All Geoff could remember was his side yard barbecuer sizzling. He went out to flip his chicken breasts and steaks, next thing you know he was confused and his sight was blurry. There was an ethereal glow about everything, like reality was melting around the edges. A swirly blurriness dissipating the colors of what he saw became vividly bright, like tangy drink powder or a squeeze tube of paint. He was grilling himself a barbecue dinner and then he wasn't there.
He felt numbish like he was half conscious and his limbs were made of paper weights. His senses were dulled. “Where am I?” Geoff said, searching for someone else. He somehow knew that he wasn't alone. There was someone there, his senses were too confused to actually see them.
When his eyesight resharpened to normal and he looked around him, the sky was a light red with orange highlights, almost pink in some areas. The sun was huge but not as bright as he remembered the sun being. He could stare right into the sun and his eyes didn't hurt.
He was standing on a hill and when he looked down he saw his first wife sitting there not far away. Geoff was married, but to a different woman, his second wife Aletta. This woman on the hill was his first wife, Fedora. She was probably the last woman he would anticipate seeing and considering the circumstance he wondered were he sane at all.
Geoff said, “Fedora? Why are you here and where is it are we?”
Fedora turned her head around to see him, surprised, “I was wondering the same thing.” She said, “I was washing my laundry, pulling clothes out of my dryer, then all of the sudden I am here. I didn't know you were here. I'm not asleep am I, Geoff?”
Geoff said, “I don't know. I was wondering the same thing.”
He breathed deeply and smacked his mouth. The air contained an odd flavor, like damp mold. Not thick and pungent, but ever so faint that you barely knew the odd flavor was there. He went down the hill to sit next to Fedora and he felt lighter in the sense of weight, slower too.
As Geoff sat next to Fedora he asked, “Are you frightened Fedora?”
“Not at all.” She said, “I feel strange. That is all. This place. I don't know. It all seems kind of odd and unnatural.”
Geoff was leaning on one hand as he sat next to her. He looked at the growing vegetation beneath them and felt some of what was under his hand. He said, “Got a slippery texture. Sort of like wet paint but doesn't stick to your fingers. Soft, eel like.”
Fedora said, “Yeah, look at this stuff, growing on everything. There's no trees here. And no sound. No sound at all. You can't see that far, like the air is thick with something but I don't choke on it.” She rolled onto her right side to face him, setting her head on her left hand. “At least you're here with me, real or not. You know I missed you a lot once we were divorced. I couldn't get over you. Now look at us. Getting older and quieter. I wonder what would have become of us if we stayed together through it all.”
Geoff laughed, “We would be two nuts in a pea pod, completely out of style.”
Fedora got on her feet with a small thump. She said, “We should look around and see what's going on.”
Geoff said, “See those buildings down the road there beyond the bottom of the hill? Let us go there and see if we can find someone to tell us where we are. This first though.” He pinched Fedora unexpectedly, surprising her. She smirked and pinched him back. “See, Fedora, we aren't sleeping.”
They held hands while they slowly made their way down to the bottom of the hill. There was no sense of urgency or stress. They didn't know where they were or what was going on but somehow they were calm and collected and well strengthened with each other's presence.
Each building looked the same. No trim, no windows, no decorations, no distinctive features. No entrances or doors or numbers. Nothing to distinguish one building from the other and no discernable way to enter or leave them. They also looked perfectly new. No wear or tear, no weathering, no dirt. Nothing. And everything was silent. Not a single sound aside of their feet on the pathway, a pathway made of some sort of clearish plastic.
The path seemed to cut through a symmetrical center where buildings mirrored each other on either side. The pathways between the buildings were identical in their positions and the buildings were of a distance equal to each other.
Geoff and Fedora couldn’t see any people anywhere, yet all these buildings. No animals. No bugs, birds, bunnies, nothing.
They reached a building that ended the center path that they walked along. They walked the path around it and saw that in each direction outward, the town looked precisely the same. What made this center building different was the larger size of it, appearing about three stories tall while all the other buildings were a single story tall.
Geoff went to the center building and tried to see inside of it. With his face pressed into the wall he said, “Fedora, look! Can you see that? The walls are see-through.”
Fedora joined him, pressing her eyes close into the strange plastic feeling wall. She said, “Yes. And when you walk to another position the shapes inside change dimension!”
Geoff was fascinated with the alien structure. There seemed to be vast numbers of rows and columns of cubicles but they merged into each other at each perspective so severely they couldn't possibly fit in a real three dimensional space of the same size. And as he moved around to get different angles of observation the same kaleidoscope effect would continually warp the images together so that he could see them all fine, he knew inside his mind that what he saw wasn't possible in normal reality.
“Hey look!” exclaimed Fedora, “Someone walked through the wall over there! Did you see that?!”
Geoff missed the miracle but he didn't get skeptical like he normally would have done. He said, “Well, you know what, I'm going to go in there. Care to accompany me, dear Fedora?”
She smiled and they linked arms at the elbows. “Ready?” said Geoff, “One, two, three.”
They took a step directly into the wall together simultaneously and went through without resistance. They didn't feel a thing. Through the other side of the wall the inside of the building was humungous. It was so much larger than it appeared on the outside. Such an impossible cavern, they might as well have walked into a stadium. The cubicles were there in the way that they appeared on the outside; endless rows of cubicles, except now Geoff and Fedora saw them in three dimensions.
Geoff said, “This place is either a stadium sized call center or the most colossal office building in the universe.”
Fedora said, “You see their computers? No keyboards, no mouse, they must use their minds to use them.”
The people that they saw in there were definitely alien. They were similar with humans although with odd qualities. Their craniums were swollen, slightly bulging behind the ears and crowning out several inches beyond the normal human capacity. Their ears were small, embedded into the bulges without lobes or cartilage flaps. Their hair was a thin and small tuft on the tops of their large heads. They didn’t have much hair, enough to make their extra-large heads look sort of funny. Their lips thin and straight across their faces, small ridged and pointy noses, fair complexion, sort of flour-peachy cream colored like a sponge cake or a lemonade.
They were taller than normal, with arms that stretched out of proportion to the ratio of Earth human limbs on Earth humans. Their legs though seemed the same, you'd think if their arms were extra-long so would be their legs but that wasn't so with these people. They wore snug fitting sweater-like long sleeve shirts with various colored tints to them. Nothing extra bright. Their pants looked like dress pants like you'd see on Earth. Their shoes were more like water socks than real shoes.
All of them displayed the same dull look on their faces and they all moved in the same manner and they all sort of looked like clones of one another. The lack of individuality amongst them was what truly unsettled Geoff the most.
His stomach sank. They were suddenly under close watch. One of these alien humans started following them as they walked around and followed uncomfortably close to them. Fedora said, “I wonder if this weirdo has ever heard of personal space?”
Every step they took he seemed to copy their footwork. It was like being photocopied and they didn't like it at all. They wanted this alien being to stop but they were way outside of their element and for all they knew he could have been severely dangerous. They weren’t sure what action they should take.
Then Geoff and Fedora decided to stop and wait there motionless. They turned around to face the humanoid follower. The alien humanoid stared at them face to face over an extended amount of time. His eyes were unusually large and blue. There were no lines on his face at all yet he appeared to be much older than them. His skin sort of looked like dough, real fair and delicate, though without pores or hair. Smooth. His breathing seemed much fainter than theirs and the calm about him was almost lifeless.
Yes, these people were definitely alien. Geoff wanted to ask this humanoid something but knew that saying something would be futile. How could such an alien know his language?
The alien abruptly interrupted the silence when he spoke to them both in perfect mechanical English. He said, “What is your intention here? I do not recognize your type.”
Geoff said, “We are humans and we were born on Earth. What is this place and what sort of people are you and how do you know how to speak our language?”
The alien spoke, “And we all know all languages.”
Geoff said, “Yes? Where is this that we are right now and how did we get here?”
The alien spoke, “I must contact our prime intelligence before I can continue with both you two. Do not move out of your positions. If you move I will disintegrate you. I shall return.”
Geoff said, “Sir. No harm intended. We don't know how we got here or even where here is. Please, understand, we mean you no harm.”
The alien spoke, “Do not move. I warned you.”
Geoff and Fedora stood there waiting as ordered. Eventually another alien that looked much like the one that was following them looked like appeared and said, “I am the prime intelligence and you are stage three humans. You asked who we were, we are also human. We are not the same. Where are you? Nowhere close to Earth I can assure you. Earth is out there along the edges of the galaxy, hidden away like a private park. You two have arrived near the center of the galaxy and we humans pre-exist you with a half million years. I am sorry that you didn't know that before you came here. That is quite the distance to travel. Most humans wouldn't have made it.”
Fedora said, “Can you send us home? I want to go home. All I want to do is go home really bad.” Distress upon her face, she looked like she was about to break down in tears.
The alien spoke, “I am sorry but you cannot return to Earth. We do not have the technology to send you home. There is only one way and at this time that method is impossible.”
Geoff said, “What do you mean you can't send us to Earth?! How do you think we got here to your planet to begin with?! You can't bring us here and then say oh I'm sorry there is no way to go this far! Look! Here we fuckin' are! If you got us here then dammit you can get us to Earth.”
The alien spoke, “We do not know who brought you here. I am sorry that you can't return. I will have a sleeping quarters prepared for you and we can discuss important matters following your meal. Please accept my hospitality.”
Geoff said, “Yes sir. Thank you for peacefully listening to us. We would be very happy to accept.”
Fedora said with a twinkle in her eye, “I can't believe this.”
Geoff said, “We must be careful. We’ve got each other and that is much more than nothing. Don’t worry, we’ll make the most of this.”
Fedora said, “You think we’ll be alright?”
With a determined nod Geoff said, “I know so.”