Chapter 11 Dome life

Several days past uneventful. It seemed that our group only ventured out of the dome about once a week. In the mean time though, it seemed that everyone had something to do. Except for me. I resigned myself to following each of them around to check out their daily routines.
Caulin was the first one I decided to hang out with. Caulin’s day was very simple. He woke up early and started the day off with a nice run through the dome. After he had his run he moved into the gym. I use the term gym loosely here. Though the principle was the same the methods were slightly different.
I followed Caulin into the “gym”. The room was next to the sparring room that I had fought him in earlier. This one was large though smaller than the sparring room. In this room there were several chords that protruded from the ceiling and attached to the walls. The chords formed a maze of intercrossing webs that spanned through an entire section of the room. On the other side of the room were more chords some came from the wall others from the floor. These simply hung limply. Next to these were several things I assumed were used for weights, they were made of a bony material though.
Caulin stretched a little and then said, “ I usually like to start on the chords and work my way up to the weights.”
I nodded “ Sounds like a plan, so what exactly are these chords for?” Caulin smiled
“ I’ll show you.” He said cockily. With that he jumped to one of the chords and swung on it like a rope. He swung through a small routine. I could tell that he had done this many time before.
I watched, impressed by how effortlessly he seemed to make it look. He went through the routine a few times and then finally jumped back down landing in front of me in a classic gymnastic dismount fashion. “ Want to give it a try.” Caulin asked me. I had a feeling that he wanted me to try it so that he could gloat when I couldn’t get through the whole coarse, but I decided to try it anyway.
I approached the rope closed my eyes and visualized what I had seen Caulin do. I hesitated, not wanting to make a fool of myself. I looked back to Caulin. He smirked coyly. I turned back to the coarse. Ok I said to myself lets see what these nanites have done for me.
I sprinted toward the coarse. A few feet before the first rope I jumped I grabbed it with my left hand and swung up to the next rope. I gripped this one with both hands. I tucked my legs up and vaulted forward to the next one. I flipped and swung through the course, no where near as smoothly or polished as Caulin had, but never the less successfully.
I finished the routine in the same way Caulin had dismounting with a flip and landing in front of him. I took a deep breath. “That wasn’t so bad.” I said emulating Caulin’s cockiness.
Caulin fumed, “ It took me three months just to get through that course. Gohn hasn’t even made it through yet.” Caulin ranted. “ I don’t believe it.” Caulin sighed in frustration. “ Okay, well lets see if you can lift.”
We strolled to the bone weights and Caulin approached what appeared to be a bench. He heaved an enormous bar shaped bone up into his arms. He then laid back on the bench and pressed it straight up several times.
When he finally dropped the weight I could feel the vibrations as it hit the floor. He gasped for air for a second then said slowly still recovering his breath. “ Let’s see you do that.” I arched an eyebrow.
In high school I had lifted for football, but the weight Caulin had just done was clearly more than 400 lbs and I had never made it past 300. I shrugged my shoulders and decided to give it a try none the less.
I struggled to lift the bar off the ground. I could see Caulin smiling out of the corner of my eye. As I laid back on the bench I had to be careful to keep the bar from crushing me. I cracked my neck closed my eyes and pressed with all I had. Slowly but surely the bar lifted. I strained, then I gave one final push, yelled and my arms finally straightened. I dropped the bar after one rep. That was enough for me.
Caulin shook his head. “ David, I have to hand it to you. The stuff you just did has taken me years to do.” He said. Then paused for a second. “ You wouldn’t happen to know where I could get any those nano thingies you were talking about?” I smiled and laughed. We finished his work out. I was amazed at how much he did. The workout alone took most of the day. He was definitely dedicated to physical fitness. I was impressed with him, but I was even more amazed with myself, the mere fact that I could even begin to compete with a workout routine like that was incredible.
The next day I went out and decided to see what Gohn was doing. I strolled out of my room and began to search through the dome. I was astonished that I seemed to actually be able to pick my way around the dome now. I had only been here a couple of days and I was already starting to feel at home. I rode one of the pulsating platforms that carried the inhabitants of the dome across the open central area. The platform was attached to a long enormous sized piece of what looked like muscle tissue. As the muscle tensed the platform shot across the dome, and then when it relaxed the platform would return. There were hundreds of people bustling around getting on and off. I was amazed that no one ever fell off the platform because like everything else in the dome there were no railings, this place seemed to have evolved beyond accidents. I on the other hand found myself awkwardly nervous while I hurriedly stepped on and off the moving platform. People gave me looks as I stood uneasily in the center of the platform.
After finishing my ride on the platform, I proceeded to an area of the dome full of crisscrossing hallways and rooms. This was where Gohn had said he would be. I poked into several rooms before I finally found him. Quite to my surprise, Gohn was seated in an almost scientific setting. I had expected something more like that of Caulin, but it seemed that Gohn’s daily routine was somewhat different.
When I entered he looked up from what appeared to be a microscope. “ Is that what I think it is?” I asked him quizzically.
Gohn simply responded “ Nope.” then he laughed, “ of coarse I can’t have any idea what your thinking so I guess it could be.” He said sarcastically.
I rolled my eyes, and said exasperated “ I was thinking that it looks an awful lot like a microscope.”
“ Well then I guess it is what you thought it was.” Gohn said still smiling.
I thought for a moment “ I assume it is organic like everything else here” Gohn nodded. Then I smirked, “ When I was in school I used microscopes to look at living tissues, and here you are using living tissue to look at…” I paused, “ what exactly are you looking at here?”
Gohn explained to me that he was working on new pathogens for his darts. He said that each time he went outside the dome and used some of his pathogens, He could never use them again. “ Most of the animals out there are still evolving so fast that they will gain immunity to my pathogens within a day or two of my using them, I have gone out and used a particular pathogen one day then the next day I tried to use the same on an entirely different species in an entirely different sector and the disease had no effect.”
“ Wow,” I said, “ Must be tough to keep coming up with new strains.”
Gohn nodded, “ It seems to get harder each time I go out. When we go into the sectors with the stronger mutant species, I have found that some of them have such strong immune systems that even my new strains have no effect on them.”
He showed me the process he used to engineer the diseases and then inject the genetic information into his symbiote. The whole process took several hours, the whole time through I asked questions and he would answer, though he was sarcastic so often I found at times I wasn’t sure if he was telling me the truth or just being cynical.
We worked in the lab for most of the day. I caught on quickly to the various laboratory techniques, most were very similar to ones I had used back in college in my own science labs. “ And I thought that I would never use the stuff I learned in biology lab.” I thought to myself with a chuckle. Then again who could of ever imagined I would find myself in a situation like this? Cooking up diseases in a lab to use to fight mutants. I shook my head, it sounded like something out of a bad sci-fi novel.
As we worked I found myself watched Gohn, thinking back to when me and my brother had been young. We would always do things together. I would always come up with the ideas for things and I would make my brother do all the grunt work. It had never ceased to amaze me how tireless he would work. He would work and work until everything was perfect. He always pretended that he hated it and would sarcastically call me a slave driver, but he must have enjoyed it because each time I came up with some new idea he would help me. Watching Gohn then, the way he painstakingly worked, I couldn’t help, but remember my brother.
“What are you think so hard about?” Gohn said catching me in my daydream.
I laughed. “Well, to be honest, you remind me a lot of my younger brother. I can’t help, but think about how he used to be able to work for hours doing the same thing, just like you are now.” I said. “ Do you have any siblings?”
Gohn paused what he was doing for a second and thought. “yea… I did.” He replied a kind of pain in his eyes. “He would be about your age, but he died” He turned back to his work and then add without looking back. “You kind of remind me of him too. Well, at least how I remember him.”
I felt a pang of regret for bringing it up. “I am sorry, I know how hard it is losing a brother.”
After a while Gohn finally said, “ Well, I’m sick of this.” He started putting away his equipment. “ How about we go down to the gym and work on some target practice?” I nodded eagerly in agreement. I hadn’t liked working in biology labs when I was in college and not surprisingly I still wasn’t all that fond of it.
We left the lab, and I followed Gohn through the maze of dimly lit corridors, through more bizarre transport veins and platforms, until we were back at the same gym I had spent the day with Caulin at yesterday.
Gohn and I went through a short workout similar to the one I had done with Caulin the day before, but no where near as strenuous. Gohn appeared irritated that I was already better than him at most of the stuff. “Great, your almost as bad as Caulin. I was hoping that with a new guy here I would finally be better than someone at this stupid stuff.” Gohn said mockingly.
I laughed, “ Yea Caulin said you say something like that.”
Gohn rolled his eyes, “ I am sure he did. O well, my spatiality isn’t strength, it’s accuracy. Let’s see if your nano tech cells can help you with that.”
With that he strode over to yet another room adjoined to the sparring room. The room was long and narrow almost like a hallway. At the far end away from us, there were a series of hundreds of small flat circular shaped things hanging tightly from the ceiling about ten feet above the floor. Each one was attached to the ceiling by a long cord that was scrunched up to keep the disk close to the ceiling. The closest of the disks was about 50ft away, and the farthest at least a hundred feet.
Gohn walked up to a mineral card slot and inserted one of his cards. He then turned and faced down the hall toward the hanging disks. He raised his arms and tensed up waiting for something. After a moment one of the disk quickly descended from the ceiling. It was about 60ft away. Gohn didn’t even have to aim, without hesitation, he shot a single dart that hit the disk squarely in the center. As soon as the disk was hit it shot back up to the ceiling and a different disk descended this one was farther away, maybe 75ft. Again Gohn instantly fired a dart and again it landed dead center, vaulting the disk back to it hiding place near the ceiling.
This went on for several minutes. Each one farther away than the one before until the ones that descended were all at the very far side of the room. I stood quite impressed as time and time again, Gohn effortlessly shot each and every target with pinpoint accuracy.
When the last disk shot up to the ceiling and no more came down Gohn finally lowered his arms. “ That was a pretty good warm up, but I think its time to step it up.” He approached the mineral slot once more and this time inserted a different card. He spun around quickly this time to ready himself.
Step it up, Gohn did. This time the disks dropped much faster, and where as there had been a pause between each target before this time there was no such luxury. My eyes widened as the targets rose and fell. Sometime multiple targets would fall at once. I blinked my eyes dizzy from the sporadic movements. I couldn’t even begin to keep up with them, but Gohn was on fire. This time he had both arms raised. The air sacs on his biceps pulsed rhythmically firing his dart in rapid succession. It appeared that he was hitting all the targets dead on like before, but I won’t pretend that I could have told you if he ever missed.
After several minutes of this the targets finally slowed and stopped. Gohn gasped for air, exhausted from the endeavor. “ Not bad.” he said through a labored breath. “ I got all of them, but some of them weren’t dead centered.”
I just stared at him “ You’ve got to be kidding, that was amazing! I mean how could you even tell if you hit them at all much less in the center?”
Gohn smiled cockily, “ What you couldn’t?” He said teasing. I just shook my head laughed. “ Well, I hope you were paying attention because now its your turn.” Gohn said to me.
I arched and eyebrow. “ My turn?” I asked a little confused. “ I don’t have anything that can shoot though.”
Gohn cocked his head to the side “yea you do.” He said matter-of-factly, “ Didn’t you know that your symbiote can shoot out spines?”
I started to say “ Of coarse not”, but I stopped myself. I looked down and searched my mind. A picture or a feeling slowly rose into my consciousness. “ yea I guess I did.” I said with a wry smile, shaking my head.
“Good, well how about you give it a try then?” Gohn requested. I nodded and lifted my right arm pointing it down the room toward the targets. I closed my eyes and searched my mind to figure out how to use this new talent. I let go and the symbiote took over. A small spine grew out of the symbiote. This one was thin and round like a porcupine’s quill, not at all like the long scythe like claws it usually grew. It was only about six inches long and was perfectly straight.
“I set it so only one target drops at a time and they cycle slowly. Your symbiote isn’t meant for rapid fire like mine.” Gohn said walking over to the card slot and slipping in a new mineral card.
I opened my eyes. One of the targets slowly descended from the ceiling. I squinted to see it clearly and took aim with my symbiote. I breathed deliberately, swallowed hard and tensed my arm. The spine receded back into the symbiote and then was slingshoted out.
The dart whizzed through the air. I held my breath and watch as it flew through the air… completely missing the target. My shoulders slumped in disappointment. I had been doing so well at everything I had tried up to this point I had assumed that this would come easy too.
Gohn bit his lip holding in a laugh. “ That was really close.” he said mockingly. Then he smiled and said with a laugh, “ How about you give it a few more tries?”
I spent the next two hours shooting. At first Gohn attempted to hold back his laughter, but by the end he was in tears.
“ I hate to say I man, but you are the worst shot I have ever seen.” Gohn said still laughing. “ I think you had better call it a night.”
I fumed. “ I swear I am not leaving here till I hit one of those stupid targets.”
Gohn laughed “ well I’ll see you in a week or two then.” He said teasing me. “ I have more work to do in the lab tomorrow so I have to get to sleep. I’ll see you later, oh and good luck.”
I gave him a dirty look and resumed practicing. I practiced all night. After a while I was able to hit the targets once in a while, but I was going for consistency. I had always had a bad habit of setting myself to complete a task and even when I failed a hundred times I would still keep trying it. It was a trait that had driven my little brother crazy when we were kids and I got stuck trying to do something in a video game.
Gohn’s chiding had just made it that much worse. It seemed just like when my little brother would tease me when he was beating me at a game. I hated looking stupid. I was so determined to get good at it that I even went back to my room to get more mineral cards after I ran out. For some reason I was always winding up with extras at the end of the day so I decided to use them now.
I still wasn’t sleeping so I didn’t have to worry about losing sleep. I finally called it quits about an hour before everyone usually woke up. I had finally gotten it down so that I would hit about 7 out of 10 of my shots. Of course that was with them only coming down one at a time and doing so very slowly, but it took my symbiote a few second to regenerate a new spine, so considering I couldn’t hit anything before, I felt that that was a huge improvement.
When I got back to my room I collapsed. I still couldn’t sleep, but that didn’t stop me from spending most of the day relaxing in my room. After I finally felt rested up I went back to the gym and worked out with Caulin for a while until Gohn came in. Needless to say Gohn was stunned when we went back to the targeting room, and I hit the target on my first shot.
“ I got to hand it to you, David.” Gohn said. “ you are nothing if not dedicated.”
I smiled. “ That’s what I was going for.” I said.
The next day I went to see what Scyll and Terry were up to. I hadn’t talked to Terry for a couple of days and I was starting to wonder if she was uncomfortably around me for some reason after the incident at the doctors office.
Much to my relief though when I found her she assured me that that wasn’t the case. She had just been really busy the past few day processing the new mutant we encounter in our last trip. I was surprised to find out that it was her and Scyll’s responsibility to code and categorize the new mutant strains that our team encountered.
“ Yea me and Scyll actually have to work when we aren’t outside, unlike some people.” Terry had said referring to Gohn and Caulin. “ Come on, I’ll show you what responsible people do here in the dome.” Terry said laughing. Gohn and Caulin were with me at the time. “ You know you two are always welcome to come help too you know.”
Caulin and Gohn just looked at each other and laughed. “ Umm, yea we’ll be right there you all get started without us.” Gohn said as seriously as he could muster. “What? I don’t think so I am not going to spend all day stuck in the stupid lab.” Caulin protested.
Gohn rolled his eyes. “ Come on you idiot.” He said, as they walked away quickly.
Scyll sighed “ I guess its just going to be us again.” She said
Terry nodded. “ Well at least we have one decent guy finally.” Terry said nodding to me. Scyll giggled, and I blushed a little though I was happy to get the added attention again.
With that Terry and Scyll lead me to another lab. This one was different than Gohn’s lab. Unlike his where it had been only a small room with only him working, this one was full of people. Men and women all in their respective black and whit lab coats. The room was enormous and full of a pungent chemical aroma that burned at my nostrils.
Terry and Scyll worked alongside the many other people. The lab was bustling with activity. I tried my best to keep up. I helped with odd jobs here and there. There was so much to do that we didn’t have very much time to talk.
Hours flew by. We were so busy that the day seemed gone before I even could begin to realize it. “Thanks for all your help David” Terry said when there was time for a breath. “ It’s nice to finally get someone who’s not lazy!” Scyll laughed and nodded. I blushed a little.
To be honest I was surprised I was any help at all. I had the hardest time keeping focused on anything. I found my eyes drifting towards Terry constantly. I kept trying to pay attention to the things I was suppose to be doing, but my eyes wouldn’t listen. I got in trouble a few times almost ruining the tests that I was doing. She was just so graceful. As she glided around the lab her feet didn’t seem to touch the ground. Every once in while her eyes would meet mine and she would smile. Of course I would immediately try to pretend that I was paying attention to my work, but I doubt my ruse fooled her.
In spite of what Gohn and Caulin had said, I enjoyed my day with the girls in the lab, but when it was over I was exhausted. I realized why I had seen so little of Terry and Scyll the past few days. When we were finished with our work we all were ready to get back to our rooms. “We did a good job today, I think we will be done with all the tests by tomorrow.” Terry said as we walked back to our rooms.
“Yea.” I said taking in a deep breath, “ I don’t know if I have worked so hard before in my life. Your guys day is definitely harder than Gohn’s or Caulin’s.”
Terry and Scyll laughed, “ Yea, Its usually not this busy, but with a new species to test things can get kind of hectic.” Terry said. “Thanks again for helping, I think we can handle it tomorrow, I only have to run one more test and then I am going to start getting ready for the excursion that we are going to go on the next day.”
I smiled. “ Darn, so you guys won’t need my help tomorrow?” I said being only partially sarcastic.
Terry shook her head, “ No, I think we will be fine, you can relax tomorrow.” She said. “ Oh, but save some time before sunset I want to show you something, okay.”
I smiled, “ Sounds good, I’ll do that.”
Terry and Scyll stopped at a long corridor that branched off from where we were walking. “ This is our stop. I will see you tomorrow, Goodnight.” Terry said. I said goodnight to back to her and Scyll and paused to watch for a second as they walked away.
I smiled to myself as I continued back to my room. This place was turning out to be okay after all.
The following day I worked out with Caulin again. This time I fought a little harder trying to keep up with him. I have to say I think that I gave him a run for his money. After that we met Gohn for lunch in the cafeteria.
“ So synthesize any new treats for us this morning?” Caulin asked Gohn.
Gohn shrugged nonchalantly, “ Oh I don’t know I might have some nice surprises for you tomorrow.” He replied in classic Gohn fashion. “ So how did your work out go.”
“Not to bad, David’s getting better, no where near my caliber, but I think he might already have passed you up.” Caulin said jeeringly.
Gohn arched an eyebrow. “ Really?” He said slyly, “ Well we all know there is only one way to find out for sure, now isn’t there.” He looked at me challengingly.
I laughed, “ Sure why not we all know at the rate I’m progressing I will be unbeatable by either of you, in a few days anyway, minus well go a few rounds now while your still a challenge.” I taunted mimicking their coy attitudes.
Caulin raised his eyebrows and turned to Gohn, “ Big talk from the newbie. I do believe that is grounds for a duel.” We all laughed and raced each other up to the sparring room.
When we got there Gohn and I climbed into the ring. I decided against Gohn I would be better suited by a shield than a sword so I concentrated on my symbiote. Slowly a claw grew out, it curved and widened until I had myself a stout little shield that ran up the length of my forearm and bent into an almost circular fashion.
Gohn raised his eyebrows. “ Hmm, this should be interesting indeed.” He said then with a smirk he added, “ I might even have to put forth some effort here.”
Caulin grinned as he watched us squaring off. “I get the winner.” He said getting pumped up at the simple thought of a good fight.
Gohn’s eyes narrowed as he began to walk slowly in a circle around me. His arms still down at his side knowing that with out a blade I was no immediate threat. I stood not moving, my eyes trained on him. I could feel the information flowing from the symbiote. Hundreds of programmed attack and defense strategies melted into my consciousness from it. Suddenly both of Gohn’s arms shot up. Like lightning he shot to darts one for my head and the other at my stomach. Luckily I had expected he would try that. I brought my right arm to up to my stomach to receive that dart and I moved my head and neck out of the way of the other. I felt the first dart impact my symbiote, and the second whiz past my left ear.
There was no time for celebration. Gohn responded with a rapid fire of darts to follow. Every single one with pinpoint accuracy. He stood stationary like a turret rotating his upper body to follow me as I dodged this way and that. I was able to evade many of them and most the rest impacted harmlessly into my shield, but inevitably I was skimmed a few times and even received a few that went deep into my left arm. Luckily my arm quickly recovered the injuries and I wasn’t slowed by them.
I spent several minutes almost comically attempting to evade Gohn’s onslaught. After a while I decided I needed to take this in to melee range. I sprinted full speed toward Gohn. He continued his nonstop barrage. When I was still several feet away I stopped planted my feet and spun around releasing my shield like a discus at Gohn. This caught him completely off guard. To his surprise it smashed violently into his chin sending him sprawling to the floor. I took advantage of this to close the remaining gap between us. I also grew a blunt foot long and half foot wide sword that I could use as both a bludgeon and a shield. .
Gohn rolled over, recovered now from the shock of my attack, he spun around on the ground to get on his stomach and quickly pushed himself to his feet. To my surprise instead of running away from me to get some distance between us again he charged me. I swung my club shaped claw at him. He brought his right arm up and received the blow with the tube that ran down his forearm. I was stunned that it was so hard. It received the impact like hitting a bar, and didn’t seem to hurt him at all. He spun around connecting his other forearm to my face as he came about. It was like getting hit in the face with a bat. I was completely disoriented from the blow for a few seconds. I staggered backward. He brought his arms up again this time with the two barrels pointed at my chest.
I regained my composure just in time to hit the floor and evade his darts. I pushed up against the ground with my hands and kicked off the ground springing forward in an almost football tackle. I hit Gohn in the stomach and took him down hard. We wrestled on the floor for several minute. Caulin shouting at us in encouragement. “ Nice one, now hit him with that hand, yea!”. He appeared to be having almost as much fun as us.
I finally managed to get on top. I kneeled on his chest and raised my right arm to smack him in the face with my club, when I saw Terry enter the room. I paused for just a second when I saw her, unfortunately that second was all Gohn needed. He kicked me off and rolled up to kneel on my chest he held my symbiote arm down with one hand and leveled the barrel of the other arm directly at my face. I could see down the barrel it was so close to my right eye. I had no choice but to submit. Gohn helped me up. He patted my on the back “That was a nice fight. You just about had me.” He then turned to Terry, “ I must thank you, if it hadn’t been for your distraction I might have a considerable headache right now.”
Terry smiled and bowed curtly. “ Anything I can do to help.” She said laughing. My cheeks burned in embarrassment. “ Well David are you ready to go?” She asked. I nodded and turned to Gohn.
“Next time you won’t be so lucky.” I said with a smile. He shrugged and looked at Caulin pretending he didn’t know what I was talking about. “ Well good luck Caulin, give him a few more volts from me will you.” I said with a laugh.
He smiled and said. “Oh I plan too.” With that me and Terry left the two of them to their next fight.
I followed Terry for several minutes before I finally asked, “ So what exactly are we doing?”
She smile in her mysterious way and looked me in the eyes. “ You’ll see.” was all she would give me. I arched an eyebrow and wondered to myself what she could possible have in her head.
We climbed several floors. It seemed that we entered one lift after another. It wasn’t long before we were at the top floor of the dome. I looked down and felt a sudden sense of vertigo as I peered over the edge of the floor we were on. It was like being at the top floor of a sky scraper with no fencing to keep you from falling down. I took a deep breath and continued to follow Terry. As she walked in front of me I found myself watching her. She carried herself with an unparalleled air of surety and energy. At her side as always was her faithful Caudal. It walked funny, waddling as fast as it could to keep up with her, its extraordinarily long tail wrapped tightly around its waist. We emerged from the dome onto a sort of small balcony. Terry looked left and right to make sure no one was watching.
“Hold on to me.” she said. My eyebrow shot up. “ Just do it.” she said again. Timidly I put my arms around her. “ hold on tight.” With that she signaled something to her caudal and it jumped onto her back. It’s stout arms grabbed her around the shoulders and it shot its tail up. I watched in curiosity as the tail disappeared over the top of the dome. A moment later to my surprise we lifted suddenly and quickly, being pulled up by the amazingly strong tail of the caudal. We rose swiftly. My stomach did flips as I watched the ground disappear beneath my feet.
We reached the very top of the dome where the caudal had grabbed a strange antenna like thing, that stuck out from the peak of the dome, to pull us up. The dome was so large that the very top of the dome was actually quite flat. We easily walked around. There wasn’t another person in sight. It was getting late and the sun was slowly edging toward the horizon, preparing to dive out of sight to hide until morning.
Terry sat down and faced the sunset. I came and sat down next to her. “ I like to come up here from time to time just to watch the sun set.” she said, her gaze trained on the horizon. I followed her eyes. For the first time I really looked out. The view was breath taking. I could see on one side of us the huge forest we had ventured into the week before. The trees towering even above us, but the sun was setting on the other side of the dome. This side was actually relatively barren.
“Can you see it out there near the very edge of the horizon.” She asked pointing in the direction that she had been looking at. I squinted in the distance I could see the vague shadowed silhouette of the once Chicago Skyline. My eyes widened. As the sun set the shadows of the crumbling skyscrapers danced over the landscape. “Whenever I come up here I look at those buildings. I dream of the life that I might have had in cities like those. The freedom to do whatever I wanted. Go anywhere and never have to worry about danger or anything else…” She trailed off with a sigh. “ What’s it like?” She turned to me her eyes full of wonder and hope. I could have told her that it wasn’t that great or that it had its flaws, but she was so entranced that I couldn’t bring myself to dash her dreams. I hesitated, almost not wanting to delve back into that part of my life, fearing it would be too painful. Finally, I closed my eyes and said. “It was definitely a lot different. More people and definitely no monsters to fight.” She smiled her eyes trained on me. They seemed to beg for more. So I gave it to her. I told her everything. The sun disappeared, the world grew dark, I could hear beasts making their sounds through the otherwise silent night air, but I continued. I explained school, college, work. Things so ordinary to me fascinated her. I began to understand how they must have all felt about me, asking questions about their lives.
I told her about television, movies, books. I told her stories about when I was a kid growing up. I went through every vacation I could remember. I told her every funny or interesting story I had, then told her some that I didn’t think were interesting. She listened intently to everything. I could practically see her fantasies dancing in her large hazel eyes.
We sat there for hours she rested her head on my shoulder as I continued. Finally, I had said all that I could think to say about my time. She smiled, “ I wish we were there.” She said looking into the darkness toward the city that we could no longer see. “ Living in your time.”
We sat in silence for a while. “ It’s not bad here though.” I said. “ Your lives are exciting and interesting.”
She smiled, “ yea they are.” She said. “ And we have an exciting day planed for tomorrow. So we had better get back to our rooms to rest.” I reluctantly agreed. Her Caudal lowered us back down and we returned. When we got to her room she stopped and said. “Thank you. I have always wanted to know about life before. Now even though I will never get to experience it myself, I think that through you I have seen everything that I always wanted to see.” She smiled and then turned and entered her room. When she went in I could see Scyll waiting for her, the two of them were talking away even before the door had closed behind her.
I walked back with a spring in my step. I hadn’t slept since I had woken from my coma, but that night I didn’t think I could have slept anyways. I spent the rest of the night thinking through that evenings events replaying them in my mind. I didn’t think I could deceive myself anymore. I was crazy about Terry.