Read part one here.
The small, cylindrical microphone clung to his cheek as he pouted and clasped his hands in front of a bulging, smiling crowd.
“Thank you all for your attendance. It means a great deal. I know you are all very busy.” His steepled fingers touched the tip of his nose as it sucked in a deep, dramatic breath. “Today is a big, bold day and I am so excited to have this opportunity to speak to you all: my family.” Tears filled his eyes as he looked around the room, frowning slightly into the stark spotlights. “We have a breakthrough that I think we can be very excited about. Yesterday, our head of technical oversight, Pauline Clyde…” he pauses, he nods, he smiles, he continues, “reported that her team had discovered an incongruence in the metastable composition of our atmosphere. In other words, there were external impacts to the molecular make-up of this reality.” As he spoke, a murmur ran through the audience as more and more people - starting with the more technically proficient - began to understand the meaning of what was being said. He smiled at the chorus of comprehension. “It seems, though there is much that needs to be done to confirm this as true, that we might have become somebody else’s Elsewhere.” There was a silence, and then a smattering of applause and then an eruption of loud cheering, stamped feet and smashed hands. The jubilation filled the hall and blurred the screens of those beamed in from other locations. A pad of paper was tossed into the air, turning end over end and sending loose sheets flapping and flailing over the smiling, nodding heads. Julia stared agape at the CEO. How is this possible?
“This opens up the possibility for a bilateral relationship with a parallel world with which we can share knowledge and resources, as well as meditate on the very composition of reality. It is so very exciting for us and our future.” He grinned and bared his teeth. A hand shot up, emerging from the sea of twitching heads, and vibrating in the stare of a harsh spotlight. “Oh, we are doing a Q&A at the end…” He glanced around at the organisers, suddenly out of control, knocked off his rhythm, “but, sure, go ahead.” There was a murmuring while people waited for a microphone to be sourced and placed into the airborne hand.
“Hi.” The voice was thin and nervous, as though stunned to have been put into this position by the body that contained it. “Erm. I wondered, erm, given what we know of what we have done, erm with the Elsewhere, how we have engaged, and behaved, erm, what if the people in this new beyond don’t want to be seen, to be interacted with… by us.”
“Good question.” Jens clasped his hands against his lips and paced the stage. He wanted a belly-rub of a question, or just an exclamation of familial love. How do you respond to this? “Why would you engage with an elsewhere if you don’t have positive feelings towards it and its continuation.” His eyes were hard and fixed as they reached the small, squirrelly man that had delivered the microphone, and he duly took it back before the interaction could develop.
“But we haven’t-” The voice trailed as the microphone was pulled from her hand.
“Now.” Jens breathed deeply and let his shoulders rise and fall. “Let’s bring in our CFO for our mid-year financial review!” Confetti cannons blasted multicoloured mess across the stage and a wiry man with a comb-over appeared to applause and cheers from the adoring crowd.
Julia clutched her glass of red wine and stood off to the side of the cafeteria, watching her excited, chattering colleagues as they brooded over the Town Hall and waxed lyrical over the performances they had witnessed. The excitement was lost on her. Perhaps it was her recollection of what had happened that morning at her terminal, but the idea of their existence being somebody else’s Elsewhere made her shiver with fear. They could be here now, watching. She knew what their infiltration of another place looked like, and it was not limited or respectful. It was chaotic, and at times reckless; we are the source of countless myths and legends and ghost stories: “The Paranormal.” The phrase always made her laugh, so brutally simple and slightly offensive. But we deserve it, I guess, given the scale of our interaction with not so much as a “Hello” before.
“Exciting, right?” Mike said, slurping at the third white wine Julia had seen him take.
“What?” She snapped, half a world away.
“Our watchers.”
“Isn’t it just really fucking scary?”
“Kinda.”
“No, really.” She drained her glass and placed it down on the table beside her. “Imagine there are people up there now doing what we do every day. Does that fill you with a sweet sense of calm? Or does it chill you to the fucking bone.” A few heads turned as they overheard, and Mike rolled his eyes.
“It’s not that bad.”
“Mike, I’ve seen you collide with a passenger jet. I’ve seen you send two dozen people to psychiatric wards. I think there’s a congregation in South Carolina that thinks you’re the second coming of Jesus Christ.” The last one made him laugh and choke on his wine. “It’s not funny. We are just people, playing God, in the interest of some experiment. If they do that to us then that only makes me terrified.”
“You’re not that much better… remember Rendlesham.” He lowered his eyes and bit a half smile.
“That was an accident. But that’s precisely my point! If they have anything like our competence, then we’re fucked.”
“Good point.” He gazed off into the distance, suddenly anxious as he played through the possibilities in his head, his eyes darting to the large windows and then across the faces of the bustling colleagues around them. “Hey, what really happened to you today? I know you didn’t crash.”
Her heart sank and she opened her mouth to lie, to make something up and to divert the conversation to something else. But Julia paused, gulped, and admitted: “I saw something.” She cringed as soon as she said it but it needed sharing, and the wine had given her the belief that to do so would be fine.
“What? What did you see?” He pivoted around to stand in front of her, the crowd at his back. He loomed over her and she could smell the wine on his breath.
“It was probably nothing. It was a vessel. High up.”
“Vessel? One of ours?”
“No, nothing flagged on the system, it had no call-sign.”
“Woah.”
“Yeah it was weird, but Eve ignored it.” The sentence trailed into a whisper.
“That’s impossible.”
“I know. I know. But we rolled the footage and she just kicked me out.”
His eyebrows lifted to their zenith. “Kicked you out?”
“Yeah, I couldn’t get back in.”
Mike just shook his head, mouth agape for a few seconds. “Let’s go.” He grabbed her wrist and pulled her away from the wall and towards the exit.
“Where?”
“Elsewhere.” He called back over his shoulder, his half-drunk eyes wild with excitement, “let’s find your UFO.”
“See if you can get back in.” Mike’s demeanour had changed; he was stern and focused, not like Julia had seen him before. He had his arms folded and he nodded at her desk. She sat and typed her login details.
ACCESS DENIED“Fuck.” Mike said, eyes staring and complexion wan. It had all become quite real, there was evidence in front of him now that removed any suspicion of Julia lying or exaggerating; nobody ever just got locked out of their systems.
“What do I do?” Julia kept her voice low: a broadly unnecessary activity given they were the only people up on their floor; the post-Town Hall party was in full swing and likely to continue into the evening.
“Take me there.” Mike turned and leapt into his desk chair that rocked and spun against his desk. He slammed in his password and - after a pause that overextended - was granted access. He eased on his headphones and stuffed his hand into the bag of crisps on his desk, guiding most of them into his mouth and sending the remainder onto his lap and the surrounding floor. Julia smiled at his chaotic focus. “Where was it?” Mike asked Julia, propping up one side of his headphones.
“Preset zero five one.”
“Eve, set course for preset zero five one.” He said into the mouthpiece. Time seemed to stretch out, with each passing second making the situation more and more strange. The response was always instantaneous. But now, there was seemingly some doubt; some hesitation. Mike raised his hands in a gesture of “what the fuck is happening”.
PRESET ZONE UNDER MAINTENANCE…
PLEASE CHOOSE ALTERNATIVE ROUTE…Julia’s throat closed up as she read the words on the screen, hearing them echo at a distance in Mike’s headphones.
“What does that mean?” Mike was firm, put out by the denial and soundly perturbed by the growing weirdness of the situation.
“Present zone under maintenance. Please choose an alternative.” The voice echoed.
“Fuck.” Mike spat.
“Please, watch your language.” Eve responded.
“Okay.” He rubbed his temple, “set destination for Mojave.”
DESTINATION SEARCHING…
DESTINATION SEARCHING…“Mojave?” Julia asked, frowning. What is he planning? He shrugged her off and drummed his fingers against the desk in impatient anticipation.
MOJAVE DESERT? PLEASE CONFIRM.“Confirm.” He said, before Eve had finished her question.
CO-ORDINATES SET TO: 35.0110077,-115.4836763…
COVERT MODE: ACTIVE
MANUAL OVERRIDE: AVAILABLE
ENJOY THE RIDE, COMMANDER BIRCH…Mike leaned back and exhaled as his ship tipped its nose up and accelerated into the vast, rolling black overhead. Watching the movement while standing - no doubt exacerbated by the wine - made Julia’s head spin, and she grabbed the back of her colleague’s chair.
“You’ll manual fly there.” Julia asked, without making it a question.
“Let’s see if she blocks us.” He replied without looking back, placing his hand over the mouthpiece of the headset so Eve would not hear. The idea of her listening made Julia shiver.
The sky was black, then purple, then a deep blue as the vessel surged at an unfathomable speed across the Elsewhere’s sky, before slowing and lurching forward to give a view of the bitter-brown desert that sprawled out far below. Mike rolled his head, allowing air to pop out of his neck, and then took control of the ship. A few taps and the nose lifted abruptly, showing the deep black of space before twisting and heading north. Two hundred miles. Give or take. The solid Earth of Elsewhere flickered past the bottom of the screen as Mike forced his vehicle to its top speed at the edge of the atmosphere. Two heartbeats, and then it was done. A couple more taps of the keys and the distant, other world fell perfectly still. The curvature of the Earth mapped with her memory and then… everything went blank.
ACCESS DENIED“What?!” Mike yelled at the black screen with a thin scrawl of capitalised writing across its top. “No!” A few colleagues in distant, similarly glass-walled offices poked heads around corners to see what the commotion was about. Julia felt her pulse increase as the significance of the events rolled out in front of her.
“What is she doing?”
“She’s hiding something.” Mike was tapping frantically on his keyboard: navigating back to the menu to re-start a launch, Julia assumed. His login page appeared and Julia expected the ACCESS DENIED message before it arrived in front of him. He tried three more times and the message reiterated itself. He dropped his head to his desk, his blonde hair tumbling every-which-way, and groaned. “What are they doing.”
“What do we do now?” Julia said flatly. Mike drummed his fingers on the desk, calculating. They remained in thoughtful silence for several moments, contemplating the same things: whatever is being hidden, they will know we’ve been looking for it; they will know we’re now locked out; they will be coming to find us.
“We play dumb?” Mike sat up and looked to the open doorway, his eyes wide and active as he scanned the visible scene for some people in suits that might be coming to drag them away for interrogation.
“Impossible.” Julia said, coldly, knowing that her word left them with few options.
“Then I guess we run.” Mike said with a sigh, as though this was not the first time that this has been his inevitable conclusion.
Julia felt like she was being watched. Again. It was a horrible, rising feeling and it had been growing inside her over the last few weeks; nagging at her like an impossible itch. Wherever she went it was there; the feeling of being observed. In spite of that, she had slept well and yawned loudly at the closed curtains that were back lit with the brightness of a fresh day. Derek snored softly behind her and she regarded him with a half-smile for a moment before leaving him be. She wished her husband had a “normal” job, but knew expecting him to get up when she did was unnecessary.
She showered and brushed her teeth and made herself a strong tea with oat milk before leaving for the the bus stop. The bus was typically quiet and grunted diesel fumes into motion as she carefully opened her paperback. Death’s Mansion was a classic ghost story; a haunted house and a hapless male explorer, it ached with the density of requisite tropes, but she loved it: the simple escapism. There was no ulterior motive, it represented nothing but itself. There was no moral or religious undertone, no way of misunderstanding a subtext that was not there. Just like the calm of the bus, the empty seats and the humming diesel engine beneath her, it made clear, box-ticking sense.
The countryside rolled on and on in her peripheral and she noted - in the back of her mind - the towns as they changed. Her meditating had allowed her brain to be calmed and for any chaotic thoughts to be segregated and tucked away at the back; they were no longer fighting to be front and centre.
The bus stopped and she alighted, holding her breath from the fumes of the departing vehicle and walking steadily to her place of work. The green expanses rolled out in front of her and she breathed in deeply their welcoming aroma. To be free, out in the wild, in the wide open English countryside was a thing of beauty. Why would I ever do anything else? It called to her.
The rows and rows of growing vegetables flowed out in front of her like parallel library stacks; reams of wooded wonder expelling life to all who might wish to consume it. The artichokes, the apples, the aubergines, and the kumquats. The radishes, the potatoes, the rough parsnips, and the sprawling mass of cucumber. Each grouping was enclosed by a pumping, wheezing cloud of machinery that maintained the stasis required for acceptable levels of growth. To maximise yield, to maximise value. Julia knew it was all for a financial end, and if she failed in her job managing the care - and eventual harvesting of the plants - she would be out of a job, but there was something thrilling about witnessing each of the clumps of vegetation ease their way into existence from a tiny seed and then roll out into a beautiful - albeit sometimes rather hideous - violent extrapolation of life. They clawed in the carbon dioxide and pumped out the oxygen and sweated against the manipulated environment that encircled them. All for watching eyes and jabbing fingers that would prune, pluck, and sever to create the cycle anew. It was beauty; it was her own little microcosmic sanctuary.
But then she felt it again. Felt it how she had done every day for the last month. The itching, the rising of the hair on her arms, chest and neck, the light static, the hum in her ears and throat, the presence of something urgent directly in front of her with an energy, a throbbing, pulsing substance that seemed to suck at her pores for acknowledgement. It was semi-religious - or she guessed as much, having not developed a keen sense of faith - and intimate, determined to assert itself upon her. She closed her eyes and breathed it in. She sensed the form in front of her, not five feet away, a sphere - both hollow and dense, both invisible and yet unavoidable - trembling against gravity and somehow not of this place. It was there and it was watching her, consuming her. She stared straight ahead, directly into the centre of what she could feel, and could see the tiniest of distortions in the foliage of her plants and edible fruit. She fixed her gaze, wanting to assert her knowledge on them. I see you. The blink of energy akin to an exhale and the non-object vanished. The lines of vegetation straightened and the air stilled and the world relaxed. And Julia smiled.