Alex
Alex shifted uncomfortably in his hammock. It wasn’t being very accommodating to his movements, and groaned in protest against the weight of Alex’s body. It had been three hours since everyone had gone to bed. Unfortunately, because he had been sleeping for so long after he was poisoned, he didn’t feel tired at all.
He had spent the day looking around the village. There were 70 villagers in all, 25 men, 29 women and 16 children. He found out from the others that the village was structured around a loose system of both farming and hunting and gathering. The village occasionally moved with the seasons and owned several goats. There was no trace of modern technology, the houses were constructed from wood and a leathery, dried canvas made from the leaves of a local tree. And although the villagers owned many metal tools, including saws, hammers, and even a screwdriver, they did not have any knowledge of metal casting, explaining that the tools had been passed down from previous generations or traded from others. Matt and Amy took him to the beach, a ten minute walk through the forest, and showed him were the villagers went to fish and cut firewood. With nothing else to do, some of the class helped out with the chores where they could. At the end of the day, everyone had dinner around a fire kept for them by the villagers, and retreated to the two tents set aside for them for the night.
Alex listened to the faint sounds of the forest outside the tent. Again, he went over what they knew so far about their situation.
1. They were not anywhere in Illinois. In fact, by the sheer size of the ocean he saw in conjunction with the others’ description of the mountains, he doubted that they were anywhere in the United States.
2. They were almost certainly not in the same time zone, as many of the students had difficulty sleeping at night during the first few days.
3. No one was familiar with some of the vegetation that grew around the area, they look strangely alien even.
4. 14 students of the class were lost, presumably dead by waterlion poison. Alex’s throat felt dry as he remembered some of their faces.
5. The rest of them had found a temporary shelter in the form of the village. While the villagers were friendly enough, and spoke English, they do not recognize the existence of places such as Chicago, Illinois, the United States, Canada, Africa, China, Asia, or Europe.
6. The bus driver was still missing.
Alex tried to roll over, but failed and instead decided to climb out of the hammock. Maybe he should take a walk and make himself a little tired. He tied his tennis shoes and quietly slipped out, so as to not disturb the others.
The village was silent but for the chirps of insects in the foliage. A half moon cast misshapen shadows onto the ground of the village square. Alex circled around the village center a few times and then headed for the path to the beach.
The sounds of insects grew slightly louder as he entered the forest. Alex used his memory and the moonlight as a guide and was soon greeted by the sharp saltine smell of the ocean and the sound of the surf breaking over land. The branches gave away to the wide expanse of the beach he saw earlier in the day.
The beach was empty, and seemed even larger than it did during the daytime. The white sand took on a pale hue in the moonlight. Alex strolled over to the waterline and crotched down close to the sand, which was still radiating heat, and gazed towards the horizon. The sky was clear and cloudless, and thousands of stars blinked down at him. He had never seen so many in his life.
As he looked around, he caught sight of a shadow a ways further down the shoreline. Someone was standing on the beach, looking up at the sky. Alex recognized the short stature of the figure as belonging to Hunter.
“Hey! Hunter.” Alex called out as he stood up and jogged towards him.
Hunter looked down at the call, adjusting his glasses on his nose. “Yo, Alex. Come look at this.”
Alex stopped by the teen and looked up to where he was pointing.
“See that constellation up there?” Hunter traced across several stars with his finger.
Alex followed the line, and recognized three distinctive stars. “That’s… Orion’s belt!”
“Yes, you can see almost the entire constellation. See there’s Rigel, the large bluish one.”
“Wow. Neat.” Alex said as he tried to find other constellations that he recognized. Soon giving up, he asked: “So you couldn’t sleep huh?”
Hunter seemed to ignore the question. “I’ve been looking, the stars all check out, for the most part anyway.”
Alex nodded slowly. “So? What does that mean?”
“It means that we’re still on Earth, or at least very close to Earth.”
“Still on… wait you mean that you thought we weren’t on Earth anymore?” Alex asked in surprise.
“I considered the possibility. Yes. Think about it, why are there so many things, plants and animals that we don’t recognize here?”
“But the people here speak English.” Alex protested.
Hunter shrugged.
Alex looked up again. “What do you mean that the stars check out ‘for the most part’?”
Hunter shifted around a little, and finally sat down on top of the warm sand.
“Well… I wasn’t able to find Betelgeuse for one. It’s one of the brightest stars in Orion and definitely should be visible. And also, there are a lot of extra lights up there. Take a look at that one, about two stars to the right of Rigel.” Hunter pointed.
Alex followed his instructions and saw a very bright star. “Is it… blinking?”
“Yeah, it’s not the atmosphere either. It’s flickering too much.”
Alex watched for a while as the bright point blink on and off several times. “What is it then?”
“I’ve been watching it for a while. I think it’s man-made.”
“It’s what?” Alex blinked himself.
“A space station. I’ve considered other possibilities: it can’t be a spinning asteroid with one reflective side because it moves at the same speed as the background of stars. And there are no variable stars with a luminosity difference ratio that large. Nothing else natural can flicker like that, so it has to be man-made. It’s in geo-synchronous orbit so it doesn’t move relative to the surface of the planet. And at that range it’s too big to be just a satellite.”
Alex tried to absorb the information and considered Hunter’s assertion. “Why is it blinking?”
“Beats me. But there are others, most of them don’t blink though.”
“But there aren’t any space stations like that are there right?”
“No, there aren’t. The only space station humans have ever built is the International Space Station, and that’s in an orbit that is much closer to the Earth, only about two-hundred miles up. That thing is more than thirty-thousand miles above the surface.”
“So who built it then?” Someone asked from behind them.
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