A New Night

Jailhouse Rock

The darkness of unconsciousness did not seem to last long. It was more like … a light being turned off via a switch. When it was flipped back on, I was standing upright. Immediately, I could feel grainy sand beneath my feet, the sun shining warmly upon my face, and the salty wind blowing through my hair. I heard waves crashing upon the shore. I slowly opened my eyes and allowed them to adjust to the brightness. Sure enough, I was on a sandy beach—but not the artificial, powdery shore of the Sky City.

No, this was the dune-covered beach of the Island. Wild plants covered the ground, the Wall towered in my peripherals, and even the peninsula of the Servants was out in the distance. I was … home … if such a thing existed for me.

Had they sent me back to the Island after knocking me unconscious? It certainly seemed so. Then again, that made no sense with how grievous the doctor had spoken about my being down there. Also, I noticed that the shore was rather … empty. There were no bloodbags, no Night People, and no Servants in the distance.

What was going on?

Something green fluttered from the sky and landed in front of me. No, not something. It was someone—Romalla! She seemed happy, and I was barely able to believe my eyes.

“Hello, Bassello,” Romalla replied with a wave that was somehow not as awkward as I had expected it to be.

“I thought … I thought you were mad at me,” I said and knelt, unable to believe she was really back. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Romalla shrugged in a gesture that seemed ... overly human. “Now is the time to talk. Why don’t we practice kung-fu while we do?”

I started to agree, wanting so badly to put all that had happened behind us. However, something in her demeanor forced me to pause. Something wasn’t right. As much as I wanted her to forgive me, I knew that Romalla was not the sort of person to pretend nothing was wrong. If Night People had sleeves, she would have worn her emotions on hers. No, something about her wasn’t right. For her to forget that her entire world had been shattered … something was wrong.

“Bassello?” Romalla said. She put a hooked claw on my big toe ... my fleshy, human toe.

I felt like the wind was knocked from my lungs, which were now literally in my chest. Winded, I sat down in the sand and hung my head. “No! this is all a dream.” I absently placed a hand on the foot she had touched, feeling warm, soft skin instead of cold metallic claws. It felt so right, yet a sadness had come over me. Somehow, I knew that this … something that meant so much to me … was a trick. It would be taken away from me, and I would have concrete memories of having been in the body I always should have been. I felt my eyes water with hot, steaming tears spilling onto my cheeks. This was … exactly how I was supposed to feel!

“It’s sort of like a dream, Bassello,” another familiar voice said … this time in English. I turned and saw the human who had been a holographic projection, the person who had wished me good luck at the hospital. She still wore her canvas clothing with patches and her glasses. Now that I was human, she was a bit taller than me. What was more, something about her gave me a distinct feeling of Deja Vu.

I glanced back and saw that Romalla was now gone.

She continued, “This is a calming program—where we can assess you in a low-stress environment that your own mind creates. I set the authenticity levels of the program low so that it was up to you whether you wanted to engage with the program or disengage in favor of reality. It didn’t take you long to choose the latter.”

“I remember you.” I gently poked her arm to see if she was still a holographic projection and felt the soft canvas material. In this place, she was quite real.

“Testing to make sure I’m not a ghost?” she asked with a good-natured chuckle. “I’d do the same. The calming program is like an entire world inside your head. It is the one place I can take physical form without generating and inhabiting a genetically engineered body.”

“Oh!” I said, surprised. “I thought maybe you were a real person, and the hologram from earlier was like a phone. Or a recording … asking me to find a magic sword guy because he’s your only hope.”

“Excellent!” the woman let out a lighthearted cackle and grinned widely so that her cheeks caused her to squint a little. “I haven’t heard that kind of reference in over three-million years.”

“Three million years,” I echoed, feeling a little dizzy. “So... I was asleep for three million years. This is … Earth?”

“Oh no! You’ve been asleep for five million by my count,” the human said, patting me on the shoulder and then steadying my swaying upper torso. “But we can get to all of that later. Let’s start with introductions. I, like you, go by quite a few names. But you can call me Jackie.”

I nodded and did my best to reply even though my brain was still reeling. “Well, I guess you know that I’m Bassello.” I felt oddly lame for having no secrets of my own or any sort of grand revelation.

“Also known as Educator Model Alpha PSA,” Jackie continued for me. “The acronym means ‘Prototype South America.’ You have a few other titles, Sleeping God, but we’ll get to that.”

“So, I’m… Latino?” I asked, a little surprised.

“No, gringa,” Jackie replied with a smile and then gently poked at my very pale skin. “You’re a bilingual model made as a prototype for Nueva Esperanza, the South American Sky City.”

I cocked my eyebrow dubiously at her. I noted how satisfying it felt for my muscles to do that. “South America is an entire continent full of cities.”

Jackie let out a heavy sigh and then gave a slight nod. “We have a lot to go through. But first, how much do you remember about the time before you woke up on this Island?”

I tried to think of something … but the only things that popped into my mind were the nightmares. When this was the only thing to come to mind, I tried to banish the memories—as if this ‘calming program’ were a literal dream that might make me relive the horror. “Uhm … nightmares. There was a flood and screaming. And then...” I wasn’t sure how or if I could explain the worst part of my nightmare. The part that I had relived so many countless times—my own death.

“The man with the gun,” Jackie said. Her tone was somber, perhaps even disturbed. Her forehead wrinkled as she continued. “So there’s not very much. If it’s alright with you, I would like to catch you up so everything makes more sense.”

I nodded, resisting my urgent desire to ask the dozen or so questions bouncing around in my mind. Not the least of which was how she knew so much about me.

Jackie waved a hand, and the entire world changed around us. The beach became a shining gold liquid that melted and dripped into new shapes. The salty air became dilute. The warm sand became like lukewarm water that rose to my ankles—until there was no longer a beach at all. The golden lines took new shapes. I recognized the outlines of tall buildings, trees, and moving cars. The sounds of insects and distant traffic seemed to gradually catch up to us as if we had been traveling toward this place.

Once everything had settled, I found that I recognized the city skyline, the distant mountains, and the tropical foliage growing around small Spanish-styled houses around me. We were in South America … Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did.