Twin Earth

At first, I saw and heard nothing, just darkness and a muffled softening of external sound in my ears, but then slowly, fuzzy at first, a landscape began to appear in my field of vision. Lush fields of long grass flowed endlessly into the distance where huge mountains glistened under the soft glow of a sunset. Even brightly coloured butterflies fluttered in the gentle breeze I could now feel on my skin. For a moment I gasped at how real it all felt and looking down I realised I could see my own body and even touch my own skin. I was able to move my hands through the grass and feel the texture, disturbing the grass and the butterflies as I did so.

“Welcome,” a voice softly announced from behind me. Spinning around, I saw that it was the man from before. “My name is Apo. I am one of the guardians of Mochuvia.”

“How... how am I seeing you right now?” I stuttered, confused.

“You see all of us,” Apo smiled, waving his hand around and directing me to look. He was right, appearing before my eyes in a fuzzy like haze was Rachel and four other Mochuvian people, two male and two female.

“Are you the Order?” I asked.

“We are all the Order,” one of the other men replied walking over. “I am Sachihiro.”

“Sachihiro? That sounds Japanese.”

“Japanese?” the man asked curiously. “What is Japanese?”

“It’s err... a country on Earth. I am half Japanese, half Scottish.”

“What is half?” one of the women asked.

“Is that why you look so different to each other?” the other woman asked.

“This is Itzel and Akna,” Apo replied, smiling.

“And I am Adom,” the final man added.

Looking at the aliens I was stunned to see how similar they all looked, all much taller than either Rachel or I, dark-skinned and with long narrow eyes and noses. They were also all completely bald and hairless, with skin so smooth it looked like it was made of the same silk as their fabric.

“Do you not have different looking people then?” I asked, confused.

“We used to, but not for thousands of years,” Adom stated.

“We have evolved beyond differences,” Apo added.

“Who are you people? And what is this place?” I asked, looking around. Rachel had walked away from the group to play with the butterflies and for a moment I felt annoyed at how detached she seemed to be from our mission. It was like she had taken a drug or something because of how calm she was. Turning back to look at the aliens I waited for an answer but was greeted with only curious smiles.

“We are the people of Mochuvia,” Adom finally replied.

“But earlier you said we are human, just like you. What did you mean by that?”

“We came from Earth,” Apo replied.

“Earth?” I asked, dumbfounded. “But how did you get here?”

“Please, calm yourself. You have nothing to fear from us,” one of the women known as Akna replied.

“This place is magical,” Rachel breathed, re-joining us. “Don’t you think it’s magical Tom?”

“Is that your name, Tom?” Apo asked curiously.

“Sorry, yes. My name is Tom and this Rachel.”

“Yes, we know Rachel. She is gifted,” Adom smiled.

“Gifted huh,” I mumbled, whilst watching Rachel happily play with a butterfly. “So, what is this place? Some kind of virtual reality?” I asked.

“This is the thinking space. We come here to join minds and to discuss new ideas. We can easily bring in new landscapes and objects just by thinking about them,” Apo replied as the landscape around us gave way to a stunning beach that stretched for miles under a night sky, filled with four moons and millions of stars, and causing me to stumble backwards. “This is Vansonna. A distant planet in a faraway part of our own galaxy.”

“But how?” I stuttered. “How do you know about such a place?”

“We are already there,” Sachihiro replied.

“What?” I gasped.

“This is incredible,” Rachel added, leaning down to touch the water now lapping softly by our feet. “I can actually feel the water.”

“This is just an illusion surely?” I scowled in disbelief.

“If you believe it to be an illusion then it will be, but you can feel it do you not?” Apo asked.

“Well, yes, I do, but we are not actually there on this... Vansonna place. We’re on your planet.”

“Your consciousness is on Vansonna, but your body is on Mochuvia. Our light surrounding our planet enables us to travel to distant places, whilst also remaining on our own planet.”

“But... that would be... incredible,” I stuttered, leaning down to touch the sand like particles under our feet. It sparkled magically as it drifted through my fingers, but it fell much more slowly that it would have on Earth.

“The gravity is different here,” Apo smiled.

“I can see that,” I whispered in awe, looking up again at the four moons. “Can you go to the moons too?” I asked.

“We can, but there is not much to see there, just rock and ice.”

“If this is real, then it means you can travel far distances with no effects on the body,” Rachel exclaimed.

“Do you travel only by body?” the other woman called Itzel asked.

“I guess we do,” Rachel replied. “That’s how we got here.”

“Do you not feel that is dangerous and time consuming?”

“You could say that,” Rachel replied, looking at me. “But we have no choice. We do not have this kind of technology on Earth.”

“This is not technology,” Apo smiled.

“Then what is it?” I asked, confused.

“It is just knowledge of existence.”

“What?”

“We understand how things are. Do you not understand how things are?” Apo asked, but I couldn’t reply. He had completely lost me.

“Do you mean entanglement?” Rachel suggested suddenly. “You know Tom, the theory of how particles are entangled with each other over extremely long distances. Is that how it works?”

“We are all connected, but first we need the knowledge to be able to travel.”

“Knowledge of Vansonna?” I asked, trying to get my head around the hippy concept I was now being fed.

“Yes, that is correct.”

“So where do you get the knowledge from?” I asked.

“It was left to us by the beings who built the sphere,” Apo replied.

“Do you mean the anomaly? The thing we came through?”

“If you mean the pocket that protects us, then yes. That is the sphere.”

“You say someone built it?” Rachel asked. “But who?”

“We do not know,” the other woman Akna replied as the scene finally drifted back to the grasslands from before, causing me to stumble again. I was beginning to feel nauseous.

“What is this landscape? Is this a faraway planet too?” Rachel asked.

“No, this is the beginning stage, before we are in discussion. We start here and often remain here to ease our consciousness. When we travel, we exhaust our minds and become tired,” Apo replied.

“What is the sphere? How does it protect you? And more importantly how do we get back through it, so we can go home?” I continued.

“Oh, you cannot leave the sphere,” Adom replied.

“Now hang on, you can’t keep us here,” I stated.

“No, you do not understand. It is not our choice. Nothing can leave the sphere, not even light. The only way to possibly leave the sphere physically is through the void and you would not survive that journey.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Rachel mumbled.

“The void? What’s the void?” I asked.

“It is what controls the level of light within the sphere, so we can survive on our planet. We do not know where it goes,” Sachihiro replied.

“Can’t you send your minds through the void?” Rachel asked.

“We have never connected beyond the void before. It would be impossible without the knowledge.”

“But we need to get home. Earth is suffering from whatever your sphere is doing to our planet.”

“Yes, the sphere is decaying,” Apo stated.

“Decaying?” Rachel asked, concerned. “What does that mean for us, and for you?” But before anyone could reply the landscape began to fizzle out as if the signal had begun to deteriorate, and slowly the humanoid aliens disappeared, leaving Rachel and me looking at each other in shock.

“Where did they go?” I asked Rachel nervously. Then the ground began shaking and falling away from our feet. Panicking, I pushed at my head in the hope of pulling off the headset and was relieved to wake up on the bed in the darkened room. Climbing over to Rachel I yanked off her headset and pulled her off the bed just as a large screen fell on top of where she had been, missing her by inches.

“What’s happening?” Rachel screamed as the sparkly lights now flashed red in unison around us.

“Please come,” Apo announced, running over to us. “We must seek shelter.”

“What’s happening?” I reiterated.

“The shaking has returned.”

“You mean an earthquake? But that’s what’s happening on Earth,” I shouted, dodging something falling from the roof.

“But our planet does not spin like your Earth, so we do not experience movement of the ground. It is the decaying of the sphere. Please, hurry.”

Nodding in shock we ran out through another door at the back of the room, which led into a small hexagonal shaped room where we all waited, holding on to the sides of the walls as best as we could until everyone joined us. Then the door closed, sealing us into the tiny room. Moments later the door re-opened and we faced another room entirely, and I realised we had been in a lift that had moved so smoothly and silently that I had felt nothing. I had no idea where we were, how deep or how high up in the complex of buildings we were, but the room we now entered was brighter than the one we had left and thankfully wasn’t shaking.

Inside were various tables and chairs, surrounded by screens full of mathematical equations where a few more Mochuvians were stood in contemplation, discussing whatever they meant. They hadn’t seemed to notice the shaking of the ground at all and it surprised me again at how calm everyone seemed to be.

“We will be safe here, until the shaking has passed. Please, eat some nourishment,” Apo announced pleasantly.

“Aren’t you worried?” I asked, confused.

“Worry does not solve a problem. We must seek the answers with clarity of thought.”

“And how do you suppose we do that? Clearly the decaying of this sphere is affecting both our planets. How do we fix it?”

“We cannot,” Apo simply stated, motioning me to sit and join him at one of the tables.

“Then what do we do?” I asked.

“We wait.”