21: The Interviews

The room was full of bright light.

16-year-old Kyle Carter snorted and sat up on the cot. The first sign that something was wrong was that he couldn’t remember where he was or why he’d gotten there. The second sign was that he was in a grey t-shirt and jeans, both soaking in blood.

“Kyle Carter. Age, sixteen. Year of origin, unknown,” said the man in the white suit, speaking into a tiny microphone attached to the collar of his white shirt, along with a blue rose on his lapel. Everyone here wore white for some reason, along with sunglasses. Every room Kyle had been in was doused with eye-burning white. In fact, he was the only person not wearing white. He was wearing the same bloody grey t-shirt he’d found himself in when he first woke up here. These people told him that they’d get used to the blinding light shortly. That was a week ago.

One of the walls, the one he faced, was actually a giant mirror panel.

“I told you idiots, I’m from 2445!”

“That’s impossible,” said the man in the white suit, waving the subject away. “Anyway, we’ve given you and your friend, Commander Piott, a week to adjust to the facility and to face your respective losses. It’s time to start the interviews,” he added firmly. Then he fingered his microphone and spoke into it. “Proceeding with subject.”

“The interview,” Kyle repeated, unsure if this was good.

“How are you doing today, Kyle?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“That’s good. Sleep well?”

“Not really. The lights turn on every time I open my eyes.”

“That sucks. Do you know why you’re here?”

“Did I do something bad?”

The man laughed as if to say how quaint, then said, “That’s a bit more simply put than I’d like, but yes, sort of.”

“Where is here, anyway? What is this place? And can I get some of those sunglasses?”

“I can’t tell you that. And no, you can’t, I’m sorry. Anyway, I’d like you to tell us what happened after Ulysses d –”

“Kenny. His name was Kenny. Ulysses was someone else.”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry, it must still be a sore subject with you. We’ll go back a bit more. To the beginning of the trip to this conference you told us about.”

“Sure. Try not to hit your elbow on the shock button while going for your High-Society-Man-is-Intrigued pose. It hurts.”

“My bad. I told you I was sorry, Kyle.”

“No one cares. Anyway, it went like this…”

Along with Commander Piott, Doctor Bradley, and Kenny, Kyle Carter boarded the ship that had once belonged to ex-captain Amos. The CryoPods in the hangar had been replaced with crates of weapons, armored wheel vehicles of all types, AV8Rs, and huge aircraft. The Commander headed up to the bridge while Bradley and Kenny ran off to play around with all the gadgets. But Kyle snuck off toward the store room.

He opened the door to the small room, no bigger than a walk-in closet, and a feeling of nostalgia rose up inside of him. So, just for kicks and giggles, he laid down on the floor next to the sustenance tank he’d arrived in. The floor had been mopped up and all the tanks had been emptied and cleaned.

The nagging, that insistence he’d felt the first time he’d laid down there, returned. He glanced to his left, underneath the tank, and gasped. Kyle Carter stood up and shouted. “COMMANDER PIOTT!”

Kyle went back down on his stomach. Laying there, between the glass tank and the metal floor and next to the wide plastic tube where the fluid went, was an old but crisp manila folder. Out of the side stuck the corner of a page with the word SIREN visible in black ink. It looked the same as it did the day he got sent back from 2455. He wedged his hand as far under the tank as he could get, then pulled out the folder he’d been wondering about for half a year.  Instead of opening it instantly, he ran to the bridge, body slamming into Piott.

“Whoa, Kyle, what’s wrong?” Piott said, looking concerned.

“I found it!” Kyle said excitedly. “I found the file!”

Piott looked confused for a moment, then the penny dropped.

“The SIREN file?” Piott almost shouted, then pulled the file out of Kyle’s hands and started flipping through it, but stopped. He looked… troubled.

Kyle waited a moment, unsure. “What?”

“This file…” Piott said solemnly, showing it to Kyle, “is half gone.”

Kyle studied it, wondering what was out of place. Then he noticed: in the corner of each page was a number followed by “of 50”. There were only twenty-seven pages.

“Where’s the other half?” Kyle asked. Both were silent for a full four seconds. Then Piott brushed past Kyle and ran toward the utility room. Kyle followed, watching the commander press a small button on the wall, making the tank lift up and fold into the wall. None of the other pages were lying on the floor.

Piott sighed, and called for Doctor Bradley. The doctor walked in, holding what seemed to be an x-Box 1080 game controller. A small toy helicopter trailed in after him,  supporting Kenny on a rope tied around his waist. Kenny was holding a rifle, although the energy gauge was taken out. The two looked for all the world like they were playing War. Bradley hit a couple joysticks and set Kenny down on the ground.

“What seems to be the problem, Commander?” Bradley asked.

“We found half of the file Kyle came here with,” Piott explained.

“Half? Well, where’s the other half?” Kenny asked, looking bummed out.

“That’s what I want Bradley to find out,” Piott said. “Run diagnostics to find out if there are any other papers around the ship. We need as much of this file as possible.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Commander,” Bradley said. “Diagnostics don’t pick that kind of thing up. That is, if it’s Earth paper, which I’m assuming…” he glanced at Kyle, who shrugged. “I guess so. Europa was still – I mean will still be – argh, this time traveling thing is annoying – under command of Earth and Luna.”

“We end up commanding Europa?” Piott said, surprised. “That’s actually a good tactic. I’ll have Susan look into that –”

“Focus!” Kyle reminded him. “You were saying, Bradley?”

“Right,” Bradley continued. “Anyway, diagnostics don’t even have Earth paper in its search parameters.”

“So you’re saying we’ll have to look for the papers manually?” Piott looked frustrated.

“Or, we could have my querybots do the manual searching for us,” Bradley smiled. “It’s actually a pretty ingenious concept,” he said, which segued into a long speech that the Omniscient Narrator does not care to recount, reasons being it’s pointless and sort of an embarrassment to his current word count. We segue a total of ten minutes into the future.

“Yeah yeah, we’ll do that,” Piott said for the dozenth time. “Do we need to have the ship docked for them to work?”

“No, they’re battery powered with the same technology that Luna runs on. Like I said earlier –”

“Yeah, we remember,” Kenny cut him short before Bradley could launch into that again.

“Anyway, get your querybots on this as soon as possible,” Piott ordered. “We need that file as soon as possible.”

“Right,” Bradley left, the helicopter trailing behind him, dragging Kenny across the floor. Kenny nodded to Kyle in greeting as he slid by.

“So, what do we do now?” Kyle asked, when the other two were gone.

“Now, we just continue doing what we were going to do.  Fly to the conference.”