“Snow is pretty, but it’s not like rain. For one thing, as you’ve probably noticed, most people don’t wear clothes—don’t have them. The climate in Hollow World is constant, designed for—well, not for clothes. I’m almost always too hot, but it’s my sacrifice for people being able to recognize me, as me.”
“Like I said, I very much approve of your style,” Ellis said. “Very classy.”
Pax looked away again, lower lip trembling.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to keep—”
Pax walked away, disappearing through a door at the far end of the room.
Ellis stood with his back against the balcony rail, feeling terrible.
“Ellis Rogers…”he heard Alva say, the vox’s voice imitating a whisper. “You, sir, are a wonderful human being. May I get you a drink? Would you like more food—you didn’t get to finish eating. I have no clue, but I’ll try and figure out how to make a hamburger if you really want one.”
“Is Pax okay? Did I say something wrong?”
“Pax has some serious problems, but you, my love, are most assuredlynot one of them. I just wish you’d visited us years ago. But honestly, I want to do something for you. Can I play you some music? Do you like music? I can play something you might know. How about this?”
Ellis heard a quiet piano begin playing the first haunting chords to a most familiar song.
“ This was popular in your day, wasn’t it? Do you like it? It’s one of my favorites.”
A moment later Ellis heard John Lennon singing to him across the span of two thousand years. “Imagine there’s no heaven…it’s easy if you try…”Then it was Ellis’s turn to cry.
After Pax failed to reemerge, Ellis went back to the room with the canopy bed. For the first time he noticed a little statuette on a shelf—a somewhat crudely sculpted but nevertheless beautiful depiction of one person lifting another up in the air, like a pair of dancers. Ellis touched it and heard a voice rich with emotion. To Pax, thanks for all you’ve done for us. Honestly, I don’t know how we could have survived without you—as far as I’m concerned you’re the Fourth Miracle. Nal.
Ellis realized that he’d seen other such statuettes around the house. He counted eight in just the bedroom, most up on high shelves, tucked away. Each was different. They showed a variety of artistic skills. One particular figurine, resting high on a shelf above the windows, drew his eye. More exquisite in its level of artistry and emotional impact than all the others, it illustrated a person lying in a bed of thorns, hanging on to the hand of another person who dangled from the edge of a cliff. He wanted to touch it, to hear what message it might contain, but it was set too high, and he wondered if that was intentional.
Still eager to please, Alva offered the best in modern entertainment. Televisions were gone, replaced by such things as grams, holos, and vections. Grams—the word was short for holograms—could be still or moving. They were the closest thing to movies or photos except they were true 3-D, in that the image extended into the room, and Ellis could walk around and view objects from different angles. Grams were spectator-only, but holos were interactive. Each was a complete environment that served as a total immersion computer game or educational landscape. He never got to discover what vections were, as Alva provided him with an educational gram titled simply: Our Past. This was a multi-part series similar to a Ken Burns documentary or something produced for the History Channel. Alva started him on episode eight: Energy Wars.
The presentation was emceed by a talking hourglass that danced and sang. It began with images of violent storms while the hourglass spoke about dwindling fossil fuels and global warming. By the mid-fifties—2050s—when Ellis would have been one hundred years old—the climate had become violent. There were numerous references to killer storms, and agriculture industries across the globe were fighting a losing battle to grow food in an increasingly hostile and unpredictable environment. Extensive greenhouse technology was used, but soon even these interior spaces were being destroyed by what the hourglass described as a very angry Mother Nature.The agro-companies began building underground farming facilities that were safe from the turbulent surface extremes and constructed housing for their workers. As the storms increased and the death toll rose, companies had a long list of applicants seeking jobs on the subterranean farms.
With a frown and a shudder that caused a little sandstorm in its head and stomach, the hourglass pointed out that the problems of a changing environment were among many challenges confronting humanity. Antibiotics had stopped being effective, and epidemics of super flus flourished, wiping out massive numbers of people. The outcry that resulted saw the establishment of the Institute for Species Preservation, which altered human DNA to combat the super viruses.
Of all the threats, the greatest problem of the mid- to late twenty-first century was still a lack of energy, which touched off a series of wars that only exacerbated problems. Apparently that still wasn’t the worst of it, as near the end of the episode the hourglass alluded to even greater problems and something called the Great Tempest that struck in the twenty-third century and led directly to the Hollow Earth Movement and the Three Miracles.
The segment ended with a quote from someone born well after everyone Ellis had ever known was dead: “Adaptation is the greatest ability of any living creature. Humanity’s ability to adapt is proven, but our true talent is in our ability to make our environment adapt to us, and to be able to jump highest when the ground falls out from under our feet.”
Ellis fell asleep before the start of the second episode. This being just his second day in Hollow World his body still hadn’t recovered from time-machine lag and dehydration, not to mention the unprecedented stress of having killed someone. That night he had a dream about a tornado that plucked him up from his garage in Detroit—which looked more like Kansas—and dropped him in a cave filled with giant super bugs. His little dog got in the way, and he accidentally shot it. Only it wasn’t a dog—it was Pax, whose bowler hat was covered in blood. Peggy was crying, but Warren said, “I’d have done the same thing, you know. Any man would.”
Chapter Seven
Sign of the Times
Ellis woke to the familiar wheezing congestion in his chest and this time found the rain-forest bathroom without Alva’s help. Breakfast consisted of “something special” Alva whipped up. Eggs. The omelet not only tasted like eggs, but it looked and had the texture of eggs. The dish also had chunks of ham, green pepper, onions, cheese, and a little sprinkling of paprika on top. The only difference between it and a classic western omelet was that Ellis had never eaten eggs this good, which made him suspect he wasn’t eating anything that had come out of a chicken—that and the fact it had emerged from a device that looked similar to a microwave.
Alva called it a Maker and had instructed Ellis to place a bag of rocks in it. The rocks came from a chute dispenser next to the machine that reminded Ellis of the bulk food dispensers they used to have at his Kroger supermarket. The chute was transparent, ran up through the ceiling, and was filled with coffee-bean-sized pebbles. He just needed to hold the bag to the mouth and rotate a lever to fill the bag. The rocks slid down and were replaced from wherever the chute originated, causing Ellis to think about the advances of hot and cold running gravel.
Alva instructed him to place the rocks, along with the bag, in the Maker. There looked to be a means to do a direct feed into the machine from the chute, but it wasn’t connected. Then Alva told him not to touch anything and let her handle the “cooking.” The machine hummed, and there was light. Then Ellis laughed as he heard the exact same bingthat his own microwave made when it was done. Opening the door, he found the piping-hot omelet.