“My sensors indicate that you are enjoying the meal very much. Your pupils are dilated, your heart rate has risen, and endorphins are increasing. I am pleased.” The box is speaking in riddles. We don’t care. If this is what the ancient people experienced all the time, they must have been fat and enormously lazy. I’m enthralled and appalled simultaneously. I also have to pee.
The box approaches me, somehow sensing my discomfort. “Excuse me. Would you like to use the facilities?” It moves toward a thin door at the back of the room that I swear wasn’t there earlier.
“Facilities? Does that door lead out to a cess-house?” I whisper.
“I am unsure of what you speak. The door leads to a washroom.”
“How on gods’ earth do you know that I have to relieve myself?”
“Human biosigns are quite easy to interpret, with the proper programming.”
I have no idea what it’s talking about, but I take it up on its offer. The room is impossibly white with a basin on one wall and a loo-like seat in the center. I gingerly do my business, stand up, and the thing jumps to life, scaring the daylights out of me. I turn to see that the seat is gone and a voice, not unlike the boxes’ speaks from nowhere. “Please wash your hands. Would you like to take a shower or freshen up your clothing? Do you require make-up?”
The walls are no longer white but shining like silver, reflecting everything as clearly as the finest mirror I’ve ever seen. Water scented like rose flowers appears in the basin. I cautiously wash my hands and splash my face. A robe made of a spongy blue fabric is draped on a chair. I consider wrapping myself in it, then think better of letting this place entrap me. I stare at my image in the mirrors. My sandy hair’s a matted, curly mess and my eyes are drawn deep in their sockets. I’ve always been thin, but I can see the outline of my bones under my arms. I breathe deeply and leave.
“What happened to you, Marksman?” Bets is sitting back with her hands on her belly.
“Looks like she saw a ghost in there.” Theo laughs, with a strangely serene look.
“Give it a try,” I say. “It’s the strangest shithouse I’ve ever seen. Doing your business indoors. Doesn’t seem dignified to me. And you have company while you’re in there. Apparently, these people weren’t capable of passing gas without assistance.”
Bets pushes her plate away and suppresses a belch. Flip heads to the washroom. Bets turns to Theo. “This is great fun, Theo. But we came here seeking answers to questions. I’m sure Marksman wants to know where her daughter, father, and husband are. And we need to know how to stop the coming war. We shouldn’t stay here.”
Theo looks at his glass cup and marvels at the frozen chunks of water floating in it. He turns to the metal thing on the floor. “Box. We need to know where Amy Marksman’s family is.”
The box does not answer. Theo boldly taps on it. It responds, “Yes, master, what do you desire?”
“Do you have a proper name?” Theo asks.
“I am called a Human Machine Interface. My masters called me Troll, although I never understood why. They considered it a source of humor. What are your names?”
Theo pauses for a moment, considering whether it is wise to give the thing too much information. It continues, “I am only asking out of politeness. I know from your conversations that you are Theo and appear to be the leader. The thin, raven-haired, fetching woman in the animal skins and plant fiber is called Bets. Is that an abbreviation or a nickname?” Bets shuffles uncomfortably, but says nothing. “The young man enjoying a shower in the washroom is Flip and I surmise from his dress and manner that he is a new arrival to your party. Finally, there is Amy Marksman, an attractive, tawny haired but sad young woman.” Troll turns toward me with its dead, black eyes of glass. “I am sorry but I know nothing about the whereabouts of your family.”
“But that’s impossible, uh, Troll.” Theo says as he sits back down. “The book handed down to me brought us this far. The answer has to be here somewhere, somehow.”
I lightly touch Theo’s hand. “Theo, did you think it’d be that easy? This is like a puzzle. The answer to our questions is here somewhere. Troll, we need to know many things. I suppose it’s best for us to know a little about where we are and what you’re doing here. We didn’t know that anything survived after your masters left.”
“Oh, my masters never left,” Troll answers.
“What do you mean by that?” Bets asks. “They were punished by the gods and forced to leave earth to the moon. Or killed, right?”
Troll sits silent for a moment. Thinking? Then it answers, “You poor souls. After so many generations, you have experienced significant information loss. It will be better for me to show you images of the incident so that you may understand the conditions leading to the loss of our society and my isolation.”
Flip appears from the washroom, hair dripping wet and wrapped in one of the blue robes. “That was great,” he says with a grin.
“Boy, you smell like flowers.” Theo waves his hand past his nose.
A blinding light fills the room and all the food and dishes vanish. The walls, fire, and table are wiped away, replaced by the same mirror-like surface in the washroom. Flip falls to the floor, panicked.
“I apologize for alarming you,” Troll responds. “This room and most of the others have special surfaces that can be shaped in many ways based on your desires and needs. I programmed this room to resemble a dining area that you might experience in the world as you know it. It really is quite harmless and very convenient.”
I have no idea what Troll is talking about, but the ancient ones were far more amazing than anything Teacher ever described. It makes sense that the gods crushed them for over-reaching. We follow the box into the vast central area. Troll stops near the central platform and asks us to sit. Bets stands defiantly, while the rest of us find large, stuffed chairs and sigh in comfort. The space above the plaza sparks to life. Empty air is now filled with unimaginable buildings of glass and metal reaching toward the sun. Colorful boxes, carts maybe, shuttle around the buildings. Some have wings and fly while others roll on the ground. People adorned in strange, colorful clothes saunter on streets of strange black and red rock. They move with no apparent purpose. I see one sickly tree jutting from the surface. I have no idea how it can survive locked in that suffocating, artificial world, which looks like it could be summoned from a child’s painting.
“We are looking at New Reno, the city that you invariably passed through on your travel to this place. It like all the others is ruined now.”
The image vanishes. We are now gazing at a night sky with brilliant stars. A huge red ball, not all that unlike the moon, hangs before us.
“This is mars. It appears as a wandering red star in earth’s — our — sky. In this holovideo, we are hovering 1,000 kilometers above the surface of this planet. Your ancestors lived on mars before the fall. I do not know whether they still live there. If they do, this would give us hope that they may return someday.”
Theo clears his throat. “Ancestors? So it’s true that we’re brood of the ancients? How’d they get to such a little star in the sky?”