Kingdom in the Clouds

Chapter 3

Kingdom in the Clouds

 

            “He shall be king of the Anerians…” Fred awoke with a start. Fred’s eyes were out of whack from travelling through the space-time continuum, so he rubbed them until his vision became clear. When it did, he still wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was the truth. He was in a subway station.

            Fred looked down at the WWIII’s coordinate indicator, but it had been shattered.

            Fred climbed out of the time machine to look around the station. He didn’t know why, but he got a strange feeling about the place. Looking around, he got a sense that there was something greater outside the station. He noticed a staircase about 5 steps high over to his right. He walked towards it, wondering where it led to. As he neared the staircase, it began to look different. He picked up his pace, reached the stairwell, and stopped. There were no other exits in sight, so he placed his hand on the rail, wondering what to do next.  Simultaneously, and much to his surprise, he heard a large clanking noise like gears turning coming from inside the large main wall adjacent to the fake staircase. He removed his hand from the wall, backed up, turned to face the wall completely, and let his gaping but silent mouth do all the talking. There were large gold gears on the inside of the wall, and they were turning clockwise, opening up the disguised doorway. The wall split in half, and Fred couldn’t believe what he saw next.

            What Fred expected to see was something like a large golden city that was dazzling and too sparkly to even look at. But what the reality of it was not even close to that. He stepped through the doorway, and he immediately felt himself change. His first deadly mistake of four.

            He completely forgot about the transport.

            He looked himself over, but everything about him seemed to be the same. Weird, he thought to himself. All of a sudden, a sound like a car honking resounded through the air. Fred looked around him, fully absorbing his surroundings. What had once probably been the downtown area of a city was standing (or in some cases lying) before him. There were lopsided buildings, some with part of their siding ripped clean off, and some that were lying on the ground as piles of ash and rubble. The air was misty, and there hung in the air a sense of death. “Ugh” Fred said aloud to himself. He started to walk around the old city a little bit, and when he turned the corner on the right side of the wall he walked through after a building, he stepped back in alarm. A humongous crevice was carved through the road as if the Incredible Hulk had taken it and ripped it open like a Christmas present. He went up to inspect it, and looked down inside. There was nothing but blackness as far as he could tell. He placed his hands in his pockets with his thumbs sticking out, and continued walking. Without warning, the laughter of a little boy came from nowhere. Fred froze in his tracks. The subway station Fred thought. He backed up back around the corner of the building with his head sticking out watching for someone. Sure enough, the wall he had come through was opening, and what came through that doorway was one of the weirdest looking things he had ever seen. It looked neither human nor alien. He waited until the thing was out of sight, and then he bolted from behind the building and sprinted after the creature. He turned the corner from the left side of the wall he had come through, and his mouth opened up wide enough for a train to fit through it. There in front of him stood the most magnificent and tallest building he had ever seen. It was just as he expected it to look like. The building looked like it had been spray painted gold and then glitter was thrown all over it. It sparkled with such intensity that Fred didn’t know how he didn’t see it before. The building looked out of place standing in the middle of all the rubble. His attention was diverted towards the base of the building, where the creature was going through the main entrance. He waited for it to enter, and then he made his move. He sprinted to the front door, where he was greeted by the most technologically advanced security system he’d ever seen. On the right side of the doors (which were not as grand as the building was, but still very nice, indeed) there was a panel with a pad on it. Fred figured that this was some kind of hand imprint. Above that, there was an outline of an eye with a black background. And on the left, there was a video camera with four lenses: one looking left, one looking right, one pointed up, and one staring Fred straight in the face. “Great,” Fred mumbled, “Now I’m done for.” But much to his surprise, no alarms sounded, no people shouted, no nothing. A moment passed of complete silence, and then Fred began walking away from the building. He made it about 20 steps and then turned around.

            Fred charged the door.

            He lowered his shoulder and put all his might behind it to break the door down. Half of him expected that the doors wouldn’t budge, but the other half told him that it just might be crazy enough to work. When Fred rammed the door, the doors neither budged nor opened. Fred flew through the door, along with the glass shards. He landed on a bed of the surprisingly dull shards, only scratching himself slightly. He got up and rubbed his clothes smooth, looking around in the process. There were no windows on this floor, and only one door. But that’s when Fred spotted the silver doors of an elevator. He approached it and pressed the UP button. Nothing. He pressed it repeatedly, hoping for something to happen. After he pressed it numerous times, he gave it one more push, and there was a noise like something shooting out of a pipe coming from his right. He slowly turned toward where the noise had come from, and saw a big round sphere on wheels, sitting inside the now open wall. It looked like it was sitting down inside a big tube. There were steps leading up to a platform that jutted out from the wall.  And painted large on the side of the sphere were the words, “TO ANERA.”

            Fred approached the thing slowly, half expecting something to jump out of it. When nothing did, he walked up the steps of the platform and examined the thing up close. It was a stainless steel sphere with bolts protruding from the metal casing. Whatever it was, it had to have come from somewhere, and it somehow had to get back to the place it started from. The wheels looked like those you would find on a miniature play-toy car, barely holding up the structure. Fred took a tentative step forward and the thing opened. What Fred saw inside was nothing like the outside.

            Inside the sphere, it looked like a futuristic version of a car down-sized. There was a chair with wheels on it that was attached to a small, round track in the middle. There was also a small monitor, a keyboard that attached to the metal casing with a joystick in the middle, and various small speakers were set up all around the small inside. But what surprised Fred the most was that he could see the wall on the other side of the sphere. Even though the outside was stainless steel, he could see right through it like nothing was there, like a one-way mirror. But when he tried to reach through, his hand hit the metal casing with a dull THUNK. “Amazing,” he breathed.

            Then he made the mistake of sitting down.

            The chair looked very inviting, and all the technology really fascinated Fred. He sat down the chair, and the sphere closed. Fred panicked. He was trapped inside a metal sphere with advanced technology that Fred didn’t know how to operate. Great, he thought. The second time today I’ve gotten trapped. After he finished the thought, a seat belt strapped him to the seat. But this time, it wasn’t strangling him. That thought made Fred feel a little better. Then a voice came over the speakers. It was a woman’s voice: “Please hold on.” And out of nowhere, the sphere’s metal casing was ripped off, and Fred was zipping through a large glass pipe in his see-through sphere. Fred could see all the piping that went through the building, and he was utterly amazed. He sped through meeting rooms and call centers that were run down and dusty. He went horizontally and vertically through the building, following the pipe path. After only about 10 seconds, the sphere seemed like it was slowing down. Then the sphere tilted back and stopped. Fred saw that there was a hill that the pipe followed all the way up to the top floor, where there was a doorway opening. And that’s when Fred noticed something very wrong.

            The pipe ended.

            Fred frantically typed away on the keyboard, trying to reverse the progress of the sphere. But it was no use. The sphere started moving at top speed (which was about 60 M.P.H.), getting closer and closer to the opening. Fred, who was still trying his best to reverse the path of the sphere, finally realized that he was going to die. He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. Sunlight shone on his closed eyelids. He sat in the chair, awaiting his fate.

            Fred shot out of the pipe like a bullet.

            Fred opened his eyes to get a glance at his death, but what he saw instead took his breath away. Buildings as tall as skyscrapers gleamed pure white and gold in the sunlight. Futuristic cars, jets, and planes shot through the air as if they were weightless. And to top it all off, the entire city was sitting on a ginormous rock, on top of a cloud.

            Fred forgot his death for a minute, but then caught a glimpse of what looked to him like an airport air traffic control tower. And behind was the grandest airport he had ever seen. He thought he was going to crash into it, but then noticed that there was a pipe cut straight through the middle of the tower. He braced himself for the crash landing into the pipe, but the landing was as smooth as could be. The wheels didn’t screech; they didn’t even make a sound. The sphere at last came to a halt in the middle of what looked like a mix between an airport and a train station. There were ridges cut in the giant platform where the pipes lay inside with the spheres resting in them. The sphere opened and Fred unbuckled himself from the chair and exited. When he did, a surprise met him. The terminal was completely empty except for him and his sphere. Then the sphere bolted out of the station, seemingly sensing they were the only ones there, and left Fred alone.

            Then pandemonium broke out. Red sirens mounted on the wall started blaring, turning the entire terminal red. Fred panicked. The only thing he thought to do was run for it.

            So he did.

            He bolted for the other end of the terminal, half expecting some type of booby trap to spring out of the floor and grab his ankles. But nothing happened. So he kept on running. He neared the end of the terminal, light shining into it from the outside. He reached the exit and stepped out, not realizing he was on a cloud: his second mistake. The sirens immediately stopped blaring. He kept on running, gradually slowing down. He kept on looking back: his third mistake. He didn’t notice the golden fence until he was right in front of it, and he slammed into it with brutal force. Fred’s world turned black. The last thing he felt was the feeling of air rushing up on his back.

 

•••

 

            Fred awoke with a start. He was glad he wasn’t falling anymore. He sat there for a second, and then had to close his eyes due to the amount of glaring sunlight shining in his eyes. He gradually blinked them open, taking in his surroundings simultaneously. His mouth opened wide open as he did this. He quickly got to his feet and did a full 360° sweep of the area. No wonder he could barely open his eyes.

            There was a golden city in front of him.

            He looked down and almost fell… again. He was standing on what seemed to him like a small hoverboard, painted silver, and floating (yes, floating) 3 inches above the ground. Then he noticed buttons on the hoverboard: one that said “GO” and one that said “STOP.”

            So, naturally, he pressed “GO.”

            The hoverboard wasn’t as fast as the sphere in the tube, which Fred was happy to find out. The hoverboard moved along at a relative pace, heading for the golden kingdom in the clouds.

Upon entering the city, Fred expected to see strange creatures staring at him, lined up and down the streets of the city. But, oddly, there was no one or nothing around.

            Nothing seemed to move. Even the hoverboard.

            “This is weird” Fred said aloud. This was his fourth and most deadly mistake. Once he finished his sentence, sirens blared so loud Fred thought his eardrums were going to burst. He covered his ears to try and blot out the noise, but to no avail. He was thrown off the hoverboard by some unknown force and lay there on the street. He was surprised at how soft his landing was, but he did not have time to try and figure out how. He rose to his feet and looked around for a place to hide, the sirens still blaring their monotone warning into his ears. He finally found a place, which looked like more of a dumpster than an actual place. He jumped in, closed the lid, and right when he did that, the sirens turned off. He popped open the lid just a little bit to see if the sirens were going to go off again, but no blaring warnings came. He gingerly stepped out of the dumpster-looking thing and onto the paved side alley he had run into. But the thing was, the “side-alley” looked incredibly bright and, most notably, clean. He started toward the main street when he heard footsteps and some kind of babbling behind him. He turned just in time to catch his first glance at the strange new creatures.

            The creature was wearing a long red tunic that came down to his feet, which only had four “toes.” His body was a ghostly white color, or pale, if you will. He only had four fingers like his feet had four toes, and his face was not the same as he expected it to be. It was very similar to a normal human’s, very pale, but there was no nose, just two small slits for nostrils where the nose would be. His eyes were a mixture of blue and yellow, which was a new combination he had never even seen before. The creature blurted out something Fred could not make head or tail of. Fred continued staring at the creature as it fled past him back onto the street, blurting out some gibberish Fred still couldn’t understand. But when he reached the street, he stopped, looked up toward the sky, and said something. Out of nowhere, what looked like a floating car floated down with the hatch already open. The creature jumped in, and the door sealed shut. Just then, something weird happened. Fred’s eye started to itch, so he turned away for one second to itch it, and then turned back toward the street again to find that the “car” was no longer there. Fred jogged out into the street, looking around for the strange vehicle. But nothing was there. In fact, absolutely NOTHING was around. Everything had mysteriously disappeared. All of a sudden, Fred felt a tingling in his neck. He looked, and there, stuck in his neck, was a blow dart the size of a paper clip. The tingling sensation coursed through his body, all the way down to his toes. His head started to hurt very badly, and the last thing he remembered before he blacked out was the blurry vision of the city reappearing.

 

•••

 

            When Fred came to his senses, he slowly sat up in what had to be the most comfortable bed he had ever been on. He took in his surroundings, which looked like something from the movies. It was a pure white doctor’s room, in which everything was white. He noticed a light above him on a swivel connected to a large box, which was the source of light. He swung his legs off the bed, straightened up, and fell to the ground. The creatures had apparently numbed his legs so he could not escape. Suddenly he heard voices close to the door of the room. He gripped the frame of the bed, trying to haul himself back up. But it was too late. The creatures saw him trying to get back up into the bed. They dropped what they were holding, which looked like important papers stored inside confidential file folders, and ran to his aid. They helped him back up into the bed, which surprised Fred. He thought they were going to seduce him again. But they just picked up the folders again, which had not lost any papers, and left the room. The door shut, and from his left he heard a banging noise. It seemed like it was coming from the other side of the wall. He swiveled himself in the bed, made himself side cross-legged, and just sat there listening to the noise, trying to figure out what the possible sources could be. All of a sudden, the white wall dissipated into a clear, see-through wall, where he could see the strange creatures sitting behind a large control panel. He didn’t realize it, but his jaw was slowly dropping, becoming aware that everything that was happening was real. He saw one of the creatures lean forward in his chair. Almost simultaneously, Fred’s head started pounding. He put his hands on his head, trying to get rid of it. His head buzzed, and all of a sudden, a voice that wasn’t his burst into his thoughts, speaking to him in a calm, smooth voice.

            “Fred. We mean no harm. We wish to help. We have been waiting for someone like you for years. We will make you one of us, and you will become a great leader.”

            When the final word was spoken, his head stopped hurting. It was as if someone who had been clenching his head tightly had suddenly let go. His mind had been taken over by the creatures only by staring at him.

            Fred was feeling woozy, and the last thing he remembered happening was him falling off the bed, and the creatures running in to help him.

           

•••

 

            The soft hum of an engine stirred Fred awake. He quickly sat up from his lying down position to look out the window of one of the flying transports he had seen earlier. They looked like a flat solar panel with an air bubble in the middle to accommodate the passengers. There were no tracks or streets or anything. They just flew around in the air, going where they pleased. And the funniest thing was that there was no wheel in the car: it drove itself!

            “How does it do that?” Fred asked astounded.

            Both creatures looked at Fred with amazed looks, hearing him talk for the first time. “We took the technology from an old Global Positioning System and combined that with Voice Recognition Technology to create a system where you speak your destination into a speaker, the system recognizes you voice wavelengths, understands your words, and takes you to your destination for you without touching a wheel.”

            Fred stared at the creature with a dropped jaw the entire time he was speaking. He could not believe how far technology had come.

            “How long did it take to make something like that?” Fred asked.

            “Oh, we have been working on it and improving upon it for years and years. The total time it took to make 1 of them was probably a month. Very delicate work.”

            Fred was completely amazed. Before he had time to ask another question, the car came to a slow stop at their destination.

            Fred’s jaw dropped even more.

            To his right, outside the window, floating on top of a gigantic cumulous cloud with rock on top, was what looked like the White House. It was a large building with white pillars holding it up. It had a large dome on top. But what threw Fred off was the fact that there was a statue of a man positioned at the top of the dome. Fred could not make out the face because one of the creatures poked him, saying, “Fred, it’s time to go.” Fred snapped out of his gaze, and without paying any attention, took a step of the platform extending from the car. He felt himself going overboard, and then all of a sudden, he felt weightless. He was floating! He looked around, searching for the source holding him up, but he saw none. He floated toward to large building, hoping for a smooth landing. But he did more than that. He went right through the door like it was nothing. He continued on down the hallway, took a left, and staring him in the face was another totally different looking creature. Fred flinched, and he fell one foot to the ground.

            “Hello, Fred” said the creature. “My name is Nasedodok, Nas for short. I will be your right hand man. Please, follow me.”

            Fred followed him through the door into the largest room he had ever seen in his life. The bad news-it was FILLED with the Anera creatures.

            When Fred entered through the door, all talking ceased. Everyone stared at Fred like he had just committed murder.

            “Why are they all staring at me like this?” Fred asked Nas.

            Nas replied, “Oh, Fred. We have been waiting for you for hundreds of years.”

            Fred still had no idea what anyone meant by this, but he figured he must be important to these creatures.

            When they arrived at the front stage, they turned to face to crowd of Anerians. And when they did so, Nas gave his speech.

            “My fellow Anerians. We have inhabited this planet for hundreds of years, but with no one to guide us. We have suffered through many years of burden, searching all over the galaxy for someone to take control and lead us past our enemies. But now, we have found our man! He comes from… from…” Nas leaned over to Fred: “Where do you come from?”

            “Earth,” replied Fred.

            Nas leaned back slowly, looking at him with the “Did you just say “Earth?” face. He turned back toward the crowd. “He comes from p-p-planet… Planet Earth.”

            At this remark, the Anerians gasped. They looked at each other, whispering things Fred could not make out.

            “Now, I know all of you are anxious to see if he truly is the one we have been searching for. Now is the moment of truth. Anerians, I present to you: Fred!”