Bring Him Back

The night was dull and lonely. The moon flooding the dark streets with bright white light. Shining among the sea of stars and their golden lights. Just like a star on a Christmas tree, shining on top of all the beauty. And still… the night was empty of emotion. There was no sympathy, nor love felt in the heart of the people on the red circus.

They just stood there watching the big tower with the golden clock on top. Waiting patiently for the twelfth stroke. Then, it had been said many years ago, at the stroke of the twelfth hour that they would come. They would come for all of them �" the sinners and the saints, the young and the old, the extraordinary ones and the common ones. No one was safe. Nowhere was safe.

They used to come here every ten years. And when they came, they showed no mercy for the wicked or the special, for the bright or the foolish. They came to harvest their crops and to carry home the fruits of their decade’s labour.

 

Charles Brawn closed the hard-cover storybook and put it gently on his son’s cabinet. His little Victor gazed at it and stared at his father waiting for an explanation for the scariest story he had ever heard. And that of course, having in mind that his dad read him a goodnight story every Friday night and had never let him fall asleep without telling him why all the monsters are always so evil and how the brave little soldier always win…

“He sleeps with a smile on his face every night,” Victoria, his mother, stood next to the door’s frame watching them with a silly little smile on her face. “His father too, you know” she winked and walked away.

“So tell me, daddy,” Victor would say every Friday night as his father reached for the lamp and kissed him goodnight. “What were they doing to all the people?” his little hands with little fingers made the biggest circle they could.

“They were taking them away, sweetie,” Charles said quietly. He pressed his lips against Victor’s forehead. “But that is just a story. One big fantasy. Nothing to worry about.”

“Do you promise?”

Charles laughed quietly and nodded.

“Yes. I promise.”

 

“And you go around telling your son that this is ‘one big fantasy’?” the tall man with dark brown hair shook his head in total disagreement. “Crazy one, I told you from the beginning. This one is a nut job.”

All of the four men laughed for a second. Then George opened the capsule and everything went silent for a good hour.

Every last one of the long 60 seconds has passed before the closing of the biggest time capsule ever found on Earth. The four guards stepped back from it and examined the grey and red scale of the monitor on the right side of the capsule.

“Brian, are you getting any readings?”

The tall man shook his head and a few brown locks fell over his eyes.

“None,” he shouted from behind the iron giant.

“Same here, Charlie. Strange though,” Sam Gillerman walked out of the cabin positioned three meters away from the ground zero. “Yesterday it was busing with energy and now… nothing. Like it hasn’t been opened.”

The men looked at the lid. It was sealed as it was supposed to be. Nothing out of the ordinary, everything was according to plan. The everyday plan that, they all knew, would never change.

“Do you ever wonder why it needs all that silence?” Brian walked away, pulled down the mask of his white suit and sat on the loose ground. “If it is a time capsule, it should collect information. Right?

“I guess so,” Sam shrugged.

“Then why silence?!”

The footsteps of someone’s expensive shoes scratched the ground. The sound was memorable just like the scratching of a mouse. Annoying and unwanted. The four workers had never liked their boss very much. Actually, they really hated the man but he was feeding their families and it was more that enough for observing an unknown alien object.

“You ain’t paid for talking, boys, you’re paid for watching my new toy,” he shouted before even coming close. “Oi! Stand up, you, Gillermill or whatever your name is!” his cane hit Sam’s head as soon as the gray man walked the hill and stood eye to eye with his workers. “The readings from today. Where are they?”

“That is the curious…”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell, Brawn,” Mr. Brisham turned around to face Charles Brawn, who was giving him the empty blank sheet of paper.

“Sorry, sir,” he bowed.

“Yes, you are. You all are just a bunch of sorry fuckers. You stupid b******s!”

Hal Brisham hammered in his cane in the loose ground and shouted loud. The workers got in a line, awaiting the sentence while Charles was still holding the empty blank.

Was it their fault that the capsule wasn’t showing activity today?

“Brawn, what are you holding?”

“The tables for today’s results, Mr.” Charles didn’t meet his boss’s eyes.

“And why are they empty, Brawn?”

The scientist shook for a minute. Then he breathed slowly and spoke loud and clear.

“The capsule is inactive today, Mr.” his head straightened and his eyes met those cold blue irises that no one had ever seen. “We were starting to search for the answer.”

“How kind of you, boys,” Hal Brisham tapped Brawn’s shoulder and stared at him. For a second there, Charles felt all frozen and dead, then out of the blue everything went normal again and he was deliberately avoiding his boss’s eyes. “And get back to work.”

 

Charles got home around 8 pm and immediately sat on the dinner table where his family had started their meal. Victor ate everything in his plate in a few minutes and insisted on having a new story tonight.

“Your father needs to rest, sweetie,” Victoria ruffled his hair and smiled entreatingly. “Let me tell you a story tonight.”

“No.”

Victor put his favorite storybook on the table and placed his little hand on the symbol on the cover.

“Daddy started this story last night. He has to finish it.”

Charles smiled and gently stroked his son’s blond hair. He was getting ready to tell him that the story was over. They finished it last night. Charles was absolutely sure until the moment Victor opened the cover and leafed through the pages.

And there they were �" new drawings, new text had just appeared over there like magic. Charles took the book and carefully examined it. He was very tired last night. He had probably just missed the last pages. There were only 2 pages more.

“Okay. We are going to read them right after I take a shower.”

 

As the ‘old’ people flew away they planted ‘new’ ones here, where the story of one has ended and a new one was bound to be written. The soil would melt into the ground and purple rain would pour down. Red fog would rise from the ground and wrap up the whole world, giving birth to a new environment and nature.

And as nature was reborn and skies turned from blue to deep wine red a new race was born and created from the ashes of the sky and the trees, and the flowers, and the deep dark oceans. A race strong enough to walk alone and to breed, to feed and fly away without the need of the wings the birds have or the engines machines are run by. A race of ice and fire. A race to grow and conquer the world. A race to be harvested at just the right time in the universe.

 

“Daddy,” Victor turned over in his bed and gazed at his father. “How big is the universe?”

“Bigger than we all can imagine,” his dad said and winked.

“Go on now,” the boy cuddled up with the covers.

 

The new race rose and prospered. The human race, they were called. Humans. The weirdest race in the whole universe. A rare mixture of love and rage wandering through time and space and living for the fires of its advances.

They were beloved by some and hated by others but protected by the most powerful of them all.

The mighty time.

And because time always loved its tiny little human race they prospered and flew across the galaxies and galaxies. But when time decided it was the right moment the harvest would begin, there was no race strong enough and brave enough to save them.

 

“This is it for tonight, sweetie pie,” Charles kissed his son and left the room. His wife was waiting in bed. Her cold face turned to him as she smiled and tapped on his side of the bed.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she said in a flat voice.

“Is it about what Victor said tonight?” He laughed and sat on the bed, one leg bent under his strong body. “It’s just a book I read to him. A boy thing…”

“It’s about us.”

Charles fell silent. His eyes burnt through his wife’s face as he came closer to her. Something dark and painful was stuck in his throat.

“What is it?” he smiled and asked her quietly, gliding his fingers along her chin.

“I want to tell you something for quite a while now,” she couldn’t bare the look in his eyes. “I’ve been seeing someone else now. Someone better.”

Charles fell into silence. Suddenly he stopped breathing; his heart missed a beat as he looked at his wife’s face.

“I’m so sorry, Charles. I really am.”

 

The Capsule Team, as they called themselves, worked every day of every week. They were paid extra for the weekends and stayed two hours less than usual. Charles Brawn didn’t mind working on Saturdays and Sundays but today he barely understood what he was doing.

The capsule didn’t show any readings again and Sam was furious because of the countless totally pointless hours of working.

“We never move an inch sideways and CABOM! This piece of rubbish here decides to stop giving us anything.”

“Calm down, Sammy-boy,” Brian tapped his colleague’s back and opened a beer. The bottle’s neck hissed and a few white bubbles burst out. “Have you seen Dave? He hasn’t been around since ever.”

“Dave?” Charles a bite out of his sandwich and swallowed slowly. “Dave hasn’t been here from yesterday. I can’t remember him being here.”

“No, no,” Brian took out the signature table from yesterday and waved it in front the two men. “He signed up yesterday. See.”

“I chose the history of time.” In the narrow row was scratched the hardly readable.

“What’s that supposed to mean?!” Sam wrinkled his nose.

“I don’t know,” Charles shrugged and silently continued eating.

“He is around somewhere,” added Sam. “Drink a beer, Brian. Dave will be better off put of here when Mr. comes around” they laughed loudly and shared ironic glance.

The capsule lit up and opened automatically. Loud sharp noise buzzed. The men stood up immediately. The basic rule was “Don’t speak!” but they weren’t in a basic situation, were they? Sam put on the white helmet and ran to the glowing raging capsule. His tries to close it up failed as expected.

To help, Charles and Brian started digging up codes and schemes to turn it down. All the noises were too much. The pad of their boots, even the beat of their hearts �" it was all too noisy. The levels got five times higher than admissible.

And the capsule made a hell of a noise.

60 seconds later it all stopped. Out of the blue the machine died. The noise, the bursting glow, everything slowly faded away leaving the men absolutely numb.

“What was that?!” Sam shouted and pulled off his helmet. “I’ve never seen anything like that!”

“No one has,” Brian added in a weak voice.

“We are supposed to be scientist, you know,” Sam’s laugh was muffled. “The smart ones.”

“Actually, I’m the only real scientists here,” as usual Brian pointed out his opinion. “You are not even doctors.”

“Shut it, Collman.”

Charles put together all the information they had gathered over the glitch. Numbers, numbers and more numbers. They had a lot of calculations to do and the results were critical.

“Come see this,” he shouted and waved. “And where is Dave, for God’s sake!”

 

At home Charles felt as if he was intruding on someone else’s life. His wife happily talked on the phone the whole night, lovingly stroking Victor’s hair. Charles didn’t ask who was on the other side. This conversation was a moment of true happiness for Victoria. He had never seen her so cheerful and liberated before. He knew it the moment he saw her smile, her sparkling eyes.

“I’ll see you in three days then,” she spoke finally ending his torture.

Victoria Brawn was one very frigid woman. She was speaking smoothly, always acting a bit distant �" afraid not to present herself as weak or �"God forbid �" immature. So when it came to talking about divorce and splitting up from her 8-year partner, she didn’t really know what to say.

Neither did Charles who has devoted his life to his family. He even refused an amazing offer to study and become a doctor of science just because Mrs. Brawn wasn’t ready to look after Victor alone. At the time Charles didn’t mind her insisting on how he went about his life and career. She was his life, after all, and he loved her very much.

Seeing things now �" he felt disappointed in his hopes; cheated in every meaning of the word. He had nothing left. His current work wasn’t exactly permanent. Mr. Brisham was most importantly a moody person so every minute he could make a completely different decision. Today he pays well; tomorrow you go home unemployed.

And Victor, of course. Charles would always have his son but Victoria was probably planning on taking him away with her new man.

“Go to your room, baby,” Victoria sent their son away and sat calmly on the sofa. She wasn’t showing even the slightest sign of regret. “I want to sit and talk.”

“I don’t know what about,” shrugged her husband, leaning back in his chair.

“Well, I am moving out next week,” she spoke as if it was absolutely normal. “What are you to going to do?”

“You don’t want Victor?” surprise and anger mixed on his face. “Your own son.”

“There is no need to shout.”

Charles stood up and walked out of the room. Here goes his nice and loving face.

He entered his son’s room and took the storybook from the cupboard. He opened to the last page they had read the previous life. He was stunned when he saw a new page, had appeared in the book. Like the story continued telling itself through time. Every day a new page revealed.

Only it was impossible. There was no book whose pages would appear one by one with time.

“But here is it,” thought Charles and smiled. “A magic book.”

 

The next day at work Charles was greeted by only one co-worker. Not only Dave, but now Brian had ‘gone missing’ as they joked around. Sam left a message to each of them and got back to work, analyzing the results after the first successful opening of the capsule in the last three days.

They hadn’t analyzed the data from the malfunction the last day but it was on the top of their To Do List after all the basics were covered.

“Are the readings any good?” Sam asked quietly as he sat up straight in his chair. Their desk was big enough for four computers and the papers of all the scientists and as well for couple cups of coffee. Thank God, Sam was thoughtful and bought some coffee on his way to work. Otherwise they would be out of any caffeine �" Brian was the only one who made good coffee but both Dave and him where gone so coffee shop it was.

Charles cast a glance over the freshly printed pages and passed them to his partner.

“I don’t get a thing,” he sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “These readings are just crazy. Is that some king of what… brain activity?!”

“I think so. Yes,” Sam looked at him and smiled like a crook. “This is something big, Charlie. BIG, I tell you. B. I. G.”

“No. This is machines turning to trash. There is no logic in this.”

“Of course, there is!” shouting out, Sam stood up and scatter the papers. “I think is some king of language. It’s wired and it’s �" in its own sick way �" alive and communicating with something…”

“Or someone,” Charles childishly smiled at him.

“Yes! It is communicating with someone.”

Brawn shook his head in total disbelieve. How mad has the world gone! They were scientists. Their job was to be open to everything and everyone new but this was just too much. This was straight out of Crazy Town.

“It’s just a theory,” finally he said and turned aside, back to his computer.

“Well, explain it better!”

“Challenge accepted,” Charles smiled wildly to his friend and span around in his chair. He went through the readings again. Then checked some stats online and slapped his hands in triumph. “In my humble opinion, this is low-level telepathic wave.” Oh, his smile was priceless as was the look on Sam’s face.

“You are good, Mr.” he rested satisfied. “You are very good.”

“Just some stats and a crazy idea.”

“A good idea, I’d say!”

They both laughed.

“So what are going to do now?” having half of the team missing, they weren’t left with many options.

“Study this,” Brawn showed the numbers of the supposed telepathic wave again. “And we’ll try to find out what is it, how it works and where all the information is being sent.”

Sam looked around, suddenly worried.

“Do you think it is some kind of… I don’t know, spy thing?” being on edge wasn’t exactly a typical behavior for Sam so Charles tapped his shoulder and spoke calmly.

“I would like to think it’s not from around here. If I were to be adventurous, I’d say it’s from outer space. From somewhere far away from here.”

Sam laughed at him. His eyes clearly said what his mouth wouldn’t �" Charles was acting absolutely ridiculous.

“I have an idea,” glowing eyes, devilish smile, morbidly calm voice. Sam looked at Charles in surprise.

“Do you think it’s wise to do anything?”

“Well… what do we have to lose?” Charles, particularly, had nothing to put in pawn. But Sam, he wasn’t sure is the theory was good enough to pledge his career on.

He gulped nervously and looked around. He knew it’s wasn’t the right time, nor the right circumstances to make random experiments but this was a chance as well, a chance for them to discover something �" something new and big, and important enough for their names to be remembered in history.

“Ain’t that what we all want,” Sam thought as he drew to Charles. “To be remembered. To be discoverers.”

He breathed in, collecting all the strength and willingness left in him after the fear washed away. Sam was now ready to approach the unknown, starting with Brawn’s remote plan. Whatever it was, it obviously included Queen’s music because as soon as they agreed to try it, Charles went online and bought one of his favorite songs.

 

The new race stepped within forests and seas, within mountains and across starless skies. The sons of the king walked across the moon and studied the universe as if it was theirs to hold. They called themselves born to be kings �" the princes of the universe and the world spread the mighty human race evolved into a race of powerful titans and mighty dragons; a race of fiery magic and unattainable will.

They held every world in their hands as they walked across the stars and flew on the backs of their mighty dragons from planet to planet �" asserting their power and unlimited hold.

With iron swords and clothes of steel the human race rose to rule the world as they had been told by ancestors and fathers and as they told their children. The history of their fights and the names of their heroes flew away engraved on golden salvers.

With magical balloons that traveled across mountains, high next to the sky; oceans as big as continents; and they wandered through lands filled with dangerous wizards and dark castles; the golden salvers traveled the planet and told of the mighty heroes and the queer battles.

The human race was victorious.

Until time came and demanded its price �" the price for the race had been sown in the grounds and the nature had been disguised for their pleasure.

 

Charles closed the book. A new page again.

His face was pale white. Becoming paler and paler, Mr. Brawn kissed his son’s forehead, wished him goodnight and walked straight to Platform 59 �" the time capsule’s platform. The same one draining humanity’s imagination and turning it into a magical book.

“Won’t panic,” Charles promised himself. “So what, if it does broadcast, now everyone in the universe…” because he was denying the idea there were any chance the human race was the only one, created in a probably endless reality. “… thinks we have dragons and Tolkien stuff.”

Charles got to the capsule and turned every computer on. The programs were set on; all the qualitative and quantitative indices were to be registered. Only one thing left to be done �" to open the capsule.

He swallowed his fear �" after all, who was a human without his foolish idea of success against the unknown? �" and pressed the round gray button. Oh, everything was about to change because of him. But he was too stressed to care now. The capsule! That was all that mattered right now and it was opening in the quiet empty tent.

 

“Your idea ain’t so good now, ia?” murmuring to himself, he stood next to the capsule and waited. Usually, even at the lowest sound it would start wailing like a human and weeping at the wind. Today it decided to stay silent. Even when Charles shouted at it and kicked the oval case, it still wouldn’t reveal its secret. “Great! You create stories for us to put in our children’s minds and you don’t dare to face us!”

Charles stepped back. The storybook sat on the desk. He had that as a gift from his father. It had gone from generation to generation for years. As the story said, from father to son and everyone would know it. His sister’s copy was the same, wasn’t it? From mother to daughter.

Everyone had them. Their magical book with amazing stories old as the world itself.

“That’s it, isn’t it? Our future! This story here �" we all know it but we never pay attention to the magical story �" tales of dragons, fairy-tales of princes. We are blind but we have always known it all. You were here all along. Every day, every night, waiting for the harvest to start again; to be able to start absorbing the new ideas, the new dreams and the new hopes just in the back of our mind.”

He laughed loudly and stretched his hands as wide as possible. The feeling was magical; more magical that the book itself. He felt his outspread wings.

A new man.

 

“Bring him back,” a white face opened its eyes across the emptiness over the capsule. Thin red lips, impossibly pale mint green eyes, a face born of projection and simple technology. Nothing magical, nothing unknown; only something missed somewhere within the pages.

Charles stared at the face for a good minute before he could pull it together. Who was ‘he’? There was no one else here. He just opened his mouth to say and the face blinked. Wind began to blow.

“Bring him back,” the face repeated, dead calm.

“Who?”

“The father.”

Charles went numb. He got the idea this time, but he didn’t understood what the face mean. He was still there. The man he has ever been. Charles Brawn, the loving father, husband and son.

“I am here.”

“No,” the face shook. “He has changed. He now has knowledge that will never allow him to be the man he used to be. He has now acknowledged what the world really is.”

“So what? I know many things that no one else understands. I can make a difference now.”

“But he shouldn’t.”

Charles knit his brows.

“Why?”

“Because of reality. The fabric of reality will tear to pieces if time is changed against its will.”

“And we must all just wait to die?!” he shouted, finally full of anger.

“All must live. Live a life, led by ambition and dream. Knowing the simplest truth will ruin the last that has left for you to cherish in this dark days of you journey. We all die one day but we should never know neither when, nor how.”

“It’s…” it was as simple as that but �" because, after all, he was human and because he was a scientist, the urge to always know more was thrilling �" he didn’t want it to be true.

“Bring him back,” the face said for third and last time. “Do it now or lose yourself in history of time.”

Charles swallowed with some effort. Hard, it was hard. All that knowledge, the urge to change the world �" a lost man, a lone soldier; another fantasy in the back of his mind, a lost fairy-tale.

But what he really was, was human. A father and an ex-husband. One hungry human mind ready to absorb it all �" all of earth and space, and human. Everything destined to be explored. His mind was open and ready, eager to take it all in.

Human being at the edge of his own ending. A human being, that loves strongly enough to step back when everything in him is shouting to leap in it and live within the heart of time itself.

Father, that’s what he really was. That’s what he had always needed to be. The face was right. There was a lot more to be learnt here on Earth.

And Charles Brawn, father of Victor Brawn and ex-husband of now happily married Victoria Sowl, was impatient to hunt it all up.

Reviews

[Rhianne Ney]

I love the expressiveness and how the thoughts exploded in this work
Keep it up! and keep writing

[Rain]

Thank you!

[Rhianne Ney]

You're welcomezz

[Derek Cummings]

Nice use of dialogue and description. It made the story flow very good. It's an interesting story and I look forward for more. I'm always intrigued by science fiction.

[Rain]

Thank you!

[Zeph]

I love how you've written this :) Very nice work.

[Rain]

Thank you!