Harmony

Shared Experiences

A wave of good feelings swept over her again, calming her and allowing her to relax and accept her reality for now, knowing that answers would come soon enough. From where, though? As nice as everyone had been so far, she was just barely getting to know them. They were all in the same boat as her, so that was something at least. She wasn't alone and they could all work together to solve their situation. What she needed right now was more information about where she was, if that was possible, and how the others had gotten here.

She sipped some more of her Pho and waited for that information to come.

The other six for now were simply talking quietly together and letting her group enjoy their food and drinks. They weren't saying anything beyond small talk, but from their words and mannerisms so far, they were as nice as her group, which pleased her. Some of her friends from the aircraft again asked about how the food was created. The answers received were along the lines of 'the machines do it' and that they could see them later. It still made no sense to Le how any food could be created so quickly.

When they had all mostly finished, the Chinese woman spoke to them all. "It's time we did some introductions," she said. She introduced herself, and the other five followed her. Pixie's name stuck in Le's mind, simply because it aptly described her stature and waif-like appearance. She had even said it was her real name, not a nickname. Le liked that too. The Egyptian girl – Neca? – was lovely. As Neca spoke, Le happened to be looking in Rais' direction. He had an appreciative expression on his face. He and Neca were similar in ethnic background, unlike the already blooming friendship between Prina and Rivo, and Rais appeared to be attracted to her. She was exotic to Le; her blue eyes and dark hair were captivating, so she could understand his response. For her own part, she liked them all. They were all so nice, and other-focussed too. Just like her group.

The village group's explanations as to their lost memory were not surprising. With her hunger satisfied and her tiredness fading, she was able to process things a little better. She could now study their body language and mannerisms more closely. They were visitors as well. Just visitors who had been here in this place a bit longer than they had. What was it, six days, Pixie said, since she'd arrived? By herself even. Le couldn't imagine how hard that must have been. She doubted she could have faced memory loss on her own.

After their brief introductions, Gimi asked her and her companions to tell their stories. They did so, including a description of where they woke up and under what circumstances. They all shared the telling of their time up on the mountain, sleeping in the aircraft and finding their way down the valley. Pleasingly, no-one interrupted, even though they finished each other's sentences at times. The village group didn't seem surprised by this. They also weren't surprised by Rais' assertion that the whole scene at the aircraft was most likely staged, although he didn't know why. He mentioned the cylinders too, but no-one had any idea what those were for, he said.

The village group then told the rest of what they could remember. It was quite a bit different to Le's group because their awakening points were in separate places and at different times. Le couldn't work this out. She hoped one of the others could analyse the pattern and understand it, but no-one had any explanation for the differences.

Rocsi was the last to speak. After talking about herself she described the experiment she had referred to with her first words to them. It was a theory, she said, that Pixie and Suria had presented to them, and they'd been discussing it right before Le and her group showed up. It was entirely logical to Le. The idea that this whole environment was planned by some researchers somewhere fitted their overall situation well, including her group, without fully explaining the involvement of a crashed aircraft.

Nobody knew what day it was. The village group had discussed the date briefly during their conversations but had no clocks or calendars anywhere, which was curious to Le. This was some sort of experiment for sure. The consensus view was that they had had specific memory parts removed, along with no convenient way to track time, plus a strange environment, to test how they would cope with it all. After some discussion, they group managed to vaguely pin the date down to sometime in September of 1975. That seemed reasonable to Le, as the group were basing it on world events that some of them were able to remember. This left her with the notion that their memory removal was not absolute. Discussions continued for a little while about this aspect of their memory loss. Le was enjoying the intelligent discussion. The shared experience between all twelve of them, including the unified emotions and thought processes, was beginning to form and solidify.