atlas ↠ b.blake

2 ↠ a new earth

Morgan City, Louisiana
2045

     SUMMER HAD ALWAYS BEEN Lane's favorite season. Like every other fourteen-year-old kid in Morgan City, she felt thrilled to be out of school, but she also enjoyed the water park days, the picnics, and the nights exploring the city with her best friends. 2045 was a summer full of rain showers, and on that oddly cool July night, Lane was sitting in her father's shed as small rain droplets danced against the roof. She leaned over the wooden table full of tools and continued to fix an old radio she and her friend Colton had found in the woods last week. It must have been at least fifty years old.

     Lane's dad grew up with a mechanic as a father before he pursued a career in neuroscience. He knew how to fix broken things, and he had taught Lane how to fix things too. She was confident she could fix the radio. It was hour three of working on the dusty box when the tiny rectangular screen suddenly flicked on. 

     Lane's eyes lit up as the grainy sound of static filled the shed. She reached forward and turned the big, black knob to the left. Something blurred every station with a consistent noise of jumbled electricity. Lane couldn't wait to show Colton her handiwork when suddenly she found a station that was working. She heard a deep, British voice talking on the channel.  

     "So, you're making progress then?"

     "You'd be thrilled with the recent discoveries my lab has made," the other voice was a woman's.

     Lane furrowed her eyebrows. This was a weird radio station, "I just want to keep this quiet as long as we can."

     No, this was wrong. It seemed that Lane hadn't fixed the radio. She had somehow tapped into something else entirely, "I promise you that ALIE 2 is the key."

     "It has to be," the man replied. "We wouldn't want ALIE 1 being released into the world. Not after what her solution was."

     There was a thick silence for a moment, "The population is getting out of control."

     Another voice popped up on the radio, but this one Lane recognized. It was her father, "ALIE 1's solution is outrageous and inhuman. I want no one thinking it's the right way." Why would her father be talking to those people? And what was ALIE 1 and ALIE 2?

     "Elaine?" Lane quickly turned off the radio at the sound of her mother calling her name. She turned around from where she was seated at the table of tools when her mother entered the room. "You can't stay in here all night sweetie." Lane tried to wipe off the concern from her face, but her mother noticed before she could. "Something wrong?"

     Lane shook her head, "No, no I'm just still trying to figure this old thing out," she pointed to the radio.

     Her mother smiled, "You are so much like your father it's scary. Both of you are always either out fixing something or out looking for something to fix." Lane managed a small laugh. "I want you back at the house no later than ten."

     Lane nodded and as soon as her mother left, she flicked the radio back on, but this time there was nothing but silence. 

Arkadia 
2149

     The distant images of her dream faded away as Lane's eyes slowly flickered open, but she wasn't back home in Morgan City. She was in a place where the air was uncomfortably cool, and the dim lighting of the room made it difficult for her to see her surroundings at first. Lane's mind was one haze of broken memories that would not put themselves in order. She remembered waking up to the horror of the seventy-four dead pods, and somewhere in her brain was a picture of a man with a mop of dark curls on his head, his deep eyes looking into hers in a calming way.