Lost Translations (Travel Brilliantly Contest)

Lost Traslations

I'm lost.

Completely lost.

I feel around the dark space, barely being able to see my limbs in front of me.

***

It's been hours since I last left the crowded city of Darius, saying farewell to mother, placing a last strained kiss on her cheek. Since I passed the city's monotonous brick flats, which waved at me from the window of the carriage for the last time. I was so eager, then.

At sixteen, every boy is expected to go in search of work, and I'd decided to become an entrepreneur.

I'd had a dream the year before, a recurring dream that drilled itself into my mind and made me a madman, according to my family. I'd spoken about new machines called "robots" and tube-like shoots that brought people around cities, of which I didn't know the names. It was something otherworldly, something of the future, but it'd been there, and I needed to find it.

I would start a company.

That was during a time when They'd just begun to send off families from Darius' lands to faraway places for reasons even They couldn't name. Foreign people who'd helped the city grow, floating away helplessly on creaky wooden boats that could barely hold their weight.

I'd lost my friend, Maxwell, to Them just a few months before. He could speak the language of Darius well, but his blood was foreign. He had no right to stay in Darius according to Them, because he'd been born somewhere else. 

Tears streaming, he waved goodbye to me that day, as guards dragged me up the shore and I tried to glimpse Max's diminuating form for the last time.

I went in search of the "robots" after that. 

I could morn no longer and I wanted to do something about Them.

But They  tried to stop me.

And failed.

***

"Beep," a flashing red light appears in the dark, and I look up, my curls hanging low and getting in front of my eyes. I stare at the light and swat my hair to the side.

"Wh-who are you?" I move closer, fear escaping me and curiosity taking its place.

"I am your personal assistant; I have been awaiting your arrival, Renard." The voice is choppy and humanlike, and I jump at the mention of my name. 

"Where am I," I ask, remembering that I must be very far from Darius, and yet this talking thing knows me.

"You are in America, it is the year 2050." The voice is almost static, new to my ears.

The talking thing comes closer and now I recognize it as a "robot" from my dream, same metal body, long tubular neck, and flat face, wires running through it all.

"A robot," I breath, amazed. "You said I'm in America? And in 2050? I was just in 2019."

The robot comes closer yet. "Ah, 2019, one year after 'the end'?"

"Yes, sir," I say, not sure how to address the strange new machine. Everyone knows about "the end," the time when They were just beginning.

"America was once in the same position as Darius, but now it's improved because of technology." 

"What do you mean," I ask, confused. 

"Well, They  were once here." 

At the mention of that title known so well in Darius, I nod my head and finally understand. I am in the future, in a land that once mirrored my own.

"So what has happened to Darius now," I wonder aloud.

"That depends on what you are going to do about Them."

On the last word, the darkness opens up and sudden light coming from all around blinds me. I close my eyes, giving a little gasp. When I open them again, a city stretches below me, full of color and buildings. I can't make out any people, but I see tubes everywhere above the city and realize I'm in one, too.

I'm sitting in a comfy seat of blue velvet, surrounded by the see-through confines of a tube overlooking the city.

The robot presses a sole red button near my seat, and we quickly speed forward.

"The tubes were created so that the lost people who'd been sent away by Them could come back in an effort to restore the country."

"What made them want to restore the country?" I look around me at the new sights as we zip by.

"Their realization that all those made to leave were needed in order for life to continue," the robot hits a blue button I hadn't noticed before and we come to a stop.

"Why do They  want all the migrants out and want to only keep the natives?"

"Because They can't understand the foreigners. And what They can't understand, They get rid of." 

It makes sense, I realize.

When we finally get to the ground, I take a good look around me, unbuttoning my vest and rolling up the sleeves of my white evening shirt. There are people from everywhere here, from places I never knew existed. They speak foreign languages that have never bothered to touch my ears, and which I can't understand.

And most exciting of all, they are surrounded by technology, as this new idea is called. 

If only I could bring this stuff back, I think, amazed.

"You can," I hear my companion say, as if he can read my mind, which maybe he can.

"What difference would it make; the foreigners would never be understood with their languages and ways. They would not simply cease to exist." I try to shield my eyes from the sun.

"But They would cease to destroy your people. You, too, if you wanted, could understand the languages spoken here."

I turn to the robot.

"Really?"

"Translators. I have one embedded in me. They help people understand each other."

A small child passes by, waving and saying something I can't comprehend.

"Hello," comes the robot's voice, translating in my language.

And I immediately know I've found just what Darius needs.

Technology.

***