The Traveler

Luise

The sounds of Krell activity below and around me faded to complete silence, aside from the machinery humming from deep within their small fortification. I had almost fallen asleep when my mind returned to the Plan. I stretched in darkness and yawned to shake off my sleepiness. I was anxious to get moving. I wondered if they would be able to stop me from the escape. Kren didn't have a direct line to my thoughts... I hoped. I knew I had been able to maintain a rather tight distance from the rest of them but Kren seemed to find everything out. We would see.
The curtains quivered in the silence, shushing me with their movement. There was no moonlight to expose me either and the cloudcover was thick. Humidity filled my lungs as I shivered in the sudden cold. I pulled on my shoes and opened the window a crack more. Not a single nature sound. How odd. Turning my body around, I placed my feet over the tiny guard rail and shimmied all the way over onto the rather flat rooftop. Using the shingles as extra support, I let my weight pull me slowly towards the edge if the building. The porch was quite a few feet down. Then the other. I jumped and landed rather softly. The earth was icy cold through my thin-soled shoes. I pulled my jacket around me tighter as I turned to run towards the pines on the south end of the building. No one came to follow me. I kept running, the frigid painful air forced down my throat again and again as I sped up more and more. I sprinted and flew past the forest, a field, then slowed in a surprised relief to jog onward. Nobody had stopped me so far. I was wary, but more optimistic now that my initial attempt had somewhat succeeded. I was alone. I felt alone. And it was lovely. All night I kept going. The dark and the isolate rustles and sudden movement in the dead leaves did not send me into panic. In fact, they were reassuring. It was the sound of home...

A winding one lane road. I took a left and walked till my feet ached and my numb fingers and toes lost sensation of touch. My nose was runny and my cheeks rosy. My head was clearer but I was tired. I walked into the next day, and as light poured over the cold cold earth I took a seat on a relatively dry log by the road to warm up in the sunrise. I watched the sun's movement and smiled to myself.
All I remember was the cold. The peace of mind that I was free. The newfound energy in my veins from the Krell. They did change me. The walk hadn't tired me so, and I found myself wanting to continue along the road. My body had warmed up in the heat of the morning sun. It was time to go.

By midday I got somewhere. Walking is incredibly slow of a transportation. No wonder technological advances came so slowly in the past; there was an extremely limited circulation of ideas. And communication makes all the difference in building something. There was an intersecting highway with an interstate sign depicting the city in blue to my right. I took that right. The day was coming to a close and I still did not feel hungry. Or thirsty. I became concerned for my physical health. Was it possibltle to die from dehydration if the victim had no consciousness of thirst at all? I had not passed a building nor a gas station yet. I slowed my pace a bit. My machine-like energetic strides frightened me. My feet no longer hurt and my brain was very active. I had so many thoughts, so many worries...so many plans and doubts. It occurred to me then that the Krell had intentionally let me leave and that they were in fact able to track me.
There were simply too many mixed feelings in this situation to feel completely naive. The Mother's respectable kindness, the Krell's acceptance of me, Kren, my own need for contact....my blank slate memory. These were my weaknesses. The Krell maintained a shady avoidance of fully explaining their plans to me. Both their initial kindness and familial acceptance...were almost manipulative. I considered freedom from both of them as a healthy alternative. But where would I hide? And I had too many raging questions to just get up and leave. I felt my fingertips itching for a keyboard for some reason. Perhaps if I isolated a simplified communications program...maybe then I could attempt to safely converse with It. I needed to do research on the net. This was quite a risk, and I had no current way of accessing a computer either. In two more miles there was certain hope of achieving my goal. There were buildings, some gas stations, a couple houses dotted the scene far off. I followed the line of cars now piled up in what appeared to be local town traffic. I just needed a computer. I walked into a gas station on the street corner to check the date and time. I had no money but that wasn't my most essential issue. I needed human interaction; perhaps a person could give me some pointers towards a simple start to a solution. Upon entering and hearing the jingle of the gas station doors the cashier looked up and smiled. The station store was empty except for him.
"Good day 'mam."