The Time of the Titans

Chapter 15: The Choice

Having walked some way across the moor, which now opened on my both sides, I noticed that the bamboo stick that Ze had so skillfully used as a weapon was a valuable help for a trekker. I felt exhausted and in pain, and it got gradually worse as adrenaline subsided and was replaced by my tortured body's appeals to get rest and be treated for all the hits I had taken while battling the rather forbidding boys. Yet I forced my body to go on, for I knew it would not be long before Robin would have released Ze and they would both be on my tracks. They, and who knows how many of their kin.

Who was their kin, I wondered. They were obviously human, yet they kept talking about me as if I was from an alien race. From Robin's words I deduced they knew what Atlantis was and what was going on there. They called the titans greys, so they not only knew about the titans, but they also seemed to know them from the Atlantean perspective. Were they castaways from Atlantis, lost boys, shipwrecked once upon the time as schoolkids, similarly to what had happened to us on the Nautilus? Or even more likely, were they fugitives? Runaways from the rebellion that had taken place in the past and entered my nightmares?

How many there would be of the kind of Rob and Ze? Had they designed their group to seem like a scene from the Star Wars – or even more, from some of the visually fancy computer games that were popular at the time when I was in Hügelberg University? Teen monk ninja warriors – come on, Planet Sini, what were you throwing at me? They also spoke like gamers. Was this a game for them? Just an extension to the entertainment that the virtual realities of Atlantis had offered before they ended up on the island?

Here – I looked around myself – everything was all undoubtedly real. The taste of blood on my lips, the smell of grass, the buzz of crickets. The few flies that had started bothering my bloodied lips when the wind temporarily ceased. I was grateful when the wind soon returned. Everything here was so very real, more so than the things in Lemuria and Atlantis.

Or was it?

Oh, I wished Mary was still with me. I would face all this new world with her by my side. Her presence would have softened the boys. Where was Mary now? Where were the girls? Were they out on the sea, floating with the oceanic current that likely took them even further from the island? I had no way knowing. No way reaching them. Oh, the pain of that.

Was this a game of some sort? Augmented reality on a real island?

This was the sort of issue I would have debated with Benson. His death had certainly been real. I remembered how I let his body slip into the sea for the last time. Or did I? Was it just another planted memory? When Mary was whispering to me on the lifeboat – was it all a dream? Maybe she, or any of the girls, never existed, or maybe they were just avatars of other players in a virtual reality scenery. They had removed back to their realities after the island had been reached. But if that was the case, why was I still here? And I didn't have a choice, did I? To end the game here and wake up in my room in Atlantis. Or in Lemuria. Or in the hospital. Or in my student flat. Or back in the old-fashioned, oil-lamped cottage of my grandfather by the lake with the magic island.

The grass was getting lower and there was white cotton grass, yellow flowers and something that looked like marsh tea, growing for long stretches all around me. I started noticing the ground under my shoes was wet. One of my feet had just slumped into wet moss. I was in a quagmire. This was no good. It was a bog of a sort, and I had walked a long way into it while being absorbed in my thoughts.

I turned around to assess the situation. If the boys were pursuing me, I would be stuck here, since it would be too dangerous to run in a bog. I was also highly visible from far now, for the vegetation was considerably lower than before. I didn't see anyone following, though. There was a lonely bird flapping and catching insects in the sky above the bog. Nothing else seemed to move, save the grass and flowers in wind.