Entry 21

Navigation has never been my strongest suite. I remember going on a road trip to the Alamo once when I was in middle school. We had a set of foster parents who were well intentioned but really did not know how to deal with two teenage children. Randy, our foster dad at the time, let me sit in the passenger seat for part of the trip and navigate. It should not have been that hard. We were pretty much just driving on I-10. However, my skills with a map are not that good. He should have asked John to navigate. I think John has built in GPS or something. Anyway, I somehow got us lost in Louisiana.

(John just reminded me that GPS is an Earth only thing and that it could not have been built into his system. He just knows how to read a map.)

Needless to say that the map Ven was studying was complete gibberish to me, and not just because it had labels in a language I could not begin to understand. I was quite content to let Ven decipher the map and tell me where John was being held. So Ven studied the map, and I studied the aliens.

It must have been a recess in the symposium, or maybe everyone was not required to attend the same lectures, because the hallway was filled with aliens. They disappeared through doorways only to be replaced by more aliens entering the hallway. Most of the time they traveled in groups, talking loudly and heatedly. The groups were the oddest things of all. I saw a nine foot alien with turquoise leather like skin and golden curly hair talking with a pure black lizard that was barely a foot long. The lizard was sitting in a cushion that hovered near the alien’s eye level so they could communicate better. I saw what looked like a cockroach but was furry talking to a creature that was feathered like a bird but shaped more like a ferret. My comparisons are doing little justice to what I saw in those few minutes I was staring wide eyed at the hallway, for which I apologize.

“Carlee.” Ven’s deep voice interrupted my study of the aliens in the hall. I looked away and glanced up into his dark brown eyes, hope filling me.

“Did you find John?” I asked excitedly.

“Not exactly,” Ven answered. “I found the section of the facility where they keep the androids. There will be a more specific directory in the android facility. Your android may still be in processing. It may not yet have its own storage, even though they obviously did a preliminary download of its hard drive.”

“How do you know that?” I asked. Ven motioned for me to walk beside him and took off down the hall. I raced after him, not wanting to be left behind. I could appreciate being swift when it came to saving my brother, but he could be slightly more considerate about not leaving me behind.

“The native environment program you were in would have been created from your mind – what you know and remember about Earth – and from your android’s recordings and data,” Ven answered. “That’s how they could make it so realistic. Your android’s recording capability is infallible – essentially a perfect memory. However, your memories also influenced it so that it felt real to you, which is important or else you would figure out it was fake.”

“Is it ok that we are talking about this among all these anthropologists?” I asked, looking worriedly at the exotic aliens we were passing.

“None of them will know English or have it in their databases for translation unless they happen to study Earth,” Ven answered unworriedly. “The odds of us passing someone who is an Earth expert, specifically an expert in an English speaking culture, is very high. We are safe. I will not let you get caught again, Carlee.” His words were reassuring. I felt nervous and uncertain as I followed him through the halls of the alien building. Though I felt secure in his presence, it was nothing compared to the complete safety I felt in John’s presence. I knew Ven would track me down if he lost me, but only because it was his job. John would go to the ends of the universe to find me, no matter how long it took or what he might run into. John was my brother. Ven was simply an operative who had been assigned me. I had no delusions that he actually cared; however, I stuck to him. Ven would lead me to John, and then all would be right in the universe.