A Timeless Journey (12 page)

16

Fifteen minutes later, I entered Luna’s apartment and, as she stood very close to me with her hand resting on my shoulder, she complimented me for the way I looked. The temptation to move my face forward and kiss her grew uncontrollably, but somehow I managed to keep myself aback. She noticed my hesitation, apologised and then asked me to follow her where the Emze was parked.

Just as Luna promised, it took about ten minutes for the New York skyline to appear in front of us. From a height of five hundred feet above water, which was the average height chosen for that type of journey, the view of the megacity in the evening was simply exceptional. The white lights that uniformly covered most of the buildings surfaces and the red and blue lights that highlighted every human-made shape, gave the Megacity of New York a breath-taking look.

The Emze swerved between buildings until it reached an area where there were even more lights and Holo projections playing in the public spaces around. Luna parked her Emze in a hundred and fifty story building made especially for parking these vehicles. We left the parking and joined the busy moving lanes of New York. As the lanes kept winding slowly towards our destination, my chest was nearly exploding by the amazing views on both sides. Luna explained that it was a fun city within the megacity and it was exclusively built for leisure, sports and partying.

Everything in the fun city felt alive. The eateries, the bars, the 24-hour music clubs, the theatres and a lot of other places for ice-skating, gaming, playing sports and more other entertaining places that I hadn’t seen or encountered before, buzzed by the large number of people having fun. Like any other entertaining complex on the planet, this place was also open twenty-four hours a day. The busiest days of the week were Thursday, Friday and Saturday when most people had the days off work.

Luna showed me around trying to explain what was what and how everything operated around the fun city. I had never seen so many people in one place having fun. This place was very addictive and if I’d had unlimited credit, I would have stayed in this place until my legs stopped moving and my brain gave up.

There was no surprise that New York in the year 2572 had to be better than the one in the 21
st
century, especially with the unfathomed advancement in technology. People travelled there from all corners of the world just to try the unique experience of the ‘Leisure City’ as it was called. Although every community had its own version of fun city, the Leisure City in New York was something entirely different and very special.

Two hours later, I felt an overwhelming tiredness wash over me from visiting place after place and my brain couldn’t hold any more information about what went on in the fun city. This place was fast and furious, a real adrenaline buster and my prehistoric brain felt the need to shut down. It was too much information in very little time and I begged Luna to find a drinkery and sit in some drinking booth away from that overwhelming environment.

We sat in the drinking booth talking about the next week when Luna returned to work and I started my new job in this chaotic but beautiful megacity. I don’t know if it was the alcohol, the exhaustion, or a combination of both, but I decided to open up to Luna and tell her how I really felt when she was near me.

I found it hard explaining to her in simple words that I still felt something for Sophie, feelings that had to do more with the time and memories I had spent with her rather than with true love. I told Luna of my wish to go back to the 21
st
century since that timeline was my home and the conflict I was having with a hidden decision to stay in the future with her. Regardless of my decision, I told her that she was the only one I would want to spend the rest of my days with.

There was a big gap between my ancient mentality and her advanced way of thinking and the only advantage I had was the fact that in this future people were rational, they listened and reasoned before arriving to a conclusion. I took the courage and told Luna that in the short time we had been together, I had developed strong feelings for her. The experience we had with the mind scrambler had convinced me that the connection I had with Luna was something special, something I had never experienced before. There was no doubt in my mind, that even if I went back to the 21
st
century, I was never going to feel the same way about Sophie. I would never be able to love her or anyone else the same way I loved Luna.

It was a complicated situation for me. I couldn’t promise Luna that I would stay with her forever, nor did I know what the future held for me. In the same time I wished to have a relationship with her, regardless if it lasted forever or until another portal to the 21
st
century opened. The fact that I was still hoping to return to my timeline, made me realise that I was asking Luna to gamble with her future and it was the last thing I wanted her to do. I felt conflicted between my strong feelings for her and my duty to protect her from heartache.

No one knew at the time what was going to happen in the future. Time travel was a possibility in the 26
th
century but was banned due to the weakening of time and space fabric which was responsible for me being there. Even if I managed to get my hands in a time travelling device, the AI system would not allow me to use it. The laws about time travel were very strict and the punishment severe.

After hearing the confession about the way I felt for her, Luna remained silent for a while. Then suddenly, she surprised me.

“I want to be with you regardless of what will happen in the future,” she said with a stubborn conviction.

“I don’t want to hurt you Luna!”

“I rather spend a short time with you than nothing at all. I know what I want.”

“Me too,” I replied in a euphoric head rush.

I was flattered by her choice. Luna was 27 years old with a good job in the Holographic design for a fashion company with a chain of GNPs around the world. She had a lot of options in front of her, but she chose to be with me and was willing to take that risk of getting her heart broken. It was my way of thinking and the way I spoke that intrigued her and beyond that, the chemistry between us was so intense that both of us found it hard to resist each other. I had noticed that Luna adored the cluelessness in me about this reality and my simple and judgemental mentality I demonstrated.

“We need to celebrate!” She said.

“What have you got in mind?” I asked with a smile on my face.

“I need to be in a Mclub right now, dancing.”

“Mclub, what is that?”

“It’s better that I show you. You will love it.” She replied with her eyes closed from excitement.

We left the bar and went to a Mclub. The Mclub was the equivalent of a nightclub in the 21
st
century but with a hi-tech twist. The Mclub we went was the one that Luna and her friends frequented regularly on weekends. At the entrance a Holo synthetic gadget charged her the entry fee. She then took out of a dispenser machine two sets of digital earplugs which were included in the fee.

Luna explained the earplugs synchronised automatically to the club’s music list and played the same music for everyone in the club and, if I had to take the earplugs out, I wouldn’t have been able to hear any music. Technically, there was no need for the earplugs because Link could easily synchronise with the club’s network, but due to privacy protection laws, a private establishment network was forbidden to synchronise with any Link device that was considered a customer.

Earplugs in a nightclub were a great idea whoever had thought of it. If someone wished to have a quiet conversation with a friend over a drink, he could do so without having to listen to loud music simply by removing the earplugs. Thanks to the advanced technology everyone with the digital earplugs on, synchronised and listened to the same playlist, chosen by the club’s music director (MD) which was the future DJ.

There were some other nightclubs, as I found out later, called ‘Chaos Mclubs’. In these clubs an individual could choose the personal music list with the help of Link and dance differently and independently from others without the need to connect to the club’s network.  

The music in the future is very different from what we listen in this century. It was very enjoyable since the music produced was in perfect resonance with the human hearing. Thanks to the advanced technology, depending on the type of music, a musician adapted the tunes in such a way that it resonated with a person’s hearing frequency when listening to the music and made the listener’s chest tremble with emotion. The 4D sound system and the floating individual round platforms that locked the feet in and allowed the dancer to float in the air, made the nightclub experience something else entirely.

Another curious fact I noticed in the 26
th
century, was the smoking of cigarettes and other herbal equivalents were banned due to containing addictive substances. If someone decided to smoke banned substances, the Link, which was connected to the PBM that scanned the chemistry of the body among other functions, would report it to the main system and the offender would end up in an IEF for as long as it took to overcome the addiction and understand the reasons behind the ban.

Luna and I stood next to a drinks locker when two guys and a girl came by to greet us. Luna introduced them as her friends from New York. Just to clarify to everyone in this century, the drinks locker was a kind of table resembling a brace of tulips coming out of the ground and opening up at the top to create the impression of a bunch of flowers. The glass containing the drink rested inside where the tulip or the flower bud was supposed to be and was locked by a mechanism which released it only to the person whom fingerprints on the glass belonged.

Luna’s friends had names associated with plants, objects, places and, the whole time I spent in the future, I failed to encounter a single biblical name. Religion as a concept barely existed in the 26
th
century. The humanity had evolved so much from an educational and financial point of view that most people didn’t feel the need to believe in the divine intervention to solve their problems. The 26
th
century man couldn’t fathom the idea of believing in something that wasn’t scientifically proven. There were a few people, who had some kind of advanced revolutionary beliefs about the afterlife, but they didn’t worship or preached to others about their beliefs, nor did they fanatically followed and prayed.

After the religious extremism in the 20
th
and 21
st
century and the exposure of Vatican’s secrets after the last world war, the perception of religion changed radically and people started to understand that believing in God didn’t necessarily mean you had to follow other humans preaching their own version of religion.

When the last war finished, there were several new emergency planetary laws implemented and one of the laws, ‘The Truth Act’, prohibited every organization and government entity to keep secrets. Thanks to this law and chaos that followed from the fall of the nations, all the Vatican secrets were revealed causing an outrage among the surviving Christian community. Another reason why people in the future ceased to believe in God had to do with the interplanetaries as they called in the 26
th
century, but this is all I am allowed to say on the matter.

Luna and her friends had a completely different way of communicating with each other. Most of the time I failed to keep up with their conversation and stood clueless in the middle. We stayed at the Mclub just after one in the morning. Luna, seeing that I felt lost in their conversation, asked if I fancied returning to her apartment. She wanted to continue the celebration of our new relationship in her apartment for the rest of the night. I released a thankful smile at her rescuing attempt. The thought of carnal pleasure with the girl I loved, crossed my mind like a lightning bolt falling from the sky. I was in love with a girl from a distant future, with a girl five centuries apart.

For most people in the 21
st
century, having a relationship with someone five centuries into the future, would be impossible to comprehend. I felt bad for being torn between my strong feelings for Luna and the loyalty I was obligated to maintain to Sophie. Somehow I manage to convince myself that if I had to stay in this reality, I had no choice but to follow my heart and take the chance with Luna. The feelings I had for Sophie had become more of a caring nature at that point, compare to the real love I had for Luna. Deep down the guilt corroded my conscience for betraying Sophie, but my strong feelings for Luna soothed the guilt to the point of forgetting why I felt guilty. Luna seemed to have had cast a spell over me.

We flew in Luna’s Emze towards the Laguna city, leaving behind the amazing bright skyline of New York. The dark waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the overcast night sky, made the view around the vehicle a little frightening. It didn’t take long for the bright lights of the Laguna city to appear on the horizon. Strangely enough, seeing the city lights, to me it felt already like home.

The fact that in a few minutes I was going to be in Luna’s apartment for the rest of the night and the thought of making love to her, made my mind fuzzy and my chest tremble. Although I had longed for that moment since I met her, my emotions seemed to get in the way of my faculties.