Lives Of The Unknown Book 1: The Legend of Andrew Lockeford (3 page)

In the meantime, however, he would
work at a minimum wage job, spending the rest of his time working
on homework or applying for scholarships, never catching a break.
He wasn’t as stressed out as some other people would be, mostly
because Andrew was hard-working and did what he was told. Pomona
wasn’t his first choice when he applied to several various
universities, but it was the best choice once he got their
responses. It was definitely better here in Pomona than it was in
Searles, California. A small town in the middle of nowhere with
nothing to do except school….not exactly the greatest place to live
in. None of the people there even behaved like his idea of small
town folks; everyone was buried in their smartphones, not knowing
their neighbors’ names, not talking face to face much, and—most
of

all—looking like they were unhappy
with where they lived. Perhaps that’s what all places are like
these days, interconnecting with modern technology. Always hoping
to live it up where the grass is greener, never looking at life
through the big picture. He liked the scenery around Searles, but
trying to find a job was horrible. According to the town’s
demographics, the unemployment rate was about 6%, but that was
mostly because a lot of people worked at the factory plant north of
town. If the survey excluded the factory workers, Searles would
probably have fifteen—no, twenty percent unemployment. Andrew only
had one job while he lived there: tutoring. Being a tutor didn’t
even count much as a job, considering how he didn’t pull off much
money from it. He once did community service in order to get some
job experience, but it was confusing as hell—he wasn’t sure who to
contact for whatever or whenever he had to do something. I’ll get a
job once I’m eighteen, he said. I’ll do all the important stuff
when I’m in community college, he said.

Andrew attended a
junior college nearby Searles for about three years before
transferring to Pomona. During this time, he entered a sort of
neutrality, not seeming to
feel
everything like he used to. He felt emotionally
stiff; he hardly cried when his childhood pet died, and he didn’t
feel chills down his spine when he heard a lovely song. Even when
something like this did happen, he was always expecting something
more out of it, so he was continuously dissatisfied. At junior
college, there were less peers that Andrew could befriend than in
high school, and no one seemed to talk to each other outside of
school hours unless they were friends in the first place. He knew
he wasn’t alone—there were plenty of people at the college who
became depressed after losing most of their friends. However,
seeing that Andrew hardly had a social life and spent most of his
time in front of his computer, he certainly felt alone. He wouldn’t
talk through the Internet—he was strictly a face-to-face person
because he was afraid of losing touch with the human world. Too bad
the human world is already so attached to the Internet that it
would benefit Andrew to talk to someone online.

At Pomona, Andrew
has more friends than he did back at Searles, but his social life
was still dead due to all the tasks he demanded to take. His
validation stated, “I need to think about my future. If I don’t,
then I might have as well not have gone to college at all.” The
young adult plans on getting a Ph.D. in Engineering, even though
that would mean spending several more years of his life in this
same state. If successful, he would be working his ass off at some
company to earn money for his family—if he had one. Andrew wants to
have two children, one of which would be a boy who wanted to be
just like his father—who would have to keep worrying about
his
future. It’s just a
big cycle—a cycle of dreams and ideals that say one must be
“successful” to be content.

Andrew doesn’t truly
want to be successful, but rather to live through life without as
many problems as possible. Money
always
seemed to be a problem. He
doesn’t want to live this cycle: enduring childhood and getting
good grades and applying to hundreds of jobs and working until you
become too old to enjoy the things you wanted most in
life.

Andrew wants a change. A massive
change that would influence and benefit everybody, get them out of
this cycle as well.

Luckily Andrew wasn’t insane enough to
make this massive change himself, considering how most people don’t
appear to enjoy accepting change and would hate him forever for
doing something like that.

All Andrew could hope for was for the
world to endure some sort of apocalypse, where the people who
survived worked together to make something better out of the world.
Although, it is entirely possible that the survivors would turn
everything back to the way it was, maybe even worse.

When the latest “doomsday” was set on
December 21, 2012, Andrew saw this as a possibility for his dream
to come true. No more celebrities. No more fast food. No more
Internet. Many people would cry in horror from losing these things,
but Andrew didn’t mind. All he wanted was to keep the cars—or at
least the bicycles—as well as the landscape so he could explore the
world. Unfortunately, the closer the date became, the less likely
it seemed the apocalypse would happen. There was nothing in the
world or anything surrounding it that looked like it was going to
end soon. Everyone was just getting ready for Christmas like they
do every year.

On December
20
^th
,
Andrew drove his car nearby some mountain several miles away from
Searles, hiked up the mountain, waited for the sunset, and screamed
at the top of his lungs once the big orange light in the sky
disappeared. He didn’t care who heard, yet at the same time he did.
He just felt that there were very few places in the world where he
could express his emotions without judgment.

And so it didn’t happen. The world
didn’t end, and everything stayed the same as it always would.
Andrew didn’t change much either, although you can bet he was
rather disappointed. He didn’t think about killing himself,
however; he felt empty, not depressed. He decided to keep on living
in this world, not caring whether the cycle would ever change in
his lifetime or not.

Chapter 4

Back to the AOIB meeting room.

Andrew Lockeford stared down at the pill he had in
his hand, still thinking whether it would be a trap or not. It was
a small white sphere that felt heavier than lead. From a distance,
it appeared bland like any other pill, but when he brought it up to
his nose to smell it, he instantly jerked back. The pill smelled
strong and unusual; it had a mixture of sweet smells and fried food
smells and even some sour and bitter smells that altogether smelled
absolutely inconceivable, both good and bad. Now he was less likely
to take the pill, knowing that it would taste even stronger than it
smelled, and that would be a hell of a load upon his gag reflex.
Eventually, however, Andrew decided to take the pill. He didn’t
care what the aliens were planning to do to him. He’s had enough
change at this point. And as he swallowed the pill as though he was
committing suicide, he discovered that his gag reflex did not react
like he thought it would, but his taste buds indeed reacted
violently. He had chills down his spine, his entire mouth almost
felt cold from the sensation, and he could feel the pill every step
down through his esophagus.

“Holy….shit, that was more than I
expect—BRRUUAAAAAAAAAAAAP”

As the pill contacted his stomach acid, it expanded
to the size of a baseball and forced all the air out of his
stomach. He instantly felt full as though he ate a meal.

“I guess that guy was right.” He was shaking at
this point, with adrenalin running throughout his body even though
the danger was well over. Then it occurred to him:
Oh God, what if they’re just gonna torture me
here until I die from absolute stress? What if they’re really just
like those other freaky bastards?!?
It was then that
Andrew’s primal instincts took over and he ran for the doors. There
was no way that he would want to stay any longer. Unfortunately,
the doors didn’t open and he slammed straight into them, bouncing
back like from something out of a cartoon due to the doors’
physical reaction.

One should remember Newton’s Third Law from science
class: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite
reaction.”

Andrew barely escaped a concussion, but his head was
throbbing painfully for a few minutes. Juvir came back in after
those few minutes with a smart remark: “Too bad the doors didn’t
open for you.”

“Yeah, yeah, just tell me what you came here
for. But first,
where’s my fucking
sword?!?
”

“It’s right here in my hand. How can you be so silly
not to see?”

Andrew looked at Juvir’s hand and, indeed, the sword
was there. He was amazed to see it back, but he was even more
amazed to realize how stupid he’s been lately. First he fails to
see what happened to his clothes, now this. Either he’s having a
hard time getting this alien environment into his head or, when he
was flying through space in the escape pod, he bumped his head into
the wall of the pod. Could be both.

“Oh, wow, I can’t believe you actually got it back
for me. It looks like it hasn’t been damaged, either,” said Andrew.
At least this guy Juvir was pretty trustworthy. He also had to note
how even-tempered and unbiased he had been. “Thanks a lot! I really
mean it!” He had finally calmed down since the thought of being
tortured by aliens had left his mind.

“The scientists and I saw it laying beside you in
the pod, and we kept it until we were sure you could have it back.
It seems very old, almost as though your species had created it.
And yet it seems so familiar.”

“My species had nothing to do with this sword—I had
found it and, well, took it while I was on an alien ship.”

The sword definitely did not look ordinary. The blade
was divided into six segments, one being slightly smaller in width
and thickness than the next; the segments collapsed into each
other, similar to a toy lightsaber. The cross-section of the blade
was shaped like a sideways teardrop rather than a rhombus. The safe
end of the blade—the rounded curve of the “teardrop”—was made of a
different material than the steel of the sharp end. The handle and
the hilt were very familiar to Andrew, however, since they looked
the same as most other handles and hilts on Earth swords. The steel
on the sword had rusted from old age, but not so much that it would
lose its sharpness. There was another feature to this sword, one
that was activated by a button on the handle, but Juvir had
deactivated it.

“By the way,” Andrew continued, “you mentioned
scientists, right? Whom are you talking about?”

“Two scientists watched your escape pod land and
they decided to take you in for analysis. We debated whether we
would even keep you here, considering you’re one of the forbidden
species.”

“What? How am I forbidden?”

“Your planet, Earth, is still young and full of
natural life, and we were worried that if any of us from the AOIB
had gone over there, we would corrupt the natural development of
your species. Planets ought to develop at their own pace.”

“I don’t know what this planet looks like, or what
anything looks like outside of this room. In fact, maybe you should
just tell me everything about this place so I can get up-to-date.”
Andrew said this as though he was trying to command Juvir, though
he sounded weak.

“Well, alright then. I’ll start with myself. I am
Juvir, Vice-President of the Alliance of Interstellar Beings, and
this planet you are currently on is named Ku-an Doel. The president
of this alliance is out momentarily, but he should be back in a
couple of days.”

Man, Juvir really got the hang of Earth time, Andrew
thought. By the way, as far as Juvir looked, he was nearly eight
feet tall, with his legs making up about three-fifths of his
overall height. His head had no neck beneath it, making it appear
as though his head was directly attached to his torso. His eyes and
lips were wide and thin, and he just had holes for ears and a nose.
His hands looked similar to a human’s, but his feet looked just
like his hands; each of his four “hands” had seven fingers rather
than five. Finally, he had no hair at all and his skin looked like
crimson leather.

“I myself,” Juvir continued, “am part of a species
called the miweri, but you should note that miweri are not native
to this planet. You’ll see many intelligent species spending their
time here on this planet. Ku-an Doel is one of hundreds of millions
of planets that supports intelligent life, and one of trillions
that supports life at all. It’s a big universe, you know. The AOIB
represents three hundred planets and therefore about three hundred
intelligent species. And, well, on about all of the planets that
intelligent life is found on, there is more civilization and urban
area than natural wildlife. Ku-an Doel is under strict law to keep
the amount of wildlife areas to no less than ten percent of the
planet’s surface composition. That includes deserts and oceans, as
well.”

Andrew was absolutely shocked by the “less than ten
percent” part. If the facts were true, then this planet would just
be one big city. He rashly asked Juvir to see the outside, maybe
from a high place.

“We’ll use the teleporters. I’ll show you where
you’ll stand at.” Juvir opened the doors for Andrew and the two of
them stepped onto a pad. The coordinates were set, Juvir pressed a
button, the area around them flashed with light for two seconds,
and they then found themselves on top of a skyscraper. There were
two teleportation caches on top of the skyscraper, and the roof was
made of a porous metal. Andrew threw up from such a quick change in
altitude. He looked towards the horizon, leaving his bottom jaw
hanging down with some stomach acid still dripping from his mouth.
The acid had suddenly disintegrated after touching the metal, but
Andrew didn’t notice that. As far as he could see, there were
shades of gray and not a spec of anything natural. There were
vehicles both on the ground and in the sky. The atmosphere was
clean and natural looking, but it was hot and heavy—as though he
was in Death Valley during the summer.