Lives Of The Unknown Book 1: The Legend of Andrew Lockeford (4 page)

Andrew, who had been longing to escape the
artificiality of his society, of all the skyscrapers and concrete
cramped together for miles, started to feel his hope burn away.
This place looked like exactly what Andrew despised, only it
covered ninety percent of the whole planet.

“This is what virtually all the planets are like.
This is why we did not want to tamper with your world, because if
we did, we might have influenced your people to become just like
us, overwhelming the planet with artificial materials and waste for
our own convenience. Even so, your world may have ended up like the
rest of the universe anyway within a few thousand years or so.”

Andrew realized just how great he had it on Earth.
Just the idea that he could drive his car fifty miles away and find
himself in a natural, well-kept spot was a gift—a blessing. Earth’s
urban areas took up only 1.5% of the world’s surface area. Compared
to Ku-an Doel, Earth could be called the most preserved yet livable
planet in the universe.

“The whole universe is civilized and united in this
way. We all have food pills but no organic food. We all have people
that we follow and respect, even if they’re not right for us. And
even though there are so many species living on this planet that
work together without prejudice, we still treat newly-found beings
such as yourself as freaks or animals or simply less than
intelligent, civilized beings.” It was as though Juvir had read
Andrew’s thoughts.

Andrew was beginning to have a hard time controlling
his breathing; all of this was just so heartbreaking. He was
surprised to even keep up with what Juvir was saying.

“We are so different, yet so alike at the same time.
Civilizations have always put technology and society over nature.
They have always had people who wanted change and others who
preferred traditions. They have always treated outsiders as
outcasts or even as monsters. I’m sure your species has always
thought of extraterrestrials as monsters, no?”

The human was trying and failing to hold back his
tears at this point.

“There are two things that I shall tell you in
conclusion. First, the only monsters that exist in this universe
are ourselves. Secondly, you can bet that your planet is going to
end up like this one here eventually.”

Andrew let out a half-bawl, half-scream that
ended up sounding like, “
SHUT UP!!!!! I’ve
had enough already!!!
” He fell down onto his hands and
knees, crying uncontrollably. Juvir looked down to see the pathetic
state that he had caused. Andrew’s hope for humanity had been
destroyed, killed, annihilated. He missed his family, his world,
even the society that he had lived with that was at least somewhat
real.

Juvir said, “I suppose I’ve given you well enough
information.” Then he finished with one last statement that stuck
with Andrew forever: “Welcome to your future.”

Chapter 5

Andrew Lockeford was twenty-one and a half years
old at the time he left Earth, and was a month older when he met
Juvir. For twenty-one years, he had been living life as a journey
like everyone else, searching for answers to questions such as the
purpose of life as well as its many aspects. Many people think that
they are special, but Andrew believed he was even more so, to the
point that maybe he had a purpose in life that would impact many,
many humans. Although it could always have been more than just
humans.

A person’s purpose in life is whatever
he or she makes of it. If somebody had the potential to start a
business that would become so successful it would go global, but
did not have the courage nor the will to do it, deciding to just
keep their mediocre lifestyle, then that person’s purpose went from
world-renowned entrepreneur to your average whoever. Unfortunately,
because of varying circumstances, one may not even get the chance
to establish a purpose. Sometimes a toddler playing outside has its
life cut short because a nearby coyote was hungry. Sometimes, a
person’s purpose to live is just to live, not just exist.
Everything has the ability to exist.

But Andrew truly believed he had a
purpose, a meaningful destiny. He was just going to let it come to
him rather than search for it himself. He would go with the flow
until the time was right. He also worried that he might screw up
his destiny by searching too early. But he always thought about
life and the wondrous experiences that came with it.

He has many memories
of metaphysical thoughts, questioning the world; some dated back to
when he was just a small child. One included an instance of him
staring at some drawer as his mother called to him,
thinking,
My name’s Andrew. That’s funny.
Why is it Andrew? What if it was something else?
He had never been worried about some specific
monster hiding in his bedroom during the dark, probably because his
parents taught him to be logical. That, or his parents never told
them about monsters being in the bedroom at night. However, as a
seven-year-old, after hearing about the possibility of aliens
existing in outer space, he thought,
Do
aliens exist? I mean, it’s totally possible. Why would Earth be
alone?
Then there was religion—he had
never gone to church, and he never really decided whether God
existed or not until he was a teenager. During that time, he
recognized that some Christian ideas just didn’t seem to add up,
whereas some of the Atheist ideas didn’t seem to explain enough, so
he decided to follow his own beliefs based on what he perceived and
concluded. He was free to be open-minded and think what he wanted;
he said at age thirteen that God existed, but was very doubtful
that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. Being as logical and
reasonable as he was, as he called it, he felt that some things
just didn’t compute for a mortal human to have magic powers such as
walking on water. Yet for some reason unknown to him until he was
an adult, he felt that souls could exist, that everyone had a
spirit that passed on into an afterlife when the physical body had
not.

As Andrew had found out, he became
very philosophical whenever he was depressed. If he came home
disappointed because some girl rejected him, or that he had been
bullied, or that he was just left out of something by his friends,
his mind would wander to the point that some completely irrelevant
ideas would pop up. Such ideas were rather strange and useless,
such as “How come we’re born as humans and not fish?” Answering
such questions would not help anyone much with the questions that
we search for the most, such as, “What is the meaning of the
universe? What is life?” The ironic thing is that we can’t seem to
answer these questions for ourselves until we die.

Andrew had lived a turbulent life just
like anybody else. He was diagnosed with autism as a kid, meaning
that he didn’t quite pick up on social cues like other children did
until he was older. He wasn’t very aware of his surroundings,
especially for news. On September 11, 2001, he had no idea at all
that something tragic was happening at New York on that day; he
didn’t even remember whether he saw anybody that looked devastated,
therefore he couldn’t tell if something was wrong. Often he would
sit at the table and hear his parents having a conversation when
suddenly one of them says, “Tell us what you think, Andrew,” and he
would reply, “What are we talking about?”

In first-grade, Andrew could remember
sitting in an isolated part of the playground eating a Pop-Tart,
satisfied, regardless of what the other kids were doing. On some
occasions he would ask to join a game of kickball or foursquare,
but ninety percent of his recesses were spent collecting acorns
under the nearby oak trees and putting them into his pocket. He
would usually take the acorns out and throw them back onto the
grass because he didn’t need them—the simple act of collecting them
satisfied that boy more often than kickball ever did. He had one
friend that he really connected with, whose name was Shaun, and
even then they didn’t do much together. Shaun was most likely doing
something by himself as well, not caring about anyone else.
Andrew’s friend was two months older and always an inch taller;
they bickered over random topics and laughed over others. When
Andrew and Shaun met again after six years without contact, they
were still similar, still best friends.

However, there were times when
important issues had separated the two. Being repeatedly bullied by
a particular kid in the fifth grade, Shaun was led to act upon a
dangerous stunt. He pulled Andrew aside to show him a firecracker
he had obtained somehow, which he planned to attach to the kid’s
back in order to spook him. Andrew knew that this could go horribly
wrong, so he stood up saying, “I’m not letting you do this, dude,”
and tried grabbing the firecracker away from Shaun, but Shaun was
not so likely to give it up. After a few seconds, both of them
noticed a yard-duty lady looking at them—the two boys decided to
stop fighting immediately. Neither of them wanted to be found with
a firecracker in their hands, so Shaun hid it in his pocket and
later into his backpack. The lady did nothing, and Andrew told
Shaun that if he lit that firecracker, he would not be friends with
him anymore. Later that day, Shaun crushed up the firecracker into
bits of paper and gunpowder, throwing it away into a trashcan at
the park nearby his house; no one would be likely to see it, let
alone use it. Those two boys were already more ethical than some
people would ever be.

He always had a tendency towards Legos
and anything else that he could take apart and put back together.
He didn’t care too much about reenacting someone else’s world, such
as the new Spiderman toy set or whatever was on the commercials. He
just wanted plenty of Legos so he could make his own world, create
anything he wanted with what he had. He also enjoyed playing
driving games—racing games were fun, but open-world games in which
he could drive through and explore piqued his interest the most. He
decided as a kid that he would do something related to making
automobiles when he grew up.

Then came Andrew’s move to Searles,
where he would enter the hell known as middle school. Back in
elementary school, he was more or less the comic relief of the
classroom, but he was too socially awkward to know that the things
he did were generally idiotic. As he moved on into middle school,
his socially awkward tendencies resulted in consequences. Many of
the students guessed he was retarded in general, so they had thrown
him aside and taunted him repeatedly; somebody once threw a Master
lock at his head. It was in the seventh grade that he realized he
had autism; he didn’t know what the symptoms were, but he knew now
why his social life was so poor. He wanted to be like everyone else
now, even if it meant making some sacrifice to his dreams. The
worst part was that he already established the first impression for
everyone else, so he believed it was too late to fix anything. He
had been asked to hang out with some of the more popular kids
during lunch, and although it wasn’t a joke, he had nothing
interesting enough to talk about to these guys, so nothing improved
in his social life.

Why did those people even take him
in?

Puberty kicked into high gear during
the eighth-grade and his freshman year of high school, thus he
became depressed over one thing: lack of a girlfriend. Andrew felt
as though everyone else was in a relationship, when it was just his
mind overreacting to thoughts and exaggerating the reality. He was
asking out girls out of his league, and if by some chance he did
receive a “Yes,” he would mess things up quickly or unnecessarily
overreact to something. We are all dumb that way when we are
young.

As the tenth grade approached, he
found a group of friends that he would keep for a couple of years.
They weren’t exactly the best friends that he could be with, but
they were much better than the people in the “popular” crowd, who
left him out of everything outside from sitting at their
table.

In both of the
groups that he was with, he had never been pressured to smoke,
drink, or go to parties—he had never been asked to. Although, he
was expecting to experience it as a teenager because that’s what
cultural media tells us: high school is full of people trying to
fit in by whatever means necessary. Andrew didn’t care as much now
about fitting in. He was becoming much more aware, both about his
surroundings and about himself. No more sitting in a room with
students that had social problems and mental problems while he
thought to himself,
I don’t belong here.
I’m not like these guys.

Everything was evening out, but then
his overall desire shifted to two more things: a car and a job.
Andrew didn’t get a license along with a car until mid-way through
his senior year, and by then he discovered how realistically hard
it was to get a job. He had submitted twenty applications in one
month, but he didn’t receive a single reply. His parents paid for
part of the gas money, but the rest came from his
savings.

During junior year,
he began to read more often. He had never liked reading much, let
alone English class, but things were coming to him more easily at
this point. Most of it seemed easier because the teacher genuinely
wanted the students to learn, but maybe it was also because
Andrew’s mind was maturing a bit more. He enjoyed reading Modern
books for their realistic yet interesting themes, since the
Romantic novels he was familiar with made him sick of useless
details and ideals; he would prefer
To
Kill a Mockingbird
over
The Scarlet Letter
any
day.