Lost Past (13 page)

             
Linda felt the warm rush of a blush on her face. Wilson never looked her way, which was more embarrassing than if he saw her blush. He knew I was going to blush, she thought.

             
Afterwards, Linda began to understand some stories a bit better.

             
Although there were not a lot of children during prime time television on Earth, Linda was surprised how few children there were in the stories she watched. Large families
were nonexistent, and siblings were always more than a decade apart in age. Linda finally stumbled on something about their history from a play designed to educate children.

             
About 1700 years ago, an alien species called the
Plicts
discovered the wormhole to Earth. One alien,
Fraxent
-Bud VI, found a pair of children, now called the Founding Foundlings, and brought them back. They produced eleven children. He and his successors bred them and manipulated their genes to make them healthier and longer-lived. The
Plicts
built
Vigint
City for them and gave them food.

             
Linda spent several hours doing some calculations and reported her results,

“There are between 40,000 and 600,000 of them,” she said.

             
“Can’t you pin it down more?” Cara asked.

             
Linda then showed them her calculations. The apartment they were in was not for the poorest people, because the poorest people lived in rooms with thirty bunks, with only a small locker to call their own. The wealthy didn’t have large apartments. Even with the cramped living quarters, the common rooms and corridors took up space. Although the shows they watched were probably not terribly accurate in their representation of the world, she guessed that people wouldn’t tolerate shows that were completely unrealistic. No one was ever more than a twenty-minute walk from anywhere. That argued for a diameter of about a mile.
             

             
“If the population is on the low end of the estimate, I don’t see how they developed the technology,“ Wilson said.

             
“Obviously, it was given to them by the
Plict
, even if there are 600,000 people here,” Linda said. She went on to explain, “No matter how smart these people are, they can’t all be scientists. Some people must keep society moving. There has to be police, plumbers, and politicians. We’ve already seen a large number of actors and writers.”

             
“Writers?” Cara asked scornfully.

             
“Somebody wrote those movies.”

             
Cara snorted.

             
“We haven’t seen any scientists portrayed in movies. If they have enough scientists to produce the technology, there should be some in fiction,” Linda said. They went back to studying the society.

             
Suddenly, the room went black. After about a minute, Wilson felt his way to the exercise room, explaining that he was going to try to add to the power grid. Linda doubted that a single person would make much difference, but the power came on about ten minutes later. She expected to be upset by the lack of light, but she couldn’t turn off the lights and that bothered her. It might be nice to sleep in the dark again.

             
They had no computer access several hours, but when the computers came on, their restrictions were lifted, due to the reboot. They could study anything.

CHAPTER 10

             
John followed Baldur through the narrow corridors, which didn’t seem claustrophobic to him, just normal. Well, he thought, one mystery has been solved. My apartment on Earth must seem luxurious compared with what people have here. He accepted that he came from here, if nothing else, because of his appearance. It may be a stranger in the mirror, but he spent enough time looking at that stranger to recognize he must be related to the people he saw. They passed the stairway where they entered.
John couldn’
t help but look at the display of the Founding Foundlings. I may not know who my parents are, but those are my ancestors, he thought.

             
He was taken to a single person’s apartment. It was smaller than the room he was in before, but intended for one person. John had been in larger closets. “They wanted to give you more computer access without giving it to those others. You might want time to prepare your defense,” Baldur said.

             
“Defense against what?”

             
“Breaking your contract.” He locked the door, leaving John to wonder if he was entitled to a lawyer.
Apparently not.

             
He decided to check his background before reading the contract, because he had so many questions. He was pleased so much information was readily available.

             
Arthur Saunders
published a paper on the mathematics of wormholes. It was ignored on Earth because they weren’t even certain that large wormholes existed. The
Plicts
’ planet and Earth were connected by a wormhole, and the
Plicts
decided Arthur might be able to help them understand it. Juan Hernandez, who was an anthropologist studying Mexico, approached Arthur. Arthur agreed to help, but didn’t get along with Hernandez.

             
Apparently, someone decided John would be a better guide for Arthur than Hernandez, since he was already doing some unspecified work on Earth. He became Arthur’s chauffer and later his friend. Arthur spent a lot of time on the
Plicts
’ planet until the project was finished.

             
Arthur and John continued their friendship, whenever John could find time.  When Natalie disappeared, Arthur asked John if
he
would look into her disappearance with the
Vigintees
. John did a little cursory checking and found nothing. Nine months later, he discovered by accident that she had been kidnapped from Earth and used in a secret experiment on telepathy. It was believed she had it, largely based on something John once said. They tried various methods to see if she had telepathy, but they didn’t confirm she had it. She died during an attempt to escape. Surprisingly few details were given. John realized he had more computer access, but not unlimited computer access.

             
Mary Chen had just moved in with Arthur, indicating Arthur clearly was moving on. The children had lost a mother, but Mary Chen was no replacement. She loved Arthur, but the children were an annoyance. Her classes and research occupied all of the time she didn’t spend with Arthur.

             
John realized he could help Tom and Linda by moving in and becoming a parent. His previous online courses were designed to give him a new identity. Fortunately, they were acceptable as a premed curriculum. Medical school was easy for him, because he already knew most of the material.

             
He also took his accumulated wealth with him. Because the
Vigintees
didn’t approve
of what he was doing, he was leaving permanently.

             
He reached an agreement with the
Vigintees
government. He could go, train as a psychiatrist, but he couldn’t teach
Vigintees
psychiatry to Earth doctors. There was some discussion about the vital clause in his contract that allowed him to surreptitiously teach psychiatry, but it was considered legal. As long as they just learned from watching him, he was within the terms of the contract, but he couldn’t tell them to watch or explain anything. The penalty was death.

             
Reading the contract confirmed this. Somehow, he managed to have them agree to the contract, which allowed some of his knowledge to get out. He didn’t have to hide what he was doing; as long as he was not so obvious as to say, “Watch me,” he could convey as much information as he liked. He was not allowed to publish any papers, which accounted for his insistence that his name be kept off the papers Eric published. He realized that would bother Eric, who felt guilty getting credit for someone else’s work.

             
Whoever consented to the contract obviously underrated both John and the psychiatrists on Earth. The contract writers must have thought that the Earth psychiatrists were short-lived animals and would never understand what John was doing. John found himself ashamed of the society he came from. Did he ever believe what the writers of the contract believed? He hoped not.

             
Joh
n studied
Vigintees
law and wasn’
t encouraged. It was more a matter of guilty until proven innocent rather than the other way around. Two days of studying
made him
believe they would
n’t
be lenient.

             
When Baldur took John to a courtroom, he wasn’t surprised to find three people sitting on chairs that were slightly raised. There was an elderly man in the middle and a younger man and a woman flanking him. It was the largest room he had seen, but was just the size of a small classroom on Earth. Baldur led John to a circle on the floor, where he stood before the judges.
Katrine
and Hernandez were both among the spectators, as well as the other three men who hijacked Arthur’s plane.

             
The court started with a ceremony. The judges sang an eerie song that praised the
Plict
, accompanied by a recording of music that stirred John’s soul. The music on Earth was noise compared to this. There were places for a response from the audience and John found himself joining in. He couldn’t have predicted his response, but he knew what to say when the time came.

             
The ceremony seemed to invoke more of an emotional response than anything John experienced since he awoke in the hospital. He realized he missed this, and the ceremony spoke to a part of him that was suppressed and
yearned to be released
. It shook him to realize how important this was to him. He didn’t think he was a religious man, yet this filled the niche that religion fills.

             
After the ceremony, the man in the middle asked him, “Have you broken your agreement?”

             
“I did not remember any agreement,” John replied.

             
“You are to answer the question, not offer excuses.”

             
“While suffering from amnesia, I performed actions that broke an agreement I was unaware of.”

             
“Can you prove that you had amnesia?” asked the female judge with contempt in her voice.

             
“The doctors on Earth know that I suffered it.”

             
“Their testimony is not admissible,” she said. Her computer gave a slight beep and she looked at her screen. “I’ve been informed that they can’t be sure, even if they could testify.” John looked around and realized Hernandez sent her the message from the smug look on his face
and the computer that was on his lap
.

             
“Why isn’t it admissible?” John asked.

             
She looked at him incredulously and started to say something dismissive, but the older judge spoke, “We are trying to conceal our presence on Earth.”

             
It was John’s turn to be incredulous. “You certainly haven’t succeeded! They may not know who you are, but they know about you all over the world. They will be looking for you and probably connect Hernandez with everything.”

             
“What are you talking about?”

             
“The killing of a planeload of passengers, the interruption of the communications, and the kidnapping of Arthur Saunders.”

             
Hernandez came forward and said, “I explained to you about Saunders when I brought him here. He would have told John to publicize his knowledge, and we had to keep him from doing so. John trusted him. We’ve been over this, and the kidnapping was approved.”

             
“Why didn’t you just kidnap me?” John asked.

             
Everyone looked shocked at this. It was
Katrine
who explained to John, “You were there legally and had rights. The animals didn’t.”

             
“Arthur’s only message to me told me not to change my behavior. If Arthur had any influence over me, I wouldn’t have published.”

             
“But you did publish,” the center judge said.

             
“I wanted to get the knowledge out before I was killed.”

             
“No one attacked you,” Hernandez said, with a slight emphasis on “you.”