Welcome Home by Eric Smith

Author:Eric Smith [Smith, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Family / Adoption
Publisher: North Star Editions
Published: 2017-09-05T05:00:00+00:00

I awoke on a hospital bed. My mouth tasted like melted wax, and my head pounded. Machines flanked me, and I’d been hooked to more wires and tubes than I’d thought possible. By my bedside sat Dr. Ramirez.

“How long have I been out?”

“About three weeks.”

“And the process . . .” I tried to remember what had happened after I’d entered the chamber and came back empty.

“The process went smoothly. You have nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t remember it.”

He shrugged. “Do you remember your birth? Why would this, your second birth, be any different? You’ve become someone––something––else. Some subjects even choose new names for themselves.”

It was my turn to shrug. I’d meant it when I’d told him I don’t care much what people call me. “Now what?”

“Now we wait. Eventually, when the ark fleet has been completed, you’ll be assigned to one of the ships and help shepherd in the next phase of Terran evolution.”

“There will be training, I’m assuming.”

“In time.”

“Can I see the others now? The others who have also been bonded?”

“You will soon enough.” Something about the way his eyes suddenly slid to the floor troubled me.

“And the ark ships . . . when will they be ready?”

Dr. Ramirez’s eyes stayed on the floor. He tugged off his glasses and once again began to polish them. “Current estimates put the launch date somewhere in the middle of the twenty-second century.

I shook my head, not sure I’d heard him correctly. “But that’s more than a hundred years from now.”

“Yes.”

That’s all he said, damning me with a single syllable. “But what will I do? I can’t go back to the regular world. Not like this. Not as a . . .” As a what? A freak? A god?

“No, of course not. You’ll stay here. You’ll stay here and you’ll sleep,” he said. “You’ll sleep with the rest of them.”

“Sleep?” I’d just been asleep for almost a month. The last thing I wanted to think about was more sleep. “I don’t want to sleep.”

“Want is irrelevant. You’ll sleep. You all sleep.”

I sat bolt upright. “What are you talking about?”

I could see that, again, he’d dealt with these questions before, maybe countless times. “Think you’re up for a walk?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Then come with me,” he said, already unhooking me from the machines.

We traveled down another elevator. It opened up on onto a vast chamber. And that’s where I saw them. A field of statues. Except they weren’t statues, and I knew it. They stood, fixed and at attention, stretching back in a grid until they disappeared into the gloom.

I remembered seeing a picture of an army of terra-cotta warriors that had been buried with the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang. This is what they looked like. A buried army. One that was alive. One that was immortal. One that I would soon join.

“How many of them are there?”

“One thousand one hundred and twenty-two,” he said. “You make it -twenty-three.”

Standing here, I could tell that he hadn’t been lying to me. I would sleep, and that sleep would be long.

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