FIRST EARTH
The last time I was on Third Earth I was a few years younger and way more naive. I still remember the excitement I felt while riding the escalator up and out of that subway city to get my first glimpse of the future. I was pretty excited this time too. Or maybe excited isn’t the right word. It was more like a burning knot of fear was twisting in my gut. Yeah, that’s a better description. The future had been changed. The robot dados in the subway were proof of that. Question was, would the new future be better, or worse? My aching stomach feared the worst.
Courtney was just plain excited. She had read my journals describing Third Earth, but reading about something and seeing it for yourself are two different animals. The last thing she said to me before the flume took us from Second Earth was, “I want to see the future.” She was about to.
When we arrived at the top and stepped out from under the green kiosk that marked the entrance to the subway, Courtney did a slow three-sixty, her eyes wide with wonder.
“Don’t forget to breathe,” I cautioned.
“Unbelievable,” she gasped.
I’m relieved to say that Third Earth looked pretty much the same as I remembered. Gone was the crowded city of cement that was the Bronx of Second Earth. In its place was a vast parklike meadow. The air smelled sweet, with the faint hint of pine. I saw several green kiosks scattered about, marking other entrances to the underground city. Not too far away were the low, boxy buildings where some people still lived aboveground. The winding roads were there, with quiet electric cars gently moving along their way People still rode bicycles.
Courtney took a few steps away from me to soak it all in. I followed, in awe of what Earth had become, yet nervous about how the dados might have changed the equation.
“People finally got it right,” she exclaimed. “No pollution. Respect for the environment. No overcrowding. No wars-“
“And a bunch of robots to do the grunt work,” I added.
“Yeah, that.”
In the distance I could make out the few remaining buildings of Manhattan, including the Empire State Building, which now had a shiny steel coat of silver. It seemed like nothing was different about Third Earth.
Except for the dados.
They were everywhere. Some repaired a section of roadway. Others were mowing the acres of beautifully kept grass. I saw a team of dados putting a fresh coat of blue paint on a footbridge that spanned one of the winding streams. A silent delivery truck cruised by with a dado at the wheel. One of the squat apartment buildings had several dados clambering on the outside walls, washing windows. None of the activity was strange, except that all the workers looked the exact same. Most wore deep red coveralls, but some had uniforms that designated a particular job, like the crossing guard who stood in the road to halt traffic, allowing a group of giggling kids to run across. That guy wore a white sash, like the safety-patrol kids in my grammar school. The dado driving the delivery truck also wore a uniform that looked like the UPS guys wear. After all those years, the UPS guys still wore brown uniforms.
All the dados seemed to be men, though with a robot there’s no such thing as sex. At least I don’t think there is. Let’s not go there. They all had the exact same perfect haircut: short and dark, parted in the middle. They were exactly the same size, too. I’m guessing about six feet tall with medium builds. The odd part was they all had the same face. I mean, exactly the same face. It wasn’t the same face as the dados on Quillan, but they were definitely all the same.
“Why would they make them all look alike?” Courtney asked.
“I’m thinking if they didn’t, you’d never be able to tell them apart from real humans.”
Courtney did a quick look around at the dados and nodded. “Really. Put a mustache on one of those dudes and he’d disappear into a crowd. How creepy is that?”
“Creepy” was the word. I didn’t get it right away, but there was something about these dados that gave me the heebies. I mean, beyond the fact that they were even there. There was something about them that felt a little off. I kept staring, trying to focus on what it might be. It was right there, but I couldn’t grab on to it. They looked way more like real people than the robots of Quillan. When you watched those robots closely, you could tell their movements were stiff and almost too perfect. That was the difference. The dados of Quillan moved too perfectly. Real people don’t move perfectly. The dados of Third Earth didn’t move perfectly either. They seemed every bit as human as Courtney and I. If I had seen only one, I never would have guessed it was a dado. But seeing hundreds of exact replicas, well, that pretty much screamed robot to me. Was that it? Was I bugged because these dados looked so much like real people? Nope.
Courtney realized it first. “Look at them, they’re all the same,” she gasped. “Yeah, I get that.”
“No!” She swallowed hard and looked at me, pained. “Look closer.” Her voice cracked as she said, “They all look like… Mark.”
I snapped a look to the nearest dado. They were taller, their hair was short, and there wasn’t a zit in sight, but there was no mistake-these robots looked exactly like Mark Dimond. Every last one of them. We were seeing hundreds of clones of my best friend.
“I want to cry,” Courtney whimpered.
“It’s okay,” I assured her, though I didn’t feel even close to okay. “It just means we’re on the right track.”
“Mark really did have something to do with this,” Courtney said, shaking her head.
We were interrupted by a quick beep from a car horn. We both jumped and turned to see a small, silver car speed up and stop next to us. It was easy to see the driver since there was no roof.
“Pendragon!” Patrick yelled.
Patrick was the Traveler from Third Earth. I’m guessing he was in his twenties. He was about my size with longish brown hair. He wore the same type of clothes as the last time I’d been there, jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. He looked more like a preppy from Second Earth than a teacher and librarian from the year 5010. Then again, I’m not really sure what a teacher and librarian from the year 5010 should look like. The thing I remembered most about Patrick was that he had a calm, confident way about him.
Not anymore. That was another thing that had changed about Third Earth.
Patrick drove up and slammed on the brakes, looking anything but calm. Frantic, scared, nervous… those were all better words to describe him. I’d only met him once, but he seemed to be a guy who was in perfect control. He was an intellectual. A guy who lived to study and teach. Now he looked like a crazed guy who lived to rant and drool. He leaped out of the car without opening the door, ran to me, and grabbed both my arms. His eyes were wild. His hair was tangled. He hadn’t shaved. He was a mess.
“What happened?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”
I looked to Courtney. She shrugged.
“Uh, not following you, Patrick,” I said.
Patrick looked as if his head was about to explode. He looked at Courtney. “Who’s that?” He ran to her and grabbed her arms. “What territory are you the Traveler from? Do you know what happened?”
Courtney froze. “N-No. I’m not a Traveler-I-“
“Not a Traveler!” Patrick screamed, backing away from her, stepping closer to the edge of panic. “Pendragon, you can’t bring a non-Traveler here! What are you thinking? Things are all wrong!”
I gently put my hand on his arm to try and calm him.
“Relax, okay?” I said. “We’re here to help figure things out.”
I felt him relax. A little. His eyes darted around as if unseen ghosts were closing in on us. He was coming back to Earth. Or Third Earth.
“I’m going out of my mind, Pendragon,” he said, gulping air.
Yeah, no kidding.
“You’re used to jumping around between territories and dealing with this insanity. I’m just a teacher. I never thought something like this could happen here.”
I glanced around to see if there was a place we could talk that was more private. We were still outside the kiosk leading to the subway, and lots of people were passing by. Lots of Mark-looking robots, too. The creepy factor
