Erica's Diary

E’s Eyes ONLY!

December 7, 2012

             What a day! Like there isn’t enough to be worried about in today’s crazy world, we have to write a report on what events caused the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. I mean my grandmother wasn’t born yet!

             I have to find a better spot to hide this journal. My brat brother has been snooping in my room again. If these pages fall into the wrong hands, I will be grounded forever.

December 8, 2012

            Spending the weekend with dad. Dinner out, as usual, some Christmas shopping, and a movie. Dad promised to give me a hand with my Pearl Harbor assignment, in the morning.

            I can’t see the point in any of it! All the talk at school is about the world imploding, or ceasing to exist December 21. Grandma told me that during her life there had been several scares like this one. Twitter is going nuts with how the human race will go the way of the dinosaurs. Pretty scary stuff! Makes it hard to concentrate on making a Christmas list of what I want form the family.

            How about: 1. Making my eleventh birthday in April, instead of Christmas Eve?

                                2. Moving in with my dad?

                                3. Spending Christmas with grandma, and riding her horses in the snow one more time?

2023

       The earth was beginning to convulse beneath my, thread bare, used, mismatched, athletic shoes. Here I was twenty-two, with a college degree, walking to the grocery in my goodwill clothes. The rattier the look the better, you could get mugged in a heartbeat if you looked like you had something worth taking.

            Shelves were getting bare. I picked out a can of noodle soup, a beat up ancient looking can of tuna that was stashed behind a stack of spinach cans. I was moving though the aisles scouting out the sparsely stocked shelves when they began to shake, sway, and crash to the floor.

            A loud roar-like the sound described by tornado survivors-threatened to deafen me. Black clouds formed close to the ground, a blinding blue-white ray of light penetrated the cloudbank. That was the last thing I could recall as I peeked out from under a fallen shelf that had pinned me to the dirty nondescript vinyl floor of the local food-mart. Screams of terror from the street out front echoed in my mind as I lost consciousness.

            My next foray into a functional state was to open my gritty swollen eyes to the painful glare of an overhead light. A hospital room or triage center was the first thing that popped into my mind. That thought was quickly deleted when my grandmother leaned over me.

            “It’s going to be alright, Little E.” Then she picked up my right hand and held it in hers. Grandma was one of the few people on earth that ever called me Little E.

            Okay, time to reassess the situation. I have not been little for a long time. In a pair of heels my five foot ten allowed me to look most men in the eye, or look down on a few of their sorry butts. Flat on my back in a strange room with my deceased grandmother leaning over me scared the crap out of me!

            “Hey! Somebody let me out of this contraption. I need a bathroom, now!”

            Not a soul responded to my urgent demands, and Granny had vanished. I began to fear the worst. The weight of the falling shelves had done me in, and I was dead. A better alternative I figured, than admitting I might have gone around the bend. Grandma had become the voice in my head; in turn she was encouraging, sympathetic to a point, my taskmaster, and disciplinarian. She had a quirky sense of humor, much as she did in life, but this was the first time I’d actually seen her since she left this crummy world six years earlier.

            Wait! Two silent figures just entered the room. Their white uniforms fit like wetsuits; all that was visible through a clear bubble like mask was their paper white complexions. They didn’t lower the tall rails that confined me to the bed, so I could relieve myself. Instead, they changed the bag floating in the air and pumping its contents into my left arm. I opened my mouth to protest, and again request a toilet or even a bedpan, but not a sound came from my vocal cords. One more attempt to communicate with the pair proved too much for me. I sank into a cold black void.

∆∆∆∆∆

            I was floating among the stars gazing down at our planet. This must be what the astronauts saw when they hovered above the earth and preformed the tasks of repairing the space station. Okay, so where is my spacesuit? Could be that I was having an out of body experience, but doesn’t all the information on the subject say that people can see themselves when that happens? I couldn’t see myself, and didn’t have a clue where my physical being was.

            My travels around our solar system allowed me an up close view of planets that prior to now I could only see second hand. Out around Saturn, I looked back at the fading blue planet. To my dismay it was now a murky grayish brown. It crossed my mind that the change in color could not be a good sign.

            I seemed to be picking up speed, and soon the Milky Way was far behind me. Now nothing was familiar, and I felt a tumbling sensation, a terrible penetrating cold took hold of me. Then oblivion.

∆∆∆∆∆

            My alien captors thawed me out. Time had escaped me, and I hadn’t a clue how long I’d been in cryo-sleep. I knew a little about cryogenics from my college physics, but little was known about the effects of inducing long term exposure to the deep freeze. Straw like tentacles protruded from every orifice on my numb body. My eyes wouldn’t focus yet, and my heart double timed at what looked to be a huge sliver squid suspended above me. The tentacles imprisoning me belong to that monster. “Calm down little E. You will do yourself damage. What you see is only a medical device, which is unfamiliar to you.”

            I knew it! This had to be hell, and I’d passed on. How else could I be hearing my grandmother?

            Each time I awoke, my sojourn into this strange place lasted longer. The pale creatures, who’d made first contact with me, were conspicuously absent from this cold cell. A black robot hovered above the floor and saw to my needs. Red and blue lights flashed in a line from right to left where a human would have eyes. Its arms were similar to what I was accustomed. It never spoke to me, but seemed to know my every need before I could verbalize. Whenever I got stressed, my grandmother’s voice would appear out of the strange metallic odor that permeated the room.

            The voice in my subconscious informed me that I now had an implant in my head. Its function was supposedly to enable me to speak several alien languages. My minimal biological studies were also enhanced while I slept, and while running on a round tread wheel. I felt like a hamster on that contraption.

∆∆∆∆∆

            A twenty-five year old altered version of Erica stepped on to the surface of a new world. Truthfully, if you counted the cryo-sleep little E was really three hundred and twenty-five. The sweet smell of wildflowers assaulted my senses; crisp clean air filled my lungs. Like the few hundred passengers I didn’t realize had made the journey, I stood transfixed. We stood on a hill overlooking a lush valley. Sparkling clear water flowed over a small dam before it wandered snake like through the breathtaking landscape.

            The sky was foreign, more of a turquoise, and the clouds did appear to have a silver lining. A distant moon with a satellite of its own was clearly visible in the light of day; another smaller moon appeared to be setting on the horizon. The ground began to tremble, which panicked many in the group, but I recognized the cadence from my childhood. Hundreds of blacks, and bays, sorrels, and grays galloped with their tails flying high and manes flowing. Tears filled my eyes, and joy filled my heart at the wonder of it. “Look, Grandma, Paradise!” I know she heard me and is smiling down on me, and the beautiful animals she taught me to appreciate.