Avro Kelty – Back Days

Avro stood. The expanse of beach before him spread out in all directions, sand, shells, flotsam and jetsam of eons of waves crashing ashore, washing ashore, sweeping up the broad expanse of white crystalline rippled landscape. Avro’s feet were still damp from the surf, sticky from salt water, tingling from the rapidly dissipating foam around his ankles. Something was missing. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Something. What was it? He made is way up the shore. In half a hundred yards he left the sand. He walked now on a spongy, thick, salt and decay-smelling surface. He winced.

Palm fronds are not the most comfortable of things to walk on barefoot. He stopped. Where was his shoes? He cocked his head. He remembered. He frowned.

Strange bird calls echoed through the banyan and palms. Other sounds. Crashing surf. Wind blowing the fronds, clacking, swishing, thumping of cocoanuts bumping each other in the southerly breeze. Smells. More than the bog beneath his feet. More than the salt.

Death. It was death, he smelt.

He shivered in the hot breeze. He turned, looked out to sea, the great, blue, crashing, mysterious sea. Avro eased himself down onto a sweeping curve of tree. The tree swayed but held his weight. What was it? What was missing? Then he knew. Coke cans. It was coke cans. And plastic cup tops. The occasional red-stripped soda straw. A stray piece of cloth, a piece of foam burger box. Missing.

Why?

Avro stood, held his hand over his brow to shade his eyes from the noon sun. The heat was intense. He sucked in a breath of air, that thick, damp, hot, salt air. But even in the breeze, even in the air coming right off the ocean, he could taste death in his mouth.

He wondered if he was imagining it. Slowly he lifted a sand-encrusted hand to his mouth, started to wipe his lips, then brushed the sand away. Then he wiped his lips. Still there was sand. In his mouth, nose, on his face, stuck like some kind of weird glitter. He had a passing thought that he should figure out how to turn sea water into glue. It sure would stick sand onto skin.

But, he thought, who would he sell it to? Who in all the world? Nobody.

Nobody was IN the world.

Something glinted in the sun. Suddenly he was emotional. He was all mixed up. Maybe, well, maybe, it was true after all.

Maybe nothing was missing.

Maybe.

He plodded across the sand towards whatever it was that glinted. He stopped, looking down. Half a smile moved over his face and broke free, looking more like a smirk than a smile. It was just his clippers. Sun glinted off the lenses. He leaned over and picked them up. They were fine.

He knocked the sand from them, examined the seals around the edges of the lenses, and clipped them on the bridge of his nose. They were fine, sure, but they were not linked. Of course not. The pod was a quarter of a mile off shore, in maybe a hundred feet of water. And it was flooded with salt water.

Not very conducive to computer function. He pulled the square plexi-lense devices from his nose, took one look at them, and tossed them in the sea.

They were light weight, plastic, they would soon be right back where he found them. He didn’t care.

He was hungry.

Retracing his steps back up the beach, slipping his feet into the impressions he’d made so as to find a cooler spot to step on the hot sand, he moved up to and past the tree where he had sat. His suit was drying now, on the inside, and sticking to him. He tugged at it. Then he unzipped the blue and gold outer suite and slipped from it. He only wore the lining now, a soft, thick fabric designed to siphon perspiration and body fluids from him and deliver them into a receptacle attached to his suit.

The receptacle was gone now and the inner suit had been obediently siphoning his perspiration from him and delivering it to a tube which dripped incessantly onto his left leg. He pulled the liner off and stood for a moment naked beneath the shade of a massive Banyan. The breeze felt good. He reached for the outer suit, it’s slick, blue and gold glittering in beams of sunlight that sliced down through the trees. He slipped it on. He felt like he was wearing a trash bag.

He wondered if he might not ought to put the liner back on. He looked at it, now lying on the ground beside him. He decided against it. He sure was hungry. Above him coconuts clattered. With a little shake, several came tumbling down, nearly hitting him on the head. He picked one up. It was heavy. And hard.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered something about cocoanuts. At the moment, that sweet milk and pulp may as well be on the moon. He dropped the cocoanut and wondered inland.

He pushed through the foliage and into the forest beyond. Was it forest? Was it jungle? What

was it exactly? Hell, he didn’t know. He was from the city. Closest he’d come to one of these trees was the city park. And then there were only a few. There were only a few. Was. He stopped and took a breath. That smell again.

Death.

All around.

But, could it be? There was nothing on the beach. Nothing anywhere here. No sign of humanity. Maybe he was imagining things. Or maybe it was is own death he smelled. No matter. He spied a low-hanging limb ahead burdened with some kind of fruit.

The fruit was strange-looking, yellow, spongy, with a soft outer skin. He plucked one from the branch. It felt soft, nice, to the touch. Like the skin of a woman. Like a breast. He held the fruit and thought of Kai. Her skin was soft. She was soft. And beautiful. Kind and loving and sweet and thoughtful.

And gone forever.

He choked. “Gghhoddddd,” he exhaled, hitting the ground on his knees. “Ghhohhhddd.” He wasn’t hungry any more. He dropped the fruit and fell upon his face, curling into a fetal position upon the ground.

But he couldn’t just lay there. He had to do something. It was not his nature to give up. He struggled to his knees. Why not give up? Even as he thought that thought he clambered to his feet again and plucked another fruit. Maybe, he thought, this fruit is poisonous and he would end it all quickly. He peeled back the soft peeling and bit the fruit. It was flat tasting, not as sweet nor as good as it looked. It occurred to him if it was poisonous he would most likely die an excruciating death.

He shrugged and took another bite. With his luck he’d probably just get a good case of the runs. He gathered up a few more of the weird fruit and went back to the low-sweeping tree which had somehow become his perch.

Avro sat on the tree until his rear tingled. He stood. The sun was far down the sky now. Shadows reached before him, reaching for the edge of the surf, now much farther down the beach. Tide was out. He perked up. Tide was out! Maybe he could reach the pod. Maybe a few of the things he’d dropped would be somewhere along the bottom. Maybe the shoes! That would be good to find his shoes.

He quickly ran across the sand. It was like walking barefoot in hot snow. The sand clung at him, his feet sank into it, his progress was slowed. His muscles ached now. He’d taken a hell of a banging when the pod dropped through the atmosphere far above the ocean and then had plunged downward into the water. Nothing had worked on the damn thing. He’d barely had time to get the hatch open before it sank. He stood at the waters’ edge, looking out to sea.

Was that a shark fin he saw, or just a shadow. Would he know a shark fin from a palm frond? Not likely. But he’d seen enough old movies to know he had no desire to be some Great White’s lunch. Did Great White Sharks swim these waters? Hell, he wasn’t even sure what these waters were. Where they were.

Or when, for that matter. Not even when.

There was nothing on the beach. Things should have been on the beach, if…. He looked back up the beach, now darkening, looking ominous. If it had happened, then, well, but there was nothing. Where had his pod taken him? Where? And, when?

The idea to get the shoes was foolish. They had sank quickly when he kicked them off, too heavy to swim with. Almost as quickly the current had ripped the short socks from his feet as well. He’d have to make do with what he could find. He walked back up the beach until he was out of reach of the rushing surf. Then he allowed the strength to drain from his knees. He sank downward in a spiral, twisting, allowing his legs to fold underneath him until he plopped into the sand in a yoga position, facing the sea.

Over his shoulder the most magnificent of sunsets whispered but he ignored it. Screw that, he’d see plenty of those. Looking out to sea he thought he saw a light.

Maybe, yes, it was. He stood. A light. But no, it was just the flicker of luminescence of the sea. If this was to be where he met his end, he could think of no place more beautiful. He fell back onto his elbows and sagged onto the sand, looking up to the sea. He was thirsty but not maddeningly so.

The fruit had been juicy. Before he knew it, Avro Kelty was fast, fast asleep.

The sea woke him up. It wasn’t some nice, soft rush of surf, sneaking up to tickle his feet. No. It was a huge, crashing wave that broke over him like he was an age-old stand of coral. He’d slept with his mouth open and the salt and sand filled his mouth. He choked and groped and tried to find his footing.

Another wave broke over him and pushed him first up the shore, then tugged at him, dragging him back to sea. He gagged, spat, whimpered, yelled, and cursed. But after a struggle Avro got his breath and dragged himself up the shore. He’d hardly gained his composure when the bright morning sun broke free of the distant curve of the earth and fired its rays into eyes stinging from salt water.

Avro cursed again, turned, crawled towards the trees. He fell into a heap onto the softer but less kind spongy earth beneath his tree. His tree. He already had his own tree. How grand. By noon the fruits had satisfied his hunger but had not satiated his thirst. In the back of his mind, that dark place where images lurked and taunted him, again a thought rose. The lining. Of course. He pulled off the clinging uniform and dropped it over the turn in his tree. Then he reached for the

lining on the ground. It had still been working. Well, of course it was. It was no machine, just a modern marvel of capillary action. He slipped it on and sat on the tree. Nothing dripped from the tube on his leg. He frowned. It had been pouring yesterday. But sure, he’d been in the sea! He rose, walked across the now hot sand, wincing, stepped into the surf, waded out a dozen yards and unceremoniously flopped into the water. When he felt appropriately wet he rose and walked back to the shore. The tube was dripping before he reached his tree.

Well, stupid, he said to himself, it is dripping. Now what? He looked towards the sky for answers. None came. Then towards the forest. The answer was staring him right in the face only thirty feet away.

He rose and walked towards the foliage. He tugged at a broad-leafed plant. It was stronger than it looked. He felt the water dripping from the tube, leaking away while he fought with a leaf. Finally he tore the leaf from its place and folded it carefully into a container. He placed the container on the ground and allowed the water from the tube to fill it up. When there was a liter or so, he picked up and carefully brought the water to his lips. It smelled. He didn’t even want to think about it. The suit purified fluids to a certain extent, but not completely.

The water was not supposed to be potable until it went through a processor. But he had no processor. It was on the pod. At least the suit filtered a sufficient amount of salt and other stuff-he tried not to think about the stuff-from the water. It would keep him alive. He drank. Then he put the leaf-cup back on the ground and let it fill again, and drank.

Compared to the water, the fruit tasted superb. It occurred to him he could press the juice from the fruit, too. He’d have to find rocks. The breeze rocked his tree. He heard a thump. Another cocoanut. He’d have to find a way to get those damn things open too.

He should go inland. He pledged to do that the next day. It had occurred to him that he had never heard any sound coming from the forest other than that of birds. No animal sounds.

The sun went down and this time he allowed himself to admire the colors it took with it as it went. Then he turned to the sea again. The stars were indescribable. So many of them. The air so clear, even with the salt of the sea. He flared his nostrils and sucked in deeply.

Before he squirmed himself out a bed in the sand, far up the beach from where he’d slept the night before, Avro Kelty took inventory. He had water, such as it was. And fruit. He could learn to catch fish. And he might find a way to crack open cocoanuts. Who knows what else he’d find inland tomorrow. He could survive.

He would live.

It would be boring as hell, but he’d live. As long as he kept his mind off Kai and, well, everything else, he’d live. Maybe some day. No, forget that. No someday. No rescue. Not going to happen.

Despair swept over him then. He felt so totally, entirely, eternally alone. He sat up, considering what it would be like to drown. It would hurt. For at least a little while, it would really, really hurt. He settled down again. There’d be time to find a painless way to do it. All the time in the world. He slept.

Avro had broken into a routine, almost, by quarter day of his third day on the beach. He gave up trying to figure time by the hour. He’d figure it by the quarter. Sun up, first quarter day, noon, third quarter day, sunset. That would work fine. By noon he’d flushed enough water through the liner to be satiated. He carefully removed it and hung it over the tree.

It occurred to him that the suit would wear out some day. But by then maybe he’d have a solar still. Yeah, right. Or he’ll find water inland. After all, he would probably move inland anyway. He’d tried in vain to see up, over, or around the forest.

Nothing. No mountain, no nothing. The uniform shell was two-ply, he figured out that morning. He managed to peel the plies apart. The outer was more like plastic, a Kevlar-type material, strong enough to stop a projectile but breathable. The inner ply, he discovered, was cotton. Or felt like cotton. It was thin, but softer. It had been bonded to the suit and he’d never noticed it in all the years he’d been putting those uniforms on.

The salt water and heat must have broken the bond. Now he wore only the cotton-like inner ply. It hung loose and was very thin but it was sufficient to rid him of the vulnerable feeling of being totally naked. Some day he’d get over that feeling too, he figured, when the fabric was long rotten and nothing was left but the outer layer. That would last forever.

Avro wore only the lower half of the body suit’s inner ply. The upper part he’d torn into strips. One strip he’d fashioned into a belt. The rest he used to tie thick leaves to his feet, best shoes he could come up with.

He’d thought about trying to tear the outer liner sleeves but he knew that would be impossible.

The sun was headed towards three-quarter before Avro had prepared himself for his expedition. He wondered if he’d come back to his tree or if he’d find an oasis inland, a wonderland of clear, fresh water, gleaming golden fish in a pool beneath a waterfall, abundant wildlife for dinner and slate and quartz and all the kinds of rocks he’d need to fashion tools. He plunged into the forest.

The forest was dark. He padded along in his leaf-shoes. He made little sound. Far above him, more than a hundred feet, the towering palms swished in a breeze he could not feel. Ten minutes maybe. Fifteen. Then he saw light. A clearing. Maybe that wonderful waterfall. As he drew closer, he again felt the breeze. He’d spotted nothing at all. The ground had hardly risen, either. Just flat. He heard a sound as he neared the clearing ahead. Water. Ah, a stream. No, not a stream. Rushing water. Oh, no, he thought. He burst through into the bright, three-quarter sun. Before him spread a wide, sparkling beach. He walked forward not wanting to believe what he knew to be true. He was on an atoll. An island not much more than a lump of sand and coral in the wide, wide sea.

Avro Kelty sank onto the sand in despair. He would die here. He knew it now. The death he’d tasted in the air was is own.

Too damn bad. There would be no stream, no golden fish, no slate or quartz or any other rock. Just sand, and coral, and sand and not much else. He would die, no doubt, in a month, two months, who knew? He’d die of malnutrition, thirst, or he’d be swept to sea by a typhoon.

Avro was a city boy but he knew a few things. He knew atolls like his were always far beneath the water when a typhoon swept through. He knew he’d learn to fear dark clouds. He’d try to capture and eat birds, with no fire to cook them with. As he sat dejectedly in the hot sand he remembered the clippers he’d so carelessly thrown away. They had not floated back to shore but had found somewhere else to go, somewhere out there.

Out there.

Avro looked out to sea. He saw it as a huge monster, an evil, sinister monster, calling him. The idea to drown himself came again but, again, he thought, that would hurt like hell. No, he’d wait. He pushed himself up and walked along the beach. Soon he reached the point of his little island and before the sun sat again he was sitting on his tree.

The next morning on a whim Avro piled a dozen cocoanuts and christened his new home Kelty Atoll. Then he donned the liner, made water, drank it, removed the liner, placed it safely over the curve of his tree, and went off to gather fruit. On this fourth day of living on Kelty Atoll, Avro noted that there wasn’t so many of the weird fruit. Soon he’d be out of them. He’d have to figure out how to catch fish. And how to get those infernal cocoanuts open.

Two weeks passed. Avro wondered about Kelty Atoll as if he’d been there forever. He’d abandoned the idea of killing himself. He could think of no easy or painless way to do it. He had found a shard of some hard shell on the beach and fashioned a utensil to get the cocoanut’s outer shell apart. Then he’d fashioned a piece of coral to bore into the hard inner shell. At last he enjoyed the milk of the cocoanut and ate the pulp. It choked him, but he ate it. And it did what the weird fruit had not done. At first Avro had fashioned a latrine in the forest but the smell was worst than the imaginary smell of death he’d had on his first day. Instead he’d found an outcropping in the sea where he’d just walk out naked, squat, and let the sea carry everything away. It was a disgusting business but one that was necessary.

He realized on all those ship-wreck movies, nobody told about the bathroom. No wonder, it was gross.

In a month, Avro was finding small, tasteless fish near the shore. He longed for a fire but had not been successful in making one. He’d take to sitting long hours in the sand near his tree, dreaming of the station, of Kai, of looking down upon his planet below through the windows of the station. His mind filled with daydreams and night dreams and soon it became difficult to distinguish one from the other. He found less and less need for the liner, the water, the dwindling fruit supply or the cocoanut milk.

He knew, now.

He knew how he would die. That taste was back. Metallic, bitter, unpleasant. It was back and he welcomed it. Soon, he would see Kai. Maybe he would.

Or it would simply be all over. Avro Kelty would lie wasted, dissolved on the beach by the sea, the sun, the sand. Nobody would know of Kelty Atoll. But it did not matter. He lay on the beach, not wanting to move now, longing for another dream to carry him high above, into that darkness and cold, and past it, into the warmth of the station, and Kai’s arms. Her soft arms, her tender kiss. Take me away, Avro whispered. Take me away.

A drop, a huge, wet drop, of water, smacked Avro right between his eyes. Another smacked his shoulder. Then another and another, until he was being deluged. It was raining. Avro opened his eyes and looked up. The sun, that incessant heat monster, was gone. In its place were dark, dark, gray and black clouds. And rain. Avro closed his eyes and opened his mouth wide. The rain filled it as quickly as he could gulp. Heavy, pounding, painful rain. But wonderful, delicious rain.

Avro stood and danced. He pulled away the last vestiges of his garment and danced in the cleanness of the rain. He felt clean. Wonderfully, fantastically clean. Clean for the first time in his life, maybe. Totally clean. Heavenly.

Then it stopped. The wind swept the darkened clouds away. By the end of the day the sun had returned to mock him for being so bare and unsalted.

Avro decided he had to find a way to capture the rain, if it ever returned.

Six weeks. Avro Kelty drug the plastic-looking canopy up the beach. It had taken him weeks to find the pod and more weeks to get to it, get the canopy free, and drag the canopy along the bottom in spurts until he could at last tug it from the surf and up the beach. It would hold the water next time.

Until then, it and the other stuff he’d managed to tear loose from the pod would help him make a solar still and help him catch fish. He was alive again. He’d almost died but the rain had revived him. But had not returned. It would, he knew, some day. And he’d be ready.

Avro had no idea how long he’d been on Kelty Atoll. Six months maybe. He’d lost count. He was thin and undernourished but still he was alive.

Sometimes the rain would come and fill his bowl, that great oval shaped plasti-glass canopy. Sometimes it would stay away and he’d revert to the liner. But the liner was beginning to wear badly and didn’t produce much water. The fruit was almost gone. So were most of the cocoanuts he could get to fall. He would die soon, he knew it.

And it was time.

The taste was back. It clang to the roof of his mouth like cheap white bread, stuck there, un-budging. But he couldn’t even get at it with his thumb. And he tried. His mouth was sore for his trying. He knew he would die soon and he welcomed the idea but still he hated that damn taste. And the smell.

Night fell. One of an endless progression, day, night, day, night. No water for days. The liner had given out. The solar still was too hard to get working. Besides, the plastic had crumpled, hardened, and broken apart in the sun. It was not made to be in the sun. Even the canopy had clouded.

Funny. You’d think space would be much more harsh than the planet. But it wasn’t. Canopies lasted for years up there.

Up there.

Avro lay on his back and looked up there. Where home once was. Or, was it, will be? He didn’t know. He didn’t care any more. Avro closed his eyes.

Kai drifted towards him, smiling. She was naked except for a small belt around her waist. Avro was himself naked, except for a similar belt. The belts were tied to a tether which insured they could get back to the sides of the central station core. Getting a room in the core of the station was expensive. But it had been worth it. Avro and Kai moved freely in the weightlessness of space but safely in the air of the station’s core. Avro’s breath was enough to send him moving. They floated, finally coming together, grasping each other, making love and sharing themselves.

Avro felt Kai’s breath on his shoulder as she clutched him. He felt her hands holding him, her arms around him, her legs intertwined with his. But her breath grew too hot and her grasp too tight. He moved, writhed, turned. He was on the beach. A frond had fallen from a tree and landed on him. He sat, clutched his knees, and wept.

Avro stood and looked out to sea. He thought if there is a God, he was really pissing Avro off. Just about the time he figures he’s had it, there comes rain. Then it goes. Then he’s flat on the beach. Then there’s rain. Let me die or let the damn rain stay, Avro shouted to the wind. Almost in answer the air vibrated with a clap of thunder. And the rain came. But then, it left again.

Avro drank deeply of the water in the clouded shell of a canopy. Then he fell upon his back, closed his eyes, and willed himself to never rise again. And he didn’t.

Three days he’d laid there, within reach of the canopy but refusing to drink from it. The water became as clouded as the plasti-glass and then grew salty and was no longer potable. Avro had had enough. It was time to get things over with. He’d carved his message into his tree, as if anybody would ever find it. He’d made his peace. It was now going to be over. Avro closed his eyes and lifted his arm, thin and spindly now, towards his beloved Kai.

“Avro.” He heard his name in a soft whisper. He smiled. There must be a heaven. “Avro,” he heard again. Ah, he smiled, Kai. My lovely Kai, you’ve come.

“Can you hear me, Avro?”

Something was amis. That voice. He knew it. It was not Kai’s. It was….

Allyson’s. What? Avro felt himself shake. No, something was shaking him. No. Some ONE was shaking him. Heaven is weirder then he thought. He cracked his eyes. The light was too bright. He closed them tightly. The light wasn’t the hot golden light of the sun. It was white. Bluish white. Like a…. he forced his eyes open again. This time he heard another voice. Kai’s voice.

“Avro,” Kai said. “Wake up.”

“He’s coming too.” Allyson’s voice faded, then returned, as if she’d looked away. Avro slowly opened his eyes. He was not in heaven. Or, he was in heaven. But a heaven he knew already. He was on the station. He tried to sit up. “Oh, no, Avro, no, you’re too weak to do that.”

Gentle hands moved about his body. Avro liked the sensation. Someone was feeling his forehead. Someone was taking his pulse. Someone else was tugging at a covering, the softest garment he’d ever felt. He forced his eyes open now. He was definitely in the station. And Kai’s beautiful face hovered above him.

“But,” Avro tried to speak. “What?”

“Everything is fine,” Kai whispered, embracing him and kissing him gently on the cheek. “Fine, Avro, you’re home.”

Avro’s strength returned. He pushed upon one elbow, then both, then he felt strong but feminine arms help him sit up. Allyson stood on one side of the narrow bed. Kai stood on the other, in front of him.

“But what about,” Avro stammered. “Death? Death. Dead. All….”

“It didn’t go off,” Kai whispered. “In the end, nothing happened.”

“But,” Avro moaned, “I mean, the, I was….”

“Gone too quickly, the pod ejected before it should have.”

“It did? But…..” Avro tried to put together pieces in his head. But they didn’t fit. “What about. Why was there…. No cokes. No coke cans.”

“It’s not exactly true that nothing happened.” Allyson’s voice came from behind him. “Something happened.”

Avro turned to look at Allyson. She stood looking at him like the doctor she was. Doctors always have that look. Some kind of look. Avro never understood it. He felt like they all had x-ray vision or something. “Something happened,” Allyson repeated.

“Indeed something did.” The voice was male, strong, it echoed in the med chamber. “Avro, I’m very happy to see you up and around. It was touch and go for a while. Do you think you could have picked a more remote place to go?”

“Granger,” Avro muttered. “What happened.”

“Quite simple, really, you were turned loose too soon. God knows why. The station was caught in the vortice and you were spun about in it and then you just vanished.”

“Vanished?”

“Yes. Poof.”

“But what,” Avro paused, “happened?”

“The bomb. Well, that. It didn’t go off. It was, as they say, a dud.”

“Dud,” Avro moaned, turning and laying back on the med bed. He was awake now. “What happened to me? And how did you find me?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Kai said. “But we did, isn’t that what matters?”

Avro was certainly fully awake now. He sat up again. He felt uneasy. Queasy almost. Nauseated. He sat still and it passed. Kai reached out and touched him again. This time she felt different. Soft, but, what was that feeling? Like an electrical tingle. Avro looked deeply into her eyes. Then he sucked in a breath. Kai looked away.

“He knows,” Allyson said.

“Well, of course, it was, as they say, a long shot.”

Avro realized that the voices weren’t quite right. He stared across at a monitor. The language looked Greek. Or Russian. Or, something he’d never seen before.

“Can he handle it?” Allyson spoke again.

“Well, let’s, as they say, give it the old college try.”

When Avro looked back and forth from Allyson to Granger to Kai, he saw it was not them at all. In fact, none of them looked, Avro gasp, none looked human.

“I did die,” Avro said, “I’m in hell.”

The being that had seemed to be Grander made a grinding sound in his throat which Avro took as laughter. “Oh, no, as they say, nothing of the sort.”

“You are on the station,” the Allyson one said.

“Just not,” said the Kai one, “in your own time.”

“We are, as they say, descendants. But not entirely.”

“No,” the Kai one said, “not entirely. We’re part human and part, what you might call alien.”

“Yes,” the Allyson one said, “Our ancestors, are part from your planet,” she waved a hand downward as if to indicate a planet below, “and part…..”

Avro exploded from the med bed. He leaped to his feet and was out the door before anyone could catch him. Down the hallway, so familiar but so alien.

He was abruptly confronted by two huge beings that looked entirely alien.

They grabbed him and held him while the Allyson one administered a spray to his ear. As he faded, she said, “He will be alright. He will.”

Avro stepped aboard the transport. It felt firm underfoot. Not like the ones he remembered, which felt like they were floating. Doors whisked closed behind him and an attractive female smiled at him, offered him a drink and led him to a seat. He had the transport to himself. It moved from the dock with precision and sank towards the surface.

Avro was now well. His body had recovered from near death, malnutrition and dehydration. But he knew his mind would never recover. Never. He wished he’d died there, on that island. On his island. Kelty Atoll. But he hadn’t.

Quicker than seemed possible, Avro stepped from the transport onto a plush carpet. He heard the murmur of a crowd. A crowd that waited to see him.

Someone was speaking.

“….and soon, you will see him, right here on this stage. He is magnificent, he is handsome, and he is the hope for our future. His DNA will provide researchers with the markers we need. Once again, we can rescue our race, our species, the native Earth species, from oblivion.”

“Well, as they say,” Gifnek’s voice came from behind Avro, “as they say, Avro, it is time.”

Avro stepped through the curtain. The speaker was tall, very tall by human standards. But what was human? Avro was human. He was all that is left of human. The speaker concluded.

“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it was impossible to bring forward any member of the race. We knew, they would perish should they be brought through the vortice. But Avro, he went through it, backwards, to a time before the end, before the disasters. And we knew, we could bring him back. And, we did!”

The crowd roared. Avro stepped to the podium. He waved. That was all he need do. He said nothing. His words had no meaning. He knew that. Only his DNA.

Two days later Avro walked through the remainder of the station he’d known and been a part of. The one that at one time had sailed above the earth in space. Now only a portion remained. The blast had gone off. The insanity of the human race finally reached a climactic point. Avro read the plaque next to the med station mockup which explained, a new race had come, from a star some twenty light-years away. The new race had leaped to the rescue, saving as much as it could, preserving human D.N.A., even keeping many humans alive. But they knew, at last, that their effort was faltering. So they blended human D.N.A. with their own. And they worked to preserve everything they could of the race that had once dominated this third planet from a star so identical to their own.

Avro moved down the exhibits, reading about a past that was his own future. Then, at the end, he reached what he came for. And he gasp. For a while, he couldn’t look. Instead he read about himself on a plaque beside him. It told of how his pod had been caught in a vortice, a wormhole, a blip in time and space that swirls through the galaxy like a gopher hole. He’d been tossed back in time, and then flung down to the earth, where his pod carried him to his remote Pacific atoll. There, he died. Or should have.

Actually, he did.

But it was all so confusing. He read on, that this new race of people, part human and part something else, had explored the planet anew. And they’d found his tree. When they read, “Avro Kelty, 2054, God save us all,” the inscription carved on the tree, they knew there was a chance. Avro Kelty

would be the key to restoring the human race.

Avro read all he could.

He turned to the display. There before him, he saw his tree. It seemed like only yesterday. To him, it had been only a month or so. Maybe a little longer. But not to the rest of the universe. He looked at the sign at the base of the display. “This is the actual tree, the petrified remains of the tree, where scientists discovered that the future of the human race lay in the past. This tree lay undisturbed, beneath sand and rock, for two thousand years. Until fate, or the Gods, brought it to us.”

Avro settled onto the bench near the display. He wished for things that would never be. He wished he’d never been rescued from a time before his time. He didn’t belong here any more than….

But that wasn’t true. He did belong there. He belonged to Kelty Atoll. Not to this distant future, but to the past. To an earth now gone, and a race, his race, all dead, at its own hands.

It never learned. And he feared, it never would. He buried his face in his hands, tasting again that metallic taste he now knew wasn’t death, but fate. That ugly, faceless ogre that had flung him so mercilessly through time but refused to let him die. Avro rose, stepped over the rope and knelt, clutching the tree. He closed his eyes, willed for the end to come, and dreamed of Kai.

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