Taken by Margaret Karmazin

Taken by Margaret Karmazin

It’s hard to figure out how old I am. There were the sixteen Earth years of my childhood, then the shorter length years on Valahar, followed by even shorter ones on this new world, Yaja. One year on Valahar is .88 an Earth year and one Yaja year is .78 a Valahar year. Then there are the Youthenings that we go through. A guess might be two hundred and thirty in Earth time but actual physical aging? Forty at most.

They tell me I am an important person, after those monotonous years of farming, then a short and somewhat hilarious stint imagining I was a revolutionary, followed by helping to run a government. And now I’m back with the Overseers, actually helping them do their routine. Of course, I realize now what their goals are and see that I was on the wrong track for a long time. Also, I’ve become a widow after a very long and happy bonding and so am sadly free to go wherever I am needed.

Along with other terrified captives, I first arrived on Valahar in what would be 2024 on Earth. You cannot remotely experience what we felt. It was, in a mystical sense, akin to the journey a shaman endures in his/her mystical voyages – terror at leaving everything one knows to be true and venturing to another world without footholds and nor anywhere to feel safe. Only we did not choose to make the journey ourselves.

By the time I calmed down, I was a young adult and my mate at the time, Gabe, and I had two children we were permitted to interact with and only the Overseers knew how many others growing up somewhere else that we would never meet. We were resigned to our lot, though being young and healthy, eventually grew somewhat optimistic.

Before us stretched vast cultivated fields of vegetation, rich in shades of blue. Rows of deep azure hyah, aqua kinga, and cobalt ria with cyan hedge rows dividing the fields, their leafy blue between stripes of orange soil. Here and there, a tall tree offered a shaded place to rest, its branches spreading out with cooling teal leaves. The sky above was faint lavender, the white sun small and blazing. I remember leaning on my weed zapper and sighing somewhat contentedly, since physical labor in clean air and beautiful nature tends to lighten one’s mood.

Twenty-three years old then and a relatively old hand at this new life, I’d finally accepted that I would never see my parents or brother again, nor my hometown or country…and never again my world. Earth, that place I’d taken for granted, not really appreciating its fabulous beauty and opportunities.

Gabe stepped over several rows of vegetation to reach me and I studied his kind face with its high cheekbones and reddish-brown skin, aquiline nose and beautiful dark eyes. My once Mexican Gabriel, soon to be twenty-four himself, and the father of the two children we were allowed to see, Rosa and Juan.

“I want nothing more than a long cool shower,” Gabe whispered.

He whispered because he said this in Spanish when we were expected to speak Valahari. In the beginning, classes for learning that new language took hours of our days with old kids teaching the newcomers. But we still liked to speak our native tongues when we could sneak them in. I answered in English, “I’ll take the shower and a nap with you in addition,” and we laughed.

I was taken the night before my family was heading off to an Alaskan cruise. We were all looking forward to seeing whales, grizzlies and moose. I was packed ahead of everyone and made the mistake of asking to borrow Mom’s car to see my best friend for a quick goodbye. She lived a mile away on a dark road with fields on both sides. When I saw the strange light in the sky come down and my car suddenly lost power, I pulled to the side. The light landed and strange figures surrounded the car. That was the last thing I remembered until I woke up a captive with several other teenagers, all of us lying naked on examining tables and surrounded by scary creatures we now called “the Overseers.”

I would never see those Alaskan animals, nor my parents, brother or cat Molly, nor would I go to college and become a teacher as I had planned. I now lived in a new and simpler world and had little choice but to make the best of it.

My mate, Gabriel Torres, from Oaxaca, Mexico – his father was a manager of a small hotel and his mother an artist. He had four siblings that he loved. Gabe had been visiting his cousin in Brazil when he was taken while fishing. He cried sometimes, imagining what his parents had suffered and longed for his brother Luis so much that he ached.

An Overseer approached us now on his flying platform, his spindly frame holding up his oversized head, his long bony fingers wrapped around the central handle. This particular one was relatively kind – his name was Harook. I was not afraid of him. Gabe though, he hated the Overseers. “They are disgusting to look at,” he said. “Y esos terribles ojos negros.”

“They’re no beauties,” I had to agree. “But Harook here isn’t bad. He made my headache go away yesterday,”

Gabe shrugged. “Instead of letting you off early to maybe have some time to do what you want?”

“But what would I do? I don’t have anything else to do.”

“Pue!” he spat. “If we were on earth, we’d have plenty to do. Remember all the things people did there? Not like here, just farming and food prep. Endless chores and the sperm milking is humiliating. What am I, una vaca?”

“The egg removal is no picnic either,” I said.

“But they only did it once,” Gabe said.

I remembered my mother and all her pleasant activities. French lessons, cooking class, reading, her workouts, and tutoring juvie kids. I felt a stab in my gut. There was nothing like that to do on Valahar.

“You are creating a new world,” we’d been told. “You should feel honored to have been chosen. Your names will be remembered over the ages.”

There were many new worlds besides Valahar, or so the Overseers told us. Some had been terraformed, others begun on already functioning worlds. “Those already functioning ones,” a young man had asked at that orientation meeting, “no one lived on them already?”

“We assume you refer to what you call intelligent life,” said the Overseer. “In a few cases, there was something resembling that, but there was no way to accurately predict if what was there would evolve correctly and anyway, to do so would take millions of years. So those forms were eradicated to make room for already evolved and evolving forms. In that way, worlds are usually created.”

“You mean…” said the questioner.

The Overseer, a tall one for his type, looked around with his giant black eyes and said telepathically, “Your former worlds were indeed begun in that manner.”

“So,” someone said, “There really was an Adam and Eve?”

The Overseer expressed amusement, though without a smile. We could feel the smile in our heads. “There were many Adams and Eves, just as there are here on this world.”

“Why do they rule us so strictly?” I later wondered to Gabe.

“They might be scared,” he replied.

“We’re all scared.”

“No, I mean of us.”

“But we’re like primitive animals to them. Physically strong, but stupid. They can manipulate and control us with their minds.”

Gabe smiled. “How do you know it’s really done with their minds and not with technology?”

“I don’t see them using anything other than those wands they sometimes carry.”

“Maybe their clothing,” he said. “Or stuff is implanted into their brains. Who knows?”

“They do wear those belts they often touch,” I observed thoughtfully.

After another year of farming with the only recreation a forced party now and then in which people sat around whispering or made music with homemade instruments, some of the humans formed a loose government. Since the Overseers did not seem to mind this, the young people voted for different offices and elected a president, VP, and secretary, though it was difficult to find paper to write on to do official things. We were not allowed computers. The paper had to be obtained from the school house where we young farmers learned about local animals, insect and plant life in order to best use the soil and avoid pests that could harm the crops. We did not see where the children from our seed were educated. Possibly on their ships but these did not often land.

“What I would give for an iPad,” I said longingly. “I so miss games and going online. It’s so boring here.”

“I disagree,” said Gabe, who was now adapting to this life style better than I. “Farming is a complicated game of its own. You constantly have to outwit weather and pests. This place doesn’t have the huge biodiversity of Earth but it has enough to keep you on your toes. By the end of the day, I’m tired.”

He was surprisingly happy now, but I was bored. Why didn’t the Overseers see that some humans needed different types of mental stimulation to be happy? Not everyone was designed to be a farmer.

I became interested in four humanoids called Matozis taken from another planet than Earth and wanted to know how they felt about living in this society. They stayed apart from us Earthers and only socialized with each other, but I was growing curious. One evening after the group meal, I watched them leaving the communal hall and ran out after them. They turned in unison to look at me and for a long moment, we studied each other.

They were tall and well formed with pale, albino-like skin and white-blond hair. Their green eyes tilted up at the corners over high cheekbones and faces that tapered to pointy chins. One of the females said in Valahari, “Can we help you?”

“I just want to get to know you. You don’t mix with the humans and so I haven’t had a chance.”

They looked at each other and the same female said, “All right. How?”

“Can we talk sometime? Now? Tomorrow?”

“It is late and we are tired today,” she said, “but how about tomorrow after the meal. We will wait for you here.”

The next day was the start of the weekend and we had the children. Gabe wasn’t interested in meeting with the Matozis and took Rosa and Juan home. I was nervous but met the four at the same place as the evening before and followed them to their living quarters.

We all sat down on floor cushions. On one of the walls was a large, beautiful arrangement of wood that someone must have made. As did many Earthers, they had a Chufa for a pet. Chufas were native to Valahar and kind of a cross between a dog and a cat in behavior, though they more resembled Teddy bears. I reached out and petted this one, who seemed to enjoy my attention.

They introduced themselves and two of the names stuck in my mind, Broand and Leenani. Those were the ones who seemed interested in talking with me while others soon drifted off to their own quarters.

“They took others of our kind to a terraformed moon in another system,” said Broand, the male. “We learned that we four were brought here to see if we could live comfortably and reproduce naturally with Earthers.”

“But aren’t you two a couple?” I asked.

“We are not, though Pakota and Geran have bonded. We were supposed to form bonds with Earthers, though that hasn’t happened yet. You Earthers have an odor that we are getting used to but for sexual activity, it would interfere, do you see?”

“Is your home planet on the same level as Earth? Development-wise, I mean?” I asked, stinging inside about that remark about my odor. Did I smell bad to them right now? Should I move back?

“Roughly,” Leenani said. Matozi, our home world, is beginning space travel and probes have left our planet system. We have found the cure for many diseases and greatly extended our lifespans.”

“And you were taken from your families just as we were?”

“The four of us were taken together from a camp in the forest. It is difficult for me to think about that.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“We have since learned,” said Broand, “that our planet’s civilization was seeded by the ancestors of the Overseers. Apparently, out there somewhere is a world or worlds of our kind but ancient. Do those now realize that they were begun as this world is being done now? So, who were the first to begin all this?”

Ignoring that line of thought, I said, “So since you can’t bear to mate with Earth humans, why don’t you request to be moved to the terraformed moon? They must know by now that mating with humans is not going to happen. Since we smell,” I mean.

“We ourselves can technically be called human,” Leenani said. “You and we come from the same ancient ancestor. An Overseer told us.”

“Understand,” said Broand, who must have realized that I was stinging from the odor remark, “I do find you very attractive. Your thick brown hair and lustrous brown eyes are most appealing.”

“What is our smell like?” I snapped. “Like excrement? Vomit? Something dead?” I felt like I wanted to smack him. His pale skin looked corpselike. Who did he think he was?

He didn’t miss a beat. “Like the marine animals when they are dead and wash up on the shore.”

“Oh,” I said. “Fishy.” I stood up. “Well, sorry to have invaded your nostrils. Have a nice night.” I did give a small smile to Leenani who smiled back as if she and I shared a secret. I kind of liked her, but definitely not him.

“So, the ghosts don’t like our odor,” said Gabe when I snuggled into bed next to him and told him what happened. “Who cares? I sure like your smell.” And he proceeded to make love to me. That made me feel slightly better, but I still held a grudge. Then our new Chufa climbed into bed with us and made us laugh. His name was Dooby and his fur was soft and golden.

Valahar was beautiful, though I often missed the greenness of Earth. Here the plants, for the most part, were shades of blue. They lived by photosynthesis like Earth plants but were filled with anthocyanins that gave them their color. The flowers ran from tiny to huge with some having a diameter of almost a meter. Trees were much like on Earth, though generally with teal or turquoise leaves and the soil was black, gray or orange. Water in the nearby lake (no one had seen an ocean yet) looked green or slate blue like any water on Earth. We were permitted to swim in it after a work day. While in the water, I would sometimes forget my growing dissatisfaction, for a time anyway.

“The problem is,” I kept trying to explain to Gabe, “that there is nothing here to stimulate the brain. I miss technology, I miss movies, video games, TV and smart phones. It’s like we live in the Middle Ages. So freakin’ boring.”

“We have the kids,” he said. “They aren’t boring.”

“But we only have them on the weekends. And I feel almost like we don’t know them anymore. Rosa keeps talking about this Overseer she calls Mama.”

“Well, the weeks are shorter, so there is that. And look how healthy and strong we are –physical work is good for us.”

“I suspect,” I said, “that we are so healthy and strong because of those treatments, the Youthenings, not just for your reason.”

Gabe looked away. I knew he hated those treatments when we had to visit one of the Overseer’s facilities and be submerged into a liquid for a couple of hours. This included the at first unpleasant sensation of having to breath in the liquid. Apparently, it was full of oxygen and other unknown nutrients, but the Overseers would not explain to us what it was all about except to say that the treatments greatly extended our lives. One time I said to an Overseer “nurse” at the facility, “This is really unpleasant. Why don’t you have to do it?”

“But we do,” she said. “It is why we live long.”

That shut me up. That evening I told Gabe what she said and wondered something. “Remember how the Bible said that Methuselah lived almost a thousand years? Wasn’t there an Enos who made it to nine hundred or something? There were others too.”

“The Bible is a folk tale,” Gabe muttered.

“But what if….” I didn’t finish it the thought. Gabe was studying a seed list and obviously not interested. At times, I was beginning to wonder if possibly he and I were not well-matched. Maybe our genes made nice babies but apart from that, there seemed more and more an emptiness between us. I wished it were the weekend so I had the kids to talk to. Sometimes I felt more at home with Dooby the Chufa than with Gabe.

Weirdly, the anemic looking alien, Broand, popped into my mind and I had an irrational urge to talk with him. Throwing common sense to the wind, I went out and walked through the trees to the Matozi quarters. It was a one-story building with a central living room and four bedrooms. Our own was larger since it housed three families of four each. The buildings were constructed of a gray material that felt to the touch like hard rubber. The only decorations were colorful tile floors. At least they looked like tile but were probably all one piece. Anyone was free to decorate if they had time. But no one had much time.

Broand answered the door. He was, I could see now, quite attractive, but oh so pale; not my type; I liked dark men like Gabe.

Now he smiled and said, “Ah, my stinky friend. I was thinking about you. Let’s take a walk,” and he closed the door behind him and led me into the woods. Why was my heart beating so erratically? I had a quick and guilty thought of Gabe back in our quarters so intent on his seeds.

“I-I don’t know why I’m here,” I said.

He said nothing but picked a baby leaf from the trunk of a tree and sniffed at it.

“What color are the plants on your home world?” I asked.

“Green,” he said.

“Like Earth.” My eyes filled with tears.

“I know,” Broand said. “I know.” And he took my hand.

“Don’t you mind my smell?”

He laughed a little. “I’m getting used to it.”

You know,” I said, sniffing a little. “I kind of liked certain odors on Earth that were considered unpleasant. For one, gasoline, the fuel used in cars. The smell of cow poop while riding in the country, there was something nice about that. And even skunk, a very stinky animal when it squirts to protect itself – if it wasn’t too strong, I kind of liked it.” I was crying now. “I-I miss it all.”

He was silent but I felt his sympathy.

“You must miss things too,” I said.

He let go of my hand and waved to the sky. “Our sky was blue during the day.”

“So was ours, along with other colors depending on the weather and sun.”

“We had several oceans,” he went on. “Diversity in animals. Fabulous art, you can’t imagine. Our music was so beautiful, it was like a drug. I was going to direct my education toward genetics, not be a ridiculous farmer. And I had someone picked out to possibly bond with but now I will never see her again. They will force me to do it here probably soon, I don’t know. The least they could have done was to send me to that moon with my own species. I want to go home.”

I looked up at him and our eyes met. “Have you ever thought about forming a rebellion?” I said, and then wondered why I’d dared to say such a thing and why to him?

He didn’t respond for a long moment, but studied my face intently with his long green eyes. Then he lowered his voice. “They might have a way of listening. We are probably implanted. They probably know every thought in our minds. I don’t want them to hurt you but if you keep up such thoughts…”

“Have they ever killed anyone that you know of?” I said defiantly. “After all the work they do to get us and maintain us, I doubt they would kill us. We’re prime stock.”

“You have a point,” Broand said. He paused then asked, “Did you choose your mate or were you assigned to him?”

“We were assigned, but the Overseers saw us together a lot. We became friends from the first meeting.”

“I see,” he said. “And you have your own children?”

“Well, we all do, don’t we? They allowed us to keep two, but by keep I mean we are allowed to see them weekends. But this is only for a while.”

“And they are from the both of you?”

“I assume so. They look like a mix of the two of us.”

“Where do the offspring go that we never see?”

“I guess they’re placed in different colonies around this world, but far apart so that they don’t interbreed.”

Broand was thoughtful. He said, “They have taken my seed and Leerane’s eggs. Perhaps they have blended them with Earthers’. But they do not give any children back, so I do not know. When I contemplate living here for years and years, and I imagine those periodic treatments are for life extension, I do not know if I can manage it mentally and emotionally. If nothing changes, I mean to say.”

His meaning was clear.

“I wonder sometimes,” I said again, “if a revolution of some form might be doable.” This was not something I would say to Gabe, a rule follower from the start. And how did I know I could trust this alien that I hardly knew, but something in my gut told me I could.

He said, “The problem would be how to turn off their mind control. And even if we did rebel, what would we do then? It’s not like there’s anywhere to go.”

“Start our own society,” I said. “Make our own rules.”

Answers often come in unexpected and surprising ways. Later, Gabe and I were sorting the neesi crop, a vegetable much like corn, and stripping off the leaf coverings of the ears. We were sitting in the shade under a spreading tree and actually enjoying ourselves when a woman we didn’t know well, suddenly seemed to go crazy. She screamed and darted about madly. A Chufa had come running out of the forest with his head stuck in a big tangle of leaves and she seemed to be afraid of the innocent little animal. An Overseer buzzed over on his platform, I suppose to calm her but something went wrong and his intervention had no effect. He kept tapping his hand on the middle front of his belt and I remembered my conversation with Gabe. There was something with those belts that was used to control the humans. And now for some reason, it wasn’t working.

The Chufa chased the hysterical woman until someone moved between them and grabbed it. The little fellow didn’t mean anything by his behavior but was just having fun and he didn’t know that he looked like a little blue monster with all that foliage stuck on him. The person who picked him up removed the clump and tossed it on the ground, the Overseer touched his belt and the woman instantly calmed down. The Overseer then buzzed off and left everyone alone.

I darted over and picked up the discarded foliage to look at it. What was it? I carried it back to Gabe still under the tree. “Did you ever see this before?”

“No, why? It’s just some leaves from the woods.”

I studied it. The leaves were heart shaped and a beautiful shade of royal blue.

“You ought to put that down,” Gabe said. “How do you know it’s not poisonous?”

“I don’t. But there’s something strange about it. Like it seemed to make the Overseer unable to stop that little skirmish.”

“Oh, I doubt that’s what the problem was,” said Gabe. “Probably something just went wrong with however he does it. We still don’t know how he does it.”

“Yeah, we don’t,” I said thoughtfully and I carefully slipped some of the leaves into my pocket.

There was only one person to discuss this with. He did not show up for the evening meal or if he did, not on our shift. It was the weekend and Rosa and Juan had already been delivered to us at dinner. We played with them and after we tucked them into bed, I said I needed to get some air and would Gabe mind if I went out for a bit. Did I feel guilty? Yes, because in a way, I was cheating on him. But he was not interested in my thoughts on revolution; in fact they would horrify him.

“Claro, adelante,” he said. “I want to work on my box.” His new hobby was woodworking and his third project now a fancy, inlaid box.

Feeling devious, I went out into the soft breezes and looked up at the starry sky. The three moons of Valahar were small and almost the size of the evening star on Earth. They cast no real light. I was not afraid to walk alone at night; there was nothing to hurt me, no dangerous animals except for one resembling a snake with six legs we’d been shown in an orientation meeting, but that did not live in our particular region. Strangely, the Overseers did not do much patrolling at night. Maybe they didn’t care if we sported about; we worked hard during the day and they probably assumed we needed our rest or maybe some quiet fun. Soon I was standing outside Broand’s quarters and, as if he were psychic, he opened the door.

He looked ghostly standing there; every time I saw him anew, I was shocked at his paleness. “Maddie,” he said.

“How did you know I was here? Did you smell me coming?” 

“I think I caught a whiff but I liked it,” he said. His long, tilted eyes twinkled. “What brings you to my abode this fine evening?”

“Let’s walk a little. I have something to show you.”

He joined me and we walked in silence until I suddenly stopped, pulled something out of my pocket and handed it to him.

“Wadded up leaves?” he asked, confused.

“Might be the answer to our question the other day.”

Puzzled, he took them and turned them over in his hand, then looked at me.

I told him the story of the hysterical woman and the leafy Chufa.

“And you think the foliage around the Chufa’s neck stopped the Overseer’s power source?”

“Possibly,” I said. “Because once someone caught the animal, removed the bunch of leaves and tossed them on the ground, the same Overseer had his power back. He could make the woman settle down.”

“Why was she afraid of a Chufa?”

“I think maybe she was overwrought about something to start with and then didn’t recognize that the thing chasing her was a Chufa. It looked like some kind of weird plant after her.”

We moved back toward a road light and Broand examined the leaves. “They just look like regular leaves,” he said. He peered closer. “They have tiny red veins.” He sniffed them. “No odor to mention. May I have some? I’d like to examine them further. I’ve rigged up a primitive little laboratory. Frankly, I am surprised that Overseers don’t check our homes for…” He stopped.

“For secret things?” I supplied. “It is true that they give us freedom in odd ways. I mean, we have to follow the farming time and all but after that, sometimes I wonder.”

“Maybe,” he said, “they secretly want us to show initiative. Maybe we are not seeing the whole picture.”

I would think about this remark for days.

When I turned to go, he said, “They mated Leenani with a human.” He showed no emotion.

“I thought they would let her choose her own,” I said.

“They waited for her to do so and she did not, so they took action.”

Immediately, I thought that they would soon do that to him and it gave me a stab in my stomach. “Who did they match her with?”

“Maurice Mamoudou. He is tall and very dark skinned. Perhaps they want to see what happens when they naturally combine her genes with his. She is very upset. She doesn’t want to mate with an Earther.”

“Is there nothing you can do? Can’t you offer to be her mate?” I asked this though the mere thought of it upset me. It was pretty obvious by now that I was having feelings I should not be having. I did not want him to be her mate nor anyone else’s now.

He hesitated. “I cannot, we cannot. For one thing, we are related. For another, I do not feel a soul connection. It would be like mating with a sibling.”

I found myself worrying about Leenani and wondering how she was faring.

Over the next few days, I looked for the couple and finally saw them at the midday meal. They seemed to be getting along quite well. They sat together and talked animatedly and she touched his arm. I stopped worrying. Did he smell fishy to her like I did to Broand? If so, she seemed not to mind. They laughed a couple of times. No need to worry anymore, but I did start to fret about Broand, that soon he would be matched and we wouldn’t be able to take our nighttime walks.

In the meantime, Gabe and I were growing more distant. The children had entered a new age group and would only be seeing us once in a while. It was just Gabe and me and we realized that without the children, we had little in common and were starting to argue and avoid each other.

The regional government the Overseers had allowed us to start was running into trouble. People were expressing dissatisfaction. “Some of us are damn sick of farming!” a few complained. “What happened to learning trades, science or medicine? We’re bored out of our minds!”

“Or art?” yelled one woman. “I’m an artist and damn it, I want materials to work with and to stop damaging my hands with those stupid farming implements!”

“I want a guitar!” said an Asian man. “Or a violin, anything besides ridiculous handmade flutes and drums!”

“I want to build things!” exclaimed another. “We are wasting ourselves, wasting our talents and lives!”

“And that intermittent sperm milking and egg removal!” said another. “We can reproduce on our own!”

“We are nothing but slaves,” our president agreed. “And why do we have to stay in this one area? What are they hiding? If they have humans all over this planet, why can’t we meet some of them? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life like this. Sometimes I feel like ending it all.”

The Overseers allowed us to have these meetings and I wondered why. Surely, they must know what was going on during them. They were probably listening to everything we said.

The meeting ended with people dividing into committees and planning future get-togethers. It had been decided that three people would approach the Overseers to present our questions. It was time that our agrarian society moved up a notch. Our ages now ranged from sixteen to forty-three, from new arrivals to older settlers brought here in Earth’s late 90s.

There was no doubt about it, we natives were restless.

The semitropical weather was mostly always good, at least where we were. The days were like those in Earth’s Caribbean and the nights balmy and pleasant. Broand and I met as usual and he said, “I might have figured it out. Why that plant stopped the power of the Overseer.”

“Tell me.”

“It has an interesting structure, a microscopic webbing, very tight. Unlike other leaves I compared it to. Something about this webbing stops the signals the Overseers use.”

My mind was racing. “What if,” I finally said, “we fashioned coverings out of it and then toppled the Overseers? Or at least made them see that we aren’t so easy to dominate?”

He looked at me. “Well, probably easier to say than to do. It would take a good while and has to be done in free time. Someone will have to weave it and sew it.” But he kept staring at me and I knew I’d hit home.

The “revolution” began simply when eighteen of us showed up to work wearing tunics made from the plant fibers. Gabe, however, had refused to wear a tunic and started to work like the good little slave he was. By this time, I was angry and disgusted with him.

When we suddenly threw down our tools and refused to work, two Overseers zoomed over on their platforms and pressed their belts. When nothing happened, they aimed little wands at us and still, nothing happened. A strange look crossed their usually impassive faces and they backed up to consult with each other. After a quick retreat, we waited in some degree of terror for someone higher in command to appear. This person arrived shortly. I had seen him before and knew he was the Commander of this area, who went by the name of Towand.

He was much taller than the field Overseers, with an almost human build and smaller black eyes. I wondered if he was a hybrid. He dismounted from his platform and walked to our group, seemingly without fear though alone. Perhaps, we wondered, he had a weapon of control that was not stopped by plant fibers. All of us having the same thought, we backed up slightly but stood our ground. Our adrenalin was high; we were afraid they would kill us but at the same time were at the end of our endurance. The Overseers were vastly beyond us and we knew it.

“It is about time,” Towand said in our heads. “I have been waiting for a rebellion and was beginning to worry that perhaps my particular group here lacked the gumption to run a civilization.”

“What?” I inadvertently blurted.

Towand shot me an amused look and went on. “The special leaves have been flourishing in the forest since all of you arrived here, and I wondered when you would discover them. I finally had to resort to affecting that woman’s brain waves and sending the Chufa out wearing the leaves so she would run amok.” He smiled again. “But at last, you have awakened. It may interest you to know that you are the next to last of the twenty-six groups placed on the planet in various locations to come to this state of affairs. There is one remaining to awaken. Perhaps the cause of this delay is due to the extremely pleasant climate in this region. The first to make a rebellion were those in the polar zone who grew highly annoyed with their conditions. Whatever the case, your world here is ready for human government now. We will have to poke the last group with a metaphorical stick.”

“Well, that certainly is humbling,” I muttered to Broand and he laughed.

“Meet tonight in the center building. You will have visitors from some of the other groups. It is time for you to build transportation depots and long-range communications. We have created children in various outposts and more humans will be joining you. You will be starting schools and we need educators. This will all be discussed, starting this evening.”

Afterwards, our group was subdued and experiencing a mix of sheepish embarrassment and outright joy. Broand and I took a break from the excitement to walk a bit for some air.

Feeling unable to contain myself any further, I blurted out, “I am having inappropriate feelings about you.”

“I am experiencing such emotions also and would not necessarily label them inappropriate,” he said. “And I have become quite accustomed to your odor.”

A compliment if I ever heard one.

Were we allowed to divorce? Were Gabe and I even married? Did it all have to be formal? Did “legal” even exist on this world? I didn’t want to risk asking an Overseer. They had implied that we were about to create our own society, so then we would make the rules.

Gabe had not even wanted to attend this historic meeting, which struck me as unbelievable. I just didn’t understand his laidback attitude in the face of such exciting changes.  Returning to our quarters to talk to him, I found him rubbing oil into another of his wooden boxes and expressed my admiration for it. Then I said, “Gabe, this relationship isn’t working for me anymore. I love you but we just aren’t suited to be long-term mates.”

He looked at me and his expression was bittersweet. “Es verdad, Querida,” he said. “I have known for a long time.”

“I want you to be happy.”

“I am a generally very happy person,” he replied. “No matter where I am or what people I’m with or what I’m doing. I guess I’m lucky to be that way.”

We held each other all night and then in the morning I took my few things and moved in with Broand.

Someday what happened after this will be to future Valaharis what ancient Sumer is to the people of Earth. Though there were, as the Overseers have told us, other great civilizations before Sumer, lost in violent land upheavals. But the Taken will be to the far future residents of Valahar like Adam and Eve to the people of Earth.

Broand and I lived together and over our long lifetimes, enjoyed various employments. He became an architect, not the geneticist he had wanted since we did live in a relatively primitive society akin, perhaps, to ancient Egypt or a place called Vloptik on his planet. I was a teacher in many forms. We did have children, though I did not have to physically bear them. We original Valahar citizens were akin to gods to the people who came after, those created on the Overseer’s ship laboratories. Our descendants bore children in the usual way. In time, people from other worlds joined the gene pool, helping to create distinct races appropriate to different climates on Valahar. Broand would have lived even longer than he did if not for an accident he suffered when no Overseers were around to save him.

For a while I wanted to leave this life myself but then Towand came to me and asked if I would go with him to Yaja, a young world being birthed on a beautiful moon orbiting a gas giant. With nothing to lose, I took the offer and here I now am, teaching the new Taken, helping to begin another world.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Margaret Karmazin 2024