Peripheral Visions: Reservation

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

Reservation

"Sacajawea was our aunt," Jordan said.

"No, dipshit, she was our great-great-great-great-great-great-great aunt," Jace told him.

"How many greats is that?" Jordan asked.

"You can't count?"

"You talk fast," Jorden protested.

Jace frowned, thinking that was no excuse. But then, Jordan was only seven – two years younger than Jace. Mother often said to keep that in mind and not be so impatient with him.

"Okay, that's seven greats," Jordan said. "But maybe it should be eight. Or six. I'm not really sure. But anyway, I think it's all bullshit."

"You can't say that word!" Jordan exclaimed.

"Yes, I can."

"No, you can't! I'm gonna tell Mother!"

"Go ahead and tell Mother. Father said I can say that, and 'hell,' and 'damn.'"

"So what? Anybody can say 'hell' and 'damn,'" Jordan told him.

"Yeah, but not the way Father says I can say it. He means the way Uncle Leo says it."

"How does Uncle Leo say it?"

"When Uncle Lea says it, he's not talking about the bible. He's talking about..." Jace paused, unsure. "He's talking about other stuff."

"Oh." Jordan considered that, then asked: "But why aren't you sure about how many greats there should be?"

"Because it's just a guess," Jace told him. "Sacajawea had her first child two hundred and thirty-five years ago. But was that the person we're supposedly descended from?"

"What does that mean?" Jace asked.

"Supposedly means – "

"I know what supposedly means. What does descended mean?"

"It means we're the children of her child's child's child's... however many... child." Jace smiled at his younger brother in a superior way. "It's been a long time, and after the war nobody really knows that much about their ancestry anymore."

"What does that mean?"

"Ancestry? That means the people you're descended from. And descended means – "

"I know what descended means. You just explained it. I'm not stupid," Jordan told him.

"Anyway," Jace said, "I don't believe that Sacajawea was our ancestor. I think they just made all that up."

"Why?"

"Why did they make it up? I don't know. They're weird. They tell us all kinds of stuff that doesn't make sense. Why don't I believe it? Because if we're descended from Sacajawea, why do we look so Nordic?"

"Father says that America is color blind now. That's why we don't need silver rights."

"What? He does not say that."

"Yes, he does! And if America is color blind, that's why we're Norwick."

"Nordic, you clod."

"So, you should believe it," Jordan said.

"That's a stupid argument, and it's a stupid story they tell us. They're just mythmaking when they say things like that," Jace declared.

"Why?"

"Why don't I believe it?" Jace said. "Because it just doesn't sound right. Like, sure... sure we're related to some famous person from hundreds of years ago."

"Why shouldn't we be?" asked Jordan.

"No reason, it's just... does it sound likely to you?"

"I'd like it, sure," Jordan said. Then, before Jace could correct him about the meaning of the word "likely," Jordan said, "I believe it! I think that's why they're sending you to the Reservation."

"They are not."

"Yes, they are," Jordan said, echoing Jace's earlier smile of superiority.

"What? Who told you that?"

"Mother is talking with Aunt Josephine about it."

"Well, she is not," Jace said. "You heard wrong."

"No, I didn't."

"They are not sending me to the Reservation."

"Yes, they are."

"No, they aren't!"

"Yes, they are too! Ask them!"

Jace walked angrily to the kitchen, where his mother and Aunt Josephine sat at the table drinking coffee. He asked.

That was how he found out that, yes, they were sending him to the Reservation.

***

"They didn't want us, that's why," Cousin Albert told Jace years later. "You know what things were like. Everybody poor, the cops beating everyone up all the time, no such thing as contraception – and it was a felony to be childless."

Jace didn't know what the word "contraception" meant. He thought back to Jordan, how his brother would pick up new words and use them indiscriminately.

"It was too hard to have kids," Albert said. "Ever since they screwed up the government and everything else."

"Who screwed it up?"

"I dunno. Some guy, some friend of the president. My dad said he was a foreigner who never should have been given control."

"You mean that Russian guy? The Russian king?"

"Russian? No, the president's best friend. Well, until the president had him arrested, anyway. He was some African guy."

African guy? Jace had never heard of a White guy like the president being best friends with a Black guy. And anyway, all the Black people had been sent away. The president had ordered it. Maybe that was because the Black guy who used to be the president's best friend had made the president mad?

Jace shrugged. His parents never talked about politics – probably because they didn't want to make the president mad the way his Black best friend had done. Then again, Jace's parents had never talked about money. Was that really the reason they had sent him away? They couldn't afford him? Did things get better after he left? Was that why they had kept Jordan after abandoning Jace?

Now sixteen, Jace had been preoccupied with those questions ever since he had arrived. The trip was hazy in his memory; he had been so angry and upset that he hadn't really registered much about it. There was an airplane ride, which was something new for him, and then he had arrived in... Albuquerque? Was that it? He thought so. The "Sunport." He remembered that being the name of the place the plane brought him – the 'Albuquerque Sunport."

Then there was a ride on a bus to... well, not far. Someplace close to the Sunport. Or maybe still a part of the Sunport. And there was a hotel there, and he had to stay overnight in a room by himself.

And then another bus ride, with a bunch of other kids, some of them not much older than toddlers. There had been a lot of crying on that bus, and some screaming, but mostly from the younger kids. The boys and girls his own age were much quieter: Sullen, white-faced, tight-lipped, withdrawn. Sulking. Hurt. Betrayed.

Some of them had stories about where they were going and why. Many of them didn't; all most of them had were vague and unconvincing explanations that the Reservation was a good place, a nice place, someplace where they would be healthy and safe.

Healthy and safe! – he had thought in bewildered anger. Healthy and safe and abandoned!

"You'll like it there," Mother had told him with tears in her eyes just before Father had ordered "Let's go!," his voice stern.

Father had always been stern. But did that really mean Father hated him? Wanted him gone?

Mother had been sad. Father had been... Father.

And Jordan... Jace took a slow, deep breath. He didn't know why his parents had sent him away. Some kids said it was because of a war. Some kids said it was because of The Famine. Some kids said it was a plague, like the COVID-24 pandemic that had killed a lot of people when Jace was six. He barely remembered being six, but he remembered the fear and the panic around the pandemic. He remembered people fighting in the street because some of them wore masks on their faces and some didn't. The masks were supposed to stop the sickness, Mother had told him, and Jace wondered why people would fight over something like that. Why didn't everybody wear the masks? Didn't everybody want to stay healthy?

Maybe not.

"You'll like it," Mother had said. "You'll be healthy..." And the thing was, she was right about that. There was something wonderful in the air here... a fragrance of sage and flowers, a vibration between the rocky red soil and the dry, hot air, a magic in the huge sky overhead with its white and gray clouds; a sky that glowed golden in the morning, then turned a pale orange as the sun rose...

And he was with family, which helped. Not Mother and Father, but Mother's brother, Uncle Taylor, and his cousins, Albert and Norman and Mike. They were a rowdy bunch, and Jace got the feeling they had not been sent here, but rather they had come of their own eager accord, come to a wild and dusty place because their own natures were wild and dusty.

Jace had taken on something of a wild edge in the seven years he'd been here. He had been a healthy, energetic child, but he remembered feeling a surge of inexplicable joy when he arrived. It was like his body had extra batteries in it... that was something Lucas has said. Lucas and Jace had sat next to each other on the bus, and once they arrived they stuck with each other. Lucas had been his best friend that first year. He had black hair and dark eyes, Jace remembered, unlike Jace's own blond hair and blue eyes. Jace had enjoyed talking with Lucas and being around him, and Lucas had felt the joy and the jolt of exuberance that came from being on the Reservation, just as Jace had. The others must have felt it, too, but they didn't talk about it. Neither did Jace, really, except with Lucas... it was something everyone seemed to forget about and accept as natural, something that everyone seemed to take for granted.

Only, sometimes, lying on the roof of the apartment building where he lived, staring up into the night sky, he felt that same electric sense of happiness and discovery all over again; a sense of a whole world, a universe waiting to be explored. He stared up at the reddish stars and felt... yes, happy. And safe. And healthy... and horny, which he supposed meant he was healthy.

Lucas had been selected to help set up the new town, Clark, fifty miles away, when Jace was ten years old. The two communities were still in touch, still swapped goods and people. Lewis had been built with an eye to industry, and the city's workers made all sorts of things; Clark was supposed to be more agricultural, and it was located near the confluence of two rivers. Someday a third town was supposed to be built that would serve as something called an information hub. Jace thought the future town might be called Sacajawea. Wasn't their supposed great-great-lost-of-greats-aunt a guide or a wife or something to the two explorers the existing towns were named after? Jace smiled at the coincidence and wondered if it was his personal fate to be here, on the Reservation, with his mythical connection to the past – a family legend he doubted, but that Jordan had believed.

Jace felt a stab of old sadness at the thought of his younger brother. Mother and Father had sent him away, and he hated them as much as he missed them. But Jordan was a different matter. He should have been allowed to stay home and look after Jordan. He'd be seven years older now, Jace thought – he'd be fourteen, almost grown.

When he felt that old sadness, Jace would take solace in the silent mystery of the nighttime stars or else spend the Day of Rest walking in the mountains, which were two hours distant by foot. Getting there and back, plus six hours of so of climbing their slopes and wandering their plateaus, was usually enough to cleanse his mind and spirit and restore his sense of hope.

Still, he wished his brother could have joined him. Jordan would have loved this place. He, too, would have been safe, and happy, and healthy.

Was there truly some reason larger than money or inconvenience for which their parents had sent them here? If so... or even if not... Jace hoped that his younger brother was safe from plagues and wars and famines back in Minnesota.

Albert squinted at the distant Red Mountains. All the mountains were red, of course; the whole landscape was reddish-orange rock and dust and clay, but the Red Mountains were redder at dusk, along with the whole of the Western sky, which turned scarlet as the reddish sun sank low.

"You see that?" he asked, then pointed. "That dust..."

Jace squinted in turn. He saw it: A thin plume rising from the plains. "Raiders?" he asked.

"Who else would they be? No new residents have arrived for three years now." Those newcomers had almost all been children, just as Jace had been when he had arrived.

"Still, they might be..."

Albert walked to his pack, which he had left on the ground near the well where they had working. He pulled a ceramic gun from the pack. "You have yours?" he asked.

Jace hastened to his own pack and found the gun under a wad of clothing and rags. He had never used it. He pulled it from the pack and then out of its holster and stared at it, trying to remember how it worked. Uncle Taylor had showed him – had showed everyone; one of only twelve adults in Lewis, Uncle Taylor oversaw armaments and training. Only, there was so much work to be done with building and maintenance and digging new wells that there had not been any training in a long while.

"Are they headed here?" he asked Albert, who stared intently at the plume as it moved, too rapidly for comfort, across the plains.

"No," Albert said. "I think they're headed for Clark."

***

Lewis didn't send anyone to Clark's defense; they couldn't risk leaving their own people undefended if a second raiding party arrived.

"If they think Clark is less well-prepared just because they're new..." Mr. Shandy's scratchy, husky voice trailed off.

"We made sure they had all the weapons they'd need," Uncle Taylor said, but Jace thought he sounded nervous.

Of course he was: Raiders were bad news no matter how well prepared the towns were. They had attacked Lewis just a few days after Jace had arrived.

Jace hadn't seen the battle; he and the other kids had been rushed into fortified bunkers. But they had heard some of what went on, and they had seen the aftermath: Smoke and damaged buildings, the spatters of red and black blood, incinerated corpses...

The Raiders, Jace had thought, as he and Albert drove the cart back to Lewis from the new well they had been working on. The Raiders must be why they sent us here... It was a new thought to him; after all, the fact that the Raiders had struck Lewis twice over the last seven years seemed evidence that the Reservation wasn't as safe as his parents had thought. But now he wondered if things back home were so bad that two attacks in seven years seemed sage by comparison. Maybe they really had sent him here to keep him safe.

In that case, Jace had thought, it was an open question as to whether Mother and Father and Jordan were even still alive.

What was the situation in the rest of the world, anyway? That was a topic about which no one seemed to know anything for sure, not even the elders. Uncle Taylor had once said that contact with the people they had left behind would be dangerous, and that was the reason for the silence, Jace wondered if that meant the Raiders could trace radio transmissions, and it that was how the two previous attacks had happened.

The elders would confirm nothing, explain nothing. They were unwilling to talk about anything back home – the president, The Famine, the plague... they refused to explain anything about why they were all here instead of back in their home states. They wouldn't even answer questions about the raiders: Why they had so many arms and legs, why their blackened bodies were so big and round, and whether they really did have wings underneath their charred armor.

"It's our job to remember the past," an elder name Corey had told Jace once, when he had pestered the old man for information. "It's your job to make the future." Jace had thought that maybe he could work on Corey a little and learn more – no one else would even say that much – but Corey had died a few months after telling him that, in the second of the two raids.

After that, nothing. No raids, no news, and only two new deliveries of new arrivals. Until now.

Eleven days after Albert and Jace had spotted the distant plume of dust, a vehicle raced toward Lewis from the direction of Clark. A second plume followed it. Both vehicles traced erratic paths across the plains. A squadron of armed men gathered outside the town as the vehicles approached; this time Jace wasn't cloistered away in a bunker. He was there on the front line.

Uncle Taylor had drilled them all repeatedly, every day, on how to use the weapons. Jace was confident he could bring down any threat if he needed to. That confidence barely wavered as the lead vehicle approached.

The vehicle looked stranger and stranger as it got closer. It didn't have the angles and surfaces of a typical vehicle; it didn't even have tires. Jace thought about hovercraft, which he had learned about before he left Minnesota. He and Jordan used to play with improvised toy hovercraft, making vehicles out of saucers or tin cups and staging wars between imaginary armies.

This wasn't imaginary. Nor was it familiar; the vehicle was ridged and strangely contoured and very tall. It must be Raiders, Jace thought, because Raiders were so tall and so broad and so round.

A gout of lightning-like flame suddenly leapt across the distance and struck the approaching vehicle.

"Hold your fire, goddamn it!" Uncle Taylor shouted. Jace glanced over and saw that it was Albert who had discharged his ceramic gun. Albert stood uncertainly, looking like he might throw down his weapon and run; his face was white, and his skin glistened with sweat under the afternoon sun.

Albert had fired in a moment of panic, but his burst had found its mark. The vehicle swerved, went sideways, then hit the ground and skidded, nearly overturning before it came to a stop.

A Raider emerged from the downed vehicle less than a second later. In silence, but with incredibly rapid multiple legs, it ran toward the line of armed men. It was huge, and fast, and gleaming black; the sunlight on its carapace reflected in lustrous rainbow patterns. The bodies Jace had seen years ago had been scorched, but not burned to carbon, he realized. They really were a deep, charcoal black. This was what the Raiders actually looked like.

Jace felt strangely calm – more so than he would have expected – as he drew a bead on the running creature and squeezed the trigger.

The ceramic gun erupted in a torrent of blazing energy and thunderous sound. Other guns were thundering, too.

The Raider fell to the ground, smoking. The men around Jace erupted in cheers and shouts, a mix of jubilation and rage. If their weapons had not been exhausted by the barrage, they would have fired on the creature again even though it was dead.

Jace walked up to the smoking corpse and looked it over. Uncle Taylor joined him. Side by side, they looked down at it. "What the hell is it?" Jace asked.

Uncle Taylor shook his head. His mouth moved, and Jace thought he might be about to explain, but then Uncle Taylor shrugged and turned away.

The second vehicle – the one that had been in pursuit of the raider – approached more slowly now. It rolled to a halt and then three men got out, waving to the men on the line as they did so. They walked toward the men of Lewis, their leader shouting, "They came to Clark, and they did some damage, but we showed them something."

"A warm welcome, that's what!" one of the others shouted.

Everyone laughed.

The second man from the pursuit vehicle looked over at Jace, who was staring at him, heart hammering. A grin appeared on his face.

"Jace! Hey!" Lucas called.

***

There were fewer women than men in the towns. That meant that when Lucas transferred back to Lewis to help run the water works, and he and Jace became life partners, Jace's friends greeted the news with grins. Jace being associated with another man meant less competition for what women there were.

One day was much like another; one year was much like another. There were only minimal differences between the seasons. Uncle Taylor, in one of the few pieces of information he ever parted with, said that that was because they were so close to the equator. Another elder, Mr. Benson, contradicted him, saying that wasn't the reason, but he didn't offer any alternative explanation.

Time went on in the towns. Children were born, new buildings were constructed, and the water works become more elaborate and extensive. Clark delivered more abundant harvests every year, and Lewis' infrastructure gradually became more capable of manufacturing more and different kinds of things. After the Raiders tried to attack Clark, Uncle Taylor had pressed for more ceramic guns to be made, and insisted that new designs be devised. "We can't rely on guns that have to recharge for four hours after a single use," he said, and he was right.

Still, there were other things the people of the Reservation needed. Clothing; silverware; building materials for new houses and factories. The desert and mountains didn't seem to have much metal, but the mines they built and operated extracted yielded other useful things: Potash, salt, sulfur.

"Wish they'd send us some aluminium, or some iron, or even some useful plastic components," Jace sometimes heard men muttering, and it was always with a small surprise he remembered there was a world across the great plains, a world of cities and men and raw materials.

There was no coal or oil in the land near the towns, but the original solar panels the initial builders had brought were holding up well and new materials and new designs were being invented all the time.

Jace and Lucas celebrated their eighteenth anniversary, then their twenty-fourth, then... seemingly all of a sudden... their forty-second.

"Shouldn't we be getting old?" Jace asked Lucas.

"What do you mean?" Lucas asked. His face, like Jace's, was weathered, and his knees were arthritic; a few of his teeth had broken over the years, and his eyes were slightly clouded by cataracts. Jace had complaints of his own. But neither of them felt sick or elderly; they could work full days, joint pain notwithstanding, and the desert around them still seemed to hum with enticing energy.

"I mean, weren't our grandparents older than we are now, and they were in pretty bad shape?"

"Because they never did an honest day of work!" Lucas laughed.

"Or," Jace mused, "because of the opposite... they were worked to death." It was something Uncle Taylor used to talk about, and Cousin Albert used to parrot: That back in the world at large things were so oppressive that no man was free, and though people were worked mercilessly, they were never permitted to escape poverty.

That was something else about this place: The people could make their own way, not simply be relegated to creating wealth for someone else to accumulate.

"Yeah," Lucas agreed. "It's good, free living."

***

It was another fifteen years before anyone new arrived at the town of Lewis. As when the raider had barreled toward the town in his large, strange-looking vehicle, a plume of dust rose on the distant plains and then grew closer. A line of men gathered, new and more efficient ceramic guns in their hands. The vehicle slowed its approach as it drew near, and the men held off on firing at it; the angles and proportions looked familiar, even if the exact design seemed novel.

The vehicle stopped and sat in its own settling dust for a few moments and then a door swung upward and a man seated inside raised a hand. "I come in peace," he shouted, his voice sounding cheerful.

"Come on out, then," answered Cousin Albert, who had replaced Uncle Taylor as the town's armorer and chief tactician.

The man climbed out of the vehicle and approached. "Albert? Is that you?"

Jace felt a rush of excitement. This must be someone related to them... was it – ?

"Jace!" the man shouted. He laughed. "It's me – it's Jordan!"

"Jordan!" Jace stared at him. Jordan looked to be about sixty. Had only half century passed since he had come to the Reservation? He and Lucas had talked about this from time to time; by the reckoning of their computers and time pieces, nearly eighty years had passed since they had arrived with that busload of children.

***

"I don't understand what you mean," Jace said to his brother. He gripped the cup of root tea tightly in his hands. He was feeling edgy with excitement; not even the tea was calming him down.

"I'm saying that you, here... that this place..."

"The Reservation," Jace said.

"No," Jordan told him. "The Preservation. Like a preserve. And that's not the name of the place, that's the name of the... well, the project. The undertaking."

"That's part of what I don't understand. This isn't a reservation?"

"No, you idiot." Jordan grinned at him fondly. "Look, I know none of this was explained to you. The world was in crisis... had been in crisis for a long time, ever since the mid-20s. Then, in 2040, when you left..."

"When I was sent away, you mean," Jace said. "When Father and Mother sent me away."

"They did that so you'd be safe," Jordan told him.

"What, and they never sent you along to be safe, too? They wanted you home, but not me?"

"They would have sent me, but they didn't have the chance. About four months after they sent you, things changed. A lot. And then, after that, there was no more need to send anyone."

"What are you talking about?"

"We beat them. First the tyrants, and then the ones who came after them. They withdrew, and they left us alone."

"Who did?"

"The Jaddek."

"Who?"

"The..." Jordan hesitated, then shrugged. "The aliens."

"The... aliens?"

"I'll try to explain this in broad strokes, because it's a lot," Jordan said. "After il presidente and his foreign-born buddy wrecked the country, and pretty much wrecked the rest of the world, a bunch of science guys using encrypted communications technology started a secret project called The Preservation... as in, the preservation of all humanity, because those reckless assholes had put us all on a path to extinction. The planet's resources were close to exhaustion, but instead of any conservation efforts or investment in new technologies, the dictators who took over in different countries went full speed ahead on finishing the job. They turned out to be pawns of an alien race called the Thrass."

"I thought you said they were called the Jiddack."

"Jaddek. No, that's a different alien race. The thing is, the Thrass destroy emergent technological civilizations in order not to have to compete with them. But the Jaddek like to... well, cultivate different races they think will be worthwhile opponents. They believe war and conflict are the only way for a species to stay strong and improve. The Thrass quit meddling with us in the late 2030s. They had destroyed our governments and societal systems, and ravaged our resources so thoroughly they thought we would never recover. They had no more reason to stay. They left Earth and abandoned their human collaborators. That's when the Jaddek swooped in. Their first attacks confused everyone, and the world's governments... you might not remember this, but any mass communications other than state-approved media had been outlawed. All the big global organizations meant to cooperate around development and emergency aid and health initiatives had been outlawed. Those science guys who were working to find solutions? They would have been executed if their governments had found out. But they didn't, and the science guys managed to create a way to bring people here, to The Preservation."

"Where are we, exactly? Some other planet?"

"Of course not. We never developed interstellar flight – the Thrass and their collaborators saw to that. But the science guys identified a kind of other dimension where human life could be sustained. And then, when the Jaddek started their offensives, the science guys put things in motion. They had a kind of underground railroad to bring people here... mostly children, but a few adults to supervise things, build things, create an infrastructure. But there were only a few expeditions."

"Expeditions?"

"Big transports of people and materials. Once the Thrass were gone, and the tyrants were either barely clinging to power or on the run, the Jaddek got busy. In a short time, they increased their attacks significantly. The tyrants who remained in power tried to make deals with the Jaddek, and the Jaddek killed them all. Then the Jaddek went right on destroying our cities."

"What happened then?"

"Well, by then there were lots of insurgents... freedom fighters, guerillas, whatever you want to call them. Human beings, citizens of the countries that were being destroyed, that had been destroyed by the collaborators with the Thrass. If the Jaddek hadn't arrived when they did, there would have been bloody revolutions in countries around the world... things had gotten that desperate. The freedom fighters hunted down and took out the collaborators that the Jaddek didn't kill. Then they started to fight the Jaddek, which was what the Jaddek wanted all along – some spirited resistance."

"And we were here the whole time?"

"Yes. And a couple of Jaddek expeditions went through the portals to see what kind of fighters you all were. I guess you showed them."

"We certainly did," Jace murmured.

"But they didn't realize that this is a pocket universe, not a whole parallel realm. And coming here is a one-way journey. They probably thought they were just coming in here for a quick bit of fun, but once they were stuck here they had no backup, no additional supplies or equipment... so of course they were defeated. Not," Jordan added, "that you guys weren't valorous in defending yourselves and giving them a whupping."

"A what?"

Jordan chuckled. "Whupping. An ass-kicking."

Jace shook his head.

"Stuff dad used to say."

"Dad? You mean Father?"

"Yeah, well... all those religious strictures, all those 'Faith and Family' laws... all that bullshit came to an end when the tyrants fell. The world is still in pieces, but across the globe more people than ever are determined to live freely, and live according to facts and reason – not be suckered by fairy tales and empty rhetoric."

"I see," Jace said, although he didn't fully comprehend.

"In short, society is nothing like it used to be. There are still grifters trying to invent enemies and spin up conflict, but the lictors are empowered to take care of them."

"The lictors?"

"They... well, they keep the peace. And they safeguard the freedoms we've regained. And they do it without hesitation, and without any confusion about what constitutes actual freedom of speech as opposed to attempts to subvert law and sabotage society."

Jace nodded. That sounded, he thought, pretty forceful.

Then something Jordan had said snapped into focus.

"Wait. You said we're in a pocket universe?"

"You know what that is?"

"Sort of. I remember that old show, 'Land of the Lost.' That was a pocket universe, right? A tiny, self-contained place outside of normal reality?"

"Yes. Well, this pocket universe is tiny compared to our universe, but our universe is vast. This pocket universe is still nine billion parsecs across."

"And what's beyond that?"

"Nothing. The spacetime geometry of this universe means that the question has no meaning."

"I... think I understand," Jace said. "But you were telling me that once someone comes here, they can't leave again?"

"That's right," Jordan sighed. "None of us can leave again."

"Then..." Jace leaned forward, puzzled and unaccountably frightened. "Then why are you here?"

"It took a long time to drive off the Jaddek, and there were civil wars going on in different countries between the freedom fighters and the people who still clung to the lies the tyrants told. A lot was lost... a lot of time, a lot of knowledge. We forgot how to come here... how to send people, supplies, news. We've only now rediscovered how to access The Preservation. I volunteered to come and explain what's happened in the outside world."

"So you could find me?" Jace asked.

"Yes, but also I'm... well, I have cancer. In less than a year, I'll be dead," Jordan said.

Jace stared at him, stricken.

Jace reached over and grasped his brother's arm. "In a way, though, I will have lived a lot longer than the doctors expected. Looking at today's date..." Jordan laughed. "Well, you're a few decades ahead of us. I mean..." Jordan sighed. "Time passes differently here, compared to back in Minnesota and the rest of the world."

"So, more years have gone by here than back where we came from."

"That's right. But," Jordan said, looking at his brother intently, "it seems to me that you haven't aged that much. Chronologically, forty-eight years have passed on Earth since you left. That's by the calendar back in Minnesota. As time passes here, you're more than ninety years old now, but you look like you're only in middle age – though I noticed you seem to have some trouble with your knees. Still, you're remarkably young and active. How's that possible?"

Jace thought of the vibrancy in the air, the excitement of the night skies, the feeling of having extra batteries in his body. "I think the way time passes isn't the only thing that's different about this place," he said. "I think it's full of some kind of special energy that keeps us young... or younger than we would be, anyway. People do die... we lost Uncle Taylor a few years ago. But they live a hell of a long time. And..." Jace nodded to himself, remembering something he'd forgotten. "And they don't die of cancer. When we first got here, my husband Lucas had a form of cancer. His parents sent him away thinking he would live a short time, but he'd be safe and happy. The thing is, he's fine... perfectly healthy. Any disease he arrived with, it's gone now. No one I know of has ever died of cancer here, or any disease other than time. It's more a matter of your body slowly wearing out. You don't get old the same way as... well, as on Earth."

"Huh," Jordan said. "Maybe entropy is less here. Maybe the body's natural immune abilities are enhanced. But either way... you're saying you think I'll be cured?"

Jace stared at the table, and the cup in his hands, with a thoughtful frown on his face. "I couldn't say, but..." He looked up at his brother, a smile on his face. "I think maybe you're gonna be with us for a lot longer than you expected."

Next week we pay a visit to a pair of exiles who left their country as it began sinking into authoritarianism and who now live in freedom and happiness... but not, as they are about to discover, beyond its long, malicious reach. Join in with "The Expats" and see what new predation they face.