Escape to the Edge

I was staring up at the pastoral sky, painted in shades of blue and pink, wishing my father was beside me. He loved when the sky made pretty, when Gaia showed her artistic face. It had been a week since his disappearance.

“Palan,” he’d whispered under the dark cloak of night. “I must go to investigate the flick-flicks.” Absconding from the tribe at night was a violation of Lok-Lok’s law. I should have reminded him of that; I should have tried to stop him.

Shamefully, I let him leave without protest. It was late, and I needed to sleep before He-Who-Brings-The-Day arrived. Also, there was no stopping my father once his mind was made. He was the smartest of our tribe, the most revered for his think-think.

If he was worried about the flick-flicks, then so too should the tribe. But a missing person took priority over the fluttering lights that many of the tribe think-thinks believed to be a new species of firefly.

“Darwina’s kitchen is always open,” Leader Mara declared a week earlier, when my father had brought the issue to council. She quickly glanced at the row of witnesses; there were twenty-two of them present. They wore flowing white robes, their faces hidden behind curved, metallic masks. Lok-Lok says looking into the eyes of a witness brings about a fate worse than death.

Nobody was certain of their purpose, or of how many of them existed, not even Father. They were always among the tribe, quietly watching.

Father did not pay them any mind as he replied to Leader Mara, “If these are creatures of Darwina, how is it that they evade the see-sees?” He turned his back on the three leaders, opening his hands toward the tribe. “I have come upon four flick-flicks in the last week, and I have never found wings or eyes, never heard the buzzing of the little-creatures.”

Murmurs rippled throughout the tribe. Father’s think-thinks were well respected. Yet, when the leaders returned from their consultation with Lok-Lok, they declared the matter resolved and ordered my father not to pursue it further.

Father nodded curtly, then hurried off to our camp on the other side of the hill. Our tribe lived upon a great spire, crafted by Gaia herself. All dwellings were on the same side of the grassy hill, and all shared facilities were on the other.

The spire was surrounded by the forever-forest. An infinite maze of hostile trees, winged creatures with razor talons and cavernous mouths. Lok-Lok’s first law forbade entry into the forest. Like all of his laws, they were designed to protect the tribe.

Was my father lost in the forest? Had he become a meal for a nasty creature? It was painful to wonder. I would prefer to stay in the dark, to never learn his fate.

Too bad.

Lok-Lok's horn blared across the spire. Rustling filled the hills as every member of the tribe exited their tent to herald our god’s arrival. Lok-Lok's iron wings blotted out the pink-swirly sky. He swooped downward, his wings drawing closed as he landed gracefully before the tribe.

204 people dropped to their knees before Lok-Lok. With his wings tucked, he looked like any man. His skin was the color of honey and his muscles were like sheets of granite, but other than that, just a man.

My stomach dropped. Lok-Lok only appeared like this for one reason: to tell of a death.

The god’s voice boomed like thunder. “My children, it is with a heart of stone that I must tell you of the death of Malot.” How I wished he had said a name other than my father’s.

I sank to the ground, sadness weighing me down like an anchor. Sad-water spilled from my eyes.

My mom’s scream pierced the night. She flopped beside me, her sad-water pouring in droves. “How?” The question came out through choked sobs.

Leader Mara hissed, “Do not speak to him!”

Mother shot her a nasty look. “It’s your fault!” She rose to her feet, a violation of law to do so in Lok-Lok’s presence. Fear welled inside me; was I going to lose both my parents on the same day?

Mother stormed toward Mara. “If you had listened to him about the flick-flicks, he would still be alive!”

Staying on her knees, Leader Mara spat back, “If he had done as he was told, he would not have died! It is his fault for defying Lok-Lok! And now, his wife so callously does the same! Have you no respect for our deity? He who flies on wings?”

Mother turned to Lok-Lok. The god’s eyes were flat, devoid of emotion. Behind him, a dozen witnesses had spawned. Their white robes fluttered, their masked faces pointed at my mother.

Mother turned back to Mara. “The only man I had respect for died because of you.” She turned to Lok-Lok. “And because of you!” Mother’s eyes were red, her mind was far away. I had never seen such anger.

The tribe held its collective breath, waiting for Lok-Lok’s response for defying him so. A few seconds of silence passed, then Lok-Lok replied, “You have my condolences.” With that, he unfurled his metal wings and took to the sky.

My grandmother swept my mother into her tent, leaving me alone in ours. So public were my mother’s woes that mine seemed to have been forgotten.

What was I to do but wander? I traveled along the edge of the spire, as close to the forever-forest as I dared. The hand of darkness was beginning to clutch the spire. I needed to be getting home—it was dangerous to be away from the tribe at night.

But my heavy heart stilled my feet. It’s not that I wanted to be made a meal of by some beast; it’s just that a part of me didn’t care. If my father could be taken, what chance did I have? What did any of this matter—

That’s when I saw the flick-flick.

A flash of white light, where the forest meets the spire. It was less than twenty steps from me. It flickered again, dancing. The color changing from dark green to bright white. It happened again and again, almost as if it were calling me.

I didn’t care that the flick-flicks were dangerous, that they might have taken my father; I had to investigate.

I moved closer. The flick-flick was a little larger than myself. The colors were shifting rapidly, changing every few seconds. My see-sees could not make sense of it.

This was not something to be known through sight. Thinking of my father, I stepped through the flick-flick.

“Ah—kid! What the hell!?”

It was Lok-Lok.

My see-sees could not make sense of what was before them. The god held a burning stick to his lips. He was leaning against a metal wall. The ground on this side of the flick-flick was not soft and grassy, but hard and gray.

“Y-your wings?” I asked, searching for any signs of the giant metal appendages that allowed the god to soar through our sky.

Lok-Lok plucked his fire stick from his mouth and tossed it on the strange ground. He shouted, “Another breach!”

“Dave!” A round man with large squares around his eyes appeared behind Lok-Lok. “What’s wrong with your exhibit? This is the second one this week.”

Lok-Lok replied, “It’s not on me! Something’s wrong with the bubble.”

I stumbled back toward the spire. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew I needed to flee.

Lok-Lok’s arm snapped like a viper, grabbing mine. “Sorry, kid, can’t let you back in with these think-thinks in your heady-heady.”

“Jeez, Dave,” the round man said, “you sound like a dumb-dumb.”

“Please let me go,” I said, fear-water spilling down my face. “I promise not to speak of this.”

Lok-Lok smiled. “I know you won’t.” There was another stick in his hand; this one was shimmering like silver. “Say goodnight, kid.”

“What—”

There was a white flash—

“Mr. Reed, is everything alright?”

“What?” I snapped back to reality. “Yes, Jen. I’m fine. I was just thinking about that poor boy from the Lok-Lok exhibit.”

“Of course, sir,” Jen replied. The plucky intern was holding her clipboard close to her chest. “Any luck catching his father?” Jen’s freckled face turned red. “Is it his real father? I can’t keep the exhibits straight.”

I answered, “Indeed, the Lok-Lok exhibit are all naturals.” Most of the exhibits had a mix of natural and memory-altered subjects.

“Amazing,” Jen squealed. I envied her excitement. Every aspect of the island thrilled her. I’d worked here for so long, I could hardly remember being anywhere else.

I tapped my monitor, pulling up the security footage from the last day.

“It’s amazing,” Jen said, “how someone so primitive could evade capture for a whole week.”

I swiped at the screen, rewinding to the day of the escape. “That’s the problem,” I began as the broken exhibit materialized before us. “The others have treated this man as a simple primitive.” As if on cue, the subject stepped out of the bubble, onto the concourse, like a butterfly breaking free of its cocoon.

He was dressed in a white toga-like cloth. He had a dark bushy beard and fresh red cuts along his arms and legs.

“Notice how carefully he looks in both directions,” I lectured. “He only leaves when he’s certain nobody has spotted him.” He didn’t run either; he moved at a walker’s pace until he found a mass of humanity to blend into.

“And that was the last time we were able to pick him up on the feeds.”

Jen said, “How is that possible? It’s not like there are a ton of places for him to hide, right?”

I cocked my eyebrow. “Jen, what is the one requirement of all visitors to any of our exhibits?”

“That they wear the witnesses outfit…” The metal mask and white robe. I always found it a bit tacky, but it served its purpose.

“So I submit to you that there is an easy way for our subject to conceal himself.”

“He’s dressed as a witness…”

I nodded. “I believe so.”

“Then he’s still here, on the island?”

“Certainly.” There was no way to leave the island without a plane or boat. Brilliant as this subject was, he could not know about the wonders of modern transport.

But I had a hunch where he was headed. I swiped at the screen a few more times. “Ah, as I suspected.” On the screen, a pack of witnesses were preparing to enter the Norse Exhibit. It was one of our most popular, and critically, it was near the edge of the island.

While most of the witnesses headed toward the wooden gates to Asgard, one drifted in the other direction.

Jen gasped. “That’s him! How did you know that’s where he’d be?”

I closed the screen and secured my weapons belt tightly around my waist. “We must hurry.” I motioned for her to follow. “That footage was from a few hours ago.”

I hustled out of the security station, onto the main concourse of Fantasy Island. It was sweltering out; a bead of sweat was already trickling down my back.

Jen chased after me.

I raced to the nearest monorail. A system of cars looped around the entire island. They were mostly used for visitors. I shoved my way past a dozen white-robed individuals.

“Make way, island security!” I barked. I stopped a woman just as she was stepping onto the cart. “Sorry, ma’am, I need this train.” She pouted, but obeyed.

“Jen,” I said, without looking to confirm her presence. “Route this rail to the maintenance bay on the north side of the island.”

“Um—okay…” She typed in the code, and the train sped off.

“The subject has a several-hour head start,” I mused, “but we are traveling much faster.” Indeed, the speed of the rails was an issue with many of our older patrons.

As we sped toward our destination, I could feel Jen’s curiosity boiling over. “You can ask, my dear.”

The words spilled from her mouth. “How do you know he’s going toward the edge of the island?”

I smiled. “A simple matter of reading his file. A few weeks ago, our subject developed a fascination with the edge of his exhibit.”

“The flick-flicks,” Jen offered.

“Yes and no. See, it’s as I said before, this subject is not the simpleton we would like him to be. Rather, I think he’s a genius.”

Jen snorted. “A genius? Like actually?”

“It was bound to happen eventually. The Lok-Lok exhibit has produced nearly 20,000 subjects. It was only a matter of time before one struck the genetic lottery.”

I suspected that the subject was aware of the confines of his cage. While the rest of his tribe saw the flick-flicks as an oddity, he saw them as a way out.

I explained this to Jen, at which point she was finally able to reach the conclusion. “And now he’s looking for the edge of the island, for the way out of here…”

“Precisely.” And he will be gravely disappointed, as this island only ends in a sea of choppy waves and hungry sharks. “We must secure him before he makes a meal of himself.”

There was much I wished to ask him before we wiped his memory.

When did he realize his world was fake?

How did it feel to know his existence was a lie?

It would be easier were he the moron they thought him to be. But for a creature of high intellect, the news of his faux-reality must have been crushing.

The monorail slowed as we arrived at the edge of the island. A few hundred feet ahead, white waves crashed against a rocky shore. The stench of seaweed and rotting wood filled my nostrils.

I raced toward the beach, knowing that the subject had to be close. Jen lagged behind me; her breathing grew heavier with each step.

I only stopped when my feet sank into muddy sand. The shoreline was less than fifty feet long. The subject could not evade me.

“Um, Mr. Reed,” Jen squeaked, nervously pointing towards the water. Five gray fins stalked through the waves, no more than twenty feet from us.

“Worry not,” I assured her. “They won’t attack us on land.”

She gulped, but nodded.

A cool breeze whistled through the air as we watched the treeline. It did not take long for the subject to arrive.

He emerged from the brush much the same way as he had from the bubble. He had abandoned his witness mask, letting his unruly beard breathe.

His dark eyes widened. “Hello there,” I called, tone friendly. “You’re a long way from home, friend.”

He nodded, inching closer to us. “I don’t know this word, home,” he replied, his voice deep and scratchy.

I answered, “It means the place where you are from. Where you raised your family.” I added that last bit to tug on his heartstrings.

He cocked his head to the side. He was less than twenty feet away. “Do any of us know where we are from?” he countered, taking on a professorial tone. “My home was the spire. It’s where I became a husband and a father. It’s where I learned what it means to be honest, to be a man, yet nothing about it was honest. Nothing about it was real.”

He was less than ten feet from me now. I reached for the taser on my weapons belt.

“Tell me, what makes you so sure that your world is what you think?”

My fingers wrapped around my taser. “I just know,” I answered, not wanting to aggravate him.

His chapped lips curled into a smirk; his gaze drifted to something behind me. “Just know. That’s what I would have said too, before I could see the flick-flicks.”

Just then, a massive wave crashed against my back, drenching me in foul-tasting water and knocking me into the sand.

I coughed violently. “St-op!” I yelled at the subject, who was sprinting in my direction, ready to hurl himself into the sea.

“J-en!” I coughed again. “Stop him!” But the intern was nowhere to be found.

The subject darted past me, kicking sand into my eyes as he ran into a cresting wave—and vanished.

What the hell?

He didn’t get swallowed by the sea; he just disappeared into the wave. I would have thought it impossible had I not seen it with my own eyes.

Cautiously, I stepped toward the sea, where another wave was rising to meet me.

Before I could see the flick-flicks…

I stepped into the shimmering white wave—onto a silver road. A massive shadow stirred at my arrival.

A deep feminine voice cried, “Code peeled-curtain! I repeat, code peeled-curtain! We have another breach from the show.”

I turned back to flee, but there was no ocean, no island, just a silver wall.

“HELP!!” I cried as a massive hand blotted out the light, and then I knew nothing.

I suppose I never did.

“Master Rex, are you okay?”

Huh? I shook my head. “Fine, just thinking about that show-person from earlier. I do hope the experience didn’t break his brain.”

“They usually recover after the wipe.”

“Righto.” I returned my attention to the task at hand. “Now, we have to find that second escapee.”