Radio Land

“Brave New World"

By Terry Echoes

It was a brave new world, but my parents always taught me to be braver. My name's Tabitha Rhymes, and, well, I'm kind of worried, if I'm being honest.

See, I'd woken up after my alarm, like any day, did all my morning business, and was about to say good-bye to my mom and dad before heading off to university. Today was my birthday, September 1st, but they wanted to give me an early gift before I headed out that day. It was a pair of virtual goggles; it's like a portable computer. I don't have to tell you virtual reality and artificial intelligence are everywhere these days. Entertainment, information, education, civil services. They all use augmented reality technologies. My dad's a patent attorney or something for these kinds of things, but it's all a bit over my head. My mom's a bit old-school. She works with plants as an interior decorator. Oh, sorry! I meant to tell you what happened to me today, and here I am, rambling!

So I got to campus, took some classes (they're really hard!), and then attended retro technologies club! There was only me and two other students there. One student was a guy named Zack Warburton. He had this neat wrist computer with a holographic screen. And then there was this other girl with dark hair, Sadie Howitzer I think her name is, wearing a hoodie and listening to her headphones, lurking over in the corner with her hands in her pockets.

Zack looks up at me from his tinkering with the machines and immediately double-takes at what I'm wearing. I like bow ties and suspenders, okay? Or maybe it was 'cause I forgot to comb my hair. It's short, so I don't do much with it, but it tends to stick out on top. But nevermind that. I ask how I can help, but Zack just says to wait for the professor.

Professor Atkins shows up finally, laments the low turn-out, then goes on about all this high-tech stuff I'm trying to follow. I really wanna learn this stuff, so I'm just diving right in. I know Zack could explain better, but he was talking about how radio waves are an abandoned technology since we have Wi-Fi and bluetooth and all that. And that using contemporary technology, radio can actually be applied in the directions of quantum mathematics. Uh, I think. My eyes were watering by that point.

Anyway! We entered the hyperbolic chambers, the prof activated the machine, and the three of us felt radio waves pouring all around us. It felt kinda cool and ripply!

But none of us expected to end up in an entirely different world!

There was a huge ripple effect that shook the sky. We ended up on top of this mountain, but everything was happening so fast, we didn't notice the avalanche at first. I had only just seen the boulders tumbling down at us like marbles down a chute. That was when the vines grabbed me around the middle and hoisted me sideways to place me atop a tree!

I wasn't sure what I was looking at first, but she's the cutest creature I ever did see! Not quite a bird, not quite a plant, it was green with these big, shiny eyes and a beak-like mouth. My first inclination was wanting to pet it. She was just so adorable!

Once the rumbling had passed, she asked me, “Are you alright?" Then she asked, “What are you? I've never met a wave like you!"

I admit, I wasn't totally focused on her questions, because I was sort of aware that Zack and Sadie had come with me. I was like, “My friends, are they alright?"

Zack was looking frazzled, to say the least. He was bowing apologetically to this little dinosaur creature that kinda looked like a bumble bee. “I, I'm okay!" he said once he'd noticed me.

Sadie popped up from out of view and mumbled at me, “I ain't your friend, blondie." Yeah, she was pretty rude. She was accompanied by this dusty-looking little furry critter that looked kinda like a beaver with long, scruffy ears.

But there was no time for introductions. Dust and grit was still blowing around, so I donned my goggles as I looked down the mountainside from my lofty perch. I couldn't be sure at first, but it looked like there were little houses down there. Not like the big, shiny, angular buildings back in our own world, but more like the house I lived in just outside the city limits. Its own, disconnected building with a windmill. It was the toppled windmill that told me people were in danger. I didn't even notice that my goggles were reading all this information and highlighting it for me—the threat of injury to others was foremost on my mind.

I dropped out of the tree and started skidding down the mountainside. The little plant-bird chased after me, and when I yelled for the others to follow, they did as well. We stumbled onto a pathway winding down the incline, now littered with massive stones. We had to clamber over some of them to get by, but that was no problem for me. I helped Zack onto the rock, and we both jumped off the other side. Sadie just vaulted over them like it was nothing.

“What's the hurry?" Zack demanded to know. So I told him what I'd seen. Sadie said she didn't think we ought to get involved. I wanted to say something back to her, but nothing sprang to mind in the moment.

It was indeed a village, and in considerable turmoil. Rocks had pummeled through their straw huts, destroying their teeny-tiny little homes and trapping them inside. And when I say “them", I don't mean humans. They were these pink and pale green little octopus creatures, panicking all over the place.

That was when the shock finally started to hit us. We were no longer home. These were completely new species of sapient creatures, and for some reason, they could communicate in our language! I think Zack said something about, “We just made first contact," and he just sat on the ground, dumbfounded. I knew how he felt. Even Sadie looked as though she wanted to head home.

But how could we?

I, on the other hand, said, “This is amazing!" They both shot me these looks, y'know, like I was a three-headed monkey. It was a careless thing to say, considering the destruction of the village nearby. “I mean, this is terrible!"

I turned to the bird-plant on my heels and asked, “What should we do?"

She just fretted and danced in place. “I don't know! It's a disaster! The entire Octowav village is ruined! Couldn't we, you know, do something?"

“That's just what I had in mind!" I rolled up my sleeves and grabbed the nearest boulder, trying all my strength to pull it away from where it sat. I just managed to shift it off-balance, and I rolled it away from the hut whose entrance it had squashed flat.

One of the Octowavs as my new buddy had called them emerged from the dilapidated building and peered at me, terrified. Terrified, but grateful. “Thank you!"

“No problem! I'm happy to help!"

Zack, meanwhile, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Not good. “What are all these things? Octopi? Octopodes? And what's with this dragon thing following me around? We should go. We don't belong here."

The yellow, black-striped creature tailing Zack huffed. “I am not a thing! Don't you know a Apisowav when you see one?"

I let my bewilderment get the better of me, and I was distracted from the ensuing chaos of the village. “Apisowav?" I uttered it like I was trying to remember the definition of some long-forgotten word, as if I actually expected its meaning to make itself clear to me. Nope. Nothing came. We were in over our heads.

“Come on. We've got to help somehow. They may be aliens, but I know distress when I see it!" I held Zack's hand, and that seemed to calm his nerves. I looked toward Sadie, who stood there, looking indifferent to everything. I scowled. “And you help, too, Sadie!"

But I bet deep down Sadie's a good egg. She rolled her eyes and grumbled, “Fine," but she was going to help, too! So the three of us—no, the six of us—walked through the miniature village and did our best to heft rocks away and carry them off, clearing debris and assisting the Octowavs. It took at least two of us humans to move a large rock, but to my astonishment, my new critter friend was super-strong. In fact, so were Apisowav, and Sadie's beaver-thing. We cleared the well, righted the windmill, and did the best we could.

As we worked, we introduced ourselves, more or less.

“What kind of wave are you?" my newfound friend asked me.

“Wave?" I remember asking. “I'm just your friendly neighborhood human! The three of us are. I hope it's not too rude, but what are you?"

“I'm a Chlorowav!" she announced proudly, twirling around and showing off her leafy wings. They looked just like a dark green rain poncho when they were closed.

“And I'm Tabitha!"

“But I thought you were a human."

“I'm both. Tabitha's my name, and I'm a human. Don't you all have names?"

Chlorowav whistled a little tune at me, as if that somehow answered my question.

“Do you have a name, too?" Apisowav asked Zack.

Zack was trying his hardest to ignore the bee-lizard carrying a huge rock over his own head.

“C'mon, Zack! Be a pal!" I said. “We owe these guys a life-debt."

“Zack! Your name is Zack." Apisowav flapped its wings in a joyous little dance.

Sadie was aiming a menacing stare down at the creature who had been following her. He looked rather unnerved by the gaze, so that his grey fur was sticking out all over here and there. “Name's Sadie," she said in a monotone. “What're you called?"

He blurted out his response like a shot. “I'm Lupowav! Could you maybe not look so terrifying?"

By that time, I was perspiring something fierce, and every muscle in my arms ached. Chlorowav asked me if I was tired.

“We don't normally do heavy lifting where we're from," I said. “We have drones to do all that for us. Where I live is pretty flat, too, so avalanches aren't really a thing."

“Are you from Sirelecho? Or beyond the Harmonicaire peaks?"

I shook my head. “I've never even heard of those places."

One of the Octowavs came up and thanked me in its whistling voice. I stopped to ask it, he or she, “How did all this happen?"

“It was frightening! There was this huge sound wave that ripped through the sky from up on the mountain, and it shook all that rock loose!"

I turned my gaze up the mountainside. It stretched like a cat's claw up toward the clouds. I slid my goggles back over my eyes again and fiddled with the buttons on the sides. I was still getting the hang of the thing, but I could see all motion had stopped. As I craned my head back, I could see concentric circles halfway up the slope that radiated outwards. I took off the goggles and thought, but I didn't have to think hard. I estimated that that point, in the center of those circles, was where we'd emerged from into this world.

I beckoned Zack and Sadie close and whispered to them, “Guys, we caused this."

Sadie tweaked one eyebrow up. Zack said, “What? It was a natural disaster, we had nothing to do with it."

“It happened just when we showed up here," I said. “This is our fault. We can't abandon these, uh, these Octowavs."

“No." Zack set his jaw and stood up straight. His whole body went rigid. “That's exactly why we should leave then. We'll just cause more trouble if we linger here. We need to head back home as soon as possible."

Then Sadie said what Zack and I were both secretly dreading. “Is that even possible?"

After a pause, I spoke. “Maybe. When I put on my goggles, I could see these—I don't know what they are yet, but they're these rings, or distortions or whatever, up in the atmosphere, around the mountain from where we showed up. Maybe we just need to get back up there."

“Ugh. More walking," Sadie groaned.

“I know it's pretty wild," Zack said, “with all these bizarre creatures like out of a cartoon or a video game. But we have real lives and real responsibilities to get back to in the real world. I thought I was dreaming, but no, we're wide awake. Our presence is a danger here. We've got to go."

I could feel my face fall. He was right. Here I was, conversing with creatures from beyond my imagination, but he was right. I couldn't let Mom and Dad down by disappearing. They'd be frantic. Distraught. So I nodded.

Most of the rubble was cleared up anyway, so the three of us quietly trudged up the path up the mountain.

“Where are you going?" Chlorowav asked me. She tugged on the shin of my slacks with her vine-fingers.

I squatted to get nearer to eye-level with her; these creatures were maybe waist-height at best. “We have to go home, Chlorowav. We're not from your world. We don't belong here."