Christina
The plane ride went smoothly, and my only regret was that I wasn’t flying in the early morning or late night. The glass ceiling made it possible to lean your seat back and study the stars, but of course at ten in the morning all I could see were clouds. Hopefully when I returned I would see a sunset and enjoy the night sky.
The drone flight from the airport to the border took a little over an hour flying over forest and fields that were more lush and green than anything I’d ever seen before. I sat with my legs curled up under me and took in the panoramic view with fascination.
The border was just like I’d imagined: a solid wall as far as the eye could see, running in both directions and with an opening in front of me that had two gates. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see past the gates so I didn’t know if my guide Boulder was waiting on the other side. He should be since it was after noon.
I got out as soon as the drone landed and as I approached the barrier, a scanner lit up red.
“Please wait,” a robotic voice informed me and soon a small elderly woman came to meet me.
“May peace surround you,” I greeted her and she replied politely. “May peace surround you too.”
“My name is Christina Sanders. You should have been informed that I’m crossing the border today.”
“Yes, but I didn’t believe it,” the small woman admitted with worry written across her face so deep that it only increased the churning in my belly.
Don’t be a chicken – you wanted an adventure, now get on with it, I scolded myself and thanked the old woman when she let me through.
“Be careful,” she warned.
“I will,” I assured her and walked on. My bags were rolling slowly just behind me, following the GPS in my wristband. I sure hoped this Boulder man had a large drone, because my equipment and clothes took up three large suitcases.
Waiting on the other side of the border, I scanned as far as I could see but there were no people in sight. I looked back at the old guard, who waved at me from the gate, and then my eyes lifted to the sky, where the drone that had brought me here was returning the same way I’d come.
Unsure what to do, I waited for another few minutes. There wasn’t really a road, more like a flat trail leading up a small hill, and I figured that if I walked up to the top, I’d get a better view and possibly be able to spot Mr. Boulder somewhere.
With resolve, I suppressed the nauseated feeling in the pit of my stomach and walked ahead. A buzzing sound made me turn and look up to see a tiny drone hovering behind me. The old woman was no longer by the gate, and I figured this was one of the thousands of drones surveilling the borderline that she and her colleagues supervised. Right now, the drone provided her with a safe way to follow my steps.
I continued walking, unsure what to do if my contact person didn’t show up, but then just before I reached the top of the hill an awful noise came toward me followed by the sight of a huge black drone flying at high speed.
My heart was pounding and I tried to steady my breathing and stay calm, but it was impossible. Folding my hands into fists, I prepared to run or fight if the person coming at me was hostile.
The large drone was going so fast that it flew right past me, making a turn so sudden and dangerous that I thought the pitch-black thing would surely crash.
I’d never seen such reckless flying, and suspected the drone was malfunctioning to behave that way.
The horrible noise from before was louder now that the large drone came to hover just an arm’s length above the ground right in front of me.
The noise is a type of music, I concluded. Something not far from the aggressive music of the past when foul language and deep bass sounds had been modern.
I couldn’t fathom how anyone would voluntarily listen to such awful tones, and curiously looked to see the passenger.
With the sun reflecting on the windshield it was impossible to see him, and so I waited until the door finally opened and the largest male I’d ever seen stepped out, slamming the door shut with such scary aggression that I took a step back.
We were standing apart and taking each other in. The man was huge, with wide shoulders that were exposed in the tight t-shirt he was wearing. My eyes blinked like a camera shooting picture after picture – trying to capture the oddity in front of me. His dark unruly hair stopped at his jaw and wasn’t braided or finely combed like the men I was used to seeing. Looking deeply frustrated he scratched his long beard, muttering words that I never thought I would hear in real life.
It was certainly English, but from the forbidden category, and yet he stood there, speaking those words so blatantly.
“What the fuck is this?” As he moved closer, the sun reflected on a thin silvery scar running up to his right temple, and even if he hadn’t been scrunching up his face so much, his features were much too sharp and masculine for him to be considered pretty. This man had the most piercing gray eyes I’d ever seen, and they were locked on me with a hostility that made me forget to breathe for a second. I’d never felt so intimidated in my life.
Stand your ground. Show no fear! I chanted internally and forced myself to step forward and meet him with my hands outstretched.
“May peace surround you.”
He jerked when I took his giant hands and looked into his eyes as a proper greeting required.
We didn’t make it to the ten-second mark, because the large man spoke up. “Why are you staring at me and holding my hands?” he asked.
It rattled me a bit. “It’s considered a formal greeting.”
“I don’t like it,” he said and pulled his hands back to place them on his hips. “What I want to know is, who the fuck are you?”
My eyes widened at his rudeness, but I stayed calm. “I’m Christina Sanders, the archeologist your ruler has asked for.”
He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “But you’re a girl!
The condescension in his last word lit a roaring fire in the pit of my stomach. Never had I been so offended, and I didn’t care that I had to lean my head back when I looked the big ogre straight in the eye again. “Do I look like a child to you?”
“No.”
“How would you feel if I called you a boy?”
He raised an eyebrow challengingly.
“Exactly. So, don’t call me a girl. I’ve been a woman for more than a decade and will not be belittled by you.”
“How old are you?” he asked, and this time there was less disgust and more curiosity in his voice.
“Thirty-one. How old are you?”
“Why?” He narrowed his eyes. “Who wants to know?”
“I do. It’s called small talk and it’s used to get to know one another,” I lectured him.
He gave me a grumpy stare and looked down to my suitcases. “What’s this?”
“That’s my suitcases. We use them to transport items.”
“Don’t be a smartass, I know what a suitcase is.”
I gaped at him. I’d known him for less than three minutes and he had used more profane words than I’d used in my entire lifetime.
“You can’t talk to me that way!” I said firmly.
“What way?”
“That thing you just called me, it’s offensive.”
“Yeah, you already told me that you’re not a girl.”
I shook my head. “I meant you calling me a smart-you-know-what. I know what that word means.”
The ogre rolled his eyes and walked back toward the large drone. “This is going to be a fucking nightmare,” he muttered while I stood paralyzed. I had naïvely thought I was prepared for the worst, and yet I had underestimated how different it was to study something from a safe distance compared to interacting with it up close.
“Are you coming or what?” my guide shouted from the black drone.
“Excuse me, but you haven’t introduced yourself,” I reminded him.
He had a hand on the door. “My name is Alexander Boulder – now get in the fucking drone, woman.”
I crossed my arms and pushed my jaw out, letting him know that I would not be disrespected like this.
“What’s wrong now?” he asked with exasperation.
“You’re being most unkind to me and I don’t appreciate your constant use of curse words.”
From the way his knuckles changed color to white, I knew he was squeezing the door hard and suspected he was counting to ten in his head.
“I also need help with my luggage, so could you be a gentleman and load them into the drone?”
“Why? I thought you women were all so independent and strong,” he mocked me.
“We are,” I said quickly. “And we’re also very keen to help others. In this case, I’m asking you to help me.” While talking, I moved toward him and my luggage followed me.
Alexander opened a hatch and bent down to take the first suitcase.
“Careful with that one, it’s very heavy,” I warned.
He snorted and lifted the suitcase as if it weighed nothing. I picked up the lightest of my heavy bags, but his drone was too tall and the luggage area much too high for me to reach.
“Could you please help me?” I asked while struggling with the heavy thing.
He did, and judging from his smug smile of satisfaction, he was clearly amused by his superior strength.
“Thank you,” I said when all my luggage was loaded aboard the drone.
“Let’s go,” was his reply and I noted again that he had no manners. I had greeted him kindly when we first met, wishing him peace, but he didn’t return the greeting. Now I’d told him thank you and he didn’t acknowledge that either. So, it was true then; the Nmen were primitive and rude and didn’t have a civilized way of interacting. But then again, they grew up without mothers or female influence, and didn’t know any better.
“What am I to call you?” I asked when we sat in the drone and it took off.
“You can call me Boulder,” he said and that’s when I realized that he was maneuvering the drone around.
“Do you control the drone?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s fun.”
“But who taught you how to?” I stared at the steering panel with the large screen.
He gave me a sideways glance. “A friend.”
“But don’t you have automated drones?”
“Of course; this one is a hybrid. I can choose to steer or not.”
“But that can’t be legal, can it?” I asked skeptically.
“Sure, why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because of accidents. Humans get distracted and make mistakes. In traffic that’s often fatal. We haven’t allowed manually controlled vehicles for hundreds of years.”
“You don’t have any manual vehicles?”
“No. Well, technically yes, but only in amusement parks. There’s one called The Ranch not far from where I live. You can ride horses and drive old-fashioned cars. It’s really fun!”
“Amusement parks,” he mumbled under his breath. “Do you have amusement parks showing off how men used to look, too?”
I gathered my hands in my lap. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t have any real men left, so do you see us men as something historical too?”
“No, of course not. It’s true we don’t have as many men as we would like, but since the toxic war ended we’ve gone from a ratio of twenty-six women per man to fourteen women per man. That’s a significant improvement, wouldn’t you say?”
“Hmm.” He grunted, keeping his gaze out the windshield.
“You have women here too, right?”
“A few.”
“How many are a few?”
“Maybe one for every hundred thousand men. Overall, we have maybe a hundred left in the Northlands.
“I wonder what it’s like to grow up as a woman in this part of the world,” I thought out loud.
Boulder narrowed his eyes as if I had offended him. “At least we let our women be women. You witches castrate your men.”
I answered in a high-pitched voice “We do not castrate our men! How would we be able to grow in numbers if we did? Where do you hear such nonsense?”
“Everybody knows how you enslave men and make them into little puppets.”
“What are you talking about?” I almost laughed at the absurdity.
“I’ve met men from your part of the world and they look and act like women.”
“So? That’s the modern man for you. They have evolved into caring, emotionally mature beings with no need to classify themselves as a gender,” I lectured him and pushed a strand of my brown hair back.
“That’s just a fancy way of saying that you’re raising your boys to be fucking pussies.”
I clasped a hand to my mouth and gasped out in shock.
For the next twenty-minutes we didn’t speak a word. It was clear to me that he was as judgmental toward my part of the world as I was toward his.
“You’re staying at the Gray Manor,” Boulder informed me. “It’s where our ruler Khan Aurelius lives.”
I snickered a bit and looked out the window.
“What’s so funny to you?” he said grumpily.
“Your names. They’re all so pompous.”
“You have a problem with our names now?”
“No, it’s just funny to me that you would choose to name your boys after great emperors, kings, generals, and gods.”
“Why is that funny?
I turned to him and smiled. “Honestly, who does that?”
“You would rather we gave our boys boring loser names?”
“No, but just normal names.”
“Normal to who? You?” he asked dryly.
“Seriously though, Khan Aurelius?”
“Yes, after Genghis Khan and Marcus Aurelius, some of the greatest men who ever lived.”
“I know who he’s named after; I’m a history professor and archeologist,” I reminded him. “I suppose you’re named after Alexander the Great?”
He nodded with an expression of self-importance. “A name has power – if you tell a wolf it’s a chicken it loses strength.”
I laughed then. Long and hard. “How exactly would you tell a wolf that it’s a chicken?”
“Bad example,” he admitted. “But everyone knows that words have power; why else would you object to me calling you a girl?”
That shut me up. He was right. Being called a girl had felt demeaning. I was a grown woman and equal to a man. A girl equaled a boy.
“We honor our boys by naming them after great men because it’s a reminder that those great men were once boys too. Every boy has a destiny, and for some of these boys it could be to grow up and rule the world.”
I swung my head toward him. “The world?”
“I meant the Northlands,” he added quickly.
His words confirmed to me that men were naturally inclined to seek power.
“And what kind of rulers would they be?”
“Firm rulers.”
“What kind of ruler is Khan Aurelius?”
Boulder seemed to think about it. “You’ll meet him soon enough and then you can make up your own mind. He’s excited to meet you, but I should warn you.”
“About what?”
“We were all expecting a man.”
“But Councilwoman Pearl said she sent a message. Didn’t you get it?”
“Yes, but it was of bad quality and we mistook your name as being Christian Sanders.
I tilted my head. “Christian, now that’s a nice name for a boy – much better than Khan Aurelius.”
Alexander shook his head. “I wouldn’t say that to his face if I were you.”