PLAYGROUND
“WE CAN WAIT FOR the girl to get back if you want,” Raiff said, uneasily taking the swing next to Alex in the Live Oaks Elementary School playground, just a few miles from Bishop Ranch.
Alex rocked slightly in his swing, legs scrunched up to compensate for being so close to the ground. “She has a name. It’s Sam.”
“We can wait for Sam to get back,” Raiff corrected, having lent her his phone so she could make a call to someone she thought might be the only person, on this planet anyway, who could help them.
Alex steepened his rock. “No, talk. Just know that whatever you tell me, I’m telling Sam. I’m sick of secrets, starting with the fact that I’m not human.”
“You are human.”
“But I come from another planet. Through a wormhole in space. And a doctor didn’t deliver me; you did, to my mother.”
“I’m human too, Alex, both of us as much as anybody here.”
Alex pushed harder, riding a swing for the first time in longer than he could remember. It seemed to him that Raiff was moving and he wasn’t. Raiff had the hard look of a soldier mixed somewhat with the hardscrabble appearance of a fisherman. His face, even in the sunlight, seemed bathed in shadows, all angles and ridges. His wavy hair was untamed, his eyes big and set far back in his face. The kind of guy who didn’t care what he looked like and didn’t care what other people thought, either.
“So even though I come from another planet,” Alex continued, forcing himself to focus, “I’m human because your people seeded Earth millions of years ago to create another version of the human race.”
“Remarkable experiment. The most successful the minds behind such pursuits ever encountered by far.”
“Okay, Raiff, why? Why bother seeding the planet in the first place? I mean, for what?”
“Go back to your original question.”
“I don’t remember what my original question was.”
“How can you be human and come from another planet? The human race on this planet was created directly from DNA that came from ours and allowed to develop organically, without intrusion or interference. Totally independent of us, which was deemed crucial by those who devised the project.”
“What’s all that got to do with me, with why those androids and the ash man—Shadow or whatever—killed my parents?”
“They weren’t your parents.”
“Don’t say that. The ash man said that and I cut him in half.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. But it doesn’t matter who your real parents are. What matters is why you were brought here.”
“The fact that they think I know how to stop them.”
“Because you do, somehow,” Raiff told him. “But you’re getting ahead of yourself. We need to go back to why this and other planets were seeded.”
Alex rolled his eyes again. “Fine, why were they seeded?”
“Because at a certain time the human race you grew up among would be needed.”
“Needed for what?”
“To provide things our planet could no longer provide for itself. Back there civilization developed as a single aggregate—no cultural or ethnic disparity. Everyone pretty much the same because of the placement of our landmasses in proportion to our oceans. There, like here, a caste system developed in our ancient times. The difference is we never progressed beyond that two-class system, those who have and those who do not.”
“Owners and workers.”
“Close enough,” Raiff affirmed.
“And a recipe for disaster,” Alex said, recalling the lessons learned from history. Thanks to Sam.
Now Raiff started swinging too, holding Alex’s rhythm. “How so? Tell me why.”
“Well, even a dimwit who needs a tutor like me knows that our history is full of revolutions where the workers, those who see themselves as oppressed, rise up and overthrow the owners.”
“Our world anticipated that. Steps were taken.”
“What kind of steps?”
“Population control, mostly via sterilization. Control the masses by keeping their numbers from overwhelming the ruling class. Makes revolution unthinkable and escape much more preferable.”
Alex nodded, starting to get it. “Escape to Earth, right? That’s what brought you and others here. Refugees.”
“Me and plenty of others, yes. Even though we knew they’d be coming eventually. But not for me, not even for you, necessarily.”
“Who, then?”
“Everyone else.”
Alex felt his hair bouncing about as he swung right next to Raiff. It made him remember his father telling him he needed a haircut, giving him ten dollars to get one when it cost almost five times that in the city.