Alex And Liz In Wonderland
Chapter 57
LVII
Max, Liz, Alex, Isabel, and Spaceport Director, Kesvyn had been watching the transmissions received from the lost Antarian space ship and discussing dimensional theories when Kyle walked in with a broad smile on his face. Max knew instantly that whatever Kyle had to tell them, it was probably going to be interesting, but even he could not have guessed what Kyle was grinning about.
"You've got visitors, Max."
"Who is it, Kyle?"
"I think you'd better see for yourself."
Kyle turned and motioned to someone to come in, and Michael and Maria walked through the door followed by two other people.
Max stood up, and his mouth opened, but he found himself momentarily at a loss for words. He looked at Liz, who was standing beside him… then at Alex. If Max appeared to be shocked, though, Liz and Alex's reactions were of stunned disbelief.
"Alex Whitman and Liz… uh… Evans…" Kyle said with a wry grin, obviously loving the reactions the new arrivals had elicited from his friends… "I want you to meet Alex Whitman and Liz Parker."
For several moments, there was only silence. The younger Liz and Alex stared in awe at the walls, the ceilings, the floors, and the decorations of the palace… then they looked at the two people standing in front of them. These people appeared to be a few years older… but there was no doubting who they were.
"Oh… Oh! I'm so sorry," Liz Evans said, suddenly realizing that someone needed to say something. "I uh, I guess we must all seem like idiots standing here with our mouths hanging open. It's just that… that…"
"Hello," Liz Parker said, extending her hand politely and swallowing. Liz Evans took Liz Parker's hand and shook it… and both smiled.
"Something tells me we've got a very interesting evening ahead of us," Liz Evans said. "Why don't you two have a seat and make yourselves… at home. We aren't usually so unsocial. We're just all kind of in shock right now."
Liz Parker nodded. "Yeah, I'm right in there with you. Are you… Are you…?"
Liz Evans nodded. "Yeah… I guess I'm you. It looks like it anyway… And I presume you would be Alex Whitman," she said, extending her hand to the younger Alex.
Still at a loss for words, Alex nodded and took her hand.
"I guess this is your, uh… doppelganger, or something," Liz Evans said, indicating the older Alex. "This is his wife, Isabel… and this is my husband, Max… or King Zan, as he insists I call him."
Alex looked at Max in surprise.
"She's kidding," Max said.
Liz giggled. "Well, he is the king… but since I'm married to him, he usually lets me just call him 'Your Majesty,'" she said, giving the younger couple a wink.
Realizing that she was trying to break the ice and make them feel more at ease, the younger Alex and Liz seemed to relax a bit, and they smiled.
"Should I… uh… call you… King Zan or Your Majesty," Alex asked hesitantly.
"Yeah, those will do," Max said with a trace of a smile. Liz slapped him playfully on the arm.
"You can call him Max… and you can call me Liz. That's Isabel and Alex over there, as I said before… and this is Kesvyn. Kesvyn's the Director of the Spaceport… and our friend. It appears that you've already met Michael and Maria.
"Hi," the younger Alex said, raising his hand. Liz Parker smiled and added a "Hi" of her own.
"Sit down," Max said, pointing at a sofa. "That's a royal order."
Liz and Alex sat down together on the sofa.
"I guess the first thing we… the first thing I need to know," Max said "…is how you got here. The second thing would be where you came from?"
"We're not sure," Alex said sincerely. "Liz had these orbs, and we wanted to contact Maria, because she's been missing, and instead of contacting Maria, we wound up here."
"Well, actually, we did find Maria," Liz corrected, gesturing toward Michael and Maria. "We were transported to a beach where Maria was… only it wasn't our Maria. I mean, it is Maria but… you know…"
Max and Liz Evans both nodded. "The orbs seem to have powers that we still have not discovered," Max said. "We know they can be used for communication… and in some cases, for healing. And now, it appears that you were able to transport yourselves here to Antar with them."
"Antar…" Alex repeated, incredulous. Hearing it still made him shake his head in disbelief. "How did we get all the way across the galaxy to some planet with an ocean that looks like… lite beer? And what are you doing here, Max?"
"I live here," Max said. "It's my planet."
"Well, yeah, I know that," Alex said. "But when we left Earth, you were missing…"
"Wait, you said that Maria was missing," Liz said.
Alex nodded. "Well, you see, Maria, Michael, Isabel, and Max were shot by these Army sharpshooters. Liz was, too. The Army claimed the sharpshooters were drunk and acting on their own, but we never believed it."
"When did this happen," Liz Evans asked.
"At graduation," Liz Parker said.
Liz Evans put her hand over her mouth and gasped, remembering her own premonitions and the close call she and the others had had at their own graduation.
"And the others… Are they…?"
"Supposedly dead," Liz Parker answered.
"They were dead," Alex insisted. "I was there. I saw them. Well, Isabel and Maria were dead anyway. Michael and Max escaped on Michael's bike. They were shot as they escaped and were found dead at the edge of town where the bike crashed."
"Found by the Army or FBI, I assume," the older Alex said.
The younger Alex nodded. "There were funerals for all of them, but just the other day, Sheriff Valenti opened the graves and found out that the bodies in the coffins were dummies… made out of latex and paraffin. And Liz had a vision of Maria trying to contact her."
"Maria?" Liz repeated, surprised, looking at Maria and Michael. Michael shrugged.
"Well," the younger Liz said, "Maria did say something about Isabel needing to help her."
"Why didn't Isabel do it herself," Liz Evans asked. "Isabel could have dreamwalked you."
"I don't know," Liz Parker replied.
"I must have been injured," Isabel said, placing herself in the place of the younger Isabel. "I'm sure that I would have dreamwalked you if I had been able to and if Maria needed help. Do you know where they were when she tried to contact you?"
Liz Parker shook her head. "I think they're on the Army base somewhere."
Max paled visibly. "I hope not," he said, remembering his own experiences in the White Room.
"Alex said you were shot, too, Liz," Isabel said. "I take it, you weren't seriously hurt?"
"She was shot in the head and spine," Alex answered for her. "Liz was in a coma for over four months. No one knew if she would survive. Since she came out of the coma, she's been paralyzed."
"Omigod! The visions Maya's been having!" Liz Evans exclaimed. "Maya saw a young woman who looked like me in a wheelchair, and she thought she was in some kind of danger. She said that a man in a tree wanted to shoot her, but Jim Valenti cut the tree down and chased the bad man off."
"Yeah! That really happened!" Liz Parker said. "I knew Sheriff Valenti had that chainsaw in his hand for a reason! He said that he confiscated it from some illegal loggers in the park. He's been protecting me. He won't say so, but I know it."
Liz suddenly realized that, for someone who was supposedly paralyzed, she looked the picture of good health.
"Oh! Yeah, I know… I'm standing up… I really was in a wheelchair, though. I don't know what happened. When Alex and I used the orbs and we appeared here, I wasn't paralyzed anymore. Do you think the orbs could have healed me?"
Max nodded then slowly shook his head. "The orbs probably didn't heal you. They teleported your essence here and reassembled you the way your DNA says that you are supposed to be assembled."
"So… if I go back… I'll still be paralyzed?"
"Maybe," Max said. "Or maybe not."
"You could heal her, Max," Maria said.
Max nodded. "If there was anything wrong with her, I could… but there's nothing wrong with her now. The orbs reassembled her perfectly. The question is, when she goes back, will she be reassembled according to her DNA plan or the way the orbs found her? And why didn't the orbs reassemble her the way they found her when they brought her here? There's a lot that we don't know about the orbs."
"You could check her out, Max," the older Alex said. "Maybe you could tell something."
Max stood up and walked over to Liz then placed his hands on her back. As he stood there, the others noticed that his face showed surprise at first, then concern. Max felt Liz's arms then picked her wrist up and checked for the pulse. Then he picked up Alex's wrist and checked for his pulse. Finally, Max sat back down.
"You gonna tell us what that was all about, Max?" the older Alex asked.
"What do you mean," Max said.
"I mean that look on your face. Something wasn't what you were expecting. Even I could see that."
"I don't know," Max said, shaking his head. "I'm not a doctor or a scientist. I'm probably not qualified to speculate."
"You're all we've got, Max," Isabel said. "Varec's not here. [b]Speculate![/b]"
"What is it?" the younger Liz asked.
Max sighed. "You don't have a pulse or a heartbeat… Neither of you do."
Alex picked up his left hand with his right hand and felt for a pulse, then he tried to feel the pulse in the carotid artery in his neck. "There's gotta be a pulse, Max. We wouldn't be alive if there was no pulse. You can't live with no heartbeat… Can you?"
"Not that I know of," Max said.
Not finding his own pulse, Alex felt Liz's wrist. Then he looked at Max. "Oh, sh*t! I think we're dead!"
"You're not dead," Max said. "I don't understand what's going on, but I can vouch that you're definitely alive… heartbeat or not."
"How can they not have a heartbeat and still be alive," Isabel asked. "Maybe you just couldn't feel it, Max."
"No, No… Wait…" Michael said, thinking. "Suppose they aren't really here."
"Of course they're here," Isabel said. "You see them. I see them. They're sitting right there on the sofa." Isabel touched the younger Alex and Liz on the arm and face. "They're here," Michael. You can't feel a ghost. I can feel Liz and Alex. They're as real as you and me!"
"Maybe not," Michael said. "Well, yes and no, actually. Suppose that the orbs reassembled a duplicate set… a copy… of them here, but the original set is still on Earth."
"That's ridiculous," Isabel said. "You don't make copies of people. Human minds can barely think for one body. I don't mean that as an insult, but humans don't even have special powers… Their minds certainly aren't developed enough to control two bodies at once."
"Maybe they don't have to," Michael said. "Suppose their real bodies back on Earth are, like, in a coma or something, but their minds are here… sort of taking a vacation… in these other bodies."
"Michael, you need help." Isabel said.
"Don't mind Michael," she said to the younger Alex, adding with a tone of sarcasm, "He's just swallowed too much of our 'Lite Beer' Sea lately! I thought it looked like the beach was getting bigger!"
"No, No, Isabel," Max said. "It makes sense really. Think about it. The orbs could transport a DNA pattern and a memory core much more easily and efficiently than they could two whole human bodies. Michael may just have something there."
"Uh, guys," the younger Alex interrupted. "I hate to just butt in here, but since we're talking about Liz and me, could somebody tell us what this all means?"
"I wish I could, Alex," Max said. "If Michael is right, though… and we really aren't certain about that… It's only a theory… then your real bodies could still be on Earth, probably lying comatose where you left them, waiting for your return."
"Yeah," Michael said… "So enjoy these while you have them, 'cause they may be disposables. They may just be on loan for your holiday, so use 'em and abuse 'em. Have some fun!"
"Michael!" Isabel exclaimed.
"Just kidding, Iz! Don't get in a frit!"
"Talk about tiny minds," Isabel fumed.
"Okay, I get it," the younger Alex said, "but wouldn't I still have to have a heartbeat… and be breathing," he added, holding his hand under his nose.
"I would have thought so," Max said. "But it's possible that your bodies back on Earth are breathing and beating for you, and these bodies are… are… well, I hate to use Michael's term, but… disposables… You know, just temporary for the time you're here."
"So… what happens if we're still here when the expiration date… or the warranty… runs out?" Alex asked.
Isabel shook her head. "You see! You see what you guys did?"
"Well, it's a reasonable question, Iz," Michael said.
"Oh!" Isabel huffed, waving her hand. "Alex, if the orbs brought you… that is, your essences or whatever… here and created some kind of temporary bodies for them… I'm sure that when these bodies… when they… when they… you know…"
"Say it, Isabel," Michael said, with an 'I-told-you-so' grin. "Say 'expire.'"
"I was going to say, when they are no longer needed…" Isabel said. "You will be returned to your regular bodies on Earth."
"Maybe you're all being concerned needlessly," Max said to Michael and Isabel as well as to the younger Alex and Liz. "I think it's likely that the bodies you have now will last as long as they're needed… however long that may be. The orbs aren't limited by our conceptions or limitations. These bodies could have unlimited life spans… at least they may last as long as your real bodies on Earth still survive to support them."
"That makes sense," Michael said. Isabel nodded.
"These bodies have fewer moving parts," Michael said, "so maybe they won't wear out as fast."
"Michael!" Isabel exclaimed, glaring at him again.
"What?"
"Okay, Liz Evans said. "If that's out of the way, can we move on to something else here? Liz… Oh, Wow! It's hard to address myself by my own name! I feel like I'm looking in a mirror talking to myself and somebody needs to lock me up!"
Everyone laughed.
Liz tried again. "Liz… Maya said that she saw Max in one of her visions, and he was in a box… a coffin, I think, and he fell out. Do you know what that was about?"
Liz Parker nodded. "When Sheriff Valenti wanted to open the coffins and he already had Max's dug up, Judge Lewis showed up and blocked him with a cease and desist order, but Kyle pulled on the ropes holding the coffin up, and the coffin fell and broke open. That's when the fake body rolled out."
"That must be what Maya saw," Liz Evans said.
"I had visions, too, Liz Parker said. "I saw your Golden Sea… Oh, and Alex, it's salt water, not lite beer."
"Damn, now you tell me… after I came all the way across the galaxy to get here!"
Everyone laughed again.
"And I know the names of all your children," Liz Parker said.
Liz Evans seemed shocked by this information. "You know their names?"
Liz Parker nodded. "I thought I was seeing my own future or something and they were my children. I felt like I was right here sometimes."
"You must have been seeing through Maya," Liz Evans said. "Her ability to see and communicate across the universe sometimes seems to leave her open to a sort of back flow of information. Some of the Antarians Too said that they had had occasional brief flashes of Antar, too."
"After we found out that the body in Max's grave was a fake… and that the others were all fakes too…" Liz Parker said, "we started wondering where the real bodies were. We're pretty sure they were taken to the Army base. I had a flash of Max calling me when I touched his ring. And later I had the vision of Maria asking for our help… so I believe that all of them could still be alive. But I think they're in danger, and one or more of them may possibly be badly hurt. I haven't been able to make a move without Judge Lewis showing up and trying to stop me or convince me that I should leave Roswell or that I should allow myself to be committed to an insane asylum he wants to send me to somewhere in Arizona."
"Judge Lewis," the older Alex mumbled. "A real friend he turned out to be!"
Kyle, standing beside Alex, nodded. "I seem to remember saying those exact words to Dad once… exactly! When Judge Lewis had Dad fired."
"So is anyone looking for Max and Maria… and Michael and Isabel…" Liz Evans asked.
"The Sheriff has been helping all he could. And I think Amy went to the base to try to find Maria herself. When we left, she still hadn't come back."
Max winced. "I hope that's not because of what my worst fears are suggesting. I know Amy. She won't give up. They'll have to shoot her to stop her… and they will."
"Mom would give them a fight," Maria said. "She wouldn't go down easy. She may not look formidable, but you have to know Mom. She probably could take on that whole base by herself… if the right incentive was there."
"To find you?" Isabel asked.
Maria nodded. "Yeah… to find me. I hope she's okay."
"I'm sure she is," Michael said soothingly. "We probably should be worrying more about the poor soldiers she meets up with."
Maria laughed and nodded, but deep inside, she was worried about Amy, even knowing that this Amy was not the mother that she knew here on Antar… and that if anything happened to this Amy it would not affect her mother here in any way.
"Do you have saber tooth tigers here," Liz Parker asked out of the blue.
Liz Evans laughed. "You saw Jim's pawgor? That must have given you a pause!"
Liz Parker smiled. "I saw a saber tooth tiger playing with a little boy."
"That would be Danyy," Liz Evans said. "Danyy is Jim and Kathleen's son. He can talk to animals."
"Jim and Kathleen?" Liz Parker asked.
Liz Evans nodded. "Kathleen Topolsky."
Liz Parker looked shocked. "Topolsky? Here? She's working against us! Topolsky is FBI!"
"She was," Liz Evans said. "She's not anymore… ours isn't anyway. Kathleen was betrayed by her own people and locked up and tortured for a long time after she tried to help us. They made up a story that she had been killed in a fire at an insane asylum…"
"Like Judge Lewis wants to put me in," Liz Parker said.
Liz Evans shuddered involuntarily, wondering if it could be a coincidence. "Don't let him do that," she said to the younger Liz. "Fight it!"
Liz Parker nodded. "I always thought that the Sheriff would marry Amy DeLuca. They seemed to have a thing for each other."
"Well, our Jim married Kathleen," Isabel said. "And Amy married Varec, a young Antarian scientist. Both of them could not be happier. But if you're from an alternate dimension, as we think you may be, then there's no guarantee that things will happen the same way with your Jim and Amy. They could wind up marrying each other."
Liz Parker smiled. "I have this feeling about that."
A staff person came into the room and whispered to Liz Evans, and Liz nodded then stood up.
"Dinner is ready. If everyone would like to head for the dining room, we can continue this conversation there." Turning to Max, she added, "After we eat, I'd like to take Liz to Kyyks and get her something to wear. We don't know how long they may be here. Would you like to come, too, Alex?"
"Uh, well… yeah, sure, I guess."
"Or I could take you out to Jim's place to see his pawgor," the older Alex said.
Alex brightened then looked at Liz Parker.
"No… that's okay. I'll stay with Liz. I probably should get another shirt and some pants so I don't have to wear the same ones all the time. Maybe we can go see the paguar together later. We really need to get back to Earth as soon as possible, though… if we can figure out how to do that. The others still need us."
The older Alex smiled understandingly. "It's called a Pawgor," he said, correcting his younger self's pronunciation.
Max pulled out seats for Liz Parker and for his wife, and both sat down at the table.
"you've got to be twice the gentleman today, huh, Max," Liz said with a smile. "It's good for you."
Max smiled but didn't reply.
"This looks really good," Alex said, looking longingly at the food on his plate and the bowls of other foods set out to choose from. "It smells good, too! For some reason, I'm really starved."
"Me, too," Liz agreed.
"Are your bodies made to eat," Michael asked. "I mean, you don't breathe or have a heartbeat. Can you… you know?"
Isabel's head sank slowly down onto the table, and she covered her face with her hands and moaned.
Alex looked at the piece of yegg steak on his fork and slowly put it back down.
Liz seemed unsure what to do with her food. "Uh, can I be excused for a moment? I… I really need to… I think I forgot to wash my hands."
"Right down the hall on the left," Isabel said without raising her head. "You'll see it."
"Thanks," Liz said, standing up and leaving the table.
"Michael," Isabel mumbled under her breath, "If the end of this day arrives… and you're still alive, it'll be a frikkin' miracle."
"Well, it's something they needed to know," Michael said. "I wouldn't want them to blow up like balloons and burst or something. I'd never forgive myself."
"You need to worry more about me forgiving you, Michael. Your life in the immediate future depends on it… and right now… it's not looking good. You've passed critical, you're already on life support!"
Liz returned to the table and sat back down then looked at Alex and smiled.
"Is everything… alright," Alex asked hesitantly.
Liz nodded and picked up her fork, taking a big bite of the grelliats on her plate. "Mmmmmm… This is soooo good!"
That was all Alex needed. He attacked the yegg steak, grelliats, and other foods on his plate like a starving man.
Isabel picked up her fork but seemed to hesitate as she decided whether it would look better sticking out of a grelliat or Michael's back. She gave Michael a quick stare then stabbed the grelliat and put it in her mouth.
"Hey, it was better that they know now," Michael said. "I'm only trying to look out for them."
tbc
Coming up: Liz and Alex see the town and meet the others, and everyone tries to figure out how to get them back home again… and where to send them back to, dimensionally, since they seem to have come from an alternate dimension. They also discuss plans to assist them in finding and rescuing the others. Meanwhile, in The Night The Dreams Died, Jeff Parker discovers Liz and Alex unconscious together above the CrashDown, and Judge Lewis, learning of their condition, sees a light at the end of his tunnel, with a little intervention on his part.