Chapter VIII: A Bleak New World

With a metallic thud they hit the floor of this new destination. Strange, Chrono thought, this isn't anything like Guardia castle… The floor was rusty, but not too dirty. RUSTY? Chrono bolted upright, throwing Nadia off his back. "Oaff!"

"What the – "

"Where are we now?" Lucca groaned, picking herself up and brushing the dust… and rust… off her shirt.

"I thought you would know that… you brought us here!"

"Chrono, don't start…"

"Sorry. So, where are we?"

"The appropriate question would be 'when are we'." She raised her right arm triumphantly at the structure they were standing in. Apparently they were in a sort of dome – glass, or some other material… transparent, whatever it was. Funny, though, the sky seemed very gray through the bubble, but the three of them thought it was just the illusion of looking through a dirty lens. The pale light illuminated the platform on which they were standing – a flimsy card of old metal, barely connected to the rest of the structure by some wiring and pipes. And, about forty feet below was the main floor – also very unforgiving metal. "This! This is the future!"

"No, I would never have guessed."

Nadia shakily stood. "What happened?"

"Same as last time," Chrono offered. "We were thrown into a portal and got ourselves into a big mess that we will now have to spend a few days getting out of."

"No! This wasn't supposed to happen at all!" Lucca stamped her foot, ignoring the crunch of rusty metal. "We aren't supposed to be here at all!"

"Then why don't we go back?"

"Chrono, are you nuts?" Nadia shrieked. "We'll be killed!"

"Not necessarily," Lucca pointed out. "Remember how we had been in the past for days, yet when we returned it was as if we had hardly left?"

Chrono and Nadia exchanged knowing, yet puzzled, glances. "So you're saying they might all be gone?"

"Maybe. We could risk it."

"What happens if they're still there?" Nadia asked.

Chrono answered. "We're dead."

"Maybe we shouldn't risk it then," Nadia sat again.

"Well, if you hadn't shown up, then everything would have turned out okay!" Lucca fumed.

"What? What do you mean, Lucca?"

"Chrono, we were supposed to have gotten away!"

"Wait! Wait! Everyone please calm down!" Chrono paced in between the two girls. "So, then, Lucca. What was supposed to happen?"

She faltered a little and ventured, "er… why don't we sit down?"

"Sure." Crunch.

"Well, for starters, we're supposed to be in the past."

Nadia wrinkled her brow. "Guardia? You mean where I was mistaken for Queen Leene?"

"Yeah. That one… except you wouldn't be there!"

Chrono stood up, his hands extended toward the two girls. "All right. We've established that Nadia was not supposed to be here. Why not?"

"Because we would have gotten away!"

"You said that already."

"Well then, let me finish!" Chrono sat. "I ran away from home – " she faltered a moment. "Anyway, the intent was for me to pick up Chrono at the castle. I take it Benny sprung you like he was supposed to."

"I think so."

"Good. Well, Corny was then supposed to meet you and the other guy, the look-alike…"

"Fritz?"

"Right… some other guy and then you two would be taken out of the castle, seen by no one. The decoy would go home under escort, and you and I would escape to the gate at the fair and go back to the past until things cooled down."

Chrono and Nadia traded stares. "What?"

"The only problem now is how we're all going to get back home."

"I would say that's a problem."

Lucca put her chin in her fist. "Well, we could go back through this portal, but, as we all said, we could come out and be killed. Or…" she pushed up her glasses. "We could look for another portal out of here."

Nadia stood up and brushed the rust off her dress. "I like that one better. But, how would we ever find a portal around here?"

"Oh, that's easy. We just find a tracking device around here and set it to look for this energy… thing. Let's give it a name. How about 'blue matter.' Anyway, we'll set it to look for blue matter. We should receive several results, although most of them will be misfires or generally unstable portions of space and all that. We'll just have to look for a denser area. It's all simple, really."

"Of course," Chrono muttered. "Why didn't I think of it."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Now that the plan was made, the trio resigned themselves to figuring out how they were going to get from their platform to the ground below. Eventually they realized there was a sort of makeshift walkway along one of the pipes (cooling system, Lucca explained. Chrono thought it was doing a marvelous job.), which led to a very unstable looking ladder along the far wall. Chrono and Lucca easily climbed down, but they had to coax Nadia along, as her dress had a tendency to snag on the rivets in the ladder, and Chrono was obliged to look away for a moment or two.

"First thing's first," she said once her feet were on solid metal. "I'm finding some new clothes."

"What's wrong with the dress?"

"Very funny, Chrono."

Lucca was already on the other side of the room. "How do these doors open?" She pointed to the foreboding panel on the wall. "No knobs, no buttons… maybe it's motion activated."

Chrono and Nadia caught up, their steps crunching across the dome. "Right. Whatever."

"Let's see, here…" she stepped toward it. "Nothing. Boy, that's a really creepy crest." The three of them gave a quick shudder at the golden object protruding from the door – some kind of head. "Never mind then. I guess we'll try the door at that end – the big plate thing." With a scrape, she turned on her heels and crossed to the opposite wall.

Just then, the plate split in two and slid into the wall, revealing a disheveled young man covered in brown robes. His dark brown hair was uncovered and uncombed, and he looked like he hadn't shaved since the invention of trousers, which, by the way, he did not have. His robes were long enough to cover his knees, his ankles, his feet, and some of the dead roaches littering the floor. One hand held some sort of burning stick ("a flare" Lucca tried to explain to the others), and the other a heavy metal pipe.

"Rats," the man muttered. "They always seem to come from here and – " he stopped dead in his tracks. "What the h – "

"Hello… there," Lucca ventured, trying to smile.

"This'll be good…" he swung his pipe back and forth. "How did you get here… and what clothes you have… lady," he gestured toward Nadia with what she hoped was a welcome. Suddenly his expression changed. "Come on," he smiled. Nobody moved. "Get over here! Everyones will be real surprised! What you waiting for?"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Much to everyone's relief, the strange man turned out not to be deranged, homicidal, or even unfriendly, once he had introduced himself. "Pat, they say. They also say it's short for 'Patty,' but I won't believe until I see writing!" He pulled them down one hallway. "We're just going upstairs. Not far. Just, we keep gettin' rats in that place. Big 'ol rats - size of your head. Don't know how, but they're in there a lot. Well, once, we found a guy – Lane's spring, sweet but stupid. Sorry to scare you or anything."

Finally he came to a stop at another door. After pressing a few buttons (Lucca watched intently), the door slid open rather noisily and the four of them stepped into a very dark, small room.

"Sorry." Pat chuckled a bit. "The light's been out in this elevator for a couple days."

"Elevator?" Lucca perked up.

"What's that he said?" Chrono and Nadia inquired before they staggered back as the machine whipped to life. "Whoa!"

"Just one floor, won't be long."

At the next stop, Pat held the door open for them. "Come on. They're almost around the corner."

"Does the power go out often?" Lucca began.

"More or less. Doesn't take too long to fix it. We just have to get someone to go down to the computers to fix things… sometimes."

"Computers?"

"Yes… computers. Say, aren't you cold? You're wearing barely anything."

"Well, to tell the truth," Nadia grinned, "we are a little chilled."

"Yeah," Lucca continued. "what's keeping this place so cold?"

"Oh, sorry. The cooling system messed up. It's always cold here. Don't worry. With a couple layers, you'll do fine. Here, through this door." Pat punched a few more digits under the curious eyes of Lucca. – screech!

About a hundred more Pats met the group's eyes. Numerous people gathered in the center of a large, low room, covered in mounds of cloaks. But it wasn't the clothes that identified them; it was the look on their faces, the look of despair – the look of someone on the elevator to hell, watching the world go to heaven above him. Chrono's heart fell just looking at them, though he wanted to believe their attitudes were part of the constant lack of heat and light.

"Welcome to our family." Pat gestured broadly.

Nadia bit her lip. "Big family."

"Well, when you live so close together, you become family." Pat pushed the three of them toward the huddle, where they were met by mixed reactions. Most of the "family" stared vacantly as if looking through the newcomers. "Hey, everybody! Guess what I found wandering around!"

One of the residents, an old woman, stood bravely and held up a hand. After a few seconds, one more stood, and before long everyone was standing, sure that these strangely dressed people wouldn't hurt a flea. "Er…" Lucca ventured to speak. "Hello… people. I – " she turned to Chrono "I don't know what to say."

"That's new."

"Oh, stop!" she hissed.

Pat broke the uneasy silence. "Let's sit down."

"Yes, let's."

Soon the three of them sat cross-legged while a hundred eager faces surrounded them.

"Who are you, anyway?" a young voice piped up.

Lucca beat the others to the punch. "We're… travelers. My name is Lucca. This is Chrono, and this is Nadia."

"Travelers? Where from?" another voice chimed in.

"Um… far away?" That puzzled them for a moment. Long enough for Lucca to pass the floor to someone else. "While we're here, why don't you tell us… well, where we are now."

"You don't know?"

"Well, no."

Someone raised a hand. A middle-aged man with slightly graying hair. "Please. If they don't know, they don't know." Then, to the three: "This is Trann. It was a city once. So we were told – hundreds of years ago."

"Trann?" Lucca scratched her chin.

"Yes," the man continued. "I'm sorry the place is in bad condition, but we only have a little power a day…"

"Oh, that's all right. We understand…"

"You can stay as long as you like."

"Oh thanks." Lucca tried to smile. "So, uh… this may sound stupid… but, um… what's today?"

The man squinted a little. "Today? It's hard to tell now…"

Lucca left it at that.

"Do you need to rest?"

"What?"

"A time to rest? Surely if you are travelers, you're tired. At least your friend is…" he pointed to Nadia, who jerked herself upright and rubbed her eyes. "Our Entertron is just in that little room over there."

"Entertron?"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Entertron was a hefty looking device, spewing hundreds of wires that even Lucca couldn't make sense of. Its shape reminded them of a plastic egg being eaten by a metallic barnacle, and it would occasionally let loose a silent scream with a flash of blue light. They were all slightly unnerved just looking at it, so when someone told them they were supposed to actually get inside and jab themselves with little needles… well, they experienced some reasonable anxiety.

Of course Lucca was the first to try the new device, and for once she was not thrilled to be the brave, scientific one. Less than ten seconds later, though, she returned, rested as ever. Chrono and Nadia hesitantly followed, and once everyone was finished, they couldn't imagine how anyone could be frightened by an Entertron ever again.

"Feeling better?" the older man asked.

"Well – yes…"

"Good, good."

Lucca stepped forward. "Don't any of you guys, you know, sleep?"

The older man thought for a moment before responding. "Sleep? Yes, sometimes, but we never get as much rest as a trip to the Entertron. Now, if only someone had invented a device to take away our hunger, too." He chuckled to himself.

Nadia and Chrono traded glances. "No food?"

The man nodded. "Hardly. We have enough to survive…" He hung his head for a moment, then pursed his lips together, refusing to say more. Still, they all heard enough. They shared a moment of silence, either out of respect, or because they really could not think of anything worthwhile to say.

Finally, Lucca worked up the courage to ask, "So, what exactly happened here?"

"Hm?"

"I mean, why… what happened to this building? Why do you live here if it doesn't function properly, and if you are starving?"

The older man stared right through Lucca, unblinking. Slowly, he cracked a smile – the type of smile an adult would give a small child before saying "I'll tell you when you're older." But instead, the man said nothing and simply walked around the corner to join his family.

"Some future," Chrono muttered to Lucca.