Reykjavík 2103

Man sits at a coffee shop in Reykjavík in July 2103, it’s a hot summer day with temperature reaching high 26 degrees. The television is on with the latest news of war and other problems of the world, few science news are in the news report too, discovery or the 500,000 exoplanet is announced. The man shakes his head and keeps drinking his soda. It has been a long time since he got fresh soda, good 54 years since he got the last one. He was on his way out of town, out of Iceland and in fact, he was going home and that was not on Earth. His home was now far away in space. He was in fact happy to be that far away from Earth, it’s difficult to hide in a society that monitors and keeps track of everyone. As he is finishing his soda a women and a man come into the coffee shop, they are not in a good mood, specially the women that shows sign of being in a fight. Suddenly the man pushes the women in the direction of Jon, with the results that she lands on him as he wasn’t paying attention to them at all. He falls down of his chair and hits the floor hard. The man comes to the women and starts to drag her up from the floor shouting threats and curse words at her like he is crazy. Jon stands up quickly from his sudden fall.

Jon says to the man “please stop this”, the man shouts back, “this is not your business old man” he says, with that Jon answers “yes it is, the moment you pushed that women on me, it became my business. I’ll give you one option, leave her alone or you will be going out of this coffee shop in a ambulance with an IQ lower that of a potato”, Jon answers firmly. With that the man drops the women that manages to crawl under the table and hide as the coffee shop staff help her and call the police. He suddenly pulls up a gun and aims at Jon, with that Jon says “a gun. This doesn’t care me you fool”, with that the man pulls the trigger at point blank range and misses. He pulls again and misses again, with the bullet going around Jon as it is not supposed to hit him. He tries again and again. Then he tries to run away but is unable to, with that Jon says, “no, no, I did warn you about what would happen if you did this. I know that you are hoping that the police is going to save you, but I can promise you that they won’t, you see, time is a relative thing and I can tell that me and time got a ‘special’ thing going on” Jon says to the man that is now sweating and trying to run away, but his legs do not move, they are stuck and he is unable to move.

Then Jon pulls up a small device that forms into a gun shape device, then Jon says, “any special requests on how brain dead you want to be?”, the man answers, “I, I got children..”, with that Jon answers, “you really should think about your actions before then, I can assure that your kids will still mostly love you after this, but based on your behaviour I don’t know what their moms is going to tell them about you. They might go for the classic that you died in some horrible accidence or got a disease. If I where a betting man, I would say that they are going for the disease excuse, since that is the most easy one. Your kids will learn to live without you and that’s a cold hard fact. Simple and easy” Jon says to the man. Jon then says, “time is going to return to normal…now, you got 10 second to run to the door, if you manage to get out the door you get to keep most of your brain” Jon says to the man. Suddenly time is normal again and the man runs for it, but it’s all to late, he is hit with a gun blast of energy beam and falls to the floor, Jon picks up a small computer that he was working out and goes into the security system and does a few changes to the video recordings. Then he prepares to walk out and says to the staff, “please call for an ambulance too, this man just had a seizure in his brain and he needs a medical attention right now”. Then he walks out the door and prepares to leave.

He walks out to the street and goes around the corner as the cops and an ambulance arrive to the coffee shop, there are blue lights everywhere. The police tries to talk to the women that was in danger of the hand of that man before, he says to them the basis what happens. Then she runs out to find that man with the strange gun. She asks people and manages to get on the track. Jon circles around the corner, but is delayed a little due to a constriction work and road blocks that force him to go close to the coffee shop where he just had been. He is next tree over, he still feels that to be too close to the place where all the action did happen. Jon wants to avoid discovery by the authorities, he has no interest in repeating the insistent of 2090 again. He manages to sneak past the police and everything while they are in the coffee shop and then he walks towards a street parking for cars that is a little distance from the coffee shop. Jon manages to get into his car without a detection or so he thinks. As he is preparing to start his car, a women opens up the passenger door and goes into the car. Jon looks quickly around and see that is the women from the coffee shop. She starts to talk about the man, then she asks him, “how did you do this?”, Jon answers “what?”, she answers “stop my ex-boyfriend”, she says. Jon answers, “the usual way” he says. With that she answers, “no, no, that’s not possible, not even a cop can stop my ex-boyfriend, he was on illegal nano-drugs that enhanced him and you stopped him like they weren’t even there” she says.

With that Jon answers, “I don’t have time for this, either leave or you come with me” he says. She answers, “fine, I’m going with you, I can always get back to Reykjavík by getting a lift”. With that Jon knows that she has no clue what is about to go on. Then Jon says, “please loose your mobile”, she answers, “no, I’ll not loose my mobile”, to that Jon answers, “fine, but it does not work where we are going” he says. She answers, “there is 99,99% coverage in Iceland, it will work”, with that Jon shakes his and turns on the car and drives away. He drives out of Reykjavík and to the south coastline and to the east part of Iceland. He stops not far from Eyjafjallajökull and the mountain view, “do you want a fresh air?” he ask the women, “no, I don’t want you to ditch me here” she answers. Jon answers, “fine, that’s your problem them”, he picks up a phone like device and makes what seems to be a call. Then he goes back into the ‘car’ and drives on. He goes north, past Hekla and up to the highland area. He turns towards a remote area in the highland, now it getting close to ten a clock as he has been driving for several hours now. He goes over a hill where a shuttle is parked out of sight of everyone, then he locks the car and drives into the shuttle. The shuttle door close and are sealed and once that happens Jon unlocks the car doors. Jon opens up the door and says “I told you didn’t want to come with me” as he stands on the bay of the shuttle.

A women comes down the stairs and makes a big kiss on Jon mouth and is happy to see him once again after several days of absence. “Is that the one that hooked a ride with you?” she asks, “yes and she is annoying and has no idea like rest of the human race” Jon says, then Jon says, “are we ready to take off?”, the women answers, “yes, the pilot is ready, “lets go” says Jon, “authorities have been tracking this women mobile phone all day and are sending some people this way, they are just about arrive once they discovered where she stopped”, then the shuttle engines start and it takes off up to the sky, Jon goes up the helm control of the shuttle, “anything other aircraft on radar”, Jon asks, “nothing yet” the plot answers, “fine, lets get out of here before they try to shoot us down or something else annoying” Jon says.

“We got problems” the pilot shouts at Jon and the women, “we got multiple contacts on radar coming in from Norway and Iceland, they are heading straight at us”, Jon ruses in, “I was hoping to avoid this”, he says annoyed, he asks the pilot, “any chance they can catch up on us?”, maybe, this planes are going a lot faster then the one we encountered 30 years ago the pilot says to Jon. “Let’s go as fast as you can at 70 degree angle, I know its not the best option since we are in the polar region, but its better then getting shot down from the sky” Jon says to the pilot, the pilot goes full in with speed going at 1200 km/h, as that is just under the sound barrier to avoid detection by sound. The military jets get close to shoot at the shuttle when they just cross the 30 km altitude, they can’t go any higher then 26 km and are forced down again. “Any damage?” Jon asks the pilot and he answers, “I think we got shrapnel in the hull on the east and bottom, nothing major but it has to be repaired before this shuttle can be used again in air flight, “great, at least it was nothing bigger” Jon says with ironic tone to his voice. They enter space, “any orbital trackers on us” Jon asks, “I don’t think so” says the pilot, then the pilot says, “I can go into space travel speed in about 2 minutes after we clear Earth gravity well”, Jon answers, “good, keep me updated on this, also keep on for orbital trackers, I don’t know what has been going on in the last 30 years since I was last here” Jon says to the pilot. Jon then says to the pilot, “I have to attend to my new permanent guest” and walks out the helm control.

He walks to the women that is still in the shuttle bay close to the car, “you bring trouble” Jon says, “yea, so what” the women answers as she picks up her phone and tries to make a call on it, “there is no signal” Jon says to the women, “we are now close to 33,000 km away from Earth and out of service range”, the women answers, “I think your full of shit and I think this is nonsense what you are saying, everyone knows that the human race doesn’t do space travel, too expensive and too dangerous, all we do is send out probes and telescopes, every school child on Earth knows that” she says to him. Jon shouts to the pilot, “what window side can you open for me?” the pilot answers, “I can open the right side, the left side is full of metal derbies after the missiles they shot at us, it’s broken and is not working”, then the pilot shouts, I have to swing by the moon to get proper speed before I can get into space travel speed, I can’t go full speed so we are going to be two hours late. I have sent a message to the main ship to approach us to speed things up”, Jon says to the women “see, nothing but problems since you walked into that coffee shop, not all of it your fault, but this is” Jon says to the women, “so what” the women answers back, then the pilot shouts again, “closing up on the moon” opening right window now.

The right window opens up, slowly and outside is the approaching moon in its full size and grey glory. The women stairs out the window, “this must be fake” she says, “no, this is the real thing” Jon answers. Then Jon says “since we got out of the way what is real or not I need to know your name”, the women answers, “it’s Berglind” she says to Jon. With that Jon says, “that is good to know”. With that Jon says, “My name is Jon Forever, I’ll explain the name to you later if you don’t hear it from the city first” he says, “city?” Berglind says, “yes, a city, 900,000 people live their, they are not human as you, they are still people, don’t worry about finding apartment, that is not a issue” Jon says to Berglind. Jon then calls on the women he had kissed earlier, she had been repairing damage to the shuttle due to missiles they almost got hit by. The women comes, kisses Jon again and says to Berglind, “I am Natolicea, my name means flower on the ocean coast, the pilot name is Y’taklen, it means one with the air, we get to choose our names at the age of 15 and their meaning” she says to Berglind. Then Berglind looks out the window and see the moon speed by at and it starts to get smaller.

“Why aren’t we floating?” She asks, “because this ship got a gravity engine” Natolicea explains. “In the old documentaries they show on television people where floating and scientists say that it’s impossible to make gravity” Berglind says, with that Jon answers, “you have been told a lot of lies, humans refused first contact when Natolicea people came to Earth in 2028, after a first contact was made in 2018 in secret. Government at the time where paranoid and unwelcoming. In the end Natolicea people decided to leave Earth in 2038 after just 10 year of contact with the human race. I thankfully had managed to get into contact with them at the time, just as a normal person. Despite the law that forbid contact, I contacted them anyway and managed to get away with them from Earth in 2041 on my own shuttle, it was not easy. I’ll arrange for you get a history class on the subject once we are back to Pegasi” Jon says to Berglind. Then the pilot shouts, “maximum speed reached, 30 km/s and the main ship is now two hours away from us, they are heading towards us to speed up pick-up due to our ‘technical problems'”. Then Y’taklen notices something strange and says to Jon, “there is a small probe attempting to follow us, it can’t keep up but it speeds is impressive for this level of technology, it is going at 18km/s or close to that speed”.

Two hours pass by, the probe from Earth is still on their tale as they pass trough the asteroid belt and go past Jupiter orbit. Then the shuttle starts to slow and and spends a good hour to slow down its speed. Suddenly the shuttle is all stop and its cargo hold is open. Berglind had been spending her time in the lunch area of the shuttle stands up and prepares to go out, as she goes out she goes straight into a quarantine area. “Don’t worry” says Jon, “this is standard protocol when we come from Earth, it is to prevent any disease that we might have picked up on Earth during our stay there, we are going to spend next 60 days in quarantine”, Berglind says, “I should have told you earlier, but I got problems” with that Jon answers, “don’t worry, it should not be a problem I hope. The doctors here are going to drain some of your blood and test if something is in it, they are going to do so with all of us. Normally there is always something, a virus or bacteria that is harmful to this people. This is necessary now since it has been 54 years since I was last on Earth and our monitoring probe picked up news of some type of outbreak in 2095 that killed a lot of people”, Berglind, “yea, it was the New Mexico plague, Iceland was mostly spared the outbreak, millions of people died in the Western U.S, there was no news from the Eastern U.S, the kingdom never gives right information anyway says the news”. Berglind asks, “where are we now? In space I mean”, Jon answers, “we are travelling trough an Einstein-Rosen bridge, we are going to be at Pegasi in 4 days time at current speed. It is slow, but there is no need to go any faster at the moment. We are going to remain on the ship for the next 60 days, protocols don’t allow for transfer to the surface until the 60 days are over” Jon says, then Jon says “this is all standard protocol for Earth, nothing to worry about”. Then Jon says to Berglind, “I don’t know what your old life was, but that part of over, what you do with the next chapter is up to you”, Berglind looks at Jon with questions in her face and a bit of worry. She is stepping into the unknown on a unknown planet with people that weren’t really people, at least not human even if they looked like humans.

Back on Earth.

Secret building of U.N Space defence headquarters in Berlin. “General, we got a problem”, It is sad on the phone, “Jon has appeared again after 54 years disappearance, we managed to get some security footage of him and he has not aged one day on them. We don’t know where he has been, but we now know he left with the Synatoids back in 2041, space probe was set to follow them from the Moon but it lost them after they passed the orbit of Jupiter, the probe ran out of fuel at the point, a civilian from Iceland did go with Jon in this case, he got into a fight with a man in a coffee shop in Reykjavík, that man is now in semi-vegetable state, what saved him was his illegal modification drugs that allowed for faster healing. He might be able to speak in 2 – 8 weeks, doctors are not sure, since they have never seen this type of damage before. A women did follow Jon back to his car in Reykjavík and security footage show that she did go into the car, we tracked her mobile until the highland in Iceland until she did go into Jon shuttle. She is now missing and a fake death report is going to be issued soon, no body is going to be found” the voice on the phone says, “anything else” says the general, “all the files and reports are on way to you as we speak” says the voice on the phone”, the general says, “start deep space search for Jon, he clearly didn’t arrive her in this small shuttle, it must have been something bigger, find it” the general says on the phone. “Right way” the voice in the phone says, “goodbye sir” the phone says, “goodbye” the general says on the phone and hangs up.