The Stranger

SunJohn7 felt the work timer vibrate against his wrist: only half an hour to go for the day. He didn’t need the timer; he could tell the time almost to the second by the location of the red dot in the sky, but it was regulation. He yanked at his wheelbarrow to turn it around and head back down the mountain. “Not a bad day’s bounty,” he mused, surveying the contents.

He was so engaged in his task that he almost missed the movement on his right, but the remaining day’s light treated the odd shadow like a giant hand puppet, sending an alert to his senses. He whipped around to face the intruder, but before he could attack, the figure collapsed before him. SunJohn7's wheelbarrow tipped, scattering his day’s work over the path.

Enraged and scared, SunJohn7 turned to the heap in front of him. He had no time to reload his wheelbarrow before his shift ended. Moreover, he risked the effects of the moon by remaining on the path too long. He was a sun miner; the moon would kill him or make him waste one of his precious life-saving vials. He raised his pickaxe to strike, then heard a faint call for help from its core.

“Who are you?” he whispered angrily.

“Help me. I can pay you.”

A hand creeped out from beneath the cloak and opened. SunJohn7 stared at a golden, heart-shaped locket in disbelief, then looked around in panic.

“Put that away. NOW!” he commanded. “You’ll get us both killed!”

The hand pulled back. “Please save me,” the voice implored.

“Who are you?” he asked again. “No… nevermind. I can’t save you. I have no time.” He picked up his wheelbarrow and tried to scoop his ore back into it.

“Please. I will die if you don’t help me. Let me know what you want, and I will try to get it for you, but please don’t let me die.”

SunJohn7 dropped to his knees and leaned toward the figure. “I can’t help you,” he whispered. He paused, then reluctantly added, “right now. I can’t help you right now. I might be able to help you later. But you must hide.” He spied a large rock away from the path.

The figure tried to stand up but collapsed again. SunJohn7 helped it to its feet. “Come on… we have no time.” He half-dragged it to the rock and tried to find the best spot with the smallest chance of detection. Impulsively, he pulled a small vial from his pocket. “Drink this. It might keep you alive tonight. And don’t make a sound. Not one sound. Trust no one else to help you. Most will kill you on sight.”

The figure trembled beneath its cloak. “Thank you,” it said. “My name is Olivia.”

A female? Here? Shaking the urge to know more, he raced back to his wheelbarrow, shoveled as much of the spilled contents back into it as he could, and hurried down the path, stopping shortly before the check-point to catch his breath so that he would appear normal.

Through mirrored sunglasses, the guard looked into the wheelbarrow, then stared at SunJohn7. “Not a good day, eh?”

SunJohn7 hung his head. “I hit a bad pocket today,” he said. “I thought I had found something, but it was not as lucrative as I had hoped. I will not be so foolish tomorrow.”

The guard passed the wand over SunJohn7 to check for contraband, then waved him on, allowing him to deposit his partial load and leave. Before he turned toward the Sun community at the fork in the road, he looked to the right where his Moon counterparts lived. As angry as he was at the female on the path and at himself for his promise to help her, he hoped she could avoid the Moon miners and survive the night.

He had no trouble reaching his residence before the sun sank beneath the horizon. It was summer, which gave the Sun community an advantage. In the winter, the sun miners often didn’t make it back in time, dying if they had used their yearly allotment of vials and leaving their widows dependent on the rest of the community for survival until their children were old enough to mine. He hated the winter.

After dinner, SunJohn7 sat silently in his rocker. He couldn’t keep his thoughts together. They raced through his head like small jolts of lightning in the night sky -- he was not used to so much brain activity. Part of him wanted to know more about the stranger, while another part cursed her for existing. Over and over, he made plans to deal with the situation, then over and over, he scrapped them.

His wife, SunRachel20, watched him from her chair. “John?” she asked quietly. “Is everything good with you? Did you meet with trouble today?”

He looked at his wife and managed a weak smile. “I didn’t get my quota today, Rachel,” he lied. “I thought I hit a rich pocket and spent too much time determining that it was not.” He knew she would accept that explanation as it had happened before.

She nodded. “I’m sorry it was not a good day for you. Would you like a small drink of wine?”

The comfort this woman gave him made his heart swell. They enjoyed the luxury of wine only a few times a year. “Yes,” he said. “Just a little.”

While she left to retrieve the wine from its locked cask in the cellar, he tried to develop a plan. It hurt him to think. When he thought, the memories of the past clouded his simple life. At 47, he still remembered the earth of his childhood. He remembered catching fireflies at night and sleeping under the stars. He remembered parties and friends and freedom.

After the invasion, he had to force himself to lock those memories away. Most of his friends lost their lives through denial or suicide, or by challenging the authorities. At times, he thought they were the fortunate ones, but generally, he accepted his life as it was. Before the invasion, SunJohn7 was John McFarland -- realtor. Now he mined gold. He had no last name; he was just one of the many men named John in the compound. He toiled 6 days out of 7 to find the gold necessary to keep his new, tenuous existence from disappearing.

The invasion changed the world’s ecosystem. Every day, the sun’s rays released toxic gas into the air, which infected the lungs and skin. The moon’s gravitational pull destroyed the gas at night but replaced it with fiberglass-like spores that burrowed into the flesh. Both were fatal to humans. After years of lives lost, scientists developed methods to combat the environment. They created a vaccine to protect people from the day’s gasses and a liquid solution to repel the night’s spores.

The Sun community received the vaccines, and the Moon community received the liquid. SunJohn7 lived in a sub-society with round-the-clock mining and separate communities too small to fight the system. The purity of the gold they mined fueled everything not fueled by solar or wind power. Without it, they would have no safety net in times of drought, extreme weather, or other catastrophes.

The vial SunJohn7 gave to the stranger was one of four allotted to him each year, in case he was caught in the mountains after dark. He had already used one the previous winter when snow impeded his trip back down the mountain.

Rocking faster in his chair, he felt a hot flush of anger. He had foolishly given one of his three remaining vials to a stranger. At any time, guards could barge into his home and count his vials. He didn’t know how he would replace it.

By the time his wife returned with his wine, he had suppressed his anger and decided on a plan. He savored the ounce of wine she poured for him. He let the wine coat his lips and dry so he could lick the taste from them later. He thanked her for her thoughtfulness. She nodded and picked up her needlework.

“I need to leave early tomorrow to make up for the loss today,” he said.

“I assumed so,” she said.

“And I need to take another vial with me. I tripped today, and it fell from my pocket and broke.”

SunRachel20 looked up from her crocheting. SunJohn7 knew that she knew he was lying, but she said nothing. She got up and retrieved one of the remaining two full vials from the cabinet and tucked it into his work pants.

That night, he soaked the sheets with night terrors. He dreamed that the authorities discovered his deception and hauled him away. He dreamed that the stranger attacked and stole everything from him. SunRachel20 watched helplessly.

He departed when the sun peeked over the horizon, hoping that the guards would accept his excuse to work longer that day. He caught a glimpse of the Moon workers hurrying back to their homes during the short interval before the sun’s gasses could harm them. He recognized one - MoonEli9 - a friend from his previous life - and waved. MoonEli9 looked askance at him, then waved back cautiously.

He almost hoped the stranger had not made it through the night. He could only think of the bad things that lay ahead for both of them if she survived.

He hurried up the path, knowing he had only a few minutes to deal with the situation, but when he reached the spot where he had hidden her, she was gone. He had to quell a scream of fear and frustration. He surveyed the area, but it was as if he had imagined her.

SunJohn7 sank against the protective rock and wept. How dare she penetrate his mind like this. Did she wander off and die? Was she captured? Did the guards find her with his vial?

He sat in the sand next to the rock until his need to survive exceeded his need to feel sorry for himself. Pushing himself up, he heard the crackle of paper beneath his hand. Looking around to make sure he wasn’t being watched, he pulled the paper from the dirt and read the message it contained.

“I am Olivia from the past. Thank you for saving my life. The spilled ore is in my cloak 20 steps to the North. At the bottom, you’ll find the empty vial and the heart locket that I showed you yesterday. I will return one day to help you.”

He looked to the North and saw the cloak in the distance. He filled his wheelbarrow with the ore Olivia had salvaged. He buried the cloak, tore the message into tiny pieces, and broke the vial to present as proof to the guards. Returning to the rock, he opened the locket. Inside was a picture of Olivia on one side -- at least he assumed it was -- and a picture of a handsome young man on the other. He rubbed the locket between his fingers -- so soft, so smooth, so… golden. He covered it with sand at the base of the rock.

The next day, and the day after, and the day after, he retrieved the locket from behind the rock and opened it to see the face of the stranger he helped. He more-than-half-expected her to return as she promised; he allowed himself to hope.

Within a month, SunJohn7 decided it was too risky to see and hold the locket. Some time after that, he decided that his brain could no longer house both hope and existence. From that moment on, his memory of Olivia, the stranger from the past, became a glance at the rock on his way up the path and again on his way down at the end of the day.