FIVE YEARS AGO (continued)

A day passed since Luc and Bastian holed up in the safe house somewhere hidden in the country of the Etatsunien. They did not have a clock, but they watched the light in the frosted window fade to black and then brighten to white again thereby indicating that a day passed. They were half-prisoners and half-refugees unable to leave the safe house for fear of being captured by the authorities of the Etatsunien, yet at the same time, they were unable to return to their home country the UEN without the help of their handlers who thought they sought asylum.

The light in the frosted window faded to black for the second time since they started counting. It was dark outside, they assumed, and Luc and Bastian had nothing to do but to wait for something to happen. As it turned out, their handlers did feed them while they were staying at the safe house. The “food” given to them wasn’t anything to write home about. It consisted of pre-packaged food and protein bars inside plastic wrappers. It kept them alive and that was about it. Without even tasty meals to look forward to, the hours dragged on. If Luc and Bastian would not die from starvation, they might just die from boredom.

“I wonder how much longer we’re going to stay here?” asked Luc to no one in particular. He was bored out of his mind.

“Maybe we can ask for a TV so we can have some entertainment, you think?” Bastian thought he had a clever request.

Luc thought that was the dumbest idea yet. “They’re not going to give us a TV! What are you thinking?”

“Well, it is kind of boring just sitting here all day waiting for something to happen. Maybe if we had a TV or a computer, it would make the time go by faster.” Bastian thought his idea was not that dumb.

“You wish!” Luc dashed Bastian’s hopes for a TV. “You know, I’ve been thinking.”

“That’s not good. You know thinking isn’t one your strong points.”

“Shut up a sec and just listen!” Luc guessed that Bastian was being insulting because he could not get a TV. “I figure we were lucky to get caught by these guys instead of the local authorities. If we had been captured by their military forces after we crash landed, we’d be sitting in some prison while we wait for the higher-ups to negotiate our release. It could go on for years!”

Years? thought Bastian. He did not like the sound of that. “They’d better give us a TV if that happened! I’m not going to be bored for years on end like that!”

If the two felt they were bored before, things just got a lot more exciting when they heard the knob of their door rattle and turn! The door opened up and in walked a young man in his late 20s with an assault rifle swung on his shoulder.

“That’s right!” the man with the rifle said. He had heard all of Luc’s speculation. “If you were captured by our government’s forces, you two might be sitting in jail for a couple of years before you get back. Wouldn’t you rather have this over with quickly?”

The sight of a military style firearm alarmed Luc and Bastian. Luc jumped up, heart racing and adrenaline pumping, ready for a fight.

“Who are you?! And what do you want?!” Luc shouted at the man with the assault rifle.

Bastian, on the other hand, cowered behind Luc. He did not like fighting. More so, he was not fond of death. “I can wait a bit longer! No need to end anything right this minute!”

“Calm down, you two!” ordered the rifleman. “I’m not your enemy.”

“Then who are you?!” Luc still bristled for a fight.

Bastian, the less hot-headed of the two, whispered to Luc, “He’s obviously a man with a big gun and we’re two men without any! Don’t antagonize him, OK?”

“I’m one of you,” the rifleman told them.

“What do you mean, ‘one of us’?” Luc stopped shouting, but he was still suspicious.

“Well, I was one of you at one time,” answered the rifleman, “before I defected to the Etatsunien.”

Luc was clever enough to understand what this fellow was saying. “You mean to say that you were a citizen of the UEN and you escaped to here? Why did you do that?”

“Actually, I was in the military when I defected,” revealed the rifleman.

“So you’re a deserter!” Luc was angry now. He did not care how loud he sounded. A deserter was the worst kind of low life serviceman.

“That depends from which side you’re looking at it from.” The rifleman tried to confuse Luc with logic. “That’s why I cannot let you know my name.”

Luc was livid. “How could you turn your back on your country and your people? The UEN has been generous to its citizens and the government takes care of all your needs. Free healthcare, free education, free basic income, subsidized child care. The list goes on and on! Don’t you feel a debt to our society for raising you since you were born?” Luc could not understand why anyone would want to defect anyway. Was life not good enough in the UEN?

The rifleman just sighed. “You wouldn’t understand until you try to oppose some government policies. Once you do, your life can become quite difficult as I saw for myself.”

“So you deserted your post and came over here.” Luc sounded less angry and curter now. “I hope you’re happy with yourself. What’s this place got that we don’t got?”

“You’re right,” said the rifleman. “We don’t have the material abundance of the UEN here. We don’t have the prosperity and modern, high-tech, comfortable way of life like you do living in the UEN. But here, we have individual rights and freedoms to live as we wish without interference from the government. We have due process of the law and cannot be detained arbitrarily without cause. And we can live our lives in privacy without the government watching and recording everything we do.”

“What have you got to hide?” asked Luc. His voice dripped with disdain. “Were you a criminal too? Is that why you ran away?”

“Like I said,” repeated the rifleman. “you can’t understand until you try to oppose any of the UEN’s policies.

“Well, I don’t want to understand. I want to go back.” Luc did not think he was being unreasonable at all.

“So I’ve heard. Well, I’m here to take you back, if that’s what you really want?” asked the rifleman.

“Yes, that’s what I really want.” Luc’s voice was firm and serious.

“I just want a TV or a computer to play with.” Bastian’s request was simpler.

A few tense seconds passed while the rifleman considered both requests. He decided that Luc’s request was the real one and Bastian’s was a decoy.

“This safe house is a couple hundred miles away from the border where you two crash landed. It would be difficult to take you back the way you came in. However, there’s a Transportal not far from here which is heavily militarized with UEN forces. We can take you there and drop you off maybe a block or two away. That should give you enough time to make it to the Transportal before Etatsunien authorities have time to notice your presence and try to capture you.”

“How will our guys know not to shoot us since we’ll be rushing up to them from this side of the Transportal’s checkpoint?” asked Luc. He was one step ahead of the rifleman.

The rifleman pulled something out of a bag that he brought with him and threw it at Luc.

“Here, put these on. These are your UEN uniforms which we took from you. Hopefully, seeing you in these will make them pause before they open fire on you. It’s up to you to convince them that you’re one of them.”

“So that’s the plan?” asked Luc.

“That’s the best we could come up with on such short notice,” explained the rifleman. “It’s night, but it will be dawn soon. It’ll be easier to transport you two unnoticed under the cover of dark. Are you ready to do this?”

“Yeah, I’m ready,” said Luc. Luc was ready even if he was not ready.

The rifleman looked over at Bastian waiting for his answer.

Bastian relaxed a lot and smiled back at the rifleman. “I like you. Just between you and me, I thought the lawyer was scarier. You know you’re really in trouble when you see lawyers show up.”

With the pleasantries out of the way, the man with the assault rifle and a driver used a van with blocked out windows to carry Luc and Bastian the twenty or thirty miles from the safe house to the Transportal. Luc and Bastian wore blindfolds before being led out of the safe house and into the van where they remained blindfolded inside the back of the van.

Without their eyes to see, Luc and Bastian’s other senses became more acute. Sounds painted a more detailed picture. Smells unnoticed before now demanded attention. And little motions and textures felt larger than ever. Bastian was the first to smell something.

I know that smell. Bastian sniffed the air. It’s gasoline! But gasoline is extremely flammable and explosive, not to mention carcinogenic! Maybe they’re not taking us to the Transportal. Maybe they’re going to incinerate us and get rid of any evidence that we were here! He decided to say something before his captors lit a match.

“Um, is that gasoline I smell?” asked Bastian aloud. He wasn’t sure if anyone was listening or looking for matches, but the rifleman answered after a second.

“Yes, you are correct. You’re not in the UEN anymore. For the rest of the world, we still rely on petrochemicals to power our vehicles. We lack the high-tech propulsion systems you have in your country.”

Luc also noticed something funny. “Have we moved yet? Why does this transport vibrate all the time, even when stopped?”

The rifleman was patient to answer Luc’s questions, too. “That is normal. The engine of this vehicle uses the gasoline to create many, rapid, tiny explosions which provide the power to move the vehicle forward. It’s those tiny explosions that cause the constant vibration you are feeling.”

Although the rifleman gave logical answers, Luc and Bastian still felt uneasy. The near constant smell of gasoline and gasoline exhaust fumes was always present and the vehicle kept vibrating whether they moved or not. It confused them a lot, but they could only trust that their handlers would deliver them to the Transportal so they could return home. Their primary impression of this experience was how primitive the technology was outside the UEN.

After driving for about half an hour, the van approached the site of the Transportal. The rifleman gave Luc and Bastian an update.

“OK, we’re in the vicinity of the Transportal and it’s nearly dawn. When we stop, we’ll remove your blindfolds and push you out of the van. The Transportal checkpoint will be half a mile opposite of the direction the van will be driving away from. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said both Luc and Bastian.

“I envy you two just a little bit because you get to go back to the place of my childhood. I remember then, as a kid with no concerns, the UEN was peaceful, modern and clean. We were provided for and I have many happy memories growing up there. It is where my parents lived full lives and are buried there. But I can never return to visit them again. I can’t say you’re making the wrong decision to go back.”

“Yeah, well, the sooner the better,” said Luc. He was not the sentimental type.

“Here’s our stop. Get ready to be released!” The rifleman prepared to open the back door of the van.

The van stopped against the curb of the street and the back doors flung open! Luc and Bastian’s blindfolds were ripped off and the rifleman shoved them out of the van which sped off and disappeared.

As this was the first time Luc and Bastian had been able to see the outside city, they were awestruck. Day was dawning and in the meager reddish-orange light, sights they had never imagined flooded into their eyes. Everywhere was brown concrete and rust red brick buildings. The cracked sidewalks were grimy and the old buildings were stained with smoke. More gasoline powered vehicles vroomed up and down the street spewing noxious fumes into the air. As they passed by, they kicked up dust that choked Luc and Bastian’s throats and stung their eyes. There was not a tree to be seen anywhere. How could any plants survive in this air? This was definitely not the modern, clean, glass-like cities of the UEN which they were accustomed to.

They looked all around and found the most important sight to them – the massive arch of the Transportal about half a mile away looming in the background behind the brown buildings of the city. At the end of the street they saw the checkpoint leading to the entrance of the Transportal. Realizing how far away they still were, Luc and Bastian ran toward the checkpoint before anyone could notice how out-of-place they appeared wearing their UEN military uniforms.

As they approached the checkpoint running at full speed, they did not look back or behind them. It was now or never. The UEN guards noticed their approach and drew their weapons. One of them spoke over a megaphone.

“CEASE YOUR APPROACH OR WE WILL USE LETHAL FORCE!”

Luc and Bastian skid to a halt and yelled back to their comrades.

“Wait, don’t shoot!” shouted Luc. “We’re one of you! We’re the two lost airmen who crash landed across the border!”

Again, the voice over the megaphone answered. “DON’T MOVE! WHAT ARE YOUR NAMES?”

“Luc Coquin and Bastian Skateur!” Luc answered for both of them.

“WALK BACKWARD AND KEEP YOUR HANDS OUT WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”

Luc and Bastian did as they were told. Before they turned around, they saw the muzzles of about half a dozen rifles pointed at them. What they were too far away to see, but which they knew from their own training was that those half dozen rifles had their safety locks off and nervous fingers on the triggers. They moved slow and deliberate. One wrong move would spook those trigger-happy fingers and they would be pumped full of lead. They held their hands out from their sides and walked backward toward the checkpoint. Bastian was white with anxiety.

“Hey Luc,” he whispered over to his partner, “if we don’t survive this, I just want you to know that you’ve been a great friend to me all this time, even if I got your nerves once in a while. I love you like a brother.”

“Don’t make any sudden moves you idiot!” Luc hissed at him. “And don’t get all sentimental on me. If you say something like that again, I’m going to rush the checkpoint and have them shoot me dead, all right? Look, this isn’t the time or place, but you’ve been a good friend, too, OK? There! You made me say it! Now concentrate on not getting killed!”

Authorities of the Etatsunien must have gotten word of a disturbance in the area. They started arriving on the scene in their gasoline powered vehicles with their lights flashing. However, they were too late to stop Luc and Bastian from escaping. They came close enough to the checkpoint that several UEN STS Agents ran out and tackled them to the ground, tied their hands up and took them into custody and brought them back past the checkpoint gates. Luc and Bastian did not resist. They had been repatriated back to the UEN.