D. MacHale - The Never War

I was back at the mouth of the same flume, inside the same gate, looking at the same rocky room I had just left.

Huh? Did I make a mistake? Did I say “First Earth” instead of “Third”? Did I somehow make a U-turn somewhere in flumeworld? That’s when I heard the musical notes sneaking up behind me. Gunny was incoming. I jumped to the side as he landed in a flash of sparkling light. ”Uhhh, did we make a mistake?” I asked. “We’re back on First Earth.”

“Nope, everything’s fine,” Gunny said.

He walked over to the side of the cavern where a pile of clothes lay. I hadn’t seen them when I first landed. I was too busy being confused. “Only looks like First Earth,” he said as he sorted through the clothes.

Hearing that made me relax a little. We weren’t going to step into some bizarro new world. But I have to admit, I was a little disappointed, too. I kind of wanted to step into a bizarro new world.

“I have no idea how these show up,” Gunny said as he looked through the clothes.

I joined him and looked through the clothes for myself. “Uncle Press told me it’s the acolytes.”

“Acolytes?” exclaimed Gunny. “What’s an acolyte?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve never met one. But Uncle Press once told me they’re people from the territories who help the Travelers. Beyond that, I haven’t got a clue.”

I was glad to see the clothes weren’t all weird and futuristic. I picked out a pair of normal-looking khaki pants and a navy blue turtleneck. There were even regular old socks and boxers, too! The shoes were the most futuristic thing there. They didn’t even look like shoes. They were more like big, white doughnuts. That is, until you slipped them on your feet. As soon as your foot was in, they molded to you and made a perfect fit, kind of like the air globes on Cloral. One size fits all. Cool.

Gunny put on a regular old white shirt with buttons, and a pair of black pants. He chose a black pair of doughnut shoes. White shoes weren’t his style. He also put on a black jacket that finished off the look nicely. He then reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a small, silver square that was about the size of a baseball card.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Some kind of telephone thing,” he answered.

“Telephone?”

“Uh-huh. It’s how we get in touch with Patrick. Don’t ask me how it works-it’s all magic to me.” He pressed a button on the card and a red light on top blinked twice. It then blinked green and went out. “He knows we’re here,” Gunny announced. “He’ll come get us.”

“Cool. Can we, uh, take a look around?”

Gunny smiled. He knew I was dying to see what the future looked like. “That’s what we’re here for,” he said. “C’mon.” He led me to the wooden door that was the gate.

Before he opened it, I asked, “Any problems with quigs?”

“Quigs? You mean those yellow-eyed dog things? Nah. If they know you’re not scared of them, they don’t bother you.”

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Iwasscared of those yellow-eyed dog things. I hoped Gunny gave off enough brave vibes to counter my fear vibes. Gunny then pulled the door open and we stepped out of familiar territory. I expected to see the subway tunnel of First and Second Earth. But that’s not what was waiting.

It was a subway tunnel all right, but nothing like the one I was used to. First off, it was bright. White light came from long tubes than ran along the ceiling. The walls were white and shiny and totally clean. This was nothing like the subways I was used to. Along the floor were two silver rails about ten feet apart. I guessed the subway train of the future was a monorail, like at Disney World.

The tunnel stretched far off in each direction. I could see ahead to the lights of the station. It was still there. I wondered if it had reopened since being abandoned in my time of Second Earth.

We then both heard a loudclickand turned quickly to see the gate had closed behind us. If I hadn’t known better, I’d say the door had disappeared, because it was absolutely flush with the wall. You had to look really close to see the outline. Weird. The inside of the gate was the familiar, wooden door. But the outside was shiny white like the rest of the tunnel. There was only one clue that it was even there. Carved into the wall was the familiar star symbol that marked all the gates.

“We best get moving,” Gunny said. “Don’t want to get caught by a train.”

I ran ahead of Gunny because I was so excited. When I got to the platform, I quickly jumped up, then helped Gunny when he caught up with me. I turned around and got my first look at a subway station, Third Earth-style.

What I saw blew me away.

The station was there, all right, and it was definitely open for business. It wasn’t very crowded. Only a handful of people wandered about, waiting for their trains. They all looked pretty normal, too. People hadn’t changed at all in three thousand years.

But the subway station sure had. I walked a few yards away from the track and was hit with an incredible sight. Standing at a railing, I looked down onto a massive, underground mall. It must have gone down fifty floors below train level! Imagine the biggest mall you’ve ever seen, then multiply it by like forty times, and you’d have this place. And it was all underground! We were on the very top and could see down to multiple levels that had tons of shops and restaurants, and even a whole section that looked like private entrances. They must have been apartments or something. People moved around on every level. Some walked, but many rode these odd two-wheel scooters that silently and quickly moved them along. Looking all the way down to the bottom, I saw a humongous pool. It was practically an indoor lake, where people swam and played ball. It was even big enough for people to paddle kayaks around.

This was an enormous, underground city in the Bronx. Or should I sayunderthe Bronx.

Gunny had walked up behind me but didn’t say anything at first. I think he wanted me to get over the shock.

Finally he asked, “What do you think?”

“Amazing is a good word,” I said in awe.

“The way I heard it,” Gunny explained, “they were running out of space, so they decided to move into the only unexplored area left on Earth.”

“Underground,” I said.

“That’s right,” Gunny said. “From what Patrick tells me, this is nothing. There’s whole cities like this all over the world.”

I watched as people went about their business, like this was normal or something. I guess to them itwasnormal but…wow., I also saw all sorts of people of every race. This wasn’t a segregated neighborhood. Maybe people had finally learned how to get along with one another.

“It gets better,” Gunny said.

He led me to the escalator that would take us up to the surface. As we walked, I saw a subway train pull into the station. Gone was the clash of wheels on metal and the screech of brakes. The train slid smoothly into the station with a quiet hum. Very cool. Very Disney.

We hopped on the escalator and I had to stop myself from running up faster. I was dying to get my first look at the outside world of Third Earth. As we rode up Gunny said, “I guess people got smart somewhere along the line. It stopped being about building more and bigger. People began to understand they had to respect what they had or it wouldn’t be around for the future.”

“So what did they do?” I asked.

“Look,” Gunny said.

We had reached the top of the escalator where I was expecting to step out into the middle of the normal, busy Bronx. Well, we were in the Bronx, all right, but it was far from normal.

The first thing I saw was grass. Lots of it. It looked like a park! There was a vast lake where people were fishing under the shade of leafy-green trees. The terrain wasn’t flat, either. There were hills and rocky rises and even a footbridge over a stream that fed the lake. The sky was clear blue on this amazing, sunny day. I even smelled something familiar. It smelled like-