Brave New World 9

BRAVE NEW WORLD

By uciboy

CHAPTER 1 - Peking Man

It was a hot and humid July morning as Lynn Wu stood outside a bus station in Fangshan watching her boyfriend, Tom Guo, trying to communicate in broken Chinese to a woman behind the counter. Lynn knew she would be of no help since her Chinglish was little better than his; and she doubted that she would be any more comfortable inside a building she was certain had no A/C. Not even her short hair could provide relief as she reached up behind her head and wiped the sweat streaking down her neck. She decided to take off the heavy backpack weighing her down.

This could take a while,

she thought to herself.

She reached into a side pocket and pulled out a pack of VS-120's. How glad this 20 year old was to be in a country that truly appreciated the pleasure of smoking. She knew she wouldn't be hassled as a smoker in China where 18 was the legal age. "If only America was as enlightened," she murmured to herself as she lit the tip of the 120 freehanded and took a cheek hollowed puff. Both of her immigrant parents understood its power, which is why she started on her smoking path young in life.

If it were up to me, I'd make the whole damn world smoke.

She reached for the Virginia Slims with her finger tips and inhaled deeply, her lungs embracing the smoke gratefully after the two hour bus ride from Beijing. She pursed her lips and blew a long column of smoke as she continued to watch her boyfriend, now pointing to a map, trying to find out how they could get to the Zhoukoudian Site Museum - or as westerners know it as, the Peking Man Site. She took another puff, closed her lips, and inhaled deeply through her nose. Her body was suffering from the heat, but at least her lungs could feel the coolness of a mentholated cloud.

We're a good match, Tom and me,

she thought to herself. Both were the children of Chinese immigrants; both were interested in Anthropology which they studied at the University of Michigan; and both were unabashed smokers. Lynn could hardly believe her luck when as a freshman she met Tom at an Anthro Club social on campus, after which the sophomore asked her out. She would have dated him even if he were a nonsmoker; but to watch him light up on the first date with such confidence gave her erotic shivers. And she could see how much he enjoyed watching her smoke a long cigarette.

As it was obvious to the other that they both had the fetish, things moved quickly after that first date. Tom, a year older than her, already had an apartment in Ann Arbor, and Lynn soon moved in. The next two years was nothing less than blissful, smoky happiness.

And now the two lovers were in China, eager to connect with their ancestral culture while backpacking through the mainland. She wished now that she had packed lighter rather than stocking up on groceries in Beijing. If it weren't for the camping that they were hoping to do, all she would really need is a change of clothes and a carton of Virginia Slims. Virginia was always her best travel companion.

Lynn reached for her wire rim glasses which were steaming up in the humidity, and wiped the lenses on her shirt.

"Thank you so much," Tom said as he stepped away from the attendant. "Sze, sze." He walked out of the building and towards Lynn, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a pack of Benson & Hedges Menthols. "She said to take bus 38." He put the all-white 100 between his lips and accepted the flame from the lighter Lynn held in her hand at the ready. "It should be here soon."

"Not before I finish my cigarette, I hope," Lynn said with a naughty smile. In fact, she was hoping to smoke one more before another long and bumpy bus ride on Chinese public transportation.

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

Fortunately Lynn did have time for that second cigarette, and the bus ride was not as long or as bumpy as she feared it would be. But the museum was not yet open for another two hours. "That explains why there are so few people here," she said glancing around the empty square.

Tom stood in front of the large, apelike statue which dominated the plaza in front of the museum, and began reading from his phone. "'Fossils of Peking Man were found in China between 1929 and 1937. He is a subspecies of Homo erectus which inhabited what is now northern China during the Middle Pleistocene.' Pop quiz," he said with a quick glance at his girlfriend, "when was the Middle Pleistocene?"

"Roughly between 125 and 780 thousand years ago," Lynn responded with instant recall.

Tom nodded his head with approval.

This girl knows her paleontology.

"It says here," he continued from his phone, "that these hominids lived around 400,000 years ago." He paused and looked up at the statue in awe. "How'd you like him as a boyfriend?"

"Depends if he smoked," she said reaching into her backpack. "Come on, let's have a bad thing."

"Not here," Tom said pointing at a sign which read in both English and Chinese, "Absolutely NO SMOKING."

"I thought China was a smoker's paradise," Lynn responded, prepared to ignore the sign.

"Apparently not so much these days," Tom replied. "Come on, let's take a walk. We'll find a spot where you can that nicotine fix."

It took a few minutes, but the two eventually did come across a bench along the hillside away from the museum. Both lit their cigarettes simultaneously and made the tips glow nice and hot. Lynn savored these quiet, smoky moments with her man. Smoking was rebellious; it was sexy; but most of all it was pleasurable. She never regretted taking that first puff from her Mom's Virginia Slims when she was 14. Health consequences be damned. She loved being a smoker.

"Don't look now," Tom whispered, "but we're being watched." He then gently nodded his head to the left.

When Lynn glanced in that direction, she saw a tall teenage girl not more than ten yards away staring intently at them. She was dressed in a pink and orange pastel dress with a skirt which went down to just above her knees. She wore no make-up, yet her Asian skin was radiant. Her hair was straight and hung down past her shoulders, and a neon pink headband kept her forehead free of any bangs. Lynn guessed she was no more than 18.

"Why is she standing there looking at us?" Lynn asked in a whisper. "And what's with those clothes? It's like something out of the future."

"Or the 1960s," Tom deadpanned.

"Maybe she wants a cigarette," Lynn said, this exhibitionist clearly enjoying the attention as she smoothly brought the long cigarette up to the center of her mouth for a slow puff. She ghost inhaled, tilted her head at a slight angle, and exhaled a bubbly stream.

"You're evil," Tom chuckled.

"I know what you like, Tom," she replied in a seductive tone. "Don't tell me you won't get a hard on from watching that girl smoke."

"Whatever," Tom responded, but of course he knew she was right. That teen would look

fucking hot

with a long, freshly lit cigarette between her fingers.

"Come on," Lynn said standing up with some difficulty due to the heavy backpack still attached to her shoulders. "Let's go practice our Chinese." Reluctantly, Tom got up, too.

"Ni hao," Lynn said to the girl with a wave as she and Tom walked towards her, but a look of fear immediately filled the girl's face who ran off around a corner of the hillside.

"You scared here!" Tom teased before taking a puff on his B&H and dropping it to the ground. He watched Lynn round the corner in the direction the girl ran. "Tom?" he heard her say. "Come 'ere." When he followed her around the corner, he saw his girlfriend looking into a narrow cave. "Did she go in there?" he asked.

"I think so," Lynn responded. "Come on, let's take a look."

"Are you nuts?" Tom replied. Both he and Lynn had spent some time in a dig in Bolivia on Spring Break, but that was with an entire team of archaeologists. "You have no idea what's in there."

"And that's what's so exciting," Lynn responded as she grabbed him by the hand.

The opening was tight, but the two of them could walk through with their backpacks single-file. Both pulled out their cell phones and clicked the flashlight app.

"Come on, Lynn, let's get out of here," Tom said, pointing in the direction they came from.

"Just a little further," she replied as she continued on. Against his better judgement, Tom followed her deeper into the cave until they both came into a circular room with several openings to new passageways. "Are these lava tubes?" she asked as she touched the smooth walls, "or are they manmade?"

Tom began sweating profusely. "You having trouble breathing in here?" he asked as he loosened a button on his shirt.

"A bit," Lynn responded. She was feeling pretty lightheaded, too.

Maybe starting smoking at 14 wasn't such a good idea.

"Time to head back?" she asked in between increasingly heavier breaths. But as she turned to exit the room, she suddenly didn't know which passageway they had just come through. "Where's the exit?"

Tom made no response as he leaned up against the wall gasping for breath. Neither he nor his companion had the ability to concentrate on a single thought, and the room appeared to be spinning.

"Tom," Lynn said grabbing his arm, "I...I can't stand any longer," and she fell to the ground, pulling him down with her. As she struggled with every breath, Lynn could see in the dim light from her cell phone the teenage girl in pastel colors slowly walking towards her.

CHAPTER 2 - Nirvana

When Lynn opened her eyes, she found herself lying on a couch. The cushions were soft, but it was made of a material she had never felt before. She sat up and saw that Tom was lying unconscious on an examination table wearing what appeared to be a gas mask.

Is this a hospital,

she thought to herself. She looked around the room and saw what appeared to be scientific instruments.

Or is it a laboratory?

She tried to stand up but fell back down to the couch in a state of dizziness. "Tom," she whispered as she brought both of her hands up to her temples to try and make the spinning stop. "Tom, wake up."

Suddenly she heard two voices in the next room. Their words had the tonal similarities of Chinese, but it was definitely not the Mandarin that she had learned piecemeal growing up from her parents. Quickly she scanned the room for something to grab, something to defend herself with. But she realized that even if she saw something, she had no ability to stand up from the couch. And so she waited as the voices grew closer.

Within seconds, the teenager whom she had chased into the cave walked into the room with a man who appeared to be at least twice her age. Both of them had surprised looks on their faces as they spoke animatedly to each other pointing at Lynn.

"Where am I?" Lynn asked the pair fearfully, and just hearing her own voice made her head pound. "What's happened to me? Why can't I stand up?" She was still taking deep breaths. "I can barely breathe."

The mysterious teenager and her companion continued to speak to one another in a tonal range that sounded like someone was tapping a fork on different sized wine glasses.

What is this language,

Lynn thought to herself on the edge of madness. She saw the man pick up an instrument from a counter and move towards her.

Is that a gun?

"No, please don't hurt me!" she shouted, but she was helpless to resist as the man placed the barrel of the gun just below her earlobe and pulled the trigger. Immediately she felt a slight pinch, but the pain was no more than a nanosecond.

"There," the man said calmly, "is that better?"

Lynn quickly looked up into the man's face. "I can understand you now."

"That's right," the man smiled. "That's a universal translator," he said pointing behind her ear. "Honestly, I wasn't even sure it would work. Apparently it's been over 300,000 cycles since we've even had to replicate one." He walked over to the examination table where Tom lay. "We don't get many visitors down here," he said with a chuckle as he implanted a universal translator behind Tom's ear.

Lynn realized that both her head pain and dizziness were dissipating, and she was no longer gasping for air. "I can breathe now," she said standing up from the couch.

"Your lungs are not equipped for the thin air in our world, but my treatment has given you temporary relief until they adapt."

"Is this one ready to be disconnected now, Ba?" the teenage girl asked.

"No, let's give him a little more time. That should prevent the initial headache."

"Where are we?" Lynn asked, no longer fearful after the kindness she had witnessed from this man.

"You've reached Nirvana, my dear, a land of peace and happiness."

"Nirvana?" Lynn asked in surprise. She was not a practicing Buddhist, but she certainly understood the meaning of the word and its implications. "Am I...dead?"

"Oh, my, no...you're very much alive, that is, thanks to my daughter here who found you and your companion in the caves while she was checking the security grid."

The young woman in pastel colors smiled warmly.

"What were you doing in those caves?" the man asked as he checked Tom's pulse.

"Well," Lynn began, but then noticed that the teenage girl behind her father was looking at her pleadingly and ever so slightly shaking her head, "...actually we were just exploring and came across the entrance into the cave."

"Hmmm," the man responded as he removed the mask over Tom's face. "There must be some gaps in the safety mesh." He looked at his daughter. "I'll need to inspect every inch of that grid when we're done here." He then turned to Lynn. "My name, by the way, is...well, you wouldn't be able to pronounce it even if I told you. Just call me Ying. This is my daughter, Yong."

"I'm Lynn," the outsider said, "Lynn Wu."

"Wu!" Yong said excitedly to her father. "I wonder if that is the shortened version of Wufengshauxilingwan," she said, rattling off the name with the roll of her tongue.

"It's possible," her father replied.

"I don't understand," Lynn said, "who are you people?"

"We're your ancestors!" Yong exclaimed.

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

As Lynn sought to process this revelation, Tom was regaining consciousness.

"Slowly, now," Ying said as he helped him sit up and climb down from the table. "You're going to experience some dizziness for a few more minutes."

Tom took a deep breath and then looked at Lynn. "We were in the cave, and we couldn't breathe," he said, trying to remember his last thought.

"Yong saved us," Lynn said as she looked intently at Tom trying desperately to prevent him from revealing the real reason they were in the cave. "It was all my fault. I shouldn't have been so eager to discover fossils related to Peking Man. Do you remember now, Tom?"

Tom looked at her in confusion but assumed that she had a good reason for not wanting to reveal the truth that they followed the girl in pastel colors into the cave. "Yes," he said nodding his head, "you are very stubborn when you set your mind to something." He didn't know what else to say.

"Meet your cousins, Ying and Yong," Lynn said with a wry smile.

"My cousins?"

Ying shepherded his two guests out of the lab and into a living room with a couch, several chairs, and a small round table for four. "Let's all have a seat," the kindly man said pointing to the table. "There is a lot that you don't know about your world."

Lynn desperately wanted a cigarette and saw that their backpacks were leaning against the couch. For now, however, she had to draw on something that had often failed her in the past: willpower.

"According to the Scrolls," Ying began, "four-hundred thousand cycles ago, our people came to this planet in search of a home. Living on the surface, however, was too dangerous for a species as frail as ours, so we found it prudent to move underground. And here we built Nirvana." He pushed a button on the table and suddenly a wall across the room began to slide to the left, revealing a panoramic window view of the subterranean cityscape that took Lynn and Tom's breaths away.

"It's gorgeous," Lynn gasped as she watched the twinkling lights of towers that ranged from five to ten stories high. The cityscape was filled with electronic billboards displaying moving pictures of residents smiling and engaging in pleasurable activities.

"What's your power source?" Tom, ever the academic, asked.

"Thermal energy," Yong said, exhibiting her own knowledge of the science behind her civilization.

"You said that you are our ancestors, but you don't look anything like the Peking Man statue at the museum."

"Well," Ying said with a smile, "you need to understand that our species was one of many roaming the earth so many cycles ago. For 100,000 cycles, we lived in peace and harmony here in Nirvana. We survived because of our technology, but this also led to a bigger problem: overpopulation. Our resources were becoming too overburdened to support so many people. Approximately 300,000 cycles ago, a violent civil war commenced, shattering our world. But according to the Scrolls, the instigators of violence and disharmony were defeated and cast out naked into the world above."

"The Biblical story of the 'Fall,'" Tom said softly to Lynn.

"300,000 cycles," Lynn responded. "If that's based on earth's rotation, then 300,000 years correlates with the emergence of homo sapiens. We really are related!"

Tom's thoughts were racing a mile a minute. This anthropological find was beyond historic; its revelation would alter the course of world events. And then it dawned on him that there was a reason why there was a security grid to prevent outsiders: these people didn't want any contact with the world above. "So," he asked his hosts cautiously, "what happens to us?"

Ying and Yong looked at one another with concern on their faces.

"That's yet to be determined," Ying said gently. "At the moment, no one else knows that you are here as Yong and I brought you back to our home during the night rotation. Soon the daylight rotation will begin." The father stood up and walked towards a built in wall shelf where he pushed a button on an electronic panel. "Fortunately, you look like us," he said as two pairs of pastel colored clothes materialized on the shelf. "Now you just need to dress like us. I took your measurements while you were both unconscious," he said as he handed the neatly folded clothes to his guests.

"Our world is big enough that you can hide in plain sight as long as you learn of our ways."

"Are we in danger?" Lynn asked.

"Not at all, my girl. We are a peaceful people. Indeed, I imagine the only way you would suffer would be from the initial inconvenience of being an object of curiosity for our people. You see, none of us have been up top."

Lynn glanced at Yong who looked down at the table trying to show no reaction to that clearly false statement from her father.

"Does your leadership know we are here?" Tom asked.

"We haven't structured our society with a government since the days of the Civil War. Everyone knows what is expected of them in this world, and they happily fulfill those duties in the knowledge that all will benefit."

"Pure communism," Tom said softly to himself. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. But Marx was only putting forward a theory which has never been successfully implemented." He then said to Ying, "Who provides for your needs?"

"All of our needs are provided by the Watcher?"

"The Watcher? " Tom asked. "So, there is someone who watches over you? Who provides for, say, the replicators?

"Well, the Watcher isn't a person, but yes, it provides for things such as our replicators."

"But what if the replicators break down?" Lynn asked.

"Then there are those who are tasked with fixing them. Our paths are set out for us from birth. For instance, I am a scientist, as were my ancestors before me. I have trained Yong to take up that role to replace me when it's my time to move on."