DAY 1: 14TH SMITH 11,293PL
KUMAIYA ISLAND
As I walked up the jet bridge, duffel bag in hand, I realized how much I had missed fresh air during the luxurious, but lengthy, flight. I had no wristwatch or mobile phone to tell time by, but it felt like we had spent at least twenty-four hours traveling after departing Minneapolis, and, for security reasons, had been unable to leave the cabin during refueling stops. The weather at the airport in Atlantea was pleasant: sunny and dry, around seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass walls around me, I could see our carbon-black Airbus being serviced. Workers, mostly female, were driving up with fuel trucks and forklifts, refueling and restocking the plane. Another group unloaded cargo from the its belly. I did not see any suitcases being unloaded; us passengers only had our carry-ons.
Khrystyna caught up with me, placing a hand on my shoulder. Her aquamarine hair looked cute in the bright sunlight. "Mr. Walker," she said.
"Please, call me Jason," I interjected.
"Thanks. Jason, I feel like I haven't made up for my rude behavior on the flight." I started to protest, but she held up a hand. "Could I drop by your place tomorrow night? I'll be staying at the island dorm anyway; it's too much of a pain to go all the way home unless there's a longer turnaround. My next flight is in two days."
"So you're saying I'm going to be at the airport for a while?"
Khrystyna looked confused, momentarily, then her face cleared. "Of course, I forget you don't know how anything works yet. Sorry! I'm not sure exactly, but you'll be going thru immigration on Kumaiya for a month or something. The island's a lot bigger than just the airport, though."
My face fell as I heard this news. 'Does this mean I won't be able to see Calista?' I thought.
The young flight attendant, noticing my distress, put her hand on my arm. "Don't worry, Jason, they make the induction process fun. So can I drop by on you? I'm pretty sure they give each of you your own apartment."
"Sounds good to me," I said. I must have not sounded enthusiastic enough, as Calista was foremost on my mind.
"To sweeten the deal, I'm going off of birth control today, and I'll give you my vote if anything happens." I had no idea what she was talking about, and was about to ask her to clarify, when Xyra walked by us, punching me on the arm and snorting derisively as she overheard Khrystyna's offer. She said something in Atlanean, as well.
Before I could ask Khrystyna to explain, she said, "Bitch!" in English, under her breath, but loud enough that I could hear. Xyra clearly heard her, too, and, despite not knowing the language, she understood the intent. Without breaking stride, she began to walk backwards. She raised her right hand, elbow bent, thumb and pinkie finger folded onto her palm and three middle fingers extended. Then she turned around again and strode off. Khrystyna had responded in kind, by reaching down in front of her midsection and stroking a phantom dick.
"What did that gesture mean?"
"It's like giving someone the middle finger where you're from," Khrystyna said. Still aggravated, she said "Those special forces divas think they're the Mother's gift to the planet!"
By now, we were entering the waiting area around our gate. A semi-circle of twelve women, all wearing purple business suits, were there to greet us. Each was holding a tablet in front of her waist.
"I gotta catch up with the other girls, okay? See ya 'round!" Khrystyna said, patting my butt before breaking off to join the other stewardesses.
I sped up to catch Chris, who was a good few strides ahead of me, and we fist-bumped before veering off to meet up with the women showing our respective last names on their tablets. "Don't be a stranger, bruh!" he said, loudly. "Let's meet up once we have a chance, okay?" I nodded in agreement, feeling good about having a friend from home in this strange new land.
I approached the woman whose device had the letters "WALKER" on its screen. She was medium height, had inky dark skin, and large blue eyes set in a delicate-looking, fine-boned face. Her tightly curled hair was dyed a vibrant pink color. In a warm voice, she said, "You must be Jason? I'm Jacintha, your Cultural Liaison; it's a pleasure to meet you." She stuck out her hand, and gave me a firm handshake. "Would you please come this way?"
We joined a flow of men, each escorted by a purple-clad liaison, stepping onto a people mover. Another flight must have landed around the same time; I estimated that there were, in total, around twenty-three other males, each with a dedicated, purple-clad escort. I overheard conversations in a multitude of tongues. I had never been good with languages, having nearly failed Spanish in high school, so was unable to recognize what the men were speaking. Based on outward appearance, though, I got the impression that the other flight consisted of Africans and Southeast Asians.
These men were dressed similarly to my group. They had on flat leather sandals, billowy shirts, open to the navel, and leather pants. The pants, like mine, were as tight as they could be, without causing discomfort, and also had no pockets. I was reminded of the many times my mom dragged me to see The Nutcracker ballet; multiple times per year, even, whenever one of my sisters made it into the production. The male ballet dancers usually had tights on, leaving little to the imagination about the shape of their butts, and even providing a decent idea of how well endowed they were up front. I could see the other men around me surreptitiously checking each other out. Everyone I could see had a substantial bulge around their groin, and shapely, rounded glutes.
The purple clad women were checking us men out, too, and were not bothering to hide it. Jacintha's eyes had dropped to my midsection as I neared her, and when she made eye contact, moments later, there was no hint of embarrassment on her face. Equally, I could now see her eyes roaming the bodies of the men, drinking in the handsome faces and cut, tightly-clad physiques. Far from being an anomaly, her behavior was the norm; the other liaisons' heads seemed to be mounted on swivels.
The small terminal that the pack of us were moving through was modern and mostly familiar, with a clean white and light green motif throughout. A soaring roof was high above us. Floor-to-ceiling windows and glass interior walls let in sunlight and provided an excellent view of the deep blue ocean stretching away from the island. There were, however, some differences from any airport I had seen before. I was used to such places posting signage in at least three major languages. Here the only signs were in the Atlantean script, which, for now, I was calling Aurebesh, as the same characters were used in the Star Wars movies. Another difference was that overall cleanliness was being maintained not by janitorial staff, but instead by crude-looking robots. The floor to the left of the people mover, for example, had several dark gray boxes, each the size of a portable refrigerator, crawling along the floor like caterpillars. Making their way up the sides of the exterior windows were crab-like robots, with rotating brushes whirring against the thick glass panes.
While we were making our way out of the terminal, Jacintha explained what a Cultural Liaison, or CL, actually did. From long experience, the Atlantean government had learned that visitors like myself needed around a month to learn enough about Atlantea, and adjust to the significant societal differences. Without such an assimilation period, they found that a lot of men hated their time on the island, or failed to do well at whatever job or academic pursuit they were here for. Or they failed to, as she put it, "be successful in other ways." That last part was cryptic, but I figured there would be time enough for clarification. It turns out that each visitor, such as myself, was assigned a dedicated CL. While she had other administrative duties, she did not have any other men to look after for the next month. After that, she and I exchanged pleasantries. She was twenty-three years old, and had been a CL for a year, having first received the equivalent of a bachelor's degree in World History at Diamandis University.
The people mover had come to an end several minutes earlier, and our impromptu troupe had walked past a gift shop and cafe, neither of which had been open for business. Eventually we came to the top of a steep staircase. Above us was a sign, with a downward-pointing arrow and a pictogram of a railway car. There was writing on the sign, which I presumed meant "subway" or "train", but could not be sure.
As we walked down the broad staircase, I was surprised to see how quickly our surroundings changed. After descending about twenty feet, the smooth white walls of the airport transitioned to older ones constructed from thick marble slabs, with steps made of the same material. Unlike before, it was clear these steps had been well-trod. It felt like I was walking through an old museum in New York City, with deeply-worn grooves from countless years of foot traffic, except perhaps an order of magnitude more so. I almost slipped in a particularly large, smoothed-out rut on the lip of one of the steps. At the bottom of the stairs was a subway platform, designed to look like a large grotto, with high, rounded ceilings painted in bright red, purple and orange hues. Statues of were mounted across the tracks. I only got a good look at one of them, the most prominent: a uniformed woman holding a shield on her right arm.
"It's just one stop to my office," Jacintha said. I could see down the tunnel, and as a train approached, it was preceded by a wave of purple light, given off by vertical armatures that bent inwards as the train approached.
"Holy shit!" I said, then looked around in surprise as I realized that many of the men around me had let out some kind of epithet as well.
Jacintha rolled her eyes at my reaction. "Yes, it's like Wakanda," she said. "And no," she added, "this isn't Wakanda."
"That explains why Calista thought Black Panther was a comedy!" I blurted out.
"Who?" Jacintha asked.
"Calista Corey," I said. "She's my girlfriend. She's why I'm here."
"You have an Atlantean girlfriend?" Jacintha asked, eyes wide in surprise.
"Is that unusual?" I asked.
"I've never heard of a male who even knew they'd met an Atlantean girl before coming here! How did you meet?"
Just then, the train arrived. Like the plane, it was made of a black metal that resembled carbon fiber. The surface of the car was clean; there was no sign of graffiti. It was also covered in pits and deep scratches.
"How old is this subway car?" I asked, wide-eyed.
"We'll get to that later," Jacintha said.
We entered the car, and sat down on a lacquered wooden bench. Like the steps leading to the platform, there were obvious indentations in the smooth wood, where countless butts had seated themselves over the years. On the ride to the next stop, which lasted about ten minutes, I relayed an abbreviated version of how I had met Calista, how she had saved my life, and how her unexpected pregnancy precipitated her rushed return to Atlantea.
