Jian-2 was a planet a lot like Earth, except with the continents and the oceans scrambled and rearranged. To Richard, it looked a bit too much like Earth. It took something away from his home planet to imagine that it was not all that uncommon, that they could find similar planets all across the galaxy. Quite frankly, he had been hoping for something more exciting.
They all stood by Wing's "window", an artificial but (hopefully, at least) truthful representation of what the world outside looked like. Wing coasted silently towards the planet. Tom stood in awe of the sight, and even Kayleigh looked a little impressed through her detachment. What Richard noticed was all the things that weren't there. There were no jumps in gravity, no change in motion as they entered Jian-2's orbit, and most importantly the lack of anything artificial-looking in the planet's atmosphere.
"No satellites," he said out loud. Nobody responded.
Wing entered the atmosphere like it was nothing but another chunk of empty space. They were immersed in greyness, but there was none of the rocking and panicked rumbling that Richard had been expecting. It was almost like some quaint 19th-century fantasist's idea of what a journey to another planet would be like.
And then they were out of the atmosphere and into the clouds, white cotton-balls that seemed to spiral out vertically as Wing sliced through them at the same calm gait. Richard forgot his scientific mind and joined the other two in standing agog at the window The continent was growing beneath them, unfurling itself to reveal mountains and valleys and tiny twinkling cities that were growing at a tremendous pace. As they approached closer Richard could see that there were six cities, all seemingly of equal size, standing in a kind of ring in the continent's most fertile spot. From their distance, what seemed to be a circle of light connected all six. And then they were diving in even closer, and in a split second the city beneath them was human size, and they were looking out on a seemingly endless plain of skyscrapers poking out from an unseen ground like spikes on a hedgehog's back.
Richard tried to catch his breath. Kayleigh turned to him and grinned. "Don't go in much for urban sprawl, do they?"
Wing's voice, back to being male and authoritative, decided to chime in. "We make the most efficient use of our land possible, so as to leave the most space for agriculture and natural environments."
Kayleigh raised her hands in surrender. "Yes, yes, you've developed an utopia. We get it."
"Once you've lived in our society, I will take your judgements of it entirely seriously," said Wing without a hint of sarcasm. "Now, if you'll just stick close together for a moment, I'm going to shrink a bit so we can fit on your roof."
Kayleigh linked arms with Tom. Richard edged closer to her, feeling weirdly guilty for following instructions.
Wing drew in suddenly and all at once. Their rooms and all the space they had accustomed to were folded up into their ship's steely walls quicker than the eye could process, and for a moment Richard was afraid that they might all be crushed. But Wing stopped short of their bodies, and instead left them in a stark bedroom-shaped shit. He then glided softly down to land on one of the grey tower roofs.
"I'd say wait until the plane comes to a complete stop," said Richard. "But I think we're at a complete stop already."
"How can you tell jokes right now?" said Tom. "And especially bad ones?"
"We all have our own ways of working off nerves."
And then Wing did something Richard had half convinced himself it would never do. It let them out.
The air smelt different. It was strange that that was the first thing he'd notice, but it was. It was purer, like deep country air, but also there was a strange tinge to its scent that he couldn't quite place. The second thing that struck Richard was the quiet. There was a faint rumbling far beneath them, but other than that it sounded like they were alone in the skyscraper city. He began to get the impression of this as a hermeneutic, sealed-off world, with the buildings just massive mausoleums beneath them.
"Where is everybody?" said Kayleigh.
They had only had their backs turned for a second, but during that time Wing had become his officious human male persona. "You must remember, we are very high up. People mostly stay inside, but there is a street environment down below, as humans prefer." Those two words -- "street environment" -- sounded strange and sterile on Wing's newly-fashioned tongue. "Of course, one can receive all amenities without ever stepping foot outside."
"Why would you set up a world like that?" said Kayleigh, Her tone wasn't angry -- more wistful, with a little curiosity in there.
"Mainly out of convenience," said Wing. "But honestly, I don't understand this obsession humans have with setting."
Richard had nothing to say to that -- here, in this bizarre array of silver stretching out to the horizon, setting seemed like the most important thing imaginable.
"Now," said Wing. "Please stand on this centre tile and I will show you to your quarters.
Wing indicated a metallic four-by-four spot on the roof, only faintly visible. The abductees crowded in uneasily. They were forced into close proximity, squeezing against each other, although this was not too great an imposition on their privacy. After all, Richard figured, he had fucked two of the three others -- what was wrong with a little group hug?
"Down," Wing gravely intoned. And then the floor dropped out from under them.
Richard realized quickly that this was it: this was when he was going to die. They were plummeting down a dark shaft, wind whipping past them, floor falling just a bit quicker than they were so that they seemed to be perpetually hovering above it. He clung to Kayleigh's hand and prayed that it was swift and not especially painful. And then, they stopped, a little startled but no worse for wear.
"Richard?" said Tom. "Was that you screaming?"
"You were all screaming," said Wing. "No need to be afraid -- the technology is perfectly safe. Welcome to floor 343 -- Madrid, as its inhabitants have dubbed it." A doorway had opened in the left side of the chasm, letting a bright light in to reveal the area as a roofless but nevertheless pretty standard elevator.
What was distinctly not standard was the area around it. They were under an impossible sunny blue sky. Whether the light was natural or artificial, it shone down on a quaint cobblestone square, a kind of old-world nostalgia piece. The steps all lead up into identical villas, which stood on a circular perimeter, all facing inwards. The exception to this was a ground-level bakery which glowed warmly from the inside. The only thing stopping this from being a little self-contained universe was two sets of spiral staircases, one on each side of the elevator, which stretched up into the sky and down into the earth below. It looked decidedly bigger on the inside than it had on the outside. Of course, it was hard to consider this "inside" at all.
Tom gazed up at the ceiling-sky with faint amazement. Kayleigh was silent as well, but it was more of a suspicious quiet as she dissected the indoor block with her eyes.
"Not bad," said Richard, hoping he sounded nonchalant. "Does it go dark at night?"
"Of course," said Wing. "Our goal is to make the transition as painless as possible."
"The past couple of weeks hasn't really been painless," said Kayleigh.
Wing's facial expression was his usual mask of blandness, but beneath it Richard somehow detected that he was perhaps a bit tired of apologizing. "Your... helper should be here shortly. In fact, I believe she is running late."
"Helper?"
"The precise term I am thinking of stems from the Veranti language -- it means something akin to 'person who allows you to live'. I am not aware of any English equivalent."
Richard rolled the phrase over in his mind . "Person who allows you to live" was probably meant to sound kindly and parental, but it also sounded a bit like a kidnapper, or some warlord extending mercy to his fallen foe.
In the windows of the weird little villas he could see faces peeking out, cautious but curious. There were a couple children, and a couple things that were definitely not human. Before Richard could look much closer at it he was distracted by the sound of metallic footsteps echoing up from the below.
A human blur burst out from the stairs in the ground. Richard saw a flash of short black hair as what was eventually recognizable as a petite woman ran up to them. "Sorry sorry sorry! I am having the worst day -- my alarm didn't go off, and there was a jam in the tunnels, and then my key card didn't work until I reconfigged it and you just have no idea how sorry I am..."
Now that she was only talking a mile a minute and not moving that fast Richard noticed some distinctly strange things about the newcomer. For one thing, her right eye was red while her left one was blue, something that would have seemed pretty mundane if not for the small blue text he saw in the red eye. She was definitely human, but her movements seemed strange, almost too smooth and too fluid. Oh, and her right arm was carved out of glistening chrome.
Everyone was a little stunned by the girl's appearance as well as her personality. Tom was the first to compose himself. "It's okay. We just got here too. And, uh, by 'here' I mean the planet. God, that feels weird to say."
"You'll get used to it," said the girl. "Of course, I wouldn't know, really -- I'm third-generation. Oh! I haven't introduced myself. Stupid, stupid. My name's Mona. M-O-N-A. But you could probably figure that out. I don't think you guys are dumb or anything. God, what's Earth like these days?"
