Justin - Chapter Four
by Machelli
It was fair to say that Justin wasn't surprised by what he saw. A man of about forty years sat behind a large, wooden desk. When the man looked up at the sound of the door closing Justin could tell that the photograph in the limousine had been a recent one. His father was an older version of Justin. No surprise there. Then the man spoke in a steady, almost calculated voice.
"How was the trip?" His father motioned for him to sit down.
"Uh . . fine, I guess," Justin said as he sat in the only other chair in the room.
His father looked at him for a while before speaking again.
"So, you don't like dress clothes," he stated.
Justin's jaw dropped slightly.
How had he known?
His father looked back down at his desk and began to write.
"I'll ask Miss Carten to stop laying them out for you, then," his father said. "You don't need to dress up when you come here."
Justin was relieved but speechless.
An awkward silence fell between them. Justin tried to think of something to say.
"So," he said. "What is it that you do here?"
His father looked up from his desk.
"Well, we manufacture metal parts for large projects. Nineteen years ago it used to be the space program but now most of it goes to large transports such as ships and planes."
He paused.
"We were the first to develop synthetic metal, quite a bit stronger and much more reliable than regular ore. And right now we are in the middle of a very big project."
"Oh," Justin said.
Then his father bent his head over his desk again and began to write something down. He stayed like that for what seemed like half an hour – at his desk, doing work while Justin sat opposite the desk, staring at him.
Come on! He wanted say. Tell me you're glad to see me! Tell me you missed me! Tell me why I don't remember you at all! Tell me why no one talks about you in East America! Tell me why the first time I ever saw a picture of you was in your limousine! Tell me why you and Mom split up! Tell me what you're writing right now! Tell me anything! Tell me you love me! TALK TO ME, DARNIT!
But nothing came out.
Justin continued to sit in his chair and his "Dad" continued to sit behind his desk, writing and showing Justin nothing but the brown, straight hair on his head.
This wasn't what it was supposed to be like. They were supposed to play ball or something. That's what normal people did, right?
He allowed his eyes to wander about the room. It was crafted in the same old-fashioned manner as the house. Polished wood had been fitted into every place imaginable. The only difference between the office and any room in the house was the computer in the corner. Justin didn't recall ever seeing a computer in his father's house.
But that wasn't the only difference.
It was quieter here. Back home there had always been some sort of background noise that made the place feel warmer and more inviting. Here there was no sound but the scritch-scratching of his father's pencil.
"Talk to me. ." Justin mouthed.
His father's desk was a wall. It was a giant, wooden wall that wouldn't allow his father to see Justin. It had grabbed the man's head and forced him to look down at the piece of paper on the desk. Then it gave him a pencil and made him write. It wanted to be larger. It wanted to grow and grow and grow and force Justin right out of the room. It wanted to push him right through the wall, back to the house and never let him come back so his father could sit there and sign papers and write all day long.
Justin wanted to get out. He wanted to get out of that office before the wall that was his father's desk forced him out. He needed to leave before the desk, with all of its papers and its scritchy-scratchy silence, made him leave. Justin couldn't take it any more. He needed to go.
"Where's the bathroom?" he asked.
His father smiled.
Was that the first time his father smiled?
"All the way back down the hallway and to your right," he said.
"Thank you."
Justin got up and walked out the office door and down the hallway.
As he turned right he was met by yet another corridor, which was much longer than the first. This new one had an unusually high ceiling for such a thin passageway. Justin continued forward, looking at the very tall, immaculately white hallway.
The brightness of the spot-free passages still amazed Justin. It was almost as if there were powerful lights hidden behind the walls. Actually he did not see any lights on the ceiling and somehow he was without a shadow. The thought that the floor, walls, and ceiling were luminescent started to become more and more acceptable to Justin as he trekked ever onward.
But where was the bathroom?
He was nearing the end of the corridor and he had not seen it yet. He was headed for the only visible door and it was, like his father's office, at the end of the hallway. It's positioning almost seemed too important to have toilets on the other side.
He was now in front of the door and it too, like the hallway, was a dazzling white. Seeing no doorknob, Justin simply pushed and it swung open without a sound. As he walked through the doorway he looked back at the hall and the giant, white door swung silently back into place. When he looked forward he immediately realized that he had taken a wrong turn.
He was in the widest, longest, tallest room he had ever seen. Hundreds of tables stretched away from him through a massive cloud of people. A few members of the crowd were standing up while others were sitting down and eating. Everyone was dressed in extremely normal looking clothes. If Justin had been wearing his jeans and T-shirt from that morning he would have fit in perfectly.
Finally his gaze fell upon someone who was not dressed to fit in. This person was wearing dark blue clothes with a black, bulky-looking vest and was standing right next to Justin. Wrinkles of old age were evident on his face and his hair was almost completely gray with a few stray strands of brown here and there. The man was rather tall but not well-built and was looking at Justin.
"Hello," he said. The man's voice was low but not calculated like his Father's was. It gave Justin the impression that this person was much friendlier.
"Hi," Justin replied. He was beginning to feel more and more out of place.
The man smiled slightly.
"I take it this isn't where you meant to end up."
"No," Justin admitted.
Then the man turned the rest of his body to face Justin. Something on his vest flashed in the light and when the glare stopped Justin could see that it was a badge. Engraved on it were the words, "Mr. Livel, member of the Guards."
Why was there a person guarding the door?
Justin was certain that he wasn't supposed to be here.
He looked up from the badge to Mr. Livel's face. He seemed nice enough and it wasn't as if the man was going to shoot him. Yet Justin couldn't shake the fact that he was out of bounds.
"How do I get out of here?" He asked.
"I'm afraid the only way to leave is to go to the other side of the mess hall and have the Door Guard over there let you out."
Mr. Livel looked sincerely apologetic.
"Why can't you just open this door and-" Justin stopped. There was no handle. The door he had come through could only be pushed open from the other side.
"Never mind," he said. "So that door must be the ‘out door,' right?"
Mr. Livel nodded.
"Alright."
Justin walked into the crowd of people, away from Mr. Livel.
Being in a crowd under normal circumstances would not have bothered Justin but these circumstances were decidedly not normal. What was even worse was the fact that he was dressed much better than anyone else in the mess hall and some people were giving him strange looks. It was almost as if wearing dress clothes was against the law.
The crowd was becoming denser and Justin came to believe that he was in the middle of the room. In order to move forward he found that he sometimes had to push and shove through the swarm of people. However, Justin was not the only one pushing through. He was getting jostled from time to time as well. A man in an undershirt almost stepped on Justin's foot at one point and a boy with light brown hair practically took him out a few moments later.
At long last Justin finally arrived at the other door, which was guarded by a man who looked very much like Mr. Livel only a little smaller. When Justin approached him he made an obvious move to block the door.
"I need to get out please," Justin said, wondering if the guard would, in fact, allow it.
"I'm sure you do," the man responded in a less-than-friendly tone. "You know the rules. Lunars aren't allowed to leave until six."
"But Mr. Livel said that in order to get out I had to see you," he stated.
"Mr. Livel said that, did he?" The guard didn't seem to trust him. "Let's just see about that, shall we?"
With that the man put a finger to an earpiece in his right ear and began speaking.
Justin looked back at the long tables and the swarm of people moving around them. He hoped that he wouldn't have to stay longer than he had to. Then he looked back at the guard who seemed to be wrapping up his conversation with Mr. Livel.
"He did?" The man said disbelievingly. "So it's true?"
He took his finger out of his ear and looked suspiciously at Justin.
"All right," he said reluctantly. "I'll let you go."
He pushed the large, white door open for Justin. As he walked through it and down the hallway he could hear the guard call after him.
"But if I find out this is a trick you'll regret it!"
As soon as the guard closed the door Justin realized that his situation had not improved. He was, once again, walking down a lengthy, white hallway with no idea how to get out. Upon reaching the end of the hallway he immediately made a left hand turn and was startled when a voice called to him.
"I don't think you want to go that way," The voice said.
Justin turned and was surprised to see another guard at a door he would have noticed had he gone right instead.
"Why not?" He asked.
"That leads to the Lunar barracks," stated the guard. "I'm pretty sure you want to go this way." The man motioned to the door he was standing in front of.
Justin walked toward the guard who pushed the door open for him.
"Mr. Livel told me you'd be coming my way."
Justin walked through the door and said, "thanks."
"No problem," the guard said, "anytime, Justin."
The door closed.
Justin stopped.
That guard had known his name. But did that really surprise him? After all, his father was their employer. However, the guard at the out door to the mess hall hadn't recognized him. So, maybe Mr. Livel told the guard in the hallway that Justin Evarb was coming through and he had better show him the way out.
Is this really as important as I'm making it out to be?
Justin decided that it wasn't and continued down the hall, looking for his father's door.
As the helicopter lifted away from the Evarb Production Plant Justin noticed that the building had a large wall around it, just like his father's house. The only difference being that the one here was much thicker and probably quite a bit taller too. Security was obviously tighter at the Plant. Justin wondered why. What could possibly be such a threat that his father had a large wall built to keep it out?
Another question that bothered Justin was the meaning of a term he had heard several times over that day. What was a Lunar? Justin had heard the word before and knew that it was in reference to the moon but the way he had heard it used suggested something other than Earth's largest satellite.
He remembered when the guard in the mess hall said, "Lunars aren't allowed to leave until six." It was almost as if he had been talking about people. And then the guard in the hall had said something about "Lunar barracks." Well, that meant Moon barracks but that didn't make sense. Were the people in the mess hall Lunars? If they were then did they come from the Moon as their name implied?
Justin continued to ponder the situation even after the helicopter had landed and he was in his room. Finally he gave up and decided that he would just ask Miss Carten about it during class tomorrow.
"Justin! Dinnertime!" Miss Carten's voice broke into his thoughts.
"Coming!" He yelled back.
He put his hands in his pockets and was about to walk out the door when he noticed something.
There was a piece of paper in his pants pocket that surely had not been there before. Justin took it out and read it.
Justin,
Come back tomorrow. Find me at row seven, table five. This is very important.
Sincerely,
Sam Yrron
How had it gotten inside his pocket? Perhaps someone slipped it to him while he was pushing his way through the mess hall. And who was Sam Yrron, anyway? Was table five in the mess hall? Why was it important? What did he need to talk about?
"Justin!" Miss Carten's voice, once again, cut through his thoughts. "Are you coming?"
Justin put the note on his dresser and headed for the door again.
"Yes!" He cried back. "I'm coming!"
The next morning Justin awoke to the sound of his alarm, which he had not been able to shut off the night before. However, this morning he was able to turn it off once he was awake so it did not continue to beep as he got dressed.
The alarm was an odd shape, almost resembling an answering machine that had been mounted on the wall. Justin had never seen anything quite like it. After examining it for a moment or two he went downstairs, had breakfast as usual and prepared himself for his private schooling.
"Ok," said Miss Carten in her jovial manner. "Shall we start with History again?"
Justin decided that now was as good a time as any to introduce his new topic of discussion.
"Actually, I was kind of hoping that I could ask you a question before we started," he said hesitantly.
Miss Carten looked at him with a smile.
"Go for it," she said.
Justin took a breath.
"What are Lunars?" he asked.
The smile slowly faded from Miss Carten's face.
"Uh. ."
Her eyes quickly glanced to the side.
"Do they come from the Moon?"
Justin hoped he could at least get an answer for that question.
Miss Carten looked back at him.
"Well, yes," she said. "Lunars do come from the moon."
"Are they people?"
"Why, yes. They're just like you." She paused. "And me."
Justin wanted to get one more question answered.
"Why were they up there?"
Miss Carten fidgeted nervously.
"You know, "she said in a wavering voice. "I don't think I feel comfortable talking about this."
And so they resumed their normal lesson. Justin tried to pay attention but most of the time he kept thinking of Lunars and the note that was on his dresser. He was debating over whether or not he should follow the note's instructions.
On the one hand he could probably get a lot of questions answered in the mess hall. But on the other hand he wasn't so sure if the person who wrote the note could be trusted. What if it was some sort of trick?
However, in the end Justin's curiosity got the better of him.
He had decided to go.
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