Looking back, it’s hard to believe it ever took place. What’s harder to believe is we put up with it. I remember my mom telling me when I was only seven years old, “we should all get guns and put an end to all this.” She waved one hand around the kitchen where I sat at a plastic topped table with chrome legs. She set my short stack of small pancakes down in front of me and pointed, with the same hand that had just waved to the world, at the bottle of liquid brown sugar pretending to be maple syrup. I squirted a glop of the thick liquid on the top middle of my highest pancake and with that first delicious bite I wondered who or what it was we should shoot with the guns we did not have. She was still mumbling something about them and what they were doing when she sat down across from me but the words were not meant for me. All I could hear was mumbling. “You got all your stuff for school together?” she asked as she put a glob of liquid brown sugar on the top of her own pancakes.
I had my own problems, although I didn’t think of them as problems at the time. I was just starting the third grade. I was the youngest, and shortest, kid in the whole class. I hadn’t noticed. I had been the youngest and shortest kid in Kindergarten, first grade and second grade. But until the first day of third grade no one had pointed out my weakness. Miss Hanna, my favorite all time teacher, on the first day of class, shared my age with the whole group. “Jack is only seven years old,” she said for no reason during roll call on that first day. There was a rumble of whispers from all the eight-year olds. Turned out there were several other seven year olds but I was the youngest so I got honorable mention…
The tall man limped to the side of the busy road. His clothes were wrinkled and stained. His gray hair stuck out in a way no stylist would suggest no matter how cutting edge a stylist might be. He shouted words that could not be defined at the car moving past. His words were words not yet listed in current dictionaries but their meaning was clear; the car was not appreciated. He rubbed the spot on his hip the slow-moving car had contacted and shouted a few more slurred and incomprehensible words. Walking backwards in order to wave a final goodbye to the vehicle he almost fell before he untangled his long legs. Turning back to his intended direction required the same tangling and untangling but he caught his balance once more and continued his rhythmless walk. Tripping at each real or imagined uneven square of concrete his movement was a continuous falling forward that seemed to progress. He paused to explain, to one rather abrupt change in elevation along a crack in the sidewalk, his discontent. He waited for a proper apology, got none, and continued walking.
The short, stout woman pulled her ankle length gray with black specs coat around her to close the gaps between large black plastic buttons that seemed to be letting the winter morning chill in.Standing on the painted white curb next to the sidewalk she leaned forward for a better look down the four lane highway.The bus was just a block away, its windscreen’s flat glass reflecting the sun coming over the mountains to the east.She picked her things, a shopping bag and a blanket, up off the bus bench and waited.
The bus came to a hurried stop producing a rush of wind and brake noise.She waited until she heard the gasp of air brakes that signaled the bus was done moving. She entered the bus, climbing the two steps, while digging into her purse for the paper card that would give her a seat.The driver nodded, not to her but to pass the time, as the machine scanned her pass.Walking down the center aisle while keeping at least one hand on the chrome bars each seat provided she kept her balance as the bus groaned and pulled away from the curb.She sat three seats down, on the right, next to thewindow in the seat she thought of as hers.The shopping bag and blanket filled the seat next to her insuring her privacy.She opened her book and started reading where she had left off the day before.She was completely lost in the story before the bus reached highway speeds.The bus slowed, ground to a stop, took on passengers, pulled back into traffic twelve more times without her having to leave her place on the typewritten pages.She put the book into her shopping bag and watched the road through the glass front of the bus. She reached up and pulled the cord above the window that activated a buzzer and gave the driver a quick buzz.The bus swerved into the gutter just inches from the curb.She waited until all motion stopped.She stood.Picked up her things.She walked to the door.Waited for the driver to activate the hydraulics that opened the door. She stepped down the two steps and onto the concrete sidewalk.
Kathy and I have been putting notes on things and passing notes back and forth to each other for a long time without a response.The passage of time is so strange here.Nothing changes.During the last few years we havehad one way to gauge the passage of time, our apple trees.The intelligence here has taken a very active roll in our three tree apple orchard.Water for the trees is produced daily.As the trees grow the bubbles brings more and more dirt.The mound on which the three small trees sit is now shoulder high and the trees themselves are at least three feet tall.I do not know how fast apple trees grow but they must be years old.I long for some grass seed.I remember grass growing on hillsides and think some nice green grass would look just fine on the sides of the pile of dirt.I have a place on the mound where I go to sit and watch the apple trees grow, sometimes several transportation bubbles hover nearby and watch with me.This morning, on a whim, I write a big Hi on a page of paper and hold it up to a small orange bubble that has come closer to me than is usual.A piece of white paper drops from the orange transportation bubble and floats gently through the air.The paper slides back and forth in the air until it reaches the soil near my feet.I pick up the paper.On the paper is only one word written in black and in the same font as the “Hobbit” paperback book.The word is Hello.Not Hi, not a copy of what I wrote but a true reply.I think of hugging the orange bubble but instead take the note and start running down paths, first this way and then that, looking for Kathy.I’m shouting, “they say hello,” the whole time I run.Kathy runs toward me obviously worried that I’ve gone completely off the edge.
“David, I’m here.Calm down.What’s wrong?” I show her the page with Hello written in large black letters. She’s not overly excited but she still doesn’t understand.
“I wrote Hi they answered Hello,” it took her a minute to process what I was telling her.
“It’s not just a copy.”
“No.”
“But it could be they just understand the two words are related without knowing the meaning behind them.”
“Could be.Could be they are saying hello.”We start walking toward the apple trees, Kathy hurrying me, walking ahead.
“Do you think the bubble is still there?”
“It was orange,” I do a quick skip to catch up to her.“What are you going to do?”
“If it’s still there I going to ask it a question.”The orange transportation bubble is still hovering in the same spot.Kathy climbs the apples tree’s mound of dirt and stands next to the tallest of the three trees.She pulls out a scrap of paper and holds her pencil over it thinking of what to say.
Every morning, every time we wake up, Kathleen and I take walk.For a long time we stayed close to our purple ball home.Our apple life forms were young and needed watered often.As the plants grew more dirt was added, they were moved from their air cleaner container and placed into a pile of dirt on the floor.We placed them just outside the entrance to our ball – kind of outside, but still on the floor.The intelligence here figured out how much water the apple plants need and started keeping the ground moist for us, they even add dirt to the pile from time to time. Being freed from the responsibility of watching after the young plants we planned a trip to the area of ground I had found inside the dome.The place where the transportation bubbles interact.We took much the same route I had on my first solo trip around the inside of the dome.Blue mats, still in like new condition lay in every spot I had stopped before. There is no dust or harsh sunlight here.There are no rain storms or winds.It’s like we are wrapped in plastic and stored for later use.Without hurry it took us close to a week to get to the black with red lines parking lot.(Seven sleeps equals a week.)
“Is this how it was before?” Kathy asks the question out loud but, as is our habit, she writes the question on a scrap of paperback paper and hands it to me as she speaks.The transportation bubbles, thousands of them, are in piles here and there across the ground area.Some of the bubbles are stacked fifty high, some are in groups of two or three.Some bubbles hover around and jump from group to group.
“Just like before.Maybe a few more are gathered here this time,” I hand her the note that says what I said.
“And you touched one?” a note says and Kathy asks out loud.
“I did.It didn’t seem to care or even notice.”
“I want to touch one,” she started walking toward one of the largest piles of brightly colored balls.I walk with her, making an effort to keep up.She was excited by this place.“I’ve never touched one before,” she wrote and said.Near the bottom of the largest pile sat a huge green bubble, three times the size of a car.Kathleen headed straight for it and without pause she placed both hands firmly on its shell.She just stood there for the longest time, smiling.I started to worry that she had gone into some sort of trance but after what seemed to be a full minute she took her hands away.
“They have community.they know each other.”
“That’s what I thought the first time I came here.”
“They know each other, they could know us.”
“I think they have known us for quite a while.”
“Don’t you see?They could just respond to us, like an adaptive program that sees a need and takes care of it.”
“But they come together here to see and feel each other.To share.”
“Or they need contact with the ground from time to time to recharge or release a charge or something like that.”Kathy looked disappointed in me for a second but recovered quickly.
“No,” she said.“They come here to be together and at some point we will show them that we can be a part of their population.They will interact with us!”She insisted that we sit together on the black surface and talk for a while.We passed notes back and forth and watched transportation bubbles come and go.Piles of bubbles changed in size and moved from place to place.
The apple trees have sprouted.Three seeds, all original to the apple core I found, germinated and pushed leaves above the soil.None of the copies of the seeds the intelligence here created have sprouted.I still water both containers of dirt but I think three successes is pretty good.I’ll give the replicated seeds a few more weeks before I reclaim the air filter base and put it back on the Lark.I’ve been moving the plants from place to place, under different colors of light to see if it makes a difference.So far the apple leaves are a healthy dark green and it looks like, in several years with a lot of care and luck, Kathy and I could be eating apples along with our Cheerio’s and Skittles.For some reason the thought of eating apples years from now depresses me.Kathy doesn’t seem to care at all about the apples.She spends most of her time writing letters to the life/intelligence here.She’s taken to posting labels on structures.She spent an entire day leaving pages with the single word “red” near every light box or spire that is the color red.She’s given up completely on our ever understanding the language used here and is focused on our benefactors learning our language.
My plan had been to show Kathy the patch of inside ground where all the transportation bubbles gathered but we didn’t make it anywhere near that far.Handing notes back and forth took more attention than talking.We included drawings along side of words like “box” or “ball”.Kathleen put the alphabet at the top of a page just to let our readers know what our limits were.I have never been a artist but with little else to do and what seemed to be an unlimited supply of paper and pencils over the next days I took up drawing.I drew landscapes of our dome almost exclusively at first.Kathy labeled the objects in my drawings as squares, spires, tubes, transportation bubbles and any other words that seemed to apply.I left one of the better of my completed drawings, along with Kathy’s labels on the red box before sleeping.I had no intention of requesting anything from our watchers.The red box served as a table and leaving the page there was just my failure to put my stuff away.In the morning the page was gone.My drawing returned the morning after that along with a white twelve inch by twelve inch page.On the square of white paper appeared the same landscape I had drawn.The intelligence’s copy was in full color along with blinking lights and moving transportation bubbles.On the white paper our benefactors had labeled each object on the page with tiny lines of script.I drew a cube as carefully as I could on a blank paperback paper page and tried to copy the dome people’s letters that appeared next to a cube in their drawing.The letters, at least I assumed they were letters, there were hooks and circles that took time to figure out and I’m sure the colors also had meaning.The one “word” I tried to copy had six different colors and a dot above one letter blinked.Mine, of course, was all in gray but I did my best and placed my cube drawing on top of the red box.My drawing was taken and returned with “cube” written in large black letters using the same font as the Hobbit book.Sitting beside the drawing was a set of thin tubes of different colors.It took me a few minutes to figure out how to use them, it requires a slight pressure to start the flow of color and a slight pressure to stop it.But the set of drawing implements is very handy.With practice they have a range from a hair’s thickness to a quarter of an inch or so and the original set has never run out of ink.I use the colors for my drawings but I’m very careful to use only pencil gray when writing words.Colors carry meaning here and I do not want to confuse the inhabitants with my ignorance.
Kathy was more excited by the half a pencil than the yellow Skittle.She wanted to put it on the red box right away so she could have one of her own but I’ve learned a few things about replication.First I found a rough surface and sanded on the broken end until I had a nice sharp point instead of the broken stump then I placed the pencil on the red box for replication, no need in having to sharpen every pencil we asked to be replicated.There were three blank pages in the Hobbit book.I carefully tore these out and placed them on the red box with the pencil.If we were going to have something to write with we would need something to write on.We went ahead and, over the course of the day, replicated ten sharpened pencils and forty-five sheets of paper.I put the originals back into the Hobbit book to keep them in good shape as templets.
Kathleen took a sheet of paper and one of the pencils in hand.She very neatly wrote the numbers one through ten on the paper and then above each number she made corresponding dots, one dot for the number one, two dots for the number two and so on until she completed ten dots over the number ten.She wanted the intelligence here to understand she was not asking for the paper to be replicated so she did not place the paper on the box but beside it on the floor.We waited.I cleaned off the yellow Skittle and placed it on the box.A small transportation bubble replaced the yellow Skittle with a pile of red, green and yellow Skittles and took the paper with numbers away.After years of having only red and green Skittles a yellow Skittle is a wonderful thing.Kathy and I took a walk around our purple home and then went outside and put the car back together, it dawned on me that I should have asked for another air cleaner base for the Studebaker before we filled the two we have with dirt but there are no other drives planned.When we got back to our place in the purple ball there was a single page of very white paper, not at all like the page from the paperback book we had left on the floor, sitting on the red box.The twelve by twelve inch thin white page was covered with tiny marks in every color imaginable.Some of the marks looked like marks we had seen on the floor.Some of the marks glowed and some blinked and the page was alive with movement.Kathy and I sat and looked at each mark, followed every line, studied every possible pattern.We returned to the page the next day and the day after that but we never have been able to make any sense at all out of any part of the white page.Kathy knew we had communicated.If nothing more we had communicated that we wanted to communicate.
There were several indications that our benefactors were understanding us.The response to Kathy’s crying:extra water, the pile of Cheerios and Skittles.The extra can of gas when the intelligence understood Kathy planned to return to this bubble.Even the response to my placing a yellow Skittle on the red box, not just giving me one replicated yellow Skittle but understanding I wanted to include yellow Skittles with the mix of red and green.Kathy was sure we could find a way to share information with the people/life form/intelligence here.
“I think we can assume that they cannot hear sound, at least not the way we do,” Kathy sat on the floor with her back against the red lit box.
“Agreed.They make no sound at all other than the very faint hum we hear all the time and that hum never changes.”I sat on the light blue mat and watched her think.
“But they did understand I was trying to say something with the numbers one through ten.”
“And it wasn’t something basic to them or they would have understood and responded with math of their own.”
“Well, we don’t know that the white page isn’t the simplest form of math they can conceive.They must see us as rats or guppies.We are never going to understand them but they might be able to understand us,” I could tell she was on to something.
“And?”
“Language.It’s probably the most complex thing we have but it might reach their level, like we understand a cat purrs when it’s happy and yells when its tail is stepped on.”
“But they can’t hear.”
“No but they can read.” Kathy handed me three pages of blank paperback paper and a sharp pencil.She picked up three pages and a pencil for herself.“Come on, we are going to walk and talk.”The first thing Kathy wrote was, “leaving the purple ball now.”She handed me the page she wrote on and I added, “let’s take a long walk, I want to show you something.”She wrote, “we should water the apple seeds first.”I wrote back, “Okay.”And our efforts to teach our caregivers our language began.
My walk continues.I zig-zag farther into town and back to the edge of the dome.Every time I stop to rest I get a light blue upholstered spring filled mat. I’m within eyesight of one as I lay on one now.I am, I’m guessing, over half way around the dome and haven’t really seen anything new until this morning’s walk.As I walked this morning the buildings seemed to become thicker and taller.The air above was almost completely filled with shapes filled with lights and shapes and then all at once there was nothing.Not even floor.The colored markings I call the floor became the black squares with red lines every ten feet, that I’ve been calling the ground. Up until now the ground has only been outside the dome. The black squares filled an area at least a mile square and not only were there no structures on it there were no structures above it all the way to the top of the dome.On the inside square of ground were thousands of transport bubbles of all colors and all sizes.For the first time I saw the smaller, personal sized transport bubbles outside their smaller structures and there were larger bubbles, bubbles larger than the car sized bubbles, like small truck bubbles.The transportation bubbles were stacked in piles fifty to a hundred bubbles high.Their sides shining every color like old style glass Christmas tree ornaments.I walked close and even touched a few but I was completely ignored.Walking past the ground area the buildings on the other side were large, close together and filled the sky all the way to the top of the dome.I continued walking until I came to where I am now.The structures here are properly spaced and the air above is populated in the fashion I have become acquainted with.I think the odd meeting place over the ground area inside this dome must show some type of community, a sharing of some sort that I have never seen anywhere else in the dome.Transportation bubbles have alway darted to and fro, always busy.The ground area may be a park or recreation area or a mating ground for all I know.But it was interesting.
I walked a few more days without much to comment on.There are always things of interest:lights that blink a certain way, a color I have never seen before, a spire cut into a million tiny shapes that each reflect in a different way but the city becomes like a forest – every tree is different but they are all alike.I started to see patterns and shapes I had seen before and knew I was not very far from my purple ball home.And then I saw something that surprised me even more than seeing the ground area inside the dome.My nineteen sixty-two gray Studebaker Lark sat outside the dome with it’s front bumper just inches from the barrier.I could see no one inside the car so I hurried to the purple dome.The first thing I noticed inside the dome was my sister Kathy sitting on top of the red lit box waiting.As soon as she saw me she jumped down from the box and ran toward me.I moved toward her at an equal speed and we hugged.We have never been a hugging family but it seemed to be appropriate.
“You’re here!” I hadn’t spoken in weeks to anyone other than myself and it was all I could think of to say.
“Yes, dear David, I’ve come back.Someone should kill a calf.”
“Seems a little harsh.Tell me.”
“Your sentences have suffered without me.But sit on this mat, no longer the only one of it’s kind, and I will tell you my story.”I did as I was told and Kathleen reclaimed her spot on the blinking red box.While swinging her legs and bumping her heels on the side of the box she started to tell me the story of what had happened since I had last seen her.
“I had a plan.I did not just drive off into the sunset.I might have if there were a sunset here but instead I chose a red line to straddle with the Lark and went in a straight line.The original plan was to drive until half a tank of gas remained and then to think about what I was doing.I drove for hours working hard to keep your car under sixty miles an hours because that’s your rule.” I nodded and smiled, it’s nice when rules are obeyed.“I found I could listen to the sound of the motor and keep the speed reasonable.I may have gone kind of half to sleep but I glanced at the dash after a long time of steady eventless driving and the gas gage showed only a quarter of a tank!So my decision was made for me.I would drive as far as the car would take me and then maybe walk for a while.Your Studebaker was almost to empty when I noticed a patch of lighter orange on the horizon, like when we first found this place.The patch of light was off to the right so I left the red line I had straddled and headed directly for the light patch on the horizon.I needed to put the extra can of gas into the tank but I made it to another dome just like this one.In fact after looking around inside a bit I thought I had somehow come a full circle and come all the way back to this place.I found this purple ball, or at least I thought it was the same one.There was no mat and no you.I searched the area several sleep cycles and found no sign of this,” she pointed to the mess of saved clothes and a few skittles that littered the area near the mat. Oh, I almost forgot, the first time I needed to rest one of the transport bubbles made me a mat just like this one.It provided a food brick and a canister of water.Anyway after I searched and slept a few times I gave up.I sat on a red box just like this one and cried.”I had never seen my sister cry and it made my eyes water just thinking about it.“I got down from the box, curled up into a ball on the mat and cried myself to sleep. When I woke up the top of the red box was covered with stuff.On top of the box there were three canisters of water, a pile of red and green Skittles, a pile of Cheerios and a copy of one of your shirts.I don’t understand the shirt thing but I think whoever runs this place felt sorry for me and was trying to make me feel better.And, I did feel better, much better.For the first time in a long time I felt I mattered.I decided at that point to try to make it back here but I spent some time looking over the second dome.I wanted to find something different that would prove I had not just gone in a huge circle and came back here.After weeks of study I decided there are at least two domes and both domes are exactly the same.”
“And then you missed me?” after all, I missed her.
“I missed you the whole time brother.But I did start planning to come back.I started filling the tank in the car with gas one can at a time.I filled it completely, filled the can one last time so I would have an extra can in the trunk.The intelligence here must have understood what I was planning because they provide another spare can of gas to insure I could make it all the way back here.I don’t think they can leave the domes and couldn’t help if I were to run out of gas outside a dome.”
“I agree,” I told her about my test sleeping outside the dome.And how no mat or food brick had been provided outside.
“At first I wasn’t sure how far to the right, off the grid line I had come and wasn’t sure I could find my way back but I reasoned that if I went in the right direction I would see the different light on the horizon the dome creates and I was right, so I’m here!”
“Well, I glad you’re here.Two people are better than one.I was getting tired of talking to myself.”Kathy was tired from her long drive so I let her sleep and left the purple ball.Seeing the Lark again had given me an idea.
I walked out to the Studebaker and opened everything up, the trunk lid, the engine hood and all four doors.I took out the rear seat cushion and the floor mats.I moved the front seat all the way up and then all the way back.All this time I was searching for anything that might be of use.Any thing the intelligence here could copy and we could use.I found gold.A yellow Skittle!I continued my search.I pulled out the mat in the trunk and the spare tire.Under the tire I found an old dried apple core.I put it along with the yellow Skittle in my pocket.I found some loose change and the broken, eraser end of half a pencil.The loose change I could see no use for but the pencil would prove as much of a find as the yellow Skittle.
Back in the purple ball Kathy finished her nap and I showed her my find.She looked everything over and then said, “lets go back to the car,”without further explanation I followed her half run back to the car.She looked the car over, even underneath, “we need something about this big that will hold some dirt.”She showed me a six inch by six inch square with her fingers.We both searched until we settled on the car’s air cleaner.I unscrewed the wing nut from where the air cleaner was attached to the carburetor.It was not the best planter but it was the best we could find.We gathered every bit of dirt we could find.Lines of clay that had fallen from my waffle stomper boots in the trunk, dirt packed into corners of each of the four wheel-wells and a nice neat pile of dirt where the hill of a shoe sits when the foot pushes on the accelerator.Our pile of dirt was small.I wished I hadn’t insisted on the car being so clean all the time.With, maybe, a cup and a half of dirt we returned to the purple ball and Kathy placed the air cleaner with the dirt in it on the red box.We waited.A transportation bubble came, hovered and produced a second air cleaner base with a cup and a half of dirt in it.Kathy piled the three cups of dirt on the red box and we waited.The transportation bubble stayed.We had it’s interest.We had six cups of dirt and then twelve and then twenty-four.When there was enough dirt to fill both air cleaner bases Kathy very carefully went to work on the apple core.Six seeds were placed on the box.Another group of six seeds was left by the transportation bubble.We planted one group of seeds into one air cleaner base and the other six seeds into the other air cleaner base.Very carefully we watered both of our future orchards.
So far my walk has revealed little new and different and much of the same ole same ole but I am still impressed by the freedom I have.I assumed my only access to food and water was to stay near the place I was first given food and water.I made that assumption for years!My home is not a purple ball but a clear dome.Or is that an assumption?I take a hard right and walk the city block to where the clear dome separates the inside from the outside.There is aslight shimmer as I walk from the painted (colored) floor to the black squares marked by red lines.I set my empty water canister down and I lay down next to it on the shiny black surface.I pretend to sleep for a few minutes and then, for lack of anything else to do, I fallasleep.I never have any idea as to how long I sleep but the first thing I do when I wake up is to check my water canister.The canister is still empty.I cross the clear barrier back into the dome, set my canister on the colored floor and lean against a blinking pillar.Maybe two minutes pass before a car sized bubble passes over my water canister and fills it.My home is within a clear dome.
david blankenship 
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