AL Clark - Jonathan G. Meyer (good books for high schoolers txt) 📗

and powerful gods of their teachings, or something else. Her people needed them to be kind and powerful.

The gods do not need flames for cooking. They sit around open fires and do little more than admire the fires they build. Inside their houses, they would take something from a silver container, remove a thin colorful wrapper, put it back in a different box, and out would come a delicious meal. There was magic in the white sticks surrounding their kingdom that put bad things to sleep. She discovered one miracle after another.

One God spoke into a little box he held in his hand, and tiny beings inside the box answered back—with strong voices!

The local girl from Avalon was in heaven. Living and learning among the Gods.

****

IT WAS RAINING WHEN Al returned to see the prisoner aboard the Excalibur. For that reason, he wore his hat. The bandages were gone, but the rain wasn’t. It had been raining since he walked out of the security shack a week ago, and had not stopped. They were experiencing the spring rainy season that Kira informed them happened every year. It was a warm light shower that resolutely refused to stop.

Two weeks after the surgery, he still could not remember anything more about his past than he did before. It was a possibility the doctors had mentioned and he was resolved to make the best of what he did know. He had hoped the tiny meteoroid was the cause of his amnesia and his headaches. He still couldn’t remember. On the other hand, he no longer had the pain in his head or the confused thinking. He decided he could live with that.

When Al boarded the shuttle, he was thinking; Maybe the meteoroid was responsible for my waking up, which allowed me to wake all the rest. It is possible that minuscule chunk of metal allowed him to save the ship, and, therefore everyone on it. There was a silver lining inside the meteor cloud.

Tammy Shoemaker stayed locked in her cell for more than a month. Al meant to visit her sooner until life kept interfering. No one came to visit her but the officers stuck guarding her, and they were not happy about it. It was reported she mostly read and meditated, and honestly believed she was not long for this world, or any other.

Accompanied by two of his officers from the planet, they came to escort her down to Avalon. The Excalibur was being prepared for extended orbit, and most of the people were already down on the planet. Soon, the ship would have only a skeleton crew.

She was to have a trial, by a jury of her peers. Even on a colony ship, there is a need for lawyers, and one of them was assigned to represent her. The security team was there to move her to the temporary jail at Camelot—to prepare for the trial.

Al moved a chair over to the cell and asked, “How are you, Tammy?”

Her reply was blunt. “I’m all right...for a dead person.”

“Now why do you say that?”

“I know what happens to people that don’t conform to your principles.” She made this statement with conviction; sure of her fate.

“It hasn’t been decided what will happen to you. You will have to go through a trial.”

“There is not a person on this ship that will allow me to live. It is not your way.”

He needed her to answer a disturbing question. “Did you have anything to do with the tampering of the sleep circuits, that caused us to orbit this planet for ten years?”

Tammy looked surprised, and then bowed her head, “Does it matter? I will take the blame for all the wrong on this expedition.”

“It does matter. You are still young, and you’ve been conditioned to think the way you do. Your actions may not be entirely your fault,” explained Al.

“I do not think your trial will find me innocent.”

“No,” Al said honestly, “It looks like you might have caused the death of a twelve-year-old child, and endangered many more people. There will be those that want someone punished. If you didn’t tamper with the sleep circuits, I don’t believe death will be the price.”

Tammy seemed confused, “I have been told you killed those you labeled terrorists with great fanfare, showing your justice to the world as warnings to the other Earth First members.”

“You can’t always believe everything you hear. You have to use your head.”

He thought for a second and asked, “Have you been visited by someone that just wanted to talk?”

“Miss Emily has been by several times, and she likes to talk. She is always asking questions about things I don’t want to discuss. She seems nice. Is she a psychiatrist?”

“She is your friend Tammy. Remember that because she can help you. Are you ready to go? We’re kind of on a schedule.”

His officers unlocked the jail door, fastened the restraints, and escorted her to the shuttle. Al followed thoughtfully behind them.

****

AL CLARK HAD A HOMECOMING party to attend. It was also a party to celebrate Chris’s eighteenth birthday, and the first time he and his friends had been able to get together since coming to Camelot. Most of them lived in single unit habitat modules, so they met at the almost finished community center.

Made from large native timbers and Dura-Steel, the octagonal construction was a building large enough to hold nearly all the colonists at the same time. The center was so large that its conical roof, when completed, would furnish enough rainwater to last for weeks. It was a lot more room than the small group needed, but it was available, and it was empty.

Al and Chris met on the path and walked there together. They joined Ana and Kayla outside the entrance, and as a group walked in together. They found Robot Nine waiting patiently. He had prepared a large round table and loaded it with food and drink. Lit with led work lights, it was a surreal setting in the center of the dark auditorium. Al thought it fitting to have a large round table in Camelot’s village hall.

Elizabeth’s footsteps echoed off the walls as she entered the room. “I hear there’s a party here. Somebody pass me a drink; I think I deserve it.”

“Rough day Mom?” asked Chris.

“I still think I deserve a drink even if it wasn’t that bad.”

Her son saw an opportunity and said, “You do realize that I too have been working real hard...and it’s my birthday. I think I deserve a drink too.”

“Well, I don’t know...you think he’s old enough Al?”

“Maybe a drink or two will quench his curiosity,” He suggested.

Chris grabbed a glass and exclaimed, “All right—let's party!”

When Cody arrived the group was complete, and they ate, drank, talked, and just relaxed. It was a pleasant gathering, long delayed, that reminded Al of the importance of friends. Sometime during the evening, Al decided he needed to tell them his secret.

He had been considering telling them for some time, and this party seemed the perfect opportunity. There may not be another chance where they were all gathered together in a private setting anytime soon. Every one of them had asked questions about his mysterious surgery, and—he was tired of lying.

“I have found out something you should know,” Al declared, “I’m a human being...in a robotic body.”

Silence took the room, and his friends peered at him as if he had gone crazy. Their faces showed them wondering what kind of joke this was. When he did not smile, they began to think he might not be kidding. Al told them everything, including details even Cody and Robot Nine did not know.

“I have learned I was the victim of an accident that left me without the use of my arms and legs. They offered me a chance to participate in an experiment, where they would place my brain in a robotic body and then make me a member of the Excalibur expedition—and apparently, I took it.

“I was brought aboard at the last minute, to be the secret backup alarm to awaken everyone upon arrival at Avalon—which obviously failed. Someone tampered with both the computer revival systems and my specially designed hibernation pod, leaving us orbiting the planet until—believe it or not—a meteoroid landed in my head.

His friends were still speechless, and could only stare in disbelief.

“The tiny meteoroid seems to have taken my memories, but it woke me up and saved us all from being a ship of ghosts. The emergency operation I had was to remove the meteoroid that was causing me some additional problems.”

Another piece of information they might find amusing occurred to him, “My name is not Al Clark. The roboticist’s assistants liked to call me ‘Alarm Clock’ as an inside joke and placed the label on my door. When I woke up, the label was so old, all I could get from it was Al Clark. Funny...huh?”

When he finished, his friends did not move or speak for several additional seconds. Cody lowered his head, and Robot Nine refilled the ice buckets. Cody was not sure if Al’s revealing himself was a good idea. Never the less, he decided to back Al no matter what happened.

“Is that how you were able to get from one side of the camp to the other in a matter of minutes?” Liz asked.

“Yes.”

“And the fire in the power room?”

“I don’t seem to need a lot of air. To tell the truth, it was not that hard.”

“Are you like...superhuman?” Chris wanted to know.

“I certainly don’t think so. For the time being my body is only slightly better than ordinary human beings.”

Al’s revelation was still sinking in for Ana and Kayla, who were completely taken by surprise. Kayla picked up on how he began his last question and wanted it explained.

“Why do you say for the time being?”

“Because I have another mode. An enhanced mode.”

“What are you like in enhanced mode?” pressed Ana.

“I don’t know. I haven’t tried it yet.”

“Why not?” asked Chris.

“I’m not sure I’m ready yet.”

Liz thought about all they’d been through together. “How come you haven’t told us before now?”

“I only recently found out myself, and I wasn’t sure you were ready.”

Al explained his need to tell Doctor Cody after the attack returning from the native’s caves. He told them how the roboticist Doctor Florida became involved, and how Robot Nine knew all along.

Chris asked the robot, “Why didn’t you say something?”

“No one ever asked, sir. If someone were to ask, I would be required to answer. I am pleased no one did because I did not want to cause Chief Clark any trouble.”

The party was becoming too sober for an eighteenth birthday celebration, so Al laughed and said, “O...kay, now you are all members of my secret society. I need all of you to help me figure out this craziness. How about we call it the Al Clark secret society and everyone has to take an oath of silence. All in favor, say, ‘aye.”

One by one they acknowledged their vows