Flight of the Gazebo

Chapter 7 - Amblesby

He gazed at the views on the plans with a faraway look on his face. Each precise drawing showed the gazebo from a different angle.

His heart swelled with pride. So this was the machine that had moved Amblesby to Hollow. How had it worked? The function had to be in the shape - the exact relationship of the gazebo's beams, supports, and occult ornamentation. Nothing else made sense. It had no moving parts, no electronics. It didn't even have electricity, for Heaven's sake.

There was no time to lose. He had to see what he could salvage from the damaged gazebo. Then the repairs could begin.

His eyes wandered over to the building materials next to his underground workshop door. Over the last couple of years, he'd spent many evenings scouring survivalist's websites for tips and instructions about what to stockpile for the upcoming nuclear war he was convinced would happen one day. There were neatly stacked piles of timber on pallets, steel lintels leaning against the wall, shelves bearing boxes of screws, nails, glues, plaster, cement and a myriad of other items, all stored for the day the manor was destroyed by a nuclear blast and a new home needed to be built.

That was all behind him now. His lips thinned in a satisfied smile. His secret hoard of building supplies was to be put to a much more productive and profitable use.

******

New feelings seared through Pip's mind. His comfortable existence, which had consisted of eating, sleeping, being cuddled by Mrs Dillinger and yapping at everyone and everything else, was being pushed aside by a compelling need to follow the rudimentary instructions forced into his skull. His tiny brain, unable to cope with the complexity, translated these instructions into the urge to explore, to seek out... what? A vague monochrome image of the blackened remains of the gazebo kept popping into his mind and it was this that had the strongest feelings associated with it. But far from providing him with a clear objective, he felt confused. The demands of thinking in a visual way, instead of the usual way of smells and sounds, was taking its toll on his already shaky sanity.

From his hiding place under the shed in Mr Klammer's garden, the craving to smell the picture in his head warred with his yearning to go home. To say he was being driven was as understated as saying Hannibal crossed the Alps. What was going on in Pip's mind was as unusual as Hannibal's epic crossing. And like Hannibal, Pip wasn't alone. But it wasn't an army he had with him, just a small artificial sub-personality, squeezed into his cramped cranium, watching and impelling him.

Pip could hear Mrs Dillinger calling him and a tiny part of him responded and wanted to go scuttling back into her ample arms, but overriding that now were the instructions crashing into his cortex.

Seek. Watch. Report.

******

"It... it can't be real. It's just so weird," said Toby. He slouched against a partial tree trunk that leaned towards the void. The trunk was sliced off cleanly directly above the cliff edge. The other two teenage boys, Julian and Scab, lay on their stomachs looking over the edge. All three were dressed in baggy denim jeans and hoodies. Scab, skateboard under his chest, kept flicking his thickly curled ginger hair out of his eyes.

Julian nodded. The sight that lay before them was too much for mere words. A whole alien world started at the foot of the cliff. It was... it was... it was begging to be explored.

"I dunno," said Scab. "People get abducted by aliens all the time. It's all over the internet." He coughed and spat over the edge. The boys watched the spinning phlegm until it disappeared.

"Yeah, right," said Toby, "Only on the weird sites you visit."

"This not the same as someone being abducted by aliens, Scab," said Julian. "This is a whole village. A few thousand people all at once. And the buildings and everything too. I've never heard of that happening before."

"Yeah. Me neither," said Toby, rubbing his chin. "It's like the Wild West. I reckon there's gonna be a lot of changes and we're the ones who are going to make them. We're going to start our own society. Chuck out the crap we thought we were gonna have to live with and start again. Like they did in the Wild West." He scratched his acned cheek. Blonde, straight hair stabbed from under his hoodie.

"That's supposing we don't get returned to Earth." Julian lifted his head and squinted into the distance. "Don't you think there's something strange about the horizon?" he said.

"That's cos we're on an alien planet, innit?" said Scab. "Everyone knows alien planets are weird."

"Don't be thick," said Toby. "I can see what he means. There isn't a horizon. The land just goes on and on, getting greyer, and sort of curves upwards."

"The sun's weird too," said Scab. "It's like one of those long light bulbs, you know, the ones they have in supermarkets and offices and stuff."

"Fluorescent bulb?"

"Yeah. One of those. Like the ends plug into something. You know."

"I think it looks like a lightsaber," said Toby. "But sort of yellowy-white, not green like Skywalker's."

"Skywalker's lightsaber was blue," said Scab.

"It was green, you moron," said Toby.

"Anyway, it's not like a lightsaber at all, dickhead," said Scab. "Lightsabers only have a handle at one end. This sun looks like it has handles at both ends."

"They're obviously not handles," said Julian. "But they must be holding the sun in place. I wonder how that works? How are the handles held in place themselves? I mean, you can't just anchor them in the sky."

His eyes went back to ground level and then slowly raised, following the land that curved upwards. The distant haze claimed the landscape, but not before a look of comprehension swept over Julian's face.

His jaw dropped.

"That's it," he whispered. "We're not on an alien planet. We're in one."