Miguel woke up in an unfamiliar place—a dark room. The first thing he did was check if the Shooting Star was still on his finger. For security reasons, he took it off and kept it inside a box in his pocket. He touched his head when he felt it hurt and tried to recall what happened.
Scenes from the night flashed before him like a deck of cards shuffled and dealt into different hands. He remembered recovering the ring. He remembered the dancing reflections of the stars as the water of the bay rippled. He remembered the sound of the huge splash that sent him slipping from the rocky shore and probably hitting his head. He remembered how it hurt, how it felt soaked in the grimy waters of Manila Bay, and how it felt to slowly lose air and drown.
Am I dead? he thought as he suddenly remembered two things: a flash of bright light and a face that looked like an angel.
“No,” he heard someone say. When he turned around to find out who it was, he experienced vertigo and collapsed on the floor.
A while later, he woke up to the minty smell of herbs stuck to his nose. When he came around, he heard the same voice.
“Greetings,” it said. The voice seemed to invade his thoughts. It came from all directions like bullets piercing through his brain. He glanced up to see a face, looking intently at him. Although the face was familiar, he wasn’t entirely sure since his vision was hazy.
Carefully, he seated himself upright, shaking off the dizziness. “You shouldn’t strain yourself,” it said. Its voice sounded soft and delicate, like a girl’s. He felt its hand touch his head with something soothing, helping his vision slowly become clearer. When he discovered what he was faced with, he started to laugh as if, at that point, he understood what was really happening.
In front of him was a girl, probably about the same age or younger. She was wearing nothing but an intricately designed loincloth and a brassiere made of linen. She wore metallic bands around her neck, wrists and ankles. She had eyes as black as void, her skin, somewhat bluish and her long, dark-brown hair flowed freely down her back. She looked like one of those aliens in Star Trek.
“Is this some kind of a joke?” He wondered if it were his friends who set him up. He looked around suspiciously looking for hidden cameras. He figured whichever prank show this was, Bitoy or Joey did an impressive job on make-ups and effects.
He stood himself up as he scrutinized the so-called ‘alien’. Simultaneously, he clapped his hands and laughed, “Come on, guys! Show’s over, you’re busted!” There was a long silence. All he heard was his voice echoing in the dark space.
When no one answered, his amusement turned to anxiety. From a man who was about to ask his girl to be his wife, he shrunk into a child crawling frantically, searching for his mama and papa. “Guys?” he called out, “come on, this isn’t funny anymore. Show yourselves!”
As if by command, the room brightened up, revealing a semi-spherical space large enough to house five vans, side by side. The walls and the floor seemed to have been built out of only one metallic piece, stretched into infinite boundaries to fill up the gaps and hinges. Behind him, the same face and embodiment of the voice stood up at his level. It looked at him with the blackest eyes but with the purest of intentions.
“I just want to know something,” she said as if she read Miguel’s thoughts. In fact, it seemed that she was able to communicate telepathically because as she spoke, her lips didn’t even move. The voice just seemed to sound straight through Miguel’s ears.
What the heck?! Miguel thought. The words repeated in his head like a trance. I just want to know something? Just that?
“What is love?”
As simple as that? What kind of question is that? Miguel exploded like a volcano that has been dormant for thousands of years. You snatched me all the way here just because you wanted to know what love is!” Spittle was spewing from his mouth and he didn’t care. “Potek! Who the hell are you?”
“I am…” she calmly replied as she tilted her head and looked straight into Miguel’s eyes. Images and memories that she inherited from her ancestors, generations upon generations, were subconsciously projected to his mind. Pictures of things unfathomable to humans flashed before his very eyes. It felt as if he was watching a movie. The images looked almost real, almost close enough to reach.
It was said that one of the early civilizations of men was far more advanced than the rest. These were the Atlanteans. During their time, they have already developed highly-advanced technologies yet to be utilized in the future. But they weren’t content. They wanted to find a better world to live in. The Atlanteans believed that Earth had slowly been deteriorating: minds gradually becoming corrupted and people of same nations starting wars against their own. It wasn’t long before they decided to move out of Earth. With their advanced technology, they built a spacecraft, able to carry the whole island of Atlantis.
Miguel was overwhelmed by the information that flashed through his mind. Sweat trickled from his pores even though the temperature in the room was cool. He stared blankly at the host of the strange craft while his hands twitched involuntarily with every memory driven into his head. It was only normal since humans’ minds aren’t capable of simultaneously handling loads of information.
The Atlanteans trekked out into space in hopes of finding a new planet to live in. Finally, light years away from the Milky Way galaxy, they found an uninhabited baby planet, almost similar to the planet Earth. Etha, they called it and they called it home.
In the spoken visuals and sounds, a name seemed to form from the combinations of syllables, tones and pitches. Although in the Earth’s language, the word was incomprehensible. But from the way the word sounded, it formed the name, “Thera.”
“Oh-my-God…” Miguel mumbled, speechless for a while before getting back to his senses. He remembered how he used to love mysteries and paranormal stuff. True enough, when he was a kid, he was an oddball among the rest of his friends. While children his age played patintero or langit-lupa, he would spend his time reading books about the mysteries of the universe. “Th-This is amazing! This is everything I dreamed of!” Not only was he faced with a real live alien; she was a descendant of the race of Atlantis—the lost city that he promised himself to search for.
“Amazing! This is the best day ever! I have to tell—Oh, no! No!” Understanding where he was and how impossible his proposal would happen anytime from now, he started to panic, “Thera, Thera, is it? You have to bring me back! This can’t be happening at the same time! I’ll be proposing to Mia soon, please, you have to bring me back.”
Thera did not understand. This was her very first encounter with another being. She just looked at him, trying to read his stray thoughts.
Having descended from the Atlanteans, Atlans—the people of Etha—have similar features to humans. But due to the constant climate and environmental changes in their planet, the Atlans needed to adapt. Change was inevitable. They have been subject to evolution just as well. The skin, the most notable feature of Atlans, adapted with the climate so that the cooler the temperature, the more translucent their skins become. Their onyx eyes, however, have adapted to the intensity of their planet’s sun. They even learned to hone their natural psychic abilities, allowing them to communicate telepathically. In due time, they forgot how to speak orally.
“I’m afraid it’s impossible,” she said as she waved her hand across one side of the metallic barrier. Slowly, a hole appeared and grew large like a window. Miguel was struck with awe as he looked beyond the porthole. It was a marvelous sight. There were different celestial bodies moving freely along gravitational trajectories. There were atmospheric cloud formations in colours unimaginable; reminding him of pictures of the aurora borealis he has seen in encyclopedias. From afar, Miguel could make out the view of a lone ice planet—Pluto—slowly getting smaller and smaller, only to realize that they were already thousands of light years away from home.
“Why me?” he asked Thera, “Of all the people on Earth, why did it have to be me?”
“Memory,” she replied. It didn’t make any sense. “Memory chose you.” Did she mean he had been a part of her ancestral memory, he wondered. Thera shook her head after hearing his thoughts. “No, we are inside Memory.”
Instantaneously, the walls of the room glowed from blue to yellow as if it were communicating. “I am Memory,” a voice echoed inside the room. It wasn’t Thera’s. In fact, it seemed to belong to an older woman. It was the spacecraft, he decided. “You have been chosen because you hold the key,” she told him.
“Key? What key?” Miguel asked, confused. He wasn’t sure what she was talking about. Maybe she mistook him for someone else, he thought. Maybe this is all just a silly misunderstanding.
Only then did he notice a faint sound coming from his pocket. Beep, beep, beep, it went. He tried to remember what was in there as he put his hand inside. He pulled out the box containing the ring and placed it beside his ear. The beep was clearer, this was it, he was sure of it.
When he was still a kid, he believed that the Sunken Garden was not just deep-set because of the faults and movements of the Earth’s crust. He believed it was one of the unsolved theories about paranormal life and life outside the planet, along with the Stonehenge, the crop circles, the Bermuda Triangle, and the lost city of Atlantis.
With his friends, they would play treasure hunting at the Sunken Garden. They would dig up the field and bury something valuable, only to pretend to find hidden treasures later on. There was one time when he unexpectedly dug up a small, metallic box that looked as if it was still brand new. There were strange symbols, like swirls and lines, engraved on its casing. Miguel, fascinated by the intricate markings, kept it, believing it was something extraordinary. But as he grew up, the little boy in him flew far away from Neverland. When he was older, he wasn’t sure anymore what use it had, still keeping it with him. Only later when he decided to propose to Mia, he found it was useful to keep the ring in.
“But—Mia,” he pleaded, “Can I just at least see her again?” Tears started to well in his eyes. It’s hard being away from someone you enjoy spending your every day with. Most especially, if you’re not sure if you’ll ever see this person again.
“I may be able to let you see her,” Memory responded. “But don’t expect too much.” Miguel’s heart raced. He felt relieved to have at least one more chance. In the center of the room, a line was drawn and the floor moved apart, opening up a hole. A complicated console slowly emerged from it. As it locked itself into position, lasers traced images in the air. “I can show you what is happening today on Earth, through these real-time images directly transmitted from your planet,” Memory explained. Regrettably, sound wasn’t fast enough to travel through space.
Mia was walking side-by-side with Robby—Miguel and Mia’s mutual friend; the person who introduced them to each other. It seemed that they were talking sincerely to each other. Robby then whispered something in Mia’s ear, after which, she cried.
Miguel thought it was the news about him not being found and being assumed dead.
Robby held Mia in his arms as she smothered herself in his shirt. He then pulled her face away from him and looked straight into her eyes. Slowly, he knelt down and held out a diamond ring.
Shocked, Miguel turned around, not wanting to finish what the projector showed him. It had only been almost a day when he was abducted from Earth but from what he saw in the projection, he could not believe his eyes. He knew Robby liked Mia but he never knew it would soon come to this.
“So, what is it that you want from me, again?” Miguel asked as he emptily stared into the endless boundaries of space.
“I want to know what love is,” Thera asked insensitively. Miguel didn’t answer, still staring out in space. “I promise, Memory will bring you back as soon as I learn what this word means.”
“Thera,” Memory said, in a gentler tone, like a mother, “leave our guest to himself, for the moment. There is much for him to think about.” Thera nodded and walked away in the opposite direction. As she reached the other half of the room, walls extruded from the floor, giving both Thera and Miguel two separate spaces. A bed and a tray of food protruded from the wall, catering to what Miguel’s body needed.
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
G. K. Chesterton