A Ship Called Absolute

The two moons rose, pale and sullen, in the frigid air, as Primrose and her family boarded the ship called Absolute.

It was absolute that their world was falling apart and that this mighty un-sinkable vessel was their last hope. Primrose was not yet twenty-five, but she was the wife to a man, Will, whose will to save his family was resolute, and she was the mother to four-year-old twins.

They were herded into the quarters for human beings. After the twins fell asleep to Primrose’s singing, arm in arm, the couple headed to the Conference Hall.

The Ship’s Director, Zoltan, stood seven feet tall. His calm caring pale face, with blonde hair and penetrating large blue eyes, swept across his audience of three thousand beings.

“Welcome all.”

All spoken and written words were automatically translated into the five languages of the five species.

“You have all been randomly selected from the samples that are needed for a new life in Esperion, the underground world of our planet Askara.”

“The Absolute will take us through subterranean caves, and everyone will disembark in forty-eight hours.”

Zoltan continued with practical information about food and water, communicating with others, and the schedules required from the Absolute crew.

After, Primrose and Will quietly talked at a small round table in their room. They knew that the Askarans were a civil and kind race, intending to save the races on the five planets affected by the Milky Way Galaxy Wars.

It was both sobering and distressing that the four of them had been chosen by ballot, from the thousands, to help continue their species. Was this the luck of the lottery of life, Primrose wondered aloud. She reminisced silently over the past.

Fair-haired and tall Primrose had been raised in a very strict environment and relied upon everyone else for assistance with bringing up their children. She loved knitting and had knitted clothes for the twins, but nobody except Will had taken her talent seriously or let her learn how to cook.

She was born to raise a family and to do as she was told. Will was good at cooking. Because she had burnt the toast once, her parents didn’t allow her to cook, but Will had shown her how to scramble and poach eggs.

Primrose’s parents had only let her travel on the Absolute because she had Will with her to cook. Apart from Will and her twins, Sean and Selene, she knew none of the six hundred human beings on the ship. There was time to meet some of them later.

The next forty-five hours passed uneventfully because the members of the different species did not have to mix, and most of them did not want to.

Together the husband and wife explored the magnificent ship, Absolute. There were encouraging mottos in gold or silver or multi-colored letters on posters and plaques everywhere.

“Who dares, wins”, and “Your dreams are absolute” were their favorites.

It all went wrong in the forty-sixth hour. Will left their room to get some tea bags and never returned.

The distraught Primrose wrung her hands and argued with herself for one hour over what she should do. Finally, she announced to Sean and Selene “I will find your father.”

Primrose knocked on the next door and was relieved to see a young couple and, in the background, a young child. She nervously got the parents to agree to look after her twins. Sean and Selene were always happy to meet new people.

She found an Administration officer and timidly told him that her husband had gone missing.

“Missing? That’s quite a story!” the tall fair Askaran cried. “Nobody and nothing goes missing just like that.”

His attitude then softened. “Look he’ll probably turn up at departure time and if he doesn’t, maybe that means he has found something to do and has lost track of time. There will be a roll-call after we arrive at Esperion, so don’t worry.”

Primrose was shocked. She and Will were always together at their most significant times. Trembling with fear, she returned to their neighbour’s room. Because the neighbours noted that she was upset and they were so kind, she told them what happened.

The clock ticked down but Will did not return, so Primrose and her children accompanied their new friends off the Absolute and to their assembly area.

The roll-call for the humans was divided into groups by surnames. Will’s name was called….and there was no response. Primrose was beside herself. She felt faint but she lay down and took some deep breaths to stop herself from collapsing.

This was not supposed to happen. Their salvation was turning into a nightmare. What had the Askarans done to Will? “Oh Will, where are you?” Primrose silently said, but there was no answer.

The Askaran officials were worried also. They snapped to attention and organised a search party.

Primrose’s twins played with some other children, while their mother sat up. Desmond, the man from the room next door to Primrose’s room tried to soothe her, saying that a lot of things could have happened. He wouldn’t say what although.

“You think that something happened to him to stop him from hearing his name being called!” Primrose exclaimed.

“How did you know that?” Desmond gasped.

“I, I….don’t know. I just knew” Primrose stammered.

She thought for a moment and said “There was lightning on the way over and Will was out of our room a lot.”

“Yes, yes” the man said. “I’ve heard that lightning can make a person deaf. Perhaps Will didn’t know he was deaf and didn’t hear the announcement to get off the ship. He could still be on the Absolute!”

Rosemary, Desmond’s wife, interjected. “But that’s absolutely not true. I know from the Askaran Vice-Captain himself that they have technology on that ship to detect any organic or living organisms and so they make sure that nobody is left behind.”

Her husband pursed his lips. “Well, sometimes the effect is delayed and if, just as we pulled into the harbour, Will went deaf, he may....have...got off the boat but not heard the roll-call.”

This time Primrose objected. “But it’s not very likely that he wouldn’t have seen the roll-call. No, something dreadful must have happened to him, and I---have to find out what.”

“Well, we’ll help you,” Desmond said, “I’ll go and join the search parties, and you ladies look after the kids.”

After he had left, Rosemary whispered conspiratorially to Primrose, “you know, Will could have gone over the wall.”

“The wall, what do you mean?” Primrose asked anxiously.

“The Vice-Captain told me, in confidence, that the assembly areas are really holding rooms with round walls, and beyond the bricks are swamps and forests,” Rosemary said.

“The Askarans don’t like to show visitors the swamps because they look ugly and human beings would be scared of them. Maybe for some reason, Will went into the forest or……into a swamp!”

Primrose turned pale again. “Why on earth would he do that?” she gasped.

“No, he disappeared before we berthed so….but….maybe you’re right that he could be there. I mean maybe someone has taken him over the wall. I’ve got to look!”

Now it was Rosemary’s turn to go pale.

“No!” she said, “you can’t do that, nobody can see over the wall, let alone get over it. I’m sure that the Askarans will send searchers to the swamps and the forests!”

But a resolve was deepening in Primrose. She had to try.

Primrose stood up. “Please look after Selene and Sean for me” she told Rosemary, “and don’t worry about me. I won’t go over the wall…..yet…I’ll just try and find someone to do it for me.”

Rosemary looked confused, but she knew how to keep secrets and how to give them away too.

Soon Primrose was mingling with the officials. It helped that she was a pretty girl and her gentle appearance engendered trust. She found out that, indeed, over the wall was off-limits, and that the passengers of the Absolute would be transported to Esperion by hover jets.

There were citizens of Esperion who were licensed to go into the forests for wood. Will, with his skills in wood-work, would be an asset in the woods.

Had someone drugged Will and taken him, Primrose wondered. She had no way of speeding up the official search, so Primrose made a brave decision. She would disguise herself as an Askaran and steal a hover jet. She would look for Will herself. Primrose steeled her mind and barred any thought of failure.

She left the twins with Rosemary and Desmond, then waited until dusk and made her way to the hover jets. With a grey hooded robe around her, she could have been a teenage Askaran.

It couldn’t be too hard to operate one of these, Primrose thought. She had watched movies where it was just a matter of pressing some buttons or flicking some switches and steering.

Her plans to study the controls and look for an instructor’s manual were foiled, when an Askaran figure in uniform suddenly loomed into sight. His uniform label read “Thom.”

“Here, what are you doing here, Miss?”

“I, I’m…..just looking…at such an interesting machine,” Primrose’s voice quavered.

She drew the robe tighter around her and smiled. “Are you the driver of this machine, I bet it would be fantastic to ride this.”

The officer straightened up and said solemnly, “No, but when you put it like that, yes they do make wonderful rides as long as you don’t get air-sick. But I don’t fly them, I fix them.”

He stopped talking and he beckoned to a companion. “This is Sandster, he is a pilot, maybe he will be the one taking you to Esperion.”

But instead of Sandster, a young Askaran in the same uniform as Thom appeared, with a stricken look.

“What is it, Marten?” Thom kindly asked the young official. But there was no reply.

Primrose shouted “he’s done something wrong, he’s thinking he shouldn’t have teleported that….that man to…Esperion!”

“She can read minds,” Marten said in astonishment. “Yes, I confess now that I know that I can’t hide it.”

“I was working on Zoltan’s teleporter on the Absolute when a human being tripped over and fell right into it. How was I to know that at the exact time, I would send him away?”

Primrose smiled. When she needed to, she could read minds. And she had found Will.

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Barry Zoltan closed the little black book. It had a soft cover with rounded corners and pages in ivory color. The book had an inner pocket made from cardboard and cloth. The pocket held a lock of Primrose’s hair.

He knew that if he had gone missing, she would have searched the world for him.

The little black book had many uses. It was made to write the stuff of dreams in. For days this book had harboured Barry’s notes, which had resulted in his play “Searching for Will.”

The lights dimmed to thunderous applause from the audience. It was the inaugural showing of Barry’s inner world. Since his wife Primrose had disappeared, he had spent his life savings on looking for her.

Then a psychic had tracked her to being on an island in the Caribbean, saying that she had lost her memory. The psychic foretold that a special reminder would trigger Primrose’s memory to return.

Barry had it all worked out – the cost of his flight to the island, a week’s stay, their return flights, and the flying of the beautiful big banner. The plane would trail their message across the blue sky.

“Our superpower is Love.”

Zoltan accepted the hand proffered to him by the director, Cindy.

He gratefully accepted the unexpected envelope.

Congratulations

Winner: “Love Has No Bounds” Category

Prize: $20,000

“How great is your belief that this will change your life? Cindy asked. She smiled broadly at his reply.

“Absolute.”