Tyson White opened his eyes, feeling groggy. He hadn't drunk the night before; he had work. He sat up suddenly, realizing that his alarm hadn't gone off and he was most likely late. The room was cold and unfamiliar, and he blinked several times before coming to the conclusion that this was not a dream. He was sitting in a coffin-like box with a short man standing over him. The light overhead hid the man's face. Had he been kidnapped?
"Hey Ty," said a voice to his left.
He turned, recognizing the voice as his mother. She smiled at him, reaching out a hand to help him up. He rose, still dressed in his clothes from yesterday.
"Was I in an accident?" he inquired, looking around.
"Val, if we could follow standard procedure," requested the unfamiliar man. "Do you remember your name?"
"Tyson White," Tyson replied promptly.
"What is the last year you remember?"
The way the question was phrased sounded strange. Tyson glanced at his parents who seemed a little concerned at the question.
"2077," he answered slowly.
"All right. Louis is going to take you next door and check your vitals. Your parents will wait for you."
He nodded. Louis was a large black man who didn't say much, only check his pulse and blood pressure, reflexes and other normal things, as if this was a physical. No one had explained why or how he got here, but Tyson worried that it was his parents' fault. Maybe he had been kidnapped and brought back? Doubtful. He distinctly remembered going out with Jeremy and Barb. Afterward. he had gone home to finish typing his homework reports. He must have fallen asleep at the table because he didn't remember getting into bed.
Tyson reentered the room with Louis once the other man was done. His parents were standing by the door. Their clothes were...odd. Simpler than anything he had ever seen his parents in before. His mother's green shirt wasn't fitted and the tan pattern on his father's pants reminded Tyson of sand dunes.
"Mother, tell me what happened," Tyson said, folding his arms.
"Rainier, would you tell my son what year it is?" his mother said instead.
"We call it Year Twenty-Five, but you would know it as 2167," the short man with his strange device answered. "You went to sleep on Earth, yes? Now you're four light years away."
Tyson had remembered the strange conversation he had had with his father two days previously, alluding to some trip the family was taking while the country was tearing itself apart. Tyson had declined, saying that his work needed him and he wasn't afraid of a little civil unrest. Apparently, his father hadn't listened.
"What have you done?" Tyson said, his voice a mixture of horror and rage.
"Saved your life," his mother said calmly. "You would have been dead for decades. I wasn't going to leave you behind."
He waited for the punch line, but the others seemed calm as if his mother was speaking the truth. He hadn't talked to his mother in a couple weeks; she had been working on that children's reading program nonstop. He saw her ads more than he saw either of his parents in person.
"And this is real?" he pleaded with Louis and Rainier. "This isn't some elaborate joke?"
"No joke," Louis replied. "You're on a different planet, kid."
"It's going to take some getting used to," his father told him. "But if you..."
"Get out," Tyson ordered.
YOU ARE READING
If Jove Stray
Science Fiction{✨Book 5✨} Earth. Light years away, and yet now that some on the base were born there, it seems so...close. As communication with the mother planet seems more and more likely, Dylan and Alcott have to wonder if Earth really has anything to offer to...
