Part 5
You turn left as you walk out onto the street outside the college, after all one way is as good as another. The road on your right is full of slowly moving vehicles, each pouring exhaust fumes into the morning air. Already the temperature is rising and you know that this will be a hot day in London. You're not in an area you know well but you're reluctant to jaunt back to the Lab. The strangeness of this morning's activity has jolted you and frightened you. You feel humiliated and ashamed of your ignorance and you dont want to have to admit that ignorance to the all-knowing TIM or the harder, older version of your friend John. Paul is still calling for you mentally as you walk down unfamiliar streets but you ignore him. The young man is an experienced enough telepath to recognise that you are conscious and physically if not psychologically well. After a while he recognises that you want to be left alone and, with a quiet instruction to call him if you need him, leaves you be.
You find the park by chance as much as intention and then are forced to walk three hundred yards past the gate before you can find a pedestrian crossing. You cross the road in front of the taxis and buses that are growling like leashed beasts as they wait to be released.
As you walk through the park gates a group of youths brush past you in the other direction and they turn, laughing, to stare at you and your clothes. You head for a bench in the centre of the small grass area and sit for just a moment soaking in its peace. A young, smartly dressed woman comes towards the bench and discards what you now recognise as a coffee cup in the bin beside it. As she passes an intrusive electronic jingle seems to eminate from her pocket and she brings a tiny communicator of some kind to the side of her face.
"I'm in the park!" She declares loudly and sits on the other end of the bench, pulling some files out of the briefcase she carries and discussing them as if in her own office.
You leave the bench, intimidated by the difficulty of escaping from the trappings of this new world. Becoming paranoid you look from side to side and note for the first time the surveilance cameras that seem to keep every inch of the park in view. You can understand security cameras in shops or offices but this? It's just a park a place to relax. Or it should be.
You find a tree that doesn't seem to harbour a camera and sit down with your back against it's trunk. You watch as the rushing tides of humanity come and go but you can't feel any connection with them. You feel like a spectator in your own life. You want more than anything else to go home but home no longer exists and it never will again. You're not sure how much time passes before Paul arrives and sits with his back against the same tree.
"I thought you might want to talk." The young man says after a while. "I'm not sure, but I think I would ... if something like this happened to me."
He sounds awkward, as if not accustomed to situations like this, but you can feel that all he wants to do is help.
"I dont belong here." You don't know what you're going to say until the moment you actually say it.
"Look," Paul says quietly. "If this is about the computers and the way the guys acted...."
"No. No, it's not that. Or not just that." You shake your head, refusing to let the tears pricking at your eyes fall. "It's everything. The computers, the coffees, the portable telephones, the lifestyle.... I just don't belong here, Paul. I'd be better off on another planet than here and now."
You look at him in anguish.
"I don't know what's happened to my friends or family. I don't even know if my parents are alive. I don't know what's happens since I left home. I don't know how you can stand there and just be what you are."
"I...I'm not sure I understand." Paul admits.
"We had such dreams, Paul. We had such fantastic hopes for the future. We thought that by now there would be millions of us. That the world would be shaped by our hopes and our dreams." You shake your head. "There are other Tomorrow People out there, Paul. I can feel the murmer in the back of my mind. But the world is stil ruled by Saps. War and destruction and hatred still control everything. And here I am in a world I never expected to exist incapable of doing even the most basic things."
"There are not nearly enough of us but there are other TP's. And all of them work towards our aims in their own way." Paul agrees. "Elena and I are just a couple of those who John has helped break out over the years. There are others out there who break out without our help or who choose not to accept the responsibilities that come with it and there are some who we just didn't hear in time."
"What about the others?" You ask, "The ones who have gone to the Trig over the years?"
Paul looks uncomfortable. He squirms where he's sitting. When he speaks his voice is grave.
"Right, I keep forgetting that you knew John and the others when they were kids. They were the first, of course. They're still the ones who represent us all to the Trig but...." He hesitates, "Jay, someone's going to have to tell you and I suppose it had better be me. It ought to be John but with the way he's been lately...well."
"Tell me what?" You ask, scared by the tension in Paul's pale eyes.
"Things aren't all rosy on the Trig either. They're are these aliens called Sorsons...."
"Yes, I've heard of them." You interrupt.
"Yeah, well. They came back, didn't they? The Federation is at war with them and from what I'm hearing it's not going well. Jay," He pauses looking at you anxiously. "Jay, the Sorsons've done some terrible things. We Tomorrow People, well we're stronger than the average telepath, aren't we? The Federation is sending those of us it can out on all kinds of missions and, well, not everyone has come through."
You feel the ice gripping your chest as if in a fist.
"Tell me." You say quietly.
"Hsui Tai and Kenny were killed. Jay, they forced Stephen to do it. They've driven him to the end of sanity and beyond. Andrew's been captured too."
Outwardly you don't react but inside you feel like something within you is breaking. Kenny was away for much of the time you spent with the other Tomorrow People but you felt you'd got to know Stephen well and, of course, you find it almost impossible to imagine the tall and beautiful Hsui Tai gone forever. It's been barely a day since you were beside her, laughing and joking with Andrew while she watched.
"How?" You whisper, not expecting an answer. "Why?"
Paul puts an awkward hand on your arm. His eyes are sympathetic.
"Hey," He says softly. "I'm sorry. I know they were your friends."
"They were." You say numbly. "And more than that. We're Tomorrow People, Paul. This isn't meant to happen to us."
"I know, Jay." Paul says and his eyes are angry now as if he does understand more than you thought he could. "I know but we're still human too. We can only do our best. One day we'll take the fight back to the Sorsons and do something about stopping this pointless war. One day we'll put the Earth to rights, too. We just have to be a bit patient, that's all."
You look around at the people rushing through the park, at the people with mobile telephones fixed to their ears and the papers under their arms.
"Patience seems to be in short supply around here." You note angrily.
"Yeah, well I'm not saying it's easy." Paul agrees.
You realise as you look out over the park that you are at a crossroads and you think about what Paul has just told you. You can see at once that there are only two options available.
Do you:
a) decide to go to the Trig?
b) decide to make the best of life on Earth?
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