Harmony
15

Suria was incredulous. Not again; not after hoping for so long. No-one was there? How was this possible? Someone clearly sent them the message, and logically it had been sent from this place. It was the only other settlement on their map. The writer or writers of the message also knew that they had all arrived in the village. If they hadn’t sent their communications from here, then they were at some location that wasn’t on the map, and therefore Suria and her companions might never replace them. It was their lowest point yet. Despair washed back over her in waves, followed quickly by the waves of peace, which she angrily tried to dismiss. She failed.

Feeling calmer at least, for no good reason, she and her companions walked on in silence towards the town. No-one wanted to utter what they were all thinking. She was quietly hating their situation. The falseness of the waves of peace frustrated her. If the people sending them were not physically around when they were truly needed, the peaceful feelings they were sending were empty and pointless.

“Hey. Guys.” Pixie had fierce determination in her voice. It cut through the overwhelming melancholy. “This isn’t going to beat us. We are not giving in until we search every last square metre of every building in this … town. Every last one. You hear me?”

A momentary pause. Suria wanted to hug Pixie. It was just what they all needed to hear.

“Of course! Of course, Pixie. We do that. We search this place anyway, even if no-one here. Let’s do it!” Rais, walking next to Pixie, added his enthusiasm to Pixie’s resilience. Suria looked over at the two them. They both seemed ready to charge through brick walls if they had to. Suria marvelled at her best friend’s resilience and courage. It was a side of her she never knew existed until now.

Some quiet, determined chatter ensued amongst the group, but Suria stayed silent. She walked next to Prina across the grass expanses leading to the town, her chin up defiantly. They were now on the outskirts of the town. They reached a small park that had an attractive arrangement of young trees, in a triangular shape. Rais pulled them all up there. He glanced from them towards the rest of the town.

“Lot of buildings here. Maybe someone here in one building or two. We split up and search different part, yes? Groups of four. Meet back here when we done. We replace someone if we look hard.” Rais had surety in his tone.

Suria and Pixie ended up joining Rivo and Prina on the eastern edge of the town. They began on the waterfront, entering a larger building that was still under construction. To Suria it resembled the community centre back at their village. In this building, however, the rooms were larger, and the interior had no furnishings. They all called out as they walked through the building, but they received no response and saw no movement. Neither was there a sign of any recent work on this building, as there were no tools laying around or materials piled up inside or outside the building. It was simply incomplete, as if the builders had left in the middle of it without intending on returning. This was not a positive realisation at all for Suria.

The four of them exited via the double front doors. To Suria, these buildings were being built by the same people who made their village. Maybe whoever had constructed them would return soon, if not today. The group had with them four days’ worth of food, so they could afford to stay here for a day or so and wait, if need be.

They walked along what was clearly a road, the first that Suria had seen since waking up, to the next building. It was also of a good size and looked from the front as if it were an apartment block. It backed onto the water, with an expansive grassed area between the back and the waterfront. The back garden hadn’t been landscaped yet. Neither had the front garden, as there were no trees or plants in either location. Yet, on entering, the small foyer was mostly finished, and there were furnishings in here. Suria was hopeful.

They dropped their backpacks near the front door. Rivo and Prina headed upstairs to search the top floor. Suria and Pixie would check the downstairs area. Suria paused momentarily in the foyer area, her eyes on Pixie as she walked up one of the corridors. Pixie called out at the first door she came to. “This one is locked! Or… I can’t open the door or something.”

Suria found this to be quite strange. Nothing in their village had been locked or closed off. It was unexpected, replaceing that here. She called back to Suria. “Keep going then. I’m going to try this door here.”

Suria was referring to an opaque door at the back of the foyer, centrally located. Like the doors in their village, she couldn’t see through it. She hoped it wasn’t locked also. She pushed the door and it opened for her. She took one step instead and was astounded by what she saw. So much so that she stepped right back out again and called urgently up the corridor.

“Pixie. Pixie! You have to come and see this! Right now!” She couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. It was a welcome change in her thoughts and it was internally generated this time, which was encouraging.

Within a few seconds Pixie was back with her outside the opaque door, and Suria motioned for her to go in first. Pixie pushed the door, stepped inside and gasped. “Oh! Oh wow. Oh my god!”

Suria stepped inside with her, into a small, dimly lit room. In it were some tables and beautiful bright red velvet-like chairs. On the tables were some screens which were even smaller than the ones in the houses in their village. They were all blank, except for the one at the front, and this is what astounded the two of them.

It was showing some sort of television advertisement or documentary.

The images were clear and crisp, and were from an aerial view of some buildings, grassed areas, and trees. Even more intriguing was a series of symbols in what appeared to be some sort of foreign language, along with one word in recognisable English letters: Versena. They were watching a documentary, or an advertisement, of the town they were standing in.

The most exciting aspect of the video was that someone must be here and have turned it on. Suria wanted to run screaming into the village and tell the whole world, but the quality of the video captivated her. She held back from any sudden or reckless action for now.

“It’s so beautiful.” Suria’s voice was somewhat dreamy to her own ears. The picture quality of the TV screen absolutely captivated her.

“It sure is…” Pixie’s tone indicated she was as distracted as Suria was. Suria glanced at Pixie, who was moving over to one of the other desks, while not taking her eyes off the screen. She grabbed a chair and brought it over, motioning for Suria to sit down. They both sat.

Suria stayed silent so that she could focus on the documentary. Or maybe it was an advertisement. They hadn’t watched any television since they’d arrived, because there weren’t any in the village. It thus was quite foreign to be seeing any motion on a screen, regardless of how advanced it was.

The television was showing sort of promotional advertisement for the finished product of what Versena would look like when it was complete. It even had humans walking through it, in strange one-piece outfits of varying vibrant colours. Perhaps this was a replica village somewhere else, because how could they put real humans in it if it wasn’t finished? This was clearly the same location, on the same peninsula, with the trees, grass and water all the same, except that the town was complete. How had they managed to do this? Suria had absolutely no idea.

The people walking around Versena all had blonde hair and appeared to Suria as if they might be from Pixie’s part of the world. It was hard to tell as there was no symbology like flags or signage that might help determine their nationality. She might have expected a Swiss flag, but there was nothing like that.

She glanced at Pixie, whose eyes were shining with the implications of all of this, before turning back to watch the screen again. There was no sound, just images. The view then changed from an aerial shot outdoors to an indoor area. It showed bedrooms that were similar to the ones in their village. The bathroom was much like their own, including the shower.

The scenes switched to show lush living areas; all symmetrically designed with a pleasing array of blues, silvers and greys in the fabric of the furniture, mixing with a dark wooden floor and the same white plaster-like walls that were quite familiar. As Suria watched these scenes, the tranquillity of them washed over her. The images transitioned to a kitchen scene and showed something recognisable to her: their food machines!

One of the women in the video was pressing buttons on it and producing food, in the same way they themselves did back at the village. It also showed one of the special glass screens, like the ones from their village, and the one they were now watching. A man was sitting at a couch made of soft grey fabric and watching the screen. He didn’t appear to do anything at all and then suddenly it turned on. On the screen was a music video that Pixie didn’t recognise. These screens were even more sophisticated than they had all thought.

“Do you know who that is?” she asked, referring to the band playing in the music video.

“No idea. Might help if we could hear it.” Suria replied. Pixie examined the screen from all sides, looking for volume buttons or dials, but couldn’t replace any. She would have to wait and replace out, like many other things, how this thing got turned on or off and how the volume worked.

The glass screen demonstration was over. The advertisement was now showcasing all of the other machines in Versena. They were the same machines Suria recognised from their village. This included the plate and cup composters, and the thing that washed the cutlery. She’d never even tried to name the machines that handled their dishes and cutlery. Neither had anyone else. They all just used them and were grateful for their existence.

The clothes machines were next, and there were demonstrations of how to work with material. Prina had clearly already worked this out but Suria recalled her saying once that she only knew how to do basic things like cutting and sewing. This advertisement, or documentary, was demonstrating more advanced techniques such as weaving and colouring. Suria had half a thought to rush and get Prina, who was still upstairs somewhere with Rivo, but it was pointless. The clothing machine demonstration would be over by the time she got here.

There was some more technology that wasn’t present in their village, but seemed to be here in Versena, or would be when it was completed. There was a small portable motion picture camera that was being used. It was really tiny, unlike the ones she could picture in her mind, from movie production sets and the like. The camera looked particularly easy to operate. For some reason, this thrilled Suria more than anything. It was something she hadn’t seen yet. It didn’t exist at their village. Apparently, it was here somewhere in Versena, though. She hoped she’d get to replace one and use it.

The scenes then switched back outside and panned around from an even higher position than before. She and Suria now knew for sure that this was imagery of the town they were in. The lake and the mountains were instantly recognisable – they had just seen the same view this morning on the way in. They also recognised the same triangular park with the young trees where the twelve of them had split up not that long ago. It was all the more mystifying that the town was complete and mature in this documentary, but still under construction at the present time. The scenes returned to a view they had seen before. It was playing on some sort of repeat cycle. They broke their entrancement with the presentation at this point.

“It’s repeating. We have to tell the others!” remarked Suria excitedly.

“It has to mean someone is here, doesn’t it?” Pixie was already moving rapidly for the door.

As she got outside the room and into the foyer again, Suria could hear Prina and Rivo coming down the stairs above them. She and Pixie’s excited movement distracted them momentarily.

“…so I think these rooms are probably…,” Prina stopped in mid-sentence when she saw Pixie and Suria rushing out into the foyer. Instead of responding to their excitement, she and Rivo stopped cold at something they’d seen beyond them. Their expressions of shock made both her and Pixie turn around, and when they did, they saw what Prina and Rivo were seeing.

It was a tallish blonde woman, coming through the front double doors. She had clearly already been aware of them and as she came through the doors she smiled warmly as she greeted them.

Oh, hello Suria, Pixie, Prina, Rivo. How lovely to finally meet you all!