“It’s hard to believe that these are not real clouds…” he noted.
“No matter how realistic they look, these are just projected images,” Lora added, feeling a bit sad.
“The park’s so huge…”
“Yes, it is. The North Park is the biggest in the city. The city fairs, our painters’ exhibitions and alien cultures’ displays are all held here.”
“Alien cultures? You actually have found traces of life on other planets?” Derek was mistrustfully looking at Lora.
“Why traces? Travelling through our galaxy we have encountered many living alien civilizations. We collaborate with some of them, exchanging technologies and resources…”
“That’s incredible!..”
“That means that at the moment of your spaceship launch, contact with other alien races hadn’t been established yet.”
“Well, this… or my memory is failing me tragically…”
“At your apartment you can gain access to the central computer in order to get an idea about all the voyages of ‘Solar Flotilla’. There you can also get descriptions of all the habitable planets we have visited…”
“That would be great…” the guest from Earth suddenly froze and his chair stopped moving.
“What’s wrong?” Lora stopped beside him looking worriedly into his face.
“My ship…”
“You mean the rescue unit?”
“Yes, I wasn’t alone there. Did you find only me there?”
Lora slightly pushed his chair to a bench down in the alley and sat.
“There was also a woman in your rescue unit. Unfortunately, she had died before we arrived.”
There was a pause and the man shook his head.
“I don’t remember her name,” he said bitterly. “I’m trying but I just can’t recall anything!”
His last words were permeated with obvious rage.
“Are you angry with yourself?” her question sounded very quietly but Derek reacted immediately.
“Wouldn’t you be?!”
Lora shook her head.
“Of course I can become angry… But rage is a tremendously destructive force that can cause a lot of harm.”
Derek’s anger immediately turned into amazement and now he was intently listening to Lora.
“We have learnt to control the self-destructive part of our personality,” she explained, seeing how much it puzzled him.
“Control? What do you mean by that? Control your temper?”
“No, we don’t actually repress fury, but we realize its futility.”
Derek still didn’t have any idea of what she was talking about.
“You are people though, aren’t you?” he tried to clarify. “Ordinary people get angry, fight, become furious…”
Lora sighed heavily, realizing that she was unable to explain her point of view to Derek without revealing to him the genuine reasons for the long voyages of ‘Solar Flotilla’.
“Derek, there is no doubt that we are human beings and that our ancestors were from Earth. But you must know something else. The doctor said that you mustn’t get stressed…”
“Please, spare me, Lora! What haven’t you told me? Do you mean about me spending 50 years in the rescue unit, and that since then the earthlings started flying into space on huge spaceships?”
“It’s much more complicated than that.”
“Even more complicated?” Derek repeated her words hesitantly.
“Our ancestors left Earth more than two hundred and fifty years ago. We think your ship was sent to look for us fifty years later. You were in stasis for two hundred years, Derek. And, to tell you the truth, I don’t know how to begin.”
There was a long pause.
“Every story has a beginning,” the young man uttered unexpectedly.
