The Boy Who Fell from the Sky by Jule Owen (grave mercy .TXT) 📕

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

From the Sky

Dragons in the Bedroom

The Naming of Things

The Pianist

Psychopomp

Mr Lestrange

Eva Aslanova's Virtual World

O'Malley Escapes

Drowned London

Robot Building

The First Space War

The Beebot

Books That Write Themselves

Chips

Letting Go the Dragons

The Beekeeper

O'Malley Again

Four Days

Dragomirov

Mathew Erlang is Dead

Borodin the Cat

The Silent Prayer

Evgeny the Spy

The Night Rescue

Friends Under the Mountain

The Empty Cell

Kindness

The Door

Reality

Bad Head

The Dream Scenario

Silverwood

The Best and Brightest Scientists

Dedication

Acknowledgements

About the Author

THE BOY WHO FELL 

FROM THE SKY

Book One in 

The House Next Door 

Trilogy

Jule Owen

THE BOY WHO FELL FROM THE SKY (HOUSE NEXT DOOR SERIES)

Text and Illustration Copyright © 2015 Jule Owen

All rights of Jule Owen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted. 

First published in 2015 by Mean Time Books

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Jule Owen and Mean Time Books. 

ISBN: 978-0-9934097-2-1

www.juleowen.com

1 Falling

DAY EIGHT: Wednesday, 15 June 2472, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Siberia, Russia

At first he spins. The sky and the trees below spin too, and his stomach lurches. Then he is parallel to the horizon, arms and legs spread-eagled like a skydiver. The air pushes at his limbs. He extends and flexes his fingers, lifts his head and looks across the treetops at the breath-taking scale of the forest, the unbroken canopy of green stretching into the misty horizon and cloud-covered mountains in the distance. The assault on his senses and instincts is overwhelming. Beauty, joy, exhilaration, and terror all at once. The ground is pulling him towards it at an alarming rate. 

I’m going to die, he thinks. Then, This isn’t real. This is not real.

As the trees rush towards him, as he nears the ground, he passes close to the side of a rocky cliff face, pounding white water throttling down, and he is like a stone in the waterfall. The spray soaks him to the skin. Fighting fear, he dares glance below. There is a lake where the falling water gathers: a blue pool, pale at the edges, shading to sapphire in the centre. 

I hope it’s deep, he thinks as he breaks the surface, feet first.

He plunges until the water finally catches hold of him like firm hands, and he is slowed, for moments on end, still and hanging, suspended in chains of bubbles escaping to the surface. It is dark and cold. Visibility is limited to a few feet ahead. Staring into the darkness, he half-expects a monster of the deep to snatch him in its jaws or tentacles. Without even realising it, he is clawing his way towards the air, his arms reaching around and down, the pressure of the water helping him, forcing him towards the world. Light refracts on the surface, glistening and dancing. 

Breaking through to his own element, he takes great gulps of air, his chest shuddering painfully, his arms thrashing. His head goes under and he swallows water; he emerges coughing and choking and thrashes some more, plunging under, panicking, until some strange, calm voice in his head tells him to stop, to be still, to lie back in the water, to trust, to get control of his breath. 

Then he is suspended on the top of the sapphire pool, arms and legs outstretched like he is skydiving in reverse now, floating, waiting for his heart and the blood pulsing in his ears to quieten. The sky is a cloudless blue above him. There is a curtain of green in the corners of his eyes. 

The sun is hot and already burning, but the water has chilled him, and he enjoys the sensation of his skin and his bones thawing. The water laps his ears with the wet, round, unknowable sounds of the lake. Bobbing in and out of the sounds of the forest, there’s a wall of noise, of birdsong and the calls of strange animals, and he tunes in to the clamour and distinguishes whistles, clicks, buzzings, individual songs, and angry cries. 

Turning his head, scanning, he spies a bank of smooth rock and swims towards it. The water is much shallower at the edges, and he is able to stand and wade onto dry land. He sits on one of the rocks and takes off his boots, drains them of water, and sets them and his socks aside to dry, flattening the sodden wool against the hot stone. 

He gazes at the waterfall and the empty air above it. 

There is no door. Nothing. 

He has literally fallen to this place from the sky. 

This must be a game, or a virtual reality world. Admittedly, it would be the most sophisticated one ever invented. It is so real. He taps the rocks with his knuckles – it hurts. It genuinely hurts. The sensation of falling, of hitting the water, of swimming, of almost drowning – well, it was remarkable. His throat is still sore from choking. 

Still, this is the most obvious explanation: He has logged into Mr Lestrange’s Darkroom, which happens to be playing the most remarkable virtual world ever made. 

Now all he has to do is to find a way to leave. 

There is no possibility of going back the way he has come.  But there is no rush. It is a lovely spot, with the sunlight pouring in, the rocks hot under his skin, the sound of the birds, and the roar of the waterfall.  Lying back, he closes his eyes and dozes off. 

And wakes with a start. 

Something disturbing – life-threatening, even – has pulled him from his dreams. But when he sits and looks around, nothing has changed except the position of the sun in the sky, which is now much farther to the east and casting longer shadows. It is still hot, and the air still sings with birds and insects. 

Discomfort registers in his brain. His arms and feet are red: burnt. Stupid, he thinks. And he wonders again at the advanced nature of this world, making him believe he is sunburnt. Virtual world or not, his skin hurts like hell, his head is sore, and he is parched. The water in the lake, he supposes, is fresh. Wading a little into the shallows, he bends and takes a couple of tentative sips, cupping the water to his mouth with his palms. It tastes good, and he gulps more. 

He ponders what he should do next. Where to start to search for the door? Remembering his view of the canopy of the forest – it stretches forever. The door might be anywhere. Or maybe Mr Lestrange will come home from wherever he has gone to and pull the plug on the game, take the skullcap off his head. That’s the most likely scenario. In which case, he should make the most of this enormous playground. 

If this is a VR world, he thinks, then there should be a map. He calls his Lenz to try the Nexus and sees a list of available networks. They are all in a strange alphabet. He tries one and is prompted for a password, and a warning message flashes. He closes it and tries the Blackweb. It is not there. He doesn’t understand. 

I’m really on my own. 

Wading back to the shore, he sits to pull on his boots. They are dry outside but still damp on the inside. There’s no choice but to put them on. His feet are swollen from the sunburn, and it hurts to pull his socks and boots onto his feet. Cursing, he ties his laces. 

All around the perimeter of the lake is an unbroken wall of creeping, thriving green, with no obvious way through the jungle. He needs something to beat a path in front of him. He finds a long pole, wide enough to be substantial but thin enough to grip, breaks some smaller branches off and tests the weight of it in his hand. It’s good.

The lake empties into a small river, which he decides to follow. It’s bound to lead to people, to the coast or something else. 

It’s easier going than he imagined, although he has to veer away from the stream to walk around trees and bushes. His feet chafe in his wet boots. The pain from the sunburn on his feet and arms is persistent. It’s humid. 

He stops to drink again from the stream. The water pooling in his hand has bits floating in it. He swills his hand and tries again, this time scooping closer to the top where it runs faster. It tastes fine. If this was real, if he was in Elgol, hiking into the wild mountains surrounding the community, he would never be so bold, but he needs to drink. His clothes are soaked with his own sweat. 

His ears are assaulted by the sounds of life all around him, but he sees only an occasional flicker of movement of birds in the trees above. Flies swarm about his face, attracted by the salt on his skin, and beyond the path he is beating for himself he is aware of small life, insects cutting leaves, crawling amongst the humus of the forest floor, gathering dying and decaying things for their food. He tries to block them from his mind. 

The light is dimming, and he starts to reflect on what he will do at night for warmth and light. Although he certainly doesn’t need the heat, a fire would give him light and keep animals away. 

The filtered greenish sunlight in the forest suddenly curdles yellow, electricity charges the air and there is a crack of lightning and then thunder, rumbling under the ground towards him. Another round of the same and a large raindrop breaks on his nose, then another on his hand, his arm, his neck, his head. 

He’s experienced a lot of rainstorms in London, but this rain comes in drops so large they hurt. As the storm gains momentum, it is like whole buckets of water are being thrown over him. 

Water rolls off the green, shiny leaves all around him onto the ground in rivulets and streams. 

Drenched anyway by his own sweat, the rain cools him and plasters sodden cotton to his skin. Carrying on, he tries to ignore it, but drops pound on his head – it’s hard on his scalp, like a persistent finger prodding him. 

Eventually, he stops and searches around for somewhere to shelter. He gets under a plant with large, long leaves, but the rain comes through as the branches bow with the force of the water. He grabs a leaf and twists and yanks to snap it off – then breaks off another and another and props them