Young Writers Society

''I'm writing on the screen, wow, words.'' I recited faithfully.
'It seems that as the means for recording language become more complex, the language itself only becomes clumsier.'
I smiled, hoping Bo would pardon the jab.

'But as it happens, I do have a little paper, and a pencil stub. I shall proceed to copy down the most recurring characters, while those from the twenty-first century can work out this 'screen.' If we are lucky, this screen may also contain the smiling yellow pictographs. Those would be helpful, yes?'

"Well...that's a sentence," Aegeas said to Bo, smiling awkwardly. He'd never gotten the hang of writing, so he was impressed with how quickly Bo had typed out the sentence. But still, Boris's comment about language and complexity seemed accurate - it wasn't much of a sentence.

Bo chuckled. “Clearly I’m not great at coming up with stuff to write on the fly, haha.” He closed the app, and put his phone away.

“But yeah! Boris, that’d be good if you could do that. And uh, the ‘yellow pictographs’ are called emoticons, or emojis. The root word there being emotion, so they’re used to communicate emotions. I.E. the one smiling people will use to communicate happiness or maybe excitement. And uhh, well, the device - the typewriter-like thing - it’s called a phone. The screen is what we call the smooth glass surface that glows and shows the words you type, among other things it can depict.”

Both Lucy and Oliver had remained silent for the duration of the conversation, opting to instead search for an outlet of some sort that Lucy could connect to without anyone noticing. But nothing looked familiar to either one of them; the controls were drastically different than why they had seen, and they had certainly seen a lot.

Oliver let out a frustrated groan. One that, hopefully, was too quiet for anyone but Lucy to pick up on. He was just about to call it quits when a strange warm feeling began to spread through his body. It was unlike anything he had quite experienced before - it should have felt good, but it seemed oddly intrusive. It was just as he noticed that odd fact that he got a killer headache. His vision blurred and then refocused. And, just as fast as it had come, the headache and warm feeling was gone.

He went to look at Lucy, who was standing in front of one of the control panels.

He could read what it said.

Welcome to Atlantis.

Something was wrong. After hearing a faint groan from Oliver, Aegeas could feel warmth spreading through his body, reaching through his fingers and towards his head. It was methodical. It was slow and steady. It was -

Aegeas grabbed his head and cried out in pain. His already poor vision blurred, eyes dilating momentarily. Brief as the experience lasted, he felt like someone was cleaving his head open. For a second, he thought he'd lost control of himself again. Why? He had no reason. None of the usual factors - or people - were around.

Thankfully, the pain vanished as quickly as it'd arrived. When he opened his eyes and looked down, his hands weren't around someone's neck. That was always a good sign. Looking back up, he froze. The writing on the panels had changed somehow. It was now in the script he was familiar with. One of the symbols on the panel Oliver focused on was a mystery, but Aegeas understood it intuitively.

"Atlantis?" Aegeas said. "What kind of name is that?"

Lola leaned against a wall, her head pounding. She could hear the others crying out in pain, and for a second, she thought they were being attacked. She spun around and found the pain in her head had already subsided. She caught sight of the strange words. This time, however, she could actually make out what they said. Lola's mouth hung open.

"Atlantis...That's not possible. That's not real."

Raiden had been on his hands and knees behind one of the control panels. He was out of sight, so nobody would have noticed him. He had also sort of tuned out the others' conversations- not on purpose, but it just ended up that way. He had his own phone out, the flashlight function on, and he was inspecting the lower regions(?) of the controls. Surely, there must've been some sort of opening. Even if it was just for cooling- unless everything was liquid cooled.

"Tch. Can't find even a cord," he muttered to himself, standing up just as the headache hit. He clutched at his head with one hand, the other gripped the control panel. He gritted his teeth until it was gone. The splitting pain retreated from his mind almost as soon as it came. He shook his head and stepped out to face the others.

"Atlantis?" he heard Aegeas say, and his eyes widened, "What kind of name is that?"

"No, no no no, no ways," Raiden scrambled over and stared at the screen himself. "This...this can't be Atlantis!" he exclaimed, more to himself than anyone else. He took a few steps back, running a hand through his hair.
"Atlantis shouldn't exist! Even if it did, it-it shouldn't look like-like this!"

"Well," Oliver quietly said, "I'm not exactly surprised."

And he wasn't, really. The starting points of various Earth cultures mainly came from other sources. Extraterrestrial races were sometimes at fault. He had heard of others, though he didn't know what exactly they were. But for Atlantis to be an advanced city floating in the middle of an ocean? He could take that. It wasn't the most absurd thing he had dealt with.

Lucy pointed at the screen. "There's more," she said. Letters were scrolling across the screen too quickly for him to read, but Lucy took it all in. It was one of the perks of being best friends with a robot. "It just looks like schematics for the city. Nothing major-Wait, I see a map!"

Aegeas narrowed his eyes. Still frightened from the headache, he couldn't help but wonder who was to blame, and Oliver and Lucy were acting suspicious again. He hadn't heard Oliver that well (he was clearly getting better at keeping out of Aegeas's range of hearing), but Oliver's general calmness contrasted with how he'd acted earlier. It was genuine this time, which was strange. Aegeas wondered if Oliver had been in situations as odd as this before. In the meantime, Lucy somehow understood that the rapidly moving text referred to both the workings and a map of the city. How?

He didn't realize how fast he was breathing. Taking a couple deep breaths, he composed himself. "I'm guessing it doesn't have the way out," he said. He knew his luck.

He thought he was going to faint or something. Was it possible his suppressed fear of the ocean was manifesting itself in new symptoms all at once? He felt warm, and then his head was splitting, and then his vision blurred, and everything was wrong. But as quickly as the sensation came, it left, and when he looked back up at the screen, he could understand it.

Atlantis.

Well that explained why they were a city floating in the middle of the ocean. But it also meant they were definitely on a city floating in the middle of the ocean. It also meant Atlantis wasn't just some story, but it was real. It also meant that he'd have to pull himself together again if they were going to figure out why they were here and how to get out.

He took a step closer to the screen, looking at the schematics as Lucy pointed them out. The words were moving by too fast for him to catch.

"Is there... any way to interact with the screen and find information, now that we can read it?" He asked, uncharacteristically calm as the denial and numbness set in hard. He couldn't waste energy panicking anymore.

My companions fell, one by one, shaking as though possessed, coming out of the spell with strange conclusions. They looked at the screen, and proclaimed 'Atlantis.'

I wondered what possibly could have come upon them, until I too was seized by it- this grossly intimate feeling of unwelcomed warmth- and a blinding headache.
Something, some wretched thing had me- and I wanted it out.
But after only a short moment of uttering silent, furious oaths, it evaporated.

I found myself on my knees. I rose with a feeling of bitter contempt for whatever had so rudely come over me. And there, on the screen, were the same characters as before.
Only this time, they made sense. It came as naturally as the language of my birthplace.

Atlantis.

Surely I was being toyed with by some higher power. To be pulled from one place to another, and then being forced into yet a third city once I had finally found a home in the second one- it was maddening. I would not forgive this. Once I found whatever had sent me here, some vengeance would be in order.

I realised that I had been glaring. I stopped, hoping that nobody had noticed the tell.

"Is there... any way to interact with the screen and find information, now that we can read it?" I heard Bo say.

I turned toward Miss Lucy. 'You seem well-versed in such technologies. Perhaps you could find something out?'

"I can try," Lucy said. It wasn't hard. Now that she could suddenly read the words scrolling across the screen, she could understand how this place worked. The technology she encountered didn't need to be like her own to comprehend it. All technology boiled down to a series of numbers and codes. Understand the system, and she could use it to her full advantage.

She rested her hand on the screen. The scrolling came to an abrupt stop. She could see little data readings on the side of the screen - oxygen readings (good for humans, Oliver and probably Aegeas), number of people currently in the city (eight) and how many parts of it were full functional (all). But what mattered the most was the map. She studied it for several seconds to get a good idea of what it was saying before reporting her findings to the others.

"Well, there are several ways out," she concluded. "But all of the ways lead into the ocean, and I don't know how far away land is. I did find a greenhouse and kitchen if anyone is hungry, as well as an area that looks like a library - though it's probably a digital one-"

Oliver took a step closer to the screen. "Hey, Lucy?"

"Yeah?"

"It says there's eight people in the city." He gestured at the other people in the room. "I just counted. There's only seven of us here."

Bo's stomach dropped. His mind went to two different conclusions. That that extra person was either a threat or another victim just like them. But, wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt were they actually just as scared and confused as everyone else was, he decided to veer towards the latter.

"Someone else was brought here?" he asked. "Does it say where they are?"

Aegeas straightened. Some part of him was suspicious that he hadn't heard of this eighth person before, as much as the group wandered around the city. At the same time, he desperately hoped it was somebody he knew. Anything familiar would be of some comfort in this bizarre place.

He approached the screen and peered at the text. "I only see how many people there are," he said after a few seconds, hoping nobody noticed the panic at the edge of his voice. "Is there a way to find out more?"

"Aside from that person already having been here before us, there's three more possibilities I can think of.

Everyone here arrived at only a short distance from each other.
It is possible that an eighth unwilling traveler was sent further away from the group through an error of some sort.
Or they could have arrived near us, but in an area that blocks sound, and so missed us because they did not hear us. Or they did find us, but they're hiding.

If that is the case, precaution would be wise. But I advise precaution in any case."

I moved closer to the screen, and surveyed the map.

"I think I shall head to the library, to see what I can learn. Anyone interested is welcome to join me."