Lowlanders Sci-Fi: The World Beneath Us

By Calebski Arias

“A young man receives a strange mind diary and learns that the only aliens in the Universe were once humans who have lived inside the Earth for 50,000 years”

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781623098148

Book preview

Alaska

1st Entry - Letter from Dr. Chalowski

Yesterday, while I was in the city, my mother received a letter addressed to me. The letter was the only link, besides some photographs, to the most important, most unknown man in my life. The man was my father.

The letter read;

Dear Thomas: I hope this letter finds you well. My name is Walter Chalowski. More than two decades ago I was part of the expedition in which your father lost his life. I would like you to come and visit me at the psychiatric hospital where I have lived for the past sixteen years. I would like to share with you a few stories about the expedition to Russia, and also to give you something that belonged to your father that he wanted you to have. Please come to see me. Regards, Walter.

The only other information was his address 1 Escalante Road, Westchester, New York, 10003. This was the lone man who had survived, and last seen my father alive. At first, I was uncertain, but I was also excited about the chance to get information about my father, but since Chalowski had mailed the letter from a psychiatric hospital, I wasn’t sure if his information would be reliable. But this was my only chance to discover something, even if only a partial truth. In the face of the abyss that was my father, the tiniest bit of information was everything.

My father, David Lankastern, was a Geologist and also an Environmentalist who was obsessed with the planet’s natural resources. He used to tell my mother that scientists had only discovered 30% of the Earth’s elements and natural resources, and that one day he would be able to find new energy sources. His dream was to find a new source of energy that could replace coal and oil, and stop their depletion and impact on the environment. My mother told me these things, years after he was gone from us. It was a way we kept him in our hearts.

I remember the first time someone really explained to me how my father died. My uncle Carlo said: Tommy, in 1988, your father went on an independent expedition in Northern Russia where, according to Soviet authorities, he and the rest of his team died in the middle of a snow storm before they could be arrested. Their bodies were never found, or at least that is what the Soviets claimed. Only one member of the expedition survived. You were 4 years old at the time. I am sorry you don’t have any real memories of your father. He was a great scientist.

My mother, Diane Lankastern, did not buy into the Soviets’ version of the facts. She believed the U.S. Government’s version. Not surprisingly, it was slightly different than that of the Soviets. Somewhere along the painful years, my mother let me read the afflictive letter that CIA agents had sent her:

"November 1st, 1988.

Dear Mrs. Lankastern:

After thoroughly investigating the disappearance of David Lankastern in Russia, the Central Intelligence Agency has concluded that KGB agents captured your husband and the other team members while they were testing the waters of the Kara Sea for nuclear waste, in Northern Russia.

Unfortunately we believe the KGB tortured Mr. Lankastern until he died, and that the only reason why one of the team members has survived is because he is a Soviet spy. The KGB denies responsibility for any of the team member’s death. We regret at this point there is nothing further the U.S. Government can do regarding your husband’s case. On behalf of the President I extend condolences to your family. Sincerely yours,

Robert Lloyd. CIA Agent/Foreign Affairs Division"

That letter and a few phone calls was all my mother got. She did not give up, and followed up on my father’s case for many months only to find out that U.S. Government officials concluded the survivor had been a spy for the Soviets all along, and his mission had been to inform KGB agents about the expedition’s progress. My father had truly been abandoned, and betrayed.

Many times I asked my mother about the man who had survived and she always gave me the same answer: He wasn’t willing to cooperate and never said what really happened! Every time he was interrogated by U.S. agents he stated that he was not a spy, and that the other team members died in the middle of a snow storm. He insisted that he had been found unconscious by Russian locals who later turned him over to Soviet agents, and they held him prisoner for months before he was turned over to British and American authorities.

The CIA did not believe the man’s statements and he was accused of murder and treason and was relocated to a maximum security psychiatric hospital where nobody had access to him, not even my mother who so desperately wanted to get some news about my father, and what his final days were like. My father had been officially declared dead on October 7th, 1988. The only person who knew what had really happened to him was the man who had survived. After so many years that man, Walter Chalowski, a doctor in Physics that my father had met at New York University, felt the need to speak about my father’s case and found me.

I needed to hold the letter in my hands, but before I went to Rocksdale to pick up the letter, I called Jessy. I was relieved to get voice mail. I was too drained to talk about what was happening. Jessy, it’s me! Listen, I’m not sure if I’ll see you tonight. I’m on my way to get the letter.

Jessy Martin -I met her at Manhattan College and have been good friends for a couple of years. Jessy and her parents are a very nice family who relocated to the United States after struggling back in their home country. Her father applied for the Green Card lottery and won! Not long after relocating to the U.S. he found a job teaching Spanish in a public school in New York City. Her mother is a humble lady who works in a beauty parlor near their place, and Jessy’s brother, Matt, is still a high school teenager. I really rely on her. I have difficulty connecting with people sometimes. She is one of my few real friends. I am not sure why but her wheelchair makes me trust her more.

They treat me as one of their own and have made me comfortable around them from day one. Sometimes I get the feeling that Jessy’s parents would like me to be her boyfriend, maybe she does too. Jessy is beautiful, and has long brown hair, brown eyes and a great personality. When people meet her they usually don’t notice the wheelchair at first. A year after they moved to New York, a man who had been drinking all night got in his car in the early morning hours and ran a red light. He hit Jessy while she was crossing the street on her way to school. Doctors say after a few surgeries she might be able to walk again, but it is not for sure. I sometimes wonder who suffers more, Jessy or her parents. They really struggle with it; the wheelchair was not part of their American dream.

As soon as I could I went back home. It is always better to leave the city before 5pm; before the mass exodus of commuters speeds to the suburbs. Most seemed not to mind it but I never got used to it, the pushing and ferocious crowds, I avoided those commute times like the plague. That indescribable smell hit me as it always does when I got underground, a moldy mix of unwashed clothes and urine. I took the number 4 subway to Grand Central where I switched to the train that takes me to Rocksdale in 40 minutes. My mind wandered where it frequently goes… The letter from Chalowski made me think of my father and how he had met my mother in the city of New Orleans at Tulane University. My mother was a student while my father worked as an assistant professor. She always said that New Orleans was the perfect place for a student to fall in love. My parents met and got married in New Orleans but soon after my father had gotten a job at New York University and they moved back to New York City where my mother had most of her relatives. I was born here. New York has always been my home. My father’s family is spread out in different countries, but some of his relatives lived in Florida, near the area of Key Biscayne.

I never had the chance to meet my father’s relatives. After his death, my mother didn’t stay in contact with any of them. When he was with us, my father used to visit his relatives in other countries, or they used to come visit him to New York. I have seen some photos, but like my memories of my father, everything else is imagined. Some people say that my father was a dreamer, and so am I. I wish I could be like him and have an adventurous spirit, and to be able to leave for long periods of time in search of new answers. I don’t have the courage they say my father had, but I know one day, my dream of becoming a pilot, will become true! I wish I could travel as much as my father did, but any talk like that upsets my mother deeply. She always reminds me how my father was constantly absent from us. His quest for more knowledge, and his ideas of finding new natural resources that could be used as fuel, kept him away from us most of the time, and then forever.

Living with my mother is complicated, but I think that deep inside she feels lonely and I remind her of my father. My mother always said: I had a bad feeling about your father’s expedition, but as an active geologist, he was always traveling far away and looking for answers. He hardly spent any time at home. As usual my mother wasn’t home when I arrived. She was still at the Hospital seeing patients, but she had left Chalowski’s letter for me on the table. The letter was simple and had Chalowski’s hospital’s address and phone number. Walking to my bedroom, I found a photo album with pictures that my mother had put together, some of me and some of my father, and some of us together. I guess Chalowski’s letter had made her want to do it, and I was grateful for that.

My father was about 6 feet tall, his skin was slightly tanned. His eye color and hair was light brown just like mine. I could see why my mother always told me that I looked just like him. In one of the album’s pages there was a picture of me and one of my father’s when he was young. The resemblance was very clear. That night I stayed looking at pictures and I did not go back to Manhattan to visit Jessy. All I wanted was to see Chalowski and hoped he would have some good stories about my father, or perhaps, confess the truth! That night I dreamed that my father was still alive, and Chalowski knew where and how to find him. It was just a dream, but in my dream my father was an old man waiting to die.

I called Chalowski’s hospital as soon as I woke up the following morning. A polite voice answered the phone: Westchester Psychiatric Hospital, this is Lisa how can I help you? I introduced myself and said: Good morning! My name is Thomas Lankastern. I received a letter from one of your patients, Walter Chalowski. He asked me to come see him. Lisa was the nurse in charge of Chalowski’s pavilion. I asked her if she knew about Chalowski’s relationship with my father, and the expedition they have worked together in the 1980s.

She seemed to be familiar with some of Chalowski’s case, but did not seem to know anything about my father. I asked her if I could really trust Chalowski’s state of mind, and she said: His mind can be a little off sometimes, but to be honest I never understood why he was admitted. I personally think he could be living in a regular nursing home, but I guess the government has its reasons for keeping him here.

Lisa’s comment was strange. I wondered why the government was so interested. She also mentioned that Chalowski often asked her to write the letters for him. I asked her again if he was mentally okay like to receive visitors, and also if she knew what was it that Chalowski had for me and she didn’t seem to know. Lisa mentioned that I wasn’t the only one who had ever visited him. Other people had come to see him in the past on regular basis, including government agents. There had to be something that was being covered up, which gave me hope that Chalowski wanted to see me because he had deep personal reasons. Maybe he was finally ready to confess his crime!

She said: The best time to visit Walter is in the afternoons. I am sure he will be very happy to learn that you got his letter. For many years he has spoken about one day meeting you in person. After my conversation with Lisa I spent the rest of the day fixing things around my mother’s house and thinking about the questions that I would ask Chalowski. Right before I went to sleep I checked my phone and saw that Jessy had left a message…Tommy, don’t be a stranger, call me. But I couldn’t think of anything