The pod around you shatters, and a brittle plastic wrap clinging to all the pieces sizzles and spits as it melts away.
“Come, come,” says a tiny man with round spectacles and tightly curled hair pulled up into a topknot. “Step away from all the toxic preservatives.”
You unsteadily take his hand and step over what is now hissing slime that makes you cough.
Your hand is so pale you have to stare at it.
“We’ve kept you out of the light, and there’s no flash photography allowed,” the man says proudly, seeing your stare. He helps you wrap up in a scratchy old towel.
You’re in a dusty basement, poorly lit with bare light tubes in the ceiling, with hundreds of crates looming in the dimness and dust.
“Where ...” you croak, voice creaky and leathery.
The nearest crate is stamped “MONA LISA. FRAGILE!” in red, blocky letters. And then, underneath that, sigils and swirls that look like no alphabet you have ever seen.
“You’re under the Feldt-Thn Museum of the Greater Western Continental Administration Zone,” the man says. “We built it when there was so little left to display we could bring it all into one building. We tried to keep the big ones here, or at least, what we had of them. Plus, having just one stop helped us advertise it as a tourist destination.”
He guides you to a small wooden table with three chairs. There’s a kettle of hot water sitting on it along with two porcelain cups.
“I’m told this might help,” he says hopefully, busying himself with pouring water. Then he presents a cherry-wood box full of teas.
You sit down and cradle the warm cup, ignoring the box of teas.
“When?” you ask.
“A couple hundred years. You’ve done it,” the man says, picking out an orange-hibiscus tea and dropping it in the cup with a reverence and yet defiance that seems like it was a revolutionary act. “You’ve traveled to the future!”
He has bright purple skin and teeth that flash silver in the light.
You look back down at the box of tea. Exhibit —2467-Kb: BRITISH TEA SELECTION, LATE 22nd.
He notes your glance and taps the box conspiratorially. “I won’t tell if you won’t!”
You’re not sure what to do with that. Your brain is still fuzzy. All those chemicals pumped into you to … slow down metabolism, stabilize your body against degeneration.
You need to get more information about your situation. You expected to be decanted surrounded by scientists, or, at least, doctors.
Not a dusty museum basement.
“I’m afraid I didn’t get your name,” you say politely.
“Ah. Seville Smith-Anuah of Terra,” he says. “And, of course, I know your name, I’ve been walking past you on exhibit for the past fifty years as I give tours.”
You look down at the towel covering you.
Seville makes an apologetic sound. “Well, that’s the way it always is, isn’t it? The Europeans often paraded around people captured from other continents naked to show their physiology. Our current masters insisted on no modesty for your exhibit. Whether it comes from the stars or the old empires, colonialism is colonialism. They wanted to see all of the ancient, preserved human in the pod.”
You shudder to think of thousands of people parading by the hibernation capsule in a museum staring at your nakedness on display. You wonder what the information plaque said. “Here Lies a 21st Century Time Traveler, Seeking To Boldly—”
“If it makes you feel any better,” Seville interrupts your thoughts, “it was mostly them taking the tours. We don’t really have the time or coin to do something like visit museums.”
“Them?”
“Them.” He spreads his hands and makes wiggly, waving motions. “Our masters from beyond the stars.”
“How … what …”
“Does it matter?” Seville slurps the last of his tea with a shudder of satisfaction. “They’re weird creatures from the dark that slammed in from the sky, and before we knew it, everything had changed. We don’t remember much about before. Most of it is just, whatever we have left in the museums. I always thought, one day, we’d decant some of you and ask a lot of questions.”
He looks at you and shrugs.
“Why are you purple?” you ask, seizing on something immediate, nearby, and concrete to figure out. The enormity of everything else threatens to dizzy you.
Time to fall back on training and figure out what you can, stay present, and orient yourself. There’s pen and paper on the table. You surreptitiously pocket the pen and a piece of paper that you fold up under a palm.
You never know what tools you’ll need.
Seville exhales and looks at his forearm. “Chemical peels,” he says. “Can’t look too weird to the aliens, need to do what you can to adapt.”
He checks a bedazzled timepiece that he pulls from a pocket.
“We need to keep you moving,” he says. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
He picks up a crowbar nearby and uses it to smash in a nearby box. You wince as he breaks display glass inside and shoves over a mannequin.
“It was the height of eighteenth-century fashion,” he murmurs. “And you have to admit, that coat is simply stunning.”
It smells ancient as Seville casually tosses the cloth over to the ground by your feet.
“I can’t possibly wear that,” you say.
“Not much in the way of choice, really. It’s that or run around in a towel, and you’ll need a good coat outside. The rain and weather are not what you’ll be expecting.”
You stare at the gold threads and brocade. You’re sure you’ve seen a picture of this ensemble somewhere in a history book.
“Come on, we don’t have much time.”
“What’s going on, really?” you demand.
Seville puts the timepiece away. “It’s all packed to the highest bidder and ready to be shipped out off-world,” he says. “The whole fucking museum. And it’s one thing to watch the paintings get packed away and readied, but another to see a person I walked past every day get boxed up. So, I’m releasing you.”
“Where do I go, what do I do?” you ask. You need to know more about the world you’re in.
“It was an impulse, not a plan,” Seville mutters. “I considered burning it all down. Better to take it from them than to have the last of it stolen. But I didn’t have the courage.”
The purple man sunk in on himself a bit.
“Maybe,” he continued. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done it. Maybe it’s a cruel thing to free you into a world where we’re all under their thumb. You remember what the world before was like. Maybe you can help them remember.”
He checks the time and stands up, eyes wide.
It’s time.
The curator pulls you along by a purple hand. The two of you hustle up the stairs, and you blink as you enter large halls, all of them empty. Plinths and display cases lay empty all around you, and spotlights dazzle the empty air.
There’s a roar in the air above the museum. A deep note in the air makes the dust dance and the earth vibrate.
“It took too long to wake you, we’re cutting this rather close,” Seville says. “Do hurry.”
Your leaden limbs protest, but Seville’s obvious fear motivates you.
At the great steps to the museum, he points towards a road leading off into what looks like a great park. There are no cities, no gleaming spires, no megastructures, just carefully manicured lawns and trees.
“Head north, and in half a day’s walk, you’ll start meeting folk.”
“Who should I look for?” you ask, trying to discern his plan.
“How should I know?” Seville says. “I have never been off the grounds in my life. I was born in the museum, bonded to it. But I’m told I still have cousins that way.”
“I need food, water—”
A shadow falls across the steps. Something massive hangs in the air far above us. It shoves clouds aside as it gently lowers itself toward the ground.
“In the archives, there was an article I read about a delegation from a part of the world, before our skies were filled like you see it now, who came to one of the old museums to ask for an artifact back. They were turned away by the museum.” Seville picks up an oval-shaped chunk of wood from where it lies next to the door. He hands it reverently to you.
“What is it?”
“A shield,” he shouts over the rumbling.
“Will I need it to protect myself?” Will there be ancient weapons as well? The wood bark that makes the shield, though, does not look like it could stop much.
Certainly not alien weapons.
“Eventually, like you, shouldn’t an artifact be returned to where it came from?” Seville shouts at you. “Or maybe, maybe I am just trying to buy a piece of historical forgiveness. Maybe, maybe someday our overlords will see the sense in this and return everything they have taken.”
Hundreds of years ago, when Captain Cook first encountered Indigenous people the first contact went wrong. His men fired on the Australians and picked up the shield you’re holding.
It has been shown in Western museums ever since.
“Take it home,” Seville says. “And maybe, someday, they’ll bring ours back.”
And then it’s time to run.
Seville sits on the stairs with a bottle of wine taken from the cellars, drinking it and staring up at the massive alien starship descending to land on the grounds outside the museum.
You think that will be the last image you have of him. But the aliens catch up to you in a few hours. They look like purple, metal crickets with helmets and backpacks on. They surround you and fire plasma into the air from their fingertips.
There’s nothing you can do but surrender. You make a fine sight, your eighteenth-century finery all muddied and scraped with brambles, your hair flying every which way, eyes wide with fear.
You drop the shield in on the grass and they take no notice of it as they order you toward a beetle-like shuttle that hovers above the ground nearby, waiting.
“I’m sorry,” Seville says when you are returned to the museum. Because you aren’t going to be staying on Earth. You’re an exhibit. Property. Ruined, but still of interest to the aliens.
There are still ways to put you in a display and tour you around distant stars for strange eyes to stare at you.
At least the shield will stay behind. Maybe, with luck, it will be found by someone. You left a note on it, written on a scrap of eighteenth-century silk with the pen you stole.
“Please return to owner …” the note starts, before giving the address.
It should have never taken becoming property yourself to make you care about its return, you think, as you are taken off into a starship to see the universe against your will.
AUTHOR NOTES
Here I’m goofing off with titles again. Though at least it’s more engaging than just a single descriptive word like “Sunset.”
I’ve studied enough postcolonial history to grow some outrage against the past injustices of colonial empire for stealing other culture’s most treasured artifacts, and spiriting them back to the seats of their power. As you’ve seen in some other stories, I like to explore the metaphor through the tools of science fiction. What would it look like if aliens plundered Earth’s treasures?