1 Midas

The morning sun cast a wide glow across the vast field. The wind blew gently and inconspicuously, almost as if it did not want to disturb the image of the field where Midas found himself lying. Midas was having visions of being in a crowded place. He looked around and found himself in a bus, full of strangers whose colourful conversation Midas could not hear clearly.

When he turned his head to his left to look outside the window he found the most fascinating sight he had seen in his entire life: the vast reaches of space. Stars twinkled and shone brightly, clusters of asteroids and space dust buzzed and floated around.

'Wow,' thought Midas to himself as he saw this scene. He wondered why everyone else was too busy having conversations between themselves when they could be immersing themselves in this beautiful sight.

"A.. kay..?"

The incoherent noises had always felt too far away, but now he could hear something closer to him. He looked around the bus, wondering what it could possibly be, but could not find the source. Midas merely shrugged to himself and gazed outside again, but not long after he heard that same voice.

"Wa... up. Are .. kay?"

Suddenly he felt like something grabbed him and shook him. With his eyes fluttering open, Midas saw a green eyed girl with a small nose and rosy cheeks staring at him questioningly.

"Are you okay? What's your name?" said the girl. As Midas slowly regained consciousness, he realised that the earlier scene may have been a dream. He rose up while staying seated to look around, only to see others stirring around him.

'Where... am I?' thought Midas to himself while looking around. He saw people having conversations with each other, with some speaking non English languages too. Bewilderment painted their faces as they seemingly began to grasp their unfamiliar surroundings. Midas imagined that he might have a similar expression on his face at this moment as well.

'Wait… I can understand them,' thought Midas after realising that the multilingual conversations around him were comprehensible to him, almost as if they were being automatically translated as they entered his ears. He knew some of these people were not speaking English though, based on their mouth movements. And yet what he heard was English. How was that even possible?

"Hey? I'm talking to you. Well you seem fine... Do you know where we are?" asked the girl. When Midas took a good look at her he realised she was half kneeling, so they were currently at eye level with each other. Her brown hair flowed down her face freely and unrestrained and she sported a natural smile on her face. She seemed like one of those people that could get along with anyone.

Behind her stood two people who were also staring at Midas, almost as if trying to read him. One of them, a black haired girl with sharp black eyeliner that made her seem like a 2012 emo girl spoke and said "I don't think he understands us. He might not speak English. You saw it right? There are people from all over the world here, China, Brazil, Spain, Australia... Let's just try talking to someone else.".

The other girl, with blonde hair and blue eyes merely said "No he probably understands, but he might be deaf or mute instead. Yeah, let's just see if ve can find someone else to talk to.". She spoke with a thick accent which Midas immediately recognised as a German accent and immediately looked away from Midas as if she had lost all interest in him.

"Hey can you understand me? Hm?" asked the girl hopefully, but all she was met with was Midas' blank expression. After seeing that, the girl seemed to have lost hope and suddenly stood up. "Yeah, you might be right. He might be deaf or mute... Let's go." said the girl as she was walking.

The two other girls followed her and they started another conversation among themselves while walking away. Of course Midas was neither deaf nor mute. He could understand everything they were saying and his thoughts were firing at a rapid pace ever since he woke up. He just chose not to speak without ascertaining the circumstances of his situation first.

'Okay, so I'm in a field, it seems like normal brown earth.' thought Midas to himself as he grabbed some of the soil and rubbed it against his palm, watching it fall back to the floor. He surveyed around trying to notice more details. 'Oh, it's not just a field. There's a statue over there. It seems like the statue of a seven pointed star radiating out of a circle there. Is there a place like that on Earth? Where am I...'

In this seemingly boundless brown field with no end in sight, the one landmark that existed was this multi sided statue. He tried to recall anything about a seven pointed star from his memory but all he could come up with was some religious symbolism. He continued surveying and finally noticed what the girls were speaking about. People from all sorts of backgrounds were waking up with confusion.

'Weather seems nominal, temperature about 20 degrees Celsius. Maybe if I could see the stars, then I would be able to determine my relative position on the Earth. I guess that will have to wait. What is this place.. I remember clearly I was in my room reading a book. How did I end up here? This is either a dream or I was taken. Since it's probably the second option, then I cannot trust any of the people around me. For now, let's try not to reveal anything about ourselves while listening in on other people's conversations.'.

'Wow… And my phone's gone.'

Thoughts continued running through his head in this fashion, and it was not noticeable to anyone else because of his blank expression. Although he seemed calm, his heart was racing at the thought of being in danger. But if he tried anything funny now, he might put himself in more danger so he might as well stay put and calm down.

He needs to blend in, be inconspicuous while readying himself for anything. That way he can at least rationally deal with whatever was coming his way. He made himself more comfortable in his seated position while trying to calm his heart. Meanwhile, he continued listening in on other people's conversations and ruminating on their meanings.

"Oh my god, I'm so scared. Where are we? Does anyone know?" said a voice in a loud fashion in a way that would grab the most attention.

"I want to go home. Please…" said someone while crying.

Midas noticed that the person who said this was a Chinese person, and they probably said it in Mandarin Chinese. An instantaneous voice over technology had probably never been invented yet right?

"Of course we don't know. We're all in the same situation here. If you're gonna ask a question, at least make sure it's a good one, gosh." remarked a man with an American accent.

"Hey there's no need to be rude!" said a British woman's voice in a scalding manner to which another Spaniard replied "Well he's not wrong..." which then started another round of arguing.

"Idiots…" said another woman 's voice to which some people started laughing, after which the American disbelievingly questioned, "Hey, did someone just call us idiots??!"

Midas felt like slapping his forehead in dismay at the lack of anything useful being offered by these "idiots''. He tried to see if any of them were making weird movements.

'Wow, there must be hundreds of us here... What do they want to do with us? This better not be some terrorist indoctrination cell.' thought Midas to himself humorously.

He could never imagine himself sacrificing himself for any cause even if he was forced into it. The idea of becoming a militant to cleanse this earth of heathens was ironic to him as he considered himself one of those heathens. And just like that, minutes seemed to pass. In this period of time he was approached by a few groups of people trying to start conversation, but Midas would merely start gesticulating in an unfriendly way to send them all off.

"Hey, Let's go check out that statue" said one tall Brunette haired man in a language which Midas thought looked like the French mouthing that he'd seen from the Congolese men he used to see around Cape Town. The only reason Midas paid attention was because he heard the word "statue" and wanted to see if he could find anything out.

The man the brunette was speaking to responded in almost a secretive manner "Yeah, that's a good idea," and thereafter they both started moving towards the statue.

They weren't the only people doing this. The statue was the only structure that stood out in this place. After a few minutes some people started gathering around the statue, touching it, feeling it up and trying to decipher the symbols on it.

Midas stood up and dusted himself off and after looking around some more, he understood that there weren't merely hundreds of them in this place, there were maybe a few thousand. He decided to move towards the statue and look for himself.

As he moved closer to the statue he realised how interesting it is. He knew it was multi-sided but now he realised that it was seven sides and every side had the same seven pointed star. The circle he had perceived in the middle was actually a golden sphere that was seemingly floating in mid air. The whole statue seemed like a star that was radiating seven rays of light when viewed from seven directions.

No wonder it was drawing such a large crowd. It was incomparably beautiful. There were even strange symbols engraved on every length of metal on the sculpture and the strange symbols did not seem to relate to any language he had come across.

When he looked closer he realised that those symbols seemed as if they had a third dimension to them as they curved into the metallic material of the statue.

"Does anyone understand this language?" said a tall dark skinned man with a thick African Accent. Midas estimated that accent to be a Kenyan one based on their pronunciation of "one" as "won" and "understand" as "onder-stand".

Midas couldn't help but muse to himself that all his multilingual television watching had finally paid off. He would insist to himself to watch television from all nations, even if he didn't understand much. This gave him a sense of intuition about people and their origins which most people never really had.

An Italian woman felt the need to reply by saying, "We don't know, is it Arabic or something?"

Another person replied, "Well no. I know Arabic, and this is not it at all"

"Is it Ithkuil?" said someone else.

"What's Ish-quill?" and the conversation carried on from there.

It seemed like their shared confusion and need for understanding had brought them together. Some even started introducing themselves and sharing their backgrounds.

Over time, Midas was amazed at how many different people from different backgrounds he could make out. It seemed like if one could call out the name of a country, there would be a person in that place that would raise their hand and tell you that that is their country of origin.

Some people had already started congregating by country of origin and it could be easily seen how some countries had more people in attendance than others. As an added terrifying bonus, they all found out that they had experienced the same time, with the last date they experienced being the 7th of March 2024.

Midas found all these details fascinating and pondered their meaning.

'How could anyone simultaneously manage to kidnap thousands of people from all around the world and put them all in one place without alerting the governments of the world in the process? You'd need power to silence governments, resources to move the people, and people to the job. That is incredibly terrifying to even think about. What in the world have I gotten myself involved in?'

Midas would later realise that he was thinking too small at that moment.

As the people continued to speak, and Midas tried to inconspicuously listen and understand things in his way, time passed. Now people were getting even more comfortable and were setting up teams to explore this place. Suddenly, Midas felt a mysterious feeling. An almost staleness in the air, as if something was about to happen.

His heart rate started increasing because this was not the first time this happened to him, and every time it happened something interesting would occur around him. He looked around, trying to find the reason, only to see a figure standing right above the statue.

Standing? In mid-air?

The figure stood at 1 metre in height, and its surface was green and scaly like a lizard's. It even had a tail behind its back that would swish back and forth occasionally and stood with two legs and four hands at its sides, totalling a count of six limbs, seven if you include the tail.

Its face had three eye-like structures, with one front-facing and two at the sides, which radiated a cold golden colour. It was looking around this place the same way a sheep farmer would gaze at his flock of sheep. Suddenly it turned to look straight at him with a cold and unfeeling light in its eyes. Something about those emotionless eyes brought shivers down Midas' spine as he took a step back unconsciously.

'What is that...', thought Midas to himself as a cold sweat started flowing down his back. What he experienced right now was a deep fear and reverence. Where from those feelings came from, he had no idea. But what was clear was that something was wrong. That thing was standing in mid air. Which means it was flying? Levitating? How? How did none of them notice?

No matter what, one thing was certain... That thing was not human.