Chapter 13

They walked into a small room that had another door facing them. But this door was open and they were stunned by the vastness of the room on the other side of it. Then as soon as they had entered into the small room, the door slid shut behind them thus preventing them from going back.

There was nothing else to do now except to walk toward the open door in front of them. It was quite plain that they were being forced by an invisible hand to go in one direction, and this reminded him of experiments he had seen on television with mice and rats made to go into a maze of tunnels while they were being observed through a glass plate overhead. Now they were the rats in the maze of this underground compound.

They slowly walked through the open door ahead of them and they found themselves in an impossibly long room. Vincent couldn't even distinctly see its far side. Besides being exceedingly long; it was so high that he could not accurately guess its height. As they kept on walking, they saw, on each side of them, machines of all shapes and sizes. Some were even humming with activity. Vincent couldn't even begin to guess the purpose of all this equipment and whether they were electronic devices or mechanical ones.

They walked for a long time along the wide corridor between the machinery until it was replaced by rows upon rows of tables with hardware of all kinds on them. There were gadgets with dials and some with screens, while others had hundreds of hair thin wires sticking out of them. Some of the equipment reminded him of laboratory materials he had once seen when he had visited a research facility in Boston.

Yes, he could tell that this immense room had been used at one time to do tests of some kind. As a matter of fact he could still see the numerous chairs and stools near each table. Everything seemed to be ready and waiting for the arrival of the occupants of the place. The floor was very clean and no dust could be detected anywhere. Even on the hundreds of tables everything seemed to be in order. It was as though whoever was in charge of the place could not tolerate untidiness or unclean equipment.

For the next ten minutes they kept on walking straight ahead until they came to the far wall of the room. They found another open door leading to a brightly lit hall. At the end of the hall was a circular room and in the centre stood a four- foot high table that reminded Vincent of a small circular stage rather than a table.

As soon as they entered into the room, the light intensity diminished and a strangely dressed woman appeared, standing on the stage-like table. She was beautiful beyond description. Her hair was very black and it went down to her waist. Her complexion was olive in colour and her face was sort of oval with wide green eyes and long eyelashes. Never before had Vincent seen such a woman. The high cheekbones combined with her thick moist-looking lips gave her a sensual look that was hard to resist.

After looking at the trio for many seconds, the woman began to speak in a clear and high-pitched voice that reminded Vincent of the voice of an oriental woman.

<< My name is Brumelle. I have been waiting for a very long time for someone to come here. You are the first to reach me in an extremely long time. As you look at me, you are seeing a pictorial representation of how I used to be when I was alive. >>

At this point Vincent realized that however real the woman appeared to be, he was looking at a sort of extremely realistic hologram - a hologram infinitely more advanced than anything he had ever seen or heard of before. She was talking in the universal language of the world of Nika and Verla and he knew that they could also understand what she was saying. Of course by now Vincent had mastered the language fairly well while the two women were able to speak English almost fluently.

<< All the knowledge that my people acquired through the ages and all the emotions I ever experienced, including everything I used to like and love as well as that which I hated and feared was placed in a computer program. The process is more complicated than anything that you could ever imagine. I will not go into details as to how it was done since it is not necessary for you to be informed about that. All you have to know is that a machine is now talking to you.

I am a machine that can think, love and hate just as I used to do when I was a living creature. I will now explain to you why I need your help and if you refuse to help me, no harm will come to you but you will be transported to another world with no possibility of returning.

On the other hand if you do decide to help me, you will encounter many dangers. At the same time you will have a chance to save your own world and many other worlds including the one we are now on. Now do not interrupt me and listen carefully while I tell my story. >>

At this point, the woman ceased talking and looked at them, each in turn as if she were trying to scrutinize their thoughts. When her eyes came to rest on Vincent, he felt a spark of passion for her even though he knew that she was not real and he knew that he could very easily fall in love with such a woman. But as soon as she began to talk again, he was shoved back to reality and he proceeded to pay close attention to what she was saying.

<< A long time ago, my people used to live on a single planet. We were born on that planet and we worked hard, experiencing pain and joy as well as all the in-between emotions, and of course we also experienced death on that planet. As time went on, we evolved in our way of thinking and we also made tremendous advances in all branches of science. Drugs were discovered and medical techniques were introduced that made it possible for us to live longer and longer. The life expectancy of the average population doubled in a very short time.

Then, there came a time when there was practically no more room for the ever increasing population. Immense efforts were made to develop new technologies in agriculture to feed the population and much research was done to find a means to reach the nearest planet in our own solar system.

Our solar system had nine planets, and beside the world we were living on, there was the possibility of establishing colonies on two of the others. Gradually those two planets were reached and colonized thus reducing greatly the pressure of our ever-increasing population.

As time went on, many new discoveries were made to cure diseases and the life expectancy of the population was increased even more. Soon all three worlds became overpopulated and we were back with our initial problem of overpopulation. All of our efforts were then focused to find a way to reach our nearest stars, but progress was exceedingly slow in that direction. Then in a stroke of luck, a group of scientists discovered the secret of displacing material objects through space by means of intense gravity fields. It was the discovery of the Simultravel technology.

This discovery was tremendously important for us. It was the greatest thing that could have happened since it allowed us to travel instantly to any of the three worlds in our solar system. Of course it did not solve our problem of overpopulation but it did help a great deal in solving our food shortage since the spaces that had been used to build roads could now be used for cultivation as travel within each planet could also be done with Simultravel.

We had been working on means to build faster than light star ships for a very long time but were never able to reach a speed faster than ninety percent of the speed of light. After many generations and much effort in that direction, it was then proven without any doubt that it was an absolute impossibility for anything to travel faster than the speed of light. It thus meant that our problem of overpopulation could not be solved by emigration to other solar systems.

The closest planetary system to our own was so far away that even at ninety percent of the speed of light it would have taken two generations to reach it. We then decided to take the next best approach to solve this problem. Many vessels were built and on each one of them we installed a Simultravel device.

Then each vessel was sent in a different direction toward star systems where we were relatively certain that they had planets. On the way to these yet unexplored stars, the crew of each ship could be changed easily by means of Simultravel. The technology of transportation over great distance is not affected at all by either the distance or the fact that the Simultravel device is moving.

You see, Simultravel will get you from one place to another with no loss of time at all. It creates a reality field that is outside of the dimension that we are in now. When it is in synchronization with a similar field elsewhere, - even if the distance between the two fields is very great - everything enclosed within these two fields becomes common and both places then become one. When the field is shut down at the departing end, whatever is in the field will appear at the other end.

So all we had to do was to wait until a ship reached a star system with life supporting planets, then using the Simultravel device on that ship we were able transport other Simultravel equipment to that new world and therefore prepare the planet for the emigration from our own overcrowded planet.

As soon as each vessel arrived at its destination, more people were sent to colonize these other worlds and whenever we found one or more habitable planets around a new star system, these planets were colonized. More and more vessels were then sent from these new star systems and the process was repeated over and over again. A last we had a permanent solution for our overpopulation problem.

The first vessel arrived at its destination when we were on the brink of collapse. All of our resources were long gone and people were dying by the millions for lack of food and the minimum necessities of life. As more and more vessels established footholds on other worlds, the pressure on our planet was greatly reduced and finally the problem no longer existed.

This was the time of discoveries and exploration. It was the glorious age of my race and for a long time we prospered. It was during this period that the Rad virus was engineered in a laboratory. It is a virus that can be introduced into the body either by injection or by eating plants that were exposed to the virus.

Once the virus is in your system it will take care of you. It contains the prints of the perfectly healthy human and it will work on your genes and order repairs to your body whenever and wherever it is needed. Diseases were thus completely eliminated and besides making the body perfectly healthy, it also made it immortal. The only way to experience death was by means of an accident.

The Rad virus was released on every world that we had already colonized and the population everywhere greatly increased. It did not worry us since we had all the room we needed for expansion. Then things began to deteriorate. Some of these new worlds were already populated by intelligent life forms and some of these aliens even made war on us. Of course they were easily beaten since they were all less advanced than we were in technology. But it had been countless years since my people had waged wars and now the old spirit of war mongering was rekindled once again.

Two completely opposed and divergent opinions developed as to what should be done with these intelligent life forms that we encountered. On one side were those that were in favour of the complete elimination of all intelligent aliens life while the other side demanded that we did not touch these worlds where the aliens lived and just leave them alone.

These discussions and debates went on for a few generations and gradually our whole race became polarized on that matter. There were those in favour of the destruction of all the aliens and then there were those demanding that they be left in peace on their world. Finally, when it became clear that the question would never be decided with the mutual consent of both sides, those in favour of destroying the aliens began to take matters into their own hand and they proceeded to wage war on these different life forms.