Chapter 1: Summoning Wild Energy

I'm too young to remember life in the Dawn Ages, before we had aliens. That is, before there were Sleesh. What was it like? Weird, I'll bet. I read a quote once from one of the Dawn Age mumbo-jumbo doctors, before The Church. of God the Engineer. The quote read: "Of all the aliens humans could have gotten, we got the Sleesh. That really tells you something about what God thinks of humanity." Our Teacher said that just goes to show that even for primitives, some of the Old Ones had the right idea about how lucky humans were, and just how wonderful things were about to become. Recently, I've been wondering if that was exactly what he meant.

I've been thinking about Caitlin again. Not in a selfish, crude, wrong-touching kind of way. In fact I listened for sleesh-sleesh noises as I lay in bed thinking about her, late last night. Nothing. Next morning, I went to all the windows in the house, looking out for shiny mucous trails on our lawns, our gardens, our driveway. Nada. Nobody saw me looking. (What would I have said if Mom had asked me what I was looking for? If she knew, I know just the kind of hot fantasies she'd imagine I'd been having, up in my bedroom. Yikes!). Lucky me, not a single Sleesh came near us in the night. I hadn't spilled any sacred fluid, or polluted myself in any way. I didn't grow hair on my palms, and my head didn't explode.

From what I learned in Sunday school though, I wouldn't be surprised if some Sleesh weren't already in our neighborhood, sniffing at my thought-spore. ("Right Thought! Right Action! Yuh-yuh-yuh." We kids learn to chant that in Sunday school.) I can't always help what I think though, I'm just a kid. But as our Sunday school teacher says, "That's what they ALL say." So far so good though, I think.

What I was thinking about Caitlen last night didn't have anything to do with her great tits or her ten megawatt smile, or imagining her in the girl's gym shower without any clothes on... (STOP THAT! Smack smack smack.) Where was I? Oh yeah, what I was thinking about Caitlin was, what a great report she gave in biology class last Friday. It was about the recovery of the US commercial fishing industry over the last 25 years. She had done some awesome research, looking up the species-by-species annual catch weight for all the major East Coast fishing ports, for the years when data were available. She even found data from old US Department Commerce, Fisheries Bureau studies, about the average age of the fish taken.

She compared that with modern data from Church of God the Engineer, Maritime Division research. She could show that before the Sleesh changed everything, humans were over-fishing like crazy, and ruining the fishing grounds for everybody, not to mention the fish. For example in the old days swordfish and tuna, both top preditors in the deep water Atlantic food chain, were getting taken younger and younger as their stock declined, often before they could breed. Before Sleesh got us straightened out, in other words.

Like Caitlin explained, that wasn't the whole story, either. For the first two or three years after Sleesh started just appearing everywhere, first in ones and twos, and then in tens and hundreds and thousands of thousands, things seemed pretty bad. Humans didn't have a clue what was really happening when a lot of people started to get hairy all over, from the hands back, or their heads exploded. By the time the Sleesh learned to broadcast on a wavelength where a few humans could receive, so they could clue us in, there were a lot fewer human. In fact the bio-mass of living human flesh on good old planet Earth declined by around one third, over a three year period. (Those numbers are heavily weighted for people in the wealthier countries, because, well, we were heavily weighted.) That sure didn't hurt the fisheries recovery process, either, not to mention a lot of terrestrial endangered species, and the ozone layer, and rainforests.

Caitlen covered all of that, and she had made a bunch of great holographic images and 3-D graphs and so on, so everybody could see what she was talking about. Our Teacher said it was one of the best science reports by a Junior he has heard in a long time. After class I wanted to go up and hug her, but of course I didn't go anywhere near her. Instead, I walked off talking with Mary Lou Jamison who most guys would say is way prettier than Caitlen, but whom I could care less about. That makes her safe, unless she digs me, which I doubt.

Luckily, when the Sleesh came, almost right away people figured out they were more technologically advanced than we were. Even though they are some strange-looking dudes. (More on that later.) If people had seen the Sleesh as threats rather than the helpers they wanted to be, humanity could have been hurt even worse. After some bad times, The Church says that now, it really IS the best of all possible worlds. For that we can thank the Sleesh, and their good friend God. One of the first things everybody in this country noticed, they had SUVs that were a lot bigger and badder than our SUVs. Those things are like tanks, and when they crunch other cars (Sleesh really love the sound of that), they smash everything up good without getting scratched. The thing is, their big SUVs (or MASUVs, Mothers of All SUVs, as guys into cars call them) still get really great gas mileage. Because Their Hearts are Pure, as Pastor says. How cool is that!?

I guess it is time for me to explain why I am writing this. Basically, because Pastor asked me to, for a Very Important Reason. The Reason gets into quantum entanglement and telepathic alien sex-addicted voyeurs, and a lot of other crazy stuff. But first, I should start with how I got to meet privately with Pastor, and how he let me in on his secret project. It all started with me getting more and more worried about where my imaginary meetings with Caitlin seemed to be headed. You think you are having a nice Platonic friendship with a girl, even inside your own head, and by the time you learn you were kidding yourself, it could be too late. Like I told you, I am not the greatest at controlling my thoughts. After I peered out all our windows that morning looking for any Sleesh trails, which (Thank you, God!) weren't there, I decided I better talk to Dad. It was Saturday, so he was on the sofa reading the paper.

"What's on your mind, Son?" he asked me, coming right to the point.

"It's about my thoughts, Dad. You see, there's this girl in class..."

"Stop it right there, young man!" Dad shouted, jumping up to pull all the living room shades down. Then Dad tried to explain the facts of life to me, all over again. He isn't real great at that, but he tries. It went like this: "If you start getting the hots for some girl, you have to take good precautions, or else you'll get yourself in BIG trouble, young man."

Me: "I KNOW, Dad, its not like I'm twelve. Besides, I don't have the hots for this girl, exactly. Or not yet. I think."

Then Dad laid his big old worry load onto me. "Maybe I shouldn't have used those words, son. It just that... Roger, you're the only son we have left, after George got all hairy and his head exploded while he was fooling around with himself. And your sister... never tell your Mom I said this, but we worry that we went too far with all the genetic engineering we ordered on her zygote, to try to keep her safe. After what happened to poor George, maybe we over-reacted. That girl may be so ugly now, nobody is even going to ask her to the Junior Prom, much less... well, let's just say Mom and I still worry a lot."

I could tell I needed to head the old man off. "Dad, are you sure you want to be having this conversation with me now? We could..."

Dad cut in. "Look Roger, you need to understand some things, very important things. See, before the Sleesh came and explained it all, mankind Cast Our Seed Upon the Barren Ground. We Coveted Our Neighbors' Women. We failed to understand how libidinal energy, that's the sex drive to you boy, was tightly coupled with every other form of energy in the universe, so that... so that... Son, this is really hard for me to explain, and maybe I'm not the right person to do it." He looked down at his hairy hands with a forlorn expression. I could see him coming to some decision. Suddenly he bounded up off the sofa, and hurried to the phone. Before he dialed, he declared, "When the Pastor will see us, you and I are going to take a ride over to Church. There's not a moment to waste!"

Pastor is a big man, with thick salt-and-pepper hair, now that the black is starting to go gray. He used to be a quantum mechanic before the Sleesh recruited him to lead their human flock in the Dayville area. Everybody seems to agree that he is really good at Pastor work. After Pastor told Dad to go on back, that we would be fine and that he could give me a ride home himself, he brought me into his office and latched the door. He sat down behind his desk, and peered closely at me.

"This girl your Dad worries about, she's Caitlin MacDougal you say?" I nodded. "And you claim you never touched her in thought or in deed. You only think about how smart and interesting she is, what wonderful papers she writes, that sort of thing? But like your Dad, you worry about where your thinking might go, correct?"

I was feeling sorry for myself. I didn't even look up at Pastor, but I nodded my head, yes.

I could feel myself blushing as Pastor just sat regarded me for a moment before he began speaking more softly. "Tell me the truth Roger. Before you go to sleep, do you sometimes reach under your sheet and rub your hard member, and squeeze your achy teen-aged balls? Do you spill your sacred fluids, thinking about the charming Miss MacDougal's wonderful biology papers?"

I was so shocked I could hardly speak. "I never! That never happened. Sure, I get boners sometimes like guys my age do, but I never pulled on one. I always tell Mom, like they tell us to in Sunday school, and she says she puts as much saltpeter in my food as Doctor says is safe. "

"As much as is safe, exactly," Pastor exclaimed, in a tone that implied his worst fears had just been confirmed. "But is that enough to keep you safe Roger? That's the real question. Don't lie to me son, this is too important. You would like to walk Caitlin home from school and talk biology with her. Does she have pretty ankles Roger? Do you like her shape?"

I was getting more and more embarrassed. I said something lame like, "NO, I mean, sure, but I don't really pay that much attention, honest." Pastor just shook his head slowly and looked worried. He leaned over his desk to look me in the eye, man-to-man like.

"Be very careful Roger, something could be listening to everything you say from inside your mind. If a gap develops between what you say and what you think, Bad Things Can Happen." Pastor sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Listen son, believe me when I say there is a lot you don't understand yet. What you think may not be the main problem, it's also about how you think it, and how other people relate to the energies your thoughts carry. Sleesh taught us the Universe can't stand gaps between thoughts and actions, or even contradictions between what's in different people's minds, when strong psychic energies like Eros are involved."

I guess I looked puzzled, which I was. Pastor tried again. "Truth now, Roger. You would like to walk Caitlin home. You would like to take hold of her hand." I started to object, but Pastor waived it off. "Its alright, nothing is going to happen because of your thoughts and feelings while we talk, not if we're careful. You've taken her hand, and now it is getting dark, so you put your arm around her shoulder to help keep her warm, okay?"

We both glanced over toward the drawn shade covering his window facing the parking lot. Pastor smiled a tight little smile, and plowed on. "Now you let your arm drape across her shoulder so that your hand is cupping her breast. It feels nice to you, doesn't it son? Because it feels so nice, you run the tips of your fingers over the bulge her nipple makes in her blouse, and you feel it getting tight and hard. Are you following this, Roger?"

While he was saying these disturbing things, Pastor had softly gotten up and walked to the window. He had lifted the shade slightly away from the glass, so he could peer out through the gap between the shade and the window frame.

"Pastor, what are you DOING?" I moaned. "I'm starting to feel funny. Down there. Oh, oh, oh!" I stopped talking when I heard a soft viscid "plop!" from beyond the window. I swear, right about then my head started to feel tight and hollow. Pastor pressed his eye harder against the crack.

"There!" he whispered. He turned to me. "Does your head hurt, boy? Is pressure starting to build up?"

Me: "Oh no, no, no!" (Or something like that: I don't remember this part very well.)

Pastor asked me, "What's sixty four times thirty two, Roger? Quick now, son."

Me: "Uh, eight... two carry one, that's one twenty eight, plus, uh..."

Pastor beckoned to me urgently. "Come here quick Roger, but don't stop calculating." I shot from my chair and was by his side in an instant. I heard another wet "Plop", but closer this time.

Pastor gripped my shoulder. "Look out there, son, what do you see? But first, what's the answer?" I leaned down to peek out below where Pastor had his nose pressed to the glass. "One nine two zero, plus, uh, that was one twenty eight, let's see..." I saw two big Sleesh gliding slowly toward one another, leaving behind them two gracefully curved trails of shiny ooze, starting from opposite sides of the asphalt parking lot. I followed their wet traces with my eyes, back from the Sleesh to points where their trails simply ended.