Chapter 20

Day 10

Breaking News: “This is Julie Callaway, and I’m reporting even more strangeness, today. After yesterday’s, what is now being called ‘atmospheric anomalies,’ but were initially reported as ICBMs being intercepted by alien craft.”

“Julie, today’s story,” came a male voice presumably the anchor.

“Oh, yes. Well, I have just been handed a report about a disturbance in Antarctica. It seems that an area of the polar ice cap is being pushed up as though by some unknown force from below. One scientist has been heard to refer to it as an ice volcano, as the ice itself appears to be pushing itself up out of the ground. Forming the conical shape that we have come to associate with volcanoes.

“Another quirk of the phenomenon is that it is producing the electrical interferences around the area. No electrical device will operate past a certain point. Two planes have had to veer away when their engines began to cut out. The engine began to run normally again once they were clear of the area. This area is being referred to as ‘the dead zone’, as nothing electrical will operate within it. The boundary is not stationary and is ever widening. We even have an unconfirmed report of a satellite that passed over the area and fell out of the sky. Though we are supposed to be receiving footage of the apparent crash site as soon as we can get a cameraman to the remote location.

“In addition we have other unconfirmed reports of military ships, diverting course and heading for the area. No one in an official position, wishes to go on record about the phenomenon, or the sudden movement of military forces. Although no video camera will work in the area, we were able to obtain some still photographs of the area in question.”

The screen flickered to a picture of uneven frozen tundra, with something that might be a bulge toward its center. The next couple of subsequent photos didn’t show any immediately discernible change, but then in the following few, the slight bulge in the landscape became noticeably larger. The following picture showed that bulge continued to push higher, until there was indeed, a large conical shaped protrusion.

Julie Callaway came back on and started making other observations, but John hit the button and the screen slid back into the ceiling. He was glad he had Adam monitoring things and automatically forwarding unusual news items to him. This one had him baffled and there was something nagging at the back of his mind. It was something Sam had said, of that he was sure. He knew this wasn’t a failure of his eidetic memory. He didn’t know exactly what it was he was searching for and therefore couldn’t produce it. John stood and started pacing.

John was still pacing in his office when Mora came in. She had sensed the sudden increase in his agitation and worry, so she had come to see what she could do in an attempt to calm him. Penny had wanted to come too, but it was more important for her to continue the work on the Bio-Mechs. They had already made tremendous strides. Instead of the nearly ten foot behemoths they once were they were down to just over seven and a half foot. Just large enough for someone, not over the height of six-four, to fit comfortably. One of the ways they had reduced size was to limit the size of the person using it. Anyone over six-four or shorter than five-ten, would have to have a custom suit.

Mora went to the replicator and got John a cup of Earl Gray. Sam had told her already that it was John’s preference when he was like this. It wasn’t until she was close enough for him to smell the tea that he realized he was no longer alone. He accepted the cup from her with a weak smile.

“Why don’t you sit down big John, and tell me all about it.”

John’s smile strengthened, and he took his seat. A moment later Mora had climbed into his lap.

“Okay, John, now that you are comfortable,” Mora said, “let’s start with what so recently caused your stress level to go through the roof.”

So John explained about the video feed Adam had sent him, and the nagging feeling that accompanied it.

“John, I’m curious,” Mora started with furrowed brow. “All of us have acquired an eidetic memory, why is it you can’t pull this information up?”

John smiled at her, “It is simple my little blueberry, I don’t know the question. Unfortunately that causes a problem. I could sit here and ponder all the things that Sam told me about the Antarctic and never come up with the information, or I could look right past it as unimportant, because I simply did not know the question.”

“Then I would suggest that the only thing you can do is get Sam in here and show her the video. See if she can come up with the reason you keep associating her with it. If that doesn’t work there is really no need to worry about it. We can move onto the next thing and see if there is something we can do about it.”

John used his implant and called for Sam. He once again explained about the video report. Though Sam asked to see the video, there was something about the wide grin on her face that told John she suspected something.

Sam didn’t get a chance to tell him what she suspected, for all of a sudden John’s entire body was wracked with pain. An all-encompassing pain like no other, and then he felt as though he was being forcibly sucked through a garden hose. He heard alarms going off distantly when the blackness over took him. At first he though he was blacking out except that his mind was registering a kaleidoscope of colors circling around him. Another time might have made the visuals enjoyable, but the all-encompassing pain dulled their beauty.

He knew he had stopped traveling not by the absence of blackness or pain, but by the fact that he found himself sitting on a hard surface. The pain, though not as intense, still filled every fiber of his being. Whatever it was that happened to him, he did not wish to repeat at any other point in his life. He decided to take stock.

John was certain he was no longer on the moon. He was sitting on a flat surface with not even a trace amount of light, which suggested he was inside. The only thing he could pick up with his ears, was an ever present sort of buzzing. He could not discount the buzz as his own mind attempting to fill in the absence of sound, though. But he could discern little else.

As he thought over his virtual blindness, he remembered a report about a blind man. The man in question was not happy with the limited options for the blind, so he created a few of his own. By clicking his tongue on the roof of his mouth he sent out a sound. He attuned his hearing so that he could hear the echo returns, thereby creating vague images of his surrounding. The people making the documentary had even set up an obstacle course, which he navigated perfectly, giving much credence to the idea.

Having nothing to lose, John clicked his tongue. He shouldn’t have been, but he was disappointed when nothing happened.

‘Are you certain of that?’ his ‘know-it-all’ self asked.

John had to admit that he wasn’t, so he tried it again. After repeated attempts he did have something. It was nothing hi-res, but he sensed a wall or barrier about twenty feet away. He turned and repeated his efforts; until he was as convinced as he could be, that he was sitting in a circular room. He was as close to the center as he could calculate, and the room was devoid of any furniture or encumbrances.

His know-it-all interrupted his considerations again.

‘Just out of curiosity, why is it that you haven’t tried your implant, to see if you can make contact with the base?’

John refrained from slapping himself in the forehead, and decided to do just that. But before he could, a pressure came at him, as though someone was trying to force their way into his mind.

‘Get out of here!’ John thought, as he clamped down on his mind, forbidding entry.

The pressure eased for a moment before it commenced again, more virulently then before.

“No!” John shouted out loud.

He fixed impenetrable barriers around his mind. It was a moment or two before he realized the pressure had stopped all together.

Then he heard clearly, or thought he did,

“Blurk wazzit flembot oznot.”

Well that is how his mind interpreted it, not that it made any sense no matter how you looked at it. It didn’t sound like any of the verbalizations of the Hruth, though he could be mistaken. Perhaps this was some form of first contact by an, as of yet undiscovered, aliens species. That thought was frightening in and of itself, because that would mean that his arrival was accomplished by some sort of transporter technology. He needed a translator, his first thought was Sam, but he realized that the two of them had an emotional investment and she may not be totally impartial in the role. Adam then.

Sam turned to talk to John, but there was a sort of glow about him and he was becoming insubstantial. Mora caught the strange look from Sam and at the same time the klaxon began sounding. She turned her attention to John and saw what was happening. She attempted to fling her arms around him. Whether to go with him wherever he was going or to stop the extraction even she herself was never sure. The end result was the same, her arms passed through the area he had been and she tumbled painfully to the floor.

Mora leapt to her feet ready to go to war. She was already calling for Sam to ready her battle suit and to contact Penny. She wanted a ship ready and she wanted Sam to call everyone John used as advisers. She was not going to have her husband forcibly taken from her on what was later to be her wedding night.

Adam appeared a moment later and made the attempt to act as the voice of reason. Mora was not listening and continued giving orders to prepare the base for war. In the end it took Adam, Sam and an out of breath Penny to get her to slow down and think. Kirkuria soon joined them as did Ray, Bill, Paul, Dennis, and surprisingly Brian and Julie. That’s when Sam realized that the klaxon must be sounding throughout the entire base. She had Adam silence it and through high speed interaction her and Adam came up with an emergency alert message and asked people to go to their local screen and check what they were supposed to do in case this had been a true emergency. She could not see any benefit in alarming everyone.

Everyone in the room ignored the broadcast message as Mora and Sam explained what had happened. Mora, however, was still for manning an armed retaliatory strike. Until Penny pointedly asked, “Love, what would John do in this situation?”

“He would jump in the Valkyrie armed to the teeth and run off to save the day.”

This received a raised eyebrow from Penny and everyone else wisely kept any opinion they had to themselves.

“Okay, so maybe that’s what I want to do.” Mora grudgingly admitted. “John would ... drink some Earl Gray and try and think of a way that would cause as few deaths as possible.”

Penny pulled Mora into her arms. Mora struggled for only a moment not wishing to take comfort when John had none. Then allowed the embrace and began weeping on Penny’s shoulder, she felt so helpless and she didn’t like that feeling. The last time she had felt it was after being sold to a wealthy drug lord. John had changed that. He had given her hope, and a purpose. But more than that he had given her control of her own destiny, and now he had been taken.

Kiri and Sam joined in the hug and everyone gave them a moment of privacy, by suddenly becoming interested in other things. Mora was much more ready to think rationally when the others released her.

John had made several attempts with his implant without any luck. Intuitively he linked his mental abilities to the signal and pushed out with it. Whatever it was that was blocking his signal could not block that, and he finally reached Adam. After giving a quick overview to Adam, they agreed that it would be best if he were to act as translator.

In the end John sat on the hard surface on which he had landed and was feeling rather helpless. Adam had him hold a channel open with his mind so Adam would have free access to John’s implant. John felt the huge amount of data was passing through the implant. He had tried to understand what Adam was sending and saw a lot of ones and zeros. It was then he realized that Adam was using binary code.

After the first chunk of code had passed through John’s implant, he was rather surprised when a similar section of code passed going the other way. It was his first clue that whatever it was that they were dealing with had an intelligence. He discounted the attempt to break into his mind. That could have been something instinctual, or accidental. Sending answers in response to the questions he was certain Adam was asking, that had convinced him.

‘John?’ He heard clearly in his head and recognized Kiri’s voice. ‘John, can you hear us?’ He wasn’t sure who ‘us’ were but it was nice to hear a friendly voice, if even only in his head.

‘Yes, I can hear you,’ John thought back, and he felt a wave of relief pass to him.

‘Penny, Mora, and I have put our heads together, so to speak, so we could reach you. Adam has told us a little in between sending and receiving massages. He is using some universal mathematic formulas in an attempt to begin communication with the ship that took you, though Adam did mention that it really wasn’t a ship, for lack of a better term, that is how we are referring to it.

‘We want you to know that we are doing everything in our power to keep you safe and get you back home. We are in the process of switching the base functions over to Carlos. It will serve a dual function. It will give him an idea of what it is like to run a facility this large and it will free Adam up to focus on either learning the ship’s language or teaching it ours.

‘He mentioned that at the moment he is trying to get it to reduce the electro-magnetic field it is producing. If it should rise to the surface without doing so, although all our equipment is shielded, it would plunge the Earth into what Penny calls the dark ages. After that he is going to try to get it to understand the necessity for a holo-drone being on the ship with you. That would free up your implant, which is doing heavier duty then it was designed to handle and it would speed things up. Just hold in there. Sam, Penny, Mora and I are going to head down to Earth in the Valkyrie. Since it is a strain to hold the connection to you open, we are going to let it go for a bit, but we will contact you again when we get closer to Earth.’

The sudden silence that filled the air was deafening. John didn’t realize how alone he felt until the connection Mora, Penny and Kiri opened was released. So he sat in the complete blackness with the only indicator that time was passing were the incoming or outgoing messages passing through his implant.

Some unknown time later John felt a difference around him. It was impossible to explain why things felt different. It was as though a pressure that had been upon him since his arrival had lifted.

A moment later he felt Mora sharing her love as he heard Penny’s voice.

‘John we are near Earth and it appears that Adam has been able to make the ship understand the necessity of reducing the electro-magnetic field it was generating. A good thing, too. It isn’t that far from breaching the surface. Sam figures it will break the surface in another hour or two. It was affecting nearly a third of the planet before it reduced its emissions. At any rate we are going to be standing by just in case.’

‘As long as I don’t have to come back the way I got here,’ John thought back. I’m not sure that my sanity could handle it. I’m a living testimonial that transport technology is nothing like what Earth’s science fiction made it out to be. It had to be the most painful experience I have ever had. Imagine forcibly being sucked through a garden hose and that will come close to what it felt like.’

John found himself smiling as Penny and Mora tried to explain to Kirkuria what a garden hose was, its uses, and its approximate dimensions. It wasn’t until Mora and Penny shared mental images that Kiri finally understood why being sucked through a garden hose might be considered unpleasant.

John sprang to his feet when he heard a voice nearby. It took a moment for it to register that it had been Adam’s voice he heard. He clicked his tongue a few times and was able to discern the outline of a holo-drone.

“Adam, is that you?” John asked.

“Sorry to startle you like that, but I finally got the ship to understand the necessity of a holo-drone and it transported this one down. I only have a moment before I need to get busy again, but shortly I’m going to stop using your implant and channel everything through the holo-drone. It should make things quicker and easier. The ship and I really haven’t had a chance to talk. It has been tough just finding a common way to make ourselves understood to each other. Binary works, but it takes forever to say anything. I think we will have something ironed out in another hour or two. Also, over the next few minutes I’m going to start adding some light. You have been sitting in absolute darkness long enough that you are going to need some time to readjust. Now with that said I need to get back to work so if nothing else we can find out what all this is about.”

John felt strangely comforted. The holo-drone wasn’t a person, but because it was there he no longer felt alone. And, he was beginning to be able to see some of his surroundings. John realized then that he was still standing in the defensive stance he had taken when he first heard Adam’s voice. Though the light Adam was providing via the holo-drone was minimal, John could now make out most of the details of the room. Since there was nothing that could be considered a chair, he crossed his legs and sat on the floor again.

John could feel the worry coming from Mora. It was almost palpable, so he took the time to talk to each of his ladies in turn. He even took the time to speak with Sam, who seemed at least as upset as the others.

“By the way Sam,” John said though his now freed implant, “you didn’t get a chance to tell me before we were so rudely interrupted, what was it about that video that made me think of you?”

John believed Sam surprised herself when she actually laughed, but the result was that he felt the tension between the others lessen.

“Believe it or not John, you are sitting in the reason the video made you think of me. Remember the ship I mentioned that was buried so deeply that at that moment it was impractical for us to get to. It woke up, my guess is that something we did recently triggered its programming and it activated itself. As for why it took you, I haven’t a clue.”

John shook his head as if to clear it. Suddenly everything that he had been told since he had been transported to the ship fell into place. Before he was simply accepting what they told him and little of it was registering. He supposed he could blame it on having been converted to energy and back to matter again, but that felt like a cop out. It was more likely the shock of suddenly being thrust into an unknown situation.

John continued his conversations with the women. It was a pleasant distraction. He was rather surprised to discover that he had only been away from the base for less than four hours. Whether it was the pain of his arrival or the complete lack of visual stimuli, he was certain he had been aboard the ship for a much longer period of time. John wished he had some coffee or tea to sip on while he waited.

“John,” Adam said nearby startling John again, “I have learned quite a bit of the ship’s language so far. From what I have learned there is some sort of connection between you and it. It sensed a need that you had but couldn’t understand what it was that you wanted. So it asked me to act as go between and try and interpret. Is there something that you need or were wanting?”

“No,” John said before he thought about it, “well, I did just think about wishing I had some coffee or tea to sip on to help pass the time. But if the ship heard that, is it reading my mind?”

“If I understand it right, it tried, but you successfully blocked it, now it is sensing your wants, how, I don’t know. So, if you could have your choice, would you prefer coffee or tea?”

John thought for a second before saying, “Coffee with cream and sugar.”

“Have someone on the Valkyrie make up a tray for you and the ship will beam it down.”

Penny, who had been listening in, let John know that the tray was nearly ready. There was something in the way that she said this that made John wonder if they were sending more then just a tray of coffee. In fact the tray arrived a moment later and two round objects that John recognized as the handles of a set of matching energy blades lay there. John didn’t know how much good they would do him, but he was certain they would give him more of an edge than the dotrezz tucked into the back of his pants.

John drank coffee and shared small talk, with Kiri, Penny, Mora and Sam. What else could he do? At the moment he felt a bit helpless and that was a feeling he hadn’t had in a while. This was worse then the aftermath of his parent’s death. He could tell that his ladies were trying to keep him occupied with neutral subjects and for the most part it was working.

John took even more comfort in the appearance of Adam. It meant that he was fully adjusted to the light now and even though Adam was otherwise occupied, his image was nearby. For the first time since his arrival he felt he had a chance of getting back home. It was odd. In John’s mind he no longer thought of Earth as his home. His home was with the women he loved, wherever that might be, for now it was the Moon-base. Later. Who knew? Mars, Alpha Centauri, maybe somewhere he hadn’t even thought of, yet.

Kiri interrupted these thoughts by telling John that Sam believed the ship would be breaking the surface at any moment. She also said that Penny, with the aid of Mora was going to do her best to send the images to him as it happened. John was sure he heard a little humor in her voice when she told John that Sam had construction-drones build and place holo-drones all around the area. The few that risked getting into still camera range were going to get images of the ice mound collapsing in on itself, eventually leaving a slightly jumbled and disturbed surface. While Penny and Mora were going to share the true images with John.

Penny, with the aid of Mora, began relaying images as the ship broke the surface. To John the ship looked more organic than anything, not a clunky tin can like they would have built on Earth. More like the organic surfaces the Rhylertians used, though even the Rhylertian ships had a man made look to them.

John smiled when his brain kicked in as to what the ship reminded him of. He had once spent a relaxing Saturday at a museum that boasted an extensive fossil exhibit. Well he had to admit that after several hours of perusing it, that they did indeed have a massive collection. But what made him think of that day was the shape of the ship. It reminded him of a glass display case that contained some rather small fossils of Trilobites. John searched his memories of that day and remembered that the minute Trilobites had been categorized. If this ship had actually been one it would have fit in with the Corynexochida. In fact the ship looked almost identical to the genus Polypleuraspis.

In John’s mind it was a rather odd coincidence indeed. Of course there was never a Trilobite that was a mile and a half long, and three quarters of a mile wide, according to Sam’s preliminary measurements. John tried to wrap his mind around the sheer size of the ship and failed miserably. He knew eventually he was going to build ships along that scale, but he hadn’t gotten that far as of yet.

As the ship cleared the surface, John noticed that in the background the opening the ship had just emerged from was filling itself back in. John figured it was Sam’s doing. She had probably deployed some cloaked drones and set them to return things to a condition that matched the one she was projecting with the holo-drones.

“John,” Adam said again breaking the silence. “I have a fairly good understanding now of the language it is using, and I’m in the process of teaching it, English, Rhylertian, and Galactic Standard. It seems to be picking it up a lot quicker than I was able to pick up its language. But of course, now that we have a language, we can use it as a basis for understanding. It makes it a lot easier. Anyway, I wanted to have you contact the Valkyrie and let them know that the ship has agreed to fly to the far side of the moon so we can continue what we started and hopefully in a few more hours we will have things lined out.”

Out of courtesy he sent the message to Mora, Sam, Penny and Kiri, though he knew three of them had been listening in. It was better to send the message and pretend that he didn’t know that they had been listening in, even though they had. The ladies said that they would follow just as soon as they could get the drones to set things the way they should be. Penny figured there would be controversy for years to come as to exactly what had happened. But the likelihood that any two scientists would agree on anything was slim. Just another of the planets little mysteries that would never be solved.

There were four collective gasps when the ship they were monitoring simply vanished from before them. It took Sam a moment for her scanners to show that it had reappeared on the far side of the moon. It was the first time he had felt this level of worry coming from Sam. He could understand it though. The ship he was in had just made the equivalent of a FTL jump, inside a planetary system, without causing distortions in gravity. Personally, John was just glad that the trip hadn’t caused another bout of bone wracking pain.

Well, with the coffee now being gone, and the Valkyrie still back on Earth (which would make communications difficult), John settled in to continue his wait. It was an amazingly short wait. A very few moments later a voice sounded. It was not Adam, but it sounded similar to the one he had heard using the gibberish, earlier.

Though the voice had made little sense then, now it said,

“I am...” which was followed by a moment of silence before it continued with, “sorry. I did not realize that you were sentient. Though in the end it does not change my directives, I would have made an attempt to communicate my purpose with you first, had I known.”

John didn’t know how to reply. Before he gave it any thought, he found himself replying.

“I’ll forgive you this time as long as you promise never again to ‘transport’ me in that manner. That was the most painful experience I have ever had, and don’t ever wish to repeat it.”

There was a moment of silence before the voice said, “Agreed. Now, John Whitmore, we must discuss my reason for waking and more importantly why I brought you into myself. The Creator was fascinated by the spontaneous outbreak of similar life forms in random locations across his creation. This I know, for it is part of the information I have access to. There were once many of us spread across his creation. There are still others that wait dormant. It is our job to adjust parameters as needed. Many of my brethren have completed their tasks and have ceased to be.

“I have been neither awake nor in a slumber for uncounted ages, waiting. When specific criteria were met, I was once again activated. In this case it was the temporal disturbance near the satellite you call the moon. My scans revealed that a life-form meeting the genetic profile set by the Creator was located on that nearby satellite. I acted on my primary directive and brought you here to carry it out. It wasn’t until you resisted my attempts at mental probes, that I realized I was dealing with a sentient life form. My first attempt at verbal communication met with no response. I was unsure how to proceed, until you contacted the one called Adam.

“In a relatively short period of time Adam was able to teach me your language and though I tried to explain my purpose to him, he suggested that it would be better to speak with you directly. So that covers the most important of the background information, though if Adam was even partially right you will have a multitude of questions that you will wish to have answered.”

John thought about it, yeah, he had questions and probably more then even Adam could imagine, but he felt it was more pressing to find out what it was that this ship wanted from him. John knew that Adam was not only listening, but relaying the information to the others. So he didn’t worry about contacting the others personally.

“Most of my questions can wait, if you will agree to answer them later. For now I would like to understand what it is about me that met your criteria and what it is that you are supposed to do either for, or to, me.”

There was no hesitation this time as the ship said, “Agreed, as I said before you fit the genetic profile that I was set to find. After I awoke from the limbo I was trapped in, I found you as I said before. You have within you, genetic traits which are desirable. Therefore, I am to enhance that which is desirable, and to repress what is not. I also have a small bit of knowledge that will make it easier for you to deal with these changes.”