Chapter 478: Deep Thought, Provoking Question

We returned home a bit past her bedtime, but Ellen needed a shower. She stunk.

I was reading April a bedtime story when Ellen came in from the shower. Ellen fell asleep almost as soon as she sat on April’s bed. I got April tucked in and then carried Ellen to her bed.

After midnight, I headed to bed to find Vicky in my bed wearing only panties that were barely big enough not to call them a thong.

“Can I sleep with you tonight?” Vicky asked.

“Sure. I’m going to get a quick shower and pull on some biking shorts,” I said.

Vicky was asleep when I walked out of the bathroom naked to find shorts. When I got in bed, she woke up enough to get me spooned behind her with my hand holding her tit.

The alarm on her phone went off around six.

“Thank you so much, David. I needed a guy to hold me. I can’t do that with my brothers anymore. They are both big enough to get in me from behind, making a mess. I don’t want to risk getting pregnant,” Vicky told me. “You’ve been the best friend my brothers, and I could ever have met. We are so thankful you took us into your home during the week. It would have been tiring, but we would have done what our grandmother suggested and commute daily.”

She skipped off happily to get dressed for school.

I walked the kids to school today, wandering by the various homes Molly had under construction, and headed home. I hadn’t exactly forgotten about the data being decrypted and unzipped, but it wasn’t something high on my list of things to do either. Not having anything on the list, I headed to the hidden computer room.

My implant connected automatically to the computer, and I started checking the process. I found that it had finished over a week ago and waited for me to read through it.

The information I found isn’t what I had expected, and I’m pissed.

There was a lot of data on a lot of people in the world. That included people like Steve and me, Amelia, seekers, that woman trapped in lava, Judith, and her daughter, Jude.

It had details of every experiment performed at the location that Judith turned into obsidian after rescuing her mother.

It infuriated me when I found the information on the woman who was only part of a head and brain. All this data was collected and provided to the group that split away from the elites long ago.

It listed Chrissy’s mom as one of the recipients of the reports.

The only thing that kept me from tracking her down and making Chrissy not see her mother for a very long time was that it didn’t have data about the testing done in any of Steve’s labs in the reports. They had details on Steve, Anna, Jane, and others but nothing about the power testing. I know that Chrissy’s mom knew about it.

At the very end, I found a note to me that said, “David, if you are reading this, then we need to talk urgently. No one should have been able to see what you have viewed.”

Chrissy’s mom was home, so I made my way over. She was surprised to see me and a bit frightened.

“I got your note,” I told her and watched her go pale. “You said we needed to talk, so talk.”

After a few stiff drinks, she told me, “I feared that Christopher, the one you call the man-in-the-machine, would one day crack your skull and augment you in a way he should not have. It does explain your curious absence where no one knew of your location. I easily located Ellen because we knew how to watch for her. Jasmine and Amelia were scared of Ellen back then. Now that Molly has gotten into ensuring puberty doesn’t dull Ellen’s skills, both women fear her so much more. The aunt who killed Ellen’s father and was hunted like an animal by her nine-year-old niece hasn’t stopped looking over her shoulder since she learned that you adopted Ellen. I haven’t been able to talk with you about that matter. Now seems as good a time as any. Ellen’s aunt is living just outside of town. You scare her more than Ellen. She came here out of self-preservation when she learned Ellen had hit puberty. The woman has watched over her niece for signs that Ellen isn’t as strong as their family believes Ellen to be. She does wish to meet with you. That isn’t what you came here to discuss.”

A few more drinks later, she told me, “David, you have the body of a god because you are one, as far as humans and other beings are concerned. I know you must be getting tired of hearing that by now. Those I work with aren’t the ones who provide you with aircraft that send you to deliver pizza and do odd jobs at the ISS. As you have discovered, my group of families knows a lot about people of great interest, such as yourself, but we cannot find your aircraft or weapons source. Christopher’s inability to do so is of great concern to many of my associates, but not me. You, and only you, could have remade Paula on a cellular level. No one can prove it, but there was a presence in the area not far from where you rescued Amelia and her team. Some were immune to whatever it did to those who lived in that town. It has existed deep in the Earth for longer than any can recall, then it was just gone as if it never existed. Someone matching your description was found in that area and seen with what the person described as elves, not little cookie elves, but the Elves described by Tolkien and brought to life in the movies based on his works. I, and I alone, received disturbing data from analyzing a bow and arrows found with the person in question. It can’t exist, and yet it does.”

She took some time to collect her thoughts as she looked through the thousands of books that hadn’t been in her office the last time I was here. Chrissy’s mom placed a stack of them on the table beside me. The books themselves weren’t ancient, but the languages inside them were. Most of these languages died out thousands of years ago when those who once knew it got forced to learn a different language. There weren’t more than fifty pages in any of the books. The writing inside was copied from scrolls found during excavations of ancient civilizations.

“Those are some which no one has been able to find common patterns even to attempt to decipher them into something resembling a language, and yet you read them as if they were nothing but another book to you. These are only a few thousand languages found in scrolls or carved into stone. From the ones humans have translated, they tell of a boy that came to their villages or towns who never ages, gets sick, injured, or dies. This boy learned how to speak their language. If they had a written language, he learned that too. Legends exist about a large man, a giant to some, who came to learn their fighting styles. This man moved like the wind and never aged. He mastered the ways to incapacitate, paralyze, and kill another. This man became legendary because he would not kill, and no one could kill him,” Chrissy’s mom said. “I did not create the information you found encrypted and hidden away in people’s brains, David, but I am the one who convinced the others that it became too dangerous to exist and placed all of our lives in danger. I know about Jude. Many geniuses and data analysts didn’t see something right there in front of them. You are the father of one of Jude’s many children. Specifically, a little girl who vanished from inside a secured vehicle traveling a convoy. Using Becky’s children as an approximation, the match worked out perfectly for when Jude was at your school seeking out those like you, and each time she conceived shortly after a visit. Judith’s facility turned into obsidian shortly after Jude went missing was not a coincidence. You sent away a being that had been on Earth for millions of years back to where it originated. We received a picture of Jude with a little girl who looked the right age for the one that vanished without a trace. That was the catalyst I needed to remove all traces of the data collected at labs and stop all the barbaric things done to those people. You can understand that the lives lost to generate that information were too expensive to destroy, so it was compressed and encrypted using multiple algorithms and techniques, as you found out. Those I work with were not pleased to find that someone erased data fragments deep within children’s and adults’ minds. They soon discovered that two of the girls programmed with a piece of the information were in one of your orphanage hospitals at the same time as you when it happened.”

Stay quiet and listen to see what else she has to say.

She invited me to join her for lunch. In the kitchen, we only talked about mundane things and our daughters.

She waited until we were back in her office before asking, “We cannot reconstruct that data without all the parts. I do not care why the people, who programmed their assigned data block into the adults and children, died. As far as my group is concerned, that data is now lost. So the question is, what will you do with that information? Christopher can’t take it because it will cause him to begin analyzing it and become unable to stop processing it, leaving himself and all of his projects at risk.”

That isn’t the answer I was seeking or the question I expected her to ask.

“I don’t know what I am going to do with it. These doctors and scientists did horrible things to other human beings, making all of Hitler’s work look like an investigation into bread mold to fight bacteria. Hundreds of thousands got dissected alive, with the scientists trying to figure out what made them different. All these scientists have to show for their work are detailed descriptions of the pain and suffering their investigations caused. I understand why they did it, but not how they could continue to do it when learning nothing more over the decades. I did the data processing. I’m not exaggerating when I say that all of their findings will fit on less than fifty printed pages. Jude and Judith would take up half of those pages,” I told her. “See for yourself.”

I connected my implant to her computer and downloaded the combined data from the decrypted and uncompressed petabytes, much of which is fluff or part of the multiple redundancies.

“I did find that your information on succubi lacking, and what you knew about weather witches was just wrong. I updated that for you and your group as a show of good faith,” I told her. “You and they will now owe me a debt you can never seek to repay, and with that, I am fine. I provided you all of the information I pulled from the mind of the woman trapped in lava. Those fearing her lured her into a place where she would kill another to take an ability from a person nearly as powerful as her own. Her lust for more power blinded her to the point that they were able to trap her in lava and then harden it around her. They believed she had died. I suspected then but know now that she was never a danger to me, and she was the most powerful human, or what was once human until I removed that power from her.”

“I do not have it, but the group has extensive information about her,” Chrissy’s mom countered.

With an all-knowing smile, I said, “Oh, yeah, about that. You see, that wasn’t this woman at all. What you have information on is one of many from the bloodlines her father created. That girl was merely a mimic able to solidly imprint what she wanted them to believe they observed on a human’s brain. She had them see the results she wanted them to find. The scientists, doctors, and people watching her would all remember the same and alter any data which disagreed. I haven’t met any ghosts or what people believe are ghosts, but people like this girl do something similar. It takes a lot of energy to make people not see someone right before them. Sometimes they falter briefly, and the human mind has to develop a way to explain what they believe can’t be possible. The people, like that girl, have thrived on that fact and use it to get what they desire.”

That is fucking with your head, isn’t it?

“Read what I have provided. It is the story from the woman’s memories,” I told Chrissy’s mom. “I gave it to you and your group so they can learn that people like me and the seekers are not who they should fear. There are humans and beings from fairy tales that ensure nothing becomes that powerful again. I suspect that my accidents weren’t accidents but were meant to kill me. Well, all but when struck by lightning. That didn’t have ties to them at all. It was a mistake by someone who didn’t know what they were doing. She tried using the lightning to kill herself, but it hit me.”

“Yes, David, you have always been pure of heart. Even during your darkest periods, you didn’t waver. Now you have become what you are because of that. You are correct in that we can no longer contain you, for you have it within you to suck the energy of all that is into yourself, and it will cease to be. You will be taking the life energy from everything, including humans. Doing so would get against your very being, and you would implode, releasing the energy which will cause all to begin anew. My kind has long believed that the Big Bang was precisely that. One such as yourself imploded, and all existence starts over again,” an elderly elf, much older than the ones I met before, explained. “My kind appears immortal to humans, but it is because we heal rapidly and age slowly. You show only eighteen human years, but you have lived many times longer than I have in places that are out of time. Those like this human female have good intentions in how they try to protect the human race. While misguided, they have no desire to harm those they have hurt in their pursuit of knowledge. There is no blood-lust. It is what separates them from monsters like Hitler, in your time, and many before him, even when both groups simultaneously pursue the same knowledge.”

“Hi, look like a long-haired, very old man from storybooks and movies,” April said as she appeared from behind the Elf. “It is not good to say only small truths to make them not a lie. You get a time out.”

With a scream of terror, what looked to be an elf turned out to be a tall, almost emaciated, nude tween girl. She had tiny buds forming on her chest to show that she was no longer a little girl. April had the girl unable to move, so I went to get two apples from the refrigerator that I cut into slices. I filled a clear water bottle with milk and headed back into Chrissy’s mom’s office. I looked the girl over to see that April had stopped the girl from using energy to make herself appear to be an old male elf.

“Day-id,” April said. “She needs a spanking.”

That’s what this little girl got, too.

The imposter had a hard time sitting in the chair that I put her in after I tore into her bare butt.

“Eat your apple slices and drink your milk, then you can tell us why you almost killed yourself trying to appear as something you are not,” I told her.

“April, I’ve got this. You need to go back home before you get sick again. The cook told you not to eat that raw, and you did anyway. Sorry, but that is your body teaching you that the cook was right,” I told her.

April walked behind Chrissy’s mom’s desk and was gone.

The girl swallowed the bite she had taken and said, “My name is Elf, as in Elf on the Shelf. I am not the reason for that story, but it is a little that I can remember from before. You, David, I understand what you are, even if I doubt I will ever comprehend it. What is that little girl?”

“Who? April?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Let me think,” I started. “April is the first of those who became nine identical clones to the woman whose womb they developed inside because I made them that way. Unknowingly, I changed April back into what she was and is. April is the daughter destined for me to make inside her mother one day. It appears she is much better at keeping herself hidden than you. So, are you full of shit, or did you just play on what you overheard?”

Yeah. At least those tears are real, not like the ones from my spanking your butt.

Yes, it does hurt, but that didn’t make you cry.

I waited for her to dry her eyes and then asked, “Do you have to keep yourself invisible and undetectable, or only do that because you enjoy it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve not been able to have anyone see me as anything other than a fleeting image, as those people’s minds cannot perceive me. You started releasing some energy I could store long enough to make myself appear as I did in front of you today. It was easier than letting you see me how I am, a naked, scared girl with a sore bottom,” Elf told me. “I can tell I am how I was, but April did something that stopped it from making me not able to eat, or sit, or touch. I don’t want to be that way anymore. There are scary things that do something to me that makes me feel yucky. It is not the same way naughty men touch little girls.”

I had to ask, “How long have you been like this? Do you remember anything about what happened?”

“I think I am eleven or twelve, and this is the first time I’ve eaten anything I can remember. There is no food in the place where things do yucky stuff to me,” Elf told me. “I know I can read and write because I write things sometimes in mirrors or with lipstick because it is funny. I tried to put on clothes because girls aren’t supposed to go around naked, even if the girls you know go without clothes often at your house.”

I had to get her some graham crackers and more milk. Elf was very hungry.

When I returned to Chrissy’s mom’s office, I took a picture of her face and sent it to the man-in-the-machine, whose real name is not likely to be Christopher. I got an almost instant response. It was a missing child sign with a picture of a dead ringer for Elf. This girl was twelve and vanished from inside her family’s car when it stopped at a stop sign. The girl’s car door was left open, and there was no sign of her. She was on the way home from school and going to her twelfth birthday party. They found all her clothes in a pile on the girl’s seat in the car.