ã€ŠThe Untold History of Goldã€‹


 Prologue & Chapter 1

    Prologue. Mexico, The Cartel Wars

    He¡¯s a good kid, but if he gets me killed I am going to kick his ass.

    Henry sat in the Humvee, thinking and staring across the windswept stretch of desert hills pocked with dry shrubs and tall cactus, his eyes hard, implacable. Isaac, his new med-tech, was standing on the hood of the truck, digital binoculars in his hands, scanning the plain below for marines, or any sign of the fighting. The call had come in a few hours before and they had left the tent city outside of Zacatecas, looking for the unit under fire.

    Separatists, if they could even be called that anymore, after so much mindless butchery of their own people, had pinned down a group of marines on patrol outside the city. A voice on the shortwave, desperate and barely audible beneath the sound of small arms fire. Command had refused sending helis or drones out to support the marines. The situation in Zacatecas was desperate too after all. America was tired of the war and funds were drying up. All the real heat was down in DF, so that¡¯s where they sent the good stuff. It looked like the grunts were going to end up dead, but Austen, that fucking kid, had to play hero.

    Henry caught him with a full field kit, rifle, and a duffle full of derms, blood, and a surgical unit, headed for the trucks. His dirty blond hair already damp with sweat, face sunburned, beard unkempt and savage. He reminded Henry of his kid brother. ¡°You going somewhere, Austen?¡±

    He walked past the hulking man and turned to say, ¡°I¡¯m not going to let them die out there, Sergeant. We¡¯ve got daylight, and there¡¯s a chance Miller¡¯s unit fought off the attack. Or maybe they got away and just need a pick up. Maybe they¡¯re okay.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, those militia cabrones sometimes ¡®ll just let you off with a warning shot . Good Christians they are,¡± he said sarcastically as he followed behind. He smiled as he checked the compact LSAT rifle slung over his shoulder.

    ¡°So? You coming?¡±

    ¡°Someone¡¯s got to keep your stupid ass alive.¡± Henry hopped in the driver seat and started up the Humvee and added, ¡°but I¡¯m driving.¡±

    After another hour of searching the pleno Henry started to wonder who was being stupid. The Cartel Wars were one of the bloodiest, and most useless conflicts he had the pleasure to fight in his long military career, and going out as the only fighter in a two man team, four hours from support, on a mission where, he supposed, the most probable outcome would be to find a unit of dead and wounded soldiers under attack by Cartel militia, or maybe even one of the notorious Santa Sangre assassin squads, might be the worst tactical decision he had ever made. Well, one of them anyway.

    ¡°There!¡± Austen screamed over the roaring wind and the huge engine.

    ¡°I see ¡®em,¡± Henry said, and his eyes locked on a swath of black smoke coming from a narrow canyon less than a mile away. ¡°Doesn¡¯t look good, Austen. We should run.¡±

    ¡°We can¡¯t,¡± the kid said, quietly resolute but still afraid.

    ¡°I know.¡±

    It was worse than he¡¯d imagined. Nothing to do be done. Burnt bones. Desert sand wet in dark patches. Symbols drawn in blood on the trucks. Skulls in a row on a low rock shelf, the soldiers¡¯ eyeballs left in the sockets. Flayed bodies, hands and feet cut off. No sign of the militia.

    ¡°We¡¯re too late,¡± the kid said, wiping vomit from his chin.¡°Motherfuckers, stupid-¡±

    ¡°Later,¡± Henry interrupted him. Unlike the much younger man, he had the experience to never be surprised by the inept cruelty of his commanders. ¡°Right now, all we can do is go. I¡¯ll make a report when we¡¯re back at camp. Santa Muerte death cult. Can¡¯t believe they¡¯re this far north. Command is going to lose their minds.¡±

    Isaac was still walking around the site, looking through the carnage. Either he was the most insane optimist Henry had ever met or he had the mental incapacity to give up. Admirable, but stupid. How many times, in the interest of saving lives, had Henry seen the balance of blood redoubled to pay the toll? Too many to count. In war you keep your head down. You hope for another boring day. You stay the hell away from heroes and try-hards who actually thought they could make a difference.

    Isaac bent over and lifted a heavy truck door. Beneath it there was a pair of legs that lead up to a body. Chest heaving, eyes wide open with primal fear. ¡°He¡¯s alive!¡± Isaac said, and suddenly he seemed calm, focused. He ripped off the wounded man¡¯s shirt exposing a deep gash in his belly. It didn¡¯t look good. A sheen of sweat covered his pale face like a death mask, jaw trembling, moments from the end. Henry had seen it before. Too many times.

    The cultists probably left him to watch as they butchered his buddies, knowing he would be dead soon enough. ¡°I can save him, Henry. Get the stretcher out of the truck and I¡¯ll start triage. All I need is-¡±

    The explosion was small and precise. In the slowtime flash Henry saw the locus of the blast come from the wound in the soldier¡¯s stomach. A frag mine. A human bomb meant for whoever found the kill site. Another opportunity to kill an American. Cheap tactic, and it worked almost every time. Henry lay on his back, ears buzzing with the echo of the explosion, and a thought, repeated like a mantra running over and over in his head.

    I can save him. I can save him.

    Chapter 1. Isaac Austen and the Alien from Outer Space

    It took me five years locked inside my own broken body before I learned how to leave. As soon as I woke up in the hospital and realized that I couldn¡¯t move, that not one single muscle responded to my brain¡¯s commands, I had been desperate to escape. I couldn¡¯t even dream, as I never slept. The part of my brain that needed sleep had been damaged, I assumed, in that explosion everyone kept talking about- I had no memory of it. Every moment of every day I was screaming inside my own skull, my mind writhing and twisting, pushing at the walls of my sanity until something just had to break. At first I had hoped that I could will myself out of the coma. That if I just used logic or thought hard enough, for long enough, I could make my fingers move. That I could open my eyes.

    But there was nothing for it.

    That was a fact that had been firmly reiterated to my parents as they sat at my bedside in the hospital in Ketchikan, Alaska. Doctor Julian Allesandro, Dr. Dave, and the few specialists that the VA sent to see me in the beginning, all of them had said the same thing. ¡°Your son is in a deep and irreversible coma, like a dream from which he¡¯ll never wake. His spinal cord is damaged, beyond any help from gene therapy, or from stem cell transplants. He¡¯ll live the rest of his life in this bed.¡±

    So that¡¯s where I stayed, until the night of my twenty sixth birthday.

    My mom and dad had come to read to me, and to check the batteries on my omniphone, now completely useless to me and serving only as a player for the audiobooks that substituted for human interaction while my parents were away. They got a nice payout from the Army since my CO had let me, a lowly med-tech, get myself blown up by a bomb hidden in a corpse on a mission that I should have never been on. It was hush money mostly but I was glad they were using it to have a nice retirement. For them, the shock of the tragedy had worn off years before and now they spent their time doing nature cruises through the southwestern archipelago of Alaska and fishing for salmon and halibut between Ketchikan and Sitka. And checking up on their comatose son every other day or so.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    ¡°Goodnight love,¡± she whispered on her way out of my room. ¡°Wake up soon. I¡¯ll make you a tater-tot casserole.¡± If anything was going to get me out of my bed it would have to be her cooking, she assumed.

    My eyes had randomly snapped open again and I got to watch them leave. My dad turned out the lights and I started to cuss in my head about just when my goddamned eyes open he goes and puts me back in the fucking dark! Being used to disappointment I was getting ready to play a rousing game of ¡®remember every stupid thing I ever did and stew in an abyss of regret¡¯, when a nurse I didn¡¯t recognize came in and flicked the light switch.

    An angel, I thought, God has sent me an angel.

    I was a pretty staunch atheist, since the universe had dealt me kind of a shitty hand, but the sight of this woman, this goddess, about had me ready to reconsider everything. She was a viking warrior princess in pink scrubs. Her shimmering blond hair hung in two perfect pigtails down to her ample chest. Athletic, yet so archetypically feminine that I swore I felt something begin to stir under my blanket. She sauntered over, looking me straight in the eyes the entire time. I was used to people treating me like a piece of furniture, even my parents and the few friends that had come to visit, but with her it was as if she knew that I was awake, that I could see everything.

    ¡°Hey, soldier,¡± she said softly. ¡°Got a little something for you. Birthday present.¡± She pulled a syringe from her pocket, uncapped it, and jammed it painlessly into my arm. ¡°Sweet dreams,¡± she said before leaving. Her hips like a half seen mirage in the very corner of my periphery.

    Then I was lose.

    My first thought was that I was dead. The blond nurse had poisoned me and now I would be doomed to wander the hospital as a ghost. It wasn¡¯t ideal, but it beat the hell out of lying in bed like a corpse until an infected bedsore killed me or some nurse tripped over the cord of my ventilator. I was floating, looking down onto my own body, and seeing a thing tether of what looked like electrified blue fog connecting the limp form on the hospital bed to... to what? I was pure consciousness, a 360 degree cloud of perception. If I wanted to move I could. I could reach out new tethers, like wispy tentacles, but I couldn¡¯t grab hold of anything. As curious as the experience was, I didn¡¯t waste much time worrying about metaphysics. I got the hell out of my room.

    Out the door. Down the hall. I was going to leave the hospital for the first time since I had regained consciousness, and I didn¡¯t care that I was leaving without my body. I exploded through the elevator lobby and down four flights of stairs, passing several people, each their own small bubbles of electric clouds, aural and spectral, and all of them unaware that an invisible part of their being was radiating from them like steam. Then I was on the ground floor, past the fat security guard reading a newspaper, past the receptionist, and then slam!

    I crashed into an invisible wall. For some reason I could not leave the hospital. I tried the emergency exits and windows, all to the same end. It appeared that my tether, that wire-like bit of spirit, or aura, or whatever the hell it was, was keeping me in the hospital, attached to the useless husk of my body up on the fourth floor.

    That was tough. Even though I was happier than I¡¯d been in years just to move, to experience a new place, I felt as though paradise was dangling just out of my reach. The night outside, dimly lit by the parking lot lights, might as well have been on another planet. As I gazed out of the open door to the emergency room lobby I felt myself begin to dissipate, my tether fading, and all around a darkness began to set until I woke up in my bed. Still paralyzed. Still a broken man trapped inside my own head. I found myself lying there just trying to believe that the experience had been more than a dream. Then a burst of corruscating colors, electric blue with ribbons of soft purples and yellows, began to bathe the room in cascades of shimmering light.

    A voice spoke to me, ¡°Hello, Isaac.¡± and I began to rise from the hospital bed, into the air.

    The alien -a term I will use for now instead of Plop ¡®ik, which I found out later, is what he preferred to be called- was somehow holding me about four feet above my bed. Then I saw him. I was serenely calm, unnaturally calm, as I gazed into the glistening sphere of his single, chameleonic eye.

    A tall creature, maybe seven and a half feet -not including the stubby tail- with wide shoulders and long arms. Its arms seemed to have at least five joints and they twisted in a way I had never seen another living being move, monstrous and inhuman. Its legs were thick and wide and sat, not under, but to the side of its round abdomen, like a reptile¡¯s.

    Wispy tendrils of translucent skin rose from his arms and torso like eels, and at the tip of each one was an iridescent orb, blinking with blue and violet light. It reminded me of one of those fish that carry bioluminescent lanterns on the end of stalks that hang in front of their mouths.

    Its head, about half again the size of a basketball, was just one great lidded eye with a bright green pupil. Dangling from beneath it, was a long tube with a slimy pair of blue lips at the end. It spoke from this tube but if hadn¡¯t been able to see it, I would have had no idea that I was talking to an alien. It introduced itself in perfect English. Its tone reminded me of my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Larson. Purposeful, confident, and above all soothing.

    ¡°Good morning. Do not be alarmed. You are in no danger. I have come, as an ambassador of peace, to offer you a unique opportunity.¡± His tube swung around like a cat¡¯s tail making his lips bob and list in erratic patterns. The massive pupil was waxing with the pulsing light from its waving orbs. The strange lights that stretched from his skin swayed as if there was a soft wind blowing in the bedroom of the tiny hospital dormitory.

    I could feel my eyes begin to expand out of their sockets and I blinked hard, then looked again. He was still there. My sense of calm vanished like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on me. ¡°Please don¡¯t eat me!¡± I thought. But no! It hadn¡¯t been just a thought! I had actually talked. For the first time in five years I had spoken!

    I had unwittingly pissed myself but given the situation I am not ashamed to share this fact. I have heard that pissing one¡¯s self is an adaptation that allowed cavemen not to be eaten by predators who did not care for the taste of piss. I have no idea if this is true but it seems to make sense. Aside from the wet pajama pants I was feeling amazing.

    Plop ¡®ik set me down on the edge of my bed where I sat up straight, no muscle fatigue, no pain. Just as if I had never been paralyzed.

    ¡°I promise not to eat you, Isaac. My kind do not eat human beings, for you are our greatest resource and our finest creation. I would sooner starve to death than eat one single human being.¡±

    The cascades of light played across my sparsely decorated hospital room, turning it into something that should have dayglow bean-bag chairs and Pink Floyd coming from the stereo. I was entranced by the dazzling lights playing on the walls and ceiling of my tiny apartment. It was like having my own private Aurora Borealis..

    ¡°I know you, Isaac, though we have never met. You have proven yourself a suitable candidate for a very important project that involves your world and my own. Much hangs in the balance for both of us.¡± His flagella-like tendrils were bending like stalks of bamboo in a swirling wind. ¡°I work for a consortium of beings like myself. Beings from a distant star system with one common interest. Do you know what that could be, Isaac?¡±

    With only the one eye and no face it was fairly difficult to tell in what manner this question was being asked. I chose to remain silent and await further explanation, a tactic that still works whenever I find myself in conversation with aliens or anyone who wants to talk in hypotheticals and absolutes.

    ¡°Uh,¡± I stammered. ¡°Not really.¡±

    ¡°If I told you the secret behind all of human history and even the purpose of life itself, what would you do with that information?¡± Plop ¡®ik paused and reached out for my hand. He squeezed it gently, and ever more tightly, as he spoke. ¡°If you knew the true purpose beyond all science and religion, Isaac, what kind of power would that be to you?¡±

    ¡°I... I honestly don¡¯t know.¡± Plop ¡®ik was leaning over me and staring into my eyes. He seemed to me, at that time, quite sweet. He stroked my palm with an elegant tentacle that he used like an opposable thumb. The alien¡¯s skin was gelatinous yet firm, like a wet suede water-bed filled with tiny ball bearings, and always vacillating with different shades of light.

    We spent a moment in silence, the soft light from his inconceivable appendages saturating the room. I sensed that he might feel sorry for me. That, for a reason I could never understand, he pitied me. He spoke again, quietly.

    ¡°I know you are scared, Isaac. It is right to be scared. You want to live and you want to continue living, always. This is the dream of all intelligent creatures and this is what I offer you. Our work is simple. We shall preserve life.¡±

    ¡°Right. Simple. I think ¡­ I can...¡± I began to feel an overwhelming sense of exhaustion and the room darkened.

    ¡°We will speak in forty eight hours time. Until then, Isaac. It was good to meet you.¡±

    Then he was gone, and the room was pitch black. I don¡¯t know if he beamed away or if he jumped out of the window like Batman but when he left he took all of the light with him. I spent the next day and a half in a perfect and peaceful slumber. It was almost enough to catch up after five years of unrelenting consciousness. I woke up at eleven am on a Tuesday and it was as black as midnight outside, thanks to the sunless Alaskan winter.

 Chapter 2 and 3

    <ol start="2">

    <li> Beers, Blonds, and UFOs.</li>

    </ol>

    I lay in bed for an hour checking emails on my Omniphone until its battery died. I assumed the backlog would have been longer but there was mostly spam, and a few from Army buddies who hadn¡¯t heard about my unfortunate accident. I thought about calling my parents but they had sent out a mass text about a week long boating trip down to Puget Sound. I was on the list of recipients for some strange reason. That was fine with me, as I had absolutely zero ideas about what I was going to tell them. Hi mom, hi dad. An alien woke me up from my coma and he wants me to do a secret job for him that involves the mysteries behind all life on earth. I needed to work on that speech a little bit.

    The wing of the hospital where they kept vegetables like me was normally pretty quiet, but it felt unusually still. I was kind of hoping to see that blond nurse again, and ask her just what the hell was in that shot she gave me, instead I just sat in my bed afraid to move and not sure at all if my legs could even handle a trip to the bathroom. The bathroom! Where the hell is my catheter?! Not that I missed the tube, but why would anyone have taken it out? It was as if someone was inviting me to leave, but still I wasn¡¯t sure if I should. I needed more time to process.

    I turned on the tv and flipped through the channels but every station was an infomercial or the latest on the Cartel Wars in Mexico. I didn¡¯t need to see any of that, so I turned it off and looked around the room aimlessly. I noticed that someone had set a red flannel shirt, jeans, boots, and a big fluffy winter coat on the chair in the corner. Suddenly it occurred to me that I could leave. But my muscles aren¡¯t going to work! I¡¯ve been in bed so long they must be atrophied and stiff as glass.

    After twiddling my thumbs for what seemed like an eternity, I got up. My body responded perfectly for the first time since being blown up. God it felt good to scratch myself! After taking a leak in the bathroom and splashing my face in the sink I took a moment to think about my next move. I put on my coat, grabbed my wallet, and left for the bar.

    The Golden Beaver was a dive-bar for winter people. Where as so much of Alaska had been mowed and manicured for tourists, this was a place for the locals who endured the hard seasons and the men who came to escape the easy life in the lower 48. The cruises did not put it on their handy tour maps. The mountain bikers did not stop by for microbrews or to satisfy locavore food fetishes. The patrons drank Coor¡¯s Light and they ate smoked fish, sometimes pizza. They watched the weather reports and they talked about the local basketball team or about the fishing season.

    Degenerate gamblers funneled welfare money into video-poker machines and everyone smoked, despite the posted signs. I liked this place. It was a good place to be quiet and and think. It seems weird to me, looking back, that the first place I went was a bar, but it was close to the hospital, and it had been a damn long time since I¡¯d had a beer. I¡¯d really never been a true alcoholic, just a man who shouldn¡¯t drink but did anyway.

    I came in and shook the snow off of my boots and coat. I was shivering because it was ball-freezingly cold out and whoever had left me the clothes I was wearing had neglected to outfit me for a proper Alaskan winter. No thermal underwear. My legs felt like purple Otter pops wrapped in chicken skin and my penis had retreated into my abdomen like a frightened mollusk. I made my way to the bar and ordered a beer. A low voice made a sonorous wheeze to my right.

    ¡°Hey, pal. Looking a little chilly. Need some whiskey. Warm you up.¡± The man plopped down clumsily on the stool next to mine. A big guy with a bulbous red nose that was criss-crossed with varicose veins. His long black hair hung in ropey locks and he smelled like he hadn¡¯t bathed since his last trip out to sea.

    ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s uh... really cold out there.¡±

    ¡°Hey, whiteboy, you don¡¯t know the half of it,¡± he said nodding absently before lighting a cigarette. ¡°Cold ain¡¯t killed me yet, not for lack of tryin¡¯. You, though. You look like a wet dog in a blizzard.¡± He was gruff, but not confrontational. I felt like I was doing pretty well for my second conversation since coming out of my coma.

    ¡°Just... uh, couldn¡¯t sleep last night. Took the day off. I kinda... saw an alien.¡± I was surprised how quickly I divulged my secret. I must have been more lubricated than I thought.

    He took it like most Alaskans take strange news. He drained his beer, took a drag of his cigarette, and nodded sympathetically. They are a hard folk to surprise and even harder to impress.

    ¡°Hey, they can be bad, this time of year.¡± He said and ordered another Coor¡¯s. ¡°Some folks won¡¯t talk about it. I don¡¯t see what the big deal is, I don¡¯t. When you spend the kind of time on the sea that I do, out there, you end up seein¡¯ things that you just can¡¯t explain. We seen a UFO, one time. Was as big as a Panamax, one of them big tankers? We seen it though. Clear as your ass. Hanging over the swells and lightin¡¯ up the night like fireworks.¡± He looked lost in thought, or maybe just toasted out of his mind. I wasn¡¯t sure so I stayed on topic.

    ¡°Maybe it was my friend¡¯s ship?¡± I asked, a bit too much in earnest. Even I wasn¡¯t sure if I was joking or not. He took another long swig and drained the bottle. He wiped his mouth and then made a stern face, looking me in the eye.

    ¡°Hey, that ain¡¯t your friend, sailor. The only thing them aliens want with us is to probe our asses and steal everything worth stealing. The fish and the gold. They¡¯ll take it all and then zoom, right back to outer space.¡± He made a childish pantomime of a rocket with his beer bottle and accompanied its take-off with a swooshing noise.

    An even older and drunker man in the corner came to life when he heard us discussing alien spacecrafts. He stood, knees popping audibly, and came to the bar with his beer.

    ¡°Billy, you seen it too?¡± he asked, his face a wrinkled mix of fear and red-eyed inebriation.

    ¡°Seen what, Norton?¡±

    The old drunk held up a finger and then dug his Omniphone out from his coat pocket. When I first came up north it surprised me how many fishermen and cannery workers had the latest model Omniphones, the kind that came with the ten terabyte data plans and the biometric security lock. But these days everyone had one. Mine had been like an external organ, never far from my hand, I even slept with the damn thing next to my head like a teddy-bear.

    After drunkenly manipulating the device for a few minutes Mr. Norton finally found what he was looking for and he flashed the screen at us.

    ¡°See that?¡±

    ¡°What the hell is it?¡± I asked him.

    The photograph was obviously taken from the bow of a ship, probably sometime around dawn. Hanging above the waves was a metallic yellow sphere covered with a web of black markings that almost looked like the design of an integrated circuit. It was hard to tell how big the thing was but judging from the size of the swells it had to be enormous.

    Billy the Fisherman frowned at the photo and said, ¡°Where¡¯d you get that?¡±

    ¡°Took it last July. When we went out to do some repairs on the Freddie Mercury. They was far out in the Bering, crabbin¡¯. This big circle thing just dropped out of the sky and stopped right in front of us. Sounded like a hummin¡¯ bird. Buzzin¡¯ like it was.¡±

    ¡°If I¡¯m crazy then I guess you¡¯re crazy too, right?¡± I said to the old man, and laughed weakly.

    The old man did not laugh. He put his Omniphone back in his pocket, downed the last of his beer, and nodded.

    ¡°And I know a dozen men that seen it too.¡±

    When both the men had left the bar I remembered something that happened when I was a teenager. Some kind of spherical UFO in Boulder, Colorado, that so many people witnessed the government was forced to label the event a genuine mass hallucination. They blamed a mold in the drinking water or some such bullshit, though no one became ill or complained of any other symptoms that might go along with a whole city tripping balls.

    I searched for videos of the UFO but they had all been systematically removed from the mainstream websites. There were a few conspiracy sites that were alleging a cover-up and a few that called it a clever hoax. In the archives of a local news site I found a video that was labeled ¡°Hoax Spaceship Crash!¡± The link was from back in ¡®02, the year of the ¡°mass hallucination¡±.

    I tapped the link. The video was grainy, with poor sound quality. I could see a stand of trees and maybe a mountain in the background. The camera swung around and then up and a big golden sphere filled the screen, dwarfing the trees. It was falling, or maybe gliding, down to Earth, somewhere beyond the tall pines. There was an explosion, accompanied by an intense flash of light. The camera operator, who had been close to hyperventilating, now swore out loud.

    Through a haze of smoke a few figures appeared, coming from the crash-site. As things became clear, the camera operator zoomed in on the people walking towards him. An Asian man in a dirty suit and tie. A handsome white man with a well trimmed beard. A tall blonde woman in military fatigues, her hair askew, pistol in her hand. I paused the video.

    I know that woman. The nurse!

    ¡°What are you watching, Isaac,¡± someone said behind me, in a tone implying they had caught me doing something I shouldn¡¯t.

    I turned to see the nurse, the same woman from the video, dressed in her work scrubs and a light jacket, as if she was impervious to the cold.

    ¡°Oh, uh, hi! I was just thinking about you,¡± I said, even as my Omniphone¡¯s screen was paused, showing Ana¡¯s own face. I noticed then that she looked about the same age in the video as she did then, standing in front of me. She hadn¡¯t aged a day in twenty years.

    ¡°I dropped by your room this morning. You weren¡¯t there. Guess you decided to take a little walk? What¡¯s up?¡±Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

    ¡°Yeah, I wanted to stretch my legs,¡± I muttered..

    Ana pulled up a stool next to me, waved to the bartender and said, ¡°So you know our little secret. Bad boy, Isaac, snooping can get you into big trouble.¡±

    ¡°I have no idea what you¡¯re talking about.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s only fair to tell you, normally if someone discovers who I really am, I kill them.¡± Her smile never faltered but her eyes flashed a menace that I had never seen there before.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t mean to...¡± I started to make excuses but then remembered that it was she who owed me the answers. ¡°Listen, it¡¯s only been two days since a one-eyed alien broke into my room. Now I discover that my nurse is some kind of freak who never ages and flies around in a golden spaceship! You¡¯re the one who¡¯s in trouble! You need to tell me what the hell is going on!¡± The few patrons in the bar looked up at me like I was crazy.

    She didn¡¯t flinch, ¡°All true. But now the question is, do you want to ride around with this freak in my spaceship?¡± She gave me a raised eyebrow.

    I cowed, ¡°Listen, I... I¡¯m sorry for calling you a freak. I¡¯m kind of an alien-virgin, er. Wait, that came out wrong!¡±

    Ana made a sweet, dulcet laugh and said, ¡°No need to apologize. Actually, it¡¯s good that you know who I am. Things are already starting to happen so fast. We need your help, Isaac.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re an alien, too?¡± I asked.

    ¡°That¡¯s ridiculous. I¡¯m a human, stupid. I just... have a little help when it comes to aging. Consider it a perk of working for Plop ¡®ik,¡± she said and smiled. As strange as this situation was, my feelings for her were still first in my mind. That smile could get me to do pretty much anything. ¡°You will too, if you take the job.¡±

    The shock, that should have been setting in, shutting me down so that I couldn¡¯t think of anything but to run, it just wasn¡¯t there. I was nervous, but more than anything else I was electrified with an excitement I hadn¡¯t felt since I got back home. ¡°Why does he want me? I¡¯m about as special as a billion other people.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s where you¡¯re wrong, Isaac. You have something very rare, a kind of natural talent. Something buried deep in your brain. Let¡¯s worry about that later. For now just know one thing. A war is starting. There are those of us who want to protect the Earth and it¡¯s people, and there are bad guys who want to tear it apart. Take the job and help us. You always wanted to save the day. Now¡¯s your chance.¡±

    ¡°What...¡± I had a million questions that all bottlenecked on the way from my mind to my mouth. I sat there in silent stupidity.

    She took up her beer from the bar and said, ¡°It¡¯ll be fun. I promise.¡± She drained the beer in one great swallow and slammed the empty bottle on the bar. Then she left.

    I sat there, a cocktail of intrigue and shock coursing through my brain. After a while I made my way home through a blizzard of sideways snow. I bought a six pack to-go from the bar and by the time I got halfway down the block the beer was slushy with ice. There were about eight hours until the promised return of Plop ¡®ik.

    I decided to go to the apartment my parents kept off of Tongas Avenue, a nice little two bedroom with a view of the waterfront. I had heard them talk about it all the time. The door used a four digit code and the place was empty when I got there.

    I had almost convinced myself that it was all some kind of night-terror, but the experience had been so vivid that if I did admit that it was all in my mind then I was also admitting that I was going completely nuts. Especially after Ana admitted to me that she worked for the alien too. Trying to give my aching mind a rest, I drank my half frozen beers and watched the news.

    Mexico, again. One thing about having a Republican president was constant and endless military engagement. I was glad that I wasn¡¯t down south fighting in the Cartel Wars but I knew people who were, and I wished that I could help them. The past three years had been some of the bloodiest since the Civil War but things were starting to turn our way thanks to the President¡¯s scorched-Earth policy.

    Western Mexico, especially the state of Sinaloa, had been reduced to burning cinders with illegal phosphorus missiles. The level of nastiness on both sides was enough to make one give up on humanity, but my thoughts were with the men fighting the modern day equivalent of Aztec blood-warriors, the cultists of Santa Muerte. Mean cartelistas and ex-Mexican army, all outfitted with heavy energy weapons and military tech stolen from the U.S. They were six times as many as the Afghan insurgents and a thousand times better equipped and funded. I told myself I¡¯d never go back. Those days in hot triage tents covered in gore felt like thousand years ago

    I started thinking about a Ranger that I had stitched up in a tent back in Zacatecas, Lt. Juan Morales. He caught a three centimeter piece of shrapnel in his thigh but fought for a day and a half before he called for a medic. I dug out a big chunk metal but when I removed a smaller shard I nicked his femoral artery. I think I must have made a face conveying some serious panic but Jose just grabbed me by my collar, pulled me in real close and said, ¡°I don¡¯t fail my men, ever. Now take a breath, fix my leg, and get me back into the fucking fight.¡± I followed his orders and the last time I saw him he was sitting in a bird¡¯s nest with a 30 cal, killing militia men and cartel assassins like it was going out of style.

    Now Jose was probably in Mexico City fighting some of most hardcore members of the Santa Muerte death cult, if he was still alive. Santa Muerte was like a meth-addict sociopath¡¯s version of voodoo, and they were led by a man who called himself Dragon for burning half of Mexico city with incendiaries in a single day. The cultists started out as cartel assassins but then found religion, the only thing that makes people crazier than money.

    The Santa Muerte cult worshipped bloodshed in all of its forms and its members were known for methamphetamine fueled violence and rape campaigns. They killed as many Mexicans as Americans, almost as if they didn¡¯t care who they were fighting or for what. They just loved killing. Even though I hated President Hearst, this war was one of the few that we actually had to fight, but here I was, sitting on my couch in Alaska, as far from Mexico as I could get.

    I put on my three hundred dollar headphones and lay down on my parent¡¯s comfy bed to listen to an audiobook about zombies on my Omniphone. I fell asleep listening to the end of the world.

    <ol start="3">

    <li> The Building Blocks of Life</li>

    </ol>

    Plop ¡®ik appeared at 3:33. He jostled me out of a particularly lucid zombie-dream and I awoke to his glistening eye hovering two feet over my face. Cascading arcs of violet light bathed the walls and ceiling. It was an impressive display of strobing pastel hues. I wondered if he wasn¡¯t showing off. I wished that he would just turn off the light show. All of his wondrous shimmering was hell on my hangover and part of me wanted to roll over and pretend he wasn¡¯t there. Another part of me was excited by the idea of befriending an alien life form. Another part of me wet myself like a toddler. I was still getting used to having sensation in my bladder, a downside to using a catheter for five years.

    I meant to say ¡®good morning¡¯ but what came out of my mouth was the shriek of a sixth-grade girl upon seeing a big spider.

    ¡°Please, Isaac, you must remember. I am Plop ¡®ik. We have met and touched hands. In my home-world this means we are as friends.¡± With his long and spindly forearm he reached for my hand and caressed it lovingly. If he wasn¡¯t a giant alien I would have sworn that he was coming on to me. Mood lighting, mild petting, all we were missing was some jazz and red wine.

    ¡°No. Of course. I¡¯ll try to stop doing that. It¡¯s just...¡± I was breathing hard but calming down. ¡°I remember. How are you, Plop ¡®ik?¡±

    ¡°I am well. Thank you, Isaac. Have you considered my offer?¡±

    ¡°Oh you mean all that stuff about the meaning of life and power beyond all science and religion? And some kind of war? Yeah, I have been thinking about that a lot, actually.¡± In between getting drunk and watching television. ¡°But I¡¯m not sure what you want from me. What could I have to offer your... What did you call it?¡±

    ¡°A consortium,¡± he reminded me. ¡°I use this term only so that you may comprehend the nature of my organization. We are many, united for a single enterprise.¡±

    ¡°Humans too, right? Today I saw a video of my nurse, crashing a giant spaceship in Colorado.¡±

    ¡°She landed the craft well, in my opinion,¡± Plop ¡®ik said, unphased. ¡°The goal was to place the beacon in an isolated region. Humans, as a whole, must not discover their extraplanetary origins. Not yet.¡±

    ¡°Wait. That can¡¯t be right,¡± I said, perplexed. There wasn¡¯t a scientist alive that did not believe in the basic precepts of evolution.

    ¡°Mankind is a product of a concerted effort by nine races. Designed for a single purpose,¡± said the glowing alien. He told me the secret of the origin of life in the same way a parent might tell a child the stork brought him in a white cloth.

    ¡°So your people, or whatever, created us. Like it wasn¡¯t God and Adam and Eve but aliens from another planet?¡±

    ¡°Precisely.¡±

    ¡°Precisely,¡± I said and rubbed the stubble on my chin.

    In all honesty I think that I was as accepting of this fact as any human could have been. There was no God or gods; I felt alleviated by the idea. There was nobody to blame for all of the horror and suffering. No superbeing causing it all. All our problems were own stupid fault. If that was so, maybe we could fix them.

    Then I made a mistake. I asked for more details.

    Plop ¡®ik, in a way that only a being that lives billions of years can do, took his sweet time to paint a clear and detailed history of our planet. Which, for my my own purposes, I will paraphrase here.

    About 3.6 billion years ago Plop ¡®ik and a few of his closest business associates planted ¡°seeds¡± on a freshly-hardened rock in a young star system on the fringes of the galaxy. These seeds were packets of genetic information, phospholipid bilayers, and other biological macromolecules. They built machines to oversee the evolution of life, machines that humans, starting in the 20th century, refer to as viruses. But our understanding of these little DNA delivery systems was spotty at best.

    These microscopic machines, fabricated by the alien consortium, engineered and monitored broad leaps in biological development. To ensure that things went as they had planned the aliens would make subtle genomic corrections when required. Kind of like little gardeners. Prune a tree here, pluck some weeds there.

    They worked with nature, or luck, or whatever, to create a factory of life. A factory that could sustain itself by feeding its workers to each other. The factory was also constantly becoming more complex, due to a healthy amount of reproductive activity by those same workers. Everything, down to the smallest prokaryote, was reproducing, and eating itself toward its own genetic destiny. The viruses made sure that this destiny was the one the aliens wanted.

    If a species behaved erratically, or was no longer useful, then they would arrange its extinction. If they needed a creature to fill a biological niche then they programmed a virus to insert the DNA coding for the desired traits into the cells of the organism. An example of this would be the Giant Ground Sloth. A beast that was imbued, by means of a virus of course, with a docile temperament, thick heavy muscle, and aversions to heights and water. it was slow, stupid, and delicious. It served its purposes, which were to trim the hedges and feed tribes of bipeds and other predators.

    Not all extinction events were caused by the aliens; natural selection played a more than pivotal role, as was planned for and expected. There was no place in the infinite expanse of existence where Darwin¡¯s mostly perfect model did not apply.

    So they brought frozen water from a nearby asteroid belt and they inundated the molten surface of the Earth. Then they used protocells and viruses to form a single celled organism, and for the next few billion years they gave life gentle nudges in the right direction. For Plop¡¯ik, the goal was to create a creature as perfect and benevolent as any the universe had ever seen. I assumed, at the time, that the project had been an utter failure.

    I could never have fully understood the extent to which they could control an organism¡¯s development through viruses. We understand viruses only on a pathological level. The only viruses that humanity has ever deigned to observe or care about are the ones that make us sick, but there are other kinds of virus that humans had never even detected, let alone analyzed. What fascinated me was not the biological importance of viral-genetic manipulation, but it¡¯s effect on human culture.

    Once the brain was essentially complete the aliens made the second step in their recipe for the perfect being. The consortium released a new family of viruses that worked in our minds, that directed our behaviors, that warned us, or tempted us. There were viruses that encouraged musical aptitude and art. There was even a virus responsible for religious ecstasy. However, as I came to discover, the most important of all the programmed viruses, was the one that endowed humankind with the indefatigable desire to possess gold.

    Every achievement that we can claim as a race can be attributed to beings only fractions of fractions of a micrometer in length. Beings whose only purpose was to deliver chemical messages to cells. Beings in the service of a tall glowing cyclops who would become my employer, for a time.

    When Plop ¡®ik finished his story I rubbed my eyes like a child awakened from an afternoon nap. The alien was looking at me with that great, strangely endearing eye of his, as if it was now my turn to tell Plop ¡®ik something equally revelatory and world-shattering.

    ¡°So aliens designed all life on Earth with viruses so they could engineer a perfect being?¡±

    ¡°Precisely.¡± Plop ¡®ik said and bobbed his great wet eye. ¡°However, we do not feel as alien to your world. This quadrant has been my home for over three billion years.¡±

    ¡°If you guys are in control of everything, then why is it all so fucked up? Why do so many of your precious creations have to suffer and die? Can¡¯t you change us or help us?¡± I was almost in tears.

    ¡°I cannot, but with your help we could change everything.¡±

    ¡°I hope you realize how hard that is to believe,¡± I said. ¡°And I don¡¯t see what your little fairy-tale has to do with me.¡±

    ¡°That is acceptable, Isaac. Faith is for fools and gods. I want you to function as one of many agents in our consortium, but you may decline. Act as you see fit. When we meet again I will show you something that might persuade you.¡±

    Again, he reached for my hand; I felt a flush of warmth come over me and I fell into a dreamless, infantile sleep.

 Chapter 4:

    <ol start="4">

    <li> Enter Kli Truip</li>

    </ol>

    A hard knock on the front door woke me up. I quickly changed out of my damp pajamas into some jeans and one of my dad¡¯s flannel shirts. It sounded like someone was trying to beat the door down.

    ¡°I¡¯m coming! Hold on a sec!¡±

    ¡°Open up, Isaac. It¡¯s Ana.¡± A woman¡¯s voice. I opened the door to see my former nurse, Ana Martinson. She wore her pink scrubs and had her long blond hair in a bun with crossed black chopsticks sticking out the sides. A smattering of blood covered her shirt but before I could ask what was going on she pushed past me into the studio apartment.

    ¡°Where¡¯s your phone?¡±

    ¡°Um, hello to you too.¡± I pointed to the nightstand where I had left the glass rectangle charging. ¡°Feel free to -¡± She quickly dialed a number and started talking to someone.

    ¡°Dr. Gass? It¡¯s Martinson,¡± pause. ¡°No, I had to take off for a minute. EMTs needed a hand on a call downtown,¡± pause. ¡°What the hell is going on down there?¡± After listening for a long time she said, ¡°Shit. I¡¯ll be there as soon as I can,¡± and hung up. She gave me the phone. ¡°I hope you¡¯re ready because I am short an operator and need you to back me up. You¡¯re trained as a nurse right?

    ¡°Well, field Med-Tech actually but yeah I can do triage, stitches, IVs¡±

    ¡°What do you know about African Hemorrhagic Fever?¡± she asked as she went to the kitchen and washed blood from her hands. The whole mystery girl act was gone and now she was all business. I wondered if she had military experience because something in the curt way she spoke reminded me of some of the tough bastards I had worked with in the Cartel Wars, namely my old sergeant, Henry .

    ¡°Ebola?! Jesus Christ, not much, besides that it was wiped out with vaccines in 2017. Why? Who was that on the phone?¡±

    ¡°Dr. Gass, ER doc at the hospital. He¡¯s got people pouring in from all over town with tell-tale symptoms. Except...¡± She looked out the window down to the road and I could hear sirens in the background. ¡°It¡¯s happening too fast.¡±

    Ebola could melt your internal organs and turn a man into a puddle of blood but it took days, weeks even. The first symptoms were fever and diarrhea, then vomiting. It wouldn¡¯t make sense for an outbreak to happen overnight, especially in Ketchikan, Alaska.  I rubbed my face, ¡°If it¡¯s some kind of super-strain... God, if we go down there we¡¯re likely to get infected.¡±

    ¡°I know. Plop ¡®ik wants me to keep you safe. Someone is on the way to meet us. Says he has some protective measures, new bio-tech. We hunker down here until-¡± she started coughing hard. Blood sprayed from her mouth.

    I gasped, ¡°Oh, fuck.¡± She looked at her hands, dripping with blood. Her nose had started to bleed too and her skin was going pale. ¡°We need to get you to the hospital, fast! You¡¯re losing too much blood! You must have got it-¡±

    ¡°Can¡¯t be,¡± she said and hacked again. I lead her to the couch and sat her down. ¡°My immune system is... It makes no sense.¡± she fell over onto the coffee table, unconscious.

    The EMTs she mentioned were nowhere in sight, but their ambulance was parked haphazardly on the front lawn of the apartment building, still running. I strapped her to the gurney in the back and hopped in the cab. The tires screeched as we careened out of the parking lot onto the main drag, speeding toward the hospital on the far side of town.

    Ketchikan was in panic mode. The road was littered with abandoned vehicles, some of them crashed and burning. A grocery store was in the process of being looted by a mob of crazy-eyed people probably hoping to stock up on supplies before barricading themselves in their homes. A big man in a camo jacket was pushing a shopping cart full of food with one hand and holding a 12 gauge shotgun with the other. A group of women were screaming and fighting over a package of toilet paper. I rolled up onto the sidewalk to avoid a crowd of people that were trying to get in front of the ambulance, shouting for help. It was just too dangerous. If I stopped they were just as likely to hijack the truck and if I didn¡¯t get Ana to the hospital soon she wouldn¡¯t make it. After what felt like hours we made it to the turnoff. The road leading uphill to the emergency room entrance was jammed with cars so I removed the gurney and pushed Ana at a sprint toward the hospital.

    I was still surprised as to how in shape my body seemed after years of being a vegetable. I could run pretty well and I was only mildly huffing and puffing when I pushed the gurney through the door that lead to the ER. As I opened my mouth to shout for help I realized that it wouldn¡¯t do us much good. The waiting room was an abattoir of bleeding men and women, coughing and vomiting on the floor. The smell was awful. I wheeled Ana past the admissions desk and toward the beds.

    ¡°Dr.Gass?!¡± I yelled, and a man with a bright orange beard and bloodstained labcoat looked out from around the corner. ¡°I have Ana Martinson here. She¡¯s hemorrhaging bad.¡± The doctor ran toward the gurney and started checking her vitals. Behind him nurses were running around with towels and IV bags, frantically trying to dam the deluge of blood and sickness that seemed to be coming from every patient.

    ¡°Ana!¡± he shouted and lifted her eyelids. ¡°Ana, can you hear me? Try to stay awake!¡± He shined a pen-light in her eyes. Her pupils were dilated and her eyes rolled around. Between weak spasms of coughing she would try to speak.

    ¡°What¡¯s she saying,¡± Dr. Gass asked me.

    ¡°I have no idea,¡± I put my head down by her ear and listened.

    ¡°Plop ¡®ik... get to Plop ¡¯ik. You¡¯ve got to...¡±

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    The doctor turned and opened a supply cabinet. ¡°She needs fluids, but...¡± He looked around to all of the other patients. Every bed was full and the side hallway was stacked with gurneys and carts. He was the only chance most of these people had and there was no way he could save them all. His face was twisted in an expression of pure dread.

    I grabbed the doctor by his shoulder ¡°I can do the IV. Leave me to it. You go, help them. I¡¯ll stay with her. I know what I¡¯m doing.¡± That was at least partly true. The doctor nodded and ran out to the waiting room to assist the nurses. I started a drip of saline on Ana and grabbed an ice pack for her forehead. This wasn¡¯t the first time that I had treated a patient who was way beyond my skills. I whipped out my secret weapon, my Omniphone.

    I pressed the voice activation button, ¡°Omni, open Super Doctor Junior.¡± The phone came with an application that could diagnose and recommend treatments for thousands of diseases and injuries. Ebola was supposedly eliminated years ago but hopefully the app would at least have some basic information I could use. ¡°Search Ebola¡±

    Immediately the phone started to speak calmly in a woman¡¯s voice ¡°Ebola, or Hemorrhagic Fever, is viral in nature. Symptoms include fever, diarrhea, vomiting, tachycardia, hypovolemia, and organ failure. Fatality rate: twenty to ninety percent, based on schedule of intervention.¡±

    ¡°Recommend interventions,¡± I commanded as I started the IV. The drip was saline and other nutrients that hopefully would support her long enough for her body to fight the virus.

    ¡°Rest, hydration, treat with heparin, dialysis may also be necessary. No known cure is-¡± I shut off the phone and crammed it back in my pocket.

    Frantically I picked through what was left in the supply closet. No heparin, but if I couldn¡¯t stop her bleeding she wouldn¡¯t last another hour. It is remarkable to think that humans, basically big sacks of fluid with a tube running from mouth to anus, could live at all in such a sharp and dangerous world. There was so much that could go wrong, and so much blood to lose.

    I ran out into the lobby to look for the doctor. There had to be something that I could use to prevent her blood from over coagulating and making her bleeds worse. I burst through the lobby door and what I saw made my own blood freeze in my veins. At least fifty patients and hospital staff stood motionless, some covered in blood, some bleeding from their mouths and ears, every single one of them was staring at me with dead eyes that reminded me of the possessed kids from Village of the Damned.

    ¡°What the fuck...¡± I whispered. Nobody answered, they stood there, one and all with the same slack expression on their faces. Mothers who had brought their sick children stood side by side, as did the doctors and nurses with their patients. Mouths agape. Eyes wide and glazed over. At least fifty people, as still as statues, just waiting.  I wasn¡¯t sure if they were even breathing. Then all at once they parted, leaving an aisle from where I stood to the double doors that lead to the Ambulance parking area. The doors opened and every head turned to watch what came through.

    At first I thought it was a small elephant painted red. No, I guess that¡¯s not right. At first I thought I was having a nightmare, the worst nightmare I could imagine. A hunched beast, about the size of a sedan, squeezed through doors. Every inch of the thing was covered in blood and what looked like bits of fat and bone fragments. It wreaked of blood and terror. It¡¯s eyes were fixed on me, small and pig-like behind a large snout. It carried some kind of package, like a duffle bag, in its mouth. I only knew it was a grizzly bear when it opened its jaws and dropped the bag.

    All of the frozen people in the waiting room began to speak in perfect synchronicity, with one voice. The sound, like a choir of zombies, made my heart practically stop and I felt every hair on my body stand on end. ¡°You are the one called Isaac Austen. You are the one raised from death and given gifts that were not meant to be given. You are the one in possession of my stolen property,¡± all the zombies said, only their mouths moving. ¡°I am Kli Truip. I serve the Elotiel, the Everlasting.¡±

    ¡°Holy shit,¡± I muttered. I was kind of at a loss for words.

    ¡°A traitor called Plop ¡®ik of Plos Lodril has deceived you. He has indebted you to him so that he may terrorize the galaxy. He has put your life in extreme peril, for which I pity you. Plop ¡®ik has delivered a virulent disease unto your planet. I present the cure.¡±

    The bloody bear shoved the duffle bag toward me with its snout, inviting me to pick it up. The people spoke again, their voices a terrifying mix of chorus and wails, ¡°This is the virophage that will save the life of that woman. She is another victim of the terrorist, Plop i¡¯k. I am Kli Truip, Executive Priest and closest to the Eternal, so I will show mercy to you both.¡±

    ¡°These others must not be allowed to live. Take the woman and leave this place. I am finished with you, take the virophage and go now.¡±

    Inside the bag was a syringe filled with a bright green liquid, with a wide tipped needle, the kind meant for intracardiac injection. I was going to have to stab Ana in the heart. If I knew then what I do now I might have made a different choice but at the time there seemed to be no other option. I did what I thought I had to do to save Ana. She was the only woman that had spoken to me in five years, after all.

    I ran back to Ana with the syringe, almost slipping on the bloodslick linoleum. I took a breath, counted to three, and stabbed her right in the heart with the large needle. I had no problem with blood or with injections but there was something unnerving about plunging an unknown substance into someone¡¯s heart.

    ¡°Please, Ana. Come on.¡± I whispered to the pitiable little bag of fluids that lay before me. A bloom of color rose to her face. Starting at the injection site, a flush of vibrant pink spread across her skin. I touched her and she was as hot as a fresh cup of coffee. I grabbed her hand took her pulse. In seconds her bpm had gone from barely alive, to dismal, to 50 lovely little beats per minute and rising. It was working.

    She moaned softly and her eyes fluttered open, ¡°Oh, what the-¡±

    ¡°Relax, it¡¯s okay. It¡¯s Isaac. You¡¯re in the hospital Ana. You were really sick but you¡¯re going to be alright now.¡± I reassured her, but she was shaking her head.

    ¡°No, I know that,¡± she said, sitting up on the gurney. She pointed behind me, ¡°What the hell is that?!¡± The zombified patients and hospital staff had fallen out of whatever spell or mind control had enchanted them. Many had slumped over and fell to the floor while some just started screaming. The massive, blood-drenched bear was standing on its hind legs. It raised its head and roared.

    ¡°Oh, right,¡± I said. ¡°That¡¯s a big bear covered in blood... and entrails.¡±

    The people ran toward the door but the massive thing cut them off, hammering them to the floor with its huge paws and biting as it plowed through the waiting room like a red tornado of death. Two security guards ran in from the lobby and the bear reared up and fell down onto the bigger of the two, tearing the fat man to bloody bits in seconds. His partner watched in horror, frozen by shock and fear. After tearing the first man¡¯s throat out the bear looked up and casually swatted the other one with a paw the size of a car tire. He rolled out through the double doors like a bowling pin and the bear went after him to finish the job. It was over in less than a minute. Then the bear came back into the waiting room and turned on Dr. Gass. I ran for my life back into the clinic where Ana was getting up from the Gurney. I wasn¡¯t sure what I was going to do but even in my state of shock all I could think of was getting her the hell out of there.

    ¡°Isaac, run out the back way! Get the hell out of here and find that priest from the bar!¡±

    I had no idea what she was saying but there was no way I was leaving her to that monster, ¡°Ah hell no! Get up! We¡¯re leaving!¡± I took her by the arm and supporting her weight as we made our way toward the fire exit at the back of the room. She was much heavier than she looked and her muscles were firm and hard. Jeez, she must work out all the time. Even though she seemed to be recovering quickly but she could barely stand. It felt like we were moving in slow motion as we limped towards the door. Then I heard the sound that I was dreading.

    Boom!

    The bear came charging into the clinic, tossing aside the gurneys and tables in its way as if they were children¡¯s toys. It roared at me again and I yelled back, ¡°Hey, man! I thought you said you were gonna spare us! What the hell?!¡± I didn¡¯t wait for a response. Its eyes were no longer glazed and vacant. It had gone from passive zombie to enraged and psychotic beast. It was like whatever power had possessed all of the people and the bear had just let go all of a sudden. The bear was furiously flinging hospital supplies at us as it clamored through the clinic in pursuit. I caught a flying IV drip stand in the head and hit the linoleum like a sack of beans. Ana tripped and fell on top of me. I saw the bear clear a path to us. It stood there for a moment, staring at me with its bloody teeth bared. I wanted to say something to Ana but I was frozen with fear.

    Then it charged.

 Chapters 5 and 6

    <ol start="5">

    <li> Bear Problems</li>

    </ol>

    A pressure like nothing I had ever felt came crashing down on me and I felt as if I had been pinned to the floor. I was sure that the goo-covered bear had just dropped onto me and what be momentarily ripping my head off but when I looked up I saw something else entirely. Ana had the thing¡¯s paws in her hands, holding up the monster in an insane game of mercy that broke every law of physics I¡¯d ever learned. Sweat sheened on her forehead and her jaw was clenched tight, but the medium-sized blond woman was actually military-pressing a good portion of the bear¡¯s weight.

    ¡°Holy shit!¡± I gasped. It was like watching Super Man stop a locomotive.

    She yelled back at me through gritted teeth, ¡°Don¡¯t just stand there, you idiot! Move!¡± I jumped to my feet, head still throbbing from being nailed with a big hunk of metal. I looked down to see the end of the IV line and a big shiny needle lying on the ground. There was no time to hesitate. I picked up the needle, pivoted around Ana, and stuck it into the bear¡¯s eyeball. It roared in pain as I twisted the needle around in its eye socket.

    ¡°Eat this you ugly son of a-¡± It backhanded me with a wet paw, making a sick smacking sound against my chest. I found myself lying about ten feet away from Ana, still grappling with the giant bear, my lungs burning and unable to breath.

    Ana stepped back and judo-threw the bear with impossible force against the far wall of the clinic. I swore I could see a bluish glow surrounding her body, coming off her skin in rhythmic waves of semi-transparent light. Is that her aura? As far as I knew, things like auras and psychic powers were absolute bullshit, but my world had done a complete U-turn. Now I had no idea what was true. Aliens. Super humans. Zombie bears. What about wizards? Fire-breathing dragons?

    ¡°Isaac!¡± Ana shouted snapping me out of my stupor. ¡°I said move!¡± She grabbed my arm and hauled me toward the door as if I were a toddler. Sweet Blue-Headed Christ she is strong! The bear had left a trail of blood smears all over the floor and a big red hole in the wall where Ana had tossed it, but in seconds it was back on its feet and coming for us again. Ana pushed me through the door to the stairwell and shut it behind us. We leapt down the stairs and I mentally noted how quickly Ana had recovered.

    Whoever designed those metal doors that open with big bars instead of knobs can suck it. In an instant the roaring monstrosity had opened the door and was pursuing us down the stairs to the hospital¡¯s basement. Lucky for us, its bloody paws were having a hard time navigating the stairway, but every time it slipped and crashed into another wall it just regained its footing and kept coming. Why can¡¯t bears be more like Winnie the Pooh? That lazy bastard would have given up long ago.

    ¡°In here,¡± Ana shouted and we went through the basement door. Thank God this one only opened with the RFID enabled badge that hung on Ana¡¯s scrubs . We went through and slammed it shut. A heavy slam came from the other side but the door didn¡¯t budge.

    ¡°Oh damn! Oh holy god fucking damnit! Did you see-? Oh, I mean of course you saw but- Holy monkey-loving damn damn damn-¡±

    ¡°Shut up,¡± Ana said and gripped me by the shoulders. She was looking me right in the eyes and I saw just how perfectly blue and crystalline hers were. ¡°It¡¯s okay, Isaac. We¡¯re safe now. Calm down and just try to breath.¡± She was beautiful. Her cheeks were so soft and they came down to her chin at such a perfect angle, not too round yet essentially feminine. Yet there was also something stern and implacable hidden in her eyes, like a core of solid steel.

    ¡°You¡¯re pretty,¡± I said before a wave of dizziness came over me. I felt like I was going to pass out. My head was spinning and little white stars seemed to be whizzing around my head. Then all at once the pain hit. ¡°Oweeeeee!¡± I screamed grabbing my upper chest.

    Ana knelt down by me and put her hand on my neck and then felt around by my chest and shoulders, ¡°Snapped collar bone. Damnit! That thing hit you really hard, didn¡¯t it?¡±

    I made some guttural noise and slumped over, writhing in pain. ¡°That bear... it lied to me,¡± I moaned.

    ¡°It wasn¡¯t the bear you were talking to,¡± she said and stood up. ¡°That was my former boss.¡± She didn¡¯t elaborate and I was not in the frame of mind to ask any follow up questions. ¡°Listen, I need you to stay here. I¡¯ve got to go out to the morgue loading dock, see if there¡¯s a truck we can take out of here.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re leaving me behind?!¡± I started to whine, then I thought about how pathetic that sounded. ¡°I mean, uh, I¡¯m cool. I¡¯m cool. You go. I¡¯m going to hang here for a second. Catch my breath.¡± My collarbone was crackling with electric pain and I felt like I was about to pass out, but I didn¡¯t want Ana to think I was a wimp.

    She shook her head and rolled her eyes, ¡°Just stay here.¡± She started off down the hall and then turned around adding, ¡°And don¡¯t open that door.¡± As if on cue, the bear on the other side of the heavy steel door smashed against it, still trying to break through. I nodded to Ana and then she was gone.

    <ol start="6">

    <li> Goodbye Forever, Ketchikan</li>

    </ol>

    My very first out of body experience was just a joyride compared to what I would eventually be able to do. It happened in the back of a stolen squad car. The size and shape of the driver left no doubt in my mind that it was Plop ¡®ik, but where was Ana?. The seven foot alien was hunched over in the bucket seat, his single eye gleaming with the reflections of the little lights on his skin that dappled the entire car with a spectrum of shifting purples and golds.

    All these things I saw without my eyes.

    I saw Plop ¡®ik, and I saw Isaac Austen, or maybe a clearer way to describe it was that I saw the body of of an entity that I recognized as Isaac Austen. However the pathetic and bloody pile of a man that I saw was as separate from my consciousness as the steering wheel or the safety belt. Just a thing that I could define in words. Outside of my body, I was thankful to not inhabit the broken wreck that lay foetal on the back seat, seemingly unconscious. Then, just as I began to realize the strangeness of seeing my body from the outside, a sensation like gravity came over me and I plummeted back into myself like a river at a waterfall. Back in my own body I was once again overcome with dizzying nausea and terrible pain.

    ¡°That was interesting, I imagine,¡± said Plop ¡®ik, without even looking back to me. ¡°Is that as long as you are able to exist in a state of bodilessness?¡±

    ¡°Unnnh,¡± I moaned. ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Have you ever projected your consciousness before? That was impressive for a first attempt,¡± the alien spoke as if I had done nothing more impressive than ice skating backwards or performing a card trick.

    ¡°You... you saw that?¡± I asked. Between the pain of my broken bone, the sick feeling in my gut, and the miasma that was clouding my mind when I reentered my body, I wasn¡¯t sure what was real. I believed that I might be losing what was left of my tenuous grip on reality.

    ¡°No, not quite, but I can perceive many different kinds of disturbances in the field that you call reality. I sensed a telepathic signature, an aura, but I could not visualize it. The fact that your mind can exist outside of your body is proof of your ability. I was hoping to ascertain confirmation of your eligibility before we left. I am most pleased, Isaac, that you are, without a doubt, the human that I have been seeking.¡±

    ¡°Uhhh,¡± I groaned. ¡°You¡¯re making my head hurt. Can you open this window?¡± Plop ¡®ik did so and then I felt my stomach turn inside out. ¡°Pull over. Now!¡±

    Before the squad car reached the edge of the road I was already hanging out the window purging what little remained of my stomach contents in loud spasmodic retches.

    ¡°It is good that you vomit,¡± I heard Plop ¡®ik say to me between half-dry heaves. ¡°A cleanse before I admit you to my home. We must leave soon if we are to escape the area. Your government has already sent a sizable force to combat the viral outbreak. We cannot be here when they arrive.¡±

    The violent nausea started to subside until only a sickening dizziness remained. The cold air was freezing the flecks of vomit to my stubble so I pulled my head back in the car. My collarbone was throbbing so badly that I could barely focus on anything besides the pain. Yet the events of the past few days were replaying themselves in my head like a video on fast-forward and repeat. Seeing Ana crash an alien spacecraft in a clip from back in 2002. Plop ¡®ik in my room, his strange tentacle-like cilia rippling with light like an indoor aurora borealis. A bloody murderous bear.

    It had been a while since I had seen someone die. Less dramatic deaths happened in the hospital almost everyday but I had not witnessed a violent death since I was in Mexico. Remembering the security guards and Dr.

    Gass screaming as the bear tore them apart brought back other, equally disturbing, memories from the war. The smell of blood on frozen air was like a portal back to that time in my life. The part that I wanted to escape more than anything. I wondered how much more bloodshed I would be forced to witness before my life was through.

    ¡°There were men back there,¡± I said weakly. ¡°I saw them get...  eaten, by a bear. So messed up, there were people too, they talked to me... they saved Ana.¡± I was thinking out loud as much as addressing Plop ¡®ik. ¡°One said it¡¯s name, Tru... Klandatu? No, that wasn¡¯t it. He said you¡¯re a terrorist.¡± The words came out slowly and I slurred a few, but Plop ¡®ik understood.

    ¡°Kli Truip, he was once my leader, of a sort, the leader of the Consortium. He possesses a keen mind. He is ruthless. On his home planet he is thought of as a spiritual monarch, second only to God. I am called a terrorist because I know the truth about God, about what It really is.¡±

    ¡°He was your boss?¡±

    ¡°He is an executive, an autocrat. Before being branded a heretic and a traitor, I worked in a capacity similar to architect, or perhaps, like you, a kind of engineer. An Architect. There are others here as well. Specialists whose skills and ideas have shaped this project. Some responsible for the development of protein patterns. Some worked only at the initial stages of production, before life even took hold on this planet. Geologists, you might call them, or perhaps gravitationalists.¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°But you are an architect?¡± I asked, barely understanding a third of the words Plop ¡®ik said.

    ¡°I am an artist. My medium is multicellular life, my tool is the infinite power of consciousness. My job-¡±

    Sirens. Red and blue flashing lights.

    I sat up and glanced out the rear windshield to see three vehicles tailgating our squad car. The frenetic lights reflected off the surface revealing the black SUV¡¯s with the letters CDC printed on their hoods.

    ¡°Holy shit! Feds!¡± I cried.

    ¡°Please be quiet, Isaac.¡± Plop ¡®ik said in a motherly tone, unafraid. I obeyed.

    The one-eyed alien driving the police car pulled over, parked, rolled down the window, and calmly put his hands on the wheel. The SUV¡¯s boxed us in with one cutting in front of our car, one to the side, and another not three feet behind us. I sat motionless, sure that we would be taken into custody. I would be put on trial for the deaths of three men and for injecting Ana with a mystery fluid. Plop ¡®ik would be put in a zoo or vivisected at Area 51 or something, according to what I had seen on TV.

    Federal agents with submachine guns hanging from their shoulders got out of the SUVs and surrounded us. They wore baseball caps and jackets with the yellow CDC label. They also wore full-face gas masks. One agent approached the car with his weapon pointed at Plop ¡®ik.

    He shouted, ¡°Keep those hands where I can see ¡®em! Do not move, sir!¡± The agent was hyper alert but not even close to surprised to see a big alien driving a stolen cop car.

    ¡°Good evening, sir. As you know, I am officer Wearie of the Ketchikan Sheriff¡¯s Department and this man has been in an accident. I am assisting him. There is nothing you need from us. You are looking for someone else.¡± Plop ¡®ik said, turning his eye to the agent. The man slumped a little and I thought he might fall down. He regained his balance and shook his head as if to wake himself up.

    ¡°Um, uh. Sorry, Wearie. Guess we got our wires crossed. Received some intel that a fugitive, possibly infected, was seen fleeing the area. We¡¯re just checking out every lead.¡± The agent pulled out a notepad and scribbled something on it. Then added, ¡°Have a nice night, officer.¡± and walked back to his SUV. He did a quick U-turn and headed back toward town with the two other SUVs following close behind.

    I started to laugh but it made my broken bone sing a very painful song. ¡°Did you really just Jedi mind trick that guy?¡± I asked Plop ¡®ik, somewhere between flabbergasted and impressed. ¡°That was unreal!¡±

    ¡°I altered the way his mind interacts with the reality field. Many authority figures have minds similar to his. He required reassurance that he was doing his duty. He wanted order and the maintenance of the status quo. Perhaps a simple way to explain it would be to say that I helped him to see what his mind wanted to see.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said, once again lying down on the hard bench of the back seat. ¡°You¡¯re really great at explaining things in the simple way, aren¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°Sarcasm requires a healthy inferior frontal gyrus. I shall take it as a sign of your overall brain health. A good sign,¡± Plop ¡®ik said, not even batting his singular massive eye.

    Hugging the coastline, we moved further up Tongas Highway until we were past Wrangell. It was close to midnight when Plop ¡®ik took a left onto a steep road that curved down to the water and a gated marina. The parking lot of the place was empty except for a single-wide trailer sitting by the gate. The trailer had it¡¯s porchlight on. I remember laughing that the trailer had a porchlight but no porch, just a saggy couch and a dirty cooler by the door. Plop ¡®ik parked the car next to it and got out with only the slightest struggle.

    He opened the rear passenger door for me and said, ¡°We will be safe here for a little while. My friend owns this establishment. Come, we will visit with him and you can rest.¡± I felt myself being lifted out of the car but when I looked Plop ¡®ik wasn¡¯t touching me at all. He was lifting me with his mind, and I appreciated it. It would have been hell on my collarbone if he¡¯d tried to pick me up by my torso or arms. This way the pressure was evenly dispersed across my entire frame, minimizing the pain.

    Plop ¡®ik walked and I floated towards the trailer then he knocked on the door. It shook and I thought it might fall off its hinges but quickly it opened and we looked upon a man that I recognized.

    It¡¯s the old man from the bar! The one that was raving about UFO¡¯s!

    ¡°Mr. Norton?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Hello, my son,¡± he said and bowed slightly. It was then I noticed that the old man was wearing the clerical collar of a priest along with a yellow Mr. Rogers sweater. ¡°And hello to you as well, Plop ¡®ik of Plos Lodril,¡± he said to the tall alien that was still telekinetically levitating me like a marionette on invisible strings. ¡°Please, come in.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Father Norton. How is my submarine?¡± Plop ¡®ik asked offhandedly as we entered.

    ¡°She¡¯ll float,¡± Father Norton said, a broad smile painted across his wrinkled but dignified face.

    ¡°Yes, but...¡± Plop ¡®ik paused and then giggled innocently. ¡°Oh, you are making a joke! Very good, Father.¡±

    ¡°And she¡¯ll dive too, of course. She is waiting for you at the coordinates you sent me, on autopilot. I guess this is the last of your business in Alaska then, my friend?¡±

    ¡°Oh no, I will come here again. I imagine I will return here to die, like the salmon.¡±

    ¡°They return to birth a new generation. Do you intend to that as well?

    ¡°We shall see, Gregory,¡± Plop ¡®ik smiled at the priest and then turned his eye to the floor, contemplating something I could not even guess.

    The trailer, while dingy and salt-rusted on the outside, was cozy and neat inside. The primary decorations were an abstract painting, a large cross with bronze hanging Jesus, and a purple homemade quilt. Plop ¡®ik set me on a soft seat in the cramped kitchen area and then gingerly draped the quilt over me.

    ¡°He¡¯s hurt badly, and we are far from our destination,¡± Plop ¡®ik said to the old priest. ¡°Can you help him?¡±

    ¡°Is he at risk of dying? He doesn¡¯t look all that bad to me. Perhaps he can just buck up. Then deal with him once you get to your ship.¡± The priest and the alien were talking about me as if I wasn¡¯t in the room, which was partly true. My head was spinning again and my broken bone was grinding.

    ¡°Not of the injuries, but he could die of shock. I can quell the pain but his mind, it¡¯s in danger of slipping away to the subtle fields beneath this reality. He must remain conscious, I fear that this man suffers from a mind eager to escape itself.¡±

    That doesn¡¯t sound good, I thought.

    The priest scratched his stubble and said, ¡°So we¡¯ve got a psychic in danger of detaching from the ethereal plane, huh? Moonmoth wings might do the trick. Keep his mind rooted firmly in the here and now! It won¡¯t be very fun, but it¡¯ll work.¡± The man¡¯s accent was flat and difficult to place, as if he were fluently speaking a second language. He was completely different from when I met him at the bar.

    ¡°Ah, yes. The moonmoths of Hru. Young ones on Plos would acquire the wings occasionally and have large gatherings in the desert. The wings¡¯ microorganic compounds assist with the formation of mass collective empathy-bubbles. Very erotic,¡± Plop ¡®ik said, almost giggling again. I got the feeling that the alien was having fun on our little fugitive adventure. I could not say the same thing.

    ¡°I have some in my room, and a pipe as well!¡± The old priest said as he clambered up to the six by four foot lofted bed which was his entire ¡®room¡¯.

    Plop ¡®ik sat by me and placed a warm, three-fingered hand on my forehead.

    ¡°This will help with the pain. If you can help it, try not to leave your body for now,¡± he said to me. Then I felt a warm flood of tranquility flush into me, like I was being pumped full of endorphins. I liked it.

    As the haze began to cloud my senses I said, ¡°You¡¯re... drugging me.¡± I was too high at that point to feel indignant, but it did freak me out a little. I had no idea what Plop ¡®ik was doing to me. What he might be infecting me with. I figured that there was much more to Plop ¡®ik¡¯s abilities than I could guess.

    ¡°Not a drug, exactly. Your own anterior pituitary gland is producing the hormones you feel now. I am just rearranging precursor proteins in your brain. Only a slight adjustment.¡±

    ¡°Oh, for the love of God, stop messing with my brain!¡± I moaned. ¡°I am just barely hanging on here.¡±

    ¡°Be calm. There is none more qualified to manipulate your neural chemicals than I.¡±

    ¡°And why is that?¡±

    ¡°Because they are my creation.¡±

    ¡°Really, Plop ¡®ik, I don¡¯t think I can take much more of this crazy shit. My head¡¯s already fried from the war, I don¡¯t need all this alien stuff. Just let me go home.¡± Despite the flood of endorphins I was still aware of the sharp divergence from reality that my world had taken. All my touchstones, my concept of what the world was, who I was, all of it had been blown away like dust motes in the breeze. I was ready to get off this ride.

    ¡°I will not force you to come with me, but what will you do? You are wanted in connection with three homicides and one viral outbreak. The CDC has identified you as a person of interest and potential creator of the weaponized Ebola plague that is sweeping through your city. The one that nearly killed our friend Ana Martinson.¡±

    ¡°Ana,¡± I whimpered to myself. There was a human that made my own suffering seem small by comparison. It was a miracle that she survived and an even greater miracle how quickly she recovered. The last time I saw Ana, all her bleeding had stopped and her heartbeat was leveling off at a healthy rate.

    ¡°But you didn¡¯t save her!¡± I said, glaring at Plop ¡®ik. ¡°It was that Tulip guy! He gave me the virophage, you weren¡¯t even there!¡±

    ¡°Yes, I know. I wish you had not done that.¡± Plop ¡®ik said, seeming wistful for a reason I couldn¡¯t guess. I thought I had saved Ana, and that the zombie bears had helped me, right before they killed three innocent people. Dr. Alessandro was an asshole but he didn¡¯t deserve to die like that.

    ¡°I saved her, Plop ¡®ik! If you think I fucked up, then maybe I am on the wrong side of this thing. She should not have to go through having her insides leak out her eyeballs. And you¡¯re saying I shouldn¡¯t have taken the cure when I had the chance? Maybe I should be working for Mr. Tulip and his magic bears,¡± I said, not really meaning it. I was just confused, angry, and in a monumental amount of pain.

    ¡°You did what you thought was correct at the time. There is much you do not know about Kli Truip and the gifts he offers human beings, or about the price for those gifts. Things you could not have known.¡± Plop ¡®ik set his hand on my shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. ¡°Your feelings for Ana, your love, your empathy. These are your strengths, Isaac. These are the emotions that make you powerful.¡±

    Before I could ask Plop ¡®ik what he meant, the old priest dropped back down from his lofted bed, holding a plastic food container and a big glass pipe.

    I was noticing the odd juxtaposition of a priest and a rainbow-colored marijuana pipe when Father Norton sat down at the little table with us and opened his plastic box. Inside of it was a pile of what looked to be big dragonfly wings, partly translucent and cyan. He took a few between his thumb and forefinger and stuffed them into the bowl of the pipe.

    ¡°I think I¡¯ll join you, my son,¡± the priest said to me. He then lit a match, let it burn a moment, and began to smoke the wings. He inhaled deeply and held the smoke in his lungs for a few seconds. As he exhaled he chanted, ¡°Shanti, shanti, shanti.¡± He closed his eyes and was silent.

    ¡°Are we getting high?¡± I asked Plop ¡®ik. ¡°I don¡¯t really feel like partying. Do you have any pain meds?¡± The pain from my collar bone had gone down from a 9 to a 6, but it was still agonizing.

    Plop ¡®ik shook his head, ¡°It would be dangerous for you to lose what little control you have over your mind, at this point. Opiates might trigger a negative reaction in your mind. Do you remember leaving your body on our way here? It was only for a moment, but your mind shed its corporeal housing. If you were under the influence of strong narcotics, there is a chance that, if you project again, you may not return. You might leave this plane of reality permanently.¡±

    ¡°Enough blathering,¡± Father Norton piped up, interrupting us. ¡°Here, smoke this and listen to the music of your chakras.¡± The priest said a lot of weird stuff that sounded to me like parapsychology mixed with some kind of natural mysticism. A far cry from Christian dogma.

    I took the pipe and did as I was told. Something about what Plop ¡®ik¡¯s touch had done to me made it hard to say no. I was put at ease to the point where I didn¡¯t want to. The priest lit the pipe for me and I filled my lungs with the surprisingly sweet smoke of the moonmoth wings.

    Then I was gone.

 Chapter 7

    <ol start="7">

    <li> Plop ¡®ik¡¯s Dream</li>

    </ol>

    ¡°Seventh son?¡± a gentle voice was asking me.

    ¡°Yes, Third Father?¡± I answered.

    ¡°Do you know why I have brought you to the pyramid?¡± We stood on the steps of the pyramid that our ancestors had dedicated to Time and Forgetfulness, two of our ancestors¡¯ most revered gods. In the sky, a flock of glowing air-worms floated over our heads toward the coastline. The sun blazed blue and green as it set behind the ocean world that occluded the blackness of space above us. Our primordial homeworld, Igz Nomex.

    My First father was one of the first of the Plos, of our people, to come to this moon and begin to build a perfect world. The magnificent blue planet, so much larger than my home moon, served as a pleasant reminder to our people of our roots. Once we swam among the cephalopods and cetaceans, now we build temples and sail out among the stars.

    ¡°I do,¡± I told him. ¡°I am to meet the One God, Elotiel. Commander Kli Truip has selected one from each of the nine moons to commune. I am to bring honor to our people.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± said my Third Father, something of sadness in his voice and in the colors that streamed from the tips of his plolorium. ¡°Plop ¡®ik, do you believe that the One God is kind?¡±

    A strange question, yet one never discussed by the missionary commanders who had come to Plos Lodril to tell us of the coming of the Elotiel. ¡°He is all powerful and all knowing,¡± I said, slightly unsure of how to respond. A warm breeze blew from out of the forested canyon below us, seeming to try and sweep us up the steps of the pyramid toward the temple above but we remained on the lowest stone platform.

    ¡°So it is said by Commander Kli Truip, but is the One God kind? Is he good?¡±

    I remembered what the missionary commanders had told us, ¡°He is the everything and the nothing. He is to be obeyed and given tribute. He is the devourer of worlds.¡±

    ¡°So,¡± said my Third Father. As my teacher he always lead our conversations this way. He asked the questions and invited me to postulate which would lead to more questions.

    ¡°I imagine,¡± I said, now speaking with my own words. ¡°That The One God is too vast for kindness. A being that lives outside of time, one with the ability to grant his followers the powers of the gods, one like this defies conventional judgement.¡±

    ¡°Perhaps, but is there not a universal morality?¡±

    ¡°I...¡± as a Plos I had been taught to avoid prejudice when it came to other races. We lived on only one of nine moons and we were only one of many intelligent races orbiting the oceanic world of Igz Nomex. Even though our culture believed in the reservation of judgement and empathy and understanding above all things I had always held to the personal belief in what my father now called a universal morality. ¡°I believe there is, Third Father. I empathize with and value all life, but the highest forms of intelligence are love, compassion, and peace.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± he said and blinked his eye. ¡°Yes, Plop ¡®ik, I believe you are ready to commune with the One God, and I believe you will have much to teach him.¡±

    His eye gazed into mine, my teacher, my guardian. In that moment I loved him and respected more than anyone else on Plos Lodril. He had tutored me, taught me everything he knew about life and nature, about the gods and all of the aspects of the mind. He had been preparing me for today. Now I would join the Consortium and represent the Plos and our way of life to...

    The thoughts faded into muddled rhythms of sounds that made no sense to me. I saw bright white light that stung not one but now my two eyes. Had I been dreaming? But it was so real... All of the details of the dream were gone by the time I came down from the moonmoth wings. When I was fully awake we were on the sea. Without any idea how I got there I struggled to think back on the events prior to blacking out. I remembered pain and fear. I remembered the priest, Norton, who had to be another of Plop ¡®ik¡¯s agents. Just like Ana. There was something about a pyramid too, but it was too hard to recall. None of it seemed real. All that felt real was the cold wind sweeping off the water as the boat bounced along.

    I was standing on the deck of a small pleasure cruiser, about 30 feet long with a hydrogen powered jet engine, there would be enough power to take us almost anywhere on the west coast of Canada or the Northwest United States. I assumed we hadn¡¯t traveled too far but then again I really had no idea how long I had been traversing the innermost pathways of my own body. I could see nothing from the deck of the ship but the blackness of the night and the stars above my head.

    If I had my Omniphone I could use the StarGazer app to pinpoint my location but I think I left it in the goddamn truck. Pooping is going to be so boring now! I thought to myself, realizing just how dependent I was on the little rectangle of glass and microchips. I brushed the thought away and looked for my alien kidnapper.

    Plop ¡®ik was on the elevated cockpit platform that sat above the cabin which contained a living quarters, a kitchen, and a cubby-like bed. I joined him at the helm and laughed when I saw he was wearing one of those silly orange life-jackets, four sizes too small of course. He looked like the progeny of a one-eyed shipwreck survivor and some kind of phosphorescent octopus.

    ¡°Nice life-jacket,¡± I said, still feeling a little hung over. Strangely my collarbone and ribs both felt fine.

    ¡°I cannot swim. Yet I keep my home in the sea. Strange, yes? Humans are not the only creatures capable of being enigmatic,¡± the alien said and smiled at me with his tubular mouth. At first I found Plop ¡®ik¡¯s appearance off-putting, verging on grotesque, but I was starting to see him as soft-natured and polite. I wasn¡¯t sure about his motives, but at least he didn¡¯t freak me out that much anymore.

    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

    ¡°It¡¯s November,¡± I informed him. ¡°The water¡¯s about forty eight degrees fahrenheit. A life jacket will only help the Coast Guard find your body. Unless you have some kind of magic alien resistance to the cold.¡± I wasn¡¯t being facetious, I genuinely had no idea what the creature was capable of, or what could kill him, if anything.

    ¡°I can exist in a vacuum, but I also sink in water. Hence the flotation device. I am glad you are awake, Isaac. We are only a few minutes away from descent. Have you ever traveled in a submarine?¡±

    ¡°At Disneyland, when I was like ten. So you really have a submarine? Like a nuclear battle sub? Or is it one of those little ones they use to look for giant squids on the Discovery Channel.¡±

    ¡°More the latter. It was designed by a friend of mine. It has limited combat capabilities, but its primary purposes are travel and observation.¡±

    I was still wearing my blood and vomit stained clothes from the two days before. The boat had no clean clothes but there was a brand new toothbrush and tube of toothpaste in the head. There was also a box of stale crackers that I dumped into my mouth greedily. After eating, washing my face, and brushing my teeth I felt a little better but I needed a nap. My body was still trying to recalibrate itself after the moonmoth wing trip and I was as tired as I had been since my twenty-four hour rotations back in Afghanistan. Oh yeah, and I had a broken collar bone from being beaten half to death. I descended the stairs and followed Plop ¡®ik onto the deck.

    Just as the alien had said, there was a submarine waiting for us by a flashing buoy in the middle of the Gulf of Alaska. It was yellow and only about fifteen feet long. The metal hull was a little rusty, which did not inspire a lot of confidence, but other than that it looked sea worthy. The cockpit was a big glass bubble that allowed the pilot and copilot an almost 360 degree view of the surrounding sea. Atop the bubble was an open hatch. Plop ¡®ik pointed to it.

    ¡°Shall we go then?¡± he asked pleasantly.

    I suddenly felt like I was going to be sick, and I was right. Between the cramped little submarine -a two seat observation vessel with enough room for both Plop ¡®ik, myself, and a gummi worm, maybe two- and the undersea currents that rocked the tiny ship, I was as sick as I had ever been. There is a reason the word sea is in nausea.

    It felt like days passed while we sank into the black abyss. I was barely coherent when the sub dipped into some kind of deep-sea cave, just wide enough for Plop ¡®ik to carefully navigate. Then a glowing light shone down from above and we emerged in a strange cavern with a long dock. The submarine would need a thorough pressure washing at some point, I thought to myself as we finally disembarked.

    We emerged in some kind of underwater grotto or hollow cave in the depths. We were far out to sea and deep underneath the surface but the submarine¡¯s hatch opened and fresh air fill the cabin. Plop ¡®ik unbuckled me and I immediately faceplanted into a pile of vomit on the floor of the sub. In all, the trip had been just one more reason for me to hate Plop ¡®ik with a passion. I was like a vomit covered rag doll and Plop ¡®ik carried me telepathically from the sub to a large circular portal built into the cave. I glared at him, my anger displacing my pain and nausea.

    ¡°I am never getting into that thing again, god damn you,¡± I muttered angrily and glared at the alien. At that moment his cilia, or flagella, or whatever, were standing straight up and absolutely brilliant with pure white light. Does that mean he¡¯s happy or what?  Before I could ask him, a round door, at least ten feet high, rolled open to reveal a large room with metal walls, three glass doors, and one bay window that looked out onto some larger area beyond. It was sparse, sterile, and most of all boring. Not at all what I expected upon getting my first glimpse at an alien¡¯s headquarters.

    ¡°Welcome to my home, Isaac.¡± Plop ¡®ik said as he helped me through the portal.

    ¡°I hate it.¡± I said grumpily.

    ¡°That is unfortunate, though I am pleased to show it to you. I am very proud of the work we have done here and I look forward to continuing that work with you, Isaac.¡±

    ¡°Before we get to that¡±, I interrupted him, sneering ¡°Do you have a change of clothes? I¡¯m all bloody... and vomitty. And I think I need a doctor.¡±

    ¡°Yes, of course. Please, remove your clothes.¡± He walked over to the wall behind the and touched a relieved panel, revealing a small white chamber with enough room for Plop ¡®ik. I disrobed and he directed me inside. The glass door slid shut behind me with the obligatory shhht sound. Hot water began to pour down from the ceiling, as hot as I could stand. It felt like I was being sand blasted and then an explosion of air from beneath me removed every molecule of water, or anything else, from my broken, naked body. I stumbled out and Plop ¡®ik offered me a stool that I had not seen before.

    ¡°So thirsty,¡± I said. I felt desiccated inside and out. There was nothing I wanted more at that moment than a tall glass of ice cold water.

    ¡°I am afraid that you won¡¯t be able to consume any liquids for a little while longer. What we must do will require that you¡¯re stomach is completely empty.¡±

    ¡°Trust me, there is nothing left in there. I promise,¡± I said and felt another surge of bile ascend my esophagus. ¡°Then I need some answers.¡±

    ¡°A fair request, Isaac. I will do my best to satisfy it but I must admit, I cannot tell you every aspect of our work. For it is possible your brain is being accessed by other minds than mine. Minds that would seek to impede us. Beings that, if they understood your value, would not hesitate to kill you. The Consortium has expelled me. They have discovered my intentions and now Kli Truip will stop at nothing to kill me and my human Retainers.¡± His flagella were undulating slowly, fading from turquoise to a deep indigo.

    ¡°You were part of the Consortium at one point, right. A kind of designer? I think you said you were an architect? They¡¯re trying to kill you now, though? Don¡¯t they need you?¡±

    ¡°They did. Unfortunately that is no longer the case. The Consortium¡¯s mission here on Earth will end soon. The Commander has decided to implement the final phase of their plan.¡±

    ¡°You mean this Kli Truip, right? But what the fuck do you all want with me? Why can¡¯t you tell me why it¡¯s all happening to me? I never asked to help you fight this war, as noble a cause it may be. Though you haven¡¯t told me that either really. You have a knack for dancing around the answer and something tells me that you know exactly what you are doing.¡±

    ¡°I apologize, Isaac. I will be forward. You are the only human on the planet with a brain that can house a mind capable of quantum separation. Your mind can exist in more than one place at the same time.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s complete bullshit, Plop ¡®ik! You said that natural selection made humans what we are and that you just directed our evolution with programmed viruses. How can natural selection work outside the laws of nature? Even if you secretly programmed a virus to change my DNA, how could you change my brain into something that doesn¡¯t exist in nature? I am still made of the same shit as all other humans; carbon, nitrogen, proteins, and... and...¡± I felt a pang of vertigo and then I collapsed.

    Plop ¡®ik¡¯s flagella slackened and turned a bright green. He walked over, his clawed feet clicked on the metal floor like rain on a tin roof, and put a warm hand on head. Instantly my dizziness vanished and I felt quite good. Jubilant, in spite of broken bones and a throbbing head. I was hopeful. I was proud. I felt like a powerful animal, just awake, stretching in the sun. Plop ¡®ik was doing something to me and I wasn¡¯t sure I wanted him to stop.

    ¡°You make a very good point¡±, he admitted. ¡°According to human science it is impossible to separate the mind from its corporeal housing. But did you not astrally project your own mind outside of body last night?¡± He lifted me to my feet and led me by my hand to a great window, filled with ethereal light.

    ¡°Please, come with me,¡± he said with a reverent intensity. ¡°I want to introduce you to a friend. Well, one of them at least. What you deem impossible, he sees as merely difficult.¡±

 Chapter 8

    <ol start="8">

    <li> Isaac Austen, Astral Projector</li>

    </ol>

    I stood by Plop ¡®ik looking out of the wide window at the end of the antechamber. I gasped to see the scope of what the alien wanted to show me. Spread out before us in a grid pattern was what looked like a city of golden pyramids. Each about ten meters tall with a six square meter base.

    There were lanes between each pyramid and I counted them from left to right. Twenty three in all on both axes. The walls of the giant room were covered in the same metallic material as the antechamber but the floor was striped with bands of black, silver, and gold that ran between the pyramids asymmetrically.

    The entire pit was probably over 1000 square meters. You could have held three football games at once in the thing, with room for a taco-cart. It was much taller than it needed to be. The chamber could have supported pyramids three times as high, though not as wide. Perhaps it was due to the limited light source; which was a large spherical bulb hanging from the center of the ceiling. The cloudy light that it cast on the gleaming pyramids gave the room the warm ambiance of a Spanish cathedral. Even though I was an atheist, I found it somehow holy.

    ¡°What... what is it?¡± I stammered.

    ¡°It is a brain,¡± Plop ¡®ik said, his wispy phalanges flashing resplendently. His eye was open wide, exposing a bright pink pupil, flecked with gold. I wasn¡¯t sure if that was due to the reflection of the pyramids, or was it caused by one of his inscrutable emotions?

    ¡°It is a self aware intelligence. It calls itself Myriad. His creators spent eons amassing the palladium and gold for the quantum conductors, and even longer fabricating the fallalium.¡±

    ¡°Fallalium...?

    ¡°An alloy of eight different isotopes, with properties proven impossible by human scientific systems. None of these isotopes exist naturally on Earth so I had to fabricate them using samples brought from inside the Magellanic Cloud. My race were the first to begin utilizing its superconductive electron patterns. Superficially it resembles volcanic glass, and has some properties similar to silica, except that it¡¯s macroparticles have negative mass.  Fallalium, paired with the superconductivity of gold, creates the most perfect processor. In the right circumstances we can use it to transmit particles at superliminal speeds. I could show you a diagram, if you would like. It¡¯s simple, really. Imagine if Arthur was in possession of particle A and Bobby was in possession of particle B-¡± He really would just go on and on. I cut him off.

    ¡°Right, of course. Special space-metal. Why do you need a quantum computer?¡±

    ¡°The consortium does not need Myriad. They have done all they can to eliminate any trace of his kind from the universe. But that is something that, unfortunately, I cannot risk sharing at this time. I can only apologize if you are unsatisfied by this. Remember that your thoughts are not fully your own.¡±

    ¡°I get that part. You don¡¯t want to tip your hand to this Tulip, but at least you could tell me who he is? Why is he listening to my thoughts? And why are you so afraid of him?¡±

    ¡°Kli Truip. He was once my partner, well, my Commander really. He was the supervisor for our entire project on Earth, or as we would say ¡®terra¡¯.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I used to watch Star Trek.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± Plop ¡®ik said, missing or ignoring the reference. Then he walked to one of the two doors that led out of the antechamber.

    The glass door slid into the wall and he passed into another brightly lit room. I limped after him and found myself in a long hallway, lined on both sides with coffin-sized glass tubes. The tubes were filled with what looked to be bubbling liquids of green, magenta, violet, and gold. The colors of the Aurora Borealis.

    I approached the tube to my left and was surprised to see a naked man floating in electric blue gel. He wasn¡¯t attached to anything, just floating in peaceful sleep. I tapped on the glass like a child in an aquarium trying to startle an octopus.

    ¡°Isaac,¡± Plop¡¯ik scolded me, ¡°Please do not disturb them.¡±

    ¡°Them?¡±

    Down the length of the hallway I could make out at least two dozen similar tubes. Most were empty but a few contained naked humans of varying shapes and genders.

    ¡°Who are they?¡± I asked, not sure if I was looking at a science project or a collection of victims.

    ¡°These are Retainers, humans with unique genetic mutations. I have been keeping them in stasis, and recombining their DNA as well as augmenting and sequencing it with my own fabricated polymerases. The solution that you see contains a population of programmed viruses, to maintain tissue integrity, and magnesium ions to improve polymerization of the target sequences. Their genetic destiny represents a new tier in human evolution.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean? Are they like me?¡±

    ¡°Not exactly, some have telepathic abilities, some are more equipped to be soldiers, but each are empowered with natural gifts, surgically enhanced with genetically-tailored brain implants.¡±

    I was awed by the sights and sounds of this strange collection of humans in jars, but I can¡¯t say that I was that impressed with Plop ¡®ik¡¯s science project. I mean, he did possess a super-computer. As complex as it is to reverse engineer targeted three dimensional protein shapes it was something that humans had been doing for decades now.

    The decoding of the human proteome was basically one big chain reaction of which humans had just begun to scratch the surface, but would ultimately result in knowledge of all biological interactions and complete understanding of how organisms function. The past decade might be called the dawn of a new age for molecular biology, especially for medical applications. Working in medicine had allowed me access to some of the newest technologies informed by our new knowledge of the proteome, all manufactured by an Oregon based conglomerate called the Plopman Group. Even Ketchikan¡¯s backwoods oncology center was using a kind of protein screening method to diagnose cancer before the cells could even metastasize.

    I wondered how much more advanced Plop ¡®ik¡¯s Consortium was than modern human science. There would always be part of me that wanted to say ¡®meh, we could do that. Given enough time and resources, humans could accomplish anything.

    ¡°You are in pain, Isaac. Come.¡± Plop ¡®ik pointed to a circular platform at the end of a row of tubes.

    ¡°Oh, hell no!¡± I said backing away from the platform. ¡°You want to put me in a jar? You think I¡¯m that stupid?¡±

    ¡°Isaac, if I wanted to, I could lift you with my mind and set you on the platform with the smallest effort,¡± said Plop ¡®ik and I knew he was right. ¡°You are damaged and you need to heal. This chamber is not meant to trap you. It is meant to prolong your life. When you look at the humans around you now, you think that they are my prisoners, yes? This could not be further from the truth.¡±

    ¡°Then what are they? What the hell are you doing with these people?¡±

    ¡°They are my retainers. These men and women come from every epoch of human history. What they have in common is their loyalty to our cause. Right now their minds are joined as one, a common dream.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡±

    ¡°I will show you,¡± Plop ¡®ik said.

    I stepped onto the platform cautiously, aware that there was a distinct possibility of becoming part of his museum of hominids, but what choice did I have? I turned to ask him what he was doing but before I could say a word, a glass tube shot down from the ceiling, trapping me like an insect in a collector¡¯s jar. Asshole, I thought as I tried to kill him with my best death-stare, to no avail.

    ¡°Plop ¡®ik! God damn you, you bastard asshole!¡± I shouted, but my critique of the alien went unnoticed.

    Then a bright red fluid, somewhat viscous, began to fill the tank and within seconds I was fully submerged. I writhed in the cool red slime and pounded on the glass. I felt slow and weak as if I was in a dream, where every movement was tortuously ineffective. Then my fingers and toes filled with a pleasant warming sensation, electrical and tingling, that spread up through my extremities through my body and into my head. The pain was gone. The bruises disappeared. I could literally feel my broken bones resetting themselves and healing impossibly fast. The liquid filled my nostrils and my mouth but I wasn¡¯t drowning. In fact I hadn¡¯t felt so good in quite a while.

    ¡°You see? Much better,¡± came Plop ¡®ik¡¯s voice, gentle yet resonating in my head. His mouth wasn¡¯t moving. He just watched me healing as I floated in the strange goo.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    ¡°You¡¯re in my head?¡± I asked him without vocalizing. Speaking telepathically like this felt surprisingly natural somehow. I was calm, all of the rage of the invasion of my mind was subdued, put into the background of my thoughts.

    ¡°I need you to locate someone for me. I need you to leave your body once more. This machine will keep a part of your consciousness anchored here, so you won¡¯t become lost.¡±

    ¡°Who?¡± I wondered, the liquid swirled around my eyes and everything felt like a dream.

    ¡°Ana Martinson. I can help propel you toward her but only you can see where she is,¡± Plop ¡®ik said and then set his massive three-fingered hand against the glass of my tube. ¡°Are you ready?¡±

    He didn¡¯t wait for my reply.

    Then I was alone. I couldn¡¯t sense Plop ¡®ik at all. The ocean and then the earth rocketed out from underneath my disembodied consciousness. I felt like a kite blowing in a hurricane until finally I settled, somehow gaining control enough to come to a halt. I could see. I was high up above the Earth, like I was looking at an incredibly detailed map except this map was covered in mutlicolored auras, hues radiating like weather systems. Each continent was visible under giant swirling clouds of what I somehow knew was psychic energy. A dark black storm front stuck out, calling my attention and making me feel ill despite being so far away from my body.

    It was Alaska.

    ¡°I need to find Ana!¡±

    The thought exploded in my mind. It was like I couldn¡¯t resist the pull of her gravity. Soon Alaska blew up before me until all I could see was the greens and browns of the forests, the white mountain-tops, and the dark blue sea. I found myself drifting, falling, being pulled toward Ketchikan and then I was in a hospital bedroom.

    Ana was lying on a gurney. There was no one else around. No doctors. No nurses. No cops.

    I couldn¡¯t help myself. I dove right into her brain like it was a swimming pool. I felt a sudden rush of energy and sensation and then I was in her head. I had stowed away in my first human mind. It was incredible. I hid myself in what seemed to be a quiet section of her subconscious. I was going on pure intuition, and tried my best to be a passive observer.

    Then she woke up.

    ¡°Gets easier every time,¡± she groaned to herself before she stretched and looked around her room. If she was counting, which she was, she had died approximately 18 times.

    Looking around her room, she saw that the place had been bio-tented. Quarantined by the CDC, as told by the red biohazard warnings and logos on the plastic sheets that made up her isolation bubble. Ana gracefully dismounted from the bed and began to remove the hydration IV and monitor lines that were stuck to her arm.

    Despite feeling fine, she took it easy and tested her weight on each leg before standing. Ana grunted just a bit as she felt the slight sting of atrophy in her calf. She would need to go for a run later, or maybe get into a fight. Nothing like a few high roundhouse kicks to get the juices flowing in proper fashion.

    ¡°Nurse!¡± She called out. ¡°I¡¯m awake.¡± All she could hear was the beeps and whirs of a few nearby machines. Otherwise the place was silent. ¡°Okay, I¡¯m going to leave. So if anyone wants to talk to me about the bill, well, you know my number.¡± She walked slowly over to the closet and found a pair of scrubs, cotton-candy pink. Her favorite color.

    She crossed the hall to the large circular arrangement of desks that made up the central hub of the department. No one there either. Now that was very strange. KGH was a small hospital but there was always someone in the ICU. But today there was not a soul in any of the eight rooms. No nurses, no patients, and none of the CDC agents who had pretty much tented the entire floor in emergency quarantine plastic. Ana¡¯s room had gotten the red-alert biohazard treatment.

    The whole hospital was the same, a ghost-town. Ana knew this for a mortal truth, because Ana possessed an ability that few other humans possessed. Ana could access a special part of her brain that, through her own will, could extend and contract her own magnetic field. She could reach out with invisible electric sensors and touch any other magnetic field that any life form might generate. She could even act upon said life form through said field and change it, down to its very cells. You might call it psychic electro-gnosis, or subtle body manipulation. Ana called it ¡®the trick¡¯. It was not easy for Ana to do, but the trick came in handy sometimes.

    This time when she reached out she felt nothing, nothing familiar anyway. Only a strange magnetic aura that seemed to dim as though it knew she was sensing it.

    At the hub she found the local-line and dialed out to her Omniphone. She was planning on listening to her messages or trying to figure out what the fuck was going on until she heard her ringtone. An eight-bit take on last year¡¯s pop-anthem about a teenage girl who falls in love with a transexual karaoke singer. Beeeep, boop, boop, Beeeep-eep-eep-eep! Ana found her phone in a nurse¡¯s locker in the break-room. There was one voicemail from a blocked number. She tapped play.

    ¡°Hello, Ana. I am grateful for your difficult work today. I am glad you are well. Please meet me at McDonald¡¯s at our usual hour.¡± The voice was elegant and cordial. It was the voice of an individual endowed with compassion and optimism. It was the voice of her boss.

    Ana noted the time. 2:36 pm. 12 hours since she started bleeding out of her eyes.

    She logged off of her voicemail and flipped over to local news. The page loaded slowly, which was not unusual with the cell reception in Alaska, but when it came up there was only an error message saying that the site was temporarily down for maintenance. She flipped to her web-browser¡¯s newsfeed, tapped the link for Alaska.

    The headlines read thusly:

    ¡°Ebola Strain Wipes Out Alaska Town in Hours¡±

    ¡°Ketchikan, AK: 20,000 Dead in Virus Outbreak Disaster.¡±

    ¡°CDC Shuts Down All Travel to and from Alaska.¡±

    Ana¡¯s reaction was to say this: ¡°Oh my motherfucking God. They started the end of the world.¡±

    Leaving the hospital, she saw where all the people had gone. They had died in bloody coughing fits. They had died with their liquefied intestines leaking out of their anuses. They had died in pain, and in terror.

    Ana had seen too much war and death for the grisly scene to put her into shock but when she left through the front exit she saw something that made her shudder, something she hadn¡¯t seen since World War II. Piles of bodies, all alike in charred blackness. Pyres made by survivors to sanitize the disease. There had to be hundreds all piled up in the parking lot. They were still smoking.

    She kept to the sloping road that ran from the hospital to Tongass Avenue. She saw houses with open doors and more bodies wrapped in blood-soaked sheets. There were CDC isolation tents, torn up and covered in thick red fluid. There were buildings on fire, and smoke choking everything with a gray haze. But there were no people. If anyone had survived the outbreak they were long gone. She broke into a jog as she approached Jefferson Street.

    Smoke from the town and fog from the sea limited her visibility to the point where she could only see a few yards ahead. She saw the sign for Ketchikan¡¯s pathetic mini-mall and made a right into the parking lot. The place had a sporting goods shop, a book and music store, a Quequeg¡¯s  Coffee, and a McDonald¡¯s. Everything a body could need in this crazy old world. Also the meeting place for her contact.

    During the long winters of her seven year stint in Ketchikan, she would come down here every payday and grab a #1 from McDonald¡¯s, a new book, and a new vinyl record. She could just as easily have downloaded either onto her Omniphone without leaving the house, but she preferred the paper versions. The things that didn¡¯t disappear when your phone ran out of juice.

    She had lived the vast majority of her life without technology and simply didn¡¯t trust it. There would always be a part of her that longed for the pastoral life of her childhood. A life that she could never have again. As for the burger and fries the thought was making her hungry for that tasty combination of fat with more fat. Nice choice on the rendezvous point, boss.

    Before she pushed open the mall¡¯s glass double-doors she peeked inside. It was dark, like the place was closed. That was not surprising considering what she had read on her newsfeed. What surprised her was the eight-foot figure standing in the center of the mall. Through the darkness she could only see a silhouette, but it was one scary silhouette.

    ¡°I was wondering when I would get to meet the alien that saved my life. Missionary commander Kli Truip, I presume?¡± She said loudly as she sauntered into the mall like an overconfident cowgirl.

    The bear stood on its hind legs, fore-legs dangling in front, and mouth open wide. Its eyes had a familiar necrotic look, as if the thing had died hours ago. It raised its gigantic head at Ana.

    ¡°Correct, Ana Martinson,¡± It said without moving its mouth. Really it wasn¡¯t speaking at all. The bear was projecting a psychic message like a living telephone. Ana knew this was how the alien mastermind known as Kli Truip liked to deal with humans, even hyper-developed retainers like herself. She also knew that Kli Truip was in complete control of this creature, and psychically keeping its body in a state between life and death. She knew that he might be able to do the same to her if she wasn¡¯t extremely careful. If she had to fight, she could, but she needed to keep her mind still and calm, or else he could tear it apart.

    ¡°You are welcome for your life. I am quite pleased to offer it to you. However, I did not save you so you could rejoin your master, the traitor Plop ¡®ik. We know that he has betrayed us. We know that he intends to disrupt us and prevent the success of our mission. You are suited to help us, Ana Martinson. You have received gifts and are in debt to us. Is this not true? Do you wish to die with Plop ¡®ik for nothing?

    Once Earth is consumed by Elotiel, all life will become one. All human conscience will merge with God. You cannot stop this. The final step has come and soon Elotiel will be fed. Kill Plop ¡®ik and you may join us and live. What is your choice?¡±

    Ana¡¯s skin crawled. She felt the heavy electromagnetism of the alien-possessed bear. She could barely breathe from the miasma of psychic radiation that permeated her every membrane.

    ¡°Hmm,¡± she said, trying to hide the pressure that she was under. ¡°That is a lovely offer. You know, I do want to become one with God. I think that sounds nice,¡± Ana said and smiled. ¡°But you remind me of a story I read a long time ago, when I was waiting patiently for you aliens to give me an order, before Plop ¡®ik told me what the real plan was.

    It was about a rich man who gets his feelings hurt by another man over some nasty words. The other guy is a lush and loves wine. The rich guy is a wine collector or something. The other guy, he doesn¡¯t even realize that the rich one wants to kill him, doesn¡¯t even know that he pissed him off. So the rich man tricks the guy into following him down into his basement in for a bottle of wine. Then he ties the guy up and builds a wall around him so he can never get out. Boom, revenge.¡±

    ¡°You have spent too much time with Plop ¡®ik. You are starting to blather, like him, and that is not a compliment,¡± Truip snapped.

    ¡°I think you don¡¯t forgive trespassers, and I have trespassed all over you and those clowns who serve you. You need better help than Spaniards and bears to deal with me.¡± Ana was practically growling as she spoke.

    ¡°Your answer is no, then?¡± The bear asked.

    ¡°No,¡± said Ana. ¡°My answer is fuck you!¡± She ran and as she ran she prepared her mind to shout, to do the trick as hard she could. At her full power she could shout with her mind with such force that it could break down a brick wall. She could cut a man in half or start his cells on fire. Kli Truip could read her mind, but she may have time for one good burst of pure psychic rebellion.

    The bear was ready for her answer and immediately went into a wrestler¡¯s squat. Ana sped toward the thing, she was a blur in pink scrubs, a smear of blond hair making a trail behind her like lightning. The bear exploded from its stance, its long claws, ten horrible knives, reaching for her flesh. Just before it cut into her abdomen she released the psychic explosion from the center of her augmented cerebral cortex. The bear staggered in a staccato of jerky spasms. Blood erupted in a plume from its gaping mouth. A critical hit.

    She was just close enough to intuit the bear¡¯s unique magnetic field, a resonant wave that barely registered as alive but still oddly intense. She sensed a purple aura laden with static and psychic interference. She felt the hate pouring from the animal¡¯s brain. The anger. It had been a beautiful female black bear, now it was a slave to a devious mind.

    She felt the bear¡¯s field, grabbed on to it, and inserted a tiny part of her own field into every single one of its cells. She overrode the biological directives of the cells and told them to slow down, to stop working, and finally to die. The bear¡¯s cells obeyed her and the great black thing fell to the tile floor like so much meat. Its metabolism slowed down by psychically-induced entropy.

    She collapsed on top of the thing and sprawled out like she was resting on a fur rug. Her heart  was beating fast, too fast, but she didn¡¯t have the energy to slow her own metabolic processes so she had to endure the exhaustion just like any ordinary sucker when they were out of gas. She gasped for breath. She thought she might cry.

    I beat him, she thought. I faced Kli Truip and I beat him.

    Her Omniphone rang. Beeeep, boop, boop, Beeeep-eep-eep-eep! She picked herself up off of the floor and dragged herself over to the west wing of the mini-mall. It felt like a really long trip and there probably wouldn¡¯t be any burgers.

    She answered the phone, ¡°Odin¡¯s balls Choi, where the hell are you?¡±

    Then something dragged me away from her. I felt myself, bodiless and adrift in a tornado of dark auras. A miasma of negative energy and disease. Something was terribly wrong.

 Chapter 9

    <ol start="9">

    <li> House Call</li>

    </ol>

    I curled up in a bed, like a baby in a cradle. It was like one of those beds you might see in a commercial for laundry detergent, soft and warm as the womb. A fluffy white down comforter and linen sheets so soft it was like returning to the womb. I wrapped them around my shoulders and rolled over. There was light in my eyes, penetrating my eyelids and I wanted the light to go away. I was devoted to sleep and not interested in where I had been or where I was going when I woke up. I wanted to stay in that cocoon until the end of time. So it felt pretty much like a standard morning

    ¡°Are you enjoying the bed? Exhausting work, isn¡¯t it? All of this astral projection.¡± said a voice that I didn¡¯t recognize. Some kind of accent but it took too much work to think about it. The speaker prodded me gently but I wasn¡¯t ready to roll over and embrace the reality of the waking world just yet. So he kept talking. ¡°Isaac, did you dream?¡± Plop ¡®ik?, I wondered absently. No, definitely not him. ¡°My name is Hou Choi, and I am a friend of Plop ¡®ik and of Ana Martinson. I need you to listen to me. I want to help you. For you see, you¡¯ve lost your mind.¡± There was something tender in his voice, like a pediatrician speaking to a small child. Calm yet very firm.

    Ana! I found her! I sat up and shouted¡°I dreamed about Ana. She¡¯s alive! She¡¯s in Ketchikan! We have to-¡±

    ¡°Ana is quite well I assure you. She survived the virophage, though there have been some consequences. We cannot afford to worry about that now, however. I need you to drink this tea.¡± An asian man sat in a steel chair about two feet from the bed where I lay. He was wisp thin and had to be at least sixty years old by the lines around his dark, almond-shaped eyes. He wore a grey suit and tie. We were in a small room with white glass walls. The only furniture was the chair in which the asian man sat and my bed. The door behind him was left ajar and white light leaked in from someplace else. I really had no idea where I was or even what day it was.

    He handed me a cup, ¡°It is an essence of Moonmoth wing, though I think you will have an easier time accessing the subtle field within you this time. We have made some improvements. It will help to calm your mind.¡± He didn¡¯t mention if the improvements were to the Moonmoth or to something else.

    ¡°Uh, the last time I did Moonmoth it didn¡¯t exactly calm my mind,¡± I told him, remembering how I blacked out when I smoked with the priest outside of Ketchikan. Jesus, that felt so long ago now. I drank the tea anyway. I was thirsty.

    ¡°I realize that this experience has not been easy for you. I can help to recenter your chi, if you will let me.¡±

    ¡°Listen, man. I just want to go back to sleep.¡±

    ¡°In a moment. First, close your eyes, Isaac. I want you to listen to your own breath. Listen. Inhale through your nose. Exhale through your mouth. Listen deeply. Breathe.¡± He was like some kind of cheap yogi from a strip mall wellness-salon. But it felt nice, the heaviness of his voice, and my own breath. Nitrogen, carbon, and Oxygen. Oxygen to carbon-dioxide. I love a perfect system.  A perfect system can only be created by computers or by nature itself. Either it happens as the result of the most intelligent plan with even the most microscopic detail taken into account, or by a serendipitous accident. Yet, I knew that not ten inches above my forehead was a being that violated all of my preconceptions of the aesthetic of the universe.

    ¡°If you can I want you to listen to my voice and visualize the things that I tell you. When I say a word, I want you to create an image in your mind. Then I want you to pretend that you are not dreaming, and the things you see are real.¡±

    ¡°First, think of a desert. This desert is very large, endless, but the sun is not too hot. The desert is entirely empty except for you, and you are walking. Do you sense how the sand slides out from under your feet? Do you feel the sun on your skin?¡±

    It was so easy to go there. It was like flying in a dream. I felt propelled by my own emotions, my curiosity. I was the pilot and the engine of a rocket ship that could blast my mind into any reality that I wished. It was amazing, like lucid dreaming but a thousand times more vivid. The clean blue sky, the sand-dunes, it was all there, as if it had always been there. So familiar.

    ¡°Now, as you walk you find a jar, and then another larger jar, beyond that one another and so on. There are many jars but none too far from your reach. Each jar is a different size and each one has a word written so that you can read them all. One says oxygen. One says chakra. One says the sun. One says time. There is a living thing in each of these jars, but you can¡¯t know what. It could be anything in the world.¡±

    ¡°What is this place? What are these jars?¡±

    ¡°They are emanations of a collective consciousness shared with all mankind. This is a place created by the minds of every living person on the planet, a dream space.¡±

    The jars were all there, in a massive circle on the apex of a very large sand-dune. I saw their names written in chicken scrawl, and cursive. Some printed and some carved by hand.

    ¡°I want you to find the one that says Hope, and open it.¡±

    I did as the voice said and found the jar. It was one of the smaller jars, about as big as a jar of pickles except it was opaque and clay. I removed the clay cap from the rim of the jar and carefully looked inside. It was a frog. A beautiful beetle, it looked like it came from the Amazon rainforest or something. It was striped with yellow and red lines, and turquoise ringlets around its legs.

    ¡°Please close the lid and set the jar on the sand,¡± the voice requested. Again I did as I was told. There was some feeling that the voice gave me. I wanted to obey it. It had an undeniable power over me, not from any kind of real authority, but from trust. ¡°Now find the jar that says Death and open it, please.¡±

    This was the smallest jar of all. It had a cork lid that popped when I opened it, like the fart from a tupperware container. Inside was a bright-green praying mantis. It was slowly cleaning its claws and its antennae were twirling above its triangular head. It was looking at me, and it was really starting to creep me out. I put the cap on and sealed up the little bug before the voice told me to.

    ¡°I want you to find one last jar for me, Isaac. This jar says the word Future. Open it and free the creature inside. Let it out of the jar. Do it now.¡±

    The Future jar wasn¡¯t the biggest. It wasn¡¯t descript in any way save for the word written on it. It was about as big as a microwave oven, and very round. It was so light that when I picked it up I used too much force and threw the thing over my shoulder. It crashed open on the sand and thousands of honey bees were suddenly swarming all over me. Not stinging, but coating me in beating wings and crawling legs. Bugs. Why so many bugs?Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

    ¡°Bees,¡± Choi said solemnly. ¡°We must find Ahmuzen Cahb.¡±

    ¡°Shit,¡± muttered a woman¡¯s voice softly from beyond the doorway. ¡°I guess we¡¯re going to Mexico.¡±

    I recognize that voice! ¡°Ana!¡± I shouted and rose from the bed, only to discover that I was completely naked. ¡°Oh...¡±

    ¡°Here,¡± said Hou Choi, and handed me a terrycloth robe. I put it on and raced out the door.

    She was standing in the antechamber across the room from the large circular portal that lead to the submarine dock, leaning against the wide window that looked out onto hundreds of glowing gold pyramids. A leather jacket, jeans, and a plain white tee had replaced her patient¡¯s gown and for a woman who had recently contracted some strain of Super Ebola. The last time I saw her she had just killed a 9-foot-tall zombie bear with her bare hands. Was she one of these soldiers that Plop ¡®ik had mentioned? Well, for one thing she could heal faster than any human being should be able to, she could control her own metabolism and seemed to be able to detect subtle magnetic fields all around her, oh yeah and she killed a bear with her bare hands!

    ¡°Bare hands...¡± I stammered. I had no idea what to say to Ana. I wanted to hug her, hell I wanted to kiss her, but there was some aspect to her, maybe just the way she stood there with those icy blue eyes pinning me to the floor.

    ¡°I left the hands, well paws really. I thought about taking the head but where would I mount it,¡± Ana said and smiled. Her smile was a perfect crescent of gleaming white teeth and full red lips. She was a goddess.

    ¡°Ana,¡± I said and crossed the room to hug her.

    She squeezed back for a moment and whispered in my ear, ¡°Thanks for saving my life.¡±

    ¡°Uh, no problem.¡± I had almost forgotten about that. Go, me. I was becoming the hero that I always wanted to be. Only... ¡°I wish I could say it was all me but the medicine I gave you came from-¡±

    ¡°I know, Isaac. But you did good, for a newbie.¡± She gave me a peck on the cheek and then turned to speak to Hou Choi. ¡°So, Choi. Here we are again. How long has it been, anyways?¡±

    ¡°Thirty six years, Ana Martinson. Not so long at all,¡± he said grinning. There was something in the way he moved, a delicacy, that reminded me of the kung fu masters I had watched in movies growing up. An economy of motion, as if no muscle on his body acted outside of his will. It was like watching a ballerina just to see him move across the room to join us by the window.

    ¡°Isaac, it is a pleasure to finally meet you,¡± Choi said and bowed to me. ¡°I humbly apologize for the inconveniences placed upon you by these... unusual circumstances.¡±

    For some reason that pissed me off. ¡°Oh do you mean being nearly killed? No wait, maybe you mean how everyone in town now thinks I¡¯m a murderer. Yeah, it¡¯s been pretty inconvenient.¡±

    ¡°Oh, no,¡± Ana interjected. ¡°They don¡¯t think you¡¯re a murderer, Isaac. They think you¡¯re a bioterrorist.¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Oh yeah, it¡¯s pretty funny actually. You¡¯re like the most wanted man in the country right now,¡± Ana said, almost chuckling. The more she spoke the more my jaw dropped until it felt like I would have to pick it up off the floor. ¡°They think you cooked up this Super Ebola strain at the hospital. Can you believe that? God, as if you could engineer a super virus!¡± Somehow I was almost insulted at that, not the sentiment but her tone of voice. Hey, I could engineer a super virus. I just don¡¯t want to.

    ¡°This will make things difficult,¡± said Hou Choi. ¡°We need to make our initial move and soon. Isaac is our only hope of convincing the other Architects to act against Kli Truip. You need to take him to Mexico to meet with the God of Bees.¡±

    Ana turned away from us and gazed out the window. After a moment she spoke but did not look away from the window. ¡°Kli Truip wants us dead. He knows who Isaac is, and of course he knows we¡¯re in Alaska. I think that¡¯s why he set the virus loose here first. The US government has Isaac on a terrorist kill-or-capture list and even if we can get out of the country without starting World War Three, Mexico is ten times worse. We¡¯d be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Var inte s? f?rbannat dum!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not being stupid, Ana,¡± Choi said calmly. ¡°I am as aware as you are of the risks, but we have come to the end of the game, and unless we-¡±

    ¡°Stop!¡± I interrupted him, my voice raised. I had meant to sound authoritarian but what came out sounded more like a petulant child. ¡°Everybody shut up for one second!¡± They both looked at me like I was a mental patient. ¡°Just what the hell are you two talking about?!¡±

    Choi looked to Ana and she shrugged. ¡°It might be easier to show you,¡± she said. Something in her eyes told me that would be easier said than done.

    Choi turned out to be some kind of a doctor. He brought me to an examination room further down the hall of the tube people and I sat on a table of steel and white glass while he took my temperature and poked my ribs and organs. Then he drew some blood and placed it in a metal vial that he then put into a small hole in a rectangular machine the size of a refrigerator. He held an Omnipad in his left hand and flipped a pen absent-mindedly in his right. He seemed distracted.

    ¡°So,¡± asked the doctor as I sat on the examination table, swinging my legs. ¡°Still waiting on that forthcoming explanation.¡±

    He looked up from the device, ¡°Unfortunately, I feel inadequate as historian for our cause. Perhaps, Amelia when she comes back from... wherever she has gone.¡±

    ¡°Can you at least tell me what I¡¯m doing on this table?¡±

    ¡°Preparing for surgery, I need to install a small neural shunt in your skull. Please lie down, Mr. Austen.¡±

    Surgery? Sure! Oh, yeah of course put a neural shunt in my skull! I looked over to the glass door that lead out to the antechamber. A part of me wanted to scream, to protest, even to try and run away. Maybe I could jump into the submarine, get to the surface and find my way back to shore. But what would I do then? I was a fugitive. A terrorist. I had no choice.

    ¡°And after that?¡± I asked, somewhat dejected. Or at least depressed that once again I was powerless and in the hands of forces I did not understand.

    ¡°There is no way for you to learn what we need you to learn by telling. Yes, I could tell you that you have the capability of transdimensional psychic teleportation, or that once you are fully activated you will be able to extend your subtle body field and manipulate any object with your mind. But, as you see, these are just words, Isaac.¡±

    ¡°Not very comforting words.¡±

    ¡°Comfort,¡± he said lifting a small syringe into my view. ¡°Is a luxury you will have to learn to live without, but if you can... If we succeed,¡± he paused to inject me in the neck with a clear liquid. ¡°We give the human race the only chance it has.¡±

    Once again I sank into a dark oblivion, but by this time I was starting to understand how the line between consciousness and unconsciousness was thinner that I had believed before. Immediately I realized I was in some kind of lucid dream. I was floating above the examination table, once again disembodied. Only this time I had a more than tenuous grasp on how one could move in space without a body. I could sense, rather than see, a thin blue cone of energy, my energy, connecting my sleeping body with the ghost-like phantom that I was without it. I was anchored to myself, and so I had the freedom to drift. I went up. As far as I that thin tether to my body would let me. Before I realized what I¡¯d done I was in the black vacuum of space. I saw pinwheels take shape in the darkness, like thousands of spinning waves, the colors of the Aurora Borealis, fading in and out of an utter void. Star clusters whirled past me at impossible speeds. I could see in every direction, though seeing wasn¡¯t the right word. My perception was like its very own star, radiating out in every direction, sensing everything.

    Suddenly a voice cut through my stuporous wonder, ¡°Hey, Isaac. This is some brain you got, dude. Watch this!¡± The disembodied voice was whooping like a kid on Christmas morning. Without warning I began to careen through the stars, faster and faster, my tether to my own body becoming as thin as a spider¡¯s web. The pinwheels of color were flying in all directions, smashing into each other creating nebulas that grew into the spiral arms of a galaxy.

    ¡°This brain! This beautiful fucking brain!¡± It shrieked. The voice seemed like it was going insane with laughter. I recognized the tones that it made but the emotions were completely alien. It sounded almost like me. ¡°Oh shit! I almost forgot. Hello, Isaac? Isaac Austen? Thanks for the use of your brain, man! I promise I won¡¯t fuck it up. It is like heaven in here, so much power! Look, I know you have questions and you probably are freaking out a little right now. Don¡¯t try to respond, just watch.¡±

    A perfect plume of cosmic debris; lapis, orange, and flame red, exploded and then coagulated into the form of two shimmering eyes. Within the pupils I could see galaxies, billions of suns. I then began to fall, or I felt like I was falling. Maybe a more accurate verb would be zooming, like on a camera. The cluster of galaxies became one galaxy and then one star system and then one giant blue sphere, but it was not Earth. This world was much larger and I couldn¡¯t see any continents at all, just clouds and ocean.

    The voice spoke again, ¡°This is Myriad. I¡¯m a friend of Plop ¡®ik¡¯s? That cyclops alien guy who made you piss your PJ¡¯s? I want to show you something kind of weird. When it happens you¡¯re going to be like ¡®What the fuck¡¯?! But just chill. Breathe, my man. Well... don¡¯t breath. At this point you''re just a cloud of psychic energy so you don¡¯t have lungs.

    ¡°This is just like a little movie, you know. Just relax and I¡¯ll get you up to speed on all of the extraterrestrial bullshit. Plop ¡®ik tends to leave humans in the dark when he hires them. Just pay attention and remember to- Oh fuck! We are out of time, God, I can work fast with this brain. Okay-¡± and with that the voice was gone and my mind was floating above a world that no human eyes had ever seen.

 Chapter 10

    <ol start="10">

    <li> The Training Wheels of Astral Projection</li>

    </ol>

    I hung in my position orbiting the massive blue planet, like a cloud, barely moving at all. There, all notions of shock or fear seemed as meaningless as where I left my omni-pad, though I would like to check my missed calls and emails. My only thoughts were of the perfect synchronicity of the system, of the balance of mass and gravity, of light and heat. I sensed, for the first time, what Plop ¡®ik would later call the ¡®Reality Field¡¯.

    I watched for a long time as the dark red sun radiated outwardly and at the same time pulled the other celestial bodies toward itself. I sensed the incredible gravity but I also could tell that it had no affect on me.

    There were three planetary giants revolving around the even larger sun, one green and brown, one as black as coal and barely visible except when it passed between myself and the sun, and a blue one. The largest of the three was the blue giant. I approached it, using my curiosity to propel me where I wanted to go. The more I focused on my target, the faster I went.

    I passed a number of living moons as I descended toward the planet¡¯s surface, one I might have confused for Earth but for the position of the continents. Then I passed a thick layer of blue and white atmosphere. Nitrogen, I thought, and oxygen. There was water here, too. Actually it was all water, or what looked like water as far as I could tell. There wasn¡¯t any landmass at all, not even a single atoll. I came in close and very fast but I could still make out perfectly the flora and fauna that populated the ocean planet.

    There were whales, perhaps distinct in more than the visible ways from Earth whales, but they surfaced and shot jets high into the air. I followed one pod of them until they met another larger group, and then that group merged with another until there were a herd of alien cetaceans covering an area larger than Australia. I let my mind join them under the water. It was as simple as letting myself fall into bed, except that the bed was something¡¯s brain.

    I became it. It was amazing. I was whale. I was young and so I followed my mother whom I loved beyond all reason. I was hungry so I gulped in seawater until my jaws were filled with tiny krill-like insects. I swallowed and then blew a resounding note to communicate to the pod that I was glad. The flood of emotion coming from that one simple being caused me to lose focus and my connection to it faded. So strong and unrestrained. If I¡¯d been in my own body I would be sobbing or laughing hysterically but in my current form it was like pure electrified pleasure. Then I heard the voice again. Myriad.

    ¡°That went well, don¡¯t you think?¡± It was snickering.

    ¡°How did I...?¡±

    ¡°Isaac, what did I tell you? Just watch and think. You don¡¯t have a brain or a mouth so communication is going to be just a bunch of jumbled images and weird subconscious nonsense. Let me do the talking, dude.¡± I assented by calming my curiosity and forcing my mind into stillness. In a split second I was back in orbit, floating alongside the greenest of the nine moons.

    ¡°So what do you think of the Small Magellanic Cloud? Do you come here often?¡± I didn¡¯t try to respond. ¡°Kidding! Sorry it¡¯s just that I kind of have a human sense of humor so it gets a little boring only talking to Plop ¡®ik all day. I love the dude but God is he literal.

    ¡°Let¡¯s just focus on what you¡¯re seeing here. This is the Ueio system. You see Ueio that big red guy to your left, not that it matters but it¡¯s about 300 times the size of your sun however it produces roughly the same amount of heat radiation. Blah blah blah, it¡¯s a star, it¡¯s hot, it¡¯s bright. Boring!

    ¡°Let¡¯s move over here to this big ball of gas that the locals call ¡°Mus¡±. What do you need? Chlorine? Oxygen? Methane? This baby is loaded with enough gas to fuel its own star. Still boring, I know. You humans only care about life, right? Well, a lot of the biological action in the system is located right below us. This lovely water giant is called Igz Nomex. Isn¡¯t she a beaut?¡±Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

    We were in a slow orbit above a massive planet that swirled with white and aqua-marine. A spherical ocean where I couldn¡¯t make out even a speck of land.

    ¡°Over six billion species of mammals, fish, reptiles, insects, fungi, plants, whatever. There are twenty times more kingdoms and phyla here than on Earth. This little mama is like God¡¯s aquarium. Here let me show you.¡±

    I lost all sense of control and before I had time to say ¡°Jane, get me off this crazy thing¡± I was again flying above the oceans of Igz Nomex. I saw more whales, different in size and shape, some with horns like rhinos. I saw a pack of three headed sharks hunting an eel that looked like it was bigger than the Sear¡¯s tower. The lead shark bit the thing¡¯s tail and then exploded into micro-chunks when the eel emitted a targeted energy pulse from its skin.

    ¡°You probably noticed that Igz Nomex has no land. That¡¯s true, just a ball of ice and frozen methane surrounded by nothing but H-two-mothafuckin¡¯-Oh. And if you remember anything from chemistry class you might be thinking to yourself that that doesn¡¯t make sense. Neither does astral-projecting interdimensionally to other fucking galaxies but I¡¯ll answer that, I guess.

    ¡°The whole Ueio system is artificial, not just random rocks whipping through space like that shithole Sol system. Ha, ha, JK. But for real, there is a force at work here that make the Christian god look like Zeus¡¯s rent-boy. This, let¡¯s call it an interdimensional entity, is responsible for all life on Igz Nomex and on her nine moons. Well, there used to be life on all nine moons, anyway. It can manipulate gravity fields. It can create from nothing.¡± I was barely listening. My mind was racing through the ocean of an alien planet and I was loving every second of it.

    I saw a family of pink rays that surfaced to sing to each other with voices like the most perfect cellos. Their song was a thin reedy whistle under waves of sustained bright notes, vibrating slightly. They sang at intervals and in octaves, creating chords that I¡¯d never heard on Earth. I was enrapt, completely lost in a storm of emotion, and I could feel myself being pulled further and further away. The feelings, like explosions of brilliant heat in my bodiless mind, again caused me to lose my grip. A sensation like nausea came over me.

    ¡°Hold on, bud! You¡¯re not quite ready for that yet.¡± I tried to communicate with emotion like before but was stumped by how to convey such a monumental sense of cerebral orgasm. ¡°I know, I know. You just had your mind fucked by a cocktail of emotion that made the best feeling you ever had in your life seem like a punch in the testicles.

    ¡°Think of it as the purest kind of shock that the human mind can endure. There is not one thing right now for your concept of reality to connect to. You¡¯re just a ghost floating in a galaxy so far from earth that it takes light from that star centuries to get to your homeworld. You just visited a planet unlike any known on Earth and saw millions of alien life forms. Brother, you¡¯re in shock.

    ¡°Right now your subconscious is trying put your emotions into overdrive, trying to put stress on your brain to close the doors of perception. It¡¯s saying: Fuck this! Let¡¯s get the hell out of here! I want my motherfucking bottle and my blanket and my mommy! But here¡¯s the trick, my new friend, you don¡¯t have a brain! You are astral projecting. Just a mind floating on waves of subatomic radiation. Congratulations, you¡¯re only the ninth human to do it without having their consciousness implode. But then again, you were genetically engineered to do it so, ya know, don¡¯t give yourself too much credit.

    You don¡¯t have to listen to biological impulse. You can say fuck you to billions of years of evolution and adaptation! You are free from from fear, free from the constricting influences of survival! You don¡¯t have shit to worry about!¡±

    I centered my mind and tried not to lose the single shred of control over this form that I had so far attained. It was so difficult to pull myself away from the cascades of pleasure and blythe nothingness. Like looking into an abyss and wanting, in spite of all your fear, to jump in. I turned away from the music and focused on the red sun that dominated the clear sky.

    ¡°There you go,¡± said Myriad. ¡°It¡¯s easiest to focus on one single object, something that doesn¡¯t move. Like motion sickness. Except that instead of puking you will just lose yourself forever. So, ya know, don¡¯t fuck up. So let¡¯s go somewhere with a bit less traffic¡±.

    We blinked back into space this time closest to a small moon with no atmosphere. It resembled Earth¡¯s moon but its dust was a sulfuric yellow. We got closer and I could see that the dust was covering something long and angular. A building. Spread out across the yellow plain were various mounds that had been dwellings or bases of some kind, all destroyed and covered with sulfuric dust.

    ¡°This is the moon, Plos Lodril. Not a charming place, is it? A real fixer-upper, if you know how to clean up like a billion tonnes of sulfur and amonia. All this was done purposefully as well. You see this shithole right here? This was the capital, Plos Epop. This is Plop ¡®ik¡¯s hometown. Of course when he lived here it was like Athens or New York, total hub of knowledge and culture. Not to mention the nightlife. The Plos people did it right. Science all day and sex all night. Now? Nothing but a dusty rock and a reminder to anyone who gets in the Consortium¡¯s way.

    ¡°See, what I wanted to show you with this little trip was, well really a few things. They don¡¯t call me Myriad for nothing, know what I¡¯m sayin¡¯?

    ¡°First, that you can astral project, cool trick. Right now you kind of suck at it, but I see some real potential. Second, that you would see the Ueio system because when you need to get here on your own, once you¡¯re strong enough, you¡¯ll need to visualize it with some serious exactitude.

    Third, that you see what can happen to a world when It doesn¡¯t get what It wants. And what It wants more than anything, what It lives on, is gold.¡±