Trinity's Legacy

by P A Vasey

  “I’m not sure I want to know, but how did I get into these clothes?”

  “I changed you into something more appropriate for travelling,” he said. Was it my imagination or did the corner of his lip twitch? “I promise I did not look.”

  I fixed him with what I considered my best death stare. “Not remotely funny.”

  He nodded in seeming agreement, and the shadow of the smile on his face vanished. He turned back to look out the window towards the diner and started to open his door.

  “You owe me some answers,” I said, “before we go any further.”

  “I am not certain that you will like what I have to say,” he intoned solemnly. “But I will tell you what I can.”

  I was about to reply when there was a flash behind my eyes and my head spun like I’d been sucker punched. An after-image of the nightmarish crab-like creature from the dream appeared, and then faded away into a grey mist. My vision cleared and I was back in the car, and Adam was staring at me with a concerned look on his face. I waved him off and we exited the vehicle, which I noticed was the Dodge from last night. We walked into the diner and were shown to a booth that had a view of the car park. We took opposite seats, our knees touching. The diner wasn’t busy and there were no other customers in the adjoining window booths. TVs playing daytime talk shows were hung along the walls in between square pictures of plastic-looking food. I grabbed a menu from its holder on the wall and flicked through it. Five pages of food, some of it still actually on the menu itself. I scratched at some of the caked-on organic matter with my nail and it sloughed off like dandruff.

  “All day breakfast then?” I said, looking up with a smile.

  “I am not hungry.”

  He was staring out of the window, chin in hands, elbows on the table.

  “Fine, well you won’t mind if I do then,” I said. I caught the eye of a waitress who sauntered over with a bored look on her face. She was a thin young woman, her lank mousy hair falling in frayed ribbons about her faded t-shirt. In her hand were a small writing pad, and a biro. She was perspiring significantly despite the air-conditioning. I smiled at her and asked what she recommended.

  “Eggs is good,” she said. “Still time for the breakfast special. Ten bucks, all you can eat.”

  She gestured to the panels above the cash till, where pictures of breads, toast, rolls, and troughs of bacon, sausages and artificial-looking eggs were displayed. I rubbed my hands together and gave a bright and breezy smile. “Alright then, eggs it is. Eggs and hash browns and some bacon. Extra crispy.”

  She wrote this down, and turned to Adam. “Something for you sir?”

  “He’s fine. Just coffee,” I said, with a dismissive wave.

  When she’d left I folded my arms and sat back in the sofa. I watched him, silhouetted in the window, scrutinising the parked vehicles out front. “Selecting our next ride?” I said, tongue in cheek.

  “Yes, however it is going to be difficult. The owners will undoubtedly report the theft immediately. I am reviewing other options.”

  I nodded, and then leaned forward conspiratorially. “How about you just do a Jedi mind trick on the owners? Or hey, just do it to everyone in here?”

  He stared blankly back, apparently weighing this suggestion up. “That is certainly one of the other options.”

  “I was kidding, but you really could do that?”

  “Yes.”

  I regarded him coolly. “So, what exactly are you, Adam Benedict?”

  He lowered his head and brought his hands together, intertwining fingers on the tabletop. He looked like a supplicant, praying at an altar. “I am not sure what I am,” he began. “I know I used to be human.”

  “Used to be? So what happened to you?” I said. Part of me didn’t want to press this conversation, but the dream kept coming back to me. I wanted to pretend it was all in my mind, but here I was, in a diner, with a guy who should be dead.

  “Fragments of memory are coming back to me. My mind is a jigsaw puzzle with many missing pieces. I remember being in a dark place. There was a bright light. Pain. Suffering. Then - nothing. Then… I was somewhere else.”

  “I spoke with a Gabriel Connor. Friend of yours. He said the two of you went into a crater in the Nevada desert. Do you remember?”

  His eyes seemed to glaze over and his head dipped a fraction more. There was a long silence, and I could almost sense the cogs working overtime to retrieve the memory.

  “Yes, I think it is coming back to me. I was in the crater. More of a cave, actually. With Gabriel.”

  My heartbeat picked up and an unsettling anxiety came over me. I took a drink of water from the table and wondered if Adam would notice the slight shake of my hand.

  “What’s the last thing you do remember?” I ventured.

  He looked back out of the window. “A ball of light. Silence. Pain. A constricting band of pressure around my temple that worsened as I opened my eyes. I remember seeing the edge of the crater high above, and a glimpse of a blue cloudless sky. I can see shafts of light playing on a rock wall that is covered with metal carabineers and pitons. There are a couple of ropes and a temporary ladder. I remember being entranced by dust motes floating on light beams, making their way down to the cavern floor.”

  He paused, and I said nothing, waiting for him to continue.

  “Then the light consumed me,” he said, “and the crater was no longer there.”

  I leaned forward, tentatively probing. “Gabriel said you vanished. Disappeared. Where did you go?”

  He looked straight through me and it felt like the temperature in the diner had dropped by fifty degrees. “I died. Then I was resurrected.”

  I stared back at him, and time seemed to slow down as the rest of the diner faded into the background like that scene in ‘Jaws’ when the camera zooms in on Ron Schneider’s face. “By whom?” I asked as calmly as I could.

  “I do not know. But I know that I was dead, and then I was not.” He looked up at me and his eyes looked haunted. “I remember being glad that I had died, and angry that I had been saved.”

  “Sounds like a religious experience to me,” I said trying to lighten the mood. “Did you meet God?”

  He shook his head; maybe it was too early for humour. “No, I do not think so. But I believe I was sent back. ”

  “Who sent you back? More to the point, why?”

  He reached over to my coffee cup and absentmindedly turned it so that the handle was facing me. “My cognitive and memory functions are still suboptimal. I cannot answer that.”

  “You’re sounding like a computer,” I said. I’d noticed his speech pattern was stilted and that he didn’t use contractions. I sensed he was being evasive, and the dream continued to play in the back of my mind. I couldn’t shake the sensation of coming ‘online’, of being rebooted.

  “I do not feel myself,” he continued in a monotone as if to confirm my observation. “Something has happened to me. Something very unusual. My mind is not completely my own.”

  “Like when we were back at my house?” I said.

  He nodded, and I felt that chill again, that subconscious primeval feeling of being threatened and in danger. I wondered when or if I should mention the dream, or whether he was already reading my mind. He sat back and looked around the diner, taking in the families, truck-drivers, tourists, locals minding their own business and contemplating their own day-to-day issues and problems. Seemed so normal to me. Life just going on day by day.

  I suppressed a shiver and decided to address the elephant in the room.

  “That wasn’t you back at my house was it?”

  He closed his eyes briefly and then looked directly at me. The blueness was temporarily replaced by an emerald flash, and then reverted to blue.

  There it was.

  Hiding in plain sight.

  The alien.

  “Something has come back with me,” he said. “You have felt it.”

  Ice continued to drizzle between my shoulde
r blades. I closed my eyes and concentrated on what I had felt during that event.

  “Yes. When you’d been fighting Richard there was an almost feral pleasure at the violence being perpetrated. Something ‘inhuman’ was watching and enjoying the experience.”

  “You mentioned a dream,” he said. “In the car?”

  “When I was dreaming I think I had ‘access’ - if that’s the right word - to your memories. I was there when you met … it. When you were being - what’s the right phrase – reborn. Remade, is that a better way of putting it? I think I could see and hear it. Whoever, or whatever, it is.”

  He was looking intently at me, hanging on my every word. I was about to ask him what he remembered about the experience when the waitress arrived with a plate stuffed with eggs, browns and bacon all covered in icing sugar and a layer of syrup. It smelled divine. I was soon tucking in, realising that I was starving and had not eaten for over twelve hours. In between mouthfuls I looked up at Adam who’d resumed his visual survey of the car park.

  “Can I talk with it?” I said, hesitatingly.

  “I cannot summon it at will,” he replied, somewhat snippily.

  I took a slurp of coffee. “So what happened with the police back at my house? I mean, all I can remember is the knock on the door.”

  “I do not know,” he said without looking at me. “My immediate memory of it has been erased.”

  I stopped mid-fork. “Erased. Again with the computer-speak. Why would your mind be erased?”

  “I do not know.”

  I resumed eating, stuffing another huge portion of bacon into my mouth and dribbling syrup down my chin. I picked up the napkin I dabbed a couple of spots.

  “You have missed a bit,” he said.

  Self-consciously, I wiped the whole of my chin clean and finished the coffee. I looked at him again, noted the smoothness of his face, the lack of lines or defects, the perfect symmetry of his eyes, the jet-black hair with no streaks of grey. He looked like a waxwork model, not quite real but scarily lifelike. He stared back unblinking, and once again I became very unsettled. I saw the showroom dummy eyes again. Blank. Dead eyes.

  “Are you inside my head now?” I said.

  “No.”

  “But you can do this at any time?”

  “Yes, and much more.”

  “Such as?”

  “My mind is able to reach far beyond the confines of its physical structure. I am able to control external organic neural pathways.”

  “Mind control? That’s what you did to me outside Joey’s?”

  “Yes. But not only organic pathways. At this moment I can access all five billion pages of the world-wide-web just by thinking of it. One zettabyte of data. I can interact with any electronic system and change it’s programming without any physical contact.”

  “But you’re still human, right?” I said.

  “I am not sure what I am any more. The mechanics of my musculoskeletal system have been significantly enhanced. Watch.”

  He leaned back and put his arm along the couch, grasping the solid metal rail along the top cushion. Without changing expression he clenched his fist and the metal just warped and flattened as if it was plasticine. He looked at me and a muscle seemed to twitch at the side of his mouth.

  “I do not know why, or how, I have these abilities.”

  I took a deep breath. “There has to be a reason. You said that your memory had been ‘wiped’, so isn’t there any way you can access those ‘files’?” I tapped my index finger on my temple for effect. “Like you did for me?”

  He looked back out of the window. “There is something that keeps coming up.”

  “Go on,” I said, leaning forward.

  “There is a place called the SETI Institute. Have you heard of it?”

  “My father used to talk about it. It’s where they search the skies for signs of ET, and little green men.”

  “Yes. Scientists based at SETI have been looking for alien life in the Universe since the mid 1980s. However, more recently they have been sending messages out to the stars. They call it ‘Active SETI’.”

  “Are you saying that we succeeded in contacting an alien race?”

  He nodded slowly, his eyes closed. “I believe so. Indirectly, perhaps.”

  I could see a brief flickering of phosphorescence behind the eyes as if an internal conversation was taking place. Which was probably not far from the truth.

  “Active SETI was heavily criticised in the press and by many in the scientific community because of the risk of revealing the location of the Earth to non-friendly alien civilisations. The fact that it would take thousands or millions of years for any signals to reach other galaxies was the mitigating factor. So the program went ahead and humanity sent out an invitation.”

  I shook my head at the hubris of the scientists involved. “I may have seen too many sci-fi movies, but any aliens aren’t likely to be ‘friends of the earth’ are they?” I made air bunny ears.

  “I cannot say for certain, but I do not believe so. It is statistically probable that most alien races will be millions of years more advanced than us. They would have evolved in completely different ways as well.”

  “But maybe in better ways? Better morality?” I leaned forwards. “I mean, maybe they outgrew all the supernatural beliefs and in-group fighting that’s going on here?”

  “Speculation.”

  “I know, but there’s a chance isn’t there?”

  He gave a slight smile. “What I cannot understand is this - interstellar distances are immense between galaxies. It is highly unlikely that a signal could have reached another galaxy in this timeframe. Active SETI was doomed to fail.”

  “Well that’s good, isn’t it? For us, I mean.”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Why no?”

  “If the signal was somehow intercepted by a much more advanced alien race, and they have a means to get here, I do not believe that humanity would survive.”

  “But we have nuclear weapons,” I said somewhat glibly.

  “Humanity has had nuclear technology for less than a hundred years. Imagine a civilisation that has had a thousand years of further development. A million years. We would be completely inconsequential.”

  “Here’s a thought - maybe your purpose is to facilitate the arrival of a friendly alien civilisation. Like a messenger, or a scout.”

  He looked up and raised an eyebrow. “A harbinger? They do not always bode well for what follows…”

  He stopped abruptly, and peered over my shoulder. I turned to check out what he was watching and saw that the TV on the counter was tuned to a news channel. On the screen was a picture of Adam, enlarged using digital enhancements from the photo I had taken in the ER. The caption tickertaped along the bottom:

  BREAKING NEWS: SUSPECT IN QUADRUPLE COP HOMICIDE IN NEVADA ON THE LOOSE. ADAM BENEDICT IS CONSIDERED EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. DO NOT APPROACH.

  Adam stood up and awkwardly shuffled along the table to exit the booth. The waitress had stopped serving and was watching the TV, as were the other patrons in the diner. It wouldn’t take them long to recognise Adam.

  “Time to go,” he said

  I remained seated, my heart pounding. “Did you kill those policemen at my house?”

  He glanced back at the TV, and lowered his head.

  “I do not remember. But it is very likely.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Brentwood Heights, CA

  The rest of the drive took a couple of hours, Adam saying little, and to be honest I needed time to think. He didn’t exactly tell me where we were going, just that it was in Los Angeles. The City of Angels seemed like an ironic destination to me, as I was now convinced that there was a demon in his head. I was furiously trying to reconcile everything that had happened with the fact that I’d agreed to go with him. Willingly. The police and god-knows who else were looking for us, and despite what he said about his memory lapses, it sounded like he’d definitely been responsible f
or the deaths of those police officers. I’d seen him threatened and what he was capable of. But something inside me knew that it wasn’t Adam Benedict that had killed them. The person I had connected with was scared, confused, trying to come to terms with the death of his wife and whatever had happened to him - and had asked for my help. It scared the shit out of me that whatever else was co-habiting might take control again, and turn on me. I found myself shaking my head. Did I know what the fuck was I doing?

  Adam turned the Dodge into a well-tendered street in the suburb of Brentwood Heights. We pulled up front of a circular driveway that led to a Mediterranean-styled mansion with a metal entry gate flanked by red-bricked pillars. Tall shrubs, squared off and flat-topped, surrounded the gardens on either side. Well-tended conifers and palm trees were visible both sides of the house, and a silver Porsche 911 Targa was parked just on the curve of the driveway. The afternoon sun cast elongated shadows through the gate, and some of the more sheltered streetlights were starting to twinkle.

  Adam got out and beckoned me to do the same. I stayed put.

  “It’s time to tell me why we’re here,” I said.

  There was no response so I fixed my lips in a tight grimace, locked the door and folded my arms. A minor act of defiance. He leaned in to look at me through the open driver’s side window. There was a flicker of green behind his eyes and the door lock clicked open.

  “Party tricks,” I murmured, shaking my head.

  A large silver BMW with blacked out windows cruised round the corner, not slowing down. There was a quiet drone from a helicopter somewhere beyond the tree line. Sirens could be heard from the distant freeway.

  “Law enforcement will almost certainly have the details of this vehicle by now,” he said, leaning in to my window.

  I gave a dismissive shrug, and decided to play hardball. “Good. Maybe when they get here you’ll tell them what’s going on? Clearly this is a ‘need to know’ kinda thing?”

  He looked at me, an unreadable expression on his face. “Kate, we do not have time for this.”