“You found a lost portal. A dimensional link. Most of them have been destroyed, but, as you’ve learned, a few still remain. The science behind it is still a good ways beyond your kind’s abilities, but you’re closer than you were the last time that one was active.”
“Again,” I said, “I understood the words that came from your mouth, but none of that made any sense. Dimensional link? My kind?”
“This isn’t Earth,” she said. “One end of the portal—where you entered—is on Earth. The other end is here, on Tkosa, the planet you’re on now. More specifically, you are in Enlil, which is our…country…on Tkosa.”
I remembered now. The purple light. This all made perfect sense, but absolutely no sense at all. The first thing I’d thought when I saw the strange items in those ruins was aliens, but at some level, my mind had still wanted there to be a rational, human explanation. And now I was sitting here, in a time decompression pod, talking to a gorgeous black-eyed alien woman who said I was no longer on Earth. And I believed her.
She was nodding. “Can you read my mind?” I asked.
She hesitated before answering. “No,” she said, drawing the word out. “Not exactly.” I frowned.
“I can’t tell what abstract thoughts you’re having. If you’re remembering the last sex you had for example, I won’t know that.” She smiled. “But your emotions and expressions are easier to read for us than they are for you.
Suddenly I felt embarrassed. “So, you could tell—” I began.
“I don’t know exactly what you were thinking, but I know that you found me attractive,” she said.
I opened my mouth to say something, then let it close again.
“What is your name?” she asked.
The question surprised me as much as anything else in the discussion. I assumed she already knew. “Nathan,” I answered.
“Nathan” she repeated. “When you went into the portal, did you notice the pattern on the display?”
“Um—I don’t think so,” I said. I tried to remember, but nothing was coming to me.
“That’s fine,” she said. “It’s not really important, I was just curious. What about—” she began.
“Wait a minute,” I said, interrupting. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
“That is correct,” she said.
I waited for her to continue, but she just looked at me. “Ok,” I said, playing along. “What’s your name?”
She smiled. “You’re not scared. I like that. You wouldn’t be able to pronounce my name, but you can call me Tashmit. That’s close enough.”
Despite being her prisoner, I was starting to like this Tashmit—she had a sense of humor. “Ok, Tashmit. I didn’t go into the portal,” I said. “It grabbed me. I don’t even know what activated it. And what was the deal with the jaguars?”
“One of you activated it,” she said. “The controls were there, but it should’ve been locked out, which would’ve taken a Talaris to deactivate. But you obviously got it to work. The jaguars were probably protectors. Set up to deter intruders.”
“Well they almost killed me,” I said. “And what the hell are they? We cut one open and it definitely seemed real. But a remote control kept the other one from killing me.”
“They’re real enough,” she said. “They’re biosimulants. The same lockout should’ve disabled them, but again—”
“Biosimulants?”
She thought for a moment before answering. “You’re familiar with machines made of metal and other materials. Think of these as machines made of organic matter and designed to replicate particular creatures. The behavioral programming is encoded into the non protein-expressive portions of the DNA. We originally used non-simulant organic machines on Earth, but your kind really didn’t like that.” She snorted like she’d said something funny. “But we’ve used them for lots of purposes on other worlds. Protection, espionage—“
“Non-simulant organic machines?” I interrupted. “You mean machines made of biological material, but that don’t look like a real living creature? Like a golem?”
“You know about golem!” she said. “Yes, very similar, although biosimulants are much more advanced.” Her little flash of excitement made her look very pretty. “It fascinates me to see the bits of our involvement with your kind that have managed to survive.”
“Wait,” I asked. “So do biosimulants get old and die? Obviously you can kill them, but—“
“Their cellular metabolism is programmed to reduce energy demands and aging. The ones you encountered have been attached to that portal since it was constructed, if that answers your question.”
“6,000 years ago? Those jaguars were 6,000 years old?”
“Roughly,” she said. “They rest in stasis though, so that’s preservative. There’s also the ability to—“
I was interested, but my head was still pounding and I needed to get to the point. I cut her off. “So why am I here?”
Her voice sharpened and her eyes grew predatory. “You’re here because you activated a portal and came through it. We could’ve kept you without letting you decompress. Some suggested just that, but I vetoed it. So now you’re here until you finish decompressing. You’re welcome.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“And then I have something for you to do,” she said coolly. “I helped you. Now you help me.”
And there it was.
“Helped me how?” I asked. “Why not just send me back?”
“You wouldn’t have liked that,” she said.
I suspected that it was more a case of her not liking it. “I’d prefer that to being blackmailed,” I said.
“You don’t know what you’d prefer. You don’t even know where you are or how long it’s been.”
This conversation had taken an ominous turn. But she was right, I was completely at her mercy.
“How long have I been here?” I asked.
She scoffed, rudely. “That depends.”
Her response reminded of the time I got arrested in Nairobi for “recording government operations.” I’d taken a picture of a fountain without noticing the cop standing in front. He noticed me though, and he came over, spitting mad. I explained that I was photographing the fountain, not him, but he took me to the nearby station anyway.
I expected the station commander to be more sensible, but his feigned outrage was worse than the first guy’s. He insisted that I must be interrogated at the main station for this very serious offense.
I was nervous, but I sensed that the whole thing was really just a shakedown to get a bribe. Given the circumstances, I was willing to pay for my freedom—but I didn’t know how to make the offer. It finally occurred to me to ask if there was some way I could pay the fine I surely deserved to these fine officers, rather than at the main station. That depends, was the answer.
A mere 3,000 shillings (30 U.S. dollars) later, I was free. I was sorely tempted to take a picture of the sign in front of the station which proclaimed a Corruption Free Zone, but I resisted the urge.
I held Tashmit’s gaze. What was her price going to be?
“Depends on what?” I asked.
“Your cooperation,” she said. “I mentioned time dilation. You came through on an unanchored dimensional bridge. If I’d let them send you back as soon as you appeared here, almost twelve Earth years would have passed when you got back.”
Panic welled in my chest. How long had I been sitting here talking to her? How much time had passed back home?
“So how long has it been now?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Time doesn’t work the way you perceive it to. I could send you back a year from now and only a few moments would have passed. Or I could send you back right now and decades will have gone by.”
I deflated. I obviously had no leverage in this situation. “What do you want from me?”
She smiled. “I’m so glad you asked. We’ll discuss that when you’re ready to leave quarantine.” And with that, s
he turned and strode from the room.
4
It was hard to tell how much time passed while I remained in the chamber. When Tashmit left, I sat there replaying the turn of events that had led to this. I started to get anxious and worried, but then I fell asleep. When I woke again, Tashmit was back. She was sitting in the same spot as before, watching me. It felt decidedly creepier this time.
“Congratulations,” she said. “You’re finished decompressing. You can leave the pod now.”
I sat up slowly, half expecting another headache, but there was none. Physically I was fine, but I was starving.
“I’m sure you’re hungry,” Tashmit said, standing. “I’ll take you to eat and then we can talk more.” She traced a pattern on the wall and it opened. I followed her into a hallway of what looked like solid polished marble, but there were no seams and no inclusions. The wall pulsed a bluish-gray light.
“Where’s Luis?” I asked. “You said I could see him when I got out of the quarantine pod.”
“Your companion is fine. You can see him soon. But we have other things to do first.”
I followed her down the hall for maybe 20 yards before she turned a corner and opened another wall. We passed a number of her people along the way. The glances they spared for me—if they even did, it was hard to tell where their gaze was directed—felt dismissive. Their otherness was more readily apparent now that we were somewhere with better lighting. All were very tall and slender and wore extremely form-fitting bodysuits, but I didn’t see any others wearing the liquid-metallic looking suit that Tashmit wore. Their proportions were just different enough from humans to stand out—limbs slightly too long, narrow faced, and the tilted black eyes—but not enough to be displeasing to humans.
I wondered if we were going to a cafeteria and had a flashback to middle school, looking for a friendly place to sit at lunch. What took me most by surprise were the inhabitants.
“There are humans here,” I said.
Tashmit simply nodded. “When you’re ready, you will meet some of them.”
“Ready for what?” I asked. “Why are there humans here?”
“Some were born here,” she said. “Others are here for various reasons.”
“But why?” I asked again. “Are you breeding us? Making alien-human hybrids?” I was only half kidding.
“We keep track of humans with certain characteristics. You escaped our notice somehow, but you’ll find out more later. For now, I want you to meet someone. In case you didn’t believe me about what happens without a time decompression chamber.”
Tashmit walked me to a table where a human woman was seated with another alien. The woman looked incredibly familiar, but I couldn’t quite place where from. She too was wearing the alien standard bodysuit and it looked spectacular on her. She had honey colored skin and like Tashmit, was also on the curvy side, with dark, wavy hair, full pouty lips and dark eyes.
“You’re both recent arrivals,” Tashmit said. “I thought you might like to meet each other.”
The woman was eating something that looked and smelled like succotash. My stomach rumbled loudly, just as another alien appeared, setting down a tray of the same thing, along with some kind reddish stew and what looked like a piece of French bread.
Turning to me, Tashmit said, “Eat as much as you like. If you want more, just wave and someone will bring it to you. I’ll be back for you shortly.” She walked off and the woman looked at me warily.
“I’m Nathan,” I said, holding out my hand.
She shook. “Betty Ann. Nice to meet you. Strange circumstances.”
I nodded as I picked up the spoon and dug in. It really was succotash—lima beans, corn, carrots. I was aware that my reaction was a function of how hungry I was, but it was absolutely delicious. As I chewed, her name jogged my memory. “Betty Ann Taylor?” I asked, through a full mouth.
She nodded.
There was no way this was possible. Betty Ann Taylor was an actress. She’d famously gone missing in L.A. on the night of her twenty-ninth birthday. That was in 1980, almost forty years ago and four years before I was born. Her car had been found still running in a 7-11 parking lot off Santa Monica Boulevard. This couldn’t be possible, but the woman I was talking to looked exactly like old pictures I’d seen of the notorious starlet. She definitely hadn’t aged forty years.
“How long have you been here?” I asked as I tore off a piece of the bread.
She stirred her food and looked annoyed. “Almost two weeks, I think. I’m sure my mother is worried sick. And everyone else. They’re treating me alright, but I don’t want to be here.”
I sampled the stew, which turned out to be very spicy and quite delicious, while I considered whether to tell her how long it had been. I decided to wait. “How’d you get here?” I asked instead.
She shook her head. “All I remember is driving down Santa Monica and a deer was running alongside me—”
“A deer?” I asked. “Like Bambi?”
She nodded. “It was like a dream. That sounds stupid, but I mean it literally. It didn’t even occur to me at the time that there was anything unusual about a deer running alongside my car on Santa Monica. It ran in front of me and I hit the brakes and then this bright light appeared all around me. I woke up here. That was almost two weeks ago.”
It sounded like every alien abduction story I’d ever heard. “I just got here,” I said. “Last night, maybe, I’m not entirely sure. What do you know about this place?”
“They’ve told me stuff,” she said. “I don’t believe most of it.”
I took another bite. “What have they told you?”
“We’re on another planet, in a different universe.”
“And you don’t believe it?” I asked. “Have you seen them? They’re clearly not human.”
“I’m an actress,” she said. “I’ve seen people in costume before.”
“You think all these seven foot tall people with black eyes are just people in costume?” I asked, tearing another piece of bread.
She hesitated. She didn’t really think that, she was just having a hard time accepting that there were, in fact, aliens.
“I know it’s hard to process,” I said. I hoped I sounded comforting. “But I don’t think they’re lying. Look at this place. This technology. This is way beyond anything we have on Earth.”
“It could just be some secret military technology that we don’t know about.”
“I don’t think it is,” I said. “I got here through some ancient ruins I found in South America. Me and my friend were exploring and we touched something and ended up here. And that’s in 2019.”
“What do you mean ‘2019?’” she asked. “The year?”
I nodded.
“You’re from the future?”
“From my perspective, you’re from the past.” I told her about her disappearance and about my conversation with Tashmit about time.
The expression that came to her face was the same one I’d seen on my brother when a car hit our dog in sixth grade. Her hands were trembling and she set her spoon down to keep from dropping it. She looked away for a moment, and when she turned back, her eyes were full of tears. She opened her mouth as if she was going to say something, then closed it again. Finally, she said, “I don’t believe you.” She said the words as if she was asking a question. I don’t believe you?
I didn’t know what to say to her—there was nothing I could say. I didn’t want to just repeat: “it’s true.” That seemed so heartless.
She wiped at her eyes and inhaled sharply a few times. “Are you sure?” she asked. “It’s 2019 now?”
I nodded.
“What year were you born in?”
“1984,” I said.
She gasped a little, despite herself. “You’ve heard of me. What have they said about me? About what happened to me?”
I shrugged. “You were one of those unsolved Hollywood mysteries that everyone hears about. ‘Missing without a trace.’ I
remember hearing about it when I was a kid, but I haven’t really given it much thought in a long time. I don’t know much more than that. And your brother is some big shot lawyer now. He advocates for missing kids.”
She laughed a little at that. “He always did like to argue.” She sighed and wiped away the new tears that had sprung up, then gave a single nod. “Like you said, it’s a little hard to process. But you’re right. This place…these…people…” she let off. “They call themselves Tkosi. Tkosian sometimes. Or Enlil more specifically—I think that’s their country. The time distortion piece is really hard to accept. But I guess it’s not so unexpected considering all of this,” she said, gesturing around her.
“It’s like Rip Van Winkle,” I said.
“But didn’t he fall asleep and wake up when he was old?”
“Yeah. It’s not exactly the same. But he thought he just fell asleep for a little while and when he woke up, twenty years had passed. When you come back, you’ll be the same age, but forty years will have gone by. I don’t know where the author got the idea for that story in particular, but I’ve heard people say that a lot of fairy tales are really based on stuff aliens did on Earth and people just made up stories and myths to fit what they didn’t understand. Fays that draw people to enchanted places in the forest, elves taking babies in the night, fairy nurseries in glowing caves…sounds a lot like these Tkosi to me.”
She absorbed what I was saying and nodded. “I’ve never thought of that before, but yeah, it makes sense.” She eyed me for a bit. “Why are you so calm about all this?”
“What’s the point of worrying?” I asked, between bites. I could tell my laid-back approach was irritating her. “I don’t like to worry too early. It wastes energy you’ll need when the really scary shit starts.”
She eyed me again, like she was unsure if I was really profound or just an idiot. “What happened to Rip in the story? After he got back?”
I thought for a moment. “He was lost when he got back—everything had changed. He hated his wife though, so she was gone and that was good. No one knew who he was at first, but then some people recognized him. I think he was kind of a fuck up before he fell asleep—he did fall asleep outside under a tree, after all—but he became sort of a hero when he got back. “
Children of the Sky (The Talari Subversion Book 1) Page 4