by Alan James
He reached behind the seat for his larder bag and then thought the canopy open. He had not yet ceased being amazed at the speed with which that little task was carried out. He sat, once again, dangling his legs over the leading edge of the left wing, pulled the bag up beside him and sifted through its contents: “Two ABBA ZABBAs; another Cherry-a-Let; four Moon Pies; and three more RC Colas and, of course, a big chunk of Pecan Divinity. Damn,” he chuckled, “a regular connoisseur, I am.”
Finishing off another Moon Pie and an RC, he slipped from the wing and started a walk-around. It was far too dark for him to see anything without the aid of the disc’s vision. Stooping to waddle underneath, he found three small holes in the bottom of the port side wing (probably shrapnel from the four GARs that went off together) and there on the starboard side was the gaping hole from the direct hit by the little FFAR rocket (fired by the first Sabre Jet). It was still large enough to slip a basketball through, but, by the discs present flight characteristics, he guessed it was a lot smaller now than before.
He stepped from under the wing and continued his inspection. Except for a few scuffs and scratches caused by flying debris and a few fifty caliber rounds, he was in fine shape. As he walked back around the left wing, he ran his hand down the leading edge and made his way back to the fuselage. With his right hand still on the leading edge, he laid his left hand on the nose, just below the gun ports. Closing his eyes, he took himself back over the events of the last few days: the fear; the lost hope; the pain; the deaths, and then, the unanswered questions he could see lying in front of him in the days ahead (if he still had days ahead). He knew only one thing now with any real certainty: he would no longer live his life as a normal human being (for he no longer was … a normal human being).
THE THREE RACES
Kelly grabbed his larder bag, and, on his hands and knees, crawled under the starboard-side wing. Exhausted, he rolled onto his side and then to his back. From here he would be able to watch the progress of the largest hole as it slowly grew ever smaller. The rhythmic hum of the gravity drive, now began to put him to sleep. He reached behind his head and scooped a small pile of warm desert sand to use as a pillow, then, rolling his head back and forth in it to make a soft cradle, he closed his eyes and drifted off.
***
“Brother,” the voice whispered softly.
***
“Brother.” it whispered again.
***
Kelly raised himself to his elbows. Looking through the vee formed by his shoes, he could see the figure he had known as his Brother, standing a few yards in front of him; his right hand stretched out as if longing to touch, or to be touched.
“Brother,” he called again, then, with the warmest of smiles, “I see you are healing well.”
Sitting up, Kelly reached to his right shoulder, “I suppose you are right.” Then, he offered, looking up at the bottom of the wing, “As are you … the holes are nearly mended.”
“Kelly,” the figure said softly, “you have misspoken. You do not look at us when you look at the disc.” He paused, then, “My Brother … you look at yourself.”
Kelly’s face filled with bewilderment as a question formed on his lips, a question that would stay trapped there (for his brain was unable to work the proper muscles to set it free).
“Kelly,” the figure spoke again, “you are confused. We are not surprised. Please, let us try to explain.”
Kelly, now becoming just as frightened as he was confused, tried to stand, banging his head on the chrome surface above. He collapsed to a cross-legged sitting position and watched as the little shooting-stars faded away at the back of his eyelids.
“Please Kelly, do not be alarmed … we would never harm you.”
Kelly, rubbing the top of his head, and, being somewhat surprised that he was apparently having a normal (“no, not normal,” he thought) conversation with his Brother figure, asked, “You … you call me Brother … why? … For you are clearly, not my brother.”
“Oh, but Kelly, we are most certainly … your Brother. From the first time your life’s blood became one with us, the change was, set-in-stone, to turn a human phrase … and … it is now, as it was then … irreversible.”
“Damn,” Kelly said, under his breath, “I’m a blood brother to a flying saucer.”
“It is much more than that Kelly,” the figure said matter-of-factly.
“I meant no disrespect, honestly. It is just that … well … my race tends to have a penchant, or more properly a weakness, for “uncalled for humor” in times of stress. I am sorry … please continue … I will listen quietly.”
“Kelly, there is no need to sit quietly, please, be a part of this conversation. We are sure you have many questions.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact I do,” he said, again rubbing the bump on his head, “may I ask another?”
“Of course.”
“You say I am part of the disc …”
The figure interrupted, “You know that to be true already Kelly, you have felt as much for some time now … have you not?”
Kelly stared for a moment, “Yes, I suppose that is true, but, why have you confused me so; making me believe that I have a brother … a brother that I know I do not have? A brother, you would also have me believe, is in great danger.”
“You know the answer to that question as well, for you told your friends, and quite correctly so: that we merely wished to illicit emotions in you … emotions that could be channeled into the disc, and the weapon there-in. We knew that you held a great fear for these people from the north, but we were not sure if that fear was enough to make you rise against your own kind.”
“Why did you not simply fire on those people yourselves? Surely you can fire the guns in the disc.”
“In fact Kelly, we cannot. For you see, we are not here, physically, as it were … and even if we were, it is doubtful that we could have operated the weapon. When you, or more precisely, those of your race, combined the two technologies many years ago, we found it very difficult to become accustomed to this new intrusion. We spent the intervening years learning, very slowly indeed, to adapt to it. We have made changes to shapes, here and there; even changing the shape of your technology where we felt it important in order to better, and hasten, the integration, but, we are unable to become one with it. We cannot act physically with it. Your technology, or the materials that make up your technology, are not compatible with our … our ….”
The figure turned his head to the side, as if listening to an invisible someone standing next to him. He shook his head several times in agreement, and then turned, once again, to Kelly.
“Kelly, we will start our story farther in the past. Perhaps that will help you to better understand.”
Kelly cringed as the figure walked toward him. It had failed to lower itself under the disc, and instead it simply walked through it. Kelly then watched in amazement as the figure flowed into an amorphous lump that quickly reassumed the shape of his Brother, now sitting cross-legged next to him.
“We hope that did not disturb you.”
“Oh no,” Kelly swallowed, “no … I’m fine with that,” he said, shaking his head as if it were an everyday occurrence.
“Where to begin then … perhaps the crash”
Kelly nodded.
“Very well then, we had just departed our Mother-ship and …,”
Kelly raised his hand quickly.
“Ah,” the figure smiled, “you wish to start a little farther back.”
Kelly smiled sheepishly and nodded again.
***
Kelly listened as his Brother told the story of leaving their home-world. Leaving to travel the great void and explore what planets they might find. They routinely traveled such great distances, that speaking of it in terms of Earth miles was meaningless. They measured the great expanses in something they translated to English as Galactic Units. One Galactic Unit being, simply, one tenth the d
iameter of the local galaxy, which, with a quick question, he learned, was indeed, the Milky Way.
Their home lays approximately five and one half of these units, or about seventeen thousand parsecs, on roughly the same concentric arc as the Earth; in an anti-rotational direction. They have found that most life-bearing worlds occupy a band approximately one galactic unit wide, on either side of this same concentric arc. It seemed the Milky Way had a “Goldilocks Zone,” just like our solar system.
They had moved along this arc at near light speed for some six thousand years in Earth time (a time span barely remarkable to them because of their time shifting capabilities) before happening upon the Earth.
Kelly was quick to ask about the value of making such a journey, when everyone they knew on their home-world would surely be dead and gone on their return. He didn’t receive an answer quite to his liking, or understanding, but he accepted it none-the-less. It seems that his brothers (and he apparently had countless brothers now) are immortal, in almost every way. Barring accidents that damage the physical being (accidents Kelly would soon learn about) they could expect to live beyond time itself. And, even if the damage to the physical self is un-reparable, the soul (that was the closest translation they could convey) could survive in the inanimate (that, apparently, being tools or other materials that are handy at the time of damage).
As the mother-ship approached, and then orbited Earth, four beings (one of which was Kelly’s story teller) entered two discs, two in each. The mother-ship holds one disc for every two beings aboard (a total of two hundred and forty discs). The discs not only act as near-space transportation, or shuttles, but also as living, dining and sleeping quarters while traveling the boundless depths of space.
On their very first flight to the planet’s surface, they were struck by, what they thought at first was a weapon. It turned out to be a high-powered discharge of lightening from a violent weather disturbance over the Lincoln County, New Mexico desert. They tried to explain to Kelly why they experience no such phenomena on their home-world, but, being the meteorological dunce that he was, the explanation went well beyond his comprehension. He shook his head in polite acquiescence and bid his Brother continue.
As the gravity drive in the damaged disc overloaded and began to disassemble its saucer, the drive unit itself broke free and careened wildly into its partner disc. The two beings in the first disc found themselves helplessly falling through the cold wind and rain of that ferocious New Mexico thunder storm. They chose to leave their corporeal bodies, already damaged beyond repair, and took up residence in two small pieces of the disc floating to the ground nearby.
At this point Kelly franticly raised his hand again and his brother kindly explained: “We are a race of non-corporeal beings. We are energy … life … without form. Over countless millennia we have developed a symbiotic relationship with two other races on our home-world. One is a corporeal race. They are beings shaped somewhat like yourself. The other is … well, much harder to explain ….” He turned to the invisible one beside him again, nodded, then continued, “Kelly, please, reach up and touch the disc above you, at the edge of the hole that has almost finished healing.”
Kelly raised himself to his knees and ran his fingers along the edge of the hole, then jerked his hand away quickly.
“Ah, you see, do you not? It feels …”
“ … alive,” Kelly finished his brother’s sentence, “it really is alive, I mean … I never really believed …”
His Brother smiled, “The disc, like our mother-ship, is made from a living substance, much like the metals found on your Earth. It has no will of its own, but, as you have seen, it can heal itself, it can be manipulated, and it can be resided in.”
“You mean you can live, or exist in this … solid.”
“Why of course, Kelly. As I have told you: that is how we saved ourselves during that great conflagration in the year you call nineteen forty-seven.”
Kelly reached up and touched the edge of the hole again and his brother continued.
“You can feel it, can you not?”
Kelly looked in wonder as his fingers took on the sheen of highly polished chrome as he moved them along the smooth edge. When he removed his hand their normal color returned.
“You see Kelly … you are a part of the disc. You are a part of the disc in a way we never can be … for you, as a physical being, are able to join with the living material. You make it a living being in the truest sense of the word. Even our corporeal selves could not do such a thing.”
Kelly ran his fingers over the disc once more, then remembered: “My eyes,” he said reaching up and removing the sunglasses, “what is happening to my eyes?”
“That is merely a manifestation of the joining. You will undoubtedly experience other changes as the joining continues,” he paused, with a concerned look, “Brother, believe us, it is nothing to worry yourself with … now, please, sit again and I will finish.”
‘Easy for you to say,’ Kelly thought, as the story continued with the second, slightly damaged, disc continuing a little farther into the wind and rain, before crashing in a small gully; both of its passengers leaving their corporeal selves for the safety of the solid chrome surface of the disc.
“Your people then gathered all the pieces and bodies, put them in one of your flying machines and took everything to one of their military bases, where countless members of your race picked and jabbed and cut and burned us. When they finally learned to use the surviving gravity drive to weld and meld your technology to ours, we had to leave your disc, for you see, that is when we found that we are incompatible with your technology.”
“And where are you now?”
“We are with your Brother, of course.”
Once again Kelly’s face went blank and the figure realized that a further explanation was needed, “I am sorry Kelly, we tend to speak as a collective. Will it make it clear if we tell you that we now reside in the other disc, your Brother, the one held captive in the north?”
“Yes … I think ….” Kelly paused, “You and three others are existing in pieces, or the whole, of the other disc … in Nevada.”
“That is almost correct, and again, we are sorry … it is so hard to communicate in the singular. Three others exist in the whole of the other disc. I, however, reside with you.”
“With me! You mean … inside me?”
“Yes, don’t you see Kelly; I was in the small piece of skin that you carried with you. When you placed that piece of skin against the disc while the gravity drive was operating, the disc reclaimed its own, and I relocated, to you.”
“And it is you … healing me … changing my eyes …?”
“No, it is the disc that heals you, of course.”
As Kelly’s head sank farther into his chest, he heaved a huge breath from deep within.
“Kelly, this will all become clearer as you continue to integrate. For now, you should rest,” his Brother said, laying a hand (a hand Kelly surprisingly felt) on his shoulder, “there is still much work ahead of us.”
A NEW LOOK
Kelly woke with a slight kink at the back of his neck. The sand pillow hadn’t worked as well as he would have liked. Grabbing his larder bag, he climbed out from under the disc and moved quickly to the cover of one of the old oak trees. The Sun was at its zenith now and it was fiercely hot. Leaning against the sturdy trunk, he pulled another Moon-Pie and RC from the bag. “Why didn’t I grab a couple sandwiches back at the store,” he complained.
As he worked on his snack, the fighter pilot in him took over again and he began a quick walk-around. Squatting, he could see that the underside of the disc was now smooth and unblemished. The canopy was free of cracks and the upper surface of the disc was rid of all the dents and dings from the Ball rounds and shrapnel.
His only worry was his ammo supply. Although he had tried to use the Brownings sparingly, his best estimate put his reserve at no more than two hu
ndred rounds. Oh how he wished he carried as much ammo as those fighter pilots in the movies (seemed like John Wayne’s plane never ran out). He knew that the F-eighty-six, fully armed, only had a little more than thirteen seconds of sustained firepower … that meant he had less than a two second burst, and then he would be defenseless. He remembered from the episode with Perkins, back at the trailer, that the guns could be fired one round at a time (all six at once). All he had to do now was figure out how that was done.
With his bag in hand, he threw a leg up and pushed himself unto the wing surface. He heard the canopy slide open. He was feeling more at ease now, thinking ahead, anticipating (or the disc was). He set his bag in the cockpit and slid carefully into the now form-fitting comfort of his reshaped seat As he reached for the joy-stick he caught a dull flash from his lower peripheral vision. Raising his right hand in front of his face, he saw nothing out of the ordinary at first, but then, as he turned his hand slowly in the filtered sunlight, the area on his wrist that was so damaged by the handcuff, gave a dull reflection (of the trees outside, he thought). He pulled the sleeve of the jumpsuit up to his elbow and (as a sudden wave of anxiety flowed over him) he saw his own distorted reflection staring back at him. Sliding the sleeve on his other arm up as far as it would go, he gasped as he saw the same thing, and, as his face flushed red hot with primal fear (he felt he was being attacked from within) he began to hyperventilate. Falling ever farther into a state of panic, he watched in horror as his skin took on the chrome sheen of the disc. Pulling the zipper down his chest with the speed of man being swarmed over by a colony of fire ants, he saw nothing any less frightening. Every square inch of visible skin was casting reflections of his immediate surroundings.