Outcast

by Guerin Zand

  “Like your little story about advanced beings from another reality, we have to find a way to manifest our consciousness into these other universes, these other realities. Those who study the problem of understanding other universes have come to the conclusion that we need to find a way to exchange thoughts between us, and not worry about a physical presence. This is an area where my field of study, and the study of the multiple universes, have something in common. See, your little story is not so farfetched.”

  “We’ve reached a sort of roadblock here. Without insight into these other realities, we are limited in the ways we think about existence in its totality. It’s like your Einstein stating that the speed of light was an absolute limit. Nothing could exceed that velocity according to his reality. It was not until human reality was augmented through contact with the Collective that this line of thought was abandoned. Similarly, our thoughts and ideas are limited by our reality.”

  “So, hopefully, you’ve been able to follow what I’ve been saying?”

  “Yea, I get the gist of it. I’m still not seeing the connection to my problem.”

  Lori pulled up an image on the viewer. “Does this species look familiar to you?”

  “That looks exactly like the being in my dream. The one called Bayru.”

  “This is a species called Bayru. Their home planet is called Bayr.”

  “What about this species?”

  “That is the same species as the one that was holding me in my dream. It kept telling me I had to recognize them to move on. I have no idea what he was talking about.”

  This species is called the Maricindi. Their home planet is Maric.

  “And finally, do you recognize this race?”

  “They’re human, or maybe Bree?”

  “Look at their clothing. Does it look familiar?”

  “It looks like the clothing my friends were wearing in the dream.”

  “This species is known as the Taesrin, from the planet Taes. The clothes are made from animal hides. They’re even less advanced than Earth humans.”

  “Just couldn’t resist throwing in an insult could you, Lori? It’s been a while since the last one.”

  “Just a statement of fact. Their evolutionary development is very similar to the Native Americans in early Earth history. There is no evidence of any basic knowledge of metallurgy, yet they cannot be classified as stone age. The common theology in their culture does not revolve around gods, but what can be loosely translated as Guides. These Guides speak to them in dreams, but they don’t refer to them as dreams. They have normal dreams and they differentiate between dreams and messages from Guides. They have a unique word for these messages that has no exact translation. That word is ‘naissarance.’”

  “So, are you trying to tell me you think that my dream was one of these ‘naissarance’ dreams?”

  “That’s my theory. You said it wasn’t a normal dream, it was real. It was very clear, and your memory of this dream did not fade as a normal dream typically does. That, and the fact that you described, and obviously recognize two species which you had no knowledge even existed. I think you were sent a message from those the Taesrin call Guides.”

  “And you think these Guides are from outside our reality, our universe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s say that’s true, Lori. Why me?”

  “That, I don’t know. We don’t know how they send these messages if that is indeed what is happening. Why do they only communicate with this one species that we know of? Perhaps they don’t, or they have communicated with others in the past. Didn’t your Native Americans have a concept of spirit guides?”

  “Yes, but I think we’re reaching a bit.”

  “If you accept the premise of the theory on realities I just presented you, then it’s not such a stretch.”

  “Ok, I’ll play along. So, can you tell me what the message means?”

  “Ah, now that’s where it starts to get even more interesting. All three of these species’ home planets are located in the same solar system. It’s a rather unusual system with three planets in what you call the Goldilocks zone. Taking the fairy tale analogy a step further, the planet Bayr is a little too cold, the planet Maric is a little too hot, and the planet Taes is just right for a human-like species such as the Taesrin.”

  “The planets Maric and Bayr are both about equal in their technological development. Equivalent to Earth technology in the mid to late twenty-first century. They both are capable of rudimentary space travel, and they have both established bases on the nearest planet, Taes. None of these planets have moons, but the distance between Taes and either of these planets is significantly less than the distance between Earth and Mars. They are both significantly more advanced than the Taesrins.”

  “Again, if I use your Native Americans as an analogy for the Taesrins, the Bayru and Maricindi can be thought of as Europe and Asia. What happened to the Native Americans is happening to the Taesrins. The Bayru are the more aggressive of the two, and have been using Taesrins as slaves to supplement their labor force on Taes. While the Maricindi are not exploiting the Taesrins like the Bayru, they are essentially at war with the Bayru and don’t want them establishing bases on Taes. The Taesrins are caught in the middle and are the biggest losers in this conflict.”

  “So, why hasn’t the Collective stepped in to protect Taes as they did Earth?”

  “There’s a problem with that. We protect the Earth’s system and a large area of space surrounding it. This insured that humans would have a significant buffer region to allow them to progress before having to deal with competing worlds. We protect Earth from what are considered significantly more advanced cultures. In the past, we did that without interfering with Earth’s development. If we protected Taes, we would have to interfere with the development of Bayru, Maric, and eventually Taes. Their home solar system is under our protection, but that doesn’t protect Taes in this situation from their sister worlds.”

  “So, the Collective’s position is to let them settle the issue internally and watch as the Taesrins are wiped out?”

  “This upsets you, Guerin?”

  “Well, yes. Your rules are bullshit as far as I’m concerned. I can’t believe the Collective would just let this happen.”

  “But those are our rules. No Collective member will violate those rules. But...”

  “But what, Lori?”

  “I need you to promise me that what we discuss next will never leave this room. That is why I wanted to talk to you in private. I have an idea on how to help the Taesrins, but no one can ever know that it was my idea.”

  “I think I know where you’re going with this, Lori, so it’s probably best you just don’t say anything. Humans aren’t members of the Collective. Since I have access to Collective technology, I could get through the quarantine around this system. I could help the Taesrins. You think that’s why I was sent this message.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Guerin.” Lori was smiling.

  These fucking cheaters. Once again, they wanted to use Guerin Zand to do their dirty work. I was that classic outcast from all of those old spy movies like Mission Impossible. I was the NOC. If I got my ass in the ringer, the Collective, the Council, and most of all, Lori, would deny I was working for any of them. All I needed to make this moment complete was for Lori to disappear in a big fucking puff of smoke after a ten-second countdown.

  “All I’ve done, Guerin, is to let you know that your dream was more real than you thought. I told you about the different races in your dream, but that’s all. You’d have to make your own inquiries if you wanted to know where these planets were located. If you were to travel out there, I don’t think anyone would be surprised. You don’t trust us and prefer to see things with your own eyes rather than take our word for it. Especially us lying Bree. It’s also not unusual for a shit storm to follow you wherever you go.”

  “Do you really believe all of what you just told me about these Guides
and my dream, Lori?”

  “Yes. Making contact with these Guides could lead to the breakthrough our researchers need as well as benefit the Taesrins. They contacted you. I can only speculate that they know about you. That leads to the question, just how much do they know about our reality? How involved are they with our universe?”

  “You mentioned how you felt you were being guided into situations. It seemed to you that trouble was following you. That could have been these Guides testing you. Based on those tests, they decided to contact you directly. That does sound familiar, doesn’t it?”

  “What about the message the Maricindi kept repeating in my dreams? ‘You must recognize them to move on.’ It seemed he was talking about the three strange women in my dream? Do you know who those strange creatures were?”

  “Those things I’m not entirely sure about. My best guess is that those creatures you first thought were women, were a representation of the Guides perhaps? Maybe the message had nothing to do with them. Instead, it was telling you to find out about the other species in the dream. That you needed to recognize them to find them. You just recognized them when I showed you the images.”

  “That’s pretty thin, Lori.”

  “I agree, but I think the messages are harder to interpret than the images. It could refer to how I was telling you that we have run into a roadblock when it comes to exploring other universes. We have to recognize who these Guides are in order for our research to move forward. It might become more obvious once you go there. Perhaps the Taesrins can help you better interpret the dream. Have you had any more of these dreams since then?”

  “Yes, I think I had one the other night.”

  “Well, are you going to tell me about it?”

  “I was with those friends again, and it seemed we were under attack from some aliens, or alien force. At one point in the dream, I accepted a baby boy as my own since no one would claim him in the chaos. I reached for him and he looked at me with this big smile as I took him in my arms. It sort of reminded me of when I met my daughter Gamma. I knew it wasn’t my child, but I couldn’t just leave him. Later in the dream, his mother found me and I returned the child to her. The dream ended with something attacking my body. It was like a virus or something that was consuming my legs. I could feel the pain in my lower legs as I saw my legs slowly dissolving. I fought to wake up, and I finally did before whatever it was killed me.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound good.”

  “Yea, no shit. The part where I was being killed slowly as my body was being consumed sort of bothered me as well.”

  “Both the Maricindi and the Bayru are capable of creating such a nano-weapon. A very nasty sort of weapon that essentially disassembles its targets to their core elements. Those core elements are then used to produce more of the nano-machines. You might want to research how to disable such weapons with the resources available on your shuttle before you visit Taes.”

  “I guess telling me how to detect and disable such weapons would be breaking the rules?”

  “I’ve already broken more than a few rules by telling you some of the things we’ve discussed here.”

  “So, basically, what you’re not asking me to do, is go to Taes, intervene in the war between the Maricindi and Bayru, remove their forces from Taes, save the Taesrins from extinction, and try not to get myself killed in the process.”

  “Yes, well except for the part about not getting yourself killed. I’m rather indifferent as far as that’s concerned.” Lori smiled a Julie kind of smile.

  “For a second, Lori, I almost started to like you, but only for a second. You know if I were to actually do something that stupid, the Collective and the Bree Council wouldn’t be as forgiving as they have been in the past?”

  “I’ve been told stupid is what you do best, Guerin. Besides, forgiveness isn’t against the rules. You may find you aren’t the only one who might feel that such an action was necessary. What is it you humans say? Forgiveness is easier to get than permission?”

  “I know I’m truly fucked when a Bree starts quoting us monkeys. Is there anything else I should know?”

  “Yes. I love my daughter very much, Mr. Zand. You harm her in any way and there will be no forgiveness. Only an eternity of punishment. I’m not quite sure what the nature of the relationship is between the two of you, but consider yourself duly warned.”

  Chapter 24

  Time to Think

  Lori took me back downstairs where we met the rest of the family enjoying a drink at the bar. Cindy motioned me towards the bar and produced a nice and rather nasty tasting glass of Gluark for me to enjoy. I slammed it down and Cindy quickly refilled my glass.

  “So, what did you to talk about, Guerin?”

  “That dream I had. Your mother seems to think I’m in contact with aliens from another reality or some such nonsense. I was wrong you know.”

  “About what?”

  “She is even crazier than I am. I guess by now nothing in this universe should surprise me.”

  Cindy gave me a dismissive look. “So, that’s all?”

  “Well, she threatened me as well, but that wasn’t really unexpected.” I took a sip of my drink and shrugged my shoulders. We finished our drinks, then Cindy escorted me back up to the room where I was staying for the night.

  I wasn’t really tired, so I started looking up information on Cindy’s mother and these planets she had told me about. It would be a bit obvious that her mother was involved if I were to go there too soon after our little meeting. With first contact scheduled to happen within the next few years, I would have to wait so my actions wouldn’t affect that as well. Even though that all made sense to me, I couldn’t help thinking that people would suffer and die while I waited for what I thought was the right time.

  Initially, when Lori and I first started talking, I had hoped she would help me to understand more about what was happening in my life. I came away from our little talk with even more questions. What was I now? Some sort of enforcer for this little syndicate called the Collective? A bouncer that removed rowdy and unwanted visitors from alien planets? When I had talked with Milly, we discussed me being an explorer, but that’s not what I just heard from Lori. Sure, maybe I would be the first human to visit these new worlds, but I wasn’t going there to explore. It was just like when I was an engineer. I visited a lot of foreign countries, but I spent little time sightseeing and most of the time working.

  The whole concept of a different reality sort of confused me. Hell, this reality sort of confused me. Were these dreams I had a vision of the future? How did these beings from outside our reality, if they actually existed, understand what we called time?

  We see time in what I can only describe as a linear progression. When we are in the void, time does not pass in our universe’s spacetime. We can’t observe, at least not that I know of, what is happening in the void from our spacetime. If I thought of time as looking at the frames of a filmstrip, with an infinite number of frames, I could make sense of the progression from past to present in our spacetime. If I could observe our spacetime from the void what would it look like? Would it be a single frame? What time, in our universe’s system of reference, would that frame represent? If, as some have theorized, consciousness is a quantum state, then would that mean that the universe is locked in that state that existed when I exited our spacetime?

  What about observing our universe from another? Assuming that time existed in these other universes, there was no way to even be sure of this, how was time different from what we know in our spacetime? These other universes could have more, or less, than three physical dimensions. Could they also have more dimensions to time or no time at all? Thinking about it just made my head hurt. The possibilities were unlimited. Would observing one universe from another be as impossible as it is for us to observe the quantum states of matter? Does the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle apply? I’d say it probably does since it seems to be universal, but that was the problem, wasn’t it? I w
as trying to imagine things that are not of our universe. Could an observer from an outside universe observe where I was, but not at what time I was there, or observe a time in our universe, but not know where I was at that time?

  Then I started to think, if I was even close to the truth, then how could they send us messages? First, it would have to not matter where or when I was. If our consciousness, or souls, can be described as quantum states, then was this just some really confusing quantum logic problem that they had solved? The theories relating consciousness to quantum mechanics assert that there exists a body-soul duality, which is simply an extension of the wave-particle duality of subatomic particles. In many of the discussions of the quantum mind, they describe consciousness as a transcendent reality. Was that reality transcendent across existence? Could you say that consciousness was the one common element of all the universes? If it was, then sending a message was simply an interface of consciousness.

  Our bodies and minds are just the interfaces between our consciousness and this reality. In our reality, we exchange messages between consciousnesses all the time by talking. The speech is then processed by our brain and passed to our consciousness. Even if a species in this universe communicated telepathically it was the same, just requiring a little less processing or a different kind. Or maybe, what we called telepathy, was simply a direct exchange between consciousnesses?

  What was the truth behind those meetings we had in what I thought was the void? Could it actually be just exchanges between the consciousnesses of those who attended? I often described what I thought I experienced in those meetings, but what if I was totally wrong about all of that? Perhaps it was a direct exchange that took no time at all. My brain just made all of that other stuff up to conform to what my consciousness experienced in terms of this reality. The duality of body and soul required my consciousness to react to physical stimuli in this reality, and also required my physical reality to react to stimuli to my consciousness.