Parasites Love Earth!

  Jack fell against her, knocking her backwards, and as she scrambled to get up, the other Sam kicked the blaster from her hands. "I guess we're going to have to do this the hard way," she sighed. "I thought so."

  And she grabbed Sam by the shoulders and started to push her to the ledge. The falls roared below.

  "Do you know why I chose these falls as a meeting spot?" said the other Sam, as she pushed Sam back, inch by inch. "It's because it's the spot where Professor Moriarty defeated Sherlock Holmes, sending him plunging to his death."

  "Not quite right, my dear," said Sam, struggling against her. "It's the place where both of them fell to their death. It's quite an even trade I'd be more than willing to make with you!" And then Sam pushed the other Sam back, with more strength than a normal human being should have, and the other Sam realized for the first time that she had underestimated herself. That little shit friend of hers wasn't just lurking somewhere nearby; she was closer. Much closer.

  Sam and her counterpart fell to the ground, on the edge of the falls, rolling over and over. Both had hate and death etched into their faces, both determined to see the very end of the other. Sam screamed and the other Sam screamed and they both yelled and scratched and bit into an ear and bit into a cheek and kicked and punched and clawed into a shoulder and a stomach and rolled and rolled as they tried to kill each other with the power of murder in their eyes.

  "Die, bitch, die!" one of them yelled.

  "You first, you fucking cunt!" the other yelled back.

  And they fought and hurt each other and yelled some more, and then they came to the edge and one rolled over and screamed... and was gone.

  Major Samantha Arden stood up, brushing herself off. She ached all over. She was full of bruises and cuts and deep scratches in her shoulder and a very nasty bite mark on her cheek. She saw a flashlight, on the ground. She painfully climbed to the top of the bank, and turned it on and off, slowly, three times on, three times off, giving the universal Survey Service code for all clear.

  Chapter 8: Time Variant One

  [Eight months later]

  The sleek spaceship touched down at the main Survey Service base in Colorado Springs. An honor guard of space marines stood on either side of the ship as the hatch slowly opened. Waiting at the base of the hatch was a Survey Service colonel, and several junior officers.

  A tall, dark haired man stepped out slowly. He eyed the crowd of Survey Service soldiers for a moment, and then proceeded briskly down the ramp, walking up to the officer in charge.

  "Greetings," he said. "I am Penn 1, of the Stellar Union."

  "Welcome," said the officer. "My name is Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Arden, of the United Survey Service. Welcome to Earth."

  Penn 1 looked around. "You know why I am here."

  Sam nodded. "Dunlop 4 told us. You came to assess whether Earth is inhabited by parasites."

  "Yes," Penn scanned the crowd, and reached out with his senses. He detected nothing. "Is Dunlop 4 available?"

  "Regrettably not, Penn 1, he perished," said Sam. "But in the process, he enabled us to defeat the parasites."

  "You defeated them?"

  Sam nodded.

  "All of them? Including the Hive?"

  Sam nodded. "We found a unique means of destroying them, involving tapping into the organic frequency on which their life forms biologically operated on."

  Penn 1's eyebrows raised. "Do you have information about this means of destroying the Hive?"

  "I do, sir. Would you like to accompany me?" Sam asked.

  "Gladly."

  Penn 1 followed Sam inside the administrative building. She took him into an elevator that led four levels down.

  "I knew Dunlop 4," said Sam. "In our brief time together, we became... friends. I will miss him."

  "A good man," said Penn 1. "But there will always be another."

  Sam nodded. Would they make a Dunlop 5 or 6 or whatever the latest number was?

  They got to the bottom floor and Sam got out, walking briskly in her bright blue Survey Service military skirt. Penn 1 followed.

  She took him down a few hallways, and into a large, empty room.

  Penn 1 looked around. "This room is empty."

  "Not for long," said Sam.

  A swarm of humanoid Insect creatures, harem guards, and duplicates entered the room, from three different doors. In seconds, Penn 1 was surrounded.

  "You will never get away with this," said Penn 1. "When the Stellar Union finds out-"

  "The Stellar Union will find out nothing," said Sam, walking up to him. "In fact, after you go back and tell them everything is fine here, you will help spread us among your precious Stellar Union."

  "I will not," said Penn 1.

  Sam flicked out her tongue, and Penn 1 felt a cut on his cheek, and a trace of blood. He collapsed to the ground.

  "You may not," said Sam. "But someone just like you will."

  The End

  Chapter 9: Time Variant Two

  Sam brushed the dirt off her legs as the lead Survey Service officers ran up to the picnic area. One of them, a captain, saluted Sam. She saluted him back.

  "Prisoners?" he inquired.

  "No," said Sam, shaking her head. "The body of Colonel Sullivan is back there. Take him in."

  "Just a moment," said a newcomer. He reached out and touched Sam on the head, and closed his eyes.

  "Momomomomomom," said Sam.

  "Momomomomomom," said the man, peering into her with his mind. Then he nodded. "All right," he said to the others. And then, to Sam, "Sorry, but we had to be sure."

  "I understand," said Sam. She touched her cheek. She had a nasty bite mark on it.

  Sam returned to HomePlanet Security. She worked on a plan to complete the takeover of the rest of the Earth's armed forces. General Henderson was only too glad to contribute to the plan, right after his rider got its third ring.

  Progress on the gateway was going well too. First tests on establishing a portal to Dimension 43 were going to start next week.

  A few days before the first test, she was called back to the Hive. The Hive Mind had detected some disturbing readings.

  Sam took off her clothes, and entered the cave. Before long she was standing before the Hive Mind. She didn't need a rider to commune with it, the function was built into her body. She started to listen to what it was saying. It had detected a disturbance, a disturbance along the radio pathways of life...

  And then, even as she listened, she heard moans around her. Harem guards started to drop in their tracks. Worms stopped moving and became lifeless. Riders started to fall off the backs of their hosts, and shrivel up on the ground. Sam looked around, and realized she needed to get out of there.

  She had only taken a few steps, however, when someone came out of the shadows.

  It was another Samantha Arden, but this one wore clothes, and had a blaster rifle in her arms.

  "Going somewhere?"

  "Sam," said the other Sam. "We never did find your body at the bottom of the falls. I knew, of course, that you were still alive."

  "Of course," said Sam. "That's because you anticipate everything I do, remember? So you anticipated that I would put Aura inside me, to give me extra strength to fight you," said Sam, taking a step forward. "And you anticipated that James would create a force web to catch me when I slid down the falls." She took another step. "And then you also anticipated that I recovered my memories of the wavelength of the spider forms, and that I also retained the readings I took from you. And after that, you anticipated that I contacted every broadcasting tower on the planet, and had them transmit with as much power as they could."

  "Sam-"

  "No? You didn't anticipate any of those things, did you?" said Sam. She looked around at the dying bugs and spiders. "We did a test, in Strasborg, France, of the organic transmission frequencies. It killed all the Hive creatures, but we weren't quite sure if it was working on duplicates."

  "I feel fine," said the other Sam. />
  "That's because I haven't used this yet," said Sam, holding up an activator. She pressed it.

  The other Sam felt a stabbing pain in her gut, and fell to her knees.

  "But you anticipated that, didn't you?" said Sam, looking around at the dying and dead bugs. She saw spiders shriveled up in their own webs. "That's what Colonel Worth Rogers warned me about. That it was a game, between you and I. A game to either convince me that I couldn't fight back, or a game to convince you that you had won... when you hadn't."

  The other Sam tried to say something, but no words came out. Pain saturated her body.

  "And now, let me repeat my parting message from our last encounter. Die, bitch!" said Sam, and she blew off the other Sam's head.

  She heard a roar, and looked up to see the Hive Mind glaring at her. Sam aimed carefully, and fired a shot, blinding it in one eye. The Hive Mind screamed. It kept screaming, even after Sam brutally burned out the other. Then she set her blaster to continuous fire, and carved up the Hive Mind like a rump roast. She cut huge chunks of it, which fell to the ground with a thump. After she had carved about a third of it, the creature gave one final scream and died.

  Sam eventually stopped firing, and stood there, with tears in her eyes. For a long time she didn't move or say anything. Suddenly, she realized she was the only living thing there. She left the cave.

  ********

  Two hours later Sam was sitting on a log, overlooking the Potomic river. She was crying softly, now. The first hour she had cried her heart out.

  A middle aged balding man, with a neatly kempt beard, approached her. "What's wrong?" he asked.

  Sam looked at him. Her first instinct was to be on alert. She was still running high on adrenaline.

  But the Hive had been destroyed. After she left the cave, she had contacted the World Government, and learned that so far, none of the Hive had been immune to their transmissions. Maybe this was simply what it seemed to be--a casual bystander expressing concern for someone in pain.

  It didn't matter. Sam looked away, and continued to cry.

  The man slowly came over, and sat farther down on the log. "It can't be that bad," he said.

  "I killed everyone I ever loved."

  "You're not the kind of person to do that," he said.

  Sam looked at him, and wondered if he had been one of those who had somehow avoided contact with the Hive. Was it possible he really didn't know?

  "Tell me about it," the man said.

  And since Sam had no one else to talk to, she did. She told him how she participated in her own Infection. How she cooperated in maturing her own rider. How she helped Infect the armed forces. How she Infected her best friend and lover. How she participated in the slaughter of her own family.

  The man listened in silence, nodding a bit. Sam wondered if he thought she was crazy. But finally, when she stopped talking, he said, "Is that all?"

  "Is that all?" Sam gave a laugh. "What more do I need to say?"

  "Things aren't always what they seem, Sam."

  Sam looked at the man. She had never told him her name.

  "I watch people," said the man. "That's my job. Because you have been a pivotal person in recent events, I have been watching you, and those around you, Major Samantha Arden of the United Survey Service." The man paused. "A very proud title. A very proud title for a very brave and distinguished young woman."

  "Who are you?"

  "As I said, it is my job to watch. To make sure certain rules are not broken."

  "Are you some kind of interstellar police man, like Dunlop 4?" Sam asked.

  The man shook his head. "No. My job is not to write the wrongs of the galaxy. It is only to prevent things that shouldn't have happened from happening. That Container Ship never should have been taken over. It never should have come to Earth. Earth should never have been Infected." He paused. "If you're sad now, you haven't seen the timelines I've seen. In some of them, too many of them, the Hive Mind wins. You die at Reichenbach Falls. You never go on to save the Earth, and the Hive takes over the entire planet, and spreads from there."

  That didn't make Sam feel much better. "Well, if you're supposed to stop these things, you're a little late."

  "No I'm not," said the man. "Things will soon be righted. It will be as if this invasion never occurred."

  "You're going to... reverse time?"

  "Just reset it on its proper course."

  "When?"

  "As soon as this conversation is over."

  "Then... do it," said Sam.

  "First things first," said the man, raising a restraining finger. "Sam, you should know that things are not what they seem. You did not kill your husband Gavin. You did not kill Colonel Jack Sullivan."

  "I pulled the trigger!"

  "You were compelled in the first instance. But either way, the people you shot were not who they seemed."

  Sam looked at him for a long moment. "They were duplicates?"

  The man nodded. "Your husband Gavin was captured and turned by Melinda. While he quickly became an obedient slave, they weren't satisfied with the results. They didn't merely want someone who would Infect you, they wanted someone who would break your spirit. And for that they needed a duplicate."

  "So Gavin... all the things he said to me about resenting me... it was all a duplicate?"

  The man nodded. "And Jack, the Jack you saw at Reichenbach Falls, he was a duplicate as well. The real Jack was strangled three days before you last saw him, when his duplicate was born."

  Sam started to sob again.

  "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you cry again."

  "No, no, it does make me feel better, somehow," said Sam.

  "Now, as for your feelings of guilt for succumbing too easily to the Hive, again you were not responsible. After Gavin, or his duplicate, Infected you with the initial worm, what's the first thing he did?"

  Sam tried to think back. "He... he used a spider on my head."

  "And what was the result?"

  "I... I don't know. I didn't feel any different."

  "Did you notice, when you came home the next day, you automatically undressed and bared your back to him, even as you told him you were not going to cooperate?"

  "Yeah," said Sam, remembering. "That was strange, now that I recall."

  "And do you remember when he gave you the final worm, and you put it on yourself?"

  "Yes," said Sam.

  "That was all part of your conditioning. You were programmed to do it," said the man. "But even more broadly, your conditioning was meant to prevent you from resisting. It made you accept what they were doing to you."

  "I tried to resist," said Sam, remembering the warning she had tried to give Jack.

  "How many times? Did you try very hard? Didn't you give up rather quickly?"

  "Yes, I did," said Sam.

  "That's because you were conditioned that way. The programming the spider gave you told you to put up only a token resistance, that resistance in general was futile. Tell me, Sam, you were an 86 strength ESPer. Why did you never try to use your ESPer powers to fight the worms or your rider, except at the very end?"

  "I... I don't know! It never occurred to me!"

  "It didn't occur because you were conditioned not to think about it. That's why Gavin made you submit to spider programming so early in your Infection process. Once you were programmed not to fight back, once you were programmed to accept, then they could portray you as an eager convert."

  "Why? Why was it so important to them that I see myself as an eager slave?"

  "For two reasons. The first I have already mentioned. If you realized you could resist, you might break free of their influence. But the other reason was Dunlop 4. They needed you to seduce him without a rider, because Dunlop could detect the presence of riders. To let you operate without a rider, they had to convince you that you were dedicated to the Hive. That's why they had you Infect your family and watch while they were consumed by the Hive."

  "I won
dered about that," Sam whispered. "But I seemed so... enthusiastic when my family was killed." She choked back a sob.

  "That wasn't you, Sam. It never was. It was the rider."

  "You mean, when the other me spoke-"

  "There was no other you, Sam. There never was. There was only you, and an extremely formidable five pound, triple banded rider, controlling your actions and even your thoughts as needed. Whenever you said or did something cruel, it was the rider, using you like a puppet, trying to convince you that you were something that you were not."

  Sam thought about it for a while. "Are you sure?"

  "Yes," said the man. "You were not responsible for your actions. You did absolutely nothing wrong. On the contrary, despite immense mental conditioning, you managed to break free and save your planet. You are a wonderful woman, Sam, to overcome such adversity, a true inspiration to your race... even like... the one in your mind... yes, Anna Rogers."

  Sam started to breathe more easily. Suddenly, a smile came to her face. "And so... when you leave, all those people who are dead-"

  "Jack. Janice. Your family. All will be alive again," said the old man.

  Sam suddenly reached out and hugged the old man. He hugged her back, and smiled.

  But when Sam drew back, she had a puzzled look on her face. "But... why are you talking to me, then? If you're about to go and change everything, why tell me all this now? This version of me is not going to exist very much longer."

  "That's correct," said the man. "I am talking to you not primarily for your benefit. I told you for my benefit. I have spent centuries watching. Watching people make mistakes. Watching people blaming themselves. Watching people suffer. But I have been powerless to intervene. This is one of those rare times that I can intervene. It's very rare in my line of work that I can ever get what you call... job satisfaction. I so rarely get to even talk to anyone. I thought, for once, it would just be nice.... nice to...."

  Sam smiled at him and squeezed his hand. "Thank you."