Alien Omega

by Marc Landau

  “You are supposed to use protocol for any potential interspecies first contact.”

  Honestly, I couldn’t remember what the hellvian I was supposed to say. It was something military. Outpost, blah-blah, my designation is Sub-Commander blah-blah-blah. I never paid attention. I never thought I’d be talking to aliens. Also, I don’t always remember small details when I’m about to be killed. My anxiety level kind of gets overwhelming when aliens are going to blow up the ship.

  “Do you want anti-anxiety supplements to help your first contact performance?”

  How the hellvian did the bot know? Was I talking out loud again?

  “Your biosystems are indicating a heightened level of anxiety.”

  “Hellvian yeah, they are! Wouldn’t yours be shooting off the grid if you were about to be attacked? Again?”

  “I do not experience anxiety.”

  “Not the point.”

  “Then why did you…”

  “Let’s table this for later.”

  “Confirmed.”

  The small object approached and I wondered if I should tell Kat to come up to the command room with Poka. She might recognize it. Then again, if the Kat part of her didn’t, and the alien portion did, who knew what it might do? It was safer to keep her-it in the garden until I knew what was going on.

  On the downside, if the vessel blew us up, I’d rather die with alien-Kat and Poka at my side. I didn’t want the last face I saw to be the snarky bot giving me a smug grin from its mouth hole. I couldn’t bear it if the last words I ever heard were, “Beep-borp, I told you so.”

  I stared at the screen, my heart speeding up. The vessel was still so small, I could barely make out what the thing was. It could be some random golf ball in space for all I could tell.

  “Can you magnify the vessel?”

  “Already at maximum,” the bot replied.

  It figured. This dang ship wasn’t configured for anything good except sitting around. If the universe was going to throw me into a shat storm, it could’ve at least put me on a warrior class vessel so I had some defenses.

  Then again, it had put a super-powered alien on-board. Maybe that’s all I needed. I just had to figure out how to control the thing. Has anyone ever tried to control an angry alien ex-girlfriend? The only thing worse would be a super-powered Poka.

  All I could do was wait. The vessel was getting larger as it approached. It now looked more like a basketball. Another minute or two and I should have a good look at it. That, or it was going to rip through the ship. Like the bot said, it was on a collision course. Who knew if the thing was going to stop once it got to us?

  I certainly hoped it would, because at its current rate it would be at least the size of one of those statues from the ancient Elfen Island. I barely remembered the doc-vid I saw about it years ago. But those giant heads were unforgettable. They were huge and on this teeny-tiny island, and no one could ever figure out how they got there. It turned out aliens did it.

  Funny how many things aliens actually did. People used to think aliens existed and visited and helped humanity, but they couldn’t prove any of it because their tech was so lame. Everyone called them crazy or conspiracy wackjobs but they were right all along. The pyramids, Stonehenge. Evolution. Leprechauns. It turned out to be aliens every single time. Cave paintings with something that looks like a spaceship? Yup. It was aliens.

  “That thing is as big as those heads on Elfen Island,” I muttered to the bot.

  “Easter Island,” it beeped.

  “Are you sure? What do giant heads have to with Easter? Shouldn’t it be giant eggs?”

  “I am one hundred percent correct,” the bot replied.

  “Not even ninety-nine point nine nine?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  Hmmm. I was wrong but it still kind of nagged at me. Easter and giant heads didn’t make sense. Oh, well.

  I peeked over at the screen of the garden and spotted Kat and Poka still there. Thank hellvian she’d listened when I asked her to stay put. Which made the case for her being an alien. The real Kat never listened to me. Well, almost never.

  I turned the sound module up and heard Poka snoring. I needed a smile before the ship was rammed by a boulder. Kat was just sitting there, gently stroking Poka as she chopped wood. It was a soothing sight. I could hear Kat muttering but couldn’t make out what she was saying.

  She used to do that back when we were living together. She and Poka would cuddle up, and Kat would whisper into her ear. I never could figure out what she was saying. My guess, the basic doggie talk.

  “What a pretty dog, I ruv ru.”

  I’m sure there was the occasional, “Wil’s such a dork.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Collison in thirty-two seconds,” the bot reported.

  “Collision?”

  “Correct. As stated previously.”

  “Unless the thing stops.”

  “Correct.”

  “So don’t say collision.”

  “The vessel doesn’t indicate any intention of coming to a halt. Probability is under three percent.”

  “You can’t determine that. You have no idea what that thing is.”

  “Correct. However, based on its mass and speed, there are no known engines powerful enough to stop its forward motion at this time.”

  “So basically what you’re saying is that there’s no room left to stomp on the space brakes?”

  The bot beeped and buzzed, processing my language. “Space brakes. That is an accurate analogy in this instance. And you are correct. There is not enough time to apply them.”

  “Do we have any shields to help buffer the impact?”

  “Our vessel isn’t equipped with shields.”

  “Of course not.”

  I watched as the giant Easter Island head came barreling at us full-speed. Hopefully, it wouldn’t tear the ship to shreds.

  “We’d better brace for impact then.”

  “There is nothing to brace.”

  I hit the comm and warned Kat.

  “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

  “Can you teleport us again, or make the thing shrink down to the size of a peanut?”

  There was a long pause. Was she trying? Could another life-threatening moment kick-start her alien superpowers?

  “…sorry.”

  I slumped. “It’s okay. Give Poka a big hug for me, and hold on tight.”

  I watched on the screen as she nodded and clutched Poka. It brought a small relief to know that if this was it, at least they were together.

  Poka didn’t seem to know it wasn’t really Kat. That made me wonder. She was usually pretty good about detecting when things were off. Animals and their sixth-sense type stuff. Running away from storms. Detecting seizures, bombs, drugs. And in vids they were even able to detect ghosts and demons. So why not aliens?

  Poka couldn’t do that, but she did have a good sense of when someone was “off.” The few times she barked at a person, it turned out there was something sketchy about them. Once she even barked at a perfectly normal-looking guy who later got sent to detention for murder. It was totally random, but she barked so wildly at the guy that I couldn’t forget his face. A couple of days later I saw on the news screen that he’d been arrested.

  Why was she acting like Kat was Kat? Was Kat in there somewhere? After all that had happened in the last few days, anything was possible. Not that it mattered. We were all about to be crushed by a giant Easter head. Except for alien Kat, who I was pretty sure could survive a macro-nuke. I just wished there was some way she could protect Poka.

  There was a way. She could jump us all out of here into oblivion. If I could figure out how to access her abilities.

  “Collision in five.”

  I stared, eyes wide, watching the giant boulder race at us. A giant blur of doom. A pit formed in my stomach. Doom. A feeling I’d had many times but it had never been so literal.

  “Impact in three, two…”


  I held my breath, closed my eyes, and prayed silently.

  A few moments passed and nothing happened. The bot never said “one,” and we didn’t explode. Could we have blown us up so fast that I didn’t even feel it? Hellvian, I hoped so. If I was gonna be dead that’s the way to go. Quick and painless. But I didn’t feel dead.

  I heard the bot hum and emit a low beep. If this was the afterlife, the bot better not have come with me. No way I could endure infinity with the walrus. I cautiously opened my eyes, waiting to see if I was in the afterlife or still in the command room.

  On the screen was the “vessel.” My mind searched for an explanation of what it was, but I came up blank. If it was a ship, I’d never seen anything like it before. It looked nothing like an Easter Island head and was at least twenty times the size. It was more like a small moon had shimmied up to the side of the ship and sucked us into its orbit.

  If it was a ship, the thing was massive. If it was a planet, not so much. Whatever it was, it wasn’t in our database. Nothing we’d encountered in the last day or so was in our database. Two unknown alien species, one of which was now at war with Earth Prime, while the other was in the garden petting the dog. Also a planet that could be alien-Kat’s home. And now, this glowy thing.

  A giant, multicolored sphere hovered outside the ship. It might have been mirrored, because the colors were reflecting the hues of the planet. But it was also pulsing as if it was breathing. It reminded me of how bubbles bend and shimmy as they float away before they pop and spritz you with suds.

  “Bot. Any idea what that is? A small planet? An asteroid of some kind?” I was sure I’d said it out loud and was expecting the bot to respond. But there was only silence. It caught me off guard.

  I realized that the bot had stopped at two. It never said one. And it never spoke again. That almost never happened. Usually it would be full of details, speculation and probabilities. A quiet bot? That was something to behold. As much as I wanted peace and quiet, it was eerie.

  All I heard was a low hum, and possibly a muffled beep. Like it was trying to speak but couldn’t.

  I turned and saw the walrus standing there motionless, its lights a soft glow. Someone had turned the dimmer switch to low. If I knew I could’ve turned the bot down, I’d have done it on day two. It wasn’t the time to be petty but I was trying to avoid dealing with the fact I was actually worried about the dang bot. I hated that a part of me actually cared about the thing. Not that the walrus would ever find out. No way I was ever going to tell it. Still, seeing it stuck, trying to move and speak but not being able to was choking me up.

  I quickly shook it off, because there was obviously a problem. The bot wouldn’t have suddenly shut down like that. Something was doing it. And there were only two things that could. The first was Kat, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t her. She was still calmly petting Poka in the garden. So it had to be alien invader number two. The giant glowing boulder floating outside the ship.

  “Bot. Don’t worry, I’ll fix this.”

  It mumbled something and in my head I heard it say, “I know you will. You’re the best captain ever!” But I’m sure it was more like, “You have zero chance of fixing anything.”

  Looking at the bot,it reminded me of the ancient term, “a deer caught in the headlights.” It was just standing there, frozen in terror. Except it didn’t feel terror. It said it didn’t feel anything. But if I had to call it, I’d say it was scared shatless. I was pretty sure if I checked its robot pants, I’d find it had evacuated some lug nuts into them.

  I looked back to the main screen and watched the sphere pulsing, breathing with light and color. I felt myself being pulled into its beauty and motion. It was similar to what happened with the jeweled cocoon when we first encountered it. It was calling to me like a vampire orb, “Come closer.”

  A compulsion washed over me. I had to touch the beautiful magical orb. My hand gently stroked the monitor, but the feeling was empty. I needed to really touch it. Feel it. Be engulfed by its wondrous beauty. The feeling was so strong, if I could’ve walked through the ship’s wall and into space, I would have. I think I might have even tried to, but the command room’s wall stopped me.

  I heard the bot’s muffled beeps and blurps and knew they were actually screams. It was warning me. But I was too absorbed in the warm glow of the sphere to care.

  The orb’s colored reflections glowed inside the command room. I didn’t know if it was coming from the vid screen, or if the light had penetrated the hull of the ship. The flickering, amorphous colors were so overwhelmingly beautiful that a tear welled up, freed itself from my eye and glided down my cheek. It was like seeing all the greatest works of art for the first time in a flash.

  A deep memory freed itself from the recesses of my mind. I was on a rooftop on a crisp fall day, in the city of art. Kat was by my side. She was the one who liked to do things. I always enjoyed going places with her and having new experiences, but left to my own devices, I was much more likely to sit around eating junk food and watching the screens or playing games in the deep-arc.

  I’d never seen sculptures in person before. Only in the virt, which looks and feels pretty damn real. I always thought the virt was as good as real, or even better. But it wasn’t. Being there with the real thing. Knowing someone had forged, and chiseled, and molded this actual object hundreds of years ago, was profound. And that millions of people actually left their houses and took transportation, and paid creds, just to see them in person!

  It was all so real. The people. The art. Kat holding my hand. Giving it a soft squeeze, and me a small knowing smile, as we shared the experience.

  As if that moment wasn’t enough, the next ones were what seared it into my mind for all eternity.

  Kat and I were admiring one of the statues when a small, middle-aged woman walked up and gently touched the marble face. A security guard rushed over, telling her not to touch the art. But before he could finish the sentence, he stopped. A second later he whispered something gently into her ear, smiled and casually walked away, like nothing happened. The woman continued her exploration of the statue with her hands, and we understood why the guard had moved on.

  She was blind.

  Even a blind woman cared so much about the art that she’d made her way here like all the rest of us. Just to see it in her own way. That’s how powerful the artist’s work was. Someone had created something that inspired a blind woman to do whatever it took to connect with his work, five hundred years later.

  Another tear rolled down my cheek. That’s when I realized I couldn’t move. I’d become a statue.

  At least now I knew what happened to the bot. The colored bubble had trapped it in some form of simulated memory. What exactly was memory for the bot? It said it didn’t have emotions, which are critical for human memory. Without emotional triggers humans can’t remember much of anything. Maybe some math, but everything else is tied to some palpable sense.

  Sounds.

  Colors.

  Odors.

  Feelings.

  Words.

  They open the doors.

  Stop thinking. They’re trying to keep you occupied.

  I’m pretty sure we remember everything, but humans get too overwhelmed by the details. Our conscious brains can’t handle all the information, so we stuff it down deep then tag it with a feeling which acts as a key so we can access it later. Quick reference. Tabs in the mind.

  There have been people with diseases or brain damage who literally remember every second of their lives in excruciatingly perfect detail, including every feeling they had at that moment.

  I can’t fathom what it would be like to remember everything in perfect detail.

  But you are.

  Remember being born?

  Conceived?

  The first moment of existence?

  Crying as a baby because mommy took her breast away?

  The people who can remember every second of the their lives can’t functio
n in society. They’re effectively trapped inside of their past. Stuck in a loop. Every second recorded and played back as they move forward.

  Peel a banana then remember peeling it while eating it. Then remember peeling and eating and swallowing it. Then remember peeling and biting and chewing and swallowing. Then remember…

  You’re ranting. The sphere’s fraking with your mind, keeping you stuck.

  I heard the bot’s muffled bleep and wondered if was also trapped in some sort of infinite code loop? Were its memories visual, like mine? It would say they weren’t emotional but I’d wager they were. That thing had something akin to emotions. Whoever designed snuck in a shatload of attitude and snark.

  As much as I hated to admit it, they’d also programmed in compassion. It cared about Poka, even though it wouldn’t stop harassing me about her being a dog, not a bio-AI. It was stubborn. Had to be right. Ironic—the bot was more like a dog with a bone than the dog was.

  I knew it was fighting off that sphere head thing. Trying to hack through whatever the alien was doing. It was struggling to tell me something. Struggling to move. Free itself from the invisible tractor beam, force field, or hypo thingy. I hoped it was having better luck than I was.

  Stop thinking. It’s a mind trap.

  “Yes, a trap. A catch-22, an endless obsessive loop of repetitive never-ending detail that will never…”

  Stop it! Try to calm your thoughts.

  “I’m trying!”

  You’re not doing a good job.

  “Gee. Thanks.”

  Stop talking back to me. It's another trick.

  “Sorry. I’m trying to stop, but it’s really hard.”

  Shut up!

  Chapter Eight

  I couldn’t hear the muffled beeps of the bot any longer. I couldn’t hear anything. Instead I was feeling sound. Feeling every hum and beep and whir of the ship and the sphere, and of space, and the planet. And Kat. Feeling it all in my core, on an atomic level. Deep in my bones. The blood. Veins. Up through the skin and out through my pores. In came the sounds of the universe. I was breathing them all in and out, from my pores to my soul.