Cherko nodded.
The next thing Cherko knew they were in a living room. It was dark, and he could hear the ventilation system running. Doses of heat were pumped into the room. They really had to be north if the heat was on in August.
She and two other aliens were with him. The aliens turned without a word and Cherko followed. They moved swiftly, fluidly. It was actually kinda creepy. They flew through the dark house unerringly and with surprising speed, which was not as easy for him; for one thing his night vision hadn’t yet kicked in. They left the living room for a hallway, then headed up a flight of stairs. Cherko saw one of the aliens carrying something, but he couldn’t get a good look at it. It looked like a rod or baton of some kind. He wanted to ask what the thing was but was overcome by a feeling to not ask questions.
Quickly making their way down the short hallway past a nightlight, a cat poked its head out into the hallway and hissed, arching its back, hair bristling. The cat nearly jumped out of its skin getting out of the way, but none of the aliens appeared concerned. Without pause, they entered the bedroom at the end of the hallway.
When Cherko entered the room, the aliens were already grouped around the bed. Before them, and on his side, slept a small child of perhaps four. Cherko had never been any good at figuring out kids’—or women’s, for that matter—ages. One of the aliens had already held out the device Cherko couldn’t identify, over the child. The child rolled over onto his stomach and Cherko distinctly felt as if that had been made to happen by his guides. The one with the rod-like device then touched the object to the small of the child’s back and repeatedly ran it up and down both sides of his spine.
What are you doing? Cherko mentally asked.
We’re correcting his condition.
Why?
He is vital to one of your future probabilities. This act itself, what we are doing... is also required.
What do you mean?
She turned to him. All in good time.
You do this a lot? Help us out?
We have our methods.
When the one with the rod was done, the group departed the room as they’d entered—quickly and efficiently.
Cherko followed as they again made their way through the home, and unerringly made their way into another bedroom. But here they found what Cherko knew was the mother. She sat bolt upright in bed, blankets bunched about her waist, her hands firmly planted to either side of her into the blankets.
She stared at them.
“No... no, no, no... this isn’t happening, this isn’t happ—”
She reached out to the young mother.
Everything is all right. We are here to help. You are safe.
“What is happening,” the woman continued to wail, eyes wide.
Cherko could feel the fear in her... her concern for her child. She allowed Cherko to come to the woman, and he came out of the shadows and showed himself.
The woman’s eyes opened wider. “Who are you?” she asked. Her voice was thick with terror. “What do you want?”
Cherko could see the woman trembling. He looked to his guides, then back to the woman. He now felt more confusion than fear from her.
Continue, She directed.
“I am... a friend,” Cherko said. “We’re here to help. We’ve helped your son.”
“My son! What have you done to him! Where is he!”
The woman tried to get out of bed, but Cherko felt She direct... something... toward her and she remained where she was.
“Why are you here?” the woman appealed, now openly crying. “Why us? You have no right! No right!”
But we do, She said.
Cherko looked to She.
Your child is to live and grow. We’ve corrected multiple organic misalignments. He will now grow unaffected and will be a strong, healthy son. He will live a long, useful life. You will both be happy.
Cherko watched as the woman suddenly—as if on cue—stopped crying and her face went blank. She stared straight ahead—through them.
You will go back to sleep now, She continued. Nothing happened here tonight. You will both awake in the morning with no memory of us, this conversation, our actions, nor your son’s disorder. You will feel happy and safe. Your lives... safe.
The group turned as one and departed the woman’s bedroom.
* * *
“What happened back there?” Cherko asked She, back on the ship.
We help those in need of our actions.
“Why don’t you help everyone who needs such help?”
We have our methods, Captain.
“Where to now?”
We think you will like this.
* * *
Cherko watched as the screen changed to another curious image: he appeared to be looking down from on high to what looked like a cloudy Replogle display globe. From some off-center angle at the top. He could clearly see fully half of the globe illuminated, the other side dark. Though there were clouds covering large sections of the land masses, and he was at an angle opposite to those continents in the light, he could clearly make out the top of the Russian peninsula stretching toward Alaska. North America was heading into this light.
He was frigging looking at the entire Earth.
From space.
We are sorry we cannot present you with astronaut wings, She sent.
All Cherko could do was stare in amazement.
He was goddamned in space!
Orbiting Earth—well, perhaps not exactly orbiting, but certainly hovering. There, below him... was everything. For this moment in time and space, he was unique. Outside of the familiar. Outside of bills and mortgages and alarm clocks. Outside of the surly bonds of Earth. Just a sweep of a minute-hand ago they’d been in a desert-bound ship’s bow in the American Southwest; another short sweep, and he’d been in the bedroom of a child and its mother in the distant northlands of Canada. Another sweep—
In orbit.
“Won’t we be spotted? By radar, surveillance satel—”
No, She said.
“Then what of—”
Cherko felt more translated amusement from She.
You only see what we allow you to see.
“You mess with us?”
We prefer to think of it as limiting our exposure.
Cherko looked back to the screen.
But, it’s not just us you see so much of.
Cherko looked to She, then back to the screen.
“This is so unreal. It’s like... all our bickering, fighting... makes absolutely no sense from up here.”
Cherko felt an intense wave of compassion overtake him. Deep, profound, soul-wrapping kindness, concern, and sympathy. He looked up and into the large, dark eyes of She and found that this enormous sensation again originated from her.
There was also another feeling Cherko identified, also from She... a brilliant and pure sense of danger.
But as soon as he’d felt that, it was gone. Washed away by the overriding sense of love and caring, as if from—
A mother.
She looked back to the screen.
We monitor your world’s condition, She said. We cannot interfere... it is our “Prime Directive,” again, to borrow a familiar phrase from your television programs—
“It’s like you and Gene Roddenberry had something going on,” Cherko said, grinning.
We monitor the molecular structure of your atmosphere, your tectonics, your hydraulics, to levels you cannot yet conceptualize. Though there are some in your community already aware of this, it will largely be ignored until it is too late... in your terms, She continued, looking from the screen to Cherko. She held his gaze for a moment, then looked back to the screen, which now displayed the Arctic. It was a little unnerving being stared at by an emotionless extraterrestrial face that was now—and would forever be—more than just some quaint Hallowe’en mask. It was a face so much more full of texture, character, and personality than ever displayed in any sci-fi movie image or book jacket.
The Earth image on the screen grew slightly larger in size, and Cherko wasn’t sure if that meant they’d come closer or the image was magnified, but he figured it was probably a little of both. Then a second image was superimposed over this one. One that appeared to be an overlay of pixels—billions and trillions of them, he surmised—superimposed over the Arctic image. He also saw values associated with each and every pixel. It was unimaginably mind-boggling. They flowed in and out of each other, in the most brilliant, technologically advanced, and spectacular of fashions. As many as there were, as small as they were, he felt he could easily zoom in on each and every one.
Given the current state of your world, and all things considered, your world is heading toward—is already within, actually—a cyclical period of tremendous global climate change. It is not inevitable, but will shortly become so.
“Climate change?”
Global warming.
“What is that, exactly? I’ve heard of it. Melting ice caps, tropical-like-weather-everywhere kind of thing?”
Without the enthusiastic anticipation you are associating with the image, yes. Though the Earth itself can withstand and rebound from this period within its temporal timeline, Humanity, as a whole, will be greatly affected. It is not something to be taken lightly in the sense you give it.
“Sorry.”
But it is part of your heritage as a race. Not that it should be accepted and ignored; but as a forum of growth and responsibility, a medium for change. There are forces at work... that are ignoring this for their own self-serving interests, obfuscating its reality, which will bring about your world’s collapse and destruction if allowed to continue at present—and forecast—rates.
“It’s not inevitable?”
My dear Captain, nothing is inevitable nor irreparable.
Then that’s good, Cherko thought.
No information is good stored and not implemented.
But there was something more. Something She wasn’t telling him.
Cherko looked back to the screen. Studied it.
So, Humanity was on the fast-track to obliteration from the geological record and extraterrestrials were helping correct damaged children. It all seemed cosmologically comical. Futile. But nothing in nature happens without need, Cherko remembered reading somewhere. We may not know what or why, but everything happens for a reason.
So what was the damned point?
We’re all gonna die, but aliens were saving children?
That a captain from the U.S. Air Force was flying around in UFOs and trading environmental philosophies with extraterrestrials?
Or that life, as Humans understood it, was forever changing—and not in a good way?
Chapter Twenty-One
1
There is one more thing we have left to do before we return you, She told Cherko as they descended back toward Earth. And all of what we have done and shown you must remain undisclosed to your General.
“Why can’t I tell him?”
For all he has seemingly done for you, he is not to be trusted. He, like his leadership, feels we mean humanity harm.
“But we could show him—”
Attempts have already been made, but as much as the General claims he does not fear us—he does—and cannot see past that fear. We greatly regret this.
“So, what am I supposed to do?”
We will make additional information known to you. Information you cannot share with your General. But for now—we have arrived at our final destination.
Cherko was speechless when he saw where they hovered on the control-room screen.
Garden of the Gods.
They were hovering just inside the center garden area to the Garden of the Gods park, back in Colorado Springs, the rocks of the Kissing Camels to their east.
“Why are we here?”
She turned away from Cherko and looked to the screen.
There was a car parked alongside the main road into the park. It’s lights were off. Cherko recognized that car.
Erica’s.
“You’ve—why?”
Did you not want to see her?
“Yes, but I—”
Go to her. We will return. Will not observe you. We will return when it is time—but you only have until the sun rises.
“I don’t know what to say—”
You need say nothing. Go to her.
* * *
Cherko stood beneath the ship, looking up to it.
Now, this would make a really neat picture, he thought as the ship quickly and soundlessly ascended back into the night sky. A UFO hovering within the Garden of the Gods, behind Kissing Camels. Wish Rich Buzzelli had managed to snap off one of those.
Cherko looked down the road.
He was back in Colorado Springs. He could hardly believe it. Hardly believe half of all he’d seen and where he’d been tonight.
He looked back into the still-night sky.
Good, Lord, he’d actually been out in orbit around the Earth! In space!
Who’d ever believe him?
Yet, here he was, ready to see a girl he’d fallen head-over-heels in love with and with whom he hadn’t seen for over a year; standing on the main drag through Garden of the Gods, a park he used to run and hike and bike through when he lived here, while an hour or so ago (was that right?) he’d left a jeep parked (and with its lights on, he just remembered!) at the White Sands Missile Range, in southern New Mexico.
In front of a land-bound ship.
Yeah, it was all crazy, but he was living it, baby.
Surrounded by chirping crickets echoing off the dark, pock-marked red rock walls, Cherko walked toward the parked car.
* * *
Erica Taylor sat dumbfounded in her vehicle.
What was she doing out here in the middle of the night? What had possessed her?
She didn’t remember getting into the car—let alone getting dressed—and driving all the way across town to find herself sitting in an empty park?
Who knew who was out there in the dark, stalking her?
Yet, instead of starting up her car and leaving... she just sat there.
It wasn’t like someone or something was holding her hostage, against her will; she could have started the car and left if she so chose to....
She just... didn’t.
Erica rolled down the window an inch or so.
And it was such a lovely night. The sound of chirping crickets soothing. The air warm and quite pleasant. Her doors locked.
No, there was nothing to fear.
She was safe.
She just stared ahead, out her windshield.
All was good with the world.
Safe.
* * *
She didn’t know if she first heard her name mentally, inside her head, or if someone had actually called it out. Sometimes—she only privately admitted to herself, because this would surely sound insane, but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was sane—but sometimes she actually heard her name called out to her when no one was around. Yes, she was usually meditating or in that in-between sleepy state when that happened, but she knew she’d heard her name called out, and it hadn’t been her, because, well, she did. Heard it.
Erica.
Just like that. Like she heard it now.
Had she dozed off?
Probably. It was after—
She turned to her driver-side window.
A man stood before her.
Amazingly, a part of her noted, she was unafraid.
“Erica?”
Erica blinked. Shook her head only slightly, and blinked again.
“Jimmy? Jimmy, is that you?”
Jimmy backed away from the car. Smiled.
“It’s really me.”
Erica undid her seatbelt, unlocked the car door, and jumped o
ut of the car, lunging for him. She threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely. Buried her face into his chest.
“What are you doing here? Where—”
Had she gone crazy?
What was she doing throwing herself at an ex-boyfriend who’d up and dumped her without so much as a good-bye?
Erica pushed away from Cherko, who looked to her with a mixture of longing and confusion.
“Where have you been? Why are you here?”
“I—”
“You left me, is what you did!” Erica blurted out, and tears burst out from her, surprising her most of all. “You goddammed left me and never told me why!”
Erica pounded her upper thighs with tightly clenched fists.
“Erica,” Cherko said, trying to come in closer, but Erica thrust out a hand keeping him at arm’s length.
“You bastard!”
“Please,” Jimmy said, in a soft, calm tone, “hear me out—please?”
“Why should I? I loved you and you left me!”
“I know I can’t possibly say anything that could ever make that right. I wish I could, believe me, I desperately want to, but I can’t. It was my job. I was pulled away—I had no say—”
“Liar!” Erica shouted in a guttural voice just short of Linda Blair’s Exorcist tones. Sobbing, she turned away; crossed her arms.
“Erica—I love you. I still do. But I have... I have no control over my life.”
Erica turned back around.
“Everyone has control.”
“I don’t.”
“How. How do you not?”
“I can’t tell you. I wish I could, but—”
“Is there someone else? Tell me—is there another woman?”
The question, Erica saw, actually seemed to catch Cherko off-guard.
“No... of course not. It’s always and only been you. But those I work for—”
“You work for the government—they can’t just take you away without a reason—keep you from those you love.”
“Yes, they can.”
“No, they can’t!”
Cherko again tried to edge in closer, and this time Erica allowed him. Allowed him to cup his warm hands to either side of her swollen and wet face, and bring his up to hers. He had a weird smell to him, she noticed, not unseemly, but odd—faintly electrical?—but, then again, maybe not.
ERO Page 24