“Me?”
“Genetic manipulation. Social engineering. We only periodically assess and communicate with you.”
“Why? Why all this?”
“Your government has developed its own advanced technology without also developing the necessary advanced principles—you call them ‘ethics’—that must also accompany and govern such development. Power. There are reasons.”
“Why can’t you tell me more?”
“You must remember. What else do you remember?”
“I’m not really sure any more, but—”
“Be sure. Remember how you arrived here.”
“On this space station? In this... thing?”
“What is the first thing that comes to mind after hearing my words...
“Now.”
2
“This... this is crazy,” Cherko said, staring out the window at Alda’s office. It was snowing.
Cherko looked back Alda.
“So, I’m to believe I’ve been abducted throughout my life?”
Cherko reached up behind his neck.
“My God—there is a bump there!”
Cherko rushed to Alda’s desk. Stood before it rubbing the back of his neck.
“Cut this out!”
“Don’t be silly, Jimmy. Sit back down, please.”
“I’m not being silly. There really is a bump back there—feel it!”
Cherko leaned over Alda’s desk, insistent.
“Feel it!”
Alda touched it.
“Well?”
“I do not perform surgery.”
“What is it?”
“It could be whatever you believe it to be.”
“None of this makes sense,” Cherko said, backing away while rubbing his neck. “Are you saying... that everything I told you... all my stories... are real? That I’m not hallucinating? I really was a lieutenant, a captain—the UFOs? Cause that’s what I believe.”
“What do you think it means?”
“Why am I paying you, for Chrissakes? Can’t you come up with anything better than that? Anything at all?”
“It is not about me telling you what is or is not going on with you... it is about me helping you better understand yourself... your situation.”
“And what is my ‘situation,’ Herr Doktor?”
“That is for you to define.”
“Dammit!”
Cherko returned to the windows.
It continued to snow.
3
Cherko had left Alda’s office and sat at the stop light on Austin Bluffs Boulevard, waiting to make a left turn. The snow was coming down pretty hard.
He had to have made it all up. He was a writer, had an active (if unmarketable) imagination. How far of a leap was it to say that he’d just made everything up? He was stuck in a dead-end tech writer’s job. Was bored with his life. He had plenty of motive to try to find something “special” about himself. Anything... even if fabricated.
It’s all about what you believe, right?
The light turned green and Cherko inserted himself into
A small chamber.
Cherko stood in a small chamber.
What is so hard to believe? came the thought from behind.
Cherko turned.
She stood alone.
You’re real.
As much as you.
How do you do this? How do you remove me from my car in the middle of traffic, and what is it—
Unimportant. We need to clarify events.
To me? Why am I so important?
The future of your race depends upon itself. Without it, there is no future.
That doesn’t even make—
The “sense” is in the meaning. We have made concessions in coming to your race. We do not agree with all your race is doing. We have tried to redirect efforts, but your government, though many within its ranks feel they mean well, is blind. There is so much more at stake than mere power and technology. So, we take our message to individuals.
What message?
Survival. Redirection. Expansion of consciousness through confirmation of our presence. Your race is focusing far too much on violence and power. Materialism. Immediate gratification. There are those who see the need for redirection, but are... eliminated. Discredited. Interfered with. Simply, those in power want to remain in power. Corruption is taking far too deep a hold. There are so many other paths to take, but those in power are blinded by their own ambition... their own corruption.
Why do you stay?
A greater good. If we can reach some of your race, we can better inform from within the masses, show hope exists.
Individuals.
Yes.
Unfortunately, much has been learned by those in power, and they no longer feel they require our assistance. Those of strong religious beliefs believe us evil. Literature and media have taken hold of and exacerbated fear. Fear is taking hold of minds. This is not by accident.
We are many millennia in advance of your race, and have seen the effects of too much science without conscience. Your technology outpaces your ability to deal with it. Wars do not just start... they are cultivated. Greed... cultivated. Fear... cultivated. A long time ago and once a part of your distant timelines, we behaved not unlike your scientists and explorers... we examined and categorized. But we learned from our mistakes. We attempted to guide your race away from these same mistakes, but they are not open to us.
So, it is not you who are mutilating cattle and snatching and grabbing us?
We have no need for such prosaic behavior.
You brought me here just to explain yourselves?
She studied Cherko, and slightly cocked her bulbous head. We’ve brought you nowhere.
Cherko flew through the green light at Nevada and Austin Bluffs, startled so violently he nearly sideswiped the car next to him.
Cherko spastically merged into the far right lane, then pulled off into a parking lot. He yanked on the brake and gripped the steering wheel.
And once again sweat like Niagara Falls.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
1
Colorado Springs, CO
4 November 2010
1633 Hours Mountain Time
Cherko slid to a stop in the garage, alongside Erica’s 2001 Honda.
He wasn’t... right.
Something was terrible wrong with him, he felt it, and it made him sick to his stomach.
What had just happened?
Cherko hit the garage door switch as he entered the house.
“Erica! Erica!”
No answer. But he saw the message light blinking on the answering machine.
The thought did people still use these things? entered his mind, but he dismissed it.
Cherko rushed past the message machine, up a short flight of stairs, then hooked a sharp right to enter the third floor of the tri-level... and ran smack into a wall.
“What the—”
He backed up; touched the unexpected barrier.
A wall where stairs should be! There used to be an upstairs hallway right here!
Cherko shook his head.
“Erica!” he continued calling into the wall. He spun around, again calling her name, and again returned to the wall...
And found a hallway.
One that led to their bedroom and back office.
Without another thought he shot up the stairs, down the hall, and into what should have been Erica’s home office.
But no Erica.
He spun around.
It wasn’t even her office... but a spare room.
Had the house shrunk while he’d been gone?
Was he losing his mind?
“Erica! Where the hell—”
He hurried to their bedroom.
No Erica.
Looked in her closet.
Empty.
Went to his closet.
Clothes.
Spun around to the bed.
There were no pictur
es of either himself nor Erica. The bedroom was sparse, only basic nightstands, lamps, and a phone. No pictures. No closet full of women’s clothing.
No Erica!
Cherko left the room and hurried back down the hallway, down both sets of stairs, past the still blinking answering machine, and out into the garage.
And no 2001 Honda.
Only his vehicle.
His legs buckled and he grabbed hold of the railing. Slowly backing out of the garage he reentered the basement living room.
“What... what have I... what’s—”
But the words didn’t form... wouldn’t form. Wouldn’t leave his brain nor reach his mouth. Forming them—giving his crazy thoughts validity—would mean there was something wrong. Not right. That there was—and most probably never had been—any Erica at all.
“But I remember her... met her at the apartment complex...”
Cherko closed the door as he continued to slowly back into the living room.
The answering machine’s message light continued to blink.
Who used these things anymore?
He did.
He went to the machine and hit play. It beeped twice, then clicked off. No message.
Cherko stabbed “Erase.” Stared at the machine.
Erase.
He closed his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck.
That bump was still there.
Was his life being erased?
What had happened at that shrink’s office? What the hell had been done to him?
Cherko snatched the cordless phone, hit “Talk,” and put it to his ear.
Silence.
“Who’s there?” he asked. “Who’s out there, goddammit?”
More silence.
He tossed the phone onto the stand. Looked to his office.
His manuscript. His story. He had a manuscript to finish.
Was the story real?
That’s what the shrink implied.
Were UFOs real?
He’d supposedly just been in one, though he’d been barreling down Austin Bluffs like everyone else. Almost hit another car. Had pulled into the garage alongside his wife’s car. A car that no longer existed and that had belonged to a woman who also no longer—if ever—existed.
Except for his story.
He entered his office.
That was still there.
His laptop was on.
Cherko sat behind the desk.
What was his manuscript about?
Right. A guy who never quite got what he wanted out of life, but who seemed to have gotten into some very big trouble with the government. A guy who was supposed to be in his future.
A guy... who seemed to be him.
If any of this was true... even a little patch of it... and he was writing it... could he change things? Write how he wanted things to turn out? Hadn’t that been what he’d been doing all this time?
It wasn’t like he’d been writing about this with the thought—the intent—to change the outcome of his life. He’d just been doing what had come naturally... an organic science fiction creation using events from his own life.
Or had it been his life that had been using events from his manuscript?
Cherko began typing....
2
“I’m afraid.”
“Of what?” Eurphraeus asked.
“I don’t know. There’s something about what happens next... I’m not sure I want to find out.”
“It has already occurred, has it not?”
“Yes.”
“You are who you are, where you are—now—correct?”
“Am I?”
“Then what is there to fear? What is done... is done. You are where you are—”
“Does this place seem smaller to you?”
“It possesses the same dimensions it has always possessed. It is what it is.”
Cherko shivered.
“That race, the one of... She... they are in our future?”
“They are.”
“Were they really just trying to help?”
“Yes.”
“How do you fit into all this?”
“You must first go where you fear to go, James.”
“No one calls me that.”
“No, no one does.”
“I’m feeling rather claustrophobic.”
“It will pass.”
Cherko looked nervously about the module.
“Something isn’t right in here.”
“No, something is not.”
3
Captain Cherko lay on a narrow slab composed of deep blue flecks within some weirdly translucent material. All worry, all stress immediately evaporated from him. He felt something very much like a magnet running throughout his body, and at a cellular-level. It was extremely prickly, almost painful, like a severely cranked ultrasound machine. Colors assaulted him, shades of colors he’d never known existed, symbols and numbers. Good God, he saw it all...
Just before he blacked out.
* * *
Cherko stood in a chamber that seemed all too familiar. A table was off to his right, a prone form upon it. An open drawer was at his feet at the base of a nearby wall.
Something just didn’t feeeel right.
He looked around the dimly lit chamber. Images... so much more intense, brighter. He felt... different. Not bad different, just... different different.
Not all there.
Light... wispy... agile. Had a severe case of feeling quite beside himself. A disquieting sensation of feeling... unseated. Loose, as if he wore clothing several sizes too large—
This will pass.
He turned.
That will pass, She again said.
My hands feel—
Cherko froze. His hands—there were only four digits!
Cherko brought the hands—his hands!—up before him.
Hands that only had four digits and were thin and slender and greenish gray!
What have you done to me!
Cherko advanced on She. Clumsy and dizzy, he almost tripped over the open drawer.
We are in the process of completing your training, Captain.
What training?
As Cherko moved he felt his limbs flop about as if they’d fallen asleep. Cherko—at least he thought he was Cherko—bumped up against the wall.
We have incorporated your consciousness into the form we wear. The form we use in exploring your corporeal existence.
Cherko jumped back. As clumsy as he behaved, he was amazed at the agility he now possessed. There was all this speed with hardly any mass.
She continued. We have been training your mind since before you were born. In utero.
Cherko looked to his arms, his legs; looked to them as if separated from them... fascinated at the—pardon the pun—alien feel to them. Waved them in the air about him, “testing” them. He still felt as if he were trying to control sleep-deadened limbs in apparel two-sizes too large, but was now more fascinated by the experience than afraid. The tingling sensations quickly gave way to feeling and control. He touched his face with the long, slender, four-digit, appendages. Looked to the mesh-like composition of his new skin.
How is this possible?
What we are is far more than corporeal composition, but to travel within your framework requires such a form. A physical form. This is what we use, as you use clothing. Our state of existence is so dissimilar from your own that this form assists us to better interrelate to your state of existence on many levels beyond the obviously physically humanoid appearance.
Where is my body? Cherko asked.
It is in a stasis condition similar to that of sleep, She stood aside and directed a hand to the prone form on the narrow table.
For all practical purposes—to him.
Cherko, still somewhat clumsily, approached his body.
It is held under a localized energy field that allows it to exist while your consciousness travels elsewhere.
How do you do this?
Cherko asked. He looked to his form. On the table.
Him.
Like a curious dog he cocked his head side to side. It lent a peculiar out-of-body sensation as he looked to his sleeping form. “He” breathed slowly, very slowly, rhythmically, in his olive drab flight suit. The name “Cherko” on his flight suit felt nostalgically distant. He looked to the senior space badge insignia sewn over his left-chest pocket (and unconsciously touched his current left breast area), and his silver-pipinged blue flight cap stuffed into his flight-suit pocket at his left calf.
This is me? Cherko asked.
To be precise, it is the form you wore.
Cherko brought his face closer to his sleeping body. His shell. Touched the body before him.
This was him... yet not....
He brought the same hand to his new body.
His mind felt a longing attachment to that prone form before him, but felt a part of the form he was currently inhabiting as well. A bastardized definition of bilocation. His mind still felt the attachment to the him on the slab—the only lifelong intimacy of flesh he’d ever known—but also couldn’t deny the experience of standing outside himself, in this other... existence.
Gave new meaning to out-of-body experiences.
That is what this really was. A Frankenstein’s monster transfer in the oddest of parodies. He looked to the hand that had touched both forms. That four-fingered appliance.
Yes, appliance.
The shift in consciousness into your current form is much more than a physical bilocation, She said. As you are discovering—or rediscovering—it is a far more foundational paradigm shift. It involves, in your terms, a mental, emotional, and psychic shift. A creation of additional neuronal pathways not only in the form you are inhabiting, but also upon your return into your indigenous casing. When you return you will be—as you are now—more than you were when you first departed.
Cherko looked to She.
I’m not sure I—
You will assimilate as you experience.
Cherko stepped away from the table. Gave himself a really good once over, twisting and examining arms, legs... feeling his head and neck. Though the neck was slender in appearance, it was more than adequate in function. There was little mass to these bodies, but quite enough strength. The oversized feeling of wearing “clothing” too large for him was now all but gone. He began to feel more comfortable in his own... skin.
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