ERO

by F. P. Dorchak

  Until someone found his body—his human one, that is—inside the real UFO. Not a debris field, not a HEUFO, but a real live extraterrestrial space ship. Found by some passers-by, then summarily surrounded by yet another contingent of government operatives. Army Counterintelligence. One man in particular. And on this human carcass, on this body that was Cherko, or perhaps more to the point what Cherko had worn for twenty-six years... had been his wallet, within which were his military and civilian IDs.

  With late 1980 dates.

  That was what all the ruthless secrecy had been about all those years. The stark, unforgiving intimidation and outright murder to keep secrets secret.

  It had been bad enough that elements within the U.S. Government had created their own super-advanced flying machine and kept it from their own kind, from those who were led to believe that they had held the supposedly most classified clearances to date, but then to discover that they were also being toyed with by an extraterrestrial race, one they could not ever hope to better even with their super-advanced technology...

  And it had also been bad enough that they had found actual extraterrestrial bodies at that crash scene, bad enough that they had actually captured a live alien life form... but to have found a human body amongst that alien wreckage, held in stasis inside an alien ship... alive... bearing documents of a future military member of the very same U.S. Government that was now in possession of this crash site ship and its occupants... that was simply far too much for most 1947 minds.

  Besides all the obvious and logical questions that arose, the Army now had to deal with not only an alien craft and bodies—but a very human one, as well. One that had been heavily damaged in the crash. One that, though it had been encompassed within an unknown alien technology, had been damaged beyond the current state of Earthly technology by whatever had caused the crash and landed it in less-than-perfect condition onto the desert floor.

  Good God, what had been going on up in those skies above New Mexico?

  The UFO—at that time still largely unexplored—had been removed from its crash site and hastily spirited off to various locations, wherein which it eventually ended up at Edwards AFB. Area S-4.

  The best minds on the planet poured over the damaged ship, but none had found the human remains, because they had been removed before it had even left New Mexico. While the ship had been temporarily housed in a hangar on the Army’s 509th Bomb Group airfield enroute to its other location, She, the only surviving crew member of that ship had cut a deal with the CIC operative about the crash. She had told the truth, that what the Government had was for real. That the human remains were from the future, and because of a catastrophic onboard ship error, the craft had ended up in 1947 as they had found it. That it had been an error on their part that Captain Cherko, USAF, 1987, had been injured.

  Was he still alive?, CIC asked.

  The mind of Captain Cherko was, She informed, but his body was quickly dying and mangled beyond any meaningful repair. Then She volunteered the following:

  We can save him. We can save him until your race gains the necessary technology to receive him back. Time is an illusion, means nothing to us... and now, to him. It’s more advantageous for him in many ways... aids in his development in ways only he can now appreciate, She said. We will do this, and I will offer myself for your study.

  The agreement had been struck.

  Cherko’s body had been removed from the ship by another set of aliens who had indeed come in search for him, but men in dark suits had swiftly and deftly descended upon each crash-and-debris site and removed everything, and together with the best minds of the day, began formation of the Black Onion.

  The culture of secrecy and disinformation had begun.

  There had been no crash.

  No aliens.

  No nothing. Ever.

  And “they” threatened and killed to keep it that way.

  She cooperated as long as she could, because, she, too, had been dying as a result of that crash, but not in a way humans thought. And the aliens had taken Cherko and preserved the only part of him worth saving: his mind... by way of his brain. The interface for the mind and the body. The seat of human consciousness, the only thing with an ounce of life left to it.

  The brain, Cherko now saw, was an extremely complex interface between the physical and nonphysical, the body and soul. Cherko was kept secret in remote locations where not the U.S. Government—nor any other earthly government—could reach him. But as worldly technologies continued to advance and grow, human surveillance and detection methods also progressed, and it became increasingly difficult to keep him hidden. It wasn’t so much that humans would find what was left of Cherko, but it was the surrounding extraterrestrial support structure they would find that was keeping Cherko alive and led to other areas best kept hidden. The hidden structures, chambers, equipment, and technology used to contain him not of this world.

  It has often been said that the best place to hide anything is directly under the seeker’s own nose. That was exactly where Cherko had been secured.

  Placed in Earth orbit.

  His brain—steeped in and protected by alien technology—had been placed on an extraterrestrial platform, a satellite, impervious to detection by Earthly technology, in a high-end polar orbit. There he was to be kept until Earth had evolved enough to deal with his condition, they were told. Writers, whose very lives and families had been threatened and were left in the dark as to exactly what they were doing, and why, were secretly brought in by the government to fabricate a make-believe fantasy life for him. A secret life that had then been coded into an artificial intelligence program. And the alien race had reached agreements with certain human contacts to help expedite said technological developments through the measured and controlled seeding of alien technology.

  Again, the paradoxical irony of Cherko’s Dulce position.

  Later, the measured and well-thought-out seeding of mis-information about what exactly had crashed was meticulously leaked into public awareness.

  UFOs were the perfect cover.

  Took the heat off highly classified government projects. Fact and fiction were blended together.

  There had been no government HEUFO.

  But there had been a UFO.

  Yes.

  With extraterrestrial casualties.

  One side would deny everything, while the other decried conspiracy!

  But things had not turned out exactly as She had expected. After She (as far as the Government knew) had expired in government custody, those in charge had gotten greedy. Begun using the alien technology for self-serving ends, because, in all reality, everything can be reverse engineered if given enough time and resources. Intent.

  And because the powers in control had never been able to locate that future Air Force officer found in that 1947 crash.

  But Cherko had not been left idle in his condition, either. His mental capacities had been developed and refined by his E.T. handlers. Once Cherko had become accustomed to his situation, he had worked with the extraterrestrials that had given him his continued life.

  Absolute power corrupts absolutely is not an empty epithet, and there was a reason, Cherko discovered, that alien contact had not been further advanced. The Human condition has its challenges, those who run the events and affairs of their Race were not about to yield to any non-Human authority.

  Enter one young, fast burning general, Robert Mitchell Hammond, who became privy to the on-orbit payload that was Jimmy Cherko.

  Hammond had his orbital test bed. His on-orbit platform.

  And Hammond had kept it all to himself. But... even generals die... and with Hammond’s death, went the knowledge of Jimmy Cherko’s existence.

  There are reasons why there are wars and poverty on a planet with plenty. Reasons why individuals suffer. Having anything handed to a Race that needs to solve its own issues first does not advance that Race. A Race seeking external answers to its own issues does not advance that Race.
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  And there are reasons why there are renewed pushes for space exploration, math and sciences, studies into the nature of time and space. A rise in the interest of metaphysics. The publicly expressed cover stories are always reasonable enough. They have to be. But for each reasonable proclamation there are always, always the untold, ulterior and covert driving motives....

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I see, Cherko said, I finally... see.

  Cherko sped through his polar orbit.

  Why the sadness? Eurphraeus asked.

  Earth is dead. They finally did it. Killed themselves off.

  Cherko had seen as satellites and other technologies attacked... destroyed... retaliated...

  Long-dormant payloads activated... warheads launched...

  Populations... entire societies... gone....

  The path your historical timeline perspective followed indeed destroyed themselves. Had your perspective’s Race chosen to change their path, they would not have visited this scenario. As contradictory as this sounds, there are other timelines in which this perspective did not occur.

  But I lived there, in that one.

  Yes.

  Cherko sped over the surface of the Earth. Reached out with his mind. Explored. The atmosphere had been poisoned, boiled off—gone. Obliterated by a technologically advanced, highly reactive bio-chemical reaction that had seared the atmosphere of everything and anything.

  He explored what had once been mountains and streams and oceans and forests. All that had once brought him so much joy and awe... now silent. There were no longer buzzing insects and annoying houseflies, no fresh-cut aromatic grass, and no leaf-rustling trees. No longer the scent of pine and earthy humus. The sound of chirping birdlife. Or the golden, early morning rays of the sun warming sea and soil. The sound of breakers against a sandy beach. Or playful dolphins in oceans.

  No Mom nor Dad. Carl, Penny, nor Ritchie.

  All had been stripped by the intense drive of the few who had managed the logical conclusion to their violence and hatred: total planetary annihilation.

  That was what they wanted and that was exactly what they got.

  As if by a gigantic hand that had taken a planet-sized sheet of sandpaper and rubbed the Earth clean, the planet had been stripped to bare rock and sand. Not even an atmosphere. No different than Mercury or Venus. With the gaining of knowledge from advanced alien seed-technology and plain old-fashioned Human Ingenuity, with the massive amount of effort expended toward creating better bombs and technology to wage wars, to spy, to perpetuate violence with the unbridled creativity of the human mind to create and discover new ways to do anything, including ferreting out the most secret of secrets to other governments, the end result had finally been achieved. Those hell-bent on destroying all life had finally succeeded, because Humanity as a whole had allowed it.

  There can be no peace if there are only plans for war.

  How long? How long has it been?

  Eurphraeus smiled.

  Instead of Eurphraeus’s voice, Cherko’s head was filled with images. Powerful images. Experienced—

  War.

  War that involved the many orbiting platforms. Satellites. A conflict that flew instantly out of control as soon as it had ignited, as malevolent technology was not only directed against Earth, but itself. The alien satellite upon which Cherko had been hidden had been hit. The satellite itself had not been damaged, but he had been. His consciousness. His consciousness had been directly integrated into the extraterrestrial bio-technology, and the recovery mode had done something to him. Something his keepers had not counted on. Cherko saw that his keepers had to bring him out carefully... allow him to... reboot... on his own. Work through his own “program errors.” An extremely delicate and intricate effort that had to be allowed its own progress in order to save his consciousness. The system, the programs that had sustained him had not been damaged, but the recovery mode had kicked off a vicious cycle of events that had been interfered with by Cherko himself.

  Deep, long-buried, and primordial aspects of Cherko’s consciousness had interfered with program recovery. Though he had come to terms with his situation long ago, with this space war something entirely unexpected happened. Something the creators of his platform had, again, not counted upon.

  This was the first time the creators of his platform had ever done anything like this with Humanity. These aliens were so far into Humanity’s future that they had forgotten certain constants to the makeup of human consciousness. When consciousness was removed from a human body, it changed things. Changed a human’s perception of itself. The perceived need for a body... the role of the mind, the soul. It was nothing short of dramatic, essentially cataclysmic consequences.

  Death that was not death.

  Each organism is uniquely designed to inhabit the form in which it inhabits, uniquely designed for the consciousness within which it inhabits, the Time within which it is placed. Once removed from its own specifically designed “platform,” dramatic changes occur. Changes that can be for the better, but for the most part, as had often been observed in the Human Race, not been. There are deep emotional ties that bind humans and their timelines. Certain instances, such as the separation of mind from body, reach throughout all continuums, and affect different—and related—events across Time itself.

  Just such an emotional correspondence had reached back into Cherko’s Roswell trip, and had, paradoxically, caused the crash.

  He saw how scientists in his time were just beginning to discover the nature of simultaneous time and inter-related events when they discovered quantum entanglement... that separated atoms—those not in contiguous contact—reacted to the exact same event that the other experienced from a great distance....

  Hyperdimensional physics.

  Cherko saw that deep within his consciousness an elemental part of him had cried out in fear. A fear that had taken over his thinking consciousness, had grown and festered thanks to this impromptu system recovery. A fear, a common thread that ran throughout all of Humanity and that had driven much of Humanity’s actions. This is what they had not foreseen.

  Fear had become a glitch in the program.

  As system recovery continued, these fearful elements continued to interrupt and corrupt, calling for continued recovery attempts. Tripping and re-tripping itself. Created an “infinite loop.” System, file, and access contentions, not only with the highly advanced bio-technological system sustaining Cherko, but in Cherko himself. His mind. Physical neuronal and dendritic damage. Damage that had to be corrected through regrowth. The only remaining physical aspect to Cherko, his “platform”—and it still exerted an influence.

  How, his reasoning mind considered, could he still be physical yet not inhabit a body?

  How could he be up in orbit and not be physical?

  How could he be part of a spacecraft—or computer programs?

  How could many a millennia pass, and he still be him?

  What of his soul?

  Cherko saw that his consciousness and these quandaries continued to surface after collateral damage to the extraterrestrial satellite, and that they’d continued to interfere with the satellite creators’ programming. To have attempted to directly correct these issues could have done irreparable and grave damage to the conscious fabric that was James Francis Cherko, and the extraterrestrials did not want that. Since Time is but a corporeal illusion, the satellite’s creators had decided to allow Cherko his own “time” to correct himself, to resolve his issues in his own way, and come to conscious memory—conscious correction—of his situation on his own. They looked in on him, made sure all was on track, but allowed him, pardon the pun, his space.

  Cherko again looked down longingly toward the planet that his Race and he had once called home. Memories of all he had known continued to fill his head like a rabid feeding frenzy.

  What a waste. All that effort, all those lives—all that living—gone. Because of a few bad individuals. Because of some meanin
gless hatred.

  Nothing is ever wasted and nothing is meaningless, Eurphraeus said. What is in one is in all. Those deeply buried issues within the Human Condition had to be worked out for the Human Condition, in its entirety, to grow.

  Eurphraeus continued to send images.

  Cherko saw that there were untold probabilities for any existence... and just as the one timeline continuum he experienced existed, so did others where the more violent human tendencies and its surrounding issues did not.

  So, did any of what I experienced—what I thought I’d experienced—actually happen? Or had I made it all up? Had I really—

  Cherko was instantly back to July 1947. Roswell. He really had influenced the course of history with his presence there. He really had been “killed” in that remote arroyo. But the fears created from his far-future on-orbit malfunction had also created another him, a psychic and mental construct within Cherko himself—a ghost in the machine, as it were—just as real as any flesh and blood body, one that followed a 2010 timeline. It had been Cherko’s imaginative effort to deal with those created and surfaced fears of failure and desire, and corrupted programming and consciousness. Facts from his actual lived life continually tried to break through his glitch-frozen fearful consciousness.

  He’d created a him who could take control and create whatever he wanted. It had been the perfect fix: create a new life, reprogram it...

  Live it.

  Did you really need a body if you really lived your life in your mind?

  So, what now? And why me? Why am I so important to have been singled out by you?

  Eurphraeus smiled.

  Cherko saw that there were other Races out in the universe, and these other intelligences were not as divorced from human reality as thought. Many were future instances of human consciousnesses, future probabilities untold millennia into their various futures. Some set so far into the distant and murky future, so radically departed and removed from their original human ancestry as to be, for all practical purposes, an entirely new race.