“What did you do to me!” he yelled above the din in his head.
“Not me.” The doctor answered “Them.” The ‘Them’ the doctor was referring to was the alien civilization that had originally sent The Virus. Apparently, they had sent the Hum as well to finish off mankind where The Virus had failed. The doctor had been explaining it all for the last hour, but Sam had only heard bits and pieces. Now, as he looked up into the Dr. Crangler’s face he noticed that the doctor was also looking at him very closely. He could feel the doctor’s mind probing his own. Quickly, the doctor grabbed Sam’s hand and lifted him from the floor. The remaining pain in his head and body was so great that it hadn’t occurred to him to get up off his knees. He barely even noticed the children now as he hobbled past them. Dr. Crangler led him back out into the hallway and back into the living room. There he made Sam sit in one of the same simple wooden chairs, while he pulled up another chair and sat directly in front of him. He leaned forward, very close to Sam’s face, and placed his fingertips in the hollows of Sam’s temples. “Now, take a deep breath.” He said. Sam had no idea what was coming but he decided that it would be in his best interest to do whatever the doctor said.
He inhaled deeply and held it. He began to raise his hands to his head to try to ease the tension that was still there, but the doctor stopped him. “Now, release.” Dr. Crangler said, and Sam released the breath he held. “Again” and Sam inhaled deeply a second time. He waited for the doctor to tell him to release but he never did. Instead, Sam felt the doctor suddenly in his head, with much more force than before. It felt like the doctor was taking control of him, perhaps as he had taken control of those two kids. He felt suddenly like a kid himself, being dragged by a parent to a destination that only the parent knew. Except it didn’t feel like Dr. Crangler were taking him anywhere but rather that Dr. Crangler was binding his hands and forcing him to do something from the inside out. He felt his mind being soothed, the ears of his telepathy being closed against what remained of the Hum. Soon, Sam began to feel the pressure of the Hum’s vibration dissipate from his body. It was harrowing having Dr. Crangler inside his head so powerfully, but the relief the doctor brought was well welcomed.
When the doctor removed his hands there was no residue of the Hum left. Sam worked his jaws trying to make his ears pop. He felt as if he were surfacing from a deep dive and needed to bring an equilibrium back to his sense of balance. His ears did pop and with it the relief was complete. “Thank you.” He said, and then tried again, using his telepathy, when the doctor grimaced at him. “Thank you.” He repeated, mentally. After what he had experienced he had feared it might be painful somehow, using his ability. It wasn’t. That horrible experience was truly over.
“You are welcome, my son.” The doctor answered, “But I must apologize … it has been so long since I’d experienced the Hum myself that I’d nearly forgotten how … uncomfortable it could be.”
“You’ve felt this before?” Sam asked.
“Yes, and worse.”
“How could this Hum”—Sam thought it should be called something more accurate like the Blast—“possibly be any worse.”
“The alien civilization that sent the Hum is beyond your ability to understand right now, but soon you will see. Their attacks are far above the proficiency of any weapon known to earth, and more specific as well. The Hum is more intense the stronger the mind is.”
Sam understood, or at least he thought he did. It sounded like Dr. Crangler was saying that the stronger the telepathy the more powerful the Hum. Sam thought it over. That mean that the Hum meant instant death to a mind as powerful as the doctor’s, didn’t it?
“Not instant” the doctor answered “but close enough. I have been guarding myself as well as your family for years now.”
“Why didn’t my father tell me about the Hum?” Sam asked.
“He did not know about it.” Dr. Crangler answered matter-of-factly. “I had shielded myself as well as the Hum from his mind.”
Just as you shielded yourself and those children from my mind, Sam thought to himself. The doctor didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. “Is this the storm my father warned about?” Sam did ask.
“It is. Your father could not have known exactly what was coming, but he could sense that something wrong was happening. I intend to right that wrong.”
“How?” Sam asked. How, indeed. Who, including The Good Doctor, was able to stand face to face with what he had experienced—and more—and defeat it? It was one thing to shield one’s mind from it—a formidable feat in itself—but to defeat it outright? Sam doubted that any one man, including Dr. Crangler, was able to accomplish that. For the second time the doctor didn’t answer and Sam knew he was right. A new revelation began to dawn upon him. The doctor was experimenting upon those children in hopes that he could eventually use what he learned to build an army. An army of men and women able to wield telepathy. An army, perhaps, that he could control. Sam shuddered. Any army would need a commander but an army of the telepathic would need more than a commander. It would need a god. Apparently, Dr. Crangler intended to be that god.
“We are all gods.” Dr. Crangler answered. “It’s just that we have forgotten our power. I propose to help us remember.”
Sam said nothing. The doctor sounded like he might be going mad. But no, the more Sam pondered upon it the more he realized that the doctor had a very valid and very unnerving point. Telepathy had been introduced to humanity by an alien intelligence. It was an intelligence far more advanced than human intelligence but the fact that the human mind was capable of telepathy at all meant that the facilities were already there, buried. Hidden. The fact that Geoffrey had learned telepathy meant that he possessed the capability. The alien intelligence might be far more advanced than humans’, but humans could rise to that level if they were given enough time and the right circumstances. Dr. Crangler’s ability, after all, was very near to being godlike, and if any human could theoretically be taught to wield that kind of power then weren’t we all potential god-like beings? Sam wasn’t completely sure, but the argument sounded eerily plausible.
Sam also wasn’t completely sure he liked the sense it did make. He’d peered into the minds of the townspeople. The idea of each of them possessing godlike powers like what the doctor wielded over those children was worse than unsettling. As far as he was concerned it would be disastrous. Perhaps that was the storm Geoffrey had seen coming. It could certainly destroy mankind as surely as the Hum could. “Indeed” the doctor said “the world is not yet ready for a nation of gods … but it will be. It must be. I will teach the world—just as I will teach you—to harness this great power. I must, or we shall all be destroyed. That is why the Hum was sent, to stop man from discovering his true identity. Countless thousands across the world have been hearing the Hum for years …”
“Impossible!” Sam said. “It would’ve been documented. There would’ve been thousands of unexplained deaths.”
“Not so. You forget, the Hum is an ingenious weapon. It is only as strong as a person’s telepathic ability. Those with the greatest potential but not the actual ability heard the Hum as a low frequency droning. Like a diesel engine. For the rest of the population it was too low to register. Everyone has heard it, but most people don’t notice it.”
“Why?” Sam asked. “What is the purpose of the Hum besides to kill us off slowly?”
“Protection, my son.” The doctor answered. There was delight in his voice, as if he were glad that Sam had finally begun asking the right questions.
“Protection?” Sam asked, slowly. “The aliens are trying to protect us?”
“Not us, son. Themselves. They’re scared.” There was even more delight in the doctor’s voice now.
“The…aliens…are…scared…of us?” The idea was preposterous to Sam.
The doctor smiled. “That’s exactly right, the aliens are scared of us.”
“Okay … why?”
“As a nation, an entire wo
rld, of gods, we can reach farther across the cosmos than any machine. We can reach them!” Sam thought he was beginning to understand. The doctor continued, “No matter how advanced our technology becomes we are still bound by these bodies.” The Doctor brushed at his chest, “Any spaceship we create will be bound by physical laws, and those laws say that we can never build a machine that can travel faster than the speed of light. That poses a problem because the place where They exist is a protoplanetary nebula ten thousand light years away. It would take generations of lifetimes for us to reach them, and then it would be too late. Besides, we lack the technology to oppose Them even if we could reach them.”
“Okay, Dr. Crangler, a couple of questions. One, what is a photo…a photoplanet…”
“A protoplanetary nebula …” the doctor began to answer, but instead of a lengthy explanation, he opened Sam’s mind and showed him an image. It was a gorgeous image, awe-inspiring, but Sam immediately understood why the doctor had showed rather than explain it to him. It was beyond words. The word that did come to mind when Sam saw the image was explosion. It looked like a great explosion of vibrant blue light so violent that it flung matter and gases out at an astronomical rate. The original point of blue light remained at the center, but two huge funnels of brilliant white light exploded out from either side of it. The white light had fiery red edges. It appeared as if the red were the result of the violent outburst against the interstellar medium. The entire explosion vaguely resembled a bowtie, only infinitely more lustrous. It was a wondrous sight, more clear and precise than any picture or view from a telescope. “How can anything exist there?” Sam asked.
“Obviously, They do not have bodies like our own. You are not ready to understand Them yet, but don’t worry. The time will come when all will be made clear. For now, you must trust that They are there.”
“Okay, I have another question. You said that we could never reach them in time. In time for what? In time to save ourselves?”
“In time to stop them. They have bodies that can use light as transportation. The image you saw was of an explosion, a relatively slow but massive explosion …” Dr. Crangler reached into Sam’s mind and changed the vantage point of what he was seeing. When he finished, Sam saw the nebula as it truly was. It had looked massive to begin with but now he could see that the tiny blue point of light at the center was not tiny at all but larger than the entire solar system. At the outer edges the funnels of white and red light were many millions of times larger still. They were larger than thousands of Milky Way galaxies, and growing larger, still expanding outward in space at an unbelievable speed!
“That explosion will be exhausted soon. Once the explosion is exhausted another will immediately follow. The second will be larger and faster. They will use the light from this second explosion to propel themselves outward in every direction at speeds that cannot be measured. From there they will seek to conquer—just as they sought to conquer our planet—and destroy. We can only stop them together, and only if we act in time.”
“But you said we can never build a machine that could reach them in time.”
“No, our bodies can never travel faster than the speed of light. We would never reach them, not if we spent a hundred generations in space … but we possess one thing that can travel faster than the speed of light. The speed of thought. Unencumbered by the human body, the speed of thought alone is instantaneous. It alone can travel the span of ten thousand light years in less than a literal second. Like that,” Dr. Crangler snapped his fingers loud enough to startled Sam, “But I need to train others to help me achieve it. It’s like looking through a telescope into another world, far away. My ability alone can only achieve so much. If my ability is a telescope it is a very powerful telescope” Dr. Crangler smiled at the thought of what he had been able to achieve with his telepathy over the years, feats that Sam knew nothing of, “but a telescope none the less. Over such a great distance I can only see our Enemy. I need to raise others like myself to act against Them.”
Sam understood, but there was a part of him that wished he didn’t understand. He still had many questions and the doctor had promised to answer every one of them. In due time. Sam doubted he was ready for all the answers right now, anyway. For the moment, he believed the doctor. He believed that the alien civilization that had sent the Virus and now the Hum were a real threat that would spread destruction throughout the world—and, according to the doctor, the universe—if left unchecked. He believed that the doctor would indeed need an army to combat that threat. He also believed that he wanted to return home. He believed that he had believed enough for one day.
CHAPTER 15
Back at the Simmons’ home Sam sat his usual chair upon his porch, but he didn’t gaze out upon the horizon and enjoy the fantastic mountain scenery. Instead, he kept his eyes closed, shut tightly against the cool breeze that blew against his face. He sat quietly and thought. Or rather, he wished. He wished above all that his father was still here. If Geoffrey were here he would know what to do. He would know how Sam was supposed to feel. Right now he just felt overwhelming sadness and responsibility. If Geoffrey were here he could tell Sam if Dr. Crangler was worthy to be trusted. Geoffrey could tell Sam exactly what he was supposed to do, if he were here.
Sam wished his mother were still around as well. He hadn’t seen his mother in what felt like a very long time. It was difficult to remember exactly what she looked like after so much time, so he didn’t try to remember. What he did remember was his mother’s larger than life love for him. He had always felt it while she was alive, but he had felt it more acutely when he’d experienced it through his father’s eyes. There, in the reaches of his mind, he had been allowed to tread in the ocean of her affection for him in a way that he never could’ve otherwise. It was clearer, more intense, than anything he had ever experienced. Time may hamper Sam’s memory if he tried to recall every exact line of his mother’s face, or every twinkle in her beautiful eyes, or every purse of her lips, but no amount of time would ever dull the memory of what Geoffrey had showed him.
Sam was tempted to open his eyes and gaze back into the house, where both of his parents had once lived. Where they had both once laughed, where they had both once loved, but he resisted the temptation. The only thing behind him now was an empty living room that was much too large and much too ornately furnished. His parents would never be there again. He could go to his father’s bedroom, but his father was not there. The mayor had already sent a team to recover his body and Sam found that he felt conflicted about it. On one hand he wasn’t in a rush to have his father’s remains removed so quickly, since Geoffrey would be cremated, without even a headstone to commemorate his final resting place. It was the way it had to be or else wherever he was laid to rest, no matter how remote, would instantly become a shrine and a place of pilgrimage for thousands. Perhaps millions. The thought angered Sam. Neither of his parents had been afforded a proper burial place simply because they were famous public figures. Unwilling public figures at that. The world had taken nearly everything from them in life and it was still taking after death.
Sam was grateful that the mayor had already taken his father’s body, though, for another reason. His telepathy made Geoffrey’s death more brutal. It certainly felt that way. Even if his father had been a vegetable he would’ve been able to reach out and touch his mind, but not in death. In death there was only emptiness where his father’s thoughts and sensations had once been. He’d sensed the same suffering in the minds of the townspeople far below whenever they lost someone so close to them, but they hadn’t been able to touch minds telepathically with those loved ones. They felt the emptiness but not like Sam. That’s how it felt. Sam loathed the fact that he wouldn’t be able to look upon his father’s face, even if the person behind that face were no longer there, but he knew that if he had to see that face again he wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to reach out with his mind and find … nothing.
Sam opened his eyes and s
aw with blurred vision. He felt the twin streams running down across his cheeks. He closed his eyes again tightly against the tears and took a deep breath. He wanted to keep crying, to scream out at the cruel heavens above, but he knew that he could cry himself dry and it wouldn’t lessen the pain of his broken heart. No, he needed to focus. He needed to remember his father’s life, not his death. But whenever he tried to remember Geoffrey’s life, his distinctive laugh, his love for his family, his devotion to the things he believed in, his mind always brought him back to the fact that all that was just a memory, that the father he’d loved so dearly was indeed dead. No, he couldn’t concentrate up here, in this too large house where there were no echoes because there were no voices. He needed to get away, just for a little while. He didn’t want to return to the city, not in the light of day. Besides, what was there, besides the ruined house where the doctor was no doubt still experimenting on those poor children?
There weren’t many places that Sam could go, not without an armed detail and a dense crowd of people surrounding him, but there was one place. With his eyes still closed, Sam reached out with his mind toward the pond near the bottom of the mountain. The girl was not there. He had hoped that she would be there. He would’ve been happy to watch her from afar, even if she never realized that he was there. He preferred it that way. He didn’t like to think of himself as stalking the young woman, but he knew that if she showed his face there would be no chance they could have a normal relationship. There could be no ‘normal’ for Sam Simmons nor anyone who was given the rare opportunity to be his friend. He closed his eyes even tighter against the pain of desperately needing a friend and realizing that it was one of the many things he couldn’t have. Since the young woman wasn’t there he could, however, go to the pond himself and sit alone. Sam would’ve rather watched the young woman. She was obviously going through a rough time in her own life and if they couldn’t have a relationship he could at least share her pain, if only from afar. Perhaps it would help him forget his own for a little while.
The New Assault Page 9