That was the way of things now, mind over matter. It wouldn’t be long before matter didn’t matter anymore. That was what probably had happened to the aliens. Sam shuddered to think about it. As far as he could tell, whatever bodies they had were just shells and the real them only existed mentally. Their race might’ve been physically active at one time, until there was no further reason for physical bodies other than to house brains. It was a thought that Sam didn’t like to dwell upon. He tried to think as little about it as possible as he spent more time with Julia. He never ceased to enjoy her company and besides that, being with her, walking with her, talking with her, using his vocal chords to communicate with her, was always a reminder that he was, in fact, still human. One afternoon while Sam and Julia walked to the pond together, he decided to see how her parents were doing. It was not something he discussed with Julia. She never mentioned her parents or her life before Capital City anymore.
It wasn’t difficult this time to locate Julia’s parents. Sam’s telepathy was much stronger now. He found them with no problem just by scanning every mind in the general area where they lived. Sam found that like everyone in the city they were still in a trance, living out their inner most fantasies as their bodies slowly wasted away in the real world. The eyes of the townspeople were open, but they were unseeing. These people existed only in their own heads now. Or, as in case of Julia’s parents, only one of them did; Sam could sense Julia’s father but not her mother. He delved more deeply into the father’s mind and found that his body had been pushed nearly to the point of death from starvation and thirst. In his trance, he had a son instead of a daughter and he and his son ran a successful business together that made their name known throughout the entire city. The father had no idea that in reality his wife had most likely starved to death right there beside him and her body may even have already begun to putrefy by now. He also had no idea that the same fate would befall him shortly.
Sam scanned the minds of the remaining townspeople and discovered that over half of the people were dead already. It was death on a bewildering scale and Sam wondered at the fact that it didn’t bother Dr. Crangler and the rest of Capital City. The entire city would be dead soon and not one of the victims even realized what was happening. Sam reached out to find Dr. Crangler. Instead of an answer to his summons Sam received a series of images in his brain. They were images of war, famine, great deserts dotted with the masses of fledging nations searching for shelter and water. Many didn’t survive the searches and Sam watched as tired, lumbering men, women, and children simply collapsed midstride and remained where they were as the rest continued their exhausting march forward. Everywhere, in every scene that played in Sam’s head, there were the dead, dotting the mountains, littering the dusty highways, crumbled where they had stood upon the battlefields.
Then, finally, the answer came, “In every revolution there is death. It can be no other way.” Sam had no doubt that the scenes that the Doctor had just shown him were of real battles, actual famines, literal pilgrimages, that more often than not had been doomed from the beginning. Whenever there was serious change in the world, death was always a part of it. At least the townspeople were happy inside their own heads right up until the moment death came for them. But couldn’t they have been trained to be a part of Capital City? “There is not enough time, my son.” Dr. Crangler answered from his home near the top of the tower. He showed Sam an image. It was an image that only a telepath would’ve been able to understand. It was an image of static in the midst of complete blackness. The static grew more violent, more massive, with every passing moment. Soon the static would coalesce into a complete mass, unmoving, epic in its capacity for destruction. Thanks to his telepathy, Sam knew instinctively that once the mass solidified there could be no way to stop its destruction.
The mass was the alien civilization, focusing their unique mental oneness for their next attack. They’d sensed the presence of Dr. Crangler’s army and they were preparing themselves. Sam couldn’t tell exactly what type of attack they were preparing but it looked like it was going to be a particularly devastating one. Only this time the battle would not be fought with crippling diseases but with the power of thought. It would mark the beginning of a completely new type of warfare, interstellar, telepathic warfare. It would mean the obliteration of a world of intelligent creatures, either the humans or the aliens. The stakes were high and it was obvious that both sides were taking this seriously. Meanwhile, Sam returned to Julia’s side at the pond. He watched her as she gazed out upon the pond and grimaced. Even if Capital City won this war, the old way of life, life on earth before telepathy, was a thing of the past. By refusing to participate, Julia had made herself a dinosaur. There might not be a place for her in the New World, if anything were to happen to Sam.
Perhaps there had never been a place for her, Sam realized. Death had taken his parents and he had certainly felt as if he were a fish out of water. Something worse than death—choice—had stolen away Julia’s parents. That made her situation worse than Sam’s. If his parents had been alive he knew there would’ve been nothing that could’ve kept them from him. Sam remained with Julia on the banks of the pond, but he didn’t speak a word of what was going on in his head. The next morning he watched Julia move around the house as if casually as if interstellar war were not upon their doorsteps. While Sam spent endless hours every day practicing and joining himself mentally with the rest of Capital City, Julia cooked and cleaned and read books. The range in the subject of the books she read was impressive. The Simmons’ home had a full library that was half as large as many people’s entire homes. It was simple, really, no more than a very large room lined with long shelves loaded with books. More shelves stood in the middle of the room, themselves filled with yet more books. Sam had always thought that the library, like so many other things in the house, was strictly ornamental—he had never seen his father read a single book from there. But then again, why would Geoffrey read books when he could read minds instead? With the way things were going, Sam could see the day that when books would be a thing of the past altogether. Wasn’t it much easier and more efficient to spread information using telepathy rather than a printing press?
Julia didn’t seem to think so. She devoured the books, in no discernible order. Sam was glad to see the library get some use, he was glad to see Julia take whatever refuge she could find from a world that must be scarier to her than ever before. She’d settled into a comfortable routine at the house. She cleaned as if she did it for a living and she cooked better than either Sam or his father ever had. Sam remembered from his father’s memories that his mother had once also assumed the roles of cook, maid, launder, and whatever else was needed, but according to Geoffrey’s memories, that hadn’t come until much later in her life. She was nowhere as young as Julia was now when she learned to juggle so many hats. Sam was inspired by Julia’s strength of character. If she was a dinosaur she was a very special one.
Then the day of the Great Battle came, as it had become known amongst the minds of Capital City. It was a dreary day, overcast, with a mist that settled around the base of the mountain beyond the base of the tower like a bad omen. It rained most of the day and during the few times when the rain stopped, it still drizzled enough to keep the air cool and damp. The gloomy weather made no difference to the citizens of Capital City. They were all in their homes, sitting upon the floors in their bedrooms, the floors in their living rooms, the floors in their guest rooms. Everyone from the smallest to the largest, from the youngest to the oldest, was in deep concentration, preparing to join mental forces in a way that they never had before. Everyone in Capital City was familiar with sharing in everyone else’s feeling and experiences but according to Dr. Crangler, the Great Battle required that everyone joined together in a way that would relinquish their selfhood altogether. They would no longer experience reality separately but as a single entity. What one saw, all would see firsthand, what one heard, all would hear, what one felt, all
would feel. For a time, individuals would not comprise the group. The group would be the individual. Just like the aliens.
The Doctor claimed that it was the only way. It was a classic case of being forced to fight fire with fire. The alien civilization worked as one in a way that gave them a clear advantage. Their method may’ve disregarded the members in favor of the whole, but it endowed them with a strength that the humans lacked. Sam did think it was strange that the Doctor had appointed himself exempt from this, his own rule, so that he could lead the attack. So, everyone was supposed to be absorbed into the whole? Everyone except him? The Doctor was the strongest of the telepaths, though, so perhaps it made sense. Sam continued the grueling hours of practice with the rest of Capital city to prepare himself for the Great Battle. The work was desperately draining and the days were long because of it. When the hour came he was so exhausted that he fell into a kind of trance. Just like most of the other telepaths he hadn’t eaten properly and hadn’t slept much since training began and it was finally catching up with him. He didn’t sit upon the floor as the other telepaths did but rather upon his favorite chair upon his favorite part of the porch. It was the most comfortable and familiar place he could think of to spend what may be the last remaining hours he might have upon the earth.
The trance Sam fell into was more like a waking nightmare. It was the same nightmare. The surrounding void was close now, and the black hands that were protruding everywhere from it were even closer. They touched Sam, dug into his yielding flesh as deeply as they had the last time. Deeper. They clawed into his face, his chest, his arms and legs, even his feet, until it felt as if they were gripping his bones. The globe of light narrowed to a pinprick as the hands closed completely over Sam’s face, until all sight and sound—including Sam’s screams—were swallowed up. Sam didn’t struggle against the grasp of the black hands as he had before, but they held him just as firmly. Consumed whole in blackness, he heard nothing, he saw nothing. He felt nothing. The shadow of his nightmare had a presence to it. Sam could feel it, the Nothingness that had claimed his entire person. For a terrifying moment the nothingness was all there was. There was no Sam, no memories of Sam’s life, no recollections of anything Sam had experienced. There was the nothingness, everywhere, in every place, at every time, and nothing more. The darkness and the hands of shadow that had been terrorizing his slumbering mind for many months now had finally finished their job.
Then, in a fraction of a second, there was a single flash of light like the energy of the sun over its entire lifetime, before the blackness returned, redoubled. Not complete blackness as before. The surrounding void was even deeper than it had been but there was something in the void, a huge cube. The cube was as large as a gas giant planet, larger than fifty earths, completely perfect in its dimensions and filled completely with static. Everywhere within the cube there was light locked in mortal battle with darkness and neither ever winning. It was the mental presence of the alien hive mind. In the midst of the void the cube of static hovered and waited. Hands as black as the void reached out toward the cube and Sam saw it from both his vantage point and every vantage point possible thanks to the other telepaths. Sam was only part of the whole here, everywhere within the void and nowhere simultaneously. The void was the void and the mental presence of Dr. Crangler’s army was a blackness within it. Sam was now part of the darkness. He was an insignificant point of darkness inside the hands of shadow that had terrified him in his sleep. He was a part of every hand of shadow that reached forward toward the waiting cube, and every hand still waiting to stretch forward. He heard Dr. Crangler’s battle cry to destroy and with the rest of Capital City’s army, reached forward as dark hands to obliterate the cube. Instead, he felt, with the rest of Capital City, the searing agony of contact anywhere that the hands touched the cube.
The hands that reached out where not made of flesh. The hottest temperatures the universe could produce would not have scalded them. The cube didn’t radiate heat, it emitted a mental energy of disruption, a frequency like a tuning fork struck until it moves faster than what any physical object should be able to. It seared the minds of Dr. Crangler’s army, erasing away memories and ability like desiccated flesh in a conflagration. Injured hands of shadow recoiled and more flew forward to take their place. They too were soon left injured and retreating as well. Instantly the hands stopped shooting forward. Every mind within the blackness knew what every other mind knew, that the cube was too powerful to be handled. A new attack strategy was needed. Meanwhile, the cube hovered in the void of fathomless space and Dr. Crangler’s army hovered just beyond it. It waited. The army studied. It was a stalemate that could’ve lasted for seconds or lifetimes in a place where time held little relevance.
CHAPTER 26
The static remained in the vastness of inter-galactic space, undamaged. The human population, on the other hand, was forced to regroup. Back on earth, Sam and the rest of Capital City remained wherever they were, stunned and struggling to allow the pain to dissipate from their exhausted brains. Everyone knew what everyone else was feeling, which was misery itself, but there was nothing that could be done but to give it time. Everyone shared a sort of intense migraine. It was a discomfort that a non-telepathic person might not understand. It was a brain ache. To the citizens of Capital City, it felt as if their brains had been handled with large powerful tongs and beaten against concrete blocks until they were pulverized. It was a sensation that required that everyone remain perfectly still in their homes. Any disruption to the hive mind while it was in such a vulnerable state might be catastrophic.
It was a long time before the people began to rebound from their stupor. Even when Capital City’s citizens did recover it quickly became clear that there was other damage. Memories were lost, there were people having a difficult time remaining a part of the group consciousness, people couldn’t communicate telepathically as efficiently as they once had. The damage didn’t touch every individual but if any one suffered, everyone shared in it. It was daunting, to rely so heavily on telepathy and then suddenly to be very limited in it. Like learning a language enough to speak it fluently and then suffer a head injury and not be able to recall what you once knew so well. The discomfort the group endured was not unlike a grievous head wound. Luckily, it was also the group dynamic that facilitated the healing process. Where a person had lost memories they searched the minds and memories of everyone else, and by extension, everyone else beyond that, even those long dead, until they were able to retrieve their lost memory.
It did change the fact that Dr. Crangler’s army had suffered an embarrassing defeat. Even beyond the pain, the lost ability and memory, there was a death toll. There were members of the group that were no longer present mentally, more than a few of them, and their sudden absence was felt deeply by everyone within Capital City. The sear of contact with the alien intelligence overwhelmed the minds of hundreds of Capital City’s citizens until they simply winked out of existence. The alien intelligence may be approaching to capitalize on the situation at that very moment. If that were the case, then there would be nothing Capital City could do to prevent it. The war would turn into a massacre. No one rested, no one ate, no one slept while Capital City regrouped. Dr. Crangler’s training had taught his army to train their bodies to endure whatever hardship they might face. His army could’ve gone days, perhaps weeks, without food, water, or rest. It was a beneficial ability to have in a situation like this.
By the time morning arrived the army was ready for a rematch. There hadn’t been time to mourn the dead from the last defeat, but Dr. Crangler could sense that the alien hive mind, the static cube, was drawing dangerously close to earth. There was but one advantage that earth had, that physical space travel was something relatively new to the alien intelligence. The cube moved like a sloth through open space, barely approaching the speed of light. Their expertise was in sending Viruses to other stars, planets, and nebulas. Because of the unique nature of their organization the queen
had never made a habit of sending its consciousness abroad. One or a dozen of her members might die and their deaths might transpire completely unnoticed, but if the queen itself were ever to visit a hostile environment and be overcome, her entire population would die with her. The alien intelligence had sent the Great Plague, the Virus, the Hum, and a great many other assaults against earth over time but they had never visited a foreign planet in person. They watched, they studied, they attacked, but they never visited. Not until now.
Obviously, they felt that the human component was no longer a viable threat to their invasion of earth because the queen was moving her army toward the planet. If Dr. Crangler didn’t do something soon the queen’s assumption may prove correct. Even at sub-light speed the cube would reach earth within days at the very most, no longer. Already they had shown themselves impervious to the Capital City’s most potent attack. They expected no surprises once their combined consciousness reached the planet. It was up to Dr. Crangler to devise just such a surprise, but from where? Everyone in Capital City had been active in that attack. There were no other resources to draw upon. With such little time Capital City couldn’t afford to risk another attack unless they had a much better chance of success. With the aliens already on the approach, whatever offensive the City waged next would be their last in this battle one way or another. Everyone racked their brains for the solution but no one, including the Doctor, knew what to do. They weren’t as good at working as a single unit as the aliens who lacked all individuality, and their combined ability had been their best hope of success. They army was ready for a second battle, but they still had no plan. Just like everyone else, Sam sat in his home and racked his brain for an answer, any one at all, but he couldn’t find any. Capital City’s combined strength had counted for nothing and if all the telepathic strength the world could muster wasn’t enough, what in the world would be enough? Then, the answer came to Sam like an epiphany.
The New Assault Page 17