Shining Star admitted, “We can mask our ships from remote detection, distort visual contact, and my own energy sheath can scramble your radiolocation. But we have no means of doing what you describe, not with such precision. Could it not be one of your own ‘rogues’? One capable of invisibility, or some similar ability?”
Takayasu nodded. “It could be.”
Shining Star thought for a moment, then continued, “We have the means of detecting the bio-energy of ‘paranormal’ usage — the electrochemical byproducts created when one uses their converted abilities. The more powerful the convert, the more ambient energy remains when the individual is at rest. If permitted, we could assist you in your investigation. If this ‘rogue’ is Grand level, we might be able to help you track them down.”
Takayasu considered this offer, then said, “Okay, once more, for the record: You are stating unequivocally that neither you, nor your people, have anything to do with these escapes.”
“We have nothing to do with it. I give you my word as Grand Lord of the Taalu.”
Shining Star sounded completely sincere to Steve, but Takayasu glanced sideways in turn to Shockwave and Powerhouse on either side of him. The paranormal agents must have seen something on Takayasu’s face that Steve didn’t, because they unwound once more.
Takayasu said to Shining Star, “For what it’s worth, I believe you.”
Shining Star bowed his head. “Thank you.”
Awesome, Steve thought. Maybe now we can—
“But,” Takayasu stressed, “please understand that I can’t speak for everyone in authority. And it would help if your people would step out of the shadows and make formal contact with us.”
Shining Star responded, “I will take it under advisement.”
Steve then startled them all when he slapped the table and said in a raised, excited voice, “Okay, now that that’s all over with: Can we please, for the love of God, finally ask Shining Star about his being from outer space?! I mean, come on!”
Takayasu smiled and gestured broadly as he said, “Why don’t you start? You’re the one who made first contact.”
“Okay, Shining Star ...” Steve opened, trying to keep the reigns on his mixture of exhilaration and jitters as he addressed the alien beside him. “I’ll get to the really big questions in a second, but first, I have to ask: How is it that you’re speaking English better without your translator? You’re speaking so much better, it’s throwing me off. I mean, you just used ‘take it under advisement’ in exactly the right way, but just last night you might’ve said something more like, ‘I’ll take under the consulting.’ How have you managed that?”
“We began studying your English language,” Shining Star explained, “from your audio and visual broadcasts, and the translator I used on our previous meetings added everything you said into our database. I spent most of today receiving what we call a phrenic impression, which allows me to adapt the language centers of my brain to your language.” He tapped his head. “My own brain now acts as a translator.”
Shockwave whistled, then commented toward Steve, “Shit. Someone could sure make a lotta money off that kinda technology. Hint, hint.”
Chuckles floated around until Steve continued, “I guess the next question, the first big question has to be: Why are you here? I mean, thanks to SETI, we’ve known for a few years that there’s life, you know, ‘out there’ and all. But why finally come here? Why our planet?”
“Yeah, and why now?” Shockwave threw in. “Why haven’t any of you guys shown yourselves to us before, you know what I’m sayin’? Is it all a big secret or somethin’, or are we just too far off the beaten path?”
Drawing a deep breath — another very human gesture, Steve noted — Shining Star began.
“To answer your first question in the simplest terms: We are looking for a new home. I am sorry to say that there is a great deal of violence and warfare occurring across a very large portion of this galaxy. Peace reigned between most spacefaring species for many generations, but that came to an end during my grandfather’s time. It all started with a race known as the Verauns, whose domain had been little more than a ... I suppose the best analogy for your perception would be ‘a third-world country.’ In their first, completely unexpected salvo, they brought invasion forces to every neighboring system under the guise of new trade agreements, and that was only the beginning.
“As a result, my people’s home world, Taal, was one of the first to fall. Luckily, my grandfather had been ... well, some have said the great Grand Lord Calacus Lan was farseeing and always prepared, others have described him as overzealous and paranoid, but he had contingency plans for interstellar war when others of his generation scoffed at the idea.
“He managed to save a few thousand of our people before Taal fell. The hiding place he had arranged was peculiar and brilliant: For decades, we hid on a planetoid disguised as a small star. We called it Taal-ceky, or ‘Second Taal.’ I was born there.”
“I’m sorry,” Alan interjected. “Your grandfather disguised an asteroid as a star?”
“As a common red dwarf, yes. He managed it through careful manipulation of what we call a prime field. Prime fields have many, many uses, but my grandfather pushed the envelope beyond what had ever been tried. The field gave off the illusion of heat, radiation, gravity ... all of which could hold up to a reasonable amount of scrutiny.”
“Why did you leave Second Taal?” Steve asked, enthralled.
Shining Star’s features darkened. “The leader of the Verauns, the Cargaun, was obsessed with our people, holding an intense grudge against us. You have a fitting idiom for it — we were ‘the ones who got away.’ Even as he led the Verauns on to great galactic power, dominating almost every race they targeted, he kept looking for us, never stopping his search, even when he had to search alone.” His expression darkened further. “And he eventually found us. We were forced to flee our home once again, and my father died defending our escape.”
Shining Star paused for a moment, and Steve wagered they could’ve heard a pin drop in the silence.
Then Shining Star continued. “But my father learned a lesson from my grandfather: Prepare, always. This time, we were ready for a longer journey, and we fled from that sector of the galaxy altogether. We’ve sought refuge among the stars along the outer reaches of the galaxy.” He looked toward Shockwave. “To answer your second question: Yes, your world is a good distance from ‘the beaten path,’ and that is exactly what we want this time. Taal was already located near the outer rim of galactic politics, and Taal-ceky further still. The Taalu people are no longer an interstellar power of any consequence; we want our new home as far away from ‘the beaten path’ as we can manage.”
“So ...” Powerhouse interjected into the pause that followed. “You’ve come here, to Earth, just because we’re out of the way?”
“Partly, yes. We plotted a course that would carry us past native races who are Taalu-tek — that is, molded in an image similar to our own. Species rarely evolve into perfect matches, but we would have difficulty assimilating among beings too different from our own. But the Taalu and ...” Shining Star paused, then asked, “I’m sorry, but I’m having difficulty naming your people. Most known races are named after their world — Taalu from Taal; Verauns from Vera; and so on — but my language imprint and my translator before it have had difficulty with your species.”
Steve asked, “What do you mean?”
“When I attempt to name your race, I am flooded with different terms: ‘Humans,’ ‘Earthlings,’ ‘Terrestrials,’ ‘Terrans,’ ‘Tellurians’ — the list feels endless in my mind. What do you consider yourselves?”
“Humans—” Steve answered.
“Earthlings—” Powerhouse said.
“Terrans—” Takayasu suggested.
“What the hell is a ‘Tellurian’?” Shockwave asked.
The men looked at one another in surprise.
“Come on, guys,” Steve insisted. �
�Humans has got to top the list. Humans, human beings, the human race, ‘we’re only human,’ ‘the human experience’—”
“But,” Powerhouse argued, legitimately confused, “don’t all the sci-fi movies call us ‘Earthlings’?”
“Sure,” Steve retorted, “if they were made in the Fifties, maybe. Don’t you remember Mister Spock being half Vulcan and half human?”
“Terra firma,” Takayasu commented smoothly, “is the classic Latin term. ‘Terra’ means ‘earth’—”
“I know that,” Steve said, a bit peevishly.
“And if you’re going to drag Star Trek into it,” Takayasu continued, “the Borg attacked the Terran system, remember? And they had the Terran Empire in the mirror—”
Shockwave gestured for Shining Star’s attention and spoke up to say, “Just so you know, on our planet, this sort of thing is called a ‘nerd alert’.”
“I see,” Shining Star said, though his tone suggested he didn’t see at all.
“Dude, seriously,” Steve said to Shockwave, “if he starts using that term, I’m taking your suit back.”
In this midst of all this, Ardette had come around the table to offer Shining Star a new water bottle. In a soft voice that somehow managed to cut through the guff around the table, she said to Callin, “ ‘Humans’ is probably your best bet. Everyone will understand what you mean.”
Callin smiled. “Thank you.”
Now feeling self-conscious about the whole debate, the others settled down for Shining Star to pick up from where he left off.
“As I was saying, and as you can see, Taalu and humans are very similar. We’ve encountered a handful of other races along our journey who bore comparable resemblances to us, but none as closely as yourselves. In all cases, the conversion wave worked to our advantage, having altered the appearance of some of those affected. Just as Vortex assumed—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt again,” Steve said with an apologetic gesture, “but what is the ‘conversion wave’?”
“That is a literal translation for what we call it. I believe you said your term is ‘the White Flash’.”
Shining Star’s words hung in the air for a heavy moment ... and then everyone in the room, Alan and Ardette included, started speaking at once.
“What do you know about—?”
“The White Flash was—?”
“Are you sayin’ there’s paranormals—?”
“Do you know what caused—?”
Shining Star looked around in confusion, the stress clear on his face as he tried to follow, and probably translate, the barrage that would’ve been a mess for a native speaker.
Steve shouted everyone down. “Hey, hey, hey! Come on, easy! One at a time!”
Takayasu pitched in, and together they finally restored some order.
“Sorry,” Steve apologized to Callin. “It’s just ... if there’s one subject that’s even more earthshattering than alien life, it’s the Paranormal Effect. When you talked about the bio-energy earlier, I thought you’d learned it from studying us! And when you said ‘convert,’ I just ... we didn’t ...” He paused for a beat. “Okay ... please, you have to tell us everything you know ...” His words trailed off again as his eyes widened. “Wait, are you a paranormal after all? Your race, the Taalu, don’t just have superpowers or whatever?”
Shining Star nodded, this time imitating its human equivalent. “Yes, that is part of how I justified misleading you when we first met. My race as a whole has no more ‘super powers’ than yours.”
“So I was right after all,” Steve stated, feeling an admittedly petty but still real vindication to his pride. Shockwave snorted in response to that, but the others were too focused on Shining Star to pay much attention to him.
Takayasu asked, “Was everyone affected by it? I mean, all the other worlds, the whole galaxy?”
Shining Star shook his head. “Not all worlds, no, only some. And as on your world, only a small percentage of those given races were converted.”
“What caused it?” Powerhouse demanded, leaning forward.
“Do you know what caused it?” Steve added, to soften the big man’s intensity.
“Yes and no,” Shining Star answered ... yet it seemed to Steve that, for just a second, his new friend had hesitated. But did that mean anything? Was he just translating how to say specific words? Steve filed that away as Shining Star continued. “I’m certain you have noticed the appearance of a new, tight constellation of stars in the sky, which appeared immediately following the White Flash?” Nods all around. “Those seven stars — which have many names; we call them the living stars — have always been a mystery to the modern sciences of the known galaxy. Some worlds could see the stars, others could not, and no one knew why. Some worlds that are just a few light-years away never knew they were there, while others stretching out to the edge of intergalactic space could use them for nighttime navigation. Whether or not they were visible during interstellar travel depended upon the trajectory of your course; again, no one knew why. To deepen the mystery further, in addition to the usual levels of light, heat, gravity, and radiation, these stars emit a unique type of energy — energy with distinct biogenic properties, as though biomolecular matter had undergone an undiscovered transmutation and was then broadcast along radioactive wavelengths.”
“What’s ‘biogenic’ and all that mean?” Powerhouse asked him, his tone a little hot.
But it was Vortex who answered. “It means they’re ... alive?”
Shining Star nodded. “Yes. It means that, in some unknown, maybe unknowable way, those seven stars are alive.”
Alan grunted. “I can see why your people call them the ‘living’ stars.”
“Yes,” Shining Star agreed. “Roughly forty years ago, as you measure time, the conversion wave erupted from the living stars. It expanded outward as though all seven stars had gone supernova at once, but they had not. The wave traveled at greater than the speed of light, another seeming impossibility — it does not travel as quickly as our prolight technology allows, but no natural force should come even close.
“And to compound the enigma further, the wave does not destroy matter in its path. For all intents and purposes, it seems to do nothing more than put on an awesome display, a light show beyond any other stellar phenomena, one which leaves behind an intriguing new constellation, never before seen. But as you know firsthand, sometimes it converts the lifeforms exposed to it — rarely, but critically.
“The wave is comprised of the same biogenic energy that radiates from the living stars. This is what we measure to detect converts — paranormals.”
A moment of silence followed. Steve saw that Alan was frantically writing notes. Good thing, too — they really should have been recording this in some way, but the whole thing was so overwhelming, it just hadn’t occurred to him.
Takayasu spoke up. “Do you have any idea what this biogenic energy does to its converts? How it alters them? How most of these paranormals seem to defy the laws of physics, at least as we understand them?”
“They defy the laws of physics as the entire galaxy understands them,” Shining Star said. “We can measure the energy, and we can see what it does to certain living beings — and always sentient beings, never the lower lifeforms — but we understand very little about what it truly is. Your term, ‘paranormal,’ is fitting. I presume your medical science has made very little headway understanding the changes in the converts’ physiology? This is not surprising, as the conversion borders on the supernatural.
“You, for instance,” Shining Star said to Shockwave, startling him a bit. “Your conversion ability involves the generation of energy, correct?”
“How the hell do you—?” Shockwave began.
Steve was quick to defuse the situation. “They saw our fight with the force field guy at the apartment complex. That’s how they spotted me.”
Shockwave appeared only somewhat mollified by this explanation, but he told Shining Star, “Yeah, th
at’s what I do. Kinetic energy — I make shockwaves, shields, stuff like that.”
“But where does this energy comes from?”
“What do you mean? It comes from me.”
Takayasu stepped in. “I see where he’s going with this. Where does your body get the energy for it? You don’t eat any more than I do, you don’t drain it from outside sources like some paranormals do. So where does it come from? Your blood? Your bones? The air you breathe?”
“Exactly,” Shining Star said.
“Magic,” Steve said to himself. When he realized that he had spoken loud enough for the others to hear, he explained, “My brother believed that magic was the answer to what the Paranormal Effect did to us.”
“Many others have made the same argument,” Shining Star said, “even among my own people.”
Takayasu scoffed, “ ‘Magic’ is just extremely advanced science.”
“Has your world seen religious groups form around the living stars?”
“Yes.”
Shining Star nodded. “While most turn to science for answers, when science provides too few to satisfy, some turn to magic or religion for explanations. And I can’t say for certain that they are wrong to do so.”
“Here’s a question for ya,” Shockwave said, “if you guys don’t mind changin’ the subject.”
“No!” Powerhouse retorted, sounding agitated. “I want to know everything they know about the Paranormal Effect.”
“And it sounds like they don’t know all that much,” Shockwave fired back. “It came from those stars, but they don’t know what caused it and they don’t even know how it works, am I right?”
“I’m sorry to say that is mostly accurate,” Shining Star admitted ... but again, he seemed to hesitate before answering, and then his words sounded a little apprehensive.
Shockwave, however, was ready to move on. “Okay. You say you’re lookin’ for a new home. So are you willin’ to share stuff with us?”
Paranormals (Book 2): We Are Not Alone Page 19