The Xtra- Volume One

by Oliver Willis

  Then the nozzles fire up, spraying their contents over her, making sure that not a single section isn't covered.

  From inside the layer of liquid, Nyala is surprised to not feel wetness. Her eyes see the liquid dripping from everywhere, including her forehead, over her eyes, down at her feet. Everywhere.

  It feels strangely warm and comforting, like a thick layer of cotton. Nyala feels as if somebody took her entire body and wrapped it inside the lining of a pillow.

  She breathes in and out, expecting to have her nose stopped up, like putting a plastic bag over her head.

  Instead, it as if nothing is there at all. Her breathing is normal, uninterrupted. The only sign that something is different is she can slightly feel her breath blowing back on her as she exhales.

  But just barely.

  She is inside a cocoon. A layer of gelatinous material covering her entire body. This is what they can't simulate back home. This is what they can't train you for on Tevrem.

  This. The change.

  I'm going away, she thinks.

  Then it begins.

  Chapter 6

  The cocoon warms up. Just a little bit. But it is noticeable. Nyala feel as if someone has just tweaked a thermostat. Just a couple degrees higher.

  Then it happens again.

  It warms up a few degrees, and it happens all over at once. Her head. Feet. Legs. Arms. Fingers. She feels the heat build and it moves inside her body as well.

  The temperature increases in her throat. Up and down the bones of her arm.

  It is everywhere.

  Then it really starts. Nyala knows what is happening, intellectually, but it is a whole other experience to feel it first-hand. They don't tell you this on Tevrem. They explain that it is a "change," a "transfer," something "different".

  But they don't tell you any more than that, because of the usual excuse for so much on her home planet: Security. They don't want anybody else knowing their secrets, knowing the procedures they have in place to preserve life and intelligence, military secrets and information they have been able to obtain.

  So few on Tevrem know about the change. Just that ships are programed with it, and that in the most dire emergency the procedure can – and should be – triggered. "To preserve the life of those onboard and for the safety of our world," the instructions read.

  This is that.

  Nyala knows she isn't supposed to feel what happens next, but she does. There are hundreds of tiny, microscopic robots, crossing the threshold through the gelatin covering her body, shooting from deep inside the belly of the ship.

  And into her.

  The small robots slip inside Nyala, through the pores in her skin. Through her nostrils. Through every possible opening in her body, pumping themselves inside her.

  Stay awake.

  She wants to know what is happening. To be aware and alert as the change occurs. The first person in history to be alert for the entire process from start to finish. Then she can tell others, if there are any left, what it is like.

  It is a nice idea. But it will not work.

  Nyala feels her eyes begin to close down. She tries to fight it, but she is quickly on the losing end of the struggle. She yawns. It is long and loud. Tiredness envelops her.

  Stay awake.

  The order to herself is futile. Sleep completely consumes her and Nyala can feel the effects of the chemicals the robots are pumping into her system. It is a potent cocktail, composed by Tevrem's most elite scientists at the apex of their skills.

  She has no chance of staying awake.

  Now she is asleep. In a deep slumber.

  The ship breaks through and begins to float down to Earth, having survived the most intense segment of its journey through the atmosphere.

  On board, the robots begin their work. They fire signals to each other, each working on a tiny sliver of the problem before them. Pinging back and forth, making sure every atom is accounted for, secured, and worked on.

  Together they are transforming Nyala. They are rewriting her at the most basic level. To save her life, they are transforming her DNA.

  Into a human being.

  Chapter 7

  Nyala's blue skin evaporates. To outside eyes it would appear as if her flesh melted into nothingness. But in nanoseconds it is replaced. Now her skin is a light-brown complexion. The transformation happens in one small square, then another, and another.

  Her height decreases and she goes from Tevrem size to human proportions, shrinking considerably.

  The changes are being made based on the information the survivor drone uncovered in its swift but intensive survey of Earth.

  Many of her distinctive features survive, but are translated to human proportions. Quickly she looks like a human, with every last shred of her home planet appearance forever wiped out of existence.

  Nyala is a human woman, unconscious, on a space craft about to collide with Earth.

  Chapter 8

  Wallace Logan is walking around in the darkness, the tops of long sawgrass whipping against his jeans.

  The buzzing in his head is still there. It has been for the last few minutes. It kept buzzing when it told him to stop the car. The buzzing continued as he stepped out of the vehicle, and the sound continues as he stumbles around, unable to see a damned thing.

  The sleepiness he felt earlier is now completely gone. It has been erased almost completely by utter confusion.

  What the hell am I doing? This is crazy.

  It is crazy. Intellectually, Wallace knows the smart and sane thing to do is to walk back to his car, drive down the road, stop and get some aspirin, and be on his way. He would have to speed a good amount to make up lost time, but figures that with pedal to the metal he can make it home soon enough.

  But he doesn't do any of that.

  Instead he walks further into the nothingness, into the woods, and further away from his car. He can barely see the soft glow from his headlights anymore.

  A black man shouldn't be stomping around anywhere in America like this, let alone the rural swampland of Florida. All he needs is one trigger-happy good old boy.

  Just one.

  Wallace keeps trudging on. He is on high alert. It's a feeling he's familiar with. In the desert. On the wire. Looking out for enemy that could strike from any direction. You just never knew.

  Sometimes, Wallace felt that was his true home. Despite the stress and the intensity those felt like some of the best days of his life. It's much better than a crappy, cheap mattress, a slum of an apartment, and repeated job rejections.

  He can hear life all around him. That is different from the desert. Animals croaking. Creeping. Splashing around in the water and shuffling across the branches.

  Go. Go. Go. Go. The feeling tells him.

  It didn't explicitly say the word "go" but it gives him the feeling of "go." He doesn't know how to explain it, verbalize it out loud if someone asked. But he just feels it. He has to keep going. Walking further.

  To what, he does not know.

  I'm going insane.

  He chuckles a little bit to himself, trying to put the absurdity of his actions into context. He is going to miss his interview because he was stumbling around in the forest because a little voice told him to walk around.

  Sure, why not.

  Then he sees it.

  This grass is different from what he's seen everywhere else. There is a path of this same burnt grass and it extends into the woods.

  Wallace follows the trail with his eyes. The compulsion grows.

  There, it says. There. There. There.

  His legs lift up, almost of their own accord, and he starts striding toward the burnt path.

  Here, the feeling says.

  Here.

  Chapter 9

  Wallace keeps on walking, following the burnt path. He sees tree branches and other bits and pieces of the landscape that also have the same look to them. He smells it as well. Something came through here, recently.

&nbs
p; He balls his fists as he nervously makes his way through.

  A part of his brain just wants to turn away. And then there is the compulsion. But he's also curious too. There's an element that intrigues him, that makes him want to know what in God's name is going on.

  Then there is a clearing in the woods. The burnt look is even more intense here, like whatever burned a path through reached its peak, right here.

  He sees it.

  A bright silver shape. A vehicle of some sort. It looks like one solid slab of material, with no visible hinges or joints or anything giving away a sign that it was constructed. It looks as if it could have been one giant chunk of metal, all poured out of a forge at once, in an instant.

  Wallace exhales in astonishment. He quickly realizes the compulsion is gone. He no longer feels the driving force he felt for the last hour, pulling and pushing him through the darkness toward some mysterious point out in the swamp.

  This is why, he thinks.

  He thinks about approaching an enemy position, crawling around in the darkness in the desert, terrified that at any minute the dreaded Iraqi Republican Guard would end his life. He is unarmed. There is no comforting rifle in his hand, assurance that if he found something, something hostile, he could at least have a fighting chance to deal with it.

  Instead, it's just him, standing in the middle of nowhere, his hands at his sides. His only defense.

  I'm pretty stupid.

  He thinks about how he could just turn and walk away. The compulsion is gone. He can go back and get help. Call the cops. Or someone else. Who deals with crashed silver things in the Florida brush?

  There must be an agency.

  He chuckles to himself because he knows he can't just leave. That isn't who Wallace Logan is, for better or worse. Mostly worse, especially on days like this.

  He steps forward toward the silver vehicle. It doesn't even look right. The proportions are strange. It is narrow, unusually so, but also long, height-wise.

  Then it happens.

  Just a light "whoosh". And in the blink of an eye there is a doorway. It appears to materialize out of nowhere. Right there, in the silver slab, the space just … fades away.

  I can still go. Just go. This is a sign. I should just go.

  He steps forward, now compelled by himself, not an outside force manipulating him.

  Inside there are low lights in the ceiling, blinking displays and text he can't understand. It is impossible to understand the symbols written on the walls. In here the silver sheen is much brighter than the outside and it looks like it was also poured from one giant mold.

  Everything is connected to everything else. The buttons, knobs, screens, everything. It looks like one giant mass of… something.

  There is some smoke emanating from the walls. He can smell the burnt smell now, and it is very strong.

  Something went wrong here and even though he cannot make head or tails of the ship, it's clear to Wallace that something distressing happened. He looks around and there are more blinking displays. One screen clearly shows Earth, rotating in sort of a 3D wireframe. Next to it is a constantly changing stream of photos and videos, almost blurring into each other.

  He also sees himself, taken from footage at a vantage point slightly above. The camera follows him through the woods, walking around in the darkness.

  You brought me here, he thinks. But why?

  "Go."

  Wallace turns away from the display as he hears the weak voice from off to his left.

  "Go." A woman. It's almost a whisper. If the acoustics inside the vehicle were any less optimal, he would have never heard her. He steps in the right direction.

  There.

  He sees her legs first. Brown skin, slightly lighter than his. Then he sees her.

  A black woman, with long, delicate features lies on the floor. She is covered by a silver blanket and nothing else. Her legs and arms are positioned at awkward angles, like she fell down from somewhere.

  Her eyes are half-closed, almost like someone who has just woken up from a deep sleep. Or been drugged.

  She looks right at him and Wallace steadies himself. He is back on the ground, in Iraq, ready for all hell to break loose. His training begins to kick in and he tries to coolly assess the situation.

  "You have to go," she whispers. "You have to get out of here."

  Chapter 10

  Miles above, in the darkness of space, another pinprick of light appears. With a shimmy of reality and space-time, the fabric is again sliced open. A ship slides through.

  This one is in better shape than Nyala's, the benefit of being on the winning side of a dogfight. This is the ship that won. The pursuer.

  Klarn, the creature on board, is the same species as Nyala. Where her blue skin was light, his is dark. His features are rougher, more severe.

  He furrows his brow and looks at his readouts. The distance he has traveled is massive, far beyond any jumps he has done before. And he has done many. Klarn has traveled across the stars, unquestionably executing the tasks given to him by the Overseers.

  Klarn sneers. Creatures like Nyala annoy him. They disrupt order and refuse to go along with the rules and procedures in place. There is a plan and a role to be played by everyone in their society. Why disrupt it?

  Why travel this far, to this kind of world, in defiance of the established order?

  So many chose to avoid the logical path, refusing to see the logical superiority of Tevrem above all else. They struggled, making asinine proclamations about "liberty" and "freedom." Klarn was happy to snuff out their lights, to extinguish their needless flame of rebellion, to cleanse their infection on the collective good.

  This Nyala was even worse, because she wasn't an outsider with foreign notions incompatible with the inevitable plan of the Overseers. She is one of them.

  A dissenter.

  Now she was here, following her defiance to this planet, billions of miles away from the true center of the universe.

  It disgusts him.

  He thinks about how he will take pleasure in forever silencing her, adding her as another notch on his belt.

  The footage on his screen shows Klarn the blue-green planet below and he all but rolls his eyes. Even the appearance of this world makes no sense. Where Tevrem is logically ordered, the planet – "Earth" the data analysis says it is called – looks chaotic.

  Blues and greens and slight browns. There clearly were no Overseers creating a master plan. No collective making choices about what can live and what can die. Controlling the size of the population, maximizing the natural resources for sustaining life and building a fleet powerful enough to bring hundreds of worlds to heel.

  This planet looks primitive.

  Nyala is a fool to come here, he thinks. What can she possibly accomplish on this backwater?

  Of all the places to come with the weapon she possesses, this Earth has to be the worst.

  Klarn presses a few spots on his screen and he begins to head down, toward the surface. His ship's sensors show him right away that Nyala came through, that her ship entered Earth's atmosphere.

  He is on the right path.

  Klarn smirks. He relishes the kill. Eliminating this threat to the Overseers will result in a reward, he is sure. He also is well aware that delivering her weapon will make the Long Mission into reality, and no longer just a dream of the Overseers.

  Tevrem will be triumphant, like it always was supposed to be. The rational, logical end point of existence.

  Then a reading flashes on his screen. Klarn's expression instantly changes.

  He puts his finger on the information, expanding it for further examination.

  Impossible. Impossible. Illogical.

  But the data is right there before him. The chemical signature is unmistakable. Clear evidence that Nyala activated the preservation protocol as she passed through Earth's atmosphere.

  Klarn was trained on the technology as well, but there were obvious rules and procedures governing
its use. It was intended for emergency landings, crash situations.

  But on known worlds, working in concert with Tevrem's vast stores of information about planets throughout the galaxy. Rewriting DNA was not to be done on-the-fly, based solely on a probe's quick assessment of the planet's features and society.

  That was chaotic. Madness. Insane.

  But the data does not lie. Nyala did this, in what Klarn regards as the height of illogical behavior.

  No wonder she is such a threat.

  Even more so. Because with her DNA altered, to whatever primitive mixture she found on this retrograde planet, it inhibits Klarn's ability to find her.

  He traces the path of her ship. He must get there, determine if she survived, and purge her before she does any more damage.

  The Overseers and their plan demand this outcome. Anything less would defy order and reason.

  His ship descends.

  Chapter 11

  Wallace kneels down next to the woman and goes through checking on her vital signs. She seems to be in good shape, maybe just fatigued and stressed. He allows himself a glance at her. She's pretty, with sharp features.

  Not the time, he thinks.

  Her eyes open up again and she looks at him. Her eyes are wide, almost unnaturally so. She reaches up and grabs his arm. Her grip is far tighter, far stronger than he would have expected considering her size and condition.

  "You have to go," she says, moving her mouth in an exaggerated way to enunciate every word. He detects an accent, but he can't quite pick up on it.

  "It's okay, ma'am," he replies, forcefully but gently using his free hand to pull her hand away. She resists at first and Wallace can feel the tension. The arm isn't moving, and he's no shrinking violet. He's a few pounds over his service shape but the muscles in his arm still flex like they used to.

  This woman is strong.

  "Please, ma'am," he asks. She's really pretty.

  She relents and goes limp. Her arm falls back on to her chest.

  "You're nice," she says. "Kind."