The Next Thing I Knew (Heavenly)

by John Corwin

  Maybe taking him to the planet surface would do something. I dressed him in shorts and a t-shirt, loaded him in a shuttle, and took him down to his old neighborhood where he'd grown up. After a frustrating hour of attempts, I gave up teaching him to walk. He tottered around like an infant, constantly toppling over his long legs. Only Diana's strength and height kept him from falling over. I could hold each of his hands in mine and walk behind him like one would teach an infant to walk. I cursed at the futility but loaded him onto one of the hover stretchers in the back of the shuttle. It morphed into a seat that fit him and I pushed him inside his old house like an invalid.

  I had cleaned up his house and mine during the cloning process if for no other reason than to give me something to do. I took him to his room and showed him Chris's stuff. I did that for hours without a positive response or spark of interest from him. Even infants had some responses. Maybe something had gone wrong with brain development. He learned to pick up things and look at them but he didn't have the curiosity to examine them.

  I called Bethany and asked her to help. She showed up in Laylah's body. Her face twisted in disgust when she saw him and almost left. I begged her to stay. She spoke with Chris for a while about the old days and incidents from high school. He stared at her the same way he had me. Then he pooped in his pants.

  "He's not in there," Bethany said. "This is just a shell. And it's wrong to have given it a life like this." She waved her hand to ward off the odor. "Chris is gone."

  I clenched my fists in an effort to hold my temper at bay. "Maybe he's not. Maybe this will bring him back."

  "No." She shook her head as a tear rolled down her cheek. "This just makes it that much harder to let him go." She broke into more tears and looked away. "I can't do this, Lucy. I have to move on. You do too."

  I ground my teeth. "I'm not giving up that easy."

  "It's not giving up if it's impossible."

  I barked out a laugh. "You're saying that after everything we've been through. After everything we've done? We've done the impossible. We survived death and maybe Chris somehow survived the destruction of his body."

  "If he did, this--this construct isn't bringing him back." She made a noise of disgust and left.

  I cleaned up the clone's rear end and used Diana's holo-emitter to create another pair of clean pants. I loaded him into the shuttle and took him to a new facility the Rrilk had built near Zhrrii's cube. Word had spread like wildfire about the cloning technology so we'd had the battleships build several more cloning units and placed them in the facility which everyone called the Factory. We asked for candidates and received more than we could handle. Out of those we took ten individuals and cloned their bodies. Each would take a month to create, but we had fifty cloners online by then.

  I talked to Chris's clone every day, trying to get a response. But each day passed like the last. His autonomic functions kept on ticking while everything else stayed close to flat line. The auto-doc unit warned that the clone's brain was slowly becoming atrophied as were its muscles. The clone could walk and manipulate objects with its hands, but only under direct guidance.

  "Lucy you have to give this up," Kyle said to me one day. "You haven't done anything but babysit this thing since we returned. Our parents are still trapped in Heavenly and there are people who need our help right now."

  "I can't leave him. What if he comes back?"

  "He's not, Lucy." Kyle pounded the table where the clone lay and looked at the diagnostic console. "He's gone. Let it be, just for a day or so. The first batch of clones is done and we need to help these people into their new bodies."

  I gazed at the clone, at how I could see Chris in every line and every detail of its flesh. But I saw nothing in the eyes. No love, no recognition, no desire to exist. Kyle was right. I'd been so selfish with my time. I needed to help the people who were still around. Rejuvenating the human race would give me purpose enough to care about something else for a change.

  Kyle, Jane, and others from our team had been training the test subjects and showing them how to merge with a body. When the clones were done, we took them inside. I was assigned the old guy of the group, Tom Sanders. He approached his clone and gasped at the sight.

  "It's so strange seeing me lying there breathing. But it looks like I'm not even really alive."

  "That's exactly what your clone is right now," I said. "Just a hunk of meat with no spark. Are you ready to dive in?"

  "I dive into the body like they do in the movies?"

  I laughed. "Sorry, bad idiom. Are you ready to start the process?"

  He nodded. His hands trembled and he gulped. "You're so young. Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

  "It's how we saved the Earth, Tom." I should put that on my resume, I thought.

  "If something goes wrong, will I die for good?"

  I didn't know the answer to that, not under these particular circumstances. But I had experience. I could guess. "You'll be fine. If you don't like it, you can leave the body." I pointed to Diana's slumbering form in a chair nearby. "I'll have her on hand to help you afterward."

  He licked his lips and placed a hand on the clone. He closed his eyes and a moment later the body sucked him in. It was unlike any merge I'd seen before. The clone's eyes opened. It screamed. I heard asynchronous screams echo from the other chambers where the other test subjects were. The clone jerked upright and whipped his head left and right. He saw Diana's body. His face blanched in terror and he backed away.

  I merged with Diana and stood up, motioning him to calm down. He kept screaming and backing away. His screaming was driving me crazy so I had the auto-doc sedate him. I heard other screams go quiet as my team mates got the same idea. We were each in a Shaval body so we easily moved the new bodies into a single room where we could keep an eye on them.

  "What the hell?" I asked.

  "No idea," Kyle said. "We can't communicate with them in our Shaval bodies. It terrifies them. Maybe they haven't assimilated or something."

  "Or maybe it's because their minds are blank," I said, a wash of horror sweeping over me. "What if we just wiped them clean?"

  "Oh no," Jane said. "I hope not."

  Then the obvious occurred to me. "Hold on, I have an idea." I should have thought of it long ago.

  I grabbed a shuttle and took it north a ways to a nice house we'd set up for a very special inhabitant. Nick was there mowing the lawn. He raced over to me and gave Diana's large body a big hug like a child would to an adult. I had to bend way down. I gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  "How's the hottest alien I know?" he said with a smile.

  "Diana would tear you apart," I said, smacking one of her four large hands on his scrawny butt for emphasis.

  He laughed and smacked Diana's butt which was about even with his face.

  "I need your help," I said. He had a translator device that repeated what I said in English.

  "Thank God. I'm bored stiff out here."

  I took him back and briefed him along the way. He was bursting with enthusiasm by the time we arrived.

  "This is wonderful news. You mean I may have real humans to talk to again? Not that I have issues with the Rrilk, of course. Bloody nice chaps and all, but a bit on the ugly and smelly side."

  I showed him to our new patients. I stepped from Diana and watched as Nick had the auto-doc awaken Tom. Tom jerked awake and looked at Nick. He sat up and stared with confusion at the other slumbering patients.

  "What happened? Are you a doctor?"

  Nick nodded. "What do you remember?"

  "I was getting the mail. Then I must have passed out. I remember some crazy dreams about flying people and Kansas and something about aliens." He gritted his teeth and furrowed his brow. "But I feel like a lot is missing." He looked at his hands and gasped. "My hands. Something's wrong. They're young again. My voice is all screwy too. I sound like a kid."

  Nick put a hand on Tom's shoulder. "Yeah, it's a new hand cream we're using. You suffered a s
troke and will need to rehab, but I think you'll be fine." He showed Tom into another room. "There's a lot that needs explaining so you'll have to bear with us. First I need to wake up your companions."

  "Did they have strokes too? They all look too young to have had strokes."

  "This is the brain trauma ward."

  "Oh, I see."

  Nick repeated the process with the others until they were all calm and assembled in the room. Then he came outside and conferred with the rest of us.

  "We have a huge problem," he said. "They've all suffered varying degrees of memory loss. Some remember Heavenly but think it was a dream. Another guy doesn't remember anything at all."

  Kyle groaned. "We're gonna have to rehab the entire human race."

  Chapter 32

  Jane was the first of us to request a new body.

  "I always dreamed of having a big family," she said. "Now I can."

  "What if you forget everything like the others?"

  "Then I know you'll be there to help me, sweetie."

  Nick had his hands full with the original group's orientation but they had more or less accepted the new reality that waited outside their makeshift rehab clinic. By the time Jane's new body was ready, most of the original group were actively helping in the clinic and training to rehab the next batch that arrived. The amnesia hadn't scared any candidates off. If anything, most of them wanted to forget the last year.

  I watched as Jane prepared for the merge with her body. She meditated for a while. As she tapped into the body, her face tightened in concentration. Her hand warped as if the body were trying to pull her in. She stayed like that for a few hours while screams echoed from the other rooms and the other candidates as they awoke in their new bodies. Nick popped in from time to time to check in on us, not that he could see anything but Jane's clone lying still on the table.

  It was a while before Jane's face relaxed. She smiled. Her ghost popped into the body. I held my breath, waiting for the scream.

  Jane opened her eyes and laughed. She sat up, looking around the room for me. I was about to go grab Diana when Jane's gaze grew unfocused, almost dazed. Worry stiffened me.

  "Hey, Lucy," she said, looking at me.

  "It worked?"

  "Yeah. Had a few smooth spots in the new brain to settle into. No wonder the new guys freak out."

  "Can you leave the body?"

  She sat for a while, eyes closed and eventually shook her head. "Looks like I'm in here for good, or at least until the next apocalypse."

  "But you can see and hear me?"

  "If I look and listen for you. You're like a shimmering outline that only sharpens if I concentrate on you. Then I can see you in a bizarre fuzzy way."

  "Weird."

  "So you gonna get your body done?"

  I shrugged. "Maybe in a while. I don't know." I had too much left undone. My parents, for one thing.

  I held a meeting with Nick and his team that night using Nick's body as my vessel. As the number of revived humans increased, so did the rehab staff. I explained what had worked with Jane. A number of ghosts were on the flip side of his team, prepping ghostly candidates for their rebirth. Unfortunately, many of them were too impatient or undisciplined to learn meditation and preferred to deal with the temporary memory loss. What many didn't know was that several had lost years worth of memories that might never come back. Memories from well before we all died.

  Most of the first reborn humans had been young people before D-Day. After discovering that everyone would get a new teenage body, a lot of older people started signing up too. I could see the road to rebirth for the planet, but it was going to take a long while. I also wondered just how hellish life would be with generations of humans hitting hormone-saturated puberty at the same time.

  After a meeting during which I merged with Nick, he asked me to wait a moment before I left.

  "I've been wanting to ask you something, Lucy."

  What's that? I sent back.

  "Will you please get your body made?"

  Why?

  "I want to see you in person."

  You can see me all you want in your head.

  He sighed. "After everything we've been through, I'm surprised you don't know why."

  I could read your mind, but what fun would that be?

  "You joker." He laughed then grew serious. "Lucy, I'm in love with you."

  I didn't know what to say. I guess a part of me already knew that. A part of me loved him too. I care for you too Nick, but I'm not ready to come back to life. I'm not ready to fall in love again. I still hurt too much.

  "Please, Lucy."

  I'm sorry. I can't. I fled from him as pain bubbled up through the cracks in the armor I'd placed around my heart. Chris's clone was wasting away. The auto-doc said it would die soon. And it hadn't achieved its own sense of awareness. It was an empty meat-machine with no soul. It was dying like my love life. I figured it might be for the best if I had to endure this sort of heartache. The kind that clung like lead weights in my chest. It made me feel alive in a twisted way.

  I found a quiet spot at the edge of the facility that housed our new venture. The building looked fluid and organic, made from the same material the Shaval used for their buildings. We called the material flux, and hoped to rebuild cities with it. Rrilk crews were busy retrieving corpses and cleaning up the towns and cities. They'd offered to stay and help us rebuild, thankful that we had freed them from the Shaval and hopeful we could eventually help free their home world.

  The future looked promising but grief still clung to me.

  "It's not as bad as you think," a familiar voice said.

  I spun and cried out a note of the purest surprise and joy. Anil smiled back at me. His ghost glowed like he'd been standing too close to a power cube. I hugged him and kissed his cheeks, wetting his face with my tears. Then I realized he too was crying. I'd never seen him cry.

  "You did it, Lucy. I'm so proud."

  "How did you survive? Why didn't you tell me you were still alive?"

  "Because I couldn't." He shrugged. "The destruction of my corpse only freed me from chains I never knew existed. It cut me loose in a torrent of dimensions and places that swept me like so much debris down a river. I was unprepared for it. I nearly drowned in its endlessness." He sat cross-legged on the ground. "There is a Beyond. I finally found it. For those who died before D-Day, they had time to adjust to a new state of being and to discover Beyond for themselves while their slowly decaying corpses anchored their souls for an easier transition. For me, it was a matter of willpower and meditation that helped me recover."

  "So there's a chance that the others will return."

  "Others?"

  I told him the story of Harb's betrayal.

  He took a moment to muse over my story then nodded. "There's a chance. Time works differently between here and the other places. It took me what seemed years to find my way. Once I found Beyond, I was able to control where I went. There are infinite dimensions waiting out there. So much to do and see. And other battles to fight."

  "We can bring you all the way back now. We're reviving the human race."

  He nodded. "It's a worthy plan, Lucy. A noble one. Be certain you are the one to write the rule book this time."

  "You trust me with that kind of power?"

  "For the most part." He winked. "I will not be returning to this life, however. I've found my calling."

  "But we can patch you right up, good as new."

  "I know." His eyes settled on a point in the sky. "I want to help people on this side. I want to find the lost ones and help them find Beyond."

  "In infinite dimensions? That's impossible."

  "No, there are many of us already engaged in this task. I think it's a worthy one."

  "Can you find Chris?"

  He paused, and must have seen the pain in my eyes. "Having merged with him before, it might be more likely. But I can't promise anything."

  My hopes shot through the r
oof anyway. "But you promise to visit me from time to time?"

  "I will. Be seeing you around, Lucy." He smiled and shifted to dimensions unknown.

  I twirled and laughed into the sky. Anil was alive. Chris was still alive out there somewhere. One day, I might see him again. I would hope and wait for that day. I wanted to make Earth beautiful once again so when Chris came back to me he would be proud.

  So I did.

  MEET THE AUTHOR

  John Corwin has been making stuff up all his life. As a child he would tell his sisters he was an alien clone of himself and would eat tree bark to prove it. For John, making stuff up was about one thing: teasing his sisters.

  In middle school, everything changed. A class assignment to string random words together into a coherent story led to the birth of Fargo McGronsky, a young boy with anger management issues whose dog, Noodles, had been hit by a car. The short story was met with loud acclaim from classmates and a great gnashing of teeth by his English teacher. At this point, our esteemed author realized that making stuff up had broader uses.

  Years later, after college and successful stints as a plastic food wrap repairman and a toe model for several well-known men's magazines, John once again decided to put his overactive imagination to paper for the world to share and became an author.

  Connect with John Corwin online:

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  Blog http://johncorwin.blogspot.com/

  Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/John_Corwin