by Norman Oro
The Human Ability
Although the Allies’ involvement in mankind’s affairs began much sooner than it normally would have, there was very little that was normal about humanity to begin with. In all its hundreds of millennia of existence, the Alliance had never encountered anything like mankind; and the human awakening, in particular, defied their understanding of how races came into full possession of their abilities. Before any hint of a human collective existed, every person apparently had the latent ability to externally generate the field energy of any other race they came into contact with. In fact, after only an hour spent cross-referencing his data with the science repository on Onav, Dr. Marshall determined that the ambient field activity that the Vela system had been detecting for years wasn’t human at all. It was actually Cley. At some point in Earth’s distant past, humanity had come into contact with their field energy and began to unconsciously generate it. In fact, that was probably why many found it so intuitive to connect to their global consciousness. Given their special bond with mankind, the Cley were the first to invite humans into their collective.
With Dr. Rys and Pedro showing the way, vast swaths of the United States were soon taking the Cley up on their offer. Within a few years, displacements without field amplifiers had grown commonplace as what they taught spread to every corner of the globe. In time, many were linking not only to the Cley shared consciousness, but also to those of the Ta’oh, the Fris, the Tessites and so on. It seemed no awakened species was inaccessible to humanity. Soon people learned they could access the abilities found within those collectives, as well. Mankind’s gifts proved so robust that Dr. Rys and Ide Meadow quickly developed protocols to assure humanity’s new allies that the integrity of each of their collectives’ was respected.
In terms of guiding Earth through the sociological and environmental changes it was experiencing, the original Allied worlds proceeded on surer footing. Carefully they oversaw a transformation of human civilization like the ones they’d shepherded thousands of worlds through before. As the end of the twenty-first century drew near, mankind found itself immortal like the races whose collectives it so readily glided through. By then, every person had been invited into at least one Alliance global consciousness, which served as a surrogate until humanity formed its own. Gifted with immortality and exhilarating new abilities, millions began leaving Earth to explore the stars and establish settlements off-world. Within decades, relatively few great cities remained as wilderness was allowed to reclaim more of the planet. Once it was determined that dolphins, whales and other aquatic species generated the field activity detected in Earth’s oceans, mankind began to withdraw its presence from there, as well.
It was just over a decade into the new century when the final stage of humanity’s awakening began. Given the abilities mankind had exhibited to that point, the Allies were intrigued to see what the full range of those abilities would prove to be. With each passing day, more people began feeling the presence of other human beings in their minds. They also found their control over their own field energy growing by leaps and bounds. Soon they could change their internal field to match that of any other species’, thereby accessing its abilities. In fact, many quickly learned how to mask their field energy altogether, something Kate Minon subconsciously tapped into many decades earlier.
As mankind’s awakening progressed, the original Allied races were amazed to find that its effects weren’t isolated to just humanity. Their own age-old collectives began transforming, as well. The Cley global consciousness was suddenly filled with the voices of the Ta’oh. The Ta’oh could suddenly hear the Tessites. The Tessites could hear the Cley. Every race that had welcomed at least one human being into its shared consciousness found itself connected to every other race that had done the same. For the first time, the collectives could directly communicate with one another; and within a few days, they could also access one another’s abilities. After little over a month, humanity had achieved a goal no one had ever considered because it seemed at its surface unattainable: They’d created a shared consciousness encompassing every single one of the thousands of Allied races. Appropriately enough, the people of Earth started returning home a few months later to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of their accession into the Alliance.
Centennial
By then, the office of ambassador had been phased out as mankind took a permanent seat in the Alliance Council. The Earth’s first representative to the council, Eileen Farraz, was slated to give the keynote address christening the Allies’ new headquarters in San Francisco. Though humanity had grown skilled at communicating through its newly formed global consciousness, most people still held a fondness for their much older gift of speech. As ceremonies were set to begin, Northern California’s population swelled to almost three times normal. Parts of the state that for decades had stood vacant were filled to capacity and buzzing with crowds of people. In fact, all of California was full once again as mankind returned home to reacquaint itself with one of Earth’s most scenic regions.
Former Ambassador Rys made the journey north from Los Angeles in his Roadmaster to take part in the festivities. As he approached the outskirts of Santa Cruz, he felt within his mind the familiar and reassuring chatter of Lifeguard, the Owghen task force established a century earlier to continuously advise Alliance officials regarding security matters. He listened intently as Lifeguard explained that a Motara cycle had just begun. It was a mysterious and unpredictable phenomenon that occurred about once every dozen millennia during which their prescience was significantly diminished; and generally lasted several days. To compensate, all Owghen from the Alliance’s other heightened cognition task groups had been temporarily reassigned to oversee security in Northern California. Confident that even in a diminished state, the Owghen were more than capable of detecting any possible threat, he drove on, enjoying the scenery all around him. He also knew that if worse came to worse, there was always Hardball.
After Dr. Rys checked into his hotel, he stepped outside into the brisk February air then took a walk around the city to reacquaint himself with the area. It had been almost thirty years since he’d retired as ambassador and it felt good to be back. After visiting the San Francisco Giants ballpark, he had some dinner with Guy Pool, his wife and some former co-workers then returned to the hotel. As he started walking to the opening ceremonies the next morning, it was still somewhat cold outside, but otherwise clear and sunny. Within a few minutes, he saw the sprawling block of glass, concrete and steel that would soon be Alliance headquarters. After he arrived, he took his seat among the dignitaries gathered in front of the speaker’s platform, and spent a few minutes talking with them about old times.
The air was filled with anticipation as Representative Farraz took the podium. She’d been a protégée of Dr. Rys’s since she graduated from Smith College almost seventy years earlier. She rose quickly through the ranks of the ambassador’s office and the General Assembly elected her just a few decades earlier to the Alliance Council. Just as she began her address, however, a commotion erupted all around her. In an instant, she was gone, apparently displaced by the Secret Service detail assigned to protect her. Dr. Rys stood up to see what had happened and saw that someone had materialized on ground level just below the speaker’s platform. When he saw who it was, his heart jumped into his throat. It was a Domain envoy.
He was a large man, powerfully built, with the characteristic alabaster hair and obsidian eyes of the Grell. Dr. Rys immediately began reaching back through his memories from Onav and eventually pulled out a name, Piers Kessler. Similar to the priests from Dr. Rys’s childhood, he wore a black cassock, the trademark of his office. However, to simply call it black was a gross understatement. The color actually reminded him more of the three-dimensional voids that his old Allen field generators left of objects that had been sent. Its material seemed to seize every quantum of light crossing into it without surrendering any of it back.
As the envoy strode forward
on the carpeted path leading away from the speaker’s podium, he seemed oblivious to the police officers and security agents trying in vain to displace him into a nearby holding cell. He was equally unconcerned with their particle weapons, which proved just as ineffective. Unperturbed, he simply continued walking forward through the crowd towards Dr. Rys.
Ambassador Rys
Envoy Kessler had just awakened when he heard the news: His scouts had detected Grossveld particles matching those that could cure the Grell. Though they didn’t have a definite location, they’d narrowed the particles’ origin down to a region that was roughly a hundred light-years in diameter. He immediately closed his eyes and began summoning visuals of the area. If he didn’t know better, he would’ve sworn the race of sentients generating those field particles had been hidden from the Grell on purpose. He saw that in addition to being in the opposite direction of Domain expansion, the region was perpetually occluded from their sensor networks in almost all directions by hundreds of thousands of stars, nebulae and planets. Nevertheless, they’d found the species they sought.
Long-range scans showed little in the way of sentient life, much less awakened races. However, once the Grell displaced their probes closer, they detected a field intensity they’d never seen before. Specifically, the Grossveld energy of trillions of beings appeared to emanate from a planet that couldn’t possibly have accommodated so many people. Aside from the magnitude of the readings, their variety also made the envoy question what he was seeing. The planet exhibited field signatures that he hadn’t seen in hundreds of millennia, since he served as a battalion commander during the attack on the Alliance. Despite the immense power of that world, the field energy that would cure his people didn’t reside there.
Instead, a few dozen light-years away, a relatively unremarkable green and blue globe was bathed in Grossveld particles exactly matching his scientists’ models. Envoy Kessler stood in his command chamber astounded at finally finding what had become almost a myth. The Domain’s ages-long quest had at times seemed as futile as drawing a portrait of an imaginary person then being sent to look for them. However, there was nothing imaginary about their probes’ telemetry readings. They’d located the race that could cure them. He immediately donned his encounter suit.
Since their ill-fated battle with the Alliance, the Grell had heard rumors of beings gifted with near-omniscience. Always wondering how it was that the Allies had learned so much about their home systems without ever having been detected within the Domain, the envoy’s office began looking into ways to defeat beings possessed of such an ability. Ultimately, the Grell adopted a battle capability that was prepared at all times to extinguish a race. Reasoning that such a gift likely didn’t cross over into precognition, they sought to minimize the amount of time between their intentions being detected and when they struck. Gone was the traditional process of consultation with their collective. Gone, too, was the painstaking evaluation process to determine whether the target would eventually extinguish itself or not. Instead, it was decided that as soon as the race that could cure them was identified, extinction would begin. Consequently, within seconds of donning his encounter suit, Envoy Kessler had displaced himself into one of the planet’s great cities, San Francisco, to carry out his ritual.
He materialized to find himself standing in front of an impossibility. The envoy saw thousands of beings from practically every Allied race seated before him as though their Alliance had never died. Impulsively, he began puzzling over how that could possibly be. However, time was of the essence and based on the looks on their faces, he still had the element of surprise. Brushing aside the implications of what he saw and human attempts to stop him, he strode forward until he came face-to-face with a man of middling height and average build. Judging from his field signature, he was a native of the planet Earth. The most striking thing the envoy found about him was his eyes. They were kind, yet shimmered with a fierce intelligence, reminding him of his father from long ago, before the sickness. He looked into those eyes then gave his blessing. However, despite his exertions, the man didn’t disappear, nor did anyone else on the planet. Like a teacher patiently waiting on one of his students, the man remained in front of him for a few moments before finally speaking.
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He stood there for an instant stunned that the man knew his name. He was even more astonished by his command of Dreng, the Grell language. Despite his somewhat archaic intonation, he spoke it flawlessly with the register of an envoy.
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As hard as it was for him to admit, this human standing before him, who couldn’t have been much more than a century old, was right. The envoy could see himself through his eyes. He felt the familiar sensation of the Domain slicing into the man’s collective. Everything was just as it should’ve been, as it was thousands of times before in thousands of prior rituals in thousands of prior extinctions. However, despite all that, the man remained there in front of him, a living testament to the envoy’s sudden powerlessness. As if to ward off that sickening sensation of impotence, his response seemed to emanate from his very entrails.
<
He then looked up into the sky and closed his eyes. Within moments, quantum charges began materializing and detonating all over Earth. Sensing Lifeguard’s frantic warnings, Dr. Rys accessed the Tessite gift of intangibility just as a firestorm vaporized Alliance headquarters. Envoy Kessler floated serenely before him as the explosion’s flames and shockwaves obediently bent around his suit’s shielding while tearing into the ground beneath them. And there they remained, staring at each other as the city all around them was engulfed in fire.
Sent reeling under the Grell onslaught, humanity’s still developing hold of its abilities began to waver. Soon Dr. Rys began feeling the cold void of space all over the world where it had no business being. New York, Tokyo, Chicago, Manila, Los Angeles, Beijing, Paris, Karachi, Mexico City, London, Buenos Aires, Rome, Mumbai, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Baghdad, Madrid, Tel Aviv, Lagos, Istanbul, Sydney, Moscow, Tehran, Hamburg, Singapore, the list went on and on. No city was spared it seemed. Those who’d displaced themselves away from Earth were soon hit as well, as the Grell learned of mankind’s off-world colonies via their link to its collective.
With the screams in Dr. Rys’s mind growing to an almost unbearable crescendo, he clung with all his strength to his intangibility. Floating above a mile-wide crater gouged deep into the earth, he peered at the envoy through the vortex of ash and debris swirling all around them. He was startled to see a look on Piers Kessler’s face that he couldn’t remember ever being there before: Shock. Suddenly the attacks and displacements stopped. Envoy Kessler’s massive frame then slumped forward as if bearing some invisible weight. Seeming to teeter in the air before him about to collapse, he quietly uttered the last words Dr. Rys had ever expected him to say.
“We’re sorry, Ambassador. Very sorry.”
In an instant, he was gone. Finding himself alone, Dr. Rys slowly began relinquishing his intangibility, letting gravity claim him as he descended to the surface. After a moment spent collecting himself, he began searching the human collective for signs of his family. Once he was done, he fell to a knee then searched again. For almost an hour, he repeated his search over and over, each time taking no more than a few seconds. There was a reason for that. Dr. Rys could no longer sense the presence of his son, Pedro.
Though he drew no comfort from it, he knew he wasn’t alone in his grief that day. With the sounds of a gravely wounded humanity filling his mind, Lifeguard soon placed the death toll from the attacks at over one hundred million people. As the human race seethed at the inexplicable violence done to it, the Alliance Council authorized an immediate counterstrike. Given his unique familiarity with
the Domain, the council summoned Dr. Rys to Onav and asked him if he would lead the operation. He agreed. The council then redesignated him an ambassador and issued him an encounter suit. Seconds later, Ambassador Rys materialized within Hardball, the Allied war machine. Completed just a decade earlier, it was a small, beige-colored metal dome on the planet Mars that sat atop an underground field amplifier array the size of Los Angeles.
Seeing the installation’s systems were all online, he took its lone chair, placed his hands over its neural interface and closed his eyes. He relaxed his mind then joined the rest of mankind in bridging together the thousands of Allied collectives. After that, he requested control of them. Within moments, Ambassador Rys felt trillions of beings place their field energy at his disposal. He winced as his mind was overwhelmed by their presence; however, the installation’s cognitive stabilizers immediately activated, allowing him to channel their field energy through Hardball’s amplifiers. With Lifeguard providing coordinates, he then reached out through space to Astrid, one of the Grell homeworlds. Using the mental equivalent of a nudge, he displaced it into the Earth’s sun. He then took hold of another world, this one called Shoen, and did the same. After that, he took hold of Alma. And then, he seized Ehdl. Wielding the amplified field energy of almost the entire Alliance, he might as well have been teleporting marbles into a pond. However, after incinerating several worlds, he found the act of killing too easy.