“Yeah, second day.”
“I’m a junior, I’ve been there. Here,” he handed her a card. “That’s my room number. Call me anytime you want if you need help with the stress.”
“Um, thanks. I don’t have a card to give you, sorry.”
“That’s okay, what’s your name? I can look you up.”
“Um, Marjorie Sanders.”
He smiled and her heart melted once again. “Okay, Marjorie Sanders, I’ll see you later.”
Older Marjorie couldn’t help but smile. “He told me, years later, that he gave that card to all the freshmen woman he met, figured he would have a lot of fun while he was there. He knew he was smart. He knew he was attractive and trust me he was never lonely on a weekend. He never thought he’d actually fall in love with someone. He never really wanted to fall in love because that would have been a distraction.”
“Human mating, it’s very strange to us.”
“Yeah, it’s strange to most alien races.” Marjorie said as her mind whisked them away to another memory.
Payton and Marjorie sat on a blanket in the middle of a park. All around them people were running walking, playing Frisbee, throwing balls, or just enjoying the warm July night. It was the fourth of July, a traditional time to celebrate freedom and independence. At first, it was strictly a United States holiday that the world absorbed as a holiday to celebrate the coming together of all nations under one flag, the flag of the United Earth Alliance.
They sat on the grass waiting for the fireworks to begin. She was sitting next to him rubbing his shoulder, watching him as he talked. Their gazes locked on each other, oblivious to all that was around them.
Older Marjorie felt a pang of jealously as she watched her younger self lean in to kiss him. Was she really that dedicated to Payton? It’s been a long time since she wondered where it all went wrong. She stopped thinking about it when he died. She wondered if her outside body was crying as she brushed the tears away. She didn’t want to cry in front of The Hander about this. She didn’t want to show weakness in front of the enemy.
The Handler looked at the sky, studying it. His lips seemed to be moving and his head tilted to the side. The same expression she saw on his face when he was getting outside data. What could he be looking at? When she followed his gaze she realized how much of a fool she was. He was looking at the stars, studying the constellations. Her memories were getting better, clearer. They were manipulating her mind, finding ways to make her memories more vivid, waiting for the memory that could give up the location of Earth. If they saw the correct pattern in the sky they could use that determine where the Earth might be. That was how the Arwen always knew where it was in space, it would find a set of stars and extrapolate from their position where the ship was. This was no different.
“No, not now!” She yelled and tackled her Handler to the ground.
The memory snapped to the room. She was on top of him punching his face repeatedly. She was in control of this and she made sure what she was doing hurt. He tried to push her off but she made herself stronger. Captain Cook was in control now. She wrapped her fingers around his throat and squeezed.
The Handler, his face bloody, struggled to breathe. His struggling slowed, his strength left his body, blood gurgled out of his mouth and he breathed his last breath. His body lay limp under her.
She stood and pumped her fist into the air. “I don’t know what that does to him on the outside world but I hope it hurt. I will not willingly let you rote through my mind anymore. If you want any information you’ll need to fight me for it!” Defiant she walked over to her chair, pulled it out and sat down. She looked at the dead body on the floor and smiled, looking forward to the fight that lay ahead of her. They won’t win, she thought. They would never beat me.
Chapter twenty-two
Falling, falling, falling. That’s what Professor Ricter felt as he traveled through the grayness of wormhole beta space. He continued to hold his breath even though his lungs felt as if they were going to burst. He had no idea if he could even breathe the air of this strange universe. He knew his body was traveling near the speed of light and his mind told him that air, not just air he could breath but any kind of air, couldn’t exist here. He also knew that he couldn’t hold his breath forever. He never thought he would die this way. He wanted to continue to get older, continue to learn about the universe, continue to teach others what he knew. Even though he had accomplished so much he felt as if he had failed because he was going to die right here, right now.
And then the wormhole expelled him. He crashed onto a very solid floor and noticed the gravity seemed stronger than where he had just left. He gasped for breath, pulling oxygen into his lungs, and exhaling it quickly. The air tasted and smelled good, almost like peppermint.
His blood chilled and he opened his eyes expecting to see a Handler standing over him. Instead, he found himself surrounded by aliens, creatures he had never seen before. Creatures that were so strange his mind wasn’t able to processes what he was seeing. He tried to stand, his heart beat fast in his chest and he found himself unable to breathe again. The second before he passed out he realized he was going to pass out and said a short Earth curse word none of the aliens would understand.
It must have only been a few minutes before he woke. He felt better knowing what he was going to see when he opened his eyes. He sat up and looked around again, the aliens were there and they were looking at him with many different kinds of eyes. Some stalks, others human like eyes and one of the aliens had one huge eye sitting on a very tiny head. It was almost comical, and the Professor couldn’t help but laugh. This reaction caused the aliens to look at each other. There were at least fifteen different kinds of species in the room, a few looked similar enough that the Professor was sure they were of the same race. He sat up on his elbows. This caused another response from the aliens as they all moved back. With a grunt he lifted himself up and stood. The aliens again looked at each other, silent.
First contact with fifteen races, he thought. That has to be a new record. He was trained in first contact situations but he had taken that training many years ago. The first rule, he remembered clearly, was to not do anything that would be interrupted as a threat. He held his hands up to show he wasn’t armed. Language would be a problem, it always was, but he couldn’t recall what the solution was for that so he just said, “I’m Professor Theo Ricter from the planet Earth.”
Once again they looked at each other but said no words. The Professor knew they were somehow communicating with each other but couldn’t figure out how. Juliet might be able to help. It was then that he realized Juliet hadn’t come through the wormhole with him. “Juliet, are you here?” He yelled.
The aliens now seemed to be alarmed, but he didn’t care. “Where is she?” He asked, not really expecting an answer. He turned to the wormhole and pointed. “If you don’t tell me where she is I’m going through there to find her.”
They continued to look at each other. Frustration built slowly inside the Professor. He would sometimes show his frustration in bursts of anger, but that was normally with people who understood what he was saying. These aliens didn’t know what the outburst would mean. Juliet could very well be dead. He wasn’t able to hold his breath that long, how long could she?
Then, he saw an alien that looked familiar. It had a flat head and two very tiny black eyes. It looked like the alien in the ship he found over the water planet. What did that mean? It couldn’t be a coincidence. Professor Ricter didn’t believe in coincidences that were this improbable.
He pointed to the wormhole and said to the alien, “I need to find the person who was with me.”
They made no movement toward him. “Are you guys telepathic or something? I don’t have that power. I can only talk with my mouth. I need your help.”
It seemed as if his desperate cry was finally answered. One of the aliens, it had four legs which seemed to rotate and were connected to a round pink fur body, walked u
p to him. It came up to the professors’ waist. The front legs extended like a set of tripod legs and it met the Professor at eye level. Every instinct the Professor had told him to run away, even after meeting many distinctive kinds of aliens over the course of his life the human mind still wanted to run when confronted with something unusual. He ignored the urge and stood there.
Two antennas, hidden under a skin flap, telescoped out and tapped Professor Ricter’s face. He closed his eyes when it got close to them, and opened them when it started to probe his chin, then his chest, it continued downward. Professor Ricter stared straight ahead. They’re probably trying to figure out his physiology, maybe trying to figure out how to communicate with him. He decided they weren’t harmful; they could have killed him a thousand times already. He just didn’t know who they were, and he really wanted to know the story behind this alien cabal.
The probing finished and the alien walked up to a tall alien with very smooth grey skin. That alien reached into a pocket and pulled something out.
It walked over to the professor and showed him what he held. It was a needled filled with orange liquid. The alien gave the needle to the professor and let him examine it. He held it up to the light and looked carefully. It was cloudy but otherwise harmless. “All right,” he said and then plunged the needle into his arm.
The others watched and when the orange liquid was gone and into his body, he pulled the needle out and gave it back to the alien. “Now what?”
The effects were noticed right away. His arm felt warm and there was a strange tingle running up it. Something was happening, but he didn’t know what. The alien with the flat head, the one he knew, walked up to him and grabbed his hand. He pulled the Professor across the room. On the floor was a crude cot. He heard a word, soft, almost a whisper coming from somewhere. The word was a simple command. “Sleep.”
He laid on the cot and closed his eyes. Juliet’s face, her sweet, beautiful face, flashed before his eyes before he drifted off to sleep.
He slept. Flashes passed across his closed eyes. Words formed in his ears, testing, probing. He would hear a word, and then see an image. It was chaotic and yet a pattern seemed to be forming. Trial error tests to help establish communication.
The words came to him slowly and even then it was only one way. He heard his own voice first, testing sentences until they made sense. Learning the verbs, nouns, other parts of speech that came so naturally to babies. It was as if his mind was learning to talk all over again, pulling memories from his childhood English class, re-reading all the books he’d read. It was all so clear yet it flashed so fast he was having a hard time keeping up. The more they learned the faster the images and words came. It was a nightmare of sound and light he couldn’t wake up from. He endured because he needed to talk to these aliens, and this was the only way to make that happen.
The images and words stopped playing in his mind. It was over, and he felt more tired than he did before he slept. He forced his eyes to open.
Standing above him was the only alien he recognized, the one from the ship, the one who tried to warn them of the danger. Its tiny black eyes rolled down between two flat bone plates. The voice came from inside the Professor’s head, the alien never moved its mouth when it spoke. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Professor Ricter said.
The alien tilted its head. “You must think of the answer, do not speak it. The tiny machines cannot understand if you talk, you must think.”
“Can I do both?” He asked being sure he thought the words before speaking. “I’ve been told I love the sound of my own voice, and it’s true.”
The alien made a noise, a strange honk. Its eyes retreated inside its head, for a moment before returning. “It is good to know that humor exists everywhere.”
“Fine, yes, it does.” The Professor stood. “I know you. I’ve seen your kind before.”
“Yes, which is why they sent me here. We could reconstruct some of your recent memories and, upon viewing them, realized you come from a region of space not too far from where my home world used to be.”
“Used to be?” He did not like the sound of that. “What happened?”
“It was destroyed by the- you call them Handlers?”
“I’m sure that’s not the official name but yeah, it seems to fit.”
“They destroyed my world and are in the middle of building another sphere. They will destroy your world as well, which is why we have decided to invite you here.”
“They won’t destroy my world, not as long as I’m alive. How can I understand you now?”
“We placed small robots in your body-“
“Small robots? Like, nanobots?”
“That is a nice word, yes. Nanobots. They traveled to your brain. We needed to probe you to figure out where your brain was.”
“Ah, that would explain the examination.” Professor Ricter said.
“Once we figured that the nanobots traveled to your brain and examined it, learning how to take over functions, learning how to make your brain a better brain and also learning how you communicate. Right now, my thoughts are being transmitted in my own language to your nanbots who are translating it into your language so you can understand. The longer we do this, the better they will become.”
“How long have I been out?” The Professor rubbed the whiskers on his face. He had at least three days growth. “A long time.” He lowered his head. “I lost a friend. She was my responsibility, do you know what happened to her?”
“There was someone else with you before we grabbed you. We had lost her when we redirected your path.”
Professor Ricter lifted his head. “Do you know where they took her?”
“They pulled her into another wormhole, or she fell. We cannot be sure, and we haven’t investigated. We did not think she was important. All we needed was one human to help establish communication.”
His voice and he hoped his thoughts were demanding. “She’s important to me and if you don’t find her then I will not cooperate with you.”
Professor Ricter heard the sound of at least fifteen voices in his head. It was as if he had stepped out into a crowded theater where everyone was talking at once. He grabbed his skull and bent down. The pain throbbed throughout his body. Then, the words stopped.
“We have decided to find your friend and bring her here.”
“No, once you find her I’ll bring her here. She'll probably put up a fight if you show up.”
“Very well, once we find her we shall alert you. It will take time for your nanobots to be able to handle all our voices at once. I apologize for that.”
“That’s fine, just wasn’t expecting it. Now, can you answer a few of my questions?”
“Of course, we figured you’d have a few.”
“Okay. You seem to know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
“I am Pool.”
“Pool?” Professor Ricter asked.
“The Nanobots might not be able to translate it properly but they have now associate Pool to me so, for you and everyone else that will be my name. I am a Gurring. My planet is Gurr.”
“I’m from Earth, but you probably knew that.”
“Yes, but thank you for telling me.”
“Okay, who are you guys? Why have you brought me here?”
“We are the last of our kind. We are all the remains of the planet the Handlers have destroyed. We have made it our mission to find those who will be destroyed and bring them here.”
“Why don’t you fight them? Don’t you have a fleet?”
“No, we only have this ship and we are all that is left. There are about five hundred of us from fifteen different races. The brightest make the decisions for the rest. Those were the ones you saw when you arrived. Were lucky you decided to take the wormhole to travel, otherwise we did not think we could have grabbed you.”
“Yeah, lucky me. What about the ship I arrived on? The Arwen?”
“We do not know what happened to y
our ship.”
There was another loud blasting of many voices in the Professor’s head. It wasn’t as bad as before but it still gave him a headache. Pool said, “Come, we have found your friend.”
******
Everyone had forgotten about her. No one was coming and if she could find a way she would have killed herself a long time ago. The room was empty, there was nothing here she could use to end it all. She supposed she could have smashed her head against the wall and if she did it hard enough it would kill her but that seemed too inefficient. No, she was going to die, but it was going to be death by dehydration.
When she first arrived she looked for a door. It was difficult in the pitch darkness but eventually she found the outline of a door. Her thrill of finding the door disappeared when she pushed it with all her might and found it didn’t budge. It took her a few minutes to realize the door had been welded shut. She was sealed off from everyone in some forgotten room in lord knows where. No one was coming. No one even knew she was here. She was as good as dead.
At first, she was angry at the Professor Ricter. Where was he and why had he let her go? That anger turned to grief when she realized he was probably dead as well, trapped in the strange Wormhole Beta space to travel forever. There was only a slim chance he had found another exit. Every time they went into a wormhole they were at the mercy of aliens who had wanted them dead. Why had she let him talk her into taking that risk? Why had she followed him?
He was just that kind of guy who you followed. He was a born leader. If he hadn’t chosen the sciences he would have been a politician. She smiled at that, it seemed to fit perfectly. Juliet wasn’t born to be anything more than she was, a sensor officer on a ship. She didn’t love that job, but she was good at it. She envied the Professor for knowing, and then doing, what he loved.
It was all for nothing now. She would be dead soon, and it would all be over.
She saw the first sign of light, a tiny pin point in the middle of nothingness. At first, she thought it was just a hunger hallucination. It wasn’t until the light grew brighter and the pinpoint grew larger did she believe something was happening. She tried to stand, her legs were stiff from sitting on the floor for hours on end.
The Arwen Book two: Manifest Destiny Page 17