by JK Stone
His statement drew her attention back and she peered deep into his eyes. “You are forgetting I am bonded with you. I see and know how your brothers’ deaths affected you and I know your innermost feelings.” She paused a second looking concernedly at him, as if trying to figure the best way to say something. “No, it is not unjust to punish the evil person who murdered your brothers, but you will have to wait for justice.”
Jason’s irritation peaked at hearing that and he barked out, “Wait? I’ve been waiting for a year now. Why do I have to wait… Uh…what do you know that I don’t?”
The woman said, “I do not know if this is the right time to tell you.” She took another deep look at him and said, “You will have to trust me. I can guarantee you one thing though. You will be able to have justice by the one year mark of your brothers’ deaths if you so choose,” she said with a smirk.
Jason thought about what she was saying, then her words sank in. “Uh…that was three or four days ago.”
She just smiled at him and replied, “Actually, the end of that day is one hour and fifty minutes from now…not that time matters much on this ship.”
Jason looked down at his watch and said, “What is that supposed to mean?”
Her grin widened as she replied, “This is a time ship, and as you just noticed on your watch, time is not moving at the moment.”
Jason’s head was reeling and something that had been nagging at the back of his mind suddenly came forward. “That’s why. I initially thought an EMP from the crash caused my watch to stop, but the digital display would have gone blank if it had been that. It only just dawned on me.”
She just laughed and said, “You are correct.”
Chapter Four
The woman looked intently at Jason and said, “I think it is about time for formal introductions. My official designation is an Artificial Lifeform Integrated Synaptic Escort or A L I S E for short.”
Jason thought about it a moment then replied, “Alise?”
The woman had a momentarily glazed look, then she told him, “You may call me Alise if you wish, or you can choose another name.”
Jason looked at her for a moment before he instinctively held his hand out and said, “It’s nice to meet you, Alise. My name is Jason Stone.”
He was about to withdraw his hand, realizing a projection couldn’t grasp it, when she took a hold of his hand, gave him a smile and said, “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Jason.”
“What?” He looked down at their joined hands and said, “I thought you were a projection or apparition in my head or something.”
Alise just smiled at him and said, “Well I am that, but within the bounds of this ship I can also maintain a solid form. The ship can create a lifelike body within the confines of this vessel. I can project my consciousness into it to assist with the operation and maintenance of the ship.”
Jason thought about that for a second then asked, “What about off the ship?”
“Well, that is another story altogether. I am bonded to your nervous system, so while you are off this ship I can either remain in the body the ship provides and stay on board or I can upload to the binding disk and tag along with you and see the sights as it were.”
Jason stared at her a moment and nodded in understanding, “Okay, now for the difficult questions. Why me? What exactly is this ship’s purpose? And what am I supposed to do now?”
Alise replied, “First, as to why you.” She pointed to the dead alien across the room, “Elgon there chose you as his replacement, and after seeing what was going to happen to you, I think it is a good thing he did.”
Jason couldn’t argue with her on that point. He remembered seeing patients who had undergone that procedure, but in their cases, they had been ultra-violent schizophrenics. It was hard to comprehend that was going to happen to him. He didn’t know how the prosecutor and judge could have managed to have the order followed to lobotomize him with the legal system as it was, but for some reason, he believed Alise.
She continued. “Elgon was dying rapidly and he made a snap decision. You see there were five possibilities for a replacement commander still alive at this moment in time. Besides you, there was your father…your half-brother or one of your two nephews. Your father is married, and in the past, bonding with a married person had ended very badly. Not to mention it is forbidden, so he was disqualified, as was your half-brother—
Jason interrupted Alise. “You bonded with a married host before?”
Alise shook her head and explained, “No that happened on another ship a very long time ago. It was forbidden before that, but they ignored the rules. I am not even sure there are any other ships in existence anymore. There were five ships that I knew of, and we could contact each other but only if we were in the same phase at the same time. It has been over forty thousand linear years and we have had no contact with any of the other ships.”
Jason nodded, following her explanation.
Alise continued. “As I was saying about your brother. Marriage notwithstanding, he was a close second, but he is a little too into the…‘wacky weed’, I believe you call it. Which is fine for medicinal purposes but he seemed to like it on a recreational basis, and that tends to result in a lack of initiative and focus. Your two nephews are both too young to understand or perform the duties required of the position, not to mention they were following in your brother’s footsteps.”
The last statement got Jason thinking. His half brother’s kids were only one and three years old. How could they be following in his footsteps already? He thought.
Alise smiled. “We had tracked your family line through time. There was supposed to be more of a selection to choose from but something has altered events in this timeline. In the other timeline your nephews grew up to be like your youngest brother, and your other brothers were still alive as well.
“The original time we had selected to retrieve Elgon’s replacement was nearly fifteen years from now, but when we arrived, something was wrong, because none of you were there. We feared that one of the races who are aware of temporal changes had set this timeline in motion, but we did not have time to backtrack and find out what happened. You were the first of the acceptable candidates we came across and as it was, we had to backtrack further in time than we had planned to find you, so you were selected.”
Jason was confused and thought, How could my brothers have been alive? They died. I saw their bodies.
Alise continued, either not hearing or not commenting on his thought. “We knew of the circumstances of your life in the other timeline. Elgon had wanted either you, Jerren or Justin as his replacement because he believed your military service and code of honor would help. He did not believe the claims you were a murderer in this timeline, and now we know why we could not find any of you in the future of this timeline either. As for the medications you were on, Elgon figured they would flush out of your system and any mental instability could be repaired by the bonding process. Little did he know there was no need for repairs.”
“Okay. So, Elgon chose me. The question still stands, why me? There are almost eight billion people on this planet… Any number of them could have been a better choice than me.”
Alise’s smile was back in place as she said, “Well here is the interesting part. Elgon arranged it so his replacement would have to be a blood descendant. It was something he insisted upon. He feared anyone other than his line might turn out like the Eleven from Lantis, and he proceeded to do a little bit of tinkering with the ship. Now only a genetic relative of Elgon can bond with me or this ship.”
Jason looked at the man’s body then back to Alise. “That seems a tad short-sighted. What would’ve happened if I don’t work out, or the rest of his descendants had died off?”
Alise sighed. “That was a serious possibility, and I addressed it with him on several occasions. He still felt the risk was warranted. So, in the end I agreed.”
“Wait a second. He’s an alien, isn’t he? And who
are the Eleven you spoke of?”
Alise replied, “Yes and no. In the respect that Elgon’s family was from another planet, he is an alien, but he was actually born on Earth. Most of the ancestors of the humanoid lifeforms currently on Earth did not originate on Earth. The Lantin’s solar system was about to go into a flux due to a rogue star that was on a collision course with their star.
“They knew their solar system would not support life afterward and they searched the universe for a new world to inhabit. As luck would have it, the planet they chose was in the same solar system they had abandoned almost four hundred thousand years prior. That planet was called Lanna. You now call it Mars.
“The Lantins sent a probe to the solar system and found that Mars had not recovered from the ecological disaster that had befallen them, and the last they had seen of Terra or Earth, it was covered in ice and the inhabitants there had, for the most part, died off with the last ice age.
“The probe sent back images and they sent ships to investigate. The planet had just started to come out of the ice age and had become a kind of penal colony of sorts. Other civilizations had dropped off their interstellar criminals…the riffraff they did not wish to deal with anymore. There were humanoids on the planet already, some ancestors of the refugees who had fled Mars hundreds of thousands of years before.
“They were the ones who reached the new home world and did not wish to continue so far away from their home planet. They returned to take up residence on Earth, despite the warnings from the other Lantins. Their numbers were barely maintained and they experienced de-evolution of sorts, with the extreme cold and lack of food, their children became smaller with thicker cranial bones and smaller, less evolved brains. Your people refer to them as Neanderthal. It is because of de-evolution that your people could never find the so-called missing link.”
Jason nodded in understanding and she continued.
“Anyway, the Lantins brought their city ship Lantis to Earth and set it to rest about three hundred miles west of what you call Gibraltar. There was still a lot of ice on the planet and water levels were very low. The indigenous clans would travel by land for trade and for many thousands of years it was civil. Then some of the barbaric clans, being spurred on by The Eleven, decided to overthrow the city and steal Lantin technology. One night someone snuck into Lantis’s particle chamber and sabotaged it.
“The resulting explosion decimated the area and caused a severe planetary warming event. Very few Lantins survived the blast and the city was ripped apart in a temporal rift. All I could do was sit and watch. There was only one ship.”
Alise spread her hands out. “This ship.” She paused a moment. “My commander was at Lantis at the time and did not survive the blast, and I would have been lost as well. But as luck would have it, I was in orbit using the pyramid generator to store up energy for our next mission. I activated a multiphasic beacon, requesting aid from any other TDS ships, but there was no response.
“If this ship has a flaw it is that we can never go back to a time and place we have already experienced. Meaning if we were in the same phase and because I saw the destruction firsthand, I could not take this ship back to prevent the tragedy. I attempted to go further back in time to rescue or warn the Lantins, but something about the temporal component of the blast prevented me from intervening.
“Prior to the blast, all I was able to do was observe the events as they replayed, and none of the ship's functions would work until I passed the event.”
Alise paused, apparently to let him take in the information, then continued.
“It had been twenty-five thousand years since our last contact with another TDS ship and without another ship, I could do nothing. Whether that is a flaw or by design I do not know.” She let out a sorrowful sigh and added, “I scanned the surface and found a dozen Lantin survivors.
“When I contacted the first eleven, I had sensed that they were somehow responsible for what had happened at Lantis, so I monitored their actions and found that they had betrayed their own people for power and financial gain, and instructed the saboteur on what to do. They had hoped to take over the city ship, but the saboteurs did too much damage. I contacted the twelfth man, Elgon here.
“He was a kind man who had a family with an indigenous woman. They had children and grandchildren, and my intent was only to have one of his children take over as the commander of this ship. But when I informed him of the betrayal of the other eleven, he rushed to confront them. In his anger and grief, Elgon failed to see the danger, and the traitors proceeded to surround and capture him.
“His wife and eldest son went to the place where he was being held to plead for his release, and they were brought before the leader, and two of the Eleven ordered their deaths to be carried out in front of Elgon,” she finished mournfully.
Jason shook his head with sorrow and said, “That’s sick and wrong!”
Alise nodded. “Indeed, upon receiving the news of their mother’s and brother’s deaths, the second eldest son Baelin contacted me and asked for my assistance. I had located Elgon and transported him up to this ship. He was barely alive. I revived him, and when he was well enough, he took his remaining family into hiding. Once he was sure they would be safe he returned and bonded with me.”
“We attempted to track down the eleven to punish them for what they had done, but my transporting Elgon to safety must have alerted them, and we could not locate any of them for several thousand years despite the tracking ability of this vessel.”
Jason looked over at Elgon and figured the name must’ve been handed down, because his great grandfather had the same name. shrugging off the anomaly he said, “So, Elgon is my ancestor.”
Alise looked back at him and simply replied, “Yes.”
Jason looked at her with curiosity mounting. “When did our blood turn from that to the red running through me?” He pointed toward Elgon and the reddish-green blood staining his uniform.
Alise let out another chuckle as she explained. “His blood was no different from yours in the beginning. The color change is the result of the bonding.”
“So, what…I have antifreeze or hydraulic fluid in my body now?” Jason asked.
This time Alise doubled over with laughter. A few moments later she regained herself enough to explain. “The greenish hue you see is a concentrated chlorophyllic plasma.”
Jason thought back on his early education and said, “Wait a moment, if I remember right from school chlorophyll was the medium that assisted in photosynthesis.”
Alise nodded. “You are correct.”
Now Jason was confused and stated, “Photosynthesis is the process where green plants produce food, and the last I checked, I’m neither green nor leafy.”
This really got Alise going. Something about her laughter calmed his nerves and he politely waited for her to regain her composure.
“I am sorry… Let me explain. In the beginning of space travel, there were many mishaps that resulted in a lot of deaths. The main cause was starvation. Many of the space travelers had no real clue how to survive in deep space. They brought food and water of course, but they seriously miscalculated distances and the time it would take for intergalactic travel. Much like your current space program inevitably will, if they ever progress to that level again.”
Jason looked at her in stunned disbelief and asked, “Again?”
Alise smiled and nodded. “Yes, the civilizations on this planet have reached a pinnacle several times before they either imploded or nature performed a planetary reset. This is the fourth evolution that I know of that the human race on this planet has reached your current level of technology or better. There are still a few races of humanoids from Terra who left ages ago to start new lives in faraway galaxies for one reason or another. But for the most part, they think this planet is either uninhabitable or are avoiding it because they believe the inhabitants to be too primitive and violent.”
Jason nodded in understanding. He thought back t
o his captivity and replied, “I can agree with that.”
Alise nodded and continued. “Anyway, scientists devised a way to stay nourished while in deep space. They bound human and plant mitochondrial DNA, and that allowed humanoids and other species to gain nourishment from both sunlight and the free radiation out in space, in addition to their digestive systems. A few races went to extremes. The Zoran’s for instance, being a reptilian race, rely heavily on the chlorophyll. They bask in the suns as they travel past them and they do not care about the side effect of the green skin. The Esulan race has photosensitive bodies, and they rely primarily on the free radiation in space to nourish them. Their DNA was combined with that of a spore or mushroom and the result is what your people refer to as the Roswell Grays.” Alise shook her head and added, “Those poor souls.”
Jason looked at her in astonishment. “There were conspiracy theories about them, but our government kept denying their existence.”
Alise said, “Yes, well they made the mistake of listening to some of your radio transmissions as they were passing the solar system, and decided to pay a visit. Look how that turned out for them. They had an engine failure and crash landed, and by the time a rescue ship arrived, the survivors had been killed and dissected by your government.
“None of their race will come close enough to Earth to allow that to happen again, I can assure you. Those particular Esulan were very well liked by their people, and after the killings, there was a movement to eradicate the human life on Earth because it was considered too violent to be allowed to prosper, but in the end cooler heads prevailed.
“Within three Earth years, the Esulan along with a few other sympathetic races surrounded this solar system with redirecting beacons hidden in comets, asteroids, as well as throughout the Kuiper belt informing all races what would happen to them if they entered, and blocked all transmissions that could have been picked up by your people. There are still some species though who tempt fate and go to Earth for a little thrill seeking or just plain mischief.”