Theo
ENTRY COMPLETE.
CHAPTER 20
SILVERFLIES
It was the dead of night, the witching hour and the outside light cast a beam onto the area when Theo was interrupted by a message received from within the Pod. It was a text message from Sam. His message was simple and clear: imBLIND!!!!
Every hour since Sam Suzuki had been laid to rest in the worm infested golden soil, a new text message had arrived. Sam, in death, was like a ghost with a text message addiction.
Even in Sam’s madness, he had figured out how to send a new message on the hour, every hour. Since receiving the first one, Ravi had worked on a programmatic way to stop or block every ghost message they received.
Harry Wolf dozed by Theo’s feet until he rose to his four legs and started to yelp and squeal. The husky galloped to the Pod door and clawed at it.
“Quiet boy,” Theo said. “It’s just the wind.”
They all became startled when four loud and quick “pings” walloped the outer shell of the Pod.
While the Positives had been on the planet’s surface for only four days, they still found this sound unusual and alarming.
The sound coming from outside the Pod was like a metal golf club striking a golf-ball, and not at all like the sound of the wind they had already come to expect from this place.
After a brief pause of windblown silence, the staccato sounds returned.
PING-PING-PING-PING!
Each was louder than the next, as if whatever was causing the pings was getting stronger and braver. They were under attack. By what was still unknown. Perhaps, the camelback had returned to play paddy-cake. Perhaps the sounds were something else.
The three Positives quickly went to the viewing window where Ravi was already hitting the controls to widen the view. The lights flicked on and even with the beams of white light scanning left and right, they saw nothing unusual. At the widest aperture offered by the viewing window, they had a 270-degree view of the landscape and the oasis.
“Did you bring any golf balls?” Ravi asked.
“Of course not,” Theo snapped.
“Then what’s causing that sound?” Ravi asked.
“I doubt that’s just the wind,” Ellie said.
PING-PING-PING-PING!
The outside light shattered with a small explosion from the outside light. It sparkled to darkness around the Pod.
“What happened to the lights?”
“They got knocked out,” Ellie said.
“Something just hit it,” Ravi said.
“Like what?”
“Maybe it’s hail.”
“Highly doubtful given the planet’s atmosphere,” Ravi said.
“What about volcanic eruptions?”
“No. Not likely. We’d be feeling tremors and seeing ash.”
Theo rushed to the viewing window so that he had a full look at the grounds outside the Pod while Harry Wolf still barked and barked bloody murder as they saw a dark view of the outside.
Ravi was hunched over the video console, controlling the lone camera that was attached atop the center of the Pod’s outer shell. The view scanned from left to right and up and down. But with the outside light now disabled, he saw nothing unusual.
“I don’t see any hail or anything raining down upon us,” Ravi said.
They were looking from different points around the 270-degree view offered by the Pod’s viewing window and saw nothing resembling golf balls or hail or rain.
PING-PING-PING!
The sound echoed one more time against the outside of the Pod.
Theo rushed to the console panel and hit the protocol to open the front door of the Pod. He had the portable light and a gun in his hands.
“What are you going to do?”
“Going out,” Theo said.
“Oh bloody crap,” Ravi said. “Bloody-bloody crap. Are you sure this is smart?”
“No, I’m not sure of anything right now,” Theo answered.
“This is stupid. Very stupid.”
“Just bring the night camera,” Theo said.
“I know, I know,” Ravi said, shaking his head and picking up the night camera.
They all rushed outside, leaving the comfort of the Pod. A new sound overwhelmed their ears. The sound was a collection of high-pitched shrieks, almost like locusts. The sounds were coming from the sky. They were moving fast, swirling to and from the Pod and the liquid oasis. The silver cloud had returned.
At first, as Theo scanned the area with the portable light, he saw nothing.
But when he tilted the light up, he saw the source of the shrieks. It was, indeed, the silver cloud, almost a blur, a fast moving misshapen oval of shimmering silver in the darkness of the night.
When the light was not focused on them, the silver shimmer dimmed and they only saw the darkness of the night sky as the swarm dipped and swirled.
The pings were caused when the outer edge of the silver cloud flew into the Pod’s outer shell. They began near the oasis and circled the full circumference of the Pod every five or so seconds. The shimmer of silver was one big collection of illumination and the cloud was moving fast and in a fairly predictable pattern. They knew the silver shimmer was a collection of flying creatures. But they flew too quickly in the dark of the prairie night to be detailed more specifically.
“They’re definitely not the wind or hail or golf balls,” Ravi said.
“Much too small to be our skeletal hosts,” Ellie said. “Are they insects?”
“They might be just dust for all we know,” Ravi answered.
“Silverflies,” Theo said. It was the first term that shot out of his mouth.
But the name wasn’t all that accurate. They were only silver when the light shone on them. They did fly, but he couldn’t see any wings. They had thin, oval and translucent bodies that reflected a silver fluorescent glow. Without the light shining on them, they were just a mass of dark gray shadows flying in the sky as one distinct mass. Individually, they weren’t very large. The silverflies looked like they were about six inches in circumference, possibly even smaller.
Occasionally the outer edge of the circling silver shadow flew into the Pod, and when it did the flying shadows “pinged” the outside of the Pod. The sound was a collision of the silverflies hitting the outer metal shell.
“We need to capture one,” Theo said.
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Theo handed the portable light to Ravi. “Hold this and keep the light on them!” Theo yelled to Ravi. “Follow them!”
Without the light on them, the swarm was a mass of blackness in the shadows of the night, but when Ravi shone they reflected a silver shine.
Theo rushed back into the Pod and grabbed a four-foot long tent pole from the supply closet. He also took a canvas bag and some electrical duct tape and went back outside where the swarm of silverflies continued to circle.
Theo placed the canvas bag at the end of the tent pole and attached it with the duct tape. He had made a makeshift butterfly net.
To reach the silver swarm, Theo rushed up the ladder attached to the Pod and climbed atop the roof. From there, he waved the makeshift net over his head into the silver swarm. He went quickly, back and forth like a soldier patriotically waving a flag.
A small portion of the silverfly swarm became trapped in the makeshift net.
Theo snapped the canvas bag shut, holding it closed with his right hand.
There was definitely something trapped inside it. Whatever the silverflies truly were, they had the ability to throb like a heartbeat and they provided a pulsing light much like a neon sign above an old-fashioned diner.
The shrieks softened and then they were silent and the swarm was gone from the vicinity.
Ravi and Theo both had their night vision goggles on and watched as the silver swarm flew in the direction of Mount New Acadia.
Ravi kept the light on the swarm for hundreds of feet as they
disappeared into the side of the mountain. The night vision goggles had an excellent technical feature that pinpointed the exact location of the opening. It was a compass calibrated to the planet’s magnetic poles.
In the blackness of the night, a shimmer of silver soared overhead. The shimmer had stopped circling the Pod. Whatever “it” was had traveled quickly away. The shriek had softened.
Theo returned from the outside, walking into the Pod a wind blown mess.
“Did you get one?” asked Ravi.
“Yeah, I think so,” Theo answered.
With his full attention on the canvas bag, Harry Wolf resumed barking bloody murder.
The canvas bag sighed and throbbed with a small indentation poking in and out like a heartbeat’s pulse. Perhaps that’s what the silverflies were, just a silver heartbeat from GidX7’s sky offering a potent dose of intrigue and possibly a pulsing glow of dangerous mystery.
CHAPTER 21
A SILVER SNACK
Back inside the Pod, all attention was on the throbbing silver light pulsing from the makeshift canvas butterfly net. If the silverfly thing wasn’t alive, it definitely could be a cool party trick. That was if the group ever got a chance to celebrate any momentous occasion ever again.
Even though the group was amazed by the possibility of what was trapped inside the canvas bag, they knew this small silverfly really didn’t meet the necessary requirement to be the “It” they had been hoping to find. It didn’t have the size or a shape that was remotely similar to what Theo had found with the Wet Willy probe. Whether it was alive or something in between life and death was a debate they had yet to have.
Ravi had a video camera in one hand and the portable light in the other. When he guided the portable light onto the canvas surface, the small flying creature they had named a silverfly throbbed with a silver heartbeat. Along with the glow, the creature produced a low purr, almost a hum.
Ravi looked kind of miserable, almost sick with worry.
“Man, I hate making history,” Ravi said. “Seriously Theo. Why do we have to make history?”
“You’re the one in the Guinness Book of Records,” Theo said.
“Not by choice,” Ravi said, “it’s my karma, brother. It follows me everywhere.”
“Just be ready to catch it,” Ellie said.
“What if it can’t be caught?” Ravi asked.
“Then we improvise like Mingus,” Theo said.
“Bloody, bloody crap. I hate when you talk about jazz,” Ravi shouted back. He was on edge, nervous and speaking loudly. “We’re not musicians, you know. And not all jazz is improvisation.”
Theo interrupted, smartly. “We make a transfer. Okay?”
“To what?”
Quickly, Theo went to the supply closet and took out a clear specimen jar. It was about the size of an old-fashioned glass mason jar and made of a plastic compound.
Using the common room table as an operational base, they prepared to make a transfer from the canvas bag to the specimen jar.
Theo cupped his hands around the open end of the canvas bag and then tilted the bag upside down so that the open end was just above the specimen jar.
Gently, Theo shook the canvas bag and the silverfly dropped into the specimen jar. The transfer was successfully completed and they all could now see the silver thing.
The silverfly was an amazing sight and Theo had a distinct interpretation of what he was looking at: it had to be alien life. It was strange. Four wings. Each was a quadrangle and mostly made of some transparent film of skin.
When all four wings flapped at once, the silverfly thing made a sound from the bowels of shrieking hell. They had never seen anything like it. Based upon the body they saw, it looked as if the silverfly didn’t have a single bone.
“Do you think it passes Fullmer”s Seven Laws of Life test?” Ellie asked.
“Only experimentation will confirm what we are looking at,” Ravi answered.
“It sure looks like a living thing,” Ellie said.
“Alien life in my bloody book,” Ravi added.
Nervously, the silverfly fluttered its wings, all four of them, inside the specimen jar. It was no larger than Theo’s fist, perhaps a little smaller.
“Its skin is translucent. No inner organs,” Ravi said into his Communication Device, “at least not the kind of sensory organs we’re used to seeing. Highly doubtful that it has any skeletal bones that would match up to our initial skeletal discovery.”
Ravi clapped his hands by the canvas bag and the silverfly fluttered its wings. He did it again and got the same result.
“The clap test doesn’t prove anything,” Theo said.
“I think it proves it has some mechanism for sensory perception,” Ravi countered.
“Stimulus and response,” Ellie said. “It is, technically, a valid experiment.”
Ravi clapped again and the silverfly fluttered and the silver glow throbbed.
Ravi said, “We just need an extract of its … um… its skin.”
“There’s got to be a better test than clapping,” Theo said.
“Boys and girls. Ladies and gentlemen. Human beings and alien friends. You are now looking at the first confirmed extra-terrestrial being in the history of mankind. We call it a silverfly. No facial features,” Ravi announced.
“It’s a bizarre looking thing,” Theo said.
“I don’t think it’s like an insect. Not a bird. Not a bat. Just an oval blob of four sided wings. Up close, it looks harmless,” Ravi said as he pressed his nose right up to the specimen jar. He was as close to the silverfly as he could get, separated only by a think divide of plastic.
With a shriek, the silverfly slammed into the plastic. Startled, Ravi jumped back.
“Yeah, as harmless as the Yin-Yang Twins looked when we first saw them. So let’s not jump to any conclusions yet,” Theo said.
“There’s no protocol for this, at least none that I’m aware of,” Ravi said.
“Except that you should always tell an alien that you come in peace, right?” Ellie added.
“Exactly.”
“So, little silver E.T. thing, we come in peace. You hear? We come in peace,” Ravi said as he bent down to eye level with the silver fluttering about the specimen jar.
Into the video camera, Ravi announced the details of the creature, “No visible internal organs. Two side wings and a front and rear. Four wings. When the wings stop fluttering it looks almost like –”
“—a heart,” Ellie said.
Indeed, it was shaped like a human heart, an uneven and throbbing oval. It had large veins that pulsed. They were not designed like flies, not like birds, not even like night fliers like bats. The silverflies were shaped like a very thin and small football with two connecting flaps. There was no visible head. They were so thin, so fluorescent.
“The creature’s no bigger than a lemon or my fist,” Ravi observed.
“It appears to fly with four wings,” Ellie said.
“It’s alive,” Ravi said. “But no eyes. No head to speak of.”
“It’s hard to call it an insect or an animal or even a bird. At least it’s not like anything I’ve ever studied,” Theo added.
Harry Wolf did not cooperate. The dog jumped and barked.
“It’s okay, boy. It’s okay,” Ravi yelled.
Each bark from Harry sent the silverfly’s four wings fluttering even faster and with each flutter the silver thing also shrieked a little louder.
The shrieks sent a shiver through the Pod.
“Friendly bloody thing, isn’t it?” Ravi said.
“If that’s communication, I don’t like what it’s saying,” Ellie said.
“Maybe it doesn’t like to be trapped,” Ravi said.
“We’re not letting this sucker go free.”
“I know. I know,” Ravi said.
The shriek was somewhere between a cricket’s chirp and fingernails running down an old-fashioned slate blackboard. And it was getting louder.
>
As the silverfly moved, the specimen jar began to vibrate with the low hum of its shrieks. Though the jar muffled the sound slightly, the shriek was getting louder and the specimen jar was in danger of rattling off the side of the common room table from the vibrations.
Theo picked up the jar in his hands before it fell off the table and then the creature’s shriek became as loud and piercing as an opera singer reaching the highest note the human voice can reach.
The specimen jar shattered in Theo’s hands and for a brief moment he cupped the silverfly in his hands and he screamed in pain as a long tendril of silver whipped out from the center of the silverfly creature and into his hand. The tendril didn’t stay in Theo’s hand. It retracted into the silverfly as Theo released it from his grasp.
The silverfly went fluttering and flitting about the common area of the Pod.
From Harry Wolf’s salivating tongue, the dog knew without a doubt that the silverfly was some kind of delicious food.
Ravi tired to grab the silverfly as did Theo and Ellie. They all missed in their grasp.
Harry Wolf had much better luck and instincts. As the silverfly rested briefly on the seat of the chair and then Harry Wolf pounced on the silverfly and his paws slammed down on top of it before the silverfly reacted.
Theo dove on top of his dog, ripping at its paws, which were firmly placed atop the silverfly. The creature bulged much like a helium balloon about to burst.
And then that’s exactly what happened. Theo lunged down onto Harry Wolf, but it was already too late. The dog pressed tightly down on the silverfly creature until it totally burst!
A black and silver goo oozed out of the remains of the silverfly and Harry Wolf sucked it down in three quick slobbers before Theo yanked him off the remaining parts of the alien thing.
“Stop that, you stupid, stupid dog!”
The dog slobbered up much of the remains of the silverfly before Theo yanked him away from the small silver and black mess. Harry Wolf, the husky dog, scampered away and found a quiet spot under the common area table. Sheepishly, he curled up into a comfortable though embarrassed curve.
From under the table, Theo yanked the dog by the collar. Harry Wolf had those sad puppy eyes that practically all dogs can make. The dog was pleading.
Odyssey Rising Page 13