Déjà Vu (First Contact)

by Peter Cawdron

  I’m not sure how long I lie there, slipping in and out of a listless sleep. I’d like to think it’s moonlight drifting in through the windows, but we’re on a moon. I guess it’s starlight, or perhaps a little planet-shine. Light from the nearby star reflects off the rings. The cloud banks of the gas giant catch these distant rays. I toss and turn, unable to slide into a deep sleep.

  The door to the lab cracks open. Light from the hallway spills inside. I watch more out of curiosity than alarm. I’m half expecting the equivalent of a security guard to peek inside the room.

  Tentacles wrap themselves around the doorframe, flexing and stretching. Thin strands manipulate the steel door, pushing gently, slowly widening the gap.

  My virtual heart is about to explode out of my nonexistent chest.

  The door opens no more than a few inches. The creature slithers into the room, contorting its body like an octopus.

  “Wwwwwatch for bubblessssss…”

  It’s my voice, spoken in a whisper. The hairs on my arms rise in alarm. I slip from my bed, leaving the covers in place, and crouch on the floor, hiding in the darkness.

  “You’re in dangerrrrr…”

  Again, these are my words, only they were spoken to Jorgensen. Whatever this thing is, regardless of where it came from, it was listening.

  I keep to the shadows as I move, darting away from the bed and over by one of the flyers. I’m not sure why. I guess it’s the recognition that they’re real. My bed, the table, and the bar fridge aren’t. I’m hoping I can hide behind one of the sleek craft. I’m trying to take advantage of the way the projection works, giving me free rein out to about thirty or forty feet.

  “If they can erasssseeeee Dr. Evertonnnnn…”

  I can’t see the creature, but I can hear it speaking from the darkness, using my words to torment me.

  “They can erasssseeeee yoooouuu…”

  The alien creeps across the floor, passing through the starlight and giving me my first good glimpse of its body. The creature is six, maybe seven feet in diameter, moving like a sea urchin. It rocks on tentacles that have stiffened like spikes. I’m trying to think of which terrestrial animal it reminds me of, but there’s nothing like this on Earth. The alien’s body is the shape of a massive football, being elongated but roughly spherical. Hundreds, possibly thousands of tentacles protrude from an opening that is reminiscent of a nautilus. Its smooth, curved shell looks like that of a leatherback turtle. My astrobiology lecturer would describe the tentacles as ‘repeating segmentation forming functional symmetry.’ Damn, if only he could see this thing.

  Thick lower tentacles propel it along the ground as pseudo-limbs. The tentacles sample the air, searching for me. Hundreds of eyes dart around, examining various sections of the room. They’re set within a concave face. There’s no mouth, at least none that I recognize, although it could be obscured by the tentacles surrounding the eyes.

  “Honestly, I thought I was losing it… looooosing it…”

  The creature’s baiting me. It knows I’m in here, but can’t figure out where.

  I hide behind the slick exterior of a spacecraft near the engine bell.

  “Whaaaaaat do you remember?”

  The alien makes its way past the holographic table, taking care not to touch it, which I find surprising. It doesn’t seem to realize the table’s fake. On reaching my bed, its tentacles hover above the sheets and pillow, examining but not touching them.

  I’ve got to fight the fear welling up inside. I can’t panic. Panicking isn’t going to help. Think, Jess. See beyond the moment. It didn’t touch the table, even though it couldn’t as the table’s not actually real. It doesn’t know. The creature doesn’t realize the table and the bed are projections. That gives me something to hold on to—an edge.

  I don’t know how I could describe my emotions, but they’re conflicted. Fear. Intrigue. Caution. Curiosity. I’m torn between wanting to run and the desire to learn more.

  Self-preservation demands I flee, but I can’t. Stray more than forty feet, and the projector’s going to flicker, giving me away. Run and I’ll appear on the far side of the workshop, like someone racing through a crazy house of mirrors.

  I rest my hand on the edge of the spaceship, wanting to climb up to hide inside the open cockpit. My fingers pass through the metal surface. There’s a slight flicker of light as the holograph compensates for my interaction with a physical object.

  “Hooooow do you know what’s real?”

  I step into the craft, wanting to take advantage of my virtual form and hide inside the housing. Bad idea. I’ve touched things in this world before but during daylight. I didn’t think too much of the flicker when I first touched the paintwork, but trying to hide my entire body within a spacecraft clearly wasn’t part of the design specs for the holograph programmers. Arcs of brilliant white light erupt around the edge of my body as I disappear inside the mechanical bay of the craft.

  “Shit!”

  The alien turns and rushes at me.

  I crouch, disappearing in the darkness within the hull of the spacecraft.

  Tentacles slap at the metalwork, shaking the vehicle. The alien wrenches it off the floor, tossing it aside. A crane topples onto another spacecraft, crashing to the ground. Metal bends and flexes under the impact.

  I duck out of the way, slipping beneath the waving tentacles and backing up against the rear wall of the workshop.

  “I’m something they never… expected.”

  The alien advances on me. The eyes. I remember them among the rings of the gas giant. There are hundreds of them. Thousands. Focused. Unwavering.

  “Someone that shouldn’t beeeeeee hereeeeeee.”

  Tentacles reach for me. Long and slender, stretching several times the length of the creature’s body.

  My voice trembles.

  “I know what you are. I know what you’ve done.”

  The alien towers over me. Tentacles probe at my shoulders, glancing through them. It doesn’t realize I’m a projection.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask. “From the beginning?”

  “Creatures that inhabit this systemmmm…”

  The tentacles withdraw, but the alien moves closer. A field of eyes stare at me. I’m not sure how well they can see within the soft light, but they shift around. The alien examines my legs, arms, and upper-torso before returning to my head.

  I try to hide my fear, saying, “I remember you.”

  “Beeeeeeee careful…”

  As disconcerting as it is to hear my own voice echoing back at me, it tells me something important. The alien understands me. This isn’t a brute beast, like a tiger stalking someone in the forest. There’s intelligence there. Its actions have deliberate design. There’s intent.

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  I’m lying, but hey, that’s what we humans do best.

  “You can’t hurt me.”

  I’m not sure if that last point’s a lie. If this thing figures out I’m a hologram, it could attack the projector or the scrap of neurons in the jar, but it can’t hurt me as I stand here before it. A tentacle drifts in front of my face. I flinch, but I’m faking my reaction. I need the alien to think I’m physically present. Theory of Mind—I need it to think that I think it could hurt me. It has to believe I fear for my life. I straighten, stiffening. I make as though I’m pressing my back against the wall, but I dare not touch it. If I do, it’ll shimmer as the hologram compensates.

  “Where is Dr. Everton?” I ask.

  I need to learn all I can, while I can. I’m trying to turn this interaction to my advantage.

  The creature inches closer. From around the outside of its dark body, tentacles wave, but they’re not in sync. It’s as though each has a mind of its own.

  “Where’s Dr. Everton?”

  Although it sounds like the creature is echoing my question, I didn’t contract my sentence. It’s repeating my comment from earlier while I was talking to Jorgensen.


  “Who are you?”

  “Why couldn’t they do the same thing here?”

  Tentacles drift in front of me, moving like branches swaying in a breeze. The eyes follow them. At a guess, the alien is examining me—or trying to. It’s confused as to why there’s nothing in front of it. It can see me, but I’m not actually here.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Tell me why it isn’t… possible.”

  “You’re a parasite—feeding off the colony.”

  “Kids standing on a street corner in Nebraska.”

  “You’re confused. You can’t figure it out, can you?”

  We’re adversaries, but we’re at a stalemate. I can’t flee. It can’t attack, but it doesn’t understand why. As much as I’m trying to decipher its intent, it’s doing the same with me. It’s repeating the points that confused it during my conversation with Jorgensen.

  Tentacles lash out, striking at the wall on either side of my head. My reaction is instinctive. I flinch even though I’m in no real danger, and that confuses it, reinforcing the lie that I’m somehow real. There’s no flight, no fight from me. Holograms need neither.

  As it’s grounded in reality, anything in a virtual environment is beyond its reach. For me, it’s interesting to see what the alien has fixated on from our earlier conversation.

  Watch for bubbles—that’s a comment that makes no sense outside the confines of my mind.

  Dr. Everton—oh, it clearly recognizes her name but won’t reveal what happened to her.

  Nebraska—the alien has no idea I was describing something I saw in the macrocosm.

  It seems we’ve reached a state of détente. We’re both probing, wanting to learn more about our enemy, but neither can advance.

  The creature shifts, allowing its field of eyes to examine me from another angle. Sooner or later, it’s going to figure out what’s actually happening, and then I’m dead. Really dead. Not just caught in virtual re-runs dead. Dead dead. It’ll smash the container and my electronic life will come to an end. I have to outwit this grotesque alien.

  Given humanity’s reliance on technology, I’m surprised by a distinct lack of alien electronics. To my mind, this creature is primitive, but it’s clearly not. It’s as though there’s a disdain for the way we enhance our lives with peripheral devices. For us, technology is a way of extending our senses. We use machines to expand our intellect, but this creature seems to be a brute beast. If it doesn’t exploit technology, how did it erase Dr. Everton?

  If physical interaction is what it wants, then that’s what it’ll get.

  I stamp my foot, leaning hard to the right and surging forward toward a cluster of eyes. The alien reacts like a lion confronted by a mouse. It backs up so it can assess a threat that never actually existed. I bolt to the left, catching it off guard as I run for the far side of the cleanroom. I vault over the low hood of the fallen spaceship, forgetting I could run straight through it. Somewhere in midair, I hit my virtual wall. It’s like landing in molasses, but I bound on regardless. The creature clambers over the crumpled spaceship. Tentacles slap at the dented metal.

  Suddenly, I’m forty feet behind the alien, having rebounded to the other side of my virtual sphere. I crouch beside my bed, watching as the alien searches for me among the other vehicles. It’s confused, angry. Tentacles lash out. The creature flips one spacecraft and then another. The smell of rocket fuel drifts through the air, being automatically conveyed to me through the holographic interface.

  The alien is intent on destroying everything to find me. It throws vehicles into each other. Sparks fly. Flames erupt. A fire suppression system activates and what I guess is the equivalent of halon gas shoots out of jets on the ceiling.

  The alien tears a crane from its mount. It swings it wildly through the air, sending it thundering into the roof and damaging the fire system. Smart. It may not know why it can’t hurt me, but it figures if it burns down the room, I’ll perish in the fire—and I will. Not me personally, just that tiny scrap of skull and dead grey matter.

  Flames crackle. Spacecraft burn. Smoke builds, hanging in the air. The creature climbs the far wall, disappearing into a ventilation shaft.

  On the ceiling, a red light flashes. An alarm responds to the abnormal sensor readings within the lab. A fuel tank explodes, shaking the room. Bits of metal dig into the walls. Shrapnel ricochets off the hull of a nearby spaceship. A jagged piece of chrome-plated steel sails clear through me. It embeds itself into the workbench not more than a foot from the jar holding my brain.

  The lights come on and dim rapidly. The fire has hit the electrical system.

  First responders appear at the door, but they’re ill-equipped to deal with an inferno. Whatever these spacecraft use as fuel, it’s highly volatile and probably toxic. The roof sags. The walls twist, distorting with the heat.

  I can barely see. The smoke doesn’t affect me, though. Even the heat seems to level off. At a guess, there’s some algorithm supporting the hologram that only conveys sensory input up to a certain point. I stand in front of the torn fragment of brain matter that represents my life, trying but unable to protect it. I’m horrified as bits of the hologram shimmer. The table. The chairs. My bed. They disappear as the projection fails. Damn it, I’m next.

  Firefighters come racing in through the doors. They’re wearing full-body suits and carrying portable extinguishers. Unlike the CO2 canisters of my day that are only good for a small fire in a wastepaper basket, these devices send out a stream of foam forty feet in length. Blankets of white suds douse the burning wreckage behind the shimmering image of my bed. A woman in a fire suit runs over to me, astonished to see someone standing there amidst the flames. She grabs at my arm, but her hands pass clear through me. I’m yelling over the crackle of the fire and the sound of debris falling from the ceiling, pointing at the workbench.

  “The jar. Grab the jar!”

  She’s confused. Another firefighter comes up beside her. I can see him talking to her from behind his mask, but I can’t hear what’s said over the roar of the flames.

  “Please.”

  I point at the workbench. Thick gloved hands snatch at the jar, almost knocking it on the floor. My fractured skull cap is tucked away under one arm as the firefighter grabs the remote projection unit with his other hand. Burning support beams fall from the ceiling, showering the room with flaming debris. He ducks, darting for the door as I follow him, relieved to make it out of the room.

  There are dozens of first responders in the corridor. They coordinate their efforts to contain the blaze. Several of them finish suiting up and charge in to control the fire. They step past me, assuming I’m real, not realizing I only exist in an electronic form.

  I appeal to the firefighter escorting me outside. I have to run to keep up with him as he thunders down the hallway to the courtyard.

  Dark, pungent smoke billows into the night.

  “Thank you, but please—be careful. Be very careful.”

  Once we’re out well beyond the building, the firefighter pulls off his helmet. He peels the tightly fitting plastic from around his face and works the respirator back over his head. Sweat mats down his hair, but the eyes, I’d recognize those beautiful dark brown eyes anywhere.

  “You crazy mad baby.”

  It’s my boyfriend, Pretty Boy, the guy that’ll fly me long time. I ignore his cheesy grin. If I could, I’d hug him.

  “Yeah, that’s me—crazy mad baby.”

  He laughs as the realization of what just happened hits me.

  “Jorgensen. I have to get in touch with Jorgensen.”

  Alone

  Four thousand years may have passed, but white hats still designate fire chiefs. Firefighters herd us further along the courtyard, wanting to get us well clear of the building.

  Explosions rock the ground. A fireball billows into the darkness, breaking through the roof. The fire must have reached a fuel reservoir. The building collapses on one side as heavy equipment arrives.
Like the fire engines in my history books, tankers land in the forecourt. They’re brilliant red, resplendent with shiny chrome and flashing lights. It seems blue and red warning lights are still universal. Given emergency lights hit both ends of the visible spectrum, I guess that’s hardly surprising. Seeing them flicker over the surrounding buildings is surreal.

  The crews get to work setting up hoses and running them into the building. Several other firefighting vehicles hover above the roof of the laboratory, dousing it with foam.

  Pretty Boy shepherds me, almost but not quite putting his hand around me as he leads me to one side. I think he’s the only one that realizes I’m a hologram.

  “You see?” he says.

  “Oh, yeah. I saw. I need to get on the Veritas.”

  Jorgensen gave me his contact details. I bring up a virtual interface, but I know it won’t work. A bunch of numbers and references appear. They’re barely legible to me, but Jorgensen’s avatar image is blank. I try to call anyway, but I’m immediately met with, “Corrupt entry—No record found.”

  “We’ve got to get the hell out of here,” I say.

  My new best friend looks at me like I’m speaking French. The term ‘hell’ probably didn’t communicate quite the way I intended.

  “Fly, right? You fly me?”

  He screws up his face, gesturing to the fire.

  “It’s not an accident.”

  Pretty Boy starts turning away, looking for somewhere to place the jar and the projection unit. He wants to go back to help.

  “No, no, no.” I swing around him, getting in his face and daring him to walk through me. “You need to get me the fuck out of here!”

  Pretty Boy knows fuck, but my usage of the word doesn’t communicate, confusing him. I can see it in his eyes. How can he have sex with a hologram? Why am I talking about sex in the middle of a disaster? I point at myself and speak slowly.