by Derek Baker
The last word seemed to resound positively with the crowd, those who had looked terrified before appeared to ease up.
“However,” Chym continued his wide-ranged gaze, bringing people back to the edge of their seats, “There is another race, completely separate and different from ours, that would gladly oversee your annihilation.”
~~~~
Elaborate hallways, delicate kitchens, traditional parlors, future-esque bathrooms, crawling with agents. There was a ball room at the front of the house when Haven had parties, filled with guests of all walks of life, each wanting to share in the orgies of drugs, sex and booze.
A stairway leading from a top balcony spiraled down into the ball room, bearing a banner that contained Haven’s favorite catchphrase: “You can enjoy life’s offerings when you join the Havenist Cause. God bless.”
“Sir, all rooms clear, sir.”
“Check all the little cubby holes, nooks and crannies?”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
“Damn it. Corporal Freeman, keep a perimeter around the estate, no one goes in or out without us knowing about it.”
“Sir!”
~~~
“Mr. Curtis, is it true then that you were in fact abducted by these so-called Wendrans along with your friend Delvon Galihue?”
Alexander gave the reporter an almost sardonic look with red, bloodshot eyes. “Yes, it is quite true. The very same creatures who plan to invade Earth. The same Chym and Martians seek to help us fight against.”
Another reporter stood, chubby round the middle and neck, sweat glistening his brow, “And why should we believe it isn’t Chym and his Martians who mean to wish us harm?”
A murmur of agreement went around the crowd, something Alexander hadn’t expected. He focused all his energy into fighting the high that by then mostly worn off. Trying to clear everything but the task before him.
“Because of what they are offering you. They wouldn’t say they’re going to try to advance our military in a matter of months if they were going to be the ones ultimately destroying it. There’s no conspiracy here, they only wish to help us in our time of need.”
He looked around, took a deep breath, felt a new surge of confidence take over.
“Don’t you think it’s time for change? Look around you, the human race is turning into vile filth, with no care about tomorrow. It’s almost like we wouldn’t care if aliens came here and took over our lives, even killed us all, just for our natural resources. Life has lost its purpose, it seems like. I dropped out of college because everyone there was doing drugs and having sex, and my friends and even Professors wanted me in on it. I felt like I was only one there who cared.
“Think about this: what if we, in cooperation with the Martians, successfully defended ourselves against the Wendrans? What if in a short span of time we can modernize ourselves? I’ve seen what they’re capable of, and we would be no match for them. But we could advance, we could change, we could embrace the new, cast out the old. If we could stop their reign of terror we would emerge a new, revitalized human race, ready to face the new galactic age that awaits us.”
A voice rose from the back of the crowd: “Listen to the man, he’s right! I lost a son to Havenist overdose! Let’s get fucking serious, people! Let’s get to work!”
A cheer rang around the world.
~~~~
“Sir, we found this holographic message in his bedroom.”
“Did you read it, Private?”
“Sir, no, sir. I assumed you would want to be the first to read it, sir.”
“Good thinking. Let’s turn this on and see what the SOB’s got to say."
The button was pressed and the image of Johnny Haven’s face appeared before the group.
“Hello,” he said abruptly, his head turning side to side as if to make sure no one was watching, “if you are watching this message then by now I’ve either escaped or I’m dead. Don’t bother trying to find me; you won’t. Don’t worry though, my reign of terror has largely come to an end. My plot has been discovered, my fortunes have gone to waste, all because some miserable kids poked their heads where they didn’t belong.
“I have a will stored in my safe, located behind the portrait of my grandfather. The pass code is modusoperandi, all one word.
“Oh, and one more thing: I have your precious Fitzpatrick with me, assuming I’m still alive. Sorry, but he’s on my side. Good guy, though, I’ll tell you that.”
A silver tube carried in his hand came up to the holographic face as it took a hit of the narcotic. “Ah,” he sighed, “I swear this stuff would’ve made everyone nice and complacent had they at least tried it…”
“Anyway,” his face looked resigned, “God bless, and good luck with the whole invasion thing. Those Wendrans are some real bastards, I tell ya.”
The message dissipated.
Chapter 19
Slowly, I became vaguely aware of my surroundings. Flashing lights in the ceiling, repeating over and over again. Everything so white, so pure. So clean. The color of innocence, or not really a color at all?
A bed, with white sheets, with perfect comfort and security. Holding me tight in its arms. Unless those were the arms of someone else. A person?
There was a table with chairs. A cabinet against the opposing wall. A television rested in it, along with clothes. An odd familiarity was associated with those garments. Were they my clothes?
Two pairs of faces constantly interchanging with their appearances. Three of them adult without a doubt. The fourth was a harder guess. An infant?
I awoke in the morning light with a jolt. I was in a hospital room somewhere, but I had no idea about how I’d come to this place.
Then I thought, Ah, yes, I remember this feeling. Helplessness. Except this seems better than the Wendran ship. Wendran! The abduction, Halley’s Comet, Mars, Chym …Alexander?
For a moment, it all felt like it could’ve been just a messed up dream. Had I been in a coma? It all felt so real though, so vivid. Upon reflecting for a few moments, lying there in the hospital bed, I slowly regained my senses. I knew it hadn’t been a dream. No, it was reality. A horrifying, yet so very exciting, an intriguing reality.
I attempted to distinguish between what images in my head were dreams and which actually occurred: Yes, I really had aliens do experiments on me. Yes, I went to Mars. Yes, I’m alive. No, it was a dream when I drowned in the hurricane. No, I’ve never been to that cave where I heard the wailing, the cool stream running, trickling along the bottom of the cavern.
An odd connection crept up on me. Two images –no- two sounds mingled together. However, I thought better of it and pushed the thought away.
The door popped open, and in walked a nurse. She was young, maybe around twenty-five, dark brown hair at shoulder’s length.
She walked toward my bed beside which sat my medicines that were drugging me back to health. Approaching my bed, I tried to speak.
“What’s…happening?” I croaked out.
She did a double take, and, noticing that I was truly awake and it hadn’t been her imagination, she face broke into a friendly, welcoming smile.
“Why hello, sleepy! You’re lucky to be alive, mister. I’ll go grab a doctor for you.”
As her body turned sharply back toward the door, the sun, which had been previously blocked out with her silhouette, shone through her hair, revealing also the paleness of her skin not just on her neck but all over.
She must not get out much, I thought.
I continued trying to make sense of everything, all the while staring at the pattern in the ceiling paint. An endless pattern of swirls kept my attention in focus.
After what seemed like forever, the nurse returned with an older, bearded man who seemed to have a friendly demeanor about him. His balding head and facial hair were salt and pepper, no more than half an inch in length.
He checked his electronic clipboard, a curved plate of glass lit with my information at his disposal.
&n
bsp; He and the nurse stood there for a moment in quiet conversation, just under the point at which I could hear what they were saying. Finally, he dismissed the nurse and calmly strode over to my bedside, giving himself a moment off his feet as he sat down beside my recumbent figure.
“Heeeeey, kid. I’m Doctor Thompson,” He spoke in a cheerful tone, while still keeping his attention focused on the information presented to him on his clipboard, “How are ya?”
“Um, okay, I guess.”
“Gooood,” he remarked almost distantly.
His face took a long, hard look of concentration, and then eventually he cleared his throat looking up at me.
“So… tell me what you remember, then, Delvon.”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s the last thing you remember happening before waking up here?”
I looked around the room, and wondered aloud, “Where exactly is this, this ‘here’?”
“You’re at the George Washington University Hospital, in Washington, D.C.,” came his answer.
Now my memory was jogged, “Ohhh…” I let out slowly.
“Do you remember, then?”
“Yeah, …yeah, I do!” Then I thought, Wait a second, does he know about all this alien stuff? Or is he going to think I’m crazy?
Sensing my inner dilemma, the doctor reassured me, “It’s okay, Delvon, everyone knows you’re here, and how you got here. You’re completely safe for the time being. I just want to know how much you remember so I can assess the problem better.”
“So let me get this straight, you know about the Martians?”
His eyes widened. “Martians? Well, yes, I’ve heard all about them. Everyone knows. You can’t exactly hover a bunch of spaceships over the nation’s capital and expect it to go unnoticed.”
“True,” I agreed, “I’ve obviously been, you know, out of the loop. How long was I unconscious, then?”
“A good two days, actually.”
“Great…” I felt I had so many questions to ask all at once, but no way to get them out. “So –”
“I’ll tell you what, Delvon, tell me what you remember first, then I’ll be able to give you some information. Right now, your health is most crucial.” This guy seemed to know what he was talking about.
“Well…”
So I started at the beginning, telling him everything health related that had happened to me in the time since I had been abducted. I told him about the needle plunged into me, rendering me unconscious for a good nine months. I explained, in gruesome detail, the procedure in which the Wendrans had basically ripped out my knee cap, among other things. Then I talked about the Martian diet I had been following, which despite its foul taste left me feeling generally well and good since I had started it. Last but not least, I described the insane trip I had experienced after smoking whatever it was that President Fitzpatrick persuaded me to try.
“That would be the ‘Havenist Narcotic,’ as they’re called around the hospitals. We found traces of it all throughout your blood stream. You were one of the lucky ones, that’s for sure. Most people who reacted to it such as you did would have been dead had paramedics not shown up when they did,” explained the doctor.
“Oh god, is that the drug that’s been going around with those…Johnny Haven crazies?”
“’Fraid so. I can’t tell you how many patients have gotten here already dead from that crap,” his disgust was apparent.
“Damn,” was all I could think to say.
The doctor seemed to stare off at nothing in particular for a moment. The room got darker all of a sudden, like a cloud temporarily blocking out the sun outside. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Now that I was back, there were so many things to do. And I was already two days behind schedule. I wondered if anyone had come to visit me. My parents? Friends? On a wishing thought, maybe Claire? Or had I been cooped up in here and nobody knew it had been me who had returned aboard a spaceship after being presumed missing or dead? Finally, the doctor said after leaving me to my thoughts, “I suppose you probably want to know what’s been going on the last couple days, huh?”
I hid my anticipation. “Well, sure, go for it.”
The doctor laughed at my less than enthusiastic response.
“Alright, where to begin… Yes. Well. As I said before, everyone knows you’re here. There was an investigation for some time as to what had happened to you and this Alexander Curtis fellow. It had been given up on a few months after you disappeared; no one knew if you were dead or alive, from what I’ve heard. Then out of nowhere you show up in DC with aliens from outer space. To put it bluntly, shit’s hit the fan. No one really knows what’s going to happen now.”
“What about Alexander, my family?”
“When you were whisked away in an ambulance, Alexander and your aliens friends went to the United Nations and held a press conference. Historians are already calling it the most universally watched thing on television ever. They explained what happened, telling the whole story, trading off with Alexander and this alien called Chym’Buk’Tai or something like that. That’s about the time that you were brought in here and I was able to contact your parents.”
“So then what’s been going on since then?”
The doctor let out a heavy sigh. “I’ve tried to keep you secluded in here while the whole world’s anxiously waiting to hear from you. There’s been a lot of things happening, as you can imagine. Some are calling this the next coming of Christ, some saying the world’s going to end, others killing themselves. On the other hand –and this is from my point of view– this could be the start of a brand new start.”
“I like the way you think,” I said, “So you know about this other alien race that’s coming to invade Earth?”
“I think that’s the part that’s got everyone so riled up. It’d be easier to accept if everything was peaceful with this new view of the universe, but the fact that these aliens are preaching doom isn’t exactly going over well.”
“Damn it, I’ve got to get out of here,” I tried to rise from my bed, only to collapse back down from weakness.
“Don’t be trying that just yet, Delvon. Besides, I’ve got more news for you.”
“Doctor, you seem like a smart guy, and I appreciate you telling me all this but I’ve got to get back –”
“I thought you might want to know, the President resigned, and fled the country,” the doctor interjected.
My face sunk. “Well, serves him right. He’s one of them.”
“But do you realize what this means?”
I shrugged. “I guess not, Alexander is the political man, I’m the astrophysics nerd that got into some space-orgy-alien nightmare and was way in over his head.”
“Since Fitzpatrick was just sworn in a few weeks ago, he never had time to pick a vice-president. This means the presidency should go to the secretary of state, Jane Kosowski. But with recent events, with a supposed impending alien invasion on the horizon, there’s already been talk of a consolidating into a world government. While Kosowski said she would take over as commander and chief, there’s been lots of controversy over whether she should bother or not if the United States is going to get swallowed up by this new world order.”
“Huh. Interesting. I think Alexander could get this worked out.”
“Alexander could?”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t know this, but he’s a got a knack for political things. In fact, we wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for him convincing the Martian legislature to see things from our point of view.”
The doctor raised his eyebrows. “Legislature, eh? You think your friend has what it takes to get into the political action? What is he, like 18, 19?”
My voice unintentionally rose, “Don’t let his age fool you; he might be young but he’s got talent. Maybe he won’t be able to do anything now, but certainly in the future…”
A knock came to the door, ending the conversation that felt nowhere near to being finished. Doctor Thomps
on went to answer it, going out into the hallway to speak to whoever stood on the other side.
The door swung open again, revealing the ever so fondly missed: my parents.
“Dear god! Delvon!” I was immediately immersed in embraces from both my father and mother. They each appeared almost ten years older than the way I remembered them. Much anxiety, I’m sure, from thinking they lost their only child. This was obvious from the lines that had creeped across my mother’s face. The hair line looked as if it had receded further back along my father’s head.
“Are you feeling better sweety? I just…” my mother tried to say in between sobs, “can’t believe you’re here.”
“Believe me…me too, mom. Me too.”
“Good to have you back, son,” my father said with his voice wavering, teary-eyed as well.
The three of us stayed locked there for a while, not daring to let go. I looked up at one point to see that Doctor Thompson had left. He must have felt the need to leave us alone. I proceeded to tell my parents everything that had happened. While they had heard it from Alexander’s press conference, they wanted to hear my point of view, of course. They listened with the utmost attention, never taking their eyes off of me as I lay in bed, weak but alive.
“So how’s it been for you? You know I wish I had been here,” I said, after finishing my story.
“I’ve been a mess. I’m sure you can imagine,” my mom answered. “And you broke your promise.”
I smiled, chuckled a bit, remembering our old quarrels. “Mom, you know I couldn’t help it this time…”