by J. Blanes
“You could say so,” Iris confessed.
“Do you remember when were you abducted from Earth?” Albert asked.
“I could never forget that,” Iris scoffed. “It was April 25, 2003.”
“And how old were you then?” Albert asked again.
“I was sixteen,” Iris replied.
“You’ve been on that planet for eleven years,” Albert calculated rapidly. “So you’re twenty-seven now.”
“I can’t believe it,” Iris whispered. “It has been a lifetime to me. It was so hard…” She wanted to cry, but she wiped off a tear and calmed down.
“I was on my way home from my school,” she started. “As almost every day, my best friend drove me to the road that led to my house, which was in a slightly secluded part of town. I was walking home, and I remember it was a warm spring night. I was happy because it was Friday, and my parents and I were about to leave for the weekend on a field trip. In addition, the flowerbeds on each side of the road had blossomed already, and their sweet scent filled me with joy. I couldn’t have been happier. Then…” She paused. It was hard for her to recall those moments. The others waited patiently in silence.
“Suddenly,” she went on, “about halfway home, I saw a woman beside a luxury car stopped on the road. The woman was dressed in elegant business attire, smiling at me. I wasn’t afraid; I thought she was lost or one of my mom’s friends. When I approached her, she told me she was lost and showed me a map, asking me if I could help her. I started giving her directions, and that’s the last I remember. I never reached the house. I passed out and woke up on a bed in a white room. I was so confused! At first, I thought that I fainted and my parents had checked me into a hospital, but I called them and no one answered. Then, I called the nurses and doctors, but nobody came. I thought it was strange, but I still believed I was in a hospital, until I fixed my attention on the room for the first time. It was weird, with no decorations at all and no furniture, except for the bed. I started to get anxious and ran for the door, but it was locked. I screamed and banged on it, trying to get someone’s attention, until I fell exhausted on the floor.
“I don’t know how long I stayed like that on the floor, hours probably, when the door finally opened. To my surprise, the woman entered the room, in the same dress, smiling broadly. She introduced herself as an avatar, some kind of robot representing her master. I thought she was kidding, some kind of lunatic, and I told her to let me go. But she told me they were expecting my incredulous reaction, and to my horror, she clawed her fingers into her arm and tore a piece of it apart. I was in shock and didn’t want to look, but she insisted; she said she was OK, and I finally glanced at it. There was no blood at all, only pieces of something resembling plastic and tubes and some other disgusting stuff, but not blood, no veins, nothing a normal person would have…”
“An avatar is something the Pakma would do,” Blip interrupted. “They have no bodies—I mean, in the Human sense. They’re mostly energy forms, living inside a sophisticated system of interconnected machines, which allows them to interact with the environment, control everything around them, replicate themselves at will, and transport at breathtaking speeds through it. They would never show themselves in person; it would mean to abandon the system and risk being exposed. They’re too fragile outside that system.”
After Blip’s incredible explanation, Iris continued with her story. “I panicked and headed for the door she had left open, only to find myself in a room identical to the other. I tried again with the next door with the same result. I was literally living a nightmare.
“The woman, or avatar, walked calmly to me and told me to relax. She said that they would not hurt me at all, that they needed me for an important mission. I was having a panic attack and could barely breathe. I told her that the rooms were suffocating me and I needed fresh air. At that moment, the rooms disappeared, just like that”—she snapped her fingers—“and I found myself in an open field, with trees, flowers, birds, the sun, a breeze, every little detail present. I knew it wasn’t real because it had appeared out of nothing, but it was impossible to tell apart from reality.”
“A feeling hologram!” Albert exclaimed excitedly.
“A what?” Dylan asked.
“Like the 3-D maps the ship showed us,” Albert tried to explain. “But instead of being just a projection, they can also be felt and touched.”
“You bet they can,” Iris snapped. “I could even smell the flowers and hear the birds singing.”
“I told you,” Blip said. “The Pakma are one of the most advanced civilizations in the universe. To make a feeling hologram, as Albert called it, not only must light be manipulated but also forces like gravity. It requires a complete mastering of energy transformations. Of course, it can only be done in extremely controlled environments, and not even the Pakma could do it anywhere they wished. You must have been inside one of their ships, which was prepared for the show they gave you.”
Iris nodded. She knew all about it now. Then, she resumed her story. “I tried to convince myself that it was a dream, but the woman slapped me in the face. ‘Do dreams hurt?’ she said. I almost fainted when I realized the truth. But dream or not, the scenery somehow worked on me,” Iris confessed. “I needed the air, fake or not, and the woman didn’t say anything until I asked her who they were and what they wanted from me. She replied that their identity was not important and that she had already told me what they wanted from me: to be part of a mission. Then, she vanished without warning, and I found myself in another room, a luxurious, huge dining room. I couldn’t believe it! There was a dining table, chairs, a sofa—any furniture imaginable, even a TV, all superbly decorated. And the windows had a magnificent ocean view, seen from high altitude, as if the room belonged to a building near the sea. The table was full of all kinds of food and drink: main dishes, side dishes, desserts, wine, water, anything you can think of. I was so hungry I jumped at the table and ate until I felt sick. I lost track of time, but it was dark outside, and an antique wall clock showed it was nine.
“There was a door, and for some time I hesitated to open it, because I was afraid it would lead me to another dining room, but my curiosity won in the end. The door led to a bedroom, equally lavishly decorated, with a bed so inviting that I couldn’t resist throwing myself onto it. It was as comfortable as it was beautiful, and I would have fallen asleep immediately if it weren’t for the Jacuzzi tub. I saw it from the bed through another open door, and I couldn’t resist using it. After that, I went to bed and fell asleep. These were my first moments of captivity in that golden prison.” She paused again and stood up to fetch some water. The others followed her with their eyes, eager for her to resume her story, which she did once she sat down again.
“The next day the smiley woman visited me again, early in the morning. She was polite as always, asking if I was OK and liked the room. I lied to her out of frustration and told her I hated it. I regretted my words immediately when the room transformed into a shabby shack with a small wooden bed and no windows. She asked me with that stupid smile if I preferred a humble room like that one. It was so frustrating, but I had no choice, and I apologized to get back the other room.
“I asked her about my mission again, begging her to tell me more details, and I received the most incredible answer from her. She told me that they were going to make some changes inside my brain, changes that would transform me into a universal translator. I laughed at first, but she just kept staring at me with her smile. It was so creepy that my laugh froze dead. She told me that I didn’t have to be afraid, that it was a simple procedure for them, and that after the surgery I would be able to communicate with almost any civilization in the universe. Can you believe it? Me! They wanted to make me a freak of nature!” Reliving those moments, Iris opened her eyes wide in disbelief, and Blip used the opportunity to interrupt her again.
“That makes no sense at all,” he said.
“Brain surgery is overkill, and risky; there are simpler implants for that.”
Iris stirred uncomfortably on her sit. “Really? Because they did it, and it worked.”
Blip scratched his head in perplexity. “Gro_far at_do,” he tested her in spoken Pakma.
“Gro_far, Bli’p,” she replied instantly.
Blip frowned and tried again in spoken Tukma. “Yil mo. Iri .s. .ma.”
“Yao mo. Bli .p. mie.”
“What are you doing?” Keira asked finally.
“He’s testing if I’m telling the truth by speaking to me in different languages,” Iris replied.
Blip felt embarrassed and admitted that she was right. He then explained himself. “I greeted her in an ancient Pakma dialect and in currently spoken Tukma. She answered me perfectly, as if she were a native of those languages.”
Albert leaned forward and stared at her with curiosity. “Do you speak English because it’s your native language or because you learned it after the surgery?”
“I was born in Montreal, Canada,” Iris revealed, “but I grew up mostly in Spain, so you could say my first language is Spanish. I also spoke French with my family.”
“You lived in Spain? Did they abduct you there?” Keira asked excitedly. She’d had a romantic fascination for the country since she was a child, and everything related to it interested her. She felt envious of Iris for a split second.
“When they abducted me, we were living back in Canada, but only for a year,” Iris said.
“So, they performed the surgery on you, and then what?” Dylan interrupted, uninterested in all the small talk, impatient to hear more of Iris’s story.
“Yes, they did the surgery,” Iris confirmed. “Almost at the same time the avatar woman announced it to me. When she told me the news and I stopped laughing about it, she told me to sit down on the sofa and relax. I did as she asked. Just then, I remember feeling dizzy, and my sight blurred. I must have passed out again, because I woke up in bed with a slight headache. She was standing next to me, and her words puzzled me: ‘See? You felt nothing.’ I thought she was crazy. ‘Felt nothing?’ What was she talking about? The answer came right away. She spoke me in a language that I had never heard before, but I understood every word she’d said to me, out of the blue, like magic. Not only that, I answered her back speaking the same language. Can you believe it? The realization hit me like a train wreck; they had already performed the surgery on me!” Her voice was louder now and full of emotion. After all these years, she still was finding it hard to believe. “They never asked for my permission! Never gave me the opportunity to say yes or no! I was scared and confused! It wasn’t fair!” she blurted out, releasing her anger.
None of the others knew what to say and just waited for her to calm down again.
“Is it painful?” Keira asked finally, trying to understand more.
Iris gave her a confused look. “Painful? No, it doesn’t hurt, but you don’t understand,” she whispered. Then she stopped briefly and resumed talking in her normal voice. “You know, there are many forms of communication depending on the species, and talking is only one of them. After the surgery, I started to hear voices inside my head and see colors that talked to me and other creepy stuff, as if I were high from some drug, all the time. When I explained the symptoms to the smiley woman, she explained to me that what I was hearing and seeing was other beings talking to me, not verbally but by electromagnetic waves, like a radio, and vibration waves transmitted through things, like the floor or bed. She told me that I was confused because I wasn’t used to them, but that I would learn in time to control and tune in the conversations that I wanted and discard the rest. I would also learn how to speak back to them using the same methods. Well, can you believe there are species in the universe that communicate by sending light beams through their eyes?” Nobody expected the question, and no one answered back. “No? Then look.” Iris stared at the wall, and two light beams projected from her eyes onto the wall. Everybody looked in amazement, and Keira gasped, an involuntary action that she regretted immediately.
“I’m sorry,” Keira said. “I didn’t mean to…”
“Don’t worry,” Iris interrupted her. “I know that I’m a freak now. How could I ever go back home like this?”
“Blip, would you care to explain why they did this to her?” Dylan snapped, feeling angry for Iris. “Are you going to do the same to us?”
Blip was at a loss for words and just stared at Iris with his mouth open. She not only knew as many languages as him, but also languages that he didn’t even dream existed. Why the Pakma would do this to her was beyond his comprehension. “I…I…” he stammered, looking for words. “I don’t know why. I really don’t…”
“It’s OK, Blip,” Keira came to his rescue. “Even if the Tolok had planned something like this for us, they wouldn’t tell you anyway.”
“But…” Dylan was about to complain, but a fierce gaze from Keira stopped him. He desisted, resigned.
“I mean it!” Blip insisted anyway. “I’m as clueless as you are. As I said before, brain surgery makes no sense. If the Tolok were to do something like that, they’d use simple devices, not in the brain but in the ears and the mouth, maybe on the skin. And the Tolok know nothing about lights from the eyes; there aren’t species like that in this galaxy.”
“Hmm,” Dylan muttered in distrust.
“It doesn’t matter now; we’ll find out soon enough anyway,” Albert interceded. “Let’s hear more from Iris.”
All eyes turned to her again, and she returned to her story. “There’s nothing more about the surgery. As the creepy woman said, I learned how to tune in the conversations I wanted and discard the rest. It turned out that the voices I heard and the other weird things I sensed came from other beings wandering nearby, mostly working for the Pakma. She even introduced some of them…”
“Really? Who were they? What did they look like?” Albert interrupted eagerly.
“Albert, it’s not the time for this,” Keira complained. “Let her finish her story first. You’ll have plenty of time to ask about them later. Neither Dylan nor I are in the least interested in hearing about those creatures.”
“OK, no problem, sorry,” Albert apologized.
“Well,” Iris resumed her story, “after that, I spent some weeks in the room, recovering from the surgery and learning about my new abilities. They changed the scenery from time to time and gave me some books to help me pass the time, and even the TV was working, with reruns of classic shows. I remember enjoying Gilligan’s Island the most.
“One day, the woman came to visit again. She had news for me, and again, she gave me no choice. She simply said that they would release me on a planet with atmospheric and climatic conditions similar to Earth. I would have to stay there until someone would come for me to finish my mission. I asked for how long, and she said, ‘Years.’ I was in shock and blurted out many questions. Why did they abduct me so early? Why not wait until the mission was ready? How would I survive on this planet? Why not release me on Earth instead? Why were they doing this to me? And so on. She only replied that going back to Earth was dangerous, not only for me but also for the whole planet. She asked me if I would want to put everyone’s lives in danger, including my family’s. I said no, of course not. ‘Then trust me’, she replied, ‘going back now is not an option.’ She also said something enigmatic. They’d abducted me so early because they’d done something to me that had never been attempted before and needed to know if it had worked with enough time to react in case it failed. ‘Are you talking about the surgery?’ I asked. ‘Yes and no,’ she replied with her creepy smile. I swear, that smile was getting on my nerves. If I…” Iris started to wander from the main story until Blip couldn’t help himself and interrupted again.
“That kind of surgery is not new,” Blip said. “It’s never performed now, because of its risks and t
he technology that replaced it, but it’s surely not new.”
“In any case, that’s what she said, ‘Yes, and no,’” Iris remarked. “She then gave me a book, telling me to study it, because it was a survival field guide for living on the planet. She also gave me a stun gun and a stun rifle, and showed me how to use them. They weren’t killing devices, she warned me, but they would help me in defending myself and in hunting small animals.”
“I thought you said that advanced civilizations didn’t encourage killing anything,” Dylan taunted Blip again.
“They don’t,” Blip replied. “They must have thought that she would need them for survival on such a difficult planet. I told you that we don’t kill unless strictly necessary for survival reasons. This must have been one of those times.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Dylan said without conceding defeat.
“Please, go on,” Keira said to Iris, “and don’t mind these clowns,” she added, pointing a finger at Dylan and Blip.
“The next thing I did surprised both of us,” Iris said. “I shot her,” she confessed with a smirk on her face.
“What!” they all exclaimed at once.
“It was impulsive. I couldn’t restrain myself, and I couldn’t kill her anyway with the stun gun.” Her expression was one of enjoyment. “I wanted to see her face, her expression, when she’d realized that I’d shot her. For once, I wanted to erase that smile from her face, and it worked, oh, yeah, it worked. She convulsed, jerked, and shook, and her mouth twisted like a circus contortionist. She finally fell on the floor with smoke coming out of her ears. Those guns could kill her after all. It was hilarious.”
“And what happen next?”
“The fun ended right there.” Iris’s expression sobered. “Three identical women entered the room, same faces, same smiles. Two of them carried the body outside, and the other stayed with me. I still had the gun in my hand, ready to shoot her again, but she didn’t ask me about what had happened, and she only remarked that shooting them would not change my situation. I told her that she was probably right, but that it had been fun anyway. ‘I understand,’ she said, and then told me that I could shoot her whenever I pleased. That remark took the thrill out of the game, and I relaxed. I never shot her again.