by Will Lemen
"Yes, Captain Xarr!" Lieutenant shouted, before leaving the bridge to execute his Captain's orders.
******
The next thing that I remember, I found myself, along with Beth, Jolene, and Derek, sealed in a small metal room, and what could only be described as oversized metal furnishings that were somehow seamlessly affixed to our encapsulating metallic space.
"What the fuck just happened Jack?" Derek asked.
"I have no idea what the fuck just happened," I answered, as I surveyed the enclosure for a door.
Beth looked around the room and at each one of us and remarked. "I don't know what the fuck happened either, but I know I don't fucking like it."
"I'm scared," Jolene admitted, as she clung to Derek.
"Where are all my weapons?" I asked, making a cursory search of myself. "And the rest of my stuff (meaning Cassandra's titty bag)?"
"All my shit's gone too," Derek said, patting himself down.
"All of our stuff's gone, except our clothes," Beth announced, looking around the room.
"I don't see a door or window in this place, how in the hell did we get in here?" Derek wondered, holding Jolene tightly.
"The question isn't how did we get in here, the question is how are we going to get out of here," I said, now running my hands along the surface of the walls. "There are no seams anywhere, not on the wall, or the floor and ceiling, not even in the corners."
Still hugging Derek tightly Jolene recalled her last memory.
"We were just walking along and then we were here," she said.
"Yeah, the last thing that I remember seeing was that cool '51 Chevy sitting right where we parked it, and then everything faded out to a bright blinding white, and then this place," Derek added, with a look of concern on his face. "What the fuck?"
"Whatever is going on, it looks like we're stuck here until someone lets us out," I surmised, still probing for some kind of an opening, and thinking that the confines of the metallic structure reminded me of that burnt out tank, without the dead bodies and smell.
"Well somebody better let us out soon, I'm starting to get claustrophobic," Derek acknowledged, with a hint of panic on his face.
"Me too," Beth said, with the same look on her face.
I didn't say anything, but I was beginning to feel the same way, and with Jolene scared of her own shadow most of the time, I figured that she was more panic stricken than any of us.
Several hours passed and we were all about at the end of our ropes, the hard cold and oversized metal furniture was beginning to get very uncomfortable no matter how we tried to adjust ourselves on it.
We guessed that the shiny metal monolith emitting a very low bass tone vibration that was standing at a slightly awkward height in the middle of the room was a toilet. That was the only thing we could think of that such an odd-looking contraption with a hole in the top could be used for, but nobody was to the point that they were ready to test the theory, at least not yet, especially the girls. However, we all knew that it was only a matter of time before someone in the room was going to have to be the first to make the choice of either testing the metallic megalith, or dropping a series of deuces in their drawers.
Fortunately for me, as fate would have it, I wasn't chosen to be the first one to be put on display in front of my peers. That honor went to Jolene who had consumed a whole bottle of water just before we found ourselves trapped. However, she too was fortunate, that she did not have to drop the kids off at the pool; she only had to adjust the pH balance of the water after several long minutes of doing her version of an Indian rain dance in front of us. That is if there was any water in that strange mechanism at the center of our new metal world.
After Jolene had thoroughly tested the humming monolith and found that it was not only a toilet, but it was a self-flushing toilet at that.
To no one's surprise, Derek decided that if the toilet in the middle of the room was up to Jolene's apocalyptic standards, it was definitely up to his own standards, and quickly dropped trou and conducted his own extensive tests on the metal mechanism.
Moments after Derek had finished his session on the oversized commode, one of the walls of the room seemed to melt away forming a doorway, and an odd-looking, what I believed to be a male, stepped through the opening and addressed me.
His outfit was not one that was familiar to me, however it slightly resembled a uniform that would have been worn by a Nazi officer during World War II.
"Jack Doom?" the uniformed person asked in a monotone voice.
Thinking that we were finally about to get some answers to where we were and why we were there, I answered back in a monotone voice.
"I'm Jack Doom, who are you?"
"I am Lieutenant Zeem. I have been ordered to bring you to Captain Xarr," the Lieutenant answered, again in a monotone voice.
"This guy's military," I said, looking back at Derek. "Maybe now we'll get some answers."
"It's about time!" Beth stated. "Tell them to let us out of this tin can, or at least give us private quarters."
"You will follow me now," Lieutenant Zeem ordered, as he turned and walked away, leaving two other odd-looking people also in uniform standing on either side of the doorway to escort me.
Anxious to get the hell out of that metal room I didn't hesitate to follow the Lieutenant down a long hallway and into an elevator with the two others at my side.
However, as I walked along, I wondered who in the hell are these guys. I had done my time in the Marine Corps and been many places around the world, but I didn't recognize their uniforms or insignias.
"They might be CIA or NSA," I thought. After all, with all the high tech shit I was seeing they couldn't be regular military. But no one in those two organizations wore uniforms, except for their low level security personnel. At least not dress uniforms like these guys were sporting.
Maybe they were some foreign group of fighters like the Israeli Mossad, but then they didn't wear uniforms either, at least not that I knew of.
I didn't have any of the answers I was looking for, and when I did finally did get to the truth, I wished that I hadn't.
So, once in the elevator I asked the Lieutenant.
"What's going on here? Who are you people? Why did you bring us here? When are you going to let us...?"
Lieutenant Zeem interrupted in an irritated tone.
"Captain Xarr will answer all of your questions, please remain silent until you are asked to reply to any inquiries that the Captain may have."
Right off the bat, this clown's arrogant attitude didn't sit well with me. I'd been through too much shit, I'd seen too much shit, and I'd done too much shit, to take a bunch of crap from some want-to-be soldier in a pristine uniform that looked and spoke like he'd never even seen a zombie, let alone killed one.
I thought. "If we were out on the street, I'd plant my tomahawk in this guy's foot just to teach him a lesson in etiquette."
However, we weren't out on the street, and I didn't have my tomahawk or anything else.
Therefore, I stood there between the two escorts, kept my mouth shut, and waited to see this Captain Xarr character the Lieutenant kept yapping about.
The elevator doors opened and we stepped into some sort of futuristic looking control room.
The room was configured in a circle with panels of colored lights, monitors, gauges, knobs, and joysticks, and every panel had a person sitting in front of it operating that particular station.
Centered in the middle of the room was a command chair on a swivel, with buttons and switches encased in both arms.
Sitting in the command chair was a very confident looking man in a different colored uniform than the rest of the people in the control room. He was busy attending to his duties and giving orders to the other soldiers.
"Captain Xarr, Lieutenant Zeem reporting as ordered."
"Excellent Lieutenant Zeem, I see you brought the test subject as ordered," the Captain remarked.
"Yes Captain Xa
rr, as you ordered."
"Mr. Doom I presume. May I call you Mr. Doom?" Captain Xarr asked, not waiting for my answer. "Mister Doom, I wanted to meet with you personally and answer any questions that you might have that may concern you."
Deja vu hit me like a ton of bricks, but I just couldn't put my finger on it.
"What's going on here? Who are you people? Why did you bring us here? When are you going to let us go?" I asked, staring at the Captain.
"I like you! May I call you Jack?" the Captain asked, again not waiting for an answer. "That is why I have decided that I am glad that you did not get killed down there."
"Killed down where, what do you mean killed down there?" I asked, now completely confused.
Then it came to me. The Caucasian used those exact words when we first met. But this guy wasn't nearly as big as the pale giant I had killed. However, his accent was similar to the freakishly tall mutant.
"Lieutenant Zeem!"
"Yes Captain Xarr!" the Lieutenant quickly answered.
"Has Jack been informed of his whereabouts?" Captain Xarr asked as if he were my best friend.
"No Captain Xarr, none of the test subject groups have any knowledge of who we are, why they are here, or where they are now," Lieutenant Zeem answered. "And this test subject is no exception. All of the test subjects have been sequestered in their respective holding compartments until now; this one is the only earther that has been allowed to leave the containment area."
"Captain Xarr, it wasn't very long ago that someone said that very thing to me," I told the Captain. "He also spoke in much the same way you people do."
"Yes Jack, I know all about the one you speak of," Captain Xarr acknowledged. "Him and ones like him are the primary reason that you are here."
"And exactly where is here?" I asked, staring at the Captain with a stern look on my face.
"Why... here on the bridge of an Annanaki intergalactic spaceship, it is your new home, at least until we return to Annunak for your final training," the Captain informed me. "You see, the one you knew as the Caucasian is just one of many gynandromorph's who's binary genitalia was medically altered through a dangerous, yet quite efficient marinating process whereby their loins were soaked in an electrically charged chemical for an extended period of time. A process similar to the way your people electroplate jewelry. The result of this chemically induced biologic transmodification genital surgery was the shrinking of the sex organs down to a point that they not only no longer functioned, but also for all intent and purposes were non-existent to the naked eye. At least not in the state that they would normally be recognized.
This converted each gynandromorph that underwent the process and survived it, into what was the equivalent of what was called a eunuch during your planet's ancient history.
The difference being, although the chemically treated sex organs of those gynandromorphs chosen, shrank due to the change in their DNA composition instead of being cut off. A residual and unavoidable side effect of the DNA restructuring, caused the rest of the creature's physical body to expanded geometrically and lose all pigmentation in the skin and hair, rendering them albino giants, even as compared to my own tall pale-skinned Annunaki race."
"Are you telling me that the freak show I killed in the Indiana Badlands that called himself the Caucasian, was a bloated gynandromorphic eunuch from some other planet?" I asked, jokingly, not believing a word of the Captain's bullshit story.
"Jack Doom, that is precisely what I am telling you," Captain Xarr answered, with a blank look on his alien face. "However, I would not have described the transformation of the chemically treated gynandromorph in such colorful terms, yet your vernacular enhanced chronicle is nonetheless accurate."
"So what was the Caucasian, or gynandromorph, or eunuch, or whatever the hell he or it was, doing here on earth?" I asked, trying to take in and process everything that was happening around me, but still in disbelief.
"The albino gynandromorphs are part of the reason that the superior Annunaki race is currently at war with the gynandromorphic race," the alien Captain explained. "Many hundreds of thousands of kronal sections ago, several top Annunaki scientists traveled deep into one of the forbidden zones of the Cyan Prime cluster without authorization from the Supreme Being of Annunak, and carried out what the inhabitants there called unspeakable experiments on captured civilians."
"Let me guess, the experiments were done on the gynandromorph population in that so called forbidden zone," I said. "And just what in the hell is a kronal section?"
"You are correct Jack Doom, our scientists experimented on gynandromorphy citizens," Captain Xarr replied. "And one of your earth months is the closest time measurement that I can relate to you that resembles the kronal sections that we on Annunak use to gauge time."
"That's all fine and dandy Captain, and I'm getting ready to pop a woody, but you didn't answer my question.
What was the albino gynandromorph as you call it, doing down on my planet?
As a matter of fact, while you're in the mood to answer questions, what in hell's creation are all of you so-called aliens doing here anyway?" I asked, as my mood began to deteriorate, and I began to shout, still not believing the answers that Captain Xarr was telling me.
Seeing that his Captain was being accosted by a mere earther, and ready to take advantage of another opening to make some major league brownie points, Lieutenant Zeem broke in.
"Do not raise your voice to Captain Xarr or I will escort you to Bay 5 personally!"
I had no idea what he meant by Bay 5, but I was pretty sure I didn't want to find out anytime soon, whether they were from another planet or not.
So I decided to profusely apologize to everyone or everything (depending on how you look at it), on the bridge of the ship, especially Captain Xarr. I would play along with their ruse whatever it was, and hope that the Captain would see fit to reunite me with Beth and the others.
"It is all right Lieutenant Zeem, I am sure that our guest meant no disrespect toward me or any of the crew, he is just confused about who is in charge here," Captain Xarr said, very condescendingly. "His attitude is exactly the reason that he was one of the earthers chosen."
"I'm sorry Captain Xarr, I didn't mean any disrespect to you or your crew, and I have the greatest admiration for all of you. Like you said, I am a guest on your ship, and I would never intentionally do anything that would upset you or any of your crew," I told the leader, as I tried to think of a way to slit the young lieutenant's throat and not get myself killed in the process.
Up to now, nobody in this control room, or on the spaceship's bridge, or wherever I was, had paid much attention to me, they were staying busy at their stations and doing their jobs.
However, as I uttered my insincere apology to the Captain and crew, their sudden curiosity of my presents caught my attention, and I noticed the depictions on some of their monitors, most of which were images of earth from a great height, miles above the planet in fact, pictures of earth from an orbital altitude.
I also became aware that the labels by all of the switches and knobs were written in some kind of weird looking hieroglyphics that resembled nothing that I had ever seen.
"Holy fuckcycles!" I thought. "Is everything this guy's been telling me true?"
The more I thought about it as the crew stared at me, the more the Captain's explanation made sense.
"A virus that brought the dead back to life to eat the living?
The illusive shadows during the day and the flashes of unseen light at night?
Dinosaurs rampaging through the countryside?
That beam of light coming from the clouds that disintegrated the building where the sniper had his nest?
The weird lighting change and missing time that preceded our arrival on the spaceship.
The wall in what the Lieutenant had called the holding compartment melting into a doorway?"
With all of that happening, and from what the ship's Captain had told me, it was obviou
s that people from earth didn't cause the bizarre events of the past couple of years.
"Okay, let's just say that I believe everything that you've told me so far. What possible reason could you have to invade my planet and cause so much death, carnage, and destruction?" I asked, this time sincerely. "And what in the fuck do you want with me?"
"As I have informed Lieutenant Zeem, and his predecessor I might add, my family lineage has a long history that connects them and myself to your planet.
Those pre-extinction bipedal carnivorous creatures that we deployed to saved you from the overwhelming amount of control subjects that were attacking, before you and the rest of test subject group 32452013 retired into the large metal, mobile, projectile hurling mechanism...
"You mean that bunch of vile dinosaurs that killed my family?" I fumed, interrupting the Captain as he explained.
"Yes, I see that you remember them," the Captain answered straight faced and non-caring.
"I remember them all right," I steamed, trying to control my rage.
"That was a slight miscalculation on the part of one of my officers," Captain Xarr admitted, still with an unconcerned look on his face.
"Oh, that's all right," I said, sarcastically. "You wouldn't mind introducing me to that officer would you; you know the one that made that slight miscalculation?"
"Not in the least, as a matter of fact I need to check on his progress down in Bay 5," Captain Xarr answered, almost giddily. "Lieutenant Zeem, you will accompany Jack and me down to Bay 5."
"Yes, Captain Xarr," the Lieutenant shouted as he flailed an Annunaki salute toward his commander.
Without having to be ordered, the two guards also accompanied us, flanking me as we made our way down to Bay 5.
Along the way, Captain Xarr told me of his ancestors and how they, coupled with what he called the archaic Annunaki technology of the times, caused the global demise of the dinosaurs, but only after they had retrieved several choice specimens of both male and female to as he put it farm their species.