“Let me show you what you don’t want to see,” she stretched her hands causing the space image to zoom, and zoom, and zoom until it was at Alpha Centauri, then zoom some more. She paused as an image came clear. Everybody squinted at it. Galen approached the screen, tracing it with his hands.
“It’s an object in orbit between the stars,” he ran his finger along a cylindrical structure. A time bar appeared below it and he tapped it. The image rotated as it moved along an orbit between Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. He gasped as lights flickered on it, allowing several smaller objects to enter and exit. He turned to Senator Vickers, pale. “It’s a space station.”
The room erupted again. Senator Vickers banged his gavel. “Stop! Quiet!” he yelled.
“I wish you’d stop banging that thing,” Kalea said. The room silenced as she raised a hand, blowing out the light over her head. Several metal parts sparked against the force field.
Annaliese walked to the projection. “Kalea, what is this?”
“I’m the Chairman and I’m asking the questions,” Senator Vickers said. “What is it? Is that where you’re from? Is that what caused all of this?”
“No,” Kalea said. “That’s what we’re here to stop.” She touched the force field, sending a blue streak of energy around it. “You may feel like you’re in control, but that’s a lie. The beings on that station are alive, they know you’re here, and they intend to take your planet – by force, if necessary. You have to listen to us now, or you’re going to die.”
Chapter 45
The room was in pandemonium as reporters and cameramen rushed toward Kalea’s force field, shouting questions.
“Order!” Chairman Vickers yelled, banging his gavel. “Stop! There will be order in this chamber.”
“Are you really so blind that none of you saw the truth behind all the smoke and mirrors that these politicians sold you?” Kalea’s voice projected through the room.
The room quieted. Kalea pointed at Annaliese, who had resumed her seat at the table with her teammates on the study. “She tried to tell you.” She waved her hand toward all of the committee heads sitting at the long table with Annaliese. “They all did. They’ve worked for five months and brought you data that by all rights should have taken years to find. How do you think that was possible? No human team could pull that off.”
“You manipulated our study?” Dr. Patel asked.
Kalea smiled. “There was no manipulation. We gave you access to the information faster than would normally be possible.”
Annaliese nodded. “Through the subjects. You had them feed us data.”
“Through every committee. Through your staff.” She winked. “A few people that would have otherwise stayed hundreds of miles away were inspired to hand over information that by all rights they shouldn’t have been sharing until their own business was concluded.”
Annaliese raised an eyebrow. “Like an investigator in a funeral board case?”
“Perhaps.”
“I still don’t see what this has to do with the ‘miracle healings’ or the deaths,” Senator Vickers said.
Annaliese stared at him. “Aren’t you listening to anything that’s been said in this chamber? We told you that the ‘miracle healings’ were failed attempts to integrate with human beings.”
“We failed on the ones that died, and on the ones that committed random acts of violence,” Kalea said. “That’s why they had to be neutralized. We tried to reintegrate while they were in their comas, but it didn’t work.”
“What?” Senator Vickers asked.
“The individuals that failed to successfully integrate the energy proteins into human RNA proteins died,” Kalea said. She looked down. “We’re sorry about that. The team is right. We came to Earth through your satellites and were introduced to humans through healing wounds. We thought we could save the terminally ill. It would have been, what do you call it? A win-win. Yes, that’s it. You would have seen your loved ones healed, and maybe you would have trusted us, or at least accepted us.” Kalea sniffed, swiping a tear from her eye. “We didn’t mean to hurt anybody, or to traumatize the family and friends through our failures by making them go through those horrors twice. We didn’t mean to cause trouble when our beings left the bodies and caused the spontaneous combustion through our release. We didn’t know any other way. We are learning.” Kalea looked around the room, her eyes flashing in the lights overhead and from the cameras. “Why won’t you listen to us? You refuse to see, despite all we’ve shown you. We came to protect you from a threat far greater than any you face from your fellow mankind.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with the war,” Senator Vickers said. “In fact, I think that’s a red herring to throw us off track.” He waved at the images floating in the center of the room from the presentation and testimony. “I fail to see proof of what you’re claiming. I see a metal structure four light years away. There’s no indication anybody or anything is there.”
“Sir,” Annaliese said softly, “how could it get there unless somebody put it there?”
“The Society didn’t do it,” Galen said. “We don’t have the ability to build anything like that, or to get it that far into deep space. There’s no way anybody on Earth did that. It’s impossible. Can’t you see that?”
“They don’t see anything,” Kalea’s eyes glowed silver as she rose from her chair. “You sit there and judge people. You think that nothing can touch you. But you’re wrong.” She calmly walked through the force field surrounding her chair in the security chamber, her energy popping as she passed through it, unharmed. A gasp went up in the galley. She smiled as she touched the bailiff, who flew from the blue spark that erupted from her hand.
Congressman Vickers banged his gavel on the table. “Order! Everybody, calm down!”
“Enough of that!” Kalea threw a blue bolt at the gavel. Senator Vickers shouted as it singed his hand, causing him to drop it before it exploded. Kalea walked in front of the bench where the congressional panel gaped at the glowing woman standing in front of them. “You think you’re safe, but that’s a lie. You watched people die, and you call it normal. You watched others heal, and you pass it off as a miracle. You don’t have any idea what you’re looking at.” She walked to the center of the chamber, standing in the middle of the windows floating in the air from various projectors beaming from the study teams’ computers.
“Six months ago, I was just Carson Kerner’s niece. What did it matter that he rose from near death and grabbed my foot? His wife and children had it worse.” She waved her hand, sending the window flying toward the ceiling.
“It’s the same with all of these. Sidney Sinclair was just a daughter-in-law,” she said, flinging that window on the floor. “Bruce Burke was just a cousin,” she said swiping it toward the wall where the image flew inches over the head of a gaping reporter. “Just a nephew. Just a son-in-law. Just a neighbor. Just a friend. Just a babysitter. Just a medical assistant. Just a computer technician. Just a psychiatrist. Just a nurse. Just a custodian. Just another person that doesn’t matter,” she flicked her wrist, sending images flying around the room. “What do they know? They were just a step outside of acceptable parameters for grieving rites. They healed too, but you didn’t care until the miracles you cared more about passed away.” She opened her hands, spreading out a wide electric current that she threw to the computers on the study members’ table, shutting off every computer and making the images swirling around the room wink out. “I’ll tell you what they were. They were the strong ones. The ones with perception. The ones with minds open to the truth. The ones who knew that more was going on. The ones who accepted what everybody else denied – that your world has changed, and there’s no going back.” She dropped her arms, causing the electrical current to swirl out into the ceiling, where the lights flickered before resuming normal illumination. “Your world is fractured into pieces, and you don’t care.”
“Kalea,” Annaliese said softly, �
��I did hear you.” She stood, motioning to her teammates sitting at the table with her. “We all did. That’s why we’re here. To give you a voice.”
Kalea stared at Annaliese sympathetically. “I know, but surely you must have known that they wouldn’t listen. But you will listen now.” She walked up the center aisle, throwing the door open with another bolt of energy. “Take a walk with me. I have something to show you outside.”
“Get back in here!” Senator Vickers shouted.
Kalea turned, her eyes silver. “Don’t you want to see what the rest of the world is looking at right outside your door?”
Annaliese fell in step behind Kalea, followed by the study members. Slowly, the Senators and Representatives rose and fell in, followed by the reporters and others in the chamber. Kalea threw out her arms, sending bolts of energy ahead of her to blast open the back door of the U.S. Capitol. She stepped outside on the top step, a cold breeze causing her scarf to billow behind her. Kalea raised her arms, sending up energy bolts that crackled as they connected with the satellites orbiting the planet overhead. A purple glow lit the sky, showing the National Mall filled with millions of pairs of silvery eyes staring back at them.
“Behold, your new reality.” Lightning flashed overhead, illuminating the humans packed in the National Mall, filling the space as far as the eye could see.
Annaliese gasped. “Five thousand wasn’t the beginning of it.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Kalea stared at the hybrid humans with pride. “It was the tip of the iceberg. They’re everywhere, all over the world. This is just North America. What we could fit in here, anyway.”
“How many are there?” a reporter asked behind them.
Kalea smiled. “They aren’t just in the Mall. They’re in the streets. They’re in front of us and behind us and all around us, from here to Virginia and Maryland.” She turned, staring at Senator Vickers. “You have five million hybrid human-aliens at your back door, Senator. Do you have a force field big enough to hold that?”
“We’ll get the aliens out of you,” he stammered.
Kalea laughed. “You saw what happened when the binding failed. Do you really think you can undo this?”
The downtown lights flickered, faded, and then rose back to normal. Kalea looked around as the silvery eyes stared toward the sky, where pinpricks of light pinged the distant satellites. Cries of pain rose in the crowd. Kalea heard a thump and discovered Annaliese crumpled on the marble floor at her feet, holding her foot. Several others had collapsed or were writhing in pain, their faces contorted in agony. Kalea knelt, holding Annaliese by the shoulders. “What is it?”
“My foot, where I had the nanotech injected last summer.” She took off her shoe, and screamed as her flesh swirled where the machines pressed against her skin. A large black spot appeared on the bottom of her foot.
“You didn’t,” Kalea said seriously.
Annaliese nodded, tears streaming down her face. “I had a torn ligament. I just wanted it to stop hurting.”
Senator Vickers walked up behind Kalea. “What happened?”
Kalea’s eyes glinted silver as the pricks of lights in the satellites faded. “It’s too late. They found you.” She turned her gaze to Senator Vickers, holding him with a seething stare. “Time’s up.”
He grabbed Kalea’s shoulders, shaking her. “Time’s up for what? What’s in that metal structure at Alpha Centauri? Who are they? What are we facing?”
Kalea pushed out a bolt of energy, throwing Senator Vickers off her. He fell to the ground, where she kneeled beside him. “Life or death, Senator. What’s it going to be?”
Epilogue
The situation room at the Space Exploration Society bunker was buzzing as scientists pulled wires and toggled useless switches. “What happened?” Thomas Atkins, the head administrator of the Houston Society office, asked, rushing around the room.
“An electrical signal went through our entire satellite grid. It came from Washington D.C.,” Avery said, still rushing about taking readings. He had arrived fifteen minutes ago, breaking away from the Internet broadcast of his sister and cousin’s shocking Congressional testimony when the call came from work to check out another strange phenomenon in the satellite systems. “I was trying to decipher it when something else hit the system from the deep space monitoring stations and blew out everything.”
“Did you get anything from it?”
“Just binary code.”
The lights and computers flickered on. “Thank goodness,” Thomas pulled a seat next to Avery. “Can you get it back up?”
“Computer, retrieve last open file.” Avery said. The screen flickered. “It looks like vocal commands are still offline.” Avery’s fingers flew over the keys. “Here,” he said, as a series of numbers came on the screen. “It looks like it went on a loop through our satellite systems.”
“Can you trace the source?”
Avery typed in more code, bringing up a map of the universe. A red line went out from Earth to a point outside the Oort cloud. It slowed, before progressing out, further, further, until it stopped at –
“The Alpha Centauri system,” Avery said.
“That’s where they say this energy came from that’s screwed everything up with the ‘miracle cures’,” Thomas said. A group of people were building behind them, straining to see the computer screen as Avery typed in more code, trying to clean up the resolution. Avery shook his head.
“It’s riding a radio frequency,” Avery said. “It looks like it’s coming from the Voyager Probe.”
“That probe has been defunct for years. That’s impossible!” Thomas said.
“The last transmission was ten years ago,” someone in the group behind them said, “and it wasn’t heading to Alpha Centauri.”
“Are you sure it’s Voyager?” Thomas asked.
Avery shrugged. “It looks like it, but I can’t say how. It’s a perfect match with radio frequencies from the probe in the past.”
“How is it carrying binary code?” Thomas asked.
“How did it get to Alpha Centauri?” Avery asked.
They sat in silence, staring at the stream of code continuing to filter through the satellites.
“What’s the code doing?” Thomas asked as the number slowed down, and then stopped. Suddenly, the screen went blank and then a single word appeared at the bottom of the screen:
ACTIVATE.
The room went black.
To be continued in Metamorphosis, Book Two of The Earthside Trilogy.
About the Author
My name is Sherri Fulmer Moorer. I write because I’ve always loved to do it, and ebooks gave me an opportunity to share those stories with readers that I just couldn’t pass up. Plain and simple, I’m an opportunist. When the ebook revolution hit, I dove in because I wanted to be involved on the front end of this new wave. Who doesn’t want to be part of a revolution?
I write in a variety of genres because I can’t be pigeon holed into one area, and I’m many other things in addition to being an author. I work full time in professional licensing, which is great for keeping me in touch with people and reality and, in turn, inspires to write more. I’m married and live in the woods with two parrots that keep our hearts, home, and lives filled with joy and silliness that most people find strange. I’m a social media rambler and borderline introvert/extrovert who’s kindred spirit, according to online quizzes, is somewhere between a Sith Inquisitor from Star Wars and Scooter from The Muppets. You can find more on my writing and published works at http://www.sherrithewriter.com
Fiction Titles
Blurry (Wings ePress, 2011)
Anywhere But Here (Whiskey Creek Press, 2012)
Move (2013)
Splinter (Whiskey Creek Press, 2013)
Obsidian (2014)
Non-Fiction Title
Battleground Earth – Living by Faith in a Pagan World (PublishAmerica, 2004)
Feathered Frenzy – A Quick Guide to Adapting Birds into Your Li
fe (2013)
Shatterpoint – Smashing the Christian Stereotype (2014)
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