As we ride on, I peer upward toward the inky, bloodstained sky, observing ridges of rock, wrinkled in time, appearing like grumpy old men complaining about their bodily aches and pains. Oddly, I see a few dome-shaped structures I can’t accurately identify. And as we bounce upward like two children on a bumper car, I can’t help but notice cooled lava rivers left over from the last earthquake. But there is something different, something grossly familiar, about the rocky structures on the side of the road.
“What happened here?” I ask quietly as I listen to the lonely hum of my bike. Maya and I stoically ride on into the night. Occasionally, I gaze upward, observing three gray clouds forming overhead. Suddenly a crack of lightning shoots into the air. Maya wraps her arms around me. I peer into the sky, noting that storm clouds are forming all around us like ominous evil demons.
“Demons,” you say? Yes, an unclean spirit. Perhaps a lost spirit.
As we climb the lonely Aggadah Mountain, I wonder what’s out there. Daimon? Yakshagana? Karnataka? “Who’s out there?” I whisper. “What do you want from me?”
My depression begins to float over me like a wandering dark cloud looking for nourishment. No, it’s not real, I say to myself. Forge on.
Oddly, there is something all too familiar about the area. It is as if some form of thermal radiation was present right here in the recent past; the rocks around me look singed and vitrified. What’s happening? Something evil has struck this land once before. Suddenly the skies open and a deluge of rain pierces me like a knife. I feel Maya’s warm breath behind me.
“What are we going to do? We need to stop!” Maya pleads.
“But where?”
“My father told me about this place!” Maya screams through the pelting rain. “There is an old mortuary buried deep underground. I think I can find it! Once, while researching the land, my father showed me it.”
As soon as I hit the brakes, the bike lurches forward, nearly tossing us to the ground, but Maya has leaped off the back, falling to the ground and then quickly getting up, and is running toward some godforsaken hole in the ground.
“Are you crazy? Where are you going?” I say, pleading for sanity.
“I know it’s around here! We have to get dry! We can sleep in the old crypt tonight. I know I can find it!”
“Maya stop!”
I kick the dirt bike; then I begin running after her. My clothes cling to me like a hungry, blood-deprived leech. Maya’s image nearly disappears into the inky night before I see her kneeling over a slightly protruding area in the middle of the rock-strewn terrain. She is chanting something in Mayan and flailing her hands in the air. The earth somehow moves, opening and slowly devouring her body whole. I witness her descending into a lonely hole in the ground.
She’s gone!
“No, it can’t be!”
I’m still vulnerable. The demons are swirling around me. Right here! Right now! Where is Maya taking me?
I glare into the hole. There are winding, blinking dark blue stairs cascading downward into a spiral catacomb beneath the surface. Oddly, I feel a strange form of magnetic induction shooting through my body. Its force draws me down the stairs. Maya seems to be in some sort of hypnotic trance as she descends further and further into the bowels of the earth.
The demons call my name. Do they know me? Did we meet once? A strange chemical enters my brain, filtering its way into my consciousness. It’s taking me into the past. I want out. I think about running back up the stairs, but I can’t. I scream, “Maya!” No answer. I feel as if my brain is drowning in some sort of foggy, smoky fluid. It won’t let me go. It’s strangling me!
I place my foot on the lowest level of the stairs. They stop blinking. It’s quiet. “Who’s down here?” I shout. I feel as if I’m under someone else’s control. Flashes of faces shoot into my head: Victoria Vorashian, Copernicus, my father.
I’m standing frozen like a statue. Maya walks back to me, looking befuddled. I caress her shoulders, saying, “You scared me. Don’t do that!” In the midst of my fear and panic, I feel cold, steely eyes upon me.
“We’re not alone.”
All I see are eyes. Vacuous, empty eyes set inside large heads. I hear voices inside my head.
“That’s him,” one says.
“He’s back,” another adds.
“What does he want from us?” says a third.
I quickly glance up. “My God!” There are circular glass tables. Elongated heads! Big black eyes! Smoky drinks! Cascading smoky mist circling upward. Muffled sounds. Weird noises. Languages? ETs?
I squeeze Maya’s hand tighter.
“What do we do?” I hear Maya say.
They’re all looking at Maya and me with steely, spine chilling eyes. Subliminal suggestions are everywhere. I take a deep breath.
Maya and I begin walking through the tables.
Oddly, the fog in my head clears. Maya’s eyes seem to be steering me through the room of aliens. I hear three voices again:
“He’s the one.”
“He’s back.”
“Who’s the girl?”
To my right, I see a table of men with elongated heads sipping on exotic drinks with straws. As they sip, I observe them slowly glaze over into another realm of consciousness.
I feel a swarm of electrons crashing against each other.
“What’s going on?” Maya whispers.
“Hell if I know,” I whisper back.
Maya squeezes my hands even tighter. “Where are they from?”
“Not Earth,” I reply wryly. “And that’s not milk they’re drinking.”
Straight ahead are a few steely, grotesque-looking men and women who appear totally unaware of our presence.
“They’re some sort of hybrid humanoids,” I whisper to Maya. “Don’t worry about them.”
But to my left, I see a table of reptilians. We stealthily walk forward toward what appears to be a bartender.
“He has a lot of nerve,” someone says.
“Who does he think he is?” says another.
“Does he know where he is?” I hear a third voice utter. “Victoria is going to be very interested in this.”
Dear God, what have I gotten Maya and myself into? I feel their derisive sneers shooting toward me.
“Are we in trouble?” Maya whispers as she draws her face closer and closer to mine.
“This ain’t Kansas,” I utter.
“I’m scared,” Maya utters under her breath as we walk through the smoldering room, which reeks with smoke from aromatic pipes.
“I can’t breathe,” Maya whispers.
There’s a huge hologram of ancient rocker David Bowie singing on a colorfully lit stage. “What?” I say.
I can’t help but think that we’ve inadvertently just walked into an ET bar, strange as it might seem.
“They’re just hangin’,” I whisper to Maya. “I think we’re going to be all right. Oh, look, Maya! I can’t believe it!” I witness slimy reptilians wildly dancing with other female reptilians on the screen.
A man who I assume is perhaps the host of this macabre, slimy hole starts moving quickly through the crowd, bumping into a table of what appears to be three misshapen, grotesque-looking men and two oddly shaped women. They are dipping joints into some sort of chemical compound as they suck from a crazed bowl of smoke and smoldering liquid.
All of a sudden, the screen at the front of the room flashes the image of a male reptilian dancing wildly with Maya, making loud and angry sexual remarks at her.
“Don’t worry,” the man says. “They’re not going to hurt you! That’s their way of having fun, all right?”
“But … what’s happening?”
“They’re just projecting their sexual fantasies on the screen. It’s harmless, Michael.”
I stop dead in my tracks.
<
br /> “How did you know my name?”
The strange man reaches out his hand. “Lief—Lief Holden. Sorry, I’d say we haven’t met before, but we have.”
I inhale deeply. I’m standing inside an ET hangout, looking like a wet furry dog, shaking rain from my hair and dirt and soot from my clothing. The man in front of me looks like me; he’s a dead ringer, just ten years or so older.
“Come again?” I say.
Lief smiles as he leads us away from the chaos of the dance floor. We struggle our way toward what appears to be the bar.
“How do you know who I am?” I say sternly.
“Everyone in here knows who you are—probably for a lot of reasons.”
“Give me one!”
“For starters, they can smell your DNA a mile away—Eisenstein DNA. These dudes have senses that you can’t even imagine. Do you see that guy over there?” Lief points toward a man with an elongated head who is sporting eyebrows that stretch three inches long. “That guy would make your Eisenstein clan look like a bunch of mentally-challenged buffoons. Try talking to him; he’ll take what you think is intelligence and chew it up and spit it out.” He laughs. “You’re still such a kid, aren’t you?”
I glare at him. “What’s it to you?”
Lief hands Maya and me towels. “Go ahead dry off; you both look like shaggy dogs.”
“So who are you?”
Lief takes out a bottle of smoky liquid I don’t recognize. He takes a long swig and then moves his head around.
“I don’t know who I am, Michael. I’m the real definition of a lost soul.”
He stares over at Maya. “I’ve heard a lot about you too, my lady,” he says, coupling a curtsy with a curmudgeonly, cunning smile.
“What do you mean?” I say, baffled.
“I’ve had amnesia for years. I can’t tell you who my mother or my father are. But somehow I have memories of you—Michael Eisenstein. Go figure!”
I shake my head. I peer around the room like a wild jaguar. “These guys think I’ve done something wrong; is that it?”
Lief howls and then takes a drag from his mini ciggy. “These guys don’t give a shit about you, Mikey Man. Don’t worry about them. A lot of them are just vagabonds—you know, space travelers without a home. But I will tell you one thing; they’re not your friends. I can tell you that. Get used to it, Mikey, my confused little friend. As you said earlier, this ain’t Kansas.”
“What are you drinking?” I ask wryly.
“Something that will make you snort, kick, and scream. Here! It’ll knock you on your ass for a week.”
I feel Maya squeezing my hands, gripping me like a vise.
“Not interested,” I say softly.
Lief takes another swig from his mystery drink. His eyeballs seem to nearly retreat into their sockets. “This is no place for kids—especially you, Michael. These people know who you are. Keep your eyes focused on me.”
“What do you mean?” I inquire.
Lief pounds his bottle back on the bar. “This isn’t kid stuff, Michael. You’re here for another heavyweight bout, right?”
I shrug. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh yeah? Ask your Mayan queen over there; she knows.”
I glance at Maya, but she seems as bewildered as I am.
“You know, sweet Maya!” Lief says, taking another swig of smoky, simmering liquid.
That stuff seems to be filling his head with lies.
“No lies!” he shouts at me. “I don’t lie!”
Lief moves his face inches from mine.
Great, another mind reader, I muse.
“Ask your little sweetheart what a Mayan quest is. Right, honey? It’s when you come back from the dead and fight the good fight all over again! Do you think these guys don’t know who you are? You’re not normal, Mikey. I’m not even sure you’re real. Some of us come back through what you refer to as reincarnation, but that’s not you! You’re not an ET. You’re not a humanoid, a cyborg, or even a man at all. You’re the first man-made human. God has nothing to do with you! You got that, Mikey Eisenstein?” Lief forces a laugh. “You’re like a piece of cosmic dust that’s come back to haunt us. You’re just a fragment.” He smiles like a thief in the night. “You’re this!” He picks up a speck of dirt on the bar and blows it off into the air.
I shake my head, and then I glance at Maya, who still appears to be more confused than I am.
Lief puts his drink down. “You’re the reason I can’t remember anything. Don’t even try to figure that out; you’ll get it one day! I’m the man without a past, and you’re a man who was created out of spare DNA parts by a lunatic on another planet. Got it, chief?”
“I need to get out of here!” I scream.
Lief starts laughing. Then the entire room starts to laugh—except for the reptilian contingency, who all snarl in disgust.
“He wants to go home. Poor little boy wants to go home!” One of the Andromeda boys yells.
Suddenly a reptilian gets out of his seat and walks slowly over to me.
“Do you know my brother Zarri?” he asks in this cryptic, bizarre tone, sounding like a Mandarin Bob Dylan.
I swallow. “I’ve just heard about him on the news; that’s all.” I feel my body shaking.
The ghastly hybrid lizard places his hand on my shoulder. “That’s what we get when we trust humans,” he says sardonically.
A brilliant shriek of synthetic noise comes from seemingly nowhere. Maya and I look around frantically, trying to locate the source of the sound. “I’m sorry,” I say to the reptilian figure standing defiantly in front of me.
“That’s an X-spot, stupid,” he finally says. “Someone’s really coming through the rabbit hole.”
The door bursts open. Maya and I stand there in rude, glazed bafflement.
“Happy to see me?”
I can feel the Reptilian’s foul breath upon me.
“Bird Dog?” I say incredulously.
She smiles. “At your service!”
CHAPTER 33
August 7, 2378
4:29:14 p.m.
Maya and I scream all the way as Bird Dog ushers us to her souped-up swirling cycle drone. It has three revolving wheels—one for each of us. We spin, circle and fly like Pokémon characters on meth.
Bird Dog’s jet-black hair shoots up high and proud like Sugar Mama on The Proud Family. . It whistles, shrieks, and swirls in the wind, signifying our joy. I know it’s a strange image, but Maya and I are wrapped in each other’s arms, kissing like two teenagers madly in love. Have you ever escaped a crazed ET bar called X-Spot while being freed by a girl named Bird Dog who shot out of a wormhole? Making out seemed like a logical response.
Suddenly we began descending, and slowly, we lower to Earth.
“Hey, what do you kids think you’re doing?” Bone screams like a mountain man, wrapping his large arms around us. His body feels like an electric current.
Then his eyes rove meticulously around his property.
“Can’t be too careful,” he says softly.
“Who are you lookin’ for, Bone?” I ask.
Bone peers up at the orange sky. “Drones, superdrones, and supersnoops with cameras. Listen, guys, since I got in that skirmish with that reptile, this entire area has been full of ’em.”
“Who?”
“The media snipers, the sharpshooters… you know, those vermin that make camp and just don’t go away!”
“Well, where are they?” I ask, still feeling a little bit disjointed.
“They’re probably headed toward Dulce.”
“Dulce!” shouts Bird Dog as she mounts her cycle. “That’s out of my territory. If you really want to see humanity at its worst, make sure you go there!”
“Places to go, people to see!” Bone e
xclaims. “Love that girl! She’s a pint-sized Avant Courier.”
“Say what?” I respond, shrugging.
“It’s French for ‘scout.’ What’s the matter, do you think I’m uncouth?”
Bird Dog waves her hands in the air. Maya and I flash her a strong thumbs-up, watching her ascend into the sky.
“She’s a spitfire!” Bone adds.
“So Dulce? What the heck is in Dulce?” I ask sheepishly.
A nervous, uncomfortable laugh surges forth. It sounds more like a death march than anxious relief. “You kids don’t want to know.” Bone shakes his head. “Listen, little cherubs, if you’re going to play with the big boys, you’re going to have to bone up. Sorry for the bad pun. Anyway, we need to get out of here—fast!”
“What’s in Dulce?”
Bone ogles at me like I’m an innocent little bear cub not worthy of an answer. “Hasn’t your father ever told you about his pet project?”
“No, my father is mainly into research.”
Amused, Bone spits on the ground. “You amaze me, Michael. Were you actually born yesterday?” He snorts. “It’s time for you to wake up before they start comin’ for you.”
“Ya know, Bone, I like you, but I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”
Bone peers up at the garish sky. “There’s one!” he cries, raising his high-tech gun. He pauses. “No, only a bird.” His eyes continue to glare upward; he looks like some sort of futuristic sniper.
Maya tugs at my shoulders, whispering nearly inaudibly, “Is he okay?
“I’ve got a question,” I query. “Who the hell are you? You’re no run-of-the-mill drone salesman; that’s for sure.”
Bone takes a deep breath, running his worn, muscular hands through his untamed hair. “Who am I? Tell you what, if you have the guts to hang with me, you may find out!”
“I mean, how to do you know Bird Dog?”
Bone kicks a little piece of dirt into the air. “Let’s just say that I have some friends in high places,” he says, smiling devilishly.
“Is one of ’em my dad?”
Bone shakes his head. “Easy, boy. Let’s get to know one another a little better first, okay?”
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