by Dante King
I wondered if I hadn’t actually recovered from the drugs yet. It had never happened to me, but some people said that while under the drugs, they hallucinated. They saw things. Bizarre things.
That’s what this is, I decided. There was no way I could be awake, captured, and not have at least a couple of the bugs guarding me. This place wasn’t real, which is why I couldn’t smell anything.
The smoke, or fog, moved like it was alive. As I thought about it, one of the smoke-tendrils reached out from the darkness and caressed my face. It was cold, but not unbearably so. I wanted to reach out and slap it away, but my training told me that was a bad idea.
“If you experience a hallucination,” the trainer had told us, “don’t fight it. Don’t try to make sense of it. And most of all, don’t feed into it. It’s just your brain’s way of making sense of what it’s experiencing. That’s all. If it happens to you, don’t panic. Instead, consider it a short vacation from reality. Treat it like a holovid. Just sit back, imagine yourself a big bowl of popcorn, and enjoy.” His words had been met by a chorus of cheers and whispers. Several mentioned that popcorn was their second choice—that they’d be inserting their favorite holovid star into their hallucinations.
I rarely watched holovids, but I knew who I wanted in my dream—Reaver. But before I could focus enough to make it happen, a second tendril joined the first. Their touch was ethereal, and though I couldn’t feel any pressure, I knew they were there.
There was something happening beyond sight, sound, touch, or any of my other senses.
Bizarre, I thought. I didn’t know my brain could do this. I laughed and expected an echo, but it was as if the sound had died only a few inches from my mouth. Again, I thought bizarre.
I refocused my mind and imagined Reaver. The woman could turn anything into a weapon. Her legs were strong, beautifully shaped, and smooth. She could terrify men or inspire them to greatness. She could disappear into a crowd or draw every eye in the room. She was one of many, but special in her own way.
When I looked around, I didn’t see her and was a little disappointed. So, I tried again. This time, I closed my eyes and felt an image of her begin to form. She was naked, of course, and I didn’t mind at all. The image smiled at me as she laid on a huge, soft, silky bed. She stretched, and smooth, strong muscles relaxed under her soft skin.
By why do I have to close my eyes to see her? I wondered. This is a hallucination, a vivid dream… but I had to close my eyes to see what I wanted to see. I was no psychologist, but something about it didn’t make sense.
It was a hallucination, though. It had to be. My hands couldn’t grasp anything around me. I couldn’t feel the escape pod’s seat. There was no smell. The taste in my mouth was gone. And neither smoke nor fog behaved like that.
In my hallucination, I shrugged. Just go along for the ride, I told myself. It’ll make a great story to tell someday.
Then something even more interesting entered my dream. The tendrils withdrew, and the indistinct light in the darkness grew in intensity. Dark shapes passed in the distance, though how far away, I couldn’t tell. It was more like the suggestion of movement rather than a solid form.
The shape crossed the distance again, and though I couldn’t hear it, I sensed a noise. It was what I would have suspected if the thing in my dream was real. It was the kind of woosh it would make flying across a peaceful glade on a cold, winter night. It was completely alien, yet somehow familiar.
The shape—the presence—was joined by a second, then a third, then more than I could fathom. I wanted to count the things. I wanted the statistics, the knowledge of how many beings I faced. It was in my nature, and a result of my training, in case I had to help them, or kill them.
But their number was indiscernible. I could hardly tell one from another until one stopped. It was a squid—sort of.
I didn’t mind squid. They were squishy and looked like a knot of boogers, but they were also very tasty. They weren’t usually cooked right, though. It was like mankind had forgotten thousands of years of culinary skills. Like they forgot we had technology that reduced culinary mastery down to little more than a few button-pushes. Yet somehow, most so-called “chefs” managed to screw it up.
I reached out with one hand. The creature was small enough to grasp, but I was having trouble focusing on it. It seemed solid but indistinct, almost an echo of a squid rather than the real thing. When I curled my fingers, it slipped past. I didn’t even feel it. The human mind is a mysterious thing, I mused as I watched it travel left to right across my vision. It turned inward upon itself and grew a little bigger.
When the creature passed in front of me again, I tried to grab it, but it slipped past my fingers once more, untouched and untouchable. Cool.
The squid turned again and grew a little more. The tentacled snack wasn’t bothering me, so I went over the failed mission in my mind.
The creature turned again, but instead of passing in front of me, it was heading right for my nose. I waited, expecting to feel the cool chill of smoky tendril, but nothing happened. It just kept growing.
Long after I’d expected the thing to reach me, it looked even bigger—two or three times as large. Then my eyes discovered exactly where the squid was, aligned their focus, and everything became clear.
The squid hadn’t started as little. It was simply far away. And it was huge. Planet-sized huge.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered into the darkness.
My voice was swallowed up by the void. I felt my heart pounding in my chest and my breathing become rapid. Somewhere from my memories, my training reached out and bitch-slapped my brain. It told my body to remember what it had learned. This was a hallucination. There was no such thing as flying squid. The really big ones had gone extinct long before my grandfather had been born. There weren't even any aliens we’d discovered that looked anything like that.
This was a hallucination, and I needed to stop feeding it.
I inhaled, closed my eyes, and calmed myself. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. When I opened my eyes again, I had to crane my neck to see the upper edge of the huge, glowing, blue eye that stared at me through the darkness. I tried to remember a holovid or book I’d read where something like this had happened. When I came up empty-handed, I mentally patted myself on the back. I didn’t know I could be so creative.
I wondered if I was dying. Scientists said that the mind could outlive the body. When it did, chemicals were released as part of the dying process. Those chemicals, like the drugs the escape pod had injected into me, caused what some referred to as the “light at the end of the tunnel” or the phenomenon of their life flashing before their eyes. I decided that I must be dead, and this was merely my brain’s way of saying goodbye. My only regret was that the last thing I would see was a big, ugly squid, of all things.
Something accompanied the giant invertebrate. It wasn’t a feeling, because feelings could be controlled, and I felt no fear. It wasn’t a smell, a taste, or anything else I’d experienced. It was a sense I didn’t know I had, and I sensed power.
Another giant blue orb appeared in the corner of my vision. When I turned to look, my whole body turned as well. It was another eye. I continued to turn and saw more eyes than I could count. A few were huge. Others looked small but could have been far away. It was tough to tell, considering the weird rules of the universe my hallucination had established. Overall, I was the center of attention. I’d had dreams like that before. They weren’t so bad.
I found the weird sense of power the squid radiated interesting. I felt as though I could sense each of them, even ones I couldn’t see, like a radar at night on a dark, stormy sea.
I sensed feelings from them. Most seemed curious. A few were hopeful. But the overwhelming feeling was anger. These products of my own mind were angry. Not at me, but at the universe. I didn’t blame them. I’d probably be angry if I’d been born so ugly too. The thought made me laugh into the darkness.
Void Gods, my mind wh
ispered. The Dark Ones. Ah, yes, I realized. That was where these creatures had come from. I’d spent hours listening to the colonel speaking of the gods of his weird religion. He hadn’t described what they looked like, only that there were a lot of them. They existed in a plane, a dimension, adjacent to our own—whatever that meant.
The place I was seeing now was void-like. There were no stars, no sound, and no smell. I could breathe, but I felt no air passing into or out of my nose. That had to be where the hallucination was drawing the images from. I reminded myself to thank Colonel Goswin for his inspiration later, if the subject ever came up. Then, again, maybe not. He might not appreciate me describing his deities as big, spooky, black, tentacled squid-things.
“The Dark Ones,” I whispered into the void.
We are known by many names.
I reeled from the sensation. A thought, bigger than my own, had poured into my mind like hot syrup forced through a keyhole. It took my breath away and forced all other thoughts from my imagination until I could absorb it.
We are the Lakunae. We are many. We are one.
The thought had a voice, a mind that forced itself into my brain. The first thought seemed too big already, and the second one threatened to split my mind in two. The sensation was unpleasant, but I still felt no pain. Don’t feed it, I reminded myself. Just go along for the ride. It won’t last forever.
But something about the word “Lakunae” seemed familiar, as if I’d heard it before. I reached into the depths of my mind, drawing on my memory, and touched something I did not expect.
It was a collection of memories, dust-covered and heavy like an old tome buried in a storage room in some long-forgotten library. It opened before me, and though I’d never known anything in it, I suddenly remembered it all. Experiences that were not my own. Words of languages I’d never heard. First kisses I’d never experienced. Memories of ancestors from a distant past.
We have brought you to us. You are in our realm, our domain. Our universe. It is ours, and we own it, for we are Lakunae. We are many. We are one.
The thought was bigger the third time, but the sensation of discomfort wasn’t as profound. It was as though I were growing accustomed to it, or that my mind was stretching, making room for thoughts, feelings, and ideas bigger than anything it had experienced before. I felt good, malleable, and relaxed.
“So,” I said, the sound of my voice disappearing just beyond my nose, “where am I?”
I knew that speaking into a hallucination was bad, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt overcome by the power of the squids and wanted to know more. I was enjoying the sensation of awe and wonder.
You are in our domain. Our kingdom. Our universe. Our xadaar.
The last word sounded like “zi-dar” and made no sense. I felt as though I’d heard it somewhere before, though. I didn’t hold any particular religious beliefs, but something inside of me, call it my “soul,” understood the word’s meaning.
It meant something like kingdom but without the baggage of government, a hierarchy, or politics. The Lakunae had claimed it, conquered it, and now, it was theirs.
I looked around, searching for a landmark, a star—something they could rule over.
Nothing much to see except darkness, darkness, and more darkness. Your xadaar could use some TLC.
I immediately regretted the thought. Anger and vile hatred focused on my soul, which seemed to whither in response. I gasped as my bones filled with the Lukanae’s rage. My body became rigid, and I thought I might explode. These telepathic Gods didn’t seem to enjoy humor, nor could I hide my thoughts from them. I didn’t offer an apology, but I stopped thinking that they were masters of little more than a big, empty space. The feeling passed, and I only sensed one mind connected to my own.
Your mission has failed.
Yeah, no shit. This thing was brilliant. Above brilliant. Its ability to state the obvious was probably unmatched. What was it trying to do, shame me? Hardly. I’d already killed a bunch of Xeno. Hopefully, the Revenge had taken out the rest of them as well. I’d done my part.
I cut my thoughts short before the squids’ anger could rise again. I crossed my arms and waited for it to continue.
Your crew has survived. We have returned them to your xadaar. You will join them there once again.
My mood lightened a bit. I motioned for the squid to go on. From the mind, I sensed amusement. That wasn’t such a bad way to go, either. I could make friends with the thing, though a small part of my mind, a new memory cowering in a corner, warned me against it.
Our kingdom is peaceful, quiet, and serene. We desire to bring peace to your existence, your lands, your worlds, and your lives. But we can not travel there from here.
I kept my arms crossed and studied the giant eyeball in front of me. The thing wanted my help? It’d already helped me. If these squid had found a way to keep my crew alive in hyperspace, then it evidently wanted something from me. Some kind of payment for the deed they’d done.
“All right,” I said into the void. “What’s your game plan?”
We will return you to your universe. You will take with you a piece of us. You will gain understanding, strength, power of mind and body, and more. You will collect and gather the components of those who came before you. You will assemble them and open a portal for us to pass through.
“So, you want to leave. Get out of whatever this is,” I said.
Do this, and your universe will know peace.
I thought about it. I’d been trained to kill, destroy, and ruin. But, in the end, my job was to bring peace. When political means failed, when reason, compassion, and logic couldn’t bring an end to conflict, I, and those like me, were sent in to secure the end of hostility through extreme and immediate violence. But, in the end, the goal was peace. It was my job to work myself out of a job. It was also my personal dream. I felt better about the request, but the memory that concealed itself in a dark place of my mind whimpered and warned against it.
“I understand,” I felt myself saying.
You are our avatar. Make your way to our artifacts. Retrieve them. Assemble them. Open the way for our arrival.
Images entered my mind like important facts I’d forgotten a long time ago. Like memories of old childhood friends and pets, they seemed familiar. I saw the artifacts—golden, silver, and black machines of impressive complexity yet simple design.
You will be granted strength of our strength, memories of our memories, and knowledge from beyond. Behold, your gift.
I only had a moment to wonder what it meant by “gift” before I was consumed by a pain I’d never experienced in my life. My body exploded into nothingness. My soul cried out and attempted to flee. My vision traveled above my twitching, thrashing form and began to slowly spin like the hand of an ancient, mechanical clock.
I watched my body grow, become translucent, and fade into a spherical cloud. I continued to spin and watched as, little by little, the cloud began to condense.
Time no longer had meaning. I felt nothing. I knew nothing. I couldn’t change my perspective or close my eyes. All I could do was spin and watch my body slowly take shape from the cloud.
When about half of my body had formed, small sparks became visible, like networks along my limbs. They were easy to spot against the black backdrop, and the more that formed, the more excited the squids became. They started to chant, not in words, but in thoughts, feelings, ideas, and although I could see my body and wasn’t occupying it, I began to feel my limbs.
It started as a tingling sensation in my fingers and toes. It moved to my lips, arms, and legs. Then the universe—all of existence—began to fade, and a new sensation began to replace it.
Sound.
I both felt and heard a deep, rumbling roar. I opened my eyes but couldn’t focus. The metallic taste of the drug’s after-effects welled up in my mouth. An edge of cold, sickly sweet fluid joined it. I coughed, and a silver-black fluid exploded from my lungs and splashed on the ground. A wav
e of new sensations rolled in.
There was no sign of the escape pod, the void, or the Lakunae.
I was lying on an alien planet in the middle of a jungle.
Chapter Eight
The air was humid, damp, and thick with the scent of growing things. Bright light filtered through the thick canopy of trees, but the rest of my surroundings were deep in shadow. The plants themselves were mostly green, including the trunks of the trees, which shot straight up at least a hundred yards into the sky. Their color was off a little, though. They were a shade of green but also contained a bit of blue. Everything did.
Here and there were little bursts of brightly colored flowers. Some were as large as my head. Others looked like explosions of fireworks caught at their brightest, most brilliant moments. Most of the color, however, was reserved for an area about two-thirds of the way between the canopy and the ground. I spotted orbs attached to trunks and branches—fruit, which may or may not be edible to humans. I knew I’d have to try one eventually.
I lifted my head a bit further out and observed the area around me. I caught a whiff of something rotting, but it seemed far away, carried along by the slight breeze meandering between the trees.
The fronds and leaves of the ground-level plants were wide and thick. Some appeared to have small spines running along their edges, and I made a mental note to avoid them until I knew which were poisonous.
The one thing that was missing—the one thing I’d most expected in such an environment—was the sound of animals. Jungles, such as this, didn’t form on their own. Seeds couldn’t be carried by such a gentle breeze. The fruit high in the trees was for animals, but if they were nearby, they were silent, frightened by my arrival.