Suki looked at the man in shock and disbelief “How…? Why…? What has happened?”
Agent Brown raised a quizzical brow. “That would have been my next question for you, Ms. Tanaka. What happened in here?”
Suki was confused. What should she tell the man who she by now suspected worked for a governmental organization that investigated mysterious events like this one?
“I can tell you what happened before I blacked out, but I’m not sure if you’ll believe me. I’m not sure if I even believe it myself…”
Agent Brown looked over to his partner who shook his head. “Let’s get you out of here first. This is not the right place for this discussion. Can you walk?”
Suki was not sure, but she slowly pushed herself up and her legs seemed to be working just fine. She instinctively touched the region between her eyes where she still felt a strange buzzing sensation.
“Find your brother!”
Touching her skin triggered the thought that seemed to have been a message from the mystical woman commanding her to find her sibling. Suki was confused. How should she find her brother? Suki’s only brother died when he was very young. She was at a loss as to how to interpret this message. Did she have another brother that she didn’t know of?
“I have to talk to Mum,” Suki mumbled to herself as she followed Mr. Brown’s colleague to the plane’s exit.
Yes… they should be called observers, not navigators, Suki thought as she passed the door to the cockpit. It stood wide open revealing the plane’s holo screen, which displayed the flight path that had been covered in less than two hours and had been followed by a safe automatic landing. The seats of the navigators were empty, just like the rest of the plane, pools of blood collecting at their base.
Agent Garcia pointed to a black maxi-pod that hovered a few centimeters above ground. “We can talk in there.”
The pod had the same fit-out as most travel pods but was much larger and could easily accommodate eight people in perfect privacy. Suki stepped into the pod and sat down on the air cushion that was formed into a comfortable seat. A small table separated her from Agent Garcia who sat opposite of Suki and now turned on the media recorder.
“Can I offer you something to drink?”
Suki was surprised that the man did not immediately fire questions at her, but patiently made sure she was comfortable first. “A glass of water would be nice…”
He placed the glass in front of her and watched her take a small sip. “You don’t have to worry about your sanity. We’re used to hearing and seeing strange things, things that you wouldn’t believe if you hadn’t seen them for yourself. We’ve investigated this sort of attack many times over the last few weeks. But today there’s something different. You.”
Suki looked at the man in disbelief. “Me? Why? What’s special about me?”
Agent Garcia smiled and watched Suki have another sip of water. “You’re special because you’re alive. So far none of the many people that have been attacked survived. You’re the first.”
Suki’s eyes grew wide. She had seen the fierce woman kill at least one passenger, but imagining that she had killed them all while Suki was lying unconscious on the floor made her feel like a coward. She would have fought the woman no matter if it had been her own demise.
“So you know about the woman?” Suki asked.
Now Agent Garcia looked startled. “What woman? The onboard cameras showed nothing. You were the only one left. There was no other woman alive when we opened the door to the plane.”
Suki understood. They had investigated many killing sprees, but they had never found any signs of the woman. Did they even know what killed all these people?
“So you really don’t know who or what is responsible for all this?” Suki looked directly into the man’s eyes. She thought she could see anger, but also fear mixed with uncertainty.
“No! So you better spit it out right now. What killed these people!”
That was definitely anger speaking. Suki felt like smirking at the man, but she knew better and her face remained calm, but concerned. “I was just about to serve a drink to Mr. Granger, the man in seat 2 in first class when I noticed that something seemed to be holding him down. He was unable to breathe. Then I saw blood pouring down the back of his neck. There was nothing there. It looked like something made of thin air was piercing his throat. It was only when I touched him that I saw her.”
Agent Garcia’s eyes glowed in anger. “Who?”
Suki felt unsure. Should she really tell him about the woman’s hair? “I saw a woman, dressed in a beautiful green kimono. She looked like a creature out of a mythological fairy tale. Her hair… her hair was very long, at least down to her hips, but it wasn’t hanging straight down, it was moving in the air like the tentacles of an octopus. She killed a passenger with it.”
Agent Garcia looked at her in disbelief. “How? How did she kill with her hair?”
Suki told him about the ends of her hair turning into metal spikes, which she used to stab down on the passenger. She told him about her trying to stop the woman and about the creature touching her between the eyes, dropping her to the floor unconscious. Now Agent Garcia poured himself a glass of water. He seemed unsure of how to proceed. Suki sensed he was weighing up a decision, determining whether she had gone mad from seeing all the bloodshed or if she was actually telling the truth. Agent Garcia slowly regained his composure. His eyes lost their sparkle and he instructed the travel pod as to their intended destination.
“Thank you, Ms. Tanaka. Agent Miles will take over from here. Please make yourself comfortable while I take you to HQ.”
Suki felt relieved. He believed her story, didn’t he?
* * *
Agent Garcia closed the door to Agent Miles’s office as he left to return to the crime scene at the airport. Suki looked at the woman who wore a white coat and whose office resembled a high-tech hospital room. Suki felt uncomfortable. She feigned a smile.
“Don’t worry. I’m a psychologist. All we’re going to do is have a little chat about what happened and how you’re dealing with it. Do you mind if I attach these sensors to your skin? They help me in making a conclusive statement about your well-being.”
Suki nodded and Agent Miles stuck a few golden discs onto the side of her temples as well as the inside of her lower arms, just above her wrist. “So… please tell me what happened on the flight.”
Suki repeated the same story that she had told Agent Garcia just a few moments ago, but where the man seemed to become frightened and angry, the woman just looked at her in a calm, compassionate way. When Suki finished her story, Agent Miles started working on her tablet, obviously analyzing the data collected from Suki’s report. Suki noticed the woman was getting nervous. Something seemed to be wrong.
Agent Miles looked at Suki in a skeptical way. “I… I would have bet my last penny on your story being the ramblings of someone in severe shock, mixing up a crazy dream with reality, but the readings confirm that you’re telling the truth. I’m sorry to have doubted you, but your story is hard to believe. Agent Garcia will have to revise his opinion of you.”
Agent Miles smiled at Suki who felt it was high time to get out of here. “May I leave now? I feel tired and I’ll need to meet with an airline official for a debriefing before I get any rest.”
Agent Miles nodded. “Yes, sure. Please leave your contact details. We’ll be in touch tomorrow morning.”
Fourteen
Jon
Amy entered Jon’s lab looking tired but happy. “He has finished the burger and has now asked for sushi and green tea.”
Jon smiled at Amy. ”Sounds like he’s exploring life like a child would. Every experience is new and amazing.” He wondered if Delta knew that all the food he consumed consisted of a synthetic compound based on tasteless soy starch that could be infused with all sorts of chemical flavoring, mimicking the tastes of the foods of the world, seen through the lens of the chemical engineers at the Global
Nutritional Academy.
“We have to talk to Iris. We need clearance to access the Interpol network. We have to find the man and woman that Delta identified as his brother and sister.”
Amy nodded. “Leave it up to me. I’ll talk to Iris, woman to woman. I’m sure she’ll be able to arrange that.”
Jon was glad Amy was here to support him. He had grown fond of her and sometimes there even seemed to be something else, a special spark that lit up within him when he looked at her. Jon observed how she walked out of his room leaving a trace of her special fragrance in the air.
He decided to have another chat with Delta. He really needed more information about the alien life form that was attacking humanity. Delta had told him that he wouldn’t fight his own kind, but Jon was still not sure what his own kind really was. He had been able to cross the alien DNA with strands of human DNA, but he was still far from even scratching the surface of the knowledge that seemed to be encoded in it.
Delta sat at the holo desk, wearing a tight blue skin suit made up of a special mix of Kevlar and silver threading that doubled up as biosensors transmitting Delta’s biological data to Amy’s scanner. He was staring at a text on the holo screen that Jon had arranged for him.
I play with ideas
I am a blacksmith of concepts
Truth is my anvil
And thoughts are my tools
I pour rivers of golden wisdom
Into dry and barren lands
Where the smell is of singed plastic
Shaped by fire from long-forgotten plants
I am a shell that has no core
A point of view without an anchor
Drifting on the open sea
Where calm stillness talks to me
I will myself to stay alive
What happens if I let go?
Will it be the end of concepts?
Will I be a blacksmith no more?
Jon looked over Delta’s shoulder reading the short poem that was floating in front of him as Delta looked up, studying his face. “What do you think of it?”
Jon was lost for words. What did he think of it? “Sounds like someone has lost the plot…”
Delta smiled. “Or maybe he has found sanity.” He shook his head as if to wake himself from a dream. “Have you found my siblings?”
Jon looked at Delta who obviously had no idea of the complicated workings of a society that, while publicly broadcasting the most intimate details of human beings, was at the same time adamant about securing its right to privacy.
“Not yet. We need clearance to access that kind of data before we can start looking for them.”
Delta raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You have come here to discuss something else then. What do you want to know?”
“I was actually wondering if you could tell me more about the aliens. Who are they? How will we be able to communicate with them?”
Delta smiled. “There will be no communication in the way you define it in your technological world. You will not have to send out a signal, which will then be received and decoded by somebody else out there. True communication is direct. There is no interpretive language required. Your actions will speak for themselves. When the right things happen it will all end. And, moreover, it will not end where we seem to be now, it will all be rolled back in time.”
Jon looked at Delta with his mouth hanging open. “What do you mean by rolled back in time? You cannot go back in time.”
“Your belief in time is strong. You have not been able to see it, hear it, taste, or feel it, not once in your life, still you believe that it exists in the way you have come to define it. You believe in independent objects moving and state that it took the object a certain amount of time to move from A to B. This is ultimately not true. Objects are pure information only. If the right things happen everything will be reset like in one of your video games. You set a recovery point, and when you die in the game you will be able to continue playing from the recovery point.”
Jon felt intrigued. Was Delta proposing that humanity was subscribing to a wrong paradigm regarding the workings of space and time? “So you’re saying everything that has ever happened, even back to the Big Bang itself can simply be undone?”
Delta looked unsure. “No, I did not say that anything ever gets done. You are looking at this from the wrong perspective: the perspective of an individual person. The person is nothing more than an avatar in one of your games.”
Jon looked confused. “Why then are the aliens killing so many people, all these human beings, if they are only avatars as you call them?”
“What is shown to you is compassion, but in the only language that humans currently seem to be able to understand, violence. Removing humankind slowly from the planet is a form of grace. You are being given a chance for survival, but that will only be possible when true understanding enters your system.”
Jon’s mind seemed to lose its footing. His head was spinning. There were just too many contradictory pieces of information present in this equation for it to be computed logically.
“What do you propose humanity should do?”
“Take the video game analogy. The character can normally only perform actions that are designed to work within the set environment of the game. It has to follow its rules and this results in a smooth interaction of all parts of the game. But most games have hidden doors that can be utilized and thus the idea might arise that one can achieve something special, maybe even winning the game when using the hidden doors.”
Jon looked up in surprise. “Are you proposing that we should cheat?”
Delta smiled. “No… I am saying that you already do. You are cheating yourself in the game of life by turning it into a race and you are using shortcuts to win. But, you truly don’t even know if the game can be won or what the price will be. Still you keep on racing faster and faster trying to outperform the other characters in the game. By doing so you miss the only reason for the game, to enjoy its beauty. The game will never have a winner, but you insist that it should have one.”
Delta remained silent for a few seconds before he continued, “Life is a rainbow. It is colorful, beautiful, and magical. You observe it, you live it, but once you start chasing the end of the rainbow, aiming to find the golden treasure that is meant to be hidden at the place where the rainbow meets the land, you create an imaginary goal. And soon the goal turns into a barrier that seals you off from life. As a result you stand in front of an imaginary gate, you are waiting for someone to let you pass, but really there is no gate. You only have to look and see… You are the rainbow. You are already home.” Delta paused for a moment. “Our task will be to make your people see. To guide them on a journey to a place you call the here and now.”
Amy poked her head in the door looking somewhat distressed. “Hey, Jon, can I talk to you for a moment?”
Jon got up. Seeing Amy had reestablished his inner equilibrium. “Let’s talk about all this a bit later. I might need some time to digest this… information. I have to go now. I’ll check your sushi order. You still look hungry. I’m curious how you like raw fish… or at least our scientists’ approximation of it.”
“I had a chat with Iris. She’s not too happy about it, but she said she’d do her best. She indicated that we might not receive clearance without supervision.”
“Is she saying that we’ll have one of these agents in their fancy grey suits looking over our shoulders checking our work?”
Amy nodded. “I think that’s exactly what she’s saying.”
Jon felt like a pawn on a chessboard. “I really hate it when I’m stuck in a corner and there’s only one possible move.”
* * *
Amy walked beside Special Agent Zoe Page as they entered Jon’s lab. She looked delicate, fragile even, next to Zoe who was a tall, athletic woman in her early thirties. Zoe had been assigned to decide on ARC’s request to access GlobeSec, a worldwide information system shared by most governmental agencies as well as Interpol.<
br />
The grey suit looks better on her than on most men, Jon thought to himself. “Hello Ms. Page.” Jon didn’t like using the title “agent.” It made him feel uncomfortable. He would rather pretend not to know and simply think about Zoe as one of his colleagues, at least as long as he had to.
Zoe looked at Jon in a quizzical way. “You can call me Zoe, if you like.”
Jon blushed. He felt that she had already seen through his intentions, leaving him in a somewhat vulnerable position. “Thank you, Zoe. I’d like that.”
Amy looked at Jon in a reproachful way, but he didn’t seem to notice, attentively listening to Zoe as she continued, “So… your plan is to access the confidential data that is kept in the GlobeSec database? You’re looking for two individuals, a man and a woman, that have survived the alien attacks?”
Zoe coming to the point so fast took Jon by surprise. “We need to find these two people as fast as possible and bring them here so we can proceed with our work.”
Zoe smirked. “Before we can do anything you’ll have to tell me all the details of how you received the information about the two survivors. I also need to know your plans regarding these two individuals. What will you be doing to them once they’re here?”
Jon felt puzzled. He realized that he didn’t even really know anything about Delta’s intentions regarding the man and woman. For all Jon knew Delta might well severely injure or even kill them. He didn’t think Delta would do anyone any harm, but how could he explain his intuition to someone who had by now only heard about the three previous experiments that had failed miserably, resulting in situations that were identified as massive security threats to the city and maybe even the world?
Jon thought of how to answer her question without coming across as incompetent or even worse, deceptive. “We’ve finally been successful in crossing alien and human DNA. The fourth subject, Delta, is alive and both physically and psychologically stable.” Jon was not sure if the psychological part was completely true, but for now he had to convince Zoe of the necessity of complying with Delta’s bidding. “He’s been telling us that there are two survivors, a man and a woman, and that they’re required to be here with him if there’s to be any chance of success in stopping the alien attack.”
Humans and other Aliens: Book 1 Page 7