Humans and other Aliens: Book 1

by Winzer, Alexander

  Jon led the group to Professor Dimitrios’s presentation area where already a few dozen people formed a wide circle around a strange contraption.

  Nick was currently securing a volunteer from the audience in something that looked like a floating, egg-shaped seat. The man was strapped into the seat, which hovered at the perimeter of a circle marked out on the floor with a bright yellow line. He was facing a dark, marble-sized ball floating at the circle’s center three meters above the ground. Nick stepped back and activated his machine. The seat, which held the scared-looking volunteer floated up to the height of the black marble.

  “Ready?” Nick looked at the man in the seat who responded with the agreed thumbs-up signal. “Here we go…”

  Nick pressed a button on his control panel. The outline of the black marble started to glow or rather pulse in a rhythmic fashion while the seat started moving in a circular orbit around its tiny black center. The movement got faster and faster until only a blur of color was left. After about twenty seconds the circles got smaller and smaller; the chair was slowly being pulled into the center while still following a rotational pattern that reminded Eva of drawings she had seen a few years ago. “Looks like sacred geometry,” she muttered.

  Just as the chair was about to touch the tiny black ball in the center a bright flash of color wiped away the whole display and left…

  “A small child? What happened? Where’s the seat? Where’s the man?” Ivan blurted out. He looked perplexed, as did the rest of them. “What… what in God’s name happened?”

  Suki looked at Eva, apparently awaiting a scientific explanation, but Eva looked equally as lost. The child, a boy maybe two years of age, hovered in mid-air, spinning slowly around his own axis, smiling at the audience. He seemed to be at perfect peace, enjoying himself. A few seconds later another bright flash of color suddenly removed the boy and again revealed the chair holding the man who looked healthy and glowingly happy despite the torture he had seemingly had to endure.

  “This must be a trick, I don’t believe that really just happened.” Ivan was sure that Nick had to be an imposter. There was no scientific basis for any of this.

  “Hello, sir, I’m Nick Dimitrios, and I assure you that this is no trick. It’s perfectly real.”

  Ivan didn’t seem to be convinced. “Well, I don’t think so. If you spun a human being around in circles at this speed he would most probably not survive the procedure. Furthermore, how would it even be possible for an object to travel back in time while its surroundings remained untouched?”

  Nick smiled at Ivan. “I see you’re a keen observer, sir, but let me answer your query in a brief and conclusive way. There are more people waiting to travel back in time. If only for a few seconds or so.”

  Nick pointed to the queue lining up behind the sign he had put up. “I’ve managed to eliminate the gravitational forces by inducing an equal but opposing counterforce that is emitted from the backrest of the seat. Thus, the person sitting in the chair does not experience even the slightest amount of gravitational force. For him it’s like sitting in an unmoving chair, obviously besides his experience of a visually very fast-moving external environment. I normally propose that the volunteer shut their eyes so as not to suffer from disorientation.”

  Ivan still looked skeptical as Nick continued, “Sending an object back in time is maybe not the right way of putting it. What I’m doing here is invoking a different energetic configuration of the object itself, which could also be interpreted as a previous point in time. See… there’s no traveling through something you call time. You know that time is purely conceptual, don’t you? So is space for that matter. I’m retrieving a certain frequency, a state of information that is mirrored in the arising of the perceived object. You know, each object, actually each particle of the universe, contains everything, its past, present, and future. It’s all about manipulating, and bringing to the forefront, information inherent in the object itself.”

  Nick seemed to have Ivan hooked. “And by spinning the object around in circles you invoke a certain frequency?”

  Nick smiled. “Yes, that’s correct. The frequency is based on the speed and path of the rotating object whereas stopping the rotation at a certain distance from the artificial black hole specifies the exact time that the object travels to. The past is thus not really a destination, it’s a state of information.”

  Now Ivan was startled again. “A what? A black hole? Are you saying that this little black marble was a…”

  Nick nodded. “Yes, sir. A tiny computer-generated black hole. Thank you for your interest. I now have to attend to my next customer. Time is money after all.” Nick waved at Jon and the rest and focused his attention on the next volunteer.

  A black hole… he must be joking, thought Ivan, shaking his head while mumbling to himself, “Why would he use a black hole?”

  Eva had followed the conversation vigilantly. “Because that’s how he can create such a huge gravitational force when the object comes close enough to the hole, while having basically no influence on objects that are at a great enough distance from its event horizon.”

  Ivan looked at Eva skeptically. “You believe him?”

  Eva nodded. “Actually I do. I read his theory a few years ago and it’s solid. The only problem seems to be that he cannot stabilize the object once it has traveled back in time. After a few seconds it reverts back to its original state.”

  Jon had overheard the conversation. “And this is why all his work was rendered worthless. It didn’t achieve its purpose as the object has to be stable. It doesn’t make any commercial sense. It’s just wasted effort. It’s a great show, but nothing more than that.”

  Eva nodded slowly and added, “If we could find a way to stabilize it…” Ivan was getting excited. He loved working on puzzles that others had given up unraveling, a bit like the Gordian knot “…then we might be able to achieve the time jump that Delta was talking about. But it would have to be on a global scale. I wonder…”

  Jon stared at the next person flying around in circles. “I wonder too… I wonder why Delta sent us here. It looks very much like this was no coincidence. He wanted us to see the experiment, he wanted us to think along these lines.”

  Suki smiled while quietly talking to Chris.

  “Suki, don’t tell me you knew that this was his plan all along?”

  Chris looked at Jon sheepishly. “Of course not, how could we know? How about we go and have one of those steaks that you’ve been promising? I’m hungry and so is Ezrah, right?”

  The tall black man looked startled. He was still mesmerized by the flying colors that emerged when the spinning chair reached a certain velocity.

  Zoe poked him in the side. “Come on, say something.”

  “Yeah, sure, let’s go.”

  Zoe was the first to order, “I’ll have the large Porterhouse, medium rare, baked potatoes, and fried onion rings.”

  Ezrah liked women who were able to work up a solid appetite; there was something sexy about them. “Nice one, I think I’ll have exactly the same.”

  Zoe smirked at Ezrah. He felt that she already knew that he secretly fancied her. It made him even more fidgety around her. He figured he must be some twelve years her senior. He wondered if she liked her men more on the mature side. “How about a nice bottle of red wine? I’d recommend…”

  Beep! Beep! Ivan started fumbling in his pocket eventually producing a handheld device that displayed a map of the area. A red marker was blinking close to the center.

  “I think we might be in trouble… it states San Francisco, USA, ARC Technology Tower; Detected: 65% Human, 18% Anisoptera, 17% Panthera; Materialized: 7:05 p.m. local time.”

  Eva’s face turned white as snow. “A human crossed with a big black cat and a dragonfly…”

  Zoe seemed to have spotted something. She quietly poked Ezrah in the side. Again, he thought, this is becoming a habit. He was looking at her in anticipation when he saw what Zoe was pointing out. The
re was some turmoil at the entrance of the restaurant. People were scrambling inside in panic.

  “Don’t move! Stay put in the corner!” Chris appeared to have noticed it as well. He grabbed Suki and pulled her up from her seat. They were now holding hands like a loving couple, but the firm grip that held Suki’s hand indicated something else. This was certainly no gentle caress. Zoe and Ezrah both instinctively grabbed their particle guns and set them to maximum power.

  “Don’t! Stay behind us and don’t do anything rash. You can’t harm them with your weapons.”

  Ezrah wasn’t used to taking orders, especially not from a barista and a girl that could well be his daughter “Nonsense. We’ll…”

  Zoe touched his hand. “They’re right, Ezrah. I know you want to protect us, but this is their task. Let them do their work.”

  Ezrah looked at Zoe, puzzled at her cool judgment.

  The air was buzzing. It felt like an electrostatic field was being discharged. Bodies were being torn in half and flung aside as if made of Styrofoam. Suki looked up at Chris who managed a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry. Together we’ll be able to protect them.”

  Suki suddenly saw it. A sphinx-like creature with the long body of a black panther and the breasts and head of a woman was going through the restaurant like an angel of death. A pair of strong transparent wings generated a humming sound similar to that of a helicopter while refracting the light of the fires that burned in the open kitchen.

  The alien being moved with catlike speed and grace, effortlessly taking the head off the big man sitting at the table in front of them. Suki heard Eva shriek in panic as the dark, glistening creature came to a sudden stop in front of them. It took a few seconds to study these unusual humans that seemed to withstand its fury.

  “How come I smell no fear?”

  Suki sensed a thought echoing in her head. Was it a question? A question coming from this creature?

  “Because you and I are one.” Suki was speechless. Was this Chris talking to the alien woman? Suki looked at her friend who was in a trance-like state, staring directly into the eyes of the mystical creature. Something that could be described as recognition, a knowing of your own kind, crossed the four-legged woman’s face. She moved her attention away from Chris and now turned to Suki.

  “Sister?”

  Suki noticed a tingling sensation behind her eyes. She felt the magical being establish a bridge, a mental connection to her very self. She was mesmerized by the golden glow of her piercing eyes, which were set in a wildly beautiful face resembling an Arabic-looking woman.

  Her skin looks like flowing caramel, thought Suki as the lush, dark-cherry-colored lips of the woman turned into a smile. Suki’s eyes closed. She felt the heartbeat of this powerful creature. The hot breath escaping its lungs. Suki felt her determination. Her resolution to kill whatever was not of its kind.

  “Sister! Why?”

  The woman opened her mouth displaying a set of glowing white, deadly fangs.

  “You know why. This infection has to be removed before it enters my bloodstream. I am the cure.”

  Suki felt a spacious emptiness opening up inside herself. The woman was there. Her powerful heart beat in Suki’s chest. She had to act fast. This was the only chance to protect her friends.

  ”I will not let you harm them. They are my friends. Please let them live.”

  The woman looked past Suki, at the group of people cowering behind her. A flash of compassion passed her face.

  “I will spare your friends. For now…”

  Suki’s vision went black as the woman spun around and continued on her deadly mission. A few minutes later all was quiet. There were no injured; there was only death and a handful of survivors huddling in a corner while two spirit warriors still held their position, holding hands in unity.

  “I think she’s vanished.” Ivan stared at his handheld scanner that now displayed the terrifying result of the attack. Casualties: 328; Dissolved: 7:11 p.m. local time.

  “Only six minutes and more than three hundred people dead.”

  Eva had seen Ivan’s statistics back in her lab in St. Petersburg many a time, but when numbers on a screen turned into bloody reality they truly held a very different significance.

  “How did you do that?” Jon now stood in front of Chris and Suki who had just come out of her hypnotic state. “I… I don’t really know. Ask Chris.”

  Suki was still holding on fast to Chris’s hand, which had turned white as snow. “Chris, can you hear me?” Jon touched him by the shoulders, which finally brought him back from the trance he was caught in.

  “Yes… I can hear you. It’s just that… I was not here anymore. I mean, not in this body.”

  Now Suki remembered. “Yes! That’s it. We sort of… merged.” Suki held her hand in front of her mouth as if to catch this embarrassing word that had just crossed her lips. “Ahh… I didn’t mean that we… well… you know what I mean.”

  Jon simply nodded and took her hand. “Let’s get out of here. I think we should be talking to Delta, I have a feeling he knows more than he’s telling us.”

  Jon went over to the area where Nick had been performing his incredible demonstration to find only his upper body reaching out for the control panel in an attempt to stop the process.

  “What happened to the person in the chair?” asked Ivan who was standing next to Jon studying Nick’s messy-looking setup of quantum computers, fiber-optic cables and the egg chair carrying gravity inverters.

  “I don’t know. It seems he was taken back to a time before…”

  Ivan looked as if he had swallowed something potentially lethal. “Let’s not talk about this now… I think it might be a good idea to secure the equipment. Do you think we can have that transferred to your lab? I’d like to have a closer look.”

  Jon nodded. “Zoe, can you please arrange for this equipment to go directly to my lab?”

  Zoe nodded as she talked to the police officers who had just arrived, giving them instructions on how to deal with the matter.

  This lift will never scare me again, thought Ivan as he stepped into the elevator that would take them down to street level. The recent events had changed his inner scale for what he considered frightening; even exploring the Green Egg now felt like a peaceful experience compared to the massacre he had just witnessed.

  Twenty-Five

  Delta

  Jon was upset, if not angry, at his own creation, which slowly seemed to be evolving into the secret leader of the group. “It seems you knew perfectly well what would happen at dinner. You still sent us there anyway. Why?”

  Delta looked at Jon for a few seconds before answering. “It was necessary. You had to see the time machine and you had to see Chris and Suki’s potential. Even more they had to see their own potential. It will only grow when practiced knowingly.”

  Jon still looked upset. “But what if… what if they hadn’t been able to protect us? All of this would have been in vain.”

  Delta nodded. “Sometimes one has to accept a calculated risk. There is no guarantee for anything. Sometimes you have to jump even if you are afraid; so you jump and soon you see how deep the water really is.”

  Jon knew that Delta was right, still he didn’t want to let him off the hook that easily. “Next time you’d better warn us in advance. We have to be prepared.”

  Delta looked down at the table, smiling. “You think I know the future. That is not so. I felt that something important would happen tonight, but I could not see any details. I know where you have to be, but not why.”

  Ivan appeared to have no problem with Delta’s explanation. His only interest was the time machine that he wanted to fix as soon as possible. “OK, that’s fine then. What about the time machine? What do you know about it?”

  “I am no scientist, Ivan. I am sure you know more about it than I do. I know that we will have to go back a few thousand years and plant a seed. It is up to you to make that possible.”

  Ivan was su
rprised at the amount of trust placed in him. “OK… but I’m not sure that it will work… it’s the wrong way around.”

  Delta took Ivan’s hand. “I will show you something.”

  Ivan felt a tingling starting to emerge from Delta’s hand, slowly making its way up his left arm. It felt like he had placed his arm into cool, oxygen-rich water. “What are you doing…?” Ivan suddenly felt afraid. What was happening to him? He felt like he was drowning in the ocean while at the same time sitting in a chair surrounded by his friends.

  “Close your eyes.”

  Ivan instinctively followed Delta’s command even if it was the last thing he wanted to do. Suddenly a landscape emerged. Ivan was surprised that he was able to see. His eyes were closed, weren’t they?

  He saw a young boy running along a massive field dragging a kite behind him.

  “Faster! You need to run faster!” He saw a woman laughing and cheering at the boy who looked so happy. ”Yes, Mummy, I will!”

  It was Ivan talking. His perspective suddenly changed. He was the boy, he was running, he was breathing fast, he smelled the freshly cut grass, and he again heard his mother. “Yes, Ivan, that’s great!” He felt so happy, so free, so utterly unafraid and carefree, even reckless. The boy suddenly stopped and Ivan observed the kite slowly falling out of the sky. His mother was gone. There was only Ivan, gazing through the eyes of the little boy. He looked up at the sky where a black hole emerged from an otherwise perfectly blue canopy. The hole in the sky grew until he felt that he could nearly touch it. He stretched out his hand. He felt it. It was very cold. His touch changed the hole. Where blackness reigned a second before he now saw the surface of a dark, scarred planet. He looked up at the sky, spotting two bright, connected rings, a glowing figure eight, surrounding two pitch-black cores. He felt a shiver running down his spine; something was moving. He saw a small dot approaching from the horizon. It seemed to be traveling at supersonic speed. Ivan thought that it looked like some kind of animal, but once it came closer… “Oh my God, what is this creature? It cannot be…”