Humans and other Aliens: Book 1

by Winzer, Alexander

  Ivan woke up with Eva looking down on him. “Ivan! Are you OK?”

  He was lying on the floor. “Did I… fall over?”

  Delta smiled. “Do you remember the boy?”

  Ivan looked stunned. “I do. He is me… or, no… I’m him. But I also saw this place, with two black holes in the sky and then there was this creature… what is it?”

  Delta looked sad. “It is what you call death. It is the end of time. The end of the world as you know it.”

  Ivan felt cold. He shivered. “Delta, what have you done to me?”

  Delta helped Ivan back into his chair and stroked his back. “You are just fine.” Ivan felt how Delta’s touch straightened out his muscles. They relaxed and automatically fell into their natural place. All tension was gone. “I have shown you a way.”

  Ivan was buzzing with energy. “A way… I need to look at the source code that powers Nick’s machine. What we need is a wormhole, a portal… maybe if I reverse the process…” He spoke out loud unaware of everybody else watching him. “I need to talk to someone that knows more about the theoretical background.”

  Eva looked like she was missing something, something that she ought to know, something about… “Hey, Jon, have you ever heard of Professor Dvorak? His name comes up a few times in Nick’s paper that describes the setup of his experiment.”

  Jon remembered, “He’s a groundbreaking scientist in the field of theoretical physics. He has changed the way we think about quantum fields. I think he still works at the technical university in Vienna.”

  Eva wore a big smile. “You’re the best. Do you want to contact him or should I?”

  Jon knew that this was his task. “I’ll call him. He must be pretty old by now. I guess he’ll be in his late seventies.”

  Eva nodded. “Still, we need to talk to him.”

  Jon left the room and walked over to his lab. He had always wanted to talk to Professor Dvorak. He was a legend in the scientific community.

  “Chris, how are you feeling today?”

  Chris looked at Delta, wondering what to say. “I feel… OK. I haven’t ever seen so many people die, but at least… well… at least we’re all still alive.”

  “You met one of the aliens. How did that make you feel?”

  Chris wasn’t sure how to describe it. “It felt… like I knew her. She was surprised. She didn’t expect us to resist. I think she was happy to see us. It felt like she was glad that she didn’t have to kill us. I felt sadness in her. She didn’t like what had to be done, but at the same time there was this understanding that there was no other way. It was her destiny to kill, a bit like a lion has to kill to survive. It felt like she was removing a weed that would otherwise strangle the whole tree.”

  Delta nodded. “You have observed well. This is the female side, the hidden one. The one that reflects the light when it shines on her but that does not shine by itself. It requires consciousness to light it up. But once a spark is provided the flame burns bright and deadly. It will not stop before the fuel has run out, not before all that are close by have been killed.”

  Chris shivered at the thought of the fierce predator. “You’re saying this is the female side? What about the male side?” He saw how Delta’s face changed. It was the first time he thought he noticed a form of apprehension gripping him.

  “The male is just one. It is the active principle that shines by itself. When it awakens it will not stop until all work has been done. It will be the end.”

  Eva looked like she had just recalled something important. “Ivan, I’m sure you remember the final signal before the Green Egg went quiet. Have you ever tried tracking it at all?”

  Ivan nodded. “I’ve been able to track it in a way. It seems to exist as the opposite of all the regular signals combined. It perfectly balances the equation. It seems that as long as the regular signals, the alien ghosts, are active they kind of inhibit this massive signal from materializing. I don’t know what happens when this changes, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like to be close by when it does.”

  Zoe suddenly threw her hands up, looking frustrated. “Delta, I’m sick of just hanging around and watching people die. There has to be something Ezrah and I can do to help, to protect people from the attackers.”

  Delta seemed to have been waiting for her question. “There is actually. You’ve observed how Suki and Chris were able to keep the alien at bay. You’ve seen the only weapon, the only defense that humankind truly has. I would ask you and Ezrah to build us a shield: shields of complementing pairs just like these two.” Delta pointed at Suki. “There are a few more people on earth that have the gift, that are not afraid, that have seen the truth. Find them, bring them all together and find out how they match.”

  Zoe nodded. “That sounds like a good idea, but how do we find these people? How do we know that they have the gift?”

  Ezrah smiled. Finding people was something he was good at. “I think as a first step we could use your access to GlobeSec. I’m sure we can define certain search criteria that’ll yield a list of likely candidates. Chris, what do you think? Are you and Suki able to see or feel if a person is qualified?”

  Chris looked at Suki who finally answered. “We might be, especially if we’re together. We’ll know when the first people arrive.”

  Twenty-Six

  Peter

  Peter entered his lab at the technical university in Vienna. He was Professor Helmut Dvorak’s first assistant, the man who revolutionized modern science by explaining time and space as a field of pure information, of innate knowledge that modulated itself in infinite succession. He had also been a good friend of Professor Nick Dimitrios and it was he who provided the theoretical foundation for Nick’s amazing experiments.

  The professor entered the room, smiling at Peter who sipped at his Melange, a milk-based coffee that was popular in many cafés in Vienna. Peter put down his cup. “Hello, Professor, have you heard the sad news? Professor Dimitrios has died.”

  “Yes, I was informed last night. It’s very sad news.”

  Peter had been wondering why Professor Dvorak had never left his theoretical path and joined forces with Nick. He had seen Nick’s experiment when he toured the major European universities. He still remembered sitting in the egg-shaped chair that he knew was spinning at an incredible speed. He was amazed that he didn’t feel any physical effects besides a rainbow-like whirl of colors passing through his visual field of perception. It made him feel slightly dizzy. Then suddenly there was this one moment… An electrostatic discharge of unimaginable power left him in a state… well… he didn’t really know how to describe it other than as an observation of a colorful display of shapes and forms, of sounds and sensations that all floated in space. He didn’t experience a center. He seemed to be everywhere and nowhere. He was the sound, but not in an exclusive way. He seemed to be intimately connected to whatever appeared. He felt he was presence itself.

  Whenever he talked about this experience people didn’t take him seriously, which resulted in Peter keeping it mostly to himself. It wasn’t worth sharing an experience that could not be properly explained.

  “Ja, lieber Peter, das Leben ist kein Wunschkonzert.” Peter smiled at Professor Dvorak. He knew this was one of his most cherished sayings, which literally translated to “life is not a wishing concert.”

  Peter felt that this statement was correct in so many ways. There simply was no way to be sure that a certain action would result in a specific reaction. Professor Dvorak’s theories had supported this unsettling fact of non-determinism shattering most if not all of the fundamental cornerstones of Newtonian physics. Gravity, space, and time lost their relevance when approached from a unified perspective where the observer could no longer be extracted from the system, but had to be an inseparable part of it. Even speaking of parts seemed to be a step too far…

  “By the way, there’s a message waiting for you on UniCom. I believe it’s from ARC in San Francisco.”

  Professor
Dvorak looked up from the equations that floated above his holographic work desk. “I’ll have a look at it later. Can you please come over and have a look at these equations? There’s something wrong, but I’m not sure what it is…”

  Peter was gifted with a keen mathematical mind. He often found it easier to express something in mathematical formulations than use German or even English grammar. German seemed to offer more options; it was more precise than English, but compared to mathematical expressions both were just an Abklatsch. Peter smiled when he thought about the funny-sounding German word, meaning something like “poor rip-off” in English.

  “Have a look up here. Specifically this section.”

  Peter had seen these equations before. “Why are you looking at this old stuff?”

  Nick’s untimely death must have triggered sentimental memories and led Professor Dvorak to reinvestigate the theoretical background of Professor Dimitrios’s experiments.

  “I know… I just thought we could have another look at why we’ve never been able to solve the instability issue. Why does the object revert back to its original state after a few seconds? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Peter thought about his experience of being transported back in time. It didn’t feel like he was going anywhere. It was just a complete change of perspective. The individual point of view was replaced by a universal sense of being.

  “What about this section here, what if we alter this formula?” Peter swiftly rearranged parts of a few equations.

  “What are you doing? That could be very dangerous, this could create a…”

  Peter finished rearranging another section and stared at the outcome. “That could create a wormhole or… it could create a portal. A portal that rearranges the space/time matrix of every object that passes through the portal in a way that it will be assimilated into the state of information on the other side of the portal. That would make more sense than just sending someone back in time and leaving the surroundings untouched. We now leave the traveler untouched and insert him into a different space/time continuum.”

  Professor Dvorak nodded. “How do we define the target time? Maybe instead of a person in a chair we could simply use a guiding device that defines the time the portal should be leading to.”

  Peter became excited. “It would have to be an object that was created at the time … that contains the correct time matrix within itself. If, for example we used the bones of a dinosaur then…”

  Professor Dvorak turned off his holo display and got up from his chair. “I think we should rethink all of this. This could be a very dangerous device. Just imagine what this could do if it gets into the wrong hands.”

  Peter slowly walked back to his desk, taking a sip of his coffee, which by now had gone cold. “Do you mind if I take the rest of the day off? It’s my girlfriend’s birthday and I wanted to surprise her.”

  The professor just smiled and nodded while Peter packed up his things and left the lab. “Danke! Bis morgen.”

  Peter left the university building and stepped on the travelator that connected the university district with the pedestrian area of the inner city. It took him underground, past a row of shops, fast-food restaurants, and the entrance of the Viennese underground rail system. Not everyone owned one of the shiny travel pods that were a common sight in the sky of every major city. There were still many thousands relying on public transport operating mainly underground. The moving walkway emerged just in front of the opera house, marking the start of the first district’s shopping extravaganza. The ring road still separated the inner city from its surrounding suburbs, but while it once was an artery of initially horse and later on of motor-car traffic, it was now a green zone that hugged the city in its leafy embrace.

  Peter walked past old-fashioned and marvelously expensive jewelry stores with security guards in black suits standing at the entrance, protecting them not only from thieves but also from customers who didn’t have the right appearance, a look that spoke money. Peter went into Café Demel and bought one of their amazing confectionery boxes that he knew Julia loved. He complemented the chocolate with a nice bunch of yellow roses and made his way back to the underground.

  “Nächste Station, Zieglergasse.”

  Peter got up from his seat as the artificial voice announced they had reached his destination. He left the subway making his way up onto Mariahilferstrasse and then into one of the side streets where Julia had her apartment. I think I’ll ask her to move in with me, he thought, secretly hoping that Julia would counter the offer and ask him to move in with her. It would make sense; her apartment is much larger than mine and the location is better too.

  Peter made his way up the stairs to the second floor of the beautiful historic apartment building Julia had been living in since inheriting it from her late grandmother. He took out the key that she had given him a few months ago and silently opened the heavy wooden door.

  She might still be sleeping, thought Peter as he quietly announced his arrival. “Hallo Julia, Schatzi, ich bins.” He didn’t expect her to answer. Her shift at the restaurant didn’t start till late afternoon and she had been working till midnight the night before. He checked the bathroom and the kitchen, just to be sure, and sat down in front of the fireplace, still holding on to the presents he had bought for his beloved.

  He looked at his watch. It was nearly midday. “Zeit zum Aufstehen, Schlafmütze! Time to get up sleepyhead!” He listened at the door to her bedroom before quietly opening the door.

  The box of chocolates slid out of his fingers while his other hand desperately hung on to the bunch of roses, his tight grip making his fingers bleed. There was Julia, or what was left of her, lying on her bed with… but who was the other person?

  Peter slowly walked up to the second corpse whose body was curled up next to Julia, missing its head. It was a male body, but who…? He walked around the bed and suddenly saw “Michael?” His best friend’s head was lying on the floor. No blood was spilled as his arteries must have been cauterized from a cut that had been performed with unthinkable speed and precision. He looks like he’s still alive… but… why did you have to do that? With my Julia…

  Peter had to leave. He had to get out of this room, out of this smell of death and betrayal. How could she have done that to him? With his best friend? He went to the bathroom and threw up, still holding on to the yellow roses that he had bought for his girlfriend.

  “It looks like a wild beast has torn them apart. I don’t know… it’s her birthday today and I… have these roses… but Michael…” Peter couldn’t think straight as he talked to the police who had arrived a minute ago.

  “Yes, Mr. Steiner… there are quite a few more people dead in this building. It seems that the attack was not targeted only at your girlfriend.”

  Peter didn’t know what to say and sat down in the chair next to the small fireplace that he had such fond memories of. He loved lying on the sheepskin rug with Julia in front of the glowing embers late at night, enjoying her smell and the warmth of the crackling fire.

  “Forensics will be here soon. I think it’s better if you leave. We’ll contact you later so we can record your statement.” Peter was dragged out of his daydream back into the harsh reality of his dead, cheating girlfriend and an image of entwined copses on white bed linen that was now burned into his mind.

  Peter was glad to be out of there. He didn’t envy the police officers having to deal with a few dozen of these gruesome homicides every single day without ever being successful at pinning down the assassin. Peter thought about the government issuing warnings on the national TV networks asking people to avoid public gatherings or any other social meeting that involved more than ten people. They seemed to be convinced that groups of people attracted the alien attackers like flies being lured by sugary lemonade. Seems they don’t mind killing just two people either, Peter thought as he slowly made his way down the stairs.

  Professor Dvorak was surprised to see Peter entering the lab the n
ext morning. He hadn’t expected him to show up so early, or at all. “Hello, Peter, I heard about Julia, I’m very sorry… I didn’t think you would come in today.”

  Peter’s face looked drawn. Dark rings underlined bloodshot eyes that told a story of a sleepless night spent in raging agony. “Thank you… I’d rather be here than alone at home. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Professor Dvorak nodded and patted Peter’s back. “I’ve been talking to Jon Adams from ARC in San Francisco. They’ve secured Nick’s equipment and he wanted some more information about the theoretical background. I accidentally mentioned your idea about the portal…”

  Peter was not sure if he should be upset or delighted. “I thought you wanted to keep that a secret.”

  Professor Dvorak nodded. “Yes, initially I did, but when Jon talked about their need to make this work, to send someone or something back in time so they can undo this whole mess, it somehow just popped out… He has asked me to join them and help make this a success, but you know, I’m not twenty anymore. I’m old and not very well. I thought that maybe you…”

  Peter dropped into his chair. Had he just been asked to join a team of high-level scientists at ARC, the most famous scientific center on the planet, to help them develop a time machine?

  “I… I don’t know. What do you think?” Peter knew that Professor Dvorak would not propose something that would be more than he could stomach. He trusted the old man in more ways than he actually thought possible.