Humans and other Aliens: Book 1

by Winzer, Alexander

  Jai’s parents didn’t give up hope. Once he was physically stable they took Jai back home and taught him again like a child who needed to learn how to crawl, eat, and talk. With his parents’ love and dedication his rehabilitation progressed quickly and after a year he had reached the level of maturity of a thirteen-year-old boy. But he must also have retained some inherent knowledge, something that only little children understand and that’s later forgotten, thought Ezrah, something that makes him look at life in a different way. He sees beauty that I have long lost.

  The last year had taken Jai far beyond the maturity that one would expect from a twenty-one year old. He was very quiet and performed every task with a calm attention that Ezrah at first considered irritating, but that he later found quite fascinating. When Ezrah asked Jai about it he simply answered that attention to every moment is what life requires from us. That life happens in the moment, in the now, not in thoughts about the past or the future. Jai naturally celebrated each and every moment as if it were his last. There was no doing anything in a hurry; he relished every experience, every detail that presented itself. I wish I could be that calm, thought Ezrah, wiping the sweat off his forehead. One more day and I’m out of here.

  He was making his way through the lobby towards the elevators when he noticed a beeping coming from his jacket pocket. He put his hand in the pocket and produced a small electronic device. A red marker flashed close to the center of the screen that displayed a map of the local surroundings. A cold, empty feeling manifested in Ezrah’s chest when he noticed a group of people running past the hotel entrance, while a few more pushed the door open and rushed inside. Something was following them, chasing them. Ezrah placed Ivan’s alien scanner back into his pocket. He heard the bell of the elevator announcing the lift’s arrival. He quickly glanced at the sliding door. It was still closed. People only some twenty meters away seemed to be in serious trouble. A couple who were hurrying through the entrance were suddenly dragged back by an unseen force. Their bodies were ripped apart in the half-shut door, leaving a bloody trail in their wake. The glass door burst into a thousand pieces and seconds later three more people hiding in the hotel lobby were torn in half. Ezrah noticed the elevator door opening behind his back. He silently moved inside the cabin and pressed number 27. The door seemed to close in slow motion. He felt the alien creature approaching. Another woman had just been knocked off her feet five meters from the door when it finally shut.

  Ezrah was breathing hard, standing with his back to the mirrored wall of the elevator, shivering, while cold sweat poured down his arms and legs. He didn’t dare to move until the door opened again at his floor where he slowly got out and walked down the empty corridor to his room.

  Ezrah held the key card to the sensor at his door. “Light on.” Ezrah’s voice was shaking. He turned on the coffee machine. He needed a strong drink. He was still shocked at the speed and brutal efficiency of the creature. He had seen such an attack before, but at the time Chris and Suki were able to deflect the alien and protect him and his friends.

  This could have gone horribly wrong. If I’d been just a few seconds… The light started flickering. Ezrah felt an electrical charge building. The blood in his veins started pumping faster. He jumped up from the sofa that he had just sat down on. What in God’s name…?

  Ezrah slowly moved backwards. He felt the wall stop his retreat when a creature materialized that had some difficulty navigating in the confined space of the room. It looked like a tall, slim woman, dressed all in red and orange leather No… her skin is made of… snakeskin… covering most of her body.

  Her head was beautiful, in a fierce and menacing way, as long as one didn’t look at her eyes, which were similar to those of a reptile, double eyelids flashing over her eyeballs like a silvery beam of light. Long dark hair flowed down her back, covering her shoulders and breasts. Her bright red arms ended in silvery blades that looked like the swords of ancient Asian warriors while her muscular legs rested on feet sporting massive eaglelike claws.

  A thought arose in Ezrah’s mind. He instinctively knew that it was a message from the alien woman.

  “There is no escape. This is the end.”

  He had to find a way; a way to answer her telepathic message. He knew that Chris had been able to communicate with the aggressor, but how…?

  Ezrah reached inside his jacket, producing the particle gun he carried. He set it to maximum power and fired at the alien woman. She just smiled as her body absorbed the beams of energy emitted by the gun. Ezrah knew that his weapon would be useless. Still, he kept on firing until a lightning quick stroke of the woman’s bladed arms pierced his lower abdomen.

  “Why…?”

  The second stroke took his head off, sending it flying onto the cabinet where it knocked over the steaming pot of coffee before bouncing onto the floor. Coffee mixed with blood dripped down the side of the cabinet while a last thought reverberated through Ezrah’s severed head.

  “Because you have forgotten.”

  * * *

  Anil parked his travel pod in front of the hotel the next morning, noticing the damage that had been done to the entrance. He stepped out of the pod and walked through the broken glass door into the lobby that looked like a massive battle had been fought there just a few hours ago. The bodies had all been cleared away, but there was still splattered blood on most walls and over the reception desk. “Excuse me, I’m here to pick up Mr. Ezrah Hill.”

  The lady behind the desk looked at him with empty eyes. “They’re dead. All of them.”

  Anil slowly walked back to his pod. He had to make sure that Ezrah’s work had not been in vain. He decided to inform the agency first but then he would finish what Ezrah had come to Mumbai for. He would recruit the others who could resist the cruel attackers. Anil knew he had to complete what his American friend could not.

  Finally, the last one. Anil was relieved. He had visited five out of the six people who remained on Ezrah’s list and all except one had agreed to join him. Anaya Sidana was the last person on his schedule. Anil brought up her details on the holo display in his travel pod. Anaya was born in New Delhi in September 2028. She’ll soon celebrate her twenty-fifth birthday, thought Anil. Her photo ID revealed a very unusual-looking young woman. Her hair was long, but glowed white in color. Her skin was extremely fair compared to most Indian women and her eyes were of a light-blue color that Anil had never seen before in his home country.

  If I didn’t know that she was Indian, I wouldn’t believe it… I wonder if she was born like that… Anil brought up Anaya’s life story and started reading. She seemed to have had a pretty normal childhood, based on Indian upper-middle-class standards. Her eyes had been this washed-out blue color since birth, but her hair had been black and her skin caramel until something strange happened to her. Her parents were avid mountaineers and took Anaya climbing from early childhood. When she was in her teens she was adamant she had to climb all fourteen eight-thousanders before she was thirty years of age. She had already succeeded in climbing three of those mountains before turning nineteen and she had set her mind on climbing Mt. Kangchenjunga before reaching her twentieth birthday. Kangchenjunga is part of the Himalayas and at 8586 m the highest mountain in India; it was believed to be the highest mountain in the world until 1852 when new calculations showed that there were two peaks still higher than this sacred mountain, which lies partly in Nepal and partly in Sikkim, northern India. The mountain’s peak was first climbed in 1955 by a British expedition who promised the Tibetan Chogyal to stop short of the summit as it was considered a holy place. So far every climber who had reached the summit had followed this tradition and stopped short of it. Anaya was born into a new world. She was of a new generation that didn’t believe in old, mystical traditions and she didn’t feel obliged to follow an ancient code of conduct that was agreed some hundred years ago. She climbed the mountain with a group of Indian mountaineers in May 2048. The group stopped short of the peak when an incoming storm
was detected. They decided to turn around and started the descent, but not Anaya who insisted on waiting for the storm to pass and continue her climb to the peak. She found shelter under a rock ledge that was facing away from the direction of the wind. The weather forced her to remain in her hiding spot until the next morning when the storm finally abated and the clear blue sky again transformed the mountain peaks into a winter wonderland. Anaya had minor frostbite to her toes and ears, but was otherwise in good condition. She decided to climb the last few hundred meters to reach the peak, ignoring the promise that she made before departing on the expedition not to climb to the absolute summit. She reached the summit just after midday; the sun stood at its zenith. There wasn’t a summit cross standing as on most other mountain peaks, but only a small metal ring framing something that looked to her like a colorful shard of glass. The ring was mounted on a timber post, which seemed to have been replaced not too long ago; at least it didn’t show any sign of the wear and tear that one would have expected from timber that had been exposed to the harsh weather on top of an 8.5 kilometer-high mountain. Anaya was sitting down next to the strange artifact enjoying the magnificent view over the mountain ranges of the Himalayas when she noticed a bright speck of light on a rock wall just a few hundred meters east of her current position. Wondering where the ray of light came from she tried to trace it back to its origin ending up at… the shard of glass that was framed by the now silvery glittering ring. She observed how the bright marker at the distant rock wall was perfectly static even though the sun moved a fair distance over the period of her observation, which lasted nearly an hour. She had decided to delay her descent and investigate the strange phenomenon when the bright marker vanished exactly an hour after the sun had passed its highest point in the Northern sky. When Anaya reached the spot that she had marked in her satellite positioning device everything looked perfectly normal. There was a rock wall reaching some fifty meters up into the sky and directly above her was the place that had been marked by the beam of light. She remembered the old legends that were passed on by the elders of the area surrounding the mountain, legends talking about a valley of immortality that was hidden on this very mountain. Ever curious and determined, she spotted something glittering in the sunlight about seven meters above her head. It looked like a small figurine carved into the rock wall. She climbed up to have a closer look. The figure resembled a depiction of a fierce mountain deity, called Dzö-ng. It seemed to be guarding something behind the wall. Was it trying to protect a long-hidden secret? Anaya remembered spotting a representation of a similar-looking creature in one of the temples before starting her expedition. At the time she had wondered why she felt drawn to it; now it suddenly made sense. The figure was carved out of quartz, perfectly white and glittering in the afternoon sun. She felt the urge to touch it, but to do so she had to loosen her grip on the little rock ledge that she was holding on to. She knew that touching the figurine would result in her losing her grip, but somehow she had to; she was forced by an invisible power to make contact.

  She reached out, touched it, and fell. Her report of what happened next was quite disjointed. She didn’t remember her fall, not even the hard landing that broke her left wrist. What she remembered instead was a different life, the life of a Tibetan lama who once lived at the foothills of this very mountain. He was considered a holy man who, before opting for a life in seclusion, was a teacher of the young Dalai Lama himself. When Anaya woke up at the base of the rock wall, she remembered. She remembered this man, his life, she had inherited his understanding; she knew… she apprehended the true meaning behind the stories about the valley of immortality. It was not about eternal physical life, but rather about seeing through the concepts of life and death. She understood that she had truly never been born and that she would never die. She knew who she really was. While her understanding had evolved so had her body or at least her skin and hair, which both lost most of their pigmentation and turned snowy white.

  That’s how she got that strange hair color, Anil thought as he turned off the travel pod’s automatic navigation, exited the city’s highway, and descended to Anaya’s apartment, which had its own private docking station. Anaya lived alone in a small but fairly upmarket apartment that her parents had bought her when she announced that she would not be climbing mountains anymore. She now worked as a nurse in the Holy Spirit Hospital, which provided health care to slum dwellers and low-income earners, who were treated free of charge or at a very affordable rate.

  “Hello, Ms. Sidana. My name is Anil, thank you for meeting me.”

  Anaya smiled and led Anil to a small sitting area at the other end of her one-room apartment. “Tea?”

  Anil nodded and sat down on one of the floor cushions.

  “Where is Detective Hill?”

  Anil looked down at the floor. “He… was killed last night by one of the malicious alien attackers.”

  Anaya looked at him unperturbed. “The alien attackers, as you call them, are not malicious in any way. They’re simply doing what they’re meant to do. They’re like a farmer harvesting wheat. The farmer isn’t considered malicious for cutting it down, not even by the wheat itself.”

  Anil stared at her in disbelief. “But… he was my friend… and now he’s dead.”

  Anaya poured Anil a cup of tea and sat down opposite him. “Life and death do not apply to these beings. They are only here to reshuffle a deck of cards. One player has become too dominant; it’s time for a fresh start. A new equilibrium will be established.”

  Anil didn’t understand Anaya’s cryptic way of expressing herself. “I guess you know why I’m here? I wanted to ask you if…”

  Anaya nodded. “Yes, I do know. Please, let me see the message you are carrying.”

  Anil felt like an open book that this young woman was reading without his permission. He took out the last note, which he still kept in his pocket and handed it over.

  “Thank you, Anil. Don’t worry, I’m not a witch that will turn you into a frog…” Anil wasn’t so sure, but he was happy with her answer nevertheless.

  “I will join you. I’m looking forward to meeting this being that wrote these lines. Please pick me up tomorrow around midday. I have to sort out a few things before then.”

  Anil was exhausted. This day had gone from bloodcurdling to unbelievable, then back to a mix between the two. He performed a polite bow. “Thank you, Ms. Sidana. I’ll be here tomorrow at noon.”

  Thirty-Four

  Peter

  “Hey, Peter, are you awake?” Ivan stood in front of the intercom device mounted next to Peter’s room.

  “Yes, one second.”

  Peter looked at the display that was set into one of the semi-transparent glass panels that covered the wall. I hate early mornings. It’s only 6:30 a.m. and he’s already up and running, he thought.

  Peter crawled out of his bed and put on the dark-grey robe that was hanging next to the entrance of the bathroom. “What can I do for you?”

  Ivan stood in Peter’s doorway holding a transparent ball, not much larger than his hand, which was made out of reinforced glass. “See this!” Ivan was very excited. “ARC engineers built a particle accelerator to our specifications overnight. I’ve just received it.”

  Peter was shocked. “Wow, that’s amazing. These engineers are faster than light.”

  Ivan smiled. “Well, I’m not sure about that, but our particles will be once they enter the artificial black hole in the center of this sphere creating a portal in space and time.”

  Peter held up his hand. “Give me a minute to get dressed. I’ll meet you at the lab.”

  “Look at that!” Ivan grabbed Peter by the arm and pulled him over to the table holding the parts they had received first thing that morning. “Once we’ve finished putting it together it will look something like that…” Ivan brought up a holographic representation of a device that looked like a futuristic version of a Gatling gun with a perfectly round, transparent magazine stuck to the top o
f it.

  “When did you design that? Don’t you ever sleep?” Peter was shocked at the work that Ivan had already put into the project without giving him the slightest chance of participating.

  “No, I don’t sleep very much these days… The theoretical background that you explained yesterday had to be expressed in a physical form… so… ”

  Peter poured himself a cup of coffee. “So you set out and simply built it. Well, at least on your holographic simulator.”

  Ivan grinned and zoomed in on a little flap. “This is the loading chamber. It holds the object that is used for programming the destination in time and space.”

  Ivan’s excitement was contagious.

  “Wouldn’t it be better to insert it from the top, directly into the sphere? It will be much more complicated to start the rotational path from anywhere else. If we can utilize standard gravity for acceleration before switching over to the inverter then…”

  Ivan nodded. “Why didn’t I see that before…? I’ll ask them to add a specimen feeder directly to the sphere, then we can mount it in any direction.”

  Peter nodded. “What happens when the particles of the specimen collide with the black hole in the center of the sphere?”

  Ivan seemed to have been waiting for this question. “Aha… yes! Now look at that!” Ivan brought up a simulation of the gun being loaded and activated. A little black dot, only the size of a pinhead, appeared in the center of the glass sphere while a grain of sand rotated faster and faster around the black center. Ivan paused the animation. “This is only the preparatory phase. Nothing much has happened until now. But when we pull the trigger…” Ivan resumed the video that was playing out on his holo screen “We have to be really sure where we’re pointing it at.”