Humans and other Aliens: Book 1

by Winzer, Alexander

  The rotation was now too fast to follow, turning into a blur of colors emerging from the sphere when the swirling rainbow suddenly collapsed into the center and a beam of dark energy emerged from the device’s barrel. It manifested only three meters in front of the gun as a perfectly round disc about two meters in diameter and floating a few inches off the ground. The animation zoomed in on the hole in the air that the device had created, displaying a lush green landscape with a beautiful medieval castle a few hundred meters away.

  “What the hell…?” Peter was speechless. He hadn’t expected this, at least not today. “Are you sure that this will also work once we put all these parts together? Making it work on a simulator is one thing, but…”

  Now Ivan looked disappointed. “Don’t you worry, it’ll work. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t. All these parts have been built to specification, exactly as defined in this simulation.”

  Ivan suddenly looked less sure. It seemed Peter’s concerns had unsettled him slightly. “No! It will work. I’m sure. Let’s get the sphere back to engineering so they can modify it while we start putting this together.”

  Peter nodded. He wouldn’t have minded having breakfast before starting this intensive task, but knowing Ivan there would be no food until it was finished.

  “Now look at that!” Ivan lifted the portal gun, which was only missing the modified glass sphere, off the table. Peter started to laugh as he remembered something he had recently seen on the classic cartoons channel. “You look like the crazy, evil professor Dr. Doofenshmirtz from the kids’ cartoon Phineas and Ferb… you know the cartoons they produced around 2010?”

  Ivan shook his head. “I’ve never heard of this Dr. Dorfenhirtz or whatever he’s called. Even though I might be slightly crazy, at least I’m not evil…”

  Peter nodded. “No, the only evil thing you do is wake me up way too early and not allow me any food for hours.”

  Ivan looked at his watch. They hadn’t stopped working since the early morning and now it was already past 4 p.m.

  “Time to eat. Let’s go and get some synthesized chicken and noodles. It’s actually pretty good.”

  Peter smiled. Artificial chicken… no wonder they say everything tastes like chicken… Even the artificial version seemed to fit the description.

  Peter was surprised to find Jon and Eva sitting at a table in the canteen having an animated chat while drinking a cup of coffee.

  “Hi Peter, Ivan, how’s your project going?” Eva looked happy. Peter thought she looked like she was in love. He felt a stabbing sensation in his chest, a picture of Julia flashing past his inner eye. He suddenly felt very lonely.

  Peter was absorbed in thought, while Ivan answered, grinning happily, “We should be ready to test our first prototype tomorrow morning.”

  Jon looked amazed. “Really? You’ve been very fast. I didn’t expect any results until at least the end of the week.”

  Ivan now had a cheeky smile on his face. “Ah, well, you know… we Russians are simply cleverer and we need less sleep.”

  Peter nearly laughed out loud, but when considering it again he thought that at least the second part of Ivan’s statement might be true.

  “You look tired,” said Jon, “don’t overdo it. We need you rested and alert when performing the first test.”

  Ivan nodded and finished the conversation with a brief, “Yes, sir!”

  Peter removed his meal from the food synthesizer and then walked towards Jon’s table. “How are you progressing with your genetic experiments?” Eva looked up and pointed at the seat next to her.

  “We’ve been able to isolate the specific part of the human DNA that corresponds to the alien structure. We’ve also found that Chris and Suki’s version of this part is more closely related to the alien DNA than ours. They somehow were able to take a step back in the evolutionary process, at least that’s what it looks like.”

  Peter was enjoying his food. You really only know how hungry you are once you start eating, thought Peter as Eva continued, “Delta believes that we don’t have to worry about finding a mechanism to replace the existing version of the human DNA if we go back at least three thousand years. It should be good enough to find a way to add the pure structure to the existing human DNA. The presence of the unadulterated information alone should be enough to overpower the corrupted parts once activated.”

  Jon took over from Eva. “First, we have to find a way to add the DNA structure to every human being. Once your device is ready and tested we’ll have to form a team that travels back in time and performs this task. I’m not so much concerned about the spreading of the DNA structure once it has been added to a few human organisms. Three thousand years should be enough time for the seed to be propagated to basically every human being. But… I was wondering… when we’re back… in the past. How can we return to the present?”

  Ivan now joined the table. “That should be no problem at all! Only thing we have to bring along is an object that carries a time signature of the moment the team leaves. The object can be used to travel back as the original portal is only a one-way street.”

  Eva nearly choked on her coffee. “What happens if the gun is destroyed or doesn’t work anymore?”

  Ivan seemed to be in a cheerful mood. “Then you better get used to living some three thousand years ago. Should be fun. No cars, planes, travel pods, computers, TVs…”

  Jon now looked very serious. “Sounds risky, but I don’t see any other way, at least not yet.” His face grew darker. “And then there’s another application for this gun of yours.” Jon gazed at Eva for a brief moment before he continued, “We’ll be putting together teams of five people each. Four of them will be couples like Chris and Suki. They will be the shields, while another person will operate your portal device. The intention is to force the alien attacker into the portal which will lead to a place where the attacker will be rendered nonhazardous for humankind.”

  Eva nodded as she took over. “Delta told us that as long as we transport the alien to a place in deep space, the alien should revert back to its wavelike form and simply dissolve into the whole, into the universe itself.”

  Peter nearly dropped his fork when Ivan suddenly burst out laughing. “First it’s the Russians, then the Americans, and now we’re sending aliens to the moon. That’s funny.”

  Jon looked at Ivan in a quizzical way. “You know that the Russian Soyuz program never resulted in a moon landing, don’t you, Ivan? Anyway… the moon is maybe not such a great idea. I’d prefer a place a bit further away, closer to where they initially came from.”

  Ivan nodded. “Why don’t we all meet tomorrow at 8 a.m. to test it in the lab where you keep Delta’s younger brothers, the one with the solid metal doors and the bombproof glass… just in case.”

  Jon agreed. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Thirty-Five

  Team

  Jon scanned the group of people that had come together from around the globe. He felt a deep sadness about what Iris had just told him.

  “We’re all here to observe the first test of Ivan and Peter’s portal device, but before we proceed I have sad news to convey. Ezrah was killed by an alien attack in his hotel room in Mumbai yesterday evening.”

  Jon watched Chris’s face turn white as a ghost while his whole body trembled from the pain the shocking news had inflicted. Ezrah had been his friend since their paths crossed in a pretty unusual way in New York City. The big black man had been understanding and kind, something that Jon knew Chris hadn’t expected from a NYC police detective. At times Ezrah seemed to have turned into something like a father figure, a substitute for a man who was never around much when Chris was growing up.

  “I’m sorry,” stammered Chris as he held on to Suki who hugged him gently. “I didn’t expect that he…”

  Jon felt coldhearted, even mean when he said, “I’m very sorry for your loss, Chris, but he would want us to press on no matter what.”

  Chris had tears in his eyes
when he nodded for Jon to continue.

  “Ezrah’s assistant, Anil, was successful in recruiting another five people yesterday. That makes eight from Mumbai. They’ll arrive tomorrow evening.”

  Jon noticed a brief flash of relief washing over Chris’s face. He must be feeling a certain sense of satisfaction that Ezrah’s job had been completed successfully. Ezrah would have liked that.

  “Zoe will be back from London with her group of people. There are three couples from the UK. This means we will have quite a few new people arriving that we’ll have to test and sort into matching couples. We can do this based on the test results received from Chris and Suki.”

  Jon looked at Eva who now took over. “Before we let Ivan and Peter do their magic I propose that we remain quiet for a minute in honor of Detective Ezrah Hill. He was a great man and his presence will be sorely missed.”

  All was quiet when the door opened and Delta walked into the room. He didn’t say a word but simply joined the row of people standing next to each other paying tribute to their dead friend.

  After a minute Jon looked at Eva, indicating that it was time. “Ivan, Peter, are you ready?”

  Ivan nodded and signaled Peter to set up the portal gun on the stand that they had constructed. “In a nutshell… we’ve managed to reduce the size of Professor Dimitrios’s machine. It now all fits into a portable device.”

  Ivan pointed at the gun-shaped piece of equipment. “We call it a portal gun.”

  Eva laughed out loud. “Boys and their toys. A portal gun! What a name!”

  Ivan’s face turned red as he continued, “Yes… Well… Anyway, as the name portal gun indicates we’ve not only reduced the size of the equipment but also tweaked its functionality. Instead of sending someone back into his own past and leaving the environment unchanged, we now open a portal, a wormhole if you like, to a defined location in the past—”

  Peter interjected “—or the future… but this is only possible for someone that has already been traveling back in time and only up to the point in time where he was traveling from.”

  Ivan nodded. “I know this sounds complicated, but once you’ve thoroughly considered the facts, it’s really pretty simple, right?”

  Jon asked, “How do you define the destination space and time? I can’t see any control panel that would allow you to enter the desired destination.”

  Ivan smiled. “There is no control panel. We found it impossible to control the time matrix using a piece of software. We have to use an artifact that was created at the specific time that we would like to travel to.”

  Ivan went over to the table that held the specimen containers. “These are the specimens that we’ve collected for the test run. They’re objects from different locations manufactured at different times during the history of mankind or even much earlier, shaped by the workings of the universe itself. Here…” Ivan held up a small silver coin. “This coin was pressed into shape in Scotland during the early Middle Ages. Using this coin should take us back to some place in the northern UK. I guess to the workshop of a blacksmith who is stamping this little piece of metal.”

  Jon noticed Delta’s face show definite signs of amusement. “Delta, are you OK?”

  “Yes, Jon, I find Ivan’s elaborations very interesting.”

  Jon was sure that there was more than just simple interest behind Delta’s strange look, but now was not the time to analyze this cryptic being.

  Ivan picked up another specimen from the table. “This is a little piece of rock collected at the first manned mission to the moon.”

  Jon interjected, “Ivan, where did you get this rock from? Russia?”

  Ivan’s face went a slightly darker shade of red. “No… NASA was kind enough to donate a few little pieces. Anyway, using this sample should finally prove that no American has ever set foot on the moon. I’m pretty sure this will not lead us to the moon but to somewhere in Arizona in the late sixties.”

  Jon laughed out loud. “Anyone want to bet on this? Eva?”

  Eva looked startled. Jon sensed that the joviality that was going on, especially after he had just delivered the bad news about Ezrah, displeased her greatly. He suddenly felt very insensitive. He was wondering if maybe this was how humans reacted when they didn’t know how to deal with certain emotions. Was making fun of things a self-defense mechanism to take their minds off thoughts that were too unbearable to endure?

  “No, thank you, Jon. No betting this time. I still owe you dinner… let’s not make that two in a row.”

  Jon smiled at Eva. “OK, so, Ivan, where do we travel to first?”

  Ivan looked like a man who had suddenly realized that his plan finished just before the answer to the very question at hand. He had thought out the procedure, the specimen samples, but which one to use first. “I… I’m not sure… What do you think?”

  “Why don’t we see if the Americans really went to the moon? There’s less damage to be done to the moon than to medieval Scotland, I guess… I don’t want to be responsible for wiping out a whole clan of Scottish highlanders.”

  Ivan nodded and placed a piece of rock as small as a grain of sand into the glass sphere’s specimen loader. He flicked a switch on the side of the gun, which resulted in a tiny black dot materializing in the middle of the sphere. The grain of moon rock started rotating around this gravitational center. Ivan’s hands trembled with anticipation.

  “As soon as I pull the trigger the rock will be accelerated on a specific rotational path and will collide with the artificial black hole, collapsing it into itself and thus reversing the gravitational polarity, causing a wormhole… portal… being projected about three meters from here…”

  Peter went to the portal gun and placed his hand on the trigger. “We don’t know for how long the portal will be stable… actually there are a few things we don’t really know for sure. But I guess this is the same for most scientific experiments.”

  Jon nodded. “I know what you mean.” He thought back to the last, failed experiment where Delta’s older brother, Gamma, could have caused unimaginable damage had Jon not been able to trap him in the sun room, sending him into a deep winter’s sleep. “I guess now is as good as ever… Commence!”

  Peter acted on Jon’s instruction, pulling the trigger. The little rock accelerated, turned into a rainbow of color, and suddenly vanished. A dark beam, which Jon thought looked like a pitch-black streak of crystallized light, emitted from the gun’s barrel, creating a shimmering black disc a few meters in front of it. Everyone was looking at the magical display that resembled a hole in space leading to a grey, barren landscape.

  Ivan slowly approached the portal. “Looks like… you Americans really were there…”

  Jon walked up next to Ivan. “What happens if we throw an object into the portal?”

  Jon felt that this would have to be the next step; it was essential not only to open a portal but also to be able to use it accordingly.

  Ivan hesitated. “I… really don’t know.”

  Peter cut in, “Based on my calculations, which of course are purely theoretical, every object that comes in contact with the surface will be sucked into the portal. This happens because the portal’s space/time continuum will overpower the object’s locality in time and space and override it with the information inherent in the portal’s horizon.”

  Jon still didn’t feel satisfied. “So once someone touches it, he’ll travel through a wormhole and eventually appear on the moon?”

  Peter shook his head. “No, it’s not like a tunnel or corridor that one walks through and then travels physically to a faraway place. It’s more like in a computer game… Imagine you’re a character in a game and you activate a certain cheat code that takes the character into a different place in the game, maybe even into a completely different level. The character isn’t traveling anywhere, it’s only the information that makes up the character that’s inserted into a different data set.”

  Jon nodded. “I think I get it. So let�
��s use this small piece of…” He paused for a moment. Had the portal’s surface just wobbled? Jon thought it looked like a tiny drop of water had fallen onto a perfectly still pond, silvery moonlight reflecting off it. “Did you see that?”

  Jon looked back at his friends. Delta seemed to be unimpressed, gazing at the clock that displayed the current time. 08:29:31. Jon felt a small pull and noticed how his shirt lifted off his chest.

  “What’s happening here?” Jon looked at Peter who seemed equally puzzled.

  “I’m not sure…”

  Jon pushed Peter away from the portal as a small piece of metal started moving on the surface of the table next to them. It fell off the edge closest to the portal, but instead of dropping to the floor it curved into the direction of the hole and eventually disappeared into it. A second later the table started vibrating. Jon felt the pull of the portal get stronger by the second.

  “Everybody out!” Delta used a tone of urgency that Jon had never before experienced from this otherwise perfectly calm being.

  “Everybody leave the room. Close the door and don’t come in no matter what happens!”

  Delta’s eyes glowed as if a fire had been lit inside his skull. Bright beams of light started emitting from his body, burning away the clothes he was wearing, revealing a transparent form, still shaped like a human, but pulsing and glittering like a thousand stars in a perfectly dark, moonless sky.

  Jon thought about Gamma. Delta now actually looked exactly like Gamma just before Jon had lured him into the sun room. Jon and the others observed from outside the room how Ivan’s portal gun including its heavy stand lifted off the ground and vanished into the wormhole. Delta moved towards the hole. He stretched his arms out wide as if he were about to hug the black disc that hovered in the middle of the room. His body took on the shape of an X, a huge, glowing spider sitting on its dark, dangerous web, waiting for its prey.

  The concrete below Delta’s feet started bubbling and the metal legs of the table that was bolted to the ground a couple of meters from the portal started glowing and bending as if weighed down by a massive force. Jon felt the heat that radiated through the thick safety glass of the metal door they were hiding behind. The whole room looked like an image seen in a distorting, warping mirror. The fabric of reality itself seemed to be bending under these opposing forces.