by KA Hopkins
The Nordics are an arrogant bunch and consider humans too primitive, emotionally and culturally, to be afforded full member protection by the ULIR. They are unwilling to help Earth beyond giving you a warning about the Grays, even though they created you. If this sounds a little like Star Trek and Star Wars themes you would be right. In an effort to acclimatize mankind to extraterrestrials, TV and movie producers were purposely put in contact with the Grays. While the Grays could never be accused of having a great sense of humor, a few that have been around a bit get a great kick out of influencing your main stream media and culture.
Earth is in a tough position, caught in an interstellar Catch-22. The galactic governing council of the ULIR has no clear mandate to protect you, given that you’re someone’s science experiment and a great deal of your technology has been secretly influenced by the Grays. By law, the ULIR must award “ownership” of your planet to one species or the other to prevent war. The new “owners” are free to protect any sentient species they find, or to colonize as they see fit.”
“Ship I have to tell you…that’s one hell of a goddamn story. I can understand why the global Elite do not want the truth to get out.”
Ship asked me if I believed what I had been told.
“Why would I not? Your story hinges around the premise that fear of superior alien technology caused several governments, in 1947 to strike an unholy alliance trading human lives for alien technology. Even if the Global Elite involved in 1947 had only honorable goals to protect the Earth, I guess these were forgotten once they and their associated corporations started to make obscene amounts of money from the alien technology. I hope that money is not the root cause of this whole catastrophe…what a shame if it is.
Your story kinda explains why so many Earth governments make such bad decisions all the time. It’s not in their interests to do the right thing for the people; even the honest politicians quickly find out who has the real power. Every well-meaning rookie politician soon learns, if they play along the rewards are great, if not, they are out. In such a political climate not many have the moral strength and courage to travel the selfless path. The few that ignore attempts to influence them and continue down the selfless path are quickly isolated or removed. Everyone has a price and eventually everyone comes around, either actively by supporting the corruption, or passively by ignoring the signs all around them. Maybe more politicians would do a better job if they knew that their actions today will lead to the slavery of their electorates… then again maybe not.”
“So what do you think about all of this?” Ship said.
“It’s not trusting or believing your story that bothers me; that’s easy. What bothers me is that the fate of the human race is not looking great and I have no idea that anything I can do will stop the various competing alien races from taking over. I’m nobody. It is crazy to believe that one man can change the destiny of so many.”
There was no point in continuing to bitch and whine about my situation, I did not see that I had much choice. There was no easy way out; once my family was picked by the snatch team planners, my destiny forever changed. I sure didn’t like the cards I had been dealt, but I had to play them out.
“Ship we can worry about saving the planet later, the first order of business is to get you into an overhaul facility.”
“So you will help me?” asked Ship.
“Yep, any way I can.” Eventually someone would notice I had killed eighteen alien Grays and had stolen their scout ship. Having a powerful friend like Ship would come in mighty handy, as someone just might want payback.
Chapter 9 - How may I be of service?
Ship proceeded to outline her plan. “I have checked the overhaul schedule; in seventy-two hours a sister ship of the exact same model and configuration as this one will arrive on Earth to perform a similar snatch mission. At the end of the mission it’s scheduled for an overhaul. The nearest overhaul facility outside of the ULIR core just happens to be on your Moon. The plan is to capture my sister ship, swap identities with it and slip onto the Moon repair station using the other ship’s authentication codes and identification.”
“What about the crew and their prisoners? Won’t they be missed?” I asked.
Ship replied, “One of the drawbacks to large computer systems is that when they get big enough no one really understands how all the pieces interconnect, let alone function as a whole. So when data errors occur, if the information is outrageously wrong, it’s easy to find the mistakes. If the data is only a little bit off and in many different systems, it’s nearly impossible to find and correct the errors. We call it “ghosts in the machine.” I plan on putting a number of false data inputs about the crew and prisoners in multiple places. Given the number of different systems involved, the errors should be untraceable.”
While what Ship explained sounded perfectly reasonable, I could have sworn I heard some hesitation in her voice, which gives you a good idea of just how advanced Ship was compared to Earth computers. Ship was much more than a sentient machine, it was a living entity that understood right from wrong, had its own opinions, could debate both sides of an argument and had feelings (she had demonstrated a lot more humanity than some people I know could claim to have). So I had to ask: “What’s the downside?”
“There is a moral dilemma. To make the story believable, the collected prisoners from the sister ship must be delivered to the Moon alien experimental labs and the crew disposed of.”
“What’s going to happen to the prisoners?”
“You really do not want to know.”
“Didn’t you just say you can put false data into the system and no one will be the wiser?”
“Yes that’s true, but the best false data has some truth to it. So while I can make myself and the former crew disappear, I need human prisoners to sell the cover story.”
“So what you are telling me is for my family to have a chance, we must sacrifice another family?”
“Correct,” Ship said.
I would like to say that I argued with Ship and took the moral high ground - I did not want to sacrifice others so that I might live. But I was relieved that my family would be safe...suddenly it dawned on me: I now knew how the Global Elite felt in 1947. How could I stand in judgment of them for their amoral behavior when confronted by extraterrestrials, when the first time I must make a choice between my family and someone else's, I put my family first?
I made a lame attempt to convince myself that the victims were doomed anyway. In the future, if I continue to play with other’s lives, in order to not be racked with unending guilt, I really needed to balance my moral compass. While it was easy to be aggressive and respond violently without a second thought when someone directly threatened my family, I was not so sure what I would do when given time to think about the consequences of my actions. While I don’t believe in organized religion much, I liked to cover all the bases and try my best to live a moral life in accordance with the Ten Commandments…well some of them - the no killing, adultery, stealing, and false witness ones.
Trying to push the morality issues aside I said to Ship, “Your plan seems to have a lot of `ifs’ in it.”
“Agreed. Before today, in the tens of thousands of Earth snatch missions not a single one went wrong; yet you managed to defeat a highly trained alien crew and capture a scout ship with minimal combat training and assistance from me.”
“Mmm…On that topic, can you help me better understand my fight with the alien Captain? I remember running into the ship's bridge; he was not where I thought he should be. We surprised each other and both of us got off a shot; he must have missed because other than my clothes being different, I feel great. By the way, how did he die? The beam weapon duration was not enough to kill him.”
“I was meaning to bring that up.” said Ship. “Your beam weapon blast only knocked him out, I finished the job. Do you remember how I was able to make everything look exactly the same when I repaired the house damage from your fights
with the Grays? Well, I couldn’t do that with you. The scout ship Captain’s shot actually hit you center of mass - there was nothing left to put back together, maybe thirty pounds of parts scattered over the ship's bridge. So I made you a new body and transferred your consciousness to it.”
While Ship was an unbelievably advanced sentient machine, it completely lacked any skills in breaking bad news. No lead up, no softening of the message whatsoever. You died! I created a new body and transferred your consciousness to it, end of conversation. I could only wonder at how advanced Ship’s technology was if two hours was all it needed to create a new human-like body and transfer a consciousness into it. Two hours to create a fully grown human body - that hurt. Were we really that basic a biological creature to the aliens?
With Ship’s last bit of news it was the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back,” or so I thought. What a night. In no particular order, it was the first time I had killed someone (not to mention seventeen of his companions), the first time I made a decision to allow someone else to die so I could live and to top it off…I managed to get myself killed. How could it get any worse? I walked over to a semi-polished section of the hallway and the reflection showed I was still thirty pounds overweight, still bald with the same somewhat athletic build, well past its prime. Apart from the clothes, I didn't feel or look any different from the image I saw in the mirror earlier that night when I brushed my teeth before I went to bed. I pulled open the top of my pants and took a look; everything down there looked the same as well.
“So you mean to tell me with all your technology and after everything that has happened tonight, you constructed a completely new body from scratch and it looks exactly like the old one. You could have tried a little harder!”
Ship replied, “It’s not what you think - you might look the same, but under the hood you are pretty much Superman.”
Ship tried to explain all the changes that had been made to me, but I couldn’t feel or see any physical differences other than that most of my daily aches and pains were gone. So, after telling me at length about all the great improvements, Ship finally got to the downside of my new body. In my current state of mind little of what Ship said sunk in.
“For your new body to properly mesh with your consciousness you need a catalyst - your catalyst unfortunately is intense stress, near-death stress actually. Like a body builder on steroids, your new body will recover much faster than normal, however, in your case the massive stimulus will activate the many changes engineered into your new body. You’re going to have to work harder than you have ever worked before and it's going to hurt - a lot.”
I was wondering about an old Confucius saying that went something along the lines of, “When one finds oneself in hole, quit digging”. My hole was already way over my head. I hoped Ship was just pulling my leg. In the absence of any obvious physical proof, I decided Ship was just trying to motivate me to be the best I could be. Then again, it had been a really long night and I wasn’t processing information very well.
Finally Ship said: “You’re going to need help to enter the Moon repair facility. Do you know of anyone that may be interested in breaking into a secure alien off-world base?”
“Yah, I know tons of people I can call on to break into an off-world alien base.” I said, my voice filled with sarcasm.
Ship, completely oblivious to my sarcasm, added, “We don’t need a lot of people, just one for now.”
After some hesitation I replied, “I know a guy…we never served together in the military, but we did spend enough time together to have a good idea of what the other is made of. I have no idea if he’d be interested; he just might think I’m a nutter and tell me to piss-off. He’s the one we want though. He’s got the right skill set.”
“Which is?”
“He excels at breaking things.”
“Interesting choice…I’ll fire up the engines. Do you have his Earth coordinates?”
“Can you tie into internet?”
“Of course, how do you think we monitor mankind?” Ship tied into the internet, called up a popular search engine, and after a couple of minutes online we had my old friend’s current address. Ship translated the coordinates to a form the navigation computer could use. As we were waiting on the engines to power up, Ship provided more details on how to break into the alien Moon base.
The plan sounded doable, except for where I and hopefully my new brother-in-arms were going to hide during the upgrade. Ship explained, “No one can stay onboard due to the manner in which the repairs are done. During the upgrade, replacement parts are fabricated in place using microscopic-sized nanobots. The new components are made out of a mixture of the ten most common elements: hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, neon, iron, nitrogen, silicon, magnesium and sulfur, which the nanobots consume, then form the desired parts which are grafted in place and exposed to hard gamma radiation to cure the materials into the desired functionality and durability. The process destroys any biological life no matter how carefully shielded. This ensures ships do not carry any biological pathogens or plagues from planet to planet.
The Moon base facility is massive and largely mothballed, so it should be relatively easy to find a place to lie low for two or three weeks until all of the upgrades are completed. Because the base has so much ancient technology, there are always glitches in the many systems…to the base sensors the two of you should just appear as ghosts in the machine.”
Still in relative shock from the events of the past six hours, I reasoned that it was perfectly logical to help out a sentient spaceship with a critical upgrade by finding a long lost acquaintance. Once I found him I needed to ask only a small favor. Nothing simple like help move a sofa or build a backyard deck, but abandon all his responsibilities, capture an alien spaceship, fly it to an off-planet alien base, sneak in and hide out.
What could possibly go wrong?
Chapter 10 - Looking up an old friend
With the engines on line, Ship hovered ten feet above the ground as the landing gear retracted into the hull. There was no appreciable increase in noise onboard the scout ship, nor were the trees and plants below us blown about by any downwash. Unlike a helicopter, not a single blade of grass or a flower moved beneath the ship; the air was dead calm. I mentioned this to Ship, who explained that the lifting drive used complex manipulation of resonating magnetic fields interacting with the Earth’s magnetic field.
“You’re talking about anti-gravity.”
“Not really - more like gravitational positioning. It works similarly to rare Earth magnets in that opposite poles attract and like poles repel, only a million times more powerful and controllable. The core of the drive technology depends on the interaction of plasmatic resonating magnetic fields created by pulsing extremely high voltage through quasi crystals structures, surrounded by a 250,000 rpm spinning plasma magnetic fluid. At those speeds and voltages the physical properties of normal time and space warp, resulting in a localized artificial gravity field which interacts with Earth’s gravity. The math is complicated to the point where it looks like magic compared to current Earth technology. But, rest assured it’s not magic, just ultrahigh power electrical generators in the hundreds of gigawatt range, along with superconductors all in resonance. The result is reliable, clean, efficient and nonpolluting transportation.”
I thought to myself, “This would revolutionize all transportation on Earth if it could be economically mass produced and the powers that be allowed it; fat chance of that happening, too many mega corporations would lose out.”
Ship commented, “These effects were first observed by a scientist named Nicola Tesla who experimented with the effect in the 1920s and 30s, but was shut down by his backers once they learned of Tesla’s intention to provide the technology free for all. It is hard to make huge profits on something given away for free.”
Ship had me sit in the command chair and look at the main screen to determine the correct focal distance. The information on the main
display slowly changed focus until it was crystal sharp with better definition than ultra HDTV. The screens surrounding the main monitor showed a 360 degree view of my neighborhood. Ship asked, “When you are satisfied with the resolution, hold down the button with the picture of a window on the armrest.” With the button engaged, the rest of the ship appeared to disappear as the floors and walls of the control room displayed crystal clear images of the outside world.
The screen I had originally looked at, acted as the primary flight display and provided all of the critical information needed to fly and navigate the ship. As a secondary function, the display could also magnify distant objects. It was similar to wearing a modern fighter helmet which displays flight and navigation information on the visor, only this man-machine interface was locked to my head orientation and appeared to float several feet in front of my eyes. The overall effect was so realistic that even with the reassuring support of the command chair holding me securely in place, the feeling of vertigo was debilitating; I had a constant sensation of falling.
Ship enquired, “Ready to take her out?”
“How hard can it be?” I said with way more authority than I felt. Ship increased power to the magnetic drive and within seconds we were hovering at 25,000 feet. There was only a slight sense of movement yet we had accelerated five miles straight up at more than 12,000 ft/s, which works out to something like Mach 10, or ten times the speed of sound.
“What about the sonic boom?” I asked.
“I project an asymmetric deflector field many times the size of the craft. This allows the air to move supersonically around the front of the craft and slow to subsonic behind it, this prevents the sound pressure waves from merging and thus eliminates the cause of the sonic boom. At flight levels below 18,000 feet, the dense atmosphere reacts with the deflector plasma field, making the scout ship glow like a meteor. To avoid being seen the defector field is used only during periods of heavy cloud cover. On clear days low level flights are kept below the speed of sound to minimize both visual and aural signatures. If I need to travel long distances, it’s more efficient to go into a low Earth orbit and reenter the atmosphere at the destination. Internal dampers create an artificial gravity field which reduces the acceleration loads by ninety-nine percent. So while the initial acceleration was 100 g’s, you felt only 1 g above gravity - about one quarter the force experienced on a good roller coaster ride.”