His next thought really disturbed him. He had actually thought how far he would go in the program if he did sell out Bob. He could even negotiate some terms on what he would receive if the hostile alien was found, but then he got a sick feeling in his stomach and he knew that the dark thoughts were probably coming from that pain-in-the-ass voice in the back of his head that was trying to mess up his meditation this morning.
“So, are you ready to rock and roll, rock star?” Melissa asked.
“Rock and roll,” he answered and followed her out of her office to probably the brightest part of his day.
His old pal Chan was standing in front of the heavy, thick glass door to chair number one, the big chair, getting ready to be let in when Melissa yelled just loud enough for everyone to hear, which he had to say he really appreciated.
“Sorry, Chan you’ll be working chair number two. Ross is working chair number one,”
You could have heard a pin drop after she said that because Eric was pretty sure that Chan’s abilities were respected, but he was generally an ass to everybody. The look on Chan’s face was priceless. Eric was actually waiting for the room to erupt into a cheer. Eric did have to give Chan some credit because after the initial response of being embarrassed and humiliated, he pulled himself together and stoically walked to the door to room two.
Chan would still be working on the same mission he had been but he knew that it wasn’t the top priority mission of the program. This meant he wasn’t considered the top viewer anymore.
Eric knew Chan very well, and as he waited for Melissa to unlock the Fort Knox type door to room one he could almost feel Chan plotting some kind of revenge to get even. Perception is reality.
Chapter 10
Eric was back in the big chair. It had been a long time but it was the same job. It wasn’t any different from sitting in the other chairs, but it was a status symbol in the lab. That’s why Chan used to bother him so much when he would rib Eric incessantly but Chan had the skills to back it up. Sitting in the big chair was the best comeback to anything Chan could say or do to him. He didn’t feel too cocky though because he knew that he was artificially enhanced by the Brain Soup shot. He also knew that was the only reason that he wasn’t dead and why he was back working at the lab. He laughed at what a bad career choice he had made. At first it seemed so cool - real cloak and dagger kind of stuff. He actually thought he was going to make a difference in the world. He soon realized that it was all an illusion and the people that he thought were in control really weren’t in control. The Hierarchy went up and out of this dimension. He had no idea where it ended. What he did know is that everybody is expendable, and if they don’t think that you can do your job anymore and you know too much, then you’re in line to experience an accident that you won’t be recovering from anytime soon.
“Wow,” he said to himself he couldn’t believe how cynical he had become especially since he was sitting in the big chair. He knew he wouldn’t be sitting here long if he didn’t deliver the goods. He would be right back where he was a few days ago before he had the shot. Eric settled into the chair and Melissa began ‘plugging him in’ as they called it in the biz. She hooked up the electrodes to monitor his brainwaves so that he could achieve the optimal theta and delta states for viewing. That part always came easy to him. She lightly strapped down his arms and legs so that his body would be held in place and wouldn’t pull him out of his viewing states by sliding off the chair and also so he wouldn’t split his head open by cracking it on the floor. Then he put on a light vaporizer, or a blindfold, and a noise vaporizer, or headphones and he was shut out from the outside world.
Slowly soundwaves began to come through the headphones and it allowed him to easily get down to theta waves where he could concentrate in his mind’s eye and project to the destination site. It was so much easier than it had ever been. He could see a silver-blue energy swirling in a spiral in his mind’s eye, and all he was waiting for were the coordinates to come through from Melissa. Her soft voice came through like a whisper and instructed him where to go. He shot off through the spiral with ease. The thing about what he did that people didn’t understand was that his soul never left his body. He was actually sending out a probe. It was more like a piece of him that was connected to him. If it got destroyed, he would be shaken up pretty hard, but he would be okay. The location was on the other side of the world. It was cold and covered in snow. Russia came to mind. He was in the middle of nowhere. He thought it would be very easy for people to disappear out here. It made him think that he might be looking for a missing person. He soon realized that wasn’t it. He felt strange radiation patterns coming from underground. They were circular and very powerful and very, very old. What the hell were they, he wondered, and went in for a closer look.
Effortlessly he penetrated the ground and could see a circular orb resting in a holder. It looked like a hard-boiled egg sitting in its stand but it was pulsing with a renewable blue energy. It was a weapon of some kind, and it appeared to shoot a plasma beam that would probably destroy just about anything.
“Very interesting don’t you think?” Bob said to him creeping up right next to him and pretty much scaring the shit out of him. He had never actually been able to communicate with anyone in this state before.
“What the hell, Bob? You don’t sneak up on someone like that. You scared me half to death.”
“What do you mean half to death? Can you die halfway? I thought you had to fully die to be dead?”
Eric laughed. “It’s an expression, Bob.”
“An expression?”
“It’s hard to explain. What are you doing here?”
“I was following you to see where you were going?”
“Wow, that’s impressive. How did you do that?”
“I just did it.”
“Okay, well I have to tell you that the powers that be have recruited me to find a hostile alien force that’s landed on the planet and I think it’s actually you they have me looking for.”
“That’s strange I’m neither hostile nor an alien.”
“I know Bob. It’s a cover to make me think you’re dangerous and need to be found as soon as possible.”
“I see. Well you found me what do we do now?”
“You need to make yourself scarce and hide. I’m not sure if they can monitor us or not.”
“I see. Do you know what these are? They are very strange. They seem like a futuristic plasma beam weapon but appear to have been here for a very long time.”
“I would say that’s an excellent assessment.” said Bob.
“I believe they were placed here by time travelers from the far future who came back to live in the far past to probably avoid some kind of cataclysm, and they built these to protect them from others that might not appreciate their presence here. “
Eric had never heard anything so crazy in his entire life but the last thing that he expected from Bob was a crazy fairy tale like that. He suddenly had a feeling that maybe Bob was crazy and dangerous and he didn’t even know it. However, whatever these things were, they had been here for a long time and the technology that they were made from wasn’t even close to being developed on Earth. Plus, they still appeared to be functional and there didn’t appear to be a maintenance crew around anywhere to do preventative maintenance. He felt nothing but kindness and sincerity from Bob, and he felt that he had to give him the benefit of the doubt.
There was still that quiet little nagging voice in the back of his mind that was telling him about all the glory and praise that he would receive if he brought in Bob. It would be like Captain Ahab bringing in the white whale. He did his best to silence that dark and evil voice because there was another side to Eric, a stronger better side, that had an intuitive sense that there was more to their meeting than chance and the possibility of something amazing coming from it was destiny - if you believed in that kind of thing, and he did.
He decided to go in and have a closer look at this s
trange, futuristic contraption. When he got close enough he felt it scanning him. It felt invasive and disturbing. He backed off immediately hoping he could get out of its reach, but it had a lock on him. Then it had a lock on Bob. “Oh dear, this is quite unexpected.” said Bob.
They were both in the grips of some kind of tractor beam for ethereal beings. At that moment he believed every word of what Bob had said about these orbs.
“Bob, can you get us out of here?” he screamed in a panic coming to the realization that he was up against something that he didn’t understand.
“I don’t think so Eric. It has ripped through my database of information and knows everything about me. This is not good. I’m sorry I didn’t decipher that this was a possibility with these weapons. They are even ahead of my time and obviously also know how to deal with the likes of us.”
Eric felt his information being pulled out of him. He tried to fight it but it was hopeless. Whatever this weapon was, it had been designed for multi-dimensional defense. It only took an instant and it had downloaded from him everything there was to know.
“Bob, are you okay?” he telepathically projected to his new friend.
“My data has been compromised but I appear to still be me. This weapon has pulled every bit of information from me and can do with me what it pleases. I have to think that it has what it wants from us and I would assume that we will be terminated very soon. Glad to have met you Eric Ross.”
Eric felt the same way. He was a helpless minnow caught in a fisherman’s net. “Glad to have met you too, Bob,” he said and let go and waited for the end to come.
They were both waiting and waiting and waiting, but nothing appeared to be changing. They had given up all their data to the machines and now they were just stuck there awaiting their fate. Time crept by at a sloth- like pace but nothing happened. Were they to be stuck here forever? Eric knew that this was just a probe of his consciousness, but it felt like the machine had been able to travel back to the source. He wondered if his vital stats back in the big chair were reflecting what was happening to him here. Then, all of a sudden, just like that, the machines released them. It felt like a super powerful magnet had been shut off and the silver-blue plasma energy that had been flowing through the top orb dissipated. It appeared that they had shut off and that they had not been considered a threat.
“Bob, let’s get out of here,” he said and Bob didn’t need to be told twice as they moved away from the machines as quickly as they were able to and retreated off into the nearby woods.
High above them they saw a long tubular cigar shaped craft speeding off in a blur straight up into the atmosphere. Eric thought that he was meant to see it because the timing of it all was just a little bit too convenient. Then he heard a roar and the sound of wood hitting wood and he looked down at the woods and saw this huge bear like humanoid with white fur hitting a tree with a huge branch. It was a Yeti and then once the Yeti knew that they were watching him a circle of energy appeared around it and it disappeared as if it had been transported away to another place.
Eric had never experienced anything like this before during what he thought were crazy cutting-edge adventures in remote viewing. He realized that his education was just getting started and was glad that Bob was around for the ride.
He decided it was a good time to get back to his body in the big chair. He had been so caught up in everything that had been going on that he hadn’t noticed another probe of consciousness that had been observing him from afar. His nemesis, Chan had been shadowing them the entire time.
Chapter 11
Bob, was very thankful that he and Eric had escaped from the strange machines. It took him a few minutes but he now understood how they worked and realized that they were deemed not a threat so they were released. A very humane weapon, he thought, that could self -process information to determine if something was a threat or not. He was also very interested in the long tubular craft. He thought the technology was very similar to the weapons that had captured him and Eric. He knew it was a time traveling and interplanetary device. He also wondered if there was something underground beneath those weapons. It didn’t make much sense for the weapons to still be active if they weren’t protecting something. He decided he would be better off contemplating these ideas somewhere else away from the scene of the crime. So he drifted off into the nearest cloud and used its water vapor to increase his processing power, and much to his surprise, or maybe not, considering what had just happened, he picked up on another timestream that was just starting to open. He had nothing else better to do so he caught the wave and took it for a ride. He was a quick study and had learned from his first trip how to operate it, and he found himself back in his original time period. Once again things were the same as they had been.
He was still over the same icy tundra part of the world as when he entered the time stream except now it was much more developed than before. He could see the subtle circles in the ground where the weapons were.
Sunshine bounding off something shiny caught his eye and he could see the tubular craft off in the distance. As he watched, it effortlessly shot off into outer space. Bob thought they were intentionally trying to get his attention. Why else would they allow him to see their craft?
An ominous feeling came over him. He was in his original time period and the technology to locate him was far more advanced here. He decided that he had been here long enough and re-entered the time stream and went back to Eric’s time.
It had been an easy trip and he felt much safer here. He had learned how to maneuver in the time stream and how it worked and that it was intuitive based and would carry the traveler to where it wanted to go if the traveler could produce a focused, clear thought of its desired destination. Quite practical and very impressive.
He traveled back to 2019 and his spidey-sense was tingling. Something was different. He was being observed by the ones he was trying to escape. He could feel the hard driving control that they asserted over their underlings to use them the way that they saw fit. He found the feeling very unpleasant and didn’t like it one bit. He quickly made himself as small as he could and began cloud jumping. He could still feel them searching for him. How did they know he was here, he wondered? Quickly he came to the conclusion that if they knew that he was here then they also had to know that Eric had been here too, and the jig was certainly up.
He was sure Eric was probably being interrogated at this very moment as they would want to know everything that he knew about Bob. How could he find a way to check on Eric to make sure he was okay? He couldn’t go back into the timestream because he was already being tracked and they would be able to follow him. He decided to go down and get out of the clouds. Hoping he could find a body of water and dissipate himself enough so that he couldn’t be located. He wasn’t sure if he could do it but he thought it was worth a chance.
Then it hit him - he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it sooner. The machines. It was worth it to him to get captured again because they would also reel in the tracker and once the data was analyzed he was sure that the tracker would be deemed a threat and he would be let go. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen to the tracker but he had a pretty good idea that it wasn’t going to be good.
He sensed the tracker and knew that he wasn’t going to lose it. It was very good at its job and had done this kind of thing before. As they liked to say, it wasn’t its first rodeo. He went into a small clump of scraggly bushes as a diversion before heading underground to the machines.
There were seven machines, and he realized that maybe the tracker had experienced the machines already. He tried to think positively, dissipated himself even more and went underground.
This time he went deeper underneath the machines because he also wanted to satisfy his curiosity as to what they were actually protecting. It had to be something serious. He went under the machines hoping the tracker could follow him underground and it did. As the tracker made it underground, all the mac
hines came on, and in an instant, vaporized the tracker with a combined blue plasma beam.
That went better than expected thought, Bob. However, he also knew that the powers that be would be thinking that he was the one that destroyed the tracker and they would be able to confirm to everyone, but Eric, that he was a hostile alien presence that needed to be terminated.
He had the tracker out of the way and he knew that Eric would most likely be in trouble. He hoped that because he was still at large they would keep Eric alive because they still needed him to reel in the big fish.
Bob felt the pull to go deeper into the Earth. There was something there and he felt that the machines were allowing him to go down and take a look. He had been granted access.
He wanted to apologize to Eric when he saw him for not coming to his side right away, but he was as curious as a cat and craved new experiences, and here was one being served up on a silver platter. So, down the rabbit hole he went.
He went down about a mile and entered a huge cavern filled with a strange liquid that was giving off a green phosphorescent glow. It was beautiful, and there were huge pieces of crystal jutting out like daggers from the walls. He tested the substance and thought it belonged to the mercury family. However, it wasn’t toxic, and it wouldn’t be considered dangerous to organic life forms, but it conducted a tremendous amount of energy. The pool formed into a stream. The stream flowed into a cave that looked like it had been made by a machine because of its perfectly circular shape and sides as smooth as glass. The only way in was either by some kind of boat that would sail down this mercury stream, or by flying. The massive tunnel was big enough for a B-52 Bomber to fly down with room to spare.
Bob found the phosphorescent green color extremely pleasing. It reflected off the crystals and danced on the tunnel wall. It was mesmerizing, and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever see anything like it again. He floated down the tunnel easily forgetting about his troubles a mile up on the surface.
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