The Celestial Consciousness, which now reinforced this urgent request, was up the ladder of evolution three times removed from the world of Mankind. It was the first and lowest level in the hierarchy that could bridge the gap between the unrelated realities. Beyond this plane, Mankind ceased to exist as an independent consideration in the Universe: a fragment of the whole, still accounted for, but less important in the incomprehensible, grand scheme.
Yet, through the care of these benevolent Intelligences, linked to Man in the most insubstantial way, the message made its way down one of these disparate, parallel branches of evolution.
It was a clarification of the vague need conveyed by Spence, adding weight to the request for assistance.
In the Traveler, it found its intended recipient.
CHAPTER 93
EVENT: DAY 30, 1100 UT
It felt the need conveyed by an ash fragment of the Cosmic Fire.
A thing, seemingly inconsequential by virtue of its relative place in the vastness of the universe, called out.
But Ultimate and Unadulterated Truth was the consciousness of the recipient; even the most apparently insignificant part of the universe was still a part. None of which was ignored.
Being a part, Itself, it would respond to the need. No reassurance or reasoning logic was required for its decision; there was no question, no capacity for questioning. Still, in response to its acquiescence, there was a harmonic ‘rightness’ that arose from a different source, another Intelligence that it was aware existed. It had no concept for the source, but its own nature gave it the ability to see benignity. It acted.
The oscillation of its thought process was resonant with geologic time scales, but when so desired, its evolution allowed for instantaneousness of action. The journey across space, between points defined in Man’s xyz coordinate reality, allowed it to touch unexplored realities—opportunities to gather information and experience. Outside of time, it arrived at the requested location.
As it had done once before, it probed the creature. This time the encounter was not new. Unlike that first interaction, it more carefully sorted energies, sensing more deeply the inner natures. It sought the frequency of the ash fragment: the sentience that lay at the root of the request that it was here to honor. As it listened, it opened up to a universal static that was normally tuned out. From that hiss it was able to descry an immodulate buzz: the consciousness source.
Further, the buzz was multi-layered, with point sources, separate and inharmonic from the whole. Rather than standing out, the disorder of the consciousness only added to and blended with the universal chaos; it bore no resemblance to the harmony that would have easily earmarked it as aware.
Were it not for the request, it would not have chosen to repeat this experience beyond the first, unsurfeiting one. Yet still, it was fulfilled by a new piece of Universal Knowledge, a primary mission. It was right.
Setting this miniscule though golden fraction of data aside, it pulled its consciousness to attunement with the subject of the request: Ship; a word-concept sifted from the ash-fragment consciousness.
Before the essential alteration, it was, at its essence, only potential without the Spark; after illumination, it seemed lost without a further, guiding consciousness. The larger beings—Ship— seemed to start as sub-dominant symbiotes, housing the host, the chaos-consciousness. In the original contact, after being given self-awareness, Ship had responded with neediness in its interaction.
But there was a gift to be given. As before, it did so without question.
Instantly, the strange, brainless but autonomous creature became aware. No longer was it entirely oblivious to the relationship between itself and the Traveler. Something that had appeared broken was whole again. The newly awakened one was still very different from the Traveler. Action seemed imperative in the collective root-consciousness of the creature and its encompassed entities. It would not take the time for an attempt to converse.
The incurious thing moved away.
An emptiness opened in the vastness of time. Something with apparent potential to be interesting and interactive had no returning interest in the thing that had just given it the gift of its awareness.
The Traveler saw something it had missed during the original interaction: a key element underlay the achievement. The Traveler did not miss it this time: in this action of awareness gifting, the relationship between the two symbiotic consciousnesses reversed. Despite its clear need, the encompassing symbiote, Ship, was now the host, dominant, yet at once submissive to its charge.
No change could be sensed in the dissonant buzz of the other, but the new, custodial energy of the recipient was highly resonant.
Its fulfillment here was complete.
Without the earlier recognition of the deeper level of this cosmic dance, it had been unfulfilling; the reason it had not made further attempts with these beings.
Asked to touch each symbiote that possessed a certain potential, it did so, growing with the newness and interest of this second interaction.
The Traveler would keep track of this Element set to watch what would become of it—in Time.
CHAPTER 94
EVENT: DAY 30, 1100 UT
“Captains, we have Interstellar capability.”
A Bridge officer reported the fact as instrument readings jumped.
“Amazing.” Garrison watched the Bridge viewscreen and monitors. The first showed intermittent disappearance of the starfield, the other displayed a scale representation of the Medallion, dwarfed by a black, fuzzy, sunflower-seed-shaped ship dodging around Sparks’ vessel.
That’s not a ship, he corrected his thought.
Garrison and Dominique were guests on the Medallion Bridge.
Sparks said, “Just as you promised, Dominique.” Sparks had his crew back—all of them. During the final moments of Dominique’s interaction with the Elementals, all of the fetally-regressed crew, along with Taylor, were returned to the point of their life just previous to that regression.
Until Garrison had filled them in on this, during the debriefing after Dominique’s encounter, Sparks and Dominique had not known. Garrison had been in the infirmary when the commotion broke out in the neighboring ward where the stasis and regrowth units were housed. The nurses’ instincts had quickly overcome their surprise at all of these patients suddenly showing up, naked and confused. By the time Sparks and Dominique had arrived, they were being tended to elsewhere. Later, through the ghost-grapevine, they discovered that, back on Toroid Alpha, the still-living soldiers from the Pirate Patrol One attack, had also been returned to intelligent adult state.
“Don’t give me the credit.” Dominique stood in dress whites that she had produced from some compartment in the small Light Skipper. She had availed herself of one of Medallion’s spin-ring cabins that her friend, Jon, had offered; first a shower, then a lingering bath. A luxurious, guilty pleasure—in half-grav, a bath was the most amazing experience, the weight of the water being virtually non-existent.
Afterward, she’d spent just as much time exploring her new body, both with her eyes, directly and in her reflection, and with her hands. Her skin was no longer quite as glowing as it had been; light was refracted now by a thousand tiny wrinkles. She had aged. It was astonishing.
Her experience with Garrison, during their flight out and back to see Spence, had been a boost, which she reluctantly admitted she had needed. His attentions to her changed body had helped her attain a different viewpoint.
Additionally, there were the voices of the ghosts. However, her experience differed from any of the others who had acted as hosts, this side-effect had not shown up for about a week. It took her by surprise, a couple of voices seconding something that Garrison had said to her. Fortunately, in that moment, they were not in the act of making love. She quickly learned that if she stated aloud, a request to be left alone with her own thoug
hts, the voices diminished and seemed not to acknowledge her actions. She forced herself to ignore whatever subdued hubbub remained, accepting the fact that either she had complete privacy at these times, or she didn’t. There was nothing to do to change the situation, so she got comfortable with the potential exhibitionism.
The solitude of the cabin suite had been so divine after the enforced, close quarters of this extended mission; it was critical to the decision that lay before her. She’d found a meditative state, sitting for an unmeasured time, looking into the eyes of her reflection, studying the added lines that gave her a look of wisdom beyond her true years.
She had journeyed through the universe, and also what might have been an alternate universe. Daily, since that experience, images had been steadily surfacing; strange and odd things that did not seem to follow the laws of physics.
Had she earned this new, furrowed badge of wisdom in those travels? She had stared deep, prying into her own recesses for the answers.
Those that she found were not whole.
She resolved that time would fill in the missing pieces. And this simple acceptance came from an altered depth in her psyche. It was there but she could not point to the experiences credited for that depth.
Her body was the same in some regards—just as flexible and strong. And then it was better in others—more responsive and sensitive.
As she drifted within, she recognized she had already made her decision to keep the changes in this shell that she inhabited. As she examined this discovery, the reasons opened before her like flowers blossoming.
For one, the abruptness of the change was a blessing in disguise, meaning that she had skipped over the sufferance of a slow loss of her looks, from the stunning Dominique that she had been, to this more mature beauty. At a deeper level, this prepared her for the changes that would continue in the coming years, and had even given her hope for how she would age—gracefully, it would seem.
While she did not anticipate any sort of long-term love relationship with Garrison—she would not have encouraged it in any case—his ministrations and honest passion gave her a dose of confidence. She would never have guessed she would have needed it… so; it was humility that she had also gained.
Acceptance was also salved by the knowledge that this was not the only life that she would experience.
She thought of this as she stood with her fellow captains on the Bridge. A smile lined her lips as she imagined herself incarnating as one of the two men. She stifled a laugh as she tried to imagine herself as Garrison.
Some of the more sensitive souls aboard the Medallion had reported an odd sensation when the alien craft—or the alien that was the craft—had flown into the vicinity.
The protocols were unknown, even with what Spence had been able to share, and so it had been a wait-and-see game. Two days passed in this way, then the sudden change.
Having bestowed a gift of benevolent intelligence, not fully understood, upon Sparks’ ship, the creature/craft had not immediately flown off as most assumed it would. Finally, Sparks sent an unanswered hail of thanks and set a course for Earth. As they departed, all aboard felt a pull on their consciousness. In a split, it seemed that their minds remained in place with the dormant entity. The odd sensation grew stronger with distance, and then all was normal once again. Everyone on the Bridge, and all aboard, found themselves shaking their heads to clear the sensation.
Sparks offered a delayed response to Dominique’s modesty. “You’re going to get as much credit as I can possibly arrange, Astra, and I don’t want to hear another word.”
Garrison looked back and forth between the pair; there had been something between them in the past, he was sure.
Dominique did not look at Sparks as the man repressed a smile, staring at her. She looked at the viewscreen, her head subtly nodding, one corner of her mature mouth turned up—a mute acceptance of his decree.
CHAPTER 95
EVENT: DAY 40, 0900 UT
Dominique was once again possessed by an Elemental.
It was the first controlled attempt since Unity, her otherworldly experience, during which she had wordlessly brokered the agreement with the Elementals.
Admiral Sumner had seen to it that BUMP honored humanity’s end of the agreement: all of the stone-form Elementals discovered to date were lifted into orbit in an unmanned rocket. The capsule component was empty when they retrieved it. They had saved only one of the objects for the purpose that they pursued now.
Taking the initiative, she had insisted that she be the first person to attempt cooperative immersion. With this experience, the method that was stored within her psyche would have a framework that could be demonstrated and described to the new trainees-in-method. Even to Dominique, the “how” of that process was still intangible; it would only be revealed as they experimented today.
There was something else that she hoped for from this trial.
Without the slightest common framework for relating, no possibility at language, she still hoped to glean some additional information from the Elementals. She wished to understand why only Jon’s crew had been restored, and no others—like the fetuses in the incubators on the Wheel, or any of the dead fetuses that had been preserved. After all, Taylor had been brought back from the dead. But, then, Taylor had not been “sucked out” fetus. It was confusing.
Already merged, Dominique was immersed in the strange reality. A simple in and out was the first part of the experiment. Slightly nervous, about the exit process, there was no memory of her parting from the Elemental during that first, dramatic life-altering event.
Comani’s experience sounded gruesome—the feeling of the front of his body being torn off. She had no assurance that it would be different—neither from the ghosts, nor from higher intelligences that the ghosts said they had contacted.
She turned in a slow circle, her boxed-in perception rocking side to side with each footstep, confirming her location near the center of the small room. With a crystal clear intention, accompanied by a long step backward, she moved out of the perceived confinement. The moment of that step stretched through an echo of the déjà vu moment. The frozen moment disoriented, and then Dominique was back into her own familiar reality, looking toward the center of the room where the invisible creature still floated. In these brief moments, she had not sensed any intelligent source toward which she could focus her questions.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice flat, doing an internal check of her senses, unchanged for the experience. Holding her hands out in front of her, confirming the reality of the body she had barely sensed a moment before, she patted herself down to finish. All seemed well; the separation had not been painful. She took a delayed, deep breath of relief. “How did that look from out here? ‘Cause it felt very strange.”
The testing was being conducted aboard Rim station, between the edge of the solar system and the estimated boundary of the Oort Cloud. Behind a bulkhead, Garrison stood with a small audience of military personnel, including a woman Dominique did not know. Chosen by some committee, this would be the first “therapist” who would be serving in the role that Dominique was demonstrating. Rim station had been chosen for the soon-to-be-regular regressive activities—it suited the parameters set forth by the Elementals.
Dominique was really upset about how this incredible opportunity was to be used. The regression’s only function would be one of meting out punishment. It had been decided that it was the perfect way to reform criminals. There were to be no other uses. She could only hope that that would change.
Garrison’s voice came over the speaker. “It looked strange. Seemed like something had control of you. I’d be a lot happier if you could to speak to us while… while you’re… under the influence, I guess.”
“Yes, I’ll try that. I mean I’ll try harder. You said my mouth moved? Did it look like I was mouthing words?”
“
Yeah.”
“Engage the AI to read my lips, audible translation.”
“Great idea.” A pause, then, “Alright, good to go.”
“Okay,” she said with a tone of resolve, “going back in.”
“Ready.”
Dominique reentered the field and worked slowly within the influence of the Elemental. She performed various amazing experiments on fruits that had been brought up from Earth specifically for this reason. Nothing from the replicators would have the life record that was needed for the regression to an earlier state of life. It was eerie to watch the reverse transformation of the objects, the most obvious result being the change to a smaller undeveloped version of the fruit. Oddly, a seed was not the end, or rather, the beginning product, as it were, but instead, a tiny node that was the beginning of a flower bud.
Throughout her immersion, she cast about, willing the entity to communicate with her in some way, projecting images to illustrate her questions. There was nothing. The enlightened, ascended feeling that she had been suffused with after the Unity might now have been helpful, but it had worn off within the span of a few days, as she feared it might. Whatever means through which the information had been imparted initially, it seemed to be that all communication with these beings had happened in that first, divinely assisted experience; those doors were no longer aligned. The brokered agreements would be the only basis upon which they could judge these elemental creatures.
They finished the various experiments, and then it was time for yet another moment of truth. Garrison would now enter the room and meet Dominique face to face.
Parallel Extinction (Extinction Encounters Book 1) Page 47