Rick dreamed of a cool mountain slope with aspens all around him, swaying in a stiff breeze. He was cold then suddenly warm. The warmth was then soft, with the tenderness of human skin that seemed to melt around him. It was then dark, and he could smell a woman but couldn’t recognize the smell. He felt pinned, as with weight on top of him. His uneasiness grew as the weight turned into Nwella, and immediate horror deflated to apprehension as his excitement inflamed to exhilaration. She was on him with her face buried in his neck, her arms and legs surrounding him, crushing any possibility of movement. She leaned back, and he felt her rise in front of him with her breasts bulging from her gown, begging him, her eyes boring through his soul.
“Dad, Dad,” Carson shook Rick awake. He was excited and wouldn’t leave his father alone.
Rick moved his head side-to-side, trying to make sense of something. As he gained consciousness, Carson rambled on about how good he felt and how he believed the process had worked. Rick was confused and wondered where he was.
“That’s great, buddy.” He forced a smile. Then he made an effort to conduct his own assessment. First, he felt incredibly well rested. His back didn’t appear to hurt as it had for the last twenty years or so, and everything seemed so quiet. Then he realized it was because his ears weren’t ringing. Rick raised his arms above his head and stretched, flexing every muscle in his body, turning his head to the extreme left and right, forcing the side of his face into the pillow. It was her. Her scent on the pillow. Rick realized he could smell Nwella on his pillow. He’d noticed the same smell the first time he’d met her. Either he was going crazy, or she had been there. He strained to remember but could not. Then, the dream.
Rick brought himself to a sitting position on his bed. He examined Carson. He looked good. They were still alive, and he felt well. Syrjon was behind a window in another room and looked up at Rick. Seeing him awake, Syrjon moved for the door and walked into the room to welcome back his two human subjects.
“It’s nice to see you up. Things went very well,” he said with a smile.
“How’s Shainan? You didn’t need to use her, did you?” Rick asked.
“No, she’s fine. She doesn’t like to be here, but she’s fine.”
Thank God, he thought. The family was almost together. “How many days has it been?” Rick asked, concerned about his dogs. He had an automatic waterer for them, but they hadn’t eaten since he’d left. Rick knew they could survive perfectly fine for a week without food, as could he, but it wasn’t pleasant. They might get loose by digging under the fence.
“It’s only been five days. We took you off of life support after day three and let your organs take over. You’ve been perfectly fine and simply sleeping under mild sedation for the last twenty-four hours or so,” Syrjon replied.
“Who were our visitors?” Rick asked.
“Synster stopped by a couple days after the procedure and then Nwella did about twelve hours ago. I believe you are familiar with both? I didn’t realize you were conscious. Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Just curious,” replied Rick.
Syrjon motioned for Carson and Rick to take a seat on Rick’s bed. Syrjon sat on the other.
“Your bodies have been cleared of all advanced glycation end products, and repairs have been made to the telomeres on your DNA strands. Also, any cancer or pre-cancerous cells have been removed from all parts of your bodies. Any distortion from what your genetic composition originally intended has been eliminated. Carson, your cancer is gone, and you are in perfect health. Rick, repairs to the damage of your DNA have been made, and you are now the equivalent of between thirty and thirty-five years old, as best as I can tell. You haven’t taken a look at yourself yet, but you’ll appear considerably younger over the next few weeks. You’ll experience some sloughing of old skin from your body for the next few days, part of a similar process you have been experiencing internally. You will need to do something about your hair. You will no longer be gray; it will grow out its original color now. Obviously that would look strange and draw attention. You might want to shave it off and keep it that way.”
Rick stroked his silver beard in disbelief. Though he had gone prematurely gray in his early forties, he’d grown attached to his look. He felt comfortable with it. He knew he looked younger without the facial hair and people never failed to tell him so when he occasionally shaved it off. His hair, he wondered, how would it look when it began to grow? He’d have to either dye it gray or dye it some other color so it wouldn’t look like fake gray, but like fake something else. Problem was, he thought, everyone who knows me would never believe that I would dye my hair.
Syrjon completed his brief, advising them that they might have some strange symptoms – headaches, digestive issues – but nothing major.
“Any strange dreams?” Rick asked.
“Not that I know of. But you raise an interesting point. We’ve experimented with the Recombinant on a variety of species. Without exception, all have benefitted with no problems, even for the long-term. All have been rendered functionally younger and have lived vastly longer lives than control groups. But we have only rarely used the Recombinant on humans.
“We kept Shainan with us for many years as we recognized some strange occurrences with her because she walked in her sleep. We studied her for years, finding her dreaming very interesting. Provenger do not have dreams the way humans do. We then took a look at some other Earth animals that we had taken as specimens – canine, equine, bovine, corvine, cetacean, cervine, off the surface of my memory – and all did dream. We have not found this trait with any animals we’ve encountered on other planets.
“We eventually drew a correlation between dream activity and what we call our spectral scan results. They are a broad array of frequencies that emanate only from Earth creatures. I would consider this a major difference and something you ought to be aware of. So if anything strange does happen regarding dreams, let me know.” Syrjon knew Rick wouldn’t really understand his meaning, but he wanted to plant the seed in Rick’s mind that dreams were interesting to him. And he knew Rick wouldn’t mention Nwella’s visit.
With this final statement by Syrjon, Rick knew that Nwella not only visited him but had sex with him while he slept. While he didn’t mind, he felt like he should be upset. Why would she do that? Then the realization came. If they could be food, why couldn’t they also be sex toys? Fuck’em then eat’em. Entertainment and a meal. Rick hoped she’d never get to the eating part. One twisted little bitch, he thought.
Chapter 24
ThE mEEting with Tony
Rick had been home with Carson and Shainan for about an hour. It was late afternoon. He had fed the dogs, who had faithfully stuck around for five days. He had just started working on his web site, adding some of the perspectives Syrjon had provided, when he realized he’d missed the first two scheduled signals for Tony. Rick wondered what progress he’d made and knew he had to contact him as soon as possible. It was Friday night, and the next signal could be given Saturday at 6 pm. He could contact him tomorrow.
Rick looked around his living room. Carson was curled up on the couch wrapped in his favorite bison rug, alternately watching three of his favorite shows on TV. Shainan was on the floor playing with the dogs, just glad to be back on Earth again. They were all decompressing.
Rick kept doubting the Recombinant and wanted to see results, still concerned about Carson. Rick walked into his bathroom and examined himself in the mirror. His head and face still had their gray hair, but the skin on his face was tight and had the imperceptibly small pores of a younger man. Not a wrinkle to be seen, almost. He’d had a lot of skin flaking off his face and scrubbed it vigorously when he first got home.
Rick put on a baseball cap, went to the mirror again, and covered his beard with his hands. He looked too young. He felt he might even get carded the next time he went to buy liquor. Fifty years old. He certainly hadn’t imagined this kind of benefit that first time he’d been abducted a
nd strapped to the slab on the Provenger ship. At this point, if he could just see them all through this thing and stay alive, he’d be happy.
That evening, the three of them sat down to dinner. Shainan thoroughly enjoyed some salmon from McPhee Reservoir, asparagus, and onions sautéed in a garlic butter sauce. They all ate ravenously, replacing tissue and energy spent from the days with the Provenger. While there, Shainan had refused to eat, either as a kind of protest about being on board or actual inability because she was so upset. Rick was unsure.
Again she insisted on having wine and that they all sleep together. Rick’s new, younger body was arousing some stronger feelings. After one look at her getting into bed, Rick wondered how he would manage to steer clear of involvement with her. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t. People who don’t know better think that stressful circumstances curtail sexual desire. Rick knew otherwise. Stress demands stress relief.
He wanted to suggest the possibilities to her and held her close, spooning her from behind. He reached around her front with one hand and held her high on the ribcage with his forearm. He intertwined his legs with hers. He imagined her accepting his advances, both of them getting out of bed, going to the other room, and making love all night long.
Shainan gently took hold of his hand and moved it off of her. She turned her head toward him. Her lips touched his earlobe and she whispered, sinking her voice and her breath so deep in his ear it made him tremble. “Nen shanista ek net valka Utu shun sheh.” She turned away from Rick and grabbed Carson, who was in front of her, pulled him over her, and plunked him in between herself and Rick.
Rick deflated and thought about what he’d heard. The best he could figure, she said, “Maybe later. I have a headache,” or “Not if you were the last man on Earth.” Or maybe something in between.
Carson, at the moment she was flipping him over her, thought he might get lucky. These prehistoric women were very unpredictable; he’d learned. Then he realized he was being positioned as a speed bump.
The next morning Rick rolled out of bed early, leaving the pile of two dogs, Shainan, and Carson on his bed. This would have to stop soon, perhaps when things got back to normal. When would things ever go back to normal, he wondered? He briefly looked back at them thinking it was just about the best thing he’d ever seen.
He went to the kitchen, started the coffee, and turned on the small TV screen over the desk. He flipped on the news. Had this still been a normal life like the one he’d had weeks ago, he would have been curious about the victims of the hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and other disasters, such as ships and planes gone missing, that he heard about on the news. But because he didn’t have a normal life any more, he saw things differently. What he noticed was that most of the victims of these catastrophes were missing, their bodies having been swept away, consumed by fire, dropped into a crevasse, or just plain gone with no explanations. And he was in the unfortunate position of knowing exactly why. The Provenger.
Most of the catastrophes happened in third world countries. These people were less likely to be on drugs, he thought, whether they were prescription or from the street. Their bodies were those of people who led lives largely untainted by the introduction of chemicals contrived to make them feel better. They either lived healthy lives in their somewhat traditional environment, or they were living under circumstances that prevented them from being subject to the marketing machine, the drug culture, the commercial engine that pumped pharmaceutical products into the near perfection that the human body could be. They didn’t have convenience stores that peddled doughnuts and chips and crackers.
How soon would others recognize that people were disappearing? How long would it take before there were whispers, rumors, that something was going on. As long as these harvests happened in the third world, people hearing the news would expect emergency services to be inferior. They would expect people to be missing.
As Rick sipped his coffee and looked out at the morning with the sound of this news in the background, he heard his dogs leaving their new best friend, Shainan. They approached him, tails wagging, and bothered him to go out. He slid the door open and gave them the command. They ran out not knowing if they should play first or poo first, following whatever instinct guided them.
Rick thought of all the humans that might have been contacted by the Provenger and tried to imagine them keeping their secret. Could they tell only those people they needed to and convince them not to tell anyone? How the hell would that work, he wondered? It wouldn’t. It wouldn’t at all. Some would tell and many would not believe. Some would believe, and they would tell others who would believe. Be they wackos, or people who could be logically convinced, there would be many who would know. How could this all be kept secret? Things would fall apart quickly.
Rick realized that it could not remain a secret for long. It would eventually come out. It would be revealed. Everyone would know. Panic would grow. And then it would start. If the Provenger were as smart as Rick thought they were, they would know all this. They must know what would happen. Rick looked out at his dogs playing in the back yard. He noticed their subtle communication with every movement and gesture, acting and reacting to each other, instantaneously.
If this were the case, then the Provenger must know that they have a window of opportunity, a period where they can collect or “harvest” people and do it without detection. This period would offer them the optimal efficiency they always seemed to be looking for. They could collect without opposition, without resistance. It would cost them less. Once everyone knew or suspected, wouldn’t they tighten security? Wouldn’t it be tougher to get to them? Rick feared it would. How would the world grow accustomed to people disappearing all around them? They wouldn’t. They would panic and fight.
In one of those flashes of realization that should have been there all along, the worst case scenario came alive in Rick’s mind. What if the project they were managing was not a single process of creating expansive civilization through agriculture, but instead, was numerous cycles of creating agriculture, then population, then harvesting the vast majority of that population, then destroying that world, then doing it all over again starting from the beginning. A key point would be the number of people they intend to take, Rick thought. They couldn’t possibly leave us with our technology and come back in another twelve thousand years. Imagine the progress that we’d make. We’d be a threat to them.
Would they destroy this world when they were done with their harvest? How many times had they already done this? The thought left Rick with only one last big question with many parts. How would he and the ones he cared about survive this cycle? Should his goal be that they, and only they, survive? Should he try to save the world, or should he try to save his world?
Rick got up and walked to the bathroom. In the mirror he saw, once again, a very different man. It was a man not ready to retire, but one with another life in front of him, perhaps a new family and a second chance. Rick reached under the cabinet and removed the set of electric clippers he used to cut Carson’s hair. The plastic attachment that cut a half inch length was on the clipper. Rick took it off and threw it back in the bag. He moved the lever forward to allow the closest cut, and he started to shave his scalp. He needed to get the gray off so the new brown growing in wouldn’t show a line, just as Syrjon had suggested.
He first shaved his head to the skin with the clippers. Next, he shaved his beard. Rick stepped in the shower and shaved his head and his face clean with a razor. After he had rinsed himself off, stepped out of the stall, and dried himself with a towel, Rick looked up at the mirror. The effect was profound. Not only did he look even younger, but to his horror, being completely bald, he looked like a Provenger. I’d better put on a cap, Rick thought. I don’t want to scare the shit out of Shainan.
Rick needed to decide what message he would leave for Tony. If he had followed his original instructions, he’d spent a week identifying and recruiting as many high-quality, reliable individuals
as he could, the core of a force that would be able, or at least willing, to fight the Provenger, if that was ever possible. To this prospect, Rick wondered if he’d been insane. He realized that when he first spoke to Tony, he had just been back from his abduction and that he’d been tired and stressed. But now he really began to question his judgment. What had he been thinking?
He was almost afraid of what he might find. He had a small army forming for him, supposedly, and didn’t have any idea what form it would take or what he could do with it. The only one of them that even knew the real target was Tony, and all the rest were probably antigovernment, conspiracy-theory wackos. Hell, Rick speculated, when they find out I’m NSA, they might want to kill me. How will they react when they find out who the real target is and what we are really up against? They’ll think we’re crazy.
Primal Estate: The Candidate Species Page 24