Alien Storm

by Don Viecelli

  “Thank you, Dave. I’ll do that. You have my number. I’ll see you here, first thing tomorrow. We have an interview to do, remember?” He smiled and nodded yes. Then he turned around and walked to a second helicopter that Major Cole was warming up. Kaye quickly ran up to the group walking towards the visitor center. She turned to watch Dave’s helicopter take off. She brushed her hair from her eyes and watched the helicopter disappear out of sight behind the trees.

  Dave settled back into his seat for the long trip. Major Cole had switched to a smaller helicopter for the ride to Milwaukee Air Force Base. There was no copilot, just Major Cole and Dave who was in the back seat working on his daily report. As soon as Dave finished the report and sent it on its way, he leaned back to take a nap. He was desperately tired and fell asleep within seconds. He did not hear a thing until an hour later when Major Cole was shaking him on the shoulder to tell them they had landed at the air force base.

  Dave slowly climbed out of the helicopter. There was a car waiting at the gate to take him to the hospital on the other side of the base. Major Cole was staying behind to take care of the helicopter and prepare for the return trip tomorrow morning at 0600. They would meet for coffee at 0530. Dave walked over to the car and put his bags in the trunk. The driver would take him to the hospital no more than a mile from the hangar base where they would bring all the wreckage from the crash site and try to reassemble the first alien spacecraft the world had ever recovered. He could see the hangar in the distance. There were already troops deployed around the hangar and several cars and trucks parked in front. He recognized one of the trucks from the crash site pulling up to the big sliding doors. The first load of wreckage must be arriving from the site for the inspection team. He would try to get over there to see them after his meeting with the medical examiner he thought.

  The lieutenant at the wheel introduced himself and drove Dave straight to the military hospital. He drove up to the front entrance and parked by the curb. Dave got out and told the driver to wait for him. It wouldn’t take long.

  It was a small building used only for military personnel and their families. However the staff was mostly civilian and some of the best doctors and nurses from the surrounding area worked there because of the medical benefits and protection from lawsuits. The government paid for the doctors’ malpractice insurance, which attracted a lot of new doctors. There was also a lot of medical research going on, much of it for the government. It was an ideal situation for the type of work the military needed done occasionally. Each department was isolated from the others for security reasons, so it was not unusual for one department to work on a special project and the other staff members not to know what was going on. This was the case with the alien autopsies. The medical examiner and her team were the only people to know what they were examining and be able to keep it a secret.

  Dave was checked through security and escorted to the chief medical examiner’s office. Doctor Aimes was seated behind her desk filling out some forms when Dave entered the room. She seemed much less formal in person. “Colonel Hampton, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Dr. Aimes stood up and shook his hand. She was tall, almost five feet ten inches. “Please have a seat.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you too, Doctor Aimes. I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, but I’ve been pretty busy on this investigation.”

  “I’m sure you have, Colonel Hampton. But I must tell you; this case is very interesting from a medical point of view. It will take months to understand all that we’ve uncovered so far. Would you care to see the bodies? It would be easier for me to explain what we found during our autopsies.”

  “Yes, I would. You’ve certainly peaked my curiosity, Doctor.”

  “Then follow me, please. Dr. Aimes walked around the desk and out into the hallway. Dave followed beside her. “I didn’t realize what I was getting into when General Davis called and asked me to perform these autopsies. He said he had some crash victims and I thought they were military pilots. You can’t imagine how surprised I was when he showed up with alien bodies. Any idea where they come from, Colonel?”

  “No, Doctor. We’re just as surprised as you are. We’re still tying to figure out how to handle this situation.”

  “I’m sure you are, Colonel. Here’s the autopsy room.” She pushed open the swinging doors. No one was working in the room. All the metal tables were empty. Just the lights were on. They were exceedingly bright. He covered his eyes for a moment. “You’ll get used to the lights in a minute, Colonel. Here’s the first body. It’s a female.”

  She pulled the first body out from the cooler. The body was covered in a white sheet. Dr. Aimes pulled the sheet back all the way to the feet. The alien body was short, about five feet in length. The skin was a light gray color, like all the blood had been drained from the body. There was no hair anywhere on the body. All the limbs were attached. The arms and legs were thin with little muscle mass. Again, he noticed there were only four fingers and four toes on each limb, but the joints were in the usual place. There were no fingernails or toenails. The chest had been cut open and sewn back together again. The two breasts were small. The pelvic area was obviously female. The face was eerie looking since there were no eyelids and the large oval eyes reflected the light from the overhead lamps. The head was large in proportion to the rest of the body with a thin mouth, small teeth, tiny nose and what looked like two ear holes. Looking at the whole body, Dave wondered what this being looked like when she was alive and dressed in the clothes they had found her in. Somehow, he thought she would look intelligent and graceful. He waited for the doctor to speak.

  “She’s perfect from a medical point of view, Colonel Hampton. We could find nothing obviously wrong with her. She seemed to be in the prime of her life. We took all the internal organs and blood out for further study. Let me show you her internal X-ray.” Dr. Aimes found a chart and put it on the lighted wall. Their organs are similar to ours, but they are arranged entirely different in their bodies. The heart is smaller and on the right side. The stomach is below the lungs like ours, but they only have one long intestine. The rib cage protects the body cavity, but it only has three ribs and a breastbone down the middle. The spine is very delicate and much straighter than ours. The internal female organs are different than the male organs. They probably reproduce like humans but the females may not breast feed their young.”

  “This is all fascinating, Doctor Aimes, but you said you had something very unusual to show me.” Dave was getting a little impatient to see what the doctor was holding back.

  “Of course. This is probably only of interest to medical people like myself. The real reason I wanted you here was to see this.” She pulled another X-ray chart from the pile and placed it on the lighted wall. It was a picture of the alien’s brain. It was much bigger than a human brain in proportion to its body and weighted approximately five pounds. There was something shiny, about a quarter of an inch in diameter, clearly visible on the left side of the brain. It was a foreign object, placed in the brain, with tiny hair-like fibers growing out from all sides of the object and attaching itself to other brain tissue.

  “We don’t know what this is yet. It’s not made of metal or silicon. We don’t know what type of material it is yet because we didn’t want to cut it out of the brain until we had a chance to analyze the brain tissue. But what we do know is these objects were implanted into the brains of every alien. Some of the bodies have more than one of these objects in their brain.”

  Now Dave was interested. “What do you think they do, Doctor?”

  “My guess is they enhance some part of the brain function such as memory or communication. See the tiny nerve fibers attaching themselves to the object? They’re what we call dendrites. They’re small, several microns in length, and branch out like tree branches around the object. Dendrites in our brains carry electrical signals from other nerve cells called neurons. They’re the fundamental elements of our central nervous system. But the amazing thing about t
his object is it also has larger nerve fibers, what we call axons, growing out of it. They carry outgoing electrical signals to other neurons in the brain. We can only guess what they do at this point.”

  “Why do you think they’re so special, Doctor?”

  “Because of what the disks you found do to their brains.”

  “I don’t follow, Doctor. How can the disks do anything with these aliens?

  “You need to talk to Mr. Bill Murphy, the computer expert from JPL. He brought the disks over here this afternoon to see if anything would happen. It was only a hunch he said at the time. When he entered the autopsy room the disks lit up. We did some experiments and found each disk is programmed to operate with a specific body. They caused the brain tissue around the foreign objects to become electrically charged and the impulses were traced to the disks. After a few moments the disks would automatically stop. It was like the disks were trying to communicate with the dead aliens. The disks would not react again until the disks were taken out of the room and brought back in. It was not a time issue. It was based on the distance from each body. Mr. Murphy did some calculations and he said the distance is probably the same as the radius of the spacecraft you people have. He thinks the disks were trying to communicate with the alien bodies, but of course, the aliens were dead. One of the aliens did not react to any of the disks. We think it’s because his disk is missing.”

  “That’s very interesting, Doctor. You’re right about one of the disks. It is missing and we’re still trying to find it. I’ll talk to Mr. Murphy after I leave here. Anything else?”

  “Yes, there is one more thing.” Doctor Aimes put the X-ray away and looked directly at Dave. She didn’t want to miss his reaction. “We did some DNA chromosome tests on the alien tissue. We have a ninety-five percent match, just under that of a chimpanzee. It seems your dead aliens and the human race has something in common. We’re related.”

  “Incredible,” was all he could think to say. Dave thanked Doctor Aimes for all the information she had provided and left the building. He was still in a state of shock. He hadn’t expected the last piece of information. This would cause quite a stir in the scientific community, he was certain. He wondered how the President would react to this piece of news. He would deal with it latter. Now, he wanted to visit the hangar where they would bring all the wreckage from the crash sites for further analysis and, hopefully, be able to reassemble the spacecraft.

  He found the driver waiting patiently by the car. It was getting late. He wanted to meet the computer scientist from JPL and the rest of the team working in the hangar and see how they were doing. Then he planned to go to his hotel room near the airport and get a good night sleep. He was tired and it was going to be another long day tomorrow. Crash investigations always seem to wear you out both physically and mentally and he couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. Even now, he felt he was on the edge of a precipice, ready to fall off. He figured he could go another hour and that was it.

  They drove the short distance back to the air force base, cleared the security gate and drove right up to the hangar door. It opened and the driver pulled inside. Dave was not expecting the person who was standing outside his door waiting for him to get out of the car, but he was easy to recognize. It was General Anderson.

  Dave saluted and the general returned it. “Hello, General Anderson. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

  “It was a last minute decision, Colonel Hampton. General Walton thought it would be a good idea for me to see how things are progressing in person.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “I arrived just after you did. I got your latest report and read it on the way here.”

  “How are things going in Washington?”

  “The President is under a lot of pressure to keep everything under control. Plus something else has come up.” General Anderson explained the NASA press conference details and what may happen from the solar flare. It sounded serious.

  “How are the autopsies going? I would like to see the bodies.”

  Dave explained what Dr. Aimes had shown and told him. The general’s expression changed from concern to amazement. He whistled. “God, this is going to cause some problems. Are you sure about the DNA tests?”

  “That’s what she told me. You can check with her yourself. I’ll set it up for you. But I have to leave early in the morning to return to the crash site. We still have a lot of work to do and the reporters are documenting everything like the President requested. When’s the President going public? Do you know?”

  “No, not yet. I think he’s waiting to see what happens tomorrow with the solar storm. He’s worried about the astronauts aboard the ISS too. It seems our radiation shields may not be as good as we thought. Tell me. Anything new on who shot the National Guardsman?”

  “Major Drew is handling the search with the state troopers. They plan to visit the paramilitary group camp in the area. I should know more tomorrow morning when I get back.”

  “Sounds good. How about we talk to that scientist of yours. It should be interesting.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I came here. Doctor Romonof sent him to help us study the disks. The Deputy Director will be here tomorrow to study the spacecraft engines we’re bringing in.”

  They both walked over to a group of men in white lab coats studying a piece of wreckage on a bench table and asked where they could find Mr. Bill Murphy. They seemed to know him and one of them pointed to a room at the far end of the hangar. The General and Dave quickly walked to the end of the hangar and entered a brightly light room with computer screens on every desk. There were several people in the room and all were quite animated, yelling at each other in excitement. They were carrying out some sort of tests. A large, overweight, older man with a barrel chest, long gray hair, gray whiskers and red face was barking out orders to everyone within sight. This must be Bill Murphy, they both thought. On the table in front of him was the shiny globe from the crash site and one of the disks. They were obviously conducting experiments with the devices.

  “Excuse me. We’re looking for Bill Murphy.” Dave shouted above the noise. They all ignored them, so Dave walked up to the group and tapped the older man on the shoulder. “Are you Bill Murphy?”

  The man turned around and looked Dave in the eyes. “Yes, I am. And who are you?”

  “My name is Colonel Hampton and this is General Anderson. We’re in charge of this investigation.”

  You could see a sense of recognition appear in Bill Murphy’s eyes and he quickly grabbed Dave’s hand and shook it. “Colonel Hampton, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Dr. Romonof sent me and told me you were coming. I didn’t know the General was coming too.” He shook General Anderson’s hand.

  “I just visited with Doctor Aimes and she told me you paid her a visit this afternoon. We would like to hear what you found out.”

  Bill Murphy looked excited. He was obviously very interested in what he had seen today. “We’re trying to figure out how these things work. The three disks seem to communicate with this globe. We think it is a transmitter or some sort of recording device, and the disks send it information. The disks can communicate on different frequencies with different devices. They adapt when necessary. I believe they use some sort of ultra-wideband technology at a very high frequency band. It may be difficult to decipher the code. The disks can hold incredible amounts of data. If they are within range of one of our computers and the computer is turned on, the disks will start downloading everything in the database using wireless LAN frequencies or any wireless broadband frequency available. The disks seem to be able to decipher any of our software programs and start transferring data. So far, they only record the data one way. We haven’t been able to figure out how to get them to download any of its data, which is our goal. So we don’t know what’s on any of the disks or in this transmitter or central recording device, if that is what it is.”

  “What’s inside the objects?” Have you been able to d
etermine?” General Anderson asked.

  “We tried X-raying the objects, but nothing penetrates. The only other solution is to break one of the disks apart, but we don’t want to do that yet, at least not anytime soon.”

  “What about the objects they found in the alien brains?” Dave asked. “Doctor Aimes said you thought that the disks could communicate with the implanted objects.”

  “It was a hunch of mine after seeing what the disks do without any visible controls. I figured they operate wirelessly and might be used by the aliens to control the spacecraft, if not to communicate with each other. I called the doctor to see if they found anything unusual during the autopsy and she told me what they found in the brain tissue. I put two-and-two together and asked her if we could do some experiments in her lab.”

  “What made you think of that, Mr. Murphy?” General Anderson asked.

  “Call me Bill, General. My expertise is in neurocomputing, which involves the processing of information by exchanging large numbers of signals from simple processing elements such as neuron cells in the brain. It’s a form of parallel processing. I believe the aliens use an artificial neural network, ANN, to communicate with the disks. For what reason, I’m not sure, but I think they can use it to control the ship’s computer systems. At the very least, they wouldn’t need a keyboard to type anything. Doctors are doing the same thing now with brain damaged patients to allow them to communicate.”

  Dave thought about what Bill was saying. He had read some articles on the subject of ANN, but he was no expert on computers and understood just enough to realize the significance of what Bill just said. If we could figure out how the aliens use the disks to control the ship using their minds, it would revolutionize whole industries. It would be worth a fortune. He was suddenly even more worried about that missing disk.