Helpless to do anything about it, Brian and I were picked up off our feet again, held against our will by the alien. This time, though, I could see the force that held us. I could actually feel its strong grip around us. I could also feel a breach, a weaker side, a hole in the field that I would quickly exploit. I couldn’t wait to force it apart to free us, if only for spite and to humiliate the monster. We’re not those helpless humans anymore, I silently warned it with a grin on my face.
“Don’t! Don’t fight it,” Brian thought to me suddenly. “Let’s see what happens next.”
“Are you crazy? I’m tired of being a lab rat,” I thought, looking over at him with my eyes only since I couldn’t turn my head. “We’ve changed enough,” I told him. The growth had healed our bodies, altered them and our minds. Slowly, the changes were still coming upon us, modifying our bodies, moving and rearranging our DNA, stealing our humanity. “We’re not made for this, Brian. It can’t… It’s supposed to be a process, right? It’s supposed to take centuries, not hours. We’re supposed to die, then move on, to gradually evolve into something brighter, something better, like caterpillars turning into butterflies. Are you willing to stop being human, to forget…” I trailed off, unable to accept it. I had not thought of my wife, my children in so long, and I did not want to lose my memories of them.
In an instant, an alien ship appeared above us, called from across the void of space to where we were, apparently summoned by the strange probe he sank into the soil. Right on cue, a black rift opened beneath the ship, the concourse to a flight I didn’t want to take.
“No! Not again!” my thoughts exploded outwardly.
Ignoring me, the alien used its energy to move us toward the rift, keeping us frozen, save for the beating of our hearts and the darting of our eyes. I felt the vulnerable break, and I knew I could interrupt that power, widen that small hole like unraveling a sweater stitch by stitch. I have to get us out of here. Anything but this again, I thought, tempting myself with escape.
As we were moved, I caught a glimpse of the saucer and realized it no longer hurt to look at it directly. I sensed what was inside it, a quartet of aliens, which surprised me because I was sure such a large ship would carry more troops. I could also decipher the ship defenses, understand its protections. The feelings of its inhabitants became clear to me, similar to my own: determination, aloofness, and sadness. Also, though, they gave off an air of superiority that sickened me to my core, a condescension and entitlement that made me want to destroy them all.
“Brian, I know I can open what holds us,” I thought to him. “I just have to—”
“No! Don’t you dare! They’re gonna evolve us again, give us another upgrade. Let ‘em be, man!”
“God damn it, Brian! We owe it to our race to stop them. We’re still alive, survivors of our time, and they took everything from us. They eliminated our race, living and dead! Like you said yourself, we’re nothing more than data to them. They don’t care what happens to us,” I screamed back to him.
Cold logic, almost emotionless was hurled my way: “That’s just it, my friend. Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter anymore. We don’t really matter. Our race is gone, over. What good will revenge do now? It ain’t gonna bring anybody back, and they’ll get their way in the end anyway. It’d be wasted effort. They pulled back as many dead as they could, till they eventually screwed up and brought back humans evolved three or four steps beyond us. Each time those people died, they went on to the next place, became powerful, and the more advanced humans probably fought the aliens. They’ve wised up now, learned from their mistakes, and now they want that power for themselves. I was right the whole time, but nobody listened to ol’ Brian Wilson, did they? When they die, they just end. We don’t and never have. We just…continue to grow, continue to change and evolve and gain power and more abilities. They want more, and so do I.”
“What the hell are you saying?” I asked with my mind.
We were mere feet from the rift, but the alien had stopped and was looking up at the saucer, possibly communicating or calibrating. I hoped they were having second thoughts about evolving us again, but those hopes were dashed when the thing picked up the metal probe. I sensed a deep foreboding in it, a hopelessness. It knew it was very close to the end of its life cycle, and it had done everything in their advanced medicine to delay the inevitable. They had evolved as far as they could, and now they wanted to steal our future.
“I want their science, wanna know the next step. I’ve moved beyond the ailments that clouded my mind before, the mental problems and addictions. Do you know what it’s like to have a nurse cleanin’ up your peed bed? I can take care of myself now,” Brian communicated. “I’m excited about what we’ve become, new and improved versions of ourselves. Can you even imagine what’s next? Don’t resist, Peter. Truth be told, I’m far stronger than you, and I won’t let you mess this up for me.”
“Stronger?” I questioned.
“Of course! It’s all about the mind now, isn’t it? No offense intended, but I’ve always been a bit superior in that area. How did you think I knew about them fellas you met on the road, the ones who told you to get rid of me? I can read your secondary and tertiary thoughts quite easily. If you try to go against me, I’ll know…and I’ll stop you.”
I did not want what Mr. Wilson sought. I did not care about changing, about what I would become. I did not welcome it and did not want to lose myself. I was happy being myself, living my happy life, until they came for our dead. The aliens did not care about us; they only wanted to collect information to improve their own race, and I wasn’t willing to be a pawn and a sacrifice like everyone else I knew.
The rift beckoned, inches away, and I could not fight it anymore. Brian was inside my mind, spying on me, ready to stop me if I even tried. My only option was to let it go, all of the rage and all of the careful monitoring of the force around us. I turned my focus on the rift and loosened the lid on my anger, allowing the rage to overtake me. I knew Brian could read all but my primary thoughts, so I worked hard to keep them inside, protected in the deepest recesses of my head. There was one thing he had forgotten, one key to it all, but I could not let him in on my plan.
As before, a light washed over us, coming from the ship. It felt like poison this time, running through my body and bubbling my DNA into something different, evolving us. Before I could stop it, the rift crackled in front of me, its dark power full of energy, and again we were forced through, with the alien behind us.
Crystals swirled, drifting over my body. My brain wanted more time to ponder, to see what would happened and assess what had already occurred. With my heightened senses and improved mental capabilities, I felt my body change, felt the alteration and movement in my DNA strands at the prying hands of the extraterrestrials.
Through the chaos around me, I forced myself to consciousness, pulling myself out of the darkness and blackness. I felt where I was and knew, beyond a doubt, how far we’d come. Physically, I could not see Brian or the alien, but I felt them. I was aware that Brian was near me, burning brightly, his power illuminating my head in psychedelic splotches. Next to him, the alien was a dark lump of living mass. My body felt frail, but my mind pushed out around it. I wanted to get going, for I had many things to do.
Slowly, wobbling at first, I forced my body to kneel, then stand. I saw that we were on a rocky ledge, surrounded by towering stone walls. Above, the sky was reminiscent of the one that canopied Earth, blue and filled with the yellow haze of a glowing sun, speckled here and there with white, billowy clouds. I swooned, still off balance, and almost fell but managed to keep my footing. I felt Brian’s brainwaves, but his body way too weak to do much of anything.
I moved to the alien. Again, its armor was powered down, its brain sheltered in unconsciousness. It seemed to have a great deal of trouble when traveling the long distances through the rifts, difficulty adjusting to the differences. We were at a high altitude, and I thought that might have some
thing to do with it as well. Regardless, I woke it up from its slumber, tearing at its thoughts until it stirred. I wanted it that way, wanted it to feel what I was going to do to it.
Carefully, with my mind, I opened its armor, peeling back the seamless metal with great care and ease. Its eyes fluttered, and I felt fear ooze out of it. Like the rest of its race, it was old, ancient, in the midst of its final years or light-years or whatever they used to measure their lifespans. I knew they had tried everything, and we were their last resort. The aliens were bred out, and they had no more tricks, no more aces to play to extend their race into the future. We were their last chance, and I wasn’t about to give that to them.
Its body was wet, covered in some type of fluid. I saw that it was really only half the size of its armor, and an awful stink assaulted me as I removed the broken armor and threw it a dozen feet from us. My body spasmed, letting me know I was moving too much too quickly, but I steadied myself against a rocky wall and turned back to the creature. Two small forearms jutted out of its scaly, gray body. Its lidded eyes darted from side to side, and I drew satisfaction from its terror.
Roughly, I snapped it up from its fetal position and floated it in front of me. Without a word or a thought of regret or apology or mercy, I shredded its neck and was happy to watch its foul flesh tear away from its bones. I smiled as its life drained from its body, greenish ooze splashing on the ground. I made sure to keep its brain alive while I lashed it around for several minutes. Its body was already dead, with no chance of revival, and I wanted the thing to know that there would be no redemption for it, no evolution, and certainly no forgiveness. I brought the head near me, so I could look into its eyes, then, wearing a maniacal grin, I released the fluids that had kept it alive while its head was severed from its body. In the next second, the smallish, wrecked corpse collapsed in a pile at my feet.
Brian? I felt him then, behind me. His body was still too weak to move on its own, but he was using his mind, which was strong and powerful.
“One E.T. down and a million or billions to go,” I shot into his mind, looking on him with a smile.
“Peter, I cannot read you anymore. Bravo!” He held up his weak hand and studied it. “We are still mostly human, for now, but we’re rapidly changing. Never again will we be thirsty or hungry. I s’pose we’ll lose these pathetic bodies shortly, as we evolve. We’ll probably move about solely with our minds.”
His body was emaciated, his essence draining it of its vitality. Our bodies had changed immensely and were still changing quickly. Some organs were gone, and others grew. Our brains were larger, more active, and I knew that Mr. Wilson was right once again.
I looked around, wondering what plane or planet we were on. We were far removed from Earth, but it no longer seemed to matter. I picked up the alien’s armor and turned it over. I found the beacon it had used, floated it, and turned it on; somehow, I just knew how to activate it. I hurled the armor away, out of sight, and I did the same with the parts of the alien, the head and the body, because the rank odor reminded me too much of that time that seemed long ago, that time when Brian was rotting in my back seat, being devoured by gangrene. It was interesting to me that we had not lost our olfactory senses yet, nor every single one of our memories. Yet being the operative word, I thought with a grimace.
I had a sense that there were others like us nearby, great intellects. Gone were their petty emotions, swallowed up by pure grace, curiosity, and wonder. We were rapidly becoming like them, turning into beings of pure thought and little substance. Are they the ancestors who resisted the alien pull? Maybe they are different creatures from another planet, another system. Regardless, I could not wait to find out.
“Do you feel that? We’re not alone,” Brian silently spoke to me.
“No, we’re not,” I replied. “You know what I’m going to do, Brian?”
“What?”
“Before, you said you would stop me, because you wanted the wisdom of the aliens.”
“But I didn’t have to. You let things be, let us come here.”
“Well, actually, if their knowledge is what you want, and if you insist on continuing this ludicrous journey, the time to stop me would be now,” I warned.
The one thing Brian had forgotten was that my body was far stronger than his. Even now, I had already regained a lot of my strength, and I could move on my own, without the help of my exaggerated mind. I could fend off Brian’s mental attack and kill him if he insisted that I spare the alien bullies, and it would not take long to dispose of him. With my strong hands that still held the calluses, the souvenirs of Earth, I could snap his neck in seconds, and I would if I had to. “If you lose him…” you can stay, I told myself, vaguely remembering some words spoken to me long ago by strangers along a deserted road in a stolen car, with a dying man in the back and euthanasia on my mind.
Brian was distracted, though, and barely heard my threat. It was if he was blind before but was overwhelmed with sudden sight. A million things caught his attention, giving him a case of cosmic ADD, too many things communicating with him at once. The wonders of the universe beckoned, and his past seemed to matter less and less every second. The same was happening to me, but I held on to my anger that still writhed in my gut like a living thing. I did not let go of that vile serpent of fury, no matter how many marvels pulled at me.
“No, no, I… It is all so amazing. I…” he thought to me as he slowly walked away.
Hundreds of like minds probed me, desperate to communicate, begging to reveal the universe to me, but I had no time for that. I would not lose what little of my past remained, could not let my guard down, even for a second. Already, I had trouble remembering my children, my family life. I had to concentrate hard just to conjure up my wife’s name, let alone her face. Sue! That’s it. Sue! But the aliens have her now, I told myself over and over again.
The beacon flashed, and I threw it on the ground. It stuck there and sent a signal out into the universe. I was not surprised when the alien ship appeared in the next second, hovering over me. Their science was faultless, supreme, so I was not surprised either when violet flame erupted around me, burning with the heat of a score of suns. I knew they would come for their dead this time, that their sensors would pick up their dead companion’s body not far from me and react automatically.
Pleased that they took the bait, I made quick work of destroying them when they came for their dead. I ripped the vessel in two, and the ground quaked where the pieces fell. Within a minute, the metal ran like quicksilver, like someone had broken a mercury thermometer on the rocky terrain. Above me, I held the four aliens in stasis. I was tempted to pull them from the sky as well, but it was somewhat entertaining to capture them there, and I could read their minds to find the direction to their home world, as easy as internetting it back home . Wait. Internetting? Or was it goggling? I pondered, smirking as I realized that even the simple things were quickly escaping me. Googling! That’s it! As easy as consulting the googler back home.
Brian had disappeared from my sight already, and I knew I didn’t have much time either. The heavens were pulling at me, and a deep urge to join him tugged at my very being, urging me to put all that banality behind me. I climbed deeper inside the aliens’ minds and stretched myself to their world. A great distance from their planet, I learned that our bodies did have to move to evolve, that we could not change and improve on Earth, encapsulated in our Earthling bodies because the mental and physical limitations would not allow it. But here…
I continued my journey through that alien mindscape. Light moved at a certain speed, and it would have taken eons to reach their planet at that velocity, but mental travel was different, as quick as thought itself, as simple as turning grass into strawberries with a flick of a neuron.
Soon, my body formed over their alien planet. I looked down at it, studying and scanning their world. I saw a huge, pearly white building stretching into the sky, ships moving through their highly ordered homeland at pe
rfect right angles, just as Brian predicted in another time and place, when we first met. In seconds, their machinery found me; it saw me as a virus that should not exist there, and it tried to extinguish me. I blunted the attacks and floated on, taking it all in.
I was shocked to find that their world contained not millions of aliens but mere thousands, a race grasping for any chance of survival, any way to prolong themselves. The information they had gathered about humans was already there, dispersed through their thinking machines and being processed by all. They knew all that was known by all the dead and living of Earth, but that knowledge was useless to me, and it only enraged me that they had taken it at the expense of so many lives.
I started collapsing buildings, and I was overjoyed when the metal ground down on their bodies. Their automatic devices tried to stop me, but I threw them out of the sky. I was unstoppable, and I needed to murder them while I still remembered why.
Epilogue
In the beginning, I asked if you remembered where you were when the lights first appeared in our skies. We were all afraid then, but now, I know what they were up to, why they came. I must communicate that with you, must alert the few remaining humans on Earth. I wanted to let you know what I’ve been through, to inform you of what it all means.
The pull on me now is so great that I can hardly remember our blue-green Earth, that planet you still inhabit. I barely remember you, my predecessors. I know there are a few of you left, because I can feel you, but the universe is waiting for me. I want so badly to go, and words fail to be able to explain it. The same will hold true for you when you get here, when you reach this place I am now.
My anger is fading, and I am beginning to realize I’m wasting time destroying this race, the aliens that took so much from us, past and present. I will finish the job, though, make sure they are all gone, so they cannot return to bother you again. They came for our dead, but I will not let them come again for you.
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