Edge of Revelation

by David John West

  Charlotte led Dan across to the diner, which was pleasantly large and tastefully decorated inside like a country and western album cover. It was still early for lunch and there were just a few people at the large circular tables with low matching armchairs upholstered in white. A large muscular Latin-looking man sat at one of the tables looking out to the pier and small boats through bling Italian sunglasses. He looked like he may have been a small boat owner in faded navy shorts, tee shirt and trainers. When Dan and Charlotte entered he came to his feet athletically for such a big man and greeted Charlotte with a shake of her much smaller hand and they exchanged big smiles. They knew each other very well, Dan realised.

  “Umberto, let me introduce Dan Tucci of US Air Force Intelligence. Dan this is Umberto Pantucci, our pilot for today.”

  “No kidding! Dan Tucci meets Pantucci,” Umberto exclaimed in an Italian American accent. “Italian ancestry, Dan? Where your family from?”

  “Long time ago, yes. The Tuccis originally came from Naples, we still have family there. And you?”

  “Oh in the North. Lago di Como. Lots of Pantuccis there. In fact I have my brother here – he is minding the boat just now waiting for us. Shall we get started right away or do you want some lunch beforehand?”

  “Oh I think we should get going, we would like to be back this evening, Umberto,” Charlotte said.

  Umberto walked at a leisurely pace to the counter and paid for his coffee and cookies. Dan and Charlotte waited for him by the door. They looked like a rich couple with a big age difference meeting a boat owner for a recreational trip up the long narrow lake. Outside Umberto led them towards the long wooden pier where a dozen or so small boats were moored. They did not step on to the wooden planks of the pier but passed by on to a dry stony path that ran alongside the narrow margins of the lake. Looking out the water was deep blue, limpid in the midday heat, the merest breeze ruffling way out in the centre and providing small comfort to the walkers at the water’s edge.

  “We are moored round the point,” Umberto informed Dan Tucci. Just a few hundred yards.” Umberto offered to carry Dan’s bag but he would not have it. Fifty yards later he was regretting the choice as he started to swelter.

  They walked past a couple of small lake houses that had the locked-up look of holiday cabins not recently used. Round the point they could see up the long axis of the lake a couple of miles or so beyond the bend of the main body of water to the west. The far busier Lakehills resort was on the north shore round that bend but little was visible from here. There were many side creeks large and small. Umberto led them on to a barely used track of a sheltered creek out of sight of the marina and diner. He stepped out onto a dry old tree half sunk in shallow water then across to a slab of rock sloping into the water.

  “Embarkation here,” Umberto said taking hold of Charlotte’s hand first and leading her forward towards the water. “Step up now.” Charlotte stepped up and disappeared with Umberto’s forearm. Umberto withdrew his arm becoming visible again but without any sign of Charlotte. “You OK to follow, Dan?” he asked.

  “I guess so,” Dan replied. It was the damned weirdest thing of his entire eventful life but he felt confident somehow that this would be all right, and that it was necessary for him to progress. He could refuse, but he would then regret the weakness his whole life. What convinced him in a funny way was duty; this was what his job was all about.

  Umberto took hold of Dan’s forearm in the manner of a medic assisting a frail invalid and helped him across the invisible threshold. They both disappeared from view into the load bay of the Gayan spacecraft Maria.

  They climbed the steps to the wide control deck. Dan was looking around slowly, trying to take it all in after the shock of stepping from a lake view into a ship in the blink of an eye. Large screens had been mapped onto the walls that showed panoramic views of the lake before them and the low hills behind. Dan thought the interior fittings were exceptionally stylish. Some kind of ivory wood fitted exquisitely to the interior and forming the bases of the comfortable-looking furniture. The ship itself was broad and linear but the interior flowed around it in elegant swirls. At the far end a second Latin-looking man of broad proportions was sitting at an operations console of some kind. He stood and greeted Charlotte.

  “My brother Rafaello,” Umberto explained to Dan Tucci by means of introduction.

  “My pleasure,” Dan said, looking around. “Hell of a ship you have here.”

  “Thank you,” Rafaello smiled. “We are old friends, Umberto, Maria and me.” Dan thought Rafaello was calling Charlotte Maria until he realised that Maria was the name of their craft. “We are leaving urgently so we can explain everything as we go along. Will be easier for you to see Maria in action than for me to explain anyway. For now if you take one of the forward seats. The seat will form to you and hold you for take-off. That is completely normal. Expected flight time seventy minutes, most of which is take-off and landing. I think you will enjoy the views so I suggest you concentrate or you will miss them.”

  Dan sat in the large chair and it enfolded him without any apparent pressure points. It formed to his seated body with complete comfort. The others joined him in adjacent seats and then Maria rotated upright and accelerated smoothly without ever flattening into a cruise. Maria bolted forward as the sky blue over Texas deepened to azure and swiftly on into midnight blue. The stars came out in all their glory as if the lights had been switched on. Maria continued to accelerate without pause on her long parabolic trajectory.

  Eventually the acceleration fell away at peak altitude and the horizon was the curved surface of the bright blue globe with a white halo of atmosphere and dark space above. Maria was flying steady at treble the speed of the Blackbird spy plane back at the base. Without cloaking, Maria would appear as bright as the International Space Station. Third brightest object in the night sky. Maria was different to any space station of earthly origin, capable of adopting a course like an aeroplane with far greater manoeuvrability.

  The restraints around Dan Tucci released themselves and he turned right and left to see Rafaello and Umberto moving about the cabin at their ease.

  “I see the captain has turned the seatbelt signs off; does this mean we are free to move about the cabin?” Dan asked.

  “We have no captain here,” Umberto answered levelly. He had never flown on a terrestrial passenger aircraft and did not understand the joke. “You are able to move around for approximately twenty Earth minutes then we need to strap you in for descent.”

  Dan decided against comradely banter as it required an earthly American context to work, which was clearly missing from the crew of the Maria. Plus he thought it made him look nervous, making small talk.

  “It’s a mighty powerful ship you have here, Umberto. Can you tell me what is the power plant?” Dan thought he would at least try to discover what could be the shatteringly important engine technology that propelled this thing. He was surprised by the candid reply from Umberto, which helped him very little at all; like a native that had invented fire learning for the first time how nuclear power could be used.

  “It’s our Dark Matter Fusion drive operating in planetary mode. Dark Matter Fusion provides the most power known to humans in the universe. Planetary mode treats the medium we are travelling through as a fluid. Everything except solid rock can be treated as a fluid on most Gayan-class planets. Maria parts the fluid ahead to create a vacuum. A small amount of thrust and the lack of resistance ahead gives unlimited acceleration when we need speed off the line, or in absolute terms. In space where fluid resistance is next to nil then warp travel is enabled. I hope this helps?”

  Dan nodded slowly, “That will do for now…” Dan recognised the simple summary explained witness reports and films of UFOs with incredible acceleration and manoeuvrability. Shortly Maria tipped towards Western Europe where the meniscus of night was eating into the sunlight. Rafaello indicat
ed they should return to their seats for landing and Maria plunged downwards, hardly decelerating at all. Dan was ensconced in his seat, the views and his thoughts. His seat held him securely as they levelled out over pleasant countryside, stopping in a water meadow beside a fork in a gentle river. Dan and Charlotte deplaned and walked the short distance to the Trumpington park-and-ride facility to take them into Cambridge. It was Dan’s turn to feel like the alien as he stood in line with Charlotte in a glass shelter with his overnight bag amongst a mainly geriatric group of shoppers with British accents.

  Charlotte escorted Dan the short walk from the bus stop in Cambridge down the lane Rakul had used so recently on his way to meet Joe. The evening sun was mild and pleasant after the hot dog days of Texas. Charlotte walked Dan round the corner of the Mill public house and along the river by the rental punts to the long low Garden House Hotel. It was a Hilton chain property so he was at least still on planet Earth – probably. Dan checked in and dropped his bag in his room. Charlotte suggested that they meet straight away for cocktails at the open air bar on the lawns fronting the river. Charlotte had called Joe while Dan was dropping his bag and she waited for them both at a quiet table under a tree weighed down by summer foliage. She ordered a gin and tonic and thought about how much to apprise Dan while she waited for both men to arrive.

  Dan arrived first, which was ideal. He felt remarkably refreshed and said so. “That is the only way to travel,” he asserted. “Do you offer an Uber kind of a service so I can call on you anytime?”

  Charlotte smiled, “Yes it works that way for me, but I’m afraid it’s a rather small clientele. You will find it refreshing. Your seat performs a non-invasive biopsy as you travel and administers panaceas as required. You should have arrived in better health than when you stepped on board.”

  Dan was a little crestfallen. “And I thought I was just a naturally fit guy!”

  The waiter arrived with Charlotte’s drink on a small silver tray. Dan realised he had been incubating a raging thirst and ordered a beer. Charlotte interjected and asked the waiter to bring two beers. Dan settled down admiring the idyllic scene across the narrow navigation channel of the river to Shepherd’s Green and the broad willows that framed old brick and slate houses, pubs and college buildings beyond.

  “I am studying at Queens’ College the other side of Silver Street over there,” Charlotte pointed to taller buildings beyond a bridge the other side of a broad pool in the river. It was Olde England like a Constable painting, as Dan had imagined it. “Queens’ is one of many colleges that make up the University. We live and get taught in college and do lectures at faculties spread across the town depending on your subject.”

  “Looks like a great place,” Dan observed. “So what happens now?”

  “Well tonight you get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow you can arrange transport to go on to Lakenheath to meet your people. Right now we meet with one of my colleagues, Joe. He is also at Uni at Queens’. I called him while you were checking in and he is coming over now.”

  “I have a lot of questions, Charlotte, but we need to start with who you are and what you are doing here.”

  Charlotte hesitated then pressed forward. Best she use this private moment to explain before Joe got there. “We normally take a long time preparing new people to understand our missions. We call it Enlightenment. That can be a single person, a tribe or an entire planet. We like to be careful as it carries risks, mostly to the recipient, and we put a lot of work in, which can be ruined if we mess it up. But right now things are happening very fast and certain people need to get ready for action. You are a key person and we would have explained all this to you in time, but time is running out so we took a risk showing you who we are – the Maria ride. The other thing you need to know is that while I am born and bred here in the United Kingdom, my soul is alien and I have been reborn here and across the galaxy very many times.” Charlotte let the revelation sink in.

  Dan’s credulity was already softened up by the day’s events. Even the sceptical citizens of Missouri, the Show-Me State, named after their need for hard evidence to believe anything, would have to believe that what this young woman was saying was backed by the proof of his own eyes. “So you are kind of superheroes then?”

  Charlotte laughed, “Well we don’t have superpowers like the movies, Dan. What we do have is much better knowledge of science, so we can travel to the stars as you saw today and we have much greater understanding of body, mind and soul. That could look like superpowers to some but the truth is all humans across the galaxy have these capabilities, they just don’t know about it yet. My body is born of earthly parents and my soul joined it then and we grew up together as a Gayan human being on Earth.”

  Joe arrived at that moment. “Hello Charlotte, hello Dan,” he said and offered his outstretched hand to shake.

  “This is my colleague, Joe. Joe, this is Dan Tucci,” Charlotte said.

  Joe sat down and Dan reflected that Charlotte and he seemed to be very similar, male and female forms of the same person, like fraternal twins maybe. Joe seemed to know exactly who Dan was, which told him all he needed to know. “So can I take it that you are both Earth people with Gayan souls, Gayan minds then? How many of you are there?”

  “That is correct, Dan. There are a few of us but not very many. Maybe Charlotte explained but there are very many worlds up there that need our help, we get spread pretty thin. The primary mission for us is to prepare this world to join with us and share the Enlightenment at first contact. That is getting very close so now we have to manage lots of individual threads to make that contact a success.”

  “And part of the complication is that we are not alone in visiting Earth right now. Our rivals in the Spargar Empire are also ramping up their presence as witnessed by the very large UFO that made itself known over your base in Lakenheath just recently. That was not one of ours,” Charlotte added meaningfully.

  “So what do you want me to do in all this?” Dan asked.

  “We are very close to formal contact with the leaders of Gaya, weeks if not days I would say,” said Joe. “When that happens all will become clear. We can expect our rivals from Spargar to interfere but their hands are tied to a great extent by our presence here – they have to abide by galactic peace treaties especially as we are looking over them on this world. Gayan first contact will be a revelation for the people of Earth and will need you to help managing with your politicians. It will cut across national governments and international business but overall will be a major enhancement for people’s lives here. The good news is that we have done this many times and know how to handle it. Once we get to that point then you can relax and let our process take over. Many will be fearful and resistant but they will see it will all be for the better in a very short time. And there is no avoiding it – Earth’s time of taking its place among the stars is at hand and can’t be stopped now. Just a question of how well it happens.”

  “Do I need to do anything right away?” Dan asked.

  “I think so,” Joe said. “It would make sense to bring your President up to speed as confidentially as possible. You should engage in the first instance and we can help as you have seen this last twenty-four hours.”

  “The President can be a difficult man. He knows he is the most powerful man on Earth. If I tell him any different then that’s not going to go well.”

  “I think he will get it sooner or later that the most powerful man on Earth rates pretty low in terms of the most powerful person in the galaxy. He will soon understand the reality of only being the tallest dwarf in this particular solar system. The leaders of the Spargar Empire rule thousands of planets. The Gayan alternative doesn’t promote individual power. It is a coalition of equals though some are much more equal than others. It is a much better destination for planet Earth than being the subjects of a Spargan invasion.”

  “We also need you to work alongside your Br
itish opposite numbers to handle any strange episodes that pop up before formal contact,” Charlotte added. “We will manage things but we may need your help depending on events. We have things to do ourselves in preparation as well as contain any Spargar initiatives. You can start by taking control of the fallout from the Spargar ship that arrived here the other day. You must look in control; you know what is happening. Meanwhile stay at high levels of alert. We will let you know when we need your help.”

  “If it’s any help then this is what we do, Dan. We may look young but we are many centuries older than we look. We love this part. It’s the culmination of ages of work on this world and the time is right to bring things to a proper conclusion.” Joe smiled winningly at Dan. “There’s only one thing worse than being in the position we’re all in and that’s not being in this position!”

  THIRTEEN

  On the paradise planet Chamarel, the Worders responsible for the campaign of Enlightenment for planet Earth were considering their final plans for the first ever formal visitation. Ghazan and Lykke gathered by the holographic model of planet Earth that provided the portal to their collected intelligence of the world. Chiara soon joined them to make up the triumvirate and the others allowed her to operate the model; being the only embodied one of the three Worders, she was best able to manipulate the device. Ghazan and Lykke manifested in soul form only as was their custom; it had been some time since either had seen fit to take embodied form.