by R H Nolan
Max turned to flee—
“Wait! I mean you no harm.”
Max stopped. The voice had come from all around him in the chamber. It sounded nothing like a human voice, but it was still speaking English.
Slowly, Max turned around to stare at the alien, who gestured with one of its lower arms toward the control console and made a clicking sound with its mouth.
“Can you… can you understand me?” Max asked. He stayed where he was, though, in case Bug technology included some kind of hallucinatory drugs and he was imagining the whole thing.
The Bug hovered both hands over the console, its fingers dancing in light. It looked like it was pushing buttons, although it wasn’t touching anything. “Yes. I am… a friend.”
Not very likely. Max warily eyed what had to be the Bugs’ version of a computer—still, nothing sprang out of the ship to attack him, and the alien just stood there, staring at him.
“You’re a Bug,” Max said angrily, “not a friend.”
The alien let out a series of clicks as its hands danced over the computer’s surface.
“I am not a bug. We are—I am a Qirinian. And I was a… the word is difficult for me. A xenobiologist? Yes? I studied humans. What little we knew of you. I have never seen a live specimen before.”
The Bug turned then to finally look at Max and cocked its head in curiosity.
“I’m not a specimen,” Max said.
Part of him was irritated. Part of him was afraid the thing might just be putting him at ease and would try to dissect him—and that part was getting ready to run again.
“Forgive me. Your language is foreign to me, and I have never used it before with a live… person. Is that a better word?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I am glad.”
All the fear left Max’s body. Maybe that was foolish, but there was something about the Bug that made it seem like it was really trying to create a connection.
He decided to take a chance that the thing meant what it said. After all, it was the only one left.
“My name is Max.”
“Hello, Max. I am called Zryk.”
The only thing Max could think to do was nod.
Zryk’s back legs bent a little, and he (at least, the computer’s voice made it sound like a ‘he’) looked over at the bodies of what had been his crew before all the ships came crashing down. Zryk’s head looked around the entire chamber, taking in the sight of all the dried husks of his kind scattered across the chamber floor.
The alien’s shoulders suddenly sagged, its head lowered, and one of its hands went to its mandibles as it emitted a low, sustained series of chirps.
It was a surprisingly human-looking gesture. To Max, the alien seemed overwhelmed with sadness.
Then Zryk turned back to the computer and moved its hands a little slower over the console. “I was asleep for all of it. I did not know they were… dead.”
Max didn’t know what to say, so he kept quiet.
Zryk paused, then moved both lower hands rapidly over the computer. The two upper hands began punching buttons in an overhead console.
“What are you doing?” Max asked, his caution immediately rising. When the alien didn’t immediately answer, Max raised his voice. “Zryk?”
“I do not understand—they are all silent.” The Bug looked over the screens, seemingly bewildered. “None of the other ships in our fleet will respond.”
“I… I think they were all destroyed.”
The alien’s head snapped over to look at Max. “When?”
“A long time ago. Fifty years, at least.”
For a second, Max expected Zryk to erupt in rage at the new realization, but instead the alien’s posture shrank. The way Zryk bent over, the way his rear arms fell and hugged his entire body, looked a lot like a human balling up into a fetal position.
The alien looked like he was grieving.
An unexpected sympathy filled Max. No, he hadn’t lost every one of his kind on a foreign planet, but he remembered all too clearly what it felt like to lose his dad.
Max took a few slow steps toward the alien, who suddenly seemed a lot more human than he could have ever imagined.
The alien collected himself and went back to typing at the console. “When you say ‘years,’ you mean fifty revolutions of your planet around the sun, correct?”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“And that was when everyone died?”
“Yeah. That’s when the war ended.”
“War?” the alien asked. The computer voice sounded almost surprised. “It was not a war.”
6
“What?” Max said, completely taken aback. Then he grew angry. “Your ships attacked Earth and we fought back! I’d call that a war!”
“I fear your race has misunderstood our purpose in coming to this planet. We did not come here to invade Earth, Max. We came here for shelter.”
Everything seemed to freeze with that one statement.
Though Max hadn’t been alive during the Interstellar War—in fact, neither of his parents had, either—he knew enough about its consequences to have hated the Bugs all his life.
Sure, they’d left behind some of the most advanced technology humans had ever seen, like the implants. But no one would have needed the implants in the first place if the Bug ships hadn’t unleashed their devastating, worldwide blasts of alien radiation that changed the entire planet into nothing but the Wastelands and the Dweller cities. And the mutations that had created the Sandwalkers. And the cancers that had taken his mother arm and his brother’s legs.
“Shelter from what?” Max asked, not exactly knowing if he wanted the answer.
What if the war and everything after it had been the result of one giant misunderstanding?
Zryk clicked a few times and moved his hands. “We were already at war, fleeing our solar system and my home planet of Qirinis. The violent race who attacked us chased us most of the way here. My fleet… my people were… refugees. That is the correct word, yes? Those taking refuge in a foreign place from a war elsewhere?”
Max realized Zryk was literally asking him for the correct term. He nodded.
“We were not given the chance to explain ourselves as I explain to you now. I see my only option is to leave your planet as well. To search for my kind, if any of them still exist among the stars.”
“In this ship?” Max asked. Part of him had hoped, when he’d discovered a fallen Bug starship, that he could strip it of whatever valuable parts it had and take those home. That would have more than improved things for his family. It might have even made them rich—or what passed for rich in the Wastelands.
“Yes, but not yet. Some functions are still operational, but I will need many things from other Qirinian ships to make my own fully functional. And some things from those large… nests?”
“‘Nests’?”
“I detect a large settlement of human beings enclosed within a metal cylinder very close to here.”
…‘metal cylinder’…?
“You mean Neo Angeles?” Max asked. “It’s a city.”
“Yes, the city! It contains components I will need.”
Max almost laughed. “That’s not going to be the easiest—”
“Wait.” Zryk tilted his head, and a long string of rapid clicks echoed from whatever part of him made that noise. “You are injured, Max.”
Max glanced down at his left wrist, which was swollen and red. He’d nearly forgotten about it. After all, he’d been talking to a creature that everyone on Earth assumed had died out fifty years ago—and that Max had always thought of as the worst threat humanity had ever faced.
“Oh. Right.” He tried to move his wrist slightly but winced at the pain.
“Come.” Zryk beckoned with his hand, which was such a human gesture too that it couldn’t have been mistaken for anything else.
“What are you going to do?”
“I wish to look at your injury. As I told you, I was a
xenobiologist. I know human anatomy. Perhaps I can help.”
Max highly doubted that… but if the Bug hadn’t tried to kill him so far, Max didn’t foresee him doing it now.
Hopefully.
With a deep breath, Max crept towards the Bug until he stood next to it in front of the alien computer.
“This. Inside your arm.” Zryk pointed at Max’s arm without touching him. “This is called a bone, yes?”
“Yeah.” Of course the thing wouldn’t know much about bones, would it? Bugs didn’t have any, if they were anything like insects on Earth.
Zryk clicked a button, and a light flared on and swept quickly over Max’s arm.
“Hey!” Max yelped, and stepped back in alarm—
But suddenly a translucent image made of light appeared over the Bug computer. Max clearly saw what looked like a three-dimensional model of his forearm—but he could see the two bones inside them, like two white rods.
Another word long buried in Max’s memory rose up inside his mind:
Hologram.
Whatever the light image was, Max could clearly see the jagged line in one of the white rods, and the way both sides of the bone were slightly mismatched.
“There is a structural fracture in this arm bone. I have the ability to heal it. I would like to offer this, if you accept.”
Max frowned. “YOU can heal my bone?”
“My ship can. It has the facilities to do so.”
“How long would it take?”
“You measure time in seconds and minutes and hours, correct?”
Max nodded. “Yes.”
“Fewer than twenty seconds, I believe.”
Max stared at Zryk in amazement. Yes, it would be great to have his wrist healed instantly by alien technology, but he kind of liked the fact that he hadn’t yet needed a mechanic prosthetic like his mom or Kier. Or Ayla. He wouldn’t exactly be able to explain how a piece of Bug technology that had never touched a human before suddenly found its way into his body.
“I don’t want a new arm,” Max said.
The alien cocked its head. “New arm? I do not understand.”
“A metal arm. I don’t want a metal arm.”
“Oh, I understand now. No, it would not involve a prosthesis.”
Max didn’t know exactly what a prosthesis was, but he was betting the bug mean a prosthetic arm. Probably the same thing.
“Then how would you do it?”
“The term does not exist in your language… an energy chamber is the closest term I can find.”
“I think I know what you mean,” Max said, though he was only guessing. “But I don’t want any machines touching me.”
Zryk tipped his head back as far as it would go, which wasn’t that far against the hard shell of his back that left him always hunched forward, and let out a hiss. Max backed away in alarm.
“It is amusing that you do not want a machine touching you when everything around us is a machine.”
Max frowned. “Were you just laughing at me?”
“Laughing? I… perhaps that is it.”
Max tried not to smile, but he couldn’t quite help it. It was incredibly bizarre and definitely unexpected, but he found himself liking Zryk.
And for some reason, Max thought he trusted him.
“I meant I don’t want any robotic arms touching me or cutting me open,” Max explained.
“Oh. No machines, Max,” Zryk added. “No robotic arms, no touching or cutting. Just pure energy.”
Max looked down at his wrist again, then shrugged. “Alright… why not?”
“I do not think I can accurately list all your possible reasons for declining,” the Bug replied. “However, I will attempt it if you think that is necessary.”
For a second, they just stared at each other, then Max realized the Bug had actually taken him literally.
“Oh… no,” he said with a grin. “‘Why not’ means ‘Okay, let’s do it.’ The energy chamber, I mean.”
“Ah… your language is so interesting. Why not?”
Max thought about telling Zryk that wasn’t exactly the right way to use the phrase, but that might take a while, and his wrist was killing him.
“What do I have to do?”
“Follow me.”
Zryk turned away from the computer, gesturing for Max to follow him. They went to the other side of the huge chamber, where another high, cylindrical tube was built into the ship wall. It looked a little like the elevator boxes Max had ridden to get out of Neo Angeles, which felt like days ago instead of just a few hours.
But this tube was made from the same biomechanical cabling that made up the Bug ship’s interior walls and floors, with only a small glass window at the top. The window might have been at eye level for a ten-foot-tall alien, but there was no way Max could reach it.
Max watched the door to the chamber slide open. He was seriously hoping this wasn’t part of Zryk’s plan to destroy him. And strangely enough, he mostly believed it wasn’t.
Zryk motioned for him to enter, and Max stepped inside.
The alien went to a much smaller panel beside the alleged energy chamber and hovered his hands over rays of light that emitted from the console.
The door closed, encasing Max in the chamber. He didn’t like not being able to see Zryk on the other side, but there wasn’t much he could do about it now.
A low hum rose through the chamber, followed by a bright glow of yellow light. It filled him with a pleasant warmth. A ‘pleasant warmth’ wasn’t something Max had felt in a long time. The Wastelands were either stifling hot, or just bearably hot.
His wrist tingled like his arm had fallen asleep. Then the light disappeared, the humming stopped, the tingling ceased, and the door opened.
Max twisted his wrist and flexed his fingers in wonder. His arm felt better than before the accident! In fact, his entire body felt better—better than at any point he could remember, at least since his father died.
He laughed in surprise and joy, but stopped laughing when he glanced at his stats.
HEALTH: 1000/1000 (100%)
STRENGTH: 100/100
STAMINA: 220/220
AGILITY: 110/110
The chamber hadn’t just healed his broken bone—it had healed him completely. Energized him. Put him in peak physical and mental shape.
“That’s incredible,” Max murmured as he stepped out of the tube. “What else can this thing do?”
Zryk looked up from his computer as he danced his hands over the lights of the console. “What more does it need to do?”
“Well… nothing, I guess. Do you use it when you get hurt, too?”
“Yes, to heal ourselves. Also, to re-nourish our bodies when sustenance is not readily available. It makes us strong.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
“‘Kidding’? Does this have to do with animal offspring?”
Max had no idea what Zryk was talking about, but he didn’t want to get into it. “No, it means, ‘You’re totally right.’”
The alien cocked his head. “Ah… so you were agreeing with my statement.”
“Yes,” Max said, then glanced at the dead husks of Bug corpses littering the floor. “Why didn’t they use it, then?”
Zryk looked slowly around the room. Sadly, even, Max thought.
“This is a… the closest term in your language is ‘suspended animation facility.’ We were housed here during the long space voyage, in a state where we were still alive but not conscious. The impact of the crash was apparently so severe that it ruptured all my fellow crew members’ storage tubes, and most likely did serious damage to their internal organs. Coming out of suspended animation abruptly without going through the proper detachment sequence can be extraordinarily disorienting, even deadly. Those who did not die immediately upon impact probably died of their injuries before they realized what was happening to them.”
“If they’d gotten to the chamber, would they have survived?”
“Most like
ly. It would have healed them and made them stronger.” The alien turned back to Max. “It can make YOU stronger, too.”
“It already did,” Max said. “I can feel it.”
“No… I mean, it can make you BETTER. More highly evolved.”
Max frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The human race’s potential for evolution is limitless. This is something we determined in our earliest analyses of your species. Your genetic code is always mutating, trying to find better adaptations to your environment. It is far more malleable than our own, and changes at a far greater rate. Though our technology is superior, I believe your species’ natural capability for biological adaptation far exceeds ours.
“The energy chamber fills an occupant with the Qirinians’ power source. We knew when we…”
Zryk paused and let out a slow creak that might have been an alien sigh of regret.
“When we headed toward your planet, we knew our energy might trigger a new wave of quickly advancing evolution in humans, if delivered at the appropriate measurements. This was considered before choosing your homeworld as a temporary destination. We meant to offer such advancement in trade for Earth’s… hospitality.”
The words made Max’s stomach sink.
“Must have been the wrong measurements, then,” he said sourly.
Zryk’s head tilted to the side. “Wrong measurements? Please explain.”
Max remembered that Zryk had been in suspended animation. Of course he couldn’t have known about the radiation the Bugs’ ships unleashed when they all crashed all over the world.
Max realized he had to give a history lesson now, even though he barely had a firm grasp of it himself. He only knew the stories the Elders had told around campfires.
“Earth used to have a fleet of thousands of starships, but your ships destroyed almost all of them in battles around Jupiter and Saturn and Mars, so there were only maybe a few hundred left by the time you got to earth. From what I know, Earth ended the wa—uh, stopped the fighting—by bringing all of our ships and yours crashing into the ground. It was basically a suicide mission for the Earth starships, a last-ditch effort to keep you from taking over Earth. They used a gravity bomb, or a gravity net, or something to basically bring down all of your ships, but the only way they could trigger it was if all ours went down at the same time. The only problem was, most of your ships were headed for big cities, and our ships were right there with them. So when everybody crashed, they took out a lot of people.