Blood Soaked and Invaded - 02 (28 page)

“That merits exploration,” Chunhua’s head nodded in acknowledgement. “What was discovered regarding their extinction?”

“The reptiles speak of a massive technological experiment gone wrong. Their home world is now a lifeless rock, and their colony ships are empty tubes.”

“A tragedy.”

“Then the humans are doomed,” Right Alien #2 declared.

“Mankind will fight and win, or fight and be consumed. That is the way of things.”

“No species infected by the Progeny has ever won,” said Right Alien #3, in a warmer voice than any I’d heard up to that point. “Humanity will not. They are not advanced enough, nor do they have the resources to resist.”

“You may not be correct. Have you scanned your unexpected guest?”

One of the Grays perked up and glided across the deck of the ship to stand in front of me. It put both hands of thin, gentle fingers over my face and I felt the dry paper texture of its skin. In the space between one breath and another, it squealed in my head and shot back across the floor.

“Abomination!”

All six of them pointed fingers at me.

“He is like your species,” Left Alien #2 said to Chunhua. “What have you done to them?”

“Nothing. We do not interfere. We observe. You know this.” Chunhua chided the Gray. “These few made the choice by themselves. They may survive when the rest of their kind perishes.”

“They have abandoned the sanctity of their biological nature.”

“As you know, this is a philosophical point that we disagree on. In our travels, the human race is the closest, in spirit, to who and what we were before our technological evolution. They do differ from us in a very important way...”

“Individuality,” Left Center Gray said, cutting the big voice off.

“Indeed. Your species expresses a tendency toward hive structure and thought. They tend to chaos, not unity of single mind and purpose. We were somewhere between you and mankind when we were a fully biological species. When we made the jump to transcend our bodies, we did so together, and have grown to be what you know now.”

“Yet,” Left Center went on, “you will not help them?”

“Every race that has visited this world has altered the destiny of human beings, by observing them, if not by more direct means. Your species has been harvesting their intestinal bacteria for almost 100 years to bring new vigor to your failing biology. The reptilian races exploit them for food and breeding. We will not interfere any more than we have by simple observation.”

My ears perked right up. I’d learned something that mystified me since I was little: why aliens are so keen on our asses. We’re just robust, wild strains of ass-yeast to them! It was so simple and elegant I wanted to do a little dance, but I couldn’t move.

“What about the body you wear?” One of the Grays asked, pointing at my ET-possessed neighbor.

That’s the question I would have asked if I’d been able to speak or move. I wanted to applaud the little Gray poo pirate as badly as I wanted to get the Hell out of there.

“I asked this female if I could borrow her form in exchange for rejuvenating her body beyond the capacity of existing human technology. Fortunately for me, she agreed. She will remember everything but our thoughts when I am gone. It was necessary to be near to these people to experience their feelings about leaving an evolutionary path behind.”

“Your motivations are suspect.”

The Grays were not convinced, and I wasn’t feeling the love either. Simple observation did not require possessing someone’s body and experiencing life as a human would. It would have been just as easy to walk around in alien stealth jammies and watch us like a teenage voyeur.

My train of thought did not stop at the station, but went right on to the next one and unloaded a freaky realization. This thing had been riding along while Chunhua and Shawn were screwing! I sincerely hoped my memory wouldn’t be wiped, because telling Shawn would be so fantastic! Good Lord!

“Dude,” I’d say to him, “you were banging an alien when you and Chu were knocking moist parts! How was your close encounter? Did you ‘phone home’?”

He’d kill me. I’d run and run, but he’d catch me. Why the fuck did this make me gleeful?

The Gray who’d declared me an abomination pointed at me from across the bare metal room.

“It is amused!”

Chunhua/Big Voice turned to look at me. Her eyes were not human at all, and I felt very, very tiny, looking into those glowing orbs. It turned back around and addressed the assembled stick people.

“This man is the son of the person who unleashed the Progeny on their species. He is not entirely sane. Do not take anything you observe in his behavior as an offense.”

“The offspring of a traitor to their species?”

“From your perspective, yes.”

The six small Grays shook their big heads and made an audible noise.

“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.”

I’d been dissed by aliens! Another first for me!

“There is no way to barter with you for the continuance of human kind?” The Left Center Gray held up spidery hands as if it was begging.

“You know there is not.”

The assembled Grays nodded gravely.

“We needed to request, knowing the answer, for our own peace,” they said in unison.

“That is fair. Please return us. Hours have passed for those on the ground, and our absence will be noticed if it has not been already.”

All six nodded, held up a single hand but didn’t wave. The room filled with the same blue light as before, and we floated back to earth... on top of Building Two.

Abruptly, the light surrounding us vanished. The ship above us seemed to quiver in the air, and shot off into the distance at speeds that my nanotech couldn’t even track. I was left alone in the dark, on the roof of a building, with an alien imposter. My body still felt slug-like, and I knew I couldn’t defend myself.

“You are worried, Frank,” Chunhua said to me in her normal voice. “I would like to apologize for that experience. You were never meant to see or know of these things.”

“Fssht,” I said, trying to speak.

“I would like you to know I lied to the Grays. I can’t wipe your memory without completely disrupting the nanomachines in your body. You might die or be crippled by such an action, and that would constitute great interference on my part.” She chuckled a little. “I have already bent my ethics by borrowing Chunhua like this. Oh, you need not worry. Her feelings for Shawn are genuine. It is quite lovely.”

“Why?” I congratulated myself on regaining my mouth and asking a coherent question.

“Ah. Our species was much like yours, some 600 million years ago, and we stepped into our own technological singularity... a choice that other species have eschewed... and transcended our physical bodies. In due time, we became a single being with many networked bodies. One of us represents the whole.”

“Us?”

“Indeed.”

“Why?” It seemed like a logical question to ask.

“We have watched you grow, especially over the last two hundred years, because you are so much as we were. It is science, exploration, and an indulgence of nostalgia. We wanted to meet you and know you as you encountered your own singularity.”

“Lonely?”

“Yes,” it said with her voice, and gravely nodded her head.

“Oh.”

“The danger to your world and fellow humans is real. We admit we have assisted in making it possible for you and yours to resist the Progeny. Bajali Sharma’s creation would not have evolved had it not been for us.” It approached me, wearing Chu’s body, and touched my face. “We will leave you now. We hope for your success so we might see you again someday.”

A moment later it felt as though someone had set off a flash bulb in the Universe. There was light, and a sense of disorientation, but no noise. My pupils returned to a normal shape, and I saw Chunhua sitting on the roof at my feet. She was crying.

“It’s so sad,” she said, looking up at me.

All I could do was nod my head.

“We’ve been gone a while. We should let everyone know we’re home.”

“How long?” I could barely put my thoughts together to ask her, much less trigger my own internal timer.

“Six hours.”

“Shit!”

“We need to... Ouch!” She clutched her head. “Shawn knows where we are now. Have you ever noticed that people in that family are very loud when they’re excited or upset?”

“Yes,” I answered, “as a matter of fact, I’ve make similar remarks to myself.”

“Where the fuck have you been?” Charlie’s question exploded between my ears with enough power to make me grab at my temples. “No one has been able to find you two!”

“Chunhua and I took a ride,” I broadcast to her, “in a flying saucer.”

“You’re full of crap,” my beloved replied.

“No, really. Not the bad guys either. Spindly gray guys.”

I looked over at Chunhua, who gestured toward the edge of the roof as if inviting me to jump off. Being a gentleman, I gave her the old fashioned, “After you, M’lady” sweep and bow. Grinning like a fool, she bopped over to the edge, and hopped off. I followed suit.

Not a bad landing, even if I do say so myself. The welcome, however, left something to be desired. We were surrounded by a pack of Major Kenney’s goons, prickly with rifle barrels and grumpy dispositions.

“Hey, Chu?”

“Yes, Frank.”

“Do you get the impression we’re going to get a stern talking to and a sharp debriefing in the near future?”

She smiled at me, clapped her hands and did a little dance.

“I love being debriefed! It is
so
liberating!”

“That’s right, you were a comedienne back in the day,” I reminded myself aloud.

“I have incredible timing.”

What else could I do? I just shook my head, and waited for the rest of the mob to arrive.

Major Kenney and Omura arrived first, with Buttons in tow. Their scowls were impressive, and I knew that getting to sleep before noon would be entirely unlikely. It was nearly 7am, anyway.

Charlie and Shawn arrived together, but their facial expressions were unreadable. A quick flip of my “scan these people” switch gave me a graphic indicator of their anxiety levels. The guards couldn’t have known they were about to get knocked over if they didn’t move quickly enough, yet they parted ranks to let our lovers reach us without a backward glance. Seconds later, Chunhua and I were in the middle of a Cooper Family love sandwich.

“What’s this shit about aliens?”

Shawn mumbled the question into Chu’s neck, but I couldn’t help but hear it, being squashed beside her.

“Yeah,” Charlie said, “you’re kidding. You’ve got to be.”

“No,” Chunhua replied, trying to shake her head. “We were abducted by aliens.”

“Baby!” Shawn crooned, and hugged her more tightly. “They didn’t do anything nasty to you, did they?”

“No. No. We’re fine.”

“Actually,” I piped up, after raising my face out of Charlie’s curls, “Chunhua’s been an spy for an extraterrestrial species studying us. The Grays can’t help us. The Lizards can’t help us. The Annunaki are all dead. The Pleiadians have retreated. We don’t even get an anal probe or a t-shirt.”

Buttons’ face turned white like a new pair of underwear. Major Kenney and Omura just squinted, no doubt planning intense questioning. Charlie and Shawn stiffened against us, and Chunhua gave me a nasty pinch.

“What the Hell are you talking about, Frank?”

“Well Shawn,” I’d started it, so I had to finish it, “You’ve been sleeping with a representative of another species. It was riding around in Chunhua’s brain, watching us and enjoying your company.”

I got another awful pinch.

“Don’t listen to the crazy man, Shawn,” Chunhua advised. “He’s just jealous that they liked you so much, and no one wanted to give him an anal probe.”

“Well, I guess that’s okay then. I guess. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Now that you lovely people have finished your happy reunion, our two escapees have some questions to answer. Ms. Yan, Mr. Stewart, please accompany Omura and myself to B1 for a little Q&A.”

Major Kenney sounded pleasant enough, if you like titanium porcupine quills in your margarita. Reluctantly, Chu and I parted company with our respective love interests and joined the Major’s group for a tense walk across the neighborhood. Our stomachs growled, and that was the only noise we made until the questions started flying.

We filed into the meeting room behind the three of them, and sat beside one another in the front row as if by telepathic agreement. The Major, Omura and Buttons planted themselves in folding chairs near the platform at the front of the room. It felt a little bit like facing a prickly, miniature Spanish Inquisition.

I heard footsteps and turned around in my seat. The entire community, additions included, had started to fill up the available seats. Chunhua and I shrugged at one another and turned back to face our interviewers.

“Now then, people–I don’t care if you sit in on this, but please be quiet,” the Major shouted. “And you, yes, the smartass who brought popcorn; did you bring enough for everyone?”