Lives Of The Unknown Book 1: The Legend of Andrew Lockeford (8 page)

As he took the first turn, he noticed
another alien in front of him that had black eyes, yet it’s muscles
weren’t dark enough to show through. Andrew was spooked for a
moment, then the alien talked in English.

“Don’t swing that! I’m here to rescue you!
Just come with me!”

Andrew was really skeptical as the alien was
walking swiftly towards him, backing Andrew up to the wall.

“Look, I’m a robot, and I’m not going to
hurt you, but we can’t stick around here! Just come with me!”

“Okay, fine, but seriously, what is—”

“Just start
running!
”

The human’s instincts told him to follow,
and so he ran.

After running a couple hundred meters,
Andrew noticed there was a sound coming from the alien’s feet that
almost sounded metallic, but it was muffled by the material of the
black suit on his feet.

“Are you really a robot?”

“Yeah, I just look organic from the
outside.”

He would have to take his word for it. Or
her—Andrew wasn’t sure whether robots were designed with genders or
not.

“How come no one’s around?”

“I disabled all the cameras, led anyone
around the halls elsewhere, and opened all the necessary doors.
Although I’m sorry I didn’t see those two earlier.”

“You did all that?!”

“I’m a robot, and a good one at that. I know
exactly how to operate a good plan, especially when it comes to
controlling electronics. Organics fear us for that.”

“They always have.”

The robot ignored this statement and kept on
running. However, at this point, there were sounds gaining on them
from behind, and Andrew started to worry.

“There’s someone behind us—are you sure you
know where you’re going?”

“I know exactly what I’m doing, because
we’re almost at our destination.”

In a couple of seconds, they took a right
and found themselves in front of several doors. “All of these are
escape pods. You may enter whichever you may like. But make sure to
put on the suit before you launch.”

The sounds from earlier were very close, and
there were more approaching from the other side as well. “Hurry!
You’ve got to get out of here!”

“Wait! Why are you even helping me?! Are you
gonna escape too?”

“No, I’ll hold these people off. I don’t
need to escape.” At that point, the doors to the nearest pod
opened, and the robot pushed Andrew into it. “Put on the suit!”

Andrew found the suit being referred to
within the escape pod. It was heavy, hard, and white. It was also
extremely large, considering it was designed for a Selentor.
Perhaps this suit was made for the big ones that were as tall as
six feet, like the commander. As he got his pants into the suit and
soon his arms, the aliens came into view, mostly consisting of the
black-eyed, dark-muscled kind, and the robot left, saying, “Good
luck.” The doors closed, Andrew got his helmet on, and he could see
the robot taking out two laser guns—vaporizers, to be precise. He
took down a few aliens, but he was far outnumbered and terribly
out-gunned, so parts of his body came flying out in metal chunks
and sparks as he was hit. Andrew was tempted to help, but suddenly
he saw an alien break past the robot’s remains, heading towards
Andrew. He saw a large bright button to the left of him and guessed
it was the button to send him off to space. He pressed the button,
and the escape pod shot up and out of the flying saucer with such
intense force that Andrew blacked out within seconds.

The pod didn’t accelerate past five G’s, but
it steadily increased its velocity to twenty kilometers per second.
Something inside the pod made a quick flash, followed by some
needles and tubes inserting themselves into the suit and into
Andrew’s body, giving him oxygen and nutrients for the next month
until he would reach Ku-an Doel. Luckily for Andrew, humans and
Selentors require similar nutrients, so Andrew wasn’t poisoned with
anything.

When the pod launched itself away from the
ship, there was the chance that the aliens on the ship could have
just used a tractor beam to retrieve their subject. However, the
robot disabled all the tractor beams, too. He was so considerate
and helpful, and yet Andrew never found out why he rescued such a
human. At least, he wouldn’t figure it out for at least a while.
Come to think of it, he didn’t know why the robot didn’t rescue him
before the aliens found him in the teleporter.

Chapter 9

Back to the
present.

With Andrew’s tears coming to a stop,
Juvir set up the teleporter again. Some people may think that
Andrew was a crybaby because maybe there were worse things than
losing what you love, but considering how Andrew hadn’t wept like
this in several years, this was not a scene to be taken
lightly.

“I told you all those facts because
you needed to hear them,” said Juvir. “They are things that shall
be applicable to your life from now on.”

Andrew stood back up and wiped his
eyes. “Why? Is it as if you won’t send me back to
Earth?”

“Precisely. If you were to go back to
your home planet and let everyone know you were captured by
intel-beings–”

“They wouldn’t believe me. There are
many people who say that they’ve seen or contacted aliens before,
but there’s never enough people to panic over that. It wouldn’t
matter if I told them about you guys or not.”

“That’s not it. It’s a matter of
breaking the treaty.”

“What treaty?”

“It’s a treaty that we made with
several other interstellar species that are in conflict with the
AOIB—it involves forbidden species such as yourself.”

Andrew had the feeling that this was
the same treaty that the Selentors had mentioned before. “Go
on.”

Juvir continued his
speech as they teleported back to the assembly hall; Andrew barfed
again, but this time he wiped his mouth afterwards while the
stomach acid disintegrated upon contact of the floor. “No one at
all is allowed to contact the forbidden species and let such
species know of our existence. If a member of that species
does
contact us, then
they are prohibited to go back to their native
planet.”

This disheartened Andrew, but he
wasn’t nearly as emotional as before, so he said in an accepting,
cynical manner, “Looks like I was doomed from the
start.”

“I know that I’m not the first
intel-being you’ve seen so far. What happened to you before you
landed on Ku-an Doel? And just for the record, ‘intel-being’ is
short for ‘intelligent being.’”

“Well, there were these aliens that
took me away from Earth, and—”

“Let me guess….the
Selentors?”

“Yeah, I think that’s what they’re
called.”

“I thought so; they’re known to be the
most eager in going after your planet. They’re the ones who are
most likely to break the treaty.”

“Haven’t they already? I mean, they
admitted that they’ve captured many humans before.”

“Well, have they directly talked to
your species on your home planet, saying that they want to
negotiate some relations?”

“Oh, hell no. Rumor has it, they
capture people wandering in deserted areas for experiments,
although they are sometimes captured by us humans in secret
government facilities.”

“Those are just rumors, so we can’t
know for sure. By the sounds of it, however, they are very close to
breaking that treaty.”

“From what I’m
hearing, they have been for decades. Those rumors about aliens on
Earth have been around for
at least
eighty years. And that was when people actually
paid attention to aliens! Basically, they may have been lingering
around Earth for much longer than that.”

“So this has been going on for a
while? And all the while you are the only one, supposedly, to meet
some aliens other than the Selentors.”

“Yeah,” said Andrew, who took some
time thinking about what to say next, but failed to come up with
something meaningful. “What now?”

“Tell me in detail about your life and
your encounter with the Selentors, please.”

So Andrew told Juvir about his life,
ranted about his opinions of American society, and described his
close call with the Selentors.

Referring to the scene where Andrew
was in the armory, Juvir says, “That explains how you got that
ancient sword.”

Andrew still had his special sword by
his side. “Huh? It seems pretty high-tech to me.”

“Like I said before, that sword looks
like even your species could create it. It’s millions of years
outdated.”

“So you’re saying
that those laser guns of yours are so much better?” Suddenly,
Andrew thought about the various weapons from
Star Wars
. He said enthusiastically,
“Ooh!
Do you have anything like
lightsabers???
”

“No.”

His smile instantly switched off as
his mouth remained partway open. Andrew didn’t expect Juvir to be
so blunt on that. “Umm, okay?”

“Although there may be something that
will match some of your expectations in the weapons
facility.”

“If we’re going there, can we not use
the teleporters? I don’t think I want to taste my own puke again.”
The taste from the past two incidents still lingered on his
tongue.

“We won’t need to—it’s just down the
hall. We can walk if you want. Just leave that sword here so that
we don’t have to worry as much about any accidents
occurring.”

As Juvir and Andrew walked down a lit
green-gray hall with no windows—they could be underground—Juvir
said, “I noticed that a robot helped you escape the Selentors’
grasp quite effectively….”

“And he didn’t bother to rescue me
from the start either.…don’t get me wrong, I’m still thankful, but
I just don’t know why he made his move after I saved my own self
out of that operating room and found this sword.”

“That sword is irrelevant, but from
the way you tell it, the robot wanted you to become familiar with
the Selentors and their ways—perhaps also to decide whether you
were worth saving.”

“Whoa, ‘worth
saving?’ You mean that robot could’ve saved more humans in the past
but didn’t bother to? That I could’ve
died
if I did something
wrong?”

“That, or he—rather ‘it’, considering
it has no gender—never got the chance to do so in the past.
Besides, I find it very odd for a robot to be helping an organic
being out in the first place. Usually they are not that fond of
organic beings.”

“Maybe it was because I was a
different species in which it had hope in me?”

“Perhaps. The robot must have thought
that you would be cooperative rather than undermine its words.
Organic beings aren’t fond of the robots they create, either, and a
lot of prejudice can occur. For example, most organic people refuse
to be ordered around by a ‘mere’ robot.”

Andrew was bewildered by the fact that
these aliens, having thousands or millions of years of cultural
experience beyond that of humans, would still have conflicts over
robots. Giving a few seconds of silence before speaking again,
Andrew said, “That guy gave his life for me. I saw him literally
get blown to bits.”

“Robots don’t fear death as much as
humans do. They can just be recreated with their personalities
intact.”

Andrew felt unsatisfied by that
statement. The robot he met had disobeyed its masters, and if by
some chance they chose to recreate it, it would have a new
personality that would never be the same.

“Well, here we are.”

Large doors slid open to reveal a huge
warehouse of weapons and tools within. There were several floors,
all heading downwards, with the bottom floor barely within sight.
Each floor had a specific category for weapons or tools that would
help any military out.

Andrew wondered why an political
organization consisting of multiple species would have a place to
store lots of weapons. It would be like the United Nations having
an armory that wasn’t just for the military.

They walked down to the second level,
which, according to Juvir, contained plasma weapons. One of these
weapons was the closest thing to a lightsaber, known to the AOIB as
a plasma blade. The hilt was just a cylinder of metal with a large,
circular cross-guard—nothing fancy like the hilt from the other
sword Andrew had. There was a big hole in the front of the hilt,
with a thin rod coming out of it where the blade ought to be. There
were support rods attaching the main rod to the inside of the hilt
at the entrance of the hole.

“Seriously? This thing is hardly a
weapon, and nowhere near any kind of lightsaber or plasma sword or
whatever.”

“Just grip the hilt
forcefully.”

When Andrew firmly grasped the hilt
like Juvir said, all of sudden an enormous amount of energy
surrounded the main rod up to its tip. It appeared to be a lot like
lightning, but unlike the tree-like branches of paths that
lightning randomly goes off into, the energy surrounding the rod
seemed controlled and stable. Andrew couldn’t figure out how it was
possible.