Tellus, A Story (8) Ken stopped and threw up in the stream that passed between his feet. He felt terribly thirsty but he did not want to drink the storm drain water. He pushed on, he was tired, his head ached, his body ached, he was sweating profusely and another vision came upon him. He saw three separate groups of aliens. The group in the army base pretended to be our friends by warning the humans about a second group, a reptilian race who was threatening Tellus. Being reptiles they had nothing in common with mammals and believed that humans were their natural enemies. The third group of aliens were mysterious watchers who had always been there and seemed to have no other motivation but to observe. The watchers seemed to be eternal but they had always avoided contact so their real motivation was unknown to anyone. The aliens on the base had convinced the human government that it needed their help to fight the reptile group. The aliens had also promised the government a space time transporter device but they had not mentioned that one had to be out of the physical body to use it. Since most humans were so primitive that they could not rain themselves to leave their bodies at will, the device was practically useless to the government. The aliens were amused that the humans were so greedy it made them unintelligent and easily led. The human race had not developed properly, as a whole. Something about Tellus made the humans very brutal to each other. Each planet had its own psychological pattern to its species of living begins. Tellus culture was in a death spiral pattern, there was no point in making full contact with its people, they were going to kill themselves off eventually, there was no harm in helping them along a little, the humans were much to contaminated to leave the planet, they were a walking psychological disease, but the aliens were counting on this. The aliens originally came from a planet that circles star Alpha Sigma, but they had lived in many solar systems. They had been coming to Tellus for many thousands of years and had conversed with many cultures and had sworn each one to secrecy as the condition of receiving their help. They had given advice to many peoples and had created leaders and changers of society by injecting programmed knowledge directly into their brains. The aliens needed the life force of blood energy to have a solid material form in this world so in ancient times they had set themselves up as gods who demanded blood sacrifices. They had contacted the current government by staging a crash with cloned drones in a mock ‘flying saucer’ in the late 1940’s. Ken felt weak, he had to stop for a few minutes, he was getting a vision of the worst part of the plan. The aliens were encouraging the humans to spread atomic contamination around the planet to upset the natural balance of Tellus and the universal energy. The result would be a radioactive fire storm of unprecedented proportions. All life would die and the aliens would inherit a sterile planet that they could recreate into a world that they could colonize. The magnitude of the plan had Ken reeling. He did not know if it was real or if he was going crazy. He had to force himself to continue moving down the black tunnel. He was so frightened and weakened by the visions that he wanted to lay down and die but he had seen that the fate of all life was in the balance so he compelled to press on. It seemed to him that he walked for hours and miles and the pipe went on and on. He could hear a few rats scuttling around his feet and he tried to rest occasionally by stopping and stretching his body across the pipe but he soon got tired from being bent over and his mind was burning from the visions. He had hit his head a few times and he was starting to get claustrophobic and afraid that the pipe would never end. He rounded a corner and thought he saw a pinprick of light far ahead. Like an hallucination it bounced as he moved and he could not tell if it was real and it did not seem to get closer. When it started to get larger he was sure it was there and it gave him a second wind and renewed his energy to continue. He walked, it seemed forever to him, before he could begin to see the light reflect on the inside of the pipe. Finally he could see the end of the tunnel and it was barred. Ken’s heart dropped, he wondered if he should turn around and go back but he decided to press forward to the end. The bars were set in cement, debris collected at the bottom and created a small dam, making the water deeper. Walking to the end he saw a few rungs above his head, set into the cement. He climbed the debris dam and reached the rungs, climbed up and managed to open the rusty trap door above. He climbed out into the early morning daylight of a field, very happy to be outside again. The door closed behind him and locked, it was a one way passage. He looked around and to his surprise he found himself close to where the road he had been on earlier turned away from the double fenced in area. He saw that he must be outside of the main perimeter of the base because there was a single fence in poor repair and he found what he guessed to be a coyote hole under it. He crawled through and suddenly a car came around the corner of the road and some men in it saw him. They seemed to be military types in civilian clothes and they pointed at him. This scared Jason but since they did not stop he kept moving. Jason walked up the road for a few miles until he found the truck stop, his van was still there. Feeling overjoyed he got in and started it up and drove away from that place. He decided he would drive home first and then try to sort out what he should do next. Since he felt so confused he hoped being somewhere familiar might help him to work things out. He drove along for a few more miles and then he saw a big black car speeding up behind him. It made him nervous so he turned the radio on to find some music hoping it would help him to calm down. The words of a song that he had never heard before came faintly across the static on the radio as if from a long distance. The female voice that was singing sounded familiar but he could not place it. She sang... “All the countries doctors And all the presidents men Could not put the folksinger Together again. The crash which left his Mind lacking repair Left the great movement With nothing but air. And it’s a long day to freedom.” Ken thought he could feel emanations of hostility coming from the car behind him. The song was making him sad but suddenly overriding the weak radio station signal came a loud clear broadcast. “In pursuit of suspect, is the way clear?” A garbled reply came back, something like “affirmative”. Apparently someone was using a short range radio nearby, perhaps right behind him. It came to Ken’s mind that maybe he had been bugged all along and that they knew exactly what he had been up to the whole time. A cold feeling of fear went up and down his spine. He wondered if Dave had been bugged constantly and killed for what was overheard. The car caught up to his van. It seemed to have government license plates and he noticed a two way radio antenna, it looked to Ken like an undercover police car. There were places that the car could pass him but it stayed right behind him. They did not have a red light on or a siren so he continued driving, keeping to the speed limit. If they were the police he did not want to give them any reason to pull him over. The road twisted up into the hills and on a curve where the hill dropped off to the right of the road, the black car began to pass him. When the car’s tail end was next to his vans front, the car swerved quickly and bashed the front side of his van. Ken tried to steer around the curve but the van went straight off the road, rolling down the hill. He felt a terrific force throwing him around the inside of the van before he blacked out. He saw a long silver cord behind him as he flew through a black tunnel toward the light and then there was nothing but darkness. Chapter Six Ken opened his eyes and blearily saw that he was in a hospital room. From the crisp clean sheets on the bed to the sterile, medicinal atmosphere and the various instruments scattered about the room there was no doubt that it was a hospital. He tried to move and realized that he was incredibly stiff in every part of his body to the point that he could barely move at all. He wondered why that was and he remembered the van moving along the road and suddenly spinning around violently. ‘I must have been in an accident,’ he reasoned. The unhappy thought that he was going to miss Dave’s funeral crossed his mind. He wanted desperately to get up and get out of there and then he realized he did not even know where he was. He hated hospitals, they were places for the sick and dying. He had to leave, he did not belong there. He tried to move a leg off of the bed but the tucked in sheet was foiling his feeble escape attempt. He put his hand on a bed stand trying to get some leverage and it clattered loudly with the ring of metal instruments as he almost tipped it over. His escape attempt did not go unnoticed. A nurse walked quickly into the room to investigate the noise. “You’re awake!” she exclaimed. She gently pushed his leg back into the center of the bed. In a way he was grateful because he was obviously weak. Although she had thwarted him he liked her, he felt she was sincere and energetic. “You’re not going anywhere for a couple of days,” she scolded. Then she asked him, “Can you hear me?” He tried to answer but his voice came out all rough and scratchy. She fetched a doctor who examined him and pronounced that he had already begun healing and had not seemed to suffer any permanent brain damage from his accident. The doctor told him he was lucky to be alive, that he had been very near death for awhile and that he was in a Reno Nevada hospital. Ken could tell that the doctor was tired and an intellectual who had things on his mind. Everything and everyone within Ken’s awareness seemed to have an unusual clarity. Although his mind was clear he did not really have anything to think about. He requested a newspaper to help him pass the time since he had to stay in bed all day. The newspaper that day turned out to be a revelation for him, it was bursting with interesting items. The first news was that it was Friday, he had lost twenty four hours being unconscious. No wonder the nurse had been surprised to see him awake. It was reported that the president had resigned after a complicated tax fraud scheme was uncovered concerning illegal arms sales. The president had pleaded guilty to one charge and resigned with the agreement that other unspecified charges and investigations would be dropped. Bill Wright was recovering in a prison hospital after being, he alleged, poisoned by the food he was given in his cell. “A clear cut case of substance abuse perpetrated by prison officials,” the paper said he had proclaimed. He also had said he had some kind of radiation warning for the planet that he would comment on at his trial. Ken then read that the Symbolic Army had been destroyed by a bomb they had been building. The autopsy of what was left of the leader’s skull had showed marks of a brain operation and the coroner had found a couple of thin metal wires embedded in the brain. The most interesting story to Ken was a small paragraph about a giant fire and explosions at a decommissioned Nevada military base that had been used to store out of date explosives that were to be destroyed. They said about twenty three soldiers had been killed and they planned to let the fire burn out as it was too dangerous to fight and they did not have enough water way out there in the dessert. There was little information since the site was on government land, no reporters were being let in. Even the airspace had been restricted. Ken wondered if this was the same place he had been to. The nurse, as she was leaving the room, told him to expect a pretty visitor who had come the day before. That afternoon his visitor showed up, it was Tracey. He had regained his voice somewhat but he still could not sit up well. “I say you dead...” Ken rasped in surprise and confusion. “Fine way to greet a lady,” she smiled and looked around and saw that they were alone. In a hushed tone she said, “It was a clone you saw.” Ken wondered if he was looking at a clone now, “But how...” “They have advanced techniques.” Ken knew it was really her and knew she was speaking the truth, he seemed to be almost psychic since his contact with the aliens. “I saw you being kidnapped.” “I guess I owe you a bit of an explanation. I am a reporter and I was following up a story, I got into it on purpose from the information I learned off a laser disc. They took me away in the helicopter, found out who I was and we made a deal. They took some cells from me to start clones with and they let me go on the condition that I shut up. They aren’t complete monsters.” “Well I don’t know, what will ‘they’ do if you talk?” “I won’t, they would know it was me as soon as I opened my mouth. Same thing goes for you too, so watch yourself.” She had a grim expression on her face that told him much more. Her priority was self survival, he sensed, it had always been. This was just the latest of the dangers she had passed through. He just nodded. “I knew you would understand,” she said. She was broadcasting to him by her body language and vocal intonations that she had her own life to live and she intended to go on living it. “You weren’t supposed to pierce the inner sanctum,” she continued. “I just expected you to drive the van back and report my disappearance and then I would either reappear and confirm or disavow whatever you said depending upon what I needed for my story, or if I didn’t show up they would have a clue as to where to send the search party. I know it was selfish of me to use you like that but I was trying to give you a little adventure to take your mind off of your troubles. You changed all of that by coming after me, I never expected it from you.” Ken felt his face turning red and flushing, if she was going to ridicule him for trying to save her life then there was no chance that she would ever have enough respect to have a personal relationship with him. “I am grateful that you tried to help me but it was pointless and you almost got yourself killed for nothing. Even with the president out of office and the base blown up little has really changed, those are just superficial differences.” Ken’s eyes widened. “All you have to do is keep your mouth shout and you’ll be safe. Just remember that those same people are still out there, still doing the same things.” Ken did not know if she meant the aliens or the soldiers and politicians but he knew she was expressing an honest opinion. He looked wistfully at here, she was so beautiful, so distant, she would never be able to accept someone as simple and plain as he felt he was. “Well, I’ve got to go now,” she said, “take care.” “You too,” he answered because he did not want to say anything more. What would be the point? “I love you for what you thought you were doing for me,” she blew him a kiss and left the room. Ken had gotten what he wanted and lost it in the same moment. He felt wounded and used but he was also amazed and exhilarated by it all. Surviving a near death experience made one appreciate living all that more. From the thoughts he had been having he wondered if he was hearing people’s mental processes. He wondered if this ability would last or would disappear as the visions had. In the back of his mind he wondered if he would go insane and put his life in jeopardy by telling the world about the aliens but somehow he doubted that anyone would believe him. Maybe he ought to get together with Bill Wright in his antinuclear stand. He laughed when he caught himself looking forward to being back at his quiet little job in the warehouse.
Copyright © 2007 Michael Potter |