9 Tales From Elsewhere 11

by 9 Tales From Elsewhere

  Snapping the seat belt on his younger sibling, he was just about to turn the key in the ignition when he froze, looking at the clock. “Can’t be right, surely?” he whispered to himself. It was just 4am, sunrise wasn't due for another two or three hours. Above him, the golden sphere had cleared the horizon and was moving across the sky in their direction. The object was too large to comprehend and it burned with such a brightness that an afterimage lingered on Gareth’s retinas when his eyelids fell.

  At his side, Dale had stirred and was holding onto the postcard once more. The one that their mother and father had sent them both on the day when the world changed forever, never to be seen again. The huge orb stopped above them, it was a golden colour and metallic veins crisscrossed the surface emitting a light so fierce that he could not look for too long. A hatch the size of a street opened with a hiss of lethal yellow gas, and inside he could see the giant silhouettes of nightmarish humanoids, looking down at them.

  Gareth took Dale in one hand, and the postcard in the other. He looked past the crack in the visor into Dale’s eyes, trying to resist the panic and the sting of withheld tears. He loved his little brother so much, he was so sorry that he had messed up by bringing them here, despite having the best of intentions. He knew that he was Dale’s world- and that was about to come to an end. “We’ll always have each other.” he said, his voice wavering just a little.

  A beam of green fire fell from the night sky faster than the speed of light, ploughing into the motorway with enough force to send a mushroom cloud the height of a skyscraper into the air. When the smoke and debris finally cleared in the unbreathably thick air of Earth’s new atmosphere the road no longer existed. In its place, a deep crater was a scar upon the landscape, everything within was vaporized.

  Half a postcard fluttered in the breeze, its top edge still glowing red as small specks of ash propagated the air. It showed the cartoon feet of a man and woman stood in the shallows on a beach, a reminder of happier times perhaps if anyone was to set eyes on it again.

  Wish you were here, it read.

  THE END.

  CONTAMINATION by Lee Clark Zumpe

  Derrick hated elevators.

  He had struggled with claustrophobia since childhood. Therapy had managed to keep it smothered for the last two decades. When he felt the cold sweat break across his brow, and his breath tugging at his lungs, he knew his old anxieties had returned.

  “I’m not sure I’ll be able to go through with this.”

  “We’ve only got a few miles to go, Mr. Ashley.” The general’s tone was reassuring. In the dim red light of the pneumatic elevator she smiled and clasped Derrick’s shoulder. “Once we reach the core you’ll feel like you were back at your lab in Nevada. You’ll see.”

  That was hard to believe, even coming from someone Derrick habitually trusted. It had been hours since he had breathed fresh air, since sunlight had touched his flesh.

  It took an eternity to reach the deep-sea science outpost known as Maury Station, a facility named after the 19th century American naval officer and oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury. The dive into the abyssopelagic zone cramped in a state-of-the-art mini-research sub had been sheer torture. Derrick had to struggle to remain calm, and fought off urges to bolt for the hatch and the open freedom of the sunless depths outside.

  And, much to Derrick’s dismay, almost as soon as they arrived at the station they were on their way again. Now, more than an hour later, they were encased in a metal bullet plunging down through miles of solid rock.

  “I’d like to be in Tennessee right now, riding a horse across Cade’s Cove.” Derrick spoke the sentiment out loud, though he was not attempting to initiate a conversation. He was trying to erect a mental picture that could shield him from reality. “Green fields stretching toward the gentle slopes, trees ablaze with autumn color along the ridges...”

  “Sounds like a wonderful place, Mr. Ashley,” muttered the old general. She treated Derrick like royalty. Few scientists of Derrick’s repute could be courted by the American military these days. The conspiracy surrounding the cloning projects of the mid-21st century had virtually destroyed the credibility of the combined Armed Forces. That scandal sowed the seeds of a decades-long estrangement between the scientific community and the military establishment. “We’re almost there, Mr. Ashley. You’re in for quite a treat.”

  “That’s what you’ve been telling me, general.” Through all his angst, he still felt more than a little giddy. He would be the first member of his elitist rank, the first of any possessing advanced intellectual measure to see it ... the first to catch a glimpse of what would be regarded as the single most important discovery in the history of the human race.

  There was a dull swishing noise, and their momentum slowed. The elevator gently came to a rest. Cool air swirled into the chamber in whispers, coiling about necks, sinking steadily. There was a firm hiss, and then the silvery door slid open, igniting a panel of flashing red lights beside Derrick.

  He jumped involuntarily.

  “Welcome to the center of the earth, Mr. Ashley.” It was not actually the center of the earth, but it may as well have been.

  Derrick and the general stepped out of the compartment and into a vast cavity. Tilting his neck, Derrick searched for the ceiling, but found it was lost in a murky darkness somewhere far above them. Immense stone columns ran the length of the chamber and soared upward into the distant gloom.

  There were antechambers, cramped tunnels, twisting corridors and ventilation shafts running off in all directions from this sprawling hall. When Derrick inquired as to the size of the complex, the general simply shrugged her shoulders.

  “And you say that preliminary tests have shown some of the instruments you’ve removed to be between 3 and 4 billion years old?” Derrick shivered as he asked the question. Wonder and fear mingled uneasily.

  “That’s correct.”

  “General ... who could have, how...” Derrick, ever the skeptic, always the clinical scientist, found himself utterly awestruck over what lay before him. Here was irrefutable evidence of an intelligent life form on earth billions of years ago; here was quite probably proof of the existence of extraterrestrial life; here were technologies and sciences which, if they could be understood, could cause humanity to take a quantum leap into the future.

  “Derrick,” the general said as they strolled through one of several operations centers that had been identified, “Quite frankly, we don’t know very much about this place. That’s why you’re here. You’re probably one of a handful of people on the planet who stands a chance at identifying some of the equipment here. We’re hoping that you’ll be able to answer some of the very questions that you’re about to ask me.”

  “That’s a pretty complicated assignment, general – and while I’m flattered that you put so much faith in me, I’m not sure that I can come up with all those answers.” Derrick stopped abruptly, his attention captured by a two-dimensional, circular screen which appeared to be a computer monitor. He waved his hands over a series of blinking crystals to the right of the monitor and, to his alarm, the screen crackled to life. “All right, look ... I won’t ask you what you don’t know if you brief me on everything you do know.”

  “That’s fair Derrick.” The general smiled, heartened by the fact that Derrick was beginning to sound enthusiastic. She led her guest to a table upon which stacks of reports were piled high. “We have made some inroads: Our cryptographers have deciphered about one-third of the programming languages. We have identified several small facilities within the first and second levels as environmental control centers. The central theory is that this was a scientific outpost of an alien culture.”

  “Has anyone speculated about what they might have been studying?”

  “Actually,” she said, pushing a folder-full of documents toward him, “One possibility is that they were working on some kind of hazardous pathogen – possibly trying to find a cure for a virus, or even develop a biologica
l weapon.” She looked away from him just then, as though she were suddenly embarrassed. “Of course, we might be reading too much into the biohazard zone we came across...”

  “Biohazard? What biohazard?” Derrick’s face suddenly went flush. The general’s casual revelation stripped away every trace of comfort from him. He hated the way the military only revealed enough facts to help them achieve their goals. It was for that very reason that so many scientists had shunned the Armed Forces for twenty-some years.

  “I thought someone had already shared that information with you,” said the general in a well-rehearsed lie that made both of them uncomfortable. “We’ve determined that there was some kind of contamination in an area of the complex about three levels up from here ... in fact, we have reason to believe that it actually may have led to an evacuation of the facility. We have no evidence of records following the detection of the contamination.”

  “All right,” Derrick said, trying to calm himself. “Do you have any idea what the contaminant may be?” He looked at his old companion, trying to judge her sincerity. “This is very serious, general. You do realize that there might be something down here that could kill the whole planet?”

  “It’s a risk, Derrick, but there have been no infections to date. Our bio-containment field is holding steady.” The general was ashamed. Had it not been for her own superiors, she would have had Derrick in on this from the beginning. Now she felt responsible, though nothing had even happened. “If you want we can go down there and you can take a look around. We do have hot-suits, you know?”

  “Can’t you just send in one of your robotic scouts?”

  “We could,” she admitted. “But, I thought you would want to get a closer look. We’ve had personnel in and out of there for weeks – no signs of any alien mutant superbugs.”

  “All right,” said Derrick after some hesitation. Hot-suits: Another form of torture – you couldn’t be claustrophobic and function very well in one.

  Level A-18 was fiercely guarded, locked-out and barricaded. Biohazard warning icons had been spray-painted all over the walls of the corridor leading to the zone; soldiers stood frozen along the path, combat hot-suits keeping them from exposure to the unknown.

  Derrick spent several hours inside Level A-18 by himself. He immediately recognized the layout of the facility – somehow, instinctively, he knew it was an advanced genetics lab. He identified several instruments of basic construct: He located one that he believed to be a form of microscope, though it was so alien he could scarcely comprehend how to make use of it. There were laser generators, more complicated than any he had ever seen but not beyond his understanding.

  Other devices defied explanation. A cube, suspended from the ceiling by a thin white wire, whirled about endlessly. An instrument stood at the far end of the room and sporadically belched tiny crystalline beads which dissolved almost instantaneously. In one corner was a small metallic bag with dozens of protrusions in its thick casing – Derrick could find no seams in this weird fabric, and only a single minute hole.

  Derrick emerged from Level A-18 visibly concerned, ecstatically eager to continue his research. He named names – colleagues who had to be contacted for input. He produced a list of items he would require. He shot off a number of emails (each of which was monitored, since word of the discovery had not yet been fed to the media).

  And then, after he had collected his thoughts, he returned to Level A-18 alone.

  His first discovery came within a few hours: He found compartments in the walls which contained vials. He wondered what he would find when he put these under scrutiny. Could it be a cache of some never-before seen viruses? Would his hot-suit protect him? Would his filters be sufficient to strain out the contaminants?

  Days swept by down in that lab, far beneath the churning waters of the Pacific.

  He tested every sample in the chamber, took constant air measurements, used viral-scanning devices that had never been used in the field.

  By the end of the first week, Derrick had formed a theory. He believed that the alien scientists who toiled in the complex billions of years ago had been attempting to restructure the DNA of their race to create a new species that could live on the surface of the planet. Whether they had succeeded or not, he could not say.

  As for a biohazard...

  Derrick found nothing. Not a single living organism. Not one primitive bacterium, not even an ostracized self-replicating virus. Not so much as one little green stromatolite.

  In fact, it struck Derrick as odd that he had not even found physical evidence that anyone – or anything – had ever worked in the facility. No furniture of conceivable design was evident. No means of sustenance presented itself. Had there been an evacuation, things would be in disarray in the lab. Something would be broken.

  He spent 12 hours sitting on the floor staring at everything in the room. He wanted to be sure.

  Eight days after his arrival, he felt comfortable that removing his hot-suit in Level A-18 would be safe. Nevertheless, he followed protocol – he made his report to the general and her staff beforehand.

  “The lab was full of inactive prokaryotic cell samples, general. They were part of an extensive genetic re-engineering program. I managed to deduce that from the partially decoded journal files you gave me.” Derrick spoke into a vid-com system that he had installed. The general peered back at him from a hazy, static-filled picture. “Whoever constructed this complex seemed to have had a great interest in replicating single-celled organisms. I feel that it was a first step towards creating a life form which was biologically conditioned to earth’s environment at that time.”

  “So the level is safe? We can remove the biohazard warnings?” The general looked rather befuddled in the monitor, and Derrick held back a chuckle. “You’re certain that there’s nothing infectious down there?”

  “Absolutely. These aliens must have been working in a highly sterilized environment – how much more sterile can you get than a lifeless planet?” Derrick smiled, reminding himself that he was standing in lab built before his most distant evolutionary ancestor had existed. “The only contamination of which I can conceive would be a contamination of their specimens.” He paused, looking into the general’s eyes. She wasn’t convinced, but he was the scientist. “There’s nothing here that can harm us.”

  To prove his point, Derrick began to unfasten his hot-suit.

  “Derrick,” commented the general, “are you certain you want to do that? It wouldn’t take much to sweep the area now that we know the nature of the contaminant – or the absence of one.”

  It was already too late. Derrick was slipping off one of the thick rubber gloves covering his sweat-soaked hands. He reached around to unhook the latch that clamped the awkward hood over his head.

  All hell broke loose even before his fingers had closed over the metal fasteners.

  Lights flashed. Deafening sirens squealed. Mechanisms, long silent, erupted with new life.

  Something that might have been a voice repeated a sound, over and over, and it sounded something like “Uh-lah-see.”

  The general recognized the word. Though the alien verbiage had only been partially translated, she nevertheless knew the meaning behind the digitized warning. The thought of it made his skin crawl.

  Contamination.

  Air whipped through the room, and doors hissed shut. The lab responded to the defilement swiftly, zealously. It prepared to sweep itself, eager to purge the impurities from its antiseptic environment. Like a heart valve opening, a three-paneled doorway concealing a vacuum tube flared.

  Derrick had no time to act. He had no time to pull his glove back on. All he could do was look down at his exposed hand – and remember the single minute hole in the strange metallic bag.

  It was an alien hot suit – and it had been breached.

  “General!” Derrick screamed. “They were the contaminants!” His face reddened at the revelation, and he could not suppress a smile when he realized how
oblivious he had been to the truth. But as death clawed at him, Derrick had a second sudden insight. He opened his mouth to voice the realization, but every trace of air was gone. He grunted and clicked his teeth in a futile attempt at communication.

  The general read his thoughts from the expression of shock twisting Derrick’s face.

  Seconds later, every trace of air was gone. Derrick fell to the floor, the breath sucked from his lungs. His eyes swelled, his mouth drooped open. The whirling cube dangling from the ceiling saturated Derrick’s shuddering body with invisible beams of energy, all but vaporizing the tissue. His feeble, glistening remains were swept up into the vacuum. All that remained was the hot suit, tethered to its distant oxygen source.

  The general turned away from the vid-com monitor.

  About a mile above, on the surface of the ocean floor, something that strongly resembled a hydrothermal vent suddenly stopped spewing black smoke. It lay dormant for a few moments, then coughed up a mushroom-shaped bubble which quickly erupted and shattered into hundreds and thousands of smaller bubbles.

  Some of these bubbles contained Derrick’s last breath. Bacteria from his lungs and throat and mouth floated mindlessly within the tiny spheres of air which sped up through the dark depths of the sea. E. coli from his bowels was lost in the murky soup of the deep sea.

  The general knew about the venting tubes, and she watched the bubbles scatter into the dark abyss from cameras mounted on an unmanned sub-station set up several months earlier to monitor activity. She watched, and she understood what Derrick had tried desperately to tell her.

  “Dear God...” she said. The alien scientists that had built this complex had sacrificed one of their own researchers to save their precious specimens. Either they had no idea what the consequences of their action would be, or they simply did not concern themselves with it. Venting organic materials directly into the swirling blackness of earth’s deep sea led to a far more significant contamination than the one the aliens faced in their laboratory.