Aliens, Tequila & Us: The complete series

by Michael Herman

  Her humble confession warms me. I pull her up from her chair and into my arms in a gentle embrace. “I never doubted the Sonnet I know. It’s the new and improved version I need get a feel for.” I breathe deep. “Let’s take this carefully. Let’s focus on what you experienced when Kitoko reached out to you. Can you do that?”

  She nods her head and pulls from my arms. “Now?”

  “Now.”

  I touch her arm...and then I don’t. I back away from her, giving her a blank look.

  Zed looks from me to her and back to me. He has surprise written on his face. “Done? That was the fastest read I have ever seen you do.”

  “You understand now?” Sonnet asks. Her tone is serious and unaffected.

  I’m nodding my head and contemplating what just happened. “The Whiteman has been visiting Kitoko. That’s how she knows things that have not happened yet.”

  When I read Sonnet, I saw the Whiteman at Kitoko’s bedside, murmuring into her ear. Then I saw him again, in the bush, just the two of them, in deep discussion, then another time and another and...

  “Whiteman?” Zed questions.

  He has momentarily forgotten the stories I told him of my encounter with the Whiteman when he and Sonnet were just babies. “The person who brought the man from the future to your mom and me.”

  “Kitoko never allowed me to know about the Whiteman until today when she reached out to me,” Sonnet informs us.

  “He is influencing events. What’s his endgame?” I query.

  “I don’t like this,” Zed says, “especially that we cannot feel the Bangala Elongó outside of the village. I get that I might not sense them, but Sonnet being unaware? That’s scary. She has far greater sensitivity than either of us, Uncle Forbes. For Kitoko to be able to block Sonnet without her being aware, that means that Kitoko is a force to worry about.”

  “Or maybe Kitoko is merely a conduit for Gi,” I offer. “Maybe Gi saw fit for us to remain in the dark.”

  “Now all is revealed,” Sonnet says unperturbed.

  “How can you be the new Gi?” Zed questions Sonnet. “Are you inhabited? Does it feel like you have another entity inside of you, communicating with you? Are you still you, but now there is the two of you?”

  “No. I am one. Gi and I are one.”

  “Then you know all that Gi knows?”

  That stops Sonnet. She looks suddenly distraught and responds, “No. I only know what I’ve always known.”

  “Then you are not Gi.”

  “No. I am Gi, a new and... I feel my knowledge expanding even as we talk. Just as I was able to command many avatars, I command myself and the Gi that I am. Just as my avatars were an extension of me, Gi is an extension.”

  “Or maybe you are now an extension of Gi”

  “Does it make a difference? I’m here. Gi is here. You’ll just have to get used to it.”

  I add, “As will you, Sonnet.”

  “Aagh! Look, let’s try something.” She waves her hand through the air like she’s just cast a spell and says to Zed and me, “Do you feel them now?”

  I do. I am suddenly aware of not just the local Bangala Elongó, but of the Bangala Elongó in the north. I look over to Zed who is wide-eyed and turns to me and says, “You are now one of the Bangala Elongó? I feel you like I feel them.”

  I nod and then turn to Sonnet. “Why didn’t that happen before? Why am I only now ‘selected’?”

  “Because I just now willed it. Now Kitoko no longer disrupts our awareness of the Bangala Elongó in the north. You feel them, don’t you?”

  Both Zed and I give affirmative answers.

  “Sonnet uber alles,” Zed says in German, and then with a mischievous grin, he adds gently, “All hail Sonnet.”

  Immediately irritated, Sonnet snaps, “Not funny.”

  We hear Zed’s name being called from the south side of the compound. Someone is running towards us from the village. Zed walks to the door and shouts in Lingala, “Alongi, I’m here.” He waves from the doorway.

  Alongi is the young son of the man who handles much of the village mechanics. “My father says for you to come quick, there is a problem with the motor that controls the water we drink.”

  Zed turns to us and announces, “Life intervenes, folks. Mechanical breakdown. I must answer the call. Can’t do much without water. You two okay without me for a while? Shall we take up where we left off when I get back?” Zed is a star when it comes to electronics and machinery. If he can’t fix it, then no one within 50 miles can. He exits without waiting for an answer from us.

  I walk over to the refrigerator, open the door and take an almost frozen Arrogant Bastard Ale from the freezer section. I remove the cap, take a small sip and collapse into a stuffed chair in the family room. “Shall we hold this conversation until Zed gets back? I’d like some time to mull things over.”

  Sonnet drags her fingers through her hair, pulling it from her face and replies, “That’s a plan. I’m feeling a little tired. I think I’ll lie down in my bedroom and stare at the ceiling for a while. Without distractions. Get to know myself.”

  She exits through the doorway and I stare after her, watching her until she disappears from sight. I take another draw on the ale, swallow, and then let out a string of frustrated soft expletives.

  What does it all mean?

  Sonnet’s Legacy Chapter 8

  Two Days Later

  Twizzle’s Airbus Super Puma helicopter with our foundation logo on the side slowly descends into the center of the compound in a cloud of dirt, dust, and noise. Its three extended landing gear gently take the shock of the weight as it settles onto the grass and earth. The roar of the engines and blades cutting the air drown out all conversation. Zed and I stand at the periphery watching. With our arms and hands, we shield our faces from flying debris. Zed wears sunglasses for added protection while I squint and turn my head sideways.

  Twizzle’s arrival, scheduled two months ago, is not unexpected. She’s here to pick up a batch of orchids for the tequila, champagne, and wine operations in the states. Her trip from the N’Djili Airport in Kinshasa to our compound east of there is a little over 160 kilometers, one way. At a cruise speed of 260 kilometers per hour, it’s a fairly fast trip. The longest and most irritating part of her trip is getting through the bureaucracy at the airport. At best, it takes the good part of a day. At worst, in the past, it has stretched to a week or more. The layers of bureaucracy and bribes vary from trip to trip and are never predictable. She never ceases to complain about it even though one might expect her to be used to it by now. It’s like complaining about the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Nothing you can do about it.

  Once the craft lands and the blades slow, the passenger door pops open and a Caucasian man dressed in khaki safari clothes emerges. He waves for people inside the helicopter to exit. Then two Caucasian men dressed like him climb out of the helicopter and trot towards us. The taller of the two extends his hand to us in greeting and I shake it.

  “Everything is secure for Ms. Brown’s arrival?” he yells over the helicopter engine noise.

  “All is well,” I yell back.

  He turns and waves to the helicopter. A full minute later, Twizzle steps from the helicopter. She is dressed in her usual shin-high shiny black combat boots, a black long-sleeve leotard, a white calf-length loose skirt, black gloves, and sunglasses. Her long hair is pulled back from her face in a ponytail and she wears a black baseball cap pulled down over her head. At 5’9”, she’s average height, average build and soccer player athletic. The apple didn’t fall far from the Maggie— Twizzle’s mother—tree in Twizzle’s case. She still maintains a place on a Napa Valley intramural soccer team where she is by far the oldest player on the team.

  Following closely behind and easily recognizable from this distance is her fearsome boyfriend, Rafa “Bull” Mundoz, carrying a small package under one arm. He looks like he climbed off of a Harley chopper and is headed for a Hells Angels gatheri
ng. He wears black motorcycle boots under loose jeans with a black T-shirt under a motorcycle jean jacket that, no doubt, sports a big circular club-colors insignia on the back. Interestingly, his club colors have the word “Jerusalem” on the bottom of the circle and the club name at the top of the circle is in Biblical Aramaic square script. The obligatory death’s head skull in the center of the insignia is surrounded by hieroglyphics. When people ask if he’s a Hells Angel or something, he usually spits on the ground and says he wouldn’t be caught dead with pansies like that.

  I’m convinced he’s a gang of one since no one has ever been able to chase down anyone else with his MC—Motorcycle Club—insignia. What separates him from your average thug is his girth. He’s about 6’3” with a build like the comic book character the Hulk—wide chest, wide arms and legs, thick hands, larger than average head, and the muscles of a well-conditioned pro athlete. Not one tattoo or body piercing adorns his body, of which he says, with a slight Hispanic accent, “Nothing defiles this temple.” He barely drinks, and doesn’t smoke or do drugs. He is an anomaly. His hair is black and close-cropped. His voice is smooth and low unless he’s threatening you, then it either goes super low and soft which means he’s about to unleash himself on you, or it goes gravel hoarse when he’s screaming, which I have heard him do on occasion. But mostly he’s quiet and receding unless called upon. His intelligent eyes are always assessing and qualifying. I address him as Rafa, as does Twizzle, my sister, who is Ms. Brown to most people. Everyone else refers to him as Bull. He is a constant fixture at my sister’s side.

  Twizzle trots up to Zed and embraces him in a hearty hug, kisses the side of his cheek and then does the same to me, stepping up on her tippy toes to get to my cheek. She is all teeth and smiles when she pulls back from me.

  “Where is Sonnet?” she inquires. “I was looking forward to that gunpowder tea she loves so much.”

  “Sound asleep,” Zed tells her. “She crashed two days ago and hasn’t moved much since then.”

  Twizzle is immediately concerned. “She’s sick? She’s come down with something serious? Should we evacuate her to a decent hospital? What’s wrong? Is she injured?”

  “No, no, no,” Zed assures her, holding his hands up to stem the flow of worry. “She’s a bit overwhelmed by circumstances. Uncle Forbes will fill you in while I help your guys with the cargo. Bull should come with me. You and Uncle Forbes need some alone time, I think.”

  Twizzle frowns at me and I give her a blank-faced nod of the head. “How about some ice water? I can always manage that,” I offer.

  She turns to her men and Bull, takes the small package from Bull and then directs Bull and the men to follow Zed. She turns back to me and then leads off towards the building that houses our kitchen. I follow and wonder where to start with her.

  Inside the building, she sets the package down and unwraps it to reveal a rectangular blue plastic cooler from which she pulls out two dark amber-colored bottles of my favorite ale. She pops the lids on both bottles and offers one to me. After she has availed herself of a taste of the beer, she flops into a chair and stares at me, waiting for me to tell my tale.

  An hour later, she is in deep contemplation and watching a blue-and-black-winged butterfly flit in the air over the table. When Bull stopped by with Zed a few minutes ago to check in on her, she asked that she and I be alone for a while longer.

  Zed took the lead, grabbed Bull by the arm, and asked if he wanted his fortune told by Kitoko again. It’s a game Bull and Kitoko play where Bull is the willing participant in the charade. Kitoko makes things up and he always acts surprised and grateful, telling her that everything always comes true just like she says. She calls him out for the lie and they always laugh about it. When Kitoko and Bull get together, it’s like they are two kids in play. He gives her his undivided attention and she gives him the best of her imagination.

  “You have to go to Volcan Mikeno, as dangerous as it is. You have to play this out. From what you say, it sounds like this girl Kinshasa is a catalyst and her contact with our Gi resulted in Sonnet and Gi melding into one. God, I wish Mom and Dad (Maggie and Bob) were here. I’ll never accept they had to martyr themselves for us. There’s always an alternate solution.” This has been a recurrent theme throughout Twizzle’s life. She holds it against them and always feels deserted. “Now what do we have on our hands? A Sonnet monster?”

  “Twizzle, she’s no monster any more than you and I are monsters. She’s something new, something she’s still coming to grips with. Her sleeping all the time is part of acclimating to the new her. Imagine if you suddenly had to absorb eons of Gi. How do you think it would affect you? I’m surprised she’s able to survive and remain sane at all. It’s a credit to her genetic makeup. You or I might have collapsed under the strain. She seems to be holding her own. Whenever she wakes, she’s lucid and energetic.”

  “Is there anything I can do? Should we move her to better quarters? Somewhere where it isn’t so damn humid and hot all the time?”

  I smile. It’s always difficult for Twizzle when she comes here from California. She’s never able to adapt to the weather. “She’s acclimated, Twizzle. She’ll do fine.”

  “But what about the rest of you? You no longer have Gi to fall back on in times of trouble. She’s the only one who can go avatar. If she’s incapacitated, you and the rest of the Mongála Elongó here are at the mercy of this savage country. Look at your little Boboto incident. Look at the political unrest in the presidency of the country right now. There are rebel incursions in the north again? At the very least, you need me and my security people here, armed and capable. I’m not leaving until she’s up and well.”

  “We don’t know when that will be. It could be hours or days or weeks or...”

  “My point exactly. I’m calling in my people. Until you can assure me that she’s well and able, I will err on the side of caution.”

  “The armed rebellion is north and not moving our way, the local bandits generally don’t bother us. I’ve heard nothing about trouble within the Kinshasa military like not being paid again. You’re being alarmist. We’ve been here for years.”

  “With Gi. Now there is no Gi—or there is, in Sonnet, or there isn’t, I don’t know. No. We’re staying and there’s no more discussion, Forbes. Zed and Sonnet’s welfare is fifty percent my concern here, just as it’s always been. And I just increased my voting power to fifty-one percent. You are out-voted. No argument, understand?”

  I laugh and smile in acquiescence. “You win. We’ll make accommodations for your men here and in the village. How soon will your reinforcements arrive?”

  “I’ll have some of them here by tomorrow or the next day at the latest. I’m going to bring in five or so, initially. Once I get visas for more of them, it will be up to twenty. Think you can make room for them?”

  “We always have room for castaways, Twizzle. Let’s hope they aren’t here for too long, for their sakes. Better tell them to pack provisions like it’s a safari. Now you said, before you came here, that you had foundation news for us. What was that?”

  “Oh! Forgot all about that in the heat of the moment. Yes. Very good news. Chile. The world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory. It’s a facility that’s operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cero Paranal in the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile. A foundation we support has started construction of a ground-based laser array there that will send over 100 gigawatts of power to a group of orbiting space probes. The probes will accelerate to twenty percent of the speed of light. The probes are targeted for the mathematically-predicted location of an EDEP near Jupiter. The probes are nano craft with ultra-thin light sails. Each probe only weighs a few grams. There will be over one hundred of them. The probes will reach a speed of 134,000,000 miles per hour. Once they’re up to speed, they’ll coast. All will reach the EDEP in less than three days once the laser array is used to accelerate them.”

  I almost spit ale. “Three days? Incredib
le!”

  “No one expects them all to make it. But if even one makes it, that’s a start. We plan on sending more. Once the EDEP location is confirmed, we lock onto it and place stationary observing satellites that will alert us to the next arrival of our enemies through the EDEP.

  “Given enough time and technological advancement, we enter EDEP, track them down to their homeland and make sure they never pass into our system again, but that part is generations away.”

  “And progress on controlling or reinforcing the gravitational field around the earth?”

  “Still in the works. Doesn’t look like anything will happen in our lifetime. That’s no surprise.”

  “Here we sit in our primitive jungle huts discussing interspace travel. Always amazing to me.”

  “Fighting for the future of the planet; struggling against interstellar natural events and aliens, Forbes.”

  I snort laugh. “Current humanity seems just as hell-bent on altering the planet as the aliens are. Put the two of them together and it becomes a slam dunk for the end of life as we know it and the start of a new world populated by flora and fauna completely alien to us. Just another mass extinction leading to an earth-wide restart.”

  Twizzle ignores my last comments because she’s heard it all before from me—about global warming and politicians intent on denying it. “So I’m intrigued by the concept of the ‘Chosen’ warring with the Bangala Elongó. You and I always assumed that Zed and Sonnet were either infected by David from the future or they were the evolutionary ground zero for whatever it is that selects people. You and I certainly don’t have whatever it is that they have—the selection bug or germ or virus or...”

  “Yeah, whatever it is.”

  “It’s different with Sonnet and Zed. What we’ve observed is that their thing seems to be confined to people of the Congo. Now we’re told of a new breed of ‘selection’ that’s personified in the girl Kinshasa. And these ‘selected’ have a few people near Mikeno mountain where yet another form of Gi resides. Contact between the two of them via Kinshasa resulted in the death of this Gi and the creation of a new Sonnet Gi, where does that lead us?”