The Traveler's Return (Traveler Series 3)

by Dr L. Jan Eira

  “How can we do that?” asked Brent.

  “We can alter the time lines in the dream sequences, and let them in on the real passage of time,” said Valerie.

  “How will they respond to this information?” asked Brent. “Will this be harmful to the Terrae Virentians in the long run?”

  “Don’t know,” said Ellie, a pensive mien washing over her face.

  “I can create a medical solution to produce amnesia of all events from now until several months after our departure,” said Valerie.

  Brent nodded and said, “We can begin to deploy the medicine into the outer layer of Terrae Virentia without the soldiers knowing.”

  “Yeah, the drug will permeate the atmosphere and dribble down into the breathable air on the planet,” said Valerie. “As the population comes out of stasis, they will breathe the stuff which will then cause them to forget all they experience.”

  “It’ll be disorienting as hell,” said Brent. “But it’s worth a shot.”

  “What about scanners, computer, and other nonintelligence means of recording data?” asked Ellie.

  “I can take care of that easily,” said William. “I’ll introduce a worldwide virus to alter all programming on the planet to erase any and all information relating to us and our mission.”

  “Let’s hope it all works,” said Ellie. “By the time it’s all said and done, we should have caused no harm whatsoever to Terrae Virentia or its people.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The four scientists entered an office that had been commandeered by Colonel Riggs. He was looking out his window into deep space. When the doctors walked in, Riggs turned around and gestured toward a graph displayed on a virtual screen.

  “Computer,” Riggs commanded, “superimpose minimal needs of carbonyl trioxide on present data of actual production, and then estimate the time necessary to reach desired levels.”

  “Computing!” said a pleasant woman’s voice. In seconds, the image changed. There was a graph in red, labeled Current CT production, its values down in the single-digit percentile over a period of four months. Another line appeared on the graph, this one in green, labeled Minimal Needs of CT. This line represented the seventieth percentile mark.

  “There you go, Commanders,” said Riggs. “Terrae Virentians are producing very low carbonyl trioxide levels. We need them awake producing up here.” He pointed at the green line. A spot appeared on the virtual screen, corresponding to the position on the graph to which his finger was pointing. “We need those little beasties awake. Out of stasis. Now!”

  “The antibiotic we created to fight the Staph infection is still too toxic to the Terrae Virentians,” said Ellie. “If we treat them now, we’ll kill them all!”

  “You have another week,” said Riggs. He pointed to the virtual screen.

  “Colonel, this confirms what we already knew,” said William. “We are here because we were told that Terrae Virentia would disintegrate with too much or too little carbonyl trioxide and that this disruption would eventually disrupt our solar system.”

  “But that isn’t true, is it?” asked Brent. “Our real mission here is to fix the overpopulation problem so Terrae Virentians can continue to produce carbonyl trioxide for whatever financial gains it brings. Our solar system and Earth were never in jeopardy, were they?”

  After a brief moment of utter, eerie silence, Riggs spattered out, his index finger pointing to the door, “One week! Goddamn you all. One week!”

  The virtual screen changed to a chart, a red line fluctuating slightly at levels near the zero percentile line. The diagram was labeled: Real Time Carbonyl Trioxide Production. Below this, there were four squares, labeled one through four. Each of these corresponded to the computer-driven visual pictures generated from the dreams of the four Terrae Virentian youths.

  As the four scientists exited the office, Riggs said, “I’ll be monitoring your progress through the dream images coming from the planet. Wake them up quick, or else!”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Colonel Riggs sipped from his coffee mug as his gaze fixated on the monitor screens. The dream images didn’t always make sense to him, but he kept on viewing. Scrutinizing. This time he was perusing old footage from dream sequences that had passed.

  “The dreams of a young man,” he whispered. He shook his head and sipped off his coffee again. “Stupid fool!” He sat back down on his captain’s chair, his eyes on the screen.

  William felt more alive than he had ever felt before. His new friend, Valerie, rejuvenated him and repurposed his life. The nightmares of his encounters with the law, watching people die in his arms, and finally, being shot were already beginning to fade away, each less menacing. He described the horrible visions in his sleep, and Valerie understood. Telling her of his horrific dreams made him less afraid of them and more resilient, and he no longer dreaded nightfall. Everything was slowly going back to normal.

  Brent, Ellie, and he attended Valerie’s high-school graduation and listened to her deliver her magna cum laude address. A year later, she, in turn, attended theirs. Each of them too had graduated with full honors.

  Valerie began her medical-school education one year before the other three, and, as such, finished one year earlier. Many medical research–based companies coveted her, and one year later, the other three, to work on a solution to the present worldwide conundrum—infertility—that was about to destroy all life on the planet.

  A newly discovered virus-like organism had presented the most challenging of obstacles science had ever faced. All life on Earth had become unable to reproduce, from the simplest of unicellular organisms to the most complex. Millions of species were already extinct, as they simply died off, unable to produce offspring. Earth’s people, once on the verge of overpopulating the planet, with dire consequences, had dwindled down in number drastically, and this continued to be so. With no younger generations to ease their burdens, the elderly had perished at a fast rate, and the average age on Earth now was midforties; this number threatening to decrease substantially in the next few months. The only food available was genetically engineered, which was designed to supplement, not replace, natural food stores.

  The world’s scientific community had come together to solve this dilemma that so threatened life on Earth, but to no avail. At this rate, Earth would be devoid of living beings in less than half a year.

  Riggs got on his feet and put his coffee mug down on the desk. “I got to get these miserable squints to work faster and rid these miserable creatures on this miserable planet of this miserable infection!”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It would seem providence selected Brent and Ellie to be the last to depart, leaving them to watch their friends die, one by one. The most difficult ones to observe as they departed this life were their best friends, William and Valerie.

  Wanting to be with whatever little bit of nature there was left, Brent and Ellie traveled to the cave where they had spent so much time with their best friends over the many years. And there, together they took their last breaths, their bodies in an eternal embrace.

  Adam was busy carving symbols on the rock wall outside the cave. He barely noticed Eve as she approached. She walked to him and presented him with a red fruit. Unwittingly, Adam took a bite, a mouthful of the forbidden apple tree. This was an unknown feeling in his mouth, a flavor as yet untried. Suddenly, he gawked at the fruit in his hand, with his eyes wide open.

  “Forbidden fruit!” he grunted, his hands grasping around his throat, impeding the passage of the eaten into his being.

  “Apple! Amygdalin fruit!” He shook his head violently. “Cease be!” Adam pointed to his own chest.

  Eve gasped as she noticed the little girl standing there inconspicuously, her light gray hair flowing unevenly with the whispers of wind.

  “Alexandra,” murmured Adam. “Adam cease be?”

  The albino girl walked slowly to Adam and took the apple from him and then engulfed both her little hands
around the fruit for several seconds. Following this, she touched Adam’s belly. She waved her hand in a high circle, as large as her short arms allowed. She gazed into Eve’s eyes with no expression on her albino face. Then she returned the apple to Adam.

  “You can eat it now,” said Alexandra. “No more amygdalin poison in all the apples in the realm.”

  One by one, the predatory beasts sniffed the air by the apple tree line demarcating the Garden of Eden. No longer hindered by the fear of prohibitively high amygdalin-poison smells in the air, the meat eaters entered the Garden of Eden in search of easy prey.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “It’s not working,” exclaimed Ellie. Across from her at the table were Colonel Riggs and her other three cohorts.

  “What do you mean it’s not working?” asked Riggs.

  “The antibiotic regimen we’ve created isn’t working,” repeated Brent.

  “What we’ve come up with so far is either too toxic to the Terrae Virentians or it doesn’t fight the infection sufficiently.”

  “You have another three Earth days to get a working cure for the infection you gave these poor bastards,” said Riggs. “We need that carbonyl trioxide gas, and we need it in massive quantities. We have fallen behind schedule by quite a bit, and I won’t allow any further delays.”

  “No offense, Colonel, but what are you going to do about it?” asked William. “We’re doing our best, and we need more time. It’s as simple as that.”

  Riggs glowered into William’s eyes. “I can make your lives so unbearable that you’ll want to—”

  “We’ll see what General Narrows has to say about that,” said Valerie. “We’ve sent a communiqué to him and—”

  “Did you really think I would allow you people to send messages out of this tin can? But do continue to send them. I’ve been quite amused by your pathetic pleas to General Narrows to get rid of the military presence here on Triloptia,” Riggs mocked. He got up from his chair and slowly walked toward William. “The four of you are here alone, far, far away from home, and at my disposal. Fix the Terrae Virentians and get them breathing out carbonyl trioxide like they should, or you will all be sorry. You have three days. Don’t waste your time complaining about it. Just get it done.”

  And he marched past the soldiers standing at attention by the exit door and departed the laboratory, leaving the four scientists feeling drained and cornered.

  Colonel Riggs zoomed out to view more of the realm around the two young Terrae Virentians. Large groups of menacing fanged beasts slowly advanced toward the cave. A mental command changed the view to a large metropolitan area, but all he saw were deserted city streets and empty vehicles. Not a living soul in sight. A different continent’s large urban conglomeration of skyscrapers was now on the screen. No bodies. No pedestrians. No moving automobiles. No people. All Riggs saw were more vacant streets intertwined between uninhabited skyscrapers of different sizes.

  Several Terrae Virentian weeks ago, Riggs had spied on several large urban areas, witnessing from his vantage point the incredible hustle and bustle that paralleled the overpopulated conditions of Terrae Virentia. Over the last couple of days, this dwindled down significantly, but today he scanned from city to city with the same results. All the Terrae Virentians had either died or had immigrated to another planet, something he knew was impossible. On the virtual screen to his right, he saw the pictures derived from the four Terrae Virentian dreams fade into nothingness.

  “Only two Terrae Virentians left?” Riggs said aloud. “Only two goddamned Virentians left on the whole goddamned planet? The two in the cave? And they’re about to be dinner to a bunch of approaching vicious carnivores?”

  On a virtual graph to his left, the red line labeled Carbonyl trioxide—Percent of Minimal Requirements moved from 1.1 percent to 0 percent, the number flashing in red.

  He suddenly stood up, his fists at his side, his jaws clenched tight. He grabbed his pulverizer from its holster at his hip.

  “No!” he yelled out. “These good-for-nothing scientists are no longer useful to me! Not now! Not ever!”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Colonel Riggs slammed the door to his office as he marched to the research laboratory, fuming, looking for blood.

  The sentinel soldiers snapped to attention as Riggs approached, but he hardly even noticed them there. He shoved through the entrance door and stood for a moment. The four doctors were performing different tasks in each corner of the large room. As the door swung open loudly, their attention immediately turned to the colonel.

  “You good-for-nothing pukes!” he yelled. “They’re all dead on the planet. All but two, and they won’t last long. So I no longer have any need for the four of you.” He took two more steps forward and elevated his pulverizer weapon, the barrel pointing menacingly at Brent, the closer of the doctors.

  “Colonel Riggs,” yelled one of the soldiers. He was holding a small tablet.

  “What is it, Hankers?”

  “I have an urgent message for you,” said the soldier. He pressed a button on his comm app, and four virtual people dispersed throughout the laboratory.

  “Colonel Riggs,” said the older one. “I’m Dr. Brian Voges. We were skeptical of the military’s intentions to bring four scientists with no outer space experience all the way out here to Terrae Virentia.” Voges turned around slowly, looking at his colleagues and smiling at Brent and then Ellie, and finally at Valerie and William as he rotated. Then his gaze rested back on Riggs. “Even though we were not chosen to reach this solar system, we decided to stay around to offer help if needed. We sabotaged the nav computer and prevented our space ship from returning home. We wanted to provide support to our colleagues, the chosen four.” He winked at Brent, who smiled back. “We are stationed twenty light years away from you but have been following your every move. If you harm any of our colleagues, the world will know it. We already dispatched eCommuniqués with the recordings we’ve made to Earth’s media director with instructions for our footage to be made public if they don’t hear from us on a periodic basis. Unless you want the world and your superiors to know you’re a mass murderer, a bully with a pulverizer, you better pack up your equipment and men and do get the hell out of Dodge.”

  Riggs placed his pulverizer in its holster, turned, and marched out of the lab, fuming.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “It looks like they’re gone!” said General Narrows as he entered the conference room where the doctors and scientists had gathered. A sigh of relief fluttered throughout the chamber. “We have definite confirmation that the aliens have left our solar system. I’ve received word that the people of Earth are beginning to wake up from the stasis.”

  Dr. Lillian Monroe was the first to speak after a long moment of wordless, enthusiastic quiet. She was a slender and lanky African American woman with short curly hair and big light-brown eyes. “Just like us, the whole wide world will now wake up and go about their business, aware only that several hours passed, during which time they were confined indoors while a horribly frigid blizzard slipped by.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” said Dr. Sidonia Frazier. “If I hadn’t experienced it myself, I would never have believed that my brain could have been tricked this way.” She was in her forties; long black hair and a moderate amount of crow’s feet symmetrically adorned her dark-brown eyes.

  The general smiled. “Really amazing!”

  “Do we tell the world what just happened?” asked Monroe.

  “Not the masses, no,” said Narrows. “I’ll discuss the issues with the president of the United States, and together we’ll make a decision as to whom we should tell, when and how. That is, if the president doesn’t put me in the loony bin first.”

  Dr. Frazier walked over to a television and turned up the volume. The unit was on the Weather Channel. A pretty woman in her thirties sat behind a desk, the bottom of the screen indicating her name to be Jill Lazar. Behind her was a large insignia, The Blizzard of 2013,
adorned with a cartoon picture of falling snow, stalactites, and stalagmites encircling a windowpane.

  “We have with us Dr. Heather Evans from the University of Chicago,” Jill said. Besides her sat an older woman wearing a red shirt and a few-shades-darker-red jacket. “Dr. Evans has been with us here in the studio throughout this miserable twelve-hour period, the peak of the blizzard.” Jill turned to Evans. “Any explanation as to the severity of this storm and why it encompassed the whole planet?”

  “We know exactly what happened; what we don’t know is why,” said Evans. “Arctic polar vortices blasting extreme bitter-cold temperatures into the subpolar continents is exceedingly rare, though we’ve seen much smaller versions before. What happened yesterday was that both poles became very unstable and very active at the exact same time. The Arctic pole pushed frigid air south, and the Antarctic pole did the same in a northerly direction. We have never seen the equator areas with negative temperatures and snow and ice until now.”

  “How long are you predicting until everything is back to normal?”

  Evans studied the monitors in front of her. “The temperatures are quickly returning back to expected patterns. The computer predicts that all should be completely normal in another forty-eight to seventy-two hours.”

  “Well, I don’t mind telling you that the last forty-eight hours were the worst ever in my life, and I hope we never experience this type of extreme weather ever again. Thank you for staying with us throughout the peak of this blizzard, Dr. Evans. Now we turn to Randy Ringo for an overview of the rescue operations in areas most affected by the Blizzard of 2013. Randy.”

  The general smirked and turned the TV off. “As the kids predicted, the world has no clue about what they’ve been through for over two hundred plus years.”