Alex felt a strong urge to puke but managed to swallow back the bile that had accumulated in his mouth. The slave quarter was a long room, lined by bunker beds on either side, the mattress made of some kind of a hard rubbery material. William walked to a bunker some distance away and sat on it, pointing the bunker opposite him for Alex to sit on.
Alex sat there, still struggling with the stench that filled the room in its entirety.
‘Have you seen the master aliens? How do they look?’ Alex asked William once they were both seated on the beds.
William nodded his head.
‘How do they look?’ Alex repeated his question.
‘They are big and frightening’ William looked at Alex, his eyes glazed with the frightening visage of an Alien’s face. William continued
‘They are big, frightening, walk on two legs and have six to eight tentacles coming out of their back. The tentacles take off from a hunch on their back and their skin is a willful play of colors. They are manifold stronger than us and our flesh is food for them…’
‘What?’ Alex interrupted William ‘Are they cannibals?’
‘Well no. You cannot call them cannibals since they do not eat their own kind. They eat us and our kind and so at best you can call them carnivores or meat-eaters.’ William wiped the sweat off his forehead and continued
‘They consume us in other ways too.’
Alex was still horrified with what he was listening. Now it was making some sense to him. The way the alien slave slobs dragged the bodies out of the room he had escaped from-they were piling them up for dinner…or lunch or whatever.
‘What do you mean they consume us in other ways?’
William looked at Alex and replied
‘They put the bodies in a giant machine. In fact, they put everything in that machine. I have seen humans, cattle, animals, trees…everything go in at one end and delicious white gelatinous cakes come out of the other end.’
Alex was repulsed
‘You say this as if you have eaten it.’
William looked at Alex
‘I fought my hunger for three days before I took my first bite. That’s all they would serve us here.’
Alex did not know what to say. He realized that he had not eaten for close to a full day now. His last meal was just outside Arizona when he was on his way to meet his daughter Susan. His thoughts veered towards his daughters and his wife. He was all of a sudden, filled with anxiety for Susan and Carrie and his wife Sienna. What would happen to them if they were captured? Would they meet the same fate of being processed into alien gelatin-food? The thought of that sent a shiver down his spine and he felt tortured at the injustice and helplessness of the situation he found himself in.
‘My daughter has probably been captured.’ Alex said meekly and looked at William. William saw the anguish in his eyes
‘You were captured and you are alive now, aren’t you?’
Alex nodded. He hoped Carrie was too. He looked up at William and asked
‘How did they get you from 1202?’
‘I do not know. If you are asking, how from the year 1202, well if they could traverse a vast expanse of space to reach here then why not time? It is just a space condensate.’
‘What’s a space condensate?’
‘Time. It is a condensate of space. You can either traverse space at a great speed to get through time or you could compress or condense space to get through time.’
Alex could not believe that he was taking science lessons from William of 1202 A.D.
‘How do you know all this?’
William looked at Alex and smiled
‘All in good time my friend.’
That remark was condescending and Alex did not like it very much. William was again lost in his thought. But a hundred questions were still circling in Alex’s head. Before he could shoot the next one, William asked one
‘Were you a general in your army?’
Alex shook his head
‘I was just a marine…a mere soldier. In fact you outrank me Sir.’
Williams laughed and so did Alex.
‘Where have these aliens come from?’
‘They are from very far away. From a distant galaxy in a distant galactic super-cluster altogether.’
Alex knew some astronomy, courtesy Sienna. Planets go around stars. A hundred million of these stars formed a galaxy and these galaxies formed clusters and super-clusters. The Universe had a super-structure that resembled a spider web, each arm of the web formed by millions of galaxies, arranged in clusters and super-clusters. Our galaxy, the Milky Way belonged to the Laniakea super-cluster that was defined as recently as in 2014. Talking about the humongousness of Universe was Sienna’s favorite excuse to be calm about our Earthly foibles and frivolities. Whenever Alex got agitated and furious about anything, Sienna explained the collective insignificance of all things terrestrial, in the grand scheme of things. Her perspective extended from the vastness of the lands and oceans on the Earth to the finite infinity of the Universe. She considered all Earthly squabbles petty and always thought that people are missing the big picture when they insouciantly fight over lame and trivial things like money, power and religion. There was much to explore and much to achieve and uncover in the wide Universe, than getting into disputes on Earth over issues that are trivial and bagatelle. He could never argue with that. How could anyone ignore an argument that huge?
Alex smiled as he thought about that. He did not know where and how Sienna was, and even if she was alive at that moment. He had to have faith in the odds, impossible ones even. He was alive and if he could be unbelievably so, so could Sienna and so could Susan and Carrie be. His mind kept going back to an image of a plate with shiny white gelatinous food with tiny bits of his daughters sprinkled on top as seasoning. The bile returned to his mouth and he swallowed hard.
Alex asked something but the words did not come out right.
‘Hmmm?’ William asked as if Alex had said something.
Alex cleared his throat and then repeated his question
‘How did the aliens turn out so much like us?’
‘Like us? Who? No they aren’t anything like us. If you mean, they are flesh and bones and are biped like us, then yes they are like us. But they are not like us in any other way. In no other way.’
Alex shook his head,
‘I am not talking about their customs and their habits. I am talking about them having carbon chemistry and yes, walking on two feet and having a mouth and a face and a language and having a ship made of metal…being seen by us, capable of being touched by us, capable of destruction, killing, eating, consuming. Why these similarities?’
‘The Universe is more the same than it is different. Every which way you look, it seems the same – stars, space, galaxies and the ilk. So why should life be any different? The structure of the Universe is the same. The elements are the same, the processes the same. Then why should the form of life be any different?’
Alex did not have any answer to the line of reasoning that William was pursuing. He could not keep from wondering yet again that he was taking astronomy lesson from a thirteenth century brute. Yes, brute was the word he was searching for since meeting William. William looked just like a big burly brute.
William was not finished however
‘Actually I do understand your question. A tiny tweak somewhere and the chemistry could have been different. A different structure of DNA, a different element at the core of it all; it could all have been so different. I have only to ask you this, do you think that life has developed on Earth?’ the question was only rhetoric and Alex was not expected to give an answer. He offered none.
William continued
‘Oh no. Not here. Life developed along how we think it did, but at distances very far from here. There was a basic prototype that formed and then disseminated all across the Universe covering great distances. It found root in many worlds, light years and eons apart, animated and evolved as per t
he local milieu. In fact, the more different life appears, the more is it the same. Life based on carbon overall has a very similar blueprint. Some of your scientists have called this panspermia and they have not been very far from the truth.’
‘Is there any other life? Other than the Carbon form?’
William laughed. He too found it amusing that he was giving lessons to someone eight hundred years younger than him.
‘Of course’ he took a pause and looked into Alex’s eyes, ‘There is life everywhere in the Universe. There is life inside the burning stars, based on an iron-halide metabolism, there is chemical life on the giant gas planets based on collective association. There is even life in the vacuum of the interstellar space, of a type that we cannot even begin to imagine. There is even a ‘magic-life’ that exists between dimensions, which stretches itself across dimensions, flitting in and out of existence. And my boy, that’s just a tiny bit of the variety that is out there.’
William was narrating a fantastic story and Alex listened with rapt attention. William’s hands were animated and his eyes glowed when he described the different life forms. It was as if he was speaking from experience, having seen and visited these fantastic worlds firsthand. There had to be a source for this information. Alex looked around the room and asked
‘Who are the others here?’
William looked around the room, at the empty beds. He pointed to the one on which Alex was sitting on
‘Mir Qassim, 1689, Abyssinia’ William pointed to the bed next to that ‘Samuel Brickett, 1833’ he pointed to the next one and went on,
‘That is 1324, the next is 1798, the next from 1978.’ He stopped and looked around the room
‘From 1225 to 1978. People from more than seven hundred years in this room, all of us held captive here, together for the last twelve months. You asked me how I know what I know. Let me show you.’ William got up and headed towards the far end of the room.
Alex looked after him for a moment and then got up from the bunker-bed.
Chapter 12
Divide and Rule
Secret Service Hideout, Maryland
26th January 2019
White flags adorned every surviving government building on the morning of 26th January. Every other intact high-rise building which could be contacted was also asked to fly a white flag on its mast. Huge advertising hoardings were painted with the words “WE SURRENDER”.
The government declared a unilateral ceasefire and all hostilities towards the Aliens were stopped. The overnight carnage had flattened all the major cities of US. Washington, Philly, Vegas, LA, Chicago were all gone, each reduced to a giant pile of rubble. The human cost of the attacks was huge. No number had yet been determined but a conservative estimate put the number at three million. The skies over all the major cities were covered in smoke and dust and that smog blocked out the meager sunlight from the artificial eclipse. There was chaos all around and that brought out the worst in people. There was news of arson, looting, rioting, murders and even rapes.
The communication satellites had been majorly hit since last night and the power grid had all but collapsed. The entire country had been plunged into a dark age within a couple of days.
All they could do now was to wait. There was nothing else to be done. The mood was somber within the bunker and Sienna saw gloom writ large on everyone’s’ faces. She had heard about what had transpired overnight. She was awake the whole night watching clips from the last few working news services. CNN was still running skeletal services from its station in Vancouver, its reporters covering the mayhem on ground with hand-held camera devices. Sienna kept looking for news from Florida, where she hoped her daughters and her husband had somehow escaped the bedlam. Florida was one of the cities that had been nearly devastated.
The attack continued unabated throughout the morning. Alien ships kept sending out raiding planes from its belly that mercilessly pounded and pulverized cities. Harvesters cleaned up after them, scooping out dead and alive humans, animals and trees. Once they were done, entire cities were left lifeless.
And then it all stopped by noon on 26th January. The ships went silent all over the US, halting and hovering over cities. There were no more alien planes, pods or harvesters. There was an eerie calm on the ground, the air permeated by the stench of all things burning, natural and artificial. The streets were empty, people still holed inside temporary shelters, in trenches, silos, basements, subways, underground stations, underground tracks, sewage tanks, natural caves and even bank lockers. People held onto their lives with bated breaths, not daring to venture out of their protection, even after the aliens had fallen silent.
The cessation of attacks was reported to President McGee by 1400 hrs in the afternoon. There was no fresh incident of any aggression by the aliens from around noontime. And once the news was confirmed, everyone was asked to assemble again in the ‘Situation Room’ at 1600 hrs.
Before they could do that, the aliens started broadcasting their first message at around 1500 hrs on 26th January. Their message was broadcast on television frequency and soon every functioning channel had caught on to the broadcast. It was a looped clip about five minutes long. There was a mad scamper to the Situation Room and televisions there were switched on at 1530 hrs. The President also arrived there in a huff, putting on her jacket as she entered the room. There were at least twenty other people already gathered in the room, watching the message which was looping continuously. The loop had been recorded and as soon as President McGee entered the room, they replayed it from the beginning.
It started with footage of Charlie Chaplin from ‘The Great Dictator’. His antics lasted for a minute followed by a placard of ‘Good Morning’ on the screen, as was the norm in the silent movie era. It was followed by a clip of Marilyn uttering the words “We accept your” followed by footage of Arnie in commando fatigues saying “surrender”. It was followed by a line of clips of various heads of states and their speeches which had been edited so that each spoke a word or two of the message. The mash-up of images from different eras, from color and from black-and-white, and from a beggar on the street to the State of the Union Address, each speaking a bit of the message, was unnerving. Everyone looked at the screen mesmerized at the images playing on the screen, delivering a message from the aliens, ominous in content and frivolous in its presentation.
The President went through the message once and asked them to replay it once again. She bowed her head down and just concentrated on the words, keeping her eyes off the screen. That was the only feasible way of registering the message. There was also a print out of the entire message, which was circulated to all in the room.
Sienna got the copy in her hands and began reading the words
‘Good Morning. We accept your surrender. We are the Dai-i-ty-ons. We are a wandering-hunting-gathering species. We have stopped on Earth for a refueling stop and once we have had our fill, we will move on. We were on a process of evaluating your defenses and decided to take on the might of possibly the strongest on your planet. As you are painfully aware, you do not stand a chance. It took us little more than two days to humble the best of your military might to its knees. If we want, we can erase you and your people from the face of your planet. But in our magnanimity, we have decided to spare you and your planet. In return, we expect total submission and unquestioned co-operation in our further endeavors on this overpopulated planet of yours. Your planet has gone through cycles of extinction and has a rich history of bouncing back. You are in the midst of another mass extinction, where the human proliferation has more or less wiped out all the other species. Balance needs to be restored on an emergent basis. Our actions on this planet will only further the variety, diversity and longevity of your planet. We have reached similar pacts with other planets and with other species and have taken it up on our invincible shoulders, this onerous task of restoration of these planets that were being over-run by a single dominant species. We are what you call a reset switch. We guarant
ee our non-return for another ten thousand years to this planet. We will keep monitoring your growth and the moment you reach similar verminous proportions, we will step in again to restore balance to your world. We want you to provide us complete access to your security and intelligence archives and your arsenal and expect full co-operation in our annihilation of the rest of the world. The uplink codes are being appended to the end of this message and we expect you to uplink your secure systems through the said channel. If we do not receive the uplink in an hour’s time, we will consider it a mark of your non-cooperation and proceed from where we had halted today. We expect your cooperation and look forward to you being our ally in furthering our great voyage through the Universe. We are aware of your penchant for dialogue and want to make it clear to you that this is not a negotiation and attempts to do so will result in catastrophe for you.’
The verbose footage concluded with a grab of Hitler’s vast army saluting Hitler during a World War II parade. The last images were ominous and spelt intent and doom to all. Everyone was speechless for a good couple of minutes after the message wound up on its current loop. The loop restarted and the President asked for it to be shut down. The uplink codes had been fed into the system and the radio room was ready to broadcast.
President McGee looked around the room and asked for suggestions
‘Bloody bastards, sugarcoating our invasion to us. Like they are doing us a favor. What are our options?’
The deliberations went on for half an hour, hurrying against the deadline of one hour placed by the message. Finally, it was decided to save the U.S at the cost of the rest of the world. Not an easy choice but something that had to be done, when the opportunity was there. At least that would allow the human race to continue and they could still build from the ashes and be better prepared the next time, some ten thousand years later. There was the small issue of placing the trust in these aliens, but there seemed to be not too many alternatives. The President was especially worried about saving American lives. Refusal of the offer still meant total annihilation across the globe. Better to save a few in U.S than let the entire humanity go extinct.
Exodus (The Domus Series Book 2) Page 9
