"We are still not certain we can trust you!" Anson Clemons replied.
Tatiana, I think we should surrender to them.
What? Why, Steven? They tried to kill us.
They thought we were aliens. What would you've done?
I would've tried to kill us.
Okay then?
"Okay. Please don't kill us, but we are going to turn off our warp bubbles now!"
Tatiana, turn it off!
I don't know, Steven, they'll crush us!
Tatiana, turn it off now or they will crush us!
No, Steven! I . . . I'm afraid.
Tatiana, if you love me and trust me you will listen to me now. TURN OFF YOUR WARP BUBBLE ARMOR, NOW!
She did it. I wasn't sure she was going to. It seemed that the only thing in the world she trusted was her ability to act—and, fortunately, me. Who could blame her, after dealing with the Grays?
I turned my warp armor off and Dr. Clemons lowered us to the ground. Tatiana held my hand and I could tell she was shaking slightly. I told Mike to calm her down. Something didn't make sense. Mikhail should have been able to suppress her fear better, but Mike got her under control.
We settled on the ground at the edge of one of the cul-de-sac streets just in front of Dr. and General Clemons.
"It's his face, Anson! I don't know though, he has lost a lot of weight and is in better physical condition," General Clemons said.
"Y'all just keep your distance, son, until we get to know you a bit better!" Dr. Clemons warned and touched on personal warp fields around the two of them.
"Look, I can explain why I appear so different! The Grays use nanomachines that are controlled by those Quantum Connected Central Processing Units that you have been trying to reverse engineer. We figured them out. That is how we stole the ship from the Grays. Watch this," I told them, and stood straight up in front of them and had my clothes change through several different styles and colors. Then I started to bend over and Dr. Clemons stopped me.
"Now let's not make any fast moves, son!"
"You don't understand. If I wanted to, the nanomachines have made my reflexes so much faster than human that I could move and you wouldn't even be able to see it. But don't worry. We really are just glad to be home, or—well, you know! Please allow me, I promise no swift moves." I slowly knelt down and took a knee on the asphalt. I placed my hand on the street and caused the asphalt to rise up from the ground into a statue likeness of the general. I could tell that several years ago she was very attractive and I made the likeness of her as a younger—Tabitha, as I recalled—more vivacious astronaut. Then I had the asphalt statue move and blow them a kiss. This sort of amused them.
Make it salute, Steven.
Nice touch, beautiful!
I then made the statue salute.
"Allow me," Tatiana said and followed my lead. She was standing on the asphalt so there was no need of bending down to touch it—she always did grasp this technology quicker than I did. A statue of Dr. Clemons rose up from the street beside the General Clemons statue. Then she had the two statues hold hands and we let it rest at that.
"Well, ain't that some shit!" Dr. Clemons whistled.
"Please, it's nothing but millions of nanomachines working overtime. That's why we both are superhuman the way we are. It's simple nanotechnology enhancements to our bodies and minds. We have complete control over them and we can damn near heal anything. Please let us help your wounded," I pleaded.
"Okay son, I've read comic books that are older than you are that have this idea in them. There was that Crichton book and The Black Hole Travel Agency series, and a shitload of short stories that described similar magical technologies, so I get it. Just, it's purty damn difficult to be certain that y'all control the nanomachines and not the other way around," Dr. Clemons explained his position.
Mike, download all of these relevant books and stories to me please.
Okay, Steven.
"That makes a lot of sense," Tatiana said.
"Yes, I agree with you. There is no way to know that other than to trust us. Look, at least let us help the wounded. Keep us in a bubble and let one in at a time or something. You will see. Damnit, I had to sit still and watch those goddamned Gray sons of bitches dismember another human being right in front of my eyes. I watched them pull out his heart, cut off his head, and then dissolve him into nothingness. The last thing I want to see is more human death!" I thought of my family for a brief second.
Steven, Dr. Daniels is dying, Mike alerted me.
How do you know? I asked.
I used the sensors from the spaceship to tap into the video system in the infirmary. His internal organs were crushed and he is rapidly bleeding to death. He has less than a few minutes before his heart stops. Mike said this on the open channel for both Tatiana and me to hear.
You have to save him, Steven. Go to him and I'll stay here as a hostage.
Good idea, but you go and I'll stay as a hostage.
No, Steven, it will be better coming from you. You are an American and they are American. It should be you. I will stay.
I love you, Tatiana. Take care of yourself.
"Listen to me," I pleaded one last time. "I'm using the alien computer on the spaceship to tie into your hospital's video system. Dr. Daniels is dying . . ."
Steven, he just died. Mike sounded genuinely sad.
" . . . He just died. I'm going to him and Tatiana will stay as your hostage. But I am going!" I moved faster than any person with normal human reflexes and vision could react to. To Dr. Clemons and the general I must've appeared as one big blur of motion. Of course, Tatiana could follow me with her enhanced vision, but she watched the Clemons's closely instead. I followed the map in my head to the operating room that Dr. Daniels was in and pushed myself as fast as I could run. I used the map to anticipate obstacles and turns and I covered the half-mile trek in less than eight seconds or so. I stopped just outside the operating room doors and my wake turbulence caught up with me. The wind blew papers off of bulletin boards along the hallway as I pushed the doors open. I walked in panting and sweating a little and proceeded straight to the operating table and pushed the doctors out of the way. They were trying to revive him but Mike had assured me that it would do no good with such extensive damage to all his major organs.
I placed my hands on his head, since his chest was spread open with a rib spreader.
Steven, put your hand in his chest. It will save time.
Okay. Help him, Mike. Every microsecond counted, I assumed, so I pressed my hand into his open and red with draining blood abdomen. The nanomachines immediately rushed to work. I could see the interior of Dr. Daniels' abdomen getting fuzzy.
I am helping him now, Steven.
The doctors attempted to pull me off of Dr. Daniels's body, but I kicked at them and used my left hand to push them around. Then the dark-haired lady, 'Becca, burst in with a machine pistol.
"Get away from him you alien fucker!" she screamed at me and pointed the gun at me.
"Listen to me, I'm helping him!" I cried as she shot me three times. Two of the bullets hit the bodystocking but one of them ripped through the side of my neck—and it hurt, bad.
Tatiana burst in a microsecond too late to stop 'Becca from shooting me. But it didn't take long for her to use the nanomachines to knock her out and then the others in the room as well. She did all that and caught me before I hit the ground.
You're all right, baby! I got you.
Hold me up, Tatiana. I have to fix him.
You'll fix yourself first!
No, I won't. Hold me up!
Tatiana held me up to the table and I was close enough to Dr. Daniels for the nanomachines to communicate with Mike. I held my left hand against my neck to slow the bright red stream of blood squirting out there. The squirting blood made a squishing sound between my hand and neck as it ran through my fingers. I placed my right hand back in Dr. Daniels's open abdomen.
Mike, how is he?
>
He will be better than you in less than thirty seconds.
Not if I have anything to say about it, Tatiana said. Mikhail, you know what to do. Tatiana winked at me and the profusely bleeding hole in my neck began to heal.
A moment or two later the Clemons's came running into the room gasping for air. They took a brief survey of the room and looked concerned when they noticed the myriad of bodies on the floor.
"We heard shots . . ." Tabitha Clemons breathed out and stopped short when she saw the bullet wound in my neck closing slowly.
"Don't worry." Tatiana turned to her and smiled. "They're just knocked out. They were . . . trying to stop Steven. Hey, I had to do something." Tatiana shrugged and looked at the incapacitated people on the floor.
The rib spreader on Dr. Daniels dissolved and vanished and his chest started closing. I told Tatiana to wake everybody up. Dr. Clemons grabbed 'Becca in a nerve grab that, according to Mike, was developed by the Tibetans over a thousand years ago. I was impressed by the old man to say the least. Everyone rose silently—other than 'Becca, who was cursing in pain—but they all watched as Dr. Daniels's chest closed up around my hand and the surface of his abdomen grew fuzzy.
You can remove your hand, Steven.
Oh, sorry, Mike. I pulled my hand from the man's chest and it was covered with blood. Tatiana had Mikhail clean me up almost instantly.
We stood around and watched Daniels quietly, and then his heart monitor went from the flatlining screech to a normal beeping heartbeat. Then he opened his eyes and reflexively breathed as deep as he could.
"Behave yourself, Rebecca." Dr. Clemons let her go and she rushed to Daniels's side, hugging and kissing him all over and crying.
"Oh, Jim, I thought you were going to die on me!" Tears rolled down 'Becca's face.
Jim looked around the room and saw Tatiana and me standing at the foot of his stretcher and he jumped violently. Dr. Clemons and 'Becca grabbed him and held him down.
"Take it easy, Jim. They saved you," Dr. Clemons said.
"They're the ones that put me in this shape!" Jim cursed.
"Dr. Daniels, I apologize deeply and sincerely, but we never meant any harm. It was all a misunderstanding," I assured him.
"Yeah, a misunderstanding and a bit of paranoia on your part," Tatiana added smugly and 'Becca gave her an evil look.
"Dr. Daniels, you'll be fine," I told everyone in the room. Then I thought about the massive damage and Lieutenant Ames being injured. "Tatiana, let's get to the other wounded, now!" We zipped from table to table and from room to room in the hospital. I just happened to be the one who fixed Lieutenant Ames. General and Dr. Clemons stood over my shoulder the entire time—they were both concerned from a parenting point of view, and I could tell they were very curious about the technology.
"Then it is you, Mr. Montana?" Lieutenant Ames asked me as the last few lacerations on her face and stomach vanished away.
"Yes, and it's Steven, Lieutenant," I told her.
"Then it's Annie, or Anne Marie, if we are on a first-name basis." She held her hand out for me to shake it. She was amazed that it was no longer broken.
"Sorry for all this. I didn't mean for any—"
"Forget it. We were just as much to blame, Steven. That damned Rebecca never follows orders. Civilians!" She shook her head and harumphed.
Then we went out into the city and used the sensors from the Phoenix to search for other wounded. After several hours there were no longer any immediate emergencies. If you didn't count the Gray threat, that is.
Look what a mess, Steven. Tatiana pointed out at the lunar town.
I know, gorgeous. We will help them fix it.
CHAPTER 16
It took us a good couple of weeks to get the little town on the Moon back in order. Apparently the kids in town were glad that school was canceled while we rebuilt. Thankfully, it was fall break and the kids had not been in school at the time or the incident could have been far more tragic than it was. A few trips to Earth in the little warp ships were made for various materials until I set up a materials generation and replication area with a downloaded version of Mike controlling it. Basically, any computer-drawn model of an object would enable it to be constructed from the rubble and lunar materials available. The nanomachines in the facility Tatiana and I put together would take the material and convert it into whatever piece of equipment, construction material, or whatever else was needed. If precious or exotic elements were required that weren't available, then we sent the warp ships to Earth. The nanomachines could only manipulate atoms, so if you needed a gold atom in something you had to have a pile of gold atoms to begin with.
On the other hand, we increased the budget capability of the little lunar town tremendously because there is plenty of carbon on the Moon. Diamonds are made of carbon and the lunar base became one of the Earth's small suppliers of diamonds—unbeknownst to the general public of course. General Clemons had the CIA acquire a South African diamond company to fence the lunar diamonds through—of course, the CIA got a big cut for its troubles. We allowed just enough of the lunar diamonds to flow into the market as not to cause suspicion or to flood the market and drive down the revenues. The diamond market was about a thirty-billion-dollar business each year and we planned to take in about a third of a percent of that and thus keep a low profile in the business. We also set up similar markets for the billion-dollar-a-year silicon wafer market, the two-billion-dollar-a-year flat glass (mirrors and such) market, the multibillion-dollar fiber optic market. Remember there are a lot of silicates on the lunar surface. The CIA called this contingent the "diamond factory," which was along the same lines as the old "fly by night industries" business they often used. We continued to branch out into as many business areas as we could but never took more than a fraction of a percent of the business so we didn't attract any unwanted attention.
Another aspect of the business was so highly classified that only a few folks on Earth knew the intricacies of it. We set up a manufacturing facility that could rapidly prototype highly technical instrumentation for classified programs.
Say there was a need for a new fourteen-billion-dollar Top Secret communications satellite; our nanomachine system could build it from specs in a hundreth of the time and for practically no cost. It cost more money to set up the cover facilities and for the overhead than for the actual device. We spun off two companies that could produce the rapid prototypes and then the CIA arranged for Boeing to buy one of them and Lockheed Martin to buy the other. The two companies would never know that they both would get these classified products from the same plant on the Moon. And we made almost eighty percent profit from these products, after the big industry, CIA, and cover companies raked off their share. We made a lot of money through this program.
There were two other programs that were classified even more deeply and I won't talk about them here. All I can say is that one had to do with using SuperAgents to understand, predict, and drive various economic engines. The other had to do with perfect counterfeits of foreign currencies that enabled us to control their inflation rates. We made a lot of money off those programs as well. From here on, we simply followed the CIA's lead and referred to all of these efforts with the encompassing and nebulous title "the diamond factory."
The fact that we enabled the Clemons's facility to become a viable business and no longer a drain on budget improved Tatiana's and my situation with the W-squared crew tremendously.
I was even given that long-overdue security clearance. Of course, Tatiana wasn't. She was not an American citizen—and there was always that isolated abductee issue. I was still thinking about that. On the other hand, only I could really keep anything from her and it appeared as though the W-squared group realized this. They made us both honorary members of the W-squared team and treated Tatiana as a cleared and accessed member. In fact, General Clemons pulled some strings and had an "interim" clearance issued to Tatiana with Clemons as the responsible party. But I needed to deal
with the security implications of the isolated abductee issue somehow. I wasn't sure how yet; in fact I wasn't even sure why she was isolated and what that meant. As far as Mike and I could figure, for some reason out of the millions of humans that have been abducted by the Grays in the past, a couple hundred thousand of them were different somehow. The Grays had taken some sort of precautions so as to not let these "isolated abductees," as I had been calling them, gain access and control of any of their SuperAgent systems. We still had no idea why.
After I had Mike check out everybody in the town for abductee status, we found that there were none—no abductees period, not just isolated ones. We guessed that it was due to the extreme psychological screening that these folks went through in order to get these high-level security clearances. Perhaps the quirky effects on the personality that the tracking implants have would cause one to be a suspicious security risk. Hey, maybe that was another reason for me not getting cleared earlier. I was moody and nuts for a long time—and perhaps even a bit paranoid on occasion.
Tatiana and I spent the third week explaining our story in great detail. The group had no idea what the aliens looked like. When we explained that they were the classic UFO nut description of little Grays they were amazed and surprised. They were beginning to consider some of the UFO conspiracy theories more seriously. I hadn't told them that human abductees had zero possibility of recalling the abduction yet.
It also turned out that the two light years away in what Tatiana and I thought was deep space wasn't deep space at all for these folks. They had been out as far as eighty light years. Mike had told me this once before, but it really didn't ring true until I saw the pictures of some of the planets these humans had been to. We had a meeting in a special room near the general's office and discussed what was happening.
"In that meeting at CIA Headquarters, Dr. Daniels, you made mention of something that interested me. You said to the CIA guy that if he had told you about 'this' sooner that you would be further along by now. What did you mean by that?" I asked Dr. Daniels, the male, as I leaned back in my chair. I noted to myself that for a conference room on the Moon, it had plush furniture.
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