by Norman Oro
Though he hadn’t been there since his sophomore year at Berkeley, Pedro recognized where they were immediately. There weren’t any roads, nor was there a lighthouse; however, the cliff, the outline of the shore, even the way the sun glinted off the water was exactly as he remembered it the day before as he and his father made their way through the storm. It was Steamer Lane. Apparently the Allen field in Pueblo led to Santa Cruz of all places. Or at least, it led to a version of Santa Cruz. He wanted to tell his father, but he somehow knew that would jeopardize sensing the message guiding them. He walked on silently then led his father down some steps along the cliff until they reached water.
Walk into the ocean.
It required effort to over-ride their innate caution and highly developed sense of reason, but placing one foot in front of the other, they did just that. As they descended further into the water, the last thing Dr. Rys saw was that same flawless sky that was in his mind’s eye a day earlier, now reflected in the ocean all around him. It was so clear that he couldn’t tell where the water ended and the sky began. Soon it was gone.
Don’t be afraid.
As they descended, they looked around to find it was unlike any ocean or lake they’d ever seen. The water was almost perfectly translucent. Under different circumstance, they would’ve been struck by its beauty. At that moment, though, their lungs felt as though they were on fire.
Don’t be afraid.
They grew light-headed as everything began to dim around them. Realizing they were too deep to reach the surface in time, they surrendered their last pockets of breath, fully expecting to drown.
Drink.
They drank in the water, letting it fill them. More out of reflex than anything else, they gulped it in, knowing full well it would sicken then eventually kill them. Surprisingly, however, the water had no taste. There wasn’t a hint of brine or salt in it. It didn’t sicken them, nor did it kill them. In fact, to their amazement, they soon found themselves breathing it. They were breathing the water. Overwhelmed by a feeling that was as much shock as joy, their light-headedness disappeared and they found themselves hovering weightless in a translucent ocean of liquid oxygen.
Welcome.
2
The Cley
Onav
“Hi.”
With that utterance, Dr. Rys discovered that, in addition to all its other wondrous properties, the ocean allowed them to talk underwater.
You don’t need speech to communicate.
At that, Dr. Rys relaxed and soundlessly began forming questions.
We are the Cley. No. This isn’t Earth.
Minutes passed as he and his son let that realization sink in. Soon they felt a question in their minds.
How did you arrive here?
In response, Dr. Rys began thinking of the events that led them into the sending room in Pueblo. He then recalled the Allen field generator, the warehouse-sized machine that he’d built to power it.
I see.
Pedro then formed a question.
Fifty-three light-years.
An image came alive in their minds of a globe covered in blue, white, green and beige. They both floated over it for a few seconds, taking it in and instinctively not wanting to ever leave it. Though they’d never seen it that way before, they knew it was Earth. The image then blurred into a diagram with two small dots separated by a seemingly immeasurable gulf. Zooming into one of the dots, they watched it blur into a planet much like Earth. However, this world appeared to be primarily water with lights flashing intermittently all around its surface. Dr. Rys noticed that some of the flashes left swaths of beige or green where there’d been only blue, while others did the opposite. He then wondered about the world.
Onav.
Onav. They couldn’t help but spend a few minutes admiring its beauty.
Thank you.
The water around them then began shifting and they felt as though they were going into a kind of freefall within their own minds. Their eyelids grew heavier.
Learn.
With that, they fell ever faster into what felt like an abyss. They reached an almost unbearable velocity until it ended as unexpectedly as it began. Once they opened their eyes, they realized that the Cley, in that instant, had imparted upon them knowledge that otherwise would’ve taken years to communicate. It was a history of their people, the races they’d encountered and the world they’d created. It also told of a conflict that was ancient before humanity had even been born.
Chosen
Dr. Rys and his son spent the next few hours remembering the memories they’d just received. The Cley they were communicating with was part of a group consciousness made up of the essences of his people. Apparently they’d never encountered anything like Dr. Rys’s machine. The energy it generated, what he called the Allen field, actually existed in nature; and every sentient race gave off field energy not found in any other species. In fact, he and Pedro each generated within them a field unique to humanity. Once a species as a whole reached a critical level of sentience, those fields awakened. At first, this enabled teleportation followed by a form of telepathy. With time and experience, the field energy and the shared consciousness it made possible could be harnessed to do much more. Not every race, though, reached that level of development.
When the Cley were young like humanity, they were a race of explorers and scientists. The awakening of their fields only strengthened their intrinsic curiosity about the universe around them. Using their newfound abilities, they sent probes to thousands upon thousands of worlds, seeking others who likewise had awakened. Often they found races like themselves, basking in their newly discovered gifts, and built alliances with them. Just as often, however, they found genocide perpetrated on a monstrous scale, entire species murdered.
Combing through those dead planets for an explanation led the Cley and their allies to a startling conclusion. What they’d uncovered wasn’t genocide, but rather a kind of mass suicide. As Dr. Rys had privately hypothesized, the Allen field’s power at first mainly obeyed the subconscious. Through the awakening of their abilities, those races had literally been extinguished by their own fears and desires. It was a brutal form of natural selection on a planetary scale. Any species that in its heart of hearts even remotely posed a threat to itself or to others snuffed itself out.
Realizing what had occurred and seeing the stunning civilizations those races left behind, the Allies knew there had to be a better way, and set about finding it. Ultimately their solution was to establish as unobtrusive a presence as possible on worlds that had given rise to unawakened sentient life. Within a few centuries, they were watching over thousands of planets, discreetly intervening in each world’s affairs as necessary to shepherd it through its awakening unharmed. Though it was an overwhelming task fraught with peril, only a tiny fraction of the races they monitored succumbed to their awakening; and as each race formed a global consciousness, the Allies revealed themselves then extended their hand in friendship.
For ages, the Alliance expanded until it reached a corner of the Andromeda galaxy called the Steppe. On the thousands of worlds they watched over in that region, the Allies found their methods failed them. Despite millennia spent painstakingly working to make it otherwise, every world under their guidance there inexplicably fell. Something was terribly wrong.
It took the cognitive abilities of the Owghen, an evolutionary off-shoot of the Cley, to finally determine what had happened. After assigning a small group of them the mystery of the Steppe, they returned a few days later, visibly shaken, with an answer: Another race, immensely powerful, had extinguished those civilizations. They called themselves the Grell; and it was only a matter of time until their domain began targeting the Alliance. When asked whether the Allies could defeat them before that happened, the Owghen replied, “No.”
Confronted with a race of invincible predators, the Cley gathered all the Owghen together; and asked them to make preparations that would enable the Allies to have a cha
nce at one day defeating the Grell Domain. If anything, they hoped to at least deny it complete victory. The planet Dr. Rys and Pedro found themselves on and the beings who called it home were products of those preparations.
As he finished remembering the memories the Cley had imparted, Dr. Rys couldn’t help but wonder whether the Earth was in danger.
Yes. The Grell prefer targeting races on the brink of awakening.
Ironically the response brought as much hope as it did anxiety. Soon humanity would awaken.
Perhaps within a century.
After a few minutes of silence, he formed another question.
You’re both here because ages ago, we wished it.
Just then, they felt another set of memories triggered within them. Somehow, long before the first person ever walked the Earth, the Cley had needed humanity in their alliance. However, even hundreds of millennia later, it still seemed too soon for that. Mankind hadn’t yet awakened. Nevertheless, there was a way. Instead of asking all of humanity whether it would join their fight, as they’d asked countless other races, the Allies believed Dr. Rys could decide on mankind’s behalf. His immediate reaction was that he wasn’t qualified to do that.
You can be.
Suddenly more knowledge surfaced in their minds. Next to life itself, the Cley held benevolence, wisdom and justice above all else. Normally they’d impart every dimension of the Grell conflict upon a newly awakened race’s global consciousness to enable a fully informed decision regarding whether to join their efforts. However, that moment was still perhaps a hundred years or more in Earth’s future; and any delay could prove costly. In lieu of that, the Allies could transmit a very close approximation of that understanding to individual sentient beings, namely to Dr. Rys and his son. Equipped with that information, they’d judge them worthy to decide on their race’s behalf. Unfortunately, even a condensed version of that knowledge would take someone decades to assimilate.
Over fifty-two years.
Fifty-two years. By the time it was finished, it would be the twenty-first century. Dr. Rys would be over ninety-three years old and Pedro over seventy-three. He’d probably never see his wife, Abigail, again.
You’re under no compulsion to stay, Dr. Rys. If you wish, we can return you home instantly. We would then do everything in our power to safeguard Earth without involving it in our conflict.
Dr. Rys wondered what would happen if they stayed.
You’ll gain knowledge of the Allen field surpassing that of races millennia older than humanity. If you wish, you can use what you learn to guide mankind through its awakening. Perhaps more importantly, you can also use it to mount a defense against the Grell.
Pedro then thought a question.
If you decide that humanity will enter the conflict, Earth will be integrated into the Alliance and our efforts to counter the Domain. If you decide otherwise, mankind will probably live in safety for some time. The region Onav and the Earth occupy has relatively few sentient species, making it unappealing to the Grell. Furthermore, it’s far away from their domain and in the opposite direction of its expansion. The Owghen believe that both worlds will escape detection for at least another century.
Feeling the full weight of the decision before them, they wondered why they’d been chosen.
We’re sorry.
After speaking with his son, Dr. Rys picked the only option they felt they really had.
“We’ll stay.”
A Just Decision
Suddenly what felt like an encyclopedia’s worth of information then became available to Dr. Rys and his son. However, what they’d begun remembering wasn’t the knowledge that the Cley spoke of; it was only its description. Long ago, the Allies created a repository of memories for those who wanted their life experiences made available to future generations. Their every thought, their every emotion, their every sensation had been recorded. Through Allied espionage efforts, they’d also done the same for certain Grell.
Via the repository, Dr. Rys and Pedro would each live three lives, composites which the Owghen had created with the explicit goal of being as unbiased and factual as possible, while still being accessible to the human mind and heart. They’d each first experience life as a Cley then as a Kek, an Allied race murdered by the Domain ages ago, and finally as a Grell. Once it was over and they understood, truly understood, all sides of the conflict, they’d be asked to decide on humanity’s behalf. Although their life functions would be monitored the entire time and they’d never be in any true danger, everything would feel real. Everything. Also, the Cley weren’t familiar enough with human physiology to keep them from aging; and once the process started, it couldn’t be stopped.
Dr. Rys. Pedro Rys. It still isn’t too late to reconsider. If you ask, we’ll return you to Pueblo.
They didn’t. When the time came for them to begin, they simply closed their eyes and let themselves float weightless in the Onavean sea.
Change
Dr. Rys reopened his eyes to find himself in a small, plainly furnished room lit by a large bay window. He experienced an instance of cognitive dissonance as he realized that his name wasn’t Alberto Rys. It was Ide Meadow. Also, the stunning woman lying next to him wasn’t Abigail. It was his wife of twenty-five years, Tawny. He looked around and memories came alive in his mind that hadn’t existed just seconds earlier. They lived in the city-state of Ohnz, the capital of the League of Sovereigns on the planet Halcyon. He was a physicist in the Department of Science and Exploration working with the interior ministry to investigate cases of citizens who’d gone missing then turned up hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of miles away from where they were last seen. A few were even found adrift in the middle of the Zouder Sea on the other side of the world. Suddenly he felt a peck on his cheek.
“Moyn, lef. Es ghept prima vedder outverts.”
“Yea, mine hertst. Zehkr is er vandawk mooey vedder dran.”
“Mus tu ekt te verk gain?”
“Flikt for fernugan, lef…”
It came so naturally that it took a few moments for him to notice, but yes, he could speak Cley. To be specific, he could speak Ohnzdeytch, one of Halcyon’s primary languages.
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Ide gave his wife a peck on her cheek then got up to look out the window. It really was quite a day. In fact, he could see the ancient tower fortifications, Mir and Ir, in the town of Grents clear across Lake Alster, which only happened maybe a half-dozen times a year. People were already outside walking along the shore, some untethering their sail-boats. It was always difficult staying away from the lake when they had such weather. Duty before pleasure, though.
Moments later, he got dressed, made a sandwich and washed it down with some mint cider before saying goodbye to his wife. During the entire subway ride to work, his eyes were glued to his phone, poring over the latest numbers regarding the disappearances. He ported the dataset through to the central numerical resource in Ohnz and got a result almost instantly. Outside of the events happening usually in the late evening hours and their alarming rise in frequency, there were still no discernible patterns.
He then read the news to find the cases making the front page. What had started out as merely a curiosity was taking on unexpected dimensions. Rumors were already beginning to circulate about conspiracies with some citizens even fearing for their safety. From Bon in the far north to Canton Freiberg in the south, every region had at least one disappearance. He heard a chime in the train signaling his stop then rose. After exiting, he ascended the stairs into the Ohnz central square. The air was unexpectedly cool given the sunny weather, but also refreshing. A half block later, he reached the torch that had lit the treaty ceremony ending the final Cley war and establishing the League of Sovereigns. Its fire had burned uninterrupted for several millennia ever since. Just past it stood a sedate palace, the Braf
, headquarters of the Department of Science and Exploration. Walking through its cavernous main hallway, he gave a polite bow to some of his colleagues then descended a staircase to his office. Just a few minutes after sitting down, he heard a knock at the door.
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With a gesture, a semi-transparent chart materialized before them, hovering in mid-air. On one axis was the number of incidents reported on a given day. The other axis had tick-marks for individual days stretching back one week and forward one month. As the data points radiated out from the chart’s origin, the trend-line quickly became almost vertical.
