The Awakening: Imortum

by JK Stone

  He was a little dehydrated already, but this ship was on the cool side, not cold, but cool enough. He thought it over and assessed how he felt and figured he had six to eight days before the dehydration would do him in.

  As for food, he was hungry, but he would die from lack of water long before the starvation would get him. With that grim thought in mind, Jason headed back to the “death room” as he was beginning to think of it. It was the only place on the ship with relatively comfortable seats.

  *****

  Looking around Jason thought that aside from the dead alien he had moved into the corner, the ship had a sterile feel to it. Practical but unwelcoming all the same. He sighed and took a seat to continue waiting the process out.

  *****

  The Artificial Intelligence thought Elgon had left an awful lot to chance by not letting it explain to the man in the ship what exactly was happening to him ahead of time. It had argued with him over the last year about who the new commander of this vessel would be and how to approach him. They knew it was only a matter of time before the medical unit would no longer be able to repair the damage Elgon had sustained, and now with the injuries that had recently befallen him, he had finally reached the point of no return.

  In the end and with their time constraints, Elgon had ended up choosing this man from the short list of possibilities. He was not the optimal replacement, but then again Elgon had not been an optimal choice either. Nevertheless, Elgon had worked out. The AI had given in to Elgon’s demands in the end and uploaded its consciousness into the new binding disk despite the fact that it couldn’t reintegrate with the ship until the new commander applied the disk, then it proceeded to keep tabs on the new commander, using the sensor systems throughout the ship.

  Chapter Two

  Jason sat at the console looking from the dead alien in the corner to the silver disk in his hand. It had been who knows how long since the crash. His best guess would have put it at three maybe four days, and he was beginning to feel the effects of the dehydration and was going stir crazy without windows or any way to judge the passage of time. There was nothing he could do but sit there and wait for someone…anyone to rescue him.

  Jason looked down at the little silver disk he’d been given. Several times over the past few days he was surprised to look down and find that he had picked it up. It was the size of a dime and seemed to shimmer almost like a droplet of mercury. He was seriously debating putting the disk on his head as the alien had instructed him to do, if only to stop the recorded message that kept droning on and on.

  This felt a lot like one of the torture techniques used on enemy combatants to get them to give up terrorist cells, he thought, Hell, if I knew anything I would have talked by now!

  No, he wouldn’t. He had gone through true hell in Iraq and they couldn’t get anything out of him back then. His honor would take him to death before treason. Jason gave a shudder. Our government doesn’t know the first thing about torture, he thought as one of the memories surfaced in his mind.

  *****

  Jason was also beginning to feel the repercussions of not taking his medications for the past few days. The feeling of impending doom was creeping ever closer. He knew the feeling well and knew it would not be long before the voices and hallucinations started up again. With a sigh, he placed the disk back on the console and dwelled on his past.

  The military had a tendency to put soldiers in situations where they saw and experienced things their minds couldn’t handle then…snap! You start hearing and seeing things, so what do they do? Ship you home and say, “Thank you for your service, we don’t need you anymore,” and let you try to pick up the pieces of your broken life.

  Jason knew he was one of the lucky ones. He had family and friends who had been in past wars and they got him the help he needed right away. The VA medical system was not perfect, but they helped him through the rough times. In the past year however, his sanity had been put to the test. He’d been away at an overnight appointment when somebody ambushed and murdered his brothers in his home.

  The investigators never found the person or persons who had done it, and for a time Jason had been their prime suspect. They never explained why, but they harassed him for almost the entire year, even though he provided proof that he couldn’t have been in two places at one time.

  The mere thought of it was nauseating. They were his brothers! They were triplets in fact. He was the oldest by three minutes over Jerren and six minutes over Justin. He looked out for them and would never have hurt them let alone kill them. Most people couldn’t understand unless they had identical siblings, but his bond with his brothers was deep, and when they died it killed a very special part of his soul.

  It was unfair that the authorities had spent so much time looking at him as the prime suspect. Jason felt it was almost as if they were deliberately letting the real killer get away. It had been a year to the day since they were murdered when he started his fateful camping trip, and all he had wanted to do was get away and mourn in solitude. So he’d grabbed some camping supplies and decided to try to grieve in peace. What an anniversary. He’d been looking into the sky trying to figure it all out and then this happened, and silently he shook his head in confusion.

  Jason’s stomach gave a loud grumble and he got a cramp in his gut. Having been an S.E.R.E. survival instructor for the little time he was stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington, it had prepared him for how to survive captivity. He was trained to keep going even with a lack of food and water and how to identify foliage and insects that were safe to eat, but in a sterile environment like this however, he couldn’t even find a bug.

  Jason’s eyes settled on the dead and honestly, a bit ripening alien laid out on the floor across from him. A single thought crept into his mind. MEAT! It only took a few seconds before he stifled his gag reflex and took a serious look at the silver disk that had managed to find its way back into his hand once again.

  “This had better work,” Jason said as he pressed the disk to the area behind his right ear.

  The pain was worse than anything he had encountered in his entire life. It was as if his flesh were on fire. Blisters erupted all over his body then ruptured one by one as layer by layer the skin slowly cooked off, and he could actually smell his body being seared away.

  Just as that total agony ceased, another new feeling arose. Electrical shocks coursed throughout his body. His muscles spasmed and convulsed enough to almost snap his bones in half, and that was followed by a compression that squeezed every ounce of air out of his lungs. He heard and felt his bones break and tear through his skin, then he felt his heart rate spike as more severe electrical discharges coursed through his body.

  Jason’s head felt as though it were a balloon and would explode at any moment, and the last coherent thought to enter his mind was, Never trust fucking aliens!

  Chapter Three

  Through the confusion and muddle of what just happened to him, Jason slowly opened his eyes and it took a few seconds to figure out where he was and how he had gotten there. As to where he was, it appeared to be in the fourth room on the stainless steel bed. Only now that he thought of it, he realized it was probably a medical dissection table. Monitors were active on the walls where before there had been just smooth metal, but he had no recollection of getting there.

  All he knew was it felt as if the running of the bulls had taken place over his now immobile body. He couldn’t even move his head from side to side. The only things he could move were his eyes. He was only able to look from side to side and blink them. Damn, now I’m paralyzed and stuck on this table and will just wither and die here. He thought.

  That’s when Jason heard a sultry voice enter his mind and say, You are not going to die.

  Jason groaned. “This is not good. The voices are back. I really wish I had my medications.”

  The voice in his head simply replied, You do not need medication.

  “Tell that to my psychiatrist
,” he retorted before he could stop himself, then he cursed. “Dammit, I can’t be having conversations with myself again.”

  Then it struck him. “Wait a second. If I’m paralyzed, why am I feeling the pain in my body?”

  You are not paralyzed, the voice replied sounding a little irritated.

  “I’m not talking to you!” Jason snapped back.

  There. The immobilization field has been removed. Does that help? the voice asked earnestly.

  Jason felt as if he’d just been unwrapped from a very snug straitjacket, and a throbbing began to radiate throughout his body. He grimaced in pain and muttered, “Well at least I can move again.” Then a thought popped into his head. Hysterical paralysis. “Mind over matter…that makes sense,” he said with relief.

  The voice gained an exasperated tone as it said, You make no sense. I removed the restraining field.

  Jason worried that this was the worst the voices had ever been. They’ve never been this logical or persistent before, he thought, then he said, “This can’t be real!”

  The voice became increasingly irritated and said, That is because I am very logical…very real…and very inside your head.

  Jason couldn’t do this. Speaking to someone who’s not there was psychotic, and the thought of it was building on his already pounding headache. He looked around the room and saw the dead alien lying on a kind of unzipped long body bag and wondered how he got there.

  A moment later a woman seemed to shimmer out of nowhere and stood in front of him. She was the most breathtakingly gorgeous woman he’d ever seen. She had captivatingly blue eyes, long blonde hair, high cheekbones and full, luscious kiss-me lips.

  Jason let out a lustful groan. He didn’t know where the feeling came from, but he suddenly had an unexplained deep need to protect this woman. If this is a psychotic break, I don’t ever want to be sane again! He thought.

  The woman seemed to appraise her body a moment then looked at him and her brilliant blue eyes seemed to analyze him this time. “Well, I would say thank you, but since I am a manifestation of what and whom you would trust most, I really have nothing to do with it.”

  Jason couldn’t explain why, but he did have the feeling as if he could trust her with his life. He looked into her beautiful gaze and said, “Okay, let’s say for the sake of arguing that what you’re saying is true. First off why would I need to trust you? and second, why would I make you look like…” he waved a hand in her direction and added, “that? And how did you know what I was thinking?”

  The woman smiled as she replied, “Your mind chose an image you are most likely to trust and confide in because we will be working together for a very long time. With us being literally bonded together, we can share our thoughts, memories, and to some extent feelings. This is the image your mind conjured to put you at ease.”

  Jason was a little confused and asked, “What do you mean by a long time and bonded?”

  She replied, “You were chosen to be the new commander of this vessel, and when you attached the disk to your head, my neural network bonded with yours.”

  Jason stared doubtfully at her and said, “I don’t know about you but I don’t feel any different, aside from the feeling I just had my ass handed to me by an Albatron…wait… what the hell is an Albatron?”

  Jason saw the woman crack a smile and she said, “An Albatron was a very large beast whose grip could crush bones into powder after its electrical charge incapacitated and charred its victim. They have been extinct for almost fifty-seven thousand years now, ever since their star went nova.”

  Jason just stared at her and asked, “How the hell would I know that name?”

  She simply stated, “You know it because they are a part of my memory. You do not have a complete link with me or the database yet, but when you do, you will have access to all my knowledge as well as my past commanders, and you will be able to experience everything I have.”

  A little irritated, Jason asked, “Wasn’t there a less painful way to accomplish this bonding?”

  The woman gave him a quizzical look then said, “The bonding is usually painless. I have done this twelve times now and this is a first for me.”

  She walked over to a monitor on the wall and consulted it for a moment, then she sighed. “Ah, this is different,” she seemed to whisper.

  “What’s different?”

  She looked at him and said, “Well…you see the last time I bonded with a host was over fifteen thousand linear years ago.” She pointed to the deceased alien. “Elgon over there was the last honorable full blood Lantin on Earth, although your people now refer to them as Atlanteans.

  “The population on Earth back then was much less than now, and the energy flowing through their bodies we call enerxia…roughly translated…was a lot stronger. Some of the more evolved humanoids had powers and abilities that do not usually exist anymore. Training was required to harness and control their abilities. That training gave them a balance to the energy.”

  The woman smiled at him and said, “It looks as if you have some of that energy. Your body appears to be evolved enough, but the lack of training and use of the energy over time caused a buildup and when we bonded, it triggered a feedback effect. That would account for the added discomfort.”

  Jason was undeniably irritated now and snapped, “Discomfort my ass! I’ve never experienced that much pain in my entire life…altogether.”

  She looked at him with concern etched on her face. “Wait here for a second,” she said then she disappeared.

  “As if I could do anything else stuck on this ship,” he muttered to himself.

  I heard that, she admonished with a chuckle.

  A few minutes later the woman reappeared and said, “This is without a doubt the strangest thing I have ever encountered. It took me a minute to connect with the pain receptors in your brain and…uh…that pain you experienced was, for the most part, mine.”

  Astounded, Jason asked, “What do you mean yours?”

  She grimaced and continued. “Well, the burning sensation you experienced was when my host commander died over one hundred and ninety thousand years ago in what we now refer to as the fire pit of Nerroth, and the electrocution and crushing you felt were the results of an Albatron attack about sixty thousand years ago. I died from both of those attacks… Well, the host commander died. I was recovered and after being reintegrated with the ship, I bonded with a new commander. When we bonded, the feedback effect connected with my memories and you actually relived those events. I can recall very well how those felt, and I am truly sorry you had to experience them.”

  Jason looked at her with astonishment. “What about the other feelings I had?” he asked.

  She seemed to appraise him a moment. “The heart racing and headache were a result of my bonding with your brain. The binding disk reconnected a lot of the neural pathways resulting in an energy overload of sorts. It caused your heart rate to spike, in turn raising your blood pressure and a surge in neural activity as well. I am actually very surprised you survived the ordeal.”

  Jason shook his head painfully. “After what I felt, I’m surprised as well! Actually, I’m astounded that my mind isn’t broken like before, or maybe it is, who knows.” He looked around the room doubtfully as he stated that.

  She seemed to take a closer look at him as if doing an x-ray and stated emphatically, “Your mind was never broken. Archaic leach work is what you were exposed to. You have a single triple helix DNA strand in your pituitary gland which gave you the ability to endure electrocution, and your trauma in the military caused a few unused neural pathways to connect and in doing so it opened your perception to other stimuli.

  “We call them multiphasic neural associations. The doctors on Earth had no clue what they were dealing with so they treated the symptoms and not the cause and in doing so they labeled you schizophrenic,” She appeared to lose herself in concentration then she shuddered. “No wonder!”

  “What now?” Jason asked as his nerve
s spiked.

  “I saw what they did to you with the electroconvulsive therapy. In your case, it only built the energy up more in your cells. In true cases of schizophrenia, it can work, but in your case, the energy was just absorbed due to the triple helix DNA. I saw what they were going to do next, a partial frontal lobotomy.”

  Jason looked at her dumbfounded. “They were not going to do that!” he stated.

  She replied, “The unevolved human brain works a lot like a radio or a computer, and the electrical impulses are like a data stream being transmitted. Less evolved minds do not block this, I peered through your memories and I heard the thoughts of people around you. With the way your mind is, you may not have been able to read their thoughts, but you may have been aware of their motives. You had an appointment next week for a skin cancer removal, correct?”

  “Yes, but not a lobotomy!”

  She stared directly into his eyes and calmly said, “The prosecutor in your brothers’ murder case convinced a federal judge to order an injunction against you. The judge forged the other tribunal members’ names and issued the order. The VA hospital was not even in the loop, and they made it look like the VA had outsourced your procedure to expedite your care.

  “The medical staff at the surgical center, believing you were a murderer and dangerous, was going along with the order to get you in for the procedure for the safety of staff and the citizenry.

  “The skin cancer they said was to be removed is nonexistent. They used your supposed mental impairment to make you the scapegoat so they could close your brother's murder investigation. The prosecutor wanted the public to believe he was looking out for their safety, despite the fact he had no clues who killed them.” She paused a moment then muttered to herself, “That could be why we had to come back so far…” The last statement was almost inaudible.

  Jason looked at her with stunned disbelief and asked, “After seeing what’s in my head how can you trust me?”