Déjà Vu (First Contact)

by Peter Cawdron

  Several tentacles withdraw, leaving a narrow gap through the middle of the clogged airlock. Eyes peer at me. They’re bigger, but there aren’t as many as on the smaller alien. With most of this creature out in the main concourse, only a few eyes stare through the gap. To my surprise, I can see electronics weaved between the eyeballs. Fine metal threads stretch around the fleshy sockets.

  “Aha,” I say, seeing what looks like the reticle on a sniper site centered over one of the eyeballs. Hundreds of tiny lights flicker around it, betraying its electronic nature. “Now we’re talking.”

  “Talkkkkking,” the adult alien says.

  “Yeah, me and the kid were just talking about you, wondering when you’d turn up.”

  “Releasssssse,” the creature says from within the airlock.

  “Oh, you want to trade?” I ask, wondering just how much leverage I have with this trapped juvenile. “First, let my friends go.”

  No sooner have I spoken than Pretty Boy continues pacing. He responds to something I said several minutes ago, mumbling, “22nd, haha. And I…”

  Pretty Boy’s eyes say the words he’s struggling to express. For him, the recent past simply does not exist. I can see the machinations of his mind at work. One moment, I was sitting before him. He blinked and the table shifted. The projector’s gone. I’m standing ten feet away, holding a blow torch with a thin blue flame leaping from its tip. Why am I waving it over what looks like the carcass of a giant squid?

  Gal’s got an equally shocked look on his face. He springs to his feet, rushing around the table. The tentacles of the adult alien are as thick as industrial pipes. Seeing them flex and grab at the rock is a nightmare come to life. Tentacles hover in the air, reaching into the cavern, trying to grab us. The look on Gal’s face screams, Hell no!

  “Welcome back,” I say, seeing Gal struggling to realize he was ever away. He shakes his head in disbelief, pointing at the massive alien trying to squeeze itself into his subterranean home. The crushed remains of the Cadillac have rolled to the other end of the cavern. His eyes trace its path through the dust.

  “How long?” he asks.

  “About ten minutes.”

  “And this?” he asks, pointing at the creature I’ve cornered.

  I say, “You need to disconnect your implants. Like now.”

  “Done,” Pretty Boy says. Gal just nods, still in shock.

  “Releasssssse,” echos through the cavern. “Reeeeee—leasssssse.”

  “We are not going to get this opportunity again,” I say to Gal, unsure how to proceed. A few minutes ago, I was quite happy to turn this juvenile into sushi. Now, I’m trying to negotiate the complexity of an unknown future. Renege on the deal and that thing out there is going to go ballistic. Who’s to say a surge of adrenaline, or whatever pulsates through those tentacles, won’t mean it tears through the airlock or pulls the cavern down on top of us. Let the child go and I lose leverage, but did I ever really have any?

  The game has changed, at least in the short term. Two of the inhabitants on this moon have now seen these damn things for what they are. Hopefully, Gal and Pretty Boy can no longer be snuffed out while paralyzed by their implants. As for big daddy out there in the corridor, I’m pretty sure he’s caused a helluva lot of damage rushing down here to rescue junior. Wiping that kind of physical evidence isn’t going to be easy.

  What about the artificial intelligence enslaving this system? These alien creatures are the foot soldiers—the messengers. Whatever that device is strapped over the eyes of the big creature, it’s enhanced its ability and allows it to interact with human implants. That device isn’t theirs. It’s got to have come from the AI holding humanity captive.

  I switch off the torch. The rush of flames shrinks in an instant, dying with a pop. The hiss ceases. No sooner have I done that than the juvenile rushes to the airlock, carried on by thousands of tiny feet. It moves without opening out into its dark sunflower shape. For now, it’s relieved to get the hell out of here.

  Thick tentacles withdraw from the now deformed airlock. The hatch hangs from a mangled hinge. Crushed helmets fall to the dust.

  “Now do you believe me?”

  Gal looks pale. He stands there speechless with his mouth hanging open.

  Run

  “We need to get the hell out of here,” I say.

  “Agreed,” Gal says.

  Pretty Boy’s already packing equipment into a couple of duffle bags.

  In my age, electronics were rigid. Hard drives were hard, although most people had forgotten why there was any distinction. By my time, floppy drives were relics akin to cave paintings. Laptops had glass screens that could be chipped or cracked. Apart from cables, everything was stiff and unyielding. Electronics were encased in metal to protect circuit boards. Not so here. I’m not sure what Pretty Boy’s shoving in his bag, but it probably contains exponentially more computing power than the Intrepid. The bag, though, could be from my era.

  Gal grabs the picture of the coke ad and plants a kiss on it before replacing it on the shelf. Okay. Not weird at all.

  “We go.”

  Ah, yeah. I’m standing here with the cutting torch, ready to rock and roll. My finger itches the ignition switch, ready to fire it up if daddy comes back.

  Gal sorts through the spacesuits scattered in the airlock, picking them up and shaking them. I’m not convinced that’s a viable test procedure, but he seems confident. He drapes two suits over his shoulder. Most of the helmets were crushed by the alien, but Pretty Boy finds one that’s still pristine. Gal picks up the helmet I saw when we entered. He turns it toward me, smiling. He’s proud of the spiderweb of cracks running through the back of the skull.

  “Lucky.”

  If you say so.

  “What about me?” I ask, looking for a helmet that hasn’t been dented and doesn’t have a deformed locking ring.

  “No,” Pretty Boy says, waving me away. “No life. No need.”

  I point at the center of my chest, saying, “What about this?”

  “No convection. No conduction. You will be fine.”

  I’d like to debate that last point, but for a short hop, he’s probably right. I want to ask about some of the finer details. Spacesuits aren’t just about maintaining air and regulating temperature, they also protect against volatiles. The fine dust found on the Moon and Mars could damage machinery in my time. Given I’m a machine, that seems pertinent, but we’re already rushing down the main tunnel, heading away from the city.

  Gal stops to talk to someone. They look horrified.

  “Null Veritas. Null Refusal. Contagion. View imagery. Evoke and spread.”

  “No?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  Gal rests his hand on his friend’s shoulder. A small crowd gathers. Several other people try to get Gal’s attention, but we push on down the tunnel.

  “What was that about?” I ask, but Gal’s distracted. Not with the Veritas, I hope.

  Given my exposure to language in this time, I’m guessing Null Veritas. Null Refusal equates to, “You can’t trust either network.” Contagion has retained at least some of its meaning. I’m hoping View imagery is a reference to video of the creature. I’ve got no idea about Evoke, but spread seems pretty clear. The guy we just spoke to is organizing the people around him. They’re going to get the word out. I suspect some will struggle with being unable to trust the bedrock of their technological society. I note that Gal didn’t try to explain what we saw. The idea that their world is governed by aliens must seem crazy, something akin to the conspiracy theories of my day. At the moment, everything hinges on his reputation.

  “Where are we going?” I ask Pretty Boy.

  “An old research hut.”

  Without his Veritas, he’s struggling to find the right term, but I appreciate the effort he’s going to.

  We pass by several glass domes. They provide spectacular views of the desolate rocky plain beyond the city. The domes are spaced roughly fifty met
ers apart inside the tunnel.

  Starlight casts long shadows over the dull grey boulder field. Like Earth’s moon, the regolith here has been pulverized over billions of years. The ground is pockmarked and covered in thick dust. Craters of various sizes overlap like divots on the plain. A burst of orange marks where the surface has been churned by a recent impact. Recent, though, is a rather ambiguous term when it comes to astrogeology. Recent could be any time in the last ten million years. There’s a crater in the distance that is surrounded by white debris. It’s as though talcum powder exploded onto the surface.

  The city has been built inside the caldera of a volcano. Its design takes advantage of the high walls to limit the size of the overhead dome. The tunnels we’ve taken have led us to the outer slope of the volcano. Sunken lava tubes wind their way across the surface. It’s as though gigantic worms have burrowed beneath the moon.

  “In here,” Gal says.

  We step into one of the observation bubbles. The two men suit up. Pretty Boy rests his duffel bag on a seat lining the miniature dome. As Pretty Boy climbs into his suit, I examine the material. In my day, spacesuits were thick and bulky, with multiple layers. They had to account for pressure and provide thermal/radiation protection. This could be a casual NASA flight suit, the kind worn while training in the Vomit Comet rather than something worn on a space mission.

  “Okay. Let’s go,” Gal says, gesturing for me to step up onto the seat and then out onto the surface of the moon. Pretty Boy grins from behind his helmet as the realization strikes. I was waiting for them to close an airlock door similar to the one I saw at Gal’s place, or at least undergo depressurization. Apparently, both of those steps have already occurred. I reach out with my fingers, expecting to touch the glass dome, but either it’s astonishingly clear or it’s already open. Damn, that was smooth. I step down onto the rocky surface, watching as my feet sink in the fine dust.

  Wait, if we’re in a vacuum, how the hell can I hear Gal? He seems to read my mind. He taps his helmet, touching the casing over his ear.

  “And you can hear me?” I ask, but I can’t even hear my own voice inside my head. My lips move but there’s no sound whatsoever. I can’t even exhale.

  He says, “Radio.”

  Well, of course, but in my day, radios were something clunky. I had to wear a Snoopy cap with the mic protruding beside my jaw and a couple of built-in speakers clamped over my ears.

  “Where are your consumables?” I ask, stepping beyond the dome and giving them room to follow, but the term confuses Gal so I say, “Oxygen? Electricity? Carbon dioxide scrubbers?”

  Gal taps his helmet again. Damn, it’s all built-in.

  Pretty Boy has a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. I’m interested to see how the material in his suit reacts to his movement. His suit is pressurized, but is far more flexible than anything I wore on the Intrepid. Far from the thick padded gloves I used to don, he could be wearing gardening gloves.

  Just a few steps are enough for me to notice gravity has changed. We’re no longer at one gee, so they must have some technology within the city that mimics gravity. Given the long term health effects associated with low gravity, it’s not surprising they’d beef it up within the colony. I’m loving being in what feels like roughly one-third gravity but without a bulky spacesuit. It reminds me of the time I spent stationed on Earth’s moon. Life inside the volcanic tunnels on Luna was like living in a kid’s bouncy castle. Going back to Earth was a drag—quite literally.

  Gal rummages around behind one of the boulders near the bubble-shaped dome. If I move my head, I catch a glint of light marking the glass. Other than that, the airlock looks as though it were an opening in the hillside leading directly to the tunnels. I can’t shake the idea that airlocks are supposed to be big, clunky, rigid, physical structures. The one that led into Gal’s apartment must have been from centuries ago.

  Gal retrieves a hidden stash from behind a boulder. This is why we came to this particular airlock. He clips a glowing device on the rear of Pretty Boy’s waistband. Its effect quickly becomes apparent. I’m not sure how it works, but it disrupts the pulverized regolith behind us, covering our tracks. It must cause electrostatic interference as the dust surrounding our footprints shimmers and collapses, leaving the surface pristine.

  Gal takes the lead. We run/hop/jump down the slope, which is fun. I drift easily fifteen to twenty feet between each step. Whatever dust is kicked up quickly settles with Pretty Boy following behind us. Our footsteps collapse as he passes over them, removing our trail.

  On reaching the base of the slope, I turn back, wanting to take in the sight of a city hidden in a caldera. The dome rises over the jagged rocks, looking distinctly unnatural. It’s smooth, following a precise curve as opposed to the chaos of the ancient volcano.

  We drop into a ravine, avoiding the plain, and to my delight, my eyes adjust perfectly to the darkness. Rather than appearing grainy, the boulders scattered through the canyon are crisp and clear. We keep to the shadows, bounding over rubble and rocks for miles. No one talks. I’d like to, but as the others are silent. I take that as a deliberate strategy. Radio waves are, after all, easily detected. That’s the whole point of using them for communication.

  I don’t breathe. I don’t ache. I don’t tire. I’m wondering about the limits of this robotic body. Could I live on in this form for centuries? At what point does the electrical stimulation given to my necrotic brain cells cause them to disintegrate? As it is, I have blind spots. There are points where my reasoning falters. Two plus two equals—and I know the answer, but it’s not there. I know that I know the answer, but when I reach for it, I’m left grasping at the emptiness. Four seems obvious, but in those quiet moments when my synaptic connections fail, concepts like addition might as well be the tensor calculus of general relativity.

  Memories haunt me. Where was I born? Oh, I know the year, but it’s just a number. I know the state, but Alabama is just a name. There’s nothing beyond a vague memory of Huntsville. What did the streets look like? Was the city set along a river? Did I grow up in a one-story house or two? I desperately want to remember my mother’s face, but I can’t. She’s a jumble of parts. A smile. A frown. A pair of eyes. Rosy cheeks. Long brown hair. Curly locks. But I can’t put them all together. As for growing up, that draws a blank. It’s as though I appeared on the scene as a 34-year-old astronaut boarding the Intrepid. I have clear memories of my training, but nothing from high school. The loss of identity scares me. It’s not just that the past is gone—it’s hollow. Empty. I know something should be there and that torments me.

  I’m not enjoying being left alone with my thoughts. Fighting aliens. Struggling to communicate with Gal and Pretty Boy. These are the things that have occupied my mind up until now, keeping it busy, but leaping over boulders and following Gal’s dim shape gives me too much time to think. I don’t belong here. I’m an oddity—an intrusion. I should be dead. The crew of the Intrepid has been dead for thousands of years. Although I know that mentally, I can’t fathom what that means. For me, the blink of an eye was never four thousand years passing. From my perspective, it was only a second or two. I drifted into the vacuum of space and then into the lab here on Erebus. To my mind, the explosions that ripped through the hull of the Intrepid happened just a few days ago. Anything else is absurd.

  My life is absurd!

  The fissure we’re following splinters, but Gal has no problem picking his way through the rubble. He never slackens his pace. By my reckoning, it’s about three hours before we emerge in a dense crater field. Overlapping ridge lines reach up to fifty feet with long, sweeping slopes. This rocky plain has been pummeled. The sheer number of impact sites leaves me wondering if Erebus is tidally locked. I can’t see Styx. This region must take the brunt of the asteroids being drawn toward the gas giant.

  Gal’s preference is to trace the rim of the impact sites instead of pushing on through the soft dust that’s accumulated in the craters. Rocks lie scatte
red in the fine powder. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear we were on approach to Armstrong Base in the Sea of Tranquility.

  Sizes are difficult to judge on any moon as there are so few distinct landmarks. A boulder reaching up to waist-height looks as big as a house from a distance.

  Ancient mounds dominate the horizon. They’ve been worn smooth after being pelted by the debris kicked up over billions of years. They rise gently, forming billiard ball smooth hills in the distance. Up close, they’re as chaotic as the plain around us. At a glance, they could be a hundred feet in height. Take a second look and it’s clear they reach up several thousand feet. There’s no point of visual reference for comparison. No grass. No trees. No houses or bridges. Just a shattered, desolate plain pockmarked with craters.

  We come to the base of a mountain range. Gal leads us to what I’d call a traditional airlock. Its location is obscured by fallen rocks. A thick metal door opens to reveal a tube and inner door. This is closer to what I saw in Gal’s subterranean quarters. I feel at home. There’s no mystical glass dome magically cycling the atmosphere. As we enter, I reach out, taking a firm grip on the edge of the airlock. It’s insanely cold, but it feels good to touch something of substance. Once inside, Gal closes the lock, and we disappear into the darkness. There’s not even a hint of light around us. I’m about to say something when fluorescents kick in overhead, flickering as they burst into life. A warm light bathes us.

  Pretty Boy works with a control panel that’s come to life. The two men talk, but I’m past trying to interpret everything they say. I’ll wait for comments in Old Tongue. They remove their helmets, hanging them on the wall. Gal is sweating. It’s only then I notice the air pumping through the overhead vent is humid.