Cast Under an Alien Sun (Destiny's Crucible)

by Olan Thorensen

  Chapter 2: Alive

  He awoke. Not the instant awareness of being jolted by an alarm or the gentle rising from dozing in and out, but a gradual recognition of existence.

  All he heard was his breathing. Wherever he was, the air was odorless and still. When he tried opening his eyes, they ached. His whole body ached.

  Finally, Joe’s eyes opened, and he stared up at a ceiling so white it hurt his eyes. He turned his head to the left, then to the right. He was in a room with walls of the same featureless white, with no hint of seams, tiles, windows, doors, or lights.

  He tried to talk, to ask questions, but a croak came out.

  “You can get water from the tube to the right of your mouth,” said a voice.

  Joe turned his head, and something touched his cheek. He opened his mouth and a tube entered. He sucked cool water into his mouth. While it felt good, when he swallowed, it was as if the water fought its way over rocks. After several more swallows, it became easier. Finally, he pushed the tube out with his tongue.

  “W . . . what happened? Where am I?”

  “You were in an accident and were injured. Everything should be fully functional.”

  Accident? What accident?

  He couldn’t remember an accident. He was on a plane going to the meeting when . . . the plane. Sitting. The man and the Hispanic girl. Looking out the window. The dot. The dot getting bigger! The impact? Everything turning to pieces! His heart rate shot up as he remembered.

  “Do not be alarmed. Everything is fine. We believe you are functioning within normal parameters.”

  The voice sounded hollow. Recorded.

  Functioning within normal parameters? Who the hell talks like that? I must be in a hospital. Where’s the staff?

  He tried to move something besides his head: legs, arms, fingers. Nothing responded.

  Why can’t I move? Am I paralyzed!?

  “Everything is fine. You cannot move yet because I need to speak with you first. Do you understand?”

  “No, I don’t understand,” he rasped. “Where am I?”

  The voice ignored his question. “What is your name?”

  Joe said nothing, his mind racing, groping for solid ground.

  “Please answer. What is your name?”

  “Joe,” he mumbled. “Joe.”

  “Your name is Joe? Is that your entire name?”

  “Joseph. Joseph Colsco. Joseph William Colsco.”

  “You have given three different names. Are they all equally correct, or is one more correct?”

  “My full name is Joseph William Colsco, but people call me Joe.” The rasp in his voice was fading.

  “Thank you, Joe.”

  “Who are you?” he demanded, his tone hardening.

  “You may think of me as your doctor.”

  “Think” of you as—? What the hell is going on?

  His mouth went dry again. He returned to the tube for more water and a moment to think.

  “All right. You’re a doctor, and I was in an accident. Why can’t I move?”

  “To keep you calm until we can talk,” said the voice with its odd flatness. It had an accent, though he couldn’t place it. That was unusual, because people from all over the world attended Berkeley, and he could easily identify most accents. This voice strangely lacked intonations.

  “I will allow a little movement so you can be reassured. Test your fingers and toes.”

  Joe clenched his hands, then splayed his fingers. He wiggled his toes. He wasn’t paralyzed.

  He tried to sound calmer. “Yes, I can move a little. Why can’t I get up?”

  “In time. Please answer more questions. This is to check your memory. Where do you live?”

  “Berkeley, California.”

  “What is our occupation?”

  “I’m a chemistry graduate student at the University of California.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “La Mesa, near San Diego.”

  “What is the name of the San Diego football team?”

  “Huh? Who cares?”

  “The name please.”

  “The Chargers.”

  “Now I will ask questions to test your mental responses. What is two plus five?”

  “Seven.”

  “The square root of twenty-five?”

  “Five.”

  “The cube root of 4913?”

  “Gimme a break!”

  “Please recite back the following numbers, three, five, eight, two.”

  Joe complied.

  “Three, five, two, two, seven, six, eight.”

  He repeated the string of numbers again—barely.

  “Five, eight, one, eight, three, six, two, seven, four, five, seven, five, nine.”

  “Who the fuck can remember that many?!”

  The questions continued, alternating from the trivial to the ridiculous. Joe was about to call an exhausted and angry halt when the questions stopped.

  “Thank you, Joe. Your mental functioning seems to be satisfactory.”

  Joe was too tired to respond.

  “You will rest now, and we will talk more later.”

  “Wait! What about some answ—”

  Joe descended into a black void.

  ***

  Then . . . awake again. This time suddenly, still looking at the same white ceiling. Joe opened his mouth to call out and realized he could move his arms. He drew them up in front of his face to look at his hands, rotated the wrists to view both sides, and flexed his fingers. While everything worked, the pallid flesh and his thin arms startled him.

  “You may sit up,” the voice droned. “Be careful. You may feel dizzy.”

  When Joe tried to sit up, it was as if his abdominal muscles had forgotten how to contract. He grunted and pushed against the surface with his right arm, struggling into a sitting position. He was on a platform two feet off a floor. The voice was right. He was so dizzy for a second, he thought he might faint. He sat, head hanging, hands gripping the edge of the platform, eyes closed until his head cleared.

  The ceiling, walls, floor, and platform were all the same white. He was inside a ten-foot white cube, empty except for the low platform on which he sat.

  He looked down. He was naked. His genitals were there but shriveled. His legs were pale, thin, and unmarred.

  The accident! My leg!

  He remembered the bone sticking out. Ribbons of blood. Now, there wasn’t a mark. What kind of hospital was this?

  “Joe, can you catch this ball?”

  “Ball? What ball?” Something thudded off his forehead. A blue ball about two inches in diameter bounced across the floor, hit a wall, and continued to ricochet around the room. It wasn’t the blueness that caught his attention, but the slowness with which the ball bounced and the height of the bounces. It was like he was watching a slow-motion film. That possibility was eliminated when the ball came within reach, and Joe reached out and grabbed it with his left hand. Another ball appeared—red this time. He caught it in his right hand.

  “Good reflexes. Thank you, Joe.”

  He stared at the two balls in his hands, then his fingers curled into fists. He opened his hands and gaped. The balls were gone!

  A chill washed over him, and his breathing turned quick and shallow. A knot formed in his stomach.

  “There is no reason to be frightened, Joe. You are fine. You were injured, but everything seems to be sufficiently repaired.”

  Repaired? Like a toaster? And sufficiently? Sufficiently for what?

  He drew several deep breaths, trying to slow his racing heart. “Please answer my questions. Who are you, and where am I?”

  “Joe, I am a simulation of a human being, designed to communicate with you.”

  “Yeah,” Joe snorted, “and I’m Jim Thorpe, the greatest athlete ever.”

  There was silence for a few seconds, then, “I’m sorry. You told me earlier your name was Joseph William Colsco. Did I misunderstand?”

  “All right! Eno
ugh of this shit! Who the fuck are you, and where am I?”

  “Joe, do you see the bar next to you?”

  “What?”

  “The bar, Joe,” insisted the voice.

  “There’s no bar—” Joe glanced to his side and scowled at a two-inch-thick bar about eight inches above the end of the platform and curving to connect to the two corners. It hadn’t been there a moment ago. “Where . . . ?”

  “Please hold onto the bar.”

  Joe placed his right hand lightly on the bar.

  “Do not be alarmed. Please hold onto the bar to avoid injury.”

  “Injury from wha—” His feet left the floor. Joe gasped and clutched the bar with both hands as he floated, attached only by his death grip on the bar, his mind blank of any thought except holding on.

  The sensation of weight slowly returned, and he settled back onto the platform, keeping a firm grip on the bar with his right hand and his left hand gripping the edge of the platform. His mind was frozen, waiting for an explanation.

  Finally, he croaked, “What happened?”

  “The gravity in your room was adjusted to zero to prove you are no longer on your planet. You are in a vessel at a Lagrange point.”

  “Lagrange point?” The part of his mind still reasoning drew from a classroom memory. One of the points in space relative to the Earth where an object stays in a stable position with respect to the Earth while they both orbit the Sun. He remembered the balance between gravity and orbital motion caused the stability. He thought there were several such points, but all he could remember were the ones where the Sun, the Earth, and the Lagrange point were in a line, Sun-point-Earth, Earth-Sun-point, point-Earth-Sun, and point-Sun-Earth.

  “That’s not possible,” Joe whispered, another chill raising the hairs on his back and arms. “How can I be at a Lagrange point?”

  “How do you think it would be possible?”

  Joe froze. To answer would make the impossible possible.

  “Joe, how might you be at a Lagrange point?”

  Joe’s brain seized, trapped in a vortex. The voice repeated the question at thirty-second intervals until Joe swallowed and choked out, “A spacecraft?”

  “Very good, Joe. Yes, you are on a spacecraft.”

  “How did I get into space and whose ship is this? Ours? Russians’? Chinese?”

  “What do you think, Joe? Which of them could have adjusted the gravity in this room?”

  Joe’s mind raced, rummaging frantically for plausible answers. He was on Earth, and they faked the floating? No. No way to do that on Earth. And what about the slowness of the bouncing balls? Some secret NASA, military, Russian, whomever or whatever? Nothing fit. But it had to be one of these, didn’t it?

  Joe’s grip on the bar tightened even more, as he eliminated all possibilities except one. The blood drained from his face.

  “Can you think of an answer, Joe?”

  “No,” he said in a small voice.

  “Then what is left?”

  He was silent for a full minute. Joe was cold and sweating at the same time, his throat constricted, his heart pounding. “A spaceship not made on Earth?”

  “That is correct, Joe. This craft did not originate on your planet.”

  I’m insane, dreaming, or hallucinating.

  Joe scrambled for an explanation he could understand. Acceptance came only after more demonstrations of gravity manipulation, and when one wall turned transparent and he could see the Earth in full view. At first, it was a small orb of blues, browns, and greens. Then it grew closer—magnified, he assumed—until it filled the wall. He stared for some time, long enough to notice the view had the Earth’s surface in total sunlight. The only way the surface could be in complete sunlight was if the vessel was positioned between the Sun and the Earth.

  This must be the L1 Lagrange Point, his mind dredged up. So the Sun must be behind us to get this view. The Sun-point-Earth Lagrange arrangement. Only when the wall changed back to white, and his heart rate returned closer to normal did his mind accept as possible the option that couldn’t be true. The voice was silent, waiting for him to initiate. He didn’t know what to say or ask, as his mind tried to gather itself.

  “Do you need more evidence, Joe?”

  “No. It must be true, or I’m insane.” After a moment, he said, “Hey, wait a minute! If you’re supposed to be some kind of alien, how do you speak English and how do you know about Lagrange points?”

  “All languages can be understood with sufficient samples, such as the broadcasts emanating from your planet. I assumed your language was English, based on the position of your aircraft. As for knowing the name for the Lagrange points, among the electromagnetic emanations from Earth are education programs. Joe, you are on a vessel near your planet, both orbiting your Sun.”

  Joe’s mind whirled, unable to settle on a single thought for more than a fraction of a second before careening off in other directions.

  When Joe didn’t speak, the voice repeated, “Joe, do you understand you are on a vessel orbiting your Sun?”

  “You mean an alien spaceship?”

  “A vessel not of your planet. Yes. An alien spaceship.”

  “Who are you?” Joe whispered.

  “I am a simulation of a human being, designed to communicate with you.” The same statement, word for word, the voice had used when Joe first asked the same question.

  “Simulated? Designed? You mean you’re a computer program or AI?”

  “You may think of me as an AI, an artificial intelligence, as the closest analogy to your species’ technical level.”

  “Who made you? Who made this vessel?”

  “That information is not important for you to know, and I am not authorized to give an answer.”

  “Why am I here? What do you want of me?”

  “A malfunction of the systems of this vessel caused it to accidently destroy your craft. There was a temporary single sub-atomic systems fault that would normally have been corrected by redundant subroutines, except for coinciding with a routine reboot of a process whose role was monitoring the reliability of subroutines. Unable to confirm reliability, blocks of subroutines shut down or paused, affecting both the vessel’s cloaking technology, making it momentarily visible, and stopping the processing of external sensor data.”

  “A computer crash? You’re saying you crashed into my plane because your systems glitched?”

  “A crude but accurate assessment. It took two seconds to recognize the faults from the initial quantum error and make the necessary corrections. Unfortunately, in those two seconds, our vessel transited thirty-eight miles and, for a brief instance, attempted to occupy the same volume of space as your airplane. Not unexpectedly, the attempt failed.”

  “Well, no shit.”

  “There were negligible effects on our vessel, but consequences for your aircraft were substantial. Our systems resumed normal function too late to avoid the collision. However, we managed to hold onto pieces of the plane, the baggage, and the passengers. Most of the humans died instantly, but a few survived the seconds it took the ship’s systems to recover and attempt to save the plane. You are one of the survivors.”

  “Was I injured?”

  “Yes.”

  “How badly?” Joe steeled himself.

  “It is not necessary for you to have that information.”

  That doesn’t sound good.

  “How many survived?”

  “I cannot give you that information.”

  “Why not?”

  “I cannot give you that information.”

  “You can’t tell me how many survived, or you can’t tell me why you can’t tell me?”

  “Yes to both questions.”

  “Why am I here? You didn’t answer when I asked before. Why rescue anyone?”

  “There is an obligation,” said the voice in the same flat tone, “an obligation to be acknowledged and mitigated as much as possible.”

  “Why is there an obligation
and to whom?”

  “You would likely not understand if I tried to explain. Also, it is unnecessary for you to know the reasons.”

  “I must be dreaming this, or else I’m going crazy. If this is all true, why do I feel so calm? I should be climbing the walls.”

  “Why would you climb the walls? You have no physical attributes that would assist this action, and climbing would lead nowhere except the ceiling.”

  “I mean, I should be screaming and running around, scared shitless!”

  “I do not see any logical connection to feces. However, if I understand your meaning, you are wondering why you do not have more severe reactions to your situation. Part of the answer is that we are suppressing the portions of your nervous system that respond to agitation.”

  Joe was quiet for a moment. “You mean, dampen the fight-or-flight response?”

  “Yes. The hormones and neural pathways that energize your physiology to either flee from danger or attack an enemy are being suppressed to allow you to rationally accept events.”

  “What comes next?” Joe asked. “Do you keep me here, take me to your planet, return me to Earth, or what?” At the edge of his consciousness were other options, ones he didn’t care to consider.

  “None of those three options are possible. For reasons unnecessary for you to understand, you cannot remain on this vessel or be taken to my creators’ home. Neither can you be returned to your planet. You have knowledge of our existence. You may choose one of two options. For you to understand the options, it is necessary you be given limited knowledge. I will not answer additional questions.”

  The voice paused a moment, while Joe sat waiting to hear his options. Fear curled over raw nerve endings, in spite of the alien’s attempts to keep him calm.

  “This vessel observes Earth and its civilization,” the voice intoned, “because there are other planets in this region of the galaxy inhabited by humans. Earth is evidently the origin of humans, though both humans and some animals and plants were taken from Earth in the past and transplanted to other planets. Who did the transplantation is not known. Humans did not then, nor do you now, have such technology. Our purpose is to gather information to explain who is responsible and why this was done.”

  “Humans on other planets! How many such planets and where are they?”