Psyatoan's Aperture
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I was now feeling a little numb inside and asked S.E.S.I. to play the Psyatoan message.
“Analysis of data as follows:
‘We the Psyatoan are a passive race of this realm. We walk freely on the ashes of those who choose to deny freedom to any sentient life. Though we choose peace, we are no more than an evolved species of this realm.
“To our disdain, violence is evolutionary genetic. Walk lightly if you denounce sentient life. If you sustain sentient life, proceed freely through our aperture to our new realm of life.’”
“The Psyatoan are a highly evolved form of an Aves species. This is our verse to the world. We have faith that the discovery proves we’re no longer alone and will end the stagnantly cynical outlook the world has today. For better or worse this is our verse.”
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I instructed Tessa’s phone to end the recording, as I lost myself in her embrace.”
“So what do you think? I don’t mean to speak for you, though our outlooks are so similar, I had a moment of clarity and went with it,” I said, reflexively embracing her again and resting my chin on the top of her head.
“No, Kale, it was in a word, poignant. That’s what makes you truly you, your depth of expressionism.”
Tessa emphasized her praise by taking in one of her deep breaths and slowly exhaling. Tessa backed away ever so slightly to make eye contact.
“You’re confident about all this right? Once we send the emails and posts our lives back in Lewiston are finished.” She grimaced.
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“Yes, our lives lack the freedom of decadent life and yes, our lives are controlled by our mundane careers. We’ve always been worried that neither one of us were ever going to make a mark beyond our own selfish needs.
“How would we ever really improve anything? Besides, what good is the false freedom of a decadent life of today? You can’t take it with you. Civilizations throughout time have tried. It doesn’t work.”
I embodied the moment by cradling the right side of her face and emphatically brushing her red hair behind her ear and obtaining her infectious smile.
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As we made our way back through the decrepit remains of the Tesla’s facility; the vestige still vividly exuded traces of the raw innovations that occurred long before their time of understanding.
On our exit, passing once again through the floor to ceiling window arch, you couldn’t help from being drawn toward the eerily preserved steam powered generators.
The photo processing plant had been remodeled in 1989 and 1990 and blocked it all off, in a sense, making a memorial to the history that still encompasses the grounds.
Reaching the outside air, Tessa and I weren’t just overcome, we were humbled by our first East Coast sunset.
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The infectious tones of color bled from the sky, inducing a last phase, a half-light; that surreal after light, that envelops one’s soul.
“So are you really ready to let this all arise?” Tessa asked while walking toward the center of the property musing once again through her thoughts.
“Hold on a second. I’ve got to say the tower foundation would be the most appropriate.”
“It’s as good as any and kind of sentimental. I like it!” Tessa said, bee lining toward the monstrous foundation ring. “So how large should we make the H configuration?” Tessa walked into the center of the ring.
“Hell, I don’t know? As long as it’s all equally configured, it should suffice, right?” I asked, laughing at the smart-ass expression she was making to my response to her question.
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As I set the terminal down at the six o’clock position, I slowly backed toward Tessa, exchanging a look of uncertainty.
“S.E.S.I., transmit the correct activation tones in both rotating spectrum's without missing prime numbers.”
“Rendering data … transmitting both spectrum's of communication:
Tessa and I took one anothers hand, backing up once more, unsure of what impending actions were about to happen. Surprisingly, nothing occurred for what seemed like an eternity, though it was most likely, less than five minutes.
“Do you see that, Kale?” Tessa asked looking toward the enigma before us.
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“Yeah,” I said ever so contently to appease her and help her maintain her state of mind.
The cobalt blue centers of all six of the now fully activated edifices, were intensified by a lurid type of afterglow.
They were as bright as the crown of a torch, a blending of white and surreal blues, with a hint of something close to an off yellow.
What happened next without indication of noise or flux was beyond one’s imagination. Each edifice erupted with sublime plasma toward the night sky.
Every pulse of plasma, was as though a liquid teardrop of mercury, the size of one’s hand, was wrapped in a fiery blue afterglow of ultraviolet light. It was a surreal display of life that escaped from one’s conception of what tranquility would be like.
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By the fourth pulse, a murky billow was forming over the facility’s entire property. The mass of the billow was stationary, looking completely out of place in the clear, spring night sky.
Then as quickly as it all began, it ended with the seventh pulse. Exposing a massive cloud bank the likes I feared no one has ever lived to describe before.
“Can you hear that?” Tessa asked, looking ashen.
“Yeah, it sounded like dry lighting,” I said as I escorted Tessa to the cover of one of the old run-down outer buildings.
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Momentarily looking away from Tessa, I saw multiple bolts of what had to be some kind of lightning striking, each edifice. The centrally inverted cores, were unexplainably growing straight into the earth and equally in height.
Tessa, now looking from behind my right shoulder, reflexively held on to my arm as if she was being escorted.
“If it wasn’t so frightening, it would be the embodiment of the sublime,” she stressed while lightly biting my outer right shoulder and releasing one of her long breaths. “We’re in so over our heads, Kale,”
I was fighting back a fear for Tessa. I knew she was working up her courage for something.
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“That occurred to me too.” I hesitated with a false confidence, partly hypnotized by what was before us. The rhythms of strikes were accelerating now, dancing off the edifices.
The six edifices were now close to a thousand feet high, yet no more than eight inches square. The outer ebony bodies of each edifice had broken free, leaving the six monoliths.
It was too dark to be certain, because your eyes were drawn toward the cloud bank, which was dribbling bolts of lightning like rain.
“Kale, I think we’d better back off a little. Those last bolts are getting more than out of hand.”
Tessa was retaining her resolve, although I could see her drive to discover the answer to all this wasn’t blinding her outright.
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“I believe, they are charging before the next phase. You see the control edifice still has its outer ebony cover, right?” she asked, unbelievably, looking away from what was before her.
Looking around the corner of what little cover the old-broken down stone building provided, I saw what had to be flashlight beams emanating from outside the fence line.
“Tessa, you have to see this. Either our message online worked, or the neighborhood around us has come out to investigate Tesla’s facility, coming back to life.” Either way, I was elated that everything was out in the open.
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Reflexively turning to see Tessa moving toward the security of the shadow-ridden refuge. I was uncertain what her true reaction was, to the numerous souls overtaking the outer fence line of Tesla’s facility.
Tessa and I had subconsciously succumbed to the gravity that was before us. We were, in a sense, momentarily absent from our external environment. In that shared, surreal moment, we were both partially jo
lted back to reality. A multi-spectral pulsation, eerily emanating from directly behind us.
As we returned to the southeast corner of our stone refuge, the rhythm of the pulsations were slowly accelerating, compared to the intensity of the lightning bolts that were still dancing off the six monoliths.
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We could barely see through the arc of white and ultraviolet pulsations emanating from the previously dormant control edifice.
Each strobe of pulsing white light was followed by a declining intensity of ultraviolet light, yet either spectrum was more than one could handle outright.
“Oh God, Kale!” Tessa said, taking my arm once more, and shielding her eyes with her free hand. “Look up. The lightning, it stopped!”
At that instant the monoliths discharged six massively twisted bolts directly into the control edifice, exponentially amplifying both spectrums in intensity and rhythm.
It was truly more than we were mentally prepared for. We both turned our backs and fled behind our meager stone structure.
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“What did we do, Kale?” Tessa asked in fear of what we’d set forth.
From the dark side of the building’s outer wall, we could see the fence line and that the traffic on the four lane thoroughfare had stopped.
Crowds of people were walking away from their vehicles, trying to make out the phenomenon occurring above the facility that was equal to the legend of the man who built it.
“I believe the ultraviolet band is becoming more dominate, Tessa,” I stressed as I glanced around the corner, still shielding my eyes.
“You’re right. It’s all collapsing in on itself. It’s dimming as it accelerates,” Tessa said fearlessly as she walked around the corner toward the foundation.
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As we both made our way closer toward the outer foundation ring, it abruptly diminished into a small sphere of two massively intense rotating spectrum's.
Standing there, we were suddenly overcome with a sense of peace, as it systematically faded way into the blackness of night.
“That can’t be it,” Tessa said with a sense of disappointment that one could not help but feel internally.
“Uh, Tessa?” I reached for her hand. “What I want to know is, where did the control edifice go?” I asked, stunned by the blinding blackness that the six monolith’s cobalt blue halo didn’t reach.
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Looking into each others eyes, our thoughts ran through what we could be missing. Channels of light from behind began to overtake the overall grounds. A quarter of Long Island was now overtaking the fence line from all directions.
“There must be something we’re missing, Kale,” Tessa expressed with a defeated tone. As I instinctively took her hand, I began to mentally prepare, how to explain our intent to the expanding crowd that was less than three hundred feet away now.
Tessa and I were taken back, by a pulsation of pure ultraviolet light from behind us, of an unfeasible power, yet absent of any sound.
We were both taken to our knees, by the blinding intensity. The people standing northeast of our location, facing the aperture, all fell to the ground fearfully covering their eyes.
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“Are you all right?” I asked Tessa, lifting myself off of her.
“Yeah,” Tessa said with a now completely ashen face as she faced the aperture. “Oh, Kale, what did we do?”
As I turned to witness, what she was fixated on, my heart skipped in fear of being infinitesimal to what was before us.
The six-thousand foot cobalt blue monoliths all had a slight afterglow, but were being overtaken by an ultraviolet aperture materializing in between the six monoliths.
It was hundreds of feet high now, and becoming clearer into the Psyatoan realm. It was as though a fringe of nature was inexplicably connecting our two realms.
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“Kale, I believe the human race has just been humbled! The expansion of the actual laws of nature were just demisted by a species of the first order,” Tessa said with her hopeful tone.
The luminescence of the aurora’s expanse, had a luster that exuded a sense of bliss. Looking at Tessa, it was apparent she once again was lost to the pain of her own convictions.
“You see that, right?” Tessa asked, walking into the foundation ring and solemnly reaching back for my hand. “
“Yeah.” I shrugged, completely mesmerized by the aperture. It was distorting once again.
The fringe uniting our two realms was rapidly dissipating, revealing the actual sunlight of the Psyatoan realm.
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We could vividly see a meadow now, completely surrounded by a massive mountainside, reaching thousands of feet high.
Psyatoan society was integrated completely into the mountainside. There were no signs of dwellings or structures. The meadows were excluded, from any alteration of the natural landscape.
“Kale, their world is only constructed out of the mountainside, and the crystal-like material of the edifices,” Tessa remarked without breaking eye contact of the dominating realm.
It was tranquil with the ebony and cobalt blue colors dominating throughout the landscape, although there were massive translucent spiral towers colored with the hues of ivory, auburn, and a sun-kissed orange.
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“Uh, Kale, something is moving over by the left spiral,” Tessa said with her adrenalin pumping so hard I could feel her pulse through the palm of her hand.
Before I could focus on anything, there were hundreds of small unrecognizable inhabitants bolting toward their now open aperture.
“Oh, Kale, they’re marvelous!” Tessa said breathlessly.
The Psyatoan's were nothing like I would have imagined. They had long torsos, and elongated skulls. Two arms and two legs that were oddly inverted, and eyes that were sunken inward, with twin pupils a mixed calico color. It was truly hypnotically beautiful.
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They had two different types of skin. The underbelly and forearms had hard callous-like skin covered in fine feather-like hair. The remaining body was completely translucent, which revealed a bio-luminescent energy, moving throughout their bodies, culminating at either side of their necks.
“Kale, they’re extremely stout. I don’t think they’re much over four feet tall,” Tessa informed me with a blank gaze.
“So what should we do next?” Tessa asked, staring back at the Psyatoan, which were curiously looking at the both of us.
“I thought of that,” I answered with an air of confidence.
“S.E.S.I., do you contain the information recorded on the gold voyager probe record?” I asked.
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“Analysis of data as follows:
Shows both voyager message and the SETI message sent by Dr. Carl Sagan; explaining man’s genetic makeup.”
“S.E.S.I., could you translate messages into the Psyatoan vernacular?”
“Yes.”
“So what do you think?” I asked Tessa, breaking her gaze.
“We might as well stand on the shoulders, of those who dreamed of this moment. They put a lifetime worth of thought into those messages,” Tessa added with her infectious smile.
“S.E.S.I., repeat both messages, in the vernacular of the Psyatoan, until you receive a response.”
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Tessa and I both walked to the edge of the aperture, slowly taking a knee down to slide the terminal freely into the Psyatoan realm.
“Kale, hold up a second,” Tessa said, reaching out and stopping my hand. With the slightest motion, Tessa reached for her necklace, breaking it free from her person.
“S.E.S.I., this pendant contains a small piece of quartz extracted from the surface of the earth’s celestial satellite. We give this as a token of friendship.”