Incursion (The Narrows of Time Series Book 2)

by Jay J. Falconer

  The black floor drain rose up only two inches and looked more like the open end of an undersized sewer pipe than a toilet. “Not exactly the Ritz,” he mumbled.

  He unzipped, finished, zipped up, fastened the button at the top of his pants, and ran his hands through the reverse flowing water. There was no towel to use, so he wiped his hands on the front of his shirt and waited for an exit to appear. It didn’t.

  “Hey, ladies? I’m done in here,” he said to the oscillating walls that now felt a lot closer than before. He waited a minute. The entrance didn’t appear. “Hello? . . . Someone want to let me out of this cage?” Again, nothing happened.

  He thought about how Flexus had used her hand to control the ship and, even though he knew it was a long shot, decided to try it. He put his palm on the glistening wall, but the wall wasn’t solid and his hand passed right through it. The ship reacted by retracting the water assembly and the black sewer pipe into the walls and floor.

  “What the hell?” He jerked his hand back. He wasn’t feeling any pain, but still flexed his fingers and tested his grip by opening and closing a tight fist several times. His hand was working normally. The bathroom walls felt wet to the touch, yet his fingers were dry.

  He figured the ship must have been using some type of sensory-enabled hologram technology to display the walls and bathroom fixtures and must have reacted to his near contact. That gave him an idea. He turned to face the wall behind him—the same wall that had dissolved earlier to let him inside. He walked toward it, protecting his face with his hands in case his plan failed. The wall dissolved as he had hoped.

  When Lucas stepped out of the Baaku’s bathroom, the hairs on the back of his neck tingled and he could hear a faint whirling sound above him. He looked up and saw something that hadn’t been there before: a spinning, bright-orange sphere hovering near the top of the ship’s central shaft. It looked to be thirty feet in diameter and was discharging random bolts of lightning, each striking the upper floor of the ship at different locations. An ominous-looking white spot would swirl around just before the sphere released a bolt of lightning and point in the direction of the next discharge. One beat later, the white spot stopped its rotation cycle and pointed down at Lucas, as if it had just noticed him. Instantly, his headache erupted into a full-blown tsunami. It felt like a thousand jackhammers pounding at his skull, trying to dig their way to his feet. He wrapped his hands around his temples and dropped to his knees. He screamed in pain.

  “Initiate containment procedures!” Alista yelled at Flexus.

  Lucas managed to find the strength to lift his eyes and look at Flexus. His vision was erratic, but he saw her standing next to the far wall with her left hand touching it. Moments later, her hand disappeared into the translucent wall. An orange, pulsating glow appeared where her hand should be, then it shot up the wall about twenty feet and stopped. A black, metallic-looking flat section grew out of the orange glow and spread quickly across the hull to form a three hundred and sixty degree ring around the ground floor.

  It wasn’t more than a second before the ring started to expand inward, growing a white-colored ring along its inside edge. Thousands of tiny, octagon-shaped chunks appeared, piecing themselves together like a jigsaw puzzle to construct the second ring. The process continued, forming ring after ring—each about twelve inches in width—to build a flat surface that would soon cover the shaft’s expanse. After each successive ring was built, its surface changed color from white to orange to black, like the new rings needed to cool off or harden. Each of the finished rings looked like it was made out of the same silky black material that covered the exterior of the ship.

  Lucas’ headache disappeared the moment the ceiling construction was complete. So did the mounting pressure inside his head. He stood up. His legs wobbled and every muscle in his body ached, but otherwise he thought he was okay. He rubbed his temples. “Now I know what an irradiated tumor feels like.”

  “Our apologies. We do not receive many two-twelves,” Alista said.

  “What the hell was that thing?”

  “That is our Neural Nexus. The sum of all we are.”

  “You mean like a central memory core?”

  “Yes, but it is also for communications. All Baaku are linked to the Nexus.”

  “When it looked at me, I felt like my head was going to explode.”

  “The Great Loti was attempting to make a neural connection. Obviously, your physiology is not compatible.”

  “Yeah, no shit,” Lucas scoffed. He was surprised the Baaku had given the painful device a nickname. He would have called it the Great Evil Eye, since that’s what it looked like. “I’ve had some killer migraines before, but that one was biblical. I just hope I don’t have any lingering brain damage.”

  “A scan is advised,” Flexus replied.

  “That is an excellent idea,” Alista said, nodding to Flexus in a matter-of-fact way. She looked at Lucas. “We should check you for injury.”

  Flexus bent down and stuck her hand into the floor. A shiny, silver device rose up from the center of the great bird emblem. It looked like a preacher’s pulpit with a flat metal surface for the bible and a four-foot curved pedestal supporting it underneath. Two cutouts in the shape of a human hand were built into the podium’s surface—one for the left and one for the right.

  Lucas stepped forward and waited for directions. Even though he was still a bit woozy, at least he couldn’t hear or feel the traveler stomping around inside his withering garden of neurons. Maybe the Great Loti’s agonizing mind-hack had erased the traveler. If it did, then the pain was worth it. Either way, he figured it was going to take a while for the cobwebs to clear in his head.

  “Place your hands on the scanning device,” Alista said.

  Lucas did as she instructed. The metal was cold and slippery, but the cutouts fit his hands perfectly, as if they they’d been made just for him.

  “Coalescence detected!” a loud voice echoed throughout the ship. The words bombarded Lucas’ eardrums, coming at him from every direction at once. He looked around, but couldn’t identify the source. He tried to pull his hands away from the scanner, but he couldn’t move them.

  “Coalescence detected!” the voice said again. Each time the voice spoke, the shimmering walls reacted and changed colors in sync with the syllables and variations in tone. Almost like how a voice spectrum analyzer would react.

  Lucas used all his strength in an attempt to pull away from the device, but his hands were stuck. “What’s going on?” Lucas yelled to Alista. His heart thumped a louder beat than before, as sweat began to drip from his temples. A flash of searing pain raced down his neck, wrapped around his chest, and shot through his arms and into his fingers. Lucas felt lightheaded and dizzy, then everything went black.

  EIGHTEEN

  Lucas opened his eyes. He was lying flat on his back, on some type of body-length table, with his face and mouth covered by a crystal-clear, stretchy material that smelled like oranges. There were no cutouts for his nose and mouth, yet somehow he could breathe. A cold dampness pressed against the back of his neck and his legs were stretched out flat. His feet tingled, like they had been asleep—but he could wiggle his toes.

  He tried to sit up, but couldn’t. His entire body was lashed down to the table, held motionless as if he were stuck inside a giant, ultra-thin condom. A light burned three feet above him, searing his watery pupils with white light. He closed his eyes as vertigo sprang to life in his ears, making the room spin wildly in his mind. Round and round he went, sending his stomach into near-vomit territory. He resisted the urge to throw up, and a few minutes later, the spinning stopped.

  Alista’s voice echoed randomly off the ship’s walls in the background. Lucas thought she was talking to Flexus, but wasn’t sure. “We need to try a different approach before the subject regains consciousness. We need additional instructions from Loti. I am not sure how to proceed without further degradation.”

  There was no response. />
  Lucas kept his eyes closed and his head still. He didn’t want Alista to know he was awake. His blood pressure pounded in his ears; his breathing shortened and intensified. He tightened his stomach muscles to calm his undulating chest. He prayed she wouldn’t notice the change in his vitals. It seemed to work.

  Footsteps stirred behind him. He held his breath. The steps were loud and moving slowly at first, then they picked up speed as the sound dissipated. The light above him went dark, as did the sounds of other life in the room. Lucas figured he was alone.

  The material covering his face began to dissolve, starting at a point above his nose and working outward. He opened his eyes, craned his neck, and looked down across his body. He could see every contour of his body shimmering under the sheer, stretchy material. He couldn’t defend himself—not this way. He needed to break free before Alista, or something worse, returned.

  He discovered he was able to move his fingers in a piano-playing motion. “That’s a start,” he whispered. Slowly he raised his right arm off the table. The material’s tension gave way, allowing him to elevate his elbow an inch from the shiny surface. He smiled—progress.

  He tried to lift the other arm and sit up, but the Baaku material reacted, snapping his upper back and his arms back into place on the table. His elbows smashed into the metal slab, sending a pair of jolts into his shoulders, landing in his neck. He bit his lower lip to muffle his voice, though he wanted to scream.

  He allowed himself time for the pain to subside. It did. He exhaled a long, slow breath and wondered if he pulled hard enough and fast enough, could he break free from the material before it reacted. Worth a try.

  He took a moment to focus his thoughts, then summoned all his might to yank both of his arms away from the table in one powerful thrust—but his arms didn’t budge, not a millimeter. So, he could wiggle his fingers and move his arms slowly, but nothing more. He closed his eyes and waited a few seconds for his nerves to relax. They did. His mind cleared.

  Come on. You’re a scientist, he told himself. Figure it out. He decided to try wiggling his fingers again. They moved. Then he tested raising his arm. Again, success. The facts told him what he needed to know—the hold-down material would respond with equal force to the speed and intensity of his movements. The harder he tried to break free, the stronger the material fought back. He was a prisoner.

  He turned his head to the right. The nearest edge of the Baaku material was pulled tight, but it didn’t seem to be attached to anything. It was as if it were hovering in midair, possibly held in place by a matrix of invisible struts or possibly a bio-sensitive force field.

  He tried sliding his body slowly off the table, like a hunk of butter easing its way across a simmering frying pan. If he could move slowly enough, maybe the material wouldn’t register his movement and react. He might just be able to slip underneath it and escape.

  Just then, a pinpoint headache invaded his skull. Lucas clenched his jaw and cried out in pain. He figured the noisy traveler had just woken up and was about to speak more of its nonsense to him. Lucas waited, but the traveler said nothing.

  A shape appeared across from Lucas, inside the swirling patterns of the ship’s wall. The image stabilized slowly and jumbled itself clear: It was a face . . . a human face. . . . His brother’s. A calming peace washed over him and the roaring headache stopped pounding instantly. It had been too long since he’d seen Drew’s image in a reflective surface. He’d almost forgotten about the perfect contours of his brother’s nose and chin. Lucas’ eyes flushed with tears.

  Once again, Drew’s lips were moving, but there was no sound. This time, however, it looked like Drew was shouting at him, with eyes wide and eyebrows raised. Lucas didn’t understand why. After all, wasn’t this his hallucination? Why was his brain conjuring a disturbing vision instead of something more soothing? He figured he must be losing it.

  Seconds later, the material covering his body disappeared. He sat up, turned sideways, and slid off the table. His feet hit the deck with a thud. He scurried toward Drew’s image, but before he made it to the wall, his brother’s face lit up with sudden panic, then he was pulled away quickly, sucked deep into the vibrant colors flooding the wall.

  “Drew!” he shouted. He reached to touch the wall where Drew’s face had been, but the wall started to flutter. He yanked his hand back before making contact. A door-sized section of the wall dissolved into nothing and Alista and Flexus walked through.

  “Are you feeling better?” Flexus asked, in a flat, toneless voice.

  Lucas backed away from the Baaku and held up his fists in a half-boxer, half-karate pose. Rico’s hand-to-hand training had a will of its own, taking control of his limbs. “Stay the hell away from me!”

  Alista’s eyebrows pinched. “Remain calm, Lucas two-twelve. You are among friends.”

  “Bullshit!” Lucas said, his jawline stiff and ready. “I really don’t like being shrink-wrapped like a Twinkie. Why am I being treated like a prisoner?”

  “A prisoner?” Alista responded.

  “Yeah. A goddamn prisoner. What the hell is going on?”

  “You required medical attention,” Flexus said.

  Lucas shook his head. He didn’t believe her.

  Alista stepped forward. “The scanning device sent a severe neural-electric shock into your system that stopped your heart and overloaded your neocortex. We deployed the medical device to heal your injuries.”

  Lucas thought about her words for a moment. Then he agreed—the facts seemed to jibe with her reasoning. He lowered his fists and stood at ease.

  “How do you feel?” Flexus added.

  “Like a poached egg,” Lucas answered, rubbing his temples.

  “Just allow yourself time to recover fully,” Alista said. “There may be a few side effects. Your system took quite a jolt.”

  Lucas stretched his back until it cracked. “What was that stuff holding me down to the table?”

  “The Great Loti used it to heal your injuries,” Alista said.

  “Some type of bio-healing gel?”

  The short Baaku nodded, then offered up a half-smile.

  “Is that why parts of it disappeared before others?”

  “Yes. Once an area of your body had been repaired, the healing material dissolved.”

  Lucas nodded, then remembered something that occurred just before the scanner cooked his ass. “What was all that earlier when the ship’s alarms went off? Something about a coalescence detected?”

  “That will take some time to explain.”

  Lucas put his hands on his hips. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  “Our primary source of trade involves long-term memories, which we acquire and store in the Neural Nexus. We offer them for sale to other species who desire to share in the lives and experiences of other life forms, all without leaving the comfort of their own planet. It ensures a safe and full cultural exchange.”

  “Basically, you’re thought merchants. People can live out a waking dream, pretending to be someone else for a while.”

  “Yes. However, on rare occasions, random patterns of cognitive distortions group together with the system’s framework, become self-aware, and escape. That’s what happened in your case.”

  The ghost in the machine, he mused. “Cognitive distortions?”

  “When we acquire a body of thought, we take a digital imprint of the subject’s mind. We absorb it en masse and store it in the Neural Nexus. The Great Loti then sifts through the memory patterns, weeding out the unstable thoughts and keeping the remainder.”

  Lucas thought about the lightning bolts discharging from the great eye to the top floor of the ship. “Is that what I saw earlier, with Loti? Discharges of negative thoughts?”

  “Yes. That is how Loti rids the Nexus of unwanted memory patterns.”

  Lucas nodded. “Makes sense. You only want the stable thoughts. Something you can sell easily.”

  “Precisely,” she said. “Violent or negative
thoughts can be quite powerful, but problematic. Every living being has a mental filter, like an inner eyelid, that typically controls their sadistic thoughts and impulses. But occasionally when the mental filter of the donor subject is removed from the equation, the more powerful distortions become unstable. Even the Great Loti can’t control them.”

  Lucas thought about the noisy traveler squatting in his head the past few months. He decided not to tell the Baaku that it had been trying to communicate with him. He wasn’t sure how this would play out and certainly didn’t want to give them another reason to penetrate his gray matter.

  “Okay, let me see if I got this straight. . . . A random coalescence, as you call it, moved into the top floor of my brain, and decided to play hide-and-seek until your medical scanner discovered it. Then your machine tried to suck the cognitive distortions out of my head, almost killing me in the process.”

  “Yes, that is accurate,” Flexus replied.

  “I can see how being a thought merchant could be very lucrative. Back home on Earth, people would line up to take a vacation from themselves. Probably pay a fortune, too. Just have to issue a legal disclaimer about the potential side effects. So where’s this coalescence now?”

  “It has been eradicated from your synapses. The scanner may have overreacted with the purging discharge, but it did its job. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.”

  “Inconvenience? Seriously?”

  “Is there another word that better suits the facts?” Alista asked.

  “Probably, but that’s not really important right now. How the hell did this coalescence get inside my head in the first place?”

  “Unknown at this time,” Flexus said, before looking at Alista with an extended gaze.