by SK Benton
"You have done amazing things, Max. You were top of your class in the university, you were always honest and driven, and furthermore, you helped - no - you invented the technology around which the SSCC program revolves. Have you ever asked yourself just how you were able to achieve such things? Furthermore, why it is that you can sleep with only one eye shut, or why under stress you show incredible strength? How is it that you had the courage to put your life at risk and test your invention, coming all the way to a nearly-uninhabited planet with no previous knowledge that it would have even been here in the first place?"
"I ask myself a lot of questions, old man," responded Max. "Questions like, if I am insane and talking to an apparition of an old warrior that doesn't actually exist. Or maybe I am dead and I'm in Hell. Did I even survive the journey from Azul? Crap, anyway, being as I'm speaking to a ghost - what's your name?"
The man smiled softly, and then lifted the pipe to his mouth. Putting his forefinger to the bowl, a flame came out just below the fingernail as he puffed away, procuring light clouds of smoke and creating a pungent aroma at the same time.
"Cool trick," thought Max.
"My name is Draagh, although I have been known by many titles. I am the first of my line, one of the Prīmulī, and if you look at time in a linear fashion, I have been in existence for eons more than anyone can even count. I have seen the beginning of the current universe, of this galaxy, and many others. I saw the Exodus to Azul and I saw the fall of Earth. I have travelled to the furthest reaches of space, not limited even to this, what you call the Visible Universe. I have seen the rise and fall of magnificent empires, and some not so magnificent. I am an observer and a corrector, a teacher and a companion - and might I say, I really do think the stars are beautiful at night?"
Max gave Draagh an incredulous look, and then noticed he was still holding the bottle of Glenfiddich in his left hand. Looking back at Draagh he said, "OK, so you are super old, have seen a lot of stuff and you saw the fall of… whoa, wait… you know what happened here?"
Draagh gained a whimsical expression, his blue eyes twinkling in the firelight. Taking a small puff off his pipe, he lightly cleared his throat and said, "Yes, the fall of Earth. Quite tragic, really, but it could not have been avoided. No, no, no. That was a certainty. The only reason you stand here today is because one of your ancestors took a job with a certain corporation, and then ended up on an Exodus barge. In fact, if he would have gone out to coffee with a certain girl he fancied he would have left his phone at home, by accident of course. Then he would not have answered when a call came in for him to look into a particular job."
"A job? Where?" asked Max.
"At a bar in the city of Pasadena, California."
"Huh?" mumbled Max, unable to make a connection between a bar and being on an Exodus barge.
"My son, all things are interrelated. If your ancestor had not taken that job as a bartender, that is, one who prepares alcoholic beverages for guests, he would have never worked the happy hour shift and befriended a top executive at a particular company - a company, by the way, that was eventually purchased by a major corporation in the consortium that eventually developed the fleet of barges. Once this man's company was purchased, there was need for a senior level computer ops manager, and as your ancestor was educated in this discipline, he obtained the job, thereby unknowingly securing his passage on a barge during the Exodus. Isn't it funny how one thing leads to another, and then to another?"
Max nodded, interested, but still skeptical. "Alright, so I had an ancestor who somehow made it onto a barge, but what happened to the girl he was going to meet for coffee?"
Draagh squinted his left eye, as if in concentration.
"Hmmm, it seems to me that she was the one who had cancelled the coffee date, as her ex-boyfriend was pining for her to return and she gave in to his supplications. They married and had seven children, all of whom grew up to be spectacularly stupid criminals. So this young man, your ancestor, eventually married with a particularly beautiful woman, once they had emigrated to Azul. Of course, that is simply your mother's side of the family - your father's is a completely different issue. Smart people, they all were. On the bright side of things, you had no living ancestors on Earth when the invasion occurred. Oh, I did mention the invasion, did I not?"
"The fall of Earth is what you said. What happened here? I went to Lima and there was practically no life, and absolutely no sign of human remains. It's impossible that they would have disintegrated after only a few hundred years, even exposed to the elements. I mean, my instruments would have picked up massive residual DNA at the very least."
Draagh nodded his head in the affirmative while saying, "Yes, my son. It was quite tragic - quite tragic, indeed. Not a trace left - invaders of a really nasty sort. They were looking for particular natural resources, as are most invaders. Earth forces did not take kindly to an alien race simply showing up, uninvited. The invaders attacked, and a war ensued."
"Hmmm… a war? What do you mean?" Max asked excitedly. He was starting to get interested.
"Oh the war! Brilliant! Mankind at its finest! All nations came together, leaving behind all of their old prejudices. They simply fought for survival against the threat of the invaders. The Vrol, that's what they are called - the Vrol. Virulent creatures, they are. Much like intergalactic insects, with no individuality. So, eventually coming together, Earth forces had practically destroyed the Vrol, despite its advanced technology. Pure grit, I must say," said Draagh while displaying a bright expression, his eyes momentarily growing big, as he proceeded to reload his pipe. "So the last thing the Vrol could do was to try and decimate the entire population of the Earth, and they did so - out of spite. They did this with a particularly horrific piece of biological warfare. They polluted the entire water supply of the planet with a genetically-engineered amoeba. Unfortunately, this amoeba penetrated on contact with the skin or mucous membranes. Everyone perished; all perished with horrible, painful deaths. The transmission vectors were all over the planet - drinking water, in the shower, swimming pools, and lawn sprinklers - anywhere. The amoebas simply consumed all organic tissues, with an extreme fondness for calcium, hence - no bones! Anywhere!"
Max shuddered as he imagined dying slowly and painfully, watching as his bones dissolved while he was still alive.
"So, what you are saying is that there are no humans left on Earth? That it is basically a dead planet?" asked Max.
"No!" exclaimed Draagh. "Life always continues, my son, always. Life cannot be stopped. It may take centuries, or even eons, but life always manages to forge on ahead. Yes, yes it does. In fact, there are nomadic tribes of humans running about in areas where the infection could not be implemented. As the amoeba could not travel up into the atmosphere when the water evaporated, that same water went up and formed clouds. Clouds of pure, unadulterated water, and those clouds created rainfall that collected in places where there was no contamination! This was true especially in the higher altitudes. Of course, there were some smart humans who waited until the amoeba lifecycle ran its course, simply subsiding on bottled water products and anything else that had been sealed before the infection. Speaking of sealed, that whisky is perfectly fine, as I stated earlier. Would you mind sharing a bit with me? It has been so long since I tasted a fine single malt."
Max looked at Draagh with a quizzical expression and simply shrugged, saying, "Sure, I guess, but are you certain that it's ok to drink?"
Draagh pointed to Max's backpack, wearing a slight grin as he did so. "If you do not believe me, drop one of your little devices in it and perform an analysis. I do imagine you detected fossilized amoebas when you checked the area around Lima, did you not?"
"Yes, in fact I did. The computer couldn't identify them, but it said they were inactive, or even dead."
"Just so you know," said Draagh, "that whisky was bottled before the invasion. It is fine, so let us make a toast to a new friendship. I am sure we have much more to discuss before
we depart."
Max pulled two sterile cups from his pack and filled them with the golden liquid, handing one to Draagh before returning to his seat on the log, as he had been standing during the strange man's entire string of monologues.
He thought he heard Draagh say depart, but let it waft to the back of his mind, interested in hearing more strange tales. In the worst-case scenario, he was dead and in Hell. In any other scenario it was completely up for grabs as to what had happened. He could be laying somewhere, sick, dying and simply having a magnificent hallucination, or he could really be sitting with an old man - who looked like a badass Viking - and was smoking a pipe.
Whatever.
The two sat back, sipping on delicious single malt whisky hundreds of years old, while looking up at the stars. Draagh again filled his pipe and puffed away, with Max noticing that the smoke made him feel quite relaxed.
"Hey, Draagh, what are you smoking? It's not tobacco, is it?"
Draagh snickered and almost coughed, but held back. "My son, this is an exotic herb that actually originated here on Earth. I believe its scientific name was cannabis sativa. It is quite relaxing. Would you like a puff?" Draagh went to hand the pipe to Max, who went to reach over, until a look of realization washed over his face.
"Whaaa? You're smoking pot? Oh. My. God! I never smelled it before, but we have it on Azul. I can't believe it. You're smoking weed. Man, this is weird."
Draagh waved his hands in the air, half snickering and half coughing, clearing away the ambient smoke floating around his head. "Oh no, no, no, my son. It doesn't affect me like it would a human. My system is much more resilient. In fact, my genome has roughly 127 billion base pairs, compared to a normal human's 3 billion. We are quite complex. Yes, quite, I must say."
Max had no desire to smoke any weed, and started to feel the scotch working in his belly. He always loved that initial warm sensation, consequently followed by a delicious dulling of the mind. He poured more Glenfiddich into their cups, filling them to the brim. Taking a more comfortable position on the ground and leaning back against his log, Max was far more relaxed and accepting of this odd turn of events, and the whisky was certainly helping. He had escaped Azul, successfully tested the hook drive, and arrived at Earth. Then he had investigated a major city commercial area, gone to Machu Picchu, and then strangely made a new friend who popped up out of nowhere. He knew that Federation forces were on their way to get him, but he had another couple of days at least, and if this Draagh fellow had popped up out of nowhere, perhaps he could help in getting him to a safer location.
"Draagh, I have a question. If you knew I was coming here, and you knew all about my life, then you probably know who's coming after me, right?"
Draagh, also relaxing back against a log, nodded his head. "Yes, Max. There are coming. They will reach Sol system, as you call it, by tomorrow afternoon, and then need another day to get into orbit around Earth. Why do you ask?"
Max shot him a look of spite. "Wait, you know this, and yet you sit here hitting on a pipe and drinking whisky? I really need to make some plans, because there is no way I can go back without showing some sort of success on this trip. It was an incredible risk I took in the first place. Hey! Can you tell me where the surviving humans are? Maybe I can go there."
Draagh shook his head side to side, looking down slightly. "No my son. There is no need. We can stay right here. Do not worry, my son. No, no, no. There is nothing to worry about at all. I have a wondrous plan that will all come to fruition quite soon. We are quite safe! Such excitement! This will be most brilliant!" Draagh shot his fist up in the air, almost in a victorious fashion.
Great, thought Max, he's loaded. I'm so screwed.
###
Max woke up to the sounds of birds singing as they jumped from branch to branch in the thick vegetation overhead. His fire had self-extinguished due to lack of attention, but it had only been for effect anyway. His sensor perimeter would have protected him in any case, and the weather in the Urubamba Valley was quite warm, even during the wintertime. Rubbing his eyes, he got up from his blanket and nearly spilling the opened bottle of whisky at his side.
Hmm, what a weird dream.
Staggering over to his ship, he went up the loading ramp and into the cargo hold.
God, I'm gonna need some pain killers.
He knew drinking on an empty stomach was always a bad bet, so he stumbled up to the gallery and pushed for a painkiller cocktail. Taking it out of the dispenser tray he moved across the aisle to his cabin, opened the door, and almost dropped his newly acquired medicine on the floor. There, on his bed, was Draagh, passed out, snoring, partially disrobed, and wearing what appeared to be some sort of cloth diaper.
"Nooooooo!" Max painfully yelled out. "Crap, it wasn't a dream!"
He backed up, tossed the pain med concoction down his throat and bounded up the stairs to the cockpit, sitting in the pilot's chair, trying to get his brain straight with his head in his hands and yelling, "A diaper. Oh my God, he's wearing a diaper! Draagh! Wake up!"
Max started clanging some scrap metal pieces together as Draagh tried to get out of bed, but ended up falling on the gray deck of the cabin. Then, quickly righting himself and dressing, he exited the small room with a slight stumble and a feeble smile.
"Good morning, my son," he said, in his most authoritative voice, "Shall I assist you in preparing to break the fast?"
"Huh?" replied Max as he dropped his scrap pieces, making loud clanging noises. He then stepped into the galley and grabbed some foodstuffs from the refrigerator. "Naw, that's ok. I'll cook up some desa. It's a camping trip, after all. Just a camping trip on a distant planet - where aliens wiped out the majority of humanity, and military forces are coming to kill me. No big deal - I'll cook. Not like it's weird or anything, right? Immortal Viking dude in a diaper?"
Max made a silly face, which was good. It showed he had come to terms with the fact that he was in the company of someone with perhaps the ability to save his hide, if it came down to that. Or at least he believed this to be true. Trotting out the back of the Machu Picchu, he used his Stinger on a low setting and torched some wood, starting the fire up again. He then set a screen over the flames and put down his cast iron skillet. Eggs and jraxon meat - that was on the menu. He didn't have coffee grounds, so they would have to settle for synth'd coffee from the dispenser, but it tasted good anyway.
Sitting on their respective logs, both men ate in silence. Draagh looked no worse for wear, as he ate the hot meal that Max had expertly prepared in a matter of minutes. Once finished, Max took their plates and set them down off to the side, and then looking at Draagh with a stern expression.
"Ok Draagh, can you tell me more? You said something about going somewhere, and I have a feeling that you left a lot out."
Draagh went for his pipe, but then reconsidered. "Max, last night our conversation went all over the place. That was simply normal, as we had met for the first time and you had numerous questions, but now I am going to speak, and I need for you to listen. I need for you to listen, understand and believe everything I am about to tell you. Are you fine with this?"
Max made a deadpan expression and nodded. "Ok, dude, I'm game. Speak away."
"There are many worlds in the universe. Yes, hundreds of trillions of worlds. In these many worlds there have been civilizations that have come and gone - empires that existed long before fish on Earth crawled out of the oceans and took their first breaths of deadly atmosphere. Mankind is not alone in the universe, as you already might have surmised. There indeed is an alien fleet on its way to Azul, and your people are alarmed - for good reason, I might add. Every society needs to do its utmost to protect itself, but time is not linear, nor is it in a loop. It is more like a - how can I put it - a bicycle wheel. Have you seen the wheels of a bicycle?"
"Sure I am," Max said as he nodded. He had bicycles when he was a child, so he was familiar with the concept of spoked wheels.
Draagh waved his ha
nd in the air and conjured a holograph that vaguely resembled a bicycle wheel, but with complex, moving spokes. Max watched intently as animated light from the holograph moved across his face. The old man moved his fingers, causing the wheel to spin around, and then delicately pulled at some of the spokes, bringing it into a zoomed view, in what could have resembled puling individual threads from a silkworm cocoon. Max could actually see things moving along the line –things that resembled chromosomes, as if they were some form of code.
"There is a central hub," Draagh continued, "from which all of the spokes in the wheel emanate. So look at it like this. The Hub is the center of time. The Hub is timeless. Each spoke is a different timeline, but one such as myself can cross into different timelines simultaneously if The Hub is used properly. It takes great skill, with only very few beings who are able to do this. However, I am one of them. I watched you from a faraway place for a very special reason. Do you remember how, when you were young and you went for physical checkups, your doctors always seemed to be aloof or disoriented upon performing your examination – especially if the checkup had anything to do with bloodwork or DNA?"
Max thought about it for a second (unaware that the shadow of an extremely unusual Y chromosome marker fell upon his cheek), and he did remember this happening. He thought it was quite odd, and he also remembered his parents wafting off a bit after some doctor visits.
"Yeah, I remember something like that. I thought they were self-medicating or something." Max snickered a bit and then gave his apt attention to Draagh.
"So, my son. As you do remember this, it had a purpose. I did that to the doctors. Yes, it was necessary - necessary to hide your lineage - your nature and true heritage. Else, you would have been vivisected upon an operating table with no further thought."
