Parallel Extinction (Extinction Encounters Book 1)

by T. R. Stevens

  Dominique’s facsimile voice, as recreated by the AI, was good, but still somewhat plastic. As he discussed the prospect with her, listening to the synthetic sounding responses, his stomach was churning.

  He didn’t doubt that these were Dominique’s own responses, he just hadn’t gotten to the place of complete trust of the thing that was in her. Visions of what it might be like to be devoured by it were irrepressible. He committed himself to the idea that he was just going in to see Dominique. And she would never do that to him…

  He opened the door cautiously, stifling his concerns. She was looking at him, but her eyes were more vacant than he liked. Her lips moved. He had routed the AI output directly to his internal channel, and Dominique’s voice came into his head in the weird monotone of her avatar, matching her lips quite well.

  “It’s okay, Garrison, I’m not going to bite,” she teased.

  Her comedy lightened the mood in the observation room, but he wasn’t able to find the humor, instead, he felt the hair on his neck rise. He forced himself to turn away from her to close the door.

  He felt very vulnerable. No attack came.

  He faced her again and pushed words from his dry throat. “You feel any urge to… eat me?” His throat closed again. He managed a slightly choked breath, waiting. There were a few chuckles from the small audience as they mistook his seriousness for wit.

  “Well, you are rather tasty looking.” Laughter rose from the group this time.

  “Funny.”

  “Sorry.”

  He breathed a tense sigh. “So how do we do this?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? Doctor Comani, you there?”

  “Yes, Signorina Astra,” came his voice from the room speaker.

  “Can you offer any guidance on the next experiment?”

  “I will tell you how it happened with me.” He had been working on his accent. “As I was move to closer and closer to the man first, he was disappearing in my eyes. My arm was to reach to try and touch him, and then he was almost gone, the boy, and then the bambino, and then fetus. He no moved much then.”

  “Uh, okay Doctor, thank you.” Her lack of confidence even bled through the synthetic voice. “What do you think, Garry?” Garrison was similarly at a loss, though he had more at stake.

  He thought about it. “When you were working with the fruit, the regression started and stopped with the motion of your hands, just as the doctor says. Maybe hand proximity is part of it.” Still struggling with trust, he added, “You said that our intentions have been made clear to the Elementals. I’m hoping that they know exactly what we want here. I don’t want to end up like, like what he just described.”

  “Really, Garrison, you can relax.” Without inflection, her assurance was unconvincing.

  He committed. “Let’s get on with it. Just move toward me slowly, one step at a time.”

  She agreed. With each step, they concurred that nothing was changing. As she came within a meter of him he tried not to hold his breath.

  Then there was a strange sensation. “Whoa, stop.” He said it with an edge of fear, and quickly covered, “I feel something. Just give me a second.” It wasn’t the looping déjà vu that the doctor had described; it was a tingling. “Is my face changing?” he asked quickly, concerned that he was regressing as they spoke.

  “No,” Dominique said simply. The doctor said the same.

  “Okay, well I guess I’m just feeling the thing’s influence. Don’t come any closer, okay?”

  “You got it. But that’s the next step, Garry.”

  He didn’t respond immediately. It felt like a life or death moment. A chill passed through him; he visibly shivered. Dominique said nothing, waiting for him to give his assent. As the moment hung, he found that the pause gave him a certain confidence—there was no aggression. Dominique was very close but did seem to be in control. If this was the case, he was in good hands.

  “Do it.”

  He watched her hands come up. The tingling increased for a moment, and… her hands dropped from a raised position. They looked at each other.

  “Something happened,” she said.

  Garrison was processing some confusion as he looked back at her. “What do you mean? I didn’t tell you to do anything yet.” He suddenly found his last reassuring thought cast into doubt.

  It took Dominique by surprise. “I thought… no, you said, ‘Do it.’”

  “What? No, I didn’t?”

  Comani’s voice broke in. “It has worked. Do you see? He has no remembering of that moment he says, ‘Do it’.”

  Garrison turned and looked at Comani, who smiled through the observation window, and then back at Dominique. “I did? I said ‘Do it’? I was going to say that. I just don’t… I mean, I hadn’t said it yet. But I did? Wow, that’s spooky.”

  “I have the record. You did say. You see.”

  “I believe you, Doc. I’m just amazed, that’s all. Wow. Okay, this is good. But I guess that we better not do that again. I don’t think I want to forget anything else.” Finally he smiled wide at Dominique. Her largely immobile features managed to produce a hint of the smile that said she agreed.

  “I’m going to step out of the influence. Garrison, maybe you should leave the room, just as a precaution.”

  He nodded and started to go. Dominique’s voice came from the speaker, more loudly, as if to address a larger audience. “I just want to thank the Elementals, and the ghosts, and whoever else has been watching out for us.”

  He turned back uncomfortably; feeling like he was at the dinner table and his mother had just said Grace. The antiquated word, amen, floated through his mind. “Oh, yeah, uh, thanks you guys,” he awkwardly said to the air.

  Of course, only Dominique and the doctor heard the response, and she conveyed appreciation for the thanks to the rest who attended.

  She had no clear answers to her private questions; no new insights that she could share with those who had lost loved ones.

  No clue as to where the lost Souls resided.

  CHAPTER 96

  EVENT: DAY 50, 1600 UT

  “That’s great, Chris, you’re going to be perfect.”

  Taylor was genuinely excited for the man who had become a friend, instead of a conquest. “I guess this is the Counselor promotion that you’ve wanted? You’ll be able to talk to ghosts, too.”

  Friday had invited her to his station temp-quarters in M&M Slice. She’d ridden up to Toroid Alpha with Garrison a few days early for the big ceremony that was to happen next week. She’d kept in touch with Ensign Friday over the last three weeks, and was happy to see him again.

  His commission had come through: to accompany prisoner Swan out to Rim station; he would remain there to act in the same role as the woman trained by Dominique.

  “Thanks Taylor; it is a promotion—Therapist, actually. It wasn’t what I was expecting but it seems almost as exciting as one of your stunts, huh?”

  “Uh, hmmm… speaking of stunts, Chris, I had this interesting idea I’ve wanted to talk to you about. Do you think that you can give me regular treatments with the… Elemental? I mean, you know, like you’re going to do with your patients?”

  “I don’t know about that, Taylor.”

  He actually did know that there was no possibility. “I think that it’s too early in the program to start treating this phenomenon like a thrill ride. I really should not have compared it to a stunt; it’s a serious business.”

  She wasn’t too disappointed. “I didn’t really think so, Chris. But, hey, maybe I’ll wangle a way to be one of your patients. Just think, being able to stay young.” She had a faraway look as she touched a hand to her face.

  Chris broke the bad news to her, “Well, you are aware that only criminals are going to be regressed, right, TJ?”

  “You don’t think that they’ll put to
gether some sort of rejuvenation clinic?” This time, her disappointment was genuine.

  He laughed, it was so like her. “You’re amazing. I’d have thought that, after your experience, you’d have trouble just talking about the Elementals, let alone being close to one.” She smiled, always pleased to surprise. “You do know that you don’t just get younger, Taylor? You also lose all your memories of your life, from the present to the point you get taken back to.”

  “Hmm. I don’t know… might be worth it.” She cocked her head in a pose of thought as she reviewed. “I could start over with new memories.”

  “The thing is, Taylor, you wouldn’t really enjoy it. You wouldn’t be able to have the point of reference for starting over. We enjoy our lives in a subjective way, after all. We compare one experience to another, whether we realize that we do it or not. That’s how we work. If you got regressed, and someone told you that you had been regressed, which will be against the law, by the way, you would look at the person like they were crazy. All you would remember is your life up to that point, good or bad. You wouldn’t be happy to be younger, you just would be. You would be living your life right from that point forward, with no thought to what you had gained or lost as a result of being regressed. To make matters worse, everybody you knew and loved would be years older than you’d think they ought to be. It would make you crazy.”

  “Fascinating, Chris, tell me more.” She was playfully sarcastic. He knew it. She knew he knew it, but he explained anyway, just because he was so excited about it.

  “Well, it’s because of those kinds of problems that only criminals will be treated. I will be a volunteer host for the Elemental, to allow the action upon the criminals. The Elementals then may consume the person, either nearly completely, or to a point in their life where a critical decision to turn bad was made—we control how far. They might be regressed as far back as the newborn state, or very young anyway, depending on the crime and the individual’s past, or other circumstances. In any case, interviews will be done with the victims and criminals to determine the best point to regress to, and then, interviews at those points will indicate whether further regression is necessary. The near full regression solves some big problems, but creates other logistical ones. It’ll be case by case. We’ll never go back to fetal state again, it’s too close to total consumption, as happened to those who died before they could be saved. Total regression would put the Elementals in the role of executioner—now that they understand the consequences of their actions. This would be seen by the… the… realms beyond human as a true crime against Humanity, since the Soul is lost to another dimension. Or, at least, gone from this one, as I understand it.” He paused for a moment. “I’ve been reading some files from the earliest research; my prisoner/patient’s files, in fact.”

  “Finally, counseling can begin once the regressions are complete; someone who is skilled will be easily able reform him or her. It’s called pre-reforming.”

  Taylor listened with a new patience that had come with the growth she’d achieved in her sessions with Chris Friday. He is so cute when he’s excited.

  When he finished, she said, “Well, it’s safe to say that I’m not going to be one of your patients.” She struck a coy pose, and adopted a deeper, sexy voice. “Unless I’m a really bad girl.” She dilated her pupils and added a gesture from her secret language. The ingrained translation played out in the man’s head, causing him to blush.

  That gave Taylor a rush. “Oh, I got you, I got you.” His blush was something that she had stopped trying to win since the relationship had changed to a tutorial one.

  “I guess we won’t be seeing each other on a professional basis anymore, Chris.” She said it with an air of sadness, and in her inimitable way, she then followed it up with a serious tease. “Just how am I going to get you into bed?” His blush remained. She leaned in to his ear, brushing against him, and whispered, “I still want to fuck you.” She was rewarded with the sound of his breath catching.

  In the intimacy of his quarters, she waited for him to recover, though his face only went to a deeper flush and stayed there. Finally he said, “Taylor, you really are so very, very sexy. Trust me, we’ll have our moment,” and he gave her a smile that was the closest thing to a tease that she seen from him.

  “I’m going to hold you to me… oops,” she feigned embarrassment. “I mean, I’m going to hold you to that promise.”

  CHAPTER 97

  Beyond Time

  Like so many ungoverned events following the order of free thought and will, it was never intended in the Universal order for the Elementals to feed upon the souls of Man. Innocently, and purely by accident, was it discovered that this could be done through a hosting of the human vessel, itself a conduit to this type of energy.

  While humans in any particular incarnated set, like Earth, were nearly as motes of dust in the grander cosmic scale, the set that was Terra’s had acquired a combination of circumstances to allow for the repair of the growing and threatening imbalance, and a way to put a stop to the attacks that occurred, not just in this galaxy, but in others as well. That fact drew the Eye of the Greater Cosmic Consciousness, giving special attention to this set of incarnates.

  The truth of the Elementals’ nature was previously not understood by even the oversouls. They were a known quantity in the higher echelons, a component in the functioning of universal balance.

  Their entanglement with Man—accessing the Akashic record through him—had to be dealt with through Man. This was due to the balancing karmic-law agreements that had been put into place at the outset of the dysfunctional relationship. On some level, above the oversouls of Man, the knowledge of a possible resolution had existed from the beginning. The loss of human souls, the sparks of the divine, had been allowed for the same karmic reason, and for the truth that matter is neither created nor destroyed, and intelligence is one.

  Man began to understand that matter did in fact leave the universe but was not destroyed. Instead, it returned. The mechanisms were provided by the Elementals, as well as black holes and white holes. This flow established the balance of energy, which kept membranes stable enough to effectively zero out the collisions that would result in Big Bang type events.

  Yet, ‘effective zero’ was not an ‘infinite zero’. Nothing maintained a perfect balance forever.

  The knowledge of what these creatures were could now force typically-self-centered humans, in the highest possible authority—secret authorities—to respect the entities. In the creatures’ eternal haunt of the higher material realms, just as human ghosts haunt the material realms of Man, their balance-providing activities helped to sustain the entire fabric of known and unknowable existence for nearly infinite time frames.

  They were an intelligent force of nature, embodying the energies of black holes, not recognizing good or bad, only balance and imbalance…

  The nature of the Elementals is a benign one.

  Yes, it is well… the nature was not clear before the Unity.

  No, and yet a new right resonance is now tangible.

  This helps to fill the hole left by the loss of souls.

  Is it known that they are beyond retrieval?

  If known, the knowledge is far above us and not being given.

  None have been returned yet.

  Possibly in a following eternity.

  A pause.

  The Traveler’s gift is an added element of knowledge… soon or late, it will be understood by our charges.

  Could all of this contribute to an ascension?

  The densest matter is the most adhesive, breaking free is not easy.

  True, but with new, unprecedented knowledge…

  Yes, it is hopeful, yet the warring mentality of mankind remains strong.

  It may be powerful, but the power of knowledge has been shared out… no longer retained by the military entity.

 
Still, above time, the question looms… Why have they lingered in the mire?

  Small steps… Discount not, the sorting at the time of their ‘Obliteration’.

  Yes, many fewer are left to struggle here.

  And those now have a greater truth to embrace.

  Indeed… the ghosts’ manifestation, by and large, was a gift of assistance.

  A considering silence stretched in the non-time of this conversation.

  How will humanity’s particular partnership with the Elementals affect the Akashic record?

  Again, it is beyond even our vision to see a positive…

  Forcing the loss of parts of the record…

  Those in your custody, have you noticed this loss?

  From within, it cannot be seen

  From without, yes, great loss exists

  Yet it has been allowed…

  Controlled by these powerful minds, still quite mired.

  Yes.

  Yet, these forced losses are steadily replaced by subsequent material years lived.

  The questions move beyond even our realm, and yet,

  Our contemplation is also reflected in time and matter…

  Our charges converse of these very things…

  CHAPTER 98

  Now, and On

  “Yes, quite remarkable, really.” He waxed philosophic.

  “Crime in our little corner of the galaxy should shrink to a minor blip on the radar. Of course, we’ll still be the wily creatures that we humans are. Who knows what evil lurks, and all that. But for the most part, and in a very positive manner, we’ll come to a place that future generations will look back on as the beginning of the golden age.”