Arkvar

by Cara Wylde

  Ark sat down beside her, smiled, and reached out to brush a strand of soft, blonde hair behind her ear. When she didn’t flinch or pull away, he knew this was his chance to have a real conversation with her.

  “This is better, Allie, don’t you think?”

  She nodded. She felt like she was under some sort of spell, but she was so tired from having cried and screamed so much that she didn’t have the power to fight him mentally.

  “Now,” continued Ark. “I know you have a lot of questions. Let’s just sit here for a while and talk. I will tell you everything you want to know, and I promise you I will be completely honest with you.”

  Allie closed her eyes, thought for a second, then took a deep breath and let out the first question which had been torturing her ever since she had witnessed what he and his crew had done on the Bridge.

  “Did you destroy Earth?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What do you mean? Yes and no? As I see it, it’s either yes, or no.”

  Ark made himself more comfortable on the bed.

  “It’s a bit more complex than that. Physically, yes, we destroyed Earth as a planet. But on the grand scheme of things, on a non-physical and spiritual plane, we didn’t destroy Terra and the humans living on it. We saved them.”

  Allie’s blue eyes grew wide with disbelief and confusion.

  “On a non-physical, spiritual plane? What are you talking about?”

  “You see, Allie, nothing is actually black or white. The humans of Earth are a very special species, and the rest of the species in the universe care a lot about them and have tried to protect them for thousands and thousands of years. It hasn’t been easy, mind you. We have lost many of our own people, good, strong soldiers who gave their lives to the cause of protecting Terra from those who wanted to destroy it.”

  “I don’t understand.” Allie shook her head. “We were fine before you came. Life was easy. Sure, there were still a couple of poor countries, there were still parts of the world that struggled with limited resources and limited access to education and jobs, but all in all, we were fine. We had the technology to make life easier. We were starting to take better care of the planet by being mindful of global warming and trying to keep it in check. Solar energy, wind energy, electric cars, all the breakthroughs in science and medicine… We were doing great until you came and decided that… what? We weren’t able to take care of ourselves?”

  Ark smiled indulgently.

  “Alison, you have to understand: the fact that you had so much technology wasn’t a good thing. It wasn’t the right direction for you. Look around you. Just look at this room and truly see it.”

  Allie let her eyes roam over the walls. She studied the ceiling, the window, the bed, and the door on the other side of the room.

  “It’s empty,” she said. “No furniture, not even a table. Only your chair, and…” she hesitated. “The chair is gone. Where did it go? Did you…? Never mind.”

  “No, no, your observations are correct. The room is empty, the chair is gone, and the only thing left here is the bed. Do you know why?”

  Allie furrowed her brows in concentration.

  “Because we need it?”

  Ark’s entire face lit up with joy and excitement. Finally, she was starting to get it. For the first time, he felt like they were close to making a breakthrough, and she was willing to try and meet him half way. Soon, if everything went well, Ark and Alison might find themselves on the same page.

  “Exactly,” he exclaimed. “Because we need it.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry, but even though it makes sense, I’m not sure I’m following you.”

  He readjusted his position so he would look straight into her eyes. He was so close to her now that he could almost smell the rose-scented shampoo she had used back on Earth, and the subtle tone of the exotic perfume she had sprayed behind her earlobes many Terran hours ago. The unexpected closeness made his stomach flip for a second, and Ark found himself taking a deep breath to control the way his body reacted to hers.

  “My race, the Unxendi, doesn’t need technology as you do. I mean, we need some of it now because we are in these physical bodies, but when we’re not trapped inside these biological machines, we are free, and we don’t need anything material to live our lives to the fullest. While inside a physical body, it is a bit more difficult to use our natural abilities, but not impossible. It just takes a little more concentration than usual. We can still use telepathy to some extent, and we can travel in ways your human mind cannot even comprehend now. We can also manifest most of the things we need, just like I manifested the chair, so I could sit in it and wait for you to wake up.”

  Allie chuckled. She was so dumbfounded by what he was telling her that she didn’t even realize she had allowed him to enter her personal space. Deep down, she was still afraid of him, but right now, she was so focused on trying to wrap her mind around the information he was dumping on her that she didn’t even care for her own safety.

  “Wait a second. You, the Unxendi, can manifest things? Material things?”

  “Not just material things. We can manifest whatever we want, but not as easily as when we don’t have physical bodies.”

  “So, this might sound silly,” said Allie, “but humor me. Does this mean you’re free to choose whether you have a physical body or not?”

  Ark shrugged.

  “Yes and no. We can leave our physical bodies in certain circumstances, but not for long. It’s like when you leave yours when you’re dreaming, but you have to come back because your physical body cannot sustain itself for too long without your spirit being there. If we want to leave them permanently, then we have to die physically, and then if we want to come back to this material reality for whatever reason, we reincarnate in another physical body.”

  Allie opened her mouth to say something, but changed her mind at the last moment. She cleared her throat and took another couple of seconds to put her thoughts in order.

  “I must admit this is not the first time I hear this sort of theory,” she eventually said. “What you’re saying sounds like some belief systems we had on Earth. I mean, some people had them, not me specifically. Many people I knew believed in reincarnation, past lives, and I think I even read some books about this concept that we are much more than our physical body. I can’t remember exactly, to be honest. It was in high school. But what you’re telling me right now is at a whole different level. What I understand is that you can die whenever you want. Have you ever died before, Ark?”

  He smiled and nodded slowly. “Yes. This is not the first physical body I’ve ever had. I died at least a couple of dozen times before.”

  “Oh my God,” Allie whispered. “You’re not joking, are you?”

  “Do you think I’m joking?”

  “N-no.”

  “Having a physical body is not easy,” he continued. “It requires a lot of maintenance, a lot of attention and time to keep it in perfect shape. I think the greatest challenge is to keep it fit and healthy. It’s also very dense. I’m not sure how to explain this part to you, but… imagine that when you’re not trapped in a physical form and a material reality, you can move at whatever speed you want, you don’t need food or water to sustain you, you don’t need sleep, and there are no limits when it comes to interacting with everything and everyone around you. As a spirit, you are light, and everything is easy and comes naturally. Time and space impose no boundaries on you. You can see and know everything, and you can be in any place you want the second you think it. When you are in a physical body, however, you feel so dense and heavy, and disconnected from your true nature, and things don’t come as easily to you.”

  Allie motioned for him to stop for a second. She stood up, smoothed down her red dress, rounded the bed and started pacing the room. She happily noticed that the living scarf around her shoulders and arms had apparently given up on the idea of squeezing her to death.

  “No
t a scarf,” she corrected herself mentally. “A Kidem. A familiar. My Kidem.”

  She walked back and forth for a couple of minutes, lost in deep thought. When she felt ready, she turned to Ark. Looking at him from that angle wasn’t bad. She noticed he was just as handsome as the first time she’d seen him, back when his skin wasn’t blue. In his human disguise, he had looked like Christian Bale, and if she studied his features carefully, she could still see some kind of resemblance.

  “So, you, the Unxendi, can die and reincarnate over and over, as you please.”

  Ark stood up and shoved his hands into the pockets of his black uniform. He gave her a playful, mysterious smile, as if to suggest things were even more mind-blowing than that.

  “Actually, Alison, everyone can do it. All the races in this infinite universe can do it. We’re only separated into races when we take on a physical form, but when we’re free spirits, there are no differences between us.”

  “There are more alien races,” she said, “not just the Unxendi.”

  “No, what I’m trying to say is that every spirit can reincarnate, die, and reincarnate, and then die again, over and over, according to what suits their purpose at any given time. And that includes you, humans.”

  Allie stared at him for a moment, then burst out into laughter.

  “No. I don’t believe that. I mean, look at me: here I am, having no clue about how to do it.”

  “You have no clue now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it. You just have to expand, gain experience, and learn. Essentially, Allie, you, and all the humans like you, are just like me and all the other races in the universe, and all the other spirits that don’t currently have a physical body.”

  “You say we are no different, but we are different. If I am to believe you, then it means that you can die right now and live only as a spirit in some sort of non-physical, non-material plane.”

  “True,” Ark agreed.

  “Right. And I can’t do that. I’m not even sure I want to think about dying. The idea makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Okay, if you want me to say that there is a difference between us, then here it is: we are more evolved than you, in the sense that we are perfectly in touch with our real nature. We know exactly who we are and what we can do. Humans, on the other hand, have forgotten these things. The whole point of reincarnating on Earth over and over again is for you to remember who you truly are and what you can do if you allow yourselves.”

  “Alright, alright.” Allie started waving frantically as if to make him stop and give her a break. “If that’s true, and we need to live a thousand lives to reach your level of evolution, then why did you destroy our planet?”

  “That’s a good question, I’ll give you that, but it’s not an easy one. I don’t know whether I can give you a satisfactory answer, but I’ll do my best. Unfortunately, and it wasn’t entirely your fault, you were moving in the wrong direction. Instead of going toward spirituality and unity, you took the path of technology and separation. Instead of focusing on freedom and the concepts of other levels of consciousness, other dimensions, or realms, – however you want to name them, – you were constantly distracted by everything material. I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. It’s just how you, as a race, chose to experience the human, material life and learn from it. However, it was a very slow process. It was so slow that it gave some beings, so to speak, the opportunity to intervene countless times and make things even more difficult, for their own gain.”

  “Beings? What sort of beings? This is so confusing…”

  “The Anunna. You might have heard of them, you might have not.”

  Allie shook her head.

  “Since they discovered your planet, about 450,000 Terran years ago, they have tried countless times to take advantage of your species. For a while, they succeeded, but then the Galactic High Council of Seven and the Gaea Alliance began making things increasingly difficult for them. It didn’t stop them. The Anunna simply got smarter and subtler in their manipulation. The Council and the Alliance have been protecting you for so long that I can’t even remember. Lately, however, the psychic and energetic attacks on your race have been so intense that protecting your planet from the Anunna just no longer felt sustainable. Given its position in your galaxy, Earth has always been an easy target. This particular side of the universe in which you live… in which you used to live… is well populated, and not all of your neighbors have your best interests at heart. So, unfortunately, the best option was to destroy the planet and force everyone on it to take their spirit form, whether they were ready or not.”

  “They’re not dead,” Allie concluded.

  “No, they’re not dead.”

  “Have they reincarnated?”

  Ark sighed and looked away. As he was telling her these things, it was becoming harder and harder for him to hold her gaze.

  “No, not yet,” he said. “But they will, one by one, when they are ready.”

  “Where? Where will they reincarnate?”

  “Somewhere far, far away from your galaxy and all the ones who want to harm you. The Council has already chosen a planet which is suitable to become the New Earth, and soon, when the humans of Old Earth are ready, they will start populating it. Basically, we did destroy your planet and killed everyone on it from a strictly physical, material point of view, but from a non-physical point of view, we wiped out the old and ensured that humans have a second chance at real evolution. Once they all reincarnate on New Terra, hopefully, they will make other choices and move in the right direction this time, speeding up the process.”

  Allie started pacing again. She used her long, thin fingers to comb through her hair, but it was more because she needed to do something with her hands to distract herself than the fact that she needed a shower, a hairbrush, and new, clean clothes.

  “This is insane,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “This is a whole new level of insane.”

  “Ask me anything you want,” he encouraged her. “I will try to answer as clearly as I can.”

  “No, no you’ve already given me a headache. I don’t have any more questions.” She did, in fact. What was the Galactic High Council of Seven? What was the Gaea Alliance? On the one hand, she needed answers. On the other hand, she was afraid of getting them. “Okay, maybe just one.”

  Ark smiled, hope and enthusiasm shining in his dark blue eyes. They were making real progress, and if he was to be honest with himself, Allie’s capacity of understanding the concepts and ideas he had just dumped on her head was astonishing. It was way beyond anything any other human on Old Earth would have probably been capable of. That helped him relax for the first time since he’d returned to The Hesperia with Thivo. He hadn’t been wrong about her. Alison Page was, indeed, special.

  She took a couple of steps toward him and fixed him with a serious, intense gaze.

  “Why did you bring me here, Ark? If what you really did was not kill my race, but save it and give it a second chance at evolution, then why didn’t you leave me there?”

  “Oh,” he murmured. “That’s an even more difficult question. I… I don’t know. I saw you walk out of that bookstore, and I guess I felt something. Your thoughts were louder than the thoughts of anyone on that street, and anyone in the entire city, for that matter. I think that was what drew my attention to you. And then, when I approached you and we exchanged those few words, I realized you could understand me.”

  “Understand you?”

  “No, not like that. You could understand my language.”

  “What do you mean your language? You spoke English.”

  Ark laughed wholeheartedly. It took him a couple of minutes to regain control of his breath, and by the time he stopped and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, Allie was frowning at him and tapping her bare foot impatiently.

  “No, Alison, the Unxendi don’t speak English. In fact, every race in the universe has its own language. The o
nly reason why we understand each other and communicate perfectly is that we do it at another level. It’s like we don’t speak the same language, yet we do. And that moment when you didn’t only understand me, but you also answered me in my language and not in English, was the moment when I knew there was something about you. And I just couldn’t let you have the same fate as the other people of your race.”

  “Ark, I speak English. I am speaking English right now.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said chuckling. “You only speak English in the presence of other people who speak it, but when you’re with me or with Shirin, or with any other Unxendi, you actually speak our language even though you’re not aware of it.”

  Allie crossed her arms over her generous chest and cleared her throat a couple of times. She thought long and hard about it, but eventually had to give up and simply accept the fact that this whole thing about speaking an alien language without being conscious about it was beyond her.

  “So, you’re saying you brought me to your spaceship because I could understand and speak your language, which means that I’m not entirely human?”

  “No, no, no. You got it all wrong. You are one hundred percent human, but all these little facts about you convinced me that you’re much more evolved than the rest of your kind. That is why I couldn’t leave you there.”

  “Okay,” she smiled.

  At his point, Allie was taking everything Ark said with at least a grain of salt. She didn’t know if she believed him, or if she wanted to believe him, and the only way she could deal with the situation was to promise herself to think about it and decide later.