Primal Estate: The Candidate Species

by Samuel Franklin

  “Yes, that was an amusing story.”

  “That was an exciting time.” Streyn missed it.

  “You told me just last week.”

  “Yes,” Streyn realized, feeling a little silly. “For me the incident was years ago.”

  “We’ll have to record our observations of the Algorithm’s quirks and assure there are notifications for future runs.” Synster paused. “So now we have massive populations in developing countries that would have otherwise yielded little. Now one out of every three at harvest age has the correct body mass index for our quotas. And, for the most part, they haven’t been medicated yet. I’ve reviewed some of the information generated by Earth media. You know what they’re attributing the weight gain to in third world regions?”

  “With meat and fat being the most expensive foods available, please don’t say meat and fat.” Streyn winced.

  “Meat and fat!” parroted Synster. “It’s amazing. Borlaug made wheat cheap and easy for them to grow. They even called it the ‘Green Revolution’. They lauded him for saving millions, if not billions, of lives. They gave him the Nobel Peace Prize for providing the world with grain. And when those millions of people augment their traditional diets with flour, what do they think is making them obese? The two major groups that don’t cause obesity, meat and fat!” laughed Synster.

  “You know,” Streyn suggested. “I’ve had my concerns about these humans being too clever, but I don’t think I have much to worry about.”

  “We shouldn’t let those in the third world live too much longer, should we, Streyn?” Synster grinned at him. “Otherwise, all the profit will go to Earth’s drug companies and not to us! We’ll have to triple our efforts in these affected nations.”

  “Already working on it,” Streyn assured.

  Chapter 17

  Tony’s Purpose

  Tony woke quickly from a deep sleep. He’d been up almost all night crossing the entire canyon after walking Rick back to his Jeep.

  He was a very different man. Yesterday morning he’d been contemplating the evils of his government socializing medicine, conducting surveillance on its citizens, and possibly assassinating them. Now he was friends with a fed in the very organization he most vilified. Yesterday he’d been plotting against the forces that threatened his Constitution, and now he was plotting against the forces that threatened his planet. Tony didn’t consider for a moment that it could all just be a bad dream. He’d spent too much time all yesterday afternoon waiting for something to happen after Rick disappeared. When Rick returned, it was clear confirmation of everything he’d been suspecting.

  Tony slowly pulled himself to the side of his bed and sat up. Out the French doors of his bedroom, he could see across hundreds of acres of clearly lit desert scrub. He had three hundred acres along with the house that his father had left him when he died. He’d moved to Mancos two years ago, knowing he would never need to work again, as long as he managed his money well.

  His long-time girlfriend from New Jersey refused to come with him, but he decided to leave anyway. His job in Jersey wasn’t going anywhere, and he wanted to experience life in the West and enjoy his father’s house. At thirty-six, he felt like he might be getting a little old and probably shouldn’t be alone. But he was working on that, still trying to get his girlfriend, Rachel, to move out. He was even thinking of proposing.

  Tony stood, stretched, and ambled to the kitchen where a cup of coffee was waiting in the machine. He only got one swallow down before the phone rang, and he answered before the second, “Yello.”

  “Mr. Carrian, I want to talk to you about our agreement. I don’t like the way things are going. Did you get anything this week?”

  “Aw shit, lady, what the hell are you doing calling me this early in the morning?” Tony asked.

  “It’s two in the afternoon!”

  “Oh, I guess it is.” Tony glanced at the clock for the first time since he awoke. “Still, I told you I’d call you if I had anything. And I don’t have anything.”

  “I have an appointment with Government Health Services in a week, and I need something!”

  “Well I don’t have anything, and you know what?” Tony grew irritated and considered his new relationship with Rick. “I don’t think this is going to work out.”

  “What do you mean, won’t work out? We have a deal!” she screeched.

  “Yeah, well, the deal isn’t working,” Tony countered.

  “Well, you’d better make it work because the cops might be interested in your antigovernment activities, not to mention the fact you’ve been spying on the NSA.”

  “Hey, hey, hey…Listen Sarah, you give me one tip about him being…you know what, with promises of more if I do my part, and you come up with nothing. The deal isn’t working out. Besides, the way you’ve been dealing with me, I’m starting to think you’re full of shit.”

  “Mr. Carrian,” Sarah said in a suddenly calm voice, “when I get off the phone with you, my next call is going to be to the Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office. I’m going to tell them that you told me you have automatic weapons, and that you’ve been conducting surveillance on one of their citizens without any authority to do so.”

  “Listen, lady, I didn’t tell you anything about weapons, and don’t threaten me!” Tony found himself getting angry very quickly. Calm down Tony, he thought. Just get rid of her. He took a deep breath. “Listen, I’ll tell you what I have so far, and we end this thing, okay?

  “No. I won’t agree to that. You tell me what you have first, and then I’ll decide whether or not we end it. You owe me. So far, I’ve got nothing.”

  “Well, I don’t think there is anything to know. Rick lives a pretty clean life, he seems to care well for Carson, and he hasn’t seen his girlfriend in months. Now I’ve got just one bit of detailed information on him, and I’m not going to give it to you unless you swear to leave me alone.”

  “Okay, I swear,” Sarah lied, desperate for some dirt on Rick. “But if you screw with me, I’m going to screw back.”

  “Whatever.” This lie needs to be good Tony thought… “Yesterday morning I went to my favorite breakfast place, and I’m sitting there at the counter. Rick walks in and sits right next to me. Next thing I know we’re talking about the weather, some local issues, and he starts telling me about his son. So I see this as an opportunity to get some good intel for you. I lead the conversation a little, and he starts telling me about his cancer and how he’s doing well. So I fake like I’m acting surprised and he agrees with me, you know, regarding the trouble getting appointments and rationing and all that, and tells me that although it’s a pain in the ass, he’s doing what the government is telling him to do. So I’m like, you mean waiting for appointments? And he says, no, he means doing all the treatment.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “So what was he having for breakfast?”

  “What do you mean what was he having for breakfast? I don’t remember what he was having for breakfast.”

  “So you sat there next to him, having breakfast, and you have no idea what he was having for breakfast.”

  “I don’t know…pancakes. I think he was having pancakes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. It was pancakes.”

  “Bullshit! Rick would never eat pancakes!”

  Tony heard a couple smashing sounds on the other end of the line and then a dial tone. She’d hung up, and she sounded really pissed. Shit. She said her next call would be to the sheriff.

  Tony started to panic and thought of the three fully automatic rifles he had in his house, the case of C4 explosive he’d lifted while in the Army, and his two grenades. He knew he’d never told Sarah about them, but that didn’t matter. She didn’t know he had them, but she was going to report him just to make trouble. He tried to think about what probable cause for a search warrant would be, and wondered how long it would take the sheriff to get one.

  Rick had
given him his phone number last night, to be used only in case of a dire emergency, and Tony decided this was one. He couldn’t have his weapons or explosives taken. They might need them to fight the aliens. And he wasn’t going to prison. He wouldn’t say anything about the aliens while on the line; this didn’t concern them. He justified making the call.

  Rick hung up the phone from his call with Tony and couldn’t understand why the world was conspiring against him. He’d just spent the last hour trying to calm Tony down while the man ran around the house trying to find a spot to hide his guns. Aliens were going to harvest the human population, his wife was conducting a covert op to undermine his custody of Carson, and his new domestic terrorist partner was panicking that the Sheriff was going to hit his house any minute. Life had taken a turn to the absurd.

  Rick thought it very unlikely that Sarah would call anyone. She was always making threats she didn’t keep. The stress from his new interplanetary duties, frustration with Carson’s situation, and anger with his ex-wife were all brewing inside him. He needed relief. Rick drank and posted to his website for the rest of the day, which is never a good combination, and went to bed early. Maybe he’d wake the next morning to find it had all been a nightmare.

  It took about five hours for Tony to calm down. Rick had tried to reason with him. Meanwhile, he’d found a pair of sunglasses, a set of keys, one sock, and two gift cards he’d lost. Simultaneously, he’d located some really great hiding places for his contraband, places he’d never even thought of before. He was amazed how fear had focused his creativity for locating remote crevasses of his home, and secreting weapons in their spaces.

  Once calm, he considered the task ahead, putting his army together. He immediately thought of three like-minded friends that he knew were reliable. Others, he would have more difficulty choosing. He went to his email and began filtering through contacts to get a feel for who might be right. He needed recruits to be unwitting soldiers for a cause no one knew existed. He scheduled training at their local range and even went for a drive to some public land, to check to see if it had potential for additional training. It took his mind off the horrors of what the future might hold.

  Chapter 18

  TRial by oRdeal

  Rick stood before Synster and almost shit himself. He’d spent his Sunday morning in idle thought, waiting for something. He’d wanted to arrive at some profound conclusion about his place in life, discover something that might aid him in his survival. He didn’t want to have to deal with work and hadn’t taken leave for about eight months. He needed time to think. He’d just completed some major projects and had already spoken to his supervisor about taking some time off. Nothing new had been assigned to him so he phoned his boss in Denver at home, apologized for the Sunday call, and told him he’d like to “take the next two weeks off, if that is at all possible.”

  After checking schedules, his boss gave him a disgruntled “no problem” but “give me more notice next time.” It was a good thing he’d made the call because Rick now had secondary employment.

  Carson had left to meet his friends then go to a movie after. Rick had been home alone for about five minutes. He was about to sit down to watch a movie when his eyes went dark. He was back on the Provenger Ship.

  Synster immediately noticed him shaking and thought it sufficient. “Did we frighten you?” It was good practice to make Rick think he could be snatched at any moment. It made this human think the Provenger were virtually all-powerful, and that was something that Synster needed.

  “It’s been a rough weekend, and I was about to sit down and relax.” Rick’s fear began to turn to annoyance and then to anger. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing zapping me out of my own home?” Rick wanted to scream at Synster. But he didn’t. Instead, he said, “I think we need to plan these visits better. My son could have seen me vanish.”

  “No, we saw him leave your house. But I will give you this.” Synster tossed Rick a small object, and Rick immediately and deftly stepped to the side, allowing the object to sail right by him with a good two feet of clearance from his body. Synster laughed as it skipped across the floor.

  After Rick got his heart out of what felt like his right lung, he also laughed, nervously. Then he stopped but forced a smile. He thought, Oh, isn’t this nice. Earthling Rick and alien Synster share a little laugh together! Rick really wanted to kill him.

  “Not this time Rick. That was a device that will enable you to signal me. It will only do two things. It will signal me to come to you. I may or may not, depending. And it will signal me that you want to come to the ship. Be aware that the intent of your subsequent actions are being monitored by your tag and will warn me if you have anything but our interests in mind.” Synster bluffed. The tag didn’t have that capability. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” Rick mustered all the courage he had, walked over to the thumb-drive sized device and picked it up off the floor. “Where does it go?”

  “Put it near your tag, and it will find its way in,” Synster replied.

  While Rick really didn’t want to do this, he definitely wanted to feel he might have some kind of control over when and where he’d get zapped across the solar system. He moved it toward the tag, and when it was about an inch away it leapt at the tag and imbedded itself. The tag still looked like a watch; it even kept time. “When do I get this thing off?” Rick asked. His sensation of hatred and fear of it were almost overwhelming.

  “When I am reasonably assured you are invested in our relationship to work together to save your species from Managed Collectivization.”

  “I am committed to that. Can’t you hook me up to a polygraph or something, to test me…that I’m committed?”

  Synster was enjoying watching him squirm. He knew that the longer Rick felt this anxiety about getting the tag off, the more grateful he’d be when it was finally removed. By that time, he would already have been convinced. “Soon.”

  Rick was still breathing heavily from his surprise transport but was starting to calm. It had made a big impression on him. To think that he could be removed from anywhere at any moment, that they could see anyone come or go from his house, and that he had the power over immediate life or death, or worse yet, pain; this was terror.

  He did have one angle so far. Rick had information from his first visit that the threshold cloak mechanism they used might not work reliably when a tag was around. He’d been clued into that when that gorgeous hunk of flesh called Synster’s daughter had come into the office. If that was the case, as long as he had this tag around, he might be able to detect a cloaked Provenger inside his home.

  Rick couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  “Now, we have some business to do. As you can see, we have the ability to bring you here at any moment we desire,” bragged Synster. He then thought, If Rick only knew how much of my budget was blown by this little transport stunt, he’d know we could never do this again.

  A regular transport wasn’t that expensive, but not so with a surveillance assisted transport. It required a number of Provenger scanners diverted from other duties outside of the pre-established cloak mechanism, with improvised cloak modifications to prevent them from being detected, in just the right locations to obtain the necessary information. That all required a huge amount of energy, which necessitated a special request from the committee along with the accompanying fees. The resources and energy for the request needed to be diverted from the general fund, which took resources from each individual Provenger’s recreation energy and transport allotments. Synster’s first trip to abduct Rick consumed eight percent of his project’s energy budget. Creating the standing wave gravitational cocoon and moving the space was what consumed the most energy during any transport. What weight or volume it involved, within reason, had little bearing. But good surveillance and counter surveillance was expensive.

  “We need to know you are still committed to saving your world from Managed Collectivization. We have a twofold test to a
ssess your loyalty. Keep in mind, I am currently monitoring your emotions. The amount of stress that you feel while providing us with our proofs will determine whether or not you are cooperative. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” Rick’s heart raced. A dread began to overwhelm him even as he began to realize now was the time he had to be his best. This bastard was going to ask him to do something, and he was going to have to say he’d do it and mean it. And perhaps, he would have to do it immediately. How committed am I? Then it happened.