Startoucher

by C. J. Odle

  Jake floated in empty space, though he had no trouble breathing, and the vacuum did not touch him. Ahead he could see stars clustered together, nebulae forming around him. The universe in all its vastness—for a moment Jake felt he could stretch out to every corner of it…

  “You know you’re dreaming, don’t you?” he told himself, but a different version of him spoke. Another Jake stood a little to the side on the grass of a meadow that reached to the horizon, thick with wildflowers. Another Jake stood next to it, and another, until they stretched as far as the meadow did. At first glance, they appeared identical, but he knew they weren’t. Each was minutely different, a version of him for every second he’d existed. They opened their mouths, speaking with one voice that filled up the world. “You’re dreaming your life, and you need to wake up.”

  Jake looked around again, and the visions began flashing by faster than he could follow. Butterflies skimmed over beds, stealing thoughts from dreamers. People walked below him, their entire lives spread out like a stylized tapestry.

  Jake stood in a maze made from mirrors, reflection after reflection of himself distracting from any hope of finding a way through.

  “Wake up, Jake!”

  The mirrors shattered, the butterflies scattered, the threads of the tapestries snapped. The heartbeat Jake had heard stopped, leaving him in silence, and in that silence, everything rushed in. Everything that was. Everything that had ever been.

  In a single moment, Jake saw it all. Every pulse of life on worlds he never would have imagined existing. Stars spread out to infinity, but Jake felt like he knew each one. Lines of energy stretched between them, in a web with yet more webs beneath it, down to the level of matter and below. Jake felt connected into it, simply because he existed.

  A consciousness shone, impossibly vast, consisting of billions of minds all with their own thoughts, feelings, and desires. Yet Jake felt he could understand this incomprehensible vastness, that it all made sense as naturally as if it had always been a part of his life. He floated in the middle of it, connected to it, one with it. He melted into the web of consciousness, and it flooded through him. He could no more control it than he could the tide. But he didn’t feel helpless. Only that he was exactly where he needed to be.

  Jake slipped in slow motion through the web as he began to return to his body. Then, as smoothly as it had come, the vision faded. With a great inrush of air that it took him a second to recognize as his own breath, Jake woke up one last time.

  He was in a small, bare, and rounded room with luminescent walls. As he got up from a twin-sized bed that extruded from the wall, the bed flowed back into the pearly surface with a liquid motion until no trace of it remained. The walls glowed brighter, and he realized with surprise, the clothes he wore now came from the duffel bag he’d brought with him from the city. The aliens must have put them on him after the operation.

  Jake recalled seeing robotic arms gliding through the air toward his head and the alien looking into his eyes before stepping out of view. Had they operated there? Jake ran his hands tentatively around the base of his skull and then explored his scalp, expecting to find stitches, a bandage, something. Instead, his fingers touched only smooth skin and hair. He might have dreamed the whole episode, except here he was, in this small, strange room, which was surprisingly comfortable despite the bareness. Besides, if they could absorb a bed back into the wall, they could presumably operate without leaving a scar.

  In spite of everything he’d experienced, Jake felt safe. Safer than at almost any other point in his life. He felt protected. The walls of the room seemed more like a barrier to keep out anything harmful, even if they also kept him inside. Curious, he looked for a door and finally found one, fitted flush to the wall. While he couldn’t see any way to open it, he didn’t feel a compulsion to leave.

  He realized an extraordinary shift had taken place. He felt so different to the way he did before, he could barely recognize the man he used to be. That man was alone… empty, somehow. Cut off from the world, locked within himself as surely as Jake was shut within this small room now. They were nominally the same person, but it was hard to feel the connection between them.

  Everything else in the universe felt sublimely in tune. While he might not be experiencing the same sense of oneness with existence that he’d felt during his recent vision, Jake knew it was there, waiting for him. He moved his hand slowly through the air and had the sense that even such a simple motion could impact other lives in ways he couldn’t see or anticipate.

  He sat on the floor in the middle of the room and listened, just listened, while his heart beat and his breath moved softly. The man he used to be would have been banging on the door demanding answers about what had happened to him.

  The man he was now was content to wait.

  Jake didn’t have to wait very long. Perhaps those in charge had been watching, or perhaps they checked up on him. Either way, the door to the room soon slid silently open.

  The creature who entered had the same translucent white skin and dark eyes as the one who’d operated on Jake, the same oversized skull and short, relatively weak-looking body. Yet Jake sensed this was not the creature from the operation. That one had possessed an air of cold efficiency while this one seemed warmer somehow. It carried a sealed oval container, and Jake noticed its long hand had three fingers and a low-set thumb.

  “Welcome,” the creature said, and it took Jake a moment to realize he hadn’t heard the word in any conventional sense. Instead, it simply arrived in his mind, in English. Jake looked at the alien’s face and could see a thin slit of a mouth and two small holes for nostrils. As the alien spoke again its mouth remained motionless.

  “I am Vega. I am aware your kind requires sustenance.”

  It placed the container on the floor.

  “Where am I?” Jake asked aloud.

  “Try it our way, please,” Vega projected into his thoughts.

  “I don’t know how,” Jake insisted.

  “Yes, Jake. You do.”

  And to his surprise, he did.

  “Like this?” he asked, sending his words toward the alien without speaking aloud.

  “Yes, exactly like that.”

  For a moment, Jake marveled at how it could be possible. And then it became obvious. Connected to everything, he just needed to reach out for a specific connection and then project his thoughts along it like vibrations on a guitar string.

  “Where am I?” he asked telepathically. “What did you do to me?”

  “You are aboard our ship,” Vega pulsed. “We brought you here to help you.”

  “Why?”

  “You have always had the capacity to receive visions, to see things. Recently this intensified. Your pineal gland is your body’s gateway to the universal consciousness, and it had started to become unstable. This accelerated your development in a way that rarely happens for your species.”

  “What kind of development?” Jake asked, and he couldn’t help thinking about what this must look like to an observer, he and this translucent-skinned alien conversing soundlessly with one another.

  “You would call it your spiritual or psychic development,” Vega sent. “It is simply your deepening connection to the universe.”

  The alien said it as though it was natural, even normal.

  “So, I had… what?” Jake asked calmly. “The spiritual equivalent of a burst appendix? What did you do? Take my pineal gland out?”

  “No, nothing so extreme.” Vega’s thoughts carried a tinge of horror far more precise in its nuance than any tone of voice could have. “We stabilized the gland to ensure the process would not run out of control. To do this, we placed a small amount of living cosmic plasma connected to the universal consciousness within the gland.”

  “Living plasma?” Jake echoed. If Vega’s thoughts had conveyed disgust at the idea of removing the gland, presumably his own managed to convey his confusion.

  “Cosmic plasma is an essential component o
f the universe, connected to the deeper universal consciousness,” Vega sent. “It is a… manifestation, if you will. Its discovery has shaped our technology for many generations.”

  “What would’ve happened if you’d left my pineal gland alone?” asked Jake.

  The alien’s large black eyes narrowed, and the smooth skin of its forehead wrinkled.

  “Over time, your visions would have become stronger and more frequent, eventually leading to psychosis and then total mental collapse.”

  “And now that you’ve stabilized it? How will this affect me?”

  “This is not the time for an explanation,” Vega pulsed, and its slit mouth gave a faint twitch. “You are tired, and must rest.”

  Jake wanted to say he was fine, but in truth he felt exhausted.

  “It will take a while for the effects of the operation to wear off,” Vega pulsed. Jake sensed the flicker of its thoughts toward the wall. As the bed extruded again, Jake had the impression of Vega and the ship as parts of a unified system, rather than as machine and operator. “Rest now. You can find us when you wake.”

  Jake still had questions and wanted to protest, but fatigue overwhelmed him. He lay down on the bed and immediately fell asleep.

  Chapter Nine

  When Jake woke up, the door was open. Perhaps it had been left open as a sign he could roam freely. For now, though, he sat up on the bed with his eyes on the oval container that Vega had left behind. Hunger assaulted him, and he wondered just how long he’d been asleep.

  He instinctively glanced toward his watch but only found a pale band of skin where it had been. He picked up the container of food and puzzled over how to open it, until an instinct prompted him to try pushing against it telepathically, pulsing the way he did when talking to Vega.

  The container opened in his hand like the petals of a flower, and the faint aroma of peach wafted out. He peered at what looked like a thick type of porridge, and ignoring the shell-shaped spoon, he dipped a finger in to dab some tentatively on his tongue. Jake had to admit, the luxurious texture and peachy taste was surprisingly good. He grabbed the spoon and wolfed the rest down.

  Once he finished eating, he placed the container on the floor and rested on the bed with his back against the luminescent wall. The thick porridge felt nourishing in his body, and his energy levels surged. Jake considered going to find Vega, but he didn’t feel ready to leave the room yet and wander around the interior of an alien spaceship.

  Jake gazed at the shimmering wall opposite him. As a teenager, he’d been scared of his visions and had done his best to repel them, despite the intense pain it brought on. For years after, he feared the visions would return, and then, gradually, this fear left and the whole thing became a distant memory. But it turned out that, because of his unstable pineal gland, in less than a week, he’d had the most intense visions of his life and then had been forced to accept the evolution of his abilities. Now he was able to communicate without speaking and open a container with his mind. Jake wondered what else he could do thanks to the cosmic plasma.

  In the past, he’d been at the mercy of his visions—so could he turn the tables and induce a vision? Choose what to see? He closed his eyes and, as naturally as breathing, began to think about Sarah.

  And then he could see her. She held a stick of charcoal in her hands, alone in her studio, sketching a portrait that looked suspiciously like him. She had finished the basic outline, but the expression on the face looked too sad, too empty. The vision shifted to reveal a large canvas, his portrait set against odd shapes and clusters of stars. Jake could see tears at the corners of Sarah’s eyes. Was this his fault? He’d clutched his head in agony seconds after their kiss at the restaurant and then staggered out. Sarah had called twice to find out why and check that he was OK, and he’d just sent a short text and then vanished. He longed to reach out to wipe her tears away.

  Jake swallowed. He didn’t want to see Sarah upset and alone. As if in answer to his desire, the image shifted. Now, he was looking at a messy basement, too deep in pizza boxes for comfort. Billy and Adam tapped away at their computers in the far left as Jake’s viewpoint raced forward and behind the desk to show the monitors. A series of maps flashed before his eyes: Mount Shasta, Kelso Dunes, Sedona. Jake’s viewpoint zoomed back across the basement to see Marina slumped on the beanbag, turning over tarot cards with her usual intensity. As Jake stared at her, she glanced up with a frown. He wondered about the state of her pineal gland, and whether she would hear if he said something.

  The image shifted again, and Giles’s office came into view. Giles was studying a case file, associates coming and going while he snapped and snarled at them. He didn’t seem his usual jovial self, and his desk was stacked with files without Jake around to pick up the slack.

  Again, he thought about calling out, although Giles wouldn’t hear him. No one alive was more wrapped up in himself, and anyway, even if Giles did hear, he’d probably just order him back to the office.

  The vision faded, and Jake’s mind returned to the room where he’d awoken. He got up from the bed, unsteady at first, but as he tested his balance, he felt more confident. He walked out to discover a corridor whose crystalline walls arched in an almost-perfect tube. As well as the light pouring softly from the gently curved walls, there were lines of energy crackling along them, like neurons firing just below the surface. Every so often, a closed-off aperture could be seen, probably some type of door. Jake considered trying to open one, but instead, he walked along the corridor, looking for any sign of Vega or the creature who’d operated on him.

  The corridor appeared to wind on forever, never running straight, flowing in a way that probably made sense only to whoever built it, assuming it had been built and not simply grown. Jake didn’t feel lost, though. Something about the organic interior of the ship made it easy to navigate, and he felt certain of the direction he was walking in.

  He eventually found an open aperture in the tube and walked into a circular room twenty feet across. A pyramid-shaped object the size of a large apple rested on a pedestal in the middle of the room. The pyramid glowed with white light, but flickers of other colors rolled across it, almost too quickly for Jake to follow.

  Around the pedestal, three ethereal screens hung in the air, insubstantial as floating gossamer. On each there streamed a rapid succession of images, data, maps, and readouts. One screen was close enough for Jake to reach out and wave his hand through. He felt a tingle of something like static electricity as the cobweb-like substance flowed around his hand.

  Vega stood by a console on the curved edge of the room, along with the one who had operated on him. Jake was puzzled as to how he could identify the two aliens with such certainty when their appearances were so similar, but he could instantly discern Vega.

  The aliens were communicating telepathically, standing opposite one another with obvious connection, occasionally gesturing with their three-fingered hands. Jake could feel something on the outer edges of his mind, like a conversation in another room half heard but not quite comprehensible. He tried to tune in and bring it into focus, but encountered some sort of wall that blocked him.

  Although they didn’t allow him to eavesdrop, the two aliens didn’t appear particularly bothered by Jake’s presence. They made no attempt to stop him as he walked around the room, running his hands over the shimmering surface of the windowless walls, pausing as he discovered designs etched into them, so fine that they were only apparent to the tips of his fingers. He traced them gently, but if they did contain words, they were written in a language far removed from those of his world.

  The two aliens turned their bulb-shaped heads toward him.

  “Jake,” Vega pulsed into his mind at last. “I would like you to meet Sirius. It is the one who performed your operation.”

  Jake stepped forward, wondering about an alien equivalent of shaking hands. He didn’t think that asking them to the take him to their leader would go down particularly well.


  “I remember,” Jake pulsed, concentrating to project the words telepathically. “Thank you.”

  “You are thanking me?” Sirius sent back.

  “Vega told me my pineal gland had run out of control, and that you stopped it,” Jake pulsed. “It doesn’t sound like it would have been good for me if you hadn’t.”

  “It would have ended your existence,” Sirius sent to him. The alien turned and stepped to the white pyramid at the heart of the room, touching it as the colors changed. Vega joined it.

  As the two jellyfish-skinned aliens stood together in front of the bright pyramid on the pedestal, Jake suddenly wondered if they had a specific sex. He stepped to their side to discretely scan their unclothed bodies for clues.

  “We are asexual,” Vega pulsed without looking up.

  The pyramid started to flash yellow and light orange.

  “What’s that?” Jake asked. “What are you doing?”

  Again, he could sense that the two aliens were conferring. Vega answered, raising a thin arm to point at the pyramid.

  “You would call this a computer.”

  “A computer,” Sirius pulsed with something like amusement. “The primitive machines they possess hardly warrant the term. They do not even grow them, let alone use the plasma within them.”

  “You cannot blame them for what they have yet to learn,” Vega sent back.

  “That remains to be seen,” Sirius pointed out.

  “So,” Jake asked, “what does it do? How powerful is it?”

  “Powerful?” Again, a sense of amusement pulsed from the alien as its large black eyes regarded Jake. “Ah, the human obsession with power. Let me demonstrate.”

  Sirius waved a hand, and a three-dimensional image of Earth appeared, rotating slowly. Countless points of light dotted the surface.