The Temporal Key

by Adam Benson

  "Well, but there were a great number of things that you all found that were very different. For instance, what was that extra set of lobes near the prefrontal cortex, not to mention all the other differences that you found in the brain." Sheridan said.

  "Many of those were technological." Naomi added. "There were biological... anomalies, but most everything that I saw looked very... human."

  "Oh, that's preposterous!" Barked Lieutenant LaRue. "I've never seen anything so... alien... in all my life. Whatever that thing is, it's certainly not human, and it's certainly.... well.... It's not from here. It's an abomination against God!"

  "Obviously it's not, he's not from here." Naomi agreed. "But I don't believe that makes him some sort of demon from hell, either. I'm remarking at the similarities between that creature and ourselves."

  The conversation went on and on. The room was buzzing with chatter from all the different cliques that had congregated together within the small room. Since the first part of the morning, Dr. Moorhead's pompous behavior had simmered down into something far more sheepish. He was suddenly a more frustrated and lonely man, ripped away from his own senses and thrust into a reality that he couldn't even fathom.

  "No, I honestly don't have any clue how that thing died, and why would I know. I've never seen anything like it before." Dr. Moorhead said with a tremor in his voice.

  "Well, that's why Roger had you do the autopsy. He told us that you would be able to figure it out." Said one of the men who had come to observe the autopsy. "Certainly, you can give us some idea?"

  "Look, if I knew anything about that thing's physiology that would be one thing, but since I don't all I can do is make a guess... based on... what I don't actually know." Harvey Moorhead whimpered. "I can't diagnose diseases on some alien that I know nothing about!"

  "Harvey, listen. None of us know anything about this character. But you're a doctor. Certainly, some things are going to be the same from planet to planet. You know. A gunshot wound will look just as messy on a person as it will on an animal. You know what I'm saying, Harvey? What can you tell us?"

  "I can't say for sure what killed him. There are signs that may point to radiation poisoning, but again, I don't know anything about his physiology. Maybe he emits the stuff. There's so much damned technology stuffed into that body that it wouldn't surprise me if he's the most radioactive thing on this base!" Harvey said.

  "Hardly." Jesse Marcel chimed in.

  Harvey continued, "I did find some small lesions on the epidermis that are often characteristic of electrocution, but I wasn't able to find anything else that would point to that, and frankly those same lesions could have been caused by any number of things."

  "So, you think he died from an electric shock?"

  "I don't know how he died!" Harvey barked. "There were contusions all over the body, one of the arms had a hairline fracture, but all of that could have been sustained in the crash. It may have been trauma to the head for all I know, there just wasn't any evidence that pointed to any one thing, and nothing I saw looked like a cause of death. Fellas, look, there's not enough information available to me to tell you how that creature died. I'm sorry."

  "It doesn't matter how it died." Said another one of the men sitting with them. "The damned thing's a gold mine. The technology alone will be worth a fortune once we can figure out how it works. Any ideas on that doctor?"

  "Sorry. I'm not an engineer. I mean... there are doctors out there who have postulated using implanted technology to fix some human ailments, but the best we have is prosthetic limbs, hearing aids, eye glasses... that sort of thing. Whatever those devices were that were implanted into the body of the creature was beyond my understanding. The way they were placed also didn't make a lot of sense to me." Doctor Moorhead pulled a cigarette out the pack in his shirt pocket and quickly lit it up. "The little... gold things we found in the finger-tips... I got no idea what those are for. They don't even make sense to me as to why they're in there in the first place. We found similar little devices in the eyes, in the brain... in the goddamned heart for that matter. None of them seemed to be attached to anything... Just embedded there."

  "How's that doc?" One of the men asked, lighting up a cigarette of his own.

  "Well, they didn't seem to go anywhere. They dug down a little way into the fibrous septae of each finger, and granted, there are a heavy concentration of nerves there, but other than a few small wires, or whatever they were, running down into the collateral ligament... I'm guess for support, although, I don't know why they didn't just drill it into the bone." Dr. Moorhead rambled on.

  "What are you saying, Harvey?" Jesse said.

  "I'm saying..." He took a long drag on his cigarette. "I'm trying to tell you that... None of the technology we pulled out of... it... seemed to connect to anything. No wire, just almost like roots that bored into whatever tissue that surrounded it, and then... nothing else. It didn't go anywhere." Everyone in his group stared at him, as though waiting for him to finish. "So, I'm asking the question, how did any of it work? I mean, like I said, I'm not an engineer, but even still, that doesn't make any sense. All these implants and yet none of them are connected to anything. How the hell would that even do anything for the creature? I mean, if there were some kind of wires that lead up to his brain, or anything that seemed to physically attach to the nervous system itself, that I could see, but..."

  "Any ideas on how the devices were powered?" Another one of the men chimed in.

  "I haven't the foggiest." Harvey said, taking a long drag on his smoke. "Under the microscope it looked like a little chip of gold with... like a fly's compound eye on the tip. And that's under the microscope."

  From across the room, as the others continued their own conversation, Naomi Saulf got up and excused herself from her colleagues. She walked a few steps over to where the more senior group were talking and attempted to make her presence known, while not interrupting Harvey Moorhead's nervous rambling.

  "On the other side, the gold had a metallic root that sort of 'grew' out, but not very far. We weren't able to detect any kind of power coming off it, or any kind of radiation. Nurse LaRue tried to get some kind of reading off it with an ohm meter, but nothing registered." Harvey continued rambling. "Now, the stuff we found in the brain. Well, that's almost a different story because at least it was in the brain. I mean, you can take a guess as to how that's working, because..."

  Nurse Saulf coughed politely as she could.

  "Something I can do for you Captain?" Major Marcel interrupted.

  "Sorry sir. Do you know how long the General is going to be?" She asked.

  "Well, he's dealing with another matter at the moment, but he shouldn't be long." Jesse said.

  "Sir, do you think I'd have time to use the ladies’ room before the briefing?" Naomi asked, only a little embarrassed.

  "Of course!" Jesse said. "Try not to take too long though. If General Ramey comes in before you get back, I'll try and stall him for a few moments."

  "Thanks sir." She said, and quickly walked out into the hall.

  "So, anyway..." Harvey started again. "What was I saying? Oh, did you see the skin? We put a charge through part of it and it briefly changed colors on us."

  "You think it's like a camouflage response?"

  "That might explain why we couldn't find their companions in the desert." Major Marcel said.

  "You mean, there's more of these things running around New Mexico?" Someone said.

  "Good god." Harvey mumbled. "This is some kind of invasion."

  Dayk and Thalia were scurrying around the hallway trying to find an empty, unlocked room that they could hide in long enough for them to rematerialize two fresh cloaking devices. Most of the rooms they came across either had some sign of life within them, or they were locked. They used their enhanced vision to look for heat signatures to find rooms that were unoccupied, but whenever they came across one the door was locked firm.

  I think my field is about to collapse! Tha
lia thought frantically. I just got a glimpse of my arm. It flickered at me for a nanoChron.

  That's not good! Dayk panicked. He kept trying each door that he felt confident would be empty, but to no avail. Fortunately, the hallway had been empty since they made their way into the building, but that could change at any moment. There are only three more rooms to check before we have to find a quick plan B! He yelled telepathically.

  But his thoughts were becoming easier for Thalia to hear, and her own thoughts were growing louder in Dayk's mind as well. Reserve Power: 3%. Eminent Cloaking Field: 65 centimeters. Status: Active - Critical. It was very bad news. In a matter of chrons her cloaking device would fail, and she would be completely visible.

  Plan B! She yelled mentally, I thought this was plan B! Let's hurry up and check the last few doors, but then what are we going to do?

  Suddenly, a door shut far off down the hallway behind them and around the corner. Then came the quick, ominous clicking sound of a woman's heels on hard linoleum in a concrete and steel building.

  Naomi did her best to hurry to the ladies’ room before General Ramey came in for their briefing. She quickly walked down the hallway and around the corner toward the women's restroom.

  As she got close to the end of the hallway, something bizarre caught her attention. She stopped short and looked inquisitively down the short distance to the ladies’ room door. Something was flashing, but it wasn't a light. It was as though something in front of her was flashing in and out of existence. At first it was dim and nearly impossible to see, but as the seconds ticked by suddenly the apparition began to take shape and become truly corporeal. It was almost like a spherical kinetoscope slowing down its cycle and gradually revealing that it wasn't really motion being seen, but rather still frames that gave the illusion of movement when they moved fast enough in sequence. Except this was no kinetoscope, and those weren't frames.

  The flickering apparition wasn't sitting still either. It seemed to be moving away from her down the remainder of the hallway. As the little glimpses strobed in and out of existence they moved back and forth from one door and then toward another, frantically as though trying to hide. And then...

  There was an energetic flash of dim light and then suddenly before Naomi's eyes stood a short creature, about three feet tall, with a large head, big, almond shaped eyes and opalescent, grey skin. It registered almost immediately. The alien stared at her with an expression of panic, and she stared right back at the alien. Before she knew what was happening her body let out a blood curdling, involuntary scream that could have ripped the concrete apart!

  Naomi was face to face with one of the very beings that she had helped to dissect only an hour before!

  Thalia tried to back away from Naomi waving her hands at her as some sort of weak defense. It was too late to hide, there was nowhere to run. Thalia let out a scream of her own! It was a panicked response to a terrible situation, and immediately she wished that she had kept that to herself.

  Suddenly, Dayk deactivated his own cloaking device and rematerialized right next to Thalia.

  Naomi screamed again! This time it was very loud, and very terrifying. Down the hall they all heard a group of men come bursting out of the conference room and start jogging their way toward Naomi.

  "Wait! Please!" Dayk said to the woman. "We're not going to hurt you! Please help us!"

  It was speaking English. Naomi looked puzzled. There was a ruckus going on behind them, as the men in the distant room came out into the hallway and started running toward Naomi's screams.

  Dayk looked at Thalia and noticed the portable archiver hanging from her belt. He snatched it away from her and pointed it at Naomi. It wasn't a weapon, and he knew that, but he hoped that she wouldn't. "Please! I don't want to use this, but we need a place to hide now!" He said. "I'm sorry, we don't want to hurt you, but if we're captured there's no telling what will happen to us, and we just want to get home. That's it. We're just trying to get home."

  The foot falls were quickly getting closer. Any moment they would come around the corner and see everything.

  Naomi was puzzled. The alien sounded almost human, and they both seemed far more frightened than she was. For reasons that she didn't fully understand, Naomi, with her wide, terrified eyes locked on the aliens, pointed them toward the women's restroom door. It was the only gesture she could get her body to make, and she was still rigid with fear.

  "Thank you!" Dayk said. He grabbed Thalia by the shoulder and instantly darted toward the last door on the left. They ran into the women's restroom and the door shut behind them just as the men came around the corner.

  "You alright, ma'am?" Said the first man around the corner.

  "Captain Saulf!?" Said another.

  "Naomi?"

  "What happened?" Said Jesse Marcel, as he came around the corner.

  Naomi stood there turgid with fear. She could hear the men behind her. She wanted to turn around, but at first, she had no idea what she would say. She didn't know why she had just helped the aliens hide. She wanted to question them just as much as any of these men would have. But at the same time, she didn't really want to give them away. The pleas for help had been the right thing to say to her. She could understand that, and honestly didn't want to see a sentient being hacked to pieces in the name of science. An autopsy or dissecting a cadaver was one thing, but the things that would probably happen to them in the hands of ambitious men was quite another.

  She slowly turned around to face her coming heroes. "I..." She started. What would come next? Was she going to tell the truth, or lie to them? What would the lie be? She thought as she turned to them. "I... I saw a... a... mouse." She lied.

  "A mouse?!" Harvey Moorhead said cynically. "All that noise over a damned mouse."

  "A mouse, ma'am?" Jesse said. "Are you sure?"

  "Yes. It ran... under that door." She said, pointing to the locked door that she had first seen the apparition in front of.

  Jesse pulled out a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door. He stepped inside and a few of the men followed him. He turned on the light and they all began looking around the floor. The room only had a single desk and a filing cabinet inside, so hiding places were at a minimum, but in their cursory glance none of the men found the imaginary mouse.

  General Ramey came marching down the hallway toward the ruckus. After he had finished his business, he had gone back to his office to get a notepad for the briefing and had been rifling around his desk for a working pen when Naomi's screams echoed down the hallway. Before he knew it, the briefing room door burst open and seven men went running down the corridor.

  "What's going on down here?" Said General Ramey as he came around the corner.

  "Ten-hut!" Someone yelled, and everyone quickly snapped to attention, except Nurse Saulf who was still overcome with fear.

  "At ease." General Ramey said. "What's all the noise about?"

  Jesse came out of the unlocked office and spoke up. "Said she saw a mouse, sir."

  "A mouse?" General Ramey asked suspiciously.

  "Yes, sir. Apparently ran into here, sir." Jesse informed him.

  "You saw a mouse." The General said flatly, giving a cold stare to Captain Saulf.

  "Yes sir." Naomi replied.

  "In a concrete military building in the middle of the day, in the desert, in July?" The General questioned.

  Naomi felt stupid but committed to her lie. "Yes sir." She said, more timidly this time.

  General Ramey stared at her cold and nodded, biting the inside corner of his lower lip. His eyes scoped around the hallway and then looked into the empty office. There was nothing there, but he didn't really expect to see a mouse anyhow. It didn't quite smell right to him, but there wasn't anything there to suggest otherwise to him either.

  "Wrap this up." He said. "I want to get briefed on the autopsy now."

  "Alright everybody, back to the conference room." Jesse said, rallying the troops back to where they had come from.
Absentmindedly, Jesse and the others that had briefly explored the empty office began hurrying back toward the conference room, leaving the door to the room they were in slightly ajar.

  "Um, sir?" Naomi said. Before the General turned around, she noticed the open office left by Major Marcel and his men.

  "Yes, Captain Saulf." General Ramey said as he turned.

  "I still need to use the ladies’ room."

  "Make it quick."

  Meeting Naomi

  Dayk and Thalia quickly ran to the back of the primitive toilet facility and got into the furthest stall back.

  I can't believe what you just did! Thalia said with angry panic in her thoughts.

  What else was I supposed to do? We're already exposed now. Dayk thought back. Here, he said, handing her the archiver. Get the new cloaks out fast!

  It's still going to take about three hectoChrons to get them both out! I can't do it any faster. She thought. Her mind was still washed over with adrenaline and terror. Any moment now men would probably be bursting in to take them away into captivity, and then there would be no telling what might happen to them. Her hands shook terribly as she took the archiver from Dayk and started priming it to reassemble one of the two cloaking devices stored in its memory. I can't believe you used this like a weapon. She thought, fumbling with the controls. Dhregh! Screamed the frustration in her head.

  I didn't know what else to do. Dayk said. And I didn't really know what I planned to do with it anyway.

  It was a good idea, but we can't do it again until the cloaks are reassembled. If I pull this thing away in mid re-materialization the atoms will get scrambled and we'll permanently lose one of the cloaks. She said.

  I'd rather have the cloaks, if at all possible. Please hurry Thalia! He said. He opened his palm and let his display hologram float above his hand while Thalia fiddled nervously with the archiver. His body quickly scanned the entire building and displayed for him all of the people out in the hallway. The crowd had arrived to the woman's aid. They showed up like glowing reddish holograms standing in a blue holographic hallway.