Call of the Harbinger

by Allen White

  *****

  "Damn it!" Erickson said. "Where the hell is she?"

  He turned back to face the Professor, only to find him shrugging like a useless buffoon.

  "According to the instruments, she's not in there," Braun said. "It could be an overload..."

  Erickson turned back to the readout screens, and clawed at his eyeglasses. "What do the instruments say about the probe's mass?"

  Professor Braun turned around, and thumbed through a few electric blue dials, located the right sub-screen.

  "No change," Braun said.

  Erickson closed his eyes, and sighed. "What the hell happened to her?"

  *****

  The land began to roar and shake with the vibrations of something massive. Reina looked around and spotted a herd of what looked to be Woolly Mammoths. That wasn’t possible! They’d been extinct for at least ten-thousand years. Then something else caught her eye: a group of men, tribals by the looks of them, sporting primitive spears and swords, sneaking up on the Mammoths. She watched, as they attempted to surround and flank the animals. She turned back to the probe and gritted her teeth.

  "This is impossible," she said. "Where am I?"

  The rumbling grew more intense, and she realized that it hadn't been from the steps of the Mammoths at all. She glanced around desperately to find it, any hint of it... and there it was, just entering Earth's atmosphere - a blinding fireball in the sky.

  "What is this?"

  The land grew hot, her heart rate skyrocketed, and she began to hyperventilate. Time seemed to stretch on forever. Animals and men scrambled for the hills, the trees... Fools!

  Reina screamed when the asteroid exploded in the lower atmosphere. The shockwave hit her, shattering her bones, and her eardrums, into thousands of pieces. She fell onto her back, and watched in horror, while hellfire ravaged the sky above her and scorched her flesh...

  *****

  The roar of the wind caught his ear, and its hand swept his coat up and out from under him. The storm had gone from bad to worse in little more than an hour. It wasn't even on the forecast, James thought.

  "Okay," James said to himself. "It's time."

  He took a deep breath, and walked down the hill, toward a metal warehouse in the middle of nowhere. They were probably going to kill him and sell his parts on the internet, but he had to know what these people knew about what was happening to him. There was simply too much there to call it all coincidence. All of the callers that he had listened to last night had the same story, and almost all of those stories matched his own. He finally felt like he was getting somewhere, accomplishing something. He was thankful that he hadn’t purged Sister Mai’s email from his recycle folder.

  He kicked himself forward, and his boots slid through the muddy grass. His hands gripped at the fence, rattling it.

  The door to the warehouse had been left unlocked, just as her last email said it would be. He stepped into a musty, dark void. His hands reached out, then he hesitated as they searched for a light. Whoever these people were, they probably preferred it dark. Should he even try to call them out?

  "Hello?" he said.

  He swallowed his fear, straightened his back, and walked forward.

  "It's James, from the emails." He stopped in what he felt was the center of the warehouse.

  "We know you, Brother James." A woman's voice carried from above, probably in the rafters. She sounded young, maybe a little flighty. Okay, so that had to be Sister Mai.

  "Yeah, which makes this very awkward. Who are you people?"

  "Please, step into the light, Brother."

  Clanking sounds reverberated off the metal walls inside the warehouse, and a spotlight lit up a small circle of concrete several feet in front of him. He didn't like the idea of exposing himself like that... so he said; "You first."

  "Consider it a show of good faith in exchange for what we promised you."

  He was going to regret this later... he stepped into the circle of light, and waited for a bullet that never came.

  "Okay," he said. "Now what?"

  Her chatter paused there... he could hear footsteps and whispers coming from above. The footsteps slowly clanked their way down to his level, and stopped all around his little circle of light.

  "Congratulations, Brother James." He could just barely make out her ruby lips, shrouded beneath a hooded robe. "The Old-Ones have smiled upon you, haven’t they?"

  "All right, I think I'm just about done with this..." He turned around, and walked to the edge of his circle of light. "I'm a lot of things, but I'm definitely not stupid enough to join a cult!"

  "Hear what we have to say, Brother," she said. "Regardless of the source, information is what you came here for, right?"

  "Would you quit calling me that?"

  He turned back around and crossed his arms, stonewalling her. She stepped into the light with him, and removed her hood, giving way to a woman with short black hair, and jewel-like eyes that pierced right through him. She slinked forward, and grinned at him when she saw his reaction.

  Damn it, he thought. The attractive ones are always crazy.

  "Very well," she said. "As I said, the gods have smiled on you. Many of our people have been allowed to see the future as well. We can help you prepare."

  "Okay..." His eyebrow rose. "How?"

  "Humanity has been the dominant species of four worlds, three of which have ended in disaster. We are the fourth world... the last." She backed out into the darkness, and walked around the circle of light, her hand dancing in and out of the edge of the circle as she spoke. "The old gods have guided us through each world, have watched our development and given us wisdom through each period of instability."

  "Says who?" He scowled. "You expect me to believe all of this? Show me some proof, and maybe I'll start to."

  "We have no need to prove it to you."

  "Then I'm gone."

  She came into the light and grabbed for his arm just as he turned to leave. His heart jumped. "I didn't say that we weren't going to show you." Her ruby lips formed into a devilish smile, and those blue eyes sparkled at him in the spotlight. "Follow me."

  *****

  "Ah!" Reina screamed, tore out the tubes and needles that were fixed into her neck and arms, and sat up in a hot sweat.

  She held her head, and took a look around the room; it was the white medical-bay she remembered from the initial tour. So, she wasn't dead; that was good news. As soon as her headache was gone, she fell out of the bed, snatched a spare medical gown, and stumbled for the door. The others needed to know what she knew.

  The computer told her that Doctor Erickson and Professor Braun were in the research room, probably monitoring and studying the probe still. The elevator took her several levels down, until the lights turned to that familiar red, signaling that she was entering a restricted area. She swiped her security badge, and her descent continued.

  She stepped into the dim, blue-lit workspace, letting the door silently close behind her. They were both looking over some holographic displays of the probe. She wondered how she should interrupt.

  "I can't accept that theory, Braun," Dr. Erickson said.

  "Why not?" Braun asked.

  He sighed, and grabbed for his glasses. "There isn't enough data. We can't just come out and tell the council that it's from another planet yet."

  "Then where is it from? There's no other option!"

  "I'm not willing to deal in absolutes, damn it!"

  Erickson slapped a few discs off the table with his arm, casting them at Reina's feet. She bent down and picked them up. Their heads turned, and they fell silent when they noticed her standing there.

  "How long was I out?" She asked.

  "You should be resting," Erickson said. "We still don't know what that thing did to you."

  "I'm betting you can't find any conclusive evidence of radiation poisoning-" -she walked up to one of the monitors, and began scanning through data lines- "or any other type of damage to my body.
So, you don't have any say. I'm still in control of this project."

  "You don't just get to come in here and start barking orders!" Erickson jumped in front of the view screen, inches from her face. "We've made significant strides in understanding this thing in the last week. You're too far behind to take over without setting us back for at least that long."

  Professor Braun placed his hand on Erickson's shoulder. "Maybe you should sit down?"

  "I've read your notes," she said. "Most of that's just conjecture."

  "How the hell would you even know?" Dr. Erickson asked.

  "You might want to sit down," she said. "The beacon showed me some things, and they're going to shape the way we go about our investigation."

  "Showed you?" Professor Braun asked.

  "Don't listen to her." Erickson crossed his arms. "We found her floating out there after all of her biometric readouts flatlined, for all we know, she could have significant brain damage."

  She walked toward the edge of the research room, and danced her fingers over a few display screens, waking them, and bringing up all the data that Erickson and Braun had recorded.

  "I can see that you've been trying to translate the symbols on the probe," she said. "Don't bother. It can speak directly to our minds."

  "It's telepathic?" Professor Braun scratched the inside of his palms.

  "I believe this thing is a beacon," she said. "A warning to us of what destroyed its own civilization, one that was probably very similar to our own."

  "I'm not going to just stand here and listen to this." Erickson reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a small communicator, then turned for the door. "You want to ramble on about visions and psychic phenomena? Fine. But, I wonder how long before it affects your career?"

  The door hissed shut behind Erickson. Reina crossed her arms.

  "I want him off this project." Her eyes narrowed, drilling into Braun's.

  He backed up, and shook his head. "I don't know... maybe you should rest for a few days, get your head on straight."

  "I know what I saw." She turned back to the screen. "If you don't want to accept that, you can leave too."

  She watched his reflection fall away and leave the room as she worked to undo some of the damage that Erickson and Braun had done to her project. They didn't understand, but soon they’d see. She brought up the video log, and began recording an entry.

  "I had a dream..." she said.

  James sat alone in a dimly lit room, sunlight filtering in through a tinted window behind him. It was like living in the dark ages: no computers, no electricity. He had been poring over the only sensible book that this Cult of the Old-Ones seemed to have.

  Mai had him locked up in the library for the majority of the week, and he was beginning to feel like a prisoner. The historical tomes that she had provided were too much to get through in such a short period of time, but the few that he had been able to really dig through told him quite a bit about the kinds of people he was dealing with. In a word, they were nuts; radicals, who believed that ancient godlike aliens were going to come back to the Earth to fix all of humanity’s problems. From what he could tell, their group wasn’t isolated to the East Coast, but he had no clue how many more of them there were.

  They were dangerous too. He glanced behind himself, and caught a quick glimpse of someone in full ceremonial body-armor, carrying a shotgun. Nearly every crazy person in the cult had some form of firearm; whatever he did, he'd have to be very cautious.

  “I see you’ve been busy,” Sister Mai said.

  James glared back at her. It was that time of the morning again, when she’d have her coffee and try to convince him that she wasn’t a lunatic. Mai crossed the room, and sat at the table; shortly afterward, a servant came in and placed two metal trays on the table in front of them. James looked down at his food. Two eggs, three sausages, some toast, and a cup of black coffee.

  “You should eat,” Mai said.

  “How do I know you didn’t poison it?”

  “That’s hardly fair, after all we’ve done.”

  She carefully, daintily, picked up her fork and began cutting into her egg, and placed a piece in her mouth.

  “None of this makes any sense,” James said. “It flies in the face of the geological record; humans have only been on the Earth for fifty-thousand years.”

  “As far as your scientists know,” Mai said.

  He paused, and shoved a piece of sausage in his mouth to keep expletives from flying out.

  “You know, when I was a little girl,” Mai said. “I would come home from school every day to find my mother baking cookies. She would smile upon my arrival, and guide me to sit down at the table to receive my treat. While eating those cookies, she’d tell me that my father would be home from work around five-o’clock, and she’d have dinner on the table shortly afterward. After my cookies, she’d send me upstairs to do my homework. My life was simple, quaint. My family and I were like any other in the neighborhood, we were normal, and would be for years.

  “Then one day, after school had let out. My mother picked me up. We drove in silence for a while, and I could tell that something troubled her. We seemed to be driving around in circles for almost an hour before she finally spoke. Do you know what she said to me?”

  James shook his head.

  “I’m not your real mother,” Mai said. “Your father and I are getting a divorce.”

  “I’m sorry,” James said. “But how does that relate to what I’m reading in this book?”

  “It’s simple, Brother James. Reality is never what it seems to be, even truths that seem to have been written in stone can come crumbling down with a single sentence. Only a child believes everything she’s been told is true.”

  Sister Mai stood up from the table and walked toward the door.

  “It’s almost time for me to deliver my morning sermon,” Mai said. “Hopefully you’ll join us today, Brother James.”

  He stood up and closed the book, casting it aside with the other tomes on the wooden table with a certain amount of carelessness. The armored goon had his back to him, following Mai further down the corridor. This was his chance! His feet hit the floor as silently as he could manage, and he made his way through the adjacent doorway, and to another metal staircase. It was probably overkill, but his paranoia was all the reason he needed; he just didn't like the combination of religious cult member and shotgun-wielding goons.

  Voices echoed at the edge of one of the rails. He made his way to the edge, placed his hands on the bars, and peered over the edge. His eyes took in the sight of one more of Mai's occult sermons. She was reading from a wooden-bound book the size of one of her forearms, her face lit only by ceremonial candle-light. He waited there, under the shadow of a rather large metallic beam, and listened to her talk. Despite the calculated form of crazy that was spewing from her mouth, she had a nice voice.

  "We've been doing this for too long now," Mai said. "You have all done well in following the creed of the Old-Ones, but our masters have spoken, and the time is now to rise. To take from the enemy what they have stolen, and teach them the penalty they must face for stealing from those that they can never compare to."

  The crowd bowed, and raised its hands to the ceiling, chanting hymns to its would-be gods. There was something different about this sermon; Mai had a look about her, like she knew something. James’ grip tightened around the railing.

  "The Old-Ones communicated with me last night, as I was performing my nightly prayers and meditations." She closed the large book in front of her, and her hands moved from the top of the podium to the hood of her cloak, removing it. "They have shown me a military base, several hundred miles away from here, where the enemy keeps stolen artifacts hidden away from civilians. We will retrieve great weapons and send a message to the citizens of this world."

  "Of course," James said, kicking the railing.

  She removed her hood, and locked those jewel-like eyes on his own. She smiled; he glared.
<
br />   "Praise the Old-Ones, look who has finally graced a sermon with his presence!"

  "You're an idiot, Mai." He backed away from the railing and walked down the metal staircase. "You actually think you're going to make it into that military base without being riddled with bullet holes?"

  "Your concern shows little faith, Brother James, but the Old-Ones have made a decision."

  He reached the bottom of the stairs, and shook his head. "I may be tempting fate when I say this, but who the hell do you think you are? You're going to risk the lives of your followers on some half-baked lucid dream?"

  "You came here to learn about your own dreams, didn't you? I'm sure you know just how powerful a dream can be."

  "That's not the point... I haven't seen any evidence of some higher power in all of this, and I sure as hell haven't found any answers to my questions in the week that I've been here."

  "You will come with us."

  "Are you threatening me?"

  She smiled, and snapped her fingers. His hair stood on end when he heard several shotguns cock around him; he turned to see several of those aforementioned goons aiming their weapons at him. His hands rose into the air; he might have disagreed with them, but he didn't want to die over a disagreement of opinion.

  "Are we agreed?" Mai said.

  "No. But I see that doesn't make a difference to you," James said.

  She nodded, and waved her goons forward. They grabbed him by the arms, and lifted him up off his feet. Not necessarily a superhuman act; he barely weighed one-hundred-thirty pounds.

  "Tend to our misguided brother here," Mai said. "I have preparations to make for our journey."

  She shrouded her eyes with the hood, and slinked up the metal staircase.

  I knew coming here was a bad idea, he thought.

  The sound of explosions pierced the wall of Erish's quarters, and her eyes popped open; there wasn't time for sleep, not with the enemy raining down from the heavens. She leapt out of bed and grabbed her communicator, opening a line.

  "Sir," she said. "What's our situation?"

  "Get geared up, and get the hell out here soldier!" he said. "We've got multiple inbound ships, and they're tearing through all of our defensive posts!"