This was not the time and the place for it though.
Out of the five of them, he was the most stable in the situation because he had been trained to be prepared for extreme circumstances. Ironic really, that the thing bothering him the most was how much younger he felt and the distraction it caused him.
He would have to get a grip.
I better control myself. Or else what?
Ormond had lost control when he was younger and since learned what the consequences were. Things his younger self had not considered.
That old axiom? If I knew then what I know now?
Perhaps a better one is, that if I have everything I know now but in a younger body I could be really good at my job. Heh, my job. It has been so long now, I didn’t even react in the park.
Meanwhile, he would do what he could to help out the others, they would be having a harder time.
Ah yes, the general anger and resentment fueled by testosterone were also overwhelming him at times. They had trained that out of him too, taught him to channel it and focus it.
The psychology of being homeless and a bum had broken down a lot of that discipline too.
Ormond wanted to shake his head, but that impulse was also against the self-control he had developed his entire life since entering the armed services.
Stay still.
With a mental effort, he pushed everything else aside and started the mental exercises for self-control.
The one thing he did like was that he was curious again, some might have called it morbid curiosity, but still, it was the most exciting thing to happen to him in years.
**
Meriam did not have to work to stay still and examine her surroundings.
Mainly it was because she woke up relaxed and with her head turned away from everyone else, so they did not notice she was awake as yet.
Tousled in my sleep, always when I sleep well, no nightmares this time. Those drugs and those memories must have put me so far out I had no way back into scary nightmare world.
The situation she was in was more frustrating than scary.
Then again, she was not looking at it from the other’s perspectives, for them, it might be as scary as hell. For her, she had things to do, the abrupt change in her circumstances could have ruined everything.
Meriam was focused on other things, with the past few years of her life dedicated to a goal so important to her that this abduction was a big problem. She should be worried, the rational part of her was calculating and working out what she should do to survive, but the emotional content was lacking.
Meriam was good at pushing emotion aside, not usually this good, but then they probably had help with that. She was good at dealing with emotions when it was safe to do so.
It was necessary considering that she used every skill, talent, and opportunity that she could to reach her goal. She was gorgeous, she knew that without being arrogant, but she also used it to get what she wanted.
You could not let yourself be used the way she had been without being able to detach yourself, even if that detachment was damaging to her psyche. She always came back around to dealing with the emotional consequences.
She had been so close!
Detachment and experience had kept her from being subsumed into a role for a good year now, able to keep her own and not have to betray her body or her feelings. Immersion into her task had brought her right to the edge of success.
What was going to happen to it now?
That was the source of all of her frustration, so much emotional tie into what she had been taken away from that this whole mess was just an overwhelming problem more than an overwhelming situation.
Running the possibilities through her mind, Meriam could only conclude that the best way out was through. It took a mental effort, but she pushed the frustration aside, focused it into a drive to figure out what she needed, to apply herself to adapt to survive.
This mindset was crucial to her success in her chosen profession, and even more key to her success in what that profession covered as her real goals.
Perhaps if she could look at the opportunities her, figure out how they could work as a group and come together. They all needed each other after all, and if she could positively influence that for the best outcome….
Meriam was off balance in this abduction, but she was not lost in it.
**
Lekiso gave a slight grunt and then shifted around to sit up on her bunk.
“Six hours. Not bad. That last memory implant really took it out of us.”
“Or the suits gave us a sedative,” Ormond said without moving from where he stared at the ceiling.
“Or both,” Connor replied, getting a flicker of Ormond’s eyes in his direction.
“Uhhhh.” Marc rolled onto his side. Then gave a small cough.
Slowly, he opened his eyes to look at the room.
They widened in surprise, and he sat up suddenly, exclaiming, “What the…?”
“Yeah, we got some new additions while we slept, Marc.”
Connor sat on his bunk and watched the small man. He seemed to be getting quite upset. He was surprised when Marc lurched up and stalked over to the inside door, the one without a panel.
“You know what this means, right?” he said with a certain amount of venom in his voice. “You know what this means?!”
“Hey, Marc, calm down, buddy.” Connor got slowly to his feet.
The smaller man ran his hands quickly along the sides of the door before slamming both fists against it.
“This means that they get stuff from inside this ship and out to us, so this door must open! It’s probably controlled from the inside or through some kind of communication that we don’t have access to. They are deliberately keeping us out of the ship!”
“Yup, like the little pawns we are. Give it up, mate. The door won’t open.”
Ormond sat up and put his feet on the floor beside his bunk.
“Let’s see what our great masters have decided to gift us with, hey?”
Marc had both hands on the door as he leaned against it, breathing heavily.
“Come on, Marc, you can’t do anything there anyway,” Connor entreated.
At that point, Meriam sat up on her bunk.
With a natural grace, she struck a surprisingly alluring figure as she arched her back and pulled her hands through her hair to get it out of her face. Marc caught himself staring and then looked about with a start.
“Uh, yeah. Sure.”
As Marc made his way back over to his bunk, Lekiso and Ormond were already sliding the crates out from under theirs, so Connor did the same. None of them noticed Meriam’s sly smile at the distraction she had created.
The container was very much like one would expect, solid and hard, with a lid clipped on by four hinged latches, one on each side. The metal or plastic was cool to the touch and smooth. Connor unclipped the latches and took the lid off, putting it to the side.
His display immediately started to highlight the contents in neat outlines of violet light, with a note attached to each.
His crate contained a backplate for his singlesuit, two forearm bracers, and a strangely curved triangular block that was marked as a weapon. He also had a pair of thigh plates and what was identified as a utility belt and some food rations, and electrolytes to add to water.
“More brands, I see food and drinks, and of course Coca Cola is still going strong.” Connor pointed out the supplies.
“What the hell.” That was Ormond.
He had picked up the back plate and was turning it around to look at both sides.
“My display says I should clip this thing onto my back, but how? It has no straps or hooks or anything.”
“Um, like this.” Marc looked pleased with himself.
He already had his back plate on, and with one hand, he reached to his shoulder and pulled up. The entire back plate just came off in his hand, and he brought it back around.
“See, i
t just sticks.”
He lifted the plate over his shoulder, and as it got close to his back, it suddenly lurched to connect onto his back as if it were a magnet that had gotten close to another one.
“And then your display interfaces with it. Watch.”
Without doing anything that the rest of them could see, the back plate extruded small shoulder pads that also extended part way down his chest and two gripping arms around each side of his chest.
“Uh, this adds functionality to the singlesuit. It enhances the force and energy fields as well as provides a helmet for if we end up in a vacuum.”
A metallic hood flipped up behind Marc’s head, and some transparent material slid out of it in two halves to connect in front of his face, sealing it in.
“Well, would you look at that? Now we can be astronauts.” Ormond flipped his backplate on and reached into his crate to pull out the triangular object marked as a weapon.
“So, interface with it, you say.”
The object changed, parts of it folding away as another moved up to pivot perpendicular to the part Ormond was holding. Other pieces slid inside, and he was holding a gun.
“Whooooeeee. Now, that is something.”
Connor was surprised.
He watched carefully as Ormond turned the gun back and forth to get a good look at it. Then Lekiso spoke up from next to him.
“I have another one. Look at this.”
Everyone looked over to see she was holding a long object. It was just shorter than her arm, and she must have interfaced with it because it also shifted. The result was a military rifle, a longer shape that everyone recognized: the durable AK-47.
Except it was in gray metal, with darker pieces holding it together, and it had a modified block that capped the ammunition clip joint.
“That is a P90.” She pointed at Ormond.
“But according to my display. These don’t fire bullets. Each one has different ammunition options.”
Lekiso brought the AK up, and her back plate extruded a more extended piece down her right shoulder. It also shifted and became a connecting point for the stock of the rifle, like a shoulder pad.
“Uh, yeah, and this thing’s got a charge instead of ammo.” Marc also had one of the handguns.
“Careful there, mate. Have you ever fired a gun before?”
“Uh, only in computer games,” Marc replied.
“Then maybe just put it away unless you really need it, yeah?”
“And what about you, have you had training in using firearms?” Lekiso looked pointedly at the P90-type rifle that Ormond had.
With his shaved head, Ormond looked rather grim when he smiled tightly back at her.
“Yeah, boss lady, I did my tour of service.” In a smooth motion, he slid the safety off, the fire mode to burst, and had the rifle up against his own shoulder pad and looking down the sights.
“I think I remember how it’s done.”
Connor couldn’t help leaning a bit to the side so that Ormond wasn’t quite aiming the rifle right at him.
“Hey, look.” Meriam was standing up.
She had on the back plate and a single arm bracer, but her legs had equipment on both calves. On her right hip, the triangular block that was a gun seemed to just stick there.
“Ok, so its body armor and weapons, then,” Lekiso said.
“Um, it’s more than that. Look, each of us has different equipment. My forearms are different from yours and Connor’s. Look. It has a display built into both, and my interface says it can project holographical images too.” Marc held up his arms, hands pointed out to show everyone what he meant.
Lekiso stood up and put on the rest of her equipment.
The rifle turned back into a long rectangle and stuck to her back plate, and the smaller firearm went on her right hip. Other than that, she didn’t have more equipment.
“But why just pieces like this? Why not full body armor?”
“Who knows? We’ll find out eventually, I’m sure.” Ormond was also equipped in a similar fashion to Lekiso, while Marc had his backplate, forearms, and the firearm on his right hip.
Connor looked down at his own gear: he had a firearm on his hip, his backplate was on, and he had two bracers on his forearms that had strange ridges on them but otherwise no buttons or screens.
Everything registered as interfaced, though.
The five humans looked around at each other, examining their getups. Connor saw the options for his gear scrolling up on his display. Looking at them put his eyes in the direction of the door out of the airlock.
“Ok, so that’s a crate for each of us, but what’s in that one?” Connor pointed at the crate sitting in front of the airlock exit door.
“Hunh,” Marc commented.
Lekiso moved past the middle bunk, where Ormond had been sleeping, and over to the crate.
The other four followed her.
It was higher than the containers that had been under their bunks and shorter in length. Lekiso snapped open the top and lifted the lid aside. She made a small sound of surprise and then put the lid down so she could reach inside with both hands.
She brought out a transparent container that looked something like a human cat carrier but was completely sealed with a metallic lid that had a display and some vents molded to the top. When Lekiso tipped the container to the side so that the others could see the display, they realized why she had sounded surprised.
The display showed a picture and a biological schematic of the Devourer parasite they had encountered in the Enone Hub park.”
“No, really?” Connor blurted out.
“What?” Meriam asked, and she was quickly followed by Marc: “It’s a sample container!”
Connor and Lekiso both looked at Marc, so he continued.
“Um, well, I can interface with it. It can hold the internal environment for a variety of settings, but this one is already set up. Any of us can interface with it to control its opening and closing. See?”
Meriam had turned away to look at Ormond, but both of them quickly looked back as the sides of the container disappeared. After a moment of Marc looking around at everyone, he chose the icon in his display again, and the sides reappeared.
“Yeah, we weren’t asking that, Marc. It was the blatant hint.”
Connor took the boxy unit from Lekiso. It was quite light and comfortable enough to carry, and it had a handle that popped out on top.
“Uh, what did you mean?”
“Do you think that these creatures are the Tempest that all the refugee aliens are worried about?” Meriam asked, ignoring Marc’s question.
Lekiso answered her. “I don’t know. And Marc, this is here, all this stuff that makes us better equipped, even the memory implants, because whoever is doing this wants us to be able to do things for them. And the thing it wants now is to catch a live specimen.”
“Uh, oh shit.”
“Oh lovely, so some asshole has gone and decided we are the next best choice for whatever he, she, or it has in mind for this place, then?”
Ormond gestured physically as if to show around the whole of the Puzzle Box outside.
“Thanks but no thanks, methinks. Who the hell would be able to do this to us anyway, with all this tech and shyte? No one from Earth. We worked that out already, didn’t we?”
“We did?” It surprised Connor that Meriam spoke up with Ormond being so aggressive, but she carried on.
“You don’t think any of those seriously rich guys could afford to pull some kind of massive stunt like this? An entire island hollowed out and built to simulate all of this for kicks or a competition or something?”
Lekiso had an eyebrow raised. Clearly, she didn’t think that was much of a possibility.
“Meriam, I really don’t think we are in some kind of made-up simulation. Not even drugs and hypnosis would produce effects like this, the experiences, the sheer impossibility. All of that has to work on something the mind already has inside it, something
for the drugs and hypnosis to start with and build on. Believe me, I couldn’t imagine a setup like this in my wildest dreams.”
“Oh yeah?” Meriam stood taller.
“How about all of the logos, like the one on our heels, and I’ve seen the Microsoft logo sitting there on some of the display windows. A couple of our systems might have Apple or Google on them, branded to their technology. Did you check the food and drinks in our crates? There was Coca Cola on the drinks. Hey, Marc? Some of those other apps have trademark logos on them too, don’t they? All Earth stuff we’d recognize.”
“Uh, well, yeah. But a good investigation of Earth would find those kind of things quickly. I mean, just watch TV for a day, and you’ll see all the big brands, right?”
“I’m not sure this is getting us anywhere,” Connor said, trying to interrupt.
“Look outside. Everywhere you look, we get new information, alien ship designs, building materials, and use of different types. The ships, the weapons, the science behind it all, we aren’t making that up in our heads, and no one could be keeping up with what we may be hallucinating if they are feeding us this while we are unconscious.”
“Uh, yeah. Plus, keeping five people in the same hallucination is impossible. There would always be major differences.”
Marc nodded. “And this wouldn’t be just a dream for one of us, because each of you has a unique personality, it’s just too complex to be made up. The memory information is what makes the biggest difference. We all get it at the same time, and it shows up in the software consistently.”
“So, we all agree, it must be real?” Lekiso looked around at the four of them, each in turn. “Then it remains, is it alien, or is it from earth?”
“Hey, Marc, if this software we are using was all put in our heads, then anything in it could be made up, right?” Ormond looked thoughtful.
“Uh, sure, yeah. The software could use any data at all. Come to think of it, good virtual reality headgear and the right kind of senses system could trick us all into sharing the same kind of projection or experience. Uh, I’m going to go back on my last comment. This could be done to all of us. We could be in a room right now in pods, with people monitoring us.”
Abductees Page 12
