A Spacetime Tale

by J. Benjamin

  The silence was broken.

  Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

  It was the hand of a clock, or perhaps a pendulum. Kiara opened her eyes. She stood on a round, marble platform inside a semi-dome resembling a snow globe. Nothing other than stars and space filled the outside. The wall of the semi-dome appeared tall enough to reach more than a thousand feet. Its main feature was a grandfather clock with a pendulum large enough to demolish an entire skyline.

  A rapid clicking noise emerged from below the pendulum. It was the fast movement of a typewriter. Kiara turned her focus to see a rather unusual sight. Below the clock was an old oak desk with a sign that read ‘Department of what the hell is happening?’

  Behind the desk sat an old man with a white beard and bifocals. He was typing away on a typewriter that looked to be even older than the man using it. Kiara wasn’t sure which was older, the man or his device.

  Kiara ran up to him. He didn’t appear to notice her.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Talk to me.”

  The old man faced her briefly and then returned to his typing.

  “Is this how you treat all visitors or just the ones who involuntarily have to suffer through your mind games. What is this place anyway?”

  The old man did not respond. He continued typing.

  “Please say something,” Kiara asked. He remained steadfast in his gaze on the paper before him.

  “Just what are you typing that is so damn important?” She ripped the white paper that rolled from the top of his typewriter.

  Greetings. Glad you could join us today, Kiara read the paper out loud. “Thank you. Now tell me, what is this place?”

  The old man continued typing, and Kiara read the page.

  You are in a construct formed from deep thoughts in your own consciousness, Kiara read. “Oh, really? I totally thought you had grandfather clocks, typewriters, and raggedy-old white guys hanging around on your isolated tundra. Tell me, what do you know about me?”

  The old man typed a terse response. This time, he voluntarily handed the paper to Kiara.

  Everything. “Do you now?”

  The man typed some more.

  What else do you want to know? “What else do I want to know? Good question. What was that place you took me to before here? That definitely was no damn figment of my imagination.”

  Click. Click. Click.

  The next page simply said, Correct.

  Kiara put her hands on the desk and looked the old man directly in the eyes.

  “What is your agenda? Where are you taking me?”

  The old man stopped typing. He took off his bifocals, pushed his typewriter aside, and stood up. His pale green eyes locked directly into Kiara’s, but his lips did not move.

  Kiara felt his stare pierce right through her. The old man’s silence spoke volumes. It was as if he, or they, were peering directly into her soul. The whispers returned. Just like before, with the worm aliens, they rapidly intensified until they became a screech. Except this time there was nobody present except Kiara and the old man, and Kiara was confident that the whispers weren’t intended for him.

  The frequency was frustrating. Kiara grabbed her ears with both hands as she collapsed to the floor. It quickly accelerated from frustrating to dreadful.

  “Please stop! I’m begging you!” Kiara was at her mental breaking point. Kiara’s mind turned in a very morbid direction. She wondered if this was how she was going to die, alone and in a mental alien freak show? The death part disappointingly didn’t come as a surprise to her. She anticipated the strong possibility of her early demise. What upset her more was that nobody else would be around to see what she was seeing.

  The screeching wouldn’t stop. The old man continued looking down at her from behind the desk. The pain was so overwhelming, Kiara felt like she wanted to die. She shut her eyes. Then, abruptly, the screeching stopped.

  32

  Kiara felt her consciousness return to the space where the Aquarians had latched into her. They were still there, although something was different this time. They had unlatched from her, and she was now free-floating, or so she thought.

  Though she was no longer physically tethered to them, her alien mind felt a gravitational pull from a force far stronger. A hole opened in the wall of the pocket, and she was rapidly pulled out from it. Her alien body zoomed through the twisting ventricle, which held hundreds of other similar pockets.

  As she continued her journey through the winding, dark tunnels of the Aquarian world, she sensed herself being pulled somewhere far grander. Kiara found herself thrust into a massive new environment.

  It was spectacular. It was one of the most incredible things Kiara had seen in her entire life, and she had already seen more than any human had lived to talk about. This vast new terrain was a stark contrast from the tight space where she emerged. It was a giant bubble that stretched for dozens of miles. It radiated with purple light and thick walls similar to the living mantle of an Aquarian flagship.

  In the center was a towering monolith that erupted from a trunk as high as a hill. Just like the flagships, it too contained a powerful purple core. Kiara could sense the energy emanating into its outer shell, which absorbed it and created the organic compounds that flowed through the walls and fed life to every living organism connected to it. She happened to be one of those organisms just minutes before.

  Kiara could see it all. She saw the schools of Aquarians, the branch, the thousands of pods nested to it, and the thick, copious, solar-bacterium that descended into the bubble. It connected all the way back to the higher surface above. It was as if the processes for Aquarian life were embedded in her memory from the moment her Aquarian self was born.

  Whatever it was that was controlling her had not finished with her yet. Kiara continued traversing the awe-inspiring colony that the Aquarians had constructed. As she continued observing, she had an epiphany. Could she be inside one of the subsurface bubbles discovered in the first report?

  It finally dawned on Kiara that perhaps she was not in a simulation at all. She pondered the possibility that the Aquarians extracted her mental consciousness and injected it into a living, breathing organism. One thing was for sure, everything she had prepared for and anticipated was tossed out the window. She had entered dangerous, uncharted waters.

  Kiara felt dragged to the far edge of the massive bubble. A new ventricle appeared, and once again, she was sucked into a dark, mysterious zig-zag. Except this time, she reemerged in a much different space. She was now outside the massive bubble colony.

  The landscape beyond the bubble was even more compelling in its grandiosity. This place was massive. Kiara felt its presence all around her. The outside of her was bristling. It was cold and wet. Was it air? Was it liquid? She couldn’t tell.

  Her focus intensified. In the distance, violet behemoths jutted from the bedrock and sat aimed at the solid ceiling of ice, miles above her. Kiara was becoming incredibly familiar with these structures, the Aquarian Goliaths from both the eleventh report and from her mini-adventure to the worm colony. Kiara could sense the energy from the ground beneath feeding into the structures like the roots of a tree. She sensed the millions of others feeding off these hives and traversing the landscape around them. They were tall and mighty and in no small number.

  Mere feet from Kiara, she felt the presence of another. It was the same presence she felt before when she was in the incubating pocket. It was the one that was born the same moment and the same millisecond as her. It also took the same long journey through the colony and to the exact spot where they now floated, three feet from each other.

  Matt! Kiara called out. It wasn’t her actual voice, but she felt an ability to communicate by means beyond sound. Kiara knew it was Matt. She sensed it.

  Matt was still alive and at her side, even after the terrifying journey across the spacetime continuum. She knew if she died today, she wouldn’t be alone. Kiara would be with the one person worth crossing the uni
verse with. Kiara felt a feeling she hadn’t felt since entering the wormhole: hope.

  Kiara! Matt replied. Where the hell are we? What the hell are we?

  Before Kiara could respond, a group of six Aquarians jutted to them and stole their attention.

  What do these things want with us? Matt asked.

  I don’t know, but I think we are about to find out, Kiara replied.

  They watched as the six Aquarians continued to hover nearby. Something was happening to them. Powerful pulses of light emanated from their flagella, which increasingly grew bigger. Their appendages were bonding together. One by one, the tiny threads formed strings, until those strings became thick like a rope. Their strands were bending, curving, and tightening until they no longer appeared like floating spaghetti monsters. Instead, they were starting to resemble something far more familiar.

  Dear God! Matt communicated. On this alien world far from Earth, the six creatures before them were defying every known law of biology and physics. They morphed in front of their very sights. The meshes of thread narrowed into more dense figures. The tightening continued until the creatures inexplicably shaped into forms that had torsos, legs, arms, and even human heads.

  That explains how much they learned from us. All of it! Kiara communicated. Still in-morph, the Aquarian subjects became more defined in their intentional resemblance to humans. Their physiology appeared translucent in the same way as a glass frog or ghost shrimp. They even had internal organs. In short, the Aquarians completely mapped human biology and successfully replicated it in their own image.

  Kiara sensed the energy flowing from deep within until it reached the outer reaches of her imitation human body. She sensed it happening to Matt too. Now it was making their skin not-so-translucent. Splashes of black, white, and brown pigment blasted through the cells of their multiple threads onto the exteriors of their alien bodies. They knew enough about humans to completely take on every form of appearance. It kept going until they developed eyes, mouths, fingers, noses, and even breasts for some of them. Strangely, they did not develop human reproductive organs. They were also completely devoid of hair and cartilage.

  The gammanauts said nothing. What was there to say? Their minds were shot through a wormhole to a different part of the universe to communicate with aliens that knew everything about them before they arrived. Now they were uploaded into alien bodies and watching the aliens turn into humans.

  Kiara. Please tell me this is a dream, Matt said.

  I’m afraid not, Matt. It’s their world, and we are along for the ride, Kiara said.

  As Kiara and Matt communicated, they almost didn’t notice that they too transformed. Just like the aliens ahead of them, their Aquarian bodies were taking on human appearances. Strangely enough, they did not feel much from the twisting, churning, and meshing of the hyper-advanced cells in their borrowed bodies. This suggested to Kiara that Aquarian cells were far more adaptable and amorphous than they first appeared.

  Within minutes, Kiara and Matt were “themselves” or as close as they could expect from alien bodies. Kiara was able to recreate every part of herself (yes, all of it), including her hair. Matt appeared to do the same. They even managed to replicate clothing. It was as if their bodies were in exactly the same state as when they had entered.

  For the first time since entering the wormhole, both Kiara and Matt felt intense relief that they finally had some degree of control over their reality-defying situation. At least the Aquarians were letting them use this shocking ability of theirs to conform back to their human bodies. Any bit of familiarity helped them cope with this unique environment.

  Okay. So we were able to morph into our human bodies. Now what? Matt asked.

  The Aquarians are recreating what they know about us, possibly from the Golden Wave and possibly from us. We’re recreating ourselves in our own images. Aquarian biology recognizes our consciousnesses and can perfectly replicate us from our brainwaves. Not sure who they are replicating. It could be a composite of several human examples, Kiara said

  Can we talk? Can they talk? They’ve been rather quiet this whole time, Matt said.

  I don’t think so. Even if we have vocal cords, not much use here. I guess we just let them lead the way for now, Kiara replied.

  What is their goal? They finally got us in their world. What next?

  Good question.

  Kiara had no answers. The word ‘normal’ now felt like a foreign concept, unusable in this new reality. Kiara also had a tingling sensation that she could read these six aliens better than her human self would. There was something to them and how they operated. It was as if they were working as a collective. She felt their presence, pulling her closer, not by choice.

  Sure enough, Kiara and Matt were no longer standing on the solid ground. They were levitating through the water along with the six others.

  They’re taking us somewhere, Kiara said.

  But where? Matt asked.

  They weren’t moving slowly, though it felt like it. Kiara could see the landscape in much greater detail. Thousands upon thousands of natives to this world floated about in every direction. The hosts moved seamlessly in the water, and the gammanauts were still locked into their movements.

  Kiara could sense the incredible power of the towering arcologies. Even if they stood miles away, Kiara sensed their energy the way an animal senses a tsunami long before it hits the shore. Each of them continued absorbing heat from the heart of the planet until their day came when their fusion reactors would become self-sufficient.

  They were like unborn children getting nutrients from their mothers’ wombs until they were ready for birth. Some of the monoliths were early in their cycle. Others were much further along. In turn, the creatures who populated the planet were feeding off the earth-grown ships just like they fed off the larger bubble colonies. It was like bees in a hive. The energy/food chain came full circle.

  The movements of the six hosts confounded Kiara. They weren’t psychically swimming. Their arms and legs weren’t moving. This only heightened Kiara’s suspicions regarding the Aquarians’ technological capabilities to manipulate/move objects remotely. Though natural psychokinesis in humans had long been regarded as junk science, the idea that an alien civilization may have figured it out no longer seemed farfetched.

  Matt could sense it too. Along the energy-rich surface of arcologies, egg-shaped habitat pods, and bright lights, one monolith stood out. Mainly because it was no longer being fed an endless stream of energy from the ground. Its power now came solely from within because it had completed its incubation phase and birthed a functional fusion core. They knew this is where they were heading. It was toward this behemoth, which had just finished being born.

  The gargantuan soon-to-be flagship glowed a bright violet as it was powering up its fusion reactor. Thousands of Aquarians poured into the vessel from the ridges along the upper part of the ship. From there, their bodies would cross the thin barrier protecting their space-faring aquarium from the harsh, dead, cold vacuum of space itself.

  Their new alien brethren appeared as tiny as ants. It was another reminder of just how large the object in the distance was. Within minutes, they were closing in on the significant gaps that led to the ship’s interior. As they approached, their hosts disappeared into the mass. Nevertheless, the gammanauts still felt their presence.

  Human minds were not built for such intense sensory overload. Had they been in their real bodies, the sensory overload would drive them mad. This scared Kiara as it demonstrated the true magnitude of the Aquarians’ might and power. It wasn’t their ships. It wasn’t in any form of visible weaponry. It was in their ability to manipulate minds, especially those of species they had never physically come into contact with previously. Nothing was more terrifying than knowing that a stranger already knew everything about you.

  They reached the edge of the ship. Its curled ridge loomed large as a canyon. They promptly jutted through the crevice. In every direction t
hey looked, they were flanked by schools of Aquarians following in the same path.

  Further along the curving path, the crevice narrowed until they approached the familiar outer mantle of the ship. It was the barrier. Aquarians burst into it one by one, leaving ripples behind as they did. The gammanauts crossed the threshold, and from there, everything changed.

  It was one thing to see the insides of an Aquarian flagship on a grainy video shot from a half-century-old camera. It was another to actually be living in it. Kiara and Matt could see it all.

  The eleventh report didn’t do this justice, Kiara communicated.

  No, it didn’t.

  The organic ‘branches’ that rooted throughout the ship held it together like a skeleton. The ship acquired its energy from the bright reactor core holding the vessel together. It fed life into the thousands of small pods that grew from the skeletal structure of the ship like grapes on an everlasting stem. From there, those tiny chambers would feed the tentacled workers who would call the pods their new homes. In return, they labored like worker ants to sustain the living, breathing, ship, that would carry them off this planet.

  I think it’s safe to say, this ship is alive, Kiara said.

  I agree. Is ‘ship’ even the appropriate term to call it? Perhaps kaiju?

  Living monster sounds about right.

  Kiara could feel it communicating with her. It wanted her to become one with it. It wanted all of the creatures inside to become one with it. The ship’s survival depended on their cooperation and vice versa. It made her wonder if the Aquarians were actually in control of themselves or whether they were a subspecies in service to these leviathans. As Kiara absorbed her surroundings, she noticed something else occurring with the Aquarians.

  They’re rushing the pods, Matt pointed out before Kiara could. Indeed, the Aquarian workers were quickly dispersing from the open area and into the thousands of tiny droplets lining the insides of the kaiju. One by one, the workers disappeared into the watery orbs. The gammanauts could feel them connecting into the ship each time it happened.