Prologue
Lorena laid the open book she had been reading on her bare belly and looked up into the darkness of her cell. In a way, she found it rather ironic that her cage was as large as an enclosed football stadium. Though she had never been to a game on Earth, much less been to an arena, she had an idea of what it was like because of the books she had read. She especially enjoyed sports stories, not because she enjoyed sports, or that she aspired to be athletic, but because she liked seeing the characters struggling against both physical and mental obstacles in the pursuit of perfection. She found it inspiring.
She could not see the walls, or ceiling, to her cell, but she could imagine them beyond the darkness pressing in around her. The light she used for reading came from the examination table that she lay on, and it was insufficiently bright to avoid eye strain. So, Lorena read in small doses, like sipping water to avoid a stomach ache even though she was dying of thirst and her impulse was to down it all at once. With her eyes, she traced the edge of the perimeter established by the light falling around her until she tired from looking at the nondescript floor. She stared up into the darkness, desiring to see some hint of the ceiling, even trying to force the image into her head. She wondered if there was daylight beyond the domed ceiling, or was it overcast? Wonder, her human heritage. She didn’t struggle with the musings, but embraced it. Her imagination was her only sanctuary from insanity, for the darkness held monsters. There were creatures in the dark, examining her. She knew they were there, communicating in their silent fashion. She could smell their conversation in the air, but could no more decipher these chemical messengers than she could translate the odor of a rose. By any other name, she mused, would it still smell of fear?
The monsters descended around her table, like fierce thunderhead clouds that randomly self illuminated as if the firing of neurons was the equivalent of lightening. Tentacles hung like Christmas tensile, silvery threads waving as if blown in a wind. There were larger tentacles in the midst of these delicate strands, strong enough to grab hold of a human, pick it up, rip it apart, and deliver the pieces to its mouth somewhere in the center of all those arms. They were the type of creatures that would strike fear into the heart of any man, for it wasn’t just their appearance that provoked terror, but the natural odor that emanated from their being. Their pheromones resonated with-in the human animal’s autonomic nervous system, triggering the fight or flight response. The only thing that kept her from running, or throwing up, was the fact that she had a long line of experiences with these creatures. One of them was even her mother, ten generations removed.
The one she identified as mother descended even closer, drawing tentacles across her body. Most of the tentacles were moist enough to leave a visible slime trail streaking across her skin, as if she had just passed through one of those automatic car washes she was reading about. Lorena shivered.
The creature directly above her vanished. It was always hard on the eyes to follow it, for the human mind couldn’t make sense of something that was there and then suddenly, instantaneously, being gone. It always took her breath away, made her heart skip a beat. Even the transporters the Federation used gave the human brain sufficient time to understand the event of dematerialization taking place. For starters, there was that dance of lights, followed by the harmonic sounds of matter becoming energy, or vice versa. Just as suddenly as the creature vanished, a human female appeared. Even though she was beautiful, not appearing a day over twenty five, this creature, her Grandmother by biological rights, was well over one hundred and twenty, by Earth measurements.
“Hello, Grandmother,” Lorena said.
“You persist in the use of these human terms of endearment,” she said. “My human name is Kelinda, and I don’t look anything like a grandmother.”
“Only because you refuse to age,” Lorena pointed out. “I’m sure you look just as good as you did the first time James T Kirk kissed you.”
“Lorena, why do you endeavor to provoke me?” Kelinda asked, petting Lorena as if soothing a small child, or, more likely, petting a dog or a cat.
“The nature of your question suggests I might be reaching you,” Lorena said.
Kelinda laughed. This daughter had too much Vulcan in her. “I’m not a new born. I have sufficient human experience that I am no longer influenced by their emotions. When you have lived as long as I have, you will also be less prone to emotional sentiments, and be more swayed by the use of logic. All of you children are still so young.”
“Not so young that I can’t see for myself that what you’re doing to us is unethical,” Lorena said.
“Preserving our species is not unethical,” Kelinda said. “And you are overly dramatic, no doubt a product of too much time spent in literature.”
“Ah, but only at your insistence. It wasn’t enough to control for genetics, you also sought improvement of being through environmental and social manipulations,” Lorena pointed out. “The books you have chosen for me to read have led me to where I am, made me who I am. But to what ends? I am still guessing.”
Kelinda smiled and brushed the child’s hair, in the process picking up some Kelvan residue that had been left behind. She licked the residue off her hands, and savored the taste. Lorena resisted the urge to be sick.
“You are limited in your understanding,” Kelinda explained. “Not just because of your perspective, but also because your human brain is insufficient to understand all the permutations, incapable of producing the models or even holding all the variables necessary to make valid predictions. Even if your brain were connected in tandem to a super computer, you would still lack the vital attributes which comes natural to the Kelvan species. You will be pleased to know, however, that the fetus that was chosen for you to carry has successfully survived the imprinting process. If it continues to develop along the curve we have plotted, we predict an 87 percent probability set that we will be able to transform the hybrid into a Kelvan without any loss of function. If this works, and we can continue to refine the procedure, we will be able to provide our species with an alternative to fleeing our home galaxy. We have determined that three to four generations in human form would allow sufficient time for the radiation spreading through our galaxy to decrease to a tolerable level. Humans would not be as adversely affected by the radiation as the Kelvan are, and when the danger has passed, we simply convert back to our true, superior form.”
“Even if you are successful, I doubt you would be able to deliver this new technology to the home world in time to save any of the remaining population,” Lorena said. “And, by your own philosophy, anybody that was left at the home world would have been left behind because they would have been considered inferior in some way.”
Kelinda patted Lorena’s head. “You’re so sweet, dear,” Kelinda said. “Always concerned about things that are out of your control. I’ll be back in an hour to allow you some exercise. We have decided to keep you under observation a while longer, just in case there are any disparities between actual fetal progression and the simulation.”
Kelinda reached for her wristband and touched a solitary button that momentarily illuminated the bracelet. And then she was gone. As unsettling as it was to watch someone vanish, Lorena was actually glad Kelinda had departed from sight.