Chapter Ten
Jumpstart to Life
I stepped into the apartment only to behold a scene of tangled wires and busy monitors. Jane had been busy, but at what?
Where was she?
I saw her rise up and in her hand was a gun. She wasn’t alone. The door behind me opened as men in suits closed around me and took my weapons along with the backpack holding the devices.
I stood there betrayed and I had to admit that I wasn’t really all that surprised by the occurrence knowing what I did about Jane.
I just wished that she had taken longer to play out whatever angle she’d been up to so I could’ve skipped town with the gizmo she was making before the trap had closed in on me. My mission was a failure, unless Flicker could come to my aid. Then maybe there was a chance that the gloomy outlook of this situation might once again be turned back for good.
I had never been so reliant on a woman before in my life than I was right now. It was a new experience and a humbling one. I started saying a few prayers, as well as screaming a few urgent thoughts in my mind, but I wasn’t getting any corresponding answers from either God or my girlfriend.
‘Hello girlfriend need a spot here! Need you to save the day again! Anytime now!!!’
Flicker didn’t respond, which was when a frisson of concern went through me. Had they caught her too?
Was she even now dead?
I stifled that last thought quickly or it would have overwhelmed me. The little dots on my head just weren’t working was all, which meant that for at least the time being I was alone and that I would have to handle this by myself.
I watched a suited goon, who seemed to exhibit no emotion at all hand the two devices from the gorilla to Jane, who took them greedily from him. Going to a table that bore a single shiny metal plated device she pressed two panels open and slid the two devices into the corresponding slots that were open and available to receive them. The trays closed and the device began to hum and then it glowed blue, as it levitated up off the surface of the table.
“Congratulations Doctor, you’ve done it! This is all we yet needed in order to make the transformation.” The lead goon said.
Jane nodded abstractly, as she studied the device before her.
I spoke up, as my hands were being cuffed together by one of the other goons, “So I’m guessing that device isn’t for disrupting the mind control devices that you have manipulated members of the Agency with.”
The man who’d praised Jane came to me and lifted his gun to my head, “You are of no further use to us.”
Darn! Where was my girlfriend when I needed her?
I almost felt the bullet blow my brains loose, when Jane suddenly spoke, “I would like to further use this one for pain testing First Officer.”
The man with the gun to my head glanced to Jane questioningly before shrugging, “As you wish Doctor. Bring him!” The headman stepped out of the room with the device held securely against him, as if it was the only thing he cherished in life.
Jane stepped out toward me and I longed for the bullet that I’d been about to receive, as my mind filled with the many atrocities that this woman had done in the name of science. How could I have been such a fool to let this woman get the upper hand, when I’d known from the first day that she wasn’t to be trusted?
I glared my hate at her, as I was held securely in place by three of the suited men. Her hands reached up to then glide down my chest, until further down past my waist she gripped my maleness through my pants and said, “I am so looking forward to our time together in the lab, as I deconstruct you and then build you back up into a creation of my imagination.”
My mind filled with the images of what had been done to the demented gorilla monster and I felt revulsion rise up in me at the thought of ending up like it or made into something worse.
Jane let go of me laughing, “Take him outside. Have him transported to the lab that has been set up for me. I’ll begin his transformation as soon as we land.”
I was jerked out the door by the guys in suits, as I watched Jane arm a bomb detonator to take out the apartment with all of its technology.
‘Come on Flicker!!!’
There was still no response from my girlfriend. I felt hope fading fast, as I was herded outside into the sunlight. There was a sudden shriekingly loud sound that kicked up a dust storm within the town as windows shattered at the sudden appearance of a flying vessel that looked like it belonged in outer space.
My jaw dropped in astonishment, as I took in the alien looking vessel that landed not too far from us in a parking lot. It pivoted around presenting us with the rear of the vessel from which a gangway lowered down, as the vessel continued to hover just above the pavement of the parking lot.
I was roughly shoved forward toward it, and all I could think was that the Agency and for that matter the entire world, had a lot more to worry about than just a few mind controlled board members. This level of technology was beyond anything that anyone else surely had access to on the planet. How had the remnants of the Code people increased in technology so fast?
I didn’t know how, but they had. I had to do something about it, but what?
As I stepped on board the sleek craft something was jammed into my neck and I passed out moments later.
The craft with its cargo of individuals now loaded roared out over the town causing even more shattered windows and fractured nerves, as people ran to and fro in mass panic at the sighting of so alien a sight as the ship was to them. The vessel once it cleared the ground, rocketed upward into the atmosphere at a lightning pace, as it started out on its path of leaving Earth’s atmosphere altogether.
The vessel had a target that shone brightly ahead in the gloomy darkness of space, the moon. It was a fast trip, as the vessel locked its coordinates on the moon base that had been three months in the construction of and had only been completed the previous week.
An abrupt jar stirred me partially out of the delirium I was in. With a grunt of pain I felt myself being dumped onto a stretcher of some kind and then I was picked up and carried roughly along. My eyes peered open, my brain thick and foggy, as I struggled for full consciousness to make sense out of what was happening.
I was being carried down a long hallway. Occasionally windows appeared in the unbroken corridor. There was something outside.
I squinted and focused waiting for the next window. My jaw fell open partially, as I realized that what I’d seen before was Earth!
I wasn’t on the planet!
Consciousness came back to me in leaps and bounds then, but I kept it to myself doing my best to make it look like I was still groggy and half knocked out. Doors opened ahead of us and a large domed space opened overhead.
It was hard to keep my sense of awe to myself. How had they done all this?
I was pretty sure that if I was looking at Earth out the window then the structure I was in had to be located on the moon. Who could have guessed that the Code had gone into space in order to hide from the heavy retribution acted out against them by the survivors of their harsh rule upon the Earth?
I saw the guy with the anxious trigger finger break off with most of the group following on after him and his glowing metallic blue device, while I was taken off elsewhere on the stretcher. I really didn’t want to think about how I might have just been penciled in as humanity’s best last chance for freedom. Even more than that I didn’t want to contemplate on the fact that I may have just handed over to the enemy what they needed to turn the tide of war.
Yeah it had been a bad day. To top it all off it looked like my girlfriend had ditched me or worse yet wasn’t able to come to my aid. Things were bleak no matter what way you looked at it.
I seemed to have arrived at wherever my stretcher bearers had been intent on taking me. I tensed my muscles in preparation to attempt to take the two of them on, when they unceremoniously dumped me off the stretcher. Before I could recover from the surprise of that they were both at me kicking viciously.
Oh it hurt! What kind of hard implemented organ and spine massage doesn’t?
I was gasping for breath and feeling like I was dying by the time they hauled me up off the floor and slammed me down on top of an exam table. My arms and legs were quickly fastened to it and my two assailants left the room leaving me alone in the lab.
I tested the restraints. I wasn’t getting out of them.
“Way to save the world Utah!” I said out loud in a self-deprecating manner.
“God I could really use some help right now!” I said in a humble plea for the miraculous to occur.
The door opened and I glanced up to see Jane walk into the lab.
My head fell back against the table, as I stared up at the ceiling, as if I was looking into heaven. My thought was, “Really God? Look I know I’m in danger of repeating Job’s sin by asking this, but why when I call out for help do You send me the one individual who wants to playfully cut my manhood off and turn me into a mechanical vegetable?”
Jane was by my side at the table and she was smiling, “I assure you honey that removing this is the last thing I would ever contemplate doing.” She finished with, as she patted my trousers.
Okay so that was downright creepy! She apparently could read my mind to, which was just great!!!
Jane moved from out of my sight and I prepared for the worst to begin. The restraints suddenly released me and I lay there for a shocked moment before I rolled off the table and onto my feet turning to stare at Jane as I did so. She was still smiling, as she came up to me.
She handed me a gunish looking device and said, “Just pull the trigger like you would a gun and give these to Flicker when you see her.” Jane finished, as she handed me a bag of small round discs such as I had on my head.
I took the bag not knowing what to say. Jane wasn’t a traitor?
“It will all become clear in time Utah. Now follow me.” Jane said, as she started out from the laboratory.
I followed on after her, as I prepared to drill anyone that showed with the death ray looking blaster I held in my hand.
Jane headed out from the lab and down a series of glistening technology laden corridors. We came to a partition door and through the glass pane I could see a lot of people gathered in what appeared to be a central control room.
Everyone was very busy in their assigned tasks. Did Jane hope for us to sneak through the hustle and bustle type atmosphere without going noticed?
I doubted the success of that, as I was the only black person I’d seen in the place so far. I was about to say as much when Jane turned to me and said, “Wait here a moment. You’ll receive further instruction from Flicker.”
Jane turned back to the access door and I hurriedly asked, “What are you going to do?”
“Clear the way.” Was all she said before she went through the door and into the busy control room.
Clear the way?
I watched Jane step into the center of the space and then her hands came up with what looked like two halves of a stick. She jammed the two pieces together to form one unbroken rod and there was an intense blue explosion of color that had an electric like feel to it that engulfed the control room.
The access door was blown off its mounts and I was knocked to the floor, as the acrid electrical smoke from the other room poured out into the hallway.
Coughing I got back up to my feet and stumbled into the room that Jane had entered. Everything electrical within the room was fried and it was dark except for some emergency lighting here and there. The people were all dead, only for the fact that they weren’t people. They were the most artfully crafted true to life machines I had ever seen in my life.
It was as if I had just walked into an old Terminator movie. The explosion of blue electric flame hadn’t done much damage to the structure of the room, but everything electrical, as well as the people like machines, was blown apart and charred. Walking through the smoke hazed scene was otherworldly to say the least. No pun intended.
I found what was left of Jane. Just like everyone else in the room she hadn’t been human. She’d just been a mirage of a human. Everything had been a mirage of deceit. What the heck was going on here?
I knelt down and moved around the blown open fuse panel partitions of what was left of Jane’s metallic skull. I saw something of interest. Behind one plastic yet believable and still intact ear clinging to the metallic skull was a round disc. Everything went quite within me as I saw that disc.
I felt the positive emotion that Flicker was in my thoughts before I felt the framing of her question, “Are you okay honey?”
I felt both intense relief at knowing that she was alive and anger over how I had been duped by her.
“You have a lot of explaining to do honey!” I stated with mind felt intensity.
“I know I do, but your reactions had to be authentic for this to be pulled off.”
“You were in control of Jane the whole time weren’t you?” I asked, as I quickly put things together.
“Yes, I’m sorry that I deceived you!”
My thoughts ran over what I’d been made to think by the Jane persona, as to what I was to have been created into under her knife. “I should give you the spanking of a lifetime!” I gritted out, even as I felt my embarrassment flush my face with hot blood.
“Is that a threat or a promise?”
“Oh it’s a promise!” I affirmed.
“Okay then, if it will make you feel better, but you’ve got to let me into the facility. Preferably before my oxygen runs out!”
Concern took over within me and I quickly got to my feet and asked, “Where are you?”
“I hitched a ride on an outer compartment of the vessel that brought you here.”
I shook my head; so much about all this was absolutely crazy. I had just gotten back to the states from tangling with a bionic gorilla intent on raping my girlfriend and feeding himself with my flesh, only to walk into the realm of a science fiction novel complete with evil robots and death ray blasters. Things couldn’t get any worse, at least I hoped not.
“I’m coming for you. Can you direct me?” I asked.
“Take the hall beyond. Follow it to the end and make a left. Go straight through an open gallery to the hall beyond that one. Go down it and make a right and you’ll see me in a pressure chamber. Engage the pressure lock and open the door once the atmosphere has stabilized.”
My brain scrambled, as I tried to copy all that down. “How much air do you have?” I asked.
There was a slight pause, which was telling, before she responded, “I don’t have much. Please hurry!”
I took off running. The hall beyond was still lit up unaffected by the blue explosion and peopled with oncoming first responders. I lifted the blaster and gave it a try. Oh cool!
I probably shouldn’t react that exuberantly to killing several somethings with a few clicks of the trigger, but they weren’t human so it wasn’t too bad of me, was it?
The weapon really was cool. With every squeeze of the trigger blue jolts of energy shot out and encased my intended victims causing them to falter and pitch forward in a mass of burning wires and blown circuits.
There sure were a lot of these robot things, in fact I was really beginning to hope that this weapon didn’t have some kind of recharge function coming up, because the attacking robo girls and boys were not happy at all.
Crossing the open gallery was an experience. I just held the trigger down and commenced mass robotic destruction. I gained the other hallway and tore down it unimpeded. I made the right and I saw a glass panel head. It was the pressure chamber compartment and Flicker dressed in a spacesuit was collapsed on the floor!
“Flicker!” I exclaimed, but I got no reply.
I jammed away at the probable sequence of buttons on the display and the chamber began to pressurize. I waited in anxious frustration for the atmosphere to equalize before I ripped the hatch door open and began dragging Flicker out of the small room. She had to weigh a ton!
Fumbling, I managed to get her helmet off. Her features were cold and still.
“No, you come back to me!” I yelled out frantically.
I propped her head back and forced her lips apart and breathed air into her, as I barely controlled myself to keep from blowing to forcefully and hurting her lungs. I gave her another breath and then I started chest compressions, which was made difficult by the bulky suit she wore.
I was about to give her another breath, when I was torn away from her and hurled out across the hall to slam into the adjoining wall. Glancing up I saw my assailant was one of the human robot kinds like Flicker, only of the walking vegetable variety. In a word the situation was not good!
I ducked out away from the wall, as a metallic fist pulverized the material of the wall where my head had just been. In my lunge away from the wall I tumbled down the hall and came up with the blue ray gun. Flipping over onto my back I let the fast approaching robot have an energy blast, only to my horror it didn’t work!
The gun fired and the blue electric cloud coated over the robot man like it had the others, but there was no sparking or sizzle of fuses blowing. Apparently the blaster didn’t work on this kind of robotic creation. What a shame!
What a dirty rotten shame I thought to myself abstractly, as I was flung through the air helter-skelter for the second time. I skidded off the ceiling and dropped ten feet to land hard on the floor. I shouldn’t still be conscious, but desperation drove me to be.
I crawled as best as I could the remaining distance to Flicker. I had just reached her, when I felt the sworded arm of the robot stab down through me anchoring me to the floor. I winced at the gut rending pain, but I lifted my fist and slammed it down hammer like onto the center of Flicker’s chest.
Flicker flew upward with a gasp of air and then screamed out at the sight before her and moved at the speed of light. Dimly through the shock I noticed the robot’s bloody electrical sparking head roll off to the side of me.
“Asta lavista buddy, say hello to my girlfriend!” It was odd the things one thinks up, when one is dying.
Someone was saying something. I glanced up to see Flicker. Her face was awash with tears, but they didn’t diminish her beauty at all.
“I love you.” I managed to say before I just couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer.
Flicker clutched Utah to herself and cried out desperately, “Oh God!”
She didn’t care about destroying what the Code had become anymore. All she cared about was the man bleeding out in her arms. She had cut the robot’s blade off and it still remained within Utah. If she’d removed it Utah would have bled out in seconds.
Flicker didn’t know what to do. Cradling Utah’s tall frame gently in her arms she got to her feet and headed for where the space vessel was. Maybe she could get back to Earth and get him to a hospital, but bitterly she knew he’d never make it. What else could she do though?
She made it to the open gallery, but standing in the middle of the space she could bitterly see that she could get no farther than this. The humanoid Code manifestations had retreated in order to preserve their number, but they had brought in reinforcements to do their work for them. Ringed around the whole open gallery where the robot warriors of her own engineered kind. There was simply too many of them to even attempt to resist against.
Flicker knelt down and tenderly laid Utah onto the floor and with one last glance around she folded her metallic fingers together, “My man is dying! Can’t you do something about this Jesus?”
A vision overwhelmed her then. She was in a field of wildflowers and all of her looked real, even though she still knew the parts of her weren’t. She didn’t understand it. Suddenly she was walking through the flowers and a little girl was beside her laughing. The girl’s skin was a soft chocolate in comparison to the vanilla tone of her skin. The little girl took off screaming, “Daddy! Daddy!” Flicker looked up to see a man coming through the flowers toward them. It was Utah only it wasn’t. The man’s name was Sean. Utah was Sean? The girl jumped into the man’s outstretched arms crying out joyously in her jubilance at being in her father’s arms. The girl turned back to her and cried out for her to come along too. Flicker started to move forward, as she stared into the little girls blue eyes that were a match for her own. What did all this mean?”
“A promise of what is to come.”
The words had been spoken into her very soul and Flicker glanced up, as she opened her eyes back to the present. She saw that the robot warriors were advancing, as their self-styled robotic masters watched from the periphery eager for the kill to come.
Flicker stood up and stepped forward to straddle Utah’s motionless form. Her arms lengthened and formed into swords, as talons elongated from her feet and helped her grip the floor, as she planted herself ready to defend her man. She looked down at Utah and pointed a sword appendage, as if it was an admonishing finger at him, “I claim the promise! So don’t you even think about dying on me! We’ve got a baby girl to enjoy making and then raising and I claim that future and all the joy that it holds for us in the power of Jesus’s Name. I say it and even now I claim it!”
“Amen April! Amen!”
Flicker’s eyes rose to see a man in black standing, but ten feet from her. Who was he and how had he gotten there and how on Earth did he know her real name?
“You know my name?” Flicker asked hesitantly.
“I do.” The stranger affirmed.
“Are you an angel?” Flicker asked.
“No, just a man that believes and trusts in the Master of all life the same as you now do.”
“Why are you here?”
“To help you claim your promise.”
“How did you get here?” Flicker asked in consternation.
The man smiled, “Behold a mystery that I still do not even understand and yet I am obedient to the Father and I tremble and humbly obey His Holy Spirit’s command wherever He may lead me for I will ever seek the Lord’s command and rule over my life’s journey. April are you ready to claim the promise that has been given to you?”
Flicker straightened and said, “Yes!”
“Well then let’s be at it then. Protect your man and I’ll deal with the rest.” The man of mystery turned away, as he pulled two short swords from his waist and charged the encroaching enemy line of robot warriors.
Flicker swallowed, as she watched the stranger launch himself into the fight with a speed and a tenacity of skill that she doubted that even with her augmented capabilities that she could ever equal. Thankfully the stranger was on her side. A fact of which she sent off a prayer of gratitude to her Heavenly Provider, who had met her need once again in a miraculous way.
A few robots broke free of the struggle and came at her, whom she savagely repelled back, as enraged as any lioness would against a pack of giggling hyenas intent on claiming her cub for a snack. She managed to sever one’s spinal feed and it fell comatose to the floor, as she parried and dodged the swings of the other two who were trying to hack away at both her and Utah lying on the ground.
One of the robots abruptly fell, quickly followed by the other one to reveal the stranger standing behind them. Flicker blinked and stared around the gallery. There were no robots left standing. Half of them were dead, with the other half lying comatose upon the floor unlinked from their chain of command.
Flicker shook her head, as her hands reformed from the swords they had been, “Who are you?”
“My name is Elon Gideon. Let’s have a look at your man.”
Both of them knelt and Elon pulled Utah over onto his side. For a moment Flicker thought Utah was dead, but then she saw a shallow breath and allowed herself to relax slightly. He was still bleeding badly though.
Elon glanced up at her, his face sweaty, “You can heat the metal of your hands up can’t you?”
But of course why hadn’t she thought of that!
Flicker’s fingers turned molten red and she pushed them down to the wound on Utah’s back, as Elon pulled the broken blade forward out the front. Utah didn’t move, as her fingers burnt and cauterized the flesh of his back, but Flicker felt the pain for him and cried in sobs of anguish at what she was causing.
Elon squeezed her shoulder consolingly, “That’s enough April.”
Elon eased Utah over onto his back and Flicker did not like what she saw. Utah must be near death, why he wasn’t dead already was a mystery. She reached for the sword shard to pull it all the way free so she could cauterize the front, but Elon stopped her with a shake of his head.
Elon took a small knife that materialized from somewhere and sliced deeply into the palm of his own hand. Flicker gasped, as she saw the rich red blood well up from the deep cut. Before she could ask why on Earth he had done such a thing she saw him withdrawal the sword shard and press his bleeding palm to the wound before much blood could escape from Utah.
How could what Elon was doing be possible, but as she watched the big blood vessel in the crook of Elon’s arm throb she knew it was true. Elon was giving Utah his blood.
Elon seemed to sense her bewilderment and said, “The body has ways of doing things that commonly once were done, but have been lost or the ability to do it all together is gone.”
“But how is it possible? He’s all cut up inside!”
“I am repairing him even now, as I give him the blood that he needs to maintain normal function.”
It was beyond Flicker’s understanding to even comprehend how the process worked, but Elon’s concentration was so great as he commanded the internal mechanics of his own cellular structure to repair that of another’s that she marveled he was even talking to her.
He seemed able to read her mind, “Because I want you to understand that this is a natural process and not some magical ability that I possess. You are young in your faith in God and you must guard against being pulled off to the sides of the straight path you have begun, because you don’t understand or feel overwhelmed by many things that may appear as a mystery to you.”
Flicker couldn’t believe it, “You’re worried about my faith right now?” She exclaimed.
“Always! The life of this man that I am fighting to restore is but a temporary thing valued by both you and God, but still temporary. The spirit, your spirit is eternal. It will exist forever in one of two places. You made the right choice yesterday, but it is not over with that one choice! You must keep making those right choices every day, focusing on giving more and more of yourself over to your Savior, until He reigns supreme within you and you in Him!”
Utah took in a deep breath, as color returned to him and Flicker glanced from Utah’s renewed vigor back to Elon, who was pouring his life into Utah and her in a way.
Elon’s eyes remained fixed on her, “Yes, this day you see a miracle occur in your life, but don’t let your faith stop here and say that this is enough! Press in and go further and discover all that God’s word has for you! Be inspired, be amazed, be transformed into the blessing that only God can fashion you into! A vessel made to give Him glory and honor for all of eternity. Do not hold back from your destiny with Him, but give it your all. Outlive your life and do miracles in the Name of Jesus. Promise me that this will be your quest in life, to bring honor and glory to the Creator with the life and spirit with which He has gifted you with!”
“I promise! With all my heart I promise!” Flicker breathed out passionately.
Elon reached out with his free hand to grasp Flicker’s teary face, “Even as you have given your will to the pursuit of accomplishing the Lord’s will for your life know that even now the Spirit of God which has already begun to dwell within the temple of your body is there to instruct you, comfort you, and empower you along every step of the journey. You are more than a conqueror through Jesus Christ your Savior!”
Flicker nodded feeling the truth of all that Elon had said at play within her. She felt like something special and of rare value had been poured into her by another who loved her enough, as a fellow member of the Kingdom, to share everything with her in the encouragement of her soul.
“Thank you!”
Elon shook his head, “Don’t thank me. Thank the One who made you, to whom all the credit and glory goes.”
Elon reached down and pulled a bag free of Utah’s belt