Chapter 1
San Francisco, California, United States of America May 30, 2002 - 11:31 PM Headquarters of the Government Agency, Tears of the Sun - Dr. K. C. Leighmann's office.
Dr. Kate Christine Leighmann sent a very special teenage boy, Mark, to the streets to buy her some groceries for the meals of his fellow companions and some clothes for them. The people under Dr. Leighmann's care, they were special-needs people and they couldn't go out whenever they wanted to. They depended entirely on her, like they were physically, mentally or emotionally disabled. That wasn't so. The people that would interact with Mark within the next couple of hours, from the moment he walked out the door of the federal agency "Tears of the Sun", they would soon find out that Mark and his companion brothers and sisters were not disabled. They were from outer space. Some people would be horrified upon figuring this out and others would be contented. They thought that these beings could give them anything that they wanted for them just to be loved and accepted. Were they right, or were they targets of the biggest and most lethal deception of them all, a deception that would drive the US Government to decide not to leave Planet Earth for special missions ever again? There was a slightly mentally-ill elderly woman that Cameron, the reporter of Tears of the Sun was interviewing. Cameron was part of a very talented elite team that was in charge of constantly surveying people to collect their opinion about our outer-space adventures. The elderly woman was extremely preoccupied. She'd had strange premonitions about human beings not going to Mars, were they usually go when they get out of Earth, but to the moon. They knew that Mars was solid rock and that if it all went well; human beings could land safely on Martian soil without falling into any loopholes. The moon was very different. People had to select the spot that they were going to stand on before setting their feet on lunar soil. They usually stayed away from the huge lunar craters and collected samples from the outside of the craters, in the surrounding area. They were afraid of collecting anything inside of the craters and they were right in fearing that. There were two-foot live creatures in there, creatures that were part weird but cute little monsters and part angels, thus they had the wings of angels, twice as big as their bodies, but they never had the slightest complication walking around with those wings. They couldn't fly nonetheless. There was too much gravity on the moon for them to be able to fly and it made them weigh 1,000 pounds each. If these organisms lived on Earth, each one of them in their primary body, the body of a very strange creature, they would each weigh only 200 pounds—their bodies along with the human bodies they morph into, 600 pounds in pure muscle, but that's because the human body's much bigger because gravity on Earth is just right and it creates a balance that makes the creature be as the Biblical half-angelic, half-human creatures were in the Book of Genesis—so huge that they could stomp on the ground with force and knock dead up to 1,000 human beings all at once.
"There's too much gravity on the Earthly moon now," said the borderline, but bright elder expert. "I don't know what brought about the change. Temperatures are freezing cold and when men go to the moon, they can't stay there for long. They've got to watch their step. The soil is not as smooth and firm as it used to be. It's like sand here on Earth. People take steps and their feet sink into the ground."
"It's probably due to global warming and all of the supernatural disasters that changed the Earth's axis."
"It's not yet known the exact cause. One thing's for sure, there are so many craters... and those craters are not empty anymore."
"What's inside, water?" asked Cameron.
"To be honest, I wish it was water inside of the craters, but it's not water, its living things."
Open mouthed and blown away, Cameron said, "Living things? What species do they belong to?"
"No one that has traveled to the moon recently has been able to see them. They're not afraid of us, they're just angry that we've invaded their territory."
"They consider the moon their territory? How were we supposed to know that someone lived there? The moon was empty all this time, and now it's populated, as much as Earth?"
"That is correct."
"How can that be? Where did they come from?"
"It's not known. There is one theory that they're trying to prove as fact and they have been examining since 2000, when the first specimen was found. It's believed that there was a solar storm that caused such a flare that moved everything completely out of place, but the storm couldn't reach Earth. As soon as it touched the moon's surface and intermixed with the moon's matter and particles, the contrast between the extreme heat and the extreme low temperature created a living thing and then threw it into a crater, like someone dumping a sandwich into a trash can, sandwich halfway through or unfinished."
"Oh, my God, this is surreal."
"Apparently it's not surreal anymore, Mr. Benson."
While Mark explored grocery stores for food and department stores for clothing with $100,000 in his pocket in the form of debit cards, the $100,000 that came from Dr. Leighmann's account, Dr. Leighmann sat in her office, open-mouthed and astonished with the results of the IQ tests that she gave her alien friends only seventy-two hours before. The lowest IQ that she saw was 200, and that was Michael's IQ, Mark's twin brother. Mark had an IQ of 292, which in alien standards would make Michael slightly, retarded compare to Mark. Nonetheless, these beings didn't live where they were born; they lived on Earth, and on Earth, IQ's so high could make these living things our biggest blessings or our worst nightmares. It all depended on whether we would treat them like we treat one another or treat them like they're our nemeses—and treating them like that would surely cost us our lives. Dr. Leighmann was constantly taking phone calls from different grocery stores at this moment, asking her whether or not she authorized Mark to use her debit cards. She would say that she sent him there to make the purchases with her bank-account money and then hang up and reexamine the IQ test results again and again. She couldn't believe it. She suddenly felt like expediting these tests again, but she didn't want to antagonize these aliens. She thought that their temper was as bad as ours. When provoked, however, their temper was 1,000 times worse!
"How could you get these test results, Dr. Leighmann?" said Cameron, astonished. "These IQ results are laughable. I doubt their authenticity."
"That's the real IQ test, Cameron that the State has issued."
"Yes, but no one has IQ's over 160!"
"You're wrong, Cameron. Remember that although these living things seem to be in our crew, they're not. They're Earthling aliens."
Stunned, Cameron asked, "Earthling aliens?" and said, "There's no way that a living thing can be an Earthling and an alien at the same time."
"Yes, there is. An Earthling is a specimen that was conceived and born here on Earth. Here on Earthly soil, not around the planet, but inside of it. The moon, the soil that saw these Earthlings breed and bring about new beings, simultaneously, repeatedly and endlessly, it's the Earth's moon, but it isn't inside of the planet. It's millions and millions of miles away. Just because we can look up at the night sky and see the moon, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's inside the planet. The moon is just like the sun." "You call them Earthling aliens. What a term you've used to describe them!"
"That's what they are. If they'd been born in any other planet besides Earth, they would be simply aliens, but they were bred and born on the Earth's moon. Moons are not planets. Moons are the sources of life of our planets. Without moons, our planets would be highly unstable including Earth—especially Earth."
"Tell me just some of the things that would happen if the moon abandoned the Earth."
"I'm just going to tell you two of the things because if I were to explain to you everything that would happen; we would be sitting here, conversing for the next four to five hours. Two of the most terrible things that would happen: the Earth's temperature would get so low that it would literally be impossible for any of us to live here. We'd freeze to death and then decompose, infecting the planet and making it inhabitable and—plainly sickening. The Earth would become, figuratively a place were the AIDS virus would be flying and from which no one would be able to escape, no matter where they went. The second thing that would happen: night and day would happen repeatedly, second after second, instead of occurring every twenty-four hours, like it's occurring now. Imagine that, night, and day, night, and day, night and day..."
"We would die of old age in one day."
"That's right. Do you want to know what would happen, everything that would happen if the moon suddenly decided it doesn't want to be by the Earth's side anymore? Ask our dear aliens. They can tell you everything within a few minutes without having to stop, think back and verify information in their minds to answer any question you were to ask next, in order to give you the information that you're asking for."
Mark suddenly encountered an adult alien that had been kicked out of "Tears of the Sun" for mysteriously passing on a deadly sexually-transmitted disease to one of the nurses. However, this was not an STD. This was a deadly chemical that would cook the human being from the inside out, after mating with the alien, if the alien didn't undergo a very delicate surgery procedure that would remove the deadly substance from his or her body before starting to mate. The specialists of "Tears of the Sun" were learning this bizarre truth at this very second, while Mark and Wesley became the best of friends. Wesley was an incredibly-handsome caramel-colored-skin, turquoise-blue-eyed, brown-haired, incredibly-brawny and muscular man that had literally broken hundreds of hearts in a matter of hours. Women would ask him to make love to them and he'd turn them down, because the incident with that nurse completely discouraged Wesley from mating. Wesley accompanied Mark to Dillard's to get his brothers and sisters the best clothes. Wesley helped Mark to understand their taste in clothes and find the ones that would look the best on them and Mark spent $40,000 in Dillard's and $20,000 in Publix, leaving two of Dr. Leighmann's debit cards completely unused. They were new. The other debit cards were full. The bank notified Dr. Leighmann of this, but she declared that she hadn't been a victim of identity theft and that she'd authorized all of these purchases. Wesley took Mark to the bathroom of the ice cream shop they were in and inside that bathroom; Mark became a twenty-seven-year-old man. The height and the bodies of the two men, one Latino and one Caucasian, were truly stunning. The women in the store would take one look at them and then they would gasp and drool.
"Did you see those hot rods walking out of the store, Kristin?"
"Yes, I saw them. Would you dare to enamor them and then have kinky sex with them?"
"I would enamor them just to show them that they can have any woman they want, but I wouldn't have a threesome with them or sleep with them, one after the other. No way. I've done that before, and the only thing it got me was an incurable STD for which there's no shot, and that left me infertile—HPV—beautiful, huh?"
"That won't happen to me." Kristin walked away from her older sister Kay and just as the objects of her dirtiest desires walked to Wesley's car, Mark's only mean of faster transportation that he wouldn't have to pay for, she walked up to them, behind them and then walked around them and faced them.
They looked at one another in awe. "What are you guys doing tonight?"
"Why do you ask?"
"I thought the three of us could have fun tonight."
Smiling, Mark said, "How?"
"We could have sex."
Mark gave away a big sigh and said, "It's solely Wesley's decision to sleep with you or not to sleep with you, sweetheart, but count me out of this. I believe that threesomes and orgies are nasty and I also believe that, for a man or a woman to have sex with another man or woman just hours or minutes after having sex with a third man or woman—is disgusting."
"I don't know who told this whore that I wanted to have sex with her," said Wesley, laughing at Kristin cruelly. "When I want to have sex with a woman, I make my moves on her, very subtly however. I don't approach her and say, 'What are you doing tonight? Want to have sex with me?'"
"I'm sorry if you don't like it when the woman takes the initiative. I'm sorry you refuse to acknowledge that we're in control now, and you're at our mercy. We can do whatever we want to you and you have no say about it because you can't push us away. You know what? That is because we take advantage to the maximum, your physical strength over our physical weakness."
Wesley looked directly into her eyes, burning them, as his eyes were literally two bright little stars, and said, "We're not interested, but now that you're talking about men and women being in control when it comes to one wooing the other, I'll give you my very personal opinion. Being in control is being approached, being offered sex, and saying no, which is precisely what we're doing right now."
"I repeat what he said. We're not interested, so get lost. We don't mind you having vast experience with various different men, in your past or in your present. What really innerves us is your egotistical and vane attitude—the way that you think that every man you see and propose to have sex to will say yes to you, go home with you, and give into you. We love vastly-sexually-experienced women. As a matter of fact, we prefer them over virginal or hardly-experienced women. However, we do hate vanity, especially when we see it in human beings—living things that are obviously inferior. Look at us! Can you look into our eyes without lifting your head like you want to look at the sky?"
She remained quiet.
"I didn't think so. Now, just in case you didn't quite," said Mark, harshly pounding his temple with his index finger, "get it, I repeat, for the sake of both of us and not just mine—we’re not interested in you. Take a hike. Find some other fool who won't mind having you tonight and watch you having a man-woman-man threesome tomorrow night."
The men turned the young woman down and she felt humiliated like she never had before. Just to get back at Mark for being the first to turn her down, rudely, she spit directly on his eyes. As Mark covered his face and her saliva covered his eyes, he ran out of the sidewalk onto the street and a forty-five-year-old man hit him hard with his BMW. Worried, the man got out of the car to see how the victim of his first-ever car accident was doing. Mark was down and he was unconscious. Wesley wasted no time. He immediately called TTS. Kyle, one of the helpline representatives, responded after the second ring of the phone. Kyle called Dr. Leighmann at her extension number and notified her of what was happening. Thirty minutes later, Dr. Leighmann received a phone call from St. Mark Hospital, just ten minutes away from TTS. Kyle and Dr. Leighmann left to go there, together, in Kyle's sedan. As soon as they arrived, they found the attendant, identified themselves, and immediately got access to Mark and Wesley. As soon as they entered the ICU, they were in for a horrific surprise. The girl that had caused Mark's accident, she'd been skinned alive and was now fighting for her life, and Mark was lying on a bed, on a respirator, with severe damage in his internal organs. He'd only been there for forty-five minutes. Suddenly, Mark's organs, including the skin, started regenerating. Mark only got stronger and stronger as minutes of time passed him by, until he took off his respirator and effortlessly sat on the bed and greeted everyone. Wesley, Kyle and Dr. Leighmann were absolutely astonished. Dr. Ramsey discharged Mark and both Mark and Wesley were taken back to Tears of the Sun. Wesley was received at "The Sky-Blue Castle", as aliens called it because it was built in the form of a castle, as if nothing had ever happened between him and that nurse. Wesley's old friends, they started sharing and having fun with him like he'd never left. 5. Back at Dr. Leighmann's house, Dr. Leighmann had adopted a girl that was now fourteen years old because the girl's mother dumped her in the trash can at an apartment complex. When the police found her, they put her in social-services custody and finally, at four months old, Dr. Leighmann and her husband, Esq. Leighmann, they legally adopted the girl and named her Christine Rose Leighmann. Christine was on her computer, shopping on the Internet for new medical supplies, gauzes, band-aids, isopropyl alcohol, special soap, among other things. Christine Rose had been burned with acid all over her body except her face and her neck three years before. A very evil nine-year-old girl had gotten Christine back in a very evil way because the boy that she liked told Christine that she was prettier than that other girl, and that he liked her more. Envy and pride drove that now twelve-year-old girl to prey on Christine by making sure that boys wouldn't be attracted to her ever again. However, part of the plan of this girl failed miserably because although Christine couldn't take her clothes off in front of anyone because her skin was still repeatedly shedding and regenerating, she could still show her pretty face and her stunning big, round dark-turquoise eyes, eyes that would astound anyone who looked directly into them. Dr. Leighmann wanted to introduce Mark and Michael to her adopted daughter just to make them feel welcome at her home because TTS was undergoing intense remodeling and reconstruction after a specimen went mad for no reason and destroyed the premises totally. This specimen was physically incomplete, completely-monstrous physical appearance and unfinished body. It went crazy after a nurse injected it. It hated needles, and after killing the innocent nurse mercilessly by making her give back her heart through her mouth, it was confined to a capsule, physical outlook slowly changing—morphing—specimen waiting to be forgiven and given the chance to interact with others, like a relatively-normal creature.
Three days after the incident with the disrespectful woman, Mark was eating his breakfast in TOTS outside of his capsule, but locked up in a bedroom. He was browsing the Internet on his laptop and all of a sudden, he saw a dating-site advertisement. He became interested and clicked on the link.
Mark wasn’t allowed to interact with human women on the outside of his home, so he had someone call Kate to ask her permission to use her credit card. Five minutes later, Kate went into Mark’s room. “How can I help you, Mark?” She said, smiling.
“Hi,” he said, smiling back. “I want to ask you something, but I’m afraid you’ll become angry with me.”
She crossed her arms across her chest. “What is it, Mark?”
“I wanted your permission to use your credit card to get a membership in an online-dating site,” he said.
“Online dating?” she said, awestruck. “You can’t get out of here, Mark!”
“I just want her to write me letters and send me gifts.”
“Well, if all you want is a long-distance relationship, I will let you borrow my card.” Kate pulled out her credit card from her pocketbook and gave it to Mark. The credit card had $50,000 at the moment, and Mark would only use $9.95 for the membership fee.
“Thanks, Kate,” said Mark as he took the card from her. “I promise you never to borrow it again.”
“This credit card is under my name, but it’s yours. You can’t have anything under your name because on the outside world, you don’t exist.”
Worried, Mark said, “I have no documents?”
“Birth certificate and social security card, no, you don’t. However, within the next two days, after a procedure that we have to perform on you, you will be released.”
“What procedure is that,” asked Mark, “making us human?”
“It’s impossible to make you human, Mark. If that could be done, you would be out of here since the day you were born.”
“Oh…”
“You’ll have your identity documents by the time you be released. That means you’re going to be able to work, and have a lot of things, including bank accounts and credit cards.”
Mark became as excited as a little child. “That is awesome! I promise not to use more than $200 on this card.”
“Ok,” said Kate. “I hope you can find a good woman on the Internet.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Leighmann.”
Kate walked out of the room.
Mark got on Google to search for a trustworthy site. He found one in a matter of seconds. It was the first one on the first search-results page, and the most popular one, too. He clicked on the link and pressed the ‘sign up’ button. Mark put in all of his personal information, like his birth date. He also wrote down where he lived. Minutes later, he received not one, but ten compatible people with him after taking a brief personality test.
It was time to upload his photo. Mark didn’t know what to do now. He was not sure if when he took a picture of himself, the image would be visible and crystal-clear like the picture of a human being. Once again, he called on Kate for help, this time on his instant messenger.
Kate was busy with a woman that found a baby alien, and wanted to turn it in to Tears of the Sun. Kate told the woman to give her a few minutes and opened an IM conversation window with Mark. She invited him to a webcam conversation and he accepted. She invited him to a microphone conversation and he accepted.
“How can I help you?” she said.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I just wanted to ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“If I took a picture of me, would it be crystal-clear as if you took a picture of you?”
“Yes, Mark, it would be clear. You are not a hybrid. Your human appearance is due to the fact that you were born on the moon. If you were a Martian, you would either be hybrid or be a man-eating monster.”
“Oh, ok…”
“So go ahead and take a picture and upload it or upload many pictures if you like. This is your time for entertainment, and it ends in an hour, so have fun.” Kate ended the conversation.
Mark closed the conversation window and went back to the upload-photo page. Then, he minimized the window and opened his webcam video-capture program. Then, he selected the snapshot feature, put himself on his best pose for sitting in a chair, pressed the snapshot button, and took a picture. He was wearing his best clothes at the moment, like he was going to go out.
Then, he closed the video-capture program and searched for the picture on the folder of his video-capture program. He closed the ‘My Documents’ window and went back to the upload page. He pressed the browse button, located his picture, and pressed the ‘upload’ button. He figured that one picture was more than enough, so he made some modifications to his profile, and then, he gave a description of himself in his About Me section.
I AM TWENTY TWO YEARS OLD AND I AM LOOKING FOR A WOMAN WHO IS VERY COMPASSIONATE AND UNDERSTANDING, A WOMAN WHO IS CAPABLE OF LOVING A MAN JUST THE WAY HE IS, AND WOULD NEVER WANT TO CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT HIM.
As soon as he finished working on his profile, he closed the window and closed up the laptop.
The morning after, Mark ate breakfast with his friends and played some board games. Then, he went to his room to take a nap because, for some reason, he didn’t sleep well the night before. Two hours later, Mark woke up. A nurse came to get him because it was time for him to do something artistic, like composing songs or painting. He and the nurse walked out of Mark’s room.
“So,” said Thomas, the nurse, “where do you want to go, to the art room, or to the music room?”
“I want to go to the music room,” said Mark.
“Very well,” said Thomas and walked Mark to the music room. No one was composing songs, however. They were all listening to music.
Mark sat, alone, in a table near the door of the room. A female alien sat beside him. She was a lunar alien, too. “Hi,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“My name is Mark Donovan Manning. What’s yours?”
“My name is Amelia Rose Galloway.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Amelia.”
This wasn’t real. In reality, Mark and the female alien didn’t say a word to one another. She just sat there, watching him compose his song to learn how to compose songs of her own. Mark was briefly taken out of reality to visualize the real future. In his eyes, the alien had morphed into Amelia, the woman that he met on the Internet the night before, and given him a taste of what it would be like with the real Amelia.
Mark and Amelia were now talking on the instant messenger through webcam and microphone. This was the only contact that aliens were allowed to have with humans: cybernetic.
Amelia remained silent for a few minutes. She was fascinated with what she was seeing. She knew where he was talking to her from because every instant messenger that was used on that facility, it had the person’s name and the Tears of the Sun logo on it, and it could not be edited and changed. She knew that he was alien. Still, she felt that he was the love of her life and she couldn’t let him get away. It was strange because she had never felt this for another man right after meeting him, not in person, much less on the Internet.
“Are you there, Amelia?”
“Yes, I’m here. It’s just that you’re so… hot and sexy!”
Mark laughed. “I get that a lot, and I never get to go out anywhere!”
“So, you get a lot of visitors.”
“Oh, yeah, they bring people, only physicians and psychiatrists, and the female ones all became infatuated with me.”
“No wonder,” she said. “So, do you think that you’d be allowed a visit from someone that’s not a doctor?”
“No,” he said, “but you know what? We will be released in three days. We will be provided with houses, cars, scholarships to go to college and get degrees so we can start careers and support ourselves financially.”
“That’s great,” said Amelia. “What career will you pursue?”
“I want to be a singer. I have composed many songs.”
“Do you ever sing?”
“No, I don’t because I don’t want to disturb my friends and the staff of TOTS.”
“I don’t think you’ll disturb them. Just sing during the daytime and don’t sing loudly.”
“I never thought of that. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Well, I suppose you have to go to sleep now, so we will talk tomorrow night.”
“Ok, Amelia. I promise to sign in earlier so we can talk more.”
“Bye, Mark.”
They logged off simultaneously. Mark turned off his laptop and closed it up.
Suddenly, Deanna, o