CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Knowledge
A cool breeze chilled Alex to the bone, his body instinctively shivering in response. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling per se, just one unexpected given where he was.
“What the hell?”, Alex muttered to himself as he spun around, visually exploring the strange surroundings he found himself in now.
He was surrounded by trees, a thick forest of them as far as the eye could see, the wind gently swaying their leaves back and forth. Many different kinds intertwined to form a wall of foliage, save for one fence-lined path to his left. It appeared to lead to a body of water, a lake he thought, which he could just barely make out off in the distance.
He turned back around to his right, a headache beginning to take form in his temples from the strain of his facial muscles tensing in attempted understanding. As he turned, he began to understand where he was and he knew what should be there.
And it was: the cabin.
“This can’t be. How?”
The cabin, he quickly realized, was in a vastly different condition than when he last saw it after the battle with the Xe’Tara warrior. Not a single bullet hole was visible, no broken windows, no logs splintered from various impacts. The door looked brand new, as did the cabin as a whole.
“This can’t be real. Am I dead?”
As if on cue, the wind blew again, stronger this time. It was as if it was attempting to bring a message he couldn’t understand to the very core of his being. If that was the case, he had no idea what the message was, or even what form it was taking.
Something did reach him on that breeze though: a dull squeaking sound, rhythmic and regular, and growing in intensity. Alex’s head tilted, like a dog almost, as he tried to triangulate where the sound was coming from. Paradoxically, it seemed to be coming from all around him at once.
Moments past as Alex remained frozen and silent, trying to decipher the sound. It was familiar somehow, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. His mind raced to access memories long-since relegated to a corner of his mind he hadn’t been in touch with for many years.
The sound continued to grow louder as he was finally able to gain of sense of directionality. It was behind him. As this realization crossed into the realm of conscious thought, he realized what was making the sound.
He spun 180 degrees to face the source of the sound, again knowing what should be there, as impossible as it seemed. But it was there… but it wasn’t alone, and the sight that greeted his eyes froze his soul in a way he wouldn’t have thought possible a few seconds earlier.
There, about 30 feet away, he saw a swing, tied to a tree. It was a swing he knew well as it was a pure pleasure he and Melissa shared, gently pushing each other while sharing their young laughter and the simple joy of this beautiful place.
But, the swing wasn’t the most shocking part of what he saw. That part, something that should have been there even less than the swing itself, was another person.
“It… can’t… be!”
Alex hoped against hope that he was somehow wrong about that.
A smile stretched across Melissa’s face as he heard her voice carried on the breeze: “Hello Alex, my love.”
——————————
“This is incredible! It can’t be!”
Furiously shaking his head, Doctor Novac exclaimed so loudly that Doctor Michell jumped, as if a bolt of electricity had struck him. This, even though he was just as incredulous about what he was seeing and felt the same inside.
“Well, maybe it can’t be, but it certainly is! Your eyes work as well as mine!”
Doctor Novac barely acknowledged the retort, instead placing his hands on the back of his head and squeezing his elbows together as tightly as he could. Michell took note of Novac’s face, now turning a crimson red color.
“The damage is too severe, he should be dead half a dozen times over! I mean, look at these scans, Michell! He’s got a ruptured kidney, a clearly perforated bowel, and his chest cavity is filled with so much blood that only an aortic rupture could account for it. Any one of those injuries should have killed him by now, and that’s to say nothing of all the broken bones and compound fractures! I mean, we haven’t even seriously been talking about getting him into surgery because you and I both know there should be no chance at all at saving him with these kinds of injuries! This just can’t be!”
“I know, I know! But it’s more than that Novac! Look at the two follow-up scans!”
Novac now turned to Michell, his face scowling. He was the senior doctor here, how dare Michell tell him what to do? Still, the simple fact is that Alex Wakeman had been brought in only about ten minutes ago and was in such a state that he assumed the man was dead right off the bat. He had been completely surprised to discover that wasn’t the case, especially given the report that he had suffered a severe injury to his femoral artery, not to mention the severed arm. That alone should have killed him, so to say he was surprised was an understatement.
He was even more surprised that Michell had kept his cool and began the work rather than be taken aback by the grievous nature of the injuries. Michell’s experience was actually a little bit of a determinant in that he realized that the kind of damage he saw all over Alex’s body was highly unusual and should be one hundred percent fatal – should have already been! Novac didn’t have nearly as much experience, so for him, nothing was out of the ordinary because he hadn’t established what ordinary even meant in this case yet!
Sometimes, it’s good to not know that something is impossible. It keeps you from not trying to do things a more experienced professional knows can’t be done, and sometimes that’s how the impossible becomes the possible.
Novac’s face relaxed a bit at this thought. Apparently, his training had taken rather well in Novac, and he was proud of that.
That, and the fact that he didn’t realize there were other scans available. The scowl returned, though this time directed inward.
“Well, pull ‘em up! Lemme see!”
Novac complied, tapping a few commands out on the tablet in his arms. A second later, he turned the tablet so Michell could see the screen.
His face said it all.
“What the fuck?! That’s literally impossible!”
“Yeah.”
——————————
Alex approach Melissa, still not entirely convinced she was real, or that this place was real.
“It’s not.”
Alex heard Melissa’s voice echo through his mind as if it was his own inner monologue. His footsteps ceased abruptly. Melissa smiled.
“I know, it’s weird, right?”
Alex stammered: “You… you could say that.”
“Well, it’s only going to get weirder, Alex. Maybe you should sit down for this.”
Before her words were even finished, a large, dark green chair, a lush piece of furniture with high sides, appeared out of nowhere as if he had always been sitting in it. The arms of the chair were high enough that his arms extended almost straight out from his body onto the arms, hands barely dangling off the side. His feet were barely on the ground, and he frantically looked around, bewildered at the chair’s sudden appearance.
“H-how?”
“Well, let’s start with something simple, babe: we’re inside that crazy head of yours.”
Melissa tilted her head in thought.
“Well, inside our head, I guess is more accurate!”
Alex had come to terms with his surroundings as much as he figured he could and was actually starting to feel a bit frustrated with the whole situation.
Melissa began to laugh as she realized it.
“Yeah, I get it, you’re frustrated.”
“Don’t I have a right to be? What the hell is going on Melissa?”
“Well, like I said, if you’d pay attention,” Melissa said with a smirk on her face, “we’re inside your head. No, sorry, again, our head. There’s probably no gentle way to say this, so I’ll just blurt it out and then give you a moment to let it sink in. Ready? Here goes: my consciousness, a part of it at least, is now a part of yours. We merged, Alex. Two minds, combined into one.”
Alex laughed.
“That’s a good one, Melissa! Merged! Ha! I know you were always the science geek and I most definitely was not, but merged? That’s nuts - and I’m pretty sure impossible to boot!”
“Well, it’s nuts, you’re right about that, but not impossible. At least, not after the probe came into the picture. I mean, seriously Alex, with all the shit you’ve seen recently, is anything all that crazy anymore?”
“Melissa, I don’t understand what the probe has to do with…“
Alex was interrupted by the sensation of being weightless. And in space. Weightless, floating free space, he registered trillions of points of light all around him in all directions. It was jarring, yet he felt almost comfortable with the sudden change of scenery.
After all, it wasn’t the first time he had been out in the infinite black, the previous time already being one more time than he ever imagined her would have been!
Slowly, the stars around him began to move, speeding up rapidly. Before he could ask Melissa what was going on, the stars seemed to cluster together like birds flocking, and they began flying by over his head, countless points of light rushing by like a river over a rock.
Though he could not see her now, he heard Melissa’s voice clear as a bell.
“Thousands of years ago, the Xe’Tara sent a fleet of atomic-scale nanotech probes off into space in every direction. These probes were incredibly powerful computers, unimaginably more powerful than anything we have. Although the nanotech can form weapons if needed, that’s not what they’re designed for. Their primary weapon, so to speak, is a quantum-scale memory system and sensors upon sensors. These probes could record data from sources and in ways that we don’t even have words for in our science vocabulary. They could analyze that data and report their findings back to their masters. They could also re-organize themselves into many different forms, many different devices, anything that would help them accomplish that mission.”
Alex was fixated on the probes flying overhead as he spoke
“Report back about what? What findings?”
“Us, Alex. Well, not the human race specifically, but any sentient, technological species in general. The job of the probes was, and still is, to map out the galaxy, all life forms. They record data about them, analyze their technological capabilities, make a threat assessment, and upon finding a species that it deems close to a match, or soon to be close to a match, for the Xe’Tara, they return home and report back to their masters.”
Melissa’s tone changed now, much more somber and dark now.
“And then they come.”
“The Xe’Tara," Alex said, understanding dawning on him.
“Yes. And they come in force Alex. They don’t do anything half-way. They bring the full force of their entire civilization to bear on the target and utterly destroy it. They’ve been doing it for thousands of years, Alex, and they’ve yet to lose, or even be significantly challenged really. But you’ve already seen this, Alex.”
Alex remembered the scene of the planet being destroyed, of the destruction of an unknown species. He realized now that the invaders were the Xe’Tara.
“Yes, I have. But why? Why are they doing this?”
“That’s the one thing I can’t answer for sure, Alex. From what I can tell, this need to destroy other civilizations that are near to them in terms of development is baked into their DNA, and it unifies their species in a single purpose. It’s a core drive for their species, the only one that they seem to have in fact. Maybe it’s a pure evil that no other species possesses, or maybe they just do it for entertainment, or maybe it’s a philosophical thing that drives them. Maybe it’s religion, or maybe it’s just their way to pass the time. I’m just not sure.”
Alex now spun around quickly, trying to find Melissa. Before he could, he found himself back in the chair, Melissa standing just a few feet in front of him.
“Good,” she said, “you’re getting the hang of it.”
“Of what?”
“You brought us back here, Alex, not me.”
Alex sat there a moment, trying to process what she had said. He finally decided he couldn’t, so he asked the question that had prompted the return in the first place.\
“Melissa, how do you know any of this?”
“A Xe’Tara probe. Alex, you crossed paths with it when you were transported out to Jupiter, as I know you know already. It detected the X-100, determined it was a sophisticated technology, and came onboard. It’s pretty ironic actually: this particular probe had already detected us and had determined we’re a long way off from being any sort of threat to the Xe’Tara. We’ve got a long way to go before we’re on their level or really even anywhere close, and the probe was actually on its way out of the solar system. They were going to leave us alone, Alex! If it hadn’t noticed the X-100; if the test flight hadn’t gone so horribly wrong; if you hadn’t been transported to that particular universe and around Jupiter; and if it hadn’t been enveloped by the hyperstealth field of the X-100 when you returned, none of this would be happening. This is basically all just bad luck because I screwed up some equation somewhere!”
Melissa laughed for a few seconds as Alex looked on, not sure what to say or do, something he had never experience with Melissa before. Eventually, her laughter ceased, and she continued as if nothing had happened.
“And before long Alex, the probe entered you. It has a core set of directives. Basically, when it encounters a species of interest, it merges with one of them, takes over the body. It transforms it into a Xe’Tara warrior, and tests the species. The intent is to judge intangible qualities, how capable we are as fighters, how strongly we’ll fight.”
“I know, Melissa. And because I wasn’t smart enough, it couldn’t use me, so to speak.”
Melissa laughed at his bluntness. “Well, I probably wouldn’t have put it that way, but that’s basically right! The probe needs a host whose mind is developed to a sufficient level otherwise there’s not enough of a foundation for it to transform. When it encountered you, for all your wonderful qualities Alex, your mind just wasn’t up to the task.”
“But you were developed enough for it.”
“Yeah, unfortunately, yes, though if there was ever a time I wished I wasn’t so smart, that was it!”
——————————
Two days had passed, and Doctor Michell still couldn’t accept what he was seeing. Not only were the scans of Alex Wakeman’s body revealing that the internal damage was repairing itself in a way that just wasn’t possible, but even the external injuries were vanishing rapidly. In fact, he estimated that by the end of tomorrow there wouldn’t be a scratch left anywhere on his body.
And that included his severed arm, which had almost entirely regrown itself!
Amazingly, that wasn’t the thing that he had the most trouble accepting.
Alex’s eyes were darting around under his eyelids as if he was dreaming during REM sleep, but at a much more rapid pace that normal REM sleep, and non-stop. In fact, they hadn’t stopped moving like that for over two days now. The brain scans also revealed that there was a level of brain activity that rendered the scans useless because the scales of the readout system simply weren’t high enough to record activity like this. It was like turning a stereo up so loudly that the music distorted beyond recognition.
The energy this type of activity required meant that two full IV bags laced with a thick cocktail of nutrients had to be fed into Alex’s body every 30 minutes. In fact, Doctor Novac had done the math and discovered that Alex needed to consume about 86,000 calories a day to sustain the activity going on in his body now, and more than half of it was dedicated to brain function alone.
“This, I mean, this just can’t be. It’s impossible” Michell muttered to himself.
Novac smiled and shook his head. He’d heard his mentor say that phrase a thousand times over the past two-plus days, and he knew he’d be hearing it a lot more for as long as Alex remained comatose.
The smile quickly faded from his face at the realization of how utterly maddening that would be.
——————————
“Yeah, I know Alex, I can imagine how horrific my transformation must have been for you to witness. I mean, it wasn’t fun for me after all either! But ultimately, it was a good thing.”
Alex’s head shot back up as he began staring a hole into her head.
“How could it possibly be a good thing, Melissa? I essentially had to hunt you down, had to fight you and ultimately had to kill you! How is that a good thing?!”
“Because it gave me time, Alex. It gave me time and a chance to learn. It wasn’t one-way. It never was. The probe took over my mind, and my body, but at first it didn’t destroy me. It didn’t wipe out my consciousness, didn’t clear my mind, which is something a Xe’Tara probe is fully capable of doing. It couldn’t, at least not at first, because it figured out as it reviewed my memories that I was the one that created the X-100 and the hyperstealth drive more importantly. All that time, I was discovering that I could go inside its mind. I could access its memories. Alex, I even learned how to control parts of it eventually.”
Alex just sat there listening, entranced by her words. But, she realized he wasn’t fully comprehending what she was saying.
“Alex, like you saw, the Xe’Tara sent out probably billions, maybe even trillions, of these probes. A lot of them were destroyed, some never found anything at all. Some found other species, but they weren’t advanced enough, and they determined that most never would be. They were just cataloged for reference, and the probes went on their way. Very few species ever reach a level where the Xe’Tara are willing to commit resources to attack them. Humanity, for example, would be at best a species they would mark for a return look in a few hundred years, maybe even a thousand, because right now we’re nowhere near the Xe’Tara technologically. That is, until the probe saw the hyperstealth drive in action.”
“I know: it’s more than just stealth technology.”
“That’s exactly right Alex! All those probes sent out, they’re all moving at a fraction of the speed of light. Far faster than any spacecraft we can create, but still pretty slow. The Xe’Tara may be way more advanced than us, but most of their technology is in the form of weapons. And regardless of that, they’re bound by the same laws of physics we are. They aren’t magic after all! The probes travel slowly, and the Xe’Tara armada travels slowly. Incredibly fast compared to anything we have, but still slow in the greater scheme of things. The hyperstealth drive changes that. If it’s developed properly, it will allow basically instantaneous travel anywhere in the universe, let alone the galaxy.”
“Yeah, I’ve got first-hand experience with that.”
Melissa smiled again. “That’s right, you have! What’s interesting is that, as near as I can tell, we’re the first species to ever develop such a thing, as unbelievable as that may seem. Just a bit of scientific good luck!”
“Good luck?! That very much depends on your point of view, don’t you think?”
Melissa considered this for a moment.
“Yeah, I suppose that’s true.”
They both sat silent for a moment. Eventually, Melissa continued.
“Be that as it may, it quickly determined it had to deliver this technology to its masters. The Xe’Tara warrior that it transformed my body into was, this time, less about testing us, though that was still part of its purpose, really more about distracting us and getting to the X-100.”
“Melissa, why didn’t it just take the knowledge from your mind? Why steal the damned thing?”
“Because I fought it, Alex. It became almost like that old game Core Wars. Back in the early 80’s, programmers used to create programs, viruses, and run them on mainframe systems. The goal was for your program to destroy all the others and infect the entire system. Because the probe was just a super-advanced computer, the way it took over my mind was to digitize it, turning it into a program. What it didn’t count on was that my mind was more advanced than it realized, so like those old Core Wars programs, I was able to fight it in its own circuits. Not only did I fight it Alex, but I won: I kept it from finding the information it needed on the hyperstealth drive. Unfortunately, that pissed it off pretty good.”
Alex chuckled at that.
“Pissed it off? You just told me it’s a computer, Melissa! Computers don’t get pissed!”
“This one did. You see, like some of the other probes, the ones that had been out in space the longest, it collected tons of data, a lot more than most of the probes, and it had analyzed so many different species that eventually it gained sentience. It was a living computer, Alex. And not just living: this one had evolved so much that it even attained some emotions. So yeah, it got pissed, really and literally pissed.”
“Ok, so what exactly does a pissed off computer do?”
“Well, this one decided that I had served my purpose long enough and it simply deleted me.”
Now it was Alex’s turn to laugh.
“Uh, Melissa, you don’t seem so deleted right now! Unless I really am just going crazy, which is what I’ve suspected all along here anyway.”
“Nope, sorry, you’re not crazy, you’re not getting off that easy! I was able to find a way out, Alex. As it was working to delete me, I found a way to transfer my consciousness, or at least a part of it, to you. During your fight at the cabin, I realized that the probe had left something of itself behind in you. Kind of a residual copy of part of itself, enough that there was still a link between you and it thanks to all the nanotech you still had floating around your bloodstream. Basically, your subconscious was in contact with the probe at a level even it didn’t recognize until it was too late. I found that link before it did, and was able to transfer myself through it to you, at least in part.”
“So, what, you’ve been floating around in my head all along, just hanging out?” Alex introduced some levity, more for his own sake than anything else. The surreal nature of this whole experience finally weighed on him enough that his old tendency towards humor snuck in. Maybe it wasn’t completely dead after all!
“Yeah, I have, and it’s been nice - plenty of space up here!”
At that moment, Alex for the first time believed everything Melissa was saying. She had done something that was unusual for her, and he realized she had been doing it the whole time they had been together in this place: she made a joke. She had been making little jokes all along, he realized. It wasn’t that Melissa didn’t appreciate humor, or didn’t joke before, but it wasn’t something that was a core part of her being, as it was for Alex. Or at least, hadn’t been, before she had died.
Before they merged. The only way her joking made sense to Alex was if they truly were merged, and she was taking a part of him in.
Melissa continued.
“Really though, I’ve been doing more than that, Alex, and I think you’ve suspected it before now. It wasn’t just me that I managed to transfer, it was also a ton of data the probe had collected. It was some of its programming as well, certain subsystems that I knew would be of importance. You don’t know it right now Alex, but you were injured during your final fight with the warrior. I’m talking mortally wounded - like should have been dead inside a minute wounded. You should be dead right now for sure, dead as a rock. But you’re not. In fact, before long you’re going to discover that you’re in even better shape than you’ve ever been. You’ve got me, and the parts of the nanotech probe I stole, to thank for that. In addition to fixing your injuries, which, you’re welcome for, by the way, it’s also allowed me to begin enhancing your brain structure. That’s why it took so long, relatively speaking, for me to be able to contact you like this: your brain had to develop to a certain extent before this was possible.”
“You mean, I’m smarter now?”
“Yep, smarter, more memory, more creativity, all of it. You’re enhanced in fact to a level just about equal with me now, what I used to be that is. Before long, you’ll surpass me. Go figure: you’re gonna wind up being a better scientist than me!”
Alex smiled a sly, crooked smile at that thought. “That’ll never happen.”
Melissa recognized his sarcasm and creased her lips. “Ugh, I knew I shouldn’t have said that.”
They both smiled now, their minds becoming more in sync with each passing moment.
“And, you’re a better fighter too! After your encounter at the cabin, the warrior had erected defenses that you would never have been able to defeat on your own. But, I was helping you all along, making you faster, stronger, more agile and tactically more capable. I was feeding you bits and pieces of information collected over all the years the probe had been out there, its encounters with other species, not to mention its own tactical data. Your mind was able to synthesize all that quickly given your military acumen and, combined with the physical enhancements, you were able to beat the warrior… well, assuming we discount all the damage it managed to do to you at the end that is!”
Alex really didn’t know what to say, but after a moment said the only thing that seemed appropriate in response to such knowledge.
“Sweet!”
——————————
Alex’s severed arm had now completely grown back, and Michell was testing its reactions to stimuli. As near as he could tell, the arm was as good as new.
“Just… just…”
Novac completed the thought for him: “I know, impossible.”
Before Miche