ltimm
January 30th, 2010, 11:53 PM
Chapter 1
I gazed into the dark, cold, and desolate night sky. The dry soil cracked underneath my feet. The slow moving breeze urged me on toward my destination. The only light that illuminated my path was the crescent moon and the thousands of stars watching over me.
I looked ahead. The kitchen light was glaring at me. A shadow passed through. My mother. I rushed on. The light went dark. I looked around. Where was the house? I became disoriented. I looked beside me. Nothing. I looked to the other direction. Nothing. I started to panic. When one sense fails, the others heighten. I closed my eyes. I listened. I stood still. I sensed the smell of smoke. The chimney. I sniffed and waited but it was everywhere. No telling where” it came from.
So instead, I listened. Suddenly, I could hear everything around me. I heard prairie dogs burrowing underneath my feet. The sound of the interstate 10 miles behind me blared in my ears. Tractor trailers speeding by, supped-up Japanese cars with sport mufflers and intense sound systems. Then, I heard silence. Then creaking boards and the slight content sigh of my mother.
I awoke to my mother bringing me some orange juice and pancakes. She even brought me oatmeal which she knows I hate. But I ate it anyway just to please her.
“You gave us quiet a scare last night”
“What do you mean?” She looked at me puzzled.
“You don’t remember anything from yesterday?”
My eyes widened,” no, should I? Mom, you’re scaring me! Is everything al-“
She cut me off,” Son, you fell asleep in the dark last night and we had a hell of a time trying to find ya. It turns out that you were about a quarter of a mile away from the house shivering in the dirt! Your daddy picked you up and brought you back to the house,” just then I realized something: my body was aching all over and there were scratches that looked like claw marks on my arms and legs.
“Mom, where did these come from?”
“We don’t know! We had Sherriff Taylor down her helpin’ us and he tried looking for a coyote or mountain lion or somethin’ but he didn’t find anything!”
“This is all too weird, Mom! How could something like this just happen! I’m always careful and you know it! Plus there haven’t been any wild animal attacks around here for as long as I can remember! This area is too populated for any major animals to be roamin’ around! And the Sherriff comes around every so often and checks things out!”
“Son, after the Sherriff left, me and your daddy went to go take a look at things for ourselves and found some strange markings on the rocks like symbols of some sort! I’ll have your daddy take you to them in a little bit. You just go on and eat your oatmeal. And take a shower boy! I think you musta rolled in a cow patty or somthin’!”
On that note, I sniffed and indeed smelled “farm animally’. I took a spoon full of oatmeal and took I bite while gazing out my bedside window. I looked at my plain room: a dresser (half empty), my small bed (I’m 5 feet nine inches) and my desk with a few pieces of paper and my school books, torn and rugged. I leaned back and stared at the ceiling with the cobwebs in the corners but no spiders. There never really were spiders in here, only a few cellar spiders, harmless.
I examined my forearms. The scratches seemed to make a pattern. Almost like a symbol of some sort, like somebody or something was trying to tell me something. It resembled a backwards ‘N’ turned 90 degrees counter-clockwise with a deep slash through the middle.
I noticed that it was cloudy. Weatherman Tom said that it was supposed to be sunny. But these weren’t regular clouds. They had a spiral in the middle; too late for hurricanes. They were spinning extremely fast; something had to have been speeding it up. I opened my window and jumped out. The pain in my legs jolted up to my body and I became rigid. After a few seconds it subdued and I was able to move again.
The clouds were getting darker by the second and our farm animals were in the barn; unusual for this time of day even when a storm was coming: they knew something.
The wind began to pick up and the flag started to rustle in the distance. The weird thing, though, was that the wind was moving into the eye of the storm like something was sucking it in.
The wind grew even stronger, hurricane force I would have to say. I was having trouble standing up. Tin pieces came off the roofs of the house and barn. They slammed to the ground with amazing force. Dirt flew up and was caught by the wind to never return.
Soon it became dark and everything around me stopped. Then, light. The clouds had parted by about a mile in the middle and they were getting brighter. Suddenly, a large circular mass descended from the sky and with it came lights. Not big lights, but the ones that have almost no luminosity but you can still see them. The object had to have been at least a half-mile wide with no wings or windows; it was not manmade.
I gazed at it awestricken. It descended slower, about a quarter-mile off the ground. Suddenly, a sound like fog horns came from the craft. It was loud and intense. Like being right next to a tugboat. I covered my ears but nothing changed. It stopped. I uncapped my ears and everything was silent. No noise coming from the spacecraft at all. No birds chirping. No cows mooing. No cars going on the main road just a few hundred feet away from me. Time stood still.
My mind raced. Mom. I dashed inside the house and found my mother and father looking out the window just as speechless as I was. They looked at me in disbelief and foreboding. It descended faster now just a few hundred feet of the ground when the noise came again. We all covered our ears and we squeezed our eyes.
It stopped. We opened our eyes and watched as the craft made its final approach. It slowed and surprisingly hit the ground with no vibration running through the earth. Our fences fell and trees caved in all around it. Then a pulse came from the craft. The pulse was blue in color and was clear. Everything in its path that was not necessary was instantly vaporized. As the trees cleared, they made a “poosh-poosh” sound. The wave continued on as it rushed towards our house. We clenched together preparing for the end. My mother and father prayed together. I didn’t. I watched as my last few minutes on earth were about to come to an end. Then the pulse vanished and the earth became silent.
My mother and father opened their eyes and stared in disbelief. A bright light was opening near the bottom of the craft.
I looked. Suddenly my vision became clearer and was able to focus and somehow, zoom-in. The light was disrupted by a figure coming out of the hatch. It definitely was not human. It had a large head with two eyes and no nose. Its legs were long and scrawny. It had two long arms, most likely its main arms, and two much shorter ones, probably for picking up close range objects. Then, it stared directly at me.
Chapter 2
I shuddered. I stood motionless and tried to look away but couldn’t. My mother and father stared at me in confusion. The creature was almost onto the earth now. It was walking with a long gait and its feet touched the steel with a flat-footed thud.
It toke the first step off of the platform and looked around like it had been here before. It started to walk towards the house. My mother and father saw the being and started to run towards the back door.
But I stayed put. Somehow I knew that this creature would not hurt anybody. It had a gentle appeal in its eyes and looked content in its surroundings. My mother and father pulled at me to get me to come with them. “Come on now boy we need to get outta here!” yelled my father.
“No, they won’t hurt us!”
“How do you know? They could be blood-thirsty monsters lookin’ fer heir next kill!”
“No. They seem peaceful. I’m going out”
My mother stared at me in disbelief but she didn’t try to stop me. I stepped out of the door and walked awkwardly toward the craft and creature. The creature caught sight of me and smiled gently like it had been expecting me. I stared with weary eyes and it turned around and stared into the sky. He was only a few hundred feet away from me now.
I heard a slight pulsing from the craft. Other than that, all was quiet. The creature turned and looked at me. It smiled again warm fully like he was welcoming me to approach him. Somehow, I felt safe and secure, like it was not a threat.
I crept closer and gradually returned my stride back to normal. It started towards me and was still smiling like it was so happy to see me, like we’d been long lost friends.
It was a few yards away from me now and we both stopped. It stared at me and I stared at it. He opened his mouth to talk:
“This may seem surprising, but, I can communicate with you through your language.” His voice was gentle and soothing like he was a native speaker. His voice was a little hoarse and crackly. “We’ve been watching you.”
“Who?”
“Us, the beings on that craft. You are the chosen one.”
“What? I’m confused. Where did you even come from?”
“Your North Star, Polaris.”
“Wait! Polaris is like 400 light years away from Earth! How did you get here?”
“Our technology is much more advanced than yours so in turn we have found ways to travel through time and space without much effort or time.”
“So how many years ago would you say your technology was like ours?”
“In Earth years, I would have to say about…2,000 Earth years ago is about when we were in this stage of development.”
“So, about this ‘chosen one’ again?”
“Oh right, just slipped my mind! It turns out about 300 Earth years ago, our ancestors came here looking for resources and your great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was one of us. He fell in love with a human and produced a hybrid. That’s why you can see clearer and can focus in better than regular human vision.”
“I’ve never heard any of my family talking about this abnormality!”
“Well…That’s heard to answer why nobody else in your family has these traits, but you are the first and we have waited a very long time to create an alliance between our empire and your planet.” His gaze struck me as sincere and worried at the same lime, like he was unsure whether or not this was going to work.
“Wait. Empire?”
“Yes, our race controls three planets all together, miniscule compared t to the other power hungry life-forms.”
“Wait. So there are more than just you?” I stared into his comforting blackish-grey eyes and for the first time felt like we had known each other for a very long time. Like we were connected.
“Oh, of course! We have found at least 25, I think, other intelligent species in the Universe so far. Some more advanced than us and some less than you. The species that are less than you, we leave alone until they have become more advanced and are able to conceive that such a thing is possible.”
He looked at the house and noticed that my parents were there listening to the whole thing. I turned and faced them. They had shock in their eyes, also pain. They know what was going to happen and they couldn’t accept my loss. It wasn’t like I was going away forever but for all I knew, they could be blood-sucking killers. But I knew that wasn’t true because I felt a connection, like I had always known that somebody was out there watching over me. I was right.
He waved for my parents to come forth and they followed suit out of fear. My mom was crying while my dad looked stern and accepted this hypothesis.
The creature spoke, “I know this is quite a shock, but you have to believe me, us,” he waved toward the mass of other creatures like him flowing out of the hatch, “ we have waited for this for a long time, 300 years. Although in our life that is about 4 generations. Your planet has many resources that we have run out of and we need to harvest them. We can pay. And in return, we can offer you some of our technology to use in your advancement, although we would have to speak to some kind of governmental figure.”
“That would probably be the UN. It’s a big organization designed to protect the world and almost every country is in it. Although there are some countries to steer clear of: North Korea, maybe China, Russia I don’t think will be a problem and some Middle Eastern countries. Other than that, the UN should welcome you with open arms. But most likely some people won’t like it, especially the religious people.”
He seemed shocked, “I beg your pardon? Religious people, like a deity created our Universe? How naïve, hopefully you aren’t one of them?”
“No, I haven’t believed in God in years. In fact, many acclaimed people in the world are Atheists. Religion is falling down and the religious, especially the Christians, are getting furious.”
“Good, our people ruled out a deity because, scientifically speaking, godly figures are irrational and, most of all, irrelevant. We have many of the same interplanetary laws as you do: No killing, No kidnapping, No stealing. We are as much as civilized as you are.”
“Anyway, so what should we do from here?”
“Well we could take you to our primary planet and be admired by our people or we could go and talk to this ‘UN’ about our relations. Which one would you want to do first since you are our link?”
“Maybe we should hold off on the whole let’s-get-together thing. If your people are up to meeting me then I’m game. Although, it would be nice to see some other aspects of the Universe. How fast does that UFO go over there,” I motioned to the craft and he looked behind him.
“It creates a wormhole is the space-time continuum. Anywhere in the Universe that we want it to go, it can go there in a time ranging from a few seconds to a month.”
“So, how long does it take to get to Polaris?”
“About a few hours.”
“Well should we leave?” I motioned towards my parents.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but, you are the only human allowed to come with us, direct orders from the head-councilman himself.”
“But they have to!”
“I’m sorry,” his eyes pierced me as stern and I submitted to his dominance.
“Okay”
My mother stepped in, “Please, sir, you have to promise me that you will take good care of him.” She held back the tears, “ and that you will not let anything happen to him.”
“Ma’am, I cannot promise that nothing will happen but rest assured that in my care, he will be safe.”
She backed down as his eyes glared at her. The woman who never took no for an answer submitted like I did.
My mother looked at me and started to cry. I hugged her without words. My father looked at me and shook my hand like me and him were acquaintances.
My mother and father stepped to one side and the creature and I stood side by side facing my parents.
We turned and started to walk towards the ship and a tear ran down my face. I had a feeling that I was not going to see them for a very long time.
Chapter 3
We marched up the ramp. We stepped on it and the lights going into the ship lit up. There was movement inside; I could see multiple shadows that resembled the creature. My heart beat quickened. The creature put his arm around me knowing my apprehension. I looked at him. He stared into the light.
He stopped. “Welcome, to the Mother Ship P-704. The most sophisticated piece of machinery designed by our species.”
We stepped in. His species stood at control boards flipping switches and talking into futuristic headsets. There language was gargling and hissing sounds: a language that I had heard in my dreams.
The giant room was most likely a main gathering room. Hundreds upon hundreds of species stood in crowds and socialized. Many laughed and there were even adolescent creatures.
“What is this?” I asked.
“This is one of our main social rooms. We gather here with our families and have our ‘ship-meetings’ which are every other day near curfew.”
“You have a curfew?”
“Only a mild one. We just cannot go into certain areas when the curfew is in effect.”
“Oh.”
“Well now, would you like me to introduce you to the supreme commander?”
“What the heck.”
We walked across the giant room. Creatures stared at us in awe.
“So what is your species called?”
“Oh, how rude of me. In our language, we are called ‘grék’. It means enlightened.”
“Oh, how nice?”
“Shall we?” We had already walked across the room. He motioned to a glass elevator. For the first time, I looked up. There were walk ways suspended by nothing over head stretching across the length of the room. The elevator reached up hundreds of feet. The sign on the elevator was in strange characters.
“héal-éké-ouké hé-prak la hoc. Authorized Personnel Only.”
“Are you authorized?”
“I assure you, I am. Haven’t I told you? I’m third in command!”
“Oh, humph.”
“Now let’s go.” We boarded the elevator and inside, there were no buttons of any kind. Instead, a holographic display of the space craft appeared and he twisted his fingers and made movements with his hands. He gave one last poke at the display and it disappeared.
The elevator started to go up. I then began to realize how large this main room was. We had gone up at least 100 feet and yet I could barely see the other side.
“You never did tell me your name,” I blurted out.
“Ah, yes. My name…my name is Hraleck. It was my father’s name. See? Even here we have similar family traditions.
“Can I just call you ‘H’?”
He looked at me puzzled, “why ‘H’?”
“Well, in English, H would be the first letter and, plus, Hraleck,” he snickered, “would be a very hard name for me to pronounce all the time. That is if I’m going to be with you all the time?”
He looked down into the now distant room below, “Yes, I suppose you will be with me for your stay with us. I was assigned as your guide and bodyguard while you’re here.”
“Well, that’s cool; we seem to get along.”
“Yes, I suppose we do.” He smiled but somehow I think it was condescending. I fell silent and we continued our ride to the top. I never really did get a good look of the top of this craft from my house yet I thought that it would be extravagant. And I was right.
The elevator stopped and spoke in a mechanical voice. I, of course, didn’t understand a word. We stepped out and, in front of me, there were windows (at least I thought they were windows). I couldn’t tell if the image outside was real or fake. Before me I saw hundreds of stars, if not thousands, all gleaming in their all mighty power. I hadn’t even noticed that we had left Earth. Then, I saw the Milky Way. An opaque streak of purple and blue swept across a star lit sky. I stared mesmerized.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said H.
“I’ve never actually seen it before. I’ve never even had a telescope!”
“We expose all our offspring to the great Universe. To us, space exploration and discovery is everything.”
“The farthest we have gone is to our moon, with an actual human, that is. We have an unmanned satellite that is almost out of our solar system.” There was a long pause, “I always thought that Polaris didn’t have any planets?”
“So you think! Our race has invented a cloaking device for our planets. When one of your radio waves or optical devices locks on to one of our planets, it just goes right through, not detecting anything! That’s why your race has only discovered a small amount of the planets in the Galaxy. In reality, without the cloaking devices, your race would have discovered thousands of planets, many actually are inhabited!”
I know I need to add more detail in ALOT of places. But, somehow I think this story could go places one day( if I finish it)!
I gazed into the dark, cold, and desolate night sky. The dry soil cracked underneath my feet. The slow moving breeze urged me on toward my destination. The only light that illuminated my path was the crescent moon and the thousands of stars watching over me.
I looked ahead. The kitchen light was glaring at me. A shadow passed through. My mother. I rushed on. The light went dark. I looked around. Where was the house? I became disoriented. I looked beside me. Nothing. I looked to the other direction. Nothing. I started to panic. When one sense fails, the others heighten. I closed my eyes. I listened. I stood still. I sensed the smell of smoke. The chimney. I sniffed and waited but it was everywhere. No telling where” it came from.
So instead, I listened. Suddenly, I could hear everything around me. I heard prairie dogs burrowing underneath my feet. The sound of the interstate 10 miles behind me blared in my ears. Tractor trailers speeding by, supped-up Japanese cars with sport mufflers and intense sound systems. Then, I heard silence. Then creaking boards and the slight content sigh of my mother.
I awoke to my mother bringing me some orange juice and pancakes. She even brought me oatmeal which she knows I hate. But I ate it anyway just to please her.
“You gave us quiet a scare last night”
“What do you mean?” She looked at me puzzled.
“You don’t remember anything from yesterday?”
My eyes widened,” no, should I? Mom, you’re scaring me! Is everything al-“
She cut me off,” Son, you fell asleep in the dark last night and we had a hell of a time trying to find ya. It turns out that you were about a quarter of a mile away from the house shivering in the dirt! Your daddy picked you up and brought you back to the house,” just then I realized something: my body was aching all over and there were scratches that looked like claw marks on my arms and legs.
“Mom, where did these come from?”
“We don’t know! We had Sherriff Taylor down her helpin’ us and he tried looking for a coyote or mountain lion or somethin’ but he didn’t find anything!”
“This is all too weird, Mom! How could something like this just happen! I’m always careful and you know it! Plus there haven’t been any wild animal attacks around here for as long as I can remember! This area is too populated for any major animals to be roamin’ around! And the Sherriff comes around every so often and checks things out!”
“Son, after the Sherriff left, me and your daddy went to go take a look at things for ourselves and found some strange markings on the rocks like symbols of some sort! I’ll have your daddy take you to them in a little bit. You just go on and eat your oatmeal. And take a shower boy! I think you musta rolled in a cow patty or somthin’!”
On that note, I sniffed and indeed smelled “farm animally’. I took a spoon full of oatmeal and took I bite while gazing out my bedside window. I looked at my plain room: a dresser (half empty), my small bed (I’m 5 feet nine inches) and my desk with a few pieces of paper and my school books, torn and rugged. I leaned back and stared at the ceiling with the cobwebs in the corners but no spiders. There never really were spiders in here, only a few cellar spiders, harmless.
I examined my forearms. The scratches seemed to make a pattern. Almost like a symbol of some sort, like somebody or something was trying to tell me something. It resembled a backwards ‘N’ turned 90 degrees counter-clockwise with a deep slash through the middle.
I noticed that it was cloudy. Weatherman Tom said that it was supposed to be sunny. But these weren’t regular clouds. They had a spiral in the middle; too late for hurricanes. They were spinning extremely fast; something had to have been speeding it up. I opened my window and jumped out. The pain in my legs jolted up to my body and I became rigid. After a few seconds it subdued and I was able to move again.
The clouds were getting darker by the second and our farm animals were in the barn; unusual for this time of day even when a storm was coming: they knew something.
The wind began to pick up and the flag started to rustle in the distance. The weird thing, though, was that the wind was moving into the eye of the storm like something was sucking it in.
The wind grew even stronger, hurricane force I would have to say. I was having trouble standing up. Tin pieces came off the roofs of the house and barn. They slammed to the ground with amazing force. Dirt flew up and was caught by the wind to never return.
Soon it became dark and everything around me stopped. Then, light. The clouds had parted by about a mile in the middle and they were getting brighter. Suddenly, a large circular mass descended from the sky and with it came lights. Not big lights, but the ones that have almost no luminosity but you can still see them. The object had to have been at least a half-mile wide with no wings or windows; it was not manmade.
I gazed at it awestricken. It descended slower, about a quarter-mile off the ground. Suddenly, a sound like fog horns came from the craft. It was loud and intense. Like being right next to a tugboat. I covered my ears but nothing changed. It stopped. I uncapped my ears and everything was silent. No noise coming from the spacecraft at all. No birds chirping. No cows mooing. No cars going on the main road just a few hundred feet away from me. Time stood still.
My mind raced. Mom. I dashed inside the house and found my mother and father looking out the window just as speechless as I was. They looked at me in disbelief and foreboding. It descended faster now just a few hundred feet of the ground when the noise came again. We all covered our ears and we squeezed our eyes.
It stopped. We opened our eyes and watched as the craft made its final approach. It slowed and surprisingly hit the ground with no vibration running through the earth. Our fences fell and trees caved in all around it. Then a pulse came from the craft. The pulse was blue in color and was clear. Everything in its path that was not necessary was instantly vaporized. As the trees cleared, they made a “poosh-poosh” sound. The wave continued on as it rushed towards our house. We clenched together preparing for the end. My mother and father prayed together. I didn’t. I watched as my last few minutes on earth were about to come to an end. Then the pulse vanished and the earth became silent.
My mother and father opened their eyes and stared in disbelief. A bright light was opening near the bottom of the craft.
I looked. Suddenly my vision became clearer and was able to focus and somehow, zoom-in. The light was disrupted by a figure coming out of the hatch. It definitely was not human. It had a large head with two eyes and no nose. Its legs were long and scrawny. It had two long arms, most likely its main arms, and two much shorter ones, probably for picking up close range objects. Then, it stared directly at me.
Chapter 2
I shuddered. I stood motionless and tried to look away but couldn’t. My mother and father stared at me in confusion. The creature was almost onto the earth now. It was walking with a long gait and its feet touched the steel with a flat-footed thud.
It toke the first step off of the platform and looked around like it had been here before. It started to walk towards the house. My mother and father saw the being and started to run towards the back door.
But I stayed put. Somehow I knew that this creature would not hurt anybody. It had a gentle appeal in its eyes and looked content in its surroundings. My mother and father pulled at me to get me to come with them. “Come on now boy we need to get outta here!” yelled my father.
“No, they won’t hurt us!”
“How do you know? They could be blood-thirsty monsters lookin’ fer heir next kill!”
“No. They seem peaceful. I’m going out”
My mother stared at me in disbelief but she didn’t try to stop me. I stepped out of the door and walked awkwardly toward the craft and creature. The creature caught sight of me and smiled gently like it had been expecting me. I stared with weary eyes and it turned around and stared into the sky. He was only a few hundred feet away from me now.
I heard a slight pulsing from the craft. Other than that, all was quiet. The creature turned and looked at me. It smiled again warm fully like he was welcoming me to approach him. Somehow, I felt safe and secure, like it was not a threat.
I crept closer and gradually returned my stride back to normal. It started towards me and was still smiling like it was so happy to see me, like we’d been long lost friends.
It was a few yards away from me now and we both stopped. It stared at me and I stared at it. He opened his mouth to talk:
“This may seem surprising, but, I can communicate with you through your language.” His voice was gentle and soothing like he was a native speaker. His voice was a little hoarse and crackly. “We’ve been watching you.”
“Who?”
“Us, the beings on that craft. You are the chosen one.”
“What? I’m confused. Where did you even come from?”
“Your North Star, Polaris.”
“Wait! Polaris is like 400 light years away from Earth! How did you get here?”
“Our technology is much more advanced than yours so in turn we have found ways to travel through time and space without much effort or time.”
“So how many years ago would you say your technology was like ours?”
“In Earth years, I would have to say about…2,000 Earth years ago is about when we were in this stage of development.”
“So, about this ‘chosen one’ again?”
“Oh right, just slipped my mind! It turns out about 300 Earth years ago, our ancestors came here looking for resources and your great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was one of us. He fell in love with a human and produced a hybrid. That’s why you can see clearer and can focus in better than regular human vision.”
“I’ve never heard any of my family talking about this abnormality!”
“Well…That’s heard to answer why nobody else in your family has these traits, but you are the first and we have waited a very long time to create an alliance between our empire and your planet.” His gaze struck me as sincere and worried at the same lime, like he was unsure whether or not this was going to work.
“Wait. Empire?”
“Yes, our race controls three planets all together, miniscule compared t to the other power hungry life-forms.”
“Wait. So there are more than just you?” I stared into his comforting blackish-grey eyes and for the first time felt like we had known each other for a very long time. Like we were connected.
“Oh, of course! We have found at least 25, I think, other intelligent species in the Universe so far. Some more advanced than us and some less than you. The species that are less than you, we leave alone until they have become more advanced and are able to conceive that such a thing is possible.”
He looked at the house and noticed that my parents were there listening to the whole thing. I turned and faced them. They had shock in their eyes, also pain. They know what was going to happen and they couldn’t accept my loss. It wasn’t like I was going away forever but for all I knew, they could be blood-sucking killers. But I knew that wasn’t true because I felt a connection, like I had always known that somebody was out there watching over me. I was right.
He waved for my parents to come forth and they followed suit out of fear. My mom was crying while my dad looked stern and accepted this hypothesis.
The creature spoke, “I know this is quite a shock, but you have to believe me, us,” he waved toward the mass of other creatures like him flowing out of the hatch, “ we have waited for this for a long time, 300 years. Although in our life that is about 4 generations. Your planet has many resources that we have run out of and we need to harvest them. We can pay. And in return, we can offer you some of our technology to use in your advancement, although we would have to speak to some kind of governmental figure.”
“That would probably be the UN. It’s a big organization designed to protect the world and almost every country is in it. Although there are some countries to steer clear of: North Korea, maybe China, Russia I don’t think will be a problem and some Middle Eastern countries. Other than that, the UN should welcome you with open arms. But most likely some people won’t like it, especially the religious people.”
He seemed shocked, “I beg your pardon? Religious people, like a deity created our Universe? How naïve, hopefully you aren’t one of them?”
“No, I haven’t believed in God in years. In fact, many acclaimed people in the world are Atheists. Religion is falling down and the religious, especially the Christians, are getting furious.”
“Good, our people ruled out a deity because, scientifically speaking, godly figures are irrational and, most of all, irrelevant. We have many of the same interplanetary laws as you do: No killing, No kidnapping, No stealing. We are as much as civilized as you are.”
“Anyway, so what should we do from here?”
“Well we could take you to our primary planet and be admired by our people or we could go and talk to this ‘UN’ about our relations. Which one would you want to do first since you are our link?”
“Maybe we should hold off on the whole let’s-get-together thing. If your people are up to meeting me then I’m game. Although, it would be nice to see some other aspects of the Universe. How fast does that UFO go over there,” I motioned to the craft and he looked behind him.
“It creates a wormhole is the space-time continuum. Anywhere in the Universe that we want it to go, it can go there in a time ranging from a few seconds to a month.”
“So, how long does it take to get to Polaris?”
“About a few hours.”
“Well should we leave?” I motioned towards my parents.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but, you are the only human allowed to come with us, direct orders from the head-councilman himself.”
“But they have to!”
“I’m sorry,” his eyes pierced me as stern and I submitted to his dominance.
“Okay”
My mother stepped in, “Please, sir, you have to promise me that you will take good care of him.” She held back the tears, “ and that you will not let anything happen to him.”
“Ma’am, I cannot promise that nothing will happen but rest assured that in my care, he will be safe.”
She backed down as his eyes glared at her. The woman who never took no for an answer submitted like I did.
My mother looked at me and started to cry. I hugged her without words. My father looked at me and shook my hand like me and him were acquaintances.
My mother and father stepped to one side and the creature and I stood side by side facing my parents.
We turned and started to walk towards the ship and a tear ran down my face. I had a feeling that I was not going to see them for a very long time.
Chapter 3
We marched up the ramp. We stepped on it and the lights going into the ship lit up. There was movement inside; I could see multiple shadows that resembled the creature. My heart beat quickened. The creature put his arm around me knowing my apprehension. I looked at him. He stared into the light.
He stopped. “Welcome, to the Mother Ship P-704. The most sophisticated piece of machinery designed by our species.”
We stepped in. His species stood at control boards flipping switches and talking into futuristic headsets. There language was gargling and hissing sounds: a language that I had heard in my dreams.
The giant room was most likely a main gathering room. Hundreds upon hundreds of species stood in crowds and socialized. Many laughed and there were even adolescent creatures.
“What is this?” I asked.
“This is one of our main social rooms. We gather here with our families and have our ‘ship-meetings’ which are every other day near curfew.”
“You have a curfew?”
“Only a mild one. We just cannot go into certain areas when the curfew is in effect.”
“Oh.”
“Well now, would you like me to introduce you to the supreme commander?”
“What the heck.”
We walked across the giant room. Creatures stared at us in awe.
“So what is your species called?”
“Oh, how rude of me. In our language, we are called ‘grék’. It means enlightened.”
“Oh, how nice?”
“Shall we?” We had already walked across the room. He motioned to a glass elevator. For the first time, I looked up. There were walk ways suspended by nothing over head stretching across the length of the room. The elevator reached up hundreds of feet. The sign on the elevator was in strange characters.
“héal-éké-ouké hé-prak la hoc. Authorized Personnel Only.”
“Are you authorized?”
“I assure you, I am. Haven’t I told you? I’m third in command!”
“Oh, humph.”
“Now let’s go.” We boarded the elevator and inside, there were no buttons of any kind. Instead, a holographic display of the space craft appeared and he twisted his fingers and made movements with his hands. He gave one last poke at the display and it disappeared.
The elevator started to go up. I then began to realize how large this main room was. We had gone up at least 100 feet and yet I could barely see the other side.
“You never did tell me your name,” I blurted out.
“Ah, yes. My name…my name is Hraleck. It was my father’s name. See? Even here we have similar family traditions.
“Can I just call you ‘H’?”
He looked at me puzzled, “why ‘H’?”
“Well, in English, H would be the first letter and, plus, Hraleck,” he snickered, “would be a very hard name for me to pronounce all the time. That is if I’m going to be with you all the time?”
He looked down into the now distant room below, “Yes, I suppose you will be with me for your stay with us. I was assigned as your guide and bodyguard while you’re here.”
“Well, that’s cool; we seem to get along.”
“Yes, I suppose we do.” He smiled but somehow I think it was condescending. I fell silent and we continued our ride to the top. I never really did get a good look of the top of this craft from my house yet I thought that it would be extravagant. And I was right.
The elevator stopped and spoke in a mechanical voice. I, of course, didn’t understand a word. We stepped out and, in front of me, there were windows (at least I thought they were windows). I couldn’t tell if the image outside was real or fake. Before me I saw hundreds of stars, if not thousands, all gleaming in their all mighty power. I hadn’t even noticed that we had left Earth. Then, I saw the Milky Way. An opaque streak of purple and blue swept across a star lit sky. I stared mesmerized.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said H.
“I’ve never actually seen it before. I’ve never even had a telescope!”
“We expose all our offspring to the great Universe. To us, space exploration and discovery is everything.”
“The farthest we have gone is to our moon, with an actual human, that is. We have an unmanned satellite that is almost out of our solar system.” There was a long pause, “I always thought that Polaris didn’t have any planets?”
“So you think! Our race has invented a cloaking device for our planets. When one of your radio waves or optical devices locks on to one of our planets, it just goes right through, not detecting anything! That’s why your race has only discovered a small amount of the planets in the Galaxy. In reality, without the cloaking devices, your race would have discovered thousands of planets, many actually are inhabited!”
I know I need to add more detail in ALOT of places. But, somehow I think this story could go places one day( if I finish it)!