Day Nineteen ∞ Tuesday evening

THE TWO SOLDIERS AT THE DOORS stood transfixed with slack jaws, staring at Mickmi's and Danny's new garb as they paused before them.

"General Davies is expecting us," Dr. Kruger said pointedly.

The guards snapped into action and opened the doors to bright stage lights. The four entered and Kruger showed them to a table and four armchairs to the right, diagonally facing the large, darkened room. Somebody out there muttered and another coughed as Danny and Mickmi sat down beside Dr. Bogdanov.

—Any idea who these people are? Danny squinted. He could barely make out the figures in the audience through the glare, except for those seated in the front row armchairs. Half of them were dressed in olive drab uniforms, and several lab coats sat on the right. Beyond, here and there, a badge, watch, or glasses glinted. Some appeared to wear a shiny visitor's pass like he himself still had clipped to his new shirt. They seemed to sit in groups, separated from each other. One figure moved between the seats near the back, apparently conversing with a few persons, a pale hat giving him away.

—High-ranking military... Government advisors... Ambassadors... Mickmi stood motionless, scanning beyond the glare. Astrophysicists, engineers...

Kruger excused himself and strode to the front of the stage area.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you for coming. I'm Doctor Hans Kruger, head of the Xenobiology and Medical departments. The person who will be speaking to you today has for the past 24 hours been tested, studied, and interviewed by myself and my team of scientists and medical doctors—and Doctor Bogdanov here, head of Astrophysics—in as much detail as the short time allowed. The test results confirm that she has evolved beyond Homo sapiens sapiens... and is – by all indications – not – of our world... as we know it. I will allow her to introduce herself. I strongly recommend you take what she has to say very seriously."

Kruger walked over to Mickmi and said quietly, "Well, the floor is yours, Miss Wamba. Whatever it is, you better make a strong case for these people to act. Oh, and there's a projector over there if you need it," he added. "Just let me know. Do you need a microphone?"

"Nay... Thank you, Doctor Kruger."

—Good luck, Danny mouthed as she met his gaze.

She smiled faintly in response before striding to the middle of the podium, gems sparkling and dress shimmering as it flowed around her legs. Facing the audience, she lifted her head, standing silent and erect with her hands folded in front of her for several seconds.

"I am... Mickmi Lepantra Wamba," she said, her voice ringing clear across the auditorium, "Queen Lepantra, the Last Queen of the United Lands—"

Someone in the audience choked on a cough.

"—of The Earth That Is Beyond Reach, and the last representative of my People. I am from Anno 6665. I am – in essence... a survivor of – your – Earth's – possible – future.

"Nineteen days ago, an airplane of yours disappeared in a 'freak' storm in the Sargasso Sea—East of your Florida..."

"That's the Bermuda Triangle," Bogdanov whispered to Kruger who nodded.

"Nineteen days ago, I was in low orbit around my planet—Earth in my dimension—when I received... mental distress signals from everywhere... I... Before I could determine what was wrong, I witnessed terrible... global destruction... on a scale never predicted or... heard of before." Mickmi drew a deep breath and lowered her gaze.

—I'm right here with you, Mi. Danny wanted to go to her, to hug her, to give her some of his strength to help her navigate the difficult memory. But that would be inappropriate here.

"Before my eyes," she looked up at the dark auditorium, "the entire mining belt of my planet... the entire zone erupted with explosions. Even in orbit, my vessel was almost... obliterated. I had no choice but to flee... I had to – leave – my – people – behind—there was... nothing – I could do to – help – my – people... But... before I could – reach a safe distance... somehow... a singularity formed... and it reached through space and – sucked my vessel in and – spat me out here – through a storm – into your world... The same storm that took your airplane. The eye of this storm was in reality – a vortex... linking my dimension to yours—this present space-time continuum." She took several long breaths.

—You're okay, Mi. I'm right here.

"I lost consciousness. My vessel suffered – substantial malfunctions... and ended up in a lake on the border of Alabama and Georgia... When I awoke, I had amnesia. I knew not who I was. Without the aid of Daniel McGahn here," she indicated Danny with her hand, "I would have been lost, perhaps even perished. This – most – caring – soul... took me in under his loving care... and nursed me back to health." She turned to him and gestured her thanks, her hand flowing to her chest. —Thank you, Daniel.

Danny felt his ears heating up. He couldn't see it but he could feel every eye had turned to him. Mickmi smiled wistfully at his discomfiture and returned to the audience.

"But my vessel was not the only object the vortex captured... Another ended up near your Moon. It belongs to my... sister, L'or Leypa Aug, who also was in orbit at the time."

Kruger exchanged surprised glances with Bogdanov and turned to Danny. "There are two of her?" he whispered.

Nodding in reply, Danny kept watchful. Not being able to see who was in the audience made him nervous. Was Apocalypse somewhere out there beyond the glare?

∞

Being introduced by General Davies as "Mister Gray" with the bogus title of "our man in charge of Intelligentsia-related matters" had its advantages. Now dressed in a dark, pin-striped suit, and his white Fedora hat, he could roam the group of diplomats and government officials in the top left half of the auditorium, assessing their potential as allies or foes, probing them without they as much as raising an eyebrow. He knew most of the military officials seated in the lower half of the auditorium, and most of the scientists and consultants occupying the seats on the other side already directly or indirectly worked for him.

Now he moved closer to the stage to focus his sharp gaze on the EBE, the young, self-proclaimed 'queen' from the future.

Personality... Manipulative, calculating, superiority complex... Minimal body language, indicative of lack of empathy... cerebral, possible paranoia-maniac or schizoid? Intense gaze... Domineering, high-level functioning intellect, charisma... No tics, no nervousness, emotional emptiness? Sociopathic? No, that's not it... Chin not raised, nor lowered... Very high self-confidence... Lack of fear... Not impressed by rank or prestige... Gray analyzed every nuance of her body language, her facial micro-movements, coldly deconstructing her a dozen different ways, then reassembling her in as many ways. His conclusions were dismal in his quest to find flaws, weaknesses.

He tried another angle, this time disassembling her voice that rang clear with ease, resonating unnaturally in the theater from every direction. Listening carefully, he discerned the rhythm, recurrent tonalities, and inflections—her phonemes precise, her diction impeccable.

The longer she spoke, the more her voice grew on him. He scanned the audience They appeared captive, ensnared by her charm, as if her words spoke directly, intimately to the heart of everyone present in the vast room.

Including himself.

It took an effort of his trained will to regain control of his mind. Her voice still influenced him but a small piece of his awareness disassociated itself and grew from within, allowing him to continue his analysis in a detached way.

That was when her gaze nailed him for five full seconds as she spoke, before she smiled faintly and returned her attention to the rest of her listeners.

She's using a Power Voice. Holding a full gaggle of cynical politicians and hardened officers captive in a trance-like state wasn't an easy feat. Gray marveled at how such a young and apparently inexperienced person was able to achieve such mastery with seemingly effortless, flawless control.

I'm the only one not charmed! Then it struck him: it wasn't due to some special immunity he had. For some unfathomable reason, she allowed him to keep that awareness.

Gray's sudden realization brought back a memory from decades ago. As technical support for a Special Ops team, he'd been sent to Novosibirk to retrieve a captured EBE. A ship had crash-landed and the KGB was sent to investigate. The rogue Russian operatives had offered a deal: full immunity for any past crimes, Green Cards for each of them, and three million US dollars in exchange for a living, breathing ET. It was unconscious, so the operation was considered low risk.

Unfortunately, the alien recovered during the transfer, and they hadn't noticed until it was too late—the devices monitoring her had failed. When they reached outside the city, far from civilization, the alien just stood up and politely asked his veteran team to let her go. They—very nicely indeed—complied, going as far as helping her by taking her to a secluded location where a small saucer-like ship picked her up.

That fiasco didn't impact Gray's career. The operatives on his team just blamed the Russian rogue agents in the debriefing, calling them incompetent and drunkards. Of course, everyone who was on the field that day knew that was far from the truth.

Months later, while Gray was recruiting a renowned Russian scientist, linguist and polyglot, the subject of hypnosis and methods of mind control came up during a conversation about the KGB's secret experiments. Gray asked the scientist to review a recording of the EBE with her captors. After listening to the tape many times, the scientist—unaware that the girl was actually an extraterrestrial—came to the startling conclusion she'd used a "Compelling Voice".

When asked for further elaboration, he explained that some talented people were able to utter commands disguised as ordinary speech. They modulated their voices to completely bypass the conscious control mechanism, allowing them to directly control the subconscious mind.

"We call them Power Voices... and classify them into three sub-groups. 'Compelling Voice' which takes command of your body, 'Directing' which modifies your opinions, thus effecting changes in your intellectual processes, and 'Engaging', which deeply influences your emotional responses.

"How? When a voice with perfect pitch, intonation, and inflection is combined with a powerful will, it becomes a vehicle to transmit one's intention into the inner self of the receiver, allowing the user of that special tool to assume control of another person. Or persons. The better the mastery of that Power Voice, the harder is to remain unaffected by it."

Maybe I'm being too cynical, Gray reflected. Maybe she's just offering a gesture of friendship and goodwill. He must explore this approach. This EBE was too powerful. Whatever the source of her power was, he could tell it was very real. Forced compliance is pretty obviously out of the window. I've no real means to compel her to do... anything at all.

His intuition had never let him down.

I need to show her I'm a friend... get closer to her, without all these clowns... Then I can secure her co—

Something the girl on stage said pulled him from his abstraction, "—is what brings you all here today. I shall show you where it is."

Mickmi Wamba slowly surveyed the audience as the McGahn boy in the formal outfit walked over to her side. Then she closed her eyes. Several long seconds passed before she pointed at the empty space before her.

Squinting, Gray tried to discern the object of her focus. There was nothing there. No, there's a... a distortion?

The play of shadows grew denser. Then something grew from the floor up causing gasps and whispers in the scattered audience. In the previously empty space, now stood a low table. It was about four meters wide but only a meter high, its upper surface glimmering with luminous colors.

"This device is a gift from my people to the people of this Earth." She walked around it, her hand reaching over it with fingers spread as if to direct its formation. "It is advanced enough to push your development but not so advanced that your technicians can not reverse-engineer it. After we finish here, you may keep it—as a gesture of goodwill. Would someone please dim the lights?"

The air above the table shimmered alive, radiating to twice its width. Within seconds, it coalesced into a dynamic representation of the Earth and the moon, slowly orbiting in the space above the mysterious machine.

"Thank you."

Gray stood mesmerized, gaping at the technological marvel which seemed to have spawned from thin air. A darkening band across the Atlantic crept toward the Americas as the night side of the moon sliced into the horizon.

Mickmi's face reflected a surreal glow from the vivid light display. "This is a live representation... of your Earth as it appears now."

The view zoomed out and a brilliant yellow orb came into view beyond the shrinking Earth. Then they froze in size as one, two... eight other planets with their respective moons appeared in various locations around the sun, along with a crowded ring of asteroids the size of jagged peas and pitted pebbles, filling the breadth of the theater. Gray resisted the urge to touch the halos circling Saturn as it floated before him.

"I have condensed the distances between the planets and kept the sun at quarter its size relative to the other bodies, to facilitate clear viewing of all within this space. Now, I shall insert orbital data as well as their masses, composition, atmosphere and relative densities."

Around every celestial body, small luminous lettering appeared with the corresponding information.

"When I was a little girl plotting my course through the Solar System, I used simplified graphics to represent their speeds. Since not all of you are astronomers, I shall use it now."

Luminous arrows appeared to bisect the planets and satellites—some thicker and longer, others very short.

"The longer the arrow, the faster the planetary body is moving. The thicker the arrow, the bigger mass. The direction the arrows point indicate their projected motion. In the case of several possible trajectories, shadowed arrows show them, with the brighter ones indicating the more likely paths."

One of the men sitting with the consultants in the left half of the auditorium burst out, "Please tell us, how can you produce such detailed images? What principles are involved in the operation of such a device?"

The EBE queen smiled. "Of course, Professor Richards."

Gray glanced over his shoulder at the scientist. The man's bewildered expression was telling. She couldn't have known his name.

"This is a simple holographic representation of the images taken by my sister's vessel Paulux. When Paulux was ejected into this Solar System, its intrinsic intelligence launched several probes to optimal, strategic positions to observe celestial bodies and scan space for anything of interest. They transmit the information to our vessels." She walked to the left side of the stage and gestured at the 'table'. "This is a holoprojector. Under its surface, there are several lasers. A command module—a microprocessor—feeds instructions to translate digital pulses into light which form the images you see."

Another consultant excitedly raised his hand.

She nodded. "Aye, Doctor Werner."

"How's your device able to receive any signal down here? There's thousands of tons of rock and dirt between your ship and this place."

"It has a miniaturized receptor."

Receptor? That must be some powerful receiver. Gray would put his own team of technicians to work on it as soon as this case was over.

The answer didn't seem to satisfy the head technician's curiosity. "And what medium does your ship use to transmit signals so far underground?"

Mickmi studied him for a moment before answering. "We use a process called 'quantum translation'... which means the signals travel not at all."

A murmur grew among the scientists and technicians until another spoke over the voices. "Can you explain how that works?"

"Unfortunately, all I can tell you is that this process uses quantum entanglement and quantum tunneling, and to master these, you need first to build quantum computers. That is the extent of my knowledge."

She threw out her hand and most of the objects floating in the air vanished, leaving a basketball-sized Earth and the moon trailing its highlighted arrow above the table. "We have limited time. Allow me to present the issue at hand."

The Earth grew to an arm's width, throwing the Moon out of range of the projection. In the space around the layers of mist representing Earth's atmosphere, several tiny objects materialized in different orbits.

Satellites. Gray recognized three of them as belonging to the partially launched Navstar GPS system—cubical objects stretching out their rectangular solar wings like soaring space eagles. The fourth one would be hiding on the other side of the globe—and there crept the three-winged Salyut 6 across the barely visible layer indicating Earth's thermosphere.

"I only regained my memory a few days ago – and accessed my vessel Deymos day before yesterday. I reviewed the recordings captured by Paulux. It was then I learned that – our two vessels – were not the only objects captured by the singularity. One of our autonomous factory satellites was also thrown into this space-time."

The luminous three-dimensional view zoomed past one of the satellites toward a dark object the shape of a fat Cuban cigar slowly tumbling with a curved arrow directing its path. Alternating yellow text floated above it, indicating data including time, distance, and speed.

"This one is designated Nightstar 4, one of our older plants. Unfortunately, it did not make it back to its intended Earth-Moon L1 position—some of you will understand what that means—which is more than far enough to keep Earth outside the pollution-risk zone."

"How can you be sure that your ships and that plant are the only objects from your world that have ended up here?" someone from the military contingent asked.

"That is a very good question, Major Kerr. Paulux can only register objects that are in this space-time. And Nightstar is the only other object here with our dimensional signature. I know not whether the vortex also connected to another time—or space... thus I can not speak for any other objects that may have been trapped into your future—or past. Or into yet another Earth dimension."

"Another Earth dimension?"

"Aye... There are at least three." Mickmi raised a hand to halt the excited questions coming from the audience. "Allow me to continue. Our satellite was damaged by exposure to the... extreme high-energy streams of particles and – extreme gravitational distortions – of the vortex... A couple of its navigational modules – failed. By Deymos' projected calculations, Nightstar's orbit was decaying considerably... at a rate that would bring it into your atmosphere within six days. However..." 

She swept her hand near the virtual globe. The alien satellite crept along the arrow and then left it, following a new, steeper arrow toward the pale atmospheric rim. "Before this meeting, I received a most disturbing report from Deymos. More of Nightstar's control modules are failing, its engines presently are working at 47 percent capacity, and its shield is about to collapse. As you can see from the projected trajectory, it is now set for this area—"

The view followed the dark satellite as it entered the rotating atmosphere, the Pacific Ocean sliding past to reveal the Western Hemisphere and the Americas. The arrow approached from the west and froze with the satellite dangling south of the Great Lakes.

"—in only half the time. In three days."

A hand shot up among the consultants. The EBE girl's smile widened. "A spacecraft engineer and fuel expert! Of course, Mister Slakes."

"Exactly what type of manufacturing plant are you talking about? How large is it?"

"It is a collecting-and-refining processing factory... 300 by 75 meters wide. It collects hydrogen and processes it. The end product is antimatter."

For a long moment, there was silence. Gray scanned the audience—they were staring at her, flabbergasted. Then everybody started speaking at once.

Mickmi lifted her hands toward them and slowly the noise level subsided. She gestured at the same man. "Yes, Mister Slakes? What is your question?"

"What amount of antimatter are we talking about?"

Gray found himself holding his breath with the others.

"At the moment of the disaster, the plant was scheduled to receive cargo-vessels for transport to our Moon, Maar, and Titan colonies. So I speak of full capacity. Almost ten tons are at present aboard Nightstar 4."

A chilling silence filled the auditorium. Every face appeared blank with incomprehension at the enormity of the threat. Then loud whispers grew into troubled chatter.

Gray remained standing, his eyes roaming, watching her and the people. He understood the severity of the danger, the shortage of time available to prepare to act. Even so, he couldn't help thinking the EBE girl appeared too confident, too serene as she stood there next to the table, observing. She didn't look like someone giving terminal news. She must know more than she's saying. She's—

Something snapped his mind back to sharp focus. Before he consciously knew what it was, his eyes were scanning the shadows beyond her and his hand snaked under his jacket to his back to grip his prized Luger.

He spotted movement along the opposite wall of the auditorium. Just then, the EBE queen turned to face the main entrance at the back of the stage area, and the McGahn boy quickly stepped before her.

Crouching, Gray tossed his Fedora on an empty seat and drew his pistol. The doors were thrown open and a man wearing full combat gear including body armor strode in, boldly pointing his M-16 rifle everywhere before settling on the two next to the holoprojector.

Gray froze. Any sudden moves and the man would start shooting wildly. His expression, wrathful with grim determination, left no doubts in Gray's mind. It sent a shiver through his body.

The man came to kill and he was not alone.

— ∞ —

©2019 by kemorgan65

Banner image: ©Syda Productions - stock.adobe.com https://stock.adobe.com/images/happy-businesswoman-with-virtual-planets-and-space/189635819