Mystique or Mystie. I waved my arm like an over achieving school girl, wanting it so much I could taste it! Sooo much! I had to get one of the two human slots open to accompany two of the aliens, oops, V’s and a couple of the old SWAT team. I knew that it would be all but impossible to achieve what I wanted because I’m the quiet one here, the one who is either reading or working out in the gardens. I don’t say anything at the meetings, not because I don’t have anything to say but because if I did say what was on my mind, I’d piss a lot of them off. So, I knew if I wanted the coveted spot, I’d have to sell myself to the human population not the ‘V’s, for if the rumors were correct, they knew already. Ever since I was a little girl, actually not that long ago but it seems like a lifetime, I was fascinated by life somewhere else. My father, I think, was a kid at heart and his obsession with extraterrestrials was one of those things that he never gave up on. I was about to say, grew out of but I think what fascinates us as children is visceral, core. As we grow up and learn about things, we tend to become more rational, leaving the ponderings of the childhood imagination behind. But my dad’s study looked like a blend of someone who could work for NASA and someone in a UFO cult. In fact, he was. After both parents died, I cleaned out the house and bought a second hand trailer and moved to a trailer park. While going through dads things I found a whole file cabinet on the Urantia movement and The Blue Book. I’ve carried that book in my backpack now for four years. The thing is three pounds!
Its rubbed off on me and I’ve been a devotee ever since and why not! My father used to say ‘well kiddo ya know that there are "many strings to your bow." At first, I thought that meaning was that he could act like an adult and still have his child intact. As I grew up, literally, I grew to think that hell, why not and no reason to apologize unless he wasn’t, just letting me know that not all adults suck, that there were some that were still kids at heart but after getting through half the book, I know what he meant. You don’t have to toss out science to believe things that don’t have answers or aren’t rational.
And this is why I’m here. To say YAHOO and what’s the big deal! So, my father was right! All that stuff is in storage and I want it for my new bedroom in the Brownstone. The dream. But I haven’t taken the leap yet so I can go as human.
‘Yes, Mystie, why do you want to put yourself in that position?’
I’m also self-conscious because I won the DNA lottery by society standards anyway, with a beautiful young Jamaican female body. It’s silly, I know because it ought to be a super power but it is what it is. Seriously, I welcomed a few scars from the year of protesting in the streets. And I’m strong, every night and morning always pushups and curling that three pound book.I
stood up and once I started explaining, I lost my shyness and gave them an emotional earful until they eventually had to stop me. That night while in bed reading the blue book, there was a knock and a paper slipped beneath the door. I was to go to the café at eight tomorrow for breakfast with the others before going in. A drone had already been through the a part of it and would always stay ahead of us with anything important sighted, relayed to whoever had the talkie by the operator. The plan.
It felt like a dream come true and I was excited!The breakfast was served by an android whose name is Dave. The first service droids came out in 2028 due to light based computing, the sophistication of AI and a prototype of LUNA, the quantum computer housed in a deep cave on the moon. It’s movements were more fluid and facial expressions had been added to appear more human. I had so many mixed feelings and a few tears thinking what my father would think of his grown up daughter sitting with a few hybrids (psst..aliens) being served by Dave about to possibly enter a portal into a world only imagined by him.
The talk at the tables was about contact with someone who lived below who could be a guide but the V’s weren’t sure even though one like them had let them know about the hidden opening in a lucid message.
‘Whistle’, I said, remembering that I’m talking to evolved beings and immediately sorry that I had said anything.
’‘What?" 'My father said that if there was an intelligent other species close by to always whistle. It was like a hello, cool.’
Everyone nodded.
'But as high pitched as you can.'
’t took a while because Jagger and Gillean had to get on the same page with the drone set up. She was the other human who would hold the talkie. There was a lot of buzz when we finally got down to the basement, about the pictures the drone sent back, who would get an e-gun and how the discovery would go. The ‘V’s would go first, stopping every hundred feet and use their enhanced senses to detect anything that could cause a security threat. There were also two others with weapons just in case.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
I was the last in, squeezing through a hole that Jagger had made using the jack hammered. The tunnel was dark so the flashlights guided us to a stairway that was steep and narrow, built it seemed for smaller feet. It also corkscrewed down in parts but straighten out in the last stretch. A hundred feet down, the tunnel smell was replaced with no smell than a redolent scent of plant life. I’ve never breathed in oxygen rich air before so that was my first time. When we got to a dirt floor bottom, the V’s stopped and told us to rest for five in position to let the body acclimate to the enriched air.
All humans were given masks to wear once we were inside the tunnel due to what might be in the air. It was a precaution.
I felt light headed at first, a little nauseous and tingling in the extremities including the ears. You could taste it. It was palatable and not one taste but many. I remembered the time my mother visited a greenhouse to buy herbs to have in the winter and this was that on steroids, or something else like it, more intense, almost close to aroma therapy with essential oils but with a whole new crayon box of scents. The V’s looked like they were in a standing coma, not moving or talking, eyeballs doing the weird back and forth thing. I looked at the other humans and I could tell that they were feeling the way I did. Ish squeezed my hand.
We walked for another hundred feet until the tunnel turned into a narrow hallway with black glass walls and a heavily bolted metallic door with a virtual image of a large blue human hand. One ‘V put their hands on the black glass. A soft female voice instructed that all devices including anything electronic or that used batteries to be left in box on the floor. It took a while because it also meant guns and Walkies but after some grumbling by the SWAT team, a beam of light scanned the hand and an outline of a portal appeared as two heavy doors squeaked apart. Another metal door lay beyond but opened as the first ‘V stepped through.
It was dark but the blue light that they said was full spectrum light was enough to see the tunnel stretch as far as I could see. The stark difference between above and here drew nervous breaths and exclamations of awe. I just wished dad was there with me to experience it. We didn’t go far because as far as the ‘V’s were concerned what happened in the next thirty minutes was enough.
Honestly, my fate was sealed, the moment I climbed through that hole. I wore my tried and true light sweatshirt that said on the front We’re Not Alone and on the back a flying Tardis. The sensual overload stopped the ‘V’s and slowly turned them towards the grow pods. I went over to one with Ish, got as close as I could to the transparent shield and starred inside. They were tropical plants, some weird, bristling from possibly air or spurts of fine mist, that made them look as though they were moving on their own volition.
It's funny how our brain works. The first thing it does is match what its seeing to the closest thing in its memory banks, right! So, this under greenhouse that appeared self-sustainable. All the plants were attached to a pile of branches, no soil and a fine mist every few minutes from the top. Air came out into the tunnel from a vent on top and pin prick holes on the bottom. The only sound I heard was a soft susurration. I went to the OED to find the right word.
No one said anything. After a while, we heard a steady tiny stream of childlike voices beneath what we thought might be the intake of CO2. Indistinguishable, soft, its rhythm changing every few minutes. My last thought before I lost a chunk of time which almost made me laugh, was that this was AI’s new decarbonization technique but where was the soil? Ish tapped me on the shoulder, his mouth open as in holy shit WTF. He had taken his mask off so I did the same. The next thing that happened was Gillean saying that we should return.
Others will describe what happened during those missing minutes but here’s mine.
We were lying on a swinging bridge looking down onto what could have been a mythical place in some fantasy story. It was a little of everything. Tropical jungle with enormous living green towers arising from within with large decks dripping with hanging plants dotted with colorful flowers and tiny sparkling lights, beautiful rolling meadows with large, interconnected ponds and fountains a hundred feet high coating everything with a fine mist. Strange, elongated carnivorous plants that stretched up almost as high as the bridge searching below with flower heads that looked more animal than plant. There were boardwalks that were both posted into land and floated across water features, rose and fell with the natural features of the terrain. I could have stayed there for a day watching the strange white birds soaring over the forest canopy, the carnivorous plants swooping down to catch something, whatever they were walking the wooden pathways, whatever it was climbing the tower, and just imbibing in the sensual overload and getting high from it. Sexually high.I turned to Ish who was naked lying on a grassy pillow floating in one of those ponds. It was in the air and so strong that the intensity caused a rush of hormones and an indescribable yearning that I still have a strong memory of. We looked beautiful to each other like feeling as though each half of us needed to rejoin for a long awaited re-union! But there was no thinking, no awareness of each other or us, only a desire to connect and finally find wholeness after a life of being separate. The orgasm sent us spiraling out into a vast swirling nebula of gasses and dust, of mountains and valleys, speckled with glittering stars. Creation. It changed me.
I’ve since taken spit.
