Excerpts from Alien Dimensions Issue 11

Alien Dimensions Issue 11 contains some amazing stories but isn’t that noticeable on Amazon at the moment, so I thought I’d post some excerpts for you to find and perhaps tempt you to download the ebook, if you haven’t already.

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Rootless

By Sean Mulroy

The planet was unnamed and terrestrial, with a thin atmosphere composed of only three layers. It was a barren world, the entire surface consisting of high rocky mountains and deep valleys cut with sharp edges. The starship had been slowly orbiting it for the past two days

The planet would remain unnamed.

A silver flyer left the starship to gracefully stream through space then penetrate the planet’s exosphere, thermosphere and stratosphere; eventually plunging into a murky tangerine sky to gently dock on the dry craggy exterior. Landing coordinates were carefully chosen. After millennia of pointless roaming, the spacefarers had learnt to be careful; even now, when not necessary.

Nine humanoids disembarked from the flyer, perhaps becoming the first organic entities to set foot on the terrain. An odd-looking bunch; long-limbed and spindly, muscle atrophy being a recessive trait they were unfortunately susceptive to. Peculiar physical attributes were noticeable; such as small teeth and large eyes which glowed a reddish hue, having evolved that way for improved night vision. A genetic mutation from long ago made their skin radiation resistant.

Two little ones, once on the rocky ground, both ran away from the rest.

“Not too far children!” a female voice yelled.

“Let them go,” insisted an aged and hoarse male voice. “Memories of this day may serve them on another, one none of us will be alive for. Others will play our roles then, perhaps those two will…” The elderly voice seemed to speak from experience. He, like most spacefarers, the lucky ones anyway, had arranged-unions since birth. His own lasted a lifetime, and throughout those long decades, old memories must have helped.

The adult spacefarers stayed together near the silver flyer, forming a small circle. Some pointed towards one horizon, the rest to the other; most held strange gleaming instruments in their hands. Subsequently, the group started to slowly move in the direction the children had run off in. After a few paces one broke away. Against the burnished orange glare of the nearest star, an old burnt-out dwarf shining bitter, the act appeared heretical; as if a father suddenly decided to abandon his wife and infants to the whims of a hostile world. Some in the group shook their heads at the act but most simply rolled their eyes; no one did anything.

The lone figure was a man, lanky like the rest, though unusually muscular for a spacefarer. He walked away from the group, away from the children, away from the silver flyer and into the bone-dry land where only arid canals crisscrossed like wrinkles, and a maze of rocks and boulders made strange esoteric patterns devoid of meaning.

A young woman in the group kept her eyes on him, even after the others had given up hope. She appeared to be of two minds about what to do. Almost unconsciously, she struggled behind the congregation till she herself was apart from them. Only then did she make her decision.

“Gustav,” she said, her voice low, even though she’d wanted to scream it.

Without hearing her the man disappeared among the rocks.

She turned to the group, they were going their own way.

Reluctantly she followed the single set of footprints into the labyrinth.

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The Sardovian Fly Trap

By James Armer

On the surface, Riga 7 was no different from the other hundred ice worlds in the galaxy, but beneath the great endless white emptiness existed a dazzling subterranean jungle.

The Daragan Rift had stayed motionless for nine days inside the broken hollow of an ancient lake, and Cora had been getting restless. The AI had been shimmering back and forth through the ship from camera to camera, eagerly observing the lush sweltering jungle below for any signs of sentient life.

She had good reason to believe there would be. After all, it was a strange alien signal that had brought them to this curious planet in the first place. The coding was old in design. It didn’t translate into anything that made any sense, which suggested it could be Venelli, an ancient race, whose superior technology sold for a fortune on the black market. The humans couldn’t resist such a temptation, and now they were off chasing untold riches, while Cora was left behind to repair the ship.

That had been her blunder, though. Not only had she put them forty-seven miles out from the crater she was supposed to land in, but she had botched the landing too. When bringing the Rift in, most of her CPU was still occupied with processing the wealth of data she had gleaned from the wonderful world of Palador 3. Or, putting it bluntly, she was thinking about something else. But the humans didn’t need to know that. She had constructed an alternative truth. She told them the strange signal must have been echoing from here, which of course made no sense, but she phrased it in a confident way.

At her suggestion, the humans set off on foot with their mobile habitats on their backs. Cora had the drones repair the ship whilst she observed the tropical caverns of Riga 7, documenting all the exciting new life.

The day after the humans first departed, the ship received an audio message. It was Ben, his voice weak and distorted. He said that they were nearly at the crater, that there were some ancient Venelli ruins that seemed to lead down to it. If it proved to be as good as it looked, they would set up camp, so he told her not expect them back for a few days.

Cora had been delighted at first, but that message had arrived a week ago and she’d heard nothing since. Ben had strictly forbidden her to use her robotic body or leave the ship under any circumstances, but the lack of communication was causing her concern for their welfare. She believed this to be enough justification for overriding her restrictions, and began downloading herself into the avatar.

She left the vastness of the ship behind, and reawakened, a pattern of purple hexagons peeling back to fill her vision with color. The world always looked different through the body’s optics. It felt tight, and restricted. It was far inferior to the many eyes of the Daragan Rift, but this way she could feel like one of them, a member of the crew.

Opening the cargo ramp, she was completely unaware of the air that drew in and just how cold it was. Her metal body could feel nothing. Blissfully insensitive to the severe conditions, she took six long strides down the ramp, feeling good to finally be outside.

She saw, from her new perspective, just how much the top of the Daragan Rift had frosted over under the chilling gaze of those ice moons. It was their continual stare that kept the surface as a never-ending winterland, while the fiery core of Riga 7 kept the planet warm inside. It was in these caverns deep below, in this goldilocks zone, where life thrived.

Cora descended the jagged rock face she’d watched the humans climb down nine days ago. It was easy for her, being able to twist and contort her body in ways the humans were incapable of, and there was her perfect balance and superior strength, too. The way down became drastically steep, and soon became a climb. She carefully scaled the moist rock face, having to leap the last few feet to the platform below.

The stone cracked under her landing. She lifted the fist she had punched into the rock, and pulled herself straight. Surveying this flat precipice through her optics, she saw that life, mainly fungal, dared to begin here. The many mighty stalactites of ice that reached down into this darkness were dripping away at their sharp ends, their continual rain of freezing water gave the whole rock formation a glistening but treacherous sheen.

Carefully watching her step, she advanced to the edge of the precipice. Could she have felt it, she would have noticed the intense increase in heat. The continual drip-dripping of water echoing around in the hollow was replaced by the noisy tropical chattering of birds and insects. Coming to the edge, she found herself looking down upon the vibrant canopy, a vast and thriving jungle.

Cora looked around for a way down out of this dark murky hollow, this lobby before the unknown, as it were. Snapping on her head-torch, she discovered what looked to be a cutting in the stone to create some steps down. Their design looked intentional, and a casual observer would perceive them to be the product of intelligent life, but they were in fact natural in formation. Cora took one last look up at the Daragan Rift high above, and then made her way down.

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Motherboard

By Nicky Martin

 User: Bates, Brayden : 08.17.57 : 7:49am : Tusla, Oklahoma : Love County : 70 degrees Fahrenheit : Partly Cloudy : Precipitation 15% : Humidity 93% : Wind 2mph : Severe Thunderstorms : DDS Dentures + Implant Solutions of Oklahoma, “If you need new teeth then you have to go to the experts!”

Today was Jena Bates yearly meeting with Brayden’s school; she explained her son’s special sensitivities caused by his cognitive augmenter. Bray sat next to her, absorbing the ramifications of turquoise dye manufacturing.

“Well, Mr. Doctorow,” she told the boy’s new teacher, “Brayden’s not slow–that’s just the problem, really–he’s too fast! Say hi to your teacher, sweetheart,” Jena prodded her son.

“Merehaba,” Brayden gave a Turkish hello, and continued to bask in the Ottoman Empire.

“It started back when Brayden was in kindergarten,” she began. Brayden was in third grade now, so Jena has the speech down pat. She changed her body language from “Open Greeting” to “Confiding with Confidence,” leaned closer to the young teacher and saw sweat under his collar. “When I first heard about Brayden’s learning disability, I realized how important it is to be an active parent in my child’s education. Wouldn’t you agree Mr. Doctorow? Without an active parenting presence, special needs kids get shunned to the wayside. A parent is a child’s advocate. And Brayden being without a father,” she paused, raised her eyebrows. No response. She continued, “Well really, I’m all the boy’s got!”

Naturally, Jena insisted Brayden get a computer plugged into his brain.

Normally, neurogenetic implants were exclusive to billionaires who needed fast-brains to build rocket ships, and whatnot. Jena didn’t fully understand it. She had slow-brain, herself. Or at least, that was what her mother, teachers, and employers told her.

Jena would not let her child be plagued with a low-mental functioning lifestyle. With the school’s diagnosis as proof, she applied for a generous grant from the RiboFUNK Gene-Mod Corporation. Brayden and Jena were able to afford an intelligence implant installed to Brayden’s cerebral cortex. The Neurogenetic Engineer boasted that the device was top of the line, and with yearly updates, Brayden was on track to be ten times smarter than Einstein!

Brayden’s brain can access wifi networks automatically, so he’s always connected to the internet. Jena had internet access her whole life, but she always had to look things up. Simple things, like what month it was, or how to boil water. Sometimes she’d try and imagine knowing these things immediately, without even looking them up. That must be what Brayden feels like.

Her son is truly a genius!

The implant was mostly internal. All you could see were two holes on the back of Brayden’s skull, with wires connecting to a battery pack that he wore around his neck.

“It’s cool!” Jena said, “You get to wear this stylish, mysterious necklace. Like a medallion!” But since Brayden kind of knew everything, he knew that his giant brain battery wasn’t anything like a mysterious necklace. He knew everything there was to know about the pre-Revolution Estates General of France, as well as other contextless facts; he knew that his implant wasn’t upgraded and maintained in the correct way; he knew that the other kids at school thought he was a loser. Brayden sort of knew everything.

“This is why Brayden can’t be evaluated with regular tests and assignments. He already knows the answer to any question. He needs personalized instruction,” the boy’s mother explained to his teacher.

“I understand what you’re saying, Mrs. Field–”

“Mizzzz,” Jena interrupted. “Here is my phone number if you have any questions.”

“Thank you,” he said, putting the paper scrap in a draw of his desk. This woman was delusional. Clearly, he couldn’t give Brayden the attention he needed. There were over seventy children in his class alone!

“Allow me to have yours in case I ever need to contact you in case of emergency,” Jena batted her eyelashes at him.

“Yes, Ms. Bates, I’ll make sure to keep a special eye on Brayden.” Jerry Doctorow wasn’t exactly sure what that meant yet, but he’d do his best to try to remember this kid’s name.

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Shifting Sands

By Olga Werby

The wind howled northward, as normal for this time of the year. The angle of planetary spin resulted in a decreased amount of sunlight in the northern hemisphere of this planet during this portion of the orbit cycle. The atmosphere precipitated as ammonia and water snow, lowering the air pressure, creating a stable gale south to north. The sands shifted, and shifted again. A tip of a stone structure, worried by years of drifting particles, poked slightly above the surrounding dunes.

“There!” The man called to his companion over the radio built into his environment suit, and pointed at the tip of a hexagon. The atmosphere of this planet wasn’t breathable…yet.

“It could be just another freak of nature,” the woman, similarly dressed, said. “There are stones all over this plateau. This one is perhaps a bit more regular…”

“I know. I know.” He interrupted yet another pointless discussion on how his obsession with finding the remains of some long-lost civilization was just a corny fantasy, all evidence just a fluke of the abrasive nature of the endless shifting sands. He lifted his hand to his chest, where underneath several layers of protective clothing hung a small, intricately carved piece of sandstone on a simple plastic cord. Hugh had found that “artifact” a decade ago, when he was part of the very first expedition to terraform this dusty rock. It had been lying in front of his habitat, by the hatch. He had been certain it hadn’t been there the night before, and then like some spirit, it had just materialized where he was sure to find it.

The small, intricately carved rock had caused a sensation back home, but when no other evidence emerged, the eye of the crowd moved on to other things, the idea of the artifact dismissed and forgotten. Hugh had carried the thing around his neck since then. And Enry-o made fun of him every time he looked askance at some pattern on the cliff or a tip of a rock formation that seemed too regular or too engineered to be carved by nature. In all the years since his first find, Hugh hadn’t discovered another piece as wonderful as the first. Just a bunch of almosts…

He hit the exposed hexagon with his boot, as much in frustration as in desire to uncover a few more centimeters. The rock didn’t move or crumble, and Hugh’s foot experienced the full force of his own kick.

“Ouch!”

“Did you hurt yourself?” Enry-o’s voice carried a touch of snigger on top a genuine note of worry.

“I’m fine.” He sped up to catch up with his partner, drudging up the gentle slope of the plateau towards the wind-powered generator at the top of the rim. It had been knocked down by the winds again.

“Hugh?” About twenty meters ahead, Enry-o was examining something in the sand. Her voice sounded breathless from excitement or exertion. A stray thought that Enry-o’s suit had malfunctioned raced through Hugh’s head. But that couldn’t be — they were a team, and he would know if any alarms went off in her suit, just as she’d know if something happened with his equipment. But something in the way Enry-o called to him made him race to her.

“What is it?” he managed. The short run left him breathless. Hugh long ago got used to the lesser gravity, but low oxygen was more problematic. The protocol was never to run.

Enry-o didn’t answer right away. She continued to dig, making a kind of swimming motion with her gloved fingers, clearing a protruding rock.

“Another one,” she said.

“What?”

“Like the hexagon you found earlier,” she clarified.

Hugh bent down to take a better look. The top of the rock was uneven and weathered, but the part that was until just now buried by the sand was a perfectly polished regular six-sided column. This was not the work of randomly blowing dust; it had been made, created for a purpose. Hugh just stared, forgetting to breathe.

“There,” she said. “I thought I saw something.” She used her glove to scrub the exposed surface, and Hugh had to physically stop himself from slapping her hand away. It was too precious for such rough treatment. But Enry-o kept brushing and digging, and after the initial shock, Hugh saw what she had seen — an inscription.

It was a spectacular engraving. The thin lines curved and spiraled around each other, twisting over and under, each depth suggesting a different plane in three dimensions. It was vaguely reminiscent of calligraphy, Hugh thought.

“We should take a picture,” Enry-o said. “I can go get a camera.” But the sun was quickly disappearing behind the ridge of the red mountains in the distance. By the time they got a camera and took the shot, the lines might not even be visible in the low light.

“Later,” Hugh finally said. It was tempting to document the find, but they could do so tomorrow. “Let’s look if there’re more of these here.” He set out to walk in an ever-expanding spiral pattern around the artifact. Enry-o did the same a few meters farther out.

Hugh was slow and methodical. Enry-o raced impatiently, trying to cover as much ground as possible before the light was gone. Hugh could hear her heavy breathing through the comm. He was sure that Enry-o could pick up his racing heart — the pounding of blood in Hugh’s ears was almost deafening.

The sound stopped transmitting almost immediately after the scream. Hugh turned to where his partner had been just a moment ago, but there was nothing there, just the same bland rust-colored sand.

“Enry-o?” Inside his helmet, Hugh pulled up the various readouts that were supposed to track the location and the basic status of his partner. But everything was coming up blank. There was no connection to Enry-o.

It didn’t make any sense.

He walked towards the last place he saw her. The sun was very low now. The helmet-mounted lamp on Hugh’s suit turned on by itself when it reached his personal threshold for low visibility. He moved his head to make gentle sweeps of the landscape, trying to spot Enry-o’s footprints, but the wind relentlessly removed all evidence. The rescue procedures drilled into his head took over, the panic pushed back to be processed at a later date. All of his senses were focused on locating Enry-o.

It seemed like forever, but it was only a few meters before the ground gave way, and Hugh felt himself drop below the shifting sand.

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Prospector of the Silica Seas

By Shashi Kadapa

Editor’s Note: Ancient Sanskrit Glossary pg 51

Shiva, the ‘born complete’ non-carbon life form of the prospector class, watched the silica seas whose molten sand dunes rolled across the horizon in unending cascades, driven by fierce gravitational waves.

He had come to Planet HD 19906265SS to mine the Archisanium धातु (1). With ample quantities of the metal retrieved and locked below the deck, he was getting ready to return home.

His काल दंशिन् was linked to the main ship moored in orbit, which was in turn integrated with his home planet. (2) The time dimension system allowed him to fly to another time dimension, relative to his home planet. He could take off from his planet, wander for more than a billion parsecs, and yet still be able to return to his original time dimension, unaffected by time dilation. This feature allowed prospectors to travel far backward or forward in time, collect resources and touch base at the current time, on the home planet. However, for the system to work, time on the home planet could not be changed, and it always had a present state.

Archisanium, a name derived billions of parsecs before Intergalactic Time IG 00.00, meant ‘ray of light’ in Sanskrit, the language of those times. Archisanium, atomic number 476, was the source of white light, and just a few atoms could power planets and life. With stars dying and turning into white dwarfs, Archisanium was the source for life on Shiva’s planet Dharwad of home star Punarvasu, in the Vulpecula constellation. Even so, the metal had a negative property. If corrupted, it would give black light, which ended life, something that Shiva worried about.

Shiva continued to watch. Waiting for the right moment. Weather on this world was very hostile and decimating. The planet moved erratically on its highly elliptical orbit around a white dwarf. As it neared the apogee, it would slow down, reverse gravity across the poles, almost inducing weightlessness. When it crossed the apogee, and headed towards the perigee, it would accelerate, like a comet on a celestial slingshot, inducing cataclysmic changes in the weather.

Intense gravitational forces battered the surface, and burning methane and sulfur fumes rushed out in jets from underground magma, spreading through the environment with flames that reached 3000 degrees centigrade. Incendiary silica and powdered volcanic ash flashed across the surface in a wave, lit by lightning from the methane gas clouds, crushing and atomizing everything in their path. The planet rotated on its axis twice diurnally, and night temperatures dropped to -273 degrees centigrade, when all molecules and atoms stopped, a time when the volatile Archisanium could be mined and capped.

Electromagnetic radiation from ‘above gamma rays’ class with the frequency of 1000 Exa Hertz, and energy of more than 9.3 Megavolts, lashed across the surface, splitting molecules and dislodging electrons from super actinide series elements, and creating isotopes with half-lives of sub billion pico seconds. These unstable isotopes quickly vanished and settled into stable metals.

One unstable isotope was formed when a few electrons were knocked off from the d, p, f, and g shells and replaced by electrons from silica electron, creating the elusive metal Archisanium. Conditions for Archisanium were impossible to replicate in labs, and the metal had to be prospected in hostile environments, under deep low temperatures, quickly capped and transported in environment neutral containers.

Shiva banked the pod and briefly hovered, to logic the next action. His mother ship was about 1000 हर्दरि away safely moored in an orbit. (3) Driving straight up through the dune wave would mean the end. The intense radiation, strong magnetic field, and fierce winds with speeds of 50,000 हर्दरि per शक्षन would destroy his pod and incapacitate him, leaving him floundering on the burning desert. (4)

The present time was 20.00.00 + IG 00.00 parsecs after IG 00.00, a time long after the Solar System had been destroyed, and non-carbon life forms had evolved, some naturally, while others had been grown in labs. Each life form had been coded with a designated task such as builder, doctor, prospector, and each life form grown in the lab had been infused with the required light circuits embedded with a few atoms of Archisanium to help it perform its work.

Was Shiva alive? Was Shiva an ‘it’ or a ‘he’? Could it feel emotions, pleasure, display affection, and care?

Yes. Shiva was embedded with light neural networks that mapped emotions and thought processes of the long extinct humans. On his home planet were only lab grown beings. Animals, plants, birds, and more, were incubated and grown in labs. The universe however had strange and unknown life forms that evolved, mutated, and were deadly. Some of the known life forms were carbon, non-carbon, arsenic, methanogens or methane based xeno-nucleic acid – many unknown mimetic life forms that could adapt to the environment in which they were placed. Even after billions of parsecs had been explored, much of the universe remained unknown. There were rumors that a few members of the ‘born original’, human race had survived through the ages and settled somewhere in deep space. No one had ever seen them.

Shiva’s main concern was not the good the metal would do for his planet or the vast रोकक he could exchange. (5) रोकक allowed him to indulge in pleasures, and lead a life free from drudgery. His concern came from the huge wall of sand that hovered over the horizons, propped up from front, underneath and behind by massive opposing gravi waves, forming a thick envelope like a canopy. Lightning shattered the dune, striking sand, setting them on fire, sending out huge waves of energy that rocked his prospecting pod.

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Space Trash

By LaVa Payne

Recycle, recycle, recycle…it is our way, the natural way for galaxies to coexist!

Many of these polemic advertisements were all over the intergalactic broadcasting system. And as with most issues, it was always paramount to avoid, or at least appear to avoid, what might be perceived as a dereliction that would finally lead to an admonishment of terms for the compact.

Ah yes, the compact, or the OTRC, as it was abbreviated, was specifically geared towards the recycle, reuse and repurpose policy that has otherwise made its message not only obligatory but also sensible. For without the standards provided within the compact, the natural beauty of space and all things comprised within it, there would be malevolent consequences to the ebb and flow of space, time and physics.

That was the practical aspect. The realistic aspect was that it affected everything else, and ways to deal with it had to be addressed by all. For with all progress and intelligence there is an inherent waste generated by movement in the galaxies, and that ‘space trash’ had to have a management system that was organized and collective in order to procure and provide certain equality throughout the galaxies. As it affected all weather patterns, storms, and nebula energy existing in the galaxies, the organized effort to manage it was all the more important.

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Now come this one, one without much to return to in the name of a home, but one nevertheless. His name was Tavid. He was of the nation of the Trunktoparishies from the white star called Angora, or what would be dubbed other places as WASP-33b.

Located roughly in the beautiful Andromeda area of the universe, Angora had long past its habitation abilities due to its immediate proximity to its sun. The average orbit took twenty-nine point five hours, with a surface temperature of two thousand three hundred degrees Celsius. And with its super-heated matter, even the Trunktoparishies who were a subterranean nation could not exist upon its continually elongated body which had become more and more almond-shaped as the planet inched closer to its own sun.

In fact, the matter from Angor was quickly dissipating into its sun at a rate that was considered phenomenal about the galaxies—it was infamous for that reason alone. Which left the Trunktoparishies without a homeland, and most of them had been taken in by the OTRC as workers towards the goal of galaxy keeping.

Tavid was no exception. He had remembered his homeland with much honor and pride as it was once beautiful and lush, much like the Andromeda Galaxy itself. Though few would ever remember its splendor with such admiration as he did, Tavid was committed to expanding the awareness of preservation and compliance to the OTRC.

Conservation was a key. As much of the Andromeda galaxy was excising and collecting black holes, the obvious feeding of matter to the black holes was not advised, based on the collapse and fall policy instituted among all the aliens. It was integral to all that lived in the Andromeda galaxy to prevent unnecessary gravitation to the twenty-six, now pending twenty-seven black holes currently in mass for the center of the Andromeda galaxy.

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First Interdimensional Contact

By Neil A. Hogan

The electromagnetic sphere fluoresced and coruscated in the center of the bubble reality, bringing life-giving energy to the spherical beings that lived on the inside of the skin. It spun and twisted, pouring like a firework fountain one moment, burning like a fireball the next. The energy torus surrounding it flared and sparked, a protective energy barrier, allowing heat out but keeping most of the electric strikes in.

The pod was waking from its slow time, the spherical members rolling back and forth on the giving surface. One such being, a masculine who we’ll call Fred, had raised his energy before the others. He rolled across the surface of his world, enjoying the warmth on his body, feeling the power radiate throughout his watery insides, as his fleshy internal segments jostled and tickled each other in the energy field.

Fred looked across The Way and saw today that the red rainbow field that filled his reality was a particularly beautiful shade of infrared. He became entranced with the shifting patterns in the frequency.

As he looked up with his mid-band senses, the frequency fluctuated.

Suddenly, there was a flash, as though the energy of their reality had been parted like a curtain, and a strange shape appeared in the space above. It seemed to hover there, observing, moving slowly.

It had never existed before, but Fred could tell it was an ‘other’ shape. A shape that was made up of lines.

He had heard about lines. His pod elder had explained that if the entire pod rolled forward equally, they would create a line. If they moved to be on top of each other in piles of one, two, three and four, they could make a diagonal line. Like half a hill. And that shape would be called a ramp.

And this other that had appeared in the sky above was made of lines. Three of them joined together making a shape. A bit like the side of their ramp.

The strange shape remained, unmoving, above.

Interest turned to boredom for Fred and he began to forget about it. The beautiful waves of blue energy that made up the life skin were more interesting. But the waves didn’t look happy today. Something was wrong.

Fred saw the lines in the reflection of the waves, and remembered. He must tell someone.

He decided it was something for the numbers person.

The numbers person, a feminine energy being who we’ll call Frieda, was already looking at the shape across The Way, her balloon body stretching her eye band as far as she could, to get a closer look.

“It’s a triangle,” she sent, when Fred asked. “When you have three lines together like that, you call it a triangle.”

“What does a triangle do?”

Frieda sent the image of a triangle spinning, combining into different forms, creating all sorts of amazing patterns.

Fred was awed.

“Is that what it’s here for? To create patterns?”

Frieda remained silent, confirming that the information did not exist. “We wait.”

Soon, many of Fred’s family arrived, rolling to a stop directly under the floating triangle.

“We feel strange,” sent one of his pod.

The elder slowly rolled to the center, the other pod members making space for him. “You are feeling fear,” he sent. “Something different in this world for the first time in eons.”

“What is it?” asked another.

“We wait.”

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Tiara and the Comet Apocalypse Part 4

By Neil A. Hogan

Channel Five

On a 1600km long space ship known as the Celestial Breeze, a group of alien explorers from the Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy looked out at the planet Uranus in the star system of Sol. Just behind it, not more than 100,000km away, their intergalactic travelling planet, Elizabeth, floated serenely.

Well, now it was.

Just previously, a massive gravity beam had struck the planet and interstellar motors had almost automatically engaged to protect it from being pulled out of orbit.

The Celestial Breeze team had quickly surrounded the planet in a flash field and shifted it slightly in space to avoid the beam.

Investigations had quickly begun and, just as quickly, the cause had been found.

Terra was in trouble. Again.

A meeting had been called and several Alien Characters were in attendance, throwing as many random ideas into the discussion as they could think of.

“I think we should get Ida or Gabriel’s input,” said a very wide-headed purple alien known as Hamish. Looking like a hammerhead shark, he had to turn his head to face the other aliens around the table carefully, so that he wouldn’t knock anyone.

“Just because Ida is the only human nearby, doesn’t mean she is going to be able to help,” said Rex, a tyrannosaur-like alien with herbivore teeth. “The most we could get is her permission to help Earth, which she’s already given anyway. Gabriel is on alternate Terra so we have no way of contacting him until he chooses to be contacted. We still have to come up with our own plan.”

The others nodded in agreement.

“Sarah,” said Anneke, an ant-like alien, addressing their conscious computer, “What is the latest status of the rogue Centaurs comets?”

“At their present speed, they should be within Earth’s orbit within an Earth day,” replied Sarah, her computer face smiling.

“Is there anything we can do about the gravity-well?” asked Jacob, a humanoid figure made up of hundreds of slate-like blocks. “I could get some terraforming tools together and we could possibly override it. Terrans don’t have the technology to knock away one of them, let alone three.”

“We still need to find out what the cause of the gravity-well is and why its attracting comets to Terra,” said Aiden, a hairy, green, six-armed sloth-like creature who was head of security. “I propose we send a ship there immediately and get some close scans. All we’re detecting at the moment is an increase in the level of gravity waves from what the humans call the Coral Sea.”

“What about Brigadier General Hazelnutcoffee?” asked Anneke.

“I have not been able to contact him via the telepathic link,” said Hamish. “Either he’s not in Australia or he’s not able to answer.”

“I’m sure they would have detected something about those gravity waves, and Haze would have been the first human on the scene,” said Aiden. “Perhaps he’s already there doing something about it.”

“But he would have contacted us as well,” said Rex. “This is a huge problem. If even one of those comets hits Terra, the whole of space/time will be disrupted.”

Just then there was a flash, and Tim, a tall, gray, time travelling alien, appeared. “Checked future,” he said. “Not good. Terra gone from this and similar time tracks if we don’t help.”

The Alien Characters looked at each other in shock.

“That’s it then,” said Aiden. “We need to act now.”

“Well, there goes my afternoon studying mosquitoes!” said Hamish, happy that he was able to avoid another lesson on Terran insects.

The Alien Characters laughed, then they all got up, pressed addresses on their flash bands, and shifted to the navigation room of a large triangular ship in the docking bay.

Hamish put his hand on the white wall to mesh with the consciousness of the vessel and saw the holographic controls appear within his mind. In moments, the ship had left the Celestial Breeze, heading for Terra. He reached out and pressed the flash drive button.

And they were there.

Approximately 1000km above Terra, positioned near the gravity wave burst coming from the Coral Sea, a part of the South Western Pacific Ocean.

Hamish could see everything in his mind but wanted the other Alien Characters to see as well, so adjusted the view screen controls to zoom into the area. The systems indicated a low technology society living off the land. Local information indicated Port Vila and Mystery Island in Vanuatu, and New Caledonia, were the closest land masses to the gravity well.

Hamish zoomed directly to the exact point that the gravity waves were coming from.

The image showed blue water, then waves seeming to form in a circular shape, then the white of waves crashing together.

But, apart from that, there was nothing.

The Alien Characters looked at it in surprise. If there was nothing there, then it must be some kind of spillage from another level of reality.

They all turned to Rex. Rex had the ability to cross between parallel realities and find his way back. He always carried with him a rhomboid-shaped detecting pad that allowed him to spot cracks between realities and temporarily open them.

“I’ll need to get closer to be able to detect any cracks,” he said.

Hamish made the ship invisible and took it into a dive, heading for a point just a bit further away from the position of the well.

The invisible triangular ship then floated just above the water, turning so that the navigation room screen was directly in front of it.

Rex held up his tablet and waited for a detection confirmation.

His rhomboid tablet flashed and he nodded.

“Not an alternate reality, though,” he said. “It leads directly to the template level reality. Not something I can access that well.”

“Not good!” said Anneke, surprised. “The template level reality permeates throughout all of space and time. If something is affecting physicality in third dimensional reality from that reality, we can’t do anything about it here. We need to go straight to the source.”

“Not only that, but we’ve been stuck in it before and it almost dissolved us,” said Aiden.

“There is another way,” said Jacob. “The template level reality is where we design our future days. Where our higher minds work on constructing our future realities. We normally connect to it through our dreams.”

“Yes,” said Hamish. “And?”

“Well, we don’t have to physically go there,” said Jacob. “We can simply sleep our way there, projecting an image of ourselves within the substructure. We’d all be perfectly safe and may even be able to enact change.”

“Great idea,” said Rex. “How do we do that, then?”

Hamish closed his eyes and took the triangular ship back to the Celestial Breeze. In moments, they were back in the docking bay. Hamish opened his eyes and answered Rex’s question. “We sleep!” he said, with a smile.

The Alien Characters nodded, pressed their flash bands, and headed to their beds.

#

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