Alien Games (5 page)

Chapter Six: Sex, The Universe, and Everything

The room Jenna and Bruce followed the aliens into was much
larger. Like the space they’d just left it had no windows, but a number of
sliding doors indicated that other rooms led off it. The décor was an
unimaginatively clinical white, but the lighting was good and it was well
furnished with a quantity of comfortable couches. At one end there were some
openings about a foot square, like small dark alcoves. A large flat screen,
like a giant television filled the opposite wall.

The aliens chose couches to settle on.

The Trrivv, Fritti and Mmerr, seemed more catlike than ever.
They took the longest time selecting a place to arrange themselves. When a
suitable space was found, each turned around a few times, before settling into
a supple ball and then gazing expectantly about them. Their tails, which
stretched out their full length, undulated from time to time, the tufts at the
end twitched, seemingly of their own accord.

The Gortsoitrevnians, Mort and Zhorta, took seats next to
each other. Jenna thought they moved with surprising grace for such massive
creatures. They sat upright, their feet planted firmly on the floor and their
hands resting loosely on their knees. Their heavy, massive, muscled frames
reminded Bruce of comics he used to read as a boy featuring the Incredible
Hulk. But the weighty beauty of their faces unsettled that comparison. Once
seated, they took on the stillness of statues, only their eyes, which followed
every movement in the room, showed that they were anything other than giants
carved from blocks of stone.

The Vedi had taken places beneath the huge screen. Each
assumed the lotus position. One pair of arms rested on their knees, the other
pair dropped loosely at their sides.

Bruce and Jenna were the last to sit. They selected a spot
together as far from the others as it was possible to get. There they perched
gingerly on the edge of the couch, like a pair of chickens debating whether to
fly the coop.

The male Vedi’s voice sounded in their minds.

“Finally we are all ready to talk. I know that partial
greetings were exchanged prior to our arrival. You Terrans have met the Trrivv
and the Gorts. I have learnt from them that you go by the names Bruce and
Jenna. You have also had some contact with us, certainly Bruce has communed
intimately with Ranisha.”

It seemed to Jenna that the Vedi smiled inscrutably as he
said this last part, but it was hard to be sure.

“All that remains, therefore, is to tell you that I am
Ghanjihi, who was the Premlord of the Vedi, but who is now, like you, a captive
of the Reven.”

He paused as if this should mean something.

“Fine,” offered Bruce, who was feeling that it was time that
he asserted himself a little on behalf of the Earth. “We’re all on a first name
basis, and you’ve all witnessed me casting my seed about the place. But there
seem to be a lot of things that you…ah…people know that Jenna and I don’t
understand. So how about answering a few simple questions. What just happened
to us that was so painful? What the hell are the Reven, and what do they want
with us? Is this where we get vivisected, or are we going to be left to starve
until we begin chewing on each other?”

Mort the Gort gave a deep rumbling laugh as Bruce finished
speaking.

“No my friend,” he offered. “There will be no mutilation or
suffering for us to undergo. Provided we do not mate outside the Reven
experiments, any pain we do experience will be pure pleasure. And between those
pleasures we will have all the nourishment we need.”

He rose gracefully to his feet and strode to the alcoves at
the end of the room. There he inserted his hand into one and withdrew a handful
of something that looked like mashed potato. Then he reached into another and
withdrew a tumbler of clear liquid. He walked across the room and offered the
food and drink to Bruce and Jenna. Both hesitated, clearly reluctant to accept
strange food from an extraterrestrial Neanderthal.

“Don’t worry,” urged Mort. “This is the height of Reven
technology. It will match itself to your metabolism and give you both pleasure
and nourishment.”

Gingerly, Bruce extended his hand and accepted the offering.
Mort smiled down at him benignly.

“Bruce, wait!” Jenna clutched at his arm. “We don’t know
what it is, and we don’t know who we can trust here. Don’t do it!”

“I know it’s a risk,” he conceded seriously. “But it must be
twenty-four hours since we’ve eaten, and right now, given that all of life’s a
risk, a quick death’s preferable to slow starvation.”

“Then wait while I get some. If we’re taking risks, then
we’re taking them together!”

Jenna jumped to her feet, brushed past Mort, and crossed to
the alcoves. When she inserted her hand the food simply materialized in it.
Likewise, when she reached into the second alcove the cup felt as if it were
literally growing between her fingers. She walked back across the room carrying
the provisions. Mort’s broad back was still between her and her seat.

“Shift, King Kong!” she commanded sharply.

Mort jumped aside with surprising alacrity, giving Jenna a
deep, inscrutable look as he did so.

For her part, Jenna was too numb with fear and exhaustion to
care what Mort might think.

“Okay, on the count of three.” She said as she sat back down
by Bruce. “One, two, three!”

Wearing expressions on their faces as if they were expecting
to sample animal manure, Jenna and Bruce put the potato-like substance into
their mouths.

The result was as startling as anything that had happened to
them in these last few hours was. The bland looking food was the best thing
they’d ever tasted. It was not only delicious, but also amazingly substantial
for something so light. It didn’t have a recognizable taste for the first second
or two that it rested on their tongues, but Bruce found that if he thought of a
particular food then the substance began to taste more and more like the food
he was thinking of. It was the same with the liquid, he could alter the flavor
of each mouthful into something different. In a few sips he had graduated from
iced coffee and Coca-Cola, to beer and a fine French wine. Jenna had made the
same discovery, and together she and Bruce ate with intensifying pleasure as an
array of delicious flavors stimulated their deprived taste buds.

The aliens watched the looks that crossed the Terran’s faces
with satisfaction.

“Well,” purred Mmerr. “They seem to be enjoying themselves a
little. Perhaps they will become more sociable.” And her tail twitched at the
memory of the mauling it had received only a brief while earlier.

“What is this?” gasped Jenna. “It’s delicious! How does it
become whatever we wish it to be?

“It is Reven technology,” replied Ghanjihi, as if that
explained everything.

“So who the hell are the Reven?” Bruce demanded for a second
time, around a large mouthful of food.

“And what do they want with us if they’re not planning to
cut us up?” chimed in Jenna, who had the manners to swallow first.

“It is a very long tale,” Ghanjihi answered. “But it is one
that you need to see and hear. Let us all take refreshment, and then I will
tell you of the creation of the Universe and the history of humanoid
evolution.”

The others helped themselves to food and drink from the
alcoves, and then settled back on their couches. Bruce and Jenna, who were in
much better spirits having eaten, felt able to relax. Bruce settled back into
the comfort of the couch, and was pleasantly surprised when Jenna curled up
against him. Cautiously he put his arm around her, and was rewarded with a
smile as she snuggled even closer.

Ghanjihi assumed a more formal posture and began to speak.

“Before the beginning of the Universe there was nothing.
Even the void did not exist. Then nothing became something. And something
became many things. “

As he said this, he raised one of his arms to touch the
screen above him, and immediately it sprang into life with a picture of a
multi-colored array of lights shooting brilliantly outwards from a glowing and
pulsating central core.

“And many things exploded with a cataclysm (which your
Terran scientists imperfectly refer to as the “Big Bang”) the like of which
will never again be witnessed in this dimension until time ends.”

The lights on the screen danced and pulsed, spiraled and
flamed, in shapes and patterns too beautiful to describe. Bruce realized that
somehow he was seeing images of the birth of the Universe.

“And when the explosion occurred,” continued Ghanjihi. “It
was not only matter that was hurled outward by the mighty conflagration. For in
that firmament were the seeds of life. Along with the exploding matter flew
countless trillions upon trillions of spores. Every living creature in the
universe at this moment, from the greatest to the least, has its evolutionary
origin in that one moment of generation. And of all those spores, the most
potent is the variety that produces humanoids.”

The image on the screen zoomed in on a cloud of space dust,
and then it focused even more closely, onto a single grain that was passing
close to an insignificant yellow star orbiting a small green planet

“Infrequently, defying odds of one in a trillion-billion, a
humanoid spore encountered a planet capable of nurturing it into life.”

On screen, the tiny grain was captured by the gravity of the
planet. As it entered the atmosphere it flamed briefly, but without being
consumed, and continued on towards the surface of the world that had taken
possession of it.

“Since the cataclysm, five humanoid spores that we know of
have seeded life on suitable planets. Of these, the most recent to evolve have
been your species, the Terrans, who inhabit the planet you call Earth. Before
that, four other spores had also been nurtured into life by suitable planetary
incubators. The oldest species of humanoid is the Reven. Our ancestors, the
forefathers of the Vedi, came into being a cosmic blink later. Then some time
after that additional humanoid spores produced the Gortsoitrevnia and the
Trrivv.”

The images of evolving humanoid life forms that had been
accompanying this section of Ghanjihi’s explanation gave way to pictures of a
beautiful world that was clearly home to a mighty civilization. Even from space
it was possible to see the great cities that dotted the planet. As the view
became clearer, the inhabitants of these cities were revealed to be humans of
quite astonishing beauty.

“Eons ago,” explained Ghanjihi. “The Reven were like gods
and the ancestors of the Vedi were their slaves. The Reven were striking to
behold. The shortest of them was over eight feet tall. The least of them was
refined and powerful. “

The nearest thing Jenna could think of that compared in
beauty to the people that appeared on the screen were the most perfect
sculptures of Michelangelo. But these were people, not statues, they walked,
talked, lived and breathed.

“Even back then the Reven were incredibly advanced
scientifically. The greatest technology of your own world would have amused a
Reven child. But with their knowledge came arrogance. And with their arrogance
came cruelty. Not content with using my ancestors as their slaves, they played
games with our genetic make-up, turning us blue on a whim, and adding an extra
pair of arms to enhance our utility. The Vedi were a cosmic joke as far as the
Reven were concerned.”

The creatures that appeared next on the screen were nothing
like Ghanjihi or Ranisha. Admittedly they were blue and had four arms, but
there the resemblance ended. The slaves of the Reven were pathetically small
and hunched. They scurried this way and that, like ants, doing the Reven’s
bidding.

“It was such a simple thing for the Reven to tamper with
another species like this. Their technology is vastly superior to anything else
the Universe has seen. Reven have mapped the pathways of the brain and modeled
its every synapse. They have unraveled the mysteries of the very building
blocks of humanoid life. What your Terran scientists attempt now, mapping the
human genome, is simplicity itself to the Reven. In their experiments they
studied, not the make-up of DNA but its morphology. They had learned that
chromosomes are not fixed structures, rather they are mutable, with the
capacity to adjust at a molecular level to the activities of the organism.”

Various images of complex experiments, and close-ups of
Dan’s familiar double helix, illustrated Ghanjihi’s explanation.

“But in their arrogance, most Reven came to believe that
they could perfect nature by replacing sexual reproduction with technological
reproduction. They contended that sex was bestial, and pointed to the
undignified coupling of the ancestors of the Vedi as primary evidence for the
baseness of such activities. Some Reven were horrified and resisted, but the
majority over-ruled them, and the dissenters were banished.”

On the screen angry Reven confronted each other in heated
debates, with large crowds shouting down a determined minority.

“The Reven then selected the most superior of their number,
and cloned them. The originals were some twenty in number. Every successive
cloning was a link in a chain, or strand, of clones that connected back to the
original donor of the DNA. But what the dissenters feared came to pass. Over
the millennia the clones began to mutate. Their genitals shriveled from misuse,
their beauty faded, their bodies shrank and atrophied, the only thing that
continued to develop were their large brains. And every generation of clones
was inferior to the preceding generation.”

A succession of images showing the devolution of the Reven
flashed across the screen. The gods of earlier diminished pathetically until
they looked like the grotesque, barely human stick figures that Bruce and Jenna
had encountered.