Coalescence (Camden Investigations Book 1) (14 page)

Iris and
Mitchell watched a screen flash. Lines of people being inoculated, stores
advertising free flu shots; it actually made sense. Yet Iris still feared the
artifact might propagate the very transformation the alien warned of.
Everything was so gray. No definition. No way to determine if involvement meant
salvation. She would still urge Mitchell and Evan to refuse its wishes. She
could still plant seeds of doubt. What if this very act was the first step of
servitude?

Yet what
Mitchell revealed in the next moment brought sick revelation, because even if
she refused to believe a word of the alien’s rhetoric, her subconscious had no
choice but to respond with emotion.

“I’ve always
received inoculations. I’m still here.”

Iris had
refused them in her adult life, believing in holistic prevention. Back on her
bed, a tear welled in Iris’s physical eye. It would be unlikely Mitchell would
survive long enough to evolve.

It was
another divider. Ironically, the man who believed in aliens might never live to
face them. She would lose him if they didn’t act to restore the defense system.
Now it had all become personal. She could attach a face with the death list the
alien warned of. How could she argue against saving his life? It was so
selfish. Yet it still felt the right thing to do, despite the moral
implications of giving one person more importance than another. Iris realized
her subconscious was making a decision and that it could have fallen prey to
the presence upon first contact. Did the presence also intend to link her
emotionally with Mitchell to further its cause? Now, who was the conspiracy
nut? In any event, one final conclusion triggered innate fear. She had believed
her father, wholly. He’d said alien interventions and intrusions would never
happen. But now they might. And she was ill prepared to even fathom the thought
of serving an agenda of a people who could unleash a power to intentionally
kill all she loved.

T
HE
ALL-NIGHTER
continued with everyone seated around what was officially
dubbed the “conference table.” Rachel shuffled to and fro from the kitchen
replenishing everyone’s tea and coffee mugs, occasionally toasting muffins and
bagels for the first hours. Eventually, DJ requested she take over the position
and soon after, Darian disappeared with her.

The notion
of her sister sneaking off with Darian—especially in moments like
these—tempered some of Iris’s anger. It made her realize love could still
be the bottom line. Yet Iris didn’t need anger to keep her awake. Plenty of
adrenaline coursed through her veins every time she thought about the
deception. This disturbed her more than it angered her. The presence had omitted
quite a bit of information from the previous conversation, enough to be charged
with outright lying. Funny thing was, nearly everyone was all right with it.
Mitchell and Evan managed to convince the teams within minutes that the
presence had reason for his omissions. It had been better, Gavin stated, when
all believed an all consuming, death inducing plague was coming. Now, the
complications had everyone pondering, but Gavin maintained, it didn’t really
matter because whether you labeled it evolution or a plague, nearly six billion
deaths might result. If six out of every seven people would die, you had to
stop it. Gavin was right, and he was also someone on Mitchell’s team she could
no longer hope to counter support of the alien’s wishes. Yes, of course, Iris
considered the invasion—or whatever you called the great influx of light
waves—should be averted. Still, she wasn’t convinced the dial in tandem
with the OBOLs were the planet’s defense. The enemy bugs, according to Galloway
the alien, had visited Earth for decades. In all that time, they only came
close to defeating the defense system once. Iris fathomed what Galloway
revealed to her in the deepest recesses of her mind, and still she couldn’t
stop harboring some doubt as to his intentions. How could anyone within the
confines of her home, or for that matter the entire planet, be convinced
without doubt that this Galloway might be part of the faction he supposedly
opposed? What if there were no opposing aliens, but a team working together to
deceive? If the two teams gathered together right now, although diametrically
opposed to some of the others’ beliefs, could in some manner agree to work as
one—ghost hunter and UFO chaser alike—then maybe, just maybe, the
two alien races—once enemies—might align in a final effort to save
themselves. The final consideration of Iris was this: what if installing the
dial into the Earth’s energy core might bring about a worse outcome than
Galloway charged? This conclusion prompted her to think of her father. Could she
still consider giving the dial to the man that lived in shadows? And wouldn’t
it be best to give such an artifact—or technology—to those with
more experience handling such things? Sure Mitchell and Evan were versed in
about every scientific theory she could consider, but neither had ever had
first-hand experience with the application. She sat with hands interlaced
giving Evan and Mitchell the time they had requested to enlighten the group on
just what the extraterrestrial weapon might mean for those who might survive
it.

Mitchell
mocked, handing an imaginary baton to Evan. “Now my good molecular biologist
friend will guide us as to how a weapon from space might change our very
makeup.”

DJ and
Darian sauntered back to the room, hand in hand, dreamy expressions etched on
their faces.

“Well,” Evan
began, “DJ and Darian are providing some very good motivations and examples
right now. We all want to stop harm from coming. We all want our species to
continue procreating. I think this is something we all can agree on.”

Kassidy
waved a hand. “I’m not sure our two lovers have procreation as their top
objective. But I do believe in sex. That’s a good enough motivation for me to
keep people on our planet.” She raised a hand in mock toast while Iris observed
the couple. Darian gripped DJ’s hand tighter as his lover’s pallor segued from
ivory white to beet red, offering tender support. Iris couldn’t sense a link
with DJ. She wondered where it had gone. But her eyes told her DJ was
embarrassed. Her younger sister was apparently more comfortable at railing
against life than enjoying it.

Regardless
of DJ’s preferences, Iris wished she had Mitchell’s complete backing. They had
faced the presence mere hours ago, both ready to rebel at Galloway. But the
alien knew how to handle Mitchell, to speak the ufologist’s language so to
speak. Now he was drifting again, a ship leaving shore. How could she align
with him? She didn’t have a clue, especially if she suggested turning the dial
over to authorities. It just might be the final straw for their relationship.

Evan charged
on, undaunted by Kassidy’s ridicule. “The very weapon the enemy might have
fashioned could very well be drifting through the entire fabric of our
universe. It’s just that we—or other species—have not yet learned
how to harness it. It seems it might be funneled in a concentrated burst toward
us if we don’t observe our new friend Galloway’s requests.”

Rachel
raised a hand. “Excuse me, but what you’re saying sounds even more ethereal
than apparitions. Some here may have had reason in the past to doubt the
existence of ghosts, but I argue our presence has nearly given us irrefutable
evidence of their existence. Sure, Galloway is not tangible, but does anyone
harbor any doubt at this point?” She didn’t pause for an answer. “So we can
agree we have a ghost here. Can we all agree it is alien? And for that matter,
what proof do we have that such a light or energy weapon exists? You are giving
us theory, Evan. I just wanted everyone to be clear about that. We should be
able to quantify any claims with the same proof we now seem to have of ghosts.
Galloway has visited Mitchell who has no natural means to commune with him. It
seems to satisfy Evan’s conundrum about why everyone can’t communicate with
spirits. I just think we should all demand more empirical data.”

Iris nodded.
She hadn’t expected Rachel to step up. It was an argument she should have been
launching instead of daydreaming about Mitchell and a possible romantic future.

Evan met
Rachel’s gaze. She arched an eyebrow at him. He had been tapping on his
keyboard as she spoke. “Excuse me, Rachel, I heard every word you were saying.
It’s just that”—he paused to swivel his computer’s screen toward
Rachel—“‘censorship’ by our government has prohibited us from acquiring
such empirical data.” His screen displayed a site with many documents. Most of
them blackened beyond comprehension. “We possibly have the smoking gun—to
be more specific, the smoking spacecraft—but our government has contained
it from us. We know from Galloway he had such a craft, and he believes it was
taken upon his death and buried along with any knowledge of his alien
existence.”

Mitchell
placed a hand on Evan’s shoulder. Iris could only guess the gesture meant Evan
was on the verge of losing his temper. If he was prone to this weakness, how
might she use it to her gain? Yes, she was learning how to be manipulative and
harsh. But lives were on the line and Evan was too confident about his
theories. She had to put up a fight as the skeptic. She pondered how she might
accomplish this while Mitchell began to counter Rachel.

“Yes, I
believe I speak for my entire team that evidence of aliens has been kept from
us. It’s not new. It probably goes back centuries if not longer. Consider
visitations by ancient aliens. I think, in those cases, the aliens themselves
purposely eradicated evidence of their visitations. But they still left
monuments of their presence. How can we explain the precision crafting of the
pyramids? Tools had to have existed for humans to accomplish such tasks. We can
deduce from the existence of the pyramids that something alien influenced their
construction. And because we have a tangible by-product like a pyramid, I
submit we do have evidence of their presence.”

Rachel
glanced at the censored documents. “Okay, let’s just say I take your word for
it. Can you give us any tangibility concerning this force you reference, how it
weaves its way through the fabric of our universe without detection?”

“I will
try,” Evan answered. He interlaced his hands. “What if I tell you a genetic
wave of us still exists, even after we have removed our DNA? It is phantom yet
it is quite possible, if not provable. An electromagnetic field from this
genetic wave might not only remain as a traceable pattern but continue to effect
devices such as electronics. We all agree Kassidy’s video camera was affected
possibly by such phenomena. We just don’t know enough about the object or even
the OBOLs to ascertain their distinct properties. But we have observed the
outcome nevertheless. To touch upon Rachel’s concerns, it is because of this
residual effect that I
do
believe in ghosts. Now, you don’t have to be
dead to experience this phenomenon known as hyper-communication. On second
thought, nix that, a death state might be unproductive if you’re an ant. A
queen ant might be spatially separated from her colony, yet the workers still
complete the tasks she can
send
to them telepathically, or at least
without verbal communication. However, if the queen dies, the workers lose
their ability to receive instructions. It would seem to prove an existence of
wave genetics beyond our physical bodies. Imagine such a force permeating our
time space. A DNA wave effect whereby life can be created out of the inanimate
or existing organisms could be rearranged. DNA is changeable. That’s a fact.
It’s why I believe this force, although invisible—because it flows
through electromagnetic frequencies in ultraviolet, a spectrum our eyes cannot
see—is quite tangible when you examine its byproducts. And if this force,
or weapon, has been harnessed from space, it stands to reason it could also
operate differently than here on Earth.” Evan detailed the existence of tau
space where there are different constants not to mention temporal states. “Put
simply, things don’t operate the same. It depends where they are. Placement is
important. We might exist as ourselves here at this table but our
consciousness, biology, and physical matter, or makeup, might redefine us as
something else”—he pointed to the ceiling—“out there.”

“So how
would this weapon change us if we’re all still here on Earth?” Iris asked.

“Good
question,” Evan answered. “Not so easy to explain. But the effect the weapon
may have upon us could be influenced by our already evolving biology. Science
can provide genetic proof that we are evolving a hundred times faster than five
thousand years ago. That equates to 7 percent of our genetic material being
transformed. We might already be on this evolutionary track, but the weapon, or
the force, will speed things up even greater. It’s why what Galloway told Iris
and Mitchell makes sense to me. If the force is unleashed in a massive
concentration then we will all experience rapid evolution.”

DJ
intervened. “Is that why the alien presence appears to be rainbow-colored? Is
he some kind of light being?”

Evan nodded.
“You could conclude that much in theory. But for Rachel’s benefit, we can’t
prove that. Besides, the being is now dead. A light being might very well
achieve a higher state of consciousness in life. A living example would prove
most interesting.”

Iris snorted
and crossed her arms across her chest. She said to Evan, “That’s funny how it’s
so interesting to you. Lives are in the balance. I find nothing about this
amusing. It’s why I harbor doubts about entering into any actions based largely
upon theory. If what you’re saying is true, I doubt any one of us can imagine
the full consequence. You said we don’t know enough about the properties of the
dial or the OBOLs. Why should we find them a power source if we haven’t
considered the side effects?” She paused, waiting for her jab to simmer. She
needed to see if Evan could be baited with the simple emotion of anger.