Frankentown (12 page)

So far he seemed unaffected by the elements.
 

Flying made him happy.

It was certainly a pleasant feeling, but perhaps it might not be so good to make a break for it right now.
The best thing to do was to return to the base and leave at the opportune moment. Surely he’d pilot one of these things again. It took only about 20 minutes to get back.
On the way he covered the exit with a few peeled-off foamy stalagmites, so he’d find it again on his next attempt to leave.

When he returned, all the stations were docked to their terminals. All except his and another one near the far end of the floor.
 
All the jump-suits were lined up in a line along the middle, like boy scouts, awaiting orders.

Frank touched down to the terminal he flew from and wondered how he’d go about stepping out of it, when he realized he was sitting in the strange seat and could get out of the chair and walk.

Another craft quickly followed as he made towards the middle of the floor to ask what’s going on. The craft glowed maroon and as it silently landed behind Frank, it turned into the General walking and leaving an aluminum block behind to materialize.

General’s footsteps were heavy; they were stomps really, so when he was about two feet away, Frank jerked and turned around, just in time to have a punch laid in his face with the General’s ham-sized fist.

Chapter Thirteen

Concerning Grays

Frank woke up lying on an upholstered table inside a small room. His vision felt partial at best. When his eyelids peeled opened, he recognized the room as the
‘box in the corner’ of the testing hangar.
Everyone stood behind a window in the other room, smoking cigarettes. As soon as Nikos saw that Frank was no longer out cold, he hurried into the room.
Frank’s head hurt severely and he was extremely sensitive to sounds. Someone placed a large beef steak over his eye.

“About time you woke up. That was quite a punch you got there. I’m afraid this is what it’s like around here. Pure war mongering.” said Nikos smiling,
which made Frank somewhat uncomfortable.
“What did you say your last name was?”
“He even knocked the memory out of you. Papadakis.”
“Okay, Papadakis, is this what you guys do for fun?”

“Well, you did piss him off severely.”

It was true. Frank had no illusions about that.
But Nikos’ voice hurt, and when he finally stopped talking and returned to his station to read what to brief them on, Frank finally had a few moments to look around the lab. The long wall to his left was made entirely of thick glass panels, holding off a water tank so large he couldn’t see the far end.
A huge glowing object not unlike that which emerged out of the ocean earlier, floated in place inside the enormous tank.

A quick glance over his right shoulder was the cantina, inside which a freakishly tall person was pouring coffee into a cup.
Either a basketball player or an alien.
“So there’s an alien walking around?”
“Yes
…
” sounded Nikos from inside his booth.
“
…
but that’s Nor. HI NOR!” he said as he waved at Nor down the hallway in the cantina.

Weiss appeared out of nowhere. Somehow his appearance was so unforthcoming that everyone in the room practically had no choice but to ignore him.
Now was no exception, until he opened his mouth.
“How do they talk?”
Though the aliens had mouths,
Frank recalled from his encounter with the puddle that used to be in his freezer,
they were so minuscule they couldn’t possibly be very well adapted for speech.

In a sudden fit of snottiness, Frank effortlessly put Hector down. “With an american accent?”
“The Greys communicate telepathically.” Nikos said.

“They read minds?” Hector asked.

“Well, kind of.
So long as you don’t mind that they do.”
This sent Frank into a guilt trip back to the beach where the alien died.
Could that being have read Frank’s thoughts?
Wouldn’t it have been pissed?
Then he remembered the after-effects of his ‘close encounter’.
“Are they
…
.radioactive?”
Glancing over at Weiss who was peering at Nor from behind a pillar in the middle of the room,
he whispered to Frank.
“Not like the one, one you had at home. But the four others in the B wing are.”
Nikos snorted and grinned. “The general’s trying to get them to wear lead-lined vests. Would you believe that?Remember that Rosewell thing? Nineteen forty two? Twelve people died because of that one. Three from radiation poisoning, and then nine from abnormal tumors a few years later.”

Nikos was once again being ignored.
Scraping and shuffling of chairs resounded from the kitchen and then Nor was hunched under the tall doorframe to leave the cantina. For the first time his entire head was in the light. Nor was a tall human with alien-like body and facial characteristics.

 
Grasping a big mug in his shovel-like hands, which weren’t as transparent as the aliens’, he headed towards Frank and Weiss. Hector shat bricks and hid behind the other side of the nearest support pillar.

Looking up at the being, which was a good six feet taller than Frank, it was a comical kick to see an alien holding a cup of coffee.

The being initiated a line of thought with Frank. It got inside his mind. For a visit.
He could communicate without language.
Frank didn’t hear words but it was as if his own minds suddenly perceived concepts. And the concept was that he was welcome, and to not be afraid. He was trying to convince himself that he didn’t make it up in his head, but there was no telling, except for the muted smile on the being’s cat-like face six feet above.
“The Grey communicate only in concepts.” Nor said.
“Frank, meet Nor, our only person to regularly communicate and spend one-on-one time with the Grey.” Even before Frank had time to react to Nor’s strange appearance, Nikos explained. Nor didn’t say a word and entered Frank’s mind instead.

Language is far too imperfect to get a message across. They communicate in absolute definitions; entire ideas. A recipient of the telepathic thought is introduced to a specific set of constrained preferences on a variety of thoughts, topics and opinions, like ones and zeros. Knowledge is transferred.
This allows not only for shareing information, but immediately allows everyone to understand intentions and meanings behind each’s own specific aspect on a situation or topic. No room for misunderstanding.

When Nor finished his toughts, Frank snapped back to with a visible twitch. Nikos took notice to explain what just happened.
“It took us a while, but we finally figured out that the telepathy really travels identical to radiation, because, well, it is radiation.
The patterns on the Geiger counter and the thoughts the whole attending staff
had given it away back in June 1947.” Nikos explained.
While he yapped on, Frank was quite taken aback by Nor who was leaving to go back to the kitchen because his coffeecup was empty as usual.
Nikos continued on with his explanation.
“Telepathy is the the directing of gamma radiation, in extremely small amounts, toward another being to communicate."

That made sense enough to Frank.

"I guess that little bugger communicated the shit out of me, ey?"

Nikos smiled an affirmative grin but continued.
"They can also move place to place. Like-‘Literally Teleport.’” Said the young, insane-looking Greek while doing air-quotes. “They decompose into a cloud of atoms. The neutrinos, parts of neutrons, which are parts of Atoms carry their mass. Everything else carries their stored thoughts, personalities and, I believe, what the neutrons really hold, is each beings’ soul."

The concept of a 'soul' has been a very gray area in science, so both Frank and Hector perked up at this topic for would-be discussion.

"Microscopic variations in the distribution of neutrons add up to entire personalities, entire memories; an almost infinite amount of knowledge could be contained within a single being. They have much a higher cell density in their brains, and they’re four times as big as ours. Compared to us, their abilities is near limitless in comparison to ours.

Frank was excited at the realm of possibilities.
“-And so- have you figured out a way to make telepathy work for us, too?” Surely they must have, Frank though. That would explain why Nor looked like that.

“Well we can understand them. They communicate with us...”

No shit Sherlock.

“
…
however, we can’t yet figure out combinations of the neutrinos to decipher their meanings. That is what I do here.”

“Can everyone understand them?” Frank asked.

“Only a select few.”

“And you want to translate them?”
What makes you think there’s any chance of you ever figuring that out?

“Let me show you.”

Nikos became very excited. Frank could only guess that yet another big surprise was afoot. He led him over to an enormous, yet underwhelming machine. The exterior resembled an oversized and oversimplified photocopier the size of a tall spacious cubicle, much taller than Frank.

“What is it?”

“It measures gamma rays and interprets them as integers from the origin ray-“

“Origin?” Frank sheepishly cut in and asked.

“That’s right. It takes the point of collision of the ray inside this cube and maps the surrounding rays around it as numbers-“

Frank was catching on.

“So you get the whole sequence to decipher.”

“That’s right. Well, some of them are helping with that. But it’s practically impossible to convert it into human speech. They describe feelings and subjects we have never even heard of.

Here, let me show you to your locker.”

“I
…
have a locker?”

He had zero interest in having a locker, after being kidnapped into an underground base without the option of even packing.

Frank’s mind already felt a little enlightened, and yet burdened by the information, hoping they have alcohol at the base. Although his brain would crunch the information for days to come, it all fit together well enough. It all made sense, in some weird way.
“How long have you been here?” he asked Nikos who just didn’t look right in the head.

“Four years, three months and two days.”

Frank shrugged. “Why haven’t you left?”
“Given that you’ve signed the contract, the only way you’re getting out alive is in -a- coffin.”

Frank wasn’t so startled because he already knew that.
Hector didn’t.
“Or under full disclosure.”grinned Nikos added, staining it all with sarcasm.

“Don’t hold your breath,” he continued,“that won’t happen.”

When the door of the locker clicked open with a special key Nikos placed on Frank’s hand after he opened his locker. It already had his last name on its door. It was as though he stepped through time back to high-school, but this time the locker wasn’t stuck with gum and stuffed with a rotting sandwich and unidentifiable fruit mold farms. Instead, there was a clean change of clothes- right from his own wardrobe.
Somebody had packed for him and delivered the clothes here, along with the liquified alien.
“You can take a shower here,” Nikos explained, pointing at a row of dark doors opposite.
 

“and you can relax a little in the lounge,” he said pointing over to the corner of the hall, inside a tall doorway, “and we eat here, in the cantina.”

That word always irritated him.

Cantina.

The doorway was right beside them.
Inside, Frank saw Nor sitting lone at a table, clutching a tall thermos with hands almost as big as the alien’s. No idea how he slipped past them to get inside.

“Can he teleport too?”

“No, he’s just sneaky. He’s still mostly human as we figure, but
…
” he looked far off in the distance, even though there wasn’t any. “
…
It’s as if his body adapted for communication with the humans. Even after the initial shock of seeing such an unorthodox figure wear a lab coat wore off, it was not difficult to notice similarities between Nor and the Grey. Kind of terrifying, really.

Nikos turned to Hector.
 

“Could you come with me, Mr. Weiss?”

“Okay” and went back to his station, with Weiss on his heels,
 
like a good boy.

Frank took his favorite cardigan out the locker and closed it. Now a little warmer in the comfort of his sweater from his home, there was no other place to hide down here. Hesitantly, Frank made for the kitchen. The AC blew up a storm and Nor looked up from behind his steaming bottle, and caught Frank’s eye with a look of slight constipation.
“So you’re the doctor here?” Frank asked.

“I guess you can say that,” said the giant man who now more than ever resembled an alien.

”Welcome aboard.”

Nor’s ears protruded inches from his head like antennas, one of the strangest traits about him was also the most human. The unusual slope of his forehead, flush with the rim of his nose.
The enormous cranium. Wispy hair robed his semi-sympathetic cat face. Overall, Nor was a pretty convincing human, if you squint and all the furniture is bigger than usual. At least for someone who’s never seen an alien.

“Are you..human?” Frank didn’t think it impolite or necessary to be indirect. Though the question didn’t come as a surprise, Nor couldn’t help but be little hurt by it.
“Are you human?” he defended himself.
“I’m sorry, it’s just - I’ve never met anyone-“

“-that looks like me?”
Nor knew he wasn’t trying to be impolite, but his enlarged reddened eyes gave away grief and hurt. For the first time his posture gave away weakness and vulnerability. Nor was as pale and sickly as a junkie.
”Side effects of prolonged exposure to Them.
And their radiation.”

Jerk.
 

“How long have you been down here?”
“Few
…
i dunno, two maybe three decades?”
Before Frank could ask, Nikos burst into the room, followed by Weiss, carrying two binders.

“Frank, if you would care to join us, we have some work to do. You can grab a coffee with Nor later. -Hi, Nor.” He said waving at him.
Nor nodded and gazed at the vending machines in the corner of the kitchen.