The Awakening: Book 1 of the Evaran Chronicles (3 page)

Dr. Snowden noted that the push was fairly light, but Jay hit the slab with far more force than the push should have generated. He calculated that it would be impossible unless Evaran’s strength was off the charts. He figured Jay must have calculated this too based on his expression.

Dr. Snowden winced as a pain shot up his arm. He glanced over at Emily, who was trembling and white as a ghost. He tapped her hand.

Emily looked up at Dr. Snowden and relaxed her grip. She moved behind him, put her arms around his midsection, and then buried her face in his back.

He remembered she used to do that as a kid when there was a big bug flying around the room. He turned back to see that Evaran had pivoted and was looking at the younger man.

“Sanjay, please join Jay by the slab,” said Evaran. He then pivoted to Dr. Snowden and motioned at him to come forward. “Dr. Snowden, please come over here with Emily.”

Emily released her midsection hug on Dr. Snowden and grabbed his left arm as they inched toward where Jay was.

Dr. Snowden eyed Jay and Evaran as they stopped at the end of the slab. He didn’t want to stand too close to Jay. Or Sanjay for that matter.

Evaran twisted around toward Sanjay again and pointed to where Dr. Snowden, Emily, and Jay were standing. “Sanjay, these three are in the same predicament you are in. I can explain this, but I would prefer to do it once with everyone together. You are not in any immediate danger. Please, come stand by the slab.”

Sanjay rose to his feet while scanning Dr. Snowden, Emily, and Jay. He crept along the wall toward the slab, flattening himself as he passed Evaran, and arrived at the opposite end of the slab where Dr. Snowden and Emily were.

Evaran raised his finger. “Before I begin, let us pause for a few moments and focus on breathing. Your adrenaline levels are high.” He held out his hand directly in front of him. “When I raise my hand, breathe in. When I lower it, breathe out.”

Dr. Snowden felt more relaxed after a few minutes had passed with Evaran raising and lowering his hand. He glanced over at Sanjay and noticed he was no longer hunched over, but standing straight. Dr. Snowden noticed that Sanjay’s face was no longer one of doom, but a mix of confusion and contemplation. He glanced at Jay and saw that the lines on his face had settled. Gone were the wild looks he had seen earlier.

Emily loosened her grip on his arm.

He glanced at her and noticed her skin had returned to its normal tone, and she seemed more settled. His heart slowed, and his breathing returned to normal. Everyone seemed calmer to him.

Evaran surveyed them with taut lips and furrowed eyebrows. “Good. We should all be feeling a bit more relaxed. Now, I know this is rough, but I believe introductions are in order.” Evaran pointed to himself. “My name is Evaran. I would be what you term an alien, but it is more complicated than that. I am a traveler, and I help those in need, such as yourselves.” He pointed at Dr. Snowden. “This is Dr. Albert Snowden, a professor of astronomy at a college in Columbus, Ohio, and to his right,” he said, pointing to Emily, “is his niece, Emily Snowden, who is a history student at the same college.” He then pointed to Sanjay. “This is Sanjay Chandrakar, a computer science student at a college in Cincinnati, Ohio.” He then pointed to Jay. “And finally, this is Jay Beerman, a former military member who is now a truck driver and lives in Southern Indiana.”

Jay shuddered and glanced at Dr. Snowden, then at Sanjay, then turned toward Evaran. He flung his right arm into the air. “You’re an alien? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Evaran raised a hand out to Jay. “I am not done yet. Bear with me.” He stared at the ground for a moment before speaking, then looked back up to them. “This is going to sound incredible, but here is the situation. On February 4, 2012, around 6 p.m., you were all abducted from a small stretch of highway I-70 by an alien race known as the Krotovore. They put everyone into a virtual simulation for research purposes. Your minds were altered so the transition was seamless. While in the virtual simulation, they injected nanobots into everyone to help maintain your bodies. Then on February 25, 2012, three weeks later, they sustained some damage before entering a space-time rift that instantly took them to the Andromeda galaxy. However, it ended up being one year into the future as well, with the date being March 2, 2013. I followed them through the rift and boarded their ship, and here we are.”

Dr. Snowden’s eyes blinked rapidly as he fixed his gaze on Evaran. “That’s utterly ridiculous.”

Emily’s shoulders slumped as she looked down. “They abducted us on our way back from Dad’s grave,” she murmured.

A pang shot through Dr. Snowden’s body as he remembered the day Dan died. They had buried him in the town they grew up in. It was one of the hardest days of Dr. Snowden’s life, but this day was shaping up to be a close second. He gritted his teeth at the thought of the possibility that the Krotovore abducted them on their visit to Dan’s grave on the anniversary of his death. Dr. Snowden put his left arm around Emily and gave a light squeeze.

Jay shook his head. His eyes were wide, eyebrows raised, and lips slightly parted. “What?”

Evaran extended his hands and did a calming motion with them. “That is the current situation. I have no reason to lie to you. You will be able to verify for yourself once we leave this room.”

Dr. Snowden’s eyes narrowed. “You want us to believe that?”

“I do. I know you have questions, and now is a good time to ask them.”

“What the hell is a virtual simulation?” asked Jay, rubbing his left cheek.

“A computer program, right? That tries to simulate reality?” said Sanjay, motioning with his right hand as if shaking an imaginary ball. Everyone turned to look at him.

Evaran half grinned with furrowed eyebrows while tilting his head toward Sanjay. “That is correct. You were all connected to it.”

Dr. Snowden exhaled sharply. “I think a more likely explanation is that we’re part of some failed drug experiment. Maybe a government thing.”

Jay nodded his head and wagged a finger at Dr. Snowden. “Yeah, yeah. I’m with Doc on that. I’ve heard about shit like this in the army.”

Dr. Snowden drew his lips flat and shot Jay a look. He didn’t like being called Doc.

Evaran sighed and focused his gaze on Dr. Snowden. “How would I have been able to appear to you and Emily in the virtual simulation then?”

Dr. Snowden shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it was a shared hallucinogenic effect or the power of suggestion or something.”

Evaran shook his head. “No, and I do not think you believe that either.”

Sanjay looked at Dr. Snowden. “You saw Evaran? In the virtual simulation?”

Dr. Snowden cleared his throat. “Me and Emily did, yeah.”

Jay smirked and exhaled sharply through his nose. “I didn’t see him either.” He looked at Sanjay. “Maybe we weren’t special enough.”

Dr. Snowden snorted and shook his head at Jay.

Sanjay looked at Evaran with furrowed eyebrows. “Why didn’t me and Jay see you?” He bobbed his head and pointed at Dr. Snowden and Emily. “It woulda been nice to get a heads-up like they did.”

Evaran sighed and pursed his lips. “I was short on time. The systems sustaining the virtual simulation were ending. I decided to get at least two of you, rather than just one. It was nothing personal, more a matter of efficiency. I figured the nanobots would have helped you and Jay adjust quickly. It took a little longer than I expected.”

Sanjay cleared his throat and gestured with his right hand. “I see. I do feel calmer. More stable than just a few minutes ago anyways.”

“The nanobots are engineered to protect your body. You do not have anything to fear from them. Your well-being is their main goal. They sensed your heightened states when we paused earlier to breathe and tried to normalize it,” said Evaran.

“Not sure I like the idea of these things in us,” said Emily as she looked at her hands.

“They don’t sound harmful. Nanobots are just tiny machines at the nanometer scale,” said Sanjay. He looked at Emily while putting two fingers together with a small gap to indicate
tiny
.

Emily glared at Sanjay. “Uhh … yeah. I know what a nanobot is.”

Dr. Snowden smirked and chuckled. “Don’t worry. I don’t think there are nanobots inside us making us magically feel better.”

Evaran shrugged. “Whether or not you believe they are there is not relevant. Any doctor would be able to confirm their presence. I did not think you would dismiss your healing rate so easily. As I mentioned earlier, you will feel stronger and faster along with some other side effects from here on out.”

A small metallic orb with a blue indented groove that crisscrossed it vertically and horizontally flew to the right of Evaran’s shoulder and, in a monotonic voice with a digital rasp, said, “Correction. They are functioning at one hundred fifty-six percent of optimal human operating capacity
.
”

“Whoa,” said Emily.

“What the heck?” said Dr. Snowden, leaning back a bit.

“Now what the fuck is that?” said Jay, pointing at the orb.

“Oh, wow,” said Sanjay, leaning forward.

“That,” said Evaran, pointing at the orb, “is my variable utility artificial intelligence orb, otherwise known as VUAIO, but I call it V for short. Think of it as a mobile assistant.”

Jay turned toward Dr. Snowden. “Doc, you ever seen shit like this before?”

Dr. Snowden clenched his jaw. “It’s Dr. Snowden to you, and no, I haven’t.”

Evaran half grinned. “I would imagine not. It took a while to build, and the voice synthesizer still needs some work, but V is highly functional and, more importantly, very handy.”

“It’s a strong AI? Or weak?” asked Sanjay.

Evaran tilted his head at Sanjay. “A very good question. V is self-aware and what you would classify as a strong AI.”

“That’s impressive,” said Sanjay.

Dr. Snowden furrowed his eyebrows. He did not know much about artificial intelligence, but it seemed Sanjay did. Looked to him like Sanjay was trying to butter Evaran up.

Jay snorted and crooked his thumb at V. “Okay, enough about ol’ Blue Ball. If all this shit you’re saying is true, then who’re these assholes that abducted us?”

“Designation Blue Ball has been added,” said V.

Jay crinkled his eyebrows, with the left side of his lips upturned as he looked at V.

Evaran stepped back. “Another good question. Your abductors are an alien race known as the Krotovore. V, display Krotovore species.”

“Acknowledged. Displaying Krotovore species,” said V.

V flew out a bit and then projected a holographic display of a three-foot-tall creature. It had six eyes on a bulbous head; two were larger than the four surrounding them. Where a mouth would be, a short proboscis protruded. The body looked like a kidney bean covered in short hairs. The back had segmented armor plates. Four legs supported the body. Two arms on each side of the body hung to the side. Each arm had a hand section with three slim fingers, one of which was opposable. Small antennae extended from the head, which had small bumpy ridges around the top.

“That looks like a large flea!” said Emily as she stepped back and wrung her hands.

“Well. It’s probably
not
a large flea,” said Sanjay.

Emily snapped her head around to glare at him. Sanjay ducked his face and looked away.

Dr. Snowden figured it would freak Emily out. She did not like bugs. When she was a kid, Dr. Snowden and Dan performed a bug check in her room before she went to sleep. He was intrigued, however. “You want us to believe large, sentient, flea-like aliens abducted us?”

Evaran pointed at various objects in the room. “This is their lab. Would you conclude that the equipment design in this room was meant for humans?”

Dr. Snowden followed Evaran’s pointing. He had to admit that the freestanding console in the back of the room was designed oddly. The big screen to Evaran’s right also had an unusual interface to it. “Maybe it isn’t, but why’d they pick us?”

Evaran shook his head. “I am not sure. It could be random, maybe not. There is not a lot of information in the logs I looked at. There may be more elsewhere. I plan to find out.”

Dr. Snowden shook his head. “How convenient.”

Evaran’s eyes softened. “You are an astronomer, and I believe you would refer to their home galaxy as the Sombrero galaxy. These Krotovore, however, do not exist yet in this time period. They are from the future, about six hundred thousand years or so.”

Dr. Snowden paused for a moment and then snorted. “The Sombrero galaxy? That’s around eight point six megaparsecs away. Are you telling me they can time travel too? That’s impossible.”

“Mega what?” said Jay.

Dr. Snowden circled his right hand in front of him. “Umm … that’s … twenty-nine million light-years or so.”

“The fuck is a light-year?” asked Jay with a crooked mouth.

“The distance light can travel in one year in a vacuum, roughly six trillion miles,” said Evaran.

“Right … ,” said Jay, nodding his head.

Evaran smiled. “Dr. Snowden, they did not do it on purpose. They traveled through space-time rifts, which makes travel instantaneous.”

“Like a wormhole, right?” asked Sanjay.

Evaran nodded at Sanjay. “Conceptually they are similar. There are different types of rifts. The one thing they all have in common is that they can connect two points wherever they might be, and travel is instantaneous. For instance, a space rift would allow travel from one galaxy to another. A time rift would allow one to go forward or backward in time in the same position in space. The ones the Krotovore used were space-time rifts, meaning they could travel to a different point in space in a different time.”

Dr. Snowden smirked. “No. That’s simply not possible.”

Evaran smiled. “To your species perhaps. At least not yet. Any other questions?”

Sanjay glanced at Dr. Snowden, then at Evaran. “Going back to the virtual simulation, you said it was March 2, 2013, now, which was also the date in the virtual simulation. If the travel to Andromeda was instant, then we have only been in the virtual simulation for three weeks. How did we spend a year in the virtual simulation but three weeks out here? Time dilation or something?”