The Black Seas of Infinity (2 page)

It seemed we answered to
imbeciles—square-faced men with high ranks and no brains. One of
them might nod and grunt as if he understood your theories and
discoveries, but you knew you were talking to a brick wall. It was
frustrating. If they couldn’t understand what you did for them, why
did they continue to pay you? How long could you go on feeding them
horseshit until they pulled the plug on the operation? Or even
worse, made you disappear?

Despite the air of tension, the one big
advantage the program offered was the fact no one believed in it.
Over the years a few scientists left, and some went to the media.
Those who did were shunned and labeled as crackpots. A few even
came back. Eventually many of them, both those on the outside and
those who returned, “mysteriously” disappeared.

If there’s one thing the government is good
at it’s making people disappear. The individuals involved might not
know the reason, but it doesn’t matter. Someone was just following
orders. Anyone anywhere in the US can be tracked, and it’s only
getting easier to do.

Most of the labs were eventually shut down.
Our department’s popularity waxed and waned, often surging with the
advent of a new administration more concerned with social issues
than some scientific dead end that never seemed to produce results.
Many of the installations became abandoned relics. They continued
to be heavily guarded, however, despite the fact they were seldom
used.

We reacted to alien technology like cavemen
encountering an automobile. We could make some of it work,
understand how some of it operated, but we couldn’t put it all
together. We could start the car, in a very rudimentary sense, but
not build it or even come close to getting our heads around what we
were dealing with.

I remember hearing about some scientists who
managed to engage what they assumed was a thruster. In the end they
managed to destroy the entire compound, themselves along with it.
It simply imploded—a bubble of energy, a brilliant flash, and a
multilevel complex and a hundred men were instantly reduced to a
smooth crater surrounded by a parking lot full of cars. We had no
earthly idea what we were doing. It was too exotic, the technology
too advanced. We faced one further disadvantage: it wasn’t designed
for human use.

The focus on UFOs was cyclical. With every
new crash came a burst of activity. Soldiers would be deployed,
scientists amassed, and an intense study of the newly found objects
would commence. Then followed the debates, the competing theories
that could be neither proved nor disproved, and finally a general
loss of interest. Things would return to normal, a new item
numbered and categorized and filed away in a dusty old warehouse.
Parties moved on. Scientific focus shifted.

The government retained a core group of
scientists that studied the remains, but overall interest would
wane and the extras would be reassigned. I was one of the ones they
kept on. The rest weren’t coming up with the answers needed to
advance their careers, so they went on to other projects. Little
did they know the government wouldn’t let them advance beyond that.
It was a dead end, a no man’s land from which you never came back.
You couldn’t have someone knowledgeable, intelligent, and in a
position of authority. They would be too hard to erase if they
spoke out or acted up. But that isn’t why I stayed. I stayed
because I was fascinated. This was my childhood fantasy come to
life. More than that, I saw its far-reaching potential. Finally,
here was the technology to grant me all my dreams. I just had to
figure it out—maybe not even how it worked, but at least how to use
it, or at least enough of it to build me another body, one that
wouldn’t age and decay. Far-fetched, yes, but this was the best
shot I had. I would be long dead before our technology caught up
with what I wanted, if it ever did. Besides, human regimes and
agencies seemed pedestrian compared to this stuff. How could
squabbling governments preoccupied with oil prices, trade
embargoes, and other fare ever come close to rivaling something
this phenomenal? This unknown and intriguing?

CHAPTER II

MY SHIP COMES IN

I was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. We
were using old World War II buildings, buried way back in the woods
among the pine trees and supposedly long since abandoned to the
ravages of time. A new shipment arrived unpretentiously, as if it
were just another workday. I think it came from Nevada. It was an
entire ship. It was smallish, mostly intact, and it obviously had
come from a mother ship. Elliptical in shape, the surface flat and
contoured, it was made of long strips of overlapping tiles. A
single cylindrical tube projected from the center and blossomed
into a complex latticework of window-like structures. We figured it
was some sort of survey craft with weaponry potential. The aircraft
was waiting for us in the warehouse hangar when I came in at 08:00.
I slowly sipped my coffee, sensing that my whole world was about to
change. This was it, the discovery I had always hoped for, but
never thought would arrive. The energy in the air was electrifying.
I could actually feel the skin on my fingers tingling. Outwardly I
was calm, but inside I was jumping for joy. We donned full-body
protective suits, broke out the handheld radiation scanners, and
wandered inside.

What we encountered was magical—another
world. The floor was as smooth as polished bone, and it curved up
at the edges, meeting the contoured walls in a gentle slope. The
blackened walls were a different texture, metallic, knotted and
crisscrossed with cables and support beams that seemed to be melted
into the walls beyond. They zigzagged up and onto the ceiling,
continuing in a smooth arc as they descended the opposite side.
Just past a short tunnel the passage opened up into a circular
central chamber, where miniature rock formations jutted out of the
floor. Most were topped by a central depression harboring small,
glistening mounds that we suspected functioned as buttons. Behind
each console was a metallic chair whose design seemed based on some
strange new organic geometry. Evidently, there had been a struggle
inside. The bodies were tossed haphazardly about, like large,
lifeless insects. There were five in total, the pale green skin of
their faces glistening above chalk-white jumpsuit collars. Their
eyelids were closed over small, beady eyes, the wrinkled faces
interrupted by two nose holes and a sliver of a mouth. The one
lying closest to the far door bore an injury to its skull, possibly
incurred in transit to Earth. An area on the back of its head was
caved in, and greenish-yellow pus was seeping out. For a reason I
could not name, I doubted the crash of the ship had caused it. I
could feel the small hairs on my body standing up. This was as
exciting as it was terrifying. Stepping over the body, I proceeded
down the hall, which came to an abrupt end at a tunnel in the
floor. I surmised that when the ship was functional there was some
force that lowered you safely down the hole. Further exploration
would require rappelling gear, not to mention a firearm, just in
case whatever had killed that alien was lurking somewhere in the
depths of the ship. I walked back out and down the ramp.

I was checking the supplies out of the
storage room when one of the officers asked me what I was doing.
Annoyed, I explained briefly, and he suggested that perhaps I
needed an armed escort. I didn’t think so, but it was easier to
agree than try and dissuade him.

Armed with rappelling gear, a Maglite, and
two military sidekicks, I reentered the craft. Three scientists
were bent over alien bodies while a fourth prodded the sunken bumps
on one of the pedestals. They looked so wrong, like animals pushing
their snouts against some structures they couldn’t possibly
understand. I walked past them, tied a climbing rope around the
protrusion closest to the hall, and wandered to the hole. I ran the
rope around my waist and gripped it with one hand. Holding the
Maglite in the other hand, I started my descent. The flashlight
beam pierced the blackness, a hazy mist disrupting its flow with
layers of smoke and slowly drifting particles. I plunged a few more
feet and glimpsed a polished floor. Touching down, I looked up, the
faces of the soldiers barely visible through the fog. Untying the
rope around my waist, I let it fall and turned to face forward. In
front of me rose what appeared to be a short walkway leading to a
looming abyss. I pulled out my 9mm and advanced, a dark entrance
materializing through the mist on my right. I turned, the
fluorescence revealing two cylinders jutting out of the wall. They
resembled coffins and were strangely textured, one of them covered
by a thick pane. The other one had no lid. To the right were a few
more mesas. I could see nothing in the open casket, just a man-size
space. I shone the light on the other and was so shocked I nearly
bolted. Inside was a humanoid form. The face appeared featureless,
a barren landscape of curves and bumps, resembling a half-finished
mask. The only recognizable features were two closed eyeholes. I
slowly ran the light along the length of the body. It was smooth
and matte black and buried behind an opaque layer of dirty glass. A
shiver ran up my spine.

I wandered back out and down the hall, nearly
falling into another gloomy shaft that dropped away into depths
unknown. I was out of climbing rope. We would need to bring in
something a bit more sophisticated to explore the rest of the ship.
But the first look told me all I needed to know: This ship somehow
held my future.

Weeks passed as we studied every detail of
the ship. We found a control room and, off to one side, a smaller
room harboring the body. Quarters below were probably for sleeping,
and even farther below was a room with a holding cell. Inside was a
carcass unlike any of the other bodies. The skin was black enamel,
like an insect carapace, the hands long and spindly, the eyes
transparent domes. It had dual slits for a nose and a small,
protruding mouth. It was the first time I had heard of, much less
seen, such a species. We had reports of the other aliens, even if
we had no actual bodies, but this one was a mystery. Adding to the
puzzle was the fact it was found in a confined area, a cell whose
bars were formed by long stalactites extending from floor to
ceiling. The ship’s purpose eluded me.

But the body was what fascinated me the most.
It seemed impervious to harm. We pulled it out of its enclosure,
dragged it to a laboratory, and tried to run tests on it. The
contoured skin was smooth and impenetrable. I broke needles and
scalpels against it, saw blades and chisels. Finally I resorted to
a blowtorch. None of these had any effect. I used a high-powered
laser, tried freezing and then shattering it. Nothing worked. I set
it aside and focused on the rest of the form’s immediate
surroundings. I examined the room it came in, the curious dual
cylinders. I noticed the empty one had a retractable transparent
cover. Then it dawned on me.

I was drinking coffee at my small house
adjacent to the base, reading Newsweek, when I froze, my mind
racing, the early morning boost of caffeine surging through my
system and making my head pound. It wasn’t a body—it was a suit! An
indestructible suit! It might have been used for warfare,
exploration of hostile environments, or something else I couldn’t
even imagine, but whatever its purpose, it all made sense now. It
was too basic and utilitarian to be a living creature. There were
no reproductive organs. It didn’t appear to have a mouth or nose.
It had two shallow ear holes, but those and the eyes were the only
breaks in an otherwise seamless construction. That explained the
two spaces right next to each other—one was for the suit and one
was for its occupant! The aliens had perfected some form of
consciousness transfer! It was a wild theory, and I had nothing to
back it up, but once it popped into my head, it stuck. I’d found
the solution. I had no appetite for my morning eggs and toast so I
made a quick shake and bolted out the door and headed for work.

Like a child with a new toy, I shared my
revelation, which was met with skepticism and general disinterest.
Even if I were right, what hard facts did I have? What proof? What
made my theory better than any of the competing theories? Some
argued it was another life form. Others that it was a test mock-up
or a manikin—I found that theory especially inane. I knew my
explanation was right.

I stood my ground and eventually got my way,
which included permission to focus on the suit and the room it was
discovered in. They hadn’t put up much of a fight. Considering the
wealth of information inside the ship, one inexplicable artifact
was of little interest to anyone. Except me. I was like a
Neanderthal banging away at a computer, but eventually I was going
to write my War and Peace.

I was assigned to the project for ten years.
Ten long years in dirty, depressing Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Ten sweltering summers spent in a small redneck town filled with
pawnshops, strip clubs, and GIs walking around pumped up on
testosterone and brimming with youthful swagger, just looking for
some excuse to act like animals. To fight or fuck. Maybe my memory
of it is worse than it really was, but that place wasn’t for me. I
joined a local boxing gym, working out my aggression and
frustrations in a way that didn’t win me many friends. In fact, I
didn’t have any—not what I would consider real friends. I kept my
distance from others. I couldn’t connect with the people around me.
I’d spend time with girls, but only for the sex.

I knew there were people out there I wouldn’t
mind associating with; I had met some of them when I lived up
north. But this time around I didn’t even try. It might have been I
was too elitist. I missed up north and simply didn’t want to put
any more effort into my personal life in Fayetteville than I
absolutely had to. Besides, I was way too occupied with work at the
lab. I’d spend hours there, running test after test, rummaging
through books, trolling the Internet, the microfilm library,
whatever I could find.