The Quantum Connection (12 page)

"It's a headband of some kind," I realized.

I worked with it for a second until I could slip it over the alien's bulbous head and then held it in my hand in front of me, inspecting it. "Well, I'll be damned. Wonder what this thing is?"

I rolled the other alien over to check him for a similar gadget. When he rolled over his head dangled loosely. Obviously, in my rage, I had snapped his neck completely into two pieces. This alien had a similar headband as well.

"This means something. Why would both of them be wearing them?" I sat back down, rolling the headbands over in my hands, and tried to think. "What the hell are these things?"

I noticed on opposite sides of the headbands' circumference there were slightly thicker spots, so I pulled one of them closer to my eyes to see if I could resolve any details. When the headband reached a point about six inches in front of my face I felt funny and then multiple colored flashes of light sparkled in my eyes, accompanied by a low-pitched rushing noise. I dropped the headband almost immediately following the noise. "What the hell was that?"

The girl in the corner was watching me closely while still cowering in there. I don't think she trusted me; hey, why should she? She tried to cover herself, which made me more aware of my awkward and ugly nakedness.

I picked the headband up again and slowly brought it close to my head. Again, I was bombarded with flashes of light and noise. I persisted through my fear this time and forced myself to press the headband closer and closer to my head. The light grew brighter and faster, and the noise grew louder and higher-pitched. The weirdest part is that a strange feeling possessed me, as if I was being spoken to and I couldn't quite make out what I was being asked. The noise grew too odd for me to continue and I pulled the headband away.

I rested for a second, thinking about the headband's purpose while I scanned the room one last time for some other way out. I could see no real hope. The walls appeared solid, much more so than even my heft and the moveable gurney's mass could force through. There were no other instruments in the room, or any other devices that could be used as tools. The headbands were the only unknowns. There were two confused and completely naked and scared out of their mind humans, two mangled alien corpses, and two alien gurneys. The third gurney had vanished when the aliens completed their experiments on the poor human the gray bastards had dismembered. His remains had vanished also.

"What the hell," I said aloud. The girl, now alert and frightened, realized what I was going to do and stared at me with a hopeful and fearful look. She cowered naked in the corner but didn't take her eyes off me.

"We're dead anyway, right? Might as well try it." I put the band around my head. For a second there was an earsplitting screech and I was completely flash blinded. Then . . .

. . . nothing.

But there was something at the same time; I felt as though I had been asked a question. It was weird. I was still me. I was aware of everything around me and I could move and think normally. But. It
felt
like a question is the best I can do as far as describing it. But it was more than that. A moment or two passed and then a visual image flashed in my mind.

?

A blinking question mark is what I thought of. I could see the damned thing on television screens, billboards, signs, and computer monitors. . . . When I thought that, computer monitors, the question mark image blinked away and there was a new image.

C:>

C:>

It was a computer screen with a C:> blinking on and off. It was a DOS prompt! Why the hell was I seeing a DOS prompt? "I'm sure the aliens must've long since upgraded to some better operating system, ha ha," I joked with myself. Then the reality of my wisecrack caught up with me.

That was it! The question was not a question. It was the operating system of a computer. It was a prompt of some type waiting for a user input or command. The alien computer must be using my memories to explain itself to me. Why not?

So, I tried it.

Where am I?
I thought.

You are here.
Popped into my head in a generic and asexual tone of voice.

"Whoa! That was weird," I mumbled.

I thought about it a little more analytically and from the approach a programmer would take in designing an operating system. After all, I had designed an operating system before, so I should be able to understand this one, right?

"Okay, this is tricky. Garbage in, garbage out," I said out loud.

With relation to where I was abducted, where am I now?

Here.
An image of the solar system popped in my head and a red blinking dot appeared near one of Saturn's moons.

Am I in a spaceship?

Yes.

"Well, I guess that was obvious, huh?" I said this out loud and got no response from the alien computer. That gave me an idea as to the protocols for the system.

Will you respond to verbal commands?

Only if programmed to do so.

"I thought so."

How big is the ship?
I thought and immediately an image of the ship zipped into my mind's eye and for scale relation a man was standing beside it and a large passenger jet was above it; a 747. The 747 was smaller by four of five times.

How many more Grays are aboard this vessel?

Eleven.

Are they aware I am speaking to you?

No.

Why?

They have not asked about you.

What are you?

I am an information control and distribution intelligence.

"An Agent, he's a damned Agent," I said and then I realized that he wasn't just an Agent. "Holy shit! It's a SuperAgent! An Alien SuperAgent program." This led me to believe that there was a computer core here somewhere. And all at once, like a baptism and a Tourrette's spasm combined, I could see and understand what I had been working on for the Air Force. They had an alien computer and were reverse engineering it! They had an alien computer! Holy shit, the Air Force, the CIA, and this Group W-squared has an alien computer!

Are you a SuperAgent the way I understand them? There was a brief pause.

Yes.

Are you the only one like you on this spaceship?

Yes.

Are there other lesser Agents then?

Yes.

Where are you?

Here.
A map of the ship appeared in my head and a picture of the green and orange cube I had seen at CIA Headquarters flashed in my mind.
I knew just how to find it. I found it odd that the computer would be giving me such detailed information.

Can anybody speak to you?

Anybody equipped properly. Yes.

And do you give anybody equipped to speak to you any information they ask for?

Yes.

Can you be kept from others?

If programmed thus.

Okay. For now on, only let me talk to you.

Okay.

What stupid aliens! Don't they have hackers on their world?
I thought this without realizing it and forgetting I was still talking to the machine.

No, they do not.

The answer shocked me a bit. After a few more minutes of this discourse, or whatever you would call it, I began to understand that the entire species of these Grays must be communal and work toward one common goal, with no straying from each Gray individual's purpose. A hive. Or at least this was the feeling that I got from the SuperAgent's explanation of things.

I had been quiet for so long that I had forgotten about the naked Russian girl in the corner. She said something unintelligible to me, which brought my attention to her nudity and mine.

I wish I had my clothes
, I thought. A small spot on the wall nearest me began to ripple like dropping a pebble in a pond and then a small table floated through it. On the table were my clothes in the exact same state which they were in when I drove away from Lazarus's gravesite. The clothes were soiled with the sand and dust from the rubble-strewn valley that I had buried my buddy in. There were a few stains of blood on my shirt. This made me sad, very sad, to remember poor Lazarus, my only remaining family. Everybody I had ever really known was dead. Oh God, poor Laz. I missed him so much already.

If my clothes had not been dirty I wouldn't have thought of Lazarus.
I began to cry.
Why couldn't they have been clean? I wish they were clean.
I was starting on the downward manic spiral again and the tears began to flow. Now I was deeply, deeply depressed. I was out of happy pills so I would be in trouble if my depression started running away unchecked by the medication.

The little tray got fuzzy and my clothes looked as though I was looking at them through a zoom lens out of focus, and then they were normal again. Now they were clean and even the bloodstains were gone. I stopped thinking of Lazarus for a microsecond to notice that somehow the clothes became clean and then I realized I had wished that they be cleaned. Then it dawned on me that I should have been surprised by my clothes suddenly appearing, dirty or not.

But that fleeting instant of rationality didn't last long, because the avalanche of depression had started. "Oh God, Lazarus!" I bawled.
If only I wouldn't have seen my dirty clothes, if only I wouldn't have thought of Lazarus, why do I have to cry and be so depressed?

The SuperAgent responded in my mind. The tracking device implanted in the limbic system region of your brain is interacting improperly with your hormone production and is causing you to have rapid emotional swings with great amplitude. Your hippocampus cannot compensate swiftly enough for the chemical differentials.

As I cried I mouthed the thought out and repeated it three times. "The tracking device implanted in the limbic system region of your brain is interacting improperly with your hormone production and is causing you to have rapid emotional swings with great amplitude. Your hippocampus cannot compensate swiftly enough for the chemical differentials. . . .

" . . . The tracking device implanted in the limbic system region of your brain is interacting improperly with your hormone production and is causing you to have rapid emotional swings with great amplitude. Your hippocampus cannot compensate swiftly enough for the chemical differentials. . . ."

The third time it pierced the manic haze, "The tracking device IMPLANTED in the limbic system region of MY brain is interacting improperly with MY hormone production and is causing ME to have rapid emotional swings with great amplitude. MY hippocampus cannot compensate swiftly enough for the chemical differentials!" I paused long enough to wipe the tears from my face and start crying again. Now however, the manic state swung violently to rage as it had when I had killed the two aliens.

"I HAVE AN ALIEN IMPLANT IN MY BRAIN! MY GOD I'M NOT CRAZY!! I HAVE AN ALIEN IMPLANT IN MY BRAIN! YOU BASTARDS! GET IT THE FUCK OUT OF ME RIGHT NOW! GET IT OUT, GET IT OUT, GET IT OUT!" I beat the floor with my fists and pitched a tantrum to beat all tantrums. I knew what needed to be done and that flying off in a tantrum wouldn't help, but I couldn't stop myself.

"Can it be taken out now!?" I asked and the SuperAgent didn't respond.

"Can it be taken out now, I asked!?" still no response.

"CAN IT BE TAKEN OUT NOW?!" Then I felt a slap across my face and the naked Russian girl shook me and screamed at me.

This was enough to snap me closer to sanity and I realized I was speaking out loud and not thinking to the computer.

Can my implant be removed now without harming me?

Yes.

Do it now!

I waited for some sign, a pain in my head, a bloody nose, anything like I had seen in bad UFO science fiction movies, but nothing happened. I was beginning to get disappointed.

I said remove the implant now.

It was removed when you asked the first time. Is there a problem?

You mean, it's gone now?

Yes.

I thrust the naked girl away from me and stood up in front of her, all six-one, two hundred and forty pounds of my hairy self. I reached for my clothes.
Give me the girl's clothes, cleaned.
They appeared in the same fashion that mine had. Her clothes, if you want to call them that, were merely an oversized cotton tank top. My guess was that the Grays had grabbed her out of bed. I pulled my underwear up and nodded to the girl and at her clothes. She grabbed the top and frantically pulled it over her and then she squatted and began hugging herself and crying.

I realized then that she must have one of those damned tracking device things in her as well.

Is there an implant in the girl?

Yes.

Is it affecting her emotions?

All implants do. Yes.

REMOVE IT NOW!

Okay.

I was beginning to notice that the mood swinging had stopped. My rage and depression were slowly subsiding;
if the implant is gone why do I still feel . . . bad?

It will take a few moments for your body to compensate for the extreme chemical differentials. You will soon return to normal.

I slipped my shirt on. How long has that implant been in my brain?

Three years seven months two weeks four days thirteen hours and twenty-seven seconds from insertion to removal.

I thought about that for a second. That was just after The Rain! I had never been able to recover from the emotional losses I suffered from The Rain because of that damned alien implant!

The girl jabbered at me again. I held up my hands and then put my finger to my lip as if to shoosh her. Then I pointed to myself and said, "I'm Steven. Steven."