The Quantum Connection

CHAPTER 22

The little freckle-faced Gray made a few facial twitches and I could tell he was using the interface to the Infrastructure. These Grays were not good at covering their facial tics. He would have been horrible at poker. Following the Framework communications that he had made, a small ball of light appeared from nowhere and hovered a meter or so in front of us. The ball of light expanded and then blinked out, leaving a hemispherical vehicle with no top on it. Inside the vehicle were two rows of seats, one with its back to the circumference of the hemisphere and the other on a smaller concentric circle around the central hub of the vehicle with its back to the center of the craft. The central hub had a lone chair, obviously the cockpit, and there was a pilot sitting there. The pilot was a standard Gray alien with no freckles.

The little freckle-faced Gray turned to Tabitha. "Please, we must go in this vehicle to meet the Regency."

"How do we know that we can trust you?" Tabitha responded. I maintained my grip on the little creature's choke collar.

"Trust is irrelevant. If you desire to see the Regency then you must come with me in this vehicle."

"Yeah, right! And as soon as we step foot in this thing you will turn on the confinement beam and strand us in a bubble like you did Tatiana!" I was preparing to punch the thing in the spot where a nose should have been.

"I'd say that you little bastards are full of shit if you think we're just gonna hop in your device here and trust you for no reason. Tab, I'm gonna side with Steven on this one," Anson said.

"Well, what would you have us do, Anson? Fly there on our own, perhaps?" Tabitha asked. She seemed the most clearheaded of us at the moment. "We will take the smaller alien ship," she decided. "Alien, can you give us directions to where we can meet this Regency? We will fly in our own vessel."

"I was ordered to take you in this vessel," the little freckle-faced thing said and made a weird facial tic as he did so. I knew he was downloading information, but about what?

"Listen here, thing." I rapped its right ear pretty hard and its head bobbled back and forth from left to right several times. It shook its head kind of the way a dog does to get water off its back. "The lady says we fly our own vessel and that is the way it will be."

"Must you continuously punish me? I will relay your request," it said.

I slapped it again. "Listen to me, you little bug, your race has relentlessly tortured millions of us throughout our history. I'm just getting started on the punishment that I plan to inflict on your species. You have a lot of explaining to do!"

"Steven, relax!" General Clemons ordered me. She seemed to forget that I wasn't in her army and that she wasn't the boss of me. In fact, had it not been for me they would never have figured out what was going on with these alien abductors. I was getting irrational and it reminded me of . . .

Mike! Why am I being irrational?

Steven? Please restate the question?

I'm . . . very angry and emotionally unsure of myself.

Steven! You've been implanted . . . all of you have been!

Get them out, Mike! Now!

I removed yours, Steven. You must get closer to the others and turn on the warp armor!

Got it!

"EVERYBODY CIRCLE ON ME NOW!" I yelled. They all looked confused for a second. The emotional instability caused by the implants was delaying their abilities to think rapidly and rationally. A second or so delay passed before they realized I was concerned about our safety. They all rushed to my side and I flipped on my warp bubble with the radius modified to encompass all of us. "We've been implanted!" I explained. At the same time I slung the little alien as hard as I could throw it against the warp bubble wall. It landed with a crack and then slid down to the bottom of the bubble, whimpering in an odd shrill voice.

"We've been what?" Jim asked.

"Hold still . . . you won't feel this at all," I said as I placed my hand on his shoulder. I continued the same with each of the others. "Did you notice that you were feeling unsure of your decisions and that your emotions were getting uncontrollable?" I asked them.

"Yeah, I was almost in tears," Rebecca said.

"The Grays somehow implanted us with tracking devices like they put in the abductees. One of the side effects is that it makes you nuts. I know; I was nuts for four years because of one of those things. Fortunately, I recognized the symptoms of being crazy from experience. Mike was able to remove them for us. The warp fields should protect us. Keep your warp skins on at all times from now on."

"How . . . did you know that? It is impossible for primitives to have this capability!" The alien rose to its feet and rubbed a new bruise on its forehead.

"None of your business!" I shot it a mean look hoping to instill a little fear into it. I wished now that I hadn't fixed his arm and eye. The rest of the team implemented their warp generators and I backed mine off just to enclose me. The Gray stood there confused and amazed by the power we primitives were wielding.

"Son, I think it's time to get rid of our baggage here. My guess is that he is responsible for the implants, right?" Anson shrugged his shoulders.

"Yes, as far as I can tell that's right. But let's not kill him yet, we still need to find this Regency," I replied. Then I heard a gunshot and another right after.

The freckle-faced Gray had attempted to make a run for it, but Tabitha was too quick on the draw for it. She shot both of its legs out from under it and it went flailing across the rooftop onto its face, screaming in pain. At the same time, the pilot of the vessel the Regency had sent was moving frantically over the controls of the vehicle. A throwing knife suddenly appeared right between the thing's eyes where a nose should have been. 'Becca carefully approached the thing and retrieved her dagger. She wiped the blue syrup from the blade and then the blade vanished somewhere into her pants. I had never even known she was carrying a dagger. I wondered what else she had in there. Jim looked at the controls on the vehicle but couldn't decipher them.

"He was fiddling with something here, but I'll be damned if I know what it was he did," Jim said.

"We need to quit dicking around and find this Regency!" Anson said.

"I agree." Tabitha reached down and grabbed the choke collar and pulled it very tight around the Gray's neck. "We see now that we cannot trust you. Tell us how to contact this Regency or I will pop your little head right off!" She pulled it up onto its feet causing it to feel the pain of the gravitational pressure on its now ruined legs. The bullet holes in the thighs of the creature oozed the blue-green syrupy blood down its legs and onto the rooftop.

"Eeeekkk! Please stop! I will not tell you without the Regency's permission. I cannot by physiological function disobey the Regency." The Gray tried to rub at its legs but Tabitha kept it upright with the choke collar.

"Then I suggest you get on the horn and call up your boss and tell it to get its ass over here, now!" Tabitha yelled at it.

I could see why Anson liked this lady. She has some serious chutzpa, spunk, fortitude, and a whole lot of other stuff. She reminded me of Tatiana.

Baby, you okay?

I haven't gone anywhere yet.

Still working on it, Tatiana. I will get you out.

Steven?

Yes?

I love you.

I love you, too.

The Gray made some facial twitches that were nearly unperceivable and then it fell over . . . dead.

"What the hell?" Tabitha said.

I walked over and checked it for any type of vital signs as Tabitha had just done. Nothing.

"Perhaps one of them knows where this Regency is," Anson said. He pointed out across the rooftop at a group of seven balls of blue-white light. As the balls got closer they vanished and then reappeared a few meters in front of us. The balls flashed inward and seven large Grays with red gill-like markings on their necks and blue stripes on their foreheads and ears appeared before us. These Grays were about thirty centimeters taller than the others and they were wearing blue and black tights. I guessed that the tights were of the same type of condensed matter material as the alien armor Tatiana had designed.

"You will cease your hostilities, Earthlings," the largest of the Grays said.

"We might. But we do not follow your orders, alien," Tabitha said calmly. "Are you the leaders of your, uh, people?"

"We are the Regency and are, as you perceive, the leaders of The Species," another one of the regally marked Grays answered.

"Why are you here, humans?"

"We have discovered that you have been abducting our people, torturing them, and manipulating our history for thousands of years. We want to know why—and we want this to stop!" Tabitha said.

"Ah, you have finally grown up," the Gray in the center said.

"Grown up! Prawmitoos, you are soft. They are still primitive monkeys. Just look at them. If your soldier drones were as adept as you claimed, these monkeys would have been taken care of by now."

"Yes, a nuisance that, but that soldier drone will no longer fail me."

"His demise was too painless."

"Feyibi, you always have a harsh view of all creatures, don't you? If these creatures have not grown up then how are they here and why have we no control over their implants?" Prawmitoos replied.

"Tell us exactly what you want, humans, and perhaps we will spare your lives," another one of them said bitterly as it toed the standard Gray that 'Becca had taken out with her dagger. I was curious if the arrogant royal Gray was bluffing or if they really could take us.

"To start with, where is Tatiana; the one of us that the freckle-faced gray shot with the confinement bubble device?" I asked.

"She was infected by the Himbroozya and had to be removed," Feyibi said.

"Himbroozya, himbroozya, what the hell is this himbroozya?" I yelled at them.

"Human, we can hear you and there is no need to be loud. Why do you not ask your Servant that you carry hidden away in your abdomen?" Prawmitoos said.

"He doesn't know," I told him. Mike, you're my friend, not a servant!

Thank you, Steven. But you did program me to follow your orders.

We will remedy that soon then. Just not right this second, okay?

I understand, Steven.

"Ah, yes, but all he has to do is download the information for you from the Universum Indicium Tela," one of the other Grays said.

"Universum Indicium Tela?" Tabitha asked.

"It sounds like Latin, Tabitha," Anson interrupted. "If it is it means something like the whole world or universe, information or data, and weave or web that is weaved. He is saying the Universal Information Web or World Wide Web!"

"Latin?" Tabitha asked. Nobody responded.

"The Infrastructure?" I asked. "We decided not to let Mike access the Infrastructure to keep you from tracking us," I said.

"A wise decision, I suppose," a royal Gray said.

"I agree with you, Yiaepetoes. Perhaps these primitives are more advanced than we think. It appears that they even understand the existence of the UIT."

I found the parallels intriguing. The YIT or Universal Indicium Tela (U is a Y in latin, I, T) is very similar to us saying WWW for World Wide Web—very interesting. Then Tabitha's comment hit me—why Latin?

"Enough small talk. What is the Himbroozya and where is Tatiana?" I said.

"The Himbroozya is a technological picophage designed by Tentalos for Opolawn. He infected the human race with it more than six thousand of your years ago. As far as your friend is concerned, I do not know of her location or how we can help her," Prawmitoos answered.

"A picophage?" Jim asked. "What does it do and why did he infect humanity with it? And who the hell is Opolawn to us?"

"And for that matter," 'Becca added, "why are y'all so damned afraid of this Himbroozya that you have to disintegrate someone infected with it as soon as you meet them?"

"The Gray bastards are afraid of this Himbroozya and can't cure it. I bet that's why there's a quarantine around the isolatees," Anson pointed out.

"You understand quite well, human," Prawmitoos replied.

"Wait a minute," Tabitha interrupted. "Why Latin?"

"It is not Latin, human. It is Teytoonise. You will find most of your ancient languages have a root in Teytoonise. A side-effect phenomenon we have yet to understand about the Himbroozya is that those species infected with it evolve Teytoonise language and concept parallels," Atalas replied.

"Well then, what does this Himbroozya do?" I asked.

"It causes a species to be immortal, not an individual. The species is immortal because it drives them to perpetuate. But, more than that it, drives the infected species beyond its abilities and causes it to develop new methods of warfare and means for destruction—which the Lumpeyins might then use against us. We also have intelligence that suggests that Opolawn himself can control individuals infected by it across vast distances of space via the YIT. Opolawn left the picophage behind to infect humanity as he knew it was deep within our controlled space. We warred with the Lumpeyins and forced them from some of our space but they took some as well. We then reached a very uneasy and false peace. But before the truce required them to leave certain regions of our space, they managed to leave behind this menace on many planets," Feyibi explained.

"And these planets would be ones where individuals infected by this phage are denied access to your YIT, I suspect?" Anson said.

"Yes, that is correct," Prawmitoos said.

"Is there a cure for this picophage? Why can't the nanomachines eat it?" Tabitha asked.

"Tab, my guess is that this picophage is just that, a picometer phage. That would be three orders of magnitude smaller than the nanomachines and would be undetectable by them," Anson replied.

"You are quite correct." The royal Gray furrowed its head and wrinkled the coloration there. It didn't seem happy that we understood their plight.

"Then there is no cure for this picophage?" 'Becca asked.

"No cure that we have been able to discover. This is why we have drones live in your solar system and conduct experiments on your species. They are trying to develop a cure for this technological disease. Unfortunately, they have yet to discover one. They are motivated, as they are exposed to the phage and cannot return unless they find a cure. We have sent our best scientist drones."

"Yes, I bet you did. All the way to the Russian front, mein Fuehrer!" Tabitha said.

"Wait a minute." I thought about their actions seeming a bit megalomaniacal and not with any good intent, or at least none that I could perceive. "You could care less about us, isn't that right? You are experimenting on us to find a cure for yourselves. That is why you stay hidden away so. You are afraid of these Lumpeyins, aren't you? And what happens if we become aware or a threat?" I knew the answer. The bastards would wipe us out.

The Teytoonis didn't answer immediately. In fact they seemed to all have facial twitches. They were conferring over their headbands. I almost decided to grab one of them and connect to his circuit, but I thought better of it.

"Okay, so why can't you help Tatiana?"

"There is no escape from the collapsing quantum singularity that she has been placed in. Her use of the warp field to delay her fate was clever, but it will not save her in the end and is only delaying the inevitable. Even if we could save her, we would not. She is infected after all," Prawmitoos said.

Mike, access this damned YIT and get as much info as you can on everything. If you detect them pinging you, get out.

I understand, Steven.

Finally, Tabitha forced them to answer the big question. "You never answered. Are you afraid of these Lumpeyins and are we inconsequential to you?"

"Yes," is all Prawmitoos said.

"And when we get too dangerous to be used as lab rats what then?" Tabitha asked.

"I believe the answer is obvious," Feyibi replied.

"You plan to destroy humanity?!" Anson asked.

"I'm sorry, but it is your fate," Prawmitoos said.

"Bullshit!" I said. I didn't like these bastards from the first day I met them and I liked them even less at this point.

Steven?

Yes, Mike? I was getting used to being part of multiple conversations at once. Having a wife and a sentient computer always talking in your head will force you to develop this skill.

There is way too much data on the YIT for me to download even small fractions of it. Do you have any suggestions? Mike said in my mind.

Uh, Mike, have Michelle make a copy of yourself back in the supply room on the Phoenix, but tell her to not add any SuperAgent code. Use that cube as a data repository. In fact, have her make as many cubes as she can and fill them up with as much as you can find that might be pertinent to the survival of the human race. Understand?

Yes, Steven.

"Wait a minute," Jim interjected. "If this Opolawn creature can control the picophage on individual levels, then that must mean there is some sort of control mechanism somewhere."

"Yes, so?" Feyibi asked.

"Well, why don't we go and get the damned thing and turn it off? Then what happens to the picophage?"

"We have seen this before. The picophage drives its victims rapidly insane. Destroying the control mechanism is not an option for humanity since so many of you are infected—more than two-thirds of your species are tainted. The wars that would be created on your planet would devastate your culture. On the other hand, it would be a good option for us."

"Well, what if we found the thing and just locked it away in a place and let nobody send instructions to this picophage? Would it just lie around dormant? How does the virus spread?" Tabitha asked, not quite sure if the word virus actually fit.

"The phage spread is controlled through the control mechanism and Opolawn chooses his victims carefully," Yiaepetoes explained.

"This Opolawn must be one bored dude to sit around for millennia just tinkering with four billion people's lives," 'Becca said.

"The mind of the Lumpeyins is amazing and such tasks are minute to them," Prawmitoos assured us. I wasn't sure if he had meant the mind of a Lumpeyin or the mind of the Lumpeyins. Were they individuals or were they a collective mind?

"Well, that is the answer. We will go and take the control mechanism from the Lumpeyins and then we will control our own fate. We will let the virus remain dormant until it is gone from attrition of the infected individuals. Once all infected people have died of old age, a few generations from now, then we will destroy the controller," Tabitha said.

"Great plan, Tabitha. But if we return from Lumpeyin space with this control device or whatever the hell it is, you bastards will let Tatiana out of her prison and you will spare Earth from annihilation." I told them, I didn't ask.

"We will spare Earth. But as I have said before, there is no escape from the diminishing quantum singularity within which she is trapped. We are sorry."

"You're full of shit!" I said.