13

The Trans-Resurrection Machine, Part 2

The last explosion was terrible. Clouds of thick, burning smoke started to fill the room and fireball flames began to engulf the place.
"What has happened!" Screeched one of the redshifters. "Fire! Fire! Save the machine! SAVE THE MACHINE!!" He screamed.
"I'll call the others! We can't save the machine by ourselves!" The taller one ran from the room.
"COWARD!!" Cried the other in a rage. Mary could hear all of this behind the door of the device. it woke her from the near hypnotic state she felt the machine was puling her into, and away from the strange visions, or were they shapes she saw in the fluid. 
Shots were fired and then someone opened the device door.
"Mary!" it was Dan.
"Dan! Untie me!" he took put a blade and began cutting the straps.
"Hurry!" Shouted someone. It was Jack.
"You don't know how glad I am to see you guys!" She said. The bonds were difficult to cut through and Dan began unraveling them by hand. When he was done she managed to force her legs out of the straps holding them down and rolled off the door.
"What is that thing?" He asked,
"No time. I'll tell you later!" She said.
"They're coming! More of them. They called for reinforcements. I think I hear sirens too," said Jack. Fire was running up the ceiling like wild fire. The way was blocked. He covered Mary with a long silver cape. He was breathing hard.
"We make a run through the doorway. As you get towards the entrance, leave the cloak behind. Hopefully we'll get out without severe burns. Come on!"
They followed him out. Mary could feel the fire hot against her burning. It was so hot she thought she'd combust into millions of tiny particals. Her scalp was felt as if it would melt off her skull and she brushed her hair frantically as Jack herded them into an old car. The building was burning, like a raging beacon tearing into the night. Jack jumped into the driver's seat and sped off, burning rubber.
"We were lucky. this was a small cell. We caught them off guard!" Said Dan.
'"How on earth did you guys find me?" She asked, wiping sweat from her face.
"The red trail was strong nearly all the way to this neighborhood. I sensed you as they were driving away. I called Jack and he brought the car and we tracked your essence until it dropped off sharply about five blocks south of here. At that point, we investigated the buildings and by happenstance we found this old abandoned one. The redshifters seem to like old abandoned buildings for certain reasons. Old buildings have old memory that they thrive and work from to build their wormholes. People don't seem to pay much attention to them either." Mary turned to look out the rear window. In the distance a flurry of swirling siren lights were gathering at the burning building as they sped away into the night.

. . .

In the tiny, dusty bookshop that was now their headquarters, they sat around a small stool. Mary was frazzled but wiser and more courageous than she'd ever felt. Everyone was gathered around her, Trillion draped a warm sweater around her shoulders. 

"I'm so sorry I got you into this." said Dan. "Maybe we moved too soon-" she frowned at him at first, and then smiled.

"Got me into what? I'm in this along with all of you. We either face them now or they'll face us down later. We have to find out where they're hiding. I'm, glad it happened."

"You are?" Asked Andrew, the bookstore owner, nervously. He chewed his bottom lip and wiped his thick glasses with the corner of his shirt. She nodded vigorously. Everyone began talking at once. Mary felt a self assurance she'd never felt before in her life. She hoped this wasn't some temporary adrenaline wave.

"Listen," she said, putting her hand up. Then she took a long sip of hot coffee and set the paper cup down on the stool in front of her. The others leaned in, falling quiet. 

"I saw something I wasn't supposed to see. Both Dan and I did." She glanced at Dan excitedly.

"What?" Asked Jack. "What they actually look like?"

"Yes, but more than that. They do have these strange, advanced devices, huge machines that they call trans-resurrection devices. They use them to transfer one of their own inside a human so that they can take over the bodies and live here among us." The store owner's eyes widened.
"I was afraid of something kooky like that would be revealed." Trillion gave only the barest hint of dismay but his serene countenance remained.

"So that's how they do it!" Said Jack.

"But that's not all. There are, I think, quite a few of these machines but they are very old contraptions. It suggests they've used them for a very long time. It reminded me of a Rube- Goldberg machine. Anyway, they have this program from what I heard, called the Settling, Seeding and Expansion. There seems to be a hierarchy too. I heard something about a High Sentinel among them."

"High Sentinel?" Asked Trillion. "Troubling."
"Why?"
"She oversees punishment for wayward, incompetent and rebellious hanyar attached to the Expansion project. She has never revealed herself to humans, so far as I know. And she's not the only one. Perhaps they've changed something in the structure of the plan." 

"Yes." They all looked at Trillion
"What do you mean?" Asked Dan.
"All I mean is that things are changing. It's been a long time since I've kept in touch with their more secret activities. High Sentinels are vestiges of the older hanyar societies."

"Tell us more about the machine. How does it work?" asked Dan.

"I'm not sure on the exact nature of how it works. Only that they strap you on a bed on the other side of the machine door and close you inside and you are lowered into a huge tub of fluid with electrical currents flowing through it. I don't know what sort of fluid they use or what substance it is. It was frightening and not just because of what it would have done to me but because of the energy I could feel from it. it was overwhelmingly hostile, the energies coming from it. The very instrument they use to destroy us. More scary than any weapon they might use," she said. They listened with rapt attention.

"I felt it too," said Dan.

"What did you see, Dan?" She asked. They all turned to him.

"I entered part way through what I can only describe as an inactive wormhole. That's why I'm still alive, and through the other side I saw a vault of some. I saw a trans-resurrection machine, Mary! Inside the vault. It looked similar from the other one. I had no idea what that strange looking thing was at the time but it was another one of those devices! I'm sure of it!"

"Did you see anything else?" Asked Trillion.

"Yes. I noticed an odd symbol of a planet with out-sized rings. I wonder if that is where they came from?"

"Not likely," said Mary.

"Why do you say that?" Asked Trillion

"Because they come from subspace. They are subspace beings."

"Subspace! You aren't -" said Jack.

"Oh yes," said Mary firmly. "They said so."

"You heard them say all this?"

"They were going to kill me so they felt free to talk." Trillion folded his arms and leaned against the wall.

"My people the hanyar come from another place in the universe humans have never seen and can't imagine, somewhere on the other side of a singularity, somewhere near a planet with rings for from this solar system. They want to live in this world and in this dimension. But most want to take it over. They desire the kind of life that humans call life, to taste, touch and see and experience things the way you do.They want everything you have. They are dissatisfied with where they've gone as a species and wish to take over this world and take over your bodies as well."
"But if they only want to live as we do, why do they have to destroy us?"
"A people with a hostile, militaristic bent see things through a very limited scope. There is no room for others different from them and there is no room for others when those others have what they desire. We have countless examples of hostile human cultures that have eradicated others when it was unnecessary to do so. Greed and selfishness are the only excuses they need," said Trillion.

"You're right. And they know that some of us can detect them now," said Mary. Trillion sighed heavily.

"Yes. Once they thought they'd destroyed all sensitives, but they didn't. I and my co-workers have helped protect sensitives from them. I once thought we could find and protect all of them. We couldn't."
"You say, 'we' Trillion when you are one of them," said Mary gently.
"I know. I have been here for so long and so invloved with helping humans that I no longer feel as if I'm hanyar any longer."

"That's because in a way, you are one of us now. or at least I think so," said Mary. 
"I think our powers are growing and becoming clearer," said Dan. "I could sense you, Mary, your emotions, your fear, when they took you away."
"Yeah. We could almost track you because of that," said Jack.

"This will only help us all as things grow darker," said Trillion. "As for the plan, so far, you all managed to destroy one small alien base. That's important."

"It was two-"

"Actually just one. The wormhole you saw and were nearly pulled in through Dan was not destroyed. They can't be destroyed by fire. The building was burned but the wormhole remains, mostly likely they collapsed it and moved it to another location."

"I guess we gave the bastard the opening salvo then," said Jack. They all grinned.

"You did and I'm proud but don't be too confident. I think you all should lay low for a little while. I'm sure they're looking for the cause of this problem. It wouldn't be the first time humans have detected and ruined their plans," said Trillion. "In the confusion of two important places being targeted they'll be worried that they can't detect you. Yet."

"Then this should be a tactic we use again? Attack and lay low?" Asked Jack. Trillion nodded.

"If we use guerrilla-style tactics it needs to be when we have more power on our side. This time was a fluke. It won't happen again this easily. We've got to hone this down. But I have an idea," said Dan.

"And what's that?" Asked Mary.

"Some techniques I learned from Trillion. We need to have another meeting next week here. We need to be able to sense and know for certainty where the other places are, the other machines, and take them all out. And also," he said grabbing a piece of paper with a red marker and drawing a symbol on it and showing it to the others. "We need to find out what this means." It was the symbol of the ringed planet. Mary saw the little bookstore owner shift nervously in his seat.
"I can't imagine why a bank vault would have a sign like that and I don't know of any logos of companies with that particular symbol." 
"Let me see the symbol up close," said Jack, reaching for the slip of paper. "Maybe I can do some research on it after we leave here tonight."
"Research? How?" Asked Mary.
"Trillion said they've been here for a long time, right? There must be something out there that can shed some light on this. I have some interesting underground connections. Maybe they can turn up something?"
"Just be careful that you aren't asking one of The Others in disguise. I know that you guys can detect them now, but there just may be a few that are much harder to detect in the traditional way. That's what I'm trying to work out now. Besides that, remember, some red-shifters may be human. Only part human because of trans-resurrection or because they have no human feeling for others." This made Mary perk up.
"Hey, I can handle this," said Jack, grinning.
"I know you can. Just. . .be careful," warned Trillion.
"If I may, Jack, I have something to show you that you might find very interesting. I'd like to show you before you leave here tonight." Andrew turned to Dan. "Dan, do you remember the old book I showed you?" Dan's eyes got wide.
"Oh, yes!" Andrew glanced at Mary.
"Mary, you'll want to see this too, so stay awhile longer." They were all buzzing with even more excitement now. It seemed things were coalescing around some important paths to answers.

Mary rubbed her hair absently.As fearful as she was, she felt something awakening in her. She'd nearly crossed the threshold into a kind of death. She was able to study the inside of that threshold before being rescued. The experience left her wanting to know what the symbols and the other. . .things she'd seen in the pool, were.She would go home and ponder what she saw to make sense of it. There had to be a pattern here. Perhaps if they could decipher the pattern, they could defeat The Others. The symbols and characters had to mean something. Perhaps they were directions on how to build one? What if they could build one? It seemed crazy to even imagine such things. But she'd faced death and lived. They all did. She felt bonded to them more than she had before. And brave, an emotion she had never experienced before. She smiled.

"What is it, Mary?" Asked Dan. She shook her head.
"Nothing. I'm just ready for what's coming. I'm ready to fight."
"So we all are," said Jack.
"Dan, I'd like to study the hotspot map you created at your place again," she said. Andrew turned to Trillion.
"What are you going to do until the next meeting?"
"I have other sensitives that I've rescued out of the darkness, to train."

Andrew pressed his hands against his knees, bewildered. He had a hotspot of ragtag avengers assembling under his own roof. How long before they got found out? And what would happen to them all? He feared to think on it but he'd had some inkling of what he was getting himself into when he forged an alliance with the mysterious Trillion. Being near such special people helped him to feel he was adding something important to the cause. And he was. In fact, there was one thing he and Trillion were keeping in store for later that would be sorely needed one day. What did I get myself into? he thought, fiddling around in his apron pocket for the old skeleton key.
"Before I get the book, anybody for more bad coffee?"

12

The Trans-Resurrection Machine

Mary struggled against her restraints.
"It will only hurt worse if you continue. Why don't you lie still?" Said the hissing voice. It chilled her. It wasn't human. She wondered what creature possessed that eerie voice. She was tied down to a hard, cold surface. She'd been here for what seemed hours and she'd been blindfolded before being brought here, wherever here was.
"Where am I? Who are you?"
"Be silent. You will know soon enough." Seconds later she felt a terrible sting and a burning sensation in one of her arms, as if a long, large needle had been carelessly inserted. Then something was being wound around her head. She started to feel panic rise again. What was this. . .person. . . going to do to her? Somewhere in the room she could hear the soft noises of medical equipment being handled. Above all that stood out to her was a regular beeping sound, like a pacemaker, as if it were in tune with her own heart beat.
"How did you find the place?" Demanded the raspy, inhuman voice.
"I told you already! I was wandering around, going for an evening walk, and I was just curious about the buildings in the old rail yard. It looked abandoned."
"Do you always break into abandoned buildings?"
"No, only I was curious about it as all. And bored."
"You lie. Why do you humans always lie? A defect in you." She received a hard slap and she cried out again. Mary's thoughts raced. She tried to think of something calming, anything, to ground her. She tried to think of something that might. . .she felt a slight rumble as if there were an earthquake, and it suddenly stopped as soon as the sensation had started. There was a brief silence and then someone else entered the room.
"What?" Said her captor in annoyance.
"You know what," said second voice in cold anger from what Mary could discern.
"I couldn't get my agent inside from the box. She wouldn't open the box, stupid woman! I'll send your agent in by another way or by another's agent. Someone more compliant this time. I-"
"Never mind! You've failed. But you're not accountable to me. Surely, you would know that by now. How one as inept as you were allowed into the first waves of the Expansion, Seeding or the Settling is baffling. When the High Sentinel arrives, you can explain your failure to her." Mary felt a shock of cold fear, sensed it like an overpowering scent. It smelled like burning ice. She was sure this fear had come from her first tormentor. Footsteps came close to her, stopping.
"I was allowed into the Expansion project-"
"You were allowed in because your progenitor was one of the best and strongest of your family tree for the project and because he had so many connections with the other strongest, smartest progenitors. Nothing more. I suppose genetics really isn't everything."
"You speak as if you are my progenitor or instructor-ward," he hissed angrily. "You are not. Beware how you deal with me." The second one blithely ignored this warning.
"Our little bandit. I see you've been tormenting her. Stop right there, before you overstep your mark, once again. That's why they keep you here, in the dark working like a rat. She has a red mark on her face. You struck her?"
"What of it?"
"You never did learn discipline, did you? And you wonder why you've been relegated to bottom-rung status and grunt work," the second voice said imperiously. "In all of your playing with the subject did you prepare the device like I asked you?"
"The device is ready."
"Prepare the subject." Prepare me for what, exactly?
"The subject is ready," snapped the other one.
"Did you prime her with a numbing agent?"
"I did." hissed the other voice.
"You didn't finish the job. Must I do everything? With fools like you entering the Expansion it's no wonder it's taking so long. Step aside." The sack was yanked off her head and a tubing device was wrapped around her head. Then thin tubes were inserted into her nostrils, far up until she thought she would black out. A thin stream of blood trickled down her right nostril. Her mouth was forced open and another tube inserted down. She began to gag violently and struggle. The second being held her down and tightened the restraints. There was shuffling of footsteps in the room.
'Now," she heard the imperious voice say, "I think we can make you useful to us without the normal tactics of getting humans to behave and cooperate." Rough hands took off her blindfold. She was in a dark room set up as an operating hub. It was dusty, she could feel the grit in her throat. At one end of the room, before her stood  a frightening looking edifice. It had the look of an ancient looking machine. The device seemed to hum, a sensation she could feel in her bones. It filled the room from the floor to the ceiling on that side of the wall.
"A rather old contraption, quaint even, but it remains very useful and valuable."
It was frightening and she couldn't understand why. It looked like a huge outdated, useless computer, like a Rube-Goldberg contraption, but something about it frightened her. The red light energy shifting from it swirled and roared in her vision.

This represented certain doom.

As she looked upon it with her own eyes,. it was bathed in faint red light shimmering around its edges, like something poisonous cut out of time and space and pasted into this world. Something that did not belong here.

There was a person standing next to her. He looked like a normal man. He was slight in build with unremarkable, nondescript features. In fact, he looked very much like the kind of person to blend into the background, someone no one would notice at all. And in his ordinariness, he was had an eerie and powerful presence.
"So you can see us? I'd thought we'd rid the world of such ones," he hissed.
"I'd thought so too, but remember that this ability is a genetic anomaly that can appear spontaneously in human beings. We are working on a way to completely eradicate it. Until then, we'll find this one useful," said the other. He too was a man of average features difficult to describe as there was nothing striking or interesting about him either. He was shorter and rounder than the other man.
"Do you know what this is? Mmmm?" He asked.
"What is that?" She asked. .
"We have quite a few of these. It is one of the ways we can control human adepts that are needed for our plans. You're going to be altered anyway, so I'll tell you before we put you under. It's a trans-resurrection device, or machine. It's one of our rmost important inventions, worked on and mproved over the centuries. We could not build it on our original home in such a way that it would work here, but we found that we could build it here. We use it to allow our kind to cross over from where we exist in our natural state, in time and place, to Earth. We can exist quite comfortably within the framework of the human body in this dimension, out of subspace. In fact, most of us find it desirable for it is in the human being's body and brain that we are better able to study the universe and its secrets. But it is a sort of death before life for us. This machine renders the human being pliable mentally, like a person of retarded mental capacity, and eventually into a vegetative state. However, by then, the body is fully conformed to our own physiological and mental needs and the human merely becomes a reanimated puppet or suit as we take it over and become acclimated to the new environment."
"Home?" She gurgled with great difficulty.
"Human body, existing on Earth. That is home. By taking over the brain in the body through this machine the human's mind is severely stunted as well as their personality and they eventually die but by then we have taken over the body. It isn't painful, don't worry. You will still be human on the outside but you will have entered into an altered, higher state of existence." He gifted her with a grim smile.

The room began to tremble again and they stopped.
"What was that?" Asked the taller one. The other studied Mary with murky, gray-brown eyes that seemed to shine.
"I think it's her. Hurry! Let's get her into the device. She's a powerful one. We can use her and through her, find all others like her who are hiding from us!"
"No!" She tried to shout but the tubes prevented her from getting the words out. But she felt as if her concentration on the room inside and her fright and anger were causing some type of effect within the machine too.
"The machine! It's not as stable as it needs to be. Something's happening!" They lifted her up and opened the door of device and laid it flat, laid her on it and strapped her down even as she struggled. She managed to kick the taller one in the head. He hissed at her.

Outside there was an explosion. They stopped for a few seconds, studying the entrance door. Then they proceeded to lift the device door up and close her inside. She could see electrical currents flowing through in patterns in a tub of opaque fluid that filled the machine. The device began to slowly lower her down into this tub. The energy through seeming red felt, cold, cold as snow and she felt her face becoming numb along with the rest of her body as the numbing agent kicked in. She couldn't move the way she wanted anymore. She felt helpless. She hated feeling helpless and afraid all of the time. She'd learned so much from her short interaction with these two aliens, yet now she would never be able to tell the team. She would never be able to warn them or Trillion about what she'd seen. She could feel the power of the device enveloping her. She examined the inside even though it would be of no use. When she came out, she would not be herself, she would be a reanimated husk for one of the redshifters.

There was another explosion. Then another one. The third was so powerful that the entire room and the device shook. It sounded as if the building was breaking apart.