A tone sounded, indicating we were to meet in the community room. I left the view of the outside world. We all crowded into the room.
The commander spoke from the podium. “The ongoing battering from the creatures is causing damage to the ship. We need to erect an electrified perimeter to keep them away. The soldiers will drive the animals from the area while everyone else works at building the fence. We need every able-bodied adult out there. After seventeen generations on this ship, this planet is our new home. Our only home! We aim to survive it.”
The people cheered. I didn’t see what there was to cheer about, really. A gun hung from my belt. I was a soldier. Which seemed odd, somehow.
“Report to your designated hatches and you will be given your assignment.”
I shuffled along with the rest of the people. The crowd thinned as groups and individuals turned off down different corridors. Soon I stood at my designated hatch. There were about thirty of us there. People parted to let me through to the front of the crowd. I wasn’t excited about this mission. The tech standing there, who, no-doubt, had been assigned to give us our instructions, looked relieved to see me. I was to be the firepower, their protection.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” he began. The plan was basic. I was to go out and shoot the creatures with my gun on the second-lowest setting. Apparently, this had been tested early that morning and it was enough of a zap to cause the creatures to run but it wouldn’t kill them. Then we’d put the fence up. We didn’t want to kill any of the local wildlife. The plan was to co-exist. Somehow. Additionally, we didn’t know how intelligent these creatures were. Was there any sentient life on the planet? We didn’t want to make war with the locals. But we needed to defend ourselves. So we would use the minimum amount of force necessary.
I drew my gun from its holster. The setting dial was at the top. I turned it down to Level Two and kept the weapon at the ready. There was no way of knowing how many creatures were out there. The tech pulled the lever to release the seal on the airlock. Then he turned the wheel quickly. The metal door groaned as it released. I put my arm out in front of him to keep him from opening the door as my instincts kicked in. I motioned him to get behind me and signaled to the rest of the group to move back from the door.
I pushed the metal hatch open, slowly. At first, I didn’t see any of the creatures but, as the door opened fully, I spotted them. They hadn’t seen us yet. I started shooting. I hit three of them before the door finished its course. The hatch rang out as it met the hull, fully open. At the sound, the rest of the creatures turned to look. I kept firing, striking two more before they decided what to do. Sure enough, the ones I got were running. The remaining creatures’ faces changed, becoming more wrinkled and showing more teeth. I kept shooting, six, seven, eight, nine. A low, vibrating, growling sound reached my ears. Was it just my imagination or were their eyes becoming even more vibrantly colored and beginning to glow? I jumped out of the ship and ran a few paces. They were still just standing there, glaring and growling. Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. Would I really have to shoot each one? Would they run now or would they attack en masse?
I heard sounds behind me. Our people were putting up the fence. I kept firing. There were fewer creatures now, as each one that I hit ran away. I missed one. Tried again. Suddenly, I felt tired… dizzy. I shot again. This time the bolt found its target. I took aim at the next one. My vision blurred. I blinked, staggered and shot blindly. Their glowing, hate-filled eyes followed me into unconsciousness.
When I came to, I was lying on the hard, alien ground, having a close-up of its exotic vegetation. In a spurt of panic, I sat up quickly. My head was pounding. What had happened?
It was still daytime. I looked back towards the ship. No people anywhere. The fence was up. But I was on the wrong side of it. I sprang to my feet and turned in a slow circle, scanning for the creatures. The landscape was empty. My gun was near my feet. I reached down to retrieve it. When I saw my hand, a deeper fear sprang to life inside me. My skin was a pastel pink, the same color some of the animals’ faces had been. I snatched up my weapon and holstered it. Then I inspected my other hand and pulled up my pant leg to see the skin there. All the same. Somehow, I had been changed. With dread, I looked back up towards the compound as an airlock hissed.
A soldier stepped from an open hatch. I didn’t know him well. “You’ll need to leave the area!” he shouted. “You’ve been infected. We think you were bitten or something. We can’t risk contamination of the entire colony. You’ve been provided with a survival pack, a first aid kit and rations for a week. We’ve also left you your gun. Don’t make us regret it. I’m sorry but you’ll have to leave the area – for the safety of what’s left of the human race.”
I opened my mouth to protest that I hadn’t been bitten but no sound came out. Whatever had happened to me, I’d lost the ability to speak.
He fired at me and missed. A warning shot. But I couldn’t leave. The ship had always been my home. These were my people! How could I leave? He fired again. Pain exploded in my brain. He’d shot me! I put my hands up in surrender.
“Leave the area!” the soldier shouted. He motioned with his gun.
With tears in my eyes, I turned and limped away. What would happen to me? Would I be alone for the rest of my days? But, as it turned out, I wasn’t alone for long. As I crested the next ridge, something slammed into me from the side. Falling, blackness enveloped me.
The next thing I knew, I was lying in the back of a canvas-covered truck. The engine was rumbling and the vehicle was in motion. I picked myself up and sat down on one of the benches that ran along both sides. There was no one else there. Was this one of our trucks? I squinted in the dim light. No. As far as I knew, we didn’t have any vehicles like this one. Whose then? There must be other sentient beings on the planet. Could it be other humans? Was I a prisoner? I looked around to see how I might be able to escape. Just then, I heard a ripping sound. A slit of light appeared in the canvas.
I sprang towards the opening and tumbled out of the moving truck. I glimpsed the grassy alien plain right before I landed on a bare-chested, blue skinned man. He had black hair and the most unnatural, glowing blue eyes. I stood up and backed away. The creature-man picked himself up too. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the line of trucks bumping past over the uneven ground.
“Wait here. I’ll see if I can save anyone else,” he said, turning towards the nearest vehicle. The line of trucks came to an abrupt halt with a squealing of breaks.
He sprinted towards the vehicle and pulled his knife from his belt. A bolt of yellow light flashed.
The blue man cried out and dropped back down into the long grass. He righted himself and ran back towards me, rubbing at a burned spot on his forearm. “On second thought, I think I’ll just save you for now.” He scooped me up into his arms and took off running through the tall grass. The long, alien grass concealed us as he ran, crouched over. He carried me as though I weighed nothing. “I’ll keep you safe,” he whisper-huffed into my ear as we continued our headlong flight away from the caravan. We stopped in a grove of trees some distance away. “We can work together to rescue the others.”
“But…I’m like this.” I held out my hands for him to see the unnaturally pink flesh. “And that’s not all. I feel it. I’m different inside. I can feel it. But at least I’m able to talk now. When I tried talking before, I couldn’t.”
“Well, me too. I didn’t used to be blue, you know. My people crashed here last year. I am the only one that changed, so far. They rejected me, but I’ve been protecting the colony however I can. I don’t think it was an accident that, when I slit that truck open, you were inside. We’ll make the perfect team. And it’s the same for me about the talking. When I try to talk to the people from my colony, I can’t. I can’t talk to them anymore and I don’t understand why. I’m really grateful that I’m able to talk to you.”
“So… you got infected too? Is that
what happened to us?”
“Well, yes. But I think about it as a good thing. Something bad that turned to something good. This,” he held out his bulky arms and then motioned past his shorts down his well-muscled, bare blue legs, “is what you need to survive here. The enemy is powerful but, like this,” he clenched his pale blue hands into fists, “we can fight back!”
I hadn’t thought of it that way but I supposed he was right. “But now I’m cut off from my people. They’re all I ever knew.”
“Were you the only one to change?”
I tried to think back to what had happened. The details were fuzzy. Was I the only one on the outside of the perimeter? “I…I think I may have been the only one but I’m not sure. There may have been others. But I didn’t see anyone else who had changed. They said I’d been bitten. But I wasn’t. I think it was vibrations that made me pass out. Do you think that’s what made us change?”
“Hmm…I did feel some vibrations before it happened and I was knocked out too. But, it doesn’t matter. We have to help the humans. The situation’s desperate. I’ll fill you in about what’s going on. And…we’ll have each other.” He leaned in towards me and touched his forehead to mine. “The name’s Blaze, by the way.”
“Blaze…really?” A suppressed memory wiggled at the back of my mind. I knew someone by that name.
He flexed his blue, biceps in show. “Yup, Blaze. Everyone wants to be the hero of their own dream, right?”
***
Okay, then, why am I not the hero? Wait…dream? As I had the thought, the dream began to fade away and I rose to the surface of consciousness – I was waking up. No. I wanted to see how the dream would end. Would we rescue the others?
A repetitive beeping pulled me from sleep. My alarm? No, I never used one of those anymore. What was going on? I opened my eyes and found two technicians, in white lab coats, at the head of my bed. They had a panel open in the wall and were studying the equipment there, engaged in conversation. This was a first. I hadn’t even realized that there was any equipment back there.
“What’s going on here?” asked one of the men.
“I have no idea,” the other replied.
“We’d better get it figured out and fixed. She’s the highest rated and most used Dreamer in the region.”
“I know. Hey…Why is this frequency number so high?”
The other man leaned in to get a better look. “I don’t know. It seems like she’s overlapping with someone. We don’t have any other Dreamers set at the same frequency, at the same time, do we?”
“Better not have. We’d better check it out though. You know how dangerous that could be.”
The techs left the room without speaking a word to me or glancing in my direction. I sighed. Weird. At least the beeping had stopped. I didn’t really feel like even getting up. There was nowhere I needed to go.
Just then, Reina, the Regional Coordinator, walked into the room. I had only seen her once before. This must be pretty serious. I sat up and swung my feet over the edge of the cot.
“Good morning. How are you feeling?”
“Fine. What’s going on?”
Reina pursed her lips and looked down for a moment before her eyes flicked back up to mine. “Our connection with you is fading. Somehow, it’s degrading. We don’t understand why this is happening. It’s possible that it’s just due to some technical issue with our equipment. Maybe we’ll be able to figure it out and everything will be resolved in a good way. But, it is also possible, if the fading continues, that, in time, you will no longer be able to work for the Kingcade Worldcorp as a Dreamer.”
“I’m sure that’s not going to happen.” Losing what I had here wasn’t an option. It wouldn’t fade any further. As I blinked back the tears, I stood up and pushed past her to get to my locker and the bathroom. They couldn’t take this away from me. Being a Dreamer was all I had now! Maybe I was sleeping too much. Yes. That had to be it. I resolved not to sleep so much.
I cut my sleep back from eighteen hours a night to seven. I never used to need more than that. During my free time, I exercised in the pool. I even watched a little TV. Being a Dreamer was my identity. I couldn’t lose that.
One warm sunny day, I decided I’d do some walking. I walked for hours, not really caring where I was going. My aimless wandering led me to the river, so I followed the paved walkway there. After several hours, I saw a movie theater. I left the river and walked down the street to the theater. The side of the building displayed what they were showing that afternoon. I moved in closer to get a better look.
Blaze. His face was on one of the posters. I studied the picture. It was Blaze all right. I stared at the close-up of his face, with the ocean in the background. Probably some romance movie.
I wouldn’t see it, I decided. That would be too hard. Feelings welled up inside me when I looked at him. I dreamed of that boy way too much. Does he remember me at all? I wished I could re-connect with him… but that was just silly. We were never even really friends. I was glad I had graduated so that I didn’t have to see him at school anymore. That would be too hard, especially now that dream-Blaze and I were so close. Too bad dreams weren’t real. Guess he was living his dream, though, acting on the big screen, just like he’d always wanted.
Sadness clenched my gut as I turned away from the poster. All I had were dreams. Maybe the life I was living wasn’t socially healthy. I had to admit it; I was lonely…when I was awake.
I walked into a local convenience store. A ding sounded, announcing my arrival. Getting food felt anything but convenient lately. It felt like work. Really, buying food and eating shouldn’t feel like a burden but everything in real life felt like work these days. I grabbed a basket and scouted down one aisle. This store wasn’t my usual one. I usually went to a large supermarket but I just didn’t want to face the crowds today. I threw a loaf of white bread into the basket and a jar of chocolate spread. The door chimed again as someone else entered the store.
I reached the till at just the same time as a man. He was no one I recognized, dressed in black jeans and a hoodie. Then my gaze traveled down to his hand. He was holding a gun. It was like I was frozen in place.
He looked at me. “Don’t move.” His voice was deep and gruff. He looked at the clerk and pointed the gun in that direction. “Take the money out of the till and give it to me. Just the bills.”
I heard movement from the clerk and the sound of the till opening. But my eyes were frozen on the gun.
Suddenly, it was like the High King was there with me. I could feel his presence. Tell him it’s not too late for a second chance. What happened to him wasn’t his fault and what he’s done can be forgiven.
I forced my eyes from the gun to his face. “It’s not too late.” My voice came out louder than I expected. The thief flinched and then scowled at me. I spoke more quietly. “What happened to you wasn’t your fault. What you’ve done can be forgiven. It’s not too late for a second chance.” We looked right at one another for a long moment. An unexpected change came over his face. The hard lines seemed to soften and his eyes filled with tears.
“Why did you say that?” he asked.
“God told me to,” I whispered.
“I believe you…Thank you.” He shoved the gun under his jacket. Ignoring the bills in the clerk’s outstretched hand, he turned away and walked out the door. The chime sounded his departure.
I blinked, expecting to wake up. But I didn’t. I’m not dreaming. What had just happened had all been real! After the High King had spoken to me, I hadn’t even been afraid. Maybe the dreams were helping me to become brave.
“Maybe the dreams are like some kind of training,” I said aloud. I turned to look at the clerk who was on the phone, with the police, no doubt. He looked back at me like I was crazy. I laughed lightly as I lifted the basket to rest it on the counter. No, not crazy. But something had changed and was still changing. Things were changing in a good way. I could feel it.
Ch
apter 15 – Aquatic Change
I walked along a pristine beach as the sun set over the water. The few wispy clouds in the sky were like pink cotton candy. Waves lapped on the shoreline. A clear glass bottle washed up onto the sand. I strolled over to investigate, my bare feet splashing in the cool water. Somehow the bottle seemed important.
Inside it was aqua blue liquid and a curled up note. I pulled out the stopper and fished in the liquid with one finger for the note. Amazingly, the scrap of paper was dry. It had one word written on it: Drink. I hesitated for a moment. It was like Alice in Wonderland, only this bottle felt like it came with divine purpose, rather than being little more than random. This must be a message from the High King! I sniffed at the opening. The liquid smelled slightly sweet. I shrugged and downed the contents.
I felt a burning in my belly that spread out into my legs. Hot. So hot. I walked out into the salt water fully clothed, splashing my chest and face to cool the fire inside. When I was into the ocean up to my neck, the discomfort subsided. I kicked off my pants, ducked all the way under and sighed in relief. I didn’t feel like surfacing so I swam deeper, cutting swiftly through the ever-darkening water. It was beautiful, watching the shifting light, and I felt so free - like I was flying. Suddenly, it occurred to me that I had stayed under far too long. In a near-panic, I swam to the surface. The sun had set and the first stars were shining through the twilight sky. I realized then that I had no need to draw breath.
Fear dissolved to wonder as I looked down at myself. I sank back down into the water to get a better look at what I had become. A strong tail, covered in scales that reflected the light, had replaced my legs. I laughed and was startled by the silence as no sound came from my mouth. I tried saying hello, but again, there was only silence. At first, I felt a little sad but then I smiled. After all, I had always appreciated silence. It was more peaceful this way anyway.