The Awakening: Book 1 of the Evaran Chronicles Read online

  Jay smirked as he walked over to the first cleaning room. “A shit scanner.”

  Emily tugged on Dr. Snowden’s arm. “Uncle Albert? You okay?”

  Dr. Snowden nodded. “I’m fine. I need to think for a bit. Why don’t you go get cleaned up?”

  Emily stared at him for a moment. “Okay.” She got up and walked toward the cleaning rooms.

  Sanjay followed after her, giving her ample time to get into one of the rooms before he went in one.

  Dr. Snowden began to sort out his thoughts. How had he had been so wrong? Evidence was all around him, and he dismissed it out of hand because he did not believe in the premise. It was not easy for him as a scientist to accept the situation, especially given the lack of verifiable facts. He concluded that Evaran was just being brutally honest.

  He began going through what he knew. First, there was Evaran. The first alien that he met while conscious. Evaran was apparently able to hack into an alien virtual simulation. On top of that, he had his own starship and a flying orb with artificial intelligence. Evaran seemed to have an understanding of time travel, those rift things, and these Krotovore. Evaran was an enigma, but this could also be a learning opportunity. Evaran did not have to rescue them, but he did. That said a lot about Evaran’s character. He concluded that Evaran had their best interests in mind.

  His thoughts turned to the Krotovore. Why did they abduct four people along a lone stretch of I-70? Evaran said there was sparse information in the logs and that he planned to find out more. Maybe there would be additional information here on the bridge. He filed it away as something to ask Evaran. The fact that aliens exist at all was exciting, but what they did was inexcusable. Life was already hard for Emily, and now she has to deal with this. It saddened him that that meeting aliens for the first time was not in an effort of cooperation, but a violation of his very being. He tried to subdue those thoughts, but they simmered in the back of his mind.

  He then focused on the virtual simulation. It felt real. The sensations he felt now were much different. The sudden onset of insomnia now made sense. One hour awake in the real world was probably a day or two in the virtual simulation. No wonder trying to sleep in there was so hard. Other times he could barely keep his eyes open. Evaran mentioned that death was a real possibility, and for these Krotovore, it would have been just another failed experiment.

  He looked at his hand and flexed it. He imagined the nanobots swimming around in there. They cured his prostate cancer, and he felt like he was twenty-one again. He had doubted their existence, but he could feel their effects on him when fighting the draug. If they kept his body in this shape, he was not sure he wanted them out. He recalled Evaran mentioning they had sensory functions. He did not know what Evaran meant but figured he would ask Evaran more about them later. Emily would want them out, but maybe after hearing what they did, she would change her mind. He planned to let her know about his prostate cancer before then. The last thing she needed right now on top of all this is to learn that he had any type of cancer.

  Then there were Sanjay and Jay. He liked Jay, although his machismo was off-putting at times. Jay had saved him from having one of those creatures fall on him. He admired Jay’s resilience. He knew Jay was as scared as the rest of them, but anger was his reaction. Sanjay was a mystery, however. He seemed to be a bright kid, but crippling fear caused him to run at the first sign of trouble. Not once, but twice. Both of them had a rough awakening. He was glad Evaran had visited him and Emily.

  He figured his next plan of attack was to learn as much as he could. If this was real, he needed to know the lay of the land. Evaran seemed willing to share some information, so he would take advantage of that. He stood up and walked over to the cleaning rooms. There were six of them, and three were active.

  He walked into an open room. The doors closed. Like the stall in the medical lab, he was hit by a strong scent, except this one smelled like vinegar. He undressed and placed his clothes on a table that jutted out from the wall. He looked around and saw the structure Evaran mentioned. It was a hole in the ground with a set of adjustable limbs jutting out over it. He adjusted the limbs and locked them in place, then sat on them and relieved himself. Once finished, he stood up and pressed the large green button near the entrance. A greenish mist filled the room. It was difficult to see anything, but the mist massaged his body.

  He enjoyed the sensation over the next few minutes. He could feel the grime falling off like skin from a molting snake. Once the mist dissipated, a sweet fragrance filled the air. He looked at his arm and ran his hand over it. The mist had cleansed him thoroughly. He grabbed and inspected his shirt and noted there was not a trace of black blood or draug guts. He would love to have this back at home. He checked the toilet and noticed it was cleaned out as well. He dressed and walked out of the cleaning room.

  Looking around, he saw Jay trying to interact with Emily at the sustenance replicators. He could tell Emily was less than pleased to talk with him. Her smirk gave it away. Jay scratched his hand and walked away over to where Sanjay was. Sanjay was interacting with one of the consoles by himself. Jay tried to talk to him, but Sanjay brushed him off.

  Jay walked over to Dr. Snowden and chuckled. “Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hard on Sanjay. Your niece doesn’t like me either.”

  Dr. Snowden nodded. “They’re young, angry, and confused.” He smirked at Jay. “And you did call her Hot Pants.”

  Jay looked down and away.

  Dr. Snowden tapped Jay on the arm with the back of his hand. “It’s okay. Let’s see what Evaran’s up to.”

  As he walked over to Evaran, who was standing facing one of the wall consoles, he surveyed the bridge. The bridge was a mash-up of alien spaceship bridges he had seen on television growing up. At the front of the bridge, the wall had a large single screen that covered almost the entirety of it. To the sides of it were multiple smaller screens. The room had two areas. The first area near the entrance had three rows. Each row had consoles and unusual-looking chairs. A walkway down the middle separated the rows into equal parts. A command chair loomed at the end of the walkway. The second area was open in front of the front screen. The sides of the bridge had a continuous console with odd-looking chairs distributed evenly. The center screen showed a planet, with readouts indicating distance and speed on the bottom right.

  “Is that the planet we’re hurtling toward?” asked Dr. Snowden as they walked up to Evaran.

  Evaran turned to face them. “It is. The planet has primitive life but will not have any if this ship hits it.”

  Dr. Snowden noticed that Evaran’s suit was cleaner than before. He figured it must have some type of slow self-cleaning aspect to it.

  Emily had joined them and handed Dr. Snowden a container of water. She looked at the center screen. “It looks so serene.”

  Sanjay joined them. Evaran glanced around at them all, then looked at Dr. Snowden with knowing eyes. “So, what questions do you have?”

  Dr. Snowden smiled. He reflected on how odd it felt to smile. “That UIC, you said it allows you to connect to any system. How does it know how to connect to an alien system like this?”

  “I’d like to know this to,” said Sanjay.

  Evaran nodded. “It is only important that you know it can. The how is … a bit deeper than I think you are ready for. The UIC can interface with any technological system, usually bypassing any security setup.” He faced Sanjay. “Your studies involve working with software. Think of it as a low-level matter decompiler that works on technology. When it is accessing the system, it will snap a few inches from what it is trying to interface, and you will see a blue light begin to intensify. Once it has accessed the system, the UIC will emit a stable blue light, and I can then access it via my ARI. Their security system, which is fairly secure I might add, does not have countermeasures for a device like this.”

  Dr. Snowden furrowed his eyebrows. The idea that the UIC could access any technological system regardless of the security s
eemed implausible. The results, though, were obvious, and he could not deny that.

  “Why would you need the ARI then? There’s already a physical interface,” said Sanjay.

  “The ARI is a generic interface that works across any system. The ARI and the physical interface both access the same set of functionality,” said Evaran.

  Sanjay raised his eyebrows. “So the ARI is just another view essentially.”

  “Exactly. Imagine a sphere, where the bottom is at your hips and the top is at your head. On that sphere lives the interfaces. I get readouts on the surrounding environment based on V’s scanning or mine as well,” said Evaran.

  “Damn, that’s sweet,” said Jay.

  Dr. Snowden shook his head. “I can’t even imagine that. Could these nanobots inside us give us something like that?”

  Evaran half grinned at Dr. Snowden. “Perhaps. I will investigate the possibility later.”

  Dr. Snowden’s eyes lit up.

  “I hate to interrupt, but these draug creatures … specimens like us?” asked Emily.

  Evaran turned toward Emily. “Yes, they have been extinct for a very long time. Nasty creatures, and in following with the theme of the other specimens, apex predators of their world.”

  “Why’d they pick so many of them?” asked Jay.

  “I do not think they picked up all the ones we saw. I am guessing they picked up a brood queen by accident. It would need considerable amounts of food to make that many though.”

  Dr. Snowden gulped. “What’re we going to do about them? If we go out there, we wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “I have been trying to access their global security control system, but it is too far gone. I have, however, been able to access the local security control system. I was able to reroute some functionality.” Evaran tapped at his ARI and directed them to look at the main screen. “You can see it in action for yourselves.”

  They turned to the main screen and watched the draug roaming outside the door. The draug brood was feasting on the dead Krotovore and other dead aliens. A beeping sound rang out. Metallic spiderlike robots swarmed out from the hatches and attacked the draug. The robots began dismantling the draug with incredible efficiency. The draug retreated with the robots in pursuit.

  “Man, they kick ass!” said Jay.

  “Those are security drones. Those drones are strong and fast and can jump and scale walls, and they have numbers. They are also all networked to the ship, so they have a sensor advantage as well and can communicate instantly with each other,” said Evaran.

  “Where were they earlier? We coulda used their help,” said Emily.

  Evaran nodded. “They would not have distinguished us from the draug had they come out. On top of that, they can only be turned on from here since the global security control system is down. It was one of the first systems to go down since it is a primary system. They will ignore us since we are now honorary crew members. I added us to their ship roster database. They got the update when I reactivated the local security control system. However, the update only applies to the ones outside this door. We will need to be careful if we see any outside the surrounding bridge area,” said Evaran.

  “Oh,” said Emily.

  “I did find some other information on your profiles in the system. Seems they kept a master copy of them here. It had information gleaned from the virtual simulation as well as the state of your memories from your initial entry into it,” said Evaran.

  They all turned back around to look at Evaran.

  “Like what?” asked Jay.

  “Well, it says you just had a son before entering the virtual simulation. Sanjay is the first in his family to go to college in America. Emily plays volleyball, and Dr. Snowden recently published a paper,” said Evaran.

  Jay nodded. “I can’t wait to get back to him.”

  Sanjay nodded. “I wish I was back at college.”

  Emily sighed. “Be nice to be on a court instead of here.”

  Sanjay smiled at Emily. “I wish I had time to play sports.”

  Emily glared at Sanjay. “It’s simple time management.”

  Sanjay averted his eyes and looked away.

  Evaran paused and narrowed his eyes. He interacted with his ARI. “Looks like there is more, but a bit more personal. Okay, back to digging for me.”

  Sanjay walked over to one of the consoles and began interacting with it. Jay went over to the sustenance replicators. Dr. Snowden and Emily walked over to one of the consoles in the back row. A dead Krotovore lay sprawled out to the side of it. It was in similar shape to the one they saw outside. The odor of the rotting flesh permeated the air around it. Emily grimaced as she walked past it.

  Dr. Snowden scrutinized the console. He reached out to touch the glass-like console, tracing its multiple circular interfaces along the multicolored lines that connected them. It reminded him of a circuit chip with swirls. He ran his finger across each quadrant of the main circular interface, noting it lit up where his finger touched. He ran his finger over a smaller circle that displayed a series of menu options. He observed that the interface would work better with four eyes, given how spread out the information was. He was able to catch some of the words, but the interface moved too fast. It seemed like a mess.

  “I can barely read anything on this,” said Emily as she touched the screen. A light golden circle lit up under her finger.

  “I guess if I had four arms, more than two eyes, and the ability to process information at blazing speeds, it might make more sense,” said Dr. Snowden. He bumped Emily slightly with his shoulder, causing her to smile.

  Evaran addressed the room. “Who wants to hear a Krotovore speak?”

  Dr. Snowden’s eyes lit up. “What’d you find?”

  “The last visual log in the system. I will play it on the main screen,” said Evaran, pointing to it.

  They focused their attention on the main screen.

  Evaran swiped at his ARI, and the main screen changed from the picture of the planet to a Krotovore with a tight-fitting gray suit. The background around the Krotovore was flashing lights, and a muted warning alert was firing off.

  Dr. Snowden’s chest felt light as a tingling sensation rushed through him. He noted that the background looked similar to where he and Emily stood. He did not know Krotovore facial expressions, but the rapid blinking of the eyes seem to indicate nervousness. Were they the first humans to see a nonhumanoid alien speak? The Krotovore interrupted his thoughts when it spoke in a high-pitched and garbled-sounding voice.

  “Kri’tokhaar reporting. Kri’tokhaar is the last surviving member of the crew. Kri’tokhaar doubts it will make it out of this alive. A majority of the main systems are down except for life support. The global security control main system is down along with a majority of the secondary systems. Bipedal creatures attacked us en route to the last rift we came through. The specimens are roaming the ship freely. Tertiary systems such as transports and replicators are still functional. Kri’tokhaar barely got into the bridge and sealed it. Ghaa’kiPruut was with Kri’tokhaar and made it into the bridge, but Ghaa’kiPruut was mauled severely by a quadruped creature on the way in. Ghaa’kiPruut died shortly thereafter.”

  Dr. Snowden looked down at the Krotovore they had walked around earlier. Although he was excited to see Kri’tokhaar speaking, he was saddened at the situation being described. Was this how they truly spoke, or was it a glitch in the universal translator? It seemed when Ghaa’kiPruut was mentioned, Kri’tokhaar’s eyes blinked slower and its voice slowed down. Maybe these Krotovore do have emotions. He looked at Evaran, who had his hand on his chin and his finger on his lips. It struck him again that for Evaran, this was probably nothing out of the ordinary. However, this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience unfolding before him. He turned to look back at the display as Kri’tokhaar continued speaking.

  “Kri’tokhaar doesn’t know if anyone will ever listen to this, but beware the rifts. This journey through the rifts did not go as plann
ed. It was to be a quick jump through and back. The probes that initially tested it went in and came back. They reported an unknown constellation on the other end. We thought it was stable, but found that it is not. We have been through eighteen rifts now, with each one placing us in an unknown location. We still did our mission, however, picking up species for study and researching everyplace we went. At our last pickup, we retrieved four bipedal creatures. That region appears to have an unusually high amount of bipedal forms. It took us three weeks to get to the next rift, and on the last week, we encountered an aggressive bipedal species that attacked us after failed communications. Although our ship had better defenses, they had more ships. We made it through another rift, but the systems damage had been done.”

  Dr. Snowden waved his hand at the display. “Can we pause for a sec?”

  Evaran paused the playback.

  Dr. Snowden furrowed his eyebrows and glanced at Emily before looking at Evaran. “Who’re the bipedal species they’re referring to? I know it isn’t us.”

  Evaran placed his hands behind his back and pursed his lips before speaking. “Earth is part of a galactic community. The Krotovore ship was flying through the Kreagan Star Empire, which stretches over a vast area of space around both Earth and the space-time rift. They are humanoid and are aggressive at defending their space.”

  “As advanced as this ship seems, it sounds like the Kreagans must’ve been fairly advanced,” said Dr. Snowden.

  “Not so much advanced as different. The Krotovore region of space in their galaxy only has one humanoid race, and they are primitive technology-wise. The Kreagan are far from primitive. They are the dominant power in your section of the galaxy. The Krotovore had no defense against some of their weapons it appears, based on the logs I have read,” said Evaran.

  Sanjay raised his hand. “I noticed they referred to time in weeks. I assume the universal translator is translating that? To something we would understand?”