Charged - Book One (14 page)

“This one is good,” he said to the rest and then held
out his hand to Aaron, who put his hand in his. Then Aaron put his
other hand on top of the creature’s hand. The creature looked up
and smiled again.

“This one is a part of us.” There was a slight
whispering among the group and then they started to walk towards
us. I kept smiling and so did Aaron. I was really nervous now. I
couldn’t tell if they were smiling or going to eat us. But I
decided for Kye and Aaron I would give all in the room the benefit
of the doubt, except for Danel.

I reached out my hand for any of them to grab and it
was taken, again and again. At first it was just the smaller women
who had touched my hand, but they still miniaturized it, wrapping
all their disjointed fingers around it. It bothered me but I looked
into their eyes with an honest soul. They seemed more than
intrigued by us, almost excited. And Ben and Kye stood on the side,
watching all of this.

One female had walked up to Aaron, asking if she
could touch his hair. The only way I knew she was a female was by
the sound of her voice. The males had very low voices, but the
females were almost breathy and soft-spoken.

“Of course,” he said.

She put her spider-like hand toward the beginning of
his hairline at his forehead and moved it back through his hair and
told him he was beautiful. He didn’t flinch once. God, this kid was
brave. And I thought the “beautiful” comment was funny because
Aaron was too thin for his height, but he had a strong face. He
graciously thanked her.

Several others did the same to him, but none of them
did this to me. I guess I was too old to look like a child to them.
However, I was greatly pleased at our reception. It was going much
better than I’d anticipated. None of them seemed to be drooling for
human flesh and even some of the females were hesitant to touch
Aaron’s brightly-colored hair. I smiled at Kye and she smiled back
and Ben took notice of the slight exchange between us. My gaze
probably did wander towards Kye’s silk dress one too many
times.

It was as if the only person who didn’t want us here
was Danel. Of course, he was not present. One female who got very
close to me asked if Aaron was my child and I smiled really big and
said, “I wish he were, he’s very smart, but we’re just friends.”
Kye overheard this and I felt a little embarrassed. Although, Aaron
did look really young, he could’ve passed for a teenager.

There was a formal introduction of everyone after the
initial greeting.

The others moved away from us and Kye introduced
us.

“Lewis, Aaron, from left to right, this is Jessica,
Alma, Ursa, Collin, Kayet, Lyra, Pavo, Loft, Aric, Lee, Cymry,
Aeyan, Isaac, Boyd and Ben. I’m sorry that everyone couldn’t be
present.”

“It’s a pleasure to be here,” Aaron said. He was
mesmerized by them, as was I. Collin and Aeyan were not as
gelatinous as Danel. They seemed more defined, slimmer and I could
see the muscles under the fabrics they were wearing. They must have
been younger. I wondered how strong they were.

We sat down for lunch with them. Kye sat next to me,
Ben across from me and for the most part, things were quite
pleasant. They ate their glowing vegetables and we had pasta and
salads. We didn’t comment on their food but what they were eating
didn’t seem appealing to me. Aaron and I were the only ones with
silverware. Watching them pull apart their vegetables was
unnerving, as they slowly mashed them down with glistening,
metallic-looking teeth. Lyra made a small comment that human food
was very pungent in odor to them. Ben glanced at her for a second
and she made no other comments for the rest of the meal.

We had more questions for them than they did us.
Aaron wanted to know how much they could lift, if they were
carbon-based entities and what they thought of humans. I tried to
ask nothing at all and found myself smiling, even laughing under my
breath at some of Aaron’s questions. But clearly he couldn’t help
himself. I swear I almost understood one of Ben’s expressions when
Aaron kept asking question after question. And the expression was,
“oh boy, this one’s young.” I had to smile at that, too.

Kye was almost laughing out loud when Aaron asked if
they could breathe water or any type of fluids, but he didn’t seem
to notice. All in all, everything was all right. Ben and Alma had a
great sense of humor and Jessica seemed to be the youngest and just
as excitable as Aaron. And I tried to mentally catalog their
expressions in the hopes to read them better.

Not everyone was present, but after a while, it was
clear that almost everyone at the table were the children of Ben
and Alma, except for Cymry and Kye. I asked why others didn’t move
from other ships to occupy this one. It seemed too big for just
twenty of them, but that was never answered except for a vague
response from Ben.

“Because this ship is taboo, kid,” he said,
lightheartedly. “Too much history on this ship,” he finished with a
light smile.

This intrigued me and I wanted to ask further about
it, but not just yet. Slowly, my nervousness subsided. I’d judged
them all too quickly and secretly I wanted my suspicions to leave
me altogether, but they didn’t.

“So you can read human emotions?” I said to Ben,
because he said, ‘this one is good,’ when he took my hand. I was
curious because Kye said they couldn’t.

“Nope. I read your files,” he said.

“It gets pretty dull down here. Need to have a little
fun sometimes,” Kye said, smiling.

OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, Kye and Ben gave us a full
tour of the ship. It was much larger than I initially assumed and
supplied everything they needed. There were combustion chambers for
waste. Uneaten food went back into the red soil like a compost
pile, but it didn’t smell like one. The gardens supplied enough
food for their ship and two others. The waterfalls were
self-replenishing, so they would never run out, although I didn’t
understand how. And the spiny gelatinous creature that crossed my
path when we first arrived was actually a pet that Kye tried to
compare to a lizard. Honestly, I couldn’t see the similarities.
There were other pets in the gardens that were less
arachnid-looking, but none of which seemed like Zero.

The first thing they showed us was the exit, just in
case we changed our minds, which I found amusing. It was the same
elevator shaft we came in, but apparently no key was needed to get
out. Then they showed us the gardens, which were beautiful in a
mysterious way. The plants still brushed against Aaron and me when
we went through them again. Kye explained that they were not
greeting us, but they were drawn to the sweat on our bodies. So
they were licking us. Kye and the others didn’t have sweat glands.
Their bodies released any excess moisture by producing the chemical
light under their skin.

Aaron was most interested in the medical labs and
what they offered. He had many questions as to why they didn’t
share their technology and the next day separated from me and Kye
to meet with Jessica in one of the labs.

Danel did everything in his power to avoid us. When
we started eating our meals in the main hall with everyone else, he
started eating in his quarters and he tried to appear busy whenever
I passed him in the corridors.

ON THE SIXTH DAY of our stay, Ben buzzed in on the
screen in the suite while Kye and I were having coffee.

“Lew, I can’t join you guys today. We’re having
problems with one of the climate controls in garden dome six and
Collin and I need to take care of it.”

“You want me to help?”

“No, that’s okay. Don’t worry we’ll have a job for
you in no time.” He laughed and then the screen went blank.

“Oh, he will, too,” Kye said, laughing, grabbing my
hand towards the door.

“Since Aaron is with Jessica all day, I want to show
you something.”

I followed her down the main corridor all the way to
the end. She punched in a code on the last door and it slid back
into the wall. When we walked in, the dim blue lights came on
automatically.

“Bright,” Kye said and the blue lights increased by a
hundred percent.

We were surrounded by six large tubes, suspended in
the air. They seemed to be floating, attached to nothing. I had to
assume it was some kind of magnetic field suspending them. They
were approximately three feet in diameter and ten feet long. Aaron
would’ve loved this. It only took me a second to realize where we
were. Kye studied me for a second, but said nothing.

“Clones.”

Kye only nodded.

I walked deeper into the room toward the back and
there was another section beyond a glass wall. It was dark and
almost endless; apparently, the ship was much larger than my
initial assumptions. I was headed toward what looked like a dim
gray cave, but in fact it was a dome twice the size of the garden
we had initially entered. The ceiling height was the same, but the
bottomless floor ran endlessly into an abyss.

“What is this?”

Kye smiled at my curiosity.

“Full lights on Cryo Unit One,” she ordered the
ship’s computer.

I looked into the dome and it spanned out at least
four hundred feet in front of me. I stared out at thousands of
tubular containers, all vertically attached to the dome walls.
There was a large orange sphere rotating suspended in midair in the
center of the dome. There seemed to be hundreds of thousands of
tubes and I thought they were all full of clones. It must have
showed on my face, because Kye’s voice was suddenly reassuring.

“This is how they got here. It took some time, even
for them. And already being thousands of years old, they couldn’t
afford to waste it.”

I almost pressed my face against the glass, searching
for anything in the tubes.

“They’re empty. They used most of them to transport
the vegetation on their planet. Only twenty thousand were saved and
there are less than half of that remaining.” The sadness in her
voice pulled me out of my suspicious nature and I stepped back from
the glass. I could see they were empty. The size of the dome was
astounding. I wondered how close it was to the surface and how deep
it was in the Earth. I was mystified at what was in front of me, at
the thought of possible long-term space travel for humans.

“It’s amazing, even to me,” she said.

I’d underestimated their technology.

“The ones you see in this small room were cryo tubes
originally, but have been converted for cloning. I tried to
convince them to convert the other cryo units for some humans in
case there was another catastrophic event and they are still
discussing it.”

As I stared at the thousands of tubes, I contemplated
if that were a possibility. Would they take us with them, if
something did happen? Would they at least take the loyal ones, the
humans that kept them hidden?

“How many are there?” I said.

“A lot more than were ever originally occupied.”

Relief spread across my face. Just six clones, not
enough to start an army. I started looking into each one of the
tubes around us, but I couldn’t match any of the bodies to anyone I
met. Most of the bodies were significantly underdeveloped and
grotesque. They were encased in a thick, clear liquid that was not
from the waterfalls in the garden rooms. There were several tubes
running in and out of their bodies and hooked up to a large
cylindrical machine that was attached to the ceiling. I hadn’t seen
one without clothes on and even though most of them appeared
humanoid, the deep grooves that looked like gills in their chests
and abdomens negated any of these thoughts. I was thankful not to
see any extra arms or large tentacles protruding from their
bodies.

“How long does it take for them to develop?”

“Almost a century.”

“And if they are developed before they are
needed?”

“They are left in suspension.”

Then I recognized Danel’s clone. This irritated me
and it showed on my face. I looked for a clone of Kye, but I knew I
wouldn’t find one.

“This is the first generation of clones for them.
Even Aerus was cloned, who is older than Ben. He died almost eighty
years ago, but they were able to start a clone for him before he
died of old age. When his clone is ready, he will not retain all of
his memories, only the ones established throughout his first five
thousand years. So when he wakes up, he won’t remember me.”

It didn’t seem fair to me that they had no intentions
of cloning her. Then I remembered Danel broke the law when he made
her. She kept Danel’s emotions in check; she was necessary, even if
unwanted. This thought saddened me, but at the main hall when
everyone was introduced, they treated her with kindness, with
compassion. To me, she seemed loved by them, so why not clone her
just once?

“Did you ask to be cloned?”

“The companion cloning was not a success, something
about the mixtures of DNA and I don’t want to be cloned.” She
seemed exhausted. Her shoulders slumped forward a little and I
walked towards her.

“How old are you?”

“Ninety-seven.” This was not the number I had in my
head and I was astonished she looked so young.

“How much time do you have left?” For a second, I
thought the question was almost rude, but she answered without the
slightest hint of irritation.

“A little more than you, I think.”

“Do you age?”

“No, this is how I looked when I was twenty-five and
I haven’t looked different since then.”

“Why don’t you want to be cloned?” I was asking a lot
of questions, but she seemed happy to have the company. Then the
look faded in her eyes. She said nothing as she stared out into the
middle of the room, lost for a second.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”