Lives Of The Unknown Book 1: The Legend of Andrew Lockeford (7 page)

The alien looked down at
Andrew discontentedly, seeing that he alone with his physical
body could not carry the unconscious human. The teleporter to the
analysis room was malfunctioning for the time being, so this alien
would have to find another way to transport the subject. He called
in another alien, who looked different—this one did have “black
marbles” for eyes, and its muscles appeared dark enough to show
through its skin. However, it wasn’t any taller than the first, and
its muscles weren’t any larger. It lifted up Andrew with ease,
though, carrying him in one arm like a log.

Andrew had been laid down onto a table in a
spherical room, with the two mentioned aliens along with three more
surrounding him. Three of the aliens in the room at this time had
regular eyes while the other two had black-marble eyes. All of the
aliens were wearing the black suits typically found on Ku-an Doel.
The original one that found Andrew shone a light upon the human’s
body that made his clothes, skin, and some of the muscles
underneath look invisible down to a specific distance—they intended
to view the organs within. Another alien tapped and slid its finger
on a floating screen in order to record what it saw.

However, while this process allowed the
aliens to see Andrew’s insides without surgery, they still needed
to take out some blood, spinal fluid, stomach acid, and samples of
various tissues to determine physical properties. These aliens may
have visited Earth a few times and abducted humans before, but
anyone should use several samples or subjects in a scientific
experiment in order to account for error; Andrew was one of many
subjects. His clothes were removed for the extraction
process—compared to the sanitary black suits, human shirts and
pants were rather dirty, to say the least. The alien placed rubbing
alcohol onto the underside of Andrew’s elbow, then sticking a
syringe through the spot to draw out a trace of blood. This method
is used for diabetics to track their blood sugar, but aliens use
this trace of blood to determine his overall health, blood content,
genes from the DNA, and even some personality traits. The wound was
small enough to clot within seconds.

Afterwards, the alien doctor took a small
tube and inserted it through the human’s esophagus, reaching the
stomach to retrieve some stomach fluids. This wasn’t so much to
determine what humans in general ate as it was to know how healthy
of a diet this human had.

They decided not to draw out some fluids
such as synovial (joint) fluid or urine because the only major
purpose in doing so was to find out what they were made of and
their function in the body. These aliens have had enough test
humans to know these facts. As for sperm….well, these aliens didn’t
want humans of their own—they would just end up creating more
political issues for themselves.

The last fluid to be obtained would be
spinal fluid—doing this the old-fashioned way would most often
cause the unconscious patient to wake up in excruciating pain and
move about violently. Rather than let that happen, the operating
alien told a bystander to grab the sixth bottle to the right on a
nearby desk, which contained a powerful anesthetic. However, this
upcoming series of events didn’t go according to plan. Out of the
dozens of unmarked bottles sitting on the desk, only one was
anesthetic, and the alien grabbed the one next to it by mistake.
Super-intelligent species make mistakes, too. The bottle that was
taken contained a dilute solution of sodium hydroxide. The bottle
was passed to the operator, the sodium hydroxide was injected, and
Andrew woke up in as much pain as he would from the unhindered
spinal tap.

Andrew’s eyes opened wide, followed by
a loud scream and some surprised aliens. All of them proceeded to
hold him down, and they did it effectively, considering all five
did the job. Since the lye was injected into his spine, his back
felt like it was literally on fire. One of the aliens took some
diluted acid and poured it onto the punctured area, which
neutralized the reaction. Finally, Andrew was doused with water to
take care of any remaining lye and acid, while the alien that
picked the wrong bottle was sent out of the room, never to be seen
again. Andrew was fully conscious now, and he was trying to see
everything that was around him. Lying down with his back towards
the ceiling, he could only see the table he was on and the desk of
bottles beside him. His heart was racing, and if the aliens were
not still holding him down, he would
not
have stayed on the table. His back would
forever have a scar from this incident.

Moments later, a tall alien with black eyes
and dark muscles appeared before the table, and everyone stopped
what they were doing to give this visitor a salute. Andrew took
this chance to turn himself onto his back to see what they were
suddenly focused on. Andrew couldn’t hear what any of these aliens
were saying—especially since it was an alien language and Andrew
didn’t have a translator—but he could tell that this tall guy was
an important figure, perhaps the captain of the ship. The black
suit that it was wearing had a large, golden, intricate design
right in the center, and its hands were placed behind its back.
This alien looked even more intelligent and official from the way
it was standing. Unfortunately, at the same time, it didn’t look
like it was here to welcome Andrew as one of them, but more like
how a master would look at a slave.

Andrew heard the leader saying something to
one of the aliens, and the response that came from it uttered,
“English.” After that, the leader introduced itself to Andrew.

“Hello, Earthling. I am Commander Fall, and
you are our subject. We are part of a race known as the Selentors,
and—to save you from asking the most frequently asked question—we
have indeed been to your planet many times. Some of your species
captured a few of us, but we have captured more of you.”

“Why? What’s with all of this? Why are you
telling me this?” Andrew inquired.

“I don’t need to tell you anything. It’s
just a matter of courtesy. And also, simply because I can. Even so,
we mainly need you for anatomical research for humans and not much
else. If anything, we’ll keep you if you’re healthy.”

“And then?”

“I have no need to tell you.”

Sounds pretty ominous, thought Andrew. He
looked again at the aliens beside him and noticed that two of them
were lime green rather than gray. “I have a lot of questions for
you people. Could you at least tell me why some of you guys are
green while the rest are gray?”

“Why are some of
you
humans white while the others are
brown?”

Andrew said nothing else while Fall walked
to the side of him and looked closely.

“For such a close resemblance to savage
animals, you do appear somewhat civil.” Andrew took offense to that
statement, and it showed in his expression. “Even so, you sure are
primitive—your species divided into pieces, each piece developing a
society to manage a specific part of your world. And yet, you
cannot manage to unite your world as a whole, let alone figure out
that you are not alone in the universe.”

“So you think it’s a bad thing that we can’t
contact aliens yet?”

“Precisely. Even when you do, you don’t have
the technology to contact us clearly enough. All we can receive and
return are signals and waves of vague messages. The best form of
contact,” said Fall, as he grasped Andrew’s chin and pushed it up
slightly, “is physical, face-to-face.”

At least Andrew didn’t have to worry about
these aliens texting rather than talking. Although that pet peeve
was a lot more faint now that he had bigger things to worry about
here. Fall let go of Andrew’s chin after stating the previous
quote.

“We would love to do that, to just drop by
your planet and show your planet our superiority, but doing so
would break a treaty we made, and thus a war would start. We
already have enough conflict over religion.”

“But you guys are super-advanced aliens—are
you telling me that even with all your science and technology, a
God still exists?”

“If by ‘God,’ you mean Yhn, then yes. At
least our enemies still believe so. We, however, believe that
science can prove everything in this universe, and we highly doubt
that our lives are monitored by some omnipotent force.”

“Some people from my planet believe that a
man named Jesus was the Son of God—or Yhn, in this case—and that he
came from the afterli—”

“Now that’s just plain idiotic. Why would
humans, out of all of the species in the whole universe, be so
special, that one of your kind came from some magical place as the
lord of the universe? That, right there, proves how primitive you
humans are.”

“I never said I believed that—”

“THAT’S NOT THE POINT.”

Suddenly Andrew became very frightened, as
though he was in the face of a killer, that he could die so quickly
if he wasn’t careful. Andrew simply stopped talking until he was
asked to.

Fall decided to cool his head as well. “Well
then, back to business. My associates here will inspect your brain,
take care of those useless organs of yours, and then you will be
done.”

Useless organs? It took Andrew a
moment to realize that he was referring to his genitals. He wasn’t
fond of that idea at all—he hadn’t had kids yet, and he didn’t want
to lose them before then. Only after that, it would
probably
be okay.

Andrew wanted to ask what would happen once
he was “done,” but he knew he wouldn’t get the answer he wanted.
Chances are, he would either die or be put to work as a slave. At
the very best, he would live with some other aliens; regardless of
the case, however, he knew he would never see his fellow species
again.

“Voriaku, I leave the rest to you.”
Commander Fall and four of the aliens left the room, leaving only
Andrew and this normal-eyed alien named Voriaku to inspect his
brain.

As Andrew laid upon the table while the
alien placed something—it looked like a helmet—onto his head, he
thought about his life. It may have been rather uneventful up until
today, but at least he didn’t suffer much. He had a great family, a
nice childhood, and he knew it could have been way worse. Like
working in a sweatshop or having to be executed for no good reason.
Andrew decided to perform an awkward attempt to chat with the guy
working on him.

“So, how’s it going, Voriaku? How’s your
life?”

Voriaku looked at him for a moment, but said
nothing and redirected his focus back to the screen. He could
probably speak English, but he just decided not to—or he was
ordered not to.

By the way, there were no locks, straps or
arms that were keeping Andrew down this time. He could easily
escape from this room and take on the alien beside him, but that
could just as easily be part of a trap.

When Voriaku took off the helmet from
the human’s head, he said, “Your intelligence capacity is quite
exceptional, not like the other subjects we’ve had so far.” So
he
could
speak English.
Having an IQ of 135, Andrew was quite smart compared to many of the
people he knew. “It would be a shame if this mind of yours would
just go to waste. Of course, it’s not up to
me
to decide that.”

For once in his life, a reaction triggered
in Andrew’s brain to take a big risk. He sprang up and off of the
table, punched Voriaku’s head rapidly like a fast bag, and slammed
his head onto the table. Voriaku was definitely caught off-guard,
but he wasn’t going to die that easily. He quickly pressed a button
on a device attached to his wrist, which was supposed to alert the
other aliens to come for help. The moment he did, however, nothing
happened. Andrew threw Voriaku onto the ground, drove his fingers
into his eyes, and stood on his neck. Voriaku was still as a corpse
at this point, although Andrew couldn’t tell for sure. A few
bottles and some equipment had been broken from the struggle. He
took a bunch of untouched bottles and randomly poured them onto the
alien. He heard a lot of hissing, and Andrew immediately ran out of
the room in case the chemical reaction created something
poisonous—or worse, an explosion. He did not want to find out; all
he wanted was to get off this ship.

He sprinted down a curved hall, searching
for any sign of escape pods while watching out for aliens that
could be nearby. Much to his surprise, no aliens were nearby, and
no alarms were going off. Either this was an elaborate trap or
Andrew was really damn lucky. After taking some turns and running
down some more halls, he found himself in front of a storage room
with the door opened. It was an armory, by the looks of it.

“Ooooooooohhhh, nice,” said the human,
looking at all the weaponry before his eyes. One item, however,
caught his eye. It was within a glass casing, unlocked, with some
poor-looking metal connecting the case to the wall. There was
writing on a plaque below it, but he couldn’t read Alien. Or
Selentor—whatever the aliens called their language. The item was a
sword that looked like the blade had been cut clean, down to a
sixth of the size. As he looked closer, however, he could tell that
it was instead a series of segments collapsed into one another,
like an antenna on the remote of a remote-controlled car. He took
the sword out of the case and held it in his hands. There was a
button on the handle, and he was almost curious enough to press
it.

Suddenly he heard footsteps in the armory;
he took cover in one of the aisles. He saw two aliens, both
green-skinned and white-eyed, walking down the main aisle,
searching for the noise Andrew made earlier. One was five feet tall
and the other was about half the height. The half-height one seemed
vaguely different with its figure, other than height, but Andrew
couldn’t tell why. However, when the human and the aliens came into
range with each other, he pressed the button. The sword expanded
into full length so that it looked like a blade now; furthermore,
the blade heated up quickly to an orange glow, and as he rushed
forward and swung it, an intense heat rushed towards the aliens.
This heat was strong enough to set the aliens on fire without the
blade itself touching them. Andrew himself could feel the heat up
ahead, but it wasn’t burning hot to him. Both the aliens had fallen
down hollering and burning, and the human felt bad for them because
they weren’t technically doing anything wrong. He had to guess out
of self-defense that they were going to take him back to Commander
Fall. He looked at his blade for a second, seeing how all the air
past the handle seemed to be blazing hot, but his hand felt just
fine on the handle. The dull side of the blade also seemed to be
less scorching. He let go of the button and ran out of the armory,
careful not to let the blade get too near himself. He didn’t care
about anything else in that place—this sword seemed pretty
effective to him.