The Infinite Evolution - Conversion (37 page)

“
That’s fine.”

“
So you are probably wondering why I asked to
speak with you.”

“
The thought did cross my mind.”

“
And so it should. Jade has anyone ever told
you that you are unique.”

Jade’s voice lowered in tone, “My dad used to tell
me that all the time.”

“
Did your dad ever tell you why?”

Jade looked up with curiosity, “What do you
mean?”

“
Did he ever tell you your true
destiny?”

Jade laughed, “True destiny? No, he never said
anything about my ‘true destiny.’ Why?”

“
One request I have of you, Jade,
is simple. Tell the truth. I would rather have you tell me
something along the lines of you’d rather not talk about it, than
fabricate the truth.”

At this point Jade started to become defensive and
replied, “Fine, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“
Ok, fair enough. Can I show you
a recording of a past event?”

“
I don’t care.”

Izri turned back to his holoscreen where he again
punched in a series of commands. The lighting in the room dimmed
and part of the room turned into a three-dimensional hologram of
Jade’s old home before Spencer died. Jade looked up in amazement as
she studied the details of what projected before her. Jade was
tempted to jump up and run into this virtual room, but restrained
herself in an attempt not to look eager.

“
Now Jade, what I am about to show you may
make you a little emotional, so if you want me to stop this I will,
ok?”

Jade, still amazed with what she
was viewing, gave a simple nod. Izri took this as a yes and allowed
the virtual recording to continue.

The room, which Jade was
currently studying, was her old kitchen and as she watched what was
in front of her, the room started to change. It was as if she was
watching a three-dimensional event through someone else’s eyes, or
playing a first person video game. This person who she had not yet
identified, walked over to a cabinet, retrieved a bowl, filled it
with cereal, added milk, and started to shovel it into their mouth
as if they had not eaten for a couple of days. Once they were
finished, they dumped out the excess milk, placed the bowl into the
dishwasher, headed out of the kitchen, into the living room, down a
hallway, and into a bedroom.

At this point Jade realized the person she was
watching was indeed herself. This was one of her midnight snacks
when she lived in her old home.

As the program continued the
virtual Jade laid down in her bed and started to surf the Internet
with one of her tablets when she sat up all of a sudden and asked,
“Who’s there?” The virtual Jade looked over by her bedroom door
called out “lights,” and saw her father, Spencer.

“
Oh, hi, Dad - you scared me.”

“
I am sorry honey, that was not
my intent,” replied a virtual Spencer.

As the real Jade studied this virtual interpretation
of Spencer, she noticed he had a slight bluish glow around him and
the virtual Jade did not. Jade looked over to Izri and pointed out
this discrepancy.

Izri simply replied, “What you
are seeing is what you experienced then, now please turn back
around and pay attention.”

Jade did just that without making any smart remarks
or gestures and continued to watch with amazement.

“
So what do you want Dad,” asked the virtual
Jade.

“
I would like to take a moment of
your time and speak with you about something very important,”
replied the virtual Spencer in a subdued voice.

“
Ok, why are you talking like that? It’s like
you’re acting as if you’re some short of alien,” laughed the
virtual Jade.

“
Please listen,” as the virtual
Spencer repositioned himself to the foot of the bed. “You need to
get dressed. I want to take you to a very special place, I will
meet you outside when you are ready.”

As the virtual Jade tried to solicit further
information the virtual Spencer, simply walked out of her bedroom.
As quickly as humanly possible, the virtual Jade threw some
clothing on and ran outside where she found her father waiting for
her in the car.

“
Ok, I’m here, now what?”

“
In due time, sit back and relax.”

Normally the virtual Jade would
have been questioning her father on their destination, but for some
unknown reason the virtual Jade sat back and actually relaxed. The
drive took close to an hour and upon their arrival, the virtual
Jade noticed a stone path that led to a beautiful lake. They both
exited the vehicle and walked towards a lake adorned by a full
moon. After finding a small rock to sit on, her father looked at
her with a proud smile.

“
I took you here because of the
pure beauty of such an overlooked event in our every day lives.
There are moments like this one where we lose sight of our true
existence. I am going to explain something which you may find a
little shocking, so please do not say a word until I am
finished.”

The virtual Jade followed with a simple, “Ok,
Dad.”

“
You are a very special young
lady.”

At this point in the virtual presentation, Jade
remembered and started to recall some of the details.

“
In the future a time will come where your
assistance on this planet will be called upon. You need to answer
this calling for you are of true descent.”

“
Dad, what are you talking about?”

“
Listen to me. Your body and mind
have been forged on this planet you call Earth. I understand what I
am telling you now makes no sense to you, but someday it will. I am
here to stress to you, that you must accept your fate and make the
right decision.”

“
And what decision is that?”

“
You will know when the time
comes.”

“
Jade, unlike everyone else on this planet,
you are a true native. Your mind, your being, your consciousness
developed by itself without any influence. You are of true
intellect.”

The virtual Spencer leaned over
to the virtual Jade and placed his right hand on her forehead.
Within a few seconds, she realized what she was hearing was indeed
true, but was left with no understanding on how to interpret this
new found information.

“
Who are you?” asked the virtual
Jade.

“
I am your father. Now look upon
this lake and accept what is in plain site.”

The three-dimensional environment faded away and
Izri’s dull office came back into light.

“
I remember that,” said Jade with tears coming
down her face.

“
I am guessing you never really understood
what your father was saying. Is this a correct
assumption?”

“
No, I never did. Was that really my
father?”

“
Yes, in the sense of his
being.”

“
His being?”

“
What you saw that night was your father’s
biological form, but his mind was temporarily being orchestrated by
someone else, that was why he had a bluish glow to him.”

“
Well if that was someone’s way of explaining
who I was supposed to be, they did a real crappy job. All that did
was confuse me. Who was it controlling my dad and why couldn’t they
have given specific details?”

“
It was I, and when I fed you this information
my faction wanted you to choose your own path with minimal
involvement from an outside influence. You see when members from
our planet meddle in other humanoid’s affairs this could influence
the way they would normally develop.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Remember last night when
Serafina mentioned there have been only two newborns on this planet
who developed their own consciousnesses after rejecting our
downloads?”

“
Yes.”

“
Well, Jade, you would be the
second.”

“
So what are you saying I’m the only one on
Earth who isn’t some drone from your planet?”

“
First, people of this planet are
not drones, they are just as human as you, except we laid the
foundation for their mental state and are able to be upload after
their death. Your body somehow evolved and created its own
awareness and when you pass on you will go to that great
unknown.”

Jade looked at Izri as if he was the grim reaper and
followed up with, “That certainly doesn’t make me feel
comfortable.”

“
It should. Jade, do you not see
the importance of who you are? Of all the planets we have ever
harvested, from all the trillions of field programs we have
created, you are one of only two humanoids who we know of that have
ever created themselves without us intervening.”

Jade sat there in disbelief, and
tried to process the information. There were so many thoughts,
which ran through her mind. This had to be a prank, but she quickly
dismissed this because she always suspected something different
about herself.

Jade asked Izri, “So why am I here and what is my
importance?”

“
Certain members and I feel you
are the key to reproduction without scientific intervention. After
the first humanoid of your kind was discovered, we tried to study
his anomaly and obtained many hypothesis, but unfortunately what we
discovered we could not confirm.”

“
Why not?”

“
Because certain members of my
planet found out who he really was. At which point they persuaded
certain Earth humanoids and their religion, indirectly of course,
to persecute and later execute him. This man knew of his importance
and tried to spread positive ideals and beliefs. Some of his
teachings even caught on. He felt it was important to teach
humanoids from your planet what the true meaning of life
was.”

Jade interrupted, “And what’s that?”

“
That is for you to discover, not
for me to teach. When this man died, we unfortunately never learned
of his connection with our planet. We have strong evidence to
believe members from my planet assisted members from your planet in
the torturing and killing of this man.”

“
So, if I understand what you’re saying, there
may be a group of people who would like me dead?”

“
Possibly, if they knew you were
alive.”

“
Why wouldn’t they know?”

“
After the birth of the first
anomaly our faction decided to monitor all humanoid life on your
planet, by keeping tabs on its total population. We decided to
conduct the watch on Earth due to an opposing faction who found
this anomaly as a threat. We felt it was safer this way. There was
also a great debate and the council as a whole concluded this was a
fluke of nature. Unfortunately, it was written off as such. Once
events had gone back to normal, we created this underground
facility and staffed it with both humanoids from your planet and
ours. Now keep in mind building this facility was a great feat. We
had to secure funds and acquire a large amount of resources without
using any of our equipment or technology from our home
planet.”

“
Is that because you were unable to transport
it here from your planet?” asked Jade.

“
Precisely, all we had was the
knowledge we brought with us and we could only use it with Earth’s
modern day technology. We were certainly able to modify the
technology to fit our needs, which created a dilemma for us. Do we
share the technology we have developed with your culture or do we
wait for your culture to invent it for themselves?”

“
So what did you do?”

“
A little bit of both. We
implanted members of our society into Earth’s scientific community
by downloading their programs into humanoid shells. They assisted
with the development of certain technical and scientific
achievements. While this was going on, we were acquiring the
financial and political influence needed to fulfill our goal. We
broke ground for this facility on March 13, 1962 and it came online
July 21, 1969 the day after the moon landing. Once we were
operational we started monitoring many activities, including the
most important one, finding another one of you. And we did, on
October 31, 2026.”

“
That’s my birthday.”

“
Yes and after doing our daily population
count on how many field programs we currently had on Earth we
compared it to how many people were actually on Earth…”

Jade interrupted, “And you were over by one.”

“
That is correct, now we just needed to find
out where that one was and to use a Earth metaphor, that was like
trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

“
How and when did you find me?”

“
Using the technology and resources at our
disposal it took us eleven years, five months and nineteen
days.”

Jade conducted some quick math in
her head, “So that would’ve been September 5, 2037. That was the
day you contacted me by using my dad’s body.

“
It was, and when we made contact
with you we confirmed what we already suspected. Your predecessor
was indeed more than just some anomaly. Evolution had once again
triumphed over humanoids.”

As Jade sat there thinking how
she was some mutant freak, she started to realize the importance
she may have to all future generations of harvested humanoids. If
she were created without an alien influence, then others like her
could also be born, breaking a long history of dependence. Jade
understood why some people on Izri’s planet would be threatened by
this, especially if humanoids were dependent on harvesting for
their society’s survival.