NOVEL NEXT Chapter 10: Information
The blue skinned Lanthonean sat across from her in the small interview room. He had both hand and ankle cuffs on, though Dr. Montgomery knew it was more about making his escape harder than him being a threat. His sheet had said he was in for smuggling, but had generally been passive when arrested.
“So… what are you after then?” he asked, his antennae flicking in annoyance as he lounged in the chair across the table from her.
“I represent a group simply engaged in some general fact finding,” Selma replied. “There’s an item we’ve heard about that we would like some secondary information sources on. Smugglers like yourself are likely to give more reliable information than diplomats.”
“Mhm. I can’t promise I know anything about anything,” the man said with a grin. “I know a lot less about many things than your government insists I do.”
She knew he was lying, but didn’t care at this point. “My questions do not involve information that we would consider criminal.”
He raised an eyebrow as his antenna relaxed. “Oh?”
“Just some general questions about something called the M’tethon,” she said.
Only to watch as his eyes went wide with fear. “The… the M’tethon? Why in the world would you be asking about that?”
“That’s not information you need,” she replied.
“Is it… if it’s anywhere near this planet… is it?”
“Again, you don’t need to know. It’s irrelevant to my questions for you.”
He stared at her, muttering something in his own language before returning to English. “It matters because if it’s anywhere near this planet I’d like to take my chances with the Alliance extradition request. I have no intentions of dying on this rock.”
“Oh?” Selma asked, keeping her face neutral, though she felt this was useful information. As well as coming easier than she’d expected.
A lesser woman would have worried about that, but to her it meant there was something interesting to be learned.
“The word ‘M’tethon’ comes from the name of the god of death in the First Imperial Dynasty’s language. They gave it to the M’tethon because it more than earned it. It ravages worlds with an unstoppable hunger for destruction.”
“And where did it come from?” she asked.
The Issiod’rian prisoner twitched. “No one knows. It’s just always been there. Showing up on new worlds from time to time. And then destroying them.”
“They’ve only ever stopped it once,” the Grey held in the Albany detention facility replied.
“How did they manage that?” Selma asked, wanting any relevant information to her job.
“It was the First Dynasty… and it cost them the army that conquered the Galaxy to save their homeworld,” the Grey replied. “If you had that kind of fire power I suppose you might be able to stop it. But you don’t. So, my advice? Try to keep it at least ten light years from your planet. Maybe more, since you lack the evacuation infrastructure.”
“And how does it get between worlds?” she asked, glad that the chairs for the facility under Bethesda were more comfortable than the last two facilities.
“I don’t know. It has something to do with entering a, like, spore form. I’m not a scientist,” the Kobaroian man said, scratching at his handcuffs. “I think it sometimes it blows up the planets? So it get flung into space? It often went missing for so long some people started to think it was a myth.”
She should have known better than to interview a Kobaroian. Still, if even one of them knew what this thing was then it showed her it was well known in the galaxy.
The results of the interviews were clear. The M’tethon, the Asset, was, apparently, a world destroying doomsday device. Which was… rather more dangerous than the Benefactor had told them.
There was a difference between a walking nuclear weapon you could point at the enemy and something that would destroy the entire world.
She was left with two certainties: they had to use nuclear force immediately, and she needed to know why the ‘Benefactor’ went through the trouble of bringing something so dangerous to the earth.
It couldn’t have been a simple desire to destroy. There were surely more impressive targets across the galaxy. She’d never been out there, but she knew the Earth was in the back end of nowhere. It would be like a terrorist organization using a nuclear warhead they’d stolen to destroy a secondary city in Sub-Saharan Africa, rather than targeting the capital of a major world power. You could do it, but it was a waste of a resource that could do so much more.
So, what was special about the earth to warrant such a terrifying force being brought here?
“I think I want more of these ronbits,” the Entity said, holding the now empty box upside down and staring up with sadness.
“They cost money,” Tessa replied. “Which is something we’re not exactly rolling in.”
“I could rob a bank. Turn to a life of crime. Like in the movies. Then we’d have money,” the Entity said, floating above Tessa’s desk and spilling a few small crumbs onto her laptop keyboard.
“What have you been watching?”
“Too many of the shows I was watching lacked lesbians, so I looked up good lesbian movies online. There were a few where they became criminals,” the Entity replied. “It seems more fun than writing a thesis.
”“I hate to think how the government would respond to you turning to crime… and whatever the government does, the Americans’ response would be worse,” Tessa replied, nudging the Entity out of the way of her laptop screen.
She should have never shown it those funny videos of cats trying to get their humans attention. It seemed to have taken notes.
“Oh. But you said the government wants to appease me. Maybe we can ask them for money? Say that I need so much food, or else I will start eating buildings,” the Entity said.
“I think you’ve had too much sugar today as it is. You’re getting strangely creative,” Tessa replied. “Why don’t you try to apply that energy to your thesis?”
The Entity let out a sigh, drifting down to a nearby chair. It pouted for a few moments, which Tessa embraced as a moment of peace to actually work. At least until she started to worry about how long it had been quiet.
However, as she turned, she saw it actually still seemed down.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It’s… it’s my eyes. I… to read and write I need to use my human eyes,” it mumbled cryptically.
“Do… do you have other eyes?”
It turned to her. “Not eyes, but… I sense things. I can tell where things are… a bit like echolocation? But with electromagnetism… it comes from the alien part of me.”
Tessa nodded. “I guessed that much.”
“It’s more natural to use now than my eyes. But it doesn’t work on something like writing… but since I don’t use my eyes much they’ve gotten weak. And it hurts to use them too much,” the Entity explained in a quiet voice.
“Oh… um… maybe eye drops would help?” she offered?
“Eye… ah. Oui. Gouettes,” it mumbled as Tessa realised the almost crackling energy around it had largely subsided.
She felt like she was seeing Garcelle again, and she still didn’t know how to process that. Tessa knew how she wanted to process it, to hold onto these moments as being times she was genuinely talking to Garcelle. But she felt doubts about it. What if this was just the Entity remembering Garcelle and trying to act like her?
Then again, since the Entity had Garcelle’s body, brain, and memories, was there any real difference between it trying to be Garcelle from what it remembered and Garcelle trying to reach through to be with her?
“There’s also screen readers and speech to text options,” Tessa offered, trying not to dwell on her worries too much.
The Entity offered her a soft smile. “Yes. Those sound good.”
Sitting quietly in her car, watching the hotel home of the professor Dr. Montgomery had visited, Agent Lang found she was getting rather bored. Her audio amplifier showed her Dr. Montgomery was, honestly, having a conversation about electric eels with the grey haired man she was visiting.
Deciding there was no harm in leaving them to it for a few moments, she decided to check for anything more subtle going on. To her surprise, she found she was picking up two unusual frequencies. One was clearly another listening device.
Driving around the neighbourhood, she soon triangulated the source of that one to an SUV. She was fairly certain it was from the US military. Keeping an eye on their own, apparently. Maybe Montgomery had really gone as rogue as her boss suspected.
The other signal was stranger, though. She could barely detect it, but it was on a frequency that was rarely used by anyone.
With the spotty detection it took much longer to track, but Agent Lang eventually traced it to… a garbage can? Confused, she got out of her car and walked over. While it wasn’t technically part of her mission, she wanted to know what she was dealing with.
Opening the lid of the can, however, she was very confused by what she saw.
There was what seemed like a small command centre, with a number of creatures in there. Small things…. like a grasshopper mixed with a newt. Some of them were wearing tiny headphones.
They all stared up at her, though, seeming about as unsure how to respond to this as she was.
“Uhh… I’ll just leave you to it,” she offered, slowly putting the lid back on the ‘trash can’.
She’d known there were aliens involved, but not… ones like that. She just hoped that they’d leave her alone if she left them alone.
Unfortunately, she found herself fainting before she made it back to her rental car.
Tessa was surprised as she read over the speech-to-text work the Entity had done that evening. Apart from it having switched to French frequently, it seemed like proper science to Tessa. As much as she could understand mycology.
“Mhm, I think the speech-to-text messed up a few times, especially on scientific names, but I think it works?” she said.
The Entity nodded. “Good. I burnt out my brain writing it… I want to sleeeep.”
“You can take a nap if you need to?”
The Entity stared at her. “I don’t sleep, though. You know this.”
“Oh. Right. Um… can you just lay down and close your eyes for a bit?” Tessa offered.
The Entity paused, seeming to think things over for a bit. Before its eyes light up brighter. Tessa worried what that was going to mean, until it floated over towards the fridge, pulling ice cream out of the freezer.
It then began to sing a little melody of ‘sucrose, sucrose, human neurons need sucrose’ as it hunted for a spoon and then floated up to sit on top of the fridge.
Tessa decided she didn’t want to think about how much sugar it had consumed today. Maybe they should call up the agents to ask for extra food money. It was worth trying, right?
“When you’re done we are snuggling,” the Entity said, taking a pause from eating its ice cream.
“Oh? You’re actually letting me finish?” Tessa replied with a smirk.
“You cuddle better when you’ve finished.”
The Entity was definitely being more alien right now, but… she’d had a whole afternoon of it acting rather like Garcelle. She could accept a bit of time with it being alien.
Especially since it was kind of cute like that. Now that she’d gotten used to it, and understood that even at times like this there was still Garcelle in there.
After all, it was eating Garcelle’s favourite flavour of ice cream.
Agent Lang woke up to artificial lighting in a small grey room. Blinking and looking around, she felt the room could best be described as a cell. What with the minimalist concrete looking architecture, incredibly basic bed, toilet, and sink, and the way one wall had what looked to be crystalline bars blocking any exit attempts.
“Where in the…” she muttered, as she realised there wasn’t a window.
“Oh. You woke up, did you?” a male voice said from…
Well, he wasn’t in the hallway, so she had to guess there was another cell beside hers.
“Where are we? Who are you?” she asked, walking up to the bars.
“General Hank Adams. I’m with the joint alien task force,” he replied. “Or… I was. Until one of my subordinates turned on me and handed me over to the one alien we were working with.”
Agent Lang blinked. “That’s… quite a lot of information for you to give me.”
“There’s a robot copy out there pretending to be me. Going to my home. Eating my wife’s cooking. Sitting on my committee meetings. No one’s even looking for me, and the only reason I’m alive is to serve as a template for it if it starts drifting,” the man grumbled. “Pretty sure no one’s looking for you either. Heard them talking about setting up your copy too.”
“Oh,” she mumbled, taking a moment to process that.
“What did you do to end up getting in their way?” the man asked.
“I was observing a Dr. Selma Montgomery for the Canadian Government.”
“Ah. So it’s Selma’s fault you’re here too? From what I’ve heard out of the guards, I think she’s sold the whole planet out,” the general muttered.
“What do you know?” Agent Lang asked. “Your government hasn’t been very forthcoming about just what that thing is in Halifax.”
“Mhm… Well, I guess we’re not going anywhere, so there’s enough time to explain.”