Catalyst Part I Read online

  “You are lucky I am alone today,” he said.

  “Why?” The look he gave me now was so serious that I wondered what would really have happened to me if he had been accompanied by others. Would I have even seen them? Would I have had the chance to pull my Colt 45 from its holster? Would I be dead even now?

  “You would not have been allowed to talk to me like that, probably you would not have been allowed to talk to me at all,” he said.

  “So, are you going to answer the question or not?”

  “I just did,” surprise in his voice and face.

  “Not that question, your name, what is it?”

  “I do not think I should tell you my real name, would it be acceptable to give you a false name?

  “Whatever,” I said in an infuriated tone. Alien or not he was starting to get on my nerves.

  He shook his head as if he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. He looked at the device he had been filling with morels and pressed some lights on the outer rim of the container. It began to make a very quiet buzzing sound, like bumblebees in summer. He looked into my eyes and my breath caught. It was like looking into the eyes of a cat, but a cat that could hypnotize and capture its prey so quickly that the prey didn’t have time to think ‘my life is over.’ In that scenario I was definitely the mouse.

  He cocked his head slightly as if he could hear my heart as it started pounding faster and faster. What was this creature and why did he fascinate me so much? Then it hit me why he seemed so familiar to me but strange at the same time. This was the one from my dreams, the one who I had seen off and on for the past forty years, this wasn’t just any old alien this was the exact one I’d been dreaming of and it was too late to run. He saw immediately that something had changed in my manner, he nodded his head and said, “Call me Pan’Ar.”

  When I was a little girl my Grandma used to tell me things that I didn’t really understand at the time. She said I had to pay attention because she would be gone by the time I would need to know these things. So this knowledge couldn’t wait for me to actually be old enough to understand. Sometimes she would go into a trance and tell me what she was seeing. Mostly she just scared me to death with horror stories of the future and how dangerous it was going to be.

  She warned me to never let anyone know that I could see things that they couldn’t, that I could make things happen if I concentrated on it long enough. She said my gifts were for a higher purpose and that I should never use them for anything less than the benefit of the world. Pretty hefty stuff to hear for a nine year old but everyone said my Grandma was crazy so in later years I didn’t worry too much about it.

  As a young child and a teenager I would have dreams that made no sense to me at the time but later when the events happened in real life I thought I must be just as crazy as my Grandma. My Mom tried to warn me as well, the first book she had me read was a section of the Bible called Revelation.

  She said, “These are prophesies about the future but they were written about 2000 years ago.”

  “Are they real?”

  “Who knows? The questions you should ask are; were these prophesies meant for their time, our time or another future time? Were they meant for the people of the past, our people or some future generation? A prophesy is only as good as its relevance to the time it is given compared to the time it is predicting an event. If you predict that something is going to happen but that it won’t happen until 2000 years have passed it isn’t very useful to the people of your present time is it?”

  “How many people can dream about the future?”

  “In history there have been several who have claimed to be able to do that, but not many” my mom replied. “Sometimes those who made the claim were killed for what they were saying, sometimes they were laughed at, but usually they were ignored.”

  “Why would anyone ignore someone who could tell them what is going to happen in the future, that doesn’t make sense,” I said.

  “Are you having dreams again?”

  “Yes, but Grandma said not to tell anyone except you and dad, she said you and dad have dreams sometimes too.”

  “Hmmm… Grandma should leave well enough alone. She knows that we will teach you when she is gone.”

  “She said she will be gone soon, how does she know that she’ll be gone soon?”

  “She dreamed about her death,” was my mom’s simple reply.

  At the time I was horrified, imagine dreaming about your own death and knowing, knowing that it was real, that it was set in time, that you could not escape it. It is one thing to know you will die eventually but what kind of torture would it be to know the exact circumstances, the exact time and day in the future. Grandma didn’t treat it as a burden. She seemed relieved and did everything she could to prepare everyone for her eventual death.

  I looked into the eyes of this beautiful blue alien from another world and I realized that I was meant to find him and that he was an integral part of my own future. He seemed to know the same thing. I felt a strange connection to him immediately. I also knew that in my dreams there was the possibility that he would be the cause of my death. I had never had dreams before that could have more than one outcome. I didn’t understand those dreams but then I rarely understood my dreams until it was too late.

  “Were you looking for me?” My question seemed to disturb him for some reason and I waited patiently for his answer.

  “Yes and no,” his eyes glanced towards the sky then back to me, “I was hoping I would not be able to find you,” he said reluctantly.

  “Why would you ‘not’ want to find me?”

  “Because if I found you then it would mean that war was inevitable and our only hope would be to have control of the one weapon that would make a difference in that war,” he said.

  “What weapon,” I unwillingly asked almost certain of what his answer would be and that I would not like it one damn bit.

  “You are the weapon,” he looked up into my eyes and I could tell that he was just as unhappy with that answer as I was if not more.

  “You’re mistaken,” I said, “I’m nobody, I don’t have wealth, I don’t have political power, I don’t even know who my neighbors are, you are mistaken, I’m not important and I’m definitely not a weapon of any kind.”

  “You are a seer and a catalyst are you not?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” denial is always good especially when confronted with people who want to invade your life and take it over. It didn’t make any difference that the people in this case weren’t from anywhere around our planetary neighborhood. My Grandma had warned me that letting people know what I could do would bring out the worst sorts who would then attempt to exploit me for their own purposes. I didn’t know what his purposes were but I was pretty certain I didn’t want anything to do with anyone’s war.

  “You have been dreaming about me since you were a child, correct?”

  I was stunned. No one had ever known about those dreams with good reason, I made certain of that by not talking about my dreams of the blue man with anyone except Grandma and she was dead. “Sorry, you got the wrong person, and besides there is no such thing as a seer and I don’t even know what a ‘catalyst’ is so you are just plain wrong about me,” desperation was very apparent in my voice.

  “Will you help me?” He looked at me with those hypnotic eyes and there seemed to be—a sadness deep inside them that I couldn’t understand. I was afraid of what that sadness might mean for me and my life and for the first time I didn’t want to go to sleep and dream tonight. His eyes were burning into mine like lasers. I felt the urge to try and give him what he wanted but I didn’t understand why I would feel like that. The last thing I wanted was to be caught up in some mess that could get me killed.

  “Help you with what?” I said as politely as I could.

  He held out his hand as if he needed help getting up from the ground so I stood up and reached for him with a slight smile thinking that mayb
e I was mistaken and he wasn’t planning to do anything to disrupt my life yet. I should have known better. “My name is Cassandra,” I said and as soon as his hand touched mine I immediately knew the entire episode had been nothing more than an elaborate set up. I felt the sting of a barb in the back of my neck and the last thing I saw was Pan’Ar waving and speaking to someone behind me in that beautiful other world language and then there was darkness.

  Chapter Two

  Present… Location Unknown

  Strange sounds. Real nasty taste in my mouth. Glaring white light. Then the memories began to flood back into my mind, my inability to look away from his eyes even though I could hear footsteps behind me. My next memory was of Pan’Ar grabbing my hand, the sudden intense pain in the back of my neck, and then Pan’Ar talking in that beautiful voice and that indescribable language to someone who was apparently behind me. Then—nothing.

  I opened my eyes a little trying to see if I was alone or if I should pretend to still be unconscious. I was alone. I was a prisoner by the looks of things. There were four walls, no windows, and no doorway all of which meant no way to even plan an escape. I looked around the room and noticed there were no facilities either. Of course when you notice something like that the urge to go to the bathroom becomes almost unbearable.

  I sat up and twisted around to see what I had been lying down on. It looked like a doctors’ office exam bed. The ones that have that irritating paper you have to lie on. I got up and felt a little dizzy. Whatever they had used to knock me out was still affecting me. I walked over to the wall and started feeling along it as high as I could go. There were no depressions or imperfections, just solid wall that I couldn’t get through. I did this to all four walls with no better results than with the first. I went back to the bed and sat down. No point in standing up when I couldn’t do anything.

  When I looked up at the wall across from me it was no longer a wall. It was as if the wall had disappeared—as if it had never been there. I guess today was my day to meet as many different aliens as possible. This one looked more like the stereotypical alien from the abduction stories on late night television.

  He had a large head and large eyes but his body was too small for his head. His fingers were long and there were six on each hand. He approached me very slowly as if he was worried I would start screaming in terror or something. He was probably all of four feet tall. So I decided to just roll with the situation. How much worse could it get than being held prisoner?

  “Are you a doctor?” The diminutive alien stopped coming towards me, cocked his head slightly and then did something that I definitely was not expecting.

  ~Yes, Pan’Ar said you were unusually open minded about different forms of life~

  I realized as I looked at him that he didn’t appear to have a mouth, which meant I really was ‘hearing’ him inside my own head. He must have taken my expression to mean that I was frightened by what he had just done to communicate with me. I was thinking that I was so stupid to ask myself how much worse things could get.

  ~I am sorry, if you want I will use a computer to speak with you, I did not mean to upset you~

  “No, I just wasn’t expecting you to communicate directly in my head like that. If that is your normal mode of communication then as long as it’s not going to damage me in some way I don’t mind,” I responded as evenly as I could.

  ~Your acceptance is appreciated, computers do not always translate well, this way your own mind converts the ideas I am projecting directly into a form you understand~

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  ~Of course~

  “I’m not being intentionally rude, but how do you eat since you don’t appear to have a mouth?”

  ~We absorb what we need through our eyes and skin~

  “And you are telepathic,” I guessed.

  ~Actually, no we are not telepathic, this is more projection in this case, if you were talking about my communication with others of my kind then that would be a simplified way of explaining how we communicate with each other. With others not like ourselves we can project our ideas to them but they cannot do the same. I am relying on a computer to translate your speech patterns into projections that I can understand. It is a bit more complicated than that but I think that is a basic explanation that covers what we are doing~

  “So, where am I exactly?”

  ~Pan’Ar brought you here to the infirmary to be treated and to be given certain things he thinks you will need for the future~

  “Yes but where is this infirmary? Am I still on my home planet or am I now in space?” The thought that I was in outer space was kind of exciting but I was worried about my animals, my house, and that I would eventually be missed by someone. Not to mention that I had been taken against my will by an alien who I had thought was friendly all things considered.

  ~You are on a ship that is behind the moon that orbits your world~

  “When will I be allowed to go back?” My question seemed to upset the little guy. His reply confirmed this suspicion.

  ~Your world has been annexed by the Brenthin Empire, you are now under Pan’Ar’s command and I do not like it. I wish I could help you but my people are few and no longer have the power we once had. I have been testing the people of your world and a very high percentage of them have psychic abilities even though they seem to deny this to themselves for some reason. So your world is the most valuable in the universe right now. I am sorry though. Sentient beings should be given a choice, not forced. In your case I am surprised he took the chance~

  OK. Well that was interesting, but everything that happened now would depend on his answer to my next question. “You can project into my mind, but can you see what my mind is thinking while you are projecting?” I held very still and tried to stay calm as I awaited his answer.

  ~No, all I am capable of is projecting the ideas and thoughts to you and because you are not like me you have to be relatively close for me to do it. If I could read what you are thinking I would not need the computer to translate your vocal patterns into projections~

  Good. Wonderful, now I could start forming a plan. “I have two questions, what did you mean by ‘In your case I am surprised he took the chance’ and what does Pan’Ar want you to give me to help me in the future?”

  ~He wants me to program these miniature computers with languages and specific knowledge about the other people from other worlds that are involved in this war. Given your talents he took a serious risk in taking you from your home without your permission. One of your gifts is very subtle but extremely powerful. He could have defeated his own purposes simply by making you angry. His motivations are a mystery to me though~

  I could understand that, Pan’Ar was definitely a mystery but this strange alien seemed to know more about me than Pan’Ar did. He seemed to know precisely what I was capable of and was respectful of that power. I decided to stay away from that subject if at all possible. “How does programming those miniature computers help me?”

  ~When I inject them into your blood stream they will spread throughout your body and into your brain and nervous center. Once connected they will transfer the information directly to you so you will know everything you need to very quickly~

  Oh boy, that didn’t sound good at all. Just being a prisoner sounded pretty good about now. Granted I wouldn’t mind having knowledge like that almost instantaneously but little machines inside me, possibly controlling me was not something I wanted to deal with and would completely ruin the plans that were forming. “What happens to these little computers once the information is delivered?”

  ~I inject another solution that will destroy them and flush them from your system~

  “I don’t mean to sound crazy or paranoid but how do I know that once those things are inside me that they won’t take over my mind or body in some way or download information rather than upload it?”

  ~I would never do something like that, I am a doctor. I can understand why you would be worried consideri
ng your circumstances, but I vow to you that I am only trying to help you and I would never be a party to harming you. Pan’Ar may be able to physically force you to work for him but he cannot force your mind. It is important for you to remember that. He may threaten, persuade, hold your world hostage even, but your decisions will be your own in the end~

  “Did Pan’Ar restrict what kind of information you could program the little computers with?”

  ~No, he only specified what he wanted included, he never said that I could not include more than what he specified~

  “If you really want to help me could you program the little computers with more than what he specified? For instance could you program them with technological information, political information, anything that will help me to be on a more than equal footing,” if I was going to be force injected with tiny computers I may as well get my monies worth. This way if the doctor was telling the truth I would have more than what Pan’Ar expected.

  ~I understand. How much information do you want? And would you like to have physical and other enhancements as well? ~

  If the little guy could smile I think he would have looked like the Cheshire Cat at that moment. “Give me everything you possibly can, any advantage, any knowledge, any enhancements that will help me,” I said to my new little friend. “My name is Cassandra, what is your name?”

  ~I am called Compassionate One by my people. The concept of my name does not translate well to other beings~

  “I think it translates very well and I believe we are going to be very good friends,” I smiled at him as I thought of the surprise Pan’Ar was going to get in return for abducting me from my home in an effort to force me to do his will.

  Compassionate One said that in order for the transfer of information to work as quickly as possible I would need to go to sleep. Apparently the little computers could use my own REM cycles to speed up the transfer process. In my case the information was more than the usual so it might take a little longer than normal plus I was human and this had never been done with a human before. When the injection was ready he had to inform Pan’Ar. Unfortunately, Pan’Ar told the doctor to await his arrival before giving me the injection. He wished to speak to me first.