Chapter 9

Chapter 9

“The origin of our races begins long ago, long before your scientists believe. After the horror of the extinction event that passed stewardship of the earth to the warm blood creatures; life began again. In the beginning, life was small, tiny microbes evolved into larger things; and so on and so on. Eventually, life became similar to what we know now, furry, scaly, four legs, all the traits that make things alive. This continues for thousands of years. Sometime around two and a half million years ago, an alien race discovered our planet. They found a fertile planet, ripe for experimentation; so that is what they did. They built a base near the equator, followed by a small town.

“They begin small, experimenting on birds and small lizards. Creatures with basic physiologies, through this, we have many of our current species. After this, they began to experiment on gradually larger creatures until they have investigated all the animals of the world. Collecting all their information, the beings went back to their base to begin working on improving life across the world. Through their vast technology, they move the entire planet a few hundred thousand miles further away from the sun, causing the earth to have seasons to justify some of the traits they wanted to test. After this, they built the greatest gift they could bring to this planet; the Otherworld.

The Otherworld is the place where your mythic creatures are from. They have the sad fate to be the “failed” experiments, the creatures that did not quite fit into the ecosystems of the world. As a condolence for the exile out of the real world they were subjected to, the aliens gave them the intelligence they now possess. My people, as the prototype to humanity, were sent there as well, as their guardians and caregivers.

The Otherworld touches, but is not a part of this world. It can be accessed through many ways, from either side, but it is not easy. My people were charged to ensure that nothing gets through from either side, as you can see by current events, something or someone failed. We have fought to protect Earth for almost the entire history of this world, but we do not ask for thanks, it is our duty.

Life in the Otherworld is much like here, actually, you would be quite comfortable there. We do not have your civilization, or your buildings, but it is a joyous place. The mythic creatures are quite content there and have little desire to see this world. A few have asked to be guided across the barrier, that is why they still live on in your legends. But, something has happened on the other side, few have asked to cross in quite some time, easily hundreds of years. The elders of my people took note of this and called a great conclave, the elders and leaders of every clan met and it was decided that we knew to little to take action.

More time passed, all mythic creatures stopped visiting. This did not bother us much as we were watching across the barrier, and we saw your world was becoming more dangerous every day. A few years ago, out scouts saw a shape in our skies, it was only a flash of light but we are trained from birth to report anything out of the ordinary. When a scouting party was assembled, they found at the site of the flash, some sort of metal shape with legs coming out of it. We know now that it was an invader, but at the time we did not have a clue who they were. We had sent a diplomat with the party, they tried to engage the shape, talk to it, at least assess the danger. Well the danger was very real, a line of light came out of the shape, the diplomat was killed and burned up. The shape picked up and flew away then; when the party returned and the leaders heard the story, another meeting was called, this time all the warrior age peoples were instructed to come. We were all told this story I am telling you know, and also told that war may be coming, so we should prepare and hone whatever skills we may have. Each clan leader was given instructions, and an ancient communications device, probably left from those ancient beings from space.

More time passed, we each trained in what form of combat we were each comfortable with. As you can tell, I chose to be a scout, alone on the front lines, no one else to worry about or depend on but myself, that is how I made my choice. As each clan was making final preparations, and the young and old were being hidden somewhere safe, they returned. There were many this time; hundreds of ships covered the Otherworld, establishing bases and fortresses everywhere they went. Their technology was of course much better, I am not ashamed to admit, we had no chance. Obviously in the centuries, and millennia that passed since our charge was given, we lost something. We could never have protected the barrier without weapons that were of equality to the invaders.

Myself, I never saw what they looked like, as a matter of fact, I have not seen another of my people, of any clan, since they returned and I was given the mission to come to this world. All I know for sure is that my people have failed; if they had not, the mythic creatures would not be here. Also the disease that hurt your people so badly, came for the Otherworld, it is to us what the cold is to your people. Since we were the prototype for your species, we are immune to much more than you are. We do not get sick often, and we rarely die from illness. But this is of no matter, now we must get to a safe place, and find others who can help us to fix this problem the invaders have caused.

General Sebac, after the meeting, takes the long way through the whole facility to get back to his office. He knows that he has a lot of work to do, he needs to organize the retrofit of the base, and he has to do something to save the world. Even with all his confidence, he knows that this is an enormous job. Reaching his office, he pulls out the dossier containing the mysterious message. Pulling out his set of highlighters, he begins to cross reference the various parts; looking for discrepancies. He finds some slight errors, but nothing damning enough to disregard the information.

Finding no real problem with the information, he decides to pass it on to the epidemiologists for further study. He then took out his plans for the conversion of the base; it is mostly complete, the only thing to do now is stare at it to find flaws, but he knows it is planned as well as possible before they start.

Knowing that he has nothing else he can work on, Sebac slowly walks to his office bar to pour himself a nightcap. He does not do this often, but it is a very stressful time, and he feels it can not hurt. So, sitting back down, turns his lights off and sits in the dark for a time, he estimates about twenty minutes, when a knock on his door jars his reverie.

“Come in,” he says. The door opens and Corporal Lopez walks in, looking more relaxed than normal. She takes a seat across the desk, as she is getting ready to sit, she nods to the bar, Sebac nods and she mixes herself a drink (hard mixed drink). She sits and loosens her tie and slips of her shoes.

“Well sir, that is the first step to your plan. What is next? We need to plan at least two steps ahead of where we are.”

“Corporal, you are being rather relaxed with me,” he says, a little confused. “While you are correct, and you have been performing above and beyond your actual duties, some form of discipline needs to be maintained.”

“Sir, I totally agree, I also know that I am off duty, we have a rapport that goes beyond our duties and we should attempt to build a friendship so we can work together more smoothly. You know I am by the book, and I assume you know that in normal circumstances I would never act like this, assuming you want to talk and share your alcohol, but these are defiantly not normal circumstances.” She then looks over at the papers he was looking at, “I see you are reviewing the plans we made. I had a few ideas; we need to get the maintenance staff and engineers building rooms, then building houses outside. Another thing, we need to increase our electrical output, I have been looking at our projected load and based on average power usage per person, even the most conservative estimates put our power supply to be short by about half. So either we need to shut down some of our more draining experiments, or figure out a way to increase our output. That would be a job for our best engineers, I am not sure what that would include, but I am sure that a supply mission will need to be staged, so we should begin to organize that.

“Wow corporal, you have really been working above and beyond, I applaud your enthusiasm and commitment to our mutual safety and protection. I will put you in charge of logistics, you are now in charge of all organization, and you need to select a support staff, such as a quartermaster and other staff. You can use as many people as you need; you have no limits, and my full support.”

“Thank you sir, I will do my best. Now, we need to discuss all of these details.” They sit up for many hours going over everything again, making sure they have everything covered.

They both go to their rooms in the small hours of the world; they sleep well and wake at around their normal times. Meeting at the office, they call down the people they need for their staffs. By lunch time, the leadership committee is built, each department will be autonomous, but the lead will meet with all the others before drastic measures are taken. The electrical people begin to reroute power to the future living quarters. The maintenance crew starts to build apartments in the larger rooms, they plan to fit four families in each lab room, and use that as a guide to scale up and down.