Change - ch. 7

The interior of the space station was flaring with red flashing lights and the sound of boots pounding on the catwalks hanging dangerously over open wires and circuit boards. The crew was mustering to their positions preparing for the worst, not knowing what to do next, awaiting their orders from their commander.

“Colonel, we’ve lost contact with Mariner Bravo!” Wallace roared over his shoulder.

Baker looks to the technical sergeant and points his finger to him in frustration and yells over the emergency sirens, “Well, God damn it! Get them back!”

With his other hand, Baker grabs the microphone and presses the intercom button. A robotic click is heard followed by a horn to give his announcement. The sirens became quiet as his voice, like god, blasted over the entire station and to his subordinates.

“We have lost contact with Mariner Bravo. Weather conditions on the planet have made communications impossible. Scramble Mariner Charlie for immediate departure. Extraction and evaluation of Mariner Bravo’s condition is critical. Make it happen! Out!”

The crew was wary and tired. Susan Langley heard the order and turned her attention to another crewman. Susan was a military civilian working in coordination with the Department of Defense on this mission. Her job was to evaluate and assist the crew in asserting possible extraterrestrial or otherwise peculiar abnormalities during the mission. This constituted an anomaly from her perspective.

Sarah looks over to crew member beside her and asks him in cynicism, “You’ve got to be kidding me! We can’t dispatch a second vehicle with what crew is left!”

The crewmember didn’t reply. He was given his order.

“This is bullshit!” She threw down a pencil that was in her hand for no reason. She storms out of the cramped work station and down the maze of corridors to get answers from the Commander’s station.

Wallace was sweating, pressing buttons and flicking switches attempting to change frequencies on the off chance the Mariner Bravo scout party’s radio shifted their channels. He was welcomed by static and feedback loops from space.

“It’s no use sir, all channels are down!”

The colonel looks over to the radio frequencies and notices the same. He looks to a video monitor where the robot camera feed was coming through. The dust and wind on the planet had made it impossible to see anything but flying grey specks.

“Move the camera and see if the vehicle is still in the area.” He demanded.

Wallace did what he could but there was nothing to be seen from the Mar’s canyon. Another fruitless effort it seemed.

“Damn it!” Baker yelled.

A door slams closed and Sarah marches towards the Colonel not at all pleased by the order he had given, “Tell me what exactly you’re thinking sir! We can’t send down another crew on the surface now, who the hell would man the station?”

“Ma’am, the station is automated and I have men on the surface that require immediate extraction. I leave no man behind.”

“Even if that means your extraction may compromise the integrity of the station’s mission Colonel?”

“The station will be fine, this is a simple extraction mission at base camp on the surface.”

“Sir, you realize that the situation on the surface? Hurricane winds and debris may hinder your operation!”

“Ma’am, with all due respect, this is my call. Feel free to write your report as you deem necessary. We’re millions of miles from any beurorat right now. Stay in your lane Sarah and let me do mine!”

Wallace tried not to be part of this argument, still trying to shift channels and frequencies.

“Sergeant, escort her off my bridge!” Baker orders to Wallace.

He stands up and leaves his post and puts himself between her and his commander, “Ma’am, please leave the bridge immediately.”

She hesitated and tried to look over Wallace’s shoulders to the commander and like a reporter, she would not leave easily. Being pushed out she continued to ask and demand questions and responsibility for the station. Her face flustered red with anger.


On the surface of Mars the weather picked up a violent surge. The wind howled like a hungry wolf and debris slammed against the haul of the rover as it tried to escape the raging torrent of a Mariner sand storm.

The vehicle slams into a deep trench, Its nose digs into the soft soil. A boulder hits the rear of the armored tank and slams the exposed under carriage of the vehicle and jolts the crew inside.

A crewman inside flies from his seat and instantly crashes on the roof of the interior of the vehicle as the boulder collided with the bottom of the tank. Chapel braces for the impact and slams face first on a monitor that was hanging on from a stand on the side of the computer module. A third member is flung about like a rag doll, still buckled in his seat that was torn from bolts on the ground near the impact area. Him, the chair, all the items not bolted down bounced inside the small cavity like a pinball in racking points for the highest score.

Chapel shakes his head as he tries to gain his senses. Blood pouring down the side of his head he holds his arm in sheer pain. He groans to his crewmembers, “Jamison! Sampson!”

Chapel’s only response was the ominous howling wind and the creaking of metal as the boulders continued to pound on the outside by the hurricane.

Sampson releases an agonizing moan. He was still buckled in the chair which now hung like an ornament on a Christmas tree. A long metal rod stuck out from his chest. He spat blood and released a weak yell to his Lieutenant.

Chapel hears the pain and crawls over to him the best he could in the awkward walk way of what was left of his craft.

“Sampson!” Chapels made his way near him and saw that his soldier was hanging from the wall or was it the floor, it was hard to say in his state of mind.

“Stay with me Sampson, we’ll make it through this.”

Chapel touched Sampson’s face his skin cold and clammy. His sweat was ice cold and when he spoke blood dribbled down his chin. With his eyes trying not to roll into the back of his skull he replies, “Sir…” To the end, he was a trooper.

Sampson looks to Chapel and whispers a final request. He knew he was dying and they were so far from home, “Tell my fiance’ that I love her…”

“Don’t waste your strength. We’ll be back aboard the ship soon. Colonel Baker is sending help.” Fool’s words for a moment of desperation, but it was all the Lieutenant could do for him now.

A buzzer begins to go off and a mechanical female voice announces to the beaten crew that there was a breech in the haul and that life support was failing. Chapel could hear the whistle of his oxygen escaping from his tank.

Change - ch. 6

“Scavenger Alpha has descended. Making its way towards the target…” The frequency cuts out into gibberish and static. “Is that a good copy, over?”

The surface of Mars is a desolate terrain of cracked mud rocks and powdered rust. Within the red walls of the cavern there lay inside that strange metallic object. Certainly it wasn’t from this world or any world known to man. The Mariner Rover kept distance as the captain ordered and watched in silence as the little box was shot from space.

The box burned brilliantly in what little atmosphere the planet had before smashing into the surface. Even as the parachutes fell on top of the metallic box, labeled with the property of the United States, the enormous cube was quite the sight. The box took quite the beating as it rolled and smashed onto the surface before the impact balloons expanded and rolled the object up right.

The parachutes draped and twisted around the top of the crate and remained as silent as a metallic box could in the growing winds and debris slashing at its walls. It remained unmoving and still for what could have minutes before one side of the box opened up and dropped down like a ramp for loading cars on to the back of a big rig truck. The dimensions of the box were the normal military issued ‘quad con.’ Measuring the side of a small room in a cheap apartment, the box held within it a billion dollar piece of machinery.

The machine rolled out of the crate like some mechanical contraption from any 1960s science fiction. It rolled on a modulated tri-wheel track capable of flipping over even the harshest terrain and it wielded two powerful two-fingered claws that were able to pick up the finest and most delicate material available on Earth. The body of the robot was thin with bulking wires wrapping around what most would consider a spine. Its head was a square block with two massive red glowing eyes for sight followed by two additional cameras that constantly moved about. All of these visuals could be seen from the space station casually drifting above the scout party.
“Scavenger Bravo, that’s a good copy. Atmosphere radiation is interrupting signal. Expect delay in response time. Current time is thirteen fifty-six Zulu, package arrived at thirteen fifty-one Zulu. Do you confirm delivery, over?” Colonel Baker was lounging in his chair and leaned over to look through the small port hole and overviewed the roundness of the red planet below him.

The radio responded minutes after Baker’s response and he heard Lieutenant Chapel’s screaming clear enough to recognize the voice in the speaker. The winds picked up in the response made it difficult to understand his word and the Colonel could hear the small over shaking sounds of rock violently hitting the rover from the massive winds coming their direction.

“This is Scavenger Bravo, we confirm drop and it proceeds to target. Heavy winds in the area will make for difficult movement back to base, over.”

The robot was controlled by Sergeant Wallace near the Captain’s chair. His seat was far from completed. It was a make-shift gnarled wire frame with a torn pillow for the base. It creaked and rattled every time the station made an orbital adjustment. He hadn't grown used to it over the month of his time here, after all he had been working down in the cargo hold for most of his time. Wallace looks over to his commander and shakes his head with disagreement. He wasn’t pleased at all.

The robot on the surface attempted to move to the target inspected by the scout party before it, but it moved in slow periodic movements. It crept several feet forward and stopped. It moved several more feet forward and stopped. This was what the scout party noticed as a large chunk of something crashed against the side of their rover rattling the crew within.

“We can’t stay here much longer Sir, winds are picking up, danger imminent.”

Sergeant Wallace turns his attention to his commander and speaks bluntly, “Sir, this robot isn’t responding to controls. Something on the surface is interrupting the transmission. I suspect it’s the Mariner winds.”

The commander looks to Wallace and frowns. He nods his head and grabs the microphone from his desk and presses the button down, “Understood Scavenger, make your way back to base as soon as possible. Mission scrubbed, over.”

Lieutenant Chapel yelled at the top of his lungs from the cabin of the rover to his crew barely heard over the shattering torrents of wind outside, “I’ve been ordered to scrub the mission, prepare for immediate evacuation from the site!”

The two crew members were far from hesitant to react to the order and immediately began to move the rover around to move out of the chasm that they were in. The robot was left ignored and they all expected it was controlled by the experienced professional on the station in the heavens.

One of the crew members in the rover yelled back, “Moving out now!”

The rover was a massive machine the size of a small tank. It was armored to resist the impact of a nuclear explosion. The design was Russian and even though the armor was expensive it was insisted by several other governments in NATO. The tank moved slowly through the treacherous debris and was struck several times by boulders the size of small cars. The crew inside shook around like marionette dolls, but they held their resolve. Their only focus was to survive this growing storm they had found themselves in.

The robot moved inches and finally stopped at near the haul of the abandoned wreckage. The cameras had already been destroyed by the flying debris and Wallace was driving the machine blindly. There was a single camera left from the impact of the storm, a fail-safe system demanded by the Chinese. The camera recorded only in black and white and the resolution was terrible but at least the machine was still operational.

The grey and black images were spattered with speckles of grey and white flying by at incredible speeds when Wallace reviewed the footage nearly a minute after what the robot had seen. He looks to the Colonel and says, “I can’t see shit in this storm Sir… I don’t think this robot will survive this weather!”

Frustrated and blind, Wallace tries to drive the billion dollar machine out of harms way. This was his opportunity to show his captain what he was capable of doing. The brightest and most well equipped in the world. This was why Wallace was selected for the mission. This was more than just a simple operation to the sergeant, it was a test of mettle.

Colonel Baker looks back to Wallace, “Try and salvage what you can!” He looks over his shoulder and notices the rest of the crew wasn’t there. He turns on the intercom within the station and demands all hands on deck.

Wallace maneuvers the robot near the side of the wall and the lee side of the unknown object. Here the robot had the best chances of survival. Wallace continues to review the dark mass of spatter on his screen and can’t tell where the ship was or what the debris from the wind. The movement was erratic and from time to time the images from the camera jolted as the robot was struck or moved by the wind.

“All hands on deck! This is not a drill!” Baker spoke and his voice echoed heavily and loudly throughout the station, “All hands on deck!”

Change - ch. 5

“Mariner Six Control, this is Scavenger Bravo. Over,” Said a voice from the speaker on the space station floating miles over the red planet.

“Scavenger Bravo, go ahead,” Sounded a reply.

“Mariner Six, we have found debris that appears to be wreckage. Putting the image on camera now, prepare to receive Control.”

The control room of the space station was dark with only a single ambient red hue glowing from behind a shoddy plank of stainless steel. The artificial wall was a barrier between the crew and the miles of wires and circuits which kept them alive. There was plenty of work that still had to be done, but it was functioning to the best of its ability. The crew was in need of supplies to finish the next phase of the building process.

It takes six months to travel from Earth to Mars and the tours of duty were normally two and a half years. The crews just cycled through and this crew just landed a month ago. The astronauts were briefed by NASA regarding the current status of the station but it didn’t dawn on them the real state of emergency on the station until they landed and briefed by the exhausted crew which they were relieving.

Back in the control room a small pea-sized bulb was flashing after the last transmission. The captain of this barely functioning space station spins around in a make-shift chair built from spare parts of another seat from the Space Shuttle Voyager. He flicks a switch and a monitor blinks on reveling a blue panel and a black box in the center.

In the black box of the image on the screen there was bold red text that simply read, “Incoming transmission…”

The captain presses the screen and a download meter appears underneath the words. Within moments the images were transmitted and downloaded into the computer’s hard drive and finally the images blinked on the screen where the black box was glowing.

The landscape on the video feed was desolate and empty of life. Black was instantly filled with nothing but red colors and strange boulders with canyon walls to either side of the feed. In the bottom right of the video there was white text that blinked from time to time, “Streaming audio / video.”

The Captain was selected by the United States Air Force. He was top of his class in officer training and became a B-2 bomber pilot. He was selected to fly in one of the first sorties of the ‘Shock and Awe’ during the initial Iraqi conflict. Five years into the campaign he was promoted to Colonel where he directed the Predator program in the Middle Eastern Theater of Operations.

He was no stranger to war or the implications of making last minute decisions which would lead to the lives of his subordinates. His colleagues always congratulated his prowess military bearing and capabilities under fire. He returned home from the war with honorable mentions and several medals for his service. Then he was selected for this mission and he took it modestly.

Captain John Baker instantly gained the respect of his crew the first day of training at NASA and he knew each and every one of his men as though they were his own children. He was brawny and wary with wrinkles from the war. His hair was beginning to go grey and he just celebrated his 48th Birthday last week in the cabin of hanging wires and dim lights more than 35 million miles from Earth.

The captain presses the intercom button, “Scavenger Bravo, video received and feeding, over.”

The voice from the desolate empty below on the surface of Mars and deep within her belly replied, “Understood Control, zooming in for better picture of the identified wreckage.”

The video in the captain’s cabin zoomed in several times until he could see a black and grey mass of shredded twisted metal that had dug into the side of the canyon wall. There were no markings on the body of what might have resembled the frame of a 747 aircraft without the paint job and with several panels of the walls removed.

Captain Baker leans forward peering at the video and squints his eyes attempting to see between the wrecked frame and into the guts of the mangled mess of metal but there was only darkness. He presses the intercom button again and asks, “Scavenger Bravo, could this be part of the station?”

There was a long pause before the surface crew responded, “It’s possible Control but very unlikely. No damage reports are recorded in the crew logs on the station. Sir, Bravo requests permission to go for a closer inspection, over.”

“Negative Sierra Bravo, stand fast and await further instructions.”

Captain Baker spins in his fragile chair and presses another intercom button. He speaks into the microphone near the panel of the desk, cluttered with old coffee cups and technical manuals, “Tech Sergeant Wallace, report to control.”

The sergeant was there in mere moments. Since the crew arrived on the station he seemed pretty pointless. The captain preferred to send real men out to explore the surface rather than the crews before them which used the robotics. Sergeant Wallace was the robotics officer and instead of performing his functions in that field he was delegated to clean the hanging wires in the cargo bay. This was something he was excited about and he hoped the captain didn’t want him to clean the wires in the control room.

The captain looks to the Sergeant as he maneuvers through the hatch to the control room. He stands tall and salutes the colonel. This far out in space, Sergeant Wallace still felt it was absolutely necessary to keep military bearing.

Captain Baker nonchalantly returns the salute. Unlike the sergeant this officer didn’t really care for such formalities. He speaks to his robotics specialist, “Prepare the scout for an immediate launch to Landing Zone Romeo. There’s an artifact that we can’t identify.”

Sergeant Wallace nods to his captain, “Right away sir.” This was what he was waiting on for quite sometime and he wouldn’t let him down.

Colonel Baker presses the other intercom button and speaks to the crew on the surface of the planet, “Scavenger Bravo this is Mariner Six, standby and await Scout package drop to L-Z Romeo. Estimated drop time of package mark three zero mike, over.”

“Good copy Control, Scavenger out.”

Change - ch. 4

Screaming engines and sirens flooded the filled parking lot south of the grey smog infested concrete kingdom of downtown Houston. The wind had picked up and storm season was amongst them. Traffic was congested on every major highway. It was storm season and the people on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico had learned to be paranoid after the disaster and peril left behind by Hurricane Katrina a few years ago.

Beyond the endless miles of break lights and screaming motorists there was a news van covering the excitement of a category three hurricane that the weather experts had dubbed Henry. According to these experts, the storm was to be as deadly as Katrina was and the hurricane appeared to be on a direct course to the shore. It was expected to drive right through Galveston and slam into the heart of the largest metropolitan city in Texas.

The driver of the van slammed the horn of his two ton van and cursed at an eighteen wheeler that just randomly decided to change lanes even though the big rig had no room to maneuver. This was what the locals called a “Houston Lane Change.” It was Darwin’s theory in the most practical sense. Drive or be driven.

“Calm down Henry! Christ, screaming at the traffic isn’t going to get us moving any faster!” Jerry was prepping his equipment to ensure the giant top of the line beta cam was ready to record. The camera was the size of a German shepherd and it probably weighed just as much.

“Jerry, I bet we’re missing all the good shots. Whatever is going on at the Johnson Space Center is probably going to be over by the time we get off this damned road!” Henry was red in the face and the familiar vein on the side of his head was swollen and pulsing rapidly.

The newscaster only chuckled and shook his head. He looked out the rearview mirror and saw the Houston cityscape. He then looked down the highway and it appeared to be a giant parking lot for the criminally insane.

“Both of y’all just be quiet!” A voice demanded from the passenger seat up front next to Henry. He leaned over and turned up the radio to hear the latest on the NASA incident. It wasn’t much, but the news media was on top of things and making up the story as they go. They say in the field, any story is better than no story. Valid and direct reporting of all events was a thing of the past. The masses just wanted to hear something exciting anymore. “If it bleeds it leads” they often said.

The passenger points to a green road sign on the side of the highway overpass, “Exit here, we could circle around.” The exit was in a quarter mile so the sign read.

Henry looks to him and nods, “I’m on it.” He turns the wheel sharply and works his own Houston lane change.

The radio squeaked and came into focus. Holly was already at the site and was reporting for Jerry’s rival news agency. She somehow always found a way to get there before anyone else and she always received the credit. Many speculated she was the next to receive a Pulitzer award for best reporting this year.

“Turn that off, man! I don’t need to hear her half-assed crazed stories!” Jerry spat out like he had eaten something wretched.

The passenger looks over his shoulder to Jerry and chuckles. Instead of turning down the voice she screamed through all the speakers with the loudest annoying voice, “On site at the Johnson Space Center, this is Holly Samuels. It’s still unclear what has happened within the heart of the NASA space program but the latest report was from an anonymous telephone call from inside the building which allegedly told his wife to leave town immediately.”

She was cut off before continuing, another voice was heard in the background, “Ma’am you must leave this premises. This has been quarantined. Please move your equipment immediately.”

There was shuffling of sound and equipment shook around violently scraping against the microphones. Unlike the edited news, this was all live feed from the media news radio.

Holly replied to the microphone, hoping to get her word out to her agency, “Apparently we’re being told to move farther from the scene of this incident. The entire parking lot has been quarantined by soldiers wearing black suits and armor wearing gas masks.”

She was cut off the airwaves.

“Damn it Henry, get us over there!” Jerry was frustrated now. The passenger agreed with him and also yelled at Henry.

“Jesus guys! You see this shit don’t you? I can’t go anywhere!”

“Well, hurry the hell up! Knock that piss ant Jaguar out of your way. Do something!” The passenger should have been driving he had thought. They would have already been there, he would say.

Jerry looks to the two up front, “The equipment is all prepped and ready. We have to get there soon. My gut is telling me something big is about to happen!”

Change - ch. 3

“I don’t know what the hell happened over the past few years. The media had a hype before the broadcast was cut by the government. The people never had the chance to figure out what the hell really happened.

It all started with that damn terrorist attack on the twin towers. It only got worse from there. Governments around the world began to implement a “more gun” quality control. They figured that the more people that had guns, the less likely terrorists would make a move for fear of failure. Their only way to Mecca would be stopped by a Gentile.

I, along with the rest of my people were complacent. World politics had never been a real influence on us. Not really. We were American after all. The land of the free, the land of the true, and the land that God himself graced up to spread democracy around the globe. I can’t deny that fact. Who could? No American could, at least that was my idea before everything went to shit.

My name is Gerald Witager and I am one of the last broadcasters capable of broadcasting on an A.M. station. It’s not for lack of trying. I used to be a news anchor on CNN, but well, there really wasn’t much use for them anymore, let alone any news agency.

In a way, I felt happy they were gone. No longer would my stories be edited by those damn pigs up at corporate. I am now able to distribute my story around to the huddled masses without fear of losing my job! I no longer had a job. There wasn’t a job for anyone. The world had gone terribly wrong.

This is my final broadcast at this location. I am recording this for others to one day listen to. I hope that in the end, man will succeed in whatever that is out amongst us. Whatever this… This plague is.”

The broadcasted ended quickly and the transmission ended here. Gerald had taken the tape deep underground. He wouldn’t release it to the hungry masses until it was completed. It would never be completed.

Jerry, that was the name he liked to be called by, he was a young journalist out of college. He showed great potential in the field of video editing and story documentary. Unfortunately, all of that went away after Houston. All of his hopes and dreams would be flushed away when he was assigned to cover the footage at NASA.

Change - ch. 2

That was nearly seven years ago. Since that dreadful day I hadn’t had the chance to see my family. I was given a gag order to even talk about what I am about to say to you. Even by me talking to you now, I could be putting my family’s life in jeopardy. Our government isn’t known for being the most ethical amongst the several.

The executive officer was a Marine in the United States Army. His rank had a shiny bird. He was a Colonel. He flaunted the chicken to the best of his ability. He wasn’t much liked by the civilians who ran his department. If it wasn’t for us “lowly” scientists, there wouldn’t even be a military program. We never would have stepped on the ground on the Moon back in the 60s. Nor would we have landed on Mars 50 years later. No, it was always the civilians that managed the operations but it was always the military that took the forefront in taking the credit.

I had dropped my coffee on his floor but it was the least of the concerns. The world was about to be changed in ways I couldn’t even imagine. A group of astronaughts returned from a lengthy trip to the small space station we had orbiting the planet Mars. Apparently, there was a great discovery that would change every core fundamental principle of our beliefs as humans.

It was imperative that the space crew tell NASA in person for fear that China or other nations among us with prying ears would throw it all out of context. This had happened in the early 1990s when a core sample of rock from Mars was examined and they had found a strange worm-like structure resembling like a carbon based organism. Of course, other civilian science communities denied this fact and ultimately, the sample was still debating on to this day so many years after the fact.

No, things had changed since then and Mariner 6 was on an excavation along the Valles Marineris canyon system. In the industry, we call this geologic phenomena the “The scar of Mars.” Imagine the Grand Canyon. Now imagine the same geologic structure 600 times larger. The canyon spans from California to New York. Science is still formulating how this great canyon had formed. To this day, we don’t have a working theory.

The Mariner 6 science team had pulled out an item that looked quite similar to a capsule. They took this metallic item back to the space station for study. Only then did they realize what they had found. Living organisms within the rocks inside the capsule rose curious eyes among the crew. Had we finally found the answer to our long lost quest for the meaning of life? Maybe we had.

This was the information that braved three of the crew to return immediately back to Earth. Since the late 20th century we have been working a new propulsion system that would allow travel at speeds that we could only imagine. It wasn’t quite light speed or ‘hyper’ drive. No, this was far less than any science in sci-fi. It was faster and more efficient though.

The crew returned late that night before I entered the office on that dreadful day. I was unaware of their return. It was classified as above Top Secret. I guarantee the government wanted to keep a lid on this until they could figure out a PR angle to tell the people, if at all. This was the irony of my job. Even if we had found something remarkable, there would be red tape and crates hiding it from view. Why bother, I’d ask myself.

This was my life…

Scientists immediately took control of the capsule from Mars and it was taken to one of our most secure ‘clean rooms’ in the facility. They began to investigate the subject further and to their disbelief, according to the Executive Office in charge, this was the first signs of life outside of Earth.

Somewhere in the calamity of excitement, someone had lost containment. Something went terribly wrong. Someone was infected. Something was not right. This is where I came into the office. After I had read the Metropolitan section of the paper and finished my boring paper trail of replies on the computer email system, only after I finished several business calls did the craze stir the crowds.

During the time between me sitting down at my desk, and when the crew of Mariner 6 landed late that night, and after the scientists lost containment, only after all of this and only when they found that someone was ‘infected’ did the hazard lights turn on, the quarantine set, and panic rose. Only then did I get up from my desk and go meet with my bosses about what had happened. Only then did I know that we were all screwed.

The Executive Officer told me that the infected scientist’s name was James Orwal. He was a prick from the Carnegie Institute. He thought he was top dog in bio-engineering and he certainly made it a point to patronize me every chance he could. He was young and naïve. He was a zealot in the field of astro-physical biomes and his mission was to find life outside of Earth. Well, he had found it.

He had a full set of black hair and thick black wired frame glasses. He had an athletic build and often tried to wear shirts two sizes too small in order to swoon the ladies in the facility. Unfortunately, his personality made most everyone vomit, but he was far too arrogant to ever get it. He had a light British accent to go along with his savvy appearance and he was always three days in need of a shave.

It was rather ironic that I came to investigate. Apparently my boss had sent one of his aides out to find me. I was the telecommunications supervisor. I was well versed in several Earthling languages. My expertise was needed for once. The red badge came in handy I would say. Doctor Orwal was speaking in tongues. They couldn’t translate it and they figured if anyone in the building could, I would be able to.

I was rushed down to the clean room where the military had locked three scientists in the room. One of them was Doctor Orwal. The other two, well, they weren’t close acquaintances to me. I saw them around the building from time to time, we exchanged small talk, but I rarely actually sat down at lunch with them. All of them in this clean room looked deathly. One of the scientists wasn’t moving at all.
Doctor Orwal appeared to be fine though. Well, as fine as you could be with an alien disease inside your body eating at your flesh. His full set of hair was falling and stuck on his white lab coat. His face was bubbling up if he had a severe burn. His skin was yellow, his eyes were a strange pale yellow. Some sticky substance was smeared all over his skin and every time he went to touch his body, that goo would act like some sticky glue or paste.

The doctor didn’t even recognize me through the glass. I pressed the button on the intercom inside the room and told him my name. There was no response. I looked as the other scientist inched about, she suffered the same reactions of Doctor Orwal, but she wasn’t at all in his state of what I could only examine as euphoria. She was far from it, you could see dread in her eyes, she honestly feared for her life. Weakly from the intercom I could hear her hissing for help.

I gave her a few more hours before whatever was in that capsule to kill her. It sounded, by her voice that she had a pulmonary edema. The same type of symptoms found when you’re more than 24,000 feet above the earth climbing summits of mountains without an oxygen supply. There was nothing we could do for them. If whatever was in that room was airborne, no way we could allow the pathogen to expose to countless others. We would lose containment again. I’d like to see Washington’s PR on that accident.

This was what my life was coming to…

Doctor Orwal looked to the group of us on the other side of the glass and he spoke again. His dialect was not of this earth. I couldn’t even begin to understand it.

I punched some airman on the shoulder and demanded he record everything the dying doctor said. He didn’t argue. He moved with an amazing grace and speed I’d never seen a government employee had. The recording was on, the red light said I was ready to start the show.

“Doctor Orwal, this is Doctor Paul Newhart. You know me. You know who I am, do you not?” I asked him a series of simple questions trying to get a response from him. Maybe somewhere under the yellow skin and sticky paste, there was a shred of humanity left in him.

The bubbling balled death of a man, he speaks back to me, but it wasn’t English. It wasn’t Earthling. I couldn’t understand a thing of it. I watched him curiously and noticed some of the words he spoke would have been impossible for the human vocal chords to produce. Maybe he was changing some how. What was he turning into though?

I did notice that he understood me however. He responded to questions with relative ease, but I couldn’t grasp his responses. This creature of a man, stood up and released a thick grey substance from his mouth. It sprayed on his lab coats. I could only think that it was his lungs. I couldn’t tell, but if what I believed was happening, this display was plausible.

This alien, by now, there was no other word for it, he, it, turned around and scooped some of the grey chunks of whatever from his coat and began drawing symbols on the wall opposite of us. This alien continued this process for a great length of time before finishing.

The symbols and images made even less sense than the creature’s dialect. It would have to be further studied and the video feed was instantly sent to whatever department handled this sort of thing. As if there was someone on this planet capable of handling this problem.

It was then I realized that I wasn’t going home for dinner that night.

This was my life now…

Change - ch. 1

The day had started out like any other. I woke up and my wife had already cooked me a breakfast. The usual of breakfast to start the day, coffee, black, and the morning paper, the thing champions are made of. The kids were pounding feet out the door wearing their tiny backpacks and brown bag specials. Only god knows what leftovers my wife had concocted for their lunch today.

There was never anything interesting in the paper. This was always a common thing for this day and age. You never hear about the new meteor that was on a trajectory to strike our home in a hundred years. You never heard about that miracle pill that had the ability to cure cancer. It was in the paper, but it was flooded by the headlines that the common people found more appealing. Who was dating who and who went to jail this week? Would the children of the super model live with the rail road tycoon husband or would they go to the popparazi boyfriend in Hollywood while she went to rehab for the fourth time for a serious problem with the cocaine diet.

I looked at my watch I had received earlier this month from my employees. It was a twenty year award for my services at the organization. It was a cheap knock off of a three thousand dollar Rolex. The government never gave out awards of this sort for employees with tenure. My employees chuckled when they gave me the time piece and said, “It’s good enough for government work!” It was an inside joke.

The hand ticked to a quarter ‘til eight and it was time to go. I stood up, folded the daily tabloid of Hollywood drama and kissed my wife goodbye. I told her to have a good day and I would see her that evening. Little did I know that I wasn’t coming home that evening, if I had known, I would have come up with something a little more clever and affectionate.

Traffic was terrible. Houston was a major metropolitan area of over 9 million folks hustling here and there. They were always going someplace and I often wondered where they were heading, if they had lives, why they did what they did and if they could ever understand the bigger picture. It was a little game I liked to play while I was stuck in park on the South bound side of Interstate 45. I knew that there were quicker ways to get to the office, but I never took them. I think I liked the parking lot of poisonous fumes exausting from the hundreds of cars on the road.

I parked my black Porsche in my designated spot. I had just recently been promoted to the Deputy Supervisor of Telecommunications in a department that most civilians would never hear about. I had a new red identification badge that would let me in the several doors down into the corridors of the Howard Johnson NASA facility. I had my own office, but it wasn’t a corner window office that I had expected. It was more like a warehouse. This place hadn’t been used since the original Apollo missions so many years ago.

This was the life…

It was approximately two in the afternoon when everyone in the building went crazy. I heard the announcement intercom trigger and the head supervisor rang in telling the crew that we were on lock down. He told us that we were quarantined. He told up that everything was going to be alright. He told us not to panic and help was on the way.

Yeah, this was the life…

Of course, being only human, I had to find out what was going on. I had this new red badge, I should use my new found power and get to the bottom of things. I rush out of my prestigious office space, dodging pale skinny nerds darting back and forth in the halls like a march of angry red ants. I spun around to save my coffee cup from being smashed by some Air Force tech sergeant like I should be an extra in the theatrical play “Lord of the Dance!” All this time, I pondered that there couldn’t be anything on earth that could have so many people up in arms turning NASA into an asylum for the insane.

I came to my destination several floors above my office and came to realize that it wasn’t at all what I had expected. The phones were ringing off the hook and I watched my boss talking into the red phone. Must be the president or a member of the Joint Chiefs on the other line, it was hard to speculate. I had decided to talk to the executive officer, as busy as he was, surely he’d be able to answer my question!

I was intercepted by a new employee. She was rather cute, but today she had lost her mind in this asylum along with the rest of the employees. She tried to stop me and I looked down at her. Normally she wore a bun in her hair, tying it tight against her scalp, but today it was ragged and she was definitely on her last nerve.

“Sir, you can’t enter right now, he’s extremely busy!” She said to me.

Who the hell was she? Couldn’t she see I wore a red badge? She obviously didn’t pay attention. I told her who I was and that she had better get out of the way before I kicked her out of the office and into the street. Well, into the street when the quarantine was lifted. She didn’t defend her position much longer after that.

This is my life!

I waited and waited for what felt like an eternity before he allowed me into his office. He looked at me, called me by my first name, his voice was shaken. Something had happened and he had difficulty in saying it. I waited for the answer. I was growing more and more anxious and I just wanted to throw my coffee at the wall and demand he spit it out. I thought twice on that though, I didn’t want to be thrown out into the street after quarantine.

After he told me what had happened, I did indeed drop my coffee. It didn’t hit the wall, but it fell to the floor, my wife is going to kill me for staining these new pants. That was if I were ever going home.

This was my life. This was my life before everything changed. Before I found out that there was more to life than me. I had no words to explain what happened next. I was no longer alone on this planet, surrounded by these marching mindless ants. I found a new life to explore. This was my life before I found my life…