When Frederick was a kid, his father called him Freddy. “My daddy was Fred Senior,” his father had told him, “and that’s what they called him, or just Senior.” His father was Fred Jr., and both his parents named him Frederick to honor both their fathers. His father was half black and white, and when Frederick saw pictures of his grandfather Fred Senior, he struggled with the reality that he was looking at his own blood relation. Senior had no memory by the time Frederick was old enough to remember him, and Frederick can only remember their last encounter as a very early sketch from his years as a toddler.
As Fred Jr. got older, he became a shell of the father who had raised Frederick. By the time he was forty-five, it seemed that he was waiting for the sky to fall down on him. Frederick would always find him sitting alone in silence, usually staring into nothing like he was either trying with all of himself to remember something, or he was listening to or for something that was difficult for him to hear if he moved. He would smile at Frederick when he noticed him, “I was just …” and he would trail off.
This was before his diagnosis, though maybe it was the early signs of Alzheimer’s because it came on strong a few years later, and Frederick worried for his father.
His mother was crushed to lose her husband and she could only hold him and reassure him that things would get better, even though she knew it was a lie and she had resigned herself to the sad truth.
Frederick’s childhood had been idyllic and like a painting hit with thinner, it began to run and lose it’s definitions. By the time he left for college, his world was a muddled mess; his mother was inconsolable and his father was lost in his mind. He vowed to return with a cure that would restore the life that he had known.
Alia stares at the body of Dr. Frederick Cousins on a cadaver table and in a body bag that is zipped open. Aile, Giovanni, and Eakran are there, as well, and they stare on solemnly, Eakran with visible tears in his eyes.
“This is my fault,” Eakran says. “He was a good man, and I drove him to this.”
Aile pats him on the back to console him. “Yeah, it is your fault, but how were you ever going to make that right?”
Alia shakes her head. “He had a lot of guilt and he didn’t have to feel it. Maybe we should be feeling a little responsible, too,” she says to Aile who looks surprised. “You could have told him sooner what Moss was saying.”
“I’m not his personal medium,” Aile says defiantly.
“No one should feel any guilt,” Giovanni says. “The past is just that, and you all were discussing your plans for a better future. There was a chance for a fresh start.”
“He’s right,” Alia says and she looks to Eakran. “So what’s this plan of yours?”
After everyone mourns Cousins, the two follow Eakran to his office and leave Giovanni to dispose of the body as he has become very accustomed; the cremation of bodies was apparently in the job description of Eakran’s security detail. Eakran leans on the desk facing Alia and Aile in chairs.
“I am from a race of beings known as Druintes. I am over three hundred years old, relative to the passage of time on Earth of course, and I came here to provide firsthand information to an organization known as the Interstellar Panel that closely resembles the US Supreme Court, only, they actively create rules and regulations rather than simply defending a code that predates them. I have made steady transmissions back to the Panel over the course of my time here on Earth and I learned recently that human representatives to the Panel have been accepted. I do not know if and when these representatives plan to reveal the truth of advanced civilizations throughout the universe to the rest of Earth, but it seems that humanity has stepped onto the universal stage. I view this as a sign that I should be open about my origins. I have lived on Earth for many years and it is my new home. I prefer it here to Druont, I realize, and I did not want to admit that before.”
When Eakran finishes his monologue he sees that Aile is concerned for Alia. At some point during Eakran’s long speech, she had slipped into what appears to be a seizure, though she is not convulsing.
When Eakran had said the words Interstellar Panel, it was like a trigger and Alia’s consciousness, her awareness of her place in the universe, suddenly slipped from her physical form and she was called back to a time before time.
Journey Back
The IP shipport in sector Ys719 covers the region of space that includes Earth and the entire sector is under the protection of the IP Security Force, whose ranks number in the millions. Technically, Alia and Nebuchad are officers with the rank of Captain in the IP Security Force, even though neither of them achieved their ranks in combat disciplines. They are both on the intelligence side of the SF, Alia as an explorer and intelligence officer and Nebuchad as an expert in personnel affairs and management. The Ys719 Shipport is home to a significant military base of the IP and they are closely aligned with the allied governments of Earth that represent the planet on the universal stage.
Since Alia, Nebuchad, and Solse Prab’s journey into the uncharted regions, the IP Security Command of the Ys719 Shipport have seized control of what turned out to be a planet-sized spacecraft that was capable of sustaining billions in an enclosed ecosystem. They have identified the control center of the planet on a continent with many buildings that reminds Alia of a busy city center on Earth, like New York, and they have managed to deactivate the field of disturbance.
There are buildings and structures on other continents, but they are shells, like someone created them to simulate an environment and the IP forces that explored the planet were confounded by what they had found.
On the command center continent, the computer experts of the IP were able to deduce that the entire planet was a test dummy that was likely lost and it had engaged it’s disturbance field to avoid detection and presumably the confiscation of such advanced technology. The IP is ecstatic to have it, but some worry if the creators will return for it, angry at the new inhabitants. Unable to move it, the IP decided to occupy it and there are plans to permanently relocate the Shipport to the planet.
Alia is on the planet now, with Solse and Nebuchad, and they are in the same field that they had first encountered. They are alone, no other security forces are with them, and Alia had engaged the screen by stirring up pollen in a tall field of grass. Solse is intrigued by it, Nebuchad is disturbed that when Alia talked with the face on the screen, it was like they spoke in a code that was impossible for him to understand. He had wanted to help Alia in her recovery after the encounter that left her consciousness fractured, but whatever was happening with the face seemed much more consequential. She was back to her normal self after their last encounter on the planet, no more lapses in her awareness, and whatever her conversation with the face on the screen meant, it meant little to Nebuchad. They spoke in English, the face with an accent he had never heard before, but the feelings behind the words were unintelligible to him.
And then today, suddenly she was agitated and needed to get to the field to talk to the face on the screen, and now they are here speaking to one another in the knowing way that makes Nebuchad worry, or envious that there is no great mystery that he is apart of. He wants to listen to Alia’s conversation, but he struggles because he is listing his grievances with the situation in his mind, coming to a reason to end it for good.
“I was talking to someone, and then it got crazy and now I’m here again,” Alia says.
“This is curious,” the face on the screen says. “You are the same version I met before, too, aren’t you?”
Alia nods. “I don’t know what happened. I found my friends who can see spirits and I’m my old self again, and then I was talking with Dr. Eakran and now I’m here.”
“How did you get back last time?”
“The realization was enough, I guess. But it’s not working now. Am I stuck here? Is this my new life?”
“No, you must be here for a reason though. I can help you.”
Nebuchad and Solse look at Alia confused.
“I’m sorry guys,” Alia says, “but something is wrong. I’m in the wrong place.”
“Alia, everything is fine,” Nebuchad says, convinced that he has to put an end to her interactions with the face on the screen. “You are alright.”
“I need some time alone,” she says and Nebuchad reluctantly leaves with Solse.
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