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| Sci-Shorts-100 Science-Fiction Short-Stories The Variant Edge: Regnazek's Ascent Chapter 1: The Alien Land Chapter 2: Overseer Duty Chapter 3: Parallel Realities Chapter 4: The Variant Edge Chapter 5: The Pilot Ego |
The
Variant Edge: Regnazek’s Ascent
Nick Zentor Story translated from Colonel Zan Regnazek’s Log Chapter 1: The Alien Land The alien spaceship crashed at the edge of a desert, just a couple hundred meters from a complex of middle class apartments. The army evacuated the families from the apartments, secured the area about the crash-sight, and the air force experts moved in. I was ordered to stand permanent overseer duty, not so much because of any expertise with aliens or the unknown, but because of my top-secret clearance and the fact that they wanted me somewhere other than on active field-assignment. My field activities were now a matter of government record and personal tragedy. It was true, though I could not admit it at the time, that the last field mission had left me under trauma and shock. I protested, pleaded with the general to keep me on the active list, but it wasn’t all his decision. There were the doctor’s reports to be considered as well. So I accepted the station with reluctance, and moved into the closest apartment of the evacuated complex, at the very edge of the desert, to oversee the alien spaceship while the experts ran their tests. During the first few days, they worked on after sunset, through the night. After that, they only stayed for short periods in the day. It was sometime after the first week, during the night, that I began to notice something strange. Mental visions, transcendental imagery I did not quite understand. Visions of a spaceship very much like the one that had crashed, only it was somewhere else, not on this planet, somewhere vastly alien to any place on Earth. What transpired after this initial experience was something like a very vivid astral, transcendental experience, in which I moved along a series of roads and passages over an endless land of alien constructs, blue, grey, and blue against a bright blue-white sky and a violet haze. It became very tiresome after about 3 kilometers, by my reckoning, and for the first time I felt legs under my fleeting body. I stopped to sit on a blue-green mound at the edge of a field aligned by a visible force-field or fence-work, feeling the tension like sharp pins in my muscles and joints. Though I seemed to know the general direction of my heading, to a construct poking its height as a great, slanted tower in the distance, curiosity permitted a few careful looks beyond the force-field, and I studied strange oddly-shaped constructs over a hundred meters away, across a flat stretch of blue and purple weeds. After a short few minutes, I regained my strength, and continued on. As I moved along, there were only two things on my mind, besides the fact that it appeared a longer journey than I had expected. One was the great, slanted tower in the distance, and the other was the extremely deserted condition of the environment. My mind was concerned with a bit of a mystery, about how the environment was completely vacant of all animal life-forms, and how the slanted tower might be involved. The journey continued for what seemed like hours, but I had no time-piece to judge by, as I moved on with a compulsion until I felt the pain in my legs and had to rest again. So it went for hours and many kilometers, moving, resting, then moving again, all the time the slanted tower never seemed to get any closer. Strange, alien constructs all about the land, but no sign of animal life whatsoever. On and on I went, until I reached a wide crossroads and what appeared to be a transport line of tracks. There I found a very odd resting place that reminded me of the skeleton of an old Chevy, without roof, without doors, without wheels or engine, merely the chassis, the frame, and the seats remained, like an aliens idea of benches at a depot, and the material appeared to be blue-grey plastic-metal. It was all very strange. As I sat down on one of the seats, I noticed the weeds were getting high, as if it had been deserted and unused for some time. I rested my legs, rubbed them for a minute, and found a flask in my jacket. I drank from the flask, felt a tasteless, warm liquid enter my body that added strength. I gazed out across the wide crossroads, down each of the roads, leading off in different directions. I counted five, including the one I had traveled on, and then tried to find the slanted tower again. For a minute, I couldn’t see it, and felt lost, for it was the only landmark I had to travel by. I felt something like panic or danger and searched sharply into the distance. All the odd constructs in the near-distance were perplexing, cold, and alien. All of them were surrounded by force-fields and none appeared the least bit friendly. Finally, a violet haze gave way to the slanted tower again, in the distance. It still appeared very far away. I shook my head shortly, surprised at how greater the distance was than I had expected, and wondered if I could reach it before I was overcome by fatigue. As I felt my body relax, reassured about the particular direction and road I had to take, the experience was transformed. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, and when I opened them again, walls were taking form around me, closing my body in, and the odd, alien rest-depot had vanished. I had no idea at all where I was for a minute, felt a strong sense of deja vu, and realized I was sitting again in the apartment, at the edge of the restricted area. What I had experienced was no simple dream, I was sure, certainly nothing like any dream I had ever experienced before. It left me wondering, with fascination, and amazement. One thing I felt certain about was that the crashed alien space-ship had something to do with it, because as I arose to look out the window, across the desert, the shape of it stood out like a missing key to a jigsaw puzzle. It was the same exact shape as the slanted tower in that strange, alien experience. What did it mean? |
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| Copyright 4/2007 by Nick Zentor |