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Extract from ‘The Watchers’

By

G. K. McLaren

 PROLOGUE 

And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years," ... He also made the stars.

Genesis 1.14/15

 * * * 

The surgeon's scalpel effortlessly cut through the taut young skin as the rest of the team worked with efficiency born of skill, practice, and confidence. A trim, female form lay face down on the operating table, covered up to shoulder height by a fine silver-white sheet. Her head overhung the end of the table supported by a frame shaped specifically to cradle her face securely, whilst ensuring that her neck was easily accessible to the surgeon.

Two small incisions were made, one on either side of the neck. Both were about one centimeter long and positioned two centimeters to the rear of the patient's ear lobes, just below the hairline. State-of-the-art laser scalpels cauterized the wounds as they were made.

Nearby, lay a shallow sterile dish containing two flat semi-clear disks. Each disc was six millimeters in diameter with a whisker-thin filament partially encapsulated within. This filament extended a further 15 millimeters from the edge of the disc.

One disc was carefully inserted into each of the two wounds and tucked into a small pocket in the muscle tissue prepared for the purpose. In turn, the wounds were closed by a skin 'welding' procedure that left only very fine scars that would fade to white after a short time and would be virtually unnoticeable except to the touch.

A syringe-like tube with a circular brush of filaments, marginally bigger than the wound, was placed over each scar. A slight hiss and the operation was over.

The young woman was carefully turned over, lifted from the table to a trolley, and taken to a separate recovery room. There was one other occupied trolley in this room. As technicians cleared the theater the surgeon and his assistant stood together, looking up through a large curved window in the corridor outside.

Myriad stars sparkled through the vast void of space, their numbers and variety limited only by imagination. The infinity of black through which each star proclaimed its finite presence had confounded and inspired countless generations of philosophers and scientists since mankind first looked heavenward.

"It's beautiful out there tonight," the assistant said in obvious awe of the heavens.

"Yes," replied the surgeon, "it really puts what we do here into perspective."

 * * *

A dream and a memory away, an old woman traced her fingertips over an old newspaper cutting. On one side of the cutting the lead story was the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. The reverse side of the cutting contained a black and white photograph, together with a covering story. It was now faded and yellowed with the effect of three decades of aging on inferior quality newsprint.

As the old woman mouthed the words of the story, long since burned deep in her memory, tears silently welled up and trickled over the cheeks of her downcast face. Her memories made intimate contact with a past consigned, by most, to the pages of anonymous and inconsequential history.

The images of three young people, fresh faced and smiling, looked out from the photograph. Two of them, a young man and a young woman, were seated on the driver's bench-seat of a single-horse-drawn gypsy caravan. The third, a young bearded man, stood on the ground beside the horse's head, reigns in one hand and his other hand resting on the horse's neck. All three had turned their backs on the conventions and constraints of academic life and abandoned their studies. They had decided to use whatever money and goodwill they could muster and set off in a new direction to find a 'new truth', and all this in the way that only the young seemed capable.

Their smiles took no account of the inevitable consequence of their actions -- the sadness they were leaving behind with their friends and families. For the most part the newspaper story, published some two days after their departure, was to be the first indication of their leaving.

The old woman carefully put the press cutting back between the pages of a photograph album and reverently placed the album in a bureau drawer, wiping her cheeks dry as she did so.

CHAPTER 1

1991 BC -- Mathaum, an insignificant planet orbiting an equally insignificant star part-way between Zeta Orionis and the Horsehead Nebula in the night sky, but almost twice as far from Earth as the Nebula, at 3,000 light years distant.

Deep underground, technicians fought the increasingly hostile environmental conditions on their planet's surface, trying hard to maintain living conditions for millions of their fellows. They had lived this way for three hundred years, since their forefather's follies finally stripped away the last vestiges of an atmosphere from their planet.

Life had been tolerable but mostly synthetic, and it was getting increasingly uncomfortable for the troglodyte remnants of a once proud and advanced civilization. The last vestiges of their magnificent architecture crumbled to dust and twisted alloy on the planet's broken surface. Many were looking to their God for their long promised release. Others look to their technicians for news of many of their number who have already left on one last Holy Crusade.

 * * *

 2006AD -- Earth. The worldwide scientific community was in hyper-drive. Every scientist even remotely connected to astronomy was at the end of a phone or fax, or in front of a computer screen. Radio telescopes were turning in quick succession towards the constellation of Orion. The "wow" signal of 1977 from the Ohio State University Radio Telescope suddenly became an insignificant blip in scientific memory.

Radio frequency data streamed down from the direction of a seemingly insignificant star 3,000 light years away and lying close in the night sky to the Horsehead Nebula. Excitement was pandemic long before any part of the signal had been decoded...

"... I'm telling you, Max, this is something really significant. No, significant isn't the word, it's amazing, unprecedented, ye gods, this is proof positive of extra-terrestrial life! I just can't believe -- I just don't know what -- do you know what that means? 'Course you do! What am I thinking -- I'm babbling, right?"

"OK, Dan, calm down. Give yourself time to breathe -- you're turning blue."

"I can't help it, it is just, so, so, so, jeez I can't think straight!"

"Calm down, calm, calm ... It shouldn't be too long before we know something. We're running some of the best encryption programs known to nerd-dom -- and it's still coming in. We've got hours of tape and it is still coming. If I weren't so busy I'd get the champagne out..."

Having no proven contact since its inception, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, SETI, had been sliding down the budgetary ladder for years. Now it looked like all its Christmases had come at once.

Next day, however, the excitement was tempered by devastating news as a massive surge of energy heralded a star in the vicinity going supernova. At the same time the radio frequency dialogue suddenly stopped. For a while it was hoped that the signals were merely being swamped by the massive energy surge from the supernova. The information from the Very Large Array radio telescope, in New Mexico, was unequivocal.

Over the next few days, although the decoding of the signal was well into providing the first understanding of alien intelligence, the astronomical community turned its attention to the supernova. The death of a star was not an every day occurrence for astronomers but feelings were mixed. All indications were that the supernova was the parent star of the system from which the earlier radio signals had emanated.

Dan sat slumped at his console, hardly able to believe his bad luck until a colleague pointed out that his luck was nowhere near as bad as who or whatever sent the radio signals.

"There could have been millions of them Dan, billions even. One minute we're listening to their chatter and the next minute, BOOM! All gone ... Y'know, before these signals started we all would have been tickled to see a supernova right there in our scopes. We wouldn't have even considered loss of life, civilization, or whatever..."

Dan took time out from chewing the rim of his polystyrene cup to reply: "Man, I just can't believe it -- those people -- they shouldn't have even been there, what with the change in their stellar environment way before the star went ape. A day earlier and we wouldn't have gotten any of that radio traffic ... and from such a dull part of the cosmos. Maaahhhn! Who would've believed it? Now it's gone. The whole lot, gone, pfftt, snuffed out like a candle flame..."

"Who knows what they were doing there? Maybe their science was better than ours was? Maybe they were just passing through?"

Dan looked at his colleague over the rim of his spectacles: "If they were just passing through there must've been a helluva lot of them to generate the traffic we picked up. Nope! They're gone, they are sooo gone."

"Well, Dan, if indeed they're all gone, we're talking about three thousand years ago here. That's when the signals stopped. That's the supernova we're watching -- it's history, bubba, history..."

Over the weeks that followed, the world community had some re-assessing to do. Theory and theology were both turned upside down. With the Millennium but a fast-receding, shadowy memory, the post-millennium, post-modern, New-Age and new-agenda prophets were out, all with something 'deeply significant' to say.

Religions, New-Age and 'old age', picked the bones of the scientific findings. The more entrenched and orthodox religions refused to believe, those less entrenched found it variously easy to accept and adopt extra terrestrial life into their thinking. In the light of the non-appearance of Armageddon, the time seemed ripe for another new awakening.

Politicians had a new script to rewrite. The military found a new stage to play on and a new audience to play to, ensuring increased funding to fend of imminent attacks from the stars. Well, if there was one civilization out there the cosmos must be overrun with others, right?

On both sides of the Atlantic, government leaders were being lambasted by the scientific community on the one hand, and the military on the other, both looking for massive increases in their budgets for directly opposing reasons.

The world’s press had a field day ... 'ALIEN INVASION IMMINENT' one headline screamed. 'IS THIS THE BEGINNING OF THE END?' asked another, while a third declared: 'ALIEN CONSPIRACY UNCOVERED', complete with a list of all those in the employ of aliens -- everyone from Margaret Thatcher to Monica Lewinsky.

Despite the panic-mongering press's best efforts, the unfolding of the story of alien panic captivated more people than any threat they may have posed in this, the Earth's Third Millennium. As it had been firmly pointed out, the signals were already 3,000 years old before they reached Earth so it wasn't considered likely that the new discovery was much of a problem. Except, of course, in the minds of the military...

CHAPTER 2

"A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it. Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on men, fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake. A spirit glided by my face, and the hair on my body stood on end. It stopped, but I could not tell what it was."

Job 4.12-16

 * * *

 "Help me!" the disembodied voice pleaded, pathetically, sleepily.

"Help me! Help me!" the voice continued, distant, female, and vulnerable.

Fraser awoke with a start, covered from head to foot with sweat. His wife muttered something incomprehensible, turned over and lapsed back into a seemingly untroubled sleep. Only half awake he gathered his thoughts as best as he could, his dry mouth tasting of something nasty which had been good when first eaten. The heaviness of his eyelids, together with the perceived darkness of the world outside the bedroom curtains, persuaded him to follow his wife's example.

He lay for a while, uncomfortable on the damp bed-sheets but abnormally active for that time of the morning, or for any other time for that matter. Despite early morning fatigue and the craving for further sleep his mind began to sift through memories at a disconcerting rate. He found himself irritatingly alert.

Further attempts to entice mind to accompany body to the warm and comfortable realms of sleep were soon abandoned, as millions of synapses in his brain simultaneously fired and sparked, continuing their programmed search through forty five years of memories.

Still with an hour to go before he needed to, Fraser rose. It had become unequivocally evident to him that he would have no further chance of sleep before it was time to prepare for work. So, following a well-established morning routine, he ultimately arrived at the kitchen by way of the downstairs toilet and the TV on-switch.

It would be at least half an hour before the morning paper arrived, so he contented himself with a revitalizing ingestion of caffeine-rich, Colombian coffee -- his first choice of legal stimulant. He settled himself into his chosen seat for the ritual viewing of morning TV -- a carefully measured blend of third rate cartoons (presumably cheap), general interest features (mostly uninteresting), and tv Personalities with a well honed line of inane prattle but, interestingly enough, no personality.

The soporific effect of the television was more than countered by the potency of the steaming black coffee and after a second cup Fraser was ready to face the world -- except that he couldn't get the dream out of his mind. He'd had many vivid dreams before, but few had lingered long in his memory once the mundane grind of day-to-day living had recommenced with the first grudged opening of gritty eyelids.

This dream was different however, it was parasitic and would not leave him alone. Far from being the normal prophetic dream of impending doom or fabulous financial gain; or some deeply erotic fantasy of unbridled passion and pleasure; it was very mundane. A short, formless and relatively uneventful dream, its only memorable event being the subliminal emergence of a friend from some twenty-five years in the past pleading for Fraser's help.

It left him with a disturbing undefined yearning to drag the experience from the dark recesses of his subconscious into the light of rationality. His friend's pleading disturbed him deeply. It seemed more like memory than fantasy -- almost as if he had been with her in a time of great distress, and was now haunted by his own inability to respond to her cry for help.

The dream was with him during the first hostile engagement of the morning with Beth, his long-suffering (and long suffered) wife. It was with him during the several minor skirmishes that preceded his strategic withdrawal to the front door of the house. It was still with him as he made his subsequent escape to his car and the open road to his work in the nearby Scottish town of Kirkcaldy.

His seven-mile trip to work was more interesting than usual -- at least for the many other road users at whom Fraser seemingly aimed his car in moments of dream-induced distraction. Those who knew Fraser, or who were aware of his legendary lack of road sense, normally attempted to avoid the local Fife roads he was known to frequent during these danger times. That particular morning was worse than normal.

He added the final touches to his pre-work grooming ritual, using his rear view mirror to check the effect and forgetting, for the moment, that he was still traveling at speed.

Fraser was unremarkable in appearance -- about average height for a man, and of average(ish) build and fitness for someone who enjoyed only the occasional flurry of sporting activity, such as bar-billiards or Grand-Prix television viewing. He was dark haired with a full but well groomed beard and was regarded by many of his female colleagues as quite handsome, in an average sort of way, with a character-full, well lived-in face and an embryonic Silverback-Gorilla paunch. Bright and witty if somewhat vague, his artistic temperament belied the technical expertise required for the career path he had chosen to follow...

The Watchers ISBN: 1-59286-511-9 is published by PublishAmerica -- www.publishamerica.com  Available to order now.

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