Albedo was disturbed by the lack of communication he was getting back from the two men. He slammed his fist down on console, switching off the comm, and threw up his arms in frustration. He gave his captain’s chair a wild beating from his foot and sat back down onto while giving every known curse to ever exist. The bridge crew flinched at his sudden outburst and observed him quietly. The only one brave enough to speak was his sister. She had stepped back onto the bridge just as he had his micro-tantrum and seemed just as shocked as the rest.
“You bout done, big bro?” She stated folding her arms in disappointment. “Or does that chair need another few kicks to be soft enough for your stupid ass?”
“Not now, Anna!” He barked in response.
She confronted him at his chair, swinging him around to face her, and glared at him.
“What’s the fucking problem?”
“Milo and Mike,” He grimaced, not trying to look directly at her. “They’re my problem right now. Nobody is talking to me. I don’t know if they’re alive, trying to be dicks by not responding back… as if it’s a joke, or whatever.” He quickly turned to look at her directly, “What’s the ETA of Roberto? Is he in there yet?”
“I don’t know,” She shrugged. “I came up here to see how you were doing.”
Albedo turned on the comm on his arm rest, less forcibly this time, and spoke firmly into it.
“Chaz, what’s the current status of the robot?”
“It’s through!” The man happily chirped back. “Roberto is heading their way now. It was a bit of a long drop down, but he’s a tough son-of-a-bitch.”
“See…” Anna mockingly said to Albedo, raising a brow comically.
“Well, alright then…” Albedo nodded, giving slow exhale of relief. “Let’s hope those two having strangled each other to death. I don’t need to fill out anymore accident reports…”
“Hold up…” Chaz spoke again. There was a slight pause before he said more. “Something is going on, the robot isn’t moving, it’s not able to receive any of my commands…”
“Oh, come on, man…” Albedo sighed, rubbing his face in disbelief. “Don’t give me that shit.”
“Did you boost the signal strength?” Anna asked him as he leaned over to speak into the arm rest comm. “Maybe there’s just some latency from all that rock.”
“Duh, gee, I guess I’m too stupid to think of that…” Chaz mockingly retorted. “Ah hell, Anna, I know what I’m doing here. It ain’t the strength or the asteroid rock thickness. The robot is just… I dunno… not accepting my commands. It’s still getting through, he’s just… refusing to budge.”
Anna and Albedo glared at each other. That didn’t make sense. They had a shared confusion, both looking at the monitor ahead as the asteroid visual filled the screen. Albedo rubbed his chin, his frustration growing more intense. Anna’s eyes darted back and forth as she tried to mentally figure out what the problem could possibly be.
“What the hell is going on in there?” She wondered aloud.
“It’s time to think of another alternative.” Albedo stated. He rubbed his chin one more time, stood up, adjusting his belt, and focused his gaze onto the crew. “Start up the thrusters and let’s move the ship in closer.”
Anna quickly spun back to look at him. “What? Are you loco, bro? We’ll collide with the asteroid, it’s far too big to…”
“Hey,” He pointed at her. “I”m the captain, ya got it? I know what this ship is capable of, I know much closer we can get before anything like that can happen. I just want to close the distance so we can make a smoother jump to it.”
“Jump?”
“Yeah,” He nodded. “I’m gonna suit up and go down there.” Anna was going to object, but he held out his hand to silence that thought. “And you’re coming with me. So, get your swimsuit on, sis, I’m going into the pool with you.”
Anna was stunned for a moment. She didn’t expect that from him. Slowly, her smile started to form and nodded with acceptance.
“It’s about goddamn time.” She said.
“Ah-ah-ah…” He waved a dismissive finger. “None of that sass, just get ready.”
* * *
Milo continued to approach the alien craft. His steps were careful and slow. As he reached out the hand to touch the surface of it, the ship began to vibrate before his very eyes. He couldn’t hear Mike anymore, screeching for him to stop getting close to it, and stayed fixated on the blurring vessel. For some reason, he wasn’t able to look away, to focus anywhere else, just on the vibrating hull before him. As the intensity grew, a light began to form. The brilliance of it expanded and formed all around, it enveloped him in a blinding white light.
“I hear you…” He whispered. “I hear you calling.”
“The way is prepared.” A voice spoke.
It shocked him for a second. It wasn’t being said in English, but of an ancient Navajo language long forgotten by most of his people. He remembered his grandmother teaching him some of the lost words, ones that were taught by her mother and father, who learned it from their forebears; on and on, back in history, back to the days when their people still flourished in the American west. It was a noble heritage that gave him and all his people a sense of pride.
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But now here it was, in the depths of space, being spoken by some alien ship. Or was it something more? Remembering what he could, he tried to piece together a response.
“Peace be on to you, from Mother Earth do I come, who calls to me?”
There was silence in return. He felt disappointed for a moment. Perhaps the words weren’t as well translated as he thought, either by his own tongue or the alien ship’s understanding of what he meant. Suddenly, a shape took form in front of him. Ball of blue energy that shaped itself into a symbol. He’d seen that symbol before. His mind raced to remember, and then… he heard a humming, a low rhythmic sound that had a human tone about it. It took on the form of a chant. He knew of that as well. A vision of his grandmother flashed before his eyes. She was rocking in her chair on the porch of her trailer home, in the desert of Nevada, smiling at him and knitting a blanket.
On that blanket, was the symbol, the one the blue energy ball turned into. He never understood the meaning of it, or what the symbol was supposed to represent. His grandmother would only call it, Chi-an-ti. Yes, that was the name of it. A nonsensical name that wasn’t part of the Navajo dialect. Where she got it from, or what it meant was just as puzzling to him. Perhaps it was gibberish or some form of slang word that was lost over time. Was she the last to know of its true meaning? He couldn’t be sure. The vision quickly washed away and he glanced up into the white void with a smile on his face.
“Chi-an-ti!” He exclaimed. He outstretched his arms and pronounced it again. “Chi-an-ti!”
The minute he said it, the white dissipated and he found himself in total darkness. He had the feeling he was falling. The yawning in his stomach gave him the illusion this was so. He started to scream, the uncertainty of where he would land frightened him. As he glanced downward, or what he assumed was down as he fell, a rush of images, dreams, memories and all that he’d ever witnessed in life came flooding over him. He could hear his parents, praising his accomplishments, his grandmother, talking about their people history and showing him how to hunt in the wild.
It was like all that he learned and more was spilling past at lightening speed. All the while it was happening, the alien voice would continue to repeat the phrase, “The way is prepared.”
What did that mean? What was the way? What is prepared? He tried to stay focused, questions filling his mind, but blurring in the background with all that was coming at him. Then, after they had finished, there was another surge of images and information. Strange equations written in a form of text he couldn’t begin to understand, visions of solar systems, planets, whole galaxies slicing past as if it were attacking him. Onward he fell, deeper, father and faster. The strange voices in alien tongue became varied and weird. It was too much for him to handle. Like rush of an unstoppable river, the information came far too fast for him to comprehend.
“Stop! No more! I beg you! Stop!” He shouted. His words bounced about as if being thrown back by invisible hands. Every time he spoke, they would return back, smacking on his body and inflicting pain. “Please…” He whispered. “I… I can’t… I….”
What he was witnessing and experiencing was far too great for anyone to endure. The further he fell, the more intense the flow of information came. It was driving him to the bring of insanity. He screamed continuously, as overwhelming experience pushing his mind to the breaking point. For all he knew, this was a hell he was unable to escape from.
* * *
“Milo! Milo!”
Mike lay helpless on the ground, as he reached out a hand to Milo. The man was standing in front of the ship. He wasn’t moving a muscle. From what Mike could see, Milo had a blank expression on his face and infrequently twitched from time to time as he stood there. It was a bizarre situation. Mike steady tried his bast to crawl over. But the pain from his wound caused him to wince and shortened his breath.
“Jesus, ya dumb jerk! Snap out of it!”
Milo said nothing back. He was in a trance. His pupils were wide, his mouth jittering and softly speaking words that made little sense. Mike checked his oxygen supply, it was running low, lower than it had ben a few minutes ago. Very soon, the two of them would be out of air. This wasn’t something Mike was prepared for.
“Fuck!” He snorted. “Ain’t this something, I’m going to die in space inside my own goddamn tomb! Guess dad was right,” He laughed slightly, wincing at the sharp pain from doing so, and glanced up at Milo, “I’m going to die the way I am, stupid and stubborn. Irony is one hell of a bitch, I’ll giver her that.”
He started to laugh again. The laughter turning into soft sobs as the thought of his own death. He glanced upward at Milo again and thumped his hand to the rocky ground in anger.
“You fucking shit! Wake the fuck up! You hear me, you NDN bastard! Wake-the-fuck-up!”
* * *
Mike’s cry echoed inside Milo’s mind. He could hear it repeat over and over in the background. Milo was no longer falling. He was standing in the darkness and surrounded by points of blue light encircling his body. Much like he was outside of his mind, he was standing with a blank expression. His clothes were no longer being represented on his body. He was totally naked with his arms outstretched, palms out and arching his back slightly. The blue lights came closer to him and merged into his torso. The light was now pulsating inside of him. It caused his skin to become illuminated, showing all of his biological inner workings; veins, muscles, organs, skeleton, and even his brain.
The light showed everything. It pulsated, throbbed and glowed brighter with every beat of his heart. The blood that pumped thought his system, turned translucent as the cells within crystallized and interconnected to each other. With each new strand locking together, the flow of energy sparked within, blue bolts of energy arched about as if to fuse it in place. Milo’s could only hear the alien voice speaking to him now. With clarity and understanding, he could properly decipher the meaning behind it.
“Upload complete,” It stated. “Preparation for final transmogrification commencing…”
“What are you doing to me?” Milo’s disembodied voice asked.
“Brain activity is still present, query is not accepted, rescanning temporal lobes for abnormalities…”
“Stop!” He commanded it. “Stop what you’re doing!”
“Authorization denied.”
“Query request…” Milo stated, hoping he could try to think more like it. “General explanation of transmogrification procedure…”
There was a moment of silence before it replied.
“Low level request granted. Transmogrification procedure one-one-navari-seti-zero-bacta-chi-na-ti––when crew are no longer available, supply host form for reintegration and complete mission for central organization.”
“Reintegration? Query, on reintegration…”
“Download of former crew minds into new host body.”
Milo’s crystallized eyes went wide. He wanted to free himself immediately from this nightmare. He didn’t want to be become something other than who he was. Even now, as he tried to think about pulling away, he could see three distant balls of light heading straight for him. They were varied in colour and shape, glowing eerily like spectres from another realm. Their forms frightened him. Slowly he could feel himself slipping away, as if someone was folding him and placing his conscious mind into a drawer. It was a strange sensation, something never thought would be possible. And as this imaginary drawer closed, he could feel his mind turning off and only the numbness of being nothing. All he could visualize was the horrific dark void.