Chase wasn’t sure how long he spent staring off into the distance, watching the colors and textures of this dreamscape slowly shift and ripple. He’d heard once that most people’s perception of time in dreams was turned way up, so that a few minutes could feel like hours. That certainly felt like what was happening to him now. Thankfully Echo seemed to sense that it had dropped a bomb on him and let him process.
He wished the others were here, especially Jess. She hadn’t been wrong when she’d said that taking a page out of his book was papering over fear with gumption and bravado. Those sorts of things were hard to maintain alone in an ever-shifting dream, talking to an alien or interdimensional creature or whatever Echo was. Just having someone else here would force him to put up a front, to try to fake it and see if he ended up making it, and maybe he could do the same for them. Alone, the best he could do was try not to break down and do some babbling to let Echo get some new vocabulary.
“There’s stories all about this kind of thing. First contact with an alien species. What to say and do, how to bridge the gaps of understanding that would inevitably happen between two very different species with different understandings of how the universe works and what is possible. I don’t think any of them really accounted for something quite like this. Maybe you’ve got more experience than me there, Echo. How old are you, anyway? You seem young and rebellious, like a teen activist.”
“I am young. First contact with different species. Others have more experience.”
“Huh, so we’re in the same boat. I wonder how you’re picking up on the meanings of everything I’m saying. Is it like you’re psychically connected but don’t know the specific terms until I articulate them? If so, sorry you got stuck with me and my rambling thoughts.”
“Picking up on meanings, yes. Don’t know specific terms, rambling thoughts.”
“Guess we’re both stumbling through the conversation then. Must be a lot different with members of your own species. Probably nothing as inefficient as words, just some kind of mind meld where you instantly understand everything about the other. Am I close?”
“Close. Instantly understand mind, no words.”
“You seem distracted, Echo. Everything alright?”
“Maybe no. Stumbling, sorry. Not connected instantly close.”
“I’m going to need a second to parse that one. Things aren’t going great and you might be doing something wrong? Because… you’re not connected instantly? But you just said you were. So something else to do with instants? Are we running out of time?”
“Yes. Connected time running out.”
“Okay.” Chase sighed. “I can’t say I’m gonna miss you, but assuming you’ve been telling me the truth, I gotta say thank you. We wouldn’t have known what we were up against without you. I get the feeling we still don’t and things are just gonna get rougher from here.”
“Yes. Things are gonna get rougher. Others don’t know instantly, but time.”
Chase frowned. “So they’re gonna learn that you’re conspiring against them. Well, I admire the courage, and we’ll just have to find some way to deal with the fallout. I hope you get through it alright. Now if our time is almost done here, any advice on how to get the others to believe me? We’re all pretty new to the eldritch powers from beyond our conception of time and space deal.”
“Advice… new eldritch powers.”
“Point out all the freaky stuff that’s already happening? That’ll help some, but invisible alien ghosts might be a bridge too far.”
“Not point out.”
“Well I can’t exactly show them, can I?”
“Yes, show them.”
Chase froze. He hadn’t really thought about it, but Echo was manipulating this whole dream landscape while carrying on a conversation. Presumably the others it had talked about were maintaining the aurora bubble, fueling the memory blackouts of the blank 34, and resetting all the supplies. Probably also maintaining the power and water supply, so that mystery could be put to bed. Just what could Echo demonstrate back in the real world.
“Echo, buddy, what do you mean show them? I know you guys have a lot of weird powers, but if you start firing them off just to prove to my friends that you’re real, won’t that get the attention of the others? And how do they even work when we’re back in the waking version of the lab?”
“Powers bridge Echo and Chase.”
“Wait, what? Powers bridge us? As in, you provide the power, I provide the demonstration? Is that how your species works, with hosts?”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“Yes, hosts bridge us to physical.”
Chase’s mind whirled. That explains… nothing at all, really. I’d just assumed it was some kind of experiment gone wrong that generated all the weirdness, but that theory doesn’t really hold water either. It wouldn’t have such a sustained effect if it was some kind of one-off accident. But if things like Echo are providing power to hosts, well, it would pretty much have to be the researchers. They could possibly be sustaining the bubble and the blank 34, it wasn’t like Jess and I saw any footage of the inner areas. That’s probably bad. Dr. Redmond is brilliant, and now she most likely has an extradimensional entity running a timeshare in her head. She’s probably much better at teaching it about humanity and how we think than I am at teaching Echo. Even if she isn’t, the kinds of things it could passively absorb are kind of terrifying, much less whatever it is putting back into her head.
“Echo, I know we don’t have much time here and you don’t probably don’t have most of the words you need to explain it to me, but I gotta know more before I agree to something like that. So, questions I wish every superpowered character I’ve ever read about had asked before they got their abilities number one! Is this going to hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Well shit. Can’t win them all I guess. Question two! By agreeing to this, will I be unknowingly entering into a faustian bargain where you take possession of my soul, mind, or body for your own ends?”
“No.”
“Question three! Are you annoyed with these questions?”
“Yes.”
“Figures. Question four! Can I choose the form this power takes?”
“Maybe. Unknowingly.”
“So it works off my subconscious desires or something like that?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t end up being something embarrassing. Jess and Kayla would never let me live it down.”
“Maybe.”
“Your faith in me is inspiring, Echo.” Chase said dryly.
“Time.”
“Right, I know we need to hurry up and get on with it.” Chase sighed. “Never thought this would be my life. I don’t even know you, I don’t know how I can understand anything about you, Echo. I’m just following my gut, and my gut says you’re not trying to screw me over. It could be wrong, of course, and your species could have the power to be completely immune to my gut sense. That’d be just my luck. Just one more question, I guess. Can you show me how you see the world? I know I probably don’t have half the sense I’d need to really understand it, but if I’m basically gonna be your ambassador, I want to know more about you than my own repeated words can tell me. Is that possible?”
“Possible, yes. It will hurt.”
“I get the feeling that’s gonna become a recurring theme. Well, no pain no gain and all those other fitness slogans. Bring it on.”
“Yes. Echo… I thank you, Chase. Ambassador.”
“Pretty sure I should be thanking you, but you’re welcome.”
The dreamscape went utterly still for a moment, then violently contracted to a single point between Chase’s eyes. A sudden sensation of vertigo assaulted all of his senses at once, turning the color red into the taste of cinnamon oatmeal and the proprioception of his left arm into a jaunty saxophone solo. Chase tried to focus on his breathing even as he could smell cold fingernails digging into bare skin. And then the pain hit, and Chase could only hang on and hope he came out in one piece.
Once, in middle school, Chase had slipped during a footrace and dislocated his knee. The pain had been unbearable to the twelve year old, obviously the worst thing that could happen to anyone. This pain? This was every nerve in his body lighting up like a Christmas tree with the exact same message of ‘oh God, make it stop!’. This was his nervous system staging a dance party that turned into a riot that turned into a mad stampede as the disco burned down around it. This was the feeling of needles being jammed into every inch of his skin coupled with every pore of his body trying to violently expel the blood and muscle beneath them. And through it all, Chase felt himself simultaneously screaming and gritting his teeth and passing out from pain and I’m pretty sure I just died in that one.
Through it all, somehow, Chase was seeing, only seeing was too restrictive a word. Chase was experiencing the universe through every possible sense including at least six he could feel that humans couldn’t begin to process. He could feel the ebbs and flows of the quantum foam underpinning the universe and how Echo could use those tides to go surfing. He could taste the molasses and orange zest flavor of dark energy and run his metaphysical hands along the warm flannel texture of caring and compassion. He felt the pivotal moments in Echo’s life as if they were his own; its birth, from the gentle curiosity of a creature that reminded him of a cross between a lightbulb and centaur. Its development, herded and guided by those like it but born from determination and conviction, keeping it to within acceptable bounds. The disruption of its first foray into independence and subsequent or simultaneous rescue by those born of protective instinct. The movement of the collective into a fresh spacetime anomaly in search of more potent hosts and emerging in a place full of creatures they’d never seen before.
Chase didn’t believe for a second he was getting the full picture; it was rather hard to focus when it felt like his whole body was being torn apart and put back together five times every second. But he understood. Beyond words, beyond feelings, beyond memories, he gazed into the core essence that made up Echo. It was unlike the vast majority of its brethren, relegated to the sidelines. It could fake the motivations the others considered important, particularly curiosity, but could not follow through with the instinct to consume and procreate at all cost. Something inside Echo was broken, or at the very least mismatched. It drifted, unsure of itself in the face of the scorn its born emotion engendered. Its gentleness made it a target, others seeking to consume it, to strip away what they saw as weakness and create more benefit to the whole. It learned to hide itself, to blend into backgrounds and slip away unnoticed while creating distractions. Chase shed a tear for the innocence of the incomprehensible eldritch entity, or maybe that was from the worst pain and disorientation he’d never been able to imagine before this endless moment.
It was terrifying and beautiful and excruciating and exhilarating and everything in between at once.