5. Bear Problems
A pressure like nothing I had ever felt came crashing down on me and I felt as if I had been pinned to the floor. I was sure that the goo-covered bear had just dropped onto me and what be momentarily ripping my head off but when I looked up I saw something else entirely. Ana had the thing’s paws in her hands, holding up the monster in an insane game of mercy that broke every law of physics I’d ever learned. Sweat sheened on her forehead and her jaw was clenched tight, but the medium-sized blond woman was actually military-pressing a good portion of the bear’s weight.
“Holy shit!” I gasped. It was like watching Super Man stop a locomotive.
She yelled back at me through gritted teeth, “Don’t just stand there, you idiot! Move!” I jumped to my feet, head still throbbing from being nailed with a big hunk of metal. I looked down to see the end of the IV line and a big shiny needle lying on the ground. There was no time to hesitate. I picked up the needle, pivoted around Ana, and stuck it into the bear’s eyeball. It roared in pain as I twisted the needle around in its eye socket.
“Eat this you ugly son of a-” It backhanded me with a wet paw, making a sick smacking sound against my chest. I found myself lying about ten feet away from Ana, still grappling with the giant bear, my lungs burning and unable to breath.
Ana stepped back and judo-threw the bear with impossible force against the far wall of the clinic. I swore I could see a bluish glow surrounding her body, coming off her skin in rhythmic waves of semi-transparent light. Is that her aura? As far as I knew, things like auras and psychic powers were absolute bullshit, but my world had done a complete U-turn. Now I had no idea what was true. Aliens. Super humans. Zombie bears. What about wizards? Fire-breathing dragons?
“Isaac!” Ana shouted snapping me out of my stupor. “I said move!” She grabbed my arm and hauled me toward the door as if I were a toddler. Sweet Blue-Headed Christ she is strong! The bear had left a trail of blood smears all over the floor and a big red hole in the wall where Ana had tossed it, but in seconds it was back on its feet and coming for us again. Ana pushed me through the door to the stairwell and shut it behind us. We leapt down the stairs and I mentally noted how quickly Ana had recovered.
Whoever designed those metal doors that open with big bars instead of knobs can suck it. In an instant the roaring monstrosity had opened the door and was pursuing us down the stairs to the hospital’s basement. Lucky for us, its bloody paws were having a hard time navigating the stairway, but every time it slipped and crashed into another wall it just regained its footing and kept coming. Why can’t bears be more like Winnie the Pooh? That lazy bastard would have given up long ago.
“In here,” Ana shouted and we went through the basement door. Thank God this one only opened with the RFID enabled badge that hung on Ana’s scrubs . We went through and slammed it shut. A heavy slam came from the other side but the door didn’t budge.
“Oh damn! Oh holy god fucking damnit! Did you see-? Oh, I mean of course you saw but- Holy monkey-loving damn damn damn-”
“Shut up,” Ana said and gripped me by the shoulders. She was looking me right in the eyes and I saw just how perfectly blue and crystalline hers were. “It’s okay, Isaac. We’re safe now. Calm down and just try to breath.” She was beautiful. Her cheeks were so soft and they came down to her chin at such a perfect angle, not too round yet essentially feminine. Yet there was also something stern and implacable hidden in her eyes, like a core of solid steel.
“You’re pretty,” I said before a wave of dizziness came over me. I felt like I was going to pass out. My head was spinning and little white stars seemed to be whizzing around my head. Then all at once the pain hit. “Oweeeeee!” I screamed grabbing my upper chest.
Ana knelt down by me and put her hand on my neck and then felt around by my chest and shoulders, “Snapped collar bone. Damnit! That thing hit you really hard, didn’t it?”
I made some guttural noise and slumped over, writhing in pain. “That bear... it lied to me,” I moaned.
“It wasn’t the bear you were talking to,” she said and stood up. “That was my former boss.” She didn’t elaborate and I was not in the frame of mind to ask any follow up questions. “Listen, I need you to stay here. I’ve got to go out to the morgue loading dock, see if there’s a truck we can take out of here.”
“You’re leaving me behind?!” I started to whine, then I thought about how pathetic that sounded. “I mean, uh, I’m cool. I’m cool. You go. I’m going to hang here for a second. Catch my breath.” My collarbone was crackling with electric pain and I felt like I was about to pass out, but I didn’t want Ana to think I was a wimp.
She shook her head and rolled her eyes, “Just stay here.” She started off down the hall and then turned around adding, “And don’t open that door.” As if on cue, the bear on the other side of the heavy steel door smashed against it, still trying to break through. I nodded to Ana and then she was gone.
6. Goodbye Forever, Ketchikan
My very first out of body experience was just a joyride compared to what I would eventually be able to do. It happened in the back of a stolen squad car. The size and shape of the driver left no doubt in my mind that it was Plop ‘ik, but where was Ana?. The seven foot alien was hunched over in the bucket seat, his single eye gleaming with the reflections of the little lights on his skin that dappled the entire car with a spectrum of shifting purples and golds.
All these things I saw without my eyes.
I saw Plop ‘ik, and I saw Isaac Austen, or maybe a clearer way to describe it was that I saw the body of of an entity that I recognized as Isaac Austen. However the pathetic and bloody pile of a man that I saw was as separate from my consciousness as the steering wheel or the safety belt. Just a thing that I could define in words. Outside of my body, I was thankful to not inhabit the broken wreck that lay foetal on the back seat, seemingly unconscious. Then, just as I began to realize the strangeness of seeing my body from the outside, a sensation like gravity came over me and I plummeted back into myself like a river at a waterfall. Back in my own body I was once again overcome with dizzying nausea and terrible pain.
“That was interesting, I imagine,” said Plop ‘ik, without even looking back to me. “Is that as long as you are able to exist in a state of bodilessness?”
“Unnnh,” I moaned. “What?”
“Have you ever projected your consciousness before? That was impressive for a first attempt,” the alien spoke as if I had done nothing more impressive than ice skating backwards or performing a card trick.
“You... you saw that?” I asked. Between the pain of my broken bone, the sick feeling in my gut, and the miasma that was clouding my mind when I reentered my body, I wasn’t sure what was real. I believed that I might be losing what was left of my tenuous grip on reality.
“No, not quite, but I can perceive many different kinds of disturbances in the field that you call reality. I sensed a telepathic signature, an aura, but I could not visualize it. The fact that your mind can exist outside of your body is proof of your ability. I was hoping to ascertain confirmation of your eligibility before we left. I am most pleased, Isaac, that you are, without a doubt, the human that I have been seeking.”
“Uhhh,” I groaned. “You’re making my head hurt. Can you open this window?” Plop ‘ik did so and then I felt my stomach turn inside out. “Pull over. Now!”
Before the squad car reached the edge of the road I was already hanging out the window purging what little remained of my stomach contents in loud spasmodic retches.
“It is good that you vomit,” I heard Plop ‘ik say to me between half-dry heaves. “A cleanse before I admit you to my home. We must leave soon if we are to escape the area. Your government has already sent a sizable force to combat the viral outbreak. We cannot be here when they arrive.”
The violent nausea started to subside until only a sickening dizziness remained. The cold air was freezing the flecks of vomit to my stubble so I pulled my head back in the car. My collarbone was throbbing so badly that I could barely focus on anything besides the pain. Yet the events of the past few days were replaying themselves in my head like a video on fast-forward and repeat. Seeing Ana crash an alien spacecraft in a clip from back in 2002. Plop ‘ik in my room, his strange tentacle-like cilia rippling with light like an indoor aurora borealis. A bloody murderous bear.
It had been a while since I had seen someone die. Less dramatic deaths happened in the hospital almost everyday but I had not witnessed a violent death since I was in Mexico. Remembering the security guards and Dr.
Gass screaming as the bear tore them apart brought back other, equally disturbing, memories from the war. The smell of blood on frozen air was like a portal back to that time in my life. The part that I wanted to escape more than anything. I wondered how much more bloodshed I would be forced to witness before my life was through.
“There were men back there,” I said weakly. “I saw them get... eaten, by a bear. So messed up, there were people too, they talked to me... they saved Ana.” I was thinking out loud as much as addressing Plop ‘ik. “One said it’s name, Tru... Klandatu? No, that wasn’t it. He said you’re a terrorist.” The words came out slowly and I slurred a few, but Plop ‘ik understood.
“Kli Truip, he was once my leader, of a sort, the leader of the Consortium. He possesses a keen mind. He is ruthless. On his home planet he is thought of as a spiritual monarch, second only to God. I am called a terrorist because I know the truth about God, about what It really is.”
“He was your boss?”
“He is an executive, an autocrat. Before being branded a heretic and a traitor, I worked in a capacity similar to architect, or perhaps, like you, a kind of engineer. An Architect. There are others here as well. Specialists whose skills and ideas have shaped this project. Some responsible for the development of protein patterns. Some worked only at the initial stages of production, before life even took hold on this planet. Geologists, you might call them, or perhaps gravitationalists.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“But you are an architect?” I asked, barely understanding a third of the words Plop ‘ik said.
“I am an artist. My medium is multicellular life, my tool is the infinite power of consciousness. My job-”
Sirens. Red and blue flashing lights.
I sat up and glanced out the rear windshield to see three vehicles tailgating our squad car. The frenetic lights reflected off the surface revealing the black SUV’s with the letters CDC printed on their hoods.
“Holy shit! Feds!” I cried.
“Please be quiet, Isaac.” Plop ‘ik said in a motherly tone, unafraid. I obeyed.
The one-eyed alien driving the police car pulled over, parked, rolled down the window, and calmly put his hands on the wheel. The SUV’s boxed us in with one cutting in front of our car, one to the side, and another not three feet behind us. I sat motionless, sure that we would be taken into custody. I would be put on trial for the deaths of three men and for injecting Ana with a mystery fluid. Plop ‘ik would be put in a zoo or vivisected at Area 51 or something, according to what I had seen on TV.
Federal agents with submachine guns hanging from their shoulders got out of the SUVs and surrounded us. They wore baseball caps and jackets with the yellow CDC label. They also wore full-face gas masks. One agent approached the car with his weapon pointed at Plop ‘ik.
He shouted, “Keep those hands where I can see ‘em! Do not move, sir!” The agent was hyper alert but not even close to surprised to see a big alien driving a stolen cop car.
“Good evening, sir. As you know, I am officer Wearie of the Ketchikan Sheriff’s Department and this man has been in an accident. I am assisting him. There is nothing you need from us. You are looking for someone else.” Plop ‘ik said, turning his eye to the agent. The man slumped a little and I thought he might fall down. He regained his balance and shook his head as if to wake himself up.
“Um, uh. Sorry, Wearie. Guess we got our wires crossed. Received some intel that a fugitive, possibly infected, was seen fleeing the area. We’re just checking out every lead.” The agent pulled out a notepad and scribbled something on it. Then added, “Have a nice night, officer.” and walked back to his SUV. He did a quick U-turn and headed back toward town with the two other SUVs following close behind.
I started to laugh but it made my broken bone sing a very painful song. “Did you really just Jedi mind trick that guy?” I asked Plop ‘ik, somewhere between flabbergasted and impressed. “That was unreal!”
“I altered the way his mind interacts with the reality field. Many authority figures have minds similar to his. He required reassurance that he was doing his duty. He wanted order and the maintenance of the status quo. Perhaps a simple way to explain it would be to say that I helped him to see what his mind wanted to see.”
“Yeah,” I said, once again lying down on the hard bench of the back seat. “You’re really great at explaining things in the simple way, aren’t you?”
“Sarcasm requires a healthy inferior frontal gyrus. I shall take it as a sign of your overall brain health. A good sign,” Plop ‘ik said, not even batting his singular massive eye.
Hugging the coastline, we moved further up Tongas Highway until we were past Wrangell. It was close to midnight when Plop ‘ik took a left onto a steep road that curved down to the water and a gated marina. The parking lot of the place was empty except for a single-wide trailer sitting by the gate. The trailer had it’s porchlight on. I remember laughing that the trailer had a porchlight but no porch, just a saggy couch and a dirty cooler by the door. Plop ‘ik parked the car next to it and got out with only the slightest struggle.
He opened the rear passenger door for me and said, “We will be safe here for a little while. My friend owns this establishment. Come, we will visit with him and you can rest.” I felt myself being lifted out of the car but when I looked Plop ‘ik wasn’t touching me at all. He was lifting me with his mind, and I appreciated it. It would have been hell on my collarbone if he’d tried to pick me up by my torso or arms. This way the pressure was evenly dispersed across my entire frame, minimizing the pain.
Plop ‘ik walked and I floated towards the trailer then he knocked on the door. It shook and I thought it might fall off its hinges but quickly it opened and we looked upon a man that I recognized.
It’s the old man from the bar! The one that was raving about UFO’s!
“Mr. Norton?” I asked.
“Hello, my son,” he said and bowed slightly. It was then I noticed that the old man was wearing the clerical collar of a priest along with a yellow Mr. Rogers sweater. “And hello to you as well, Plop ‘ik of Plos Lodril,” he said to the tall alien that was still telekinetically levitating me like a marionette on invisible strings. “Please, come in.”
“Thank you, Father Norton. How is my submarine?” Plop ‘ik asked offhandedly as we entered.
“She’ll float,” Father Norton said, a broad smile painted across his wrinkled but dignified face.
“Yes, but...” Plop ‘ik paused and then giggled innocently. “Oh, you are making a joke! Very good, Father.”
“And she’ll dive too, of course. She is waiting for you at the coordinates you sent me, on autopilot. I guess this is the last of your business in Alaska then, my friend?”
“Oh no, I will come here again. I imagine I will return here to die, like the salmon.”
“They return to birth a new generation. Do you intend to that as well?
“We shall see, Gregory,” Plop ‘ik smiled at the priest and then turned his eye to the floor, contemplating something I could not even guess.
The trailer, while dingy and salt-rusted on the outside, was cozy and neat inside. The primary decorations were an abstract painting, a large cross with bronze hanging Jesus, and a purple homemade quilt. Plop ‘ik set me on a soft seat in the cramped kitchen area and then gingerly draped the quilt over me.
“He’s hurt badly, and we are far from our destination,” Plop ‘ik said to the old priest. “Can you help him?”
“Is he at risk of dying? He doesn’t look all that bad to me. Perhaps he can just buck up. Then deal with him once you get to your ship.” The priest and the alien were talking about me as if I wasn’t in the room, which was partly true. My head was spinning again and my broken bone was grinding.
“Not of the injuries, but he could die of shock. I can quell the pain but his mind, it’s in danger of slipping away to the subtle fields beneath this reality. He must remain conscious, I fear that this man suffers from a mind eager to escape itself.”
That doesn’t sound good, I thought.
The priest scratched his stubble and said, “So we’ve got a psychic in danger of detaching from the ethereal plane, huh? Moonmoth wings might do the trick. Keep his mind rooted firmly in the here and now! It won’t be very fun, but it’ll work.” The man’s accent was flat and difficult to place, as if he were fluently speaking a second language. He was completely different from when I met him at the bar.
“Ah, yes. The moonmoths of Hru. Young ones on Plos would acquire the wings occasionally and have large gatherings in the desert. The wings’ microorganic compounds assist with the formation of mass collective empathy-bubbles. Very erotic,” Plop ‘ik said, almost giggling again. I got the feeling that the alien was having fun on our little fugitive adventure. I could not say the same thing.
“I have some in my room, and a pipe as well!” The old priest said as he clambered up to the six by four foot lofted bed which was his entire ‘room’.
Plop ‘ik sat by me and placed a warm, three-fingered hand on my forehead.
“This will help with the pain. If you can help it, try not to leave your body for now,” he said to me. Then I felt a warm flood of tranquility flush into me, like I was being pumped full of endorphins. I liked it.
As the haze began to cloud my senses I said, “You’re... drugging me.” I was too high at that point to feel indignant, but it did freak me out a little. I had no idea what Plop ‘ik was doing to me. What he might be infecting me with. I figured that there was much more to Plop ‘ik’s abilities than I could guess.
“Not a drug, exactly. Your own anterior pituitary gland is producing the hormones you feel now. I am just rearranging precursor proteins in your brain. Only a slight adjustment.”
“Oh, for the love of God, stop messing with my brain!” I moaned. “I am just barely hanging on here.”
“Be calm. There is none more qualified to manipulate your neural chemicals than I.”
“And why is that?”
“Because they are my creation.”
“Really, Plop ‘ik, I don’t think I can take much more of this crazy shit. My head’s already fried from the war, I don’t need all this alien stuff. Just let me go home.” Despite the flood of endorphins I was still aware of the sharp divergence from reality that my world had taken. All my touchstones, my concept of what the world was, who I was, all of it had been blown away like dust motes in the breeze. I was ready to get off this ride.
“I will not force you to come with me, but what will you do? You are wanted in connection with three homicides and one viral outbreak. The CDC has identified you as a person of interest and potential creator of the weaponized Ebola plague that is sweeping through your city. The one that nearly killed our friend Ana Martinson.”
“Ana,” I whimpered to myself. There was a human that made my own suffering seem small by comparison. It was a miracle that she survived and an even greater miracle how quickly she recovered. The last time I saw Ana, all her bleeding had stopped and her heartbeat was leveling off at a healthy rate.
“But you didn’t save her!” I said, glaring at Plop ‘ik. “It was that Tulip guy! He gave me the virophage, you weren’t even there!”
“Yes, I know. I wish you had not done that.” Plop ‘ik said, seeming wistful for a reason I couldn’t guess. I thought I had saved Ana, and that the zombie bears had helped me, right before they killed three innocent people. Dr. Alessandro was an asshole but he didn’t deserve to die like that.
“I saved her, Plop ‘ik! If you think I fucked up, then maybe I am on the wrong side of this thing. She should not have to go through having her insides leak out her eyeballs. And you’re saying I shouldn’t have taken the cure when I had the chance? Maybe I should be working for Mr. Tulip and his magic bears,” I said, not really meaning it. I was just confused, angry, and in a monumental amount of pain.
“You did what you thought was correct at the time. There is much you do not know about Kli Truip and the gifts he offers human beings, or about the price for those gifts. Things you could not have known.” Plop ‘ik set his hand on my shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Your feelings for Ana, your love, your empathy. These are your strengths, Isaac. These are the emotions that make you powerful.”
Before I could ask Plop ‘ik what he meant, the old priest dropped back down from his lofted bed, holding a plastic food container and a big glass pipe.
I was noticing the odd juxtaposition of a priest and a rainbow-colored marijuana pipe when Father Norton sat down at the little table with us and opened his plastic box. Inside of it was a pile of what looked to be big dragonfly wings, partly translucent and cyan. He took a few between his thumb and forefinger and stuffed them into the bowl of the pipe.
“I think I’ll join you, my son,” the priest said to me. He then lit a match, let it burn a moment, and began to smoke the wings. He inhaled deeply and held the smoke in his lungs for a few seconds. As he exhaled he chanted, “Shanti, shanti, shanti.” He closed his eyes and was silent.
“Are we getting high?” I asked Plop ‘ik. “I don’t really feel like partying. Do you have any pain meds?” The pain from my collar bone had gone down from a 9 to a 6, but it was still agonizing.
Plop ‘ik shook his head, “It would be dangerous for you to lose what little control you have over your mind, at this point. Opiates might trigger a negative reaction in your mind. Do you remember leaving your body on our way here? It was only for a moment, but your mind shed its corporeal housing. If you were under the influence of strong narcotics, there is a chance that, if you project again, you may not return. You might leave this plane of reality permanently.”
“Enough blathering,” Father Norton piped up, interrupting us. “Here, smoke this and listen to the music of your chakras.” The priest said a lot of weird stuff that sounded to me like parapsychology mixed with some kind of natural mysticism. A far cry from Christian dogma.
I took the pipe and did as I was told. Something about what Plop ‘ik’s touch had done to me made it hard to say no. I was put at ease to the point where I didn’t want to. The priest lit the pipe for me and I filled my lungs with the surprisingly sweet smoke of the moonmoth wings.
Then I was gone.