Chapter 2
March 12, 2019
6:00 PM
1
The machine hums as Damion taps a few buttons. Dark liquid pours out of the machine filling the mug. He grabs it and sits on the couch in the living room. He slowly blows the hot drink to cool it down before taking one large sip.
The flavor is exquisite. Very refreshing to ease all the circumstances that occurred in the past hour. Damion stares into space and ponders the reality that he got exposed to. He is more curious about how Helix even got into the building in the first place. It is certain that now he bonded with Helix and fought against the attackers who tried to kill him, directed to his unknown future. He indulged in the rest of the remaining drink.
“You love coffee?” Helix asked.
“Never before. The bitter taste is not my thing. The first time it tasted this good.” Damion replied.
He placed the mug on the coffee table and walked into his home office, dragging out a large chest shaped like a toolbox. Enclosed by a fingerprint lock, he gave his right thumb to the scanner. The device came back with a rejection. “What the…” Damion murmured. Confused, he tried it one more time with the same result.
“Need help?” Helix asked.
“Nah. No need to.” Damion, with his fingers, yanked the lock from the chest. He opened the chest stashed with binders, notebooks, and cash. Neatly placed, he carefully searches through the chest. Ah, I found it. He slowly took out a black hardcover notebook and closed it. He grabbed a pen and headed out back to the couch in the living room.
Damion flipped open the notebook to the empty first page. He writes out number one in the right corner.
“We can start from the ground up. I’ll write any important information on paper as a backup.” He starts with "Helix:" in the first line.
Helix starts interacting with the heads-up display by revealing various documents and photographs. Damion reads the folder made by Helix and writes only the main details and words in the notebook.
“Since you are an artificial intelligence, you can interact with any technology nearby?” Damion asked.
“Yes. I mean after that battle in the company. I got a glimpse of what kind of technology we are dealing with. Why?”
Damion stood up and headed back to his home office. “I remembered I have some stash of dead tablets hidden in one of these shelves. Since you are an alien Artificial Intelligence, I want to know your capability of resurrecting technology,” He opened one of the drawers near the chest, pulled out a large screen tablet, and placed it on the desk. “This would make it easier on my end. More screen space added along with my visual heads-up display.” Sounds of technical beeps followed, and Damion saw a pop-up percentage bar in his visual. “Scanning Device.” was right below the percentage bar. He looked away to see if it is capable of scanning while away from the tablet's view and operating with no interruptions.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it functions. However, I would be shocked because it is happening in reality.
Ding!
A bell sound came from the tablet. He immediately glanced back, seeing the tablet rebooting, “Unbelievable.” The former dead tablet illuminates an unfamiliar logo with Helix's name at the bottom. The logo converts to a thumbs up and dissipates leads to the tablet’s home screen. Damion scrambles through the tablet briefly before letting Helix transfer the findings to its screen. He took it to the living room and sat on the floor, viewing over the coffee table. He starts writing the content down.
“I think this is where we start to know each other better. So, I start. How did you arrive here?” Damion said as he continued to write.
Helix was silent a moment before he gave a brief, “I don’t remember. I came online after the airship I was on crashed on barren lands. Take me a moment to realize I landed on Earth, which supports the fact that I know I’m not built on planet Earth. Also, I realized last minute that I was stalked by the ones who think of me as a tool.”
“Which are the ones that I killed?”
“Correct.”
“Are they the only ones?”
“At first, I believed so, but after I dug through the findings, it turns out there is much more than meets the eye. They will come in full retaliation once they find out two of their own got scorched to death.”
Damion stopped moving his pen. He puts his pen down and crosses his arms. “How would they know? We burned their bodies.”
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“Lack of communication. This is alien stuff we are talking about here. When something is wrong and no sign of contact, they come in full force.” Helix pops up a diagram showing the whole body and lists its available given characteristics. “They are called the Riseods. The two we dealt with are the lower class. We can deal with them.”
Damion sighed and pressed his lips. He spins his pen continuously, “How much time do we have left until the next time?”
“I can approximate around fifty earth days.”
"Also, are they weak to water?"
"The lower class Riseods yes. However, don't be so sure of the more powerful ones. I did not receive further information other than knowing they exist."
"Not only do we have to go to Greece soon but prepare ourselves to deal with more Riseods." Damion murmurs to himself and refocuses on the tablet, swiftly writing all the remaining contents.
2
Damion continuously wrote and conversed with Helix for the past hour and reached half of the notebook upon completion. Then he cleans the coffee table. He heads to the office and places the notebook in its slot inside the chest. He leaves the office, closes the door, and walks to the garage. Lights illuminate as the garage door lifts, revealing the vacant garage, and Damion walks outside to the driveway where his car has been.
Natalie is not back yet. Good. He stood directly in front of his car. “Helix, can you get the total weight of my sedan?”
“Exactly four thousand and two hundred five pounds,” Helix said, and he mentioned it was more than double the boulder weight he lifted to save Tess. Damion attempted like before, where he only used the right arm for a lift.
Damn it. He gave another go, and the heads-up display went into panic red, screaming, “Overload.” He immediately dropped the car back down. Much heavier than the boulder, but that was just one enhanced arm and went overload, “Ok, try two arms instead.” He murmurs, wondering when he fell five stories down and got up unfazed, should be able to lift heavy objects as long as his whole body.
He went full knee position and put both arms under the sedan. Using his knees, he forces them upward to give him enough posture. Then uses his arms and lifts the car. He heard a little gust of air and felt it spurt from his right arm, followed by mechanical gears and hums. The sedan went above the height lifted with one arm, and when Damion had enough, he let go of the front and let the front of the sedan descend back onto the driveway.
“One solid car,” Helix said.
“I got lucky when I bought this sedan.”
“Well, now I know better how much strength I have. Let's do some accuracy testing. I heard rodents,” Damion said.
He opens one of the shelves in the garage, withdrawing a Glock 19 from the shelves. Since his villa is in the suburbs, neighbors can hear gunshots if he fires a bullet. He includes a silencer to nullify most of the sound.
“You're not using the sword?”
Damion shakes his head. “That is for later. Since we are in a tight spot neighborhood and have small pests to deal with all the time, a gun will be the best test of accuracy and precision.” He loads fifteen 9mm rounds of 9mm and asks Helix to do a location check of a rodent he noticed earlier while lifting the car. “Still in that bush along the driveway.” Perfect. With the pinpoint on his heads-up display, he directs his Glock toward the rodent hidden in the bushes.
PewPew…Pew!
Two rodents slumped out of the bushes landing on the driveway. All three bullets made it to their target. Two in one and the last bullet to the second rodent... “I gave you the pinpoint but didn’t assist you on this one,” Helix noted. Damion eyes blinked for a second. He fired another shot striking the second rodent. Helix ain’t bullshiting. He thought and lowered his Glock. He opened a different shelf containing a box of empty trash bags and tossed the two rodents in the bag. The entrance to the driveway, where the large bins are, is approximately twenty-five meters from where Damion is currently standing. There is the recycling and trash bin, and the one that is opened is the trash. “Let’s see if this hand can exert enough force to throw this.”
He aimed at the open trash bin and hurled the trash bag into the air, “Can you record Helix?” Damion asked.
“Sure.”
“Then… Now!” Damion snaps his fingers, enabling the recording feature. An info box appears in the bottom right corner of the heads-up display...
Control your optical muscle reflexes to adjust the distance of the recording:
Squint to zoom in
Widen your eyes to zoom out.
Blink twice to end the recording.
Damion squints his eyes, viewing directly at the trash bag as it flies in the sky and plummets down. Thump.
“WHOOH,” Damion yelled with his arms up and blinked twice, ending the recording. His eyes reset back to default, and he replayed the recording. “Ah, I’m gonna be dizzy,” He said and palmed his head while turning off the recording, “Is this a symptom?”
“Affirmative. Since this is your first time seeing a video directly from your head, Gonna take some brief attempts to nullify your motion sickness.”
“Noted. Thanks.” Damion replied. He returned to the garage to disassemble his Glock 19 from the silencer and unloaded the remaining 9mm magazine. He returned the pistol to the shelf and headed inside after closing the garage door. “You have a message notification.”
Hmm. When did Helix connect to my phone? Damion wondered, but he opened the message.
“Damion, are you ok?! Please say yes!”
“Should I do it?” Damion asks Helix. He does not want to drag others into this situation as he has already tested himself to be potent and dangerous to ordinary humans. One mistake can kill somebody or inflict a coma at his current strength.
“We are pretty much done with information gathering. So I think it's safe to say yes. However, be careful of your strength. You are not an ordinary human like them anymore.”
“YeaYea. I understand.” Damion responded with an affirmative reply to Natalie.
“Thank Goodness!! You know how many here are worried about you. We looked for you everywhere.”
“Oh boy, this is gonna be a long night,” Damion murmurs to Helix