The Next Thing I Knew (Heavenly) Page 10

  I jumped off the side of the mountain and let myself freefall through the clouds and toward the ground. Seconds before impact, I stopped my fall and zoomed through the valley below. As I surveyed the craggy peaks around me, I saw a familiar sight. Mount Everest lay just ahead. Chris and I had come here once before but not stopped as we'd searched for an interesting new date location. Instead, we'd settled for an old army bunker in North Korea. Why? Because we could, I guess.

  I landed atop the mountain. The day was crystal clear aside from a few cloudy wisps beneath me. I saw something on the summit which definitely hadn't been there before, a colorful wooden shrine in the Tibetan fashion, or perhaps Chinese. I couldn't imagine how such a thing had been constructed here with everyone dead.

  Inside, a wisp of incense smoke drifted to the ceiling. A young man with a shaved head sat cross-legged before the incense, his hands resting palms up on his knees. He wore a red robe that Tibetan monks favored. He looked my age, maybe a little younger.

  "Hello?" I said.

  No response.

  "Yo?" I snapped my fingers.

  Still nothing.

  Yet again, I'd done the impossible. I'd found another survivor. There was no other explanation. But it didn't excite me, not in the least. What good did it do the world with one more guy who had managed to survive?

  "Well great. Just you and me, baldy," I said. I couldn't even muster the enthusiasm to merge with him at first but curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to understand why in the hell someone would climb all the way up here to build a shrine. I approached him, reached out my hand.

  His hand shot out and stopped mine. I screamed.

  "Why is it I cannot find peace even here?" he said and stood up.

  "Y-you're dead?"

  "How else could I be up here without oxygen or warm clothes? Not even the hardiest locals would dare that."

  "But how did you make this place?"

  "It wasn't easy."

  "I can hardly make anything in Heavenly, much less on Earth."

  "So they've named the land of the dead already?" he said.

  "Geez, you've been out of touch. It's had that name for a while. I'm Lucy, by the way."

  "Anil."

  "You speak English. Did you merge with someone to learn it?"

  "I lived in the States."

  "But you look Asian."

  "Yes. There were plenty of Asians in the States." He looked me up and down. "Did you grow up in Utah or something?" He softened the comment with a smile.

  "Fine, it was a stupid question. I ask plenty of those. I still want to know how in the heck you built a shrine here."

  "Much the same as you build anything in Heavenly. You simply will it to be."

  "Oh, I wish it was that simple, mister, but it's not. See my cat there?" I pointed to Nibbles who was swiping a paw at the stream of incense smoke. "He can make red feathers. I can only make monstrosities."

  "Clarity of purpose is important."

  "Well I'm not a monk. Can you merge with me so I can learn?"

  He cocked his head to the side. "Merge?"

  "Yeah. We can share memories."

  "Show me."

  So I did. Except when we merged, I didn't sense anything from him. I felt my own memories drawn out of me like liquid through a straw. It was frightening, staring into his dark eyes as he seemed to size me up and learn everything there was to know.

  "Why can't I sense you?" I asked, my voice trembling.

  "I wouldn't share myself with just anyone, Lucy," he said and grinned.

  Then an image burst into my mind, him standing atop the mountain, envisioning the shrine, and it slowly appearing as if the air had bent itself into the proper molecules to create it. It didn't even grow from the ground like it did for people in Heavenly. I understood how he made it. But it required more discipline than I could possibly muster. Clarity of mind has never been one of my strong suites.

  "How did you block me from seeing your thoughts?"

  "Years of meditation have taught me many lessons of the mind. Death hasn't changed that."

  "And you'd never merged with anyone before me?"

  "No."

  "Wow. We need you."

  "To fight the Octos?"

  My eyes widened. "Damn, you took everything from my mind. Are there others like you? Where are your teachers?"

  "Most of the others have gone on. I have been unable to do so because I'm lacking."

  "Lacking what?"

  "My master tried to teach me before the end of life, but I failed him."

  "You look awfully young to talk the way you do. I almost expect to see that dude from Kung Fu somewhere around here."

  He laughed. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to sound like an old wise man because I'm really not. But I've had training that most people in the West deride as foolish or a waste of time."

  "Will you help us?"

  "Your merge was clumsy, like a drunk man trying to thread a needle. You have almost no ability to control what you take in or what you put out. You're lucky to have survived the encounter with the Sst."

  I blinked my eyes. "The what?"

  "The creature you call a spider-cat. You picked up several of its memories. It's a sentient creature, albeit not quite as intelligent as us." He snorted and laughed like he'd just made a joke. "It calls its species something the human tongue can't pronounce, so I translated it into the closest word I could."

  I was stunned. He'd picked up far more from me than I'd picked up firsthand. "I'll have you know that 'Sst' isn't a name, it's a string of consonants. Are you telling me that thing is self aware?"

  "It is. It's a slave, forced to do labor."

  "You see why we have to stop the Octos?"

  "No. At least not in the sense you're thinking."

  "Are you kidding me? Didn't you see what they're doing?"

  "I know you're upset. I'll be the first to admit that I don't understand this afterlife we've found ourselves in. Whether we're quantum shadows of our former selves as the scientists think or in some purgatory as the lovely Ms. Tate believes. The first thing you must consider is that things are not always what they seem."

  "Are you serious? Could you get any more cliché with me? Now you're really sounding like the Kung Fu dude."

  "And you're making me feel like Yoda," Anil said and rolled his eyes heavenward.

  I laughed. "I get it. I'm the impatient Karate Kid brat who refuses to listen or learn. Teach me. I swear to God I won't go running off half-cocked. I can't promise not to make more cockamamie movie analogies though."

  He looked at me for a moment then nodded. "I know you won't. Run off that is. You've done too much running and I think you're ready to stop." He smiled. "You have discipline few others possess naturally. That could be why you survived the merge with the Sst." He held out his hand. "Time for your first lesson."

  "Cool."

  "Don't get too excited. I'm going to show you why the Octos are the least of your worries."

  Chapter 13

  "You're gonna what?" The Octos had killed all of us and were vaporizing every trace of human existence. How could they possibly be the least of our worries?

  "What do you know about the Octos?"

  "They're ugly slimy murderous alien bastards with really bad body odor."

  "So you have proof they were behind the deaths of all humans."

  "Duh. Seriously? They came in spaceships. They're mopping us up."

  "Forget what you think you know. Forget your hatred of them. What do you really know?"

  I had to consider that for a moment. It was hard to push aside the malevolent feelings I had toward those grotesque monsters but I did, long enough to look at things logically. It was the same thing I had to do in history class, especially when reading about the crimes against humanity perpetrated by monsters like Hitler and Stalin. Of course all that was ancient history to me. It's much harder to do when the atrocities are right in front of you.

  "The Octos were hibe
rnating in giant spaceships around Saturn. A couple of months after we died, their ships came to Earth. The giant bugs and Sst which are slaves to the Octos began to clean up all traces that humans existed. In the process our ghosts, souls, spirits, or whatever you want to call them started to vanish."

  "Correct. Now tell me, if you could kill an entire race as easily as I snap my fingers, would you clean up the mess?"

  I almost blurted out something stupid but held my tongue for a moment to think it through. Even though this guy was my age, I wanted to impress him for some reason. Maybe show him that I wasn't too stupid. "The Octos are like a janitorial crew. The ones here may not be responsible for our deaths, but their higher ups could be. Their leaders."

  "Excellent. So if an assassin kills your friend, would you kill the janitor that has to clean up his blood?"

  "I guess not."

  "Do you see my point now?"

  "The Octos here are probably forced to do this just like the Sst."

  "If that's the case, and I'm not saying it is, what would the next step be?"

  "Make contact. Find out the truth. Ask them to join the cause."

  "You're a good student, Lucy."

  I punched him in the shoulder. "Ha, ha. Now you tell me how you plan to teach me to merge with aliens if you've never merged with a living creature."

  "You're right, of course. I need to possess something to figure out how the process works. It seems you and your friend Harb have been blundering into it, trying to cram a square peg into a round hole."

  "More like trying to fit a whale into a sardine can."

  "The gorilla idea is interesting but probably unworkable." Anil held out his hand. "Let's see how I do."

  We flitted to the Congo and spent a while scouring the dense vegetation for gorillas. Anil spotted a group near a water hole and chose an independent male that was staring lustfully across the water at the females in the large group. I felt sorry for him. I wondered if he was doomed to live his life alone, always looking at what he couldn't have.

  "Wish me luck, Lucy," Anil said and approached the gorilla.

  My nerves knotted as I watched him prepare. I'd only known the guy for a few hours. He seemed pretty cool in a monkish kind of way, and I really didn't want him to vanish like the other poor souls who'd failed with the gorillas. Anil crossed his legs and went into a pose of meditation, with his legs crossed and hands palms up on his knees. After a few minutes, he reached out and touched the gorilla. The animal stiffened and its eyes stared ahead at nothing. Anil drifted inside the gorilla.

  For a long while the animal sat rooted in the same spot. I waited for the herky-jerky movement that the others had exhibited, but it remained still as a statue. I paced back and forth, stopping to snap my fingers in the gorilla's face every so often. It didn't so much as blink. I wondered if this meant he'd failed. Maybe his ghost was gone for good.

  "Anil?" Tears welled in my eyes. This was not good at all. I considered sending for Harb, Chris, or Kyle. Any of them might know more than I did. Minutes passed, feeling like hours. I decided that there wasn't much I could do and plopped to a sitting position.

  Nibbles appeared from somewhere and climbed into my lap. He rubbed his furry head under my chin then stretched, digging his claws into my thigh. I winced even though it didn't hurt that much. He wandered over to the gorilla and rubbed against it, meowing and purring as he did. After failing to receive a response from the catatonic animal, Nibbles came back to me for some attention.

  So I sat there, petted Nibbles, and worried for the better part of another hour. I was about to give up when the gorilla blinked. I widened my eyes and stared, thinking my mind had made it up. The gorilla blinked again.

  "Anil!" I rushed to him and peered into his beady brown eyes.

  The gorilla wiggled its toes, its fingers, and then looked at me. It smiled. At least that's what it looked like. I don't think gorillas were meant to smile so it freaked me out. The gorilla stood up, stretched, and scratched its privates. It abruptly stopped and I could swear it looked embarrassed. It started grunting and pointing at itself, then at me. At that point, I knew Anil was okay. Otherwise the gorilla probably wouldn't have seen me.

  Anil ran around on all fours, then stood on his hind legs and roared. Nibbles vanished. A herd of funky looking antelope bounded away. The group of gorillas across the water hole stared back. A couple of the females looked impressed. Then again, I'm not so great at deciphering gorilla body language. Nonetheless I was pretty damned happy to see that Anil was in full control of the gorilla and in record time, too. According to Harb, it'd taken me the better part of a day to assimilate. Anil had just done it in a couple of hours.

  After another hour of frolicking around, Anil separated from the gorilla with a big grin on his face.

  "That was fun."

  "You scared me to death."

  "You're already dead, Lucy."

  I stuck my tongue out at him. "Okay, mister, you get my point. Why did you freeze up? I thought you were a goner for sure."

  "I had to study everything in detail. I didn't realize how much time it took, though. I'm sorry you worried."

  "Well you just beat the record for shortest gorilla possession ever. It took me a day."

  "As I said before, you rushed in and squeezed yourself into an organism that is mostly incompatible with your being. I'm surprised any of you succeeded at all. I suppose if you dash yourself against a wall enough times it will eventually crumble."

  "Thanks for making me feel like a meathead."

  "You have the process partly right, however. By relaxing yourself into a living body, it makes the possession go smoother."

  "It seems easier the more times I do it with the same body. At least that's what it felt like with Nick."

  "I think you're right. Your spirit becomes attuned to the body instead of the body and the spirit fighting each other like invading germs." Anil rubbed his bald head and gazed at the gorillas on the other side of the water. "Meditation eases the process. I was able to explore the mind and body of the gorilla and trickle myself inside."

  "Can you teach me now?"

  "I will transfer the information, but you'll still require a lot of practice."

  He made me sit cross-legged in front of him, mirroring his own posture. After a few deep breaths, he took my hands. This time I didn't feel the outflow of information that I had the first time. Instead, a steady pure stream of knowledge poured into me. Unlike the chaos I'd seen in Harb's mind, I felt only the tranquil lull of Anil's placid mind. His control flabbergasted me. Normally I don't use the word "flabbergasted" at all, but in this case, I was willing to make an exception. The only downside to this steady data exchange was how long it took.

  It felt like an hour, but that was probably my impatience. And once he was done, the knowledge felt clean and easily accessible. My encounters with Harb had been like a huge memory dump.

  "Now tell me, Lucy, or better yet, show me how to do a clean transfer of knowledge."

  "Like you just did?"

  "Yes."

  I combed through my new knowledge. I was so used to studying books and learning everything from text or video that this new style of education required that I forget that old style. Instead of remembering descriptions of how to do things, I remembered Anil actually doing them. I felt how he took in breaths, shut down rogue thought processes, and focused with pinpoint accuracy on the one thing he wanted to do or think about. The problem was, that was how he felt when he did it. I tried doing the same thing, but random thoughts kept springing loose.

  I wonder what Chris is doing. Why does Nibbles run off all the time and how does he find me? I imagine kissing Nick. I feel dread about the death of his parents. I wonder if Anil's gorilla will ever find love. I hope he does. It would really suck to be all alone in the jungle. I really miss designer clothes. God, I miss shoes.

  Yeah. So that's the kind of crap running through my mind at any given moment. And it grew worse the more I tried t
o shut it out. The tighter I tried to control and focus, the more all those random thoughts slipped through my fingers.

  "Argh! This is driving me bonkers. I can't keep everything under control. I can feel and see how you do it, but I can't copy you very well."

  "As I feared," Anil said. "People have different ways of doing things. It's easy to transfer how to speak another language because it's basically memorization and regurgitation. But learning to control your thoughts is a very individual process." He took my hands. "Let me watch you do it."

  He merged with me. I gave it my best and tried to focus my thoughts on one thing. After failing to focus it on possession, I thought about Nick and my concerns about him. Everything else faded until there was only him. Then I switched to Chris. It worked with him too. But once I shifted my train of thought to something, like say, defeating an alien invasion, all the static in my thoughts returned with a vengeance.

  Anil withdrew. "Interesting. It's easy for you to focus on people, but you have trouble focusing on objectives."

  I remembered my last living thought. It had been of Chris as I'd tried to fill out a law school application. "I pretty much suck at meditation."

  "No, you simply need to learn to apply your method to everything else. You have your own style. After studying it, I think I can help."

  He walked me through the basics. How to control my breathing, my posture, all sorts of little nuances I never thought about. The breathing part was kind of strange since technically we didn't need to breathe. He told me it was good to use anyway. It gave me something to focus on. He was right. After focusing on my breathing, I managed to clear my mind. At least until I realized my mind was clear.

  My mind is clear! Yay! This is so cool. I need to tell Chris. Oh, I wonder how hard the next phase will be. I can't wait to try possessing another gorilla.

  Anil laughed. He was monitoring me. "You defeat yourself right at the moment of victory."

  I growled. We'd been practicing for the better part of a day and I was still having issues.