EXCERPT 2: ALIEN AND ALIEN WORLD

This crew had spent more time with humans than most. Soh immersed in human culture, Qua developing a theory of her own. She took it to the Elders. A meeting of minds was requested. First with her superiors, whose strands of thought orbited the telepathic web, then with Ssk-t, who oversaw the Earth project.

More psychically and some would say spiritually advanced, beings known as the Mantid maintained a physical existence in communication with others of their kind in higher, incorporeal dimensions. They were also in communion with Light Beings, the creators of most species across a great many star systems.

Known by abductees as Mantids for their resemblance to Earth’s praying mantis, and Ant People, or Anu Sinom the Hopi for centuries now, they had many names across dimensions. Their preferred name involves clicking which humans can’t reproduce.

Ssk-t cut an imposing figure at around eight feet tall. Its head was proportionately larger than Qua’s, and distinctly insectoid, with antennae down each side. Its mouth was even smaller than the Greys’ and nearer its pointed chin. Long, dark brown compound eyes shimmered with thousands of ommatidia catching the light like rusty glitter, each observing a unique perspective.

From a distance its exoskeleton suggested a crocodilian golden brown, but closer up the vertically rectangular scales were avocado-green at the center, flecked with dark, tiny pores. Shadows between the raised edges were laced with tiny dark hairs.

Its long hands, with three multi-jointed fingers, hung limply from short, skeletal arms bent tight against its chest. Although humanoid, its legs had an extra joint, reversed at a right angle between waist and knee, extending behind in a permanent crouch. A cloak swept away any casual scrutiny, with a high collar à la Ming from Flash Gordon. Like our body suits, it gave protection from Earth’s magnetic fields, gamma rays, light waves and gravity density, but I’ve always wondered if the design served a more dramatic purpose – to trigger mystical archetypal responses in human minds.

Implacable, searing eyes peered deeper into Qua’s mind than Greys can into a human’s. At over a millennium, Ssk-t had held authority so long, assumptions of obedience seemed almost sentimental.

It took a moment for Qua to get her bearings. Ssk-t had envisioned an environment from its home world. Shapeshifters are enabled by the observer’s mind, but they can also create environs for themselves.

The inverted dome of a massive, mud-gold hive swept majestically in all directions like a planetic pelt. Beyond it a dusty gold sky. Thousand of pods held slumbering infant Mantids connected by strands of light, pulsing intuitively. The refracting light made Qua think of the smoky haze of her home world at dawn, its twin suns in the lavender sky.

Stepping tentatively in, Qua felt the spongy response of live rocks, dark then suddenly amber, a lot like tiger’s eye – responsive, reactive, ancient. The sentient rocks fed on airborne bacteria as meaty as plankton, and listened in to burgeoning minds, always eager for an unthought thought, like dogs sniffing out a story from lamppost to lamppost. Qua’s mind flashed to her own world, cool pink and gray crystals tinkling underfoot with reflexive kinetic energy.

On the ships, smooth surfaces were de rigueur. This psychic departure to the world of Ssk-t was beyond decadent. Qua couldn’t imagine wanting to augment a life that functioned perfectly, and she didn’t welcome this aspect of becoming. But she appreciated being mind to mind with the Elder’s Elder. A result was necessary for her research to proceed.

Framed in an alcove, Ssk-t’s enormous head towered over a cluster of folded limbs. A telepathic gesture: approach. Awkwardly, Qua stepped forward.

Rock life ambled and toppled around them, until both were ensconced in a ring of twitchy stones. Ssk-t was raised to perch on the edge, slowly unfolding to crouch on its upper thighs, hands dangling in a gesture as urbane as it was contemplative. Qua stood in the middle, feeling like an ice sculpture on a silver tray, about to melt.

Ssk-t waved a telepathic invitation to sit. Such extravagant behavior only came with higher minds, and Qua felt initiated just by observing it. Disoriented, she found herself standing in the home she’d left behind – her familiar, anemic, adobe style room. Through an oblong window the two suns of her home world in the Orion constellation shone their familiar crisp white. Jagged scarlet mountains challenged long heliotrope clouds in the soft, lilac sky. Nearby, ashen pink rocks were veined with dark gray. Buildings like her own nestled like melting sugar cubes in unlikely piles under milky domes you could see right through to other domes full of homes, crouching in canyon deltas.

Ssk-t! Why was she so distracted? The landscape evaporated into familiar morphmetal, soft ambient light, and Ssk-t facing her. A ringed seat in a round room, much like her own at the base, form and function clearly defined.

Her long hands rested on her short little legs, as though restraining them from standing up and leaving. How dark my skin looks, she noticed, in comparison with Ssk-t’s absinthine scales. I must be getting older, she thought. How wonderful.