• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

From the introduction to Watch the Skies: The Not-So-Secret-History of Alien Encounters

Daniel Clompus (London Multimedia Publishing: 2051) 6

Second Prologue

Time as an Abstract

Tokyo: 1 July 1999

‘Is everybody ready?’

The eight men in grey suits, masks and dark goggles crowded around the observation window, staring into the inert sterilised environment of the white room. It was, it seemed to several of the group, like looking through the porthole of a spaceship on to another world.

‘Explain the process again, Chung,’ asked one of the men, turning to the Chinese scientist standing behind him. There was a look of detachment on Chung Sen’s pockmarked face as he scribbled a note on a torn scrap of paper, as though the action were vastly more important than the question he had just been asked. Then he set the paper to one side.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘What you are about to witness is the culmination of a three-year search to find someone who, we believe, has the necessary resistance. Switch on the glonthometer,’ he told his female assistant as he moved towards the group.

A former teenage protégé who, along with the Latvian dissident Kerensy, had been considered the world’s leading authority on theoretical time travel, Chung Sen had long ago abandoned his research in this area. Now his Holy Grail was even more within the shuttered realms of science fiction.

Childhood meningitis had left him ugly and misshapen. The fingers of his left hand were shrivelled into a gnarled claw, he had rotten stumps instead of teeth and his chronically short sight gave the impression of a leering, aggressive stare when he talked to people.

‘The quest, as you are aware, is to find DNA that is compatible with the specifications that the conglomerate has laid down. The experiments, both here and in our facilities in California and the Czech Republic, have sadly proved unsuccessful. However, we believe that we are close to the answers that we have all been seeking.’

In the centre of the white room was a chair with leather straps. Two men were leading a shoeless teenage boy dressed in thin blue hospital clothes towards it. He was blindfolded, and clearly drugged, and the pure whiteness 7

of the room contrasted sharply with his olive-coloured skin and jet-black hair.

He stumbled and struggled uselessly against the strong arms of his captors.

Something indescribably terrible was about to happen to the boy and he, and everyone else present, knew it.

‘Is all this ritualistic nonsense really necessary?’ asked a black man in the group. He was tall and angular, a shock of greying hair a stark contrast to his smooth ebony skin. That apart, there was nothing to differentiate him from the rest of the men. All wore the same dull, formulaic business suits. And the same fixed, introspective expressions pitched midway between boredom and a feeling of irrelevance towards everyone but themselves.

Chung, his own features betraying neither of these emotions, was understandably irritated by someone questioning how he did things around here.

This was, after all, his project. They simply paid for it.

‘I’m sorry . . . you are?’ he asked contemptuously.

‘Theydon Bois. Representative from Burkina Faso,’ replied the man.

‘It’s a valid question,’ said Chung with a dismissive tone that suggested he didn’t feel it was valid in the slightest. He moved through the group towards the window. Inside the room, the boy had been strapped into the chair by the two men and was now alone. And clearly terrified. ‘He is from Tuvalu in the South Pacific. His family has been well paid to forget that he ever even existed,’ Chung explained. ‘Switch on, Kyla,’ he told his assistant excitedly, as he continued to stare through the observation window.

Kyla, a striking young woman with dark hair which she wore in a ponytail, hit the initiation sequence. ‘The process takes approximately twenty seconds if all goes according to plan,’ Chung continued.

‘It’s always “if”,’ said another member of the group, a tall,