After the short, sharp pain of entry, as others had said, I felt the entity move rapidly up my arm, the side of my neck and enter my brain, although it presented more like an entry into my mind.
A warm flush moved through my entire being, spreading from my face, down through my body and into the farthest extremities. Even my toes seem to be glowing, but it quickly faded, and I guessed my entity was exploring its new host. How did I feel about that?
I turned and looked at Bill, then at Anna, firstly seeing them as aliens – whoa – they were strange and unfamiliar alien beings, then, all of a sudden, they were once more the friends and colleagues they actually were. I wondered if my eyes had glazed during that first encounter with what must be weird creatures for the entity. Did my eyes then clear as my own mind came to the fore, recognising people I knew well? Surely these entities already knew humans. Was it all part of a new adjustment within a different human?
‘You okay, Bill?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You?’
‘Yes,’ I said then looked at Anna. ‘And what’s amusing you?’
She laughed. ‘I know what you’re both experiencing. Amazing, isn’t it?’
We both agreed.
Short flashes of memory were appearing and fading within my mind. Some important, like meetings with Neil and other top NASA officials, and some insignificant, like the shock of a curry I’d once ordered which unexpectedly turned out to be a vindaloo, or opening a gift from my parents as a child one Christmas. It… no, not it… he was exploring me, understanding me, but I was, simultaneously learning about myself. I took a sharp breath as I experienced the last moments of my mother’s fight against cancer as if it was happening anew. I didn’t want the death memory but treasured that final smile she’d given me a few minutes before her last moments arrived. How lovely to see her face again.
I saw my exam results and the beaming grin of my chemistry teacher as I showed him the grades – and then the bleeding and broken nose from a deliberate punch in the scrum of a barbaric foreign school game called rugby.
Worse. A memory of the first entity flicked through my mind. The new entity realised what had happened, that I’d been overcome and controlled and that I’d tried to tell Linda to kill us both. He was shocked by the first entity’s reactions. He recognised its mistake; then I seemed to be inside that first entity, feeling its anguish at the sickness which began to pervade its being, its knowledge that it was dying and the agony it inflicted upon me when it thought I was the cause of its demise. It existed no more. It was gone. He was sad for it, but deeply upset for the harm it had done to me. I had to choke back tears. He was more hurt by my pain than the member of his own species’ death. He knew the way the entity had behaved was wrong but could also see why it had behaved that way. A dreadful mistake made through mutual ignorance, during those early days of encountering our species, and before realising the extent of the opportunities our two species offered each other for the future.
I was physically shaking. I’d experienced the torture again and been overcome by the pain it had showered me with. My new entity appreciated the hurt I’d suffered and offered a warmth to me, showing it knew what had happened and it would never occur again. He loved me. He wanted what was best for me.
‘Mark! Mark, Mark! Are you all right?’ asked Anna, who was kneeling in front of me, holding my hands as my faculties returned.
‘Yes. Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It found the memories of the first entity which was killed as we passed through the Van Allen belts. It felt some of my pain and anguish as well as seeing its death. He then comforted me through the exposure which was frightening for both of us. I’m okay now.’
‘I’d like some time alone with mine,’ said Bill.
‘We should eat,’ said Anna. ‘It would be best if we ate together and then spent some time getting to know our new friends overnight, alone in our cabins. Less chance of giving ourselves away if we stick together when in public.’
‘Yes. Let’s do that,’ I said and cautioned my entity to not take control while we were in the same room as other humans. I warned Anna and Bill to do likewise.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
During the meal, we continued to speak in hushed tones about our experiences with the entities. Several times my entity flashed memories up, asking about why a particular day, time, location or event was important, learning about my life. In the end I had to tell him to stop as I was concerned about looking preoccupied – something I would never be if I was in company.
Back in the safety and privacy of my cabin, it was different. I got into my bunk, dimmed the lights, lay back and relaxed, granting him full control.
Wow! Suddenly, he was all over me, opening and closing scenes from the past. We spent time in an astrophysics lecture I’d attended, and it was all so easy to understand this time. I’d had such a struggle with some of the applied mathematics, but now it was simple, child’s play. He made me break the problems down into manageable chunks then solve each, one at a time. Why had vectors so bemused me? They were obvious now.
What’s this? I was spinning around in mid-air!
Someone was gripping my hands. Don’t let go!
What the devil? Oh. I was a young child on the beach, being swung round and around and around at arm’s length by my father. My laughing and screaming was real again and his sparkling eyes and pleasure at the expression on his son’s face was wonderful to behold.
Another scene, and he’d made me sit in a shallow trench on the beach and constructed a sand racing car around me, with a rubber ring for a steering wheel and spade handle for a gear stick.
We were both laughing, and my lovely mum was taking photographs. Always taking them but never in them. I must find them when I get home. But, no, I needn’t. Untaken pictures of her were all here, in my mind – every time I’d ever looked at her was stored somewhere I could never hope to find on my own, but he could find them for me. There they were. In full colour, lifted out of the obscurity of some forgotten mental recess. How delightful. Anything I had ever seen, even fleetingly, could be enjoyed again but in crystal clarity. It seemed impossible, but in fact was real.
A switch of scene. What a shock! I was kissing Brenda Wilkinson under an octagonal table. It was junior school. We were ten. I smiled at the innocence of the memory. My first kiss. I felt the warmth, the wetness and the back of my hand wiping it away. I wanted to laugh. But now it wasn’t like that. I felt fear. He’d found another, much less innocent memory.
Anxiety filled every part of my being. I saw myself stealing a toy rocket from Duke’s Emporium. It was red and blue. Its fins were long and tapered. The top had a steel tip and there was space to insert a percussion cap, so that if you threw it, when the point impacted the ground, the cap fired. My pocket money had all gone. I wanted it. Desperately wanted it.
I saw myself taking it, sliding it inside my jacket and leaving the store, looking guiltily left, right, above, behind until I got home and could examine my loot. God! He was making me remember the days and days of anguish, waiting for Mr Duke to come knocking on the door to take me away to the police station. I felt the awful reality of my crime, the sickness in my stomach worrying about being found out. He showed me the many occasions I’d walked past that store. Six months before I dared to enter it and, even then, I was in fear of a hand on my shoulder, ‘Got you, you little thief!’ Perhaps that I wasn’t caught was one of the reasons I’d ever since had a great sense of fairness and justice.
No, no! No! That’s mine! Not yours – mine! He’d found another memory, on board the Gateway, precious time with Linda after our frantic departure from the moon. Oh, so real. It was real! God, I was actually feeling every sensation of the tangling of our naked limbs and bodies during our freefall lovemaking tango. I relived the actual instant which had created another entity, a human one which was growing inside Linda’s womb at this very moment. It was more than a memory. It was as if it was happening again now. No, no, I told him, these were my intimate memories, not for sharing. I was aware of an astonishing erection. Stop! He stopped at my request… eventually. I laughed at my embarrassment and was shocked that he could see such things, and that they could cause such reactions, but also staggered that these memories were so easy to recall, and in such detail. Frighteningly lovely.
I fought off his desire to find out more. I supposed he’d be with me in future during intimate moments. Could I ask him to leave me and sit on the bedside table as one did with spectacles? I laughed at the thought. But he was searching out other sexual memories. My disastrous loss of virginity and, oh no, he’d found memories of me with Penny Heston! Stop right there!
‘Stop!’ I shouted at full voice. I really didn’t want to remember anything about my infidelity. It had almost cost me Linda. He did stop and withdrew from that part of my mind. I told him there were certain memories which were mine and mine alone and he could look if he wished, but I didn’t want to see them with him. I wondered if that was even possible. I guessed we’d have to learn and set our own rules. We must establish boundaries for each other.
The next three hours were fascinating as my mind became able to use its new faculties to assess the difficult situation we were in at Moonbase. The clarity of vision gave me hope that I could find a way through the political and strategic mess which was threatening to engulf us.
I told the entity to shut up. He did. He stopped rummaging. I allowed my thoughts to settle down. I had to Skype Linda and I didn’t know how I was going to explain what I’d done. With my entity promising to retreat into silence, I made the call.
‘Hi, darling,’ she said. ‘Why the encrypted channel?’
‘Don’t want to be listened into. How’s my son?’ I said and waited for the interminable three seconds to pass.
‘Or daughter,’ she said. ‘Scan tomorrow. Do you want to know?’
‘No, I’ll wait for the surprise. Have you got a piece of paper there?’
‘Yes.’ She reached for a pad.
‘Don’t say them aloud in case our voices are still being listened to, but copy down these coordinates then show them back to me so I can check them,’ I said, holding up the note which Roy had given me.
I checked that she had an accurate copy. ‘Put them in your cloud storage. Give the handwritten version to our lawyer in a sealed envelope to be given to that New York Times guy you know, don’t say his name, in the event of my death.’
‘Death? Death? What? What’s going on? Why do we need them? Why are they so important? What’s all this about?’
‘They’re moon coordinates. We need to keep them safe.’
‘You sound a little different. Are you okay?’ she said. ‘Mark, you’re worrying me.’
She was always very intuitive. ‘I have something to tell you, and I don’t know how to do it,’ I said.
‘Start at the beginning,’ she said, and I began the most difficult explanation I have ever had to make. Fortunately, I had an alien genius inside me to offer help, comfort, concentration and an improved empathy and insight into life.
The last few minutes of the Skype call was a series of searching questions to me. Linda was satisfying herself that it really was me. I let him take control so that she could ask him about the symbiosis. She saw my eyes change and I showed her that I could retain, or handover control any time I wished. I hoped she believed me as it was crucial. She assured me she did. I even had the entity leave me and sit on a calculator, then return to me through the back of my hand.
When our call finished, I turned off the lights and my entity closed my eyes for me, helped me blank my mind, lowered my temperature and slowed my heartbeat. So began a deep, dreamless and amazingly restful sleep.
While I slept, he opened and closed the filing cabinets of my mind. By dawn he really did know me.