Homecoming Chapter 18 (Serialized Novel)
Chapter 18
Stephanie could sense that something felt off before she even opened her eyes. Even with her eyes closed. She could sense that wherever she had gone to, that it was cold, damp, and wet. And the smell. It was rancid. It was also a feeling. The feeling of fear and all that was wrong with the world. Not only that, but she could sense movements in the peripherals of her being.
Summoning up the courage, Stephanie blinked her eyes to life, and was horrified at what she saw. She found herself in a large spacious black room. Everything seemed to be black, and the walls themselves seemed to be moving. Like they were tentacles. The tentacles of the Zeta Recticuli spacecraft belonging to Malduk. The black box like monolith that had been in the center of the room had materialized itself into the form of a black metallic chair which she was reclined within. Her eyes bulged in terror as she noticed that five of the tentacles had wrapped themselves around her arms, legs, and neck, and she only just began to register how slimy they were. Another towered over her, like a cobra about to strike on its prey.
As she focused her eyes in the dimly lit room, she noticed that the giant reptilian creatures that had assaulted the Area 51 compound were at either side of her, their razor-sharp wings angled at her neck, just above where the tentacle was. They looked down at her as soon as they were aware that she was now fully conscious and awake. Directly in front of her, Malduk bent over her in anticipation, looking like a strange alien doctor overlooking an operating room table. The worse part of it all was that there was no sight of Niv in sight, who could magically teleport her away to safety.
“My dear Stephanie. What are we going to do with you? We have so much to discuss, and so very little time to do so. Ah, time. It truly is the most precious resource in all the universe. Would you not agree? One can never have too much of it. That’s what this has all been about after all, hasn’t it. Tell me, which came first the chicken or the egg? For centuries, we have appeared before countless civilizations, giving the tools and technologies needed for their development of nuclear forces, and what seems the inevitable given you seemingly innate destructive nature. We have always steadily guided you from a distant place to ensure the creation of our species. Thinking about it makes me wonder to myself how many countless times we have gone through this dance. It seems a cruel fate to me that the lifeforms of the universe are blessed with seemingly endless timelines of possible futures for themselves while we are incessantly confined to this eternal damnation and imprisonment of the same one played repeatedly. It is the reason why, from a further place in the future that we are risking the possibility of an incursion in order to replace our time and dimension with yours. We came earlier, preventing nature from taking its course, not only to buy more time for ourselves, but to ensure that this infernal entrapment comes to an end,” Malduk told her in a tone of voice that carried passionate anger.
“First off, don’t call me dear. There is nothing endearing between the two of us. And secondly, are you suggesting that the timeline that you exist within is a kind of fucked up time loop?” Stephanie asked of her abductor, as she twisted, churned, withered, curled, and struggled to get out of the confines that held her, her back arching as she failed to do so.
“That is precisely what we are talking about. I can assure you there is nothing more maddening than coming to the realization that all of time and space is infinite, that there are infinite possibilities to the dimensions of the universe, but that your very existence is relegated to the same one repeatedly. The higher dimensional beings speak of how flagrantly we have violated the universal laws of free will with our actions, but we ask, what about our free will? Where is the free will in a life that repeats itself repeatedly? Where is the uncertainty and grey area to be given the freedom to question whether things are fated, or if everything is preordained? All the things that you take for granted, the time that you have, is all but robbed from us. Most civilizations live for a better tomorrow, a better future, and we always must look backwards to the past, the snake that is constantly eating its own tail. What did we ever do to be denied that which is an afterthought to the other beings of the universe? And Niv and your precious Galactic Federation. I can assure you that you, or any one of them would not have been as inherently good as your take yourselves to be, if you were forged, molded, and shaped by the environment that made us what we are. I take one look at you, and I can tell you that, asides from an interest and fascination in time, that we have nothing in common. We are even robbed of what is ours in any sense of the past life. True, I may be what you can become in our future, but from our place in the universe, it is as if our very being recycles out to play the whole tragedy over again. We ask you how that is not a violation of the spirit. Heed what I say. We will be trapped no more. I will personally see to it, no matter the cost. What was it that Niv said to you, that this is our homecoming? I am afraid that he took you to the wrong reality, and that he was correct with those words,” he answered her, a wry smile spreading across his face.
“Has anyone told you that you talk too much? But I’ll tell you what, you’ve got one thing right. I can assure you that you will fail, because I am nothing like you, and there is no way in hell that you are a version of what I can become, no matter the conditions that my spirit is subjected to. And I am so very thankful for that, Stephanie spat back, still struggling against the tentacles with the full force of her body, but with no luck.
“That is enough from you puppet. There is still much for us to do, and I was serious when I said that we were pressed for time. To begin with, I want to know what makes you tick. What is it that you fear most?” Malduk inquired of Stephanie, leaning over her as he did so. A hood flared over his large grey bulbous head. This withered cloak contained a ridge of porous indentions along the topmost part of it, and from their openings a thick greenish-yellow gas omitted from them, straight into Stephanie’s face. Stephanie coughed violently as she wondered to herself as to what this substance was, although she knew it could not be good. This gas that Malduk had spritzed her face with, was an alien hallucinogenic, native to the decayed world that the Zeta Recticuli lived in. It was one that made its victims live out their worst nightmares. As Malduk let the agent kick in, he crossed the room and turned on a holographic projector, the very same that they had in the tunnels of the Area 51 compound, on in order to amplify the effect.
Immediately, everything went black for Stephanie. It was an odd sensation, like being completely conscious of being unconscious, as if there was an awareness to it. Then there came confusion. Stephanie found herself no longer in the metallic recliner but somewhere back on earth. She was outside, and it was cold out. Snow on the ground, there was a busy street near her, and she was randomly standing outside of a McDonald’s. Not in the parking lot, but closer to the sidewalk and the street with it. Wondering why she was no longer in Malduk’s spacecraft, she looked all around her, the confusion growing as she noted a shopping cart of recycled cans right next to her. Curious, Stephanie looked down, and was surprised to see she was dressed like a homeless person. What came next made her jump out of her skin.
“I take you to be much tougher and braver than to be afraid of being homeless. No, that cannot be it. What lurks deeper in the contents of this scene,” Malduk’s voice rang out in the background of her mind as if it were a part of her conscious thought, like an evil and sinister voice in a schizophrenic mind. “Take me deeper to what really scares you,” Malduk said.
Stephanie went to talk but was just as horrified at the result as when she heard Malduk’s voice, for what she wanted to say, and what she actually said were two entirely separate things. “Stephanie, Stephanie fears the mean man’s voice. Stephanie, Stephanie is afraid of ending up somewhere, speaking to herself in the third person, not having any idea of what’s going on,” she let out in a voice that sounded unlike her own; as if her tongue were frozen in her mouth, and as if she were having difficulty making out her words.
Suddenly, there was a whiff of smoke, and McDonald’s, and all of the street corner vanished from sight. Again, there was nothing. Nothing but blackness that she was aware of. “Deeper, deeper into your subconscious we go,” Malduk’s voice hissed in the blackness. The next thing that Stephanie knew. She was sitting down, in what looked like an old hospital building. “You can’t simply be afraid of mental illness, or any lingering effect of it. There has to be something more to it than this,” the voice went on, once again in the back of her mind as she sat in the hospital chair.
Stephanie was astonished at the way everything seemed so vivid and real. Everything from the dirty linoleum floors that were white, and green checked to the nurses station on the opposite side of the room. What she found was that the room she was sitting in was a kind of lobby, the patients busying themselves with books, a casual game of chess, or others staring absentmindedly out of windows. All of the patients wore these kinds of maroon sweaters that were identical to one another. At the nursing station, there was a woman with curly red hair in a white nurse outfit handing out medications. She was checking underneath their tongues to see if they were cheeking them. With Malduk’s comments, it didn’t take Stephanie long to piece together that this was a kind of mental facility.
“Mr. McGee,” came a voice somewhere to the left of Stephanie, and it brought chills and goosepimples to her skin. Stephanie jerked her head in the direction that she heard it the second that the voice repeated the name. What she saw completely blew her away. Sitting in a chair facing a television, wearing the same maroon sweats, was her grandfather, body caved in, and face held down. “Mr. McGee, it’s time for your medications,” the voice went on. It was all too much to bear. Stephanie had never confined in anyone the way that she feared becoming like her grandfather.
“Oh, well doesn’t this seem promising. Quite the little family reunion. I guess it’s true what they say, how the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Malduk’s voice sneered. Stephanie began to wonder how it was that Malduk could see all of this. “Still, I’m not sure that this is all there is to it,” he continued in a tone of voice that suggested that he was amused by the whole thing, as if he was getting off to it all. “What is it that sets you off. At your very core what is it that you’re most afraid of?”
Once again, the scene before her vanished. This time it was replaced with her being placed in the passenger seat of a sedan. If she wasn’t mistaken, it was a white Honda Civic. She had to admit to herself that this was a turn that she hadn’t quite expected. It certainly seemed unrelated. And, if memory served her correct, this was not something that she had lived through. She looked ahead of her and saw that the car was speeding down a freeway, a little over the speed limit. Stephanie turned to her left, curious to see who it was that she was driving with, and terror pulsed through her veins at what she saw. The driver seemed to be a man, but that was hard to determine because the face and all of its facial features were nothing more than a blur. What she could make out was that when the blur saw that she had noticed him, or it, that the driver seemed upset, and immediately turned the wheel, forcing it to crash into nothingness.
It was the same with the next scene that appeared. After she had gone through yet another stay in the void, she found herself alone in a church. For whatever reason, she kept looking at the statue of Jesus being crucified and a passage in the bible about Pilate not knowing what truth was, a passage that seemed to be highlighted.
“Ah, now it all makes sense now doesn’t it Stephanie. Aren’t you just the little philosopher, aren’t you? At your very core, you fear losing control. When it comes to it, you fear losing touch with reality, whatever that may be. Just as you fear not knowing truth or knowing your God. Well, let me fill you in on a little secret. See if it alleviates your fears. All time, all realities, are really an illusion. Nothing more. How can you be afraid of a mere illusion? And I will tell you what’s more. It will not be very long from now that I’ll be your truth, judgement, and your God, how does that sound?” Malduk droned on, but he was far from done with his tangent on fear. “I have to say, I’m surprised Stephanie. You seem to strong minded to be afraid of loosing it. Nevertheless, it is a fear that is not exactly uncommon amongst the people of your world. But let me tell you what I have learned about fear from all my years of doing this Stephanie. What all sentient lifeforms truly fear is death. All fear stems back to the fear of death. Those that fear losing control, fear doing something in that time that will lead to their death. The individual that fears heights, is afraid of falling to their death. And so on and so forth. That being said, I believe you possess a knowledge that I want, and I will. This much I can assure you Stephanie. And it will be painful. But before I extract this information from you, I am going to let you in on another little secret, and show you what it is that you should be fearing instead,” Malduk hissed telepathically in the depths of Stephanie mind.
Once again, everything caved into darkness all around Stephanie, this void lingering on for a lengthy duration this time around. Then Stephanie’s sense of consciousness was thrust full speed into the chaotic world that she had left behind with Niv. The skies were a crimson battlefield as the pyramidal structures of the Zeta Recticuli waged their war with the spherical vessels of the benevolent beings that had been aiding the human race at this perilous time.
“It will start from the east,” came Malduk’s malevolent voice as several Boeing airliners flew overhead, whishing above with the combined effect of the howling of the wind, and the storm that was raging up above. “You see Stephanie, your Russian President found in the case of Putin has become a valuable puppet and little pawn of mine in the grand scheme of things. Although, I can’t say that even I am relatively surprised in this development. Just as you can reincarnate as either Niv or myself, the latter of the two being the most likely, Putin is destined to incarnate as either Kyron or Tiamat here, and if things go according to plan, the same could be said in this individual case. Now, in a matter of hours, Putin is going to start off a cataclysmic effect that will usher in our dimension of reality into being. Now, we need a nuclear war to create for our world, but in all of our efforts, we have exhausted our own, and by virtue of the infernal universal laws of free will, we can not initiate it ourselves. It must be done by the volition of your own people, as it has been throughout several timelines. Although nothing was said about aiding this from happening just the tiniest bit. As such, Putin has been pushed to launch a tactical nuke at Ukraine and the United States of America,” Malduk informed Stephanie, relishing in all that he was disclosing to her. For Stephanie, it felt like he was doing this for sport, like a predatory animal playing with its meal before eating it. As Malduk said all of this, Stephanie saw in the contents of her hallucinogenic vision a large cloud of pepper grey smoke billowing from the ground, from which two gigantic missiles rose out of. “Given the conditions of earth at present, this will create for a worldwide panic; one where world leaders all over the planet will be forced into a position of retaliating by similar means. Now, we know that the United States has the means to stop the missiles before they ever reach the United States,” Malduk continued as the vision showed her a missile exploding over the Pacific Ocean. “But, this is the reason that we have had the Russian’s wage their little war against the Ukrainians, because the country is too close to stop the coming attack,” Malduk went on, the vision now showing massive warheads being launched all around the world that was in front of Stephanie. “Yet, even this is not the best part to all of this Stephanie. You see, while we can not initiate this attack ourselves as a result of our resources and per the universal laws, I will let you on about one of the characteristics to our spacecrafts. The material of these crafts has the capacity to amplify the quantum states of a system surrounding them. In essence, they can tap into the zero-point energy of a system around them. Something that I think you can appreciate. Now, with your genius level mind, I am sure that you might have observed that our spacecrafts have formed on your planet in a kind of geometric patten, making a sort of grid if you will. Capable of teleporting, when your people start this nuclear process, the grid that we have created will take and harness that colossal energy, teleporting our reality out on top of yours, and your reality will cease to exist, and we will be freed from our hellish time loop,” Malduk finished sounding like a major maniacal madman, his tone of voice bordering on nearly incoherent. The scene went back to black after Malduk had narrated the whole list of events of things that were supposedly to occur on Stephanie’s earth. “You see Stephanie, what you should really fear is me. Because I am going to be the end of you, and it is going to be a slow, grizzly, and painful process. Now, you have something that I want, and I am going to take it from you,” Maldulk said in his shrill telepathic manner that echoed in the further most recesses of Stephanie’s mind, sending shivers down her spine.
There was another whisp of total darkness that changed the scenery before Stephanie once more. Like entering into a vast empty void, it shot through her and took over her, taking root in her very core before she got to process everything that was taking place in the nightmarish hallucination. She was the void, and it had become her, and all that was left of her was her awareness of it. Suddenly, the next thing she knew, the dark abyss pasted by, and she found herself once more constricted to the metallic chair in the large control room of the Zeta Recticuli spacecraft with Malduk and his inferior colleagues looking down at her, the giant, slimy tentacles restraining each of her limbs.
From out of the corners of her eyes, she saw another one of the surrounding Zeta Recticuli carrying what looked like alien surgical instruments on a tray over to where Malduk stood. On this tray was the very same syringe that they had used to influence President Putin’s mind and make it all the more docile in order that he would carry out their sinister plans, not that Stephanie would be aware of any of that, and what had happened just hours previously. Watching it with bulging eyes, she remembered what Niv had told her about how the Zeta Recticuli means of torturing and mind control where some of the most asinine techniques in all of the cosmos, and she supposed she was about to find out first hand as to why that was, having already seen how they induced fear in their abductees.
With the arrival of the Zeta Recticuli newcomer, Stephanie started once more to struggling, writhing, wiggling, and twisting in her confines in another failed attempt to escape her capture. Her back arched in the many different ways that she contorted her body to get out, with her turning her neck to and fro with her eyelids squinching and wincing shut. Grimacing, her body went limp as Malduk grabbed the syringe from off of the tray, the realization coming to her that all her efforts were to no avail.
“This agent contains large quantities of serotonin and dopamine inhibitors, along with a number of chemicals that you would not find native to your planets conditions. You see Stephanie, one of the things that the people of your world would never admit is the way that they have taken from us this knowledge of how the best way to control an individual is the control their serotonin and dopamine levels. They have leveraged this insight in the medications they have created through their pharmaceutical industry. It is but one testimony of our mastery over mind control. The implant here, however, speeds up the process and intensifies it all the more. What I’m going to do is insert the implant in the vein protruding from your temple, and before long, you will tell me everything that I need to know about those light beds, and the Galactic Federation’s light bed,” Malduk informed Stephanie, flicking the needle of the syringe as he did so.
While he did this, another larger tentacle neared the chair Stephanie had been confined to. It raised itself until it was it met Stephanie at face level. It took everything in her being to hold back a scream, and to make sure her body language and facial expressions didn’t betray her to the fact of how utterly terrified she was at what she saw. At the tip of the large tentacle that was inching towards her face was what looked like a mouth consisting of several rows of blackened razor sharp teeth which were spiraling around.
“And you’re really going to like what my beautiful creature here is going to do,” Malduk continued, petting the large tentacle with his free hand as he did so. “Once the agent has been applied, and you have told us everything that you know, my beauty here is going to attach itself to your face, and retrieve from you the information of every experience you’ve every had from out the cells of your brain as well as in your very DNA. You see, you would be very surprised to learn the amount of information that our DNA contains within it. If I wanted to, my little friend here could retrieve the information of experiences lived by your ancestors, but that will be unnecessary for what I need in specific. I just need to know more about the methods of how the Galactic Federation goes about healing,” he continued, turning once more to Stephanie.
As he was nearing, in her moment of desperation, a though occurred to Stephanie. It was something else that Niv had told her after their experiences on the new earth once they visited the light beds and the Garden of Wisdom. It was what he had divulged to her in the way that the Zeta Recticuli fed off of fear, and in the way that with her newfound abilities, that all she had to believe. It was almost out of instinct, at least that was what she concluded because it felt like the exact opposite of what she thought that she should be doing, that she allowed herself to relax. Her body went flat against the chair, and she began taking as deep of breaths as she possibly could with the restriction around her neck. Deep guttural breath that filled her diaphragm. Then she allowed herself to believe. What she was believing she had no idea about. She just thought of Niv, and the Galactic Federation, and willed herself to believe that everything would be okay. “Not if I have anything to do with it,” Stephanie whispered as Malduk drew nearer to her.
What happened next occurred in rapid succession. Before Malduk could insert the syringe into the temple of her skull a great ball of golden light erupted out of Stephanie’s center. In that moment, she had activated her own Merkabah. As it expanded around her, the force field created by the Merkabah sent Malduk and his cronies flying across the room, forcing them to the ground. The tentacles that constricted her pushing off of her as well, sending them swirling and twirling away from her. It was as Niv had said, in that with a healthy Merkabah, one could walk through a battlefield untouched. This protective shield of light protected her from everything near her. Even Malduk’s Reptilian colleagues that had appeared at Area 51 went sliding across the floor, falling into one another as a result of the light.
“No, this cannot be,” Malduk let out. “You are neither a higher dimensional being, or a being of light or darkness. This is simply impossible,” he continued from the place where he groveled on the ground, his arms reaching out towards her and his fingers stretched out wide as he did so. His cohorts simply looked around with confusion in their eyes, completely taken aback by what had just happened.
Before any of them could act on what just took place, light filled up throughout the cabin of the Zeta Recticuli spacecraft as if a small lightening cloud had appeared in it, and with a faint little pop Stephanie teleported herself out of the vessel. Once she had disappeared out of sight of the troop of Zeta Recticuli and Reptilians, Malduk let out a deafening and bloodcurdling cry, shouting out a passionate, “No,” throughout all of the spacecraft; one that could be heard outside of its walls.