TOC MetaStories: Ineen Aldrop's 'He Stood taller Than Most'

Part 20 -Learning a Little History-

Paulie awoke to see two faces staring down at him with concern. One had three beady brown eyes that all blinked independently of one another and the other had six fleshy petals upon which were bright orange eyes almost like those of a cat.

He coughed a few times and then sat upright, glancing at each of the others in turn. “What happened?”

Flurn looked a little more curious now that he saw Paulie was unhurt. “Well, that was a little unexpected. You seemed to have experienced an unusually strong reaction to the procedure.”

Jakiikii butted in, “Yea, that was weird. Are you sure you are okay, Paulie?” She asked in that slightly reverberating voice. Though she spoke another language he thought he could detect more than a hint of concern there.

He shook his head as he climbed back onto the stool and sat with a grunt. “Yes. I-I.. I think so.” he put his hands up to his head, the memories were fuzzy, but he thought he could detect a slight pressure on the inside of his mind. But as soon as he noticed it the feeling seemed to withdraw like a frightened animal and so he couldn't be sure he had felt it at all.

Flurn stood close and then tapped his knee. “I think we are done with the basic tests. If you are feeling up to it I would like to administer an injection that will help keep your bones and muscle density from degrading. You are built for much higher gravity than this and given enough time the exposure to the weakened gravity will cause your bones to become brittle and your cardiovascular system to rupture as the walls of your veins thin.” he rummaged around in the bag and pulled out a comically large needle-like device.

Paulie straightened as he said quickly, “Uhn uh, no stinkin way you are jabbing me with that.”

Jakiikii gestured to the device. “The injection must be directly into the spine. There will be no pain, Paulie.” he shook his head and stood so fast that the stool clattered to the carpet with a thud.

He took a step back around it and shook his head. Visions of dark rooms and the glint of a needle flashing through his mind as he heard the echoing screams of near forgotten memories. He shivered as he pushed them down with the rest and swallowed heavily. “I.. can’t. No way. I will take the risk.” Flurn frowned, his wide mouth opening to speak but he was interrupted by the six armed termaxxi next to him.

“I have done this before. Here, I will help you.” She reached out her hands towards him. Not her large upper ones, but the much more delicate looking third pair that she generally kept folded across her chest.

Paulie hesitated and then looked at Flurn. “I don’t want to.”

She nodded, the motion so familiar that it instinctively reassured him a little. “Yes, but you need to, or you will become sick.”

He closed his eyes and then reached out, taking the alien woman’s smaller hands. He was at once surprised by the firm grip which they applied to his own, her smallest hands were stronger than they looked. Once more he noted that her skin was soft and smooth, much like his own though seemingly without the texture of fingerprints. He felt a strange pressure on his mind again and shook his head slightly as Jakiikii grumbled low in her chest. It was different from the other he had experienced somehow.

He opened his eyes to see her staring at him intently, those orange orbs so intense as they moved subtly on the fleshy petal-like appendages that held them aloft from her skull. She seemed to look a little confused, but he didn’t know why.

Now he cocked his head as he felt something tickle his mind again. Not the strange pressure he had felt on the inside as if trying to get out, but a featherlike touch as if something indescribably soft was brushing up against the corners of his mind from the outside. Was Jakiikii doing this he was forced to wonder. He felt a slight pressure at the base of his back but was too engrossed with this new mystery to really pay attention to it.

He opened his mouth slightly, “What are you doing? Is that you?” he whispered it as she seemed to twitch, her mottled skin flashing an off-white for a second as she looked at him with more scrutiny.

“Doing what? I am simply offering support while Flurn issues a deep core injection. He could tell she was hiding the truth from him though. Something unspoken that she betrayed with the flicker of her mottled skin and the twitching of her eye petals.

He didn’t push the issue though. He was starting to understand that there were a lot of things that he didn’t really understand about this place. He had only been away from Earth for a week, maybe two. And only the last day and a half had been spent on the moon surrounded by an entire civilization of strange new creatures.

She released his hands quickly as if burned as Flurn stepped around in front of him. “Ok, all done. Not so bad, now give me that.” He pointed to the coin sized sensor still attached to the center of his chest.

Paulie reached up and grabbed it before pulling it off. He winced as he saw three quarter inch long needles pull out of his flesh with it before they retracted back into the device. Spots of dark blood welled from the pricks but before he could say anything the alien doctor had already slapped another of those miraculous patches over the wound.

The pain went away almost immediately and Paulie rubbed his chest where the pain had been only moments before. “Man.. that stuff is fast acting.”

“It should be, it was developed ages ago to heal combat injuries after all.” Jakiikii said, nodding towards the patch on his bare chest. That made a strange kind of sense. Paulie could think of all kinds of medical breakthroughs that had happened during wartime. That made him curious though.

“So, if the Greater Galactic Intercession was at war, who were they fighting?” He shifted in his seat and then reached to the table for his shirt.

Pulling it on, he watched as Flurn glanced at Jakiikii meaningfully. Some unspoken signal maybe? Or perhaps the smaller alien was simply tired of answering his questions. The termaxxi woman shifted and then her eyes wilted slightly as she began, the weight in her voice telling him that it was a long story. “Well, in the beginning there was nothing but war, struggle and strife. This was before the GGI had even been formed, and the Galaxy was a much more dangerous place. It took many thousands of years of galaxy scale conflict to reach the point the GGI is at today. A long and bloody history soaked in the horrors of war, something that I am sure you can understand.”

Paulie frowned, wondering what she meant by that. Had she some deeper innate knowledge of humanity than she was letting on? Before he could ask her she continued, the low rasp of her voice answering his unspoken question.

“Your world is a dangerous and chaotic place, why else would they have initiated such drastic quarantine measures. The war was so long ago, more than fifty-thousand years..” She glanced at him, “Galactic standard years that is.”

He nodded slowly. That was indeed ancient history, in Earth years that was still nearly eighteen-thousand years ago if his math was anywhere near right. He could scarcely believe that historical records could have lasted that extreme length of time in any detail. But he had to remember he was dealing with a civilization that was probably three times older than humanity’s.

It was truly incredible. “So, what happened?” He wanted to know.

This time it was Flurn that answered. His gurgling croaks taking on as near to a whisper as the small alien could get. “The war was ended only with the intervention of Oiel.” he stopped, a look of significance seeming to cross their froggy features. Jakiikii herself looked more than a little awed at their mere mention.

He shrugged. “Okay.. and?”

This nearly immediately shifted the mood of the room and Flurn gave him his approximation of a scowl. “Hey, take care of what you speak. The Oiel died so that the Galaxy might live. Their sacrifice is honored across a million worlds in nearly as many tongues across fifty-thousand years of history. They were the best warriors and scientists the universe had ever seen. But they were destroyed by treachery at the very instant the war came to an end.” He finished the comment by closing the medical computer with a snap.

Paulie pursed his lips and glanced at Jakiikii. She nodded a little solemnly. “They disappeared, nobody really knows where too and it has been so long that any potential evidence has likely been lost. The only records we have of that time are highly fragmented, though the phrase ‘Drawn by the song of the universe’ is used more than once by those ancient texts.” She paused at that, looking at him to see if he reacted to it he guessed.

Paulie shrugged. “Means nothing to me, could just be a phrase that means something less bizarre I am sure though. Right?”

Jakiikii and Flurn exchanged another look. “Yeah, I guess so. But everything happens for a reason, Paulie.” She gave him a piercing look. “Everything.”

He felt a little shiver go through him involuntarily as her six orange eyes seemed to look into his very soul. Flurn broke the silence as he waddled between them. “Alrighty, time to go.” He stopped to glance meaningfully between them, “Unless you would rather stay here with the human instead, Jakiikii?”

Paulie smirked slightly at the comment as the termaxxi shook herself and then glanced at the oniuh that stood near to the door, waiting patiently with bag in hand. She nodded and then gave Paulie another glance, two of those bright eyes lingering as she spoke. “No, I will accompany you. Goodbye Paulie, we will meet again soon I am sure.”

He smiled at the friendly alien. “I look forward to it.” She flashed that pale white again and then followed Flurn out of the room hurriedly. The door closed behind them with a soft click leaving him alone in the dim room lit only by the light of the simulated screen behind him and the low thrumming of the bathroom’s fans.

Paulie sighed. He felt strange, as if something important had been lost. But he couldn't put his finger on the source.

As long as he was alone and had free time he decided that he might as well acquaint himself better with his surroundings. He fixed the toppled stool and walked over to the storage closet that Jakiikii had pulled it from and opened it up. The door swung aside to reveal all manner of boxes, crates and several other objects that he was as of yet unable to identify.

He dug around for a bit, finding little of real interest or value. At least not anything that he understood the workings of enough to make use of.

He walked around the room before looking at the simulation wall. An idea occurred to him so he spoke, “TV, show me the ocean.”

He was expecting the wall to change to a picturesque scene of blue waters and white sands, maybe a palm tree or two. Instead, the wall blanked for a moment and then returned with an altogether more alien vista.

The waters that stretched into the distance were a dark cerulean green, small whitecaps topping the waves as they lapped up onto a shore made of smooth reddish-brown rocks that looked almost volcanic in nature. There were no seabirds and no palm trees, though there were large patches of the same grass as the first simulation that edged right up to the waters in some places. The smell of salt and the soft sounds of water lapping against the shore were deeply familiar though and he closed his eyes briefly as the sensations washed over him like a cool breeze.

He sighed. Even in such an alien environment he could still get reminders of home. He smiled widely, a sense of deep satisfaction coming over him at his minor success.

Now it was time to figure out the other pressing issue he had been faced with. Food and how to make it.

He walked into the small kitchen and rummaged around in the fridge before pulling out some of the off-white nutricubes and a carton of something that looked almost like blueish coconut milk. He couldn't read the label but it smelled kind of like peaches or maybe pears and so he figured it was some manner of sugary fruit drink. Maybe the juice that Jakiikii had been talking about.

He opened a few of the cabinets, finding more dishes and then some more utility type cooking pots and pans in a shelf next to the fridge. Pulling out a pan, he walked to the stove/oven thing and placed the pan on top.

He spoke, “Stove turn on, er..” He had no idea what temperature to set it at. He didn’t think the aliens used celsius or even kelvin. He decided to take a wild stab. “Heat, medium high.” The soft blue glow that emanated from it was reassuring. He must have done something right as the pan heated up quickly. He sliced the cubes into smaller cubes and tossed them in and soon the small semi-moist cubes were sizzling. A smell strangely like that of scrambled eggs and hash filling the room as he whistled and tossed them, trying not to burn them as they began to crisp up like bacon.

After another few minutes he felt that they were as good as they would get and so he poured them into a bowl and grabbed what looked like a spork from a drawer by the sink. He placed the pan in the auto-cleaner and carried his foot out to the main room with the juice carton.

He sat down to eat and had only gotten one bite when the door knocked again.