The Gatherer
Chapter I
Date: July 15, 2004
The alien probe slipped into the small blue world's atmosphere without disturbing one of the myriad defense systems scattered across the planet’s night darkened landscape. The craft was a blunt ended triangle powered by a silent technology yet undiscovered on this backward world known to its teeming inhabitants as Earth. The ship’s onboard technology was hundreds of thousands of years old, yet far beyond anything this world might develop for another twenty thousand years. Even if the whole of mankind applied the best of its scientific minds toward reverse engineering the exotic craft, it would take generations to unravel the most basic of its mysteries. Yet, the silent craft was a simple pre-programmed drone doing the busywork of its masters by collecting living samples of intelligent life forms from various inhabitable planets scattered across the universe The leading edges of the craft bristled with sensors so diverse and sensitive they could pick up every thought pattern, emotional variance, and the simplest intelligence levels emanating from any living creature that came within its range.
Two teenage lovers sat tightly embraced in a time worn convertible parked deep in the forested hills overlooking the distant night lights of Atlanta. Rick and Brandy had been steadies all through high school. For several mutually agreed upon reasons they had been saving themselves for marriage, resisting the very real temptation to go all the way. This night was different. The almost fevered, emotionally charged feelings they often experienced when together was far stronger than usual tonight. and they quickly found themselves in danger of giving in to their powerful desires.
They had been accepted by different colleges for the upcoming fall semester and were acutely aware that dramatic change was sweeping into their lives. For the first time since falling in love, they were about to be separated. They would be attending classes in different states. Their extreme emotional anxiety combined with the powerful passion of young lovers had brought them far beyond reasonable restraint and caution. Their emotions were supercharged with desire and fear as they kissed and wept over their situation. Each had secretly decided to give themselves to the other as yet another way of binding their hearts together in hope neither would fall in love with someone new while they were separated.
As Brandy lay back on the car seat, she gazed tip at Rick with passion-filled eyes. Rick, hovering over Brandy, drank in the beauty of her face framed in a fan of long auburn hair. He was thinking how lucky he was to ever win the heart of a girl like Brandy. For the first time ever, Rick gently reached for the top button of her blouse. Suddenly the haloed, summer moon that bathed lover’s bluff in soft fairy light vanished from the star drenched sky as something huge and dark glided silently over the tired old convertible and hovered. Brandy’s eyes went wide as a brilliant blue beam lanced down, surrounding them with a chilling azure haze. There was no time to utter the scream forming in her throat. Both young people vanished from the front seat of Rick’s old Oldsmobile leaving only a wispy blue haze behind, which the soft summer breeze soon spirited away. A sparkling, white hoar frost centered on the front seat of the old car and spread in a sweeping arc over the dash, finally covering the interior of the vehicle. By the time anyone discovered the abandoned convertible there would be no sign of the icy frost. Only an empty car and two kids mysteriously vanished into the Georgia night.
The silent craft moved westward, drawn relentlessly by the emotional spikes and extremely high intellectual levels of the creatures that inhabited this planet The super-charged emotions of love, passion, fear, and anxiety had drawn the craft like a magnet to the young couple now helplessly trapped in the belly of the craft.
An hour and a half later a tall, dark haired man wearing biker boots and a black leather jacket eased from an alley in the south end of a grimy St. Louis tenement area not far from the iron bridge spanning the river to Illinois He could hear the rattle of the iron plates on the bridge as vehicles banged across heading one way or the other. Then he heard the tip-tap of spike heels as a pretty teen dressed beyond her years moved hastily down the darkened sidewalk, homing in on the neon lighted disco on the corner. The girl had taken a bus instead of a cab. The bus cost less, but had not dropped her at the disco’s door like a cab would have. The street she walked on ran parallel to and not far from the river front. This area had once been the busy commercial center of a much smaller town. Had the thug’s interest not been so intent on the oversized purse swinging from the girls shoulder, he might have looked into her face and guessed that the pretty fifteen year-old barely had money enough for a soda and bus fare home.
An adventurous child, she had slipped out for a little Friday night excitement despite her working mom’s admonition to stay safely at home. Emerging from the blackness of the alley the brute snatched her arm in a vice like grip, believing he had a rich young debutante who had come slumming to the shady part of town. Icy fingers of sheer terror froze the teen’s heart as she felt the steely grip of the mugger’s hand. An older more experienced woman might have frozen, passively handed her purse to the mugger, and had he let her go, ran for her life. Instead the teen exploded, screaming at the top of her lungs.
Enraged by the unexpected reaction from the slender girl in his grasp, and with no hope of a good take, the thug dragged the struggling teen into the yawning black chasm of the alley. He had to stop the screaming! He yanked the girl’s long blond hair back exposing her creamy white throat. Whisking out a razor sharp knife he brought it swiftly down in a slashing arc toward the girl’s arched neck, as her head lay helplessly locked in the crook of his arm. The blade never made contact. The assailant and his victim vanished in a pale, blue swirl of light and frosty vapor. Distance from its prey was of little consequence to the alien craft hovering five stories directly above them. The beam lanced with laser like precision as it first froze then teleported them away with the cold calculation of a machine.
Moving in an ever westerly direction to avoid the danger of visual detection that the approaching dawn would bring, the probe was soon hovering over a Nevada military base. Far below a night training exercise involving a team of Green Beret recruits had been in progress when someone accidentally tossed a live grenade instead of the required dummy. The explosion had blown a fellow teammate apart. The officer in charge heard the screams. Cursing under his breath he rose from his position to see who was injured. He was instantly knocked flat by a hurtling body which slammed full force into his chest driving him flat to the desert floor. Grappling with the soldier, whom he soon realized was bent on avenging the death of his close friend, the officer managed to right himself and the young man.
It is one thing to die for your country on a battlefield somewhere against a known enemy, but this was a training exercise and the soldiers best friend had died uselessly. The officer felt the boys K-bar nick his chest, drawing blood, as the roaring youth sobbed and struggled to drive the weapon into his heart. They were tightly locked in hand-to-hand combat when both of them suddenly vanished. The only trace of their abduction was a ten foot circle of white frost on the desert floor. The alien ship that took them was oblivious to the hail of small arms fire that plinked harmlessly against its impenetrable skin as the remaining terror stricken trainees below opened fire.
The silent craft moved on, over the Rockies, across the pacific northwestern United States and out across the dark, white capped deeps of the Pacific Ocean; ever searching for signs of intelligent life and drawn relentlessly to the intense emotional heat of life at its best and worst among the planets most highly evolved creatures. Sensing a pod of whales a mile below the surface the ship paused. The teleportation beam was almost activated to capture a full grown sperm whale entwined in a death battle with a giant squid over who would be dinner. Good, but not good enough. The whale, perhaps, as it seemed to be the second most intelligent creature on the planet. The squid was just an oversized killing machine with an intelligence level not far above a fish. The probe rejected these life forms and moved on.
Two hundred miles further west off the coast of Washington, a state of the art Japanese tuna clipper plied the sea on a southward heading, its sonar searching for the schools of blue fin and albacore tuna that fed up and down the American coast. Cherry Blossom slipped from her bunk and eased the cabin door shut behind her so as not to wake her father the captain of the fishing boat. Blossom was on her way to meet the first love of her life on the afterdeck. It was uncommon for a ship’s Captain to take his child with him on the high seas, but Cherry Blossom had lost her mother at birth and he his wife. The infant was all he had left of her and the captain refused to be separated from her. The boat was the only home Cherry Blossom had known since her seventh birthday. The Captain jealously protected his daughter from any would be suitors as he watched her slowly mature into a beautiful young lady. The old man could not bear the thought of his daughter marrying a lowly fisherman; she deserved better in his mind. Cherry Blossom’s young heart yearned for love, a husband and children of her own. She set her heart on Sumaro Yokura. Called Sumo for short, he waited expectantly in the shadows of the life boat for the girl to come to him. This handsome, powerful young fisherman set her young heart to singing by gentle looks, secret smiles, and the occasional brush against her arm in passing. This was their second clandestine meeting on the night-darkened deck of her father’s ship. Blossom’s heart fluttered wildly beneath her breast as she slipped from the shadows toward the young man she loved. She longed to hear his whispers of passion for her, his breath warm on her ear. Perhaps tonight they would not just talk of their future together. Tonight he might become bold enough to touch his lips to hers, to be more intimate with her. Sumo whispered softly, reaching for her hand in the night.
The Japanese are a very conservative people when courting. Meeting the young woman in the dark without a chaperone or proper ceremony was not honorable and caused their young hearts to race wildly with fear of discovery as they tasted the forbidden fruit of love without parental consent or the vows of marriage The accidental brush of a hand against warm skin was like a lightning strike in their young hearts.
Suddenly, a searchlight from the pilothouse flooded the lifeboat in a circle of harsh, bright light. Frightened, the couple stepped out into the open knowing they had been discovered. The bellow of her father’s harsh rebuke fell on them from above, rage apparent in his voice at this breach of honor. The old man was still a powerful fighting man who had served the Emperor with distinction during the latter days of World War II. He leapt from the deck above, cleared the life boat, his bare feet thumping hard on the after deck as he landed in a fighting stance to challenge the younger man for dishonoring his family.
The boy had no choice but to defend himself from the raging captain. Sumo knew this was a no-win situation. If he lived, he would be banned from the ship, if not tossed overboard. If he hurt the old man, Cherry Blossom would hate him forever. The girl shuddered in fear beneath the gunwale of the lifeboat as the two men she most cared for joined in the deadly hand-to-hand combat of ancient Nipponese warriors. Both were fighting with the knowledge that no quarter would be asked nor given. None of them saw the alien craft glide silently into position directly overhead. As the two men kicked and slashed bare handed, a blue shaft of light lanced down capturing the three of them in its freezing grasp. Long before the morning sun rose to kiss the deck with its warmth the telltale circle of frost left on the after deck had melted away leaving no trace of the captain, Cherry Blossom, or Sumo. They had simply vanished.
A signal from the alien mother ship initiated a return-home sequence deep inside the probe. The silent exploration craft accelerated instantly in a sweeping arc, ascending by the millisecond, it slipped unnoticed from Earth’s atmosphere. No one connected the wide spread seemingly random loss of nine earthlings to the intrusion of an alien probe. The only witnesses were the surviving Green Beret trainees, and the military is not given to talk publicly about what goes on during secret training missions.
The exiting probe seemed to bear down directly on the moon, and then swung around the brilliant disk in low lunar orbit to rendezvous with its mother ship on the dark side of the moon. This ship was so impossibly huge it lay hidden to nullify observation by any who might glance that way from earth. The alien probe slid precisely into its bay and locked down among scores of similar craft. The loosely disk-shaped mother ship left its lunar orbit on a heading directly away from earth so as not to be visually detected by observers, and continued unseen on its mission.