The entry vehicle steers me away from my siblings (1 from 100) and brings me over the center of the continent. Farther, deeper I fall - the miles separating us (100) growing with each second. Through clouds and rain and night I (1 of 1) fall, detecting radar, sliding past the tickle of waves unnoticed. Retros fire, slowing. Computers search for flat isolated areas. Optimax location criterion calls for a town of around 4000. Large enough so that a stranger isn't obvious, but small enough for easy insertion.
The computer finishes its calculations for landing while the soft flesh, muscle, tendon and bone are built around my own body and integrated. My neural pathways are connected to limbs that my brain never knew. The small cabin allows little movement for my brain to adjust to the new protuberances. I bump about for a few minutes and then return to my preparations.
Landfall is a slight jarring followed by beeping of the timer. Destruction to occur in 1 minute (seconds, oh to be one of 60, sweeping around the clock's face). Door opens, stumbling into the night and cold. This body feels the sensations of wind and chill with amazing clarity. Briefings had failed to suitably describe the sensations. Legs jerk in motion, trying to find smooth movements - neural pathways opening, connections made - as my new body is brought under control.
Behind me the pod begins to break down to its base metals; a growing pool of red, gray and white begin to seep into the soft damp ground. There is no return unless I (1 of 1) rejoin my siblings (99). To not complete the mission is unthinkable; the urge to rejoin drives me.
A farmhouse is the first sign of civilization. Dog, door and darkness pose no problems. The woman I silence quickly. The man awakens when I turn on the bedside lamp. Extrication time. I begin to speak - he begins to shout. I grasp his hand firmly, twisting, snapping fingers numbers 1, 2 and 3. He screams louder, then quiets. I (1 of 1) speak slowly, then he begins to respond.
He tells me of his years spent as a small-town doctor, the babies, the deaths, and the disease. While his litany continues under threats on numbers 4 and 5, I listen to his tale of retirement and desire to farm with only part of my awareness. A small opening on my palm protrudes a micro-fine wire. Searching, it finds the opening where the bone-end extrudes from skin. Winding, probing it enters, seeking its way up the spinal column toward the brain.
The farmer continues to tell of his life, jumping across topics and time; information begins to double back down the neural feed. Memories flood. Information spill and data organization - the cataloging of a lifetime. Raw data is correlated with experience, and experience cross-referenced with emotion. When he is empty and his voice trails off, the wire retreats, shutting down electrical activity in the medulla oblongata. Cardiac arrest begins shortly and brain death follows quickly.
The night and house are silent. A strange heaviness begins to cover my body. Second hand information from the farmer's extracted mind tell me this is the coming of sleep. What strange creatures, shutting down their bodies for hours at a time, as if death overtakes them for a while. I sit down in the chair by the window, waiting for sleep and dream to consume me.
Such a sensation, is dreaming - a replaying of memory against your control. I am on the station at Alnilam. We (100) have just infiltrated the alien's organic based space station, wriggling our separate ways (100 golden worms on 100 pathways) in through caverns that resemble nothing other than the labyrinth of dry membranes within a walnut shell, that image having been given up by my most recent acquisition's mind.
Then it all begins to go wrong.
Though our bodies match those of the aliens around us, they sense a difference, and we are discovered almost immediately. From our separate points in the pod, all of us endeavor to complete our individual assignments, but we become the hunted.
Writhing through passageways, up, down and across the pod we seek refuge in unity. The need to rejoin is our ultimate downfall. We head toward the pick-up point, the area we covered becomes less, and the concentration of attack increases. I can feel each loss of sibling (23 gone, each ripped away like a part of my own flesh) as I (1 of 77) am forced to defend myself. Pincers slide forth from the dorsal area of my body, pushing, pinching, ripping at the soft golden flesh of those who attempt to herd me. Flesh rips away, coming forth like the tearing of mushroom caps. Syrup-like blood soon covers me and I draw closer to my brood siblings (61).
At an outer wall of the station pod, we form a defensive perimeter and await our transport. We have accomplished scarcely any of our assignments. The only real data acquired was a mapping of the pod and the response characteristics of the aliens we have been sent to catalog. A standoff exists for the few hours it takes for our recon vehicle to arrive. A few skirmishes, a few lost lives (7 more of 61, never to be 1's of 100 again) and we are delivered sanctuary. Our golden bodies spew forth from a fissure ripped in the side of the pod, wriggling our way up the umbilicus to freedom.
We return home, fractured, splintered, subtracted. Our brood is diminished by nearly half (46 of 100 gone), and we await birthing of replacements, a new litter of siblings to form a whole (to be 1 of 100 again, sweet ecstasy).
Our next mission is to be Earth.
Early morning sun enters the window, defeats the curtain, and begins to warm my skin. The opening of eyes and rush of breath is welcome. I had feared I would find myself a golden worm in a dry cavern, listening to the screams of siblings.
The door of the farmhouse bangs loudly as I leave, crossing the sagging porch the farmer had built with his son, then I enter the town. Rows of silent houses, each a mystery and a familiar story, as my mind weaves itself with the farmer's memories. In him I sought the answer to my assignment, but nothing was forthcoming. At the intersection of two country highways, a trucker picks me up, and I leave the town behind in a jerking shifting of gears.
12 towns go by before we stop. This town holds a small donut shop, and the trucker and I (1 of 2 for a few hours) are its last customers of the day. I am its last customer, ever. I side step to my right, shifting the weight to my back right foot, left leg coming up, chambering in, and I side kick to the trucker's ribs. I hear his ribs shatter. Driven inward, they cut through organs and finally puncture his lungs. Left foot lands, right then left-hand snap punches to the kidneys, followed by a right knife hand strike to his voice box. As the trucker is still falling, I am up and over the counter, grabbing the pastry chef by his shirt front. A few moments later I have him secured to a chair in the back of the store, with the front shades pulled down, the closed sign out, and the process begins again. Questing for information - memory spill. The answers do not reveal what I need. The neural feed gives me nothing. I sigh and leave my mess behind.
The next town, the next acquisition. In a small shop called Magick Wonders, the New Age woman is equally disappointing. Am I going about this wrong? Surely the answers lie within their brains - I must be missing it. Again? Can I do this again? My hands seem less quick this time to seek out death. I pause momentarily grasping her trachea. What is the physical sensation? A dropping of blood pressure, and increasing of heart rate.
Where does the answer lie? I know a Holstein from a Guernsey, a cruller from a kolatchky, and the Samhaine from the Beltane. Are pure memory and thoughts not enough? Six days remain to discover my treasure.
Two days I lose working at a soup kitchen. I search the faces of each person in line. Another day wasted by manipulating computer records, via modem, of universities and hospitals ranging across the continent. The result: the following day I arrive at the emergency room of a Chicago hospital to start my shift, guided by the knowledge of the retired-physician stored in my brain. I suture and I resuscitate, wield scalpel and reset scapula, always searching, hoping for signs of fruition from my journey. My final two days pass in vain.
The day of departure finds me near the pickup coordinates. I feel my siblings coming closer, all awake with eagerness for completion. The Military Weapons group (40 of 100) is entering the downtown area having been pursued off and on by helicopters since their excursion into the Pentagon. Naval Technology (20 of 100) is close behind, having escaped cleanly from aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines at Norfolk.
I enter the building lobby to see my siblings from the Telecommunication Technology group (4 of 100) have arrived before me from their assignment of corruption, seduction, and subterfuge in St. Paul.
Agents from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation descend upon us. Military Weapons arrive, providing us armaments. We wait for our brothers and sisters. And eventually our escape ship home.
The windows are quickly shattered by volleys of bullets from the aliens who now surround the building. Bystanders in the lobby begin to fall under the barrage, and my pulse quickens. Blood begins to cover the floor, their lives leaking away before my eyes. Something inside me is turning and twisting, like an infection of larva from Granteya. I look down to my abdomen, expecting to find a gaping hole from a bullet wound and the evisceration of my intestines, but there is nothing but this odd physical sensation.
I roll forward onto my knees, dart behind a potted palm, and crawl along the floor until I reach the first victim. Gun shot wound to the right forearm, ulna exposed through open skin. I remove the patient's shirt and rip it to long strips, covering the wound as well as possible, then immobilize her arm against her body.
Next victim has received a shot to the chest, and blood is pouring forth in great heaving spurts from the crater of his sternum. Too much blood loss foretells death. Mercifully, I break his neck to ease suffering, then close his eyes with my blood covered hands. Weeping, I move on to the next fallen.
How many minutes or hours I do this, time sweeps the minutes by. The shooting comes and goes, the roar of helicopters drones overhead, and the blare of sirens pierce the day. And always there are the screams of the injured, the begging for help.
Computer Technology (25 of 100) emerges from a sub-basement via the sewers. They bring stench and guns with them. Aeronautics and Space Technology (10 of 100) parachute to the roof above. Slowly the insurrection force ascends the stairs, buzzing with their success. All groups have succeeded in cataloging, clarifying and classifying, except I. They retreat behind me, as I stand amongst the pain and suffering of the humans (26 of 5 billion) on the floor around me. I alone am the failure. Given the most simple of tasks, I have achieved nothing. Emotion, an everyday part of life for these people, eludes me. I have searched their minds and memories, their starving faces. I have listened for signs of it in their screams of pain, and in their prayers for hope. Even now, as they lay suffering around me, I find no way to take from them the concept of emotion.
Something inside me breaks, and I fall to my knees. What is this sensation? This feeling that my stomach is empty, so like the sensation of hunger, but yet not it. Breath comes in short racking contractions of my diaphragm, and my head becomes cloudy. Could this be what I have been searching for? Should I have been looking inward for the answer, instead of in the bodies of those around me?
The recon vehicle descends to the rooftop above, the brood began to file in, and I bend to my task of triage. So many needed help that I can not give, but I continue to work. Above me the ship closes and departs. I remain behind, caring for the fallen 1 by 1; 1 of 5 billion.
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