The Discovery
Johansson sat across the table from Jamie. Head slouching, arms and chest restrained in his wheelchair. He was just coming out of unconsciousness…Jamie feared the table was not wide enough, if he got loose, he could reach out and grab her by the throat.
Johansson is slim, unkept dark hair, medium height but, his eyes held something very dangerous. Johansson wakes, leans forward and shouted in a rage struggling against his restraints, “Kidnapping is a federal offense, sedating me is a violation of my human rights, I’ll have you before a court in no time!”
Jamie’s brown irises are sparkling with blue lines slowly streaming from her pupils and disappearing at the edge of her irises; like looking into two endless tunnels. She calmly projected an image of Johansson in his wheelchair back to him.
Johansson sits up abruptly. His head snapping back as if slapped. He looks straight at her with curiosity and interest. Johansson turned his head slightly looking at Jamie from the corner of his eye. “You have some skills.” He sneered and faced forward aggressively with a wicked smile, “Can you do this?” Johansson’s eyes turned black.
Jamie sensed an image of a naked women struggling against ropes as a knife cut across her breasts and abdomen and she screamed in excruciating pain…it was incredibly vivid and Jamie could feel the knife cutting her own skin. Jamie suppressed her reaction and adjusted her vest intensity up and made the image disappear. Johansson’s eyes, black, returned to normal.
Johansson’s voice dripped with disgust, “You have a way to stop my thoughts? Or do you rely on that machine wrapped around you?” Johansson stared at her vest and back to her face with hatred.
Jamie exhaled slowly and focused. “I have an essence and it is enhanced well beyond what you can imagine.”
Johansson shook his head side to side. “No, not like my essence.” He tilts his head to the side eyes closed.
A new image appeared in Jamie’s head. She is running toward the melee outside the café where they captured Johansson. Jim, her close protection officer, shot himself, the other close protection officers shot each other and Johansson stabbed Cheryl twice in the neck as she stood there motionless. Johansson turned and snarled at Jamie, his face a vicious mask of evil. He charged with his knife ready to plunge into her throat.
Jamie increased the intensity of her vest with the quick touch of her finger and as Johansson came to her she projected a new scene; Jamie grabs Johansson, lifted him over her head, and threw him into the street where a garbage truck ran him over leaving a bloody body with his limbs twisted in all the wrong directions, and he was still alive and gasping helplessly.
Johansson withdrew his projections and studied Jamie with his head tilted and calmly said, “That was most impressive.” Johansson smiled slightly with recognition in his eyes. “I remember you from the street where I killed Jordan, your friend. I was glad to meet him a second time.” Johansson smiled broadly with pleasure and Jamie sensed his satisfaction with the killing. “Your name is Jamie?” Disdain dripped from each syllable.
Jamie leans forward slightly, her irises intense blue tunnels as she delved into Johansson’s essence. “Yes, and you have been around for a very long time, haven’t you?”
Johansson in a derisive voice “Indeed I have. Want to see bitch?” Johansson dropped more of his blocks and Jamie followed his human essence and dived into his memories.
Jamie experienced him being born a thousand years ago and quickly dying, driven insane by the body he was in. He was born and died, again and again, and lived a little longer each time.
Johansson fast forwarded through a hundred episodes in his life as he finally grew to adulthood and held power over many and killed them without mercy. He focused on his time in Nazi Germany where he stood over the deaths of thousands of people, Russia where he killed thousands more, Cambodia where he engaged personally in numerous atrocities.
Jamie felt her shoulders stiffen at the onslaught of visions. She shakes her head to focus on the present so his projections didn’t overpower her. So much fathomless hatred, death and not a single bit of empathy. Why?
Johansson spoke proudly, “I have killed millions of you animals.”
Jamie spoke hesitantly. “How many do you have to kill before you are satisfied?”
Johansson shouted with a visceral hate, “All of you! I never will be satisfied as long as I have to live here!” Johansson bounced up and down in his wheelchair with violent anger, spittle dripping from his exposed teeth as he shouted strange words. Then, he was suddenly silent. Jamie could sense he could not control his emotions, why? Is he psychotic? His last garbled words hinted at deep agony in his mind and essence.
Johansson’s voice trails off and he looked past Jamie at the wall. A thousand-yard stare that opened his mind and Jamie touched a vision in his essence that was truly alien. Jamie felt shock spread across her body. How could this be possible? So many nonhuman visions and ideas that she could not comprehend, then it dawned on her.
Jamie irises are scintillating with bright blue lines and she says slowly, “You are not human, are you?”
Johansson’s long gaze came back and he focuses on her with a sinister smile. “That is correct Jamie.”
“You’re not from Earth, are you?” Jamie says slowly, trying to stay calm as nonhuman thoughts, words and images fill her mind.
“No, I am…” Johansson projected words and sounds that were humanly unintelligible. “It is difficult to pronounce my name with this limited vocal ability, ideas and fixed skin colorations.” Johansson squirmed in his chair trying to escape his skin then he started to coil in his mind like he was ready to strike.
Jamie looked to the side and tried to rid her mind of the scattered and unintelligible visions he projected. “Can you tell me how you came to Earth?”
Johansson relaxed but, Jamie did not let her guard down watching his uneasy mental state and keeping her fingers on the buttons to cut this interrogation short.
“You are insects beneath my feet.” Johansson looked off to the side simmering in anger, more images projected to Jamie. “I did not choose to come here bitch!” He lunges against his restraints. Huge spikes of mental anger, then his mood changed dramatically. Like turning a light on then off. “I’ll tell you about my species and you will see our superiority.” Jamie experienced mental whiplash trying to follow Johansson’s thoughts and extreme emotions. Humans did not make such rapid swings in thoughts and emotions. More evidence he is an alien in human skin.
Johansson settled back in his wheelchair. “My race has existed for millennia. Our minds started like yours but we extended our consciousness to reach a point where, what you call an essence, continues past death. Our essence became part of our everyday consciousness. It defined our culture. When you know you will always be part of the future, your attitude changes drastically.”
“We moved to the stars when we had advanced enough and wanted to spread our superior ways throughout the universe. I was on one of our multi-generation starships, traveling to a new home around a star we had observed for hundreds of your years.”
Johansson sensed Jamie’s question, turned his head and looked at her and answered with arrogance “No, it was not your Sun!”
Johansson went back to a relaxed calm and continued his story. “A power struggle occurred on our starship started by, what you might call my great-grandmother, although that is not a proper depiction of how our clan is related. She disagreed with our mission and the reasons to populate the universe with our form. Our lineage judged unsuitable, obsolete, and destroyed to purge these radical ideas from our starship. Not only were they killed, their essences destroyed. If your enemy never really dies then conflicts last forever.”
Jamie’s mind was reeling from the flood of images, ideas and revelations. An essence can be destroyed? How was that even possible? Dr Ridley said an essence can’t be destroyed!
Johansson smiled as he flooded this animal’s mind like a tidal wave. “Killing an essence was an early priority for our culture so we could bring disagreements to an end.”
“How did your species do that?” Jamie had to learn more to tell Dr Ridley.
Johansson smirked looking at Jamie and laughed lightly. Jamie could faintly sense the images but Johansson blocked Jamie from seeing them clearly. Johansson looked away and continued, “I am the keeper of our lineage’s faith expressed by my great-grandmother but, I was in hibernation and not part of the insurrection. The starship’s cabal decided on mercy; they ejected my pod into space. With nowhere for my essence to go, without my kind near me, I could not live again. They called that mercy.” Johansson uttered in English and German and some other language Jamie did not comprehend but, the vengeance was clear and unreal in its depth and breadth. Jamie could feel Johansson’s emotions were well beyond what a human could even comprehend, it made her dizzy.
Johansson smiles at the affect he was having on Jamie. “I was aware for such a long time in my pod. I grew angry at those who had forced my lineage into this fate and swore vengeance. I died out there, and I roamed the continuum until my essence touched a human essence. It was fleeting, but I moved towards it and found more and more of them and your Earth.”
Johansson adjusted how he sat and continued with a hint of arrogance. “The first child I entered went mad and cried continuously because our essences did not meld and your pitiful senses are limited. I must have entered the bodies of many, many newborns with the same result; my so-called parents always killed me, smashing my head with rocks!” Johansson screamed and projected something guttural and perverse to express his rage as his head and body shook manically. “I entered the bodies of hundreds of newborns with the same result.”
Jamie struggles to stay calm at the mental onslaught.
Johansson’s voice went frighteningly calm as he sat motionless. “Eventually, I began to adapt to your pitiful senses and intelligence and after several tries managed to reach maturity in a human. My hate was seething against my kind and your clumsy species who crushed me with rocks when they could not understand what was happening!” His face contorted in rage.
Jamie raised her voice, “You killed humans as an act of revenge for killing you when you were a newborn?”
Johansson sat back in his chair his face suddenly calm. “I’m as far above you as you are above your pets. I’m ridding the universe of a species that doesn’t deserve to live.” Johansson leaned forward and quietly concluded, “Eventually I will get control of enough power in the future and I’ll turn this planet and you into ash.” Johansson laughs manically. “I am living to destroy all of you!”
“You are the keeper of your great-grandmother’s faith. That, all sentient beings deserve to survive.” Jamie reminded Johansson with a projected gentleness that seemed to infuriate him. Johansson coiled in his chair and lunged at Jamie as his wheel chair bucked forward. She watched calmly knowing, and hoping, he could not escape.
Johansson growled “My leaders were right. My mission is to destroy all of you!”
Johansson is suddenly calm. That emotional whiplash that comes from an alien unfamiliar with human emotions again but, Jamie recovers quickly.
Jamie focuses on Johansson’s last thought, “Are there any more like you?” Jamie spoke with curiosity trying to stay calm.
Johansson sat back and nonchalantly fidgeting with his hands “Not that I have sensed. You and your bastard associates are the first I have met who are conscious of your essence.”
Jamie could see an opening in his conscious. “If you destroy us you will be roaming the continuum alone, again.”
Johansson leaned forward and raised his hands together and said, “If I can’t get vengeance on my kind I’ll work with what I got.” Johansson had a sly grin leaning forward his head slightly to one side. “Now, you want to see how I looked before I had to take this miserable body?”
Before Jamie could say yes, a projection that looked like a shark, mashed together with an octopus formed a monstrous vision that made her feel like vomiting…Jamie’s eyes went back to normal as she leaned over feeling her stomach rise in her throat, that was Johansson’s opening.
Jamie looked down and her vest was gone. She was naked. Arms and legs painfully spread-eagle by tight ropes. Painful slashes covered her naked body. Blood was pouring from her chest and she screamed in pain as Johansson was penetrating her. He laughed as he cut her face and neck with a knife. The visage of his alien form inches from her face, the smell, the grotesque alien visions she felt helpless and on the verge of dying.
“No, No! This can be happening! Please someone help me!” Jamie pleaded for her life as fear cut into her soul as it had done so many times in her past lives.
Then, a familiar presence projected into her essence from her fellow seers. Calm returned, she was bathed in warmth. Her fellow seers formed a cordon around her and lifted her to the surface and stopped her drowning in Johansson’s projections. Together they turned to face Johansson. Jamie lifted her head, tear streaks still wet on her cheeks. She looked at Johansson coldly. Johansson’s eyes returned to normal along with a stunned look. Jamie touched the button under her right hand and dialed the vest’s power all the way up. Her irises sparkled brightly as she and her fellow seers projected pure white rage and screamed into Johansson’s mind destroying every image they saw until Jamie blanked out.
