Hello Mr. Robinson Pt. 09

"Sit with us and partake. When you are ready please tell us your story." The Seer said as she took her spot on one of the corners.

I tried a little bit of everything. My taste buds learned new and exciting flavors. While the human palate is relatively limited the J'Nai are gifted with six other tastes that would have been lost on others. So it seemed that a part of me still considered myself J'Nai. I asked what each of them were as I took my first bite. I marveled at the simple pleasure of eating and they treated me like a new born. I guess in a way I was. Once I had enough I told them my story. I left nothing out and the Seer's eyes expressed emotions that were as alien as the food. Once I finished she dismissed the others and rose to her feet.

"Follow me Voidsinger." She said with a little bit of an edge to her voice now.

I stood up and followed her. We walked up a gently sloping ramp to the top floor of the dome. There were no stairs anywhere. J'Nai architecture was entirely ergonomic and organic. As with the exterior the same was true of the interior. There wasn't a single seam, rivet or sign of joining in the entire building. We reached a balcony that looked towards the center of the J'Nai settlement. I noticed immediately that nature and the J'Nai structures blended together with the same perfection as their architecture. They didn't fight nature they communed with it. Here there was no asphalt or concrete or leveling of forests. The J'Nai were caretakers of their worlds and I think my mind had shown her an ugly world of primitive humanity.

"We will teach you. I was told you'd arrive and I have had mixed feelings about it. A part of me dreaded your appearance here. However, another part of me was immensely curious about you and your song. We can learn much about each other. We will adopt our foundling and in doing so save your world and enrich our own. I must leave you now in the capable hands of the Ghost Dancers. You might see them as engineers or artists perhaps even a little bit of both."

I was about to thank her when two hooded figures arrived and she told them to take me to the grove. I walked between them and I sensed a kind of dread. Something lurked in this grove of theirs something dangerous. I was led out of the Dome of the Seer to the grove named Webwood. The figures gestured for me to enter the woods alone. I walked slowly taking in the sights and sounds. The trees were unusual by earthly standards. The trunks of the trees were coiled like a nest of serpents climbing over each other for dominance. The limbs of these towering giants was strange too as they grew out in elegant sickle like curves. I stopped for a moment to look at a cluster of leaves that was low enough for me to touch. The leaves were long, thin and a deep emerald in color. I stood there transfixed as the leaves moved oh so slowly. I glanced up and saw that this world's moon was rising. The moon was much larger and stranger than the one I knew all too well. The surface of the sphere was obscured by an atmosphere. I wondered if there was life there too. I began to wonder when the Ghost Dancers would arrive or reveal themselves.

I continued my walk and had the distinct feeling like I was being followed. I fought the urge to look over my shoulder. The path wove its way through the darkling wood and I spotted a figure off the path sitting tailor fashion. I wondered if he were meditating. I called out to him but he didn't respond. The more I looked the more I realized he hadn't moved an inch. I don't think he was breathing. I rushed over thinking he was in distress. The timing was perfect. I reached the figure's side just as the light from the moon illuminated him. I stopped in my tracks and stared. The man was in fact a crystalline statue. The craftsmanship was astonishing. I squatted down and looked closer. The detail was impossibly good. I could see the pores in his skin and his body gave off that swirling aura I knew that only living things radiated. What the hell had happened here?

"Welcome to the Grove of the Crystal Seers." A voice whispered in my head.

"I am sorry if I am intruding." I sent back.

"You are very considerate young J'Nai. We were told that someone wished to learn the intricacies of the Web. Do you have the patience it takes to learn what we have to teach?"

"I believe so," I said feeling a touch of uncertainty.

"Honest to a fault as well, you are a stranger here. Sit down and let's have a chat shall we."

I sat down and crossed my legs in front of me. Once I was settled I heard a skittering sound and it grew closer as the other approached from behind me. I closed my eyes and waited. My breath sounded loud in my ears and I forced myself to relax. I pushed down the terror and let it go. I could feel it monitoring my emotions. There was a loud grating sound next to my ear. I had no idea what it was but I suspected it was laughing at me.

"You are an interesting being Voidsinger. You are both young and ancient. There are heavy years that you carry and yet they are alien to you. How can this be?"

"I carried two artificial personalities with me. I was attacked and their containment units were damaged. In an effort to survive they blended with me. One of the personalities was a reflection of my own the other was not. The other belonged to someone else. I was never able to discover anything more than his first name from that personality. She wanted me to save his soul. I don't know how to do that."

"Fascinating..." the being sent. "May I?"

"I have no objections."

I felt the subtle prodding of the alien mind. A moment later my head felt like it was on fire. I was about to scream when the pain vanished. The being apologized for the intrusion and the pain as it questioned me about the microscopic things in my brain. I tried to explain nanites to it. I say it because there was no sense of gender from the being behind me. Once I said they were machines it understood. The prodding continued but with greater tenderness. What happened next took me by surprise. It began to sing to me and I felt euphoric and light headed. I went with it and enjoyed the experience. I lost track of time when suddenly that familiar flood of memories struck without warning. This time it was different. This time every single emotion, scent, sound, and tactile sensation pummeled me. My mind was held open and I could not pass out or shut it out. So I did the only thing that was left open to me. I screamed. I screamed until my throat was hoarse and even then I howled in pain. I screamed for millennia. I was in my own private hell and that god damn Warden had locked me away. I cursed at him in every language I knew.

I learned a valuable lesson, nothing lasts forever. The last image faded, the final sound drifted off to silence, and I was alone in my head once more. Only then was I allowed to pass out. The darkness took me and I drifted in the abyss but even there I wasn't alone. There was an illumination and I looked down at the spiraling Milky Way Galaxy. Space is so very cold but I found it soothing. It is true that sound cannot travel in a vacuum and yet I heard the music of the spheres. My mind perceived the various emissions from stars, quasars, neutron stars, and even the screech of Hawking radiation spat out by black holes. The chorus of a trillion stars serenaded me as I drifted in interstellar space. I tried to lift up my hand to my face but I possessed no form. I had become a being of pure intellect. There was only me and no other.

The music of the stars, which was in its totality utterly chaotic, began to take on a rhythmic pulse. There were three notes being repeated over and over again. The rhythm kept alternating from two beats followed by a single or one note followed by two. The tones grew louder and louder. I wanted to clap my hands over my ears but I had no hands to muffle or ears to be covered. My eyes fluttered open. I was prone on the floor of the prison cell. I sat up and felt light headed.

"Greg... wake up... Wake up... Greg..." It was Kelly's voice over the intercom.

"Kelly? What the hell happened?"

"It was the Warden. He lost his mind. He shot me and locked you up. He shut off the air supply to your cell. We are locked out of the system. He triggered the emergency lockdown. We are trapped until we can find a way to override it. Greg... I am sorry but the gate is going to flush the buffer."

"When... How long do I have?"

"Now, I am so sorry Greg..."

I felt the change in the air. I don't know how they managed to reroute it but it was about to be a moot point. The gate was going to trigger a momentary exposure of its event horizon and I would be torn apart by tidal forces in excess of god knew how many earth standard gravities. I got to my feet and felt my adrenalin roar in my veins. I didn't want to die! I closed my eyes and desperately fled to digital space to give me a few seconds of life. I could accomplish much but would it be enough? I was still feeling the remnants of the hypoxia, the lack of oxygen to my brain. But maybe in that daydream I could find salvation. There blazing like a star in the heavens a sign. It was a single J'Nai rune. It was one of the most complex I had ever seen. I clung to it like a life vest. I rose alight with new purpose and with me I brought the rune. My eyes blinked and I raised my hand towards the rift, towards the space between spaces. It wasn't empty. Dear god something hung there in the rift. I tore my gaze from the abomination and using every ounce of psychic energy to seal the breach using the rune. I drew it line by line in the air over the rim of the abyss and what lay beyond it.

"Go to hell," I roared as I finished the design and poured what was left of myself into that rune.

I blacked out and crumpled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. I awoke surprised to be alive. I blinked a few times and the pain hit me like a ton of bricks. The machine to my left made a clacking noise and I sighed as the morphine dumped into my IV. I couldn't lift my head. I had to use my eyes to look around my limited range of vision. I tried to talk but my throat hurt and I realized they had a breathing tube in me. What the hell happened? I tried to send a telepathic message but that met with a different kind of agony. My attempt must have been somewhat successful. Rhea got to her feet and walked over to my bed. We locked eyes and she screamed for a nurse.

"HE'S AWAKE... NURSE... DOCTOR... take it easy Void... Greg... we got you. I thought we lost you!"

I blinked to tell her I was okay. A flood of activity filled the room. Soon I was being poked and prodded. I was told how lucky I was to be alive. The cover story was that I had been hit by a semi that had crossed into my lane. It felt like I had been hit head on by a tractor trailer. I would eventually be debriefed about the events surrounding the Black Site and its ultimate shut down. I learned there had been a total of four fatalities, three prisoners and the Warden. He had been shot point blank by Kelly saving my life and everyone else in the long run. The instability in the gate had disappeared long enough for them to shut down the gate, the reactor and abandon the site. Nick took back his gates and once I was on my feet there would be new terms negotiated for access to Blink technology.

My focus was on my recovery and trying to interpret what was I even going to call it, a dream or did I access the memories locked in Ariana. I would let time and patience be my guide. I slept a lot. I dreamt a lot as well. The dreams were normal and showed no signs of those I experienced at the site. Every time I woke Rhea was there. I learned from one of the nurses that she rarely left. Days blurred into weeks while my body slowly knitted itself back to a semblance of stability but no more. Once I was removed from a majority of the machinery Rhea showed up with two other women. I blinked several times not sure I was really seeing. The women were spitting images of their sister Rhea. My jaw fell open when I took in the identical triplets. These were Rhea's sisters and I suddenly felt a sense of familiarity. The middle sister was Morgaine, the youngest was Morgana and I knew enough to realize that Rhea's true name was Morrigan. My grandmother told me stories when I was growing up about the old country. They were like fables but they dealt with my Irish ancestry.

"My grandma told me about the Triple Goddess, the Raven Goddess but she called her the Morrigan."

"What did she say?" Rhea asked or was it one of the others. I wasn't sure anymore.

"She said it was wise to stay out of her way. The stories say that she is wise, far seeing and swift to anger. She was the patron of maidens, mothers and crones. That was why she was called the Triple Goddess."

"I think he's figured us out sisters," one of them said.

"I believe you are right." Another said with a sly smile on her lips.

"Say it Greg. Tell us your theory."

"Well... I wondered how the heck we could be so intimate and yet you spent so much time with my mom. One of you watched over Cindy. One helped my mother out. One of you shared my bed and watched over me. But I think you rotated positions. There were times when I felt subtle differences. You share a kind of collective mind."

"Yes," they said in one voice.

"Do you know how rare multiple births are among the J'Nai?" Morrigan said her eyes alight from within.

"In a million births one of them might be twins. Out of ten million births one might be identical twins."

"We are the product of one out of a hundred million. The actual odds are probably much higher. We have never heard of another set of identical triplets. We might be the only ones ever."

"Wow," I said smiling from ear to ear. "Don't take this the wrong way. But uh... how is this going to work?"

"We love you," they said in one voice again.

"I... wow..." I said and fell silent.

"Perfect reaction," one of them said and touched my arm. "Now let us get to work."

I was gently and carefully moved from my bed to a gurney. It took everything I had not to scream. There wasn't a part of my body that wasn't in agony when I moved. Once I was on the gurney I was slowly wheeled towards one of the elevators. As we moved I was told what had happened in the cell. I was told how I had somehow survived the tidal forces of the event horizon long enough to shut down the gate. But the damage had been done. Astrophysicists call it spaghettification. The human body is stretched and torn apart very slowly. In my case I suffered muscular as well as skeletal damage. Add a host of other injuries from the gate but damn it all I was alive. I was told the footage was blurred due to the temporal effects of the event horizon. The time I experienced and that of the camera was different. For me time slowed to a crawl. It was not unlike comparing digital time to meat time.

We took the elevator to the top floor of the hospital. I was taken to the board of director's conference room. The room was dominated by the massive oak and marble table. I could only guess at its dimensions from my prone point of view. Take it from me it was extravagant. The door was closed and the girls went to work. They pushed the chairs out of the way from one end of the table. The gurney was brought close and the real magic began. The sisters three levitated me from the gurney to the cool hard surface of the table. My feet were pointed at the end where Rhea ni Morrigan stood. Morgaine and Morgana took up their positions on either side of me. They raised their arms and then their voices. There was a power in that song.

The healing energy washed over me and I felt it in every cell of my body. At first the melody and volume remained steady but I could sense distress infecting them as they realized how bad my condition was. They tried another song but it failed as well. The room fell silent even as the mental communication reached a fevered pitch. But even that fell silent with an abruptness that was more worrying than if they had screamed at the top of their lungs. Rhea decided and the others agreed. They never spoke in any fashion and yet I knew that something passed between them.

"Greg," Rhea said softly. "I am so sorry. We have to fall back to Plan B. It may not work but if we don't try it you will die. Your poor body has been ravaged by forces that should have killed you outright. It is a miracle that you still live. Do you trust me?"

"My faith in you, all of you, has never faltered. Do what you feel you have to."

"Hold him... this is really going to hurt boss man."

It didn't take a lot of effort to keep me prone. All they had to do was place a hand on my shoulder and I was helpless to move. Rhea reached into her purse and took out two pieces of dark metal. They were both tetrahedrons, three sided pyramids, about two inches on each side. I felt Morgaine and Morgana grab a wrist. They began to sing again but this melody was low, dark, and ominous. Rhea drove the metal into my wrists. The pointed end pierced my flesh with ease. The singing grew in volume and strength but this time I felt something inside of me respond to it. I felt dizzy at first but then my body grew hot. A minute or so later my body was covered in sweat. The dizziness gave way to a deep ache. It felt like I had a bad case of the flu. The trio kept singing and the longer they sang the further the pain spread. I had to endure this no matter what. Soon my entire body was encompassed by the discomfort. It didn't last though it got worse much worse. My back arched and now they were struggling to keep me prone. The song changed again. This new melody was harsher still. The pain became a blaze of agony. I found my own voice now. Instead of screaming I sang. I took up their song as my own. The four of us wove a tapestry of notes, tones, and cadence. As the dirge reached its height I passed out. I welcomed the darkness as an old friend.

I felt a slap across my face. I blinked and opened my eyes. I was on my back still but instead of the ceiling of the boardroom it was an open sky. I recognized the alien stars and let out a moan. I turned to see who had slapped me and bit back a shout of alarm. I was eye to multifaceted eyes with the largest arachnid I had ever seen. Its exoskeleton was bone white with bright blue markings. I wasn't a huge fan of spiders but I sensed a connection between the J'Nai and this being. The bond was strong enough for me to feel it. I looked at the entity and saw that while it shared certain characteristics with terrestrial spiders it also possessed anatomy whose function I was unsure of. There was a cluster of crystalline nodules behind its eyes and that covered the back of its head. The mouth was more complex having articulated mandibles that might be capable of speech.

"You are quite the thinker Voidsinger," the spider said it's psychic voice soft and soothing. "Take a walk with me please."

I felt fine so I stood up and walked next to the spider. It spoke as we traveled to a small lake near the center of the grove. The water like the grass had a violet tint to it. The spider told me about the early days of his people. They came into being during a quiet epoch in the galaxy.

"As you can imagine we are a very patient contemplative people. We arose from predators much like your own folk. My people shed their primitive nature. I did say that we are a patient people. What might surprise you is that the J'Nai are our legacy. You bridge that gap. The light of the J'Nai is slowly going out in the galaxy. We watch the flickering and worry for them."

"I don't understand. If they are your children why are you so radically different?"

"What is your definition of different? If you speak of our exterior form then yes we are. They are the children of our minds and our hearts. We are soon to depart the galaxy. We wanted to leave something of ourselves behind. The J'Nai represent our immortality. We passed onto them all of the things we discovered and created."