Pod N Read online

Pod N

  by

  Michael D. Britton

  * * * *

  Copyright 2012 by Michael D. Britton / Intelligent Life Books

  The brakes squeaked with an eerie whine as the white Chevy Silverado’s knobbly tires crunched to a stop in the dusty gravel and blackened twigs along the narrow fire road, high atop the San Bernardino Mountains near Banning Pass. A layer of black dust and ash covered the vehicle – from the orange-and-yellow light bar on the roof, down the doors with their worn CALFIRE decals, to the bent and tarnished running boards.

  Unit Chief Jacob Long had not believed the call when it came in from Hal Cooper. A diver stuck in the treetops sounded just plain nuts.

  Long stepped out of the truck and sniffed the smoky air, tipping back the brim of his red hard hat. Visibility was still pretty low, even though the air tankers and the ground crews had managed to contain, control, and finally knock down the six-hundred acre blaze early yesterday afternoon. An inversion had trapped the particulate matter from the valleys to the peaks, making breathing difficult, and seeing further than a few hundred yards impossible.

  Cooper, just three months from retirement, climbed out of the passenger side and pointed up, pulling his sunglasses off with his leathery left hand. “Right there. You see it?”

  Long followed Cooper’s outstretched arm to the highest branches of the charred pines at the top of the low ridge alongside a rocky ravine that ran by the fire road.

  And he saw it.

  “Yep. Sure does look like a body,” said Long. “But I think it’s just a wet suit or something.” He reached into the Chevy and pulled a pair of dark green Bushnell binoculars off the truck’s dashboard and peered up at the out-of-place sight.

  “He dead, then?” asked Cooper, squinting and scratching at his scalp through his gray hair.

  Long shook his head and said, “I still can’t make it out. Let’s see if we can’t get it down.”

  He replaced the binoculars and reached into the bed of the truck, slipping on a pair of work gloves and grabbing a filthy Stihl chainsaw.

  The two men hiked to the base of the tree, climbing over fallen timbers, some of which still had thin wisps of smoke escaping from their scorched ends. They kept glancing up to make sure they were approaching the right tree. When they reached it, Long took a breath, then yanked on the starter cord of the chainsaw, breaking the silence of the gutted forest. He placed the spinning chain near the base of the tree, and felled it within two minutes of the first cut.

  The tree fell toward the fire road, cracking through splintered, burnt limbs of nearby trees as gravity got the best of it. The smoky air was augmented by the smell of fresh sawdust. As Long shut off the saw, and the tree settled in its new resting place, the silence returned, louder than ever.

  The wet suit had bounced out of the limbs after the tree hit the ground, and landed about ten yards from the side of the fire road in some blackened weeds.

  As Long and Cooper reached it, they saw that it was more than what it appeared in the binoculars – it was a dead man wearing a wetsuit with full SCUBA gear.

  “Well, I’ll be,” muttered Cooper. “How’d you think he got up there?”

  Long, who spent many of his off-hours surfing the web, found his mind connecting to the memory of a stray email about an urban legend – one that resembled exactly what they had on their hands.

  “Well, there’s an old story about a diver picked up in the sea by an air tanker and dumped on a wildfire,” Long said, rubbing his chin as he squatted down to get a closer look at the corpse. “But that’s just it – it’s just a silly story. It seems extremely unlikely that it would actually happen. Our tankers, on this fire, didn’t even collect any water from the ocean – they used Big Bear Lake.”

  “Could he have been divin’ in the lake?”

  “I don’t think they do any recreational diving there, but I suppose he could’ve been on a rescue dive or something,” said Long. “But it just doesn’t add up. Our tankers wouldn’t have scooped near a rescue operation on the lake.”

  “Guess we better call the coroner,” said Cooper.

  “Yeah,” said Long, staring at the body. “I’ll radio it in.”

  #

  “Look,” shouted Autumn Bellamy, slapping her palm down on the steel desk of Sergeant John Lilokalani, “I haven’t seen Chance in nearly three days! I need to know what you are doing about it!”

  The bustle of the squad room momentarily hushed, highlighting her outburst. Tears welled up in her bloodshot eyes and she shoved a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, rubbing her eyes and looking down.

  Her husband of nearly two weeks had not shown up three nights ago after a day of diving off Hanauma Bay, up the road from Waikiki, Hawaii.

  Lazy ceiling fans moved the humid air around without actually managing to cool anything down. Sergeant Lilokalani nervously shuffled some papers before glancing at the clock on the wall, then looking at the young woman and responding. “Mrs. Bellamy, I am sorry. We are doing all we can. Unfortunately, a number of swimmers, surfers and divers are lost off our coast each year. The ocean is beautiful but very dangerous. And I will be honest with you – after three days, the probability of your husband being found alive is – is quite low.”

  Autumn stared back at the native policeman for a moment, the look in her eyes rotating quickly through an incomplete grief cycle – denial, anger, bargaining, and depression – then skipping right past acceptance back to denial. She looked out at the blue sky and palm trees through the blinds in Lilokalani’s office.

  Then she spoke quietly and evenly, even as tears trickled down her flush cheeks. “Chance is not dead. I know it – I can feel it. We just have to find him.”

  #

  Chance Bellamy couldn’t breathe.

  He couldn’t feel his arms, or his legs.

  He couldn’t see or hear.

  But he was awake now – that much he knew.

  He felt no physical sensations at all – not even that of floating. Perhaps he was in a sensory deprivation chamber.

  That made more sense than disembodiment.

  He struggled for several seconds with the urge to inhale sharply, then remembered his diver training and calmed himself.

  After a few moments, he realized that he didn’t need to breathe.

  Perhaps he was on a ventilator.

  An accident at Hanauma Bay?

  He thought back to the clear, warm waters. The tropical fish gliding around him in yellows and blues and golds and reds as the sunbeams cut through the waves overhead.

  Then what happened?

  A horrid image flashed through his mind.

  A machine. With moving appendages and clear, bright silvery eyes. It spoke to him without words, in what seemed to be English, yet was more meaning than diction.

  “Subject: Earth-1100010110. Human. Male.”

  It was not speaking to him, it was speaking about him. The voiceless voice moved through him like an ocean wave, muffled, distorted, yet full of power.

  “Transfer life to Pod N. Discard container.”

  And then it had all gone black.

  Chance now willed himself to perceive.

  Anything.

  Anything other than his own thoughts, and the scattered, terrifying memories.

  Memories that made no sense.

  He felt like he had been ripped from his body like an animal being skinned, the hide tossed away to reveal the flesh and blood within.

  Slowly, he started to see.

  Not with his eyes, but with some other organ – like a drug trip gone bad.

  He saw fuzzy light all around him, but no distinct objects.

  Then the light focused and resolved into th
e astonishing machine-creature from his tortured memory.

  “Subject is integrating,” said the creature, its solid silver eyes betraying no emotion.

  Soon, Chance could also hear. Or what passed for hearing. A low throbbing sound and some random blips and beeps.

  He struggled to speak, but had no lips. However, his message was somehow communicated.

  “Where am I? What is happening to me?”

  “Subject is self-aware, individual, inquisitive.” The machine moved to a control panel of some sort, its appendages touching several instruments in succession.

  “My name is Chance Bellamy. What have you done to me?”

  “Exchange successful. Pod N integrated,” said the creature.

  Chance somehow willed his vision to look down at himself.

  He no longer had a body.

  He saw that he was existing in a spherical pod of clear glass, about the size of a watermelon. He “looked” around the circular chamber and saw several other such pods. Each contained a faintly glowing gas swirling in the center.

  “Your body has been returned to the approximate location of its habitat,” said the creature. “You will exist with us, now, and we will learn of your species.”

  Chance Bellamy willed himself to scream, but only a petrified silence escaped his sorrowful mind as a vision of Earth slowly shrunk into the distance.

  #

  In his twenty-one years as San Bernardino County’s chief coroner, Bill Rexburg had seen a lot of really weird things.

  But nothing compared to this: a SCUBA diver found dead in a treetop, a hundred miles inland.

  A fingerprint analysis easily identified the man – a thirty-two year old named Chance Bellamy, from Springfield, Missouri. A call to Springfield P.D. indicated the man had been reported missing by his new bride three days ago – in Hawaii.

  Given the odd circumstances, an autopsy was authorized, and Rexburg quickly got to work in his squeaky-clean examination room. The wetsuit had already been peeled off, and the body lay naked on the table. Rexburg let the Brahms continue to play on his iPod, choosing to dictate his findings later from his photographic memory.

  The body had no signs of foul play, other than the bumps and knocks associated with having tumbled from a falling tree – injuries clearly sustained post mortem.

  Some tests on his tissues placed his time of death at only nine hours ago – about an hour before Hal Cooper had first spotted him in the tree.

  Weirder still, an analysis of the moisture in the wetsuit showed it to be seawater.

  How could this man have got from Hawaii – or even from Long Beach - to the San Bernardino Mountains, still wet, in such a short time?

  But the toughest question of all was the cause of death.

  When Rexburg cut into Bellamy’s brain, he found no indications of asphyxiation, no trauma, no clues.

  He also found no dendrites.

  At a microscopic level, the catalysts of brain synaptic activity had somehow been completely wiped from this man’s brain matter.

  Rexburg stepped back from the table, pulled the iPod buds from his ears and let them dangle at his side, his mouth slightly open and his hands trembling for the first time in two decades of slicing open corpses.

  #

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Bellamy,” said Sergeant Lilokalani, stepping around his desk to put a hand on the grieving woman’s shoulder.

  Autumn looked up at him through a stream of tears, her shoulders shuddering with her sobs. “You’re sure it’s Chance? How – how can it be?”

  “We don’t know yet how he got there – there will be a full investigation - but the fingerprints confirm it is him. Also, you may identify him from the images I was emailed – if you feel up to it.”

  She didn’t want to, but something compelled her to nod her head. “Yes – let me see the pictures.”

  Lilokalani turned his flat screen monitor around so she could see it. He clicked on an icon and with no further warning a sharp photo of Chance’s face filled the screen, his eyes closed, his skin pale.

  Autumn covered her mouth with her hand and shut her eyes tight, nodding tersely.

  Lilokalani quickly turned the monitor back around, then took a seat at his desk. “We will learn the truth of this matter,” he said quietly. “We will find out what happened, and why.”

  Autumn looked into the officer’s eyes. “Why did I feel like he was still alive, when he wasn’t? Why?”

  To that, Lilokalani had no answer.

  #

  Chance Bellamy - or what used to be Chance Bellamy – listened carefully to all that the creatures said – to him, to each other, to the other beings in the pods.

  Time seemed to pass slowly as he grew accustomed to his new environment and his new existence as a collection of thoughts with no physical form.

  He longed to be with Autumn – to let her know he was not really dead.

  After what felt like a month, he got his opportunity.

  The creatures were able to somehow manipulate matter, and would cause the pod spheres to disappear from time to time, eliminating the containment field and allowing the prisoners to float around the lab as the creatures performed experiments on them.

  The next time it happened, Chance was ready.

  When the barrier dropped, he willed himself toward the wall of the chamber with all his might, and found himself penetrating the wall. But part way through, he was blocked.

  He turned and raced through the inside of the wall, following the path of least resistance.

  Through conduits and wires, he sped through the ship at the speed of light, finally finding a weakness – an energy exhaust port that opened to space.

  He was free!

  He willed his thoughts toward Earth. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know the way – he just focused on the destination and allowed the universe to pull him there.

  Some time later, the solar system came into view.

  He zoomed past Jupiter on his way in, through the Asteroid Belt, and soon closed in on Earth.

  Through the clouds he rushed.

  To North America.

  To Missouri.

  To the city of Springfield.

  Home.

  He entered the bedroom where she lay awake in the summer heat, her thin silky night gown mingled with the sheets in their dimly-lit room.

  He stopped centimeters from Autumn’s face.

  She was older – much older now, with strands of gray clinging to the sides of her now-lined face. She looked about fifty. But still beautiful. And sad.

  He wanted to touch her. He tried to speak, but could not.

  He reached into her mind, and touched her thoughts with a gentle kiss “hello.”

  He felt her catch her breath.

  “I live,” he whispered to her mind, the thought simple and clear. “I live.”

  END

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