Arch/Eternal - Chapter Nineteen

Our Chaperones were Aliens

First thing, real quick…

For the newcomers: Arch/Eternal is a sprawling novel-in-progress in the genre of philosophical sci-fi. Think Dune meets Harry Potter, and maybe channeling a little Dan Simmons. It’s also an experiment in long-form serialized fiction on Substack.

For the allcomers: If you haven’t read any of the previous chapters, I hereby give you permission to abandon any feeling of obligation to catch up, and instead just start HERE, with this chapter.

After all, that’s what the short summary below is for.

By the end, you’ll know whether you want to keep following along or not. And I promise to always include an updated summary, so you’ll never have to worry about keeping track of the important details.

Two other things (even quicker) —

If you really want to start at the beginning, here’s the Prologue.

I also recommend you check out A Terran’s Guide to the Galaxy at some point, for a good ten thousand foot perspective of the world building behind this story.

OK, now the summary:

Earth is a protected (read: ignorant) planet nested within a galactic community known as the Fellowship. In an effort to help Earth attain full citizenship, and to rescue its people from total self-destruction, historian/researcher and secret ambassador Rita Freeman is recruiting talented young people to build a better society.

One of these is Jackson River, who grew up with his grandmother in a tiny desert town in northern Arizona, and at 11 years old, lost his best friend after an episode of severe bullying. Another is Esther Quinn, who grew up in an idyllic home in Connecticut. When she was 11, her brother Adam was recruited by Rita to become the founder of a new movement called Cubensia. Years later, Esther moved to Boston to join him.

By some stroke of fate or fortune, Esther, Jackson, and their friend Deek are late to a Cubensian launch party that becomes ground zero of an attack that destroys an entire city block. Rita scoops up all three of them into her spaceship, and takes them through an interstellar gate buried on the dark side of the Moon to a planet called Priezh, where they will receive the Fellowship’s version of basic training.

On the way, they learn about the galactic drama that has been playing out between the Fellowship and the Confederacy, and the Firstborn, a powerful race of beings at the head of each of them — respectively called archs and eternals. Esther grieves the loss of her brother, Adam, and is vocally suspicious of an arch named Morning who was bonded to him, and should have protected him from what Rita claims was an attack by an eternal in Boston.

Meanwhile, a mysterious friend of Rita’s named Callan has been left back on Earth to try to figure out what happened. While visiting a dealer of exotic artifacts, he learns of a shady figure who might have known about the attack in advance. In an effort to track this person down, he decides to enlist the help of an old flame, a woman in New York named Margaret McEvoy, aka “Marvy,” who manages what is basically a secret hotel for people affiliated with the Fellowship on Earth.

This week, though, we’re back with Esther, who is just waking up on Priezh, after a series of torturous physical augmentations…

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Chaperones

I woke up with a pulverizing panic attack. Not only did every inch of my body hurt like it had been stomped on by rock monsters, I also had no idea where I was or how I got there. For a few terrifying moments, I couldn’t remember anything. A freight train of fear was running right over me, pinning me down. All I could do was squeeze my eyes shut and try to wake up wake up wake up—

“It’s alright,” said a soft voice. Female. Strange, but lovely. “You are safe.”

Her words were meant to comfort, but I was not comforted. Instead, my head swam with an overwhelming sense of wrongness. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong body, wrong universe. Every instinct screamed for me to run, hide, go back. 

Go back.

Back where? 

I could still feel my heart slamming maniacally against my ribs, but some part of me understood that shutting out all sensory information wasn’t going to help me calm down. 

I opened my eyes. 

Amber colored ceiling. Familiar. Why was it familiar? The texture, the ribs, the way they seemed to glow. 

Another corrugated ceiling, white. No, the wood beams along the ceiling in my room back in Cambridge. No, the hologram of the galaxy, a frozen, glittering hurricane overhead. Pizza. White mozzerela clouds. 

A giant. 

A giant!

Oh.

My conscious brain clicked back into the mainframe of my memory. Grief washed over me. Adam’s death, the flight from Earth, the horrible, relentless agony inside a cement bathtub filled with hardened slime.

Rage, a howling thirst.

I sat up too suddenly, and had to shut my eyes to fight an upswell of nausea. 

When I opened them again, the appearance of the person behind the voice gave me pause. Not like the giant Poe at all — even more…alien, for lack of a better word. Non-terrestrial? Sure. She had pale, powdery blue skin, tinged with yellow at the corners of a thin mouth and around big, downturned eyes the color of wet slate. The white hair on her head was short, and dense, like thick fur. 

But then I realized that, actually, those were her most alien features. All the rest was human enough. She was very slender, and thin boned. The criss-crossing, charcoal colored fabric of her clothing left her arms bare, and looked both comfortable and flattering. She sat with her legs neatly folded on the floor, straight-backed and perfectly upright. Totally at ease.

This did nothing to stanch the geyser of hostility erupting inside of me.

“I am aYa,” she said, and the movement of her mouth didn’t precisely match the sounds.

Resisting the urge to attack her, I instead carefully adjusted my position to face her. We were in a pod-shaped chamber about the size of a hotel room, and the mat I was sitting on had the same oval shape as everything else. I could see no other furniture. Somehow I was wearing the same scoop-necked black shirt and dark green jeans I’d taken off before getting into the torture tub, and tried not to think about how they came to be back on my body.

“Where’s Poe.”

“You will see him again soon.”

“Where are my friends?”

“Close. Once you have eating and dressed, you will begin training.”

It seemed like I should have so many questions, but maybe that was the problem. There were too damn many. How do you pick? 

Plus I was hungry. Like, seeing stars ravenous.

“I have a lot of questions,” I said, stalling until I could pick one.

“Certainly. May I suggest that you eat while I do my best to answer them?”

It was incredible how badly I wanted to argue, and how impossible it was to find an excuse to do so. Hunger fought nausea fought pain fought fear fought boiling, blinding anger. 

“Yeah OK,” I said.

Immediately, aYa rose up with liquid grace and waved open a panel in the wall. 

The smell hit me an instant later, and I almost passed out. Tears welled in my eyes. I shit you not, I could have cried. It was an exquisite freshness overtop something sweet and savory. 

She withdrew a tray and set it gently in front of me. To one side, strange and colorful flowers. In the middle, a dish filled with peanut-sized morsels that glistened in the amber light. To the left, a glass of what turned out to be water.

“Those are my design,” aYa said, gesturing proudly at the flowers. 

“Are they…do I eat them?” 

Her face broke into a delighted smile, and she narrowed her eyes at me. “Yes,” I heard. It was her voice, but her mouth didn’t move. I realized that the eye-narrowing was her way of nodding, and that whatever was doing all the heavy lifting of translation between us knew I didn’t know that. 

There were no utensils, so I picked one of the flowers up by the stem to examine it more closely. Down to the minutest detail, it looked like… a flower. Blue petals in a curious concentric pattern spilling outward from the end of a long yellow stem. I plucked one of them. It felt like soft velvet between my fingers, with a slight plumpness, almost like a succulant. 

My impulse was to touch it with the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t want to look like an idiot, and I didn’t want to offend the chef, so I popped the thing into my mouth and started chewing.

Dear god. 

I later learned that some people collect recorded reactions of Terrans eating Fellowship food for the first time. Imagine if you had only eaten plain, unsalted oatmeal for your entire life. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. For twenty or thirty years. Never had anything else. And then someone gives you a handful of fresh ripe blueberries, and a thick slice of black pepper candied bacon. Imagine how you’d react. 

Yes, food can make you cry. 

For a solid few minutes, as I ate the rest of those flowers and that bowl of savory nuggets, all the anger and fear and pain melted away, and I couldn’t keep the tears from coming out of my eyes. 

Meanwhile, aYa, satisfied that I was enjoying the meal, explained the augmentations I had undergone. 

Honestly, even though she described it in pretty simple terms, a lot of it went over my head. What I gathered was that I now had the strength and durability of at least three women, or something. She said it would become more apparent during the course of my physical training, in which my body would be stress tested in various ways, triggering a lot of the latent effects of whatever had been done to me in that hateful bathtub. 

There was now also something called a “micrograft” embedded in the top layer of my skin — a woven molecular filament covering my entire body. This would serve as a sort of sensory apparatus for virtual interfaces and artifacts. In other words, it would allow me to see, hear, and touch holographic phenomena generated by systems integrated into the Fellowship network. 

It would also serve as a permanent identifier within that network — a Fellowship passport, essentially.

As if all that weren’t enough, the filaments were capable of drawing on a powersource to serve as effective layer of protection. They could, for instance, make it harder to penetrate my skin with a knife or a bullet. 

Meanwhile, this invisible second skin would continually monitor and log a comprehensive suite of biometric data — all my vitals, my various microbiomes, even the quality of my sleep. 

Speaking of those microbiomes, aYa told me that comprehensive bacterial samples had been harvested during the augmentation process. Those colonies were now being analyzed and cultivated to generate new and very much improved cultures, to which I would be introduced in a day or so. These fresh microbiomes would be compatible with the graft, synergistically improving my immune system, and protecting me from foreign organisms. 

“Sounds like a pretty good deal,” I said.

“It is perhaps analogous to the more primitive practices of hygiene and vaccinations on Earth.”

“None taken.”

“I’m sorry?” 

“Nevermind.”

Now that the alarm bells of hunger had been silenced, I could feel myself getting drowsy again. This info dump was all fine and good, but now what I really wanted was to lay back down. 

“Do you have any other questions for me?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. Translation: please leave.

“Very well. If you think of anything else, please don’t hesitate to ask.” 

She stood, and for a moment, I thought I’d get to go back to sleep. But then, with a wave of her hand, a closet opened nearby. “Please,” she said. “You will find your training attire inside.”

Stifling a groan, I stood up and made my way over, thinking grimly that at least this time I wouldn’t be expected to take off my clothes in front of strangers. 

Inside, there was something like a unitard folded up on a low bench. It felt like dry liquid in my hands, and seemed to contour perfectly to my skin. It was remarkably comfortable, but the only concession to modesty it offered was that its shade of black didn’t reflect much light. I left my other clothes folded on the bench in its place.

When I stepped out, aYa was waiting next to another open door. 

“Follow me,” she said, and left. 

If there were any other good options, I was unaware of them.

As we wound through the labyrinthine corridors, I was struck by how quiet this place was. 

“Where is everyone?” I asked, but then quickly ammended the question. “I mean are there other people here? Besides me and Deek and Jackson?”

“The current population of this planet is seven. It includes you and I, and our friends.”

That seemed insane to me, but my brain couldn’t actually absorb it. The idea that I was sharing an entire planet with only six other people was too abstract to make any kind of impact. 

But yeah, it was real quiet.

Finally, she turned into another open door, and suddenly I was standing in a room big enough to enclose my home town. Probably bigger.

“Esther!” Deek said. “Thank god.”

I hugged him. You don’t know how much a familiar face is worth until you’re getting herded along by an alien in a silent underground corridor, trillions of miles from home.

There was a fourth person in the room — aYa’s brother. In contrast to aYa’s blue-ish skin and slate gray eyes, he had a pale gray complexion, with brilliant sapphire eyes. They were approximately the same height and build, though she was visibly more slender, with some of the feminine curves you’d expect. They were both beautiful, in an offputting sort of way. It was both hard to look at them, and hard not to stare. 

I surveyed the room instead.

It was like some insane gymnast training center, or an extravagant reality TV obstacle course, but way less colorful. The platform we were standing on branched off into three paths that quickly tapered into pole thin balancing beams, suspended at least fifty feet above gigantic safety nets. Beyond that, I could see giant rubber cones, and then a big featureless wall, with three entrances. In the further distance, I thought I could make out some ropes. 

So this is how I die.

As I contemplated the fantastic degree to which I did NOT want to participate in whatever this was, Jackson arrived with his chaperone — a small man, no more than four and a half feet tall. In contrast to the layered, form-fitting clothes aYa and her brother wore, he was in a loose jumpsuit with a bright, circular crest on the front. His large eyes were hooded, and light brown, and he had an olive complexion with fiery red hair pulled back into a short ponytail. 

“Now we are all here,” aYa said, “let us make brief introductions. I am aYa, and this is my brother oyAyo. Our home planet is called a’RER’a, and this is Mowk, from Ginnen.”

Mowk stepped forward and made a sweeping gesture at the course. “You can take as long as you like to complete this course,” he said. “But, whoever finishes first gets to rest while the other two must complete it in reverse. Then, the last to finish must complete it for the third time.”

I doubted we could even make it across the balance beam.

“Good joke,” Deek said. 

“Can I ask what this is for?” I asked.

“Don’t worry!” oyAyo said. “It’s just for fun.”

“Fun,” Deek squinted into the distance. We couldn’t even see the end of the course.

“Your bodies need this,” Mowk said. 

“You must find your limits and push!” oyAyo added. “PUSH!”

“Each of you will discover you can do more than you think,” said Aya. 

“Is there a…like a timer?” Jackson asked.

“Of course!” said oyAyo. “You will want to know how slow you are now, and how fast you are later. But don’t go easy. Go fast! You will maybe surprise yourself. Okay?”

“No thanks,” Deek said.

“Yeah, I think let’s raincheck this.” 

“Happy to hit it tomorrow, though,” Jackson chimed in. 

“Good luck,” oyAyo said, patting Deek on the arm, before heading out the open door. Mowk raised his chin at us before following him out. aYa smiled, reassuring, then left the same way. As soon as she was gone, the door promptly slid shut. 

“Oh,” I said. “That’s great.”

“Shit.” Deek agreed.

Jackson looked at both of us like a lost puppy. 

I sat down, slowly, wincing at the throbbing aches and shooting pains that accompanied every motion. Then I laid down, back flat on the platform, and let out a long sigh. 

“What are you doing?” Deek asked.

“They said we could take as long as we like,” I said. 

Jackson took the cue and sat down, too. “Does…everyone’s body hurt all over?”

Deek let out a sudden huff. “That was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I thought I was going to die.”

“Death would have been better,” I countered.

“Oh good,” Jackson said. “I thought maybe I was just being a sissy.”

“No,” I assured him. “That was legit torture.”

“She could have warned us,” Deek complained, referring to Rita, I assumed, and I agreed.

But Jackson said, “I think maybe not knowing it was coming was better.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But come on. We’re adults. Maybe don’t treat us like we’re six.”

All three of us were now lying on the platform, staring up at the featureless grey ceiling thirty feet overhead. 

“That seems like a good opening,” Jackson said, “to make a joke about torturing six year olds.”

What?

It was a bizarre comment from a guy I barely knew, and it took me a second to figure out how to respond. 

“Shit, man,” Deek said. “I’m coming up empty.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

“We’ll circle back,” Jackson said.

Something in his voice made me recognize the enormous risk he’d just taken. He didn’t know us any better than we knew him, but he needed us more than we needed him. He could have played it safe, tested the water, taken an internal Hippocratic Oath to prioritize not screwing up. The fact that he instead chose social recklessness was even more impressive given the obvious fact that he had a crush on me. 

“So, new kid.” I turned my head to face him.

He looked back at me, briefly, before returning his eyes safely to the ceiling. “Yeah.”

“Where you from?”

“Oh, I know that one!” Deek said. “Arizona. He’s a desert boy.”

“Never been. I hear it’s hot, though.”

“And dry as a pizza oven,” Jackson confirmed.

“OK, well what else? Family? Hobbies? Et cetera?”

Deek jumped in to show off what he remembered from the brief conversations they’d had previously, then asked Jackson if he’d missed anything.

“Nope,” he said. ‘’That’s the gist. Good job.”

“OK,” I said. “So how do you know Rita? And that other guy — what’s his name?”

“Callan Tate.”

“Callan. OK. So how did you get mixed up in all this?”

He frowned. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

I was still looking at him. He looked back again. 

“Deal,” he said. “But you go first.”

It turned out there was a lot Deek didn’t know about my background either, so I told them all about how Rita had recruited Adam, and how I ended up going to visit him in Boston a few years later (after the prep school incident, which I may have glossed over a bit), and how I found out he was working for aliens. 

Deek was incredulous. “Wait, so you’ve known about this for years?” 

“No — I mean sort of. I hardly knew anything. It was like a tease. A glimpse into the room where it happens. Which is why I fought like hell to get in.”

“Who could blame you,” Jackson said.

“Meanwhile, Deek over here gets the red carpet.”

“Sometimes talent is just too dazzling not to notice.”

“What do you mean?” Jackson asked.

“Rita anonymously organized a student film competition in Boston,” he said. “I won.”

“What was the film?”

“Just a little autobiography. With maybe a little manifesto mixed in.”

“Basically a perfect bullseye for Rita,” I said.

“Hey I was just speaking my truth.”

“I’d love to see it,” Jackson said.

“It’s a date,” Deek said. “Assuming Earth is still, you know, there, when we get back.”

That quieted the room for a beat. Earth. Where our people were. My family, Deek’s family, Jackson’s Nali. 

“Alright,” I said, shaking it off. “Your turn.”

Jackson took a deep breath and let it out.

Then he closed his eyes, and told us everything. About his parents, his grandparents, his isolated life in the desert. He told us about Andre.

He told us about Rita showing up, about her relationship with Nali, and how he’d seen them climb into her spaceship, and then spent years convincing himself he hadn’t.

“I never brought it up with Rita or Nali,” he said. “Easier to blame my active imagination.”

He explained how Rita helped him get into MIT, and that he had planned to study astronomy and theoretical astrophysics. 

“So when I met you,” Deek said, “you didn’t know anything.”

“Not really,” he said. “But then I met Callan.”

By this point, Deek and Jackson were sitting cross-legged, and I was propped up on an elbow. Deek and I shared a quick glance as Jackson gazed into the middle distance.

“That’s when things got weird.”

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