And then; I had a dream that wasn’t a dream.
Another place, another time. Far and far away, and close as yesterday. A raging sea, with waves big as mountains. Heavy dark purple waters slamming against a massive overbearing cliff, made up of smooth and almost organic shapes. A huge structure stood on top of the cliff, strange and overpowering. All metal slabs and shining surfaces, with vicious spikes and unnatural protrusions, following no pattern or purpose I could make any sense of. Some parts of the structure weren’t there all of the time, fading or folding in and out, new parts replacing old in some terribly intricate endless cycle. The whole thing rose up and up, almost beyond bearing, on a scale beyond human acceptance. Towers blossomed like flowers as they stabbed the sky. Vivid piercing lights came and went, in explosions of colours.
And all of this under a bottle green sky, with a fierce white sun, and three small moons that went shooting across the cloudless heavens. There were sounds all around that I couldn’t identify or understand, but were still horribly familiar for all that. A series of images flashed before my unblinking eyes; strange shapes, hauntingly familiar scenes; freakish, nightmarish, disturbing. A great Voice spoke my name … and it wasn’t ‘Ishmael’.
Something made me scream. Something made me feel sick. Something made me feel horribly lonely, and sad, for people and places lost.
The dream that was not a dream changed abruptly. Became something more recent. I was inside a place I immediately recognized, but could no longer remember the name of. As though its true name and nature had been concealed from me; hovering forever just on the tip of my mental tongue.
The interior of an artificial place. Not a building, but still a constructed thing. A shimmering phosphorescent glow squirmed up and down great curving walls, ridged like bone or coral, while complex machineries with more than three spatial dimensions rose up around me, doing things I couldn’t understand or appreciate, but that I nevertheless knew were desperately important and significant. Things were happening all around me, with impossible speed. I was held in place, restrained, while terrible long needles plunged into me from every side, sinking in deep. Doing things to me. I felt no pain, but I could feel them working. And I couldn’t look down. I wasn’t allowed to look down, in this dream or memory. Because I wasn’t supposed to see what I looked like.
A machine voice spoke to me, giving me information and instructions, and I couldn’t understand any of it. I said something in return, and my voice didn’t sound at all human.
I came back to myself lying full length on the bed, twitching and trembling, my face covered in a cold sweat. Exhausted, physically and mentally. Sometimes I think these intrusions are memories, and sometimes I think they’re cover memories, to disguise something worse. They hit me out of nowhere, without warning, and they hit me hard. And I can’t escape the feeling that somewhere deep inside, the old me is trying to tell the new me something. Trying desperately to warn me, about something I need to remember …
So. Time to tell the truth, at last. Or what I have come to believe is the truth.
I am an alien, passing for human. My starship fell out of the sky over South West England, back in 1963. It hit hard, digging a great hole in the ground. I no longer remember why we crashed, but I think something bad happened, high above the clouds, but under the stars. The rest of my crew were killed in the crash. I was the only survivor. I remember that much, even if I can’t remember who or what the rest of my crew were. My ship’s mechanisms remade me, rewrote my physical form right down to the DNA, so that I could appear human. So I could pass as one of you, unnoticed, undetected, until my ship’s distress beacon could be answered by my own people. So they could come and find me, and pick me up, and take me home again.
The shape change is standard procedure, in an emergency. Because you must never know we walk among you.
But because my ship had crashed so very badly, the transformation mechanisms malfunctioned. They gave me a human body, but then they wiped most of my memories. I no longer know who or what I was, before the crash. I don’t know where I came from. I remember staggering away from the crash site, out into my new world, overcome by human thoughts and senses. By the time I was back in control of myself I was miles away, lost and disorientated. I have no idea now where my ship crashed. No point even looking for it, even if I could retrace my steps to roughly the right area. The ship would have followed its standard procedures and buried itself deep underground, hidden behind powerful shields and protections.
Because we aren’t supposed to be here. I remember that.
No rescue has ever come. After so many years, I doubt it ever will. Presumably the ship’s distress beacon was also damaged in the crash.
I have been making my way alone on this Earth, passing for human, for over fifty years now. Never ageing, always looking exactly the same. The transformation machines did good work. Always moving on, hiding in plain sight, staying one step ahead of the human authorities. But it’s become increasingly hard for me to stay under the radar, in this increasingly computerized world, with its ever-changing needs for confirmation of identity. So down the years I have had no choice but to work for many and various powerful subterranean agencies, in return for their protection. For the names and IDs they provide, backed up by all the necessary paperwork, to give me the appearance of a life, and a background.
I needed their protection because you can’t be the kind of person I am, and do the kind of things I can do, without being noticed. I have moved from place to place and from organization to organization, down the years; and there are a lot of people out there looking for me. Because they want to interrogate me, or vivisect me. One of the reasons I joined Black Heir was to search their files on alien visitations, for some information on who or what I might be, but I never found anything useful. And of course I did feel safer on the inside, looking out … I did good work, searching out the aliens hiding among us. Because it takes one to know one.
Some of my jobs I liked more than others. I tried to do things I could be proud of. If I was going to be a man, I wanted to be a good man. So wherever I went, and whoever I worked for, or whoever I was supposed to be, there was always a line I wouldn’t cross. Things I wouldn’t do. And then it would be time for me to move on again. Become someone else again.
I’ve spent the last fifteen years working for the Colonel and his Organization. Doing good and necessary work. The longest I’ve ever stayed with one person, or one organization. The Colonel kept me busy and kept me protected. Because no one ever messed with the Colonel’s people. I suppose … I should have asked more questions. But I trusted the Colonel; and I owed him so much …
There. My story, such as it is. An alien, passing for human. Of course, there is another explanation for all of this. I could be crazy. Completely loony-tunes, with a head full of hallucinations. Making up incredible stories to explain a simple case of amnesia. I have seriously considered this explanation, from time to time. But; there still remain all the things I can do that normal people can’t. The things I see and notice, that other people don’t. And, I really don’t age.
I pulled myself forward until I was sitting on the end of the bed again, and studied my reflection in the mirror on the dresser at the opposite end of the room. A very human face looked back at me; one that hasn’t changed in the least since I first saw it in a mirror, in 1963.
I remembered Alex Khan from when we both worked for Black Heir, from 1982 to 1987. We’d seemed the same age, then. He was … intelligent, arrogant, very keen to get on. To succeed. He always saw his time in Black Heir as merely a stepping stone, on the way to inevitable greatness. But when he finally did leave it was just two steps ahead of being discovered and disgraced. Because he just couldn’t wait. He had to go for the gold ring, and to hell with the consequences.