Peter Cawdron - Feedback

Lily gasped.

“There’s no time for sightseeing,” Lachlan yelled. “We’ve got to be in and out in five minutes!”

Lachlan ignored the craft, jogging over to one of the split floors that surrounded the UFO. He had a battery powered screwdriver and began the task of disconnecting the many computers. He tossed hard drives in a backpack and then jogged further along the floor. Jason could see he was skipping stations, trying to strip out at least one computer from each section.

Jason shed his fire helmet and heavy jacket, standing there in a t-shirt, bunker pants, and oversized rubber boots. They were far too heavy to drag around, so he shimmied out of them, leaving them crumpled on the floor.

“You’ll need these when we leave,” Lily said, turning to him.

“You don’t understand,” Jason replied, gesturing to the craft. “Can’t you see it? None of us will leave this place. We won’t make it out of here alive!”

Lily looked at where Jason had pointed. He was staring at several phrases carved into the side of the vehicle.

Jason bent down and grabbed a small hand ax that had been hanging from the belt of his coveralls.

“What are you doing?” Lily asked.

The ax had a blade on one side, a pick on the other. Jason turned the ax around and rested the pick in the O of Only . The blade fit perfectly. Slowly, he traced the word Only .

“Jason,” Lily cried. “We don’t have time for this!”

“On the contrary,” Jason replied, speaking in a calm voice. “We have a time machine. We have all the time in the universe.”

He rested his hand on the side of the vessel as he traced the word death with the ax pick, thinking about the implications of the word and the style of writing. With his hand on the skin of the alien craft, a long, low growl reverberated through the air, like the sound of an animal in distress.

The UFO shook.

“She’s alive,” Jason said.

“That’s impossible,” Lily replied. “This is a machine!”

“I thought so too,” he said. “But she’s not. She responded to my touch.”

Jason stroked the hide of the massive beast, feeling the hard exterior soften in response to his touch. What had looked like a stone surface had a texture similar to leather. Jason thought the hide resembled that of an elephant, thick and impenetrable.

“Come on,” he cried, running along the scaffolding, feeling the metal walkway vibrating beneath his bare feet.

As he ran, he tried to keep contact with the creature. His fingers trailed over the thick hide, skimming over the scars of various calculations and formulas.

“They’re telling a story,” he said, “the equations,” lifting his hand every ten feet to dodge the scaffold support poles, always returning to the UFO.

The scaffolding wasn’t level, at some points forcing him higher, dropping down lower at others as he jogged around the massive living vessel. The UFO seemed to breathe, expanding as the chest of a man would when inhaling deeply.

Lachlan had seen the craft respond to Jason and ran over to join them.

“What is it? What’s happening?”

“She’s alive!” Jason yelled in excitement. He stopped, looking at the formulas and words before him. For the first time, Jason could see the etchings as a continuous whole rather than a disjointed mess, and he understood what he was looking at.

“These markings,” he cried. “They’re here for us. They’re meant for us, so we would understand.”

“Understand what?” Lachlan asked.

“I’m still figuring that out,” Jason replied. “But this is deliberate and it’s meant for us, I’m sure of it.”

“Who wrote these words?” Lily asked.

Jason shrugged. He ran his fingers over a series of words.

“The formulas,” Jason said, letting the words speak for themselves as he referred to a jumble of calculations to one side. “I know what they are. They’re not calculations for time travel, they’re trying to understand the impact of unshielded travel of regular matter through a wormhole comprised of exotic matter. They’re trying to determine the consequences for anyone passing back in time.”

Lily had a pickaxe as well. Like Jason earlier, she ran the tip of the ax gently over the scars, tracing the words, seeming lost in thought.

“We need to get up higher,” she said, pointing toward the center of the UFO. There was a dome on top of the creature, barely visible from where they were on the rim of the gigantic beast.

Jason began climbing up the scaffolding hanging over the living being. Lachlan and Lily followed. Vacili hung back a few yards, catching everything on video.

Down below, gunfire erupted. Jason caught a glimpse of Bellum firing an M4, rattling off shots in rapid succession. The crack of each round being fired echoed through the dome. Stegmeyer was already heading back for the walkway.

“We have to go,” Lachlan cried. “We’ve got to get out of here while we still can.”

“We can’t,” Jason replied, dropping down from the scaffolding and onto the sloping flanks of the vast interstellar creature. “We can’t leave her. Don’t you understand? She’s waited. She’s endured. She’s held on for us, waiting for us to free her.”

Lily followed Jason, landing just a few feet away from him. She crouched as she absorbed the jump, and came to a rest with one hand reaching out and touching the thick, scarred hide. Even here, numerous formulas tattooed the skin of the animal.

Lachlan hesitated.

“Come on,” Jason cried, gesturing with the pickaxe still in his hand. “You want answers. They’re all here. They’re all around us, written in plain sight.”

“But it makes no sense,” Lachlan cried. “Who would leave these messages?”

Jason didn’t have an answer, but he’d already figured out that all of these markings were made by only a couple of people. Although the carvings were crude in places, they were unmistakably related, as though the same people had written different messages at different points in time. One person had been preoccupied with the science, the other had focused on emotions.

Jason watched in horror as the professor lurched forward. A bullet ripped through his shoulder, spraying blood over them. Lachlan struggled to hold onto the railing. He fell to his knees as a second bullet tore through his thigh.

The old man tumbled from the scaffolding, falling awkwardly onto the creature. The massive beast responded to his presence, wailing in a tone deeper than a fog horn. Lachlan slid to one side. He was in danger of rolling off the edge of the wing when Jason grabbed his wrist. A single finger, a thumb and three mutilated stubs grabbed desperately at Jason’s hand. Lily grabbed her father’s other hand. Together, the two of them hauled the old man further up the steep incline on the flanks of the beast. The thick hide on which they stood trembled, shaking as the creature groaned.

Jason fought to get beneath the professor, hoisting Lachlan’s arm up over his shoulder. Together, they staggered up the craft.

As they approached the dome, the gradient lessened, making the climb easier. Down below, explosions rattled the scaffolding.

Jason had no idea how many armed men had stormed the nuclear reactor building, but Bellum was holding his own, that much was clear. Handguns cracked as they fired, rifle shots echoed around them. A flash of light lit up the shaking scaffolding, followed by a thunderous crack.