Chapter 1: Memories of a Close Encounter

Nysol makes an intergalactic escape to Earth, but his quick actions harm Sean, the first human he encounters. Pretending to be human himself, he tries to get help for the injury he caused.

The ships were small, but the sensory equipment that they contained was highly sensitive and very valuable. The hardware that they carried could determine asteroid composition without landing. With one of these, a one man crew could monitor a good percentage of the mining area and direct the unmanned mining equipment.

The transport vehicle that was carrying these ships for use on the asteroid belt wasn’t under heavy guard. The five pirates were easily able to sneak in. The plan was for each of them to grab a different mining supervisory craft, there was only one sentinel ship traveling with the transport. The pirates planned to each escape from it in a different direction at the same time so that the lone guard couldn’t chase them all at once.

They would all eventually fly to and board their own transport vehicle hidden further out in the solar-system once the security was thwarted, strip the vehicles that they had stolen of their valuable tech, and eventually sell what hardware they acquired from deconstructing the ships. It would be a simple, nearly routine operation.

The only downside of the plan was that at least one of them would almost assuredly be caught. The targeted transport vehicle did have that one guardian ship flying nearby. The Sharill pirates were desperate enough for the reapings that they didn’t care. The money from the sales would fund the living arrangements of the full band of their outcast people for a good time.

Not only that, but the mine owners were Kisleem. The Kisleem were the big enemy.

After sneaking aboard the freighter from one small transport ship that they would leave behind, the five Sharill men gathered in a circle to quickly say ‘good luck’ and ‘goodbye’ to each other one last time; then they all climbed into the stowed ships, and launched.

Nysol, one of the ship thieves, flew off in his chosen direction and then cursed his luck. That one guardian vessel was after him. There was no way for the mining surveillance ship he was in to outrun the guard. His only luck was that they weren’t firing on him yet. They must have retained hopes of recovering the vehicle he was in.

Wishing now that his crewmates could get away while the security tailed him, Nysol set the ship to its highest speed and raced away from the others, towards the solar-system’s star, in the opposite direction from where they had planned on regrouping and being picked up. He and the rest of the pirates on the mission today had been chosen for the operation partly because they had no direct families. All of them were ready to die before they could be caught and questioned. The location of the Sharill base they had come from was still unknown by the Kisleem and they were determined to keep it that way.

The ship computer didn’t know where Nysol was headed, and so it showed a list of points of interest that were coming up in the direction he was heading. There was one life class planet in the solar-system that looked to be within his projected fuel capacity. It was a world starred as safe for Kisleem landing.

Nysol looked at this unexpected parcel of safety warily. Being trapped with no fuel on a planet wasn’t very good. It was better than death, he had to admit, but by how much? Could this little ship he was in even survive a landing inside of so much gravity? The vehicle he was in hadn’t been designed for long-distance travel or planetary contact.

Tapping on the screen of the onboard computer for more information, Nysol discovered that the planet not only had life, but it had a species that was comparable to Kisleem or Sharill type people living upon it. The Kisleem were currently monitoring the planet as its’ primitive inhabitants explored their own solar-system with combustion rockets.

Such a planet might actually be worthwhile to land upon, Nysol decided. If he could make it there, he would be running towards exile rather than death. The only problem with this plan was that a good percentage of the target planet’s surface appeared to be liquid. But as long as he didn’t drown or burn up on entry, this world might be a suitable place to land.

As he decided to give the world a try, he was nervous. In his lifetime, Nysol had been on space stations and numerous ships, but never had he set foot on an actual planet. Putting his hand to the memory beam device that he was carrying as a weapon at his hip, he decided that now was the right time to try a planetary landing. There wasn’t much that he had to lose with the Kisleem on his tail.

Adjusting his course, Nysol checked out his followers position once more. If they really wanted to get the ship that he had taken back, they ought to let him land without shooting at it. If he could get some distance apart from the vehicle before the Kisleem followed him to the ground, he might actually be able to get away.

So as he approached this planet, Nysol focused on making a safe, dry landing. Having lived on space stations for his entire life, he had never been swimming so he didn’t care to land off of solid ground. Checking his computer screen, he determined that the blue areas were liquid and the greenish areas were solid. With barely any fuel left, he sat at the controls and made ready to move towards what looked like a safe place to land. Breaking as hard as possible, he tried for a soft landing.

As he got closer to the planet’s surface, there were really a lot more colors that he could now see than just green and blue. In the last moments before he reached the ground, brown posts with green parts filled the space that had looked simply green from higher up. The ship he was in crashed up against one of these brown poles before it slammed into the ground.

With no restraints, Nysol was bounced against the controls and was lucky to not get knocked out.

As he slowly climbed out of the damaged ship, he found himself outside on land for the first time. It was a strange sensation to be walking with so much gravity.

Nysol looked around at the alien world. Green vegetation covered much of the ground. The large brown posts were not identical, and each one had its’ own amount of green growth.

There was small alien life to be seen in abundance here, little flying creatures and small fuzzy-looking ones that seemed to have been disturbed by his arrival. Nysol didn’t know how wary he needed to be of these small life forms.

Standing not far away from where the ship had crashed, there was one larger being. Nysol grabbed his beam weapon off of his belt as it started to vocalize something at him. It was one of the Kisleem type people!

“Are you Ok?” the creature said, but Nysol could not understand its words as this person continued. “I’ve never seen a plane like that. How were you flying with almost no wings? And even if you were a passenger, today was really the wrong day for you to go without shoes. Hey, is that a gun in your hand!? Hold on here!”

Not able to understand what the excited alien was saying as it moved towards him, Nysol aimed the beam at the man’s head and fired. The meter on his weapon quickly filled as the beam worked to pull thought-waves from its’ target, then he shut the device off.

The alien person collapsed.

Nysol was disappointed. He knew that Kisleem were unfazed by the beam, but Sharill were almost always knocked down. Whatever this alien being called itself, its’ strength must be closer to to that of a Sharill.

I can’t waste what this got me, Nysol thought as he placed the weapon’s handle to his forehead. Pushing the unload button, his head was filled with what he had copied out of the alien’s mind. As the alien language flowed into his thoughts, he now had names like ‘birds’ and ‘squirrels’ for the little creatures that seemed curious about his crashed ship.

Looking at the alien person that had fallen unconsciously to the ground, he now knew that the man’s name was Sean. The flood of new knowledge was almost dizzying. Nysol knew that some of his people who were referred to as ‘info-junkies’ loved the sensation of the quick learning that the beam enabled, but for the most part, using a memory beam for fun was frowned upon. The person that was drained was too often hurt.

Stepping closer so that he could see the his victim more clearly, Nysol decided that Sean didn’t look hurt. He was unconscious, but there wasn’t a mark on him. Nysol decided that he needed to stay nearby and keep the birds and the squirrels away from the fallen man. There was no telling what they might do to the fallen alien if given the chance. If the Kisleem were protecting this planet, they might want to punish him for hurting one of its’ inhabitants.

Worrying about Kisleem arrival, Nysol turned and looked back at the wrecked ship that he had come in. It would take the entire supply he had with him, but the dissolving powder in his pocket should be able to melt the ship before they got here.

As the thoughts he had gleaned from the mind of Sean gave him no ideas of how to find a fuel source for the ship (the only fuel that his victim knew of was a liquid substance called ‘gasoline’), the spacecraft that he had gotten to this planet in was useless to him now. Even if he found fuel for the craft, it was probably damaged by the rough landing. Not to mention that the small ship probably couldn’t launch away from this much gravity. Nysol wouldn’t be able to use it himself anymore, and destroying the expensive technology before the Kisleem could recover it would be a final affront to them for trapping him on this ‘Earth’ as Sean’s mind called the planet.

Nysol tore open its’ container and threw the caustic dissolving powder onto the crashed ship. Within moments the toxic material reacted with the air and the ship’s hull began to bubble. Thinking of the punishment he could face for beaming Sean, Nysol threw his information stealing weapon into the bubbling mass of the spacecraft as well. He didn’t need to use the weapon for information anymore now anyway.

As the ship and the weapon melted away into nothing, Nysol sat down next to the fallen Sean. He was now stranded without anything in his possession but the clothes on his back. With any luck, the man he had zapped would wake soon and Nysol could use his newly learned ‘English’.

After a few quiet moments, Nysol nervously reached out to shake Sean by the shoulder. Because the man looked asleep, perhaps he would just wake up.

Blinking and saying, “I’m up, I’m up” Sean did wake and pull away from Nysol. The alien was relieved at his recovery until the man he was shaking continued talking, “knock it off Kevin, I am getting back to work.”

Nysol wasn’t quite sure what the man was talking about, but he did understand the word ‘Kevin’ to be a name. Not good.

As no one else was in sight, was this man calling him to be Kevin? Who was Kevin? It was handy that Sean thought he recognized Nysol. Now Nysol only had to play along with that misrecognition to remain inconspicuous, but it could also become a problem.

What would happen if the real Kevin showed up?

And why was Sean sure of the identity? The memory beam must have done something bad to his mind. Scrambled his thoughts. Nysol was worried. The weapon did directly affect the brain. Misrecognition didn’t sound too harmful, but how many other things did Sean now suddenly know wrongly? He knew that the memory beam caused forgetting in a Sharill mind, but there was no telling what it might do to a ‘human’.

Nysol decided that it was his responsibility to look out for the man if he was out of sorts because of the information transfer. At least until they were among other people. Quietly he would make sure that Sean didn’t hurt himself.

So Nysol followed along as Sean went back in the direction he had come from. Stopping next to a metal contraption (called a ‘truck’), he watched as the man he was with pulled supplies off of it.

Sean looked around and gave a sigh before shaking his head and putting a hand on Nysol’s shoulder. “Did you WALK out to this camping area, in bare feet!? You are too much into casual fitness. I guess you didn’t bring any gear in that case. That was stupid, we have a tent but I only brought one sleeping bag. I suppose the two of us can just try staying up all night.”

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On the next morning, the weather was clear and nice. Lester Jones drove over to the parkland that was often used for camping, and stopped to look around. He knew that his friend Sean had said something about coming out here to camp on Friday night while the two of them were with some friends playing D&D last Wednesday. As it was early Saturday morning, maybe he was still here.

Lester needed a new story idea for his writing and was hoping that the scenery could inspire him. It was a lovely day for a walk, and the air hadn’t yet taken on the heat of summer. He had confidently given up his job because wanted to live as a professional writer, but the writer’s block that had plagued him for the last few months made him just feel unemployed.

Getting out of his car to walk, Lester spotted what looked like Sean’s truck. An unfamiliar man was standing near it. He must have been sleeping out here with Sean though, he didn’t even have his shoes on yet. Lester hesitated just a moment, then he decided to go over and see if Sean was nearby, also. The man he did not recognize was probably just a friend from Sean’s work. That, or he might be a friendly client. Sean was a lawyer.

Moving closer to where the truck was parked, Lester did see Sean sitting on the ground next to a tent. He was staring blankly down into his empty hands.

“Nice day,” Lester called out to get Sean’s attention. Sean looked up, but didn’t say anything. He simply looked puzzled.

The other man whom Lester didn’t recognize said, “Hello,” to him in a friendly enough manner and started walking towards him.

Smiling at the unknown man, Lester reached out his hand to shake, saying, ‘Hi, I’m Lester Jones.”

The man he didn’t recognize stopped smiling and made no move to take Lester’s offered hand, but he did answer, “I’m Kevin.” He eyed Lester’s outstretched hand as if it were some sort of threatening gesture.

Lester withdrew the unshaken hand awkwardly, and turned back to Sean. “Did you two have a good night out here?” he asked his friend.

Sean shrugged and said “I guess it was Ok,” then stood up and offered Lester his hand to shake, “Nice to meet you. My name is Sean.”

Lester wasn’t sure how to respond. “Sean, I’ve known you for like five years,” he said with a small bit of wonder. What was up with that, could he have really just forgotten? The last time they had seen each other was only Wednesday, and Sean had seemed fine then.

Pulling back his hand, Sean blushed and covered his face with it. He was embarrassed and worried. He wasn’t sure about either of the other two men, but they both seemed to know him.

Nysol put his own hand over his eyes. He wasn’t exactly sure how long a ‘year’ was, but he did get that Lester was talking about a good amount of time. Had the memory beam done this? The faulty recognition he could use to not arouse anyone’s suspicion, but this forgetfulness would be harder to deal with.

The memory beam must have been way too strong for one of these Earth people, Nysol worried about what else it might have done to the man. The damage for humans wasn’t overtly physical, like a lot of the damage that a ray beam would give to a Sharill, but the memory problems were just as bad as they could be for one of his own kind, it seemed. If the weapon could make this Sean totally forget his friends, what other damage had it inflicted? Could Nysol fix it?

“He’s been like this since I met up with him last night.” Nysol told Lester in a hurry, trying to think of what they could do. He wanted to be sure that the unintended damage caused by his quick action last night wouldn’t end the human’s life. “I think we need to get him to a doctor.” Nysol added with a little hope.

Nysol doubted that a human doctor would be able to totally heal Sean, but with any luck they could make sure that the man wasn’t hurt in any other way, and maybe they could prevent the damage from getting any worse. If the Kisleem were watching over this planet, they might be angry at him for hurting one of it’s inhabitants. He had to make sure that this man would be Ok.

Lester asked Sean, “Did you hit your head or something? Were you in some kind of an accident?” He had no idea of what could have happened to wipe his friend’s memory. The man who had been out here camping with his friend seemed nervous too.

Sean put his hand to his head and looked up at the man he had called ‘Kevin’; now he was almost questioning who that man was. “I don’t remember an accident, but Kevin found me passed out on the ground last night when he first got here.” He almost said something about the gun-looking weapon he thought he remembered, but with how friendly Kevin had acted last night when he woke up from whatever had knocked him out, and how concerned he was acting now, that memory of getting shot didn’t seem like it could be real.

Lester said to Sean, “If you’re passing out mysteriously, I agree that you need to see a doctor. It could be something serious. Did you eat something weird out here? Do you really not recognize me? Do you remember Marty and Adam? What about Randall? I could be insulted if I’m the only one of your friends that you’ve forgotten.”

Sean closed his eyes and answered. “I don’t know.” The questions about what he should know only worried him now as he was drawing blanks for answers that he felt should just come to him. Turning about, he looked over at his truck for a moment, then he turned back to Lester, “Can you give me a ride? I don’t know if I’m well enough to be driving.”

“Of course! We need to get you to the hospital for a quick check-up,” Lester said. Looking at the unfamiliar man who didn’t appear to have any vehicle nearby he said, “you can come along too, if you want to.”

Nysol wasn’t sure that he actually wanted to go, but this Lester fellow wasn’t all that threatening, and Sean’s health did concern him. His guilt for what the beam had accidentally done to this human was strong. Not wanting to arouse Lester’s suspicion, he simply nodded and agreed. Maybe human doctors could do more to fix things than he expected, that was always a possibility.

Lester led the other two back over to where he was parked. He assumed that Sean’s stuff would be able to stay safe for a little while out here if they left it. He opened the back seat of his car for Nysol. Sean sat in the front passenger seat.

“Kevin, put on your seatbelt” Lester said with annoyance as he looked in the rearview mirror at his passenger while he was making his way out of the park-land and back to the road.

Nysol knew from Sean’s memories what a seatbelt was. He also understood how Sean felt that a seatbelt made him safe. Somehow though, strapping himself down to the small unsteady vehicle seemed foolish.  What could he do if it crashed?

As the car was in constant contact with the ground, the vibrations caused by its’ movement were strong. Nysol thought that tying himself down to them seemed like a good way to make a person sick. He pulled the words ‘motion sickness’ out of the memories he had taken from Sean’s mind. Warily he clicked the belt closed over his lap. He had to act like these humans if he wanted to hide among them.

Then when Nysol looked back up front at the other two men in the car with him, he could see that he must have messed up somehow when putting the seatbelt on, the only thing was that he didn’t know what the action was that he was doing wrong. He could see that both Lester and Sean had automatically strapped part of their seat belts over their chest, but Nysol couldn’t figure out how to do such a thing with his seatbelt. Somehow the confused and fading list of memories he had stolen from Sean didn’t seem to include this feat of doubling the band.

He could almost hear his girlfriend Shyla telling him not to use the memory beam. Saying that if it could damage those who it took the memories from, it was foolish to simply put what it had collected into your own mind. She suspected that there could be damage on the receiving end, as well.

Was this absence of a simple procedure that Sean obviously still knew how to perform something of a hole in his thoughts caused by the reckless use of the beam? Was it any different than Sean forgetting who his friend was?

Being trapped on Earth with new thinking problems was definitely a prospect that scared him. Shyla’s warning about using the weapon echoed in his mind.

By the time they had arrived at the hospital, he still hadn’t figured the process of doubling the seatbelt out, but the other men must not have noticed his trouble because they didn’t even comment on his failure. They just got out of the car to enter the building, and so he followed them across the parking-lot and into the hospital.

The emergency room wasn’t busy so early in the day and after only a few minutes wait, Dr. Amy Carter called them back into an examining room. Lester recognised Amy at once because she lived downstairs from him, at his apartment. She smiled at him in recognition when they came in.

“So, what is your problem?” Dr. Carter asked the three men collectively. She couldn’t see what their emergency was, and that slightly irritated her. People who were using the emergency room simply to avoid making appointments just made it harder to deal with any real people who actually needed immediate help. As far as she could see, all three of these men looked perfectly healthy. The only thing that made it look like this may have been an unplanned trip was the fact that one of the men hadn’t even bothered to put on his shoes. If the waiting room had been crowded, she would have probably passed over them so that she would be able to focus on someone who really visibly needed help, but it was a quiet morning, today.

“Sean here passed out mysteriously when he and Kevin were camping last night and now he can’t remember things that he should know.” Lester started telling Amy. “He totally forgot who I am even though I saw him for some role-playing just last Wednesday. Without an explanation for why he was passing out or for what made the forgetfulness happen, Kevin and I both thought that he might need to be checked out by a doctor,” he explained.

“That calls for a CT-scan,” Dr. Carter said, leading Sean to the machine. Nysol was interested in the human medical equipment, but he wasn’t too worried about being discovered because he could hear Dr. Amy muttering to herself that everything looked fine as she looked at the monitors.

“Passing out for no reason’s still no good; Dr. Carter worried as she tried to find something wrong in the print-out she had pulled from the machine; leading them back to the exam room where she pulled out an instrument with a light to look inside of Sean’s eyes. “Was there anything else happening at the same time as he passed out that might have caused the loss of consciousness? Did he hit his head on something? Was he drinking?”

Lester shrugged and turned to the man they were calling ‘Kevin’, “What were you two doing earlier when Sean passed out, last night?”

“I wasn’t there at the time when he passed out, I just found him on the ground that way when I got to the campsite yesterday evening,” Nysol said. He figured that it seemed safer to claim that he wasn’t around when Sean had passed out. Not being there when the harm happened would make it harder for anyone else to blame the beam’s effects on him.

Sean didn’t feel like he should contradict what his friend said, but he wasn’t sure about the story. He had already decided that his memory of ‘Kevin’ shooting him with some strange little weapon and the bizarre little plane that had crashed into the trees had to be a dream, right? The man was acting like he was concerned and confused about the problem today, so the gun thing didn’t seem very likely to be real. And shouldn’t Kevin be a little more injured from living through a plane crash? And clearly, Sean knew that he didn’t have any gunshot injuries.

Dr. Carter tested Sean’s reflexes to make sure that he was still reacting to the world like he should. Everything that she could think of to check on him seemed to be completely as it should be. Nothing appeared to be wrong with his body right now. Her patient wasn’t obviously injured in any way that she could see.

After the quick but careful physical exam, Dr. Carter was frustrated that she was not finding anything visibly wrong with Sean. “As far as I can tell, he seems healthy,” She finally told Lester and Nysol. Shaking her head, she put a thermometer strip against the man’s forehead. Sean’s temperature was normal. Whatever had happened to him to cause the trouble last night didn’t seem to be a problem any longer; he appeared to be in perfect health now.

Putting her hands gently to feel around the back of Sean’s head, the doctor found no cuts or bruises and said, “He doesn’t seem to have been injured. There’s not much I can do medically for the forgetfulness. I’m sorry that I can’t be of more help. I guess you should just watch over him and make sure that he has a calm day, if you want to be a help. With some relaxation and a bit of luck, perhaps his thinking will get clearer.

“If he passes out again, you should come back to the hospital for sure, we still don’t know why that happened before; I don’t think he looks like he’s going to faze out again at the moment, anyway. I’m not really sure what else I can do for him right here and now. He seems to be Ok other than his memory; I don’t know what else to tell you.”

Nysol was relieved that the doctor had found nothing else wrong with Sean, but he was a little disappointed that she had no magic cure.

Lester thanked Dr. Amy for the exam then he put his hand on Sean’s shoulder. “Lets just go back to my place, Ok? You can relax there. We can go pick up your stuff from the campground later.”

Sean looked at Lester and ‘Kevin’ and nodded. “If it’s not too much trouble,” he said unsurely. These two men were acting like his friends, it seemed. He felt like he should be able to trust them even if he didn’t completely remember them. Maybe the doctor was right and he just needed some rest to get better. Sean hoped so.

Author's Note

Currently set for release on 07/22/2019.
Pre-order links at http://books2read.com/FromElse.