Preface to the Impossible dream.

Aleck and her brothers come back to there aunts and uncles after the time of the mysterious cutoff. Aleck has going mad and they take her to get help only to discover a horrible secret.

Intro[J1] 

 

Aleck gasped in pain as the white flashing lights from a high energy beam grazed her cheek, creating an instant two-inch burning scar as the blood vessels cauterized instantly. She[J2]  didn’t stop. She jumped through a broken grocery store window as shots whizzed past her. Not slowing down, she hit the uneven pavement outside at a dead run. Glass crunched under her feet as she weaved in and out between the derelict buildings at top speed until the sound of the Sharlakar’s[J3]  feet faded behind. Gasping, with a burning stitch in her side, she hid behind a trash bin in silent terror listening carefully, wishing her stomach would be silent as it growled in hunger. She breathed a sigh of relief. There were no sounds of following footsteps. She picked her way carefully down broken, wobbly stairs to the basement of a half-burned, abandoned building to where her twin brothers and baby sister were waiting for her. Wails of a hungry baby came too loudly from below.

 "Shush, Cara. Don't cry, my beautiful angel." The words were sung in a whisper by Aleck's brother Shem while Payton glanced fearfully up the stairs. Aleck swung her school bag off her shoulder and quickly grabbed the formula and water bottles out. She handed one water bottle to her brothers, who took turns taking deep sips from it. She spooned out two scoops like she used to watch her mother do. She struggled to get the formula into the bottle without wasting it. She added the water gingerly, trying not to spill it, as she glanced toward the stairwell wondering why her father hadn’t returned. Finally, the bottle was made. Her terror rose as the food didn’t seem to be the answer to the distraught infant’s disquiet. She rocked the baby in desperation. She cringed in dread as she heard the pounding of many feet echoing down the stairwell. Aleck put the baby in the baby pack quickly and then drew her energy beam and fired as Sharlakar came pouring in through the doors, all with gray skin and bloodshot eyes. For an eight-year-old, she was an excellent shot. Two Sharlakar hit the ground. One made a hole in the already rickety floor as he hit. Driven by terror, her five-year-old brothers were firing their weapons with equal ferocity. Soon, some of the Sharlakar reached Aleck and her brothers and easily knocked the guns out of their small hands. Aleck held onto her sister closely as her little brothers screamed and kicked the Sharlakar in vain. The Sharlakar dragged them into the deep rotten stench of the death camp transport vehicles.

Aleck awoke screaming from the memories and nightmares of the past and shaking uncontrollably, unsure of where she was. She struck out blindly until she felt the warmth of the computer-ordered medicine pumping into her veins. She started to calm down yet was still sobbing at the memories that consumed her.

Now completely sedated but awake, Aleck curled up in the corner bed of the stark medical room and stared blankly with a tear-stained face at the stark, sterile white wall. All the sounds of the hospital came to her cybernetic ears in a resounding echo that pounded its way through the numbness. It was all that was left of what she could feel of the vast emptiness within her. Sorrow upon sorrow tore at her, so much so that all her dreams were nightmares, and she spent her waking hours in an unfeeling state where, most of the time, she felt nothing until the sorrow, pain, and anger suppressed underneath bubbled out. She thought things would be better now that the war had ended on Etheron, a once bright green forest world. They’d finally forced the Sharlakar to abandon their attempts to invade the outer worlds, and General Wallock had been “kind enough” to let her and her twin brothers go to live with her Aunt Karla and Uncle Donald. At least until he needed them again. Even through the numbness, Alek’s stomach turned violently as her mind drifted to the general.

Aleck gaped in horror and hid in terror as she watched another bruised, bloodied, and broken body of a child get dragged away from the new general’s door. From the side, she saw a man stumble out. He was throwing up and weeping. Aleck approached him with kindness in her eyes. "What happened?" she whispered when the man stopped throwing up.

"When I refused to do what the general asked, he used my cyborg codes and forced me to torture and kill the child," he said, shaking. He grabbed a knife from his belt and tried to plunge it into his heart only to have his hand turned away by the cyborg anti-suicide programming. "I can't even kill myself to prevent him from using me like that again?" the man screamed.

Colonel Mires, who was an old friend of Aleck’s parents, dragged her quickly away from the door. "Since they sent the general to ‘help’ [J4] us, we aren't free anymore." Aleck looked up at him with confusion in her eyes. "Follow my directions child, or you'll be the next one they drag out the door." Aleck swallowed.

The drugs she was on did not allow her to remain in her nightmare. Instead, her mind drifted to memories of her aunt and uncle’s home where, instead of the peace she had hoped for, she had found only nightmares of a bloody war that haunted her not only while she slept at night, but also while she was awake during the day. She could no longer tell what was real and what was not. Her aunt and uncle, in desperation, took her to get help at a private clinic that not only had an excellent reputation, but a willingness to work with a poor farmer’s salary.

The doctors’ fearful voices came clear as a bell, through the echo of pain in her mind and to her ears. "What the…? What is that? She’s a cyborg!" The images of the full-body scan stood unmitigated before them, revealing a nightmare of stubby body parts that looked as if the limbs attached to them had been torn off the body. The shorn limbs intermingled with robotic prosthetics that were so natural looking that only a scan could tell the difference.

The doctors and nurses looked at each other with fear bordering on terror, as if a bomb dropped in the mist of them and they were unsure of how to handle it. No wonder, considering the severity of the punishments they could receive if they were caught illegally (even if it was unknowingly) harboring a cyborg in their ward. Only a few government agencies were allowed contact with or control of the cyborg population. People would rather die than become a Borg. It was a horrendous fate reserved for the disabled who had no one to take care of them. Yet here, in their care, was a cyborg with a badly broken mind.

The medical teams swallowed their fear. Nurse Cain said, “This damage obviously happened to the girl during the time of the mysterious Cutoff with the outer worlds."

The lab tech nodded. "I wonder what had happened out there? Our government certainly didn't say anything about it."

"I'll say this," said Nurse Cain, "Dead people don't cry, scream, and shake from nightmares. The line the government has been feeding us about the cyborg being emotionless and dead, with their brain used as a computer and their soul no longer being there is obviously a crock."

What the doctors didn’t know was that the Vandarian government didn’t know how truly severe the attacks were on the outer worlds. They didn’t know that when General Wallock had come to Etheron to “help” them near the end of the war, he’d discovered, to his glee, the terrible secret of how the colony worlds had survived the violent attacks and death camps of the Sharlakar. Every single one of the survivors were cyborgs, all with Borg codes that had been automatically preprogramed in the small computers implanted in their brains. They had been produced automatically by one of the robotic factories on the outer worlds. With the general's high military rank, he already had access to the program that controlled Borg codes.

The head doctor of the small clinic was a tall, stout man with gray hair and almost midnight black skin and a build that suggested he had been an athlete in his youth. He had a brilliant mind that many underestimated given the build of his massive body. He was ignorant of the war on Sharlakar because of cut communications and government-ordered silence. It didn’t take him long, though, to make a decision. He set his jaw firmly before announcing it.

"I'm going to help her anyway,” said Dr. Bastion. “I don't care what the government says; I'm not going to turn a fourteen-year-old girl away from getting help. If anyone here doesn't want to be a part of this, quit now. I will write you a recommendation to another hospital, and I won’t hold it against you if you do. If they find out she's in our ward, we could all be executed for ‘reprogramming’ a Borg."

Not one left. Instead, they all started talking about the best way to help the girl. (Just on a side note. Though the Vandarians are not true humans, the Vandarian world is Earth's shadow in another dimension, so that is the reason there are similarities between the two worlds.)

Aleck’s Aunt Karla sobbed in relief. Aleck’s Uncle Donald’s stopped holding his breath "Thank you so much! I know what a terrible risk you are taking. Please understand, of all of my wife's sister’s eight children, only four survived whatever happened during years of the Cutoff from the outer colonies. Aleck’s twin sister Alexia survived because she had been visiting us so she could compete in the intergalactic academic bee when The Cutoff occurred. Aleck and her younger twin brothers, Shem and Payton, showed up unexpectedly at our door in filthy rags just a month ago. The only thing they had with them was a paper with them informing them of the death of their family."

Dr. Bastion looked sadly over at Uncle Donald and Aunt Karla. “Please come sit down in my office. We need to talk about the full dynamics of what it is going to take to help her.”

The followed the doctor to his office, which was rather large yet had the feel of almost a living room rather than an office. He invited them to sit down on a couch with a glass table across from it. “I’m going to be brutally honest with you. I’m not sure we can cure her. She has the worst case of shell shock I have ever seen. Normally, all we can do is put them in padded rooms and keep them drugged. I have developed some new techniques and medicines that could cure her, but they are at the experimental stage. It is her only hope of being able to live a normal life. I’m going to have to ask your permission to use some techniques and medicines that aren’t authorized by the government and are at an experimental stage still. There are no papers to sign since we are helping her illegally anyway. I just need to know it will be okay with you.”

Uncle Donald and Aunt Karla looked at each other and nodded. “Yes of course,” said Aunt Karla.

Dr. Bastion stood up. “Thank you. We’ll do the best we can for her. It will take several months, though, and there is no guarantee it will work on a case as severe as hers.” He got out a package that had the hospital’s visiting hours and rules for visitation and handed them to Uncle Donald. Then he escorted them out of the hospital.

Dr. Bastion went to hook up the latest in memory imaging devices that would allow him to see what Aleck was dreaming about. He finished attaching the last cord to the video feed and watched as she drifted back into the world of dreams…

There was an explosion that shook ship. The twins and Aleck left the Sharlakar ship at a dead run, with a couple of soldiers running closely behind them. Just then, a secondary blast destroyed the ship and threw them back about ten feet. The soldiers looked back at the rising smoke from the enemy ship and blinked. Then they choked back both laughter and gasps at the audacity of the handiwork of the twins, who had set the bomb so that its smoke rose in the shape of an offensive hand gesture. Aleck just rolled her eyes at the twins in irritation. It was a waste of time and resources as far as she was concerned. “The hell twins strike again!” laughed one of the soldiers as they all high-fived the twins.

“How many Sharlakar do you have on your count now?” asked another.

Shem and Payton smirked. “More than all of you put together unless you include Aleck.”

Aleck glanced at her scanner and timer and glared at her brothers. “Shut up! You’re wasting time. We got a whole slew of Sharlakar coming over the hill.” A 3D tactical bubble came up out of the video link in Aleck’s arm. Using her other hand, Aleck swiftly formed a brilliant tactical plan. The soldiers watched in awe. The twins, who were almost as talented in tactics, sharpened it up a bit.

“Major, I see more coming out to the left.” Said Shem to Aleck. “Shouldn’t we move now?” added Payton.

 “Wait, my Lieutenants! Your impatience will only get men killed. We’ll hold out until the other company’s set.” The twins hated the wait. The memory of their baby sister murdered before their eyes drove them with a passion that surpassed all else. One of the adult solders looked over at the children who were leading them with a certain amount of sadness, wishing they didn’t have to fight in this war. But there were so few of the Vandarians left that even the children took up arms if they were able.

Aleck soon spotted movement over the hill as the Sharlakar she’d seen on her scanner earlier came out of the nearby base to deal with the exploding ship. She smiled grimly. They had reacted just as she’d hoped. The other group arrived just in time. She signaled the men to take cover. She waited patiently until the Sharlakar hit just the right spot. She gave the order to attack. Several Sharlakar fell. A missile exploded uselessly against the shields set up around Aleck's team as the Sharlakar fired back. Aleck shouted orders into the com link. It was a thing of beauty to see. A secondary force cut in behind the Sharlakar while a third one raided the now lightly defended base and turned their own wall mounted turrets against them. The energy beams of the cyborgs mowed down the Sharlakar foot solders like one of those new laser lawn mowers over thick Vicarian grass. Then pinpoint zip explosives no bigger than elephant bullets came zipping out of the cyborgs’ arms, blasting through the shields on the enemy tank with effectiveness the Sharlakar could not match.

Aleck’s mouth curled into a grim smile as the doctor stared in shock at the violent images of war. If this was a good dream, then what in the fire was this girl having nightmares about?

He, unfortunately, found out soon enough as she started dreaming of the half-eaten people still living in the death camps and the bodies of little children tortured and abused piled up outside the door of the general who was sent to “protect” them. The doctor found himself vomiting more than once. Then, when the dream observation time was over, he set himself towards the task of walking her back to the path of sanity.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

About nine months earlier, far away on a distant world, a prince clenched his fist, and blood streamed down his arms, as they ripped the living marriage band of Awn from his arm. They bandaged his arm, and on his other arm, a new, unmarred and unbroken pair of bands were fitted. He fought back tears as the high council pronounced judgment on his now ex-wife and her lovers. "Not in a thousand years have such shameful acts been committed in the house of Ramiu. Lieutenant Commander Tresai, Rear Admiral Kenzy..." The list went on and on. Jareth glared at the men who’d once been under his command. Finally, the list of names ended. "…you stand guilty of having had an affair with the high fleet admiral’s wife, thus betraying our beloved High Prince and Fleet Admiral His Highness..." The council went through his full name, which was almost as long of the list of names of the men who’d betrayed him. "…of whose direct command you were under. For this dishonor, you are considered to have committed treason against the government of Rillia and will be put to death."

There was a choked gasp from the men, who’ expected just jail time for the affair. "Take them away,” said the leader of the council. Jareth looked down at his feet and closed his eyes as they passed. "Bring forth Cassia" Cassia" looked at Jareth with pleading eyes. Jareth jerked his eyes away. " Cassia." For your affairs on your husband, I hereby strip you of all rights and privileges of your rank and sentence you to prison till the day you die. And a high prince or the king himself can pardon you." The hammer went down as Jareth breathed a sigh of relief. As angry and as hurt as he was, he did not want his ex-wife to be executed. He wasn't the villain here, no matter what the intergalactic press said.

They made it sound as if she had been driven to it by mistreatment from him. Jareth had, in truth, spoiled her greatly, giving her anything she desired. She was never really happy, though. She would yell and throw the gifts at him if they were not just to her liking. Then she would demand more, sometimes she’d even scream and attack him. He certainly had the scratches on his arms and chest to prove it. He had walked away each time and never once raised a hand against her. In fact, the idea of raising a hand against a woman was nauseatingly repellent to him.

His father, the king, stood up and announced, "The marriage to my son has ended with no dishonor from him, and he is free to remarry." Jareth watched as the Rillian high guard took his outwardly beautiful ex-wife away from the high throne room. He turned to his father to give him the hand gesture of respect, only to have his father turn his back on him in shame. While his words said he considered Jareth innocent of harm to his wife, his actions indicated otherwise. Jareth bowed humbly before his father. "Surely, my father, you know me well enough to know I would never in any way harm a woman?" He watched as his father just walked away in silence. Jareth gritted his teeth, turned on his heels, and walked away with what little dignity, if any, was left to him.

He walked through the vast, rich halls of the palace, with clenched teeth as he fought back tears. He fought back the anger within as he saw the stares of the servants and heard the whispers in the hall. Did anyone think him innocent? He entered his room and shoved a few items into a light space bag, along with his wallet and identification papers for intergalactic travel. He then headed to the private royal space port and went directly to his own space hanger, taking the elegant shuttle to his small vessel waiting in orbit. He haphazardly tossed his bag in the corner and randomly set the coordinates to take him to a non-Rillian inhabited world that was labeled as friendly. He set the space jumps for as slow of a trip as was reasonable for his supplies to last. He settled in as he guided his ship expertly out of the Rillian system and to the first space gate, savoring the time alone as he set his rich, metallic golden eyes on the portal and lost himself in the beauty of the star-scape. The longer Jareth didn’t have to deal with people the better.

---