Bev floated high above the airless surface of the small planet named Simbic Ur, trapped inside a cluster of twitching cyan tendrils of energy—a plasmatic cage that stabbed at her pressure-suit as her cargo shuttle disintegrated.
The Rhysu are the enemy!
That allegation screamed into Bev’s mind moments before the plasma encasing her slammed into a white wall of light. She shut her eyes to block the blinding glare and curled into a fetal position as pressure waves ripped through the tendrils of cyan energy and pounded her body.
The Rhysu are the enemy!
Bev recognized the mind searing scream denouncing the Rhysu as a rebuke from the Shoku.
White light pushed away the last undulating filaments of cyan energy and wrapped Bev in a pressing heat that began to erode the outer layers of her pressure-suit.
She dared a peek at the glaring light and saw nothing beyond the white brilliance.
The events that had brought her to this point in time whirled in her mind.
I helped reveal this enemy, and this is what I get!
Her mission to this place had been prompted by her connection to the Rhysu, the aliens from another dimension who had flooded her mind with visions. They sought to retrieve rebels from their universe—the aliens Bev had named Shoku, who had destroyed the mine on Alpha Cephei Four and a dozen Alliance ships. Luring the Shoku to Simbic Ur had been uneventful up to this point. She had expected a quick return to the Erstallius flagship until the Shoku ripped into her shuttle and encased her in their plasmatic cage.
The pressing heat forced Bev to focus on the present. Her quiet fear swelled into whimpering panic as she watched her suit gloves disintegrate. Pain ripped through her arms, and she fell unconscious.
* * *
The Rhysu are the enemy!
Bev jerked awake. She floated in white. Pressure eddies rippled against her body, but she could not see her body. She saw only churning wisps of cyan-colored plasma like the Shoku cage, but without the pain.
“Where am I?”
Her query was audible. She heard it plain enough and knew it was from her, but she had no sense she had vocalized it. She searched the white nothingness. There were no shapes to give her a frame of reference.
She shouted: “Where are you?”
“We are here, do not be afraid,” a soft tenor voice responded. It wrapped around Bev like a warm blanket. The sound was not a language like Englo’ni, or Akün. It was a thought that came from outside herself, in a language understood but never learned.
“I can’t see you!”
“We are here.”
“Are you the Rhysu?”
There was a subtle shift in the pressure eddies, and Bev surmised that reaction to be laughter.
“We are the ones you call Rhysu. We are not your enemy.”
“Why didn’t you speak? Why all the visions and dreams?”
“We communicate, we learn, we adapt.”
“That’s why you connected with me?”
“Yes. We learn.”
Bev recalled the eruption on Alpha Cephei Four and her escape from the mine. She laid on that airless surface and watched churning streams of luminous cyan plasma drift upward into the star-filled sky. One stream broke away from the flow and settled about thirty-meters above Bev, and the miners scattered around her—a churning cloud of charged particles and twitching electric bolts.
The Rhysu weren’t in that cloud, she thought. The Rhysu were the cloud, and they bonded with me.
That thought pulled up memories of Cynth Halva and the trip to Arrilen Po, where the Rhysu had first contact with humans, and where Cynth had lost both legs and her left arm.
“Do you damage everything you touch?”
“We wish to stop the damage,” the Rhysu said.
A spark of realization pushed to the forefront of Bev’s mind: After the Rhysu released her on Arrilen Po, she believed the Shoku motivation for entering the human universe had been the euphoric rush of being in three spatial dimensions. The exhilaration the Shoku experienced had been real. She had felt it herself as they transferred their emotional state to her consciousness. Now, after reflecting upon the more recent connection, she understood that elated feeling had clouded the truth. Her first assessment had been correct. The Shoku rebelled and broke into the human universe to free themselves from Rhysu oversight.
“I was right to give you and the Shoku names,” Bev said. “I understand you better than you think.”
“That is why we chose you,” the Rhysu said.
“Where am I?”
“With us.”
“Where?”
“Do not be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Good.”
In her mind, the cargo shuttle broke apart. She saw herself encased by the Shoku, and then the impact of the white wall. Her mind retreated from her original position until she saw the white wall become a gigantic ball of light orbiting Simbic Ur. She rushed back toward the light and it enveloped Simbic Ur’s gray surface.
“Am I in your universe?”
“Yes.”
The realization she was inside a higher dimension forced Bev to confront the fact she had been physically altered. Her change had begun on the Halva cruiser while en route to Arrilen Po, when the Rhysu had forced her into a coma to analyze her physical form. The change was completed when the Rhysu pulled her from the grip of the Shoku.
I’m here, but what am I?
Bev twirled in the white. “What did you do to me?”
“Your essence—everything that is Bev Colli—was transferred into your new form. This allows you to exist here.”
“Why am I here?”
“So we can learn.”
“How dare you! What gives you the right to interfere with someone’s life!?”
“We needed to find the Shoku. We needed you to make that possible.”
“What am I?”
“You are Bev Colli.”
Bev shrieked and the eddies of pressure holding her grew stronger with every outburst. The restraint held her in place and forced her to quiet. She calmed herself and shifted her focus on the lack of detail in the white nothingness surrounding her.
“Where are you?”
“We are here,” the Rhysu said.
“Where is here?”
The pressing white retreated from Bev’s position and revealed a circular, gray surface a few meters below her.
“What’s that?”
Bev moved involuntarily, pulled by the Rhysu toward the rough ground until she hovered a few centimeters above it.
“Dirt?”
“A familiar reference to help you adapt,” the Rhysu said.
“Adapt?”
“You are with us. You have no reference for what awaits you. The hard place below you is from the human universe. You can relate to its three-dimensional construction. It will help you adapt.”
Bev examined the granular surface and recognized the gray regolith.
“Is this Simbic Ur?”
“The hard place helped us return the ones you call Shoku.”
Simbic Ur’s gravity well had been used to stabilize the rift between dimensions. Bev never imagined such a rift could transfer an entire planet.
“How am I still here?”
“You are with us.”
“Yes, but why am I not dead?”
“You are with us.”
“What am I?”
“You are Bev Colli. Do not be afraid.”
The white nothingness retreated farther and overlapping bubbles of cyan-colored energy pressed toward Bev like a giant carpet of foam dropping out of the sky. Tendrils of energy encased her. She sensed the warmth of the embrace but could still not see her own body.
“What am I?”
“Do not be afraid. You will adapt. Your body has changed. Your shape is no longer defined by a container of flesh.”
Bev focused on the gray soil below her as the energy bubbles pressed around her. She appreciated the familiar, solid reference, and wondered how long she would need to adapt to her new environment and her new body. She looked where her right hand should be and saw only undulating strands of cyan-colored energy.
“I’ve lost everything!”
“No. Your mind is intact—every memory, everything you learned while human.”
“You stole my life!”
“We transferred your life to save you,” the Rhysu insisted. “You will need time to adapt. All newborns need time to learn about themselves and their environment. Our environment is much more complex than the human one. Your perception and your ability to move will improve as you become more familiar with our universe and your perception expands. The hard place and the white will help ease you into your new existence. Thrust too fast into this universe and your mind would fracture.”
“I’m already fractured. I’ve lost everything!”
“We understand your loss.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“I doubt that.”
“Why?”
“You’ve never been human.”
“Correct.”
“You’ve robbed me of my life!”
“You are still alive.”
Bev forced back a surge of anger. The Rhysu did not understand. Their perspective was alien, not human.
“You are wrong,” the Rhysu said.
“What?”
“There are no secrets here. We hear your thoughts.”
“Oh, that’s just great!”
“We communicate, we learn, we adapt.”
“Then adapt me back to my universe!”
“We cannot restore your human body.”
“I’ve lost everything.”
“You have not,” the Rhysu said, and they backed away to allow Bev time to grieve the loss of her human existence.
Once Bev’s mind had moved to a more settled state, the Rhysu approached her again.
“Humans are perplexing,” the Rhysu admitted. “They fight each other and yet place great value upon social interaction.”
“Yeah.”
“You have lost connection. We had not considered that.”
“No kidding.”
The pressure eddies around Bev weakened.
“Arlud used me,” she said. “He persuaded me to help him find the answers he needed. You used me to find the Shoku. In some ways, we’re not that different.”
“We use each other,” the Rhysu said. “That is the nature of existence, the social connection that is broken.”
Bev forced her mind into a blank state.
After a lengthy silence the Rhysu said: “We will take you back. You may tell your social group you are still living, but you cannot stay there.”
Bev knew her previous life was over, but being able to say goodbye would satisfy a deep need that even the Rhysu understood would help subdue her pain.
* * *
“Whoa!”
The rush through the dimensional rift was over before Bev had time to adjust. She recognized the planet Ni’apinu floating below her.
I’m in space!
Bev’s mind whirled with the realization she was high above Ni’apinu with nothing to protect her from the vacuum.
How is this possible?
“The links to your social group will pull you back to them, no matter where they are,” the Rhysu explained. “Those links can be stronger than the connection that pulled the Shoku to your location above the hard place.”
Bev sensed Arlud’s presence on the surface, and she found herself in the lower atmosphere, above the ancient, snow-covered stone dwellings in Kuliq′Quad Basin. She could feel her presence push back the cold and watched the snow melt as she dropped closer to the ground.
The Rhysu warned her: “Your new body can endanger the humans. You must reduce your activity, stay calm, and keep your interaction brief.”
Bev recognized Arlud and rushed toward him. The pressure wave that preceded her pushed Arlud to the wet ground, and as he lay beneath her, she reached out to touch him.
Remember me?
Arlud heard Bev's voice in his head and gazed up in confusion at the glowing ball of cyan-colored plasma. “Bev?”
Filaments from Bev’s energy sphere leaped upon Arlud and wrapped him in their warmth.
I’m here, Bev said. She coiled her energy tendrils around Arlud, lifted him off the ground, and transferred to him a vivid memory of their discussion in the High Regent’s house on U’galem. In that memory, she stressed Arlud’s infatuation with her to prove her identity. Only she knew the feelings he displayed to her that day.
She set Arlud on the ground and backed away. She focused on her former self and an image of her human body formed out of the swirls of cyan-colored plasma within her energy sphere.
Arlud squinted at the vision. “Bev?”
I’m OK. I’ll be fine.
“What happened?”
Don’t worry, everything will be OK.
Bev let the apparition of her former self fade. She rose into the overlying fog, then rushed out of the atmosphere to the waiting Rhysu.
* * *
Bev hovered above her childhood home on the planet Pigrell. She sensed her parents beneath the corrugated metal roof but stifled the urge to reveal herself to them.
What would they think? Would they even believe it was me?
They hadn’t seen her since she left for the mine six years ago. She would not have time to explain everything, which would only give her parents more grief.
She focused on her mental connection with her mother and did the best she could to assure her she was safe. She did not confirm if her attempt to plant that thought had been successful because the Rhysu pulled her away before she could finish.
