And the World Changes, A M Kirk [best feel good books TXT] 📗

There was no escape. They lurked in shadows, waiting, waiting.
I cannot explain how it was to watch our companions… not die! For these beings did not kill, not at first. They absorbed, they entered and controlled, and they changed the shapes of our companions into whatever whims they had. By altering cell structures, they grew hideous organs and limbs, and our companions became abominations. But within those abominations our friends were helplessly alive still.
(Briefly – thankfully briefly – Mark glimpsed something of the horror the Soros experienced at telepathically witnessing the fate of those on board the second ship.)
These beings had not known what space travel was.
We gave them the concept and the key, when they took our friends and the second ship.
Our weapons were useless against them. They move through matter, but are not of it, and our weapons, of course, depend on physical laws, just as yours do. The second ship took off. We saw it. But we knew none of our friends was in control. We were so frightened… We, who had hunted tyrannosaurus for sport, lost our reason with fear. I mean that. We went mad in our terror, and we fled.
The galaxy, Mark Daniels, is not well populated with intelligent life. There are many life forms, but not many are not what we could call “intelligent”. Life is so diverse. But we can no more communicate with the fish, or insect life here on earth than we can with some of the beings we found. Can you imagine trying to explain your culture to a bluebottle or a midge? The idea is absurd. And although, using machines or telepathy, we can carry on a conversation with humans, we cannot share the truth of what we have experienced, what we feel and what we know. Not really.
If an army of ants is coming towards you are you going to try to establish communication with them? Of course not. It is simply impossible. You destroy them or you run away. So we ran from the Enemy. They are not animals, you see. And so they have not evolved as animals have, with senses and feelings and instincts. They are completely beyond our comprehension, it’s as simple as that. But there was nowhere we could run to get help. We had found no one else in the galaxy so advanced as we were. So we came home, thinking that our civilization would still be intact, and that somehow some means could be found to defeat these … monsters.
We arrived back just over a hundred years ago. We sent down a little probe, first, because it was obvious things had changed drastically. But in our eagerness to return, perhaps we failed to programme the probe correctly. It created something of a bang in the atmosphere, somewhere above the land you call Russia.
A spark of all-but-forgotten lore fired in Mark’s mind.
You humans have been speculating about it ever since. But, in any event, it soon became apparent that the continents had shifted, some of the planet’s resources had been renewed with the movement of the tectonic plates, the atmosphere had subtly changed, and the life forms were not what we expected, not at all. Of our species there was no sign, and a new species, descended from that little group of mammals I spoke of earlier, had evolved to fill the gap: humans; homo sapiens.
I’ve mentioned that some of our children had kept mammals for pets. It was quite common. Our children used to make the small shrews of that era do tricks – they could roll over, beg for food and some of us liked to make them stand on two legs, as I have said. Understand, then, how we felt when we found our home overrun by pets! Imagine you come home one day and find your family dog standing on two legs, wearing clothes and issuing orders!
At first it was easy to hide from you. We could land in unexplored parts of the world and carry out our researches to find out what had happened and at the same time we could study the human race. But such things take time. Time was not something we had a lot of. The Enemy, you see, had been able to use the Soros telepathic link to trace us. They were following us through space, in the second ship, using the telepathic structures in our friends’ brains.
They are coming. We can feel them even now, like a mad chaos arising over a distant horizon. But they are not far away, and our time is running out.
We studied human beings. Your minds and your brains were of particular interest to us. All life on earth is ultimately derived from the same sources. Earth DNA is unlike any other. So we are linked, you and I, Mark Daniels. Separated as a species, and seventy million years apart, yet we are linked. A strange thought for you, no doubt.
But your brains… You have at the base what your own scientists call the “reptilian” brain; then, wrapping around that, in a sense, is the mammalian brain; and finally, the thing that gives you your intelligence, your human qualities, is the cortex, the human part of you that has only evolved in the last few million years. And it is unlike anything else in the universe. It is completely unique, and can never evolve again anywhere else.
It means that you can accomplish certain things we cannot. Despite our telepathic ability, and our immense intelligence, we are not quite your equals in imagination. You can visualize certain things that we cannot, and you can perceive certain things that we cannot. Some of you can foretell the future; some of you can move objects by will power alone; and some, such as your greatest philosophers and scientists, can see, as indeed we can, into the true nature of things.
It was this that made us think that, in you, we could save ourselves. The powers that lie in your minds, in the dormant eighty per cent of your human brains, can be our weapons against the Enemy.
So we began experiments.
About sixty years ago we took the decision to start experimenting on human beings. Some of us opposed the idea, but the majority was in favour as it seemed the only option open to us. Some of us suggested that we make contact with you, reveal our existence; but to be honest, sixty years ago you were like children playing with new toys – atom bombs, nuclear power, rockets, and your wild imaginations were keeping you awake at night thinking about life from other planets and how nasty it would be. So it was not the time to make contact. We don’t even think the human race is ready yet, for as a species you are very stupid, but we have no choice now. That is why we made ourselves known to you five years ago. We knew the time was coming when we might need your help, so we established contact in the way we did. But we now know that the second ship is fast approaching the outer edge of the solar system. They will soon be here.
Our experiments tried to stimulate the sleeping parts of your brains. We tried to increase your mental powers, while still retaining some sort of control over you.
The implants, thought Mark.
Yes, the implants.
And my father.
Yes, your father, answered the Soros. Subject number 506919. And then you, but you were not the subject of one of our experiments. You, Mark Daniels, are the subject of your father’s experiment. It’s strange how fate turns out. It was precisely because we exercised no control over you that you developed in your own particular way. You are a rogue element.
We only discovered you when you visited the ship the first time. We sensed the magnetic fields you generated - oh, you have no idea how powerful you can be - and we realized that in you lay our best hope. But you were trying to stifle the power you had. We had to get you to see yourself for what you were.
So you arranged what I suppose you will call my “education”!
Yes. We arranged it all. Including, sadly, the death of Miller. The organisation called “The Human Freedom League”, while they think they are plotting against us, are actually doing our work. The implants again.
Mark had the confirmation of his earlier suspicions.
They all have implants, and I am in fact the one they think of as “the Chairman”. Miller was not an enemy, but you had to be put through a series of emotional traumas and it was calculated that witnessing his death was the climax of those. It is your emotions that give you much of your power. We were helping you to grow.
Mark remembered Miller’s body as it lay slumped against the verge, and he remembered the images he had seen of his father, and he thought about the anguish his mother had gone through.
We had to do what we did! insisted the Soros leader. We had to! If we had let you bumble on in your own little way, the second ship would have arrived and that would be the end of Soros, the end of humanity, the end of our planet! You must understand that!
But Mark, understanding or not, felt only cold, cold rage. Power began to gather again in some deep recess of his mind.
A needle’s thin tip was inserted into his neck.
Now we take what we want! he heard a Soros say. The second Soros had clearly come back into the room. Enough of this talk. Begin the process to use what we need now, without delay!
The drug was very powerful and Mark was helpless to resist.


29 Janette and Carrie

They had been escorted by the soldiers to the McIntyre’s Field Centre first while Roberts’ identity was verified and thereafter removed to Allied Command Headquarters. Janette and Carrie were inconsolable. Roberts’ attempts to say something foundered against their combined despair.
He used his influence to find them comfortable rooms within the underground complex and sent word to Carrie’s parents. Martin had been released from hospital with what amounted to no more than a slight head wound, and they would soon arrive to offer what comfort they could to their daughter.
Roberts had never felt so helpless, so useless. No words of his could ever make this situation any better. He moved restlessly in the well-appointed lounge that had been allocated to them and busied himself from time to time with other aspects of the investigation. Carrie and Janette ignored him.
For the umpteenth time Roberts checked his watch. It was 11.15am. As if someone had been waiting for a cue, the door opened and an aide entered and took up an at ease position. “General Talbot to see you, sir, ladies,” he said.
Red-eyed, Janette and Carrie looked up as Talbot came in.
The newcomer was a tall man, in army uniform, with lots