Starknight: Bellefonte Series, Book 1

Chapter 3

Friday, July 1, 2014, 11:42 a.m.

Allison woke up and stayed in her bed, relaxed, in a room darkened by heavy curtains. The clock on the nightstand told her she was up earlier than she normally was. She usually didn’t go to bed before 5 a.m. and last night had been an exception.

“Last night,” she thought, and the previous day’s events rushed back to her: the call from the PA SAVIN service, Greg showing up and leaving, the police officer swinging by, her nighttime walk…and the rock.

She hopped out of bed, opened the curtains to let the light in, and squinted. She heard the heat pump’s cooling mechanism kick on in Tracy’s bedroom, which meant the sun was already making the upstairs warmer than seventy-four degrees. The living room downstairs had another heat pump and together the two machines kept the house comfortable.

Given her state of mind on the previous night, it made sense she’d made up a story about a magical rock rescuing her in the nick of time. Although the rock may have been a figment of her imagination, Greg had really been there and he’d left suddenly. Something had scared him off.

She made up her mind not to think about the rock, how it had felt in her hand, and how it had communicated with her. Maybe she could make the fake memories go away.

However, she knew that ignoring the problem of Greg Seidman would not make him go away. She had no idea where she would go to try to escape from him, either.

She jumped into the shower, dressed in a pair of shorts and a tank top, and went downstairs to get breakfast. A note from Tracy was propped up against a vase on the dining room table. “You didn’t go anywhere. Call me!” Allison smiled and took the note, depositing it in one of the plastic bags under the kitchen sink. The bag already had other scraps of paper, junk mail and the like, to be recycled.

She took a carton of almond milk from the fridge, poured some into a bowl, and shook organic, gluten-free dry cereal from a box into the milk, then took the bowl to the table in the dining room. The bowl was empty before she remembered to turn her cell phone on. There were five messages.

One was from her boss, Andy Switak, begging her to come to work that day. She called him back and left a voicemail saying she’d be there. The second was from her seventy-year-old mother who lived in Phoenix with her sister. Allison called and left a message saying she was all right. The third message consisted only of heavy breathing and she decided to tell the police about it. The fourth was from a police receptionist, reminding her to come to the station to make a statement about Greg’s visit and to get the details of the house fire (when had the police started being so courteous?). The fifth was from Tracy, wanting details of what had happened during the night.

Tracy answered her cell phone.

“You’re alive?”

“Alive and kicking. Greg did come by the house last night, but he took off again. You won’t believe what I thought saved me.”

“Tell me!”

“A rock fell from the sky and landed on the front yard, on the section with the birch tree, and this mist came out of it and scared Greg away.”

“Right.”

“I shouldn’t have tried to tell you.”

“Where’s the rock now?”

“I left it under a fir tree a couple blocks away. It wanted to be left there.”

“You feeling all right?”

“Yeah, I think I dreamed up the rock, but I’m sure Greg was not a hallucination. He really did drive over, right when I was about to get into my car and go spend the night somewhere safer.”

“Where would you have gone? Where will you go?”

“Don’t know, haven’t decided yet. I’m going to work tonight, anyway.”

“Andy should like that. They’re short-handed after all the layoffs, I’m surprised the paper’s still in business.”

“It’ll fold within the next decade, I’m sure. First the printed paper will be gone, which would leave the website. That can’t last forever, either. I’ve thought about packing my bags and going to work on some farm out in the middle of nowhere to hide from Greg. I’ll get the boot from the paper soon, anyway.”

“The world is changing.”

“It is. How are you feeling?”

“A lot better since I stopped working at the paper. I’m on a break. The most challenging task I’ve had to do today is create a smiley face with cream on top of the coffee in the mug. I’ve already memorized how to make all the drinks. That part’s easy, but you know I have trouble with free self-expression.”

“Smiley faces are complicated.”

“Stop it.”

“You’re a genius memorizing all those drinks. That’s hard.”

“Maybe to some, but not to a reformed prepress tech like me.”

“I guess. At least your work is relatively simple. I’m still in a job where thousands of readers will see any mistake I make.”

“Very stressful.”

“You know all about it. Oh, get this, the police left me a message reminding me to go to the station to talk about Greg. Apparently he tried to set fire to the house on Bishop last night, too.”

“Hah, that’s exciting. Anyway, I better go. Will you stay at the house tonight?”

“I don’t know. Depends on what the rock tells me to do.”

“You might have better luck if you visited someone who has a crystal ball.”

Allison laughed.

“You might be right. Have a good day.”

“You too. Bye.”

“Bye.”

As she pressed the cell phone screen to end the call, she wondered how she’d thought about asking the rock where she should go. She would have time to check up on the rock—if it existed—because it was barely 1 p.m. and she’d already showered, eaten her cereal, and answered messages. On a normal day she didn’t get breakfast before 2:30 p.m. at the earliest.

The sun was shining out of a cloudless sky. It was eighty-eight degrees in the shade and the humidity attacked Allison the second she stepped outside.

She gritted her teeth and proceeded to follow the same route she’d taken on the previous night—if, indeed, she’d taken that walk. It would have been ridiculous to drive over in a car. Ardell Lane and Ridge Street were narrow roads and there wouldn’t have been anyplace to park. Besides, she needed the exercise. She’d be chained to her desk at work for the rest of the night.

Sweat was beading on her forehead and chest by the time she made it to her destination. She skimmed the ground around the fir tree. No rock. Disgusted with herself and what had to be her false memories, she was already turning away to return to the house when something made her look back.

Her eyes fell on the rock. She took it from beside the tree trunk and examined the stars on its surface, again noting how it felt warm in her hands despite having been in the shade.

“Hi,” said the rock.

She almost dropped it. The voice had sounded masculine. It also had sounded like she had heard the voice through really good earphones.

“You’re hearing me in your head.”

Her jaw dropped.

“Who are you? What are you?” she said out loud.

An elderly man walking a German shepherd was passing by, going north down the hill on Ridge Street. He stared at her with a frown on his face.

“Hi,” she said, plastering on a smile.

“Hello,” the man said and walked on.

She sighed in relief when he was out of sight.

“Interesting,” the rock said in her head. “On the last planet I was on, it was customary for life forms to talk to plants, animals, or rocks. No one took notice of my contact when he talked to me. He didn’t want to make the effort to think back at me. Of course, in the end he was an old man and often couldn’t think clearly.”

“How do I do this?” she thought, mentally directing the question at the rock.

“Wow! Clear as day. Aren’t we lucky?”

She smiled.

“Am I lucky to have a rock talking to me in my head?”

“Time will tell.”

“I suppose. Who are you?” She started to walk east on Ardell Lane.

“A star traveler. I hop from planet to planet, from star system to star system, serving life forms. I received your distress call last night and transported myself here.”

“I guess I sort of…prayed.”

“Right, but you didn’t pray to any specific deity: You sent out a call to the universe as a whole.”

“Wow, I didn’t know something like that was possible.”

“You did it and here I am.”

“Amazing. By the way, why didn’t I see you at first under the fir tree when I came to look for you?”

“I had cloaked myself; no one could see or feel me. We star travelers have some nasty enemies. I uncloaked as soon as I noticed you—usually I’m not that slow on the uptake, but my mind is still muddled from the space jump.”

“I can only imagine. How’d you scare Greg away?”

“I have limited capabilities when it comes to projecting my essence outside of my compressed body, but I gather incredible amounts of energy when I travel through space to answer a distress call. With all that extra energy I could extend my consciousness from the rock to the surrounding atmosphere in a dense cloud, which I transported around the man you know as Greg Seidman. I made every cell in his body afraid of you. It should keep him away for a few days.”

“Huh,” she said out loud, then continued through thoughts. “Why did you want to be left back there? Why not on our front yard?”

She heard a sound resembling a tired laugh before the rock answered.

“Too many…vehicles driving on the thoroughfare with evil-smelling gases, especially during daytime. I prefer a clean atmosphere, and under that fir tree the air was better. I’d be all right at the back of your house now, though. The first recharge after a transport and the expending of energy in a crisis are the most crucial recharges for my well-being.”

“How do you recharge and where do you store the energy? I don’t see any wires to connect you to our power grid.”

Again she heard the sound of laughter.

“Star energy. Sunshine during the day, moonlight at night. I can recharge on cloudy days, too. The beings who helped me become what I am taught me the art of catching particles and storing them in my body. It’s a dense body and it can hold a lot of energy within every cell. Human beings store energy in their cells, too, but my cells are much more compact than yours.”

“Too bad we can’t collect all our electricity like that.”

He sighed.

“Solar panels are getting more efficient every month. However, if humanity were to suddenly be presented with an inexhaustible, clean energy source, a lot of companies would go out of business overnight. This world revolves around making money and moneymaking is polluting the world.”

“Of course.” She stopped walking. She’d reached Armour Street and she was sweaty enough to have to take a quick shower before going to work. Her watch told her it was 1:45 p.m. She turned right toward East Curtin Street.

“You have to be at work at 3:30?”

“Yeah, I have to do wire today. Can you hack into all my thoughts all the time?”

“Sometimes, but only during skin to skin contact like now when you’re holding me in your bare hand.”

She felt her face flush. In the searing heat, nobody would’ve noticed, but she was sure the rock felt her reaction.

“Do you have a name? You can’t be ‘the rock’ forever.”

“You’re convinced I’m for real, then?”

“Maybe. Am I the only person who can communicate with you on this planet?”

“As long as you don’t abandon me, that will be the case. It’s possible for me to communicate with other people, as with Greg, but only you can have a conversation with me.”

She turned right on Curtin to go back toward the house.

“What if I abandon you?”

“I’ll look for another person to assist, either on this planet or elsewhere. The universe will push me off to another planet if I don’t get a move-on in, say, a few hundred years.”

“Good to know. I should be dead within the next fifty years, give or take. I suppose you could hang around ’til then, if all goes well. You could dump me, too.”

“Highly unlikely. The universe gives me brownie points for helping people even if I don’t like them. I like you already, by the way.”

“Really! You’re pretty nifty, too. Anyway, what about that name?”

The rock seemed to ponder the question.

“I usually choose a moniker that’s common on the planet I land on. I checked out the stories in the prevalent sacred texts around here, and there’s that tale about David defeating the giant Goliath by slinging a rock onto his forehead. How about David?”

“How did you check out the Bible?”

“I can access any information anywhere on the planet. For example, I knew the road going past your house was heavily traveled during daytime even if I’d never been there during the day. I contact the molecules of gas or liquid or solid matter around me, those molecules are in contact with molecules farther out, and eventually I encounter molecules with an imprint of information about the subject I want to get information on. The request for information travels at the speed of thought to where I can get the facts, the molecules send the info back to me, and in a matter of seconds I can locate any piece of information on any planet I land on.”

“Wild. Everything is connected to everything, is that what you’re saying?”

“Absolutely! I’m glad our link is so strong, because otherwise you might have had trouble understanding this concept.”

“And here I thought I was just really smart! Okay, David works for me, but wouldn’t you rather be called by your real name? Were you born a space traveler?”

“I had a flesh body similar to yours once. A space traveling race showed me how to compress my flesh into the body you have in your hand.”

“What was your given name?”

“It was something close to Breyer.” He pronounced it “breh-yur.”

“I like it better than David.”

She felt the rock vibrate gently in her hand.

“Hey, what else can you do?”

“Let’s have that conversation another time. I’m getting tired.”

“Where should I leave you?”

“Somewhere secure in your backyard.”

“In direct sunlight?”

“Better not. I’m still getting used to your star’s energy patterns and I don’t want to get overwhelmed.”

“Okay. Do you want me to talk with you when I get back home?”

“Not necessary, but if you wish, you are welcome to do so.”

“Would you like me to?”

“I…suppose it would be nice.”

His hesitation confused her, but she didn’t want to make an issue out of it. After all, she barely knew the guy, or space traveler, or whatever he was.

“Great. Sweet dreams, then.”

“Thanks, and have a good day at work.”

After he had said that, she felt the rock lose a few degrees of heat.