THE VROL TRILOGY (8 page)

Sighing as if in resignation, Max gave
him a sullen look, exhaling as if he had already given
up.

"OK, please, who are you, where are you
from and why are you here? I really don't want to die -
yet."

Max started to kick the dirt around him as he
waited for an explanation from the weird old man.

"May I stand without you
pointing that ridiculous-looking death-stick at me?" queried the
visitor, as he moved to raise himself up, albeit slowly. Max
shrugged his shoulders, as if saying,
sure, why not
, and set the weapon
back into its holster, but preferring to stay where he was - a good
four meters away from the odd man. Walking up to the fire, the
visitor gently tapped the contents out of his pipe, and then looked
up at the brilliantly lit sky, partially visible off the edge of
the natural canopy.

"My son, we see the stars, but do we
really know what they are? Or what the nature is of the universe
around us?" The uninvited visitor took a small satchel out of a
pocket inside his great leather coat, and put a pinch of something
leafy-looking in his pipe.

"I have come a great distance to meet
with you, Maximilianus. By the way, may I call you Max? I think it
sounds much better, and as I am considerably long-winded in my
speech, perhaps it would be beneficial to all parties involved if I
reduced some words by a syllable or two every now and
then."

"OK, sure," said Max. "Actually, that's
what everyone called…. hey, just a minute! How do you know my
name?"

The man looked at Max with a kindly
expression and said, "Yes, my son. I know your name. In fact, I
have known you since you were born."

"How is that?" asked Max, trying to
piece together how some old hippy guy on Earth, number one, knew
his name, and number two, was alive when there were absolutely no
signs of human life - anywhere.

"You have done amazing
things, Max. You were top of your class in the university, you were
always honest and driven, and furthermore, you helped - no -
you
invented
the
technology around which the SSCC program revolves. Have you ever
asked yourself just
how
you were able to achieve such things?
Furthermore, why it is that you can sleep with only one eye shut,
or why under stress you show incredible strength? How is it that
you had the courage to put your life at risk and test your
invention, coming all the way to a nearly-uninhabited planet with
no previous knowledge that it would have even been here in the
first place?"

"I ask myself a lot of
questions, old man," responded Max. "Questions like, if I am insane
and talking to an apparition of an old warrior that doesn't
actually exist. Or maybe I am dead and I'm in Hell. Did I even
survive the journey from Azul? Crap, anyway, being as I'm speaking
to a ghost - what's
your
name?"

The man smiled softly, and then lifted
the pipe to his mouth. Putting his forefinger to the bowl, a flame
came out just below the fingernail as he puffed away, procuring
light clouds of smoke and creating a pungent aroma at the same
time.

"
Cool trick
," thought Max.

"My name is Draagh,
although I have been known by many titles. I am the first of my
line, one of the
Prīmulī,
and if you look at time in a linear fashion, I
have been in existence for eons more than anyone can even count. I
have seen the beginning of the current universe, of this galaxy,
and many others. I saw the Exodus to Azul and I saw the fall of
Earth. I have travelled to the furthest reaches of space, not
limited even to this, what you call the Visible Universe. I have
seen the rise and fall of magnificent empires, and some not so
magnificent. I am an observer and a corrector, a teacher and a
companion - and might I say, I really
do
think the stars are beautiful at
night?"

Max gave Draagh an
incredulous look, and then noticed he was still holding the bottle
of Glenfiddich in his left hand. Looking back at Draagh he said,
"OK, so you are super old, have seen a lot of stuff and you saw the
fall of… whoa, wait… you know what
happened
here?"

Draagh gained a whimsical expression,
his blue eyes twinkling in the firelight. Taking a small puff off
his pipe, he lightly cleared his throat and said, "Yes, the fall of
Earth. Quite tragic, really, but it could not have been avoided.
No, no, no. That was a certainty. The only reason you stand here
today is because one of your ancestors took a job with a certain
corporation, and then ended up on an Exodus barge. In fact, if he
would have gone out to coffee with a certain girl he fancied he
would have left his phone at home, by accident of course. Then he
would not have answered when a call came in for him to look into a
particular job."

"A job? Where?" asked Max.

"At a bar in the city of Pasadena,
California."

"Huh?" mumbled Max, unable to make a
connection between a bar and being on an Exodus barge.

"My son, all things are
interrelated. If your ancestor had not taken that job as a
bartender, that is, one who prepares alcoholic beverages for
guests, he would have never worked the
happy hour
shift and befriended a
top executive at a particular company - a company, by the way, that
was eventually purchased by a major corporation in the consortium
that eventually developed the fleet of barges. Once this man's
company was purchased, there was need for a senior level computer
ops manager, and as your ancestor was educated in this discipline,
he obtained the job, thereby unknowingly securing his passage on a
barge during the Exodus. Isn't it funny how one thing leads to
another, and then to another?"

Max nodded, interested, but still
skeptical. "Alright, so I had an ancestor who somehow made it onto
a barge, but what happened to the girl he was going to meet for
coffee?"

Draagh squinted his left eye, as if in
concentration.

"Hmmm, it seems to me that she was the
one who had cancelled the coffee date, as her ex-boyfriend was
pining for her to return and she gave in to his supplications. They
married and had seven children, all of whom grew up to be
spectacularly stupid criminals. So this young man, your ancestor,
eventually married with a particularly beautiful woman, once they
had emigrated to Azul. Of course, that is simply your mother's side
of the family - your father's is a completely different issue.
Smart people, they all were. On the bright side of things, you had
no living ancestors on Earth when the invasion occurred. Oh, I did
mention the invasion, did I not?"

"The fall of Earth is what you said.
What happened here? I went to Lima and there was practically no
life, and absolutely no sign of human remains. It's impossible that
they would have disintegrated after only a few hundred years, even
exposed to the elements. I mean, my instruments would have picked
up massive residual DNA at the very least."

Draagh nodded his head in the
affirmative while saying, "Yes, my son. It was quite tragic - quite
tragic, indeed. Not a trace left - invaders of a really nasty sort.
They were looking for particular natural resources, as are most
invaders. Earth forces did not take kindly to an alien race simply
showing up, uninvited. The invaders attacked, and a war
ensued."

"Hmmm… a war? What do you mean?" Max
asked excitedly. He was starting to get interested.

"Oh the war! Brilliant! Mankind at its
finest! All nations came together, leaving behind all of their old
prejudices. They simply fought for survival against the threat of
the invaders. The Vrol, that's what they are called - the Vrol.
Virulent creatures, they are. Much like intergalactic insects, with
no individuality. So, eventually coming together, Earth forces had
practically destroyed the Vrol, despite its advanced technology.
Pure grit, I must say," said Draagh while displaying a bright
expression, his eyes momentarily growing big, as he proceeded to
reload his pipe. "So the last thing the Vrol could do was to try
and decimate the entire population of the Earth, and they did so -
out of spite. They did this with a particularly horrific piece of
biological warfare. They polluted the entire water supply of the
planet with a genetically-engineered amoeba. Unfortunately, this
amoeba penetrated on contact with the skin or mucous membranes.
Everyone perished; all perished with horrible, painful deaths. The
transmission vectors were all over the planet - drinking water, in
the shower, swimming pools, and lawn sprinklers - anywhere. The
amoebas simply consumed all organic tissues, with an extreme
fondness for calcium, hence - no bones! Anywhere!"

Max shuddered as he imagined dying
slowly and painfully, watching as his bones dissolved while he was
still alive.

"So, what you are saying is that there
are no humans left on Earth? That it is basically a dead planet?"
asked Max.

"No!" exclaimed Draagh.
"Life always continues, my son, always. Life cannot be stopped. It
may take centuries, or even eons, but life always manages to forge
on ahead. Yes, yes it does. In fact, there are nomadic tribes of
humans running about in areas where the infection could not be
implemented. As the amoeba could not travel up into the atmosphere
when the water evaporated, that same water went up and formed
clouds. Clouds of pure, unadulterated water, and those clouds
created rainfall that collected in places where there was no
contamination! This was true especially in the higher altitudes. Of
course, there were some smart humans who waited until the amoeba
lifecycle ran its course, simply subsiding on bottled water
products and anything else that had been sealed before the
infection. Speaking of sealed, that whisky
is
perfectly fine, as I stated
earlier. Would you mind sharing a bit with me? It has been so long
since I tasted a fine single malt."

Max looked at Draagh with a quizzical
expression and simply shrugged, saying, "Sure, I guess, but are you
certain that it's ok to drink?"

Draagh pointed to Max's backpack,
wearing a slight grin as he did so. "If you do not believe me, drop
one of your little devices in it and perform an analysis. I do
imagine you detected fossilized amoebas when you checked the area
around Lima, did you not?"

"Yes, in fact I did. The computer
couldn't identify them, but it said they were inactive, or even
dead."

"Just so you know," said Draagh, "that
whisky was bottled before the invasion. It is fine, so let us make
a toast to a new friendship. I am sure we have much more to discuss
before we depart."

Max pulled two sterile cups from his
pack and filled them with the golden liquid, handing one to Draagh
before returning to his seat on the log, as he had been standing
during the strange man's entire string of monologues.

He thought he heard Draagh
say
depart
, but
let it waft to the back of his mind, interested in hearing more
strange tales. In the worst-case scenario, he was dead and in Hell.
In any other scenario it was completely up for grabs as to what had
happened. He could be laying somewhere, sick, dying and simply
having a magnificent hallucination, or he could really be sitting
with an old man - who looked like a badass Viking - and was smoking
a pipe.

Whatever.

The two sat back, sipping on delicious
single malt whisky hundreds of years old, while looking up at the
stars. Draagh again filled his pipe and puffed away, with Max
noticing that the smoke made him feel quite relaxed.

"Hey, Draagh, what are you smoking?
It's not tobacco, is it?"

Draagh snickered and almost coughed,
but held back. "My son, this is an exotic herb that actually
originated here on Earth. I believe its scientific name was
cannabis sativa. It is quite relaxing. Would you like a puff?"
Draagh went to hand the pipe to Max, who went to reach over, until
a look of realization washed over his face.

"Whaaa? You're smoking pot? Oh. My.
God! I never smelled it before, but we have it on Azul. I can't
believe it. You're smoking weed. Man, this is weird."

Draagh waved his hands in the air, half
snickering and half coughing, clearing away the ambient smoke
floating around his head. "Oh no, no, no, my son. It doesn't affect
me like it would a human. My system is much more resilient. In
fact, my genome has roughly 127 billion base pairs, compared to a
normal human's 3 billion. We are quite complex. Yes, quite, I must
say."

Max had no desire to smoke any weed,
and started to feel the scotch working in his belly. He always
loved that initial warm sensation, consequently followed by a
delicious dulling of the mind. He poured more Glenfiddich into
their cups, filling them to the brim. Taking a more comfortable
position on the ground and leaning back against his log, Max was
far more relaxed and accepting of this odd turn of events, and the
whisky was certainly helping. He had escaped Azul, successfully
tested the hook drive, and arrived at Earth. Then he had
investigated a major city commercial area, gone to Machu Picchu,
and then strangely made a new friend who popped up out of nowhere.
He knew that Federation forces were on their way to get him, but he
had another couple of days at least, and if this Draagh fellow had
popped up out of nowhere, perhaps he could help in getting him to a
safer location.