TOPSY TURVEY - PART 2
 

A Fiction Short-Story By the Sandoval Brothers

“The only deviation I see is you from sense. If it is true that life is so abundant out there, then why have we seen nothing of it? Not a trace,” it was validly pointed out by Vicente. “There is no tangible proof of outside life – beside disputed UFO sightings, I guess.”

“I have seen dozens of UFOs in my time. Most of the time at night, but sometimes in broad daylight.”

“I am sure, Bernstein,” I comforted. “The thing, my doubting friend, is that the answer to the apparent lack of proof is merely effective execution of protocol.”

“Protocol,” both Vincente and Bernstein droned in concert.

“Yes, protocol. Standard Operating Procedure. We have seen nothing definitive because we were kept from seeing anything definitive.”

“How would you know this?” Vincente snapped.

Keeping the comportment of an officer trained to endure a range of mental stress and fatigue, I simply answered, “Because I was told of the protocol directly.”

“By who? Your make-believe associates at the Space Force?”

“No,” I sighed. “By my alien hijackers.”

“Just to start off, what makes you think that we should believe any of this? What makes you, Nadir, think that you are all that special? Why would you get a conference with other-worldly beings and the rest of us left for –”

“To be honest,” I stammered, “I have no idea why I was chosen. I mean, I was Flight Commander, I guess. So, they must have had some preference for rank.”

But really, I knew that Bernstein, Vincente, and Chambers were just as trained, seasoned, and capable as I had been.

“Flight Commander?” homeless Vincente standing beside the dying fire balked, “Flight Commander of what?”

“I thought I made it clear. I am – was – Flight Commander Nadir from Juno IV.”

“Oh, really?” I heard Vicente condescend.

“Believe me; I couldn’t make this stuff up if I was desperately trying. I am the only known survivor from the disappeared Juno IV. That Commander Nadir, is this Nadir. It’s me. Or at least, it was at a certain point in time.

“Well, where did it disappear to?” pressed Bernstein. “If you were Commander, do you know what happened to the shuttle.”

“You would think, but no. I mean, I know where – generally, speaking, of course, where I wound up. But what happened to the shuttle? The rest of the crew, I don’t have the foggiest. I don’t know if any of you were following the launch that fateful day, but we just barely broke from Earth’s grasping orbit when all, everything, was just absorbed in a blinding white, only to be broken up afterward by a deafened realm of black. When I was returned, I learned that you here on Earth were just as perplexed and lost as I was – well, not as lost in the true sense. But the mystery of Juno IV has persisted on…for those who don’t believe me, that is.”

“The disappearance was certainly unexpected and is still unexplainable,” recounted Chambers warily. “All the eyes of the world were watching that day – every school child…every dreamer. Before very long, and right in front of everyone’s watchful eyes over the live feed, suddenly, the shuttle vanished. There was a glitch in the signal that lasted a split second, but by the time it cleared, there was nothing to see other than a black screen.

“Every host and commentator tried to soothe their audience before cutting to commercial or alternate programming while trying to figure out the lasting glitch. But no one could. We would later learn that just as we lost visual at home, flight control lost all their sights on the shuttle as well. All their different tracking gadgets and gismos just dropped the shuttle. It was almost like the shuttle never existed. There was no beacon signal, no emergency signal, no signal of hope.

“NASA and other space programs worked together for months in a joint search effort for the shuttle. Even trace debris from the wreckage would have brought at least a little bit of closure. But there was absolutely nothing that ever turned up.

“With no signs, years were then spent trying to retrace every instruction and step of the belated mission to figure out what went wrong. No one ever got a satisfying answer. There were theories and debates about what had happened. But it was agreed by almost everyone that space travel – commercial, government, or independently-funded, had to be suspended for a while. Until at least some answers were found to prevent anything like that from happening again.”

“Well,” Bernstein voiced, “there were those who figured it out right away that it was simply an alien abduction. Somehow aliens beamed up an entire shuttle and all of its crew inside.”

“No one has figured anything out, Doug!” rebuked Vincente sternly. “You’re talking about crackpot conspiracy theories and half-baked ideas.”

“A lot of it made sense,” Bernstein carried on unapologetically. “I mean, there was also the theory that you guys got sucked into a miniature black hole. I liked that one. Tons of people blamed the Russians and Chinese for kidnapping you all and the shuttle so that they could steal the technology that we haven’t been sharing with them. There were both Russians and Chinese in orbit that day, so that was a good one too. Others said that our own government did you guys in on purpose and covered the whole thing up. Maybe somebody in the crew saw something that they weren’t supposed to see during all their missions or training tours before the mission. Oh, yeah, then some said that the shuttle and crew never really existed at all – in the current reality, I mean. They said something like the memory of the crew was just a mass delusion or a collective faulty memory that those who originally came from a slightly different reality have of a group of astronauts who actually existed and were part of a mission to Mars back in the other reality. But in the current reality we have been moved to, they never really existed at all.”

“I do feel like sometimes I don’t really exist here, that is for sure” I couldn’t help from half-chuckling and half-sobbing. “But the first theory of abduction hits it right on the head.”

“What were the aliens like? Are they like little green men after all?” a now enthused Bernstein nearly blew out my ear shouting.

“Jeeze,” moaned Vicente.

I tried to describe, “They didn’t look quite like the space invaders or space ambassadors from the movies. Not my detainers, at least. I mean, as I said, alien species come in all variety size, form, and composition. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some that looked identical to E.T. or the Roswell mascot. But when I finally came to my full senses, I was astounded by what I was met by.”

Now I had all three finally shut-up and listening.

“At first, I thought I woke face-to-face with a ghost. On earth, we have accounts throughout history of supernatural visitations by translucent floating figures. I have never seen a ghost before – I don’t know about them now. But the aliens who fished me out of space were much like phantom spirits. Sometimes I thought they resembled the classic death-shrouded depictions of the beings of the haunt, but for the most part, they were essentially shape-fluid. With every directional movement, their pallid vaporous essence was distorted. It turns out that their kind was from a gaseous planet, much like our own Saturn – but without the rings. Life in that environment – if it wanted to spring up – needed to take the form of gaseous organisms.

“It completely beats me why they were in possession of a physical craft. I mean, their spaceship was not built for their biology in the least. They had no use for the doorways I was carted through. They never spoke through what was, I assumed, the telecommunications system. It was like the craft was built for a creature of a very similar stature as myself. Of course, I could never make out any of the symbols labeling the control modules. And I never did see anything that looked like a proper toilet for a human. But I assumed that the ghost aliens simply just stole and used another poor abductee’s craft. I know that they needed to place me in an enclosed environment I could survive in and they needed a vehicle to transport me in. Surprisingly, they got the oxygen and heat levels just right for me. But why they couldn’t use my own shuttle to store me? I don’t know. Maybe they wanted to keep me in an environment that was not overly familiar.”

Before I could get my next words out, I was hit by a barrage from Bernstein. “Who cares about the ship? What did they want with you? Did they run all kinds of experiments on you? Is there really a probe?”

“It was not really about me at all,” I corrected. “There was nothing that they learned from me throughout my stay with them. They already had an understanding of human biology, civics, and even history that were beyond even my general knowledge. On top of that, their hold on science and mathematics was mind-numbing. For all my scholarship, I probably would have flunked out of their version of kindergarten if they have learning institutions, or even if they have young, at that.”

“So what was the purpose of horrifying all the Juno IV onlookers and ruining the lives of the crew members…to who knows what extent?’ Chambers pandered aloud.

Vincente jabbed, “Kurt knows the extent, supposedly. Right?”

“I only know how things turned out for me. I honestly don’t know if the other crew members managed a breath after jettisoning our final boosters on our way out of orbit.”

“I thought captains were supposed to go down with the ship?”

It took me just a second – maybe more, given the abrupt shifting I noticed in everybody’s stance around the fire when I looked back up – but I answered, “I don’t need to be reminded of that by anyone. Even when I am all alone, I hear it a million times a day.”

I cannot escape any of it.

“Leave him be,” diplomatic Chambers demanded.

I didn’t need the help, as well-intentioned as it may have been.

But Chambers continued in my hesitation, “If they took no interest in what a human had to offer, and if they went out of their way to return you back home, what was their driving force?”

“You mean to ask, why I was spared, and the others weren’t” I heard myself bellow, “I have racked my brain endlessly to determine just that. But at least I know why they let me return.”

“Why?” Someone asked.

“To bring home the warning.”

“A warning for who?”

“All mankind. It is a warning, with humanity itself at stake.”

Even Bernstein faulted trying to best that kicker. Chambers even struggled keeping an open mind.

“What exactly is the warning?” Vicente was finally decent enough to ask.

“That is a whole story, but I guess I can try to make it short – but it won’t be sweet. And I cannot guarantee a happy ending. But an ending, regardless, will be determined soon by those who still have a stake in this world.”

“What’s the warning already?”

“I was told to inform world leaders and their world followers that a transition in the order of galactic rule is very soon to trigger. In itself, the transition of power from one alien planetary or system’s specie to the next is nothing novel or perilous. It has been done essentially an infinite number of times before the surviving records of most. But the poles have portended an anomalous occurrence that has been (dare I say) delayed.”

Those huddled hollered, “What?”

“Their version on polling is something that comes close to a mass psychic reading of all the galaxy’s lifeforms, conjoined with a super-computer simulation, tinged with a calendar counting down bequeathed prophecy. This mystic, yet scientific means of future-telling has been deadly precise of much. And now it indicates a term of rule for the Volfurash. Now, the looming reign of the next regimen should not be thought of quite like unilateral authority, but rather something like a majority rule of law going forward. But majority rule goes a long way in their manner of dominion. Suffice it to say, the implications of this handoff are profuse.”

“Hold up now,” demanded Bernstein, “Volf – Volfer-who?”

“Volfurash. That is what my captors called them. But I was told that most of the galactic civilizations and entities have their own names for this race. They guessed that if they were to try and translate the root meaning behind the moniker into modern-English tongue, it would amount roughly to something like the Topsy-Turvies.”

“What kind of name is that,” laughed Bernstein in sophomoric amusement.

“I thought the translation was rather fitting; that is, from what I have been told of the specie.”

I could sense the intrigue, so I proceeded.

“Well, now. It is my understanding that the Topsy-Turvies are one of the oldest versions of life within the known and accessible sections of the universe. They are also probably the most adaptive and resilient species out there. They owe their robustness and flexibility, in large part, to the environment in which they evolved.

As single-cell organism began to complicate on a massive meteorite catapulted through space, the distant predecessor organisms of the Topsy-Turvies were forced to continually roll with the punches. As the meteorite wobbled and tumbled through space over the eons, the living conditions erratically shifted.

“The beings that started to grow self-awareness absorbed the fickleness of their motherland. The trajectory of the society that was eventually to come, flip-flopped just like the soil of their sprouting.”

Vincente stole my place as I stopped for a breath. He rushed in, “Life on a meteorite? That could never be. We know that all life needs water. What kind of life could start from an environment completely missing water, oxygen, or regular exposure to solar light?”

I replied matter-of-factly, “Well, at this time, the majority foolishly subscribe to that narrow scope of life creation. Yet even in the preceding century, we have come to see many extraordinary paradigms, here on Earth alone, of tenacious evolutionary strands of life thriving in the most inhospitable conditions of the planet. We have drudged up life at the very deepest recesses of our oceans that, through the process of chemosynthesis, convert the hydrogen sulfide or methane of deep-sunken hydrothermal vents to a sustainable biomass – rather than relying on the process of photosynthesis, which is reliant on the filtered shine from the sun. Habituating to the total absence of light and the boiling water from their surroundings, these guys don’t need your precious Goldilocks criterion of just right solar light and just-right temperatures. Vice-versa, the ice worms that burrow through North American glaciers don’t complain about their subzero environment.”

“Mere anomalies, are they not?” the always collected, and inquisitive Chambers queried.

“Well, maybe not,” I replied delicately to Chambers. “There is a whole cast of known extremophiles, with more being uncovered every year.

“Extreme Files?” Vicente errored. “What are you talking about?”

“Extrem-o-philes,” I amended. “They are organisms that not only survive but thrive in the most extreme conditions found on earth, hence their namesake. These tough little guys are perfect exemplars that fly in the face of Goldilocks enthusiasts. Take as another example, the Loriciferan creature. This thing was discovered just barely over twenty years ago; it has a developed set of organelles that allow it to function without oxygen.

“Or how about Endoliths? They live inside rocks or crevices several miles below the earth’s surface! There where water is scarce, they have found a way to live; it is believed they feed on iron and potassium, and then there is.”

“Okay, you show-off, you’ve proven your point. If these organisms actually really do exist,” interjected my annoyed doubter.

“My point is, life will exist anywhere it wants to. A meteorite juxtaposed to a nuclear reactor, where the world’s most irrepressible form of life, the Deinococcus Radiodurans, live, is nothing at all.

“I chose these examples for a reason, the root in all of their names explains either their resolve or their foundation of existence. Same goes for the Topsy-Turvy specie, whose existence not only shatters one primitive human notion of universal understanding but two.”

“Which two?” Chambers requested.

“Perhaps the two most imperative ones. The first that we are the only living organisms in the universe. That is about as ridiculous, self-serving, and egotistical as thinking that the earth is the center of the universe. The second that the Goldilocks Zone is a prerequisite for life. That theory is about as credible as the flat world theory.

Before I continued, a deafening silence fell all about my team, no one could think of anything to say, so I resumed, “Look, if you don’t believe me, that’s fine, I mean who am I, well, let’s not dive into that, let’s stick with the plain science okay?

“I mean, it is common knowledge that early researchers in the international space programs stumbled upon bacteria that managed to hitchhike their way from the surface of the Earth up to space. Those samples emphatically demonstrated that bacteria could retain their hold on life through dormancy for months at a time even after being nakedly exposed to space’s fluctuations of temperature, radiation, and light.”

It was simply an erroneous thought that every strand of life spread across nearly infinite worlds needs to go through the same dance Earthlings have in order to come to terms. But I don’t mean to shame anybody. Water, after all, is indeed such a crucial factor for the shared evolutionary heritage of Earthly creatures. Then again, that is just what you would expect from life raised on a planetary surface composed of seventy-one percent by water.

Carbon molecules are so esteemed here because they are merely the best bonding element we have here to form large and complex molecule chains. But our periodic table is very incomplete compared to others. Aside from Element 115, our table is a cookbook for beginners.     

“I don’t know about all of that,” Vicente pecked at my re-vision (annihilation) of the Goldilocks theory.  

“Well, trust me, my old friends know quite well on the subject. Anyway, as I was saying, just like their meteorite that they have ridden around on, the Topsy-Turvies are, by and large, of a mercurial and capricious cerebral constitution.”

“These are the guys taking over operations, you say?” Chambers double-checked.

“That’s what has been projected for some time to come now. It is because of their very dispositions that they have been limited in the extending governing body up to this point. Despite their great numbers – which have swelled with their infestation throughout the galaxy – despite their seniority, regardless of their resiliency, their turn has been astutely avoided for epochs. But for just as long, the fight for commiserate and timely representation has been clamored for. It cannot be ignored forever. The order must keep up the appearance of being objective and non-discriminatory.”

“When are they taking over?” it was asked.

“Soon. Very, very soon, in terms of the galactic clock.”

“What does that mean?”

“Maybe within our own lifetime. Probably within one or two upcoming generations.”
“But why of all times?”

“I told you, it could not be avoided forever. There is definitely that. But then there is another factor. I was also spoken to of the existence of a space plague of sorts – something like a self-replicating computer virus entity that travels between interstellar civilizations at the speed of light. This blight is a calamitous threat to all species who rely heavily on artificial intelligence to manage their worlds, particularly to the species that have merged their biology with mechanical processors. Such circuits and information storage systems easily fall prey to the roaming virus.

“While my captors were more of a gaseous makeup, and utilize the transmission of information telepathically, making them less susceptible to direct corruption from the virus, they acknowledge the threat this bane holds over the universe’s vast and permeating public network of data storage. You know, like the cloud ecosystem here on Earth – not the atmospheric clouds but the cloud that is used mainly to store everybody pointless pictures – the universe also has a network of something like linked remote servers.”

“An alien cloud?” I was challenged by a scrunched faced Vicente. “If there is such a thing, why haven’t we detected this network before? Why haven’t we tapped into this source of information for ourselves?”

“I said it’s like our concept of the cloud. No one set up servers, per se. Their version exists in a non-physical plane of existence, like the ether—something like a lifeforce of astral information. And, now that you mention it, some within our midst have already waded around a little within the kiddy pool of their grand cloud. Have you have heard, among the open-minded, reference to the Akashic Records? The cumulative collection of human events, thoughts, and emotions from all human existence from the past, present, and even future?

“You guys have no idea what I’m talking about?” I inferred from the dead silence. “That’s fine; it’s not all that pertinent to the immediate situation. Getting back to what I was saying, it is the fear of this virus hacking into their cloud that has pushed many civilizations and entities in the great expanse to bow down to the Topsy-Turvies for a while.”

“But what does all of this have to do with us?” it was poised.

To bring the matter a little closer to home, I proceeded to tell then that previous galactic administrations have firmly upheld a general rule that life is to develop to maturity without avoidable outside interference. This is why, I explained, Earth has been left alone despite the abundance of alien life out in the cosmos. Methods were taken to veil signs of alien presence from Earth: transmission codes encrypted to near-random noise; blinders, something like 3D screensavers, put up all around the edge of our solar system; and so on.

“For the most part,” I relayed what I was imbued, “under the two previous administrations that have coincided with existence of life on Earth, there have been less than a handful occurrence of direct external interventions.”

It is specific protocol that intervention can only be proposed when over two-thirds of a total global ecology is under threat – as forecasted by their mindreading, super-computer calculating future telling apparatus.

Such intervention in the past with other worlds have been prompted by occurrences like globally devastating climate swings or so-called planetary cleansings. Still yet, the order has been known to make their presence felt when a local inhabitant group begins to sneak up on the development of a cyber malware capable of interstellar proliferation. There are other instances when the near grasp of new innovations thought to be adverse to universal security triggers an immediate intercession, like when time travel capacities nearly get stumbled upon or when planetary civilizations work on capacities to tamper with their mother star’s nuclear energy, and so on.

Though I simply acknowledged, “Very commonly the administration steps in if it is determined that a civilization or specie threatens life on neighboring celestial bodies with their space travels and colonization attempts. Remember, it is a valued belief that all life should develop, believing it is alone in all of creation, until it grows out of childhood, that is. This belief was primarily put into action in response to the early history of the Topsy-Turvies.

“Now the thing is, the Topsy-Turvies are speculated to overturn this principle of relative independent maturation – perhaps, just for the amusement enjoyed by contrarians…or maybe for reasons of a more selfish nature, it is feared.

Though the Topsy-Turvies originated on a flung meteor, they quickly developed space travel and left their boulder to inhabit other worlds. Most of the time, the Topsy-Turvies settled for worlds that cultivated lower orders of life. And almost in all cases, the Topsy-Turvies pushed the indigenous aside until the provisions of the planet were depleted beyond regeneration. Unlike their mostly unwilling planetary hosts, once conditions got too dicey, the Topsy-Turvies simply resorted to their evolutionary penchant for long-term hibernation.

The Topsy-Turvies can survive almost any conditions. Employing a nearly impervious dormant state when necessary, the Topsy-Turvies simply wait out their hosts who are abandoned to suffer through ecological collapse. In turn, the Topsy-Turvies gain a great advantage in the long haul by pillaging the natural resources the worlds left behind by their extinct natives. But their greatest advantage comes from their excavations of forgotten esoteric knowledge buried with lost civilizations belonging to natural predecessor beings or prior external visitors.

I continued, “If the principle of promoting independent development is flipped for Earth, our world will be transformed overnight into the Star Wars Cantina. It will feel something like, I am sure, an Easter Islander before Cook being dropped off in 2039 New York City, except far worse, because unlike the islander just seeing the modern form of man in its variety, we will be exposed to conditions unimaginable. And, guaranteed, we will almost always be on the side disadvantaged by the gaps in capabilities and influence.

“Though it is not officially recognized by any over-reaching governing body, there are forms of prejudice and discrimination that exist throughout the galaxy. From my experience, it is actually a fairly common practice to rank organisms by how quickly they took to develop, independently, to circumvent the speed bump of lightspeed’s limitations.”

“Nobody wants to be the natives suddenly invaded by outsiders,” Bernstein did a good job to catch. “It’s never worked out for the outmatched side. What would we do if all of this turned out to be?”

“You each better look up the Boxer Rebellion.”

Bernstein evinced his inner consternation, “This is it? Your big warnin’ is everything as we know it is going to be changing, and there is nothin’ we can do about it?”

“I am just giving you what I was given – all that I managed to grasp, I should say. But from my vague impression – and my deepest hopes – I think that we will be given more updates and more advice as events unfold. I think we should carefully mind the next street person who claims to have encountered ghosts in the cosmos. Listen for the name, the Volfurash.”

“Ah,” a re-settled Bernstein concluded. Your story was just okay. I got all little caught up in it, but it was not all that unique. “My other buddies got something pretty similar out of this nut of a woman who was just admitted to the shelter on the north side. She came in with real bad PTS and amnesia, they say. But she was rabbling on too about the end of the world at the hand of an outer-space bug or something. She said she was dropped from the sky at one point. Maybe the two of you should talk. She likes talking about space too. They humored her backstory for a while. But after they ran some DNA tests to see if she was the person she thought she was, they determined she was crazy.”

In a weep of a laugh, I remarked, “Anomalous DNA damage prevents conclusive ID matching.”

“I heard something about that woman too,” Chambers corroborated. “Her name was like…what, did they say…Christine…Chambers?”

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