Chapter 1

Chapter One

July 22nd, 2015 - Earth

Alexander Harlow was breathing heavily as crested the small hill in the Blue Mountains national park. 'I really need to exercise more' he thought as he put his head between his knees. The view was spectacular, well worth the day's hiking he'd done; he was sure there wasn't another living soul for miles, not at this time of year, and that was just the way he wanted it. Every now and then he felt the urge to get away from everyone and everything, and the middle of winter was the perfect time to avoid the serial killers and hippies, 'not sure which are worse',that normally infested the park.

He flopped down onto the ground after unstrapping his pack, the sun was setting and he didn't want to miss it. He was munching on a snack bar when he noticed a bright dot in the sky, growing bigger by the second. 'What the hell?' he said, standing up. It definitely wasn't a trick of the light, he could see it clearly now, a fast moving orange blur streaking across the sky.

"Oh fuck me dead!" Alex exclaimed, it was coming right at him! He threw himself to the ground just as it flew over him, a second later there was an incredible boom as it impacted the ground not five hundred meters away, dust and bits of trees flew every which way, and the ground lurched under him. He curled himself into a fetal position, his arms covering his head, hoping to ride out the maelstrom flying all around him.

After what seemed like an eternity calm returned the world and Alexander unfurled himself before checking for any injuries, his ears were ringing something fierce, and he felt like someone had kicked him in the guts, but other than a few scrapes he was uninjured.

He snatched up his pack and raced towards the crashed... object. It was easy to see which way to go, the object had left a wide gouge in the ground as it skidded to a halt, thankfully it had rained earlier in the week, and the ground was still moist, the last thing he wanted was to be caught in a bushfire, other than a few smoldering chunks of vegetation there didn't seem to be any danger of sparking one.

As he approached the crater he first thought it was a meteorite, but as he drew closer he realised that wasn't what he was looking at, no meteorite he'd ever heard of was shaped like an oblong egg, nor had he heard them being perfectly smooth and purple.

"Please God, let it be Roddenberry and not Giger" He muttered under his breath and he ripped into his pack for his spare jumper, if he was going down there, he'd need something to protect himself from the heat. He flipped open his pocket knife and made a few quick cuts before dumping the contents of his water bottle over the strips of cloth. He wrapped one around his face and mouth, and the other two around his hands.

Taking a deep breath of soggy air, Alex jumped down into the crater, he could feel the heat radiating from all around him as he slowly moved towards the object, it appeared to be about four meters in length, and three wide in the middle. When he reached the object he slowly reached out with his left, ready to pull away, and touched the side... He jumped back quickly, only to look down as his hand in shock, before reaching out and touching it again. It was cool to the touch.

"How the fuck is this possible?" He wondered aloud, before untying his makeshift gloves. He ran his hands along the edge of the object, not finding any sign of an opening until he reached the middle of the... 'craft? escape pod?' when suddenly a seam appeared from nowhere.

Alex jumped back as the side of the craft receded into itself and a body fell out onto the hot ground. Alex stared at it, it was definitely not human, it looked for all the world like a Roswell Gray, only infinitely more Alien, and wearing clothes, some form of white jumpsuit. It was only when realised the being was laying on hot ground that he overcame his shock. He reached down and picked up the small being, carefully lifting... him? her? it? into his arms, it was surprisingly light, weighing less than a newborn baby, before moving back out of the crater.

He laid the Alien down on the wet ground a few dozen meters away from it's craft, before sitting back on his heels. What the hell was he suppose to do now? He'd be lost if the being in front of him was human, he didn't even know if he wasn't killing it by exposing it to Earth's atmosphere. He ran over to his pack and snatched out his mobile phone... only to curse loudly when he saw no reception.

"Who the fuck would I call anyway? The Cops? The Army? ASIO? They'd probably just box everything up and give it to the yanks anyway" He muttered in disgust. He tossed the phone down and walked slowly back to the Alien body laying on the ground. So far he'd see no sign of movement, not even when he was carrying it, and alien or not that wasn't a good sign.

He sat for a long while just staring at the being in front of him. Here he was, living the dream of millions of science fiction geeks around the world, he'd made First Contact!, and he was useless as tits on a bull. He'd dreamed about the stars since before he could remember. Slowly he crawled over towards the Alien, and ran his hand over it's head, looking for any sign of life, nothing, not a twitch, not even a pulse. Moving his hands down it's chest he stopped at where the heart would be on a human, and waited, hoping for a pitter patter, nothing. He moved onto the beings arms, looking for veins, surely something shaped like a human had to have some kind of circulatory system he reasoned, but again nothing.

He reached Alien's right wrist, only for the Alien's hand to move suddenly, gripping his own right hand, he tried to jerk back, but the grip was like a steel trap. The cloth around the wrist rippled and melted off the Alien before flowing onto his own wrist. Just as suddenly as it had grabbed him, the Alien went limp, back to it's seemingly lifeless state.

Alex scrambled away from the Alien, holding his wrist away from himself, it felt like someone had dunked his arm in a vat of ice water; His feet slid from under him and he found himself flat on his back. The cold was spreading, moving up his arm at a rapid pace, and he was gasping for breath. The cold finally hit his shoulder before spreading both up and down his torso. He tried to scream but he couldn't find his breath. Blackness was edging in from the side of his vision, just before he passed out he heard a voice in his own head.

"NEW USER DETECTED. BEGINNING ANALYSIS"

***​

In a short space of time Alex had undergone a number of disturbing events, but in his opinion awakening while standing was perhaps even more disturbing than coming across a crashed alien spaceship. There was something unnatural about it, he swayed on his feet and fought to keep his balance.

There was only one word that could be used to describe his surroundings, nothingness. No ground, no sky, no walls, not even a horizon. It wasn't white, it wasn't black, it just was. It hurt his mind just to look at it. The sheer wrongness of it caused him to squeeze his eyes shut and focus on his own breathing. 'Is this hell?' He wondered mentally.

He was pondering the merits of the traditional eternal torture version of hell, verses an eternity floating in nothingness, aware, but denied any stimuli, when suddenly a voice boomed out of nowhere.

"ANALYSIS COMPLETE. LOADING HEURISTIC USER INTERFACE."

He opened his eyes and looked around frantically as what appeared to be holographic information displays blinked into existence all around him. They displayed all kinds of information, one showing what he assumed was his current health information in dizzying detail, another displaying what he could only consider some form of abstract artwork.

Cautiously he reached out and touched the health display, finding no resistance, the image diffused slightly where his hand touched it, before snapping back into a crisp display of his internal structure. Tapping his finger on the heart caused the image to zoom in rapidly, showing a highly detailed image of his heart beating away rapidly, a small box faded into existence above it with the word 'MODIFY' written on it. He quickly snatched his hand away.

"WHERE THE FUCK AM I?" He screamed into the empty air, ideally noting the representation of his heart beating faster.

"THE USER IS CURRENTLY LOCATED IN THE CONTROL NEXUS" The voice from before boomed out again.

"What the hell is going on here!?" Alex ground out in frustration.

"CLARIFY REQUEST"

"What?" Alex stuttered, before shaking his head, "who are you?"

"THE USER IS CURRENTLY INTERACTING WITH THE LIMITED VIRTUAL INTELLIGENCE OPERATING SYSTEM; ACRONYM LVIOS"

Alex blinked, "You're a computer?"

"AFFIRMATIVE" LVIOS replied, it's voice flat and toneless.

Alex sighed deeply, it didn't appear he was in any mortal danger, and if there was anything he knew, it was computers, and given the way his eye was twitching in frustration, this was definately a computer, no living being could be as infuriating as a computer.

***

Extract from Alexander Harlow's Personal Journal, Entry dated July 23rd 2015.

... According to LVIOS (I've taken to calling him Lee-Vos, cuts down on the syllables, oh and I've tagged him with a male gender just because) his default protocols state that when a user self-terminates, which apparently is what the little grey chick (weird) did (LVIOS won't tell me why either, claims it's against his programming to talk about former users), he seeks out the nearest 'compatible' life-form to bond with.

Fun factoid I'm just over the borderline for this bonding, which is why my interaction with him is like pulling teeth. Normally the UI is much more intuitive. But me? Little hairless ape I am, he had to go ratting around in my head looking for a UI that wouldn't fry my brain like an egg. That's why everything looks like something from an RPG.

Apparently, he and other devices like him were created by a race of pan-dimensional beings somewhere back when the Earth was playing host to giant reptiles. When they died out, or moved on, or whatever, LVIOS doesn't have any useful information on the subject, he and the others like him were scattered around the multiverse. He's not an AI, he's not self-aware, thank crap for that, but rather a massively advanced learning VI that can never becomes self-aware due to how he was designed, I'm thinking if he hasn't overcome that programming limitation in all this time I'm pretty safe.

Oh and that little white goo that slid onto my hand? That's not him, that's the brain / machine interface, he actually exists outside of space and time, that's where I am at the moment, sitting on 'nothing' in an expanse of 'nothing' writing on keyboard hoving in the same 'nothing', hoping that I'm not having a nervous breakdown.

Anyway he was designed to be a perfect assistant slash communication slash travel device for user. Yep, that's right, he's a multi-dimensional TARDIS, only he can't do the time travel, well kind of, it makes my brain hurt, basically, as near as I can understand it, he can 'connect' with any universe (expect a few he won't talk about, bloody computers and admin levels) at any point in it's history, but once that connection is made time flows exactly 1:1 with all other universes he's connected with.

Example, if I made a connection to another universe, to say the year 1492, popped over for a visit, but later if I wanted to visit the same universe in the year 1992, I'd have to wait 500 years to pass in 'real' time, rather than just jumping back and forth like in sci-fi.

Like I said, it makes my brain hurt, but that's my basic understanding, it took an hour to drag that out of him. Talking with him is a bit like playing the old Police Quest games, you've got to know the exact wording of anything you want or you'll get "CLARIFY" shoved into your face.

He's got some other nifty features, body modification (I'm staying the fuck away from that until I've got a better handle on the UI), communications (which is useless since no-one else I know has anything advanced enough to contact), a library and database (that I'm locked out of because it belonged to previous users)... yeah he's just wonderful isn't he?

Wanna know the shittiest thing about all this? I can't go home. Ever. Because that little grey bitch decided to top herself in my universe, it's locked out, if I even attempt to go he'll stop me, if I try to find another way back, he'll stop me, something about universal collapse or some other bollocks.

My family is back there! My friends are back there! MY DOG IS BACK THERE! I want to go home!

Well I've had a good long cry, screamed some abuse at a computer system, I still feel like shit, but I've come a conclusion that hadn't sunk in, I've got access to a UNIVERSAL TRAVELING DEVICE. Yeah I heard him say that, but until I sat down and thought about it a bit I didn't really get the implications of all that... I can travel the god-damn MULTIVERSE.

You know what? I don't think this will be so bad after all.

Alexander The First and Only, God-Emperor of Humanity Ascendent has a nice ring to it.