Chapter 03 -- Onwards and Upwards
In the end she got the distinct feeling her again rambling thoughts weren't getting her anywhere, so she might as well go looking for her 'guide'.
She actually had a nervous laugh at that, imagining a tourist agency offering all inclusive space vacations on ancient, hidden mega star base complete with tour guides and a spa complex on top of a mountain that you had to climb after arriving. Of course that spa had the nicest of views on the planet busting cannon sticking out of the very mountain top, a cannon coincidentally pointing directly towards Earth.
She was interrupted in these morbid fantasies when she turned around towards her backpack in order to retrieve it. There was a small bird sitting on it, watching her intently. It was a tit she thought, blue on top and yellow along its belly.
Her curiosity peaked, she slowly bend down towards it and it still didn't fly away, just hopping around a bit, moving its head from here to there. Her feet were less then thirty centimeters away and still no sign of flight, which was really strange for a wild bird -- or any bird.
So she slowly stretched her hand towards it expecting it to leave at any moment. It never did until finally her forefinger rested against the soft feathers at its underbelly. At that moment it looked at her in what she interpreted as an irritated manner and chirped once. The spell was then broken as it spread its wings and took off in a convincingly birdlike manner.
No bird would trust a stranger like that. Did she luck out on the one suicidal bird in all the forest or did it have some strange parasitic worm in its brain that influenced its behavior? It was like everything conspired against her to freak her out as much a possible and if she hadn't already tested if she was dreaming, she would do it now. Actually a second time couldn't hurt she thought and no sooner a slap could be heard across the clearing. Yeah, definitely not dreaming.
She was still trying to wrap her head around it when she heard that specific chirp again. Looking around in a half panic as if she expected those robbers to suddenly materialize she found the tit sitting on a rock beside the trail. 'Great' she thought, another tour guide urging her to hurry the fuck up.
It looked the part too, staring directly at her in that nervously annoyed fashion from earlier. So she did as she was chirped, collected her backpack and axe and began walking.
My, that bird was really annoying.
It always stayed in front of her and as soon as she got close would search for another perch up ahead, land, chirp once and continue to stare at her. It didn't seem concerned watching out for any possible predators that might be in search of a snack either.
This was definitively unnatural behavior and far too targeted on her specifically. Did her guide double as bird trainer? How did one train a freaking tit? Its brain must be minuscule and she never heard about that type of bird being in any way smart. That didn't change the facts chirping before her though.
At one point as she was beginning to wonder just how far behind she had fallen, when the bird changed its strategy. In front of her the path was forking and differently from before it was a fork with both trails going upward. One trail looked just like the one she was hiking on the whole time, the other one far narrower.
Naturally she was inclined to follow the wider path cursing her guide for both not stopping here as well as insisting that there only would be ever one path going uphill. The problem was that the annoying tit was chirping at her from well within the narrow trail. It didn't take long for her to decide on what to do, both options were stupid as was her whole situation, so she might as well go all in on the Alice in Wonderland theme and follow the bird.
In the end it didn't matter as the trail ended after two hundred or so meters at a small creek. Here her little guide was busy first drinking and then washing herself. She decided already that it was a ladybird, well or ladytit to be especially lame.
Following the example she filled up her canteen and drank her fill but opted out of the bathing fun. As soon as she was finished with that an insisting chirping from behind reminded her to hurry up back towards the main trail.
Their routine after that continued for at least half an hour and while nothing more out of the ordinary happened she noticed the slope getting steeper and the forest changing slowly from Californian redwood to a more alpine setting.
Finally as she walked around a bend in the trail she saw a figure sitting cross-legged like some Buddhist monk on a big rock some way in front of her. Her companion seemed exited at that and flew towards him chirping.
She landed -- of course -- on the sphere on top of a ramrod straight cane standing freely on the same slab of stone he was sitting on with closed eyes, seemingly dozing. She wouldn't have been surprised if a wolf walked out of the forest now and sat down complacently at his feet like a lap dog. Perhaps Bambi too while we are at it.
What happened next did surprise her though, because he opened his eyes and instead of a gray iris surrounded by white sclera there was just black. That cheap horror movie trick turned less cheap though within a second, because this black color seemed to flow away like tar towards the inner corners of his eyes, where it seemed to disappear. While that wasn't spooky at all her tit turning into the same black sludge certainly was. The resulting puddle of scary then flowed around the orb towards the shaft and ... fused with it.
It bothered her from the start that this shaft had a surface with a distinctly fluid appearance as it tended to change around in small fractal ways. Combining that apprehension with what she just observed made her really reluctant to come anywhere near it.
As the bird was made out of the stuff ... she had touched that bird she thought with a shudder... and showed signs of intelligence that only left one option and that option actually made quite a bit of sense. He was in control of it and therefor also of the black sludge, just like if it was some sort of remote controlled drone. Her fear of getting near the stuff on his cane such certainly extended towards him too now.
She didn't really know what to say or if she should say something at all or heck if this was the moment to turn around and run, but he beat her to any reaction.
"It is my specialty and I am quite proud of it too. From your physiology, accent and the place we met I guess you were raised in Europe, so I selected an Eurasian blue tit for this occasion. I have eighty-five other species in my portfolio though, from all over the world. I would like to have even more on offer, but it takes time to get one right as I am a stickler for the small details and I am too often too busy for it."
He then stood up and got into a stretching routine. "I presume you have thought things through and have some questions yes? But please let us continue first." At that he took hold of his cane, hoped from the rock and continued walking. She let him get ahead some and then started after him.
She pondered how to ask him about where they actually were, whether or not this planet above them truly was Earth or where exactly they were heading and for what purpose. She considered asking about the cane, the black sludge and the bird or any of the strange things she was witness to.
In the end though all of that didn't move her inner core quite as much as another question that was forming in herself since the beginning. That was the wrong word though, that question wasn't forming as much as it was raging, pleading, whining or just plain crying out like a caged animal kept in check until now only by her fear and the strange circumstances. Not anymore though, this animal wanted out and it wanted out now.
"Why? Why me? Why not just let me die in peace?" She threw at him accusingly, actually crying again she noticed as if standing outside of herself there for just a bit.
"Hmm. I would prefer you to ask just one question at the time, it will be hard enough even then, for you and me both. To give you some insufficient answers: first off because it is easier for us -- the mission as a whole I mean -- and because there is a very fine line as to how much we are allowed to meddle into human affairs. A line that is more easily crossed with dead or almost dead people like yourself."
"As to you personally I have no idea really, as I have no access to your file ... and we do have files for each and every human on that planet of yours, believe me. Of course over time I cannot help but notice some similarities between the people I escort which leads me to conclusions by comparison but still, the whole of my experience of you will consist out of roughly eight hours of questions and answers while we hike plus some extra for rests as well as one final decision you have to make once we have arrived. Not really much to take the measure of a person, but also more then nothing. As for you dying in peace that is still an option."
She was frozen by that last bit of info -- again -- her brain resetting shortly thereafter. "What do you mean by that?" she stuttered, not really knowing how to feel about such a revelation.
"What I mean my dear -- if you allow the familiarity -- is that the decision is up to you in the end of whether or not you accept our offer or continue where you left off, which is dying in a rather cold and lonely lake."
"Before you ask, our offer and your decision on it is the final thing you will have to do at the end of our little journey -- I strongly advise you to take it very serious but also to refrain from more questions about it until we reach the plateau. It will be much easier and clearer to do my explaining on that topic there."
Well she could live with that, she supposed. He really had a way of scrambling her line of thinking and even feeling with just a few words she thought, but that heavy weight was still very much on her chest nonetheless.
"How did you find me?" She asked, finding it really hard to walk while talking about this.
"I didn't find you. I was send to a specific place at a specific time by a specific person in order to retrieve you before your body was beyond saving." He made a short pause, looked at her for a moment and then kept going.
"Before you have to ask everything yourself I will explain it a bit on my own. You see usually my job entails studying people, a whole lot of them, to search for specific candidates that qualify for what you go through right now. I am not alone at this though and sometimes I might get assigned to a candidate someone else found, mostly because you can seldom predict very well when a chance for extraction may appear."
"Many if not most candidates die without us being able to do so. Still: in a normal case I will have some time before or after extraction to read through a persons file and get a preliminary reading on them before they wake up in front of me. We also leave each other notes and conclusions to that end."
