Treasure Prequel 0.001

Treasure Prequel to Treasure Ch 0.001

The following is a Prequel to ONE of the timelines. The timeline where living with aliens had become semi-normal. Recommend you trace the timelines through the earlier stories to get a full understanding of the confusion.

This starts back at the beginning, sort of. The question my Muse raised was this: 'What happened to the 'this' Drew when the second Drew found the device and took over his timeline?'

I have no definitive proof, but I have some interesting ideas.

All humans and creatures are over 18 years of age. All humans and creatures are figments of my mind and are not meant to represent any creatures that walk our earth. If one does, please tell the creatures to PLEASE call or text me.

What do you do in someone else's timeline?

Be true to your core beliefs?

***

Arrival

"Calli" Drew paused again...this ranged up in the magic-stupid things he had done, but this was his stupid idea.

"Put me in touch with the tower and let me wing it," Drew stated while letting out the breath he was holding.

'Wing it the man says...Wing it?" Calliope (Calli for short) asked.

"Why did you not follow direction and land at a military base or the Navel Aircraft Carrier that is out past Catalina Island?" Calli questioned.

She already knew his reasons. She was an advanced form of AI, at least for humans. She knew that if she asked the same question over and over to a human, she would get a different result.

"Because I do not need some moron with brass on his shoulders taking a shot at you. Also, I do not need to be stuffed in a deep hole somewhere while 'politics' work themselves out." Drew paused again.

"I want you safe, I don't want you to return fire and I want this VERY public." Drew commented with only a little of a raised voice.

"Oh, Gee, thanks 'Boss,' using human sarcasm since it seemed to make it through Drew's thick skull.

"And before you ask for the umpteenth time, yes, I broadcasted, through earth human social media, that there was a very special event at the San Luis Obispo Airport today."

There was a pause, "And yes Annie and Kim have received your texts, and they are excited but confused,"

"Not surprised...since I vanished, literally, off the face of the earth, a year ago." Drew paused and thought of his friends and what they were going to think when this 'circus' arrived in town.

There was a tingling in his mind. He knew it was Pixy focusing his attention before she spoke or sent him 'things.'

"I am not a circus sideshow" he heard her whisper in his mind, "And neither is Patricia nor Kitty."

"I am aware Pixy. I hope the other 'Ambassadors' do well, but I am nervous." Drew said with a sigh.

Drew took a deep breath and tried to calm his own nerves.

"Lion, Tiger and Bears, Oh My!" Drew said aloud and smiled. Humanity had no Idea what was about to happen.

"Comm clear?" Drew asked Calli.

"You are free to contact the Tower Drew,"

"San Luis Obispo Tower this is...'Alien 01' inbound to your location...about five miles out."

"Really 'Alien 01? They will think I look like a Zillior and want to eat them!"

There was a pause for the Tower, while Calli admonished Drew.

"Who is this? And what is your Call sign??"

"We do not really have one, and I sort of winged that. For the moment just call us Alien 01. We have checked all the incoming and outgoing traffic. We will be with you shortly. We are going to come in over the airport and put down between the tower and the Spirit Restaurant in one of the normal transient helicopter spaces."

"If you are a helicopter follow normal procedure. Please provide a proper call sign, turn on your transponder and land over the runway as is normal protocol."

"Not a helicopter SLO Tower. Just a guy returning home."

"Calli, drop shields and let's set her down." Drew thought for a moment, "Calli will you please do a pirouette 360 for the folks in the restaurant?"

"Show off!" Calli commented.

"And that is one of the many reasons you love me." And then he chuckled.

"Bullshit" was her reply.

"Tower look out your windows towards the airport's main terminal."

And there sat, suspended in the sky, a beautiful silver ovoid craft twice the size of a normal helicopter. No visible windows, no wings, no flapping blades just a smooth silver craft out of a Sci-Fi movie. It pulsed with power but was silent.

The craft slowly dropped spinning a perfect 360.

The Craft slowly settled into the open tarmac. An opening appeared in the side and the craft seemed to shift. Part of the craft seemed to re-shape itself into a ramp like feature.

To those in the restaurant, what happened next was a bit anti-climactic. An older white male stepped out. He was of average build, dressed in a T-shirt with some type of writing. He had green shorts, not too long, not too short, and black and white checkered vans. His white hair was shown beneath the straw fedora he wore.

Inside the Restaurant there were two that let out a series of loud comments, the loudest being Annie.

"What! That is Drew!" And she and Kim both shoved towards the back gate used for transient pilots.

They lost sight of Drew for a moment as they tried to move through the crowd. There came a collective gasp from the restaurant patrons. There were murmurs and frightened comments. Kim and Annie continued to push through the crowd to get to the patio and rear gate leading down to the tarmac.

A silver female, tall, statuesque, and gorgeous, had stepped out and stood next to Drew. She seemed to be made of the same silver material as the ship.

"Well, I think the Natives have awoken," commented Calliope.

Drew started to laugh and could not contain himself.

***

Back to the future...a Year before Arrival

Drew looked up through the 'fog, or clouds or whatever,' he thought as he continued his climb up Bishop's Peak.

It was not Everest.

Bishops was only a 1500-foot vertical climb. Drew was not in the shape he had once been, but he decided to climb that day, to honor his birthday.

He hated birthdays. Not because of the 'age thing,' but because terrible things happened on his birthday or close enough to it.

For Drew, it was a yearly pilgrimage to remind him that age would not win. Well, it would kill him one day, 'but not today,' he intoned to himself.

'Just one step after the other,' he kept reminding himself as his thighs burned from the hike.

He had hit the transition point where the local morning clouds covered the peak. It was a first for him. In all his previous hikes up the Peak, there had never been cloud cover. It was always a clear view at the other volcanic 'sisters' that trailed down to the Rock at Morro Bay.

Here at the shift from July to August, he annually trudged out in the early morning to make his climb and avoid the summer heat that would be scorching by late afternoon.

Now he was headed up into mist that currently shrouded the mountain top, and he was doing it alone.

'Alone' he thought and contemplated his life. He groaned as he jumped over a low spot between two large boulders and his muscles screamed in pain at him.

This was his 60

th

birthday and he again had stupidly got his hopes up regarding his love and aspirations regarding one female in his life, 'his Jeanne.'

'Stupid, Stupid, stupid,' he thought to himself. He had done it to himself again. It was all him. Not her fault. He had gone to counseling over his 'obsession' with her. She was his muse. She touched places in his soul, blah, blah, blah.

"Let's just say that she does not hold you (counselors' words) in the same regard," she had reminded him repeatedly. Even Jeanne had laid out the rules so long ago. 'No ties, no strings, no chains' she had warned him if they were going to casually see each other...when she had time...or if she had the desire...or if (in Drews mind) she did not have a better offer.

Yet in his own stupidity and urning, he had fantasized that she would realize that he was a good guy that adored her. Then in a Hallmark remake, she would have an epiphany run into his arms, kiss him madly, and they would live happily ever after.

'Being a romantic was stupid' Drew chided himself.

He paused on the limited trail and took a sip from his water bottle. He had packed light of course. His daypack with first aid kit, some protein bars, and his water bottle. Not much else needed except for his sun hat.

'What is the definition of insanity?' his friend always reminded him. 'Yea, yea, yea...doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.' He thought to himself as he felt the chill run through him from the mist surrounding him.

Drew thought and smiled. His good friends had always been there with him and for him. But his 'obsession,' as they coined it, with Jeanne, confused them to no end.

He had a pillow in his living room to remind him. It was given to him by a good friend. She was the little sister he wished he had always had. The pillow read "WHAT and I mean this with all sincerity, THE FUCK?" She had sent the text, and then Amazon delivered a box to his house containing the pillow.

All because he had spent a weekend with Jeanne. Well really it was not the weekend as much as the depressing effect it had on him.

"You do know your just a Disney land ride, right?" another of his female friends stated while they ate pizza and drank hard cider. "She decides she needs to get away from her own troubles. Calls, buys a ticket, drives to the park, to you...by...the...way. She then rides the ride hard, and then goes home to whatever or whomever." She commented as Drew stayed silent.

"All of us have fond memories of riding the rides at Disneyland. But and it is a huge BUT, we do not want to live on the ride. We do not take the ride home with us. All of us gather pleasant memories of the experience. That is what we treasure, the memories. We do no not treasure the ride itself." She continued.

Drew raised his eyes to his friend. "Then I must be 'Mr. Toads Wild Ride...old, cranky but, dependable," he ended.

She stared at him and shook her head.

"No, my friend, you are the 'Dumbo' ride. You are safe, boring, childlike, and run-in circles for her," She finished, and Drew could tell that it hurt her to be so blunt. But they had known each other for over twenty plus years.

Drew remembered that and the other friends 'interventions' regarding his odd obsession. He knew they were right.

But admittedly, he was honest with himself and would not do anything about it. Or to put it differently, he reminded himself, he would not give up his Hallmark hope and dreams.

He stood on top of another outcropping staring into the white mist. He was only a couple hundred feet from the peak. This outcropping was where he normally stood to look out over the city of San Luis Obispo and the last 'sister' that way, Madonna Mountain. Then he would turn himself and look past the other sisters, towards Morro Bay.

He unslung his backpack and sat down on the grey/green serpentine rock ledge. The wetness on the rock soaking through his hiking shorts. He pulled out his water bottle and an energy bar.

He remembered why he climbed today with such a heavy heart. As went with her spurning him on his 21

st

and 50

th

birthdays, she had texted him that she had met someone and had to try and make it work.

Just a week ago the bottom dropped out of his heart again...some guy from Tennessee it seemed.

The counseling had done wonders for his compartmentalization. He knew he had an irrational desire to be wanted. Mother issues and such had caused problems throughout his life. While the hurt was there it was muted with the knowledge of his own shortcomings.

He had done it to himself...again. But he had to admit to himself that he would not give up the love he felt for her.

He smiled again, 'Stupid is as Stupid does' he chuckled quoting Bubba Gump.

He was sitting in a cloud bank, white everywhere.

The visibility was down to 20 to 30 feet. The sun turned it into a glowing white, but still obscured.

He looked up at the peak and shook his head. 'No bother hitting the peak. It is not like I climbed Everest,' he thought to himself.

He twisted his body and groaned as he leveraged himself up off the large rock shelf. He always chuckled as he noted the aches and pains that came with being older.

He grabbed his pack and slung it over his shoulder. He squared himself away and thought about the climb down.

A bright glint flashed through the whiteness. His first thought was that a plane had gotten too close to the mountain. That scared him.

But there was no motor sound.

He stood silently and stared at the whiteness.

Then, like some bad sci-fi movie, he was enveloped by a bright white tunnel of light.

The mountain was alone again, bereft of human connection.

***

Drew woke up looking at a white ceiling. He rotated his head back and forth and all he saw was white. He could not remember that much. He had woken up before like this, but it was in a hospital, after a motorcycle accident.

He had a flash thought, 'maybe he was dead?'

"Naw' he thought to himself, 'death could not be like a Hollywood movie.'

He tried to lift his head to no avail. He turned it side to side...more white surfaces. At the very edge of his peripheral vision he saw a wall corner, well of sorts. While it was curvilinear, he still saw the joining of flat plane surfaces.

That gave him the belief that he was on a raised dais or table, raised off the floor.

He tried to lift his hands and then arms. He could move the digits and feel his muscles tense, but nothing came off the surface he laid on.

He heard a sliding sound. Similar but more muted that the doors from the old Star Trek.

His bed started to shift, and his head and shoulders were lifted into a position where it was easier to see the beings entering his 'room.'

A very tall, thin insectoid creature came in wearing, of all the things, a doctor's white lab coat. Drew could see the mandibles moving without noise.

The second being was something out of a 1960's B Sci-fi movie. 'She' and Drew assumed it was a 'she' because she had human style breasts jiggling behind her uniform style smock. But she was also an alien with white-grey skin, antenna, odd, shaped cone ears, and overly large grey speckled eyes.

The third creature was a feline warrior in padded body armor. She looked like a bi-peddle Jaguar with huge golden eyes that locked on Drew.

The insectoid creature stepped forward and Drew could hear a buzzing in his mind. It slowly became a speech he could understand.

Drew then noticed that the doctor and the silly alien both had pads. The 'Doctor' alien was manipulating his pad. The silly alien was just watching her pad.

The "warrior' just placed herself to Drews right and two steps back from the other two. Drew recognized she was in a position with a clear line for action if it was required.

"Do you understand me now, Drew Scott?" and Drew knew it came from the tall insectoid 'doctor.' He was bending down closer to Drew.

"You could never pronounce my name so let us just call me 'doctor.' That is why I wore this ridiculous outfit. You humans seem to be better with familiar settings." the Doctor paused for just a second.

"You are one of several thousand...'ambassadors' that will be returned to Earth following training on living amongst peoples not of your species. We have selected you because you are 'average' and 'normal' among your species. You do not have many of the negative and hyper aggressive aspects of the Human species." He did not seem to need to breathe but paused briefly.

"These were not random selections, and you have most of what need to get you started on your training." The doctor paused and straightened himself up.

"Your implant seems to be working better now and so I want to introduce you to your 'training officer. She has taken on the name 'Patricia' to help in your transition. The other creature is her Bodyguard. Please do not talk to her. She is here only due to her fighting prowess." 'He' paused for a second.

"There have been many...'discussions,' mostly in a negative fashion from the other Ambassadors. She is here to make sure Patricia is safe." He intoned, "Follow Patricias direction and all will be right."

"Do you have any questions?"

Drew sat dumbfounded, scared, and generally pissed. He had testified in court as a professional expert on several occasions and so he knew to repeat the question, dissect the question, and respond in short answers...

"Do

I

have any questions?" he asked slowly back but thinking... 'Dissect...think calmly...OH FUCK THAT!' he thought to himself.

"Are you out of your collective alien minds?" he asked with a lot more passion than he could control. Out of his peripheral vision he saw the warrior tense and take a quarter step in his direction.

"Hold!" He stated, while looking at the Warrior with his arm stretched and pointing. He now realized that he could lift his head and his arms were relatively free but his shoulders and core body, including legs, were still glued to the table.

He could see her tense body, but she stayed where she was.

"Kitty," he started while pointing at the warriors' golden eyes, "While it seems I can now move my arms and head, I am going nowhere. Plus, I am no danger to anyone here. I am just beyond confused." Drew finished and then swiveled his head back to the doctor.

"Questions? Do I have questions? One simple one...WHY?" Drew paused to take a breath, "Why...Why all this ambassador bullshit? Why kidnap me? Why Me?" Drew finished and swiveled his head looking at all the aliens.

"Your training officer will answer all your questions." And with that he turned to Patricia and talked in a language that he could not understand, or the translator was shut down. The doctor finished his discussion with a bow from Patrica and he left without looking back.

Drew started to look all around for the translator and there was nothing specific around his neck of plugged in the ear.

"Human! Focus!" Patricia demanded.

"Bitch!" was Drew's return thought.

Patricia visibly stiffened. Drew's eyes flicked, but "Kitty" was at ease and had a Mona Lisa smile in her jowls.

"You can fucking hear or know what I am thinking?"

Patricia was contrite when she nodded her head and responded. "The implant will allow multiple communication patterns to be used. Currently it is set to allow us to communicate and read your thoughts as you transition into your new role."

"Implant," Drew said calmly and then the implication of alien tech in his brain finally hit him.

"IMPLANT?" he said with a panicked tone.

"It is perfectly safe Human" she commented with heavy disdain.

His arms were again stuck to the table, and she was leaning over Drew with her pad seemingly measuring something.

He promptly threw up.

His head had limited movement so he could not do the polite thing and turn his head away. The projectile vomit went directly at the leaned-over Patricia.

She was going to say something and had turned her head with mouth open. She became drenched.

She sputtered once and then collapsed across him and then slid to the floor.

'Kitty' walked over and careful, not to touch or slide in the slime he had ejected, picked up Patrica with one arm and calmly walked out the door.

Drew was left hacking and coughing, covered in his own vomit.

He muttered to himself and felt the slime slowing soak through the sheet to his bare skin.

He heard the door swish again and a being, covered in some type of sealed suit, walked in. It looked at him and then raised its pad and started to move its digits.