Dinosaur brain hack, p.12
Dinosaur / Brain Hack, page 12
“Okay, keep safe, say hi to the fellers.”
The big day arrived. The three of them had watched Hellhouse the night before and were excited about it. During a late brunch at the Black Cat Café, they couldn’t stop talking about it.
“Hell of a lot spookier watching it than actually being there, don’t you think?” Digger said.
Jax laughed into her coffee, “Definitely.”
Their good mood suddenly stopped when Dixon Rune stormed into the café, looking furious, and confronted Digger.
“What’s going on between you and my daughter?” he snapped. “She’s barely fifteen!”
Digger was surprised, “Nothing, why don’t you just sit down and chill…”
“And what’s this about taking her to the crater this afternoon at sunset? What the heck is that all about? Are you exploiting my daughter for your TV show?”
“Mr Rune,” Jax started kindly, “we’re not exploiting anyone. Like my brother said, please take a seat and we’ll explain everything to you.”
“I watched your show last night, and it looked to me like you leave people out to dry just to get your story.”
Doc stood up, glared at Dixon, and said, “What gave you that idea?”
With Doc standing over him, Dixon calmed down and took a seat. After a long explanation from Doc about everything that had happened since they arrived in Deniliquin, Rune seemed satisfied.
“Alright, I apologise, Digger. I accept your account, but I want to come with you this afternoon.”
They agreed.
As Dixon left, Rianna, Annie, and Lola came in and joined the others.
“Hey Rianna, what are you guys up to?” Jax asked.
“Nothing, just hanging out. When are you guys leaving?” Rianna responded.
“Tomorrow morning.”
Annie asked, “Did you finish your investigation?”
Lola added, “Yeah, we watched Hellhouse Saturday night, it was way cool.”
“Like Bella’s still got her rock and all,” Annie said snidely.
Doc spoke up, “We think that’ll be taken care of before we leave.”
“And what about Bella? Is she going to jail or something for what she’s done?” Annie asked.
Just then, Sam came in and sat down at the table. “Good morning, everyone.”
Annie asked again, “Is Bella going to jail for what she’s done?”
Sam looked at Annie seriously. “And what is it she has done to go to jail, Annie?”
“She poisoned me and did all that stuff to Ry and Daz, that’s like proven.”
“And should you go to jail for threatening her with a knife?” Sam asked seriously.
That took the wind out of Annie’s sails. She thought about it, pulled a smug face at Jax, and said, “Ah, I get it. That’s why Mr Rune was just here, he talked you out of blaming Bella,” she grinned wickedly at her friends, “like he’s done before with the vice principal Mrs Morris, hasn’t he, girls?”
They both folded their arms defensively and nodded in agreement.
Jax smiled pleasantly. “No, Annie, that’s not the case.”
Annie pulled a grumpy look. “Humph! Why are you taking sides with someone that’s like seriously below us?”
Jax locked eyes with her and said calmly, “Annie, the only time you should look down at a person is while you’re offering them a hand up. Now go away and think about that.”
Jax could see that Rianna and Lola got it. Rianna offered her hand to Digger. “Thanks for answering my request, it’s been cool meeting you guys.”
Doc handed Rianna a card. “Here’s my business card. Each of you email me, and I’ll send you a release form so we can use you in the story we’re producing for The Next Files.”
The mood of the three girls suddenly changed dramatically; now they were excited.
“Seriously?” Annie questioned, almost jumping out of her skin.
“Yes, Annie, that’s what we’ve been doing here,” Doc explained.
“Wow, how random,” Rianna said excitedly. “Like we’re going to be famous. Cool … hey, thank you.”
“But where are the cameras?” Lola asked, puzzled.
Doc pointed to the tiny camera on the lapel of his jacket. “Here, we’ve all got them. They’re sending images and sound right now to our production office in Sydney.”
“Way cool,” Lola said, obviously the most tech-savvy of the three. “When will it be on TV?” she asked, giving a thumbs up to Doc’s camera.
Jax answered, “In about four weeks, we’ll let you know in advance.”
They all but skipped out of the café, giggling, eager to spread the news about their upcoming appearances on The Next Files.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
A flash of lightning lit up the interior of the Beechcraft King Air 360.
“ETA Sydney, five minutes folks,” the pilot told his passengers.
Digger sat up sharply in his seat, then swivelled around to look at Jax seated behind him. He looked across the aisle at Doc with a totally perplexed expression. They both mirrored his mystification.
“What’s going on?” Digger asked, bewildered.
“I don’t know,” Jax admitted, equally confused. “Last thing I remember was watching Rianna, Annie, and Lola leave the Black Cat Café.”
“Same here,” Doc added, like he had just awakened from a dream. “Something’s wrong with all this. How did we get here?”
Digger shook his head. “You’ve got me.”
The plane hit turbulence. A fork of lightning flashed through the windows, and the plane took a hard bump. Jax immediately grabbed the sides of her seat, white-knuckled, not a fan of flying in a light aircraft.
“It’s okay, Sis,” Digger tried to comfort her, seeing that her face was drained of colour by fear. “The pilot’s got this.”
“It’s not so much about the pilot, Dig, as it is about how surreal this feels. It’s like I’m in a dream,” Jax said.
“I just pinched myself,” Doc added. “This ain’t no dream.”
They all sat in silence for a moment, the hum of the plane and the flashes of lightning adding to the eerie feeling. The turbulence made the situation even more unsettling.
“We need to figure out what happened,” Jax said, her voice steady despite the fear. “Something’s not right.”
Doc nodded. “Agreed. But first, let’s get through this landing. Then we can start piecing it all together.”
Digger looked out the window at the strange, dark, stormy sky. “This is going to be one hell of a story.”
They were unusually quiet during the taxi ride from the airport to the NewsLine offices in Surry Hills.
It was 8:30 AM, and the staff arriving to start the day were happy to see the stars of The Next Files, greeting them enthusiastically.
Digger and Doc went into the Next Files office while Jax headed to post-production at the back of the building. She found Janet in a digital editing suite.
“Hey, Janet! How’s it going?” Jax asked, trying to sound upbeat.
Janet looked up from her computer monitor and got up, smiling. “You’re back! Awesome.” She gave Jax a big hug, then held her at arm’s length. “What a story, mate. Unbelievable. This one will top the others, believe me.”
Jax was amazed. “I don’t get it, how?”
“What do you mean, how? The footage is out of this world, literally.”
Jax explained to Janet that none of them had any recollection since being at the Black Cat Café Sunday afternoon. The first thing they remembered was being on the plane five minutes from Sydney.
Janet was amazed. “I don’t get it … so what, you lost your memories?”
“Yeah, totally blank after 4 PM yesterday.”
“Well, thank goodness your cameras stayed on and captured everything. That’s why I’m here now. I’ve been up all night cutting it all … a ton of footage from the three cameras.”
Jax grabbed the desk phone. “Let me call the guys.” She dialled her office, and Doc answered. “Come to edit suite two in post, bring Dig, you’ve got to see this.”
A few minutes later, Doc and Digger walked into the editing suite, both looking puzzled.
Janet gestured for them to sit down. “Alright, you three, brace yourselves.”
She hit play on the editing software, and the screen lit up with footage from their lapel cameras. They watched as the events unfolded. Arriving at the crater, they got out of the two cars. Bella, holding the rock out front of her like a detection device, started walking. They were silent, just following Bella’s lead. Dixon was beside Bella, then Jax and Digger, followed by Sam with Doc.
“We look like zombies,” Doc mumbled, glued to the screen.
“I don’t remember any of this, do you?” Jax asked Digger and Doc, and they both shook their heads. Janet was intrigued by their reaction.
Bella navigated the rocky terrain confidently, like she was on a mission. The last rays of the setting sun were lighting up the western horizon in orange. The glow dimmed to twilight by the time they’d walked about a hundred metres. Suddenly, the rock held in Bella’s hands began to blink, and she stopped.
“It’s like the rock is directing her,” Doc observed.
Bella turned in a slow circle with the rock held at arm’s length—the blinking stopped until she faced west again, so she continued walking and the blinking increased. A few minutes later, well out into the middle of nowhere, the cars out of sight, immersed in the dark veil of a moonless night with a vast canopy of stars overhead, the rock ceased blinking but remained alight and Bella stopped, the light from the rock reflecting on her face. The others circled her as though aware they’d reached the destination. Bella squatted down and placed the rock on the ground. As soon as the rock touched the soil, the ground beneath their feet lit up in a glowing ring with a radius of six metres.
“Wow, it’s as though the rock made contact with the motherlode,” Doc said.
Jax and Digger were lost for words, open-mouthed in awe.
Janet said, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
The door behind them opened, and Des Carter came in. “Hey guys, welcome back. I’ve got to watch this again; I couldn’t believe my eyes when Janet showed me early this morning.”
Janet had paused the footage.
“And we can’t remember any of it,” Jax assured him.
“Seriously? Are you saying your memory of it has been wiped?”
“Yep, if it wasn’t for the lapel cameras, we wouldn’t have known any of this had happened,” Doc explained.
“We only came out of some kind of dream state five minutes out of Sydney in the plane,” Digger said.
“I’ll be,” Des said, scratching his head in amazement. “Play on, Janet.”
“Here comes the good bit,” Janet said, hitting play.
The five of them had encircled Bella, the ground beneath their feet glowing in a ring surrounding them. They were standing still as if mesmerised by the light, then the ground beneath them began to blink.
“Look at that, it’s blinking binary code … Remember Sam interpreted the blinking rock as saying ‘Hello’?” Doc stated. “Well, this time the ground is sending a message to the heavens. There must be a mother rock under us.”
“Yes, we should be able to interpret the binary code,” Jax muttered, stunned by it.
Out of the blue, they were struck by a powerful light from above them. It was so powerful they looked like misshapen silhouettes within it. Bella raised her arms above her head in reverence to whatever it was. They all looked up.
Above them was a massive glowing tic-tac-shaped craft that had silently blinked into existence.
“Holy mackerel, will you look at that!” Doc exclaimed, leaning forward in his seat.
Without warning, the rock on the ground next to Bella flew up into the craft that was only twenty metres above them. The ground beneath them began to tremble with the glowing light flashing faster. Bella knew instinctively they had to move and quickly led them outside of the flashing ring. The trembling increased, making it difficult for them to maintain their footing. Now there was sound as the ground within the ring violently cracked open like an earthquake, and from deep within, a glowing round orb the size of an SUV rose up out of the cavity slowly towards the craft. The orb had stopped flashing and was somehow absorbed into the belly of the craft.
“It’s difficult to see if it went into a cargo hold. The light around the craft obscures it,” Doc said.
“I think there was a hatch with a tractor beam. You can actually see it if I apply an infrared filter. I’ll show you later,” Janet explained. “Watch this part…”
Their eyes were glued to the flat screen.
With the orb and the rock on board, the entire craft began blinking.
Doc exploded, “It’s messaging us!”
After a few seconds of blinking, the craft simply blinked off, as though someone had turned off the lights. The six of them were left staring up at the firmament; the craft had vanished.
Janet explained, “It continues to show you driving back to town. Sam must have dropped off Bella and her dad. You three returned to the cottages. The cameras stayed on all night and continued with you checking out in the morning, taking the car to the airport and boarding the plane, never muttering a word mind you, as though the three of you were in total dream mode.”
“Yes, I remember I turned my camera off just before landing in Sydney, during that storm…”
“What storm?” Des questioned with a chuckle, “It was clear blue skies over Sydney this morning.”
“That’s Twilight Zone stuff because when we came out of our reverie, we were in a serious electrical storm over Sydney,” Doc stated.
“Maybe that was all part of coming out of the dreaming,” Digger suggested.
Jax agreed, “That actually makes sense. The pilot didn’t mention any storm.”
Janet asked, “So, what do you think of the footage?”
Doc was the first to answer. “It’s … unbelievable.”
Digger shook his head. “No wonder we can’t remember. This is beyond anything we’ve ever encountered.”
Jax was still processing. “We need to get this out, but we need to be careful. The world isn’t ready for this kind of information.”
Janet nodded. “That’s why I’ve been cutting it carefully. We need to tell the story without causing panic.”
Doc agreed. “Let’s review everything, decide what to include, and how to present it. This is a game-changer. I need to know what the craft was messaging.”
They spent the rest of the day reviewing the footage, discussing their options, and planning how to release the story to the public. The Next Files was about to make history, and they knew they had to get it right.
“Do you think they knew we were filming?” Jax asked Doc.
“Yes. I think that’s why we were there, they left it up to us to deliver a message to the world through The Next Files,” Doc said, holding up a flash drive. “I’ve got the footage on this. I’ll take it home and decipher it.”
Jax and Digger were at their computer terminals when Doc breezed into the office the next morning. Digger looked up at him. “Didn’t wake you, mate. Figured you’d been at it all night.”
Doc flopped tiredly into his chair behind his desk. “Sure was … took a while, but I got it done.”
Excitement broke on Jax’s face. “Was the message for us?”
“It sure was … it said:
‘Deliver this message… You seek to find yourselves.
You’ve come far
but you do not yet stand a united species.
While some plunder nature,
Others feast on the misery of the downtrodden.
You cannot venture into space without humility,
Without understanding…
Prove that you are humane.
Prove that you care for the world you share.
Until that time comes,
you must seek to find your inner god.
Until then, dare,
dare to dream.’”
The room fell silent as they absorbed the weight of the message.
“We need to share this,” Digger said finally. “But like, in a way people will get it without freaking out.”
Jax nodded. “Yeah, it’s profound. But it’s also what people need to hear right now. It’s the truth.”
Doc agreed. “Brain Hack is more than just a Next Files story; it’s a wake-up call.”
Don't miss the next adventures:
DREAM WEAVER
&
FRACTURED FAIRYTALE
The song lyrics featured in this novel are with the permission of:
Keadybros Music Publishing
http://www.keadybros.com
‘LONG WAY HOME’
by G. L. Keady & J. M.Vallins
copyright©2012
‘SONG’
by G. L. Keady
copyright©2012
‘ORATION’
by G. L. Keady & J. M.Vallins
copyright©2012
visit:
https://www.bigislandpublishing.au
G. L. Keady, Dinosaur / Brain Hack
