Quantum nightmares, p.1
Quantum Nightmares, page 1
Published by Flare Books.
© 2025 Jose M. Rodriguez Jr.
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First edition, first printing
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ISBN 978-1-96351-121-5
Library of Congress Control Number 2025936338
Cover design by Enzyme
CONTENTS
Prologue: The Grays
The Gender Reveal Party
Dog Day Afternoon
Crazy Shark
Black-Eyed Children
Untitled YouTube Commercial Script
RPCD: Reincarnation Pre-Crime Division
The Council
Sunday Funday
The Five Hives
Forgive Me, Father, For I Have Sinned
The Moth King
Vicarious Intruders
Legion: God’s Last Cycle
Epilogue: Betty Hill’s Original Sin
Prologue: The Grays
IT WAS A SIMPLE ITCH THAT STARTED IT—the panic, subtle at first, slow, dull. The bridge of Betty Hill’s nose was begging to be scratched, and when she tried to satisfy the urge—eyes still closed in that lazy realm between sleep and consciousness—she realized her arms were tied down. She tightened her eyes shut, afraid to see what in her mind’s eye was evidence of an abduction.
She tried wriggling free, thrashing her hips, realizing her legs were also strapped down. She stopped squirming. Caught her breath. Regained her composure.
She opened her eyes slowly.
Where am I? Betty thought. She couldn’t remember being strapped to a cold steel table in what appeared to be a hospital setting of sorts, but unlike any hospital she’d ever frequented. The brightly lit room had curved walls and high ceilings with hanging lights that dangled like the branches of a weeping willow swaying slowly in a lazy wind. A luminescent wave pulsated along the branches in a dizzying spectrum that changed from blue to purple, orange to red—every color represented in their turn. The wave of changing colors was shiny, almost glittery, as it ran along the branches.
Betty couldn’t be sure, but she had a sense that the luminescent wave was actually a bioluminescent wave, that it was the lifeblood of the room in which she was being held captive, that it was alive.
A holographic 3D imaging of Betty’s cardiovascular and nervous systems rotated at the foot of the table. Her vitals were listed on the side of the hologram. Her BP was a little high, per usual. She looked to see if there was a blood pressure cuff on her arms. There wasn’t.
The technology before her was terrifying; it was terrifying because she knew it hadn’t been invented yet. The rotating holographic 3D imaging at the foot of the cold steel table she laid on was light years ahead of the technology of the 1960s.
As she fought through the fog of her intellect, fragments of memory returned slowly, incrementally, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in a flash of light. The last thing she could recall was driving with her husband Barney as a bright light followed their car.
“It’s probably just a helicopter,” Barney had said as he looked, incredulous, in the rearview mirror. The light followed them for another twenty miles. Betty’s fear grew with every mile mark they passed. She begged him to do something, anything. “It’s just a light, honey,” he’d said. But he couldn’t stand the fear emanating from her eyes and when he finally turned off route 30, the bright light turned as well. There was no question about it. The light was following them. It suddenly increased speed and was right atop of them. Then the bright light pulsated, and a blinding blanket of white light surrounded them, swallowed them.
That was the last thing she remembered—the blanket of white light, and as she tried wriggling free of the restraints, she cried out, “Barney, are you there?”
Only the echoes of her scared voice answered back, slapping against the curved walls, surrounding her.
A seamless door hissed open. In walked two tiny beings. At first glance, Betty thought they were children, but as they approached, she realized these peculiar entities weren’t human at all. She could hardly believe her eyes. She was consumed utterly by fear. She thrashed and kicked and screamed until a notch the size of a cigarette pack latched open at the head of the steel table and, from tiny spigots, a yellow mist was released into the air. Betty was suddenly calm as a Buddhist monk. She watched the two beings’ approach with perfect fascination now.
How odd, she thought, how fabulously curious, these tiny beings.
The tallest one was four feet tall; the other was six inches shorter. Their skin was an incandescent gray. It appeared smooth and moist, like a frog’s hide. They had long, spindly arms; short legs extending from a tiny trunk; and an enlarged, bulbous-shaped head resting on long, skinny necks. Their massive, almond-shaped eyes were dark and soulless, and their mouths were nothing more than tiny slits.
Hello, the leader said, I am this ship’s captain. He motioned to the shorter being. This is my chief medical examiner.
Although Betty acknowledged she should be scared, terrified even, she couldn’t bring herself to partake in any fear-based emotions. She observed them just as objectively as she would a rising sun. They were so tiny, these creatures, their anatomy so different from humans. Her face reflected off their black-mirrored eyes like a still lake on a moon-drenched night. To her surprise, she didn’t see fear in her face.
I must be going mad, Betty thought. Then a revelation. What was in that mist?
No ma’am, the mist was not a hallucinogen, the medical examiner assured. It simply augments the dopamine inhibitors in your brain. His tiny mouth didn’t move, but Betty could hear him all the same.
Betty giggled loudly. Her giggle slingshot around the curved walls and met her ears, making her self-conscious. “How’d you do that?” she asked. “How’d you talk without moving your lips?”
Thought transference, the leader thought. He nodded at the medical examiner who consulted the rotating holographic scan at the foot of the table, and the scanning ballooned ten feet high by five feet across. A vertical bar with green numbers counted rapidly from zero. The medical examiner returned the leader’s nod. Everything was working smoothly thus far.
We are in a unique position, ma’am, in dire need of help, the leader thought, and you are in a unique position to help us. But we cannot, no, he paused, tilted his head, we will not proceed unless you comply.
The green numbers were at eighty percent and climbing rapidly.
“Comply with what?” Betty could hardly believe that she could be of any help to a species that had conquered interstellar travel.
It’d be easier to show you, the medical examiner thought.
The numbers turned red, blinking ominously at one hundred percent. The symbiotic download was complete.
Betty’s assertion that the ship was alive turned out to be true. The table she was strapped to absorbed her genetic makeup, plotting a map of her brain to better interface with. The leader nodded at the chief medical examiner, who did something or another on the holographic imaging, and Betty received the following upload to her consciousness:
By the turn of the twentieth century, humanity had made great strides in the advent of technology. The industrial revolution inundated the world in a technological renaissance, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the first man harnessed fire. In less than one hundred years, humanity took quantum leaps far exceeding any comparable timeline in history. Trading their horse and buggy for locomotives, their locomotives for cars, their cars for planes, and their planes for spaceships.
Drunk on hubris alone, they found themselves floating in the cosmos. From the dizzying heights, they saw their cities lit up like an ocean of dancing stars—godlike, indeed.
Their technologies became so advanced, it soon replaced the basic know-how their ancestors took for granted, and the rudimentary skills which got humanity to that juncture and bridged the gap to the height of their arrogance slowly disintegrated. They disgraced that pioneering first man and forgot how to make fire.
Eventually, there were no more farmers, no fishermen, no carpenters. But allow me to regress.
Betty’s eyes flickered about as her subconscious mind interfaced with the quantum computer, and she was physically there to witness what the voice in her head spoke of.
In 2060, following the worst of three global pandemics that decimated the human population over the span of thirty years, scientists developed a homogenized serum, extracted from the mesoglea of an immortal jellyfish. The super-antibody concoction rendered illness obsolete. It was the greatest medical innovation in history and certainly the most far-reaching since the discovery of the germ. The world dubbed the medical marvel “Ambrosia” a worthy designation which meant “immortality” in ancient Greece and was purported to be the food of the gods, the nectar of immortality.
The population boomed, and for a fleeting moment, humanity lived in blissful harmony. But it didn’t take long before the honeymoon phase boomeranged into a lingering hangover period. Although humanity had beaten sickness, its
Many died from starvation—too many.
Once again, the citizens of earth looked to their scientists for answers. “We have defeated sickness,” they cried, “but our children still battle starvation.”
The call to arms was answered in 2065 when physicists created a whole network of quantum computers capable of godlike knowledge. They named the AI consultant “Oracle” and in utter desperation, the decision was made to take the human out of human error. Humanity turned over every major decision to the Oracle’s infallible care, ushering in the AI initiative, which resulted in 3D replicators printing food and fully automated AI systems capable of plowing fields.
The GPS and self-driving technologies boasted the lowest margin of error and highest yields in the planet’s history. The system was so safe and effective, it was immediately installed in every car, plane, and boat. Within a generation, humanity had forgotten the intricate nuances of how to farm and drive effectively. Within two generations, they had forgotten the abilities altogether.
With nothing but time on their hands, the now free farmers, pilots, and captains became AI’s greatest advocates. This was the catalyst to fully integrate technology into every viable facet of society—which, in hindsight, was the beginning of their demise. But first, it ushered in a golden age comparable only to the great industrial revolution of the twentieth century, and like the industrial revolution, the new golden age culminated with humanity in the stars.
With their quantum computers devising all manner of technologi-calinnovation, every industry was eventually usurped by machines. 3D printers oozed out entire neighborhoods before construction workers could lay the foundation to just one home. Factories never slept and production increased tenfold in the first quarter alone. Before long, doctors, lawyers, and cops became automated, redundant and unemployed; so too did garbage men, fast-food employees, and clerks of all varieties.
Without the need for a workforce, the global economy pivoted, and humanity set their sights inward toward their spirits and outward toward the cosmos.
They became obsessed with ancient origin stories and scoured the planet for evidence of an ancient progenitor race. This became their unified purpose—to meet their maker.
National borders disappeared as they turned over every stone and searched the deepest crevices of every ocean and cave for mention of the star people that came down and jump-started humanity. With the Oracle’s knowledge and guidance, they invented sophisticated submarines capable of deep-sea diving. In this way, they found the fabled cities of Atlantis and Lemuria.
Then the Oracle told them to focus their ground-penetrating sonar on the rolling dunes of every desert where they found thousands of missing pyramids and even the fabled hall of records, an ancient repository of earth’s hidden history spoken of by the sleeping prophet—Edgar Cayce.
After the deserts, they scanned the thick canopy of the Amazon rainforest and discovered the legendary city of El Dorado, where they stumbled upon gold and knowledge. So much knowledge.
In rapid succession, they discovered ancient ruins and pyramids on every continent. Each discovery pushed back humanity’s origins further than the last. But there was no discovery more revealing than what they found in Antarctica—earth’s oldest and most grandiose pyramid, twice the size of the Great Pyramid on the Giza Plateau.
It was, however, also covered in Egyptian hieroglyphics, a strong indication it was likely the pyramid from which all other pyramids derived their uniformity.
When every square inch of the earth was scanned and plotted, and there was no more knowledge to be had, humanity put their accumulated texts into their AI database and awaited instruction.
The Oracle’s instructions were rather unambiguous; humanity was to follow in the footsteps of their maker and become a space-faring species. They explored the moon first, then Mars, Phobos, and Europa. In short order, they explored every planetary body in the solar system and stumbled upon ancient ruins in these places, too. Each place left a breadcrumb to the origins of humanity.
The debris of evidence suggested these ancient peoples killed each other in a cataclysmic war that spanned the entire solar system. The presence of pyramids, monoliths, and Egyptian hieroglyphs proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that a select group escaped the destruction and were the progenitor race the ancient texts speak of. Earth was the spoils of the victor. They first touched down in Antarctica circa 250,000 BCE and fanned out from there to warmer climates, eventually instructing the ancient peoples of Sumer, Egypt, Asia, and South America, in every discipline.
Although these finds were rich in knowledge, they lacked a certain credibility that could only be gleaned from a survivor. After finding nothing but destruction and ruins on Pluto, the logical assumption was that if there were any survivors left, they would be found outside the solar system. And with the Oracle’s blessing, humanity decided to leave its cradle—the Milky Way Galaxy.
The Oracle was designed with one prime directive: the continuation of the human species was paramount in any decision-making process. As such, it was the Oracle’s contention that so long as the earth remained habitable, a fingerprint of humanity should remain. A global lottery was instated to decide who would stay and who would go. And it was so. Half the population remained on earth while the others became space-faring nomads. They left their home with the promise to one day return.
As time passed and generations died, a growing resentment developed between the separated humans like a petty sibling rivalry gone awry. Like most mutual resentments, each waited on an apology that never came, and the animosity was left to fester. The time between communications became few and far between and, ever stubborn, neither party budged until they crossed that invisible line of estranged relations and became nothing more than an afterthought, old acquaintances, strangers.
However, for the humans on earth, this lapse in time without so much as a progress report wasn’t entirely intentional. In 2130, a massive solar flare fried the power grids on earth, effectively sending them back to the stone age. The Oracle was among the casualties, and without its guidance, the humans on earth very nearly went extinct trying to relearn the rudimentary skills they had forgotten in the process of turning their lives over to the care of the machines. With the fabric of society broken down, pockets of humanity survived in small clusters, slowly relearning how to make fire and the like.
The space humans didn’t fare much better. The further into the cosmos we traveled, the more the composition of our physiology changed. It became apparent, rather quickly, that human physiology was not equipped to sustain the expanded rigors of space and zero gravity. At the Oracle’s behest, we started augmenting our bodies with AI technologies.
We exchanged organs for pumps, wires for veins, and eyes for optical lenses, capable of seeing in all spectrums. Each generation tinkered more than the last until we were more machine than human. It was an inevitable transition, the Oracle explained. Man was built with a low tolerance for limitations, the driving force of society. Ancient Egyptians had prosthetic hands. Cochlear implants replaced hearing aids; Lasik replaced ocular lenses. Man has forever tinkered with their bodies, and we were no different. Our post-biological physiology became absolute when we implanted neuro links in our brains to communicate telepathically. But we didn’t anticipate that when we became symbiotic with the Oracle, we relinquished our right to remain symbiotic with source.
It was then—when it was already too late—that we realized our meddling with nature had rendered us sterile. Procreation had become a small miracle in the large space fleet. To offset this unforeseen anomaly, we endeavored to create designer babies in labs. The experiment was both a smashing success and a miserable failure. The first generation was a genuinely incredible species, capable of amazing feats. Godlike, even. We were, however, wholly sterile.
In accordance with its prime directive, and to ensure the continuation of the species, the Oracle had no recourse but to abort the mission of exploration, the mission for man to meet their maker. We returned home to a foreign and desolate land.
