Waiting for Summer

By JC Alva

Man has been experimenting with Alien technology, and has gained the ability to travel to space using mind probe experiments. Aaron is a cadet that gets caught between the organization he is serving and a breakaway faction of the military that has been monitoring his ability to travel across the universe, wanting to re-establish contact with an alien race. JC Alva brings you a fast-paced, action-packed short story, that brings you to different planets and alien worlds, the conflict between two opposing forces vying for the alien technology that will either bring long-lasting war or peace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JC Alva
• Release date: Jan 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215257968

Book preview

Waiting for Summer

JC Alva

Published by JC Alva, 2023.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Waiting For Summer | By | JC Alva

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To my Wife Rosanna

May she never have to experience the cold of winter life, and enjoy the warmth of the family she loves.

Waiting For Summer

By

JC Alva

Aaron, a twenty-one-year-old, wearing an all-white body-hugging suit, is floating in the middle of a large clear sphere, in a lotus position with his eyes closed. 

His breathing is slow and rhythmic. His face is relaxed and emotionless. He could feel his heartbeat pumping blood throughout his body. Slowly, his mind floats and he begins to lose all senses of his physical body.

His mind brings him through a swirling tunnel of light. He can see the end of the tunnel’s light. As he gets closer to the tunnel’s end, the white light slowly turns to sky blue. As his mind lifts towards the sky, he could see the earth’s horizon slowly fading as he passes through mists of clouds.

The blue sky slowly fades to the black of night as he breaks through the atmosphere, he sees the glow of the blue planet with a thin shiny layer of atmosphere he is leaving behind. He continues upwards towards the darkened space as stars start to glow before him.

His speed increases as the planets and their moons go by and he begins to leave the solar system behind.

Countless stars are all around him as he continues, as he sees the edge of the milky way, watching the rotation of the stars in a spiral formation that clusters into brighter concentrations of light in the center.

He starts floating with the motion of all the stars in the milky way.

His mind slowly brings him closer to a cluster of stars on the outer rim as he goes through bright colorful Magellantic and nebulas gas formations that form bright reddish fire colors to turquoise blue, whose shadows overlap lap one another and free-floating asteroids.

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Some are as small as a few meters across, others as large as small cities.

As he nears the cluster of stars, he homes in on a particular star at the center. He starts to see the orbiting planets and their moons. Some planets were dry and cold, made mostly of rock and metals, while the other planets were gas giants with violent storms.

His mind brings him down to the surface of each planet where he could see dry river beds of rust-red iron-rich soil, or acid rain clouds pouring on deep mountain ranges and thunderous lightning to violent volcanic eruptions hurling vast amounts of fiery molten material and gasses into the planet’s atmosphere.

His mind floats effortlessly through the planets like a probe and takes in all visual data from each planet.

The fourth planet from the star has a blue-green surface with almost earth-like raging oceans. His mind descends on the planet, going through the upper thin atmosphere.

He makes a low orbit around the planet seeing vast tidal waves and islands with beaches as vast as Earth’s biggest deserts. The islands at the equator of the planet had green and purple plant-like life forms in vast numbers that they can be seen from low orbit. 

He slows down his mind’s flight as he picks out one of the smaller islands with the purple and green life forms. 

He slowly lands on the soft sandy surface of the island’s beach.

He could feel the texture of the sand and could hear the familiar beach sound of waves breaking the surface as he looks into the dark blue liquid of the seas of the planet.

He turns around to walk past the beach and into the rock formations that had green and purple life forms on their jagged surface.

The green organisms were plant-like, with tiny round leaves sticking out of their 10-centimeter-long bodies that have latched themselves onto the surface of the rock.

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The purple organisms resemble more like mushrooms, with single large purple heads and slim white stems that have attached themselves to the more shaded areas of the rocks.

As Aaron’s left eye focused on the green organism, his right eye would turn into a magnifying scope that automatically made measurements, scans, and material analyses of the organisms.

Aaron notices slight movement made by the green organisms. He reaches out his hand to touch one of them, and to his surprise, it reacted to the movement of his fingertips.

He continued to lightly caress the organism and it swayed and reacted to his every touch. Suddenly, on the corner of the view field of his left eye, he could see a flashing message.

MIND PROBE ERROR.

Seconds later, Aaron’s hand holding the green organism starts to vanish, and he is pulled upwards towards the sky and away from the planet.

The planet quickly shrinks as he returns back into the darkness of space. He sees all the stars moving away from him as his mind travels back through the light tunnel of space and time.

A brief darkness came upon his mind. Then, slowly light emerges with indistinguishable sounds of two women talking.

Aaron was lying in a clear cylinder with sensors attached to his head. The cylinder was mechanically brought to a 45-degree angle, and the clear glass half of the cylinder slides opened to its side.

His eyes slowly opened to a blurry sight of white light, as two lady technicians, wearing all-white jumpsuits, elastic gloves, and transparent face shields came beside Aaron, who was beginning to wake.

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The technicians were at glass panels beside the cylinder where they were monitoring his vitals.

Welcome back Aaron. Do you feel any pain?

Aaron widens his eyes slowly, lifts his right hand over his face, looks at his hand, and starts feeling his fingertips with his thumb.

I felt it...

One of the lab technicians hears Aaron’s words and asks

Felt what?  Are you in pain?

Aaron shakes his head slowly

No. I’m not in pain. I felt what I found up there...

The two lab techs look at Aarron, then at each other, and smiled.

Sometimes our mind journeys make us believe we feel things, but we don’t.

said one of the lab technicians, and starts removing the lighted wireless sensors around Aaron’s head while the other lab tech scans a display panel, checking on the downloaded data from his mind journey.

Looks like you went further this time...Was there any interference on your way?

Aaron sits up and flexes his neck from side to side.

Not really, in fact, the journey seemed flawless, much clearer than the last ones. I seemed to have traveled much faster this time.

One of the technicians assists Aaron to get off the clear cylinder. His legs were still wobbly as Aaron tries to balance himself on the flat shiny white floor. 

Aaron steadies himself by holding on to the clear cylinder from where he emerged. He sees several other pods, dimly lit from inside each casing where other subjects were still in mind probe states.

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Am I the first one out?

Aaron asks as he is accompanied by one of the technicians across the large dome filled with cylinder capsules all lined up like a vast capsule farm.

Aaron sees another capsule flashing its lights, and another pair of technicians briskly walked towards another awakening cadet.

As soon as the technicians opens the other capsule, Aaron could hear a familiar voice cursing and complaining to the other two lab techs assisting him.

Is that Dan Winslow?

A robotic wheelchair glides across the floor toward them.

Yes Aaron, you’re the first one. You usually are, and yes, that’s Cadet Dan Winslow.

Aaron hears the continuous complaining of Cadet Dan Winslow as he looks up at a large glass window of a viewing deck, where more technicians were monitoring a large number of capsules in the chamber.

He sees a familiar face of an older woman smiling down at him. He waves at the familiar face just before he sits down on the motorized wheelchair to bring him out of the large facility. 

Dan Winslow sees Aaron and starts yelling

Hey, Aaron! You beat me again to the given sector! Next time Aaron, I’ll be the first one there! You got that!?

Aaron’s lab tech adjusts his footrests on the wheelchair and says

Pay No attention to him Aaron, He’s just a bitter little spoiled brat that lacks attention. He is just envious of your mind probe record. I feel sorry for the lab techs that have to take his shit every time he wakes up from the mind probe journeys.

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The wheelchair brings him to a long all-white corridor. He tries to keep his eyes closed and shields his eyes that were not yet used to the bright lights.

A door to his left silently opens and his wheelchair takes him into his private rest quarters. The built-in A.I. of the room sounds off a robotic woman’s voice on the room speakers.

Welcome back Aaron...

His room is all white and minimalist. A circular window, a single bed with a side table and digital clock, a work desk, a chromed chair, and a smoked glass door leading to a toilet and bath. 

He stands and walks towards his work desk and taps its surface. A thin monitor elevates out of the back of the work desk and starts displaying the date, time, year, and weather conditions.

Aaron taps the monitor to check for messages.

Music please...

The room’s AI answers... Please specify

Classic...Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis

The music begins and he adjusts his seat closer to his desk. He begins sliding his fingers on the screen as he browses through his messages.

One particular message catches his eye. He points to a particular message on his list. Jackie. He double-taps on her name and a video recording came out of the screen.

A beautiful young lady with black wavy hair and deep green eyes appears on the monitor. Smiling at the camera with voices of other young girls in the background flirtatiously giggling while Jackie tries to fend off her friends trying to get her attention.

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Hello, Aaron! You have to forgive my friends here; they came over without telling me, and now asking me to go with them to The Babylon.

Aaron could hear Jackie’s friends talking about other boys at the club in the background.

Looks like they really decided that they won’t leave until I change my mind to go with them. Anyway, I miss you so much and I hope to see you soon!

Her friends started teasing her about Aaron, one of them even stepping into camera view to say

Hey Aaron! you have no idea what Jackie here tells us about you!

Then a sudden blast of laughter from the young girls made Jackie fight for her space in front of the camera. Jackie gets back into view and stables the camera.

Sorry about that. Jenny’s really crazy! Anyway, hope to see you as soon as you get home from the base. I know you’ll have to go through a lot before they give you leave, but I’ll just be here...waiting.

Jackie put the tip of two fingers on her lips, kisses them, and taps the camera with the same two fingers. She winks and her lips say I Love You silently.

The message ends with a frozen picture of Jackie.  Aaron felt smiled and felt exited  to be released from the base.

He stands up and walks to the wheelchair and presses a button on its right armrest. The wheelchair turns around and moves towards the door

Reviews for Waiting for Summer

[Joselito Alvarado · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's the type of Sci-fi story that is based on ongoing world conflicts and logically fits in what could actually happen in the near future. It maintains the basic human elements needed as an ingredient to a well-balanced Story.