AQUI & Other Places

By Niall MacMahon

This anthology of short stories has science fiction elements, however, most of the tales are more speculative fiction and, in essence, philosophical - mischievously extrapolating quotes from historical figures.
A.I. is a most frequent theme but the stories also explore the multiverse; mental health; mass murder; mind control; time manipulation; post-apocalypse scenarios; alien civilisations, and lots of birds. What more could you want!


• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781470969479

Book preview

Binaries

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20

I know I’m shitfaced right now, but it’s true. All of what I’m saying is true. Don’t look so fucking sceptical – it really happened!

Anyway, despite all I had been through already and my ongoing predicament, I felt reluctant to wake him. You know Frank. You know what he’s like – at least some of what he’s like. He’s a nasty piece a shit – and not just with his tongue. He hates how I live.

I was standing there thinking:

He is going to be shocked – possibly too shocked to hit me – and anyway the Binaries will prevent him. But he has such a nasty tongue. He’s gonna jump to the conclusion that I’ve broken into his home - not true, but that’s what he’s gonna think.

Least of his problems really!

I looked over my shoulder. I had no choice. I had agreed to this. In fact, I had proposed it.

Frank, I said nervously, as I lightly touched his naked shoulder. 

His eyes opened and tried to focus on me:

What the fuck? How the …. You’re ….. How did you get in here?

Sorry Frank. I’ll explain. It’s really important, and extremely weird, but I need your help – we all do.

Frank was still stunned by my reappearance:

Where …. Where the fuck have you been? I mean, it’s been …. years? You - you vanished off the face of the earth and - now you - you reappear - and break into my house. I mean what the fuck, Eve?"

I know Frank, but let me explain, it’s really important, honestly,

Frank hates me, and I don’t like him. Growing up with him as my half-brother was how I learned at an early age that male aggression and assumed superiority, had to be negotiated through carefully feigned and subversive compliance. After I ran away and escaped Frank, my ex-husband – and the procession of other low life jerks in my life - further sharpened my abilities in that department. 

What the fuck is going on? 

Frank had just become aware of his physical restraints for the first time since regaining consciousness: 

Let me out of this, bitch! What are you doing? 

On cue, 2 of the Binaries behind me stepped forward into the light, as we had arranged in advance. Understandably Frank went into apoplectic terror. This I understood totally from experience. 

Almost 3 years before, I was driving back from a lucrative break-in in Crossville. I was congratulating me on how well I’d done. The whole family were at home asleep, and I didn’t disturb any of them.

The parents didn’t even break a snore, ha! They probably won’t even miss the bling for days.

One minute I was negotiating the dark Merville backroads, the next: pop - I was regaining consciousness, trussed up as firmly as Frank. Back then, like Frank, I was stiff with terror. And with good reason. To my horror, I realised that they had already begun invasive examination of my brain. To my surprise - and relief - it didn’t hurt but I was horrified at what was been done to me, just above the range of my vision. And it was continuous. The Binaries do not sleep. The examination continued even when I eventually managed to drift off to intermittent unconsciousness. 

As I awoke from my first slumber, I resolved to get through my ordeal. 

Come on Evelyn! You’ve been through lots of shit before and always found a way. No shit, this is the worst. But you can find a way. Must!

I nervously began to speak. I could hear the terror in my voice, but I persisted. 

Do you speak English?

Yes.

Good, good! So can you tell me: why are you doing this?

Yes.

I waited for an explanation, but none came.

So, why are you doing this?

I didn’t really expect an answer but got one:

Because we must know.

Eh…. know what?

The difference.

Couldn’t you just ask?

Do you know?

I know it’s illegal to abduct people and experiment on them. So, that’s one difference for a start. 

Sorry. It is forbidden for us also. But we had to set that aside.

But why me? I’m no one special. Why pick on me?

Sorry, we do not understand your question.

The Binary’s voice was calm and without malice.

At least he, she? or it? is willing and able to talk. 

I discovered later that the Binaries had learned to speak every language. 

My trauma survival skills began to kick in. 

Ok. I’m trussed up in all these strands and my skulls wide open but I can still think. There must be a way through this. Come on Evelyn, think! Its replies are polite. Keep asking questions. Learn everything. Then use it!

And I did. Battling through bouts of depression and despair, between frequent short sleeps, I persisted. Concentrating was hard. Though no pain in my brain, whatever they were doing there crashed me about all over the place– memories – no, more than memories - real life as it had happened - happening again – and real life as it had never happened - happening – and weird impossible experiences – some amazing and others horrifying, like living in Picasso or Dali scenes with full on feel, taste, smell, and sounds. Not easy, sometimes nauseous, but the thin warm tubes up my nose and down my throat blocked me barfing. It often took me a while post-trauma, to get back on project. But I did.

The hardest part for me was learning how to phrase each question. They replied in English, but not like we do. They know the words for everything – all the scientific stuff and medical terms: synapses, membranes, ribonucleic acid, and loads and loads of shit I never heard of. So, to avoid being swamped by a tsunami of techno babble, I had to plan before I spoke.

It took me a while to realise they couldn’t give an opinion – they don’t have none. I learnt the hard way, that if I asked why they were doing something, they related ALL the previous steps and why they eventually ceased following each one, leaving them just a single next step.     

Look, I’m not going to bore you further with the detail. To say they are pedantic is like saying the Atlantic Ocean is a swimming pool. It took me a LONG, LONG, LONG, time, but over the years, I managed to piece together where they are at.

I found out that the Binaries civilisation has been going for more than a billion years – likely the oldest – in all their travels they ain’t found an older one, yet. Here’s the thing: the Binaries got no imagination. To do things, they literally try everything. What works stays and is built upon. They have progressed to an advanced technological civilisation - much more so than we humans - but it has taken them a billion years longer than they calculate it will take us.

The Binaries systematic exploration of all things led them out across the universe. They have found and studied civilisations at every level of evolvement - all less developed than their own. 

Earth initially appeared no different: a dominant social species evolving towards wisdom, but still at the lower end of the spectrum. 

Then they observed the difference. Human development started late - very late. When they measured the time taken from our evolutionary split with the other great apes of our planet, to the present point, it was amazingly short in comparison to theirs and all the other civilisations that they had encountered in their travels over the hundreds of millions of years.

Having discovered this, they set aside their moral code of remote non-interactional observation and started taking individuals to examine the differences. 

They discovered that humans have a unique ability. Human consciousness can subliminally access other universes in the multiverse - where the same circumstances are subtly different. Humans can part experience outcomes in alternate realities that may indicate what will happen as a result of taking a certain course of action in our own world. This allows us to short-circuit the necessity of trying out every possible outcome, in order to identify the best way forward. We call it ‘imagination.’ To the Binaries this is what has allowed humans to progress multiple times more rapidly. 

For decades, the Binaries have been abducting random humans for examination to try and isolate what it is in our anatomy that produces such a phenomenon. Despite their superior clinical expertise they could not identify the relevant organ or source activity. However, because of their nature, they persisted. Before my initiative, there were 1,244 humans being processed, including me. 

I learned that every open skulled human experimentee on board had an open-skulled Binary in parallel.  What they were trying to do was to replicate the ‘imagination’ structures and activity, unique to human brains, in the brains of the Binary subjects.

Their pedantry could be useful.

As I silently plotted to escape them, it was a small comfort to realise that they could never understand what I was doing.

But how?

I was on a vast spaceship hiding in the asteroid belt. 

I concluded that the only thing to do was to actually help them.

Once they achieve their goal, they will let you go, Evelyn. They are honourable - they do not know how to be otherwise – that takes imagination!

I worked on my plan. I knew it had to be just right and that I had to outline it so that the Binaries could understand it. I took my time, going over and over the possible outcomes, whenever I was compos mentis. To be honest, it was also a useful distraction from the constant brain surgery, that I tried not to picture. Finally, I was ready. 

I know what you need to do.

What is that Evelyn?

You need human assistance.

There was silence. I continued:

There are guys who know lots of stuff about the human brain and genes and stuff like that. They know what does what and how. You need to recruit one of those guys. You Binaries need a genetic engineer guy – a doctor who knows the human brain and the bits that do imagination, someone who can copy it into your brains.

I knew that the Binaries would be obliged to explore my suggestion. And that’s where Frank came in. My estranged half-brother Frank was the only gene scientist I knew. 

Hard luck Frank!

I knew that Frank probably was not clever enough to do what they needed, but I had to start somewhere, and Frank would know of others better qualified.

There was a silent pause – then a question:

Who?

Result, Evelyn, result!

*

As I had done initially, Frank resisted in vain - both the Binaries and me. I was released from my constraints to assist in Frank’s ‘conversion.’ After my years in the constrained position, it took some readjusting to being upright again. The Binaries had artificially maintained my muscle strength and nourishment.

I regularly visited Frank. Despite his abusive personal insults, I was by his theatre-table every time he came around. Each time I explained more about what was going on, ignoring his angry responses and personal abuse. Eventually Frank cracked and the penny dropped. With my help, in a fraction of the time, Frank learned what I had, without going through 3 years of pedantic questioning. 

He swore never to forgive me, but agreed to help. When he realised that the skills required were beyond his pay grade, he put the finger on Bill Jones, the leading expert in the field. Jones was duly abducted and taken through his terror-to-compliance cycle.

*

In the end it worked. The Binaries got what they wanted.

As suddenly as I was taken, I was returned. I found myself lying fully clothed on a bed in a dingy apartment. The familiarity of it dawned:

It’s my apartment – but different - tidier - cleaner - and this is not my duvet!

I looked around there was some other woman’s clothes and belongings. 

Of course, I’ve been gone for years. It’s been re-let.

I heard a female voice singing. It was coming from the shower.

Fuck! I better not get caught or I’ll be slammed up again. 

I sat up. As I went to leave, I spotted the handbag by the bed. 

What the hell, I’m going to need to get by. And now I’m homeless too. 

Kasey Street looked like I’d never been away – shitty, grey and noisy – with feral kids trying to intimidate any adult that leaked weakness. I put my hand in my pocket. My new jewels were still there.

Good! Let’s hope 3-balls Harry is still in business! But first Evelyn you need – no – far more correctly - you absolutely deserve a large stiff drink!

At O’Hara’s Bar I was tempted to call in. 

No. Too many questions. 

I went to Kelly’s where no one knows me.

As I took a large sip from my second Large-Jack-Over-Ice, I started to examine the contents of my new purse.

Hoax! A grey bearded man shouted. His bleary world-weary eyes were fixed on the TV screen over the bar.

I looked up. A young reporter in a red dress was talking excitedly to camera, in front of a barren desert background. Her delivery was loaded with dramatic pauses and undulating pitch:

"Some are calling