FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Manaaki held the hand of Airini, his wife, tightly as they sat cross-legged next to each other on the heaps of sea-colored pillows in the monumental meeting-house for the hui that the... well.... He didn't know what the proper names of the creatures that stretched themselves out like noodles before them were.

The taniwha that had greeted them had been joined by one of the two that had spent the time since he'd awoken dispensing drinks and food to anyone brave enough to approach the counter they were behind. The bartender and its assistant were silent, letting the one that had shortened its unpronounceable name to Soma do the talking until now. The eerie golden eyes of the mute servers never blinking once. An unsettling appearance only compounded by the lack of pupils to show what they were looking at. If they were robots or some other kind of artificial construction, they were amazing ones far beyond the ability of anyone on Earth to create. Aliens.

It did not seem to matter what was asked of them, as with deft movements of the whiskers growing from the tips of their noses they granted any request made. Feeling over the cups, plates, taps, and ovens in a way that reminded Manaaki of earthworms working their way above ground in a blind quest for tactile stimuli. It made him think twice before drinking the tea in the mug on the table next to him and Airini. Not only because he found it impossible to credit that it had come pouring out of a tap that just seconds before had dispensed the beer that one of the Japanese were drinking with shaking hands. But also because he would have to let go of his wife's grasp to use both hands to pick up the substantial wooden cup. Afraid that letting go might sweep them out into the strange currents that they had found themselves surrounded by or that they might have to flee at a moment's notice. There were just so many things that could befall them that it would be best to be on the alert if they had a chance to react to unforeseen aggression. The slight tremor in her grip telling him that she felt the same without having to share a glance.

The American woman, Patricia Moreau, who was sounding shriller by the hour as she responded to her kidnapping by drinking heartily, unleashed her latest protest at what had been told them. Manaaki and Airini were trying not to lose sight of the fact that they felt they'd been expecting to end up on this island in their disorientation upon appearing here. Although not knowing to what end yet, they knew that this served a purpose that they should let be heard before they passed judgement on what had brought them thousands of kilometers from their comfortable home and their family. They shared looks with another couple that seemed to be kindred spirits of theirs. If their equitable manner and the stoic expressions they conveyed were anything to go by. Not everyone seemed to readily accept their present circumstances.

Manaaki was a large man covered in Maori tribal tattoos. He easily dwarfed his slim wife of forty-five years as they nodded to the elderly couple from Micronesia who were of similar minds to theirs. Lives fulfilled, they desired nothing more than to commit themselves to what had so enticed them in their dreams for the months leading up to this day. A promise that they would be given a chance to provide a splendid service to the oceans that had they had cherished all their lives.

"You bring us here and hold us against our will, based on what we said in our dreams? Like, what the hell?"

"So'waa'Ma'wae will not allow you to be kept from your units for more than two sun-moon cycles if you do not desire to campaign for this mission. But in that time, you and the other ninety-nine relatives are encouraged to think over what is being told."

"Tidak ada seorang pun di sini adalah keluarga saya. Beri tahu kami mengapa menculik kami akan menyelamatkan dunia!" Shouted a dark-skinned woman in words that Manaaki didn't understand, even if Soma and its companion did. The golden-eyed taniwha replying in what he heard as English, but what the woman seemed to hear in her own tongue. Airini had been the one to notice the peculiarity first before catching on himself. She always had been the quicker of the two of them.

"You have been gathered here, after the extensive interactions you had had with us in your dreams because you have agreed to cooperate with us in salvaging the oceans of this world. The future of this planet is entirely dependent on your actions and whether you will cooperate in a way that guarantees the continued existence of humanity.

"On land, my kindred are leading millions of individuals across the world in the final attempt to get humankind to alter their behaviors and band together for a common purpose. Unfortunately, many lives will have to end before this occurs, given the nature of your species. As significant as these acts will be, the actions undertaken on dry land will only be one small part of the puzzle you must solve to demonstrate that you are ready to manage this world. You have yet to develop the potential of humanity in a manner that is fully conscious of the preciousness of life. Your species is not the only one that is dependent on your choices. In time, Earth will be a host for no less than three other species capable of answering the question that you yourselves struggle with. What am I?

"The hundred of you, and the nine hundred more spread across the world, are unique. While those chosen by us to become Children of the Egg to manufacture a desirable outcome for the dominant species do so without their choice in the matter. Each of you will have to decide whether you willingly wish to participate in ensuring the future of not only the human species but of those who may one day be aided by your distant descendants.

"It is vital that you understand what is being asked of you. We have come to salvage this world from the pernicious curve it is currently set upon. Of secondary concern to us is the saving of the human species. Less optimal outcomes will result if you fail, and we are required to eliminate your species for others to ascend to dominancy in this world. If that must come to pass, the unnecessary risk of this region of the universe being rendered sterile and barren by those that will exist far in the future will increase. If, instead, humans prove themselves capable of correction, and the world coalesces around a singular vision, this galaxy that you inhabit will be much richer for it. Earth will thrive in ways that you will have never imagined.

"I can assure you that we do not desire the loss of life that this will require. However, we have judged that a satisfactory outcome for all is possible through the application of independent thought and will with this nudge from us now. As opposed to complete domination of all life forms within the scope of the Virgo Supercluster in which you reside for millions of years.

"The human species will find our machinations intolerable and blame us for the atrocities that you will inflict upon yourselves in the coming millennia. As regrettable as that is, you must understand that we are acting in the best interests of life and future development across a span of both space and time that you will never be able to fully comprehend as humans.

"The less of you that remain to volunteer for this delicate balancing act, the greater the chances are that the human species will be removed. There will be no replacements for the thousand among you chosen. You are it. And you only have forty-two hours remaining here, and a further one week after the return to your domiciles, to come to a decision in whether you will participate in deciding the future of more lives than you can possibly count within the span of your lives. The window to preventing the vast majority of undesirable outcomes closes after that time."

"Mais..."

"What's the rub?"

"Alisin mo ako dito!"

"What are these Children of the Egg?"

"What's happening in the world?"

"Why are we so special?"

"What do we have to do?"

"Anata wa shinryaku-shadesu! D?sureba anata o shinrai dekimasu ka?"

"This is fucked, mate! People are going to die because of what you've done, and you want us to go along with it?"

"Pourquoi tu nous racontes tout ça? N'y a-t-il pas un autre moyen pour vous de réparer ce que vous dites que nous faisons mal?"

Ripples of light played over the taniwha. First on the golden-eyed one, and then its more personable companion that didn't behave like a living PowerPoint presentation. With infinite patience, the two worked through all the concerns shouted at them.

"We indeed remember agreeing to come here, but they still have not told us how we can help in the middle of the ocean."

Manaaki leaned over, seeking Airini's opinion in Maori.

"I do not think it hard to guess why we were brought to this island. Remember the garbage on the beach. A visual reminder that there is plenty about this world that is falling into ruin. Perhaps, they intend to encourage us to take action in a way that nations can or will not."

"Why haven't they done it themselves? This place was created, and we were all brought here, if we are actually here and not dreaming in our beds, with magic, it seems. Why do they need to convince us?"

"Hmm..." Airini hummed in thought. "Perhaps it is important that we undertake this journey ourselves. I think we cannot be made to travel the path that we are being shown without affecting the outcome."

"Do you think that we're being lied to? Manipulated?"

She shrugged. "They very well could be playing with us. Would we ever know otherwise if they were? They seem to be able to do things that are far beyond our understanding. What would be the difference to us between fact and fantasy with creatures that have such power?"

"Why don't you just make everything perfect for the future if you are all so powerful?" Patricia pushed. "What could we even do if we wanted? I think we're all for saving the future here. I remember telling my dead father in my dreams that I would. Which I suppose was you, you fucking assholes. Or the fake memories that I had agreed to this! Can we even know what is real and what is an illusion?"

"Strictly speaking, no, you cannot. If we were to bend your thoughts to a desirable end, it would be no different to you than if you had made those decisions of your own independent will."

Patricia picked up her alcohol and glugged away for a minute before putting it down and wiping her mouth to respond. Manaaki was beginning to wonder if the woman could even remain conscious much longer.

"Well, fuck me then, huh? What if I told you that I don't want to betray the oath I took to the United States of America by aligning myself with aliens that are probably not interested in my country's concerns? Are you going to erase my memories? Mind control me? Delete me like the rest of the human species if we don't do what you want us to do? Do we have a choice in this at all?"

"So'waa'Ma'wae asks with you to trust that what is told is truth. So'waa'Ma'wae can sense in each of you the ghost needed to embrace your waters and heal them and shakes hand with you all. The Golden-Eyed Ones first appeared in our waters four thousand seven hundred thirty and one tides in the past. Preparing us for this day when we help the hu-mans so that they can in turn help who they are scheduled to in the prime-time slot. Is okay? We help you help, hu-mans?"

"Bakit patuloy na nakikipag-usap sa amin na para bang hindi tayo tao?"

"Because, if you agree to work with us, you won't be for much longer. You will become like So'waa'Ma'wae. Which is why I am invited. To help you slip on your new shoes, as we believe you say. This will be great fun to be a lifeform that makes waters safe for all, yes?"

Patricia led the way as two-thirds of the people gathered leapt to their feet and ran screaming from the pavilion at that response. Never had Manaaki heard something horrifying expressed in such blithe cheerful words. This thing had just stood there and told them that they would have to destroy themselves to save the world. A slow-rolling sense of nausea churned in the man's stomach. It was a concept that was too large for him to understand there and then. How could he possibly be anything but human? Who would he be if he wasn't human, Maori, New Zealander, Manaaki Paewai?

"We will not stop you from any action that you desire beyond maintaining your presence on this island for the remaining time that is allotted you to encourage decision making." Manaaki, Airina, and thirty others were on their feet in alarm as the creature that Manaaki decided to call Cthulhu, for the horrifying things it seemed to be promising, projected its breathy echoing voice from unseen speakers as the other humans fled to hide.

"So'waa'Ma'wae will fiddle until your return, please! All food and yummy adulterants are to be created here, she begs you to remember!" The creature that had now identified herself as female added. Calling after those fleeing in terror. Bursts and waves of color flashing across the scales covering her body in patterns that seemed to have meaning far beyond the ability of the humans present to decode.

"Please be assured that you will not undergo this metamorphosis until you expressly indicate that you wish to do so at the end of the forty-eight-hour plus two-week period of reflection. For those of you already considering the possibility, neither the food, drink nor any device we create or bring here at your request will act as an agent of change through subterfuge."

"What makes you think that we'd ever agree to...to...transforming into this!" an Australian man asked, waving his hand at Soma after hours of trying to understand what was being asked of them. Her tendrils rising to make a complex series of movements with different colors blinking on the bulbs capping her whiskers in sequence. Whatever that meant. Was she offended?

"Why...would...be...this?" The frail elderly woman from Micronesia asked in haltingly accented English.

"Stop these...hustles, Golden-Eyed Ones. Please distribute the understanders." Soma halted what the old islander was about to say next when she turned her head in mid-sentence to address the creature that had its tail draped across hers. An invitation to present a gift that neatly solved all the continuing linguistic problems, as it turned out.

With their odd sinuous gait, Cthulhu returned to the bar counter to curl a whisker around the handle of a wooden case that it delivered to the table the few remaining had clustered around. Facilely finding room around the rim of the table with the scene of a leopard seal diving beneath an ice floe. Poking the case, it flipped the lid open to reveal hundreds of little cubicles beside thin narrow devices. Snapping one cubby hole open, the creature pressed its tendril against a pair of the minuscule, coiled objects that looked like the kinds of devices nearly everyone had in their ears lately to Manaaki.

"If you insert these in your ears, the different languages being spoken will be made comprehensible. Please do not be reluctant to take a pair yourself, Senior Chief Moreau. They are quite harmless."

The woman, who had been the first to lead the others into the woods, shook her head as she edged back into the pavilion. Keeping the other humans between her and the creatures who watched with no evident expressions on their faces. Just bursts of color cascading across their bodies to show...something.

Airini, keeping her thoughts to herself, felt that wasn't a courageous gesture on the woman's part as would befit a Navy sailor. She would have thought the Yanks were better than that but judging on the actions of one was a bit small of her. The taniwha had said they were the best humanity had to offer and the ones most likely to succeed in what was being asked of them. If that was the best of the human species, the future must be as dismal as was hinted at. Perhaps the creature was referring to other qualities than valor in its comments.

Airini and her husband both agreed that the number of one thousand seemed to be an arbitrary one, as was the declaration that there would be no replacements. They didn't doubt that they were being told the truth, but neither did they suspect that this was meant to exert pressure on them to agree within the time frame being forced upon them.

How could these aliens possibly think that they could make a choice to become something else in only one week? That would only make sense if...

"What do you know that we don't about what is happening right now? We aren't asking the right questions, are we?"

Cthulhu, Manaaki's apt name for it beginning to catch on, gaped its mouth open in what Airini was starting to suspect was a smile. Revealing the staggering number of teeth arranged in dual rows within its maw.

"You are correct in your supposition that you are not." It replied while one of Soma's whiskers touched its head and stroked the fins growing from its spine before winding with one of its own antennas. "Knowing that, what would you like to know?"

"Pourquoi devons-nous devenir autre chose to volunteer for this duty that you have dangled before us? We are all here because we feel bound to defend and understand the oceans, so why can't we do that as humans? What advantage does becoming... whatever you may be, give us? This is horrible! You are asking us to become inhuman. How can we ever accept becoming an animal? We would be turning our backs on what we are!"

Manaaki was glad that he had taken the chance on the 'understanders.' Of course, anything and everything that was being told or shown them may have been a warped illusion. But thinking along those patterns would lead to questioning whether anything in his life had ever been ingenuous. Manaaki had to accept at some point that the creatures weren't spinning a yarn to trick them. It seemed to be vitally important to the creatures that everything was done willingly any road. Which would just have to be accepted at face value.

"Many questions that you are about to ask can be precluded by watching these global news streams. There are plenty of screens, and the remotes in the package with your translators can switch the channels at will. If you desire more information or consultation with others not present, you will find devices that you are all at least somewhat familiar with in each bungalow around the temporary colony. A pair of laptop computers and phones that will operate anywhere within the outer circle of structures if you choose to move them into another location, such as the lagoons. The only limitations for the safety of those who will return here to participate is that none of the devices can be used to find your location, and the phones will not receive incoming calls.

"None of your communications will be censored, although we will know all that you say or message as it is intrinsic to using our own capabilities in enabling these transmissions. After admittedly taking you out of your lives with warnings and agreement that you have not found acceptably constituting informed consent, Gaining your trust is something that we hope to achieve for the well-being of all in the time to come. We cannot stress enough the severity of your species' future and the necessity of the sacrifice you must make to amend it. We are only here to provide the human civilization with the capabilities to ensure its own well-being. If alternate methods become necessary, humanity will be removed to allow the next dominant species to assume primacy. We, as vast as our technological prowess has become, have discovered it is neither wise nor healthy to shepherd intelligent races through the entirety of their existences nor fix environments to conform to the best outcome without fair effort on the part of the species of concern."

"Yes!" Soma added, bobbing her head and dancing back and forth on her webbed paws. "It is as if a great creature has swum helplessly into a chasm. We help, we teach and release fish to find own way once more with chastising for doing dangerous, stupid thing. You smart enough to realize that if you fall into same chasm again, the Golden-Eyed Ones will not return as your friends with sensors reaching out to comfort."

It was a not-so-subtle reminder that the aliens that had brought all the humans here, Soma's Golden-Eyed Ones, were dubiously benevolent at best. At least, that is what Manaaki and the others thought until they began to watch the news broadcasts from around the world and saw the chaos consuming the rest of the human civilization. With seemingly none of the explanation or attempt to provide context that they were receiving.

They were stunned by the reaction of humans to first contact but somehow not all that surprised. Looting and civil strife dominated no matter what manner of news outlet they turned to, passing the control of the screens with their remotes around the table as each got their fill about their own nations.

Religious authorities pled for calm and faith as suicide numbers climbed to astronomic levels. The warning sent by the aliens, or some subset, that they had missed while being excluded from the broadcast on their island. The missiles' launching sent militaries into brief skirmishes as nations postured aggressively against each other with deadly saber-rattling. Indian, Pakistan, and China being particularly uneasy with the new status quo. Thousands dying as small-scale battles were waged.

Then there were the videos. The videos that made Manaaki's stomach twist and heave in sympathy with the people shown transforming. Just as they were being asked to do.

"It is important for you to remember, as you watch these scenes, that these people are undergoing these transformations without their consent and in condensed time frames that best serve the furtherment of humanity's interests."

"You are monsters! Absolute monsters!" Screamed Moreau, her already pale complexion now gray with horror.

"It is likely that the human species will not forgive what we have done this day for some number of years. That is if you accept this sacrifice and utilize the gifts we have granted you to better yourselves. Humans have shown that they cannot responsibly control the resources of a world by themselves. We are introducing a system of checks, and these newly introduced species mustn't be just peers of humanity. They must originate from humanity."

"This is tampering with our free will. Our happiness!"

"So'waa'Ma'wae would like to know if you are glad. So'waa'Ma'wae has observed drinking much e-thyl al-co-hol and does not think this process is strange to you."

"Are you calling me a drunk?!"

"So'waa'Ma'wae is. This, to our intuition, is not a symptom of happy. Even if not, ask Rieko and Eiken if they are happy with the taste of their waters. So'waa'Ma'wae has seen in the land and water interchange of this atoll what your idea of free will and happiness has led to. Nor do we think free will and happiness are as constant in this world as you presume. What good are these things if only for some and not others?"

Those who wore their translators tapped them as the elders from Micronesia spoke, the words of their local language seamlessly being fed directly into ears.

"Every year, we see more trash on our island and in our waters. Every year, more of our beaches are underwater. Our reefs are dying. The catch we rely on for food is failing. We are told we will have to leave, to move elsewhere. We are told by the scientists that come to our island that the change we have seen over our lives does not have natural causes. Rieko and I are not happy when we see the trash on our shores or when we must watch our clans sicken and waste away with the cancers brought by this garbage.

"We have already decided that we will volunteer. We will become the strange aliens and ensure the waters we remember as children will be there for our families. We will be proud to become protectors. For our way of life and our children, we will become these great sea creatures."

Rieko's wizened arms came up and around Eiken's shoulders as she made this pronouncement that left Manaaki and Airini deep in thought and leaning against each other. Moreau looked flabbergasted and made sputtering noises of protest.

"But...but you can't! You can't do this! It's just...not right! You'll be giving in!"

Airini came to their defense, even though the elderly couple did not need it with the implacable conviction that emerges with age in a life well-lived. Indignation and attempts to command thrown at them by the Yankee were met with the placid smiles of those who were sure of what their paths would be.

Cthulhu, Soma, and their mute companion, who'd seemed to have fallen asleep on the bar behind them, said and did nothing. Letting the scene play out between the humans. Many of the others paid scant attention and instead remained focused on the newscasts. Audio emanated from the area around the screens that had unfurled from the ceiling providing an unceasing din of background noise and drawing back a dozen of those who had fled earlier.

"It might be important to remember, Yank, that you have thrown in with a call to serve something greater than yourself, just as we are being asked here. Or is that uniform that you're wearing a costume that you're trying out for All Hallows' Eve?"

Brilliant explosions of light and a rumble that was only noticed by the rippling of the liquid in the mugs scattered in the pavilion served as an interjection by Soma as voices became heated. Grievances that went back to colonial times being aired along with traded accusations about cultures of arrogance and simplemindedness. Manaaki, the soft-hearted giant tattooed teddy bear that he was, tapped Airini's hand as the belligerent American became louder and more insistent with each drink of her mug that serving one's nation was different than taking directions from the stars.

"After all," Moreau had said, "what could aliens possibly know about human affairs that we didn't already? If international treaties and diplomacy failed to address planetary concerns that doing right by the natural world would cost the global economy too much to be of value. Well, then that is a human problem, isn't it? Something for our governments to solve. Not be solved for them."

"That would be true if your governments were interested in acting together to solve such problems. But we have yet to see any indication that is true, nor do we think it likely in this reality that we will see any without our intervention. While governments and industries proclaim their interest in dialog towards counteracting degradation in one breath, with the next, they issue orders designed to do anything but. In many cases exacerbating those same challenges.

"There is also the issue of time. Humans have simply run out of it, and we will not allow you to jeopardize the existence of other intelligent species, on a world particularly well suited to host life, to solve the problems that you have created for yourselves."

"Well, why didn't you act sooner then?!" one of the Japanese women said in exasperation. "Several times, you have hinted that you have some knowledge of the future. Why isn't that so here?"

"Despite what our brethren on land will tell their own charges, the computations necessary to know the future are formidably onerous, and the energy required to work out the likeliest outcomes to one hundred years in the future calls for the output of a typical main-sequence star over the course of a year. To predict outcomes out to ten thousand years requires the entire energy output of a black hole of ten solar masses. Analyses of the whole future of your species and the impact of the other species that will originate from this world and all their interactions with other intelligent races in this galaxy required the energy of a pocket universe for three point five hours.

"Our certainty that humanity would irreparably damage the biosphere of this world for a length of time far too great to be acceptable has been known for some time. However, we had hoped that some outcomes with a lower probability of realization would come to pass. They have not, and humanity has continued to destroy the conditions that we then had to act to preserve."

"You could have warned us decades or centuries ago. We would have changed."

"Your species would have done no such thing, and not even you believe that a warning from us would have changed your species' behavior unless we remained to enforce it. Setting up an occupation that would only have led to humanity's destruction along with sizable portions of the world's biospheres. No, humanity has reached a point where they have shown that they cannot responsibly manage the affairs of the natural world. From this point forward, the human civilization will have to accept that there will be other species in this world with which they must now consult if they wish to continue to exist. There will not be a homogeneous power structure on this world again, no matter if humanity survives or not."

The creature's whiskers rose to point at the screens, and some of the humans reluctantly returned to watching the videos. Unsettled by what they were being told and undecided on whether to believe it. Many fell into conversations with each other. Only a few continued peppering the golden-eyed creature and Soma with questions.

Videos of men, women, and children turning into black scaled lizards were rife on the screens. Even more disturbing were the reactions of others to those they had just been told had no choice in what happened to them, like the people watching in the pavilion had. Bystanders beating the transformed humans as they grew larger and larger. Dwarfing their attackers yet still fleeing on four legs from the abuse heaped upon them by others. In one scene, a pair of enormous wings folded upon the back of one lizard flared open as the person leapt from the ground with a hugely powerful extension of their coiled rear legs. Bringing those wings downward to produce a whirlwind that knocked out the camera footage as the crowd surrounding the afflicted victim were bowled over in the blast of the launch.

"Show us what will happen!" someone called out. "We want to see why you think that all this is necessary to save the human civilization."

"We will show what you consider a predictive exercise in seeing the future. We will warn you as well that these videos and images are only possibilities at this point. What you see is only being taken from the current most likely timeline branching from this instant. To simplify the presentation, we will be showing you events likely to occur one, ten, and twenty years from now in a timeline where we had not interceded on Earth's behalf. We will not show you possible outcomes from your actions if you were to participate in this voluntary effort to preclude influencing your future actions unnecessarily."

Even as the others continued to play the current events, the main screen went blank before resuming with new sets of news broadcasts.

"Look at the date."

The first video showed a tanker of some kind burning off the coast of an equatorial island and had a timestamp in the lower right-hand corner. The video shot from shore showed small boats ringed around the great vessel as the conflagration ran unchecked. Panning down, the shimmer of chemicals and scores of dead fish being thrown against the shore appeared in the bottom of the frame. Suddenly, a brilliant flash of light swamped the image, and when it was gone, it was replaced by a towering fireball rising from the broken remains of the sinking ship. Seconds later, a ripple in the water raced towards the camera as the disturbance crossed the distance between. The cataclysmic sound of the detonation reaching the microphone simultaneously with the blast wave making the image jump. Next, a news item identified a scene as the United States of America's congress being shown standing to applaud the overturning of the endangered species act. The ticker below the image detailing statements put out by special interest groups promising a new age of responsible development of millions of acres of land and water with the removal of overbearing restrictions that stifled economic growth.

Ten years in the future, a mass stranding of dozens of killer whales on forest-covered islands. Behind them, a crowded waterway with hundreds of massive ships sitting idle at anchor or passing to and from an overbooked port. Images from space, showing pharaonic blots of discolored water at a river delta spilling out into the ocean. Commercial ships escorted by armed Naval vessels were shown passing by a polar bear, sickly-looking with patches of fur exposing bare skin, glancing at its surroundings on solid ground. Divers, navigating an underwater landscape of bone-white coral, not a fish in sight. The woman in the view frame cutting loose a bright orange fishing marker with a rope tail tangled around dead coral. Japanese characters were printed on the ball.

Twenty years out, a video montage of a fish die-off of apocalyptic proportions. Millions of fish, dolphins, and whales belly up in an inexplicable event that left their exposed skin riddled with open lesions and hideous wounds. Crowds stood in the water of the landmass the footage was shot from crying at the massacre's size. Minutes later, those same people were shown lying down in ambulances, their skin covered in the blisters of chemical burns. Another video clip showed a massive river from above, choked with debris and dyed a neon purple from an unknown contaminant. Square kilometers of barren land and burned tree stumps stood to each side of it. A man in the watching audience gasped loudly when the news chyron identified the waterway as the Amazon.

The videos played in cycles, one from each time in a repeating loop. Frantic channel changes looking for the aliens to provide some glimmers of hope met with minimal success. Media showing what was being done to manage the disasters did not seem to be included in the programming. Leaving many to wonder what degree of what the aliens had learned was being hidden from them.

"Those videos are damning about where we are headed, to be sure. But how can we not suppose that you are carefully orchestrating what we see to force our opinions toward the ends that you desire? Presuming, of course, that those videos are indeed from the future and not some special effects studio."

They were reasonable questions. But some, including Manaaki, were dubious that this was some trick. An attempt to skew their feelings and thoughts? Possibly. A wholesale con game? Seriously doubtful, he and Airini agreed. The proof was in their experiences since awakening.

What was to be gained by this race of aliens and this mysterious Soma? So far, she hadn't clearly identified her relations with the 'Golden-Eyed Ones' or if they were the same species or not as their identical appearance was hardly enough to go on. It was hard to judge just how much their stated intentions overlapped. If this was a trick to make them come to preordained conclusions, why? Couldn't they just...force their minds to obey them? Wouldn't it be easier for them than all these elucidations and the opaque logic for why their cooperation was needed? These aliens spoke of using black holes as energy sources. Why did they need the humans in this room at all?

Unless... they really were interested in getting the voluntary effort of those in this room to solve their own crisis. Or at least what the aliens said was a crisis. Then, why didn't they offer the same courtesy to the people they were turning into dragons? That's what those lizards were, after all. No other title could possibly be used to describe what those humans had become. Did they still have the thoughts they had when they were human? What were the dragons? They must be another species of alien like Soma. Manaaki realized he was not the only one to think along these lines with what he heard from the others. As the conversations carried on into the evening, it became clearer that the people here thought and acted in somewhat similar ways.

Cthulhu had spoken the truth about that much, at least. They had been carefully chosen, alright. They all seemed to fit a profile created to filter who would most likely achieve what was being proposed to them. Although that seemed to only go so far in producing uniformity of behavior, as the variety of upbringings and temperament made clear. And the few outliers who were indeed strong-willed but also not willing to believe what their own memories were telling them when they were so inclined to be suspicious.

"Well, I don't care what I said to you in my dreams, and I sure don't care about asking anyone else what they think. I'm going to get drunk...er, and when I wake up from this insane nightmare, I'll be able to forget all about it. Right after I report everything that I've seen and heard here to my commander to explain the fact that I'll have been fucking AWOL for the past two days!"

"We have provided the phones and the computers for you to contact whoever you might like, including your superior officers. We will not inhibit your communications beyond preventing this location from being discovered."

If the alien creatures felt distressed by the refusal of the people who followed the woman's defiance to lose themselves in the pleasures that had been provided for all, they didn't show it in any way that the humans could interpret. Bands of color continued to flash up and down the lengthy body of Soma, with the tendrils growing from the sides of her head and her snout waving languidly in the ocean breeze flashing alternate colors of their own. What that meant, Manaaki wasn't even going to attempt to guess.

Abruptly, she surged to her feet and stretched herself out by wringing her serpentine length like a dishtowel with the loud cringe-worthy popping of vertebral joints. Showing a degree of flexibility that strengthened the impression of her being more like a snake or an eel than not. Straightening, she padded over to the other golden-eyed creature to convey an inaudible message that had a bowl of noxious brown liquid that stank of smoke, and a plate heaped high with cricket-like insects each twenty centimeters long placed before her on the counter.

She dug into her meal without sparing any attention for the disgust the humans felt at the sound of her crunching through insect shells between her double rows of teeth. Also not seeming to be aware of the danger that her thumping and swishing tail stretched out behind her posed. With its backward swept tailfin, it was a nearly lethal hazard to anyone walking past as she enjoyed her repast. No one was keen to take a hit from a tail as thick as a tree trunk and the massive bundles of muscle seen flexing just beneath the covering of the supple scales. Although Manaaki was nonplussed to notice, Soma might not have been so ignorant of her movements after all. As he watched her tail twist so that she could shove her fin beneath a few pillows that she'd knocked astray and flip them back into the pit they'd come from. All without raising her head from her pile of locusts, or whatever, that she was eating.

"I urge you to utilize other resources than the television news channels of tomorrow to inform your opinions. As some of you have pointed out, these are incomplete pictures of the state of affairs as the media sources themselves are biased in one manner or another in a competition for viewership. The more conspiracy-minded of you think that we are nefariously holding information back. To an extent, some programming has indeed been removed, as we are eliminating the paid advertisements and extraneous cultural gossip to condense these streams of information and the exorbitant energy cost required to send the data backwards in the time stream. Plenty is remaining for you to see that shows the ill-health of the natural environments and the lack of respect afforded them by the dominant interests.

"The questions that have been raised as to just why this alien body and not the human form is necessary are easy for me to answer but difficult for you to believe. The human genome will not support the modifications needed to make it suitable for the various physiological processes natural to the body of the species known as The Dreamers. Why they call themselves this, and the reason for many of our communications being done in your own dreams, will become clear if you chose to undergo this transformation as it is not relevant at this time. What is relevant is that the number of genetic adaptations you would need to undergo would render your human forms so ungainly and grotesquely mutated that you will likely prefer the elegant solution already provided to us by eons of naturally occurring evolution.

"Which is how we prefer to proceed with such interventions as this. Naturally. The Dreamers are a species that will be a natural fit for this world, completely compatible with the environment and able to integrate without compromising extant food chains and driving Earth-based species into extinction. They... you, if you so choose... will be helping to heal the waters of Earth with your mere presence. Notwithstanding the possibility of any actions you should choose to undertake after the months of education you will undergo."

Patricia Moreau, glugging away carelessly at her mug of Cosmopolitan, spluttered and coughed at hearing what Cthulhu had just said. Spraying her pinkish drink back into her cup and setting it down to pull herself back together.

"Did you just..." she coughed, clearing her throat, "did you just say education? Of what kind?"

"Oh?" Cthulhu said, with a peculiar shade of blue rippling along its neck before twisting into an orange hue that settled around its gill slits. Soma turned her head slightly to look at it with one rapidly color-shifting eye, lifting her tailfin off the ground with a kaleidoscope of patterns dancing along its surface. The humans looked around in confusion as a groaning noise seemed to come from the very structure of their surroundings before cutting off with a rising squeal that had them clapping their hands over their ears.

The light and sound display ended just as quickly as they had started. With Soma's scales shifting until her body disappeared against the wood and stainless-steel counter she was eating from. Turning back to her meal, her twin whiskers reaching out for her mug and dumped the entire contents into her upturned maw with both sets of eyelids sliding closed. A thunderous belch followed, traveling up from her belly and out her open jaws as her colors shifted again to the blue-green of her default coloration. Bending her head to look past the length of her own nose at the bar with unfocused eyes. Silent but for the one talon reaching up to scritch back and forth aimlessly on the rough wood surface. Except for the radically different architecture of her form, it was a pose that he'd seen in more than one bar in his life when the hour had grown late, and the satisfaction with one's choices had faded. Projecting human thoughts and body language, he realized, might be misleading.

A pang of sympathy struck when Manaaki realized something about Soma while Moreau was enticed into sitting on the pillows once more to pursue what had interested her as tens of others listened in. Soma had volunteered for something to in coming to this world. To do what wasn't settled yet. In some way, she had come to help them solve their impending dilemma. Possibly stranding herself from all but a very few of her own species. They were being asked to give up their bodies and the comforts they had grown to enjoy in human society. To give up being human and, in all likelihood, break the hearts of their family in addition to nearly all social bonds. Just like it seemed she had.

What would it be like to find yourself cast into the void to a place so far away that it would not even show as a point of light in the night sky of your home planet? The yawning emptiness of the distances and the emotional weight of knowing what you might be cut off from was staggering. Did she have expectations of returning? Was she lonely or homesick? They knew so little about her. A flesh and blood intelligent alien speaking with them in a place that she might not have even known existed were it not for these 'Golden-Eyed Ones.'

He felt giddy with the surrealness of what they were doing there. All his life, preserving his cultural heritage, and he was now being asked to let go of that to become something else. Something that no humans could ever do more than dream of. Why... I mean... was it essential for him to remain human to keep his culture alive? He and Airini did have central places in the local community, but....

"Soma... what are the Golden-Eyed Ones to you? Are you stuck here, really believing that it's necessary to help us? To become...like you?"

Her forelegs came down off the serving counter as she left what remained of her snack for later. Twisting in place until she faced the few humans that were curious to hear her words as her tail thumped against the bar, and she settled belly down on the rough wooden flooring with her head raised alertly and her liquid eyes bright to take all her listeners in.

"So'waa'Ma'wae and her coworkers have been helped by the Golden-Eyed Ones four thousand seven hundred thirty and one tides ago. They show, and we agree, that you need help here after we learned of your rough spots. So'waa'Ma'wae is happy to suicide an undetermined number of tides, maybe even all her tides, for the chance to create balance where none exists. She can assure you that the best chance you have of preventing your waters from tipping too far and the Golden-Eyed Ones hitting you with very large stick is to become as So'waa'Ma'wae is and learn.

"This is why she is here. Introducing The Dreamers to your waters without the thought of the human inside will lead to a very unbalanced tidal pattern indeed. So'waa'Ma'wae is here to guide you through very confusing time as you learn to Dream. Only if you volunteer to become, though. No tricks and no treats will be violated upon you here.

"So'waa'Ma'wae having her paws in your waters she hopes is enough to move you to consider acting without self to create balance for others when they feel powerless to. Much work for you to accomplish when your chieftains will not. Maybe you not like acting against the shake of your leader's tails or your pod mates', but those lost in murk should be glad of guiding fin extended from clearer waters. Which will be you if you not swallow So'waa'Ma'wae's met-a-phors.

"What makes you think that our oceans need help?" Airini wanted to know.

"Have you not heard the sounds of your own water's inhabitants?" Soma replied, cocking her head in a recognizable expression of puzzlement. "They are in pain, and they are afraid. Listen..."

The gills that had been fluttering on her neck with each breath sealed shut, and her nostrils flared wide as she swelled with a voluminous inhalation. Clicks and groans rang out from her distended chest and belly to fill the pavilion and wash out the sound of the news broadcasts and videos ostensibly from the future. Somehow, she reproduced the songs that were all too easily recognized by those who had dedicated their lives to studying the sea and the creatures in it. Bringing the bedlam of conversations to a halt as startled eyes focused on her while she replayed the haunting melody of whales calling out to each other.

Quiet ruled at the conclusion of the song that was every bit as alien as the creatures before the listeners, even if it originated from Earth. At the end of what was a much lower volume but, to the unattuned ears of the humans, in any event, faithful reproduction of what sounded like a humpback whale's call, Soma seemed to deflate with a surge of fishy smelling pent-up air. Hanging her head on the end of her long neck, she closed her eyes. "All the great ones sing in tones of dismay such as this. Some just within their blocks, some across entire oceans."

Moving to a heap of pillows, she made clear just why all the decorations were so large when she coiled herself up and tucked her snout beneath the webbed fingers of her paw to cover her eyes. Leaving her golden-eyed partner to take up the conversation.

"I invite you all to make use of the communication devices in the housing to contact any parties that are likely to be concerned over your sudden invitations to this remote island. Please keep in mind that if you wish to engage in making a material difference to the future of this world, thirty-eight hours are remaining to comprehend why we have chosen this course. It is critical that you enter your period of reflection in the ensuing week with as much information as you can retain before you make your decision. We understand that this is not an optimal time frame to give up so much and reshape your existence in the service of a strategy that you are likely suspicious of. But we could not bring you here before our presence had become widely known with the transition of select populations from human to Children of the Egg.

"We must warn you that some of your families will have been affected by that program. We understand that this may preclude your willingness to participate in this enterprise and urge you to do what you consider best. You would not have been brought here if there was not some level of conviction that you would agree to this endeavor. Your individual participation will be of the utmost benefit to the furtherment of the human species and rectification of the scarring that has been inflicted upon the world with their naïve actions.

"If you should see any of those individuals hiding in the forest or furthest reaches of the island with the erroneous thought that they are somehow escaping our detection, please convey to them that their histrionics are not warranted. Also, kindly inform them that they will remain on this island, whether they will even consider the offer we have advanced or not, for nearly two more days and that the only readily available sources of food, drink, and shelter are here. We assure you that the insects native to this location can be very noisome once the sun begins to set and carry several diseases harmful to you.

"If they do not desire our hospitalities, perhaps you might tell them to use some of the bags we have stored over here." Its right tentacle rose from around its foreleg and pointed towards a cabinet just outside the pavilion's edge. "To collect a portion of the garbage sullying the pristine beaches and killing the local wildlife to take their minds off whatever misconception that have taken root in their minds. Please recall that even if you agree to our proposal, you will be sent home for a period of seven days before your return to begin your transition. Kindly inform your relations that everyone will be relocated to their previous positions at the conclusion of the forty-eight hours at noon the day after tomorrow."

Manaaki and Airini went right for the elderly couple struggling arthritically to their feet. Moreau helping the old woman, much to their surprise, while Manaaki let the man lean on his arm as the crowd ran to find the promised opportunities for communication and to make sure that their loved ones had not been...transformed or harmed. Those who had cell phones already discovering that there were no signals to be had in the middle of what Manaaki suspected was the Pacific Ocean.

"Is there anyone you want to call?"

Rieko and Eiken did want to speak to their children and tell them of the decision they had made for themselves. Both were adamant that whatever wisdom that they could pass on to their children had been by this point in their lives. The only thing they had left to look forward to in their tiny community was to watch it fade into the same senescence that they faced themselves.

"We might be a poor village that relies on our own catch to feed ourselves, but we still know what face-chat is. We want to see our children and grandchildren when we tell them that we will be going to the sea for them."

Manaaki and Airini went to the hut that they had awoken in after helping the Micronesians set up a video call with their community center at home. Sitting with her in his lap with her head tilted back against his chest and his arms around her. Lost in thought with just each other. Airini spoke in Maori, wondering whether they should accept.

"Are we sick to even be considering this?"

"Are we considering this?"

"We would be honoring Tangaroa and our culture."

"What would our whanau think? Our iwi?"

"They will be sad if we followed this call to the sea. But we would never truly be separated from them. There is much we still do not know about this. We know almost nothing about the taniwha."

"Sea dragon," Manaaki said, humming in thought with his eyes closed. "That Japanese man called them ryujin. Sea dragons."

"Ryujin, taniwha, we all know what they are by different names. I'm sure the Yank thinks of them as serpents or dragons or something alike as well. The crux is that as much as they've told us, very little is about what they are asking us to become or what they want us to do."

"I think...I think they, or at least that one with gold eyes who seems to be running the show, do not intend to tell us what to do. I think they expect us to learn what they will teach us and then figure a way out of our morass. For the rest, does it matter? Either we are human, or we are not."

"There must be some challenges to becoming these Dreamers that we do not understand if Soma has volunteered to come here. Something about their biology that we don't know yet."

"You think we should do this? Dive into the unknown? You have nothing to say at all about the choice to either be everything that makes us who we are or not?"

"I think I want to speak to our daughters and our grandchildren to find out if these aliens have harmed our family before I decide anything else."

The conversation was not an altogether happy one, once they figured how to use the mysterious computer and phone to set up a video call with their eldest daughter, Pounamu.

"You are where and want to what? She said, yelling into the phone painfully. "Are you taking the piss? This is no time for that! Haven't you seen what's happening?"

By the time they convinced her that they were soundly trapped on the island they had awoken on for the next two days, their daughter was in tears and begging them not to agree to anything.

"Mum, Dad, please come back as soon as you can! I believe what you are telling me. There are people here turning into dragons. Dragons! Are you saying the aliens that are behind this are there with you? Tell them no! I don't want to lose my parents to this madness! Do you remember Blake, my next-door neighbor? He has a tail! My neighbor has grown bigger than his ute, has a tail, and now you're saying that you want one to become aliens just like that?! What?! What is wrong with you!"

A screaming roar came from off-camera somewhere, and their flustered daughter left to see what it was before coming back biting her nails. Pointing off to her left with a shriek. "He's growing wings and a horse snout now! With teeth! Huge teeth! My neighbor is a dragon!"

The forty-year-old woman, who always had been a bit excitable, her parents had to admit, was on the verge of panic. They were at a crossroads, tempted by promises that actions on their part would be meaningful for themselves and the world. They did not know how to reconcile that with the cost their family would bear if they suddenly departed from their lives. They were reminded why they were even considering this by what their daughter said next.

"Do you want your grandchildren to grow up without you? What kind of life would that be for them?"

"I hope it would be one that they would be proud of if it meant doing honor to our people and our connection to the world."

"Mum, don't start with that again! We don't need spirits and a belief that our well-being is tied to nature. We need you, not an ideal!"

Manaaki sighed through his nose. If Pounamu thought that would change her mum's mind, she hadn't been paying attention all the years she had raised her. Like her toes were already the claws that he'd seen on the taniwha, she could see his wife dig in stubbornly. Manaaki preferred to ply people with good-natured stories despite his size, while Airini used her quiet but implacable will in expressing herself.

"I would not agree to this if it tore me away from my family, no matter what it may do to my body. If I could ensure that my children, and their children, never lost their way in a world that finds its joy in its gadgets instead of in the beauty of their cultures and surroundings, then it will be a price that I'm willing to pay."

"That we're willing to pay," Manaaki affirmed, taking his wife's hand with his.

"But we're not! How can you say to me that aliens have kidnapped you, told you a story that they know what needs to happen to fix something that isn't even amiss, and convinced you to sign your lives away to become sea horses!"

It was only with difficulty that they got their daughter to arrange a group chat with the rest of their family. They could finally relax just a little bit after learning that nothing had happened to any of them. Willing to hear the concerns of their family when they told them what they had been told. Still holding out the hope that they could make a difference on a level that they as individuals had only dreamed of. That they could convince themselves and their families that their involvement could change things if what they had been told was true.

****

Moreau was having problems of her own trying to make sense of what had happened in the hours she'd been on the island in another hutch. Something that her chain of command in the United States Navy wasn't making easier with the extremely tense posture they were holding in reaction to the events unfolding across the Earth.

"Senior Chief, now is not the time for your excuses. Tell me where you are so that I can send someone to verify that you're not turning into one of these creatures and escort you to base if you're too drunk to come on your own." Patricia Moreau's commander, Lieutenant Commander Spruance, snapped at her.

Moreau, ashamed by just how accurate the sea serpent's observation from earlier was and that her commander was justified in his exasperation, was baffled at the mention of turning into one of those creatures. Patting at her face and head with her free hand and shimmying her top off to look beneath her undershirt at the black sports bra covering her chest to confirm that she hadn't begun transforming like she'd feared. Only then realizing that he was speaking of the dragons in the videos.

"Sir, I've been abducted by the aliens! The ones turning people into those dragons! They call them Children of the Egg and...."

"Goddammit, Pattie, I can't cover for you like this, not this time! I know no one cares about our oceanographic lab here, but every person in the United States Military is being recalled for eyes on accounting. You have to get here and get yourself under control. Just tell me what dive bar you're at now so that...."

"Sir, I can prove it! When I called the duty phone, what number was it identified as?"

"I don't have time for games...."

"What number did it show? Ask SIGINT to trace it. The aliens say that I can't be tracked here because they don't want anyone to interfere. I'm telling you, sir, that we've been abducted!"

He hemmed and hawed but, if for no other reason to clear the line of the duty cell phone, went down the hall to knock on the SCIF where the signals intelligence officer was. Moreau put the phone on speaker while she waited and did a more thorough examination of her body to make sure that she wasn't sprouting scales or that a tail wasn't fusing her ass cheeks together or something. She shuddered at the thought of turning into that sea snake. Horrified that she had been hiding her face in the giant delicious drinks while considering what it would be like to have the strength that could be seen in the thick musculature of that creature. The creature, Soma, had mentioned briefly that it was small because of how young she was. It made her wonder just what kind of sizes and ages they could attain. What kind of strengths, what kind of abilities, lay hidden in that alien form?

Her own human body was starting to show its age on its downward slope to infirmity and oblivion. The freckles that dotted her arms, shoulders, and face looked increasingly like age spots as each year went by. Standing out in sharp relief to the pale skin that never could hold a tan as she searched for scales. Muscles that were a little less firm and powerful each year. Grimacing at her aging body, which, ever since she'd hit menopause, couldn't stop the bulge that had built up in her lower abdomen with the hormonal changes. Not to mention how little she enjoyed the toll time and gravity had taken on her breasts. She'd been pregnant once, as her c-section scar that had never faded as she'd hoped attested. A daughter, somewhere in the world, that was twenty-three and had thoroughly cut her mother out of her life.

As was Moreau's habit, whenever she thought of Lisa and her failures as a parent and a human being that had driven her daughter away, she drank from the giant mug that she'd returned for after helping those dried-up raisins to call a family that they hadn't alienated. She couldn't even give her daughter the comfort of knowing who her damn father was, just one more failure in a life full of them. Her one point of pride is that she could make something of herself while wearing a uniform, and even that was becoming more problematic as the years piled on.

Voices argued on the phone, and a heavy door slammed. A gruff woman's voice spoke up.

"Senior Chief Moreau, are you there?"

"Unfortunately."

"Standby, and don't hang up the phone. This will only take a minute."

Static and electronic tones came from the phone's earpiece as some kind of electronic magic that Moreau didn't think she'd understand even if it'd been broken down for her Barney style was undertaken. With nothing else to do, and since she was feeling a little stiff, she alternated doing burpees with taking swigs of her mug. By the time the technician had finished interrogating her phone signal, she was breathing hard, sweating, and developing the pleasant haze of thought that she so enjoyed.

"Senior Chief, we need to call you back. This is something that I need to report. Have you seen anything suspicious in your vicinity? Strange antennas or anything like that? Unmarked vans parked outside the bar, perhaps?"

I'll fucking kill every one of these hilarious assholes. Moreau thought angrily.

"Ha! That's funny. I just told my CO that I'm being held hostage by aliens! Everything is suspicious! I could be calling you from Jupiter's seventh moon for all I know! And you can't call me back. Or, at least, the aliens say that you can't. They say that these phones and computers will only communicate one way. Give me a number to call you."

"*55*23*255#"

"What the fuck kind of number is that?"

"Call back in thirty minutes."

The line went dead, and Moreau sat down cross-legged with a huff. Staring at the elaborately carved pattern of a pod of killer whales. Females, judging by their dorsal fin's shape and the relative size of the pectorals along with the calves swimming beside two of them. Staring at the scene between swigs of her drink, she blinked dazedly as the image appeared to move. The water's surface rippling as the tails of the large dolphins moved up and down gently. Bubbles drifted upwards from the blowholes, and Moreau groaned, digging her knuckles into her eyes.

"Christ, now I'm hallucinating on top of everything else."

What was she doing here? These aliens were looking for people to change the world for the better and thought she would be a good candidate for that? Pfft, better they keep looking and fire whoever claimed they knew what they were doing in screening people. Even if she agreed to give up her life as a human, she still had her loyalty to the United States of America and her Navy. Whatever that was worth. From what she'd gathered about what had pissed off these aliens enough to come to Earth and start changing people into iguanas and moray eels or whatever, her country had a good share of culpability for it. She didn't particularly want to go down to that beach they spoke of, the one that she could hear nearby, and see how many pieces of plastic had a tiny American flag printed on it.

These aliens hadn't asked them to act out against any particular nation, but they didn't need to. If they wanted them to act outside the bounds of governments and international bodies as rogues, they almost certainly would have to act against the interests of countries like the one she'd taken an oath towards. And what could they do? Stop maritime shipping? Wreck ports? Kill millions with the disruption in trade? How would they even do those things if they wanted to? Her background showed in the actions she'd imagined. Talk and facts had failed. Only force seemed to be understood when it came to getting nations and individuals to change behavior.

The position she held within the military on her island station left her more knowledgeable than most on the continent. The data collected was as comprehensive as it was damning. The oceans were being changed in ways that they could not anticipate the long-term consequences of. The numbers didn't lie. But her station was just as neglected as her commander had let on. Politicians had their own agendas, and the data that she was in charge of collecting didn't always see the light of day.

Thinking along those lines to their dismal conclusion, Moreau wondered why it bothered her at all to walk away from being human. Only a sense of duty, she supposed, to the ideal of freedom that her country espoused. But even then, freedom only went so far. The minute it wasn't so amicable to prevailing thought, people became more than willing to let it be trampled under. Or perhaps it was just her pride in being human. Honestly, as long as one kept their ego and superego intact, did the vessel matter? Looking at her arms, Patricia shrugged philosophically. Maybe being human was everything to some other people, but not to her. The shape of her body did not encompass who she was. Not in the way that all the foolish things she'd done over her life did. Which was a more effective way of judging her character in any event.

She wondered what would be told to her when someone finally was convinced of the authenticity of her account. Come back immediately or stay and learn as much as she could. If you remain, Uncle Sam will have a special place in his heart for you, she was sure she'd hear at some point. If you would be so kind as to obey this order and learn as much as you could about the aliens who are threatening to wipe out humanity no matter what the cost might be to your sense of self-identity.

We'll give you a commission. Maybe they'll tell her. The first-ever promotion from E-8 to O-6 as Captain Patricia "Sea Dragon" Moreau. They could feed her with fish, like those dolphins they train to poke anti-ship mines with their rostrums to place counter-charges. Congress would love it, the cheap bastards. Patricia drained the rest of her drink and belched. Rising, she stumbled back to the pavilion and had her mug refilled with a German beer that she'd had once before returning at the thirty-minute mark.

"This is Operations Officer Hertzog, Senior Chief Moreau. I understand you have had a rather interesting day so far. Why don't you tell me all that you can about it? Please leave nothing out, no matter how insignificant it might seem, of your account starting with the circumstance in which you were 'abducted,' as you put it."

The CIA, Moreau thought, that figures. I guess the movies had it right after all. See an alien, get fucked by intergalactic deviants with anal fixations, get a visit from some spook. Maybe they'll kill me or erase my memories next. Or is that what the men in black do once the other shadowy government agencies are done with you?

****

"Do not be sad, my daughter," Eiken said gently and reached out to touch the screen showing her crying child in the bungalow between Moreau and the Maori couple. The elderly Eiken and Rieko had been lucky to catch their daughter at the community center with its computer, phone, and the island's communications tower given them by the Americans as compensation for the military equipment they had set up on the island. She had been there to arrange a search for the missing parents she was now speaking to. "It will soon be time for you to take your place as an elder."

Rieko nodded his agreement and blessing on the decision that they had made. As the oldest members of their island, their words and life experiences had always been given the respect they deserved. But now, they agreed, the spirits had called them to a higher purpose, and it was time to make peace with their old life. Whatever they would be to the village and the island in the future, they would not be their human elders.

"We have taught and shared with you all that we know, and we do not wish to burden you anymore. With this spirit here to guide us on our way, the failing harvests can go to those who need it more. The blessing of the spirits will aid us as we grow and ensure that our village will not be forgotten, like we had feared, by the world passing us by."

"Mother, father. I am torn. How can we honor your lives? Should we prepare to celebrate your passing to join our ancestors?"

"We do not plan on dying just yet, our cherished daughter," Rieko said, his face crinkling into a gap-toothed smile. "Think of it as a rejuvenation that we shall return from to guard the islands against danger. The spirits have made no mention of us having to say goodbye. That we are free to go after our rebirth has been made clear. They have encouraged us to include you in our transition to make peace with the new world that is coming."

"I hear your wisdom, mother and father, and take it into my heart. Will you stay on the connection? I wish to show that you are well and explain the blessings that we have received to the others. We must prepare a feast for this day to honor our ancestors and thank the spirits who shall guide us all!"

****

The daylight was fading when Manaaki returned to the pavilion to gather the group's food and drink in his cabin. He and Airini had rejoined Rieko and his wife in their hutch to inquire if they needed any help and had been quick to help them to the latrines and see to some drinks and snacks. Being invited to speak with them around the large round table near the center of the elder's room.

The clamor coming from the pavilion had been growing while they had been speaking with their family earlier. Dozens of those invited to the island with a much more free-spirited outlook on life had with little hesitation plunged ahead into the unknown of becoming inhuman. A decision they promptly began celebrating as evidenced by the bowls and plates stacked on the bar and in front of each of the thirty celebrants regaling themselves with stories. Quickly done as most of these adventurers shared a common culture, being from Australia or New Zealand, with just a few others mixed in. Younger adults like the Japanese sailor tucking the raven hair that had fallen from her braid behind her ears before shouting "Kanpai!" and bringing her enormous mug to her lips with all the others as her cry was echoed.

Manaaki grinned and shook his head at the sight of the youths, who seemed to have no other concerns for what the aliens had asked of them. Likely enough, they would be the same types to lead a defiant haka before rushing into any number of dangers with a wild thrill coursing through them. He would have been right there with them not ten years ago, he thought wistfully, reflecting on a time gone by. Thirty years ago, he would have been the one daring all of them with a challenge of his own.

The taniwha behind the counter appeared detached from the task it was working stolidly through. Passing each mug or plate one by one through an aquamarine curtain of light projected upwards in a square from below Manaaki's line of sight that left the wooden dishware spotless and shining. The taniwha never made a comment that Manaaki heard, even though light roved across its scales unceasingly with visual messages. With only a twitch of its head to let him know that its characterless eyes had moved from watching the party to him when he asked it for the requests from the tete-a-tete in the elder's cabin. Surprising him when it spoke for the first time.

"We advise you against over-consumption of alcoholic drinks, but we will not stop you either. Please remind the others that no final decisions will be accepted until the end of the designated period of reflection and consultation. There is much information yet still to be expressed that may change minds, and the reality of the consequences of this decision may not become apparent until you have returned to your social circles."

While a tray that he didn't know if he'd be able to lift was loaded with the oversized mugs and plates, Manaaki froze at the sensation of hot, fetid breath swirling on the nape of his neck. There was a gurgling noise and then a monstrous belch that left him feeling moisture spattering against his skin.

"You must pardon So'waa'Ma'wae. She is very upside down."

Turning, Manaaki found himself looking at the scales on the middle of her thick but flexible neck. Bands of yellow formed on the green and black plates and moved upwards in a repeating pattern until he looked up at the head slightly above his and the pair of jaws that were parted to reveal a glimpse of wickedly curved double rowed teeth. He recoiled when a damp reeking breath wafted into his face, redolent of what she was drinking. Soma had the long right fibrous whisker running from the side of her snout, holding one of the mugs that looked oversized in his hands but ideally suited to her size.

Which made sense if they were expected to look like her. The other whisker flexed, as close as Manaaki was, he could see the spiraling bands of muscle beneath the smooth skin covering them from the movement and raised the bulb on the end to his face. A slow repeating pattern of yellow transitioning to green and back again that radiated down the length of her sensory filament. Turning her head to fix one color-shifting eye on him in an odd gesture that left him confused before he realized that with a snout as big as hers and with her eyes set on the sides of her head, he must have been in her blind spot.

"We find your skin light patterns interesting. Can we fondle?"

"Um..." Manaaki was not a little bit nervous that he was this close to her and not able to help but notice that it still looked like she easily outweighed him as small as she was. He worried about doing something that might offend her and give her an excuse to show the strength of the muscle rippling beneath the supple linked scales of her body and tail by launching him into the ceiling or using her claws to butcher him like a chicken.

"I don't mind you tracing the patterns of my tattoos, I think you are asking. But fondling is not the correct word to use here. It means... well, I don't think you mean to say what it means here."

"Oh!" She exclaimed, backing up a step with the bottom tip of her raised tailfin scuffing across the wooden floor. A gray color crept into her cheeks just above the hinge of her jaw and spilled down the sides of her neck, where it faded into a crimson red ring. "I am overcome with sorry. I did not mean to anticipate carnal relations with you." She said, looking him up and down with a flick of her snout and then parted her jaws again in what Manaaki continued to suspect was a smile. "You are small and weak and measure approximately thirty-five percent of our mass. So'waa'Ma'wae would break you in the joining."

The one hundred and ninety-five centimeters tall and one-hundred-and-forty-kilogram ex-rugby player that was once known as "The Wall" was astonished into silence for only a moment before he erupted into roared laughter. Slapping the thigh straining his khaki shorts with an equally large hand in amusement. Although the top of her head was only about two meters, Soma was at least six meters long and looked like she weighed every bit of three hundred kilograms with her tubular but compact body and thickly muscled legs.

"Soma, do you mind us shortening your name like that?"

Her antenna flexed for her to take another drink as a checkerboard pattern of colors swept across her shoulders. Whatever that meant.

"This stew is very good. It makes my fins tingle, just like at my going to goodbye party. So'waa'Ma'wae allows you to call us Soma out of lack of understanding. It makes me feel like half, like no skin, but we permit because you cannot understand how we think." She paused to take a drink of what was probably her species' equivalent of a euphoriant, and Manaaki wondered if there was an equivalent to be found on Earth without whatever technology that was creating it now.

"We would like to join you in your home cavern with the much-honored ones and your forever partner Airini. Okay good? Merriment equal to what you observe here is what So'waa'Ma'wae promises this night. We will not talk of what maybe is to come, but of what can no longer be. Yes fun?"

Readily, Manaaki agreed. Wanting to get a chance to learn more about a creature that would agree to help another species of life in another galaxy and how she was dealing with being separated from everything that she had ever known. He felt getting to know how she thought and felt would tell them more about the motives of these aliens for offering their help at such a steep cost to avert the peril the future held than any kind of pre-arranged discussion.

At some unseen signal from the bartender to her, Soma stretched her head out to bite down on a platform that it had produced. Curling her head as she set her mug down on the counter, she placed the apparatus on her back where a slit cut on one side and four legs extending down worked together to lock the carrier to her body. The cut out neatly fitting around one of the dorsal fins that rose from her spine in even intervals to stabilize the rack.

"I will carry your foodstuffs for you to your igloo." She said, placing two more of the mugs of her drink in addition to the first that she asked to be refilled. Adding them to the platter once she had put it on her own back by using her mouth and whiskers with careless ease. "And rendezvous with you there. I ask you to gently request the three people hiding in the bushes thinking they are sneaky sneaky to join us or go to a cabin of their own. The insectas at night will be uncomfortable for hu-mans, yet I fear I may alarm them further if I go to them. So'waa'Ma'wae has seen eighty-six films with hu-mans being approached by aliens. So'waa'Ma'wae finds the fear calls hu-mans make disagreeable and would not like to have ruined night of celebrating new beginnings."

She sauntered off when he agreed to try to bring the humans in from the wilds. Watching her enormous tailfin swish to the time of each undulation of her hips while she threaded through the party-goers who had discovered a stash of board games for a new source of entertainment. Remarkably, the televisions were silent. Which Manaaki considered odd given the youth of the revelers.

Ordering another mug of his favorite beer while marveling at how the taps could serve seemingly any and all beverages, Manaaki raised his cup with both hands to thank the creature behind the counter and went looking for those fearing to reenter the village. This was when he realized that Soma hadn't pointed their exact location, so he had to circle the entire tree line before finding them. Away from hooded light scones illuminating the central pavilion and roughly a third of the bungalows, Manaaki was treated to a stunning display of the milky way overhead as he walked sipping on his drink.

The brilliant splash of billions of stars arcing across the sky always sent a thrill through the man who could never help admiring the courage of his ancestors. Setting out on in waka into the unknown and not knowing what they would find in a journey that they may never return from was a good analog for what Manaaki faced in the future that he and Airini were leaning towards choosing.

Not that it had gone smoothly with Manaaki's children earlier, and with more conversations to go over the next day and a half, he didn't expect it to become any less so. Manaaki had been particularly troubled by his daughter calling them selfish. Frowning, he stopped and heaved his bowl up to take a sip and reflect on that. Was it solipsistic of them, or her?

None of his and Airini's children had felt the connection to their past like their parents had. With little patience for the wonder and appreciation that he thought they should have for the natural world and the importance to their happiness that it had, they lost themselves to the trappings of modern technology. No longer used as tools to further their connection and understanding of the world around them, they allowed those tools to use them instead. Dazed and disoriented like the newly born sea turtle hatchlings. Overwhelmed by bright glittering lights, they turned away from lives that would be enriched by the oceans that they should embrace, for the impersonal mockery found in LED screens connected to other remote and aloof people.

Was it selfish to desire to stir people's imagination once more? To make them feel as if they lived in the world and did not just exist? To strengthen the next generation's binding to nature and the dwindling cultures that recognized that the health of the natural world was reflected in the health of the species within it? If that made Malaaki and Airini selfish, helping their children to respect something more significant than their individual concerns, then he could think of many worse things to be called. If a link to the stars could not fire people out of the estrangement they had let themselves sink into, then nothing could.

He shivered in wonder at the strange knowledge he had gained that day. That morning, he could only have hoped that humanity was not alone in the universe. Now, he knew that they were not and that those aliens, or at least two species of them, were willing to help humanity avoid their own destruction. By making Earth home for other intelligent beings tied to the human world by their dual nature. Alien in body, but human in mind.

Malaaki found a group of three, not knowing if they were the ones he was looking for or not, hiding behind trees, watching him approach with wary eyes. From lifelong experience, he knew how to make himself and his size appear non-threatening by holding something in front of him to show that his hands were occupied. Placing a kind of barrier between him and the others to put them at ease. A large man walking towards strangers in the middle of the night piled on top of all the strangeness of the day might be a step too far for the skittish people.

The Maori man had already forgotten about the translator in his ear but realized that the two women and man he had found could not understand either the English or the Maori he tried out on them. He couldn't guess at their nationality and only had the slightest hint at where they might have come from by their clothes or lack thereof. The two women wearing nothing more than bikinis and the man a loose pair of swimming trunks while all three of them had on cheaply made jandals that already looked to be falling apart from their run through the jungle. Tourists of some kind that had been visiting a beach or a resort maybe. A local from wherever they had come from would have had better footwear.

Curling one arm around his mug, Malaaki beckoned with the other and pointed with his hand back at an empty cabin on the other side of the one he and his wife had awoken in. With wide, frightened eyes, they refused. Shaking their heads vigorously and looking behind themselves as if they were on the verge of fleeing. A mosquito landed on Malaaki's arm, allowing him to make another point to them when he swatted it and then pointed at the cabin again. Making sure that they saw that he was pointing at rolls of the bug netting tucked up near the lofty eaves waiting to be unrolled for the night.

They argued with each other about whether he could be trusted, having seen him in the central pavilion talking with Soma and knew that having stayed behind, he was one of those more willing to consider the offer of voluntarily joining the alien's plan. The scratching they did at the bug bites that already pockmarked the ample exposed skin of their bodies helped their decision along. Unnecessarily, in Malaaki's opinion, convincing themselves that as long as they didn't eat or drink anything, pointedly staring at the bowl in his hands that he equally pointedly drank from with a smack of his lips in enjoyment, they wouldn't turn into anything unnatural.

Missing the point that Malaaki and Airini had arrived at earlier. That if the aliens had wanted to transform them, they certainly could have done so at any point either here or where they were without the slightest problem. Besides, Malaaki doubted that their resolve to abstain from drinking or eating anything would last when tomorrow's midday heat reached its worst.

It was a night that was as enlightening as Malaaki could have wished once he had gotten back to his wife and the elder Ulithians now resting their backs against Soma's side where she had curled around the table. Moreau stumbled in, not long after Soma had vividly described to them a towering series of waterfalls on her homeworld, completely munted and ranting under her breath about the CIA telling her to take one for the team. Whatever that meant.

The cataracts, Soma told them, held a central place in the lifecycle and culture of her species. In her deep rumbling voice that somehow still conveyed her wistfulness, she told them of the ceremony held there before her and her fellow traveler's departure to Earth. Making sure that the sight and sound of the cascades were the last memory they carried from the place of their birth.

"If you should choose to become Dreamers, I can share the memory with you. My damaged words do not respect our sacred falls and pools."

"You can share memories? How?"

"That is a tomorrow question about what a Dreamer is for all to hear. Now, we talk of memory and thought. We want to understand you as well. Why are you so receptacle about taking the offer when other hu-mans are not? We watch many movies and find hu-mans much perplexing. Can you help So'waa'Ma'wae find clear water? Why do you agree when you have nothing but trust that we have best intentions in mind?"

"I'll tell you... that I have no intention at all of doing any such damn thing!" The opinions of Pattie, as she wanted to be called, were well stated right off the bat. As well as her equivocations.

"You can't just ask people if they want to turn into... into animals! No offense Soma."

"I am highly offended to be called an animal as I know what you mean by it, hu-man."

"How is it that humans are not good enough to watch over our own planet?" She rolled on, ignoring Soma's objection. "There are governments for these things to be worked out with. You can't... you can't just turn a bunch of people into... Krakens... and tell them to do whatever they want! That's called anarchy! In my country, the rule of law and the financial cost of environmental stewardship must always be the first considerations. We have no more right to do... whatever this is... than anyone else has to act against the policies of their nation!"

"Not..." she took a drink of her mug to fortify herself for the qualifier that was coming. "...not that governments are always acting rationally. Or with concern for anything inconvenient. But surely you could have just given mine a heads up, and we would have done something different!"

Soma didn't answer verbally. Instead, bursts of color crisscrossed her body from the tips of the tendrils arcing out from her ears to the very ends of her caudal fin. Pattie froze, fearing that she'd angered the alien when her whisker looped across her shoulders and probed gently across her face. She feared that the alien was trying to get a sense of whether she tasted like some tasty treat from her homeworld. Pattie reached flick the rounded tip of the antenna but got little for her effort other than the whiplike sensor rearing up like a snake to swat her hand with a whap.

"OW!" She yelped, and Soma replied with a gurgling noise that reminded Malaaki of the sound a clogged drain made when it was cleared. He traded a look with his wife as they burst into laughter.

"You speak some words but think others, Pat-tie. Which should I be considering?"

"Hey! This is a human world. You got that? No mind-reading!"

"You were just speaking of the sectional nature of your world. Does your tribe speak for this island that we are on? We do not believe so from the cultural assessment we had to copy and paste to memory."

Pattie crossed her arms and looked away with an angry huff as Soma continued.

"So'waa'Ma'wae is very familiar with the peak nations of the world, and she does not approve of any of them. Inferior thought has been made of your pod in our training. This is not So'waa'Ma'wae's string to untangle, though, but yours. You misunderstand in that we are not directing you to do anything. We make you like us to give you tools to correct the balance of waters while Children of Egg work on dirt matters. If you create anarchy, it is because that is the only current you see, not because we tell you to do this or that. Maybe you are not a good fit for the project like we thought. Maybe Golden-Eyed One's feel of future not so certain."

That Moreau felt offended that she mightn't be good enough for the same thing she had been questioning the validity of just a short while ago was obvious. Malaaki, not wanting to add to the amount of stress already present in being asked by aliens to spearhead an effort by transforming into other aliens that the rest of humanity couldn't or wouldn't accomplish, defused it in the way that he knew best. By telling a story.

He told the story of Pane-iraira, who guided the tainui which brought his ancestors to the shores of what would be called New Zealand from their home in Polynesia. He used a story to illustrate the sometimes helpful nature of the taniwha and why he and Airini were willing to allow that these aliens were spirits meant to help guide them. After all, what was to say that the taniwha the ancients had followed were not aliens themselves? The proof of that possibility lay behind and around them. Was it so crazy to think that? Malaaki asked Pattie once his tale was finished.

"Yes, it's batshit crazy!" She exclaimed. "There is nothing mystical about a bored whale leading a canoe around in the ocean!"

Malaaki sighed, losing faith in finding some kernel of imagination in the Yankee. Airini grew agitated at a treasured tale of theirs being so rudely dismissed. Soma acted the peacemaker with the elders drowsing against her side. As she had said earlier, the day of this new beginning was a special one to her, and she tried to convey to the others that they should honor it as well, even if they did not wish to participate.

"Even if you care to do nothing and resign to letting others do as little as possible, why would you want to anger this day with bad thoughts? You have met two new friendly species in the stars. Must be good not to be lonely, okay? So'waa'Ma'wae remembers her first meet with others. We think everyone does! We were captain of space launch with pod of twenty Dreamers and diplomacy to do at next-door neighbor's house six light-years away."

"Wait, wait, wait. Back up. Friendly? FRIENDLY? YOU KIDNAPPED US!"

"We were invited, young woman, and we had given our blessing to come. It seems that you have not been giving your dreams and your actions in them the respect they deserve. We remember being given a choice and choosing to reach out night after night. A sound mind listens to her dreams when they speak so clearly." Eiken roused up to admonish Pattie after her interruption.

Malaaki agreed with the elderly woman. The dreams had been definitive for every night of the two weeks he and Airini had had them. The spirits had called to them for their agreement to help, and he remembered reaching his hand out towards the light speaking to him. No. There had been no confusion that something was being asked of them and that they had agreed to it. Uncharitably, Malaaki suspected it was more likely that Pattie had mistaken the dreams as something being alcohol-induced. Given her behaviors so far and the nearly constant flow of drink into her mouth.

"Please, Pattie. May we hear the taniwha's tales? It is rude to interrupt." Airini added, irritated with the woman's verbal intrusion. "I'm sure the other one, the golden-eyed one, could answer your objections to this arrangement better tomorrow. Even if we were not to decide to join with the taniwha, this is a time to learn about those we only dreamed of meeting before today."

****

"I'm telling you that we can't go back! We don't know what they'll do to us."

"We can't stay out here either. Look at all these bug bites. And we're going to need water if they do mean to keep us another day and a half. It must have been forty degrees today!"

"You can go back and get turned into a dragon if you want. I'm staying right here!"

The group of fifteen was comprised of residents of islands claimed by Ecuador and Chile in the Pacific Ocean. Showing just how vast an area the people gathered by the aliens had come from. The husband-and-wife scientists from the Ecuadorean vessel BAE Orion, Evelyn, and Jackson Delgado had fled with the others when they learned earlier the cost demanded by the aliens. Once the panic of their initial reaction had faded, they could deliberate with a more deliberate mindset. Now, they were embarrassed by the rash actions that had damaged their calm, professional demeanors.

"If the aliens were going to do something to us, they would have when they brought us here. Hell..." Jackson argued, "...they could do it to you just as easily here as anywhere else. We don't need to be exposing ourselves to the elements to prove a point. They also said there were computers and telephones for us to use to let everyone know that we are okay. Don't you have anyone that would notice that you've suddenly disappeared?"

"Oh, sure! And play right into their hands. As soon as we pick up the phone or turn on the computer monitor... BAM!... brainwashed."

Evelyn tugged on her husband's elbow and nodded in the direction that they could hear muffled voices calling out to each other in revelry. They did not sound like the noises people would make if they were being forcibly transformed. She did not think that any more rational conversation was to be had with the other six huddled on the beach beneath the crescent moon. The stars were brighter than Earth's satellite, and she wished that she could put aside her concern over what had happened and the question being asked of them to enjoy the sight.

With that, the married Ecuadoreans left without another word to the rest. Headed back to shelter and some freshwater after having had none for hours. Two stragglers hesitated and then broke away from the others who remained behind. Muttering to each other uneasily and swatting at the swarms of biting insects mobbing them.

"Who could have foreseen aliens ever meeting us like this?"

"It is odd that they seek our decisions in the matter. With this power, we are irrelevant."

"Observation: We haven't been changed yet."

"Conclusion: They genuinely want us to do this willingly. Or..." Jackson said, his arms crossed and with his fingers tapping the opposite bicep in thought as he and Evelyn slowly made their way back through the narrow path. "...perceive that we are doing this willingly."

"Question: Why now?"

"Theory: An environmental factor that we are ignorant of."

"Theory: A time-dependent outcome. Question: Will this outcome be favorable, and to who?"

"Theory: With the technology and power that the aliens have, they would not have to toy with us. Conclusion: If destruction was their goal, we would already be dead. They expect something of us in addition to the sacrifice of adopting alien physiologies. Question: What are the expected gains to this world, our species, and their own interests?"

"Oi! Can youse tell us what you are on about? We can't understand Spanish!"

"It's not Spanish," Evelyn said haughtily in English to this interruption. "It's Quechua." Turning, she gave them a summary of what she and her husband had been saying to each other in their native tongue as the two Australian women caught up.

"Aren't you boffins just upon yourselves? What does it matter why they're doing anything that they're doing? They want to make us into Joe Blakes!"

"Yes, that much is obvious as they've told us as much. But why? We must learn why. There might be an excellent reason that we haven't heard yet that might make their actions understandable. I am sorry to admit that I let my emotions get the better of me when I did not stay to hear what else that may have been told us. This might be the very first meeting with other intelligent species. We need to get as much information from them as we can. Just imagine what we might learn."

"You fruit loops. Knowledge is not worth turning into a bunyip for. We are humans, right? That is what we are, and that's all we will ever be. It ain't right to be anything else." The tall unremarkable woman as slim as a snake herself with unkempt blonde hair and brown eyes wild with confusion said in an accent so thick that the Ecuadoreans had to strain to make sense of her English. Her partner, a much more attractive woman of average height and frame with black hair and brown eyes, said nothing. Seemingly so afraid, judging by her jumpiness, that Evelyn didn't think that she even could without stammering unintelligibly.

"That is incorrect. A human is no less or no more right than any other species in the world. Or, I must amend given recent events in the universe. The mind is consequential where the body is not. Changing your body does not mean that you are someone else as long as the memories and idiosyncrasies stored within the mind are not tampered with." Jackson replied, wanting to correct a factual misunderstanding.

"Your minds are as scrambled as the googs I ate this morning before I was spirited away! C'mon Cathy, let's get away from these two dipsticks. Maybe we can get the marines to rescue us if we can get a signal on our cellies."

They had reached the edge of the clearing, the party going on still hidden from sight, but the sound put the two women at least somewhat at ease. Comfortable enough that when the taller woman tried to pull Cathy away, she resisted and shook her head.

"N...no... they...they won't let us go until they're done with us. No...no...no matter what we do. I want to understand why too." She said, stammering nearly as severely as Evelyn had feared she would. The other Australian, Elizabeth, did not look like someone keen to spend time alone this night. So, Evelyn was not surprised to see her following the three of them when they went to claim one of the cabins in a corner beside a bathhouse. Muttering uneasily to herself the whole way.

The small group encountered a fresh source of alarm not long after they had entered the camp. Freezing and clumping together when the dim light from the sconces of the bathhouse revealed one of the aliens sprawled before the entrance of their chosen quarters when they rounded its corner.

"Fuck me dead! Do the bolt the bunyip has come for us!"

The Yacumama, which Evelyn figured was as good a description for it as any, had been stretched out on its side and seemed to be asleep when they had come upon it. Jackson had stepped on its caudal fin, which looked identical to a mako shark's. At the same time, Elizabeth shouted in alarm. Rousing the creature into leaping to its webbed paws with a convulsive roll beginning at its tail tip. Dumping Jackson onto his posterior with a pained grunt and then jumping away from the four of them with a loud whistling noise.

"AH! Humans!" It bellowed, with its golden-eyes flashing from the reflected glow of the bathhouse. The voice it had was a curious phenomenon, like two different people speaking at the same time. It did not sound like its speech was coming from its mouth but somewhere deeper in its long throat. Imparting an odd echo to everything it said in its a lilting sing-song timbre that made Evelyn think that it was female. Even if she had no evidence yet as to what constituted feminine or masculine traits in this species. Or if they had any at all. They could reproduce asexually for all she knew, and every member of the species could be a potential 'mother.'

The oddity of its reaction stopped the small group that Evelyn was with from bursting into panicked flight. She wasn't above admitting that she wouldn't have been able to catch up with the younger, greater-statured women who were already half a dozen bounds away when the words of the Yacumama registered in their thoughts. Not that she could have fled, with her dear husband still on the ground and frozen in shock as he stared up at the creature standing balanced on its two hind legs and tail above him. Then, Evelyn was there. Helping him to his feet so that they could hug each other while facing the creature, which was visibly more sizable than the three that they'd seen earlier.

Its body, where it wasn't flashing light patterns, was a much paler green and blue than the others. It even had streaks of faded yellow across its underbelly and upper limbs that gave it a tigerish look. Seeing the ventral side of one of the creatures for the first time, Evelyn didn't know if what she saw indicated that the creature was female or if the long slit hidden between the membranes running along its belly contained penile tissue. It may have even just been a type of cloaca. Or it may have been nothing at all. In the end, deciding to label it a 'she' would be the easiest way to refer to her in her own mind.

Her attention didn't remain on academic minutia for long. Instead, drawn to the very practical considerations of the four clawed and webbed digits sprouting from the paws raised above their heads in a prime position to strike. And the four hind claws, longer than the ones on her hands, driven into the soft dirt they stood on by enormous tendons and bunched muscles beneath a coating of fine mesh-like scales that covered everything right up to the base of the talons where they emerged through a thickened ring of skin.

The thick musculature of the legs was incredible. Evelyn had a chance to think as she observed the physiology of the alien. Noting how easily they supported its mass and how easily its ventral and lateral muscles could hold its body upright. The hips were widely set for thick ribbons to pass from the body to the equally massive girth of the tail that curved away behind her. The body had no curvature going forward to speak of until broadening at the shoulders. Which were just as wide as the hips themselves. A perfectly balanced and sleek body plan, not heavy towards the front nor the rear. The longer tail balancing the slightly shorter neck that supported a massive wedge-shaped head. Compact but strong. Very strong, Evelyn thought, with her blood draining from her face as her eyes continued to track upwards until she found the one gleaming eye looking down at them from where it, and the head it was perched in, were. Meters above her own head.

That will be you, Evelyn's mind whispered to her, if you agree to sacrifice your humanity for your life's work.

"Good. We're glad that got your attention and stopped you." The alien said, folding her legs into a crouch until she rested on her haunches and her hands braced against the ground. Not truly paws, or flippers, Evelyn realized. Seeing how easily the fingers moved and the wrists rotated as the Yacumama picked each one up to flex before placing it on the ground again. "Now that you know how ridiculous you sound when it's echoed back to you, maybe you realize how rude you are being when you scamper around trying to be stealthy, even though you are nothing of the sort, and yelling nonsense about monsters whenever you see us. Really, you don't even know us. And we've been so calmly awaiting your return too. What do we get for being patient and friendly? A boot print on our fin!"

Taller than any of the humans frozen by her words, the aforementioned fin was dragged against the short, stiff scrub grass until she felt appeased by its appearance after curling it forward to be examined with a snout tendril.

"If you can be reasonable for the remainder of the night, we have come to try to put your bouncing thoughts at ease so that you can at least get an enjoyable rest."

The lights at the entryway of the cabin they'd been about to enter glowed with life and added to the soft ambience radiating from the bathhouse next door. Making the two Australian women gasp in surprise and shocking Elizabeth from terrified stupor to indignant rage.

"You... you... you..."

"Yes. Us. Very happy to know that that it is settled that we are indeed who we are. Now, may I kindly ask you to join us in the pavilion beside you? We see that you have already met many of your little mosquito friends and are also in need of water after being exposed to the tropical sun. We have no desire to see you sicken or die. Despite whatever wild presumptions you have made about the situation within a fin's reach."

She turned away in a fluid whirl that sent her tail whooshing overhead to wriggle into the cabin and pad around its inner perimeter. A deft flick of one of her tendrils at retaining straps sent each rolled panel of bug netting crashing down to seal off the interior from the pervasive flying insects that had already swarmed to the twin lamps outside. Once the interior was shielded, more sconces illuminated to bathe the cabin in light and beckon the weary humans inside.

The Yacumama settled herself on one side of the large round table by winding her body back and forth with her tail hidden behind her central mass. The humans clustered directly opposite her and nearer the wide screen door for an imaginary advantage in escape if they felt one should be needed. Reaching towards her back with one tendril, the alien unhooked a pair of black steel discs from a tray that Evelyn kicked herself for not noticing earlier. Setting them down one at a time on the low and wide table depicting an aggregation of manatees browsing through seagrass. Nudging the plates, one smaller than the other, towards the humans watching her with slow, deliberate movements until they were within arm's reach of them.

"Normally, you would have to go to the kitchen to encourage socializing. But we have brought these just for tonight so that our conversation would not be unnecessarily interrupted. Just tell me what you would desire to drink or eat, and we shall have it delivered to the plates."

Evelyn, Jackson, and the other two, only with difficulty, tore themselves away from staring at the image carved into the surface of the table. The hypnotizing scene appeared to be moving with the fronds of the aquatic plants undulating gently in the teasing of the current and bubbles rising from the snouts of the creatures as they browsed.

"No...AH!"

Elizabeth started before breaking off in a scream. With twin pops of displaced air, a pair of the mugs that had been offered back in the central pavilion earlier appeared out of nowhere. A tankard on each of the flat black metallic discs that hummed and emitted an alarming blue glow beneath the cups before going dormant once more.

"You scream too much, and your jumpiness cannot possibly be good for your cardiovascular system. We think you were just about to say no to some of the water that we're telling you that you need after having been out in the sun for half of the day. We know you're not that stupid."

"We can't drink that! Who knows what it'll do to us!"

"Oh... you really are that stupid." She said quietly, her yawning mouth snapping closed and blue bands radiating down her neck.

The creature's heavy muzzle turned to point at the humans sitting across from her as she looked at them each in turn. Making a remarkably human sigh when none of them made a movement towards the water, even though Evelyn's head pounded with the need for the cool crisp liquid that she could smell coming from the large mugs, the Yacumama's tendrils sagged listlessly onto the table with disappointment.

"You four really think that we would need a physical medium to be drunk by you to 'do something? We thought better of you in particular, Evelyn and Jackson. These other two sook no-hopers...."

"Oi!"

"...we didn't expect as much from." Picking up a pillow, she squeezed it absently between her whiskers with her golden eyes lidded nearly shut and pink ribbons of color flashing on her shoulders. Looking almost sly in an inhuman kind of way. "Just a couple of mong pikers that we figured wouldn't do much good anywhere else, so we might as well give them something to do with their lives."

Evelyn only had a vague idea of what a piker was from some British movies that she'd seen long ago and had no idea at all what mong or sook meant. Guessing, from the purple choler rising on the women's cheeks to replace the pallor of their terror, they were particularly disagreeable terms in Australia. She and Jackson shared a look, guessing at what was going on here.

"That's why they're here, is it not? They are willing to fight even when they are afraid. And we... we question."

"Yes. Excellent, Jackson. But you are only half right. Can you guess what the other half of the reason is for why those here have been invited?" She said, dropping the pillow.

"Theory: We have something you need or can do something that you need to be done."

"Correction: Not us, you. You are the ones that have something that needs to be done. You are the ones that have what you need. Someday, what you have done will help yourselves and others in wonderful ways that you could not even imagine. As diverse as your backgrounds and your nationalities are, you still hold one thing above all else. You respect humanity's connection to the natural world. You love the oceans, the rivers, the lakes of this world. All of you feel a call to the waters of this world and their myriad creatures that you can't describe. An urge to protect. Are we wrong? Stop screaming! We're not going to harm you."

"All those people! Oh god, all those people! You... you transformed them all into monsters! They don't even know what's happening to them, do they? You evil, evil thing! How can you talk to us of trust and what's for the best when you are doing something just like that!"

"Yes, it is no trivial thing that we have wrought upon your civilization. Interfering with uncontacted peoples such as yours is only done in cases of the greatest of need. In the instance of Earth, the window you had enjoyed for correcting your mistakes has closed. If it meant nothing more than the destruction of your own species, it would be one thing, but every indication we have seen points towards you also irreparably damaging the nursery of life that this world is. We cannot allow you to jeopardize the development of future intelligent life. We will not.

"Is it horrible that we did not ask those people their wishes in becoming Children of the Egg to fulfill the narrowly viable best-case scenario? Yes. Do we regret that it is necessary? Yes. Will we rethink our actions and instead doom trillions of life forms to soothe the offended morals of one intelligent species? No. The best-case scenario is that humans work with the mature species that will shortly call Earth home to establish a balance on this world that nurtures those here now and those yet to come.

"If none of that works, then humanity dies. We will not allow you to take this world with you into oblivion. We know that we said we were here to calm your thoughts, and we will try, but it is crucial that you understand the situation you are in after you took it into your heads to run off from the conversation earlier, screaming like fools.

"And please, for the sake of all your loves ones, drink the water I put right in front of you. The water. In front of you. Drink it. Drink the water. See it. Drink it. Drink the water.

"No!"

Although Elizabeth shouted a fresh denial at this latest coercion, Jackson and Evelyn shared a bowl now after the creature's reveal of the grand plan that it was acting on. Their parched throats were nearly sealed shut and keeping them from asking the panoply of questions that had arisen. They both figured in their own ways that the creature was right. The delivery of the water was bizarre. But not nearly as outre as being transported in mid-sentence from a research vessel to a remote deserted island. An island with a newly extant village that had the idyllic appearance of the cover of a travel magazine. The aliens weren't going to turn them into more aliens unless they gave their agreement. Why it had to be voluntary remained to be seen.

"Okay. Don't drink the water then, you braying mules."

Another mug appeared on the plate, and the Yacumama picked it and the first bowlful of water up with her whiskers. Before the two Aussies could react, hoisting them over both their heads and dumping the twin torrents down to drench the recalcitrant women.

"Oh. How clumsy of us. Whatever have we done? You're all wet now and cooling off through evaporation."

Evelyn felt sorry for the two hysterical women and sent her fiercest glare towards the Yacumama for carrying her point too far. Not knowing if that kind of nonverbal action would register at all with the alien as she didn't blink nor change any of the light patterns floating across her scales. Scooting over to comfort Elizabeth and Cathy instead where they were laying on their sides, embracing each other in the foetal position while sobbing with ceaseless fear. Jackson argued one-sidedly with the Yacumama that there must have been a better way to manage the women. However, the alien was unrepentant and arrogantly dismissive of the utter terror that she had driven into them. The exact opposite of what she had claimed she was going to do in calming their thoughts.

"Some of you will inevitably decline our offer, but we will not apologize for making light of this outrageous and illogical behavior. If you wish to opt-out of sacrificing yourself for a greater good, then that is your own lookout. We will wish you a very fulfilling life as the fate of the human species is decided without your direct involvement once you wash your fins of us. However, we expect it to be done after well thought out consideration of the costs and benefits to your own lives and livelihoods instead of.... whatever juvenile display of emotion this is."

The Yacumama watched the three women, and Jackson watched her warily in turn while trying to offer the other water bowl. Neither of the young women, Evelyn didn't think either of them could be a hair over twenty-five, acknowledged the water being gently presented to them by her husband as she rubbed Cathy's back soothingly. Telling them clearly and calmly that it had just been a joke. That nothing beyond being wet and thirsty was happening to them.

"You are both smart women that are capable of critical thinking skills when you aren't so terrified, Cathy Franks and Elizabeth Asher, or you wouldn't have been brought here." The alien said with none of the sarcasm or condescension that she had before. "Sit up so that you can look at each other and tell me if you see or feel any signs that you are changing out of your human forms. The only thing we wish for you to do right now is to believe what we tell you, and right now, what we are telling you is that you need water to alleviate the elevated core temperatures that your bodies have."

She said this while she had brought her head and one large gold eye in closer with a single whisker brushing against the side of each of their necks. They whimpered and shivered at the touch of the bulb on the end of the tendril but made no other movements. From this distance, Evelyn could see the previously unnoticed detail of hundreds or maybe thousands of filaments coming from tiny pockmarks across the surface of the tendrils and bulbs. The glow being emitted from the rough skin beneath these translucent fibers making them nearly impossible to see. The tendrils must be unbelievably sensitive, she thought to herself. Realizing that it might very well detect variations in things like temperature that the alien could interpret and quantify. A host of measuring devices growing right from the tip of the nose. As a scientist, Evelyn could appreciate the utility of such an innate ability.

"You are angry, and you have a right to be, but you also must learn that here on this island, you will not be exposed to anything but the truth by us. Which you will not find back in your home countries or among your own people as they undergo social upheaval with our actions and the consequences of meeting another alien civilization.

We will not apologize for the crude way that we forced you to make this realization, Cathy and Elizabeth. However, you are still in danger of dehydration even if our dousing you in water served to briefly lower your body temperatures. Will you now please take the mug that Jackson is offering you?"

The girls had been examining themselves while she talked and gradually calmed as the reality that no life-altering changes were being forced upon them. Cathy was the one to reach out and take the mug from Jackson and the first to sip the water. Watching them, the alien tender gaped her mouth open with her teeth hidden behind her lips in what Evelyn was now convinced was a form of a smile.

"Progress has been made! Now, who's hungry?"