Indigo's Song by Jason Sullivan
Frank and Joe sat surrounded by state of the art technology. Everything money could buy, and alien technology could build, was here in this observation room. In the center was a small plexiglass window, a two-way mirror, through which they stared at their children—all 99 of them.
“Quick! Wake up! She’s doing it again!
“You’re kidding? What have I missed, Joe?”
“I just came in and you were asleep! Come on, Frank! You better hope Dragon doesn’t catch you sleeping. The blue light, she’s in it again!”
“All right, stay cool. Start the blocking sequence. We are going to shut her fun down.”
The little four-year-old girl sat up in her metal, clinical bed. She was surrounded by a soft blue light emanating from no visible source. In fact, they were five hundred feet underground. The light sparkled and danced, eliciting smiles from the little girl, joyful hand gestures and enthusiastic giggling.
“Bring up the frequency. Block the higher frequencies first. We are going to kill this light. It must be transmitted from somewhere, something. No fun for little girly tonight.”
“Do you see him? There he is! Do you see him sitting right next to her? He’s got a couple of circular objects. They’re…I think they’re tambourines! He’s giving one to her.”
“OK, we are at full power. He is beginning to fade.” Frank thrust a victory fist into the air.
“Frank, she is starting to sing!”
Panic came over Frank’s face. Cold sweat appeared instantly on his brow. The little girl was singing a pretty song, mostly a collection of ethereal tones. The monitors started to do funny things. The constant repetitive defense waves, tight and rapid at the higher frequencies, and the low and steady programming waves in their low sweeps, all began to register extreme gyrations.
“Joe, look, the heart monitor! They are changing the rhythm of their hearts, synchronizing them to the beat of the tambourines!” The children’s rhythmic tapping of the tambourines seemed to send earthquake-like shock waves throughout the whole compound.
Frank yelled, “Shit! I’m going in there.”
“The Dragon won’t like it!”
“You know what the dragon can do!”
Frank fumbled with the locks, his nerves getting the best of him, tore open the door and started running down the row of beds, desperately trying to gain traction on the burnished steel floor. When he was about three beds away, the blue light vanished and the little girl lay back down on her pillow. Frank hit a bed post in the darkness, “Damn!”
“Did we catch it on the cameras this time? And, the little boy, he was so clear, more so than last time, I think. The weird thing, did you notice?”
A chill ran down Joe’s back. “I did. He looked a lot like—“
“Like he could have been her brother!” Frank finished.
“Her brother lives 2700 miles from here,” Joe commented in disbelief.
All the girls in the room were created with the re-engineered genetic material of infant boys. The boys were selected, through a secret monitoring program, for their extra sensory capacity, but girls were made from the material because they were more stable genetically, i.e. as clones they were a better result.
“Well, at least we shut them down.” Frank gestured to the monitors that were now registering the normal blocking frequencies.
“I don’t think so. Didn’t you see? A few minutes ago these monitors were so erratic it looked like they were playing Jingle Bells! Whatever they—" Recognizing the anger on Frank’s face, Joe halted in mid-sentence.
“Dragon wants these incursions stopped. They are contaminating the kids!” insisted Frank.
Joe was concerned about Dragon, too. Last time Dragon had visited he had grabbed the coffee cup right out of Joe’s hands and eaten the whole thing, hot coffee and all, while Joe stared on in disbelief.
“Look, Frank. Maybe these kids should be with their families.”
“What? Back with the scum up there in the herd? Their families don’t even know they exist! They have so much more here. They can’t go back. We are their family now.”
Dragon burst through the door. “Where is she? Bring 712 to me. Immediately!” Dragon was about twelve feet tall. He had brownish scales with just the slightest hint of red. His eyes were like black holes and his mouth overflowed with teeth. Perhaps because he was a nostril breather he had earned the nickname, Dragon, but he was not really a dragon at all. Joe slid his new coffee cup behind one of the monitors as Frank rushed to get the girl. The kids did not especially like Dragon, but they did not seem to fear him, either.
712 collected herself in front of the beast, who was easily four times her size. He breathed ferociously down at her before demanding, “Stop visiting with your brother!” Joe and Frank exchanged a nervous glance. So it was the brother. 712’s face was blank until she remembered and a smile blossomed. “Brotha told me a secra. He say Drago don’t like sing.” She giggled a little before singing a single ethereal tone which evoked a blue gem-like space in the center of the room. “Drago go home now. Bye-bye.” and Dragon was gone, vanishing into the oscillating blue light. Then she looked at Frank and Joe who, in contrast to her serenity, were terrified. She said, “I like you guys, but your toys stink! Bye-bye.” The light encompassed her, and then, she too was gone.
“What’d she do with Dragon?” shrieked Frank.
Joe was trying to get him on his cell but there was no answer. Some of the other girls had gathered at the door. One asked, “Where’s Sevenie?”
“She’ll be back,” yelled Frank, although he knew she wouldn’t. “Go back to sleep!” Visibly shaken, Frank collapsed into his chair.
Joe walked over to the plexiglass window and, while watching the children return to their beds, commented, “If Dragon and his people can’t figure out a few kids how long can their control last?”
“These kids! It is all just parlor tricks to them,” said Frank, trying to explain. “Dragon doesn’t fear them. He is just training the best of them to tend the herd. That’s all. That’s what they were designed for. Don’t freak. We’re on the right side. Come on! You are funny, Joe, afraid of a bunch of little girls. You should be ashamed of yourself!”
“It’s not the girls I’m afraid of,” responded Joe. “If Dragon and his kind understand the power of these kids, as they say they do, why can’t they shut it down? They are trying to reverse engineer children! When these children play, something amazing happens, something more powerful than even Dragon’s sun destroying weapons.”
“Ah, you are nuts, Joe!” said Frank. “My money is on Dragon. You don’t control half the galaxy by being afraid of a few kids.”
“Well,” Joe replied, “Dragon better learn how to sing.”
Indigo’s Song © Jason Sullivan 2011
Broken ceramic cup photo © Ansis | Dreamstime.com
