Chapter 1 (Now)

At the age of 34, I feel older than I am, or look. Its a vague sort of tiredness. I'd crammed too much living into too few decades. This tiredness does 2 things to me: it makes me flaky, and it makes me lazy. 

Tonight I was supposed to help my oldest child with a report. He chose to do his report on the 4 kinds of alien encounters. I don't know where he gets his tenacity for the strange. Oh, wait, yes I do. I myself am strange and unusual. (High five if you get the reference.) That being said, at 9 I don't think I was that weird. Weirdest of all is that he's also crazy popular, one of the cool kids. I never was. But when you have children, you learn 2 very important lessons about other humans that tear their way out of your body. You learn that you actually know nothing about who you are as a person. And you learn that these tiny creatures that you feel absolute possession over are not, in fact, you or yours to possess. 

I've spent the last 2 and a half hours pouring over every kind of alien conspiracy theory I can find on the internet. Yes, it started out as basic 4th grade sort of research on alien encounters. But that flaky, lazy chick I told you about has a touch of what can only be described as Task Onset Procrastination Based Attention Deficit Disorder. The advent of the Interwebz has only exacerbated that condition. Pregnancy brain, that tendency to literally forget how to be a person while growing another person, basically rounds out the trifecta of reasons to browse alien conspiracies for a ridiculous amount of time. Have you ever read about aliens for 2 and a half hours? You start to wonder what planet you're even on. Or in, if the theory of concave Hollow Earth hold any water. In case you didn't know, that is a theory that we are actually living inside of a Hollow Earth looking out into the outside of the world which to us looks like space? 

It is somewhere between the Ananuki, or angel aliens, and the subterranean lizard people that I first encounter the term hybrid. And it send deep shivers through me. I chalk it up to tile floora and an often too cold central AC unit. I don't think much past that shiver. Not yet. But what I do, is finish my son's research and then pass out on the couch during the evening news. I don't even wake up when hysteria starts to set in around the globe. I don't even wake up when my kids are all sitting in the living room watching TV, having been stirred from sleep by the noise on TV. My oldest wakes me up when my youngest, my 3yo, is crying in fear. When I wake up, I think a sci-fi movie is playing. But it's reality. And we have officially been visited. 

Prelude

Raysha winced in pain. The sedatives were adequate but not total. She could still feel the digging, gnawing feeling all over her body. Having no experience with this kind of physicality, even the sedatives couldn't do everything for her.

"Are you alright?" A serene voice, soft, genderless, cooed in her head.

Raysha startled herself by answering in a physical voice, "Yes." It sounded hollow. Tinny. Like it was manufactured. Mostly because it was. And she had never used such a thing before.

"We're almost through here, Raysha. In a moment, we will be sending you THERE. Once you get there you will not remember us until it is time. Time passes much slower there. It will be difficult. Your heroism in volunteering will never be forgotten here. We will NEVER forget your sacrifice for us and for that planet. But it will be rewarded one day. And when the time comes to remember us, we will be waiting with open arms to accept you home. Are you readied, Raysha?"

"I'm afraid, Jun. But I'm ready. I will miss my home."

"And we will miss you. But there will be no home without your success there. We will be watching... And waiting. Goodbye, our faithful warrior."

All of the white light around her started to dim and the feeling of digging and gnawing began to fade as well. She felt herself sinking but at the same time floating.

"Wait!" She tried to call out but it came out in a wet bubble, lost before it could become sound. The light was gone now and her body grew warmer. She became comfortable and weightless. Then a dim, blotted scream rang out. Her memory began slipping. She became all consumed by her dark, warm surroundings. The scream felt familiar. Was it her? No. It couldn't be. But with almost all of her memories gone now she couldn't quite place it.

There was a pause. Time seemed to stand still. Then the scream again this time accompanying a pressure all around her, like being sucked from the inside. The pause, scream, pressure continued for eternity. But then there was a rushing and light again. A woosh around her ears and then the rest of her body. Her confusion became fear. Panic. She began to cry in terror.

A masculine, brisk voice surrounded by murmurs and mechanic beeps, "Its a girl! Its a girl!" Raysha, no longer knowing she ever was Raysha, heard a woman cry out in happiness and then her body was wooshed again through the air to rest finally in warmth, in the woman's arms. The face was blurry but the feeling of being with her was pure ecstasy. "Hello, little girl. I'm your mama."

And just like that all memory of a fading race on a distant planet was washed away, and a baby girl was born on Earth. Unbeknownst to anyone around her, the dormant memories, and the very essence of this baby were alien. But it didn't matter because she was loved and warm, and for the first time in 307 Earth years alive, Raysha had a physical body, and a mission.