The Flight Begins

He was having the dreams again...

On and off for the last few days he was having trouble with the dreams that invaded his sleep. He told nobody for the simple fact that nobody would believe him at all. David Freeman was no ordinary boy – he'd seen tings that nearly everyone else on the planet would have murdered to glimpse. Four years ago he had been on a wild ride involving an alien spacecraft, evil NASA scientists and time travel. He sometimes what happened to the Trimaxion Drone Ship that he had named 'MAX' as a shorter version of its full designation. He guessed it had made it back to the planet Phalon, but he had had so many other questions he wished he had asked. One of the puzzling things was the fact that if he was a drone, and therefore required no pilot, why did he have a seat and manual controls? MAX had had to have had a pilot at some point, but he had referred to the others in a way that made him think of robots – kind of like Cylons from Battlestar Galactica.

"DAVID!" his mother's shout from downstairs brought him out of his musing. "DAVID! YOU'RE GOING TO BE LATE FOR CLASSES"

"COMING!" David shouted back. He was at a college for teenagers that showed a higher then normal level of intelligence. David had not been like this before the adventure that had never been, and he could only guess that when MAX had absorbed the starcharts and other things from his mind, some bits of information had been transferred over too him. At his college, he was one of the highest in science, computing, physics and astrology. Collecting his bag, he wondered downstairs to pick up the keys to his scooter – a 16th birthday present from his folks. Avoiding a hug from his mother, he went out to the garage and got on is scooter – trying to put the dream to the back of mind. But as he did so, one question still burned in his mind...

Who was the orange girl and why was she angry?

#

There was a lot of work to be done as it was getting near to the finals... David was being paired with Carolyn McAdams – the girl that helped to free him and look after him when held by NASA. Now that he was older and more experienced, he decided to try and make a relationship with her – one that was accepted. The college knew them as 'The Brain Trust' because of the knowledge thy both knew and their drive to learn new things. Several students often came too them asking if they could check their work before it was handed in for marking. David had often thought lately about asking her out on a date, but he still had his old problem of being shy around girls.

"And I see that somebody is daydreaming" his college professor said.

"Sorry, Mr Furlong" David apologized to the gruff Englishman that was on an exchange project.

"Hmm..." Furlong grunted, looking down at David. "Well now that Mr Freeman has deemed us worthy of his attention, perhaps we can reuse this lesson. I want you to get into the main programming system and create a way of searching through the weather and looking for patterns of wind, rain and sunshine. You have half an hour to complete your tasks... Begin"

"Come on, David" Carolyn said. The pair set to work on a computer, going into the main system to get the information on the weather before starting to build a program to search for the patterns. They had got halfway through when the terminal they were using crashed and wiped the data.

"Damn..." David muttered under his breath. This new system was prone to bugs from time to time and the college couldn't afford to replace a brand new system... Some computer scientists were coming the following month to repair the faults with some upgrades, but that wasn't until then. "I'll get the data from the tapes" David pushed away from the terminal and then walked to where the computer tapes were stored. Although the information should have been entered by hand, Mr Furlong had said he would let anybody affected by computer failures just load the data from the tapes – so long as this was noted on their work. As he was coming back with the tapes in his hand, he tripped over a loose tile on the floor which sent him crashing downwards. As he did so, he banged his head on a table corner and landed in a heap and very dazed indeed. The class, except Carolyn and Mr Furlong, laughed at his misfortune – that is until the screens to all of the computer terminals went blank.

"Settle down everybody" the professor said. "It looks as if you will be getting out of class a litt-" he was cut off by the screens coming back to life again and rapidly changing their displays. To his trained mind, it looked a lot like data charts, computer code and maps. "Has anybody touched anything or loaded something as a joke?" he asked.

"No, Professor" came the universal reply as Carolyn moved over to David to help him back to his feet. As the class continued to watch, all off the terminals blinked differing information with them all clearing before every screen flashed a series of maps with planets. The fourth planet was closed in on and then coloured in and started blinking too indicate some importance. Without anybody touching them or sending instructions, the giant printers started whirling into life and spewing out page upon page of information with recognisable numbers but words in some sort of symbol base text. Somebody hazarded a guess at Russian, but there were no Soviet probes outside the solar system, and Furlong added that the information would have gone to Moscow – not the Fort Lauderdale special college. Despite the easy solution of turning the computers and the printers off and on again, the entire class, except one, was held in awe of the terminal screens and the printouts coming from whatever was taking over the classroom.

David could only watch the screens and the printers as the only human capable of even beginning to understand what was happening...

The dreams he had been having were coming true

#

One thing about Mr Furlong was that he was sometimes forgot to leave the classroom door locked. David had been able to sneak in and gather up as much of the paper that had been left behind at the end of the class as possible. As he was sometimes seen going to one after college group or another, nobody asked why had had brought along two large backpacks. Back home, he put most of the printouts into cardboard boxes in his room but kept some of the charts out to examine. Some of the charts looked very much like maps with what could be dates in legible English – or maybe numbers were the same the whole galaxy. The first date had a location marked on the map near the Kennedy Space Centre, but that was impossible to get to. The second was that Friday and was near Miami, but he had no way of getting there on time. The third and final was just 15 miles distance and five of those were inside a national park – perfect to hide whatever was it was. This contained a second set of numbers which, when read several times, turned out to be a grid position. By taking that and putting it to the computers at the college – they seemed to be working now – David was able to plot a more precise location.

That night, for the first time in years, he dreamed of MAX

#

News in the academic world moves quickly, and word of what had happened at the college reached a team at NASA. They made the connection between David and the start of the information as mind reading and broadcasting was something they had been working on for years. A ship that could mentally talk to its pilot and crew and inform them of exactly what was wrong with it was invaluable. And, with seemingly new star systems being discovered, they had to find out what was happening and if there was any threat to Earth.

"We go in, talk to the boy and his parents and make them an offer" one scientist said, edging his glasses down.

"And if he refuses?" asked a second.

"Then we simply place him in protective custody" the first scientist replied.

"This is not like Commie Land" the second scientist protested. "I thought we were supposed to end that"

"Look… You know what we're supposed to do for the government! We got lucky with the bodies back in 47, but most of that technology was destroyed on impact or burned up. If we can get the chance to obtain things, we could go and become the ultimate power on this planet"

"So we do this?"

"We do this. Get a hold of security and have them provide an escort for my car. Oh, have one of the Doctors make up a fast acting sedative. Mr Freeman might not be inclined to follow the orders for what is best for him"

#

David woke up and went down for breakfast – dropping his bag by the door as he did so. He had made sure that his scooter was filled up with a full tank of gas on his way back from college the previous day.

"So what are you doing today?" asked his mother.

"Thought I'd go and meet u with a friend near the national park" David replied. "Going to look at the rocks there for some sort of fossils" he added.

"Can't you take Jeff with you?" asked his father.

"I don't have a second helmet" said David.

"'kay, Mom... I'll go to the McAllister place"

"Are you sure, honey?"

"Yeah" Jeff sighed and rolled his eyes.

"When are you going to get back?" asked his mother.

"Not till late" David replied. At the look fro his parents, he added "I want to take the chance to get some star charting done" and this lie was accepted as being genuine.

"Well you be careful" said his mother.

# # # # #

David looked in the mirror of his scooter and spotted the same car and van a little way behind him. They had been following him for a great while now, and he wondered who it could be that was interested in him so much. As he kept glancing at his mirrors, he happened to see the door of the van with the familiar NASA logo stickers.

"They can't..." dread filled David's mind as he concentrated on driving the scooter. As he parked near the visitors centre, the van and the cars sat n the road before you turned off to enter the park's main gate. Trying to put his unease at rest, he entered the park and paid the fee to go in.

"Oh, section 3A is closed off for some reason" the woman at the front desk said.

"Why?" asked David.

"Couple of people came out of there feeling very ill – kind of like radiation poisoning"

"Oh, okay then" said David, and then passed through the doors and out into the park. As he stood and looked at the other visitors, he spotted two men in the parking lot watching him with binoculars. David was now convinced that they wanted him, but he couldn't believe that they somehow knew about the existence of MAX and life forms other than Mankind. Maybe somebody found out about him taking the starcharts from the computer lab and had told someone else, who had told someone else... eventually, some jerk must have passed it on to NASA and they'd decided to speak to him. He could see a couple of them heading towards the visitors centre, so he put some money in the parking station and took out a golfing cart – used as little transports by groups of people or one with a lot of things to carry. There was also the chance; David thought wickedly to himself, that he could run down the NASA goons.

#

He would later reflect that he was not paying attention…

"David Freeman?" and David turned and looked into the eyes of a man he had hated for a long time – Doctor Faraday.

"Who wants to know?"

"I'm Doctor Faraday – I work for NASA. We've heard about what happened in your class the other day and we'd like to talk to you"

"What's NASA got to do with what happened?"

"We want to know where the charts came from"

"I don't know" David replied.

"We believe that you do" Faraday replied. "I'm afraid you are going to have to come with us"

"Why?"

"What information you have could be of vital importance to the defence of this country" Faraday motioned to the others with him who moved in to grab David. As they did so, there was a slight pain in his head and a voice broke into the teen's mind.

Duck, David

BOOM

"What the hell…" a strange silver object rose from the area sealed off from public use. David realised that it had to have been a trap to get him closer to the ship that he knew and knew well. As soon as the lower half had cleared the tree line a beam of blue crackling energy shot out and hit one of the NASA cars – blowing it up in a huge fireball that took everyone by surprise.

David…

The voice in his head came again

"What do you want?" he thought.

Do you wish to depart hostile Alien environment?

"Get him…!" Faraday yelled as he pointed at David. Two of the NASA goons lunged forwards, but the blue light snapped several times on the ground. One of them drew his gun and fired on the ship earning him a direct hit from the vessel and throwing him back several dozen feet.

"Yes"

Then come aboard

David saw the ship move forward and then go into a low hover – the back seemingly melting away and producing steps. He ran around the ship to get up the up steps and into the ship when he stopped and leaned round slightly to face the astonished scientists and security guards.

"Hey!" he called.

"What?" Faraday said.

"SCREW YOU!" he gave the man the finger and then hurried up the steps and into the ship – only to come face to face with a very angry and very orange skinned alien.

"Koĭ po dyavolite si ti? Kakvo, po dyavolite, stava?" she said.

"Uh… I come in peace?" David shrugged.

"Zprashtane! Zapovyadvam ti da mi kazhesh koĭ e tova i tova, koeto pravish!"

"Tova e Deĭvid Friĭman. Toĭ e navigatora" and whatever MAX had replied with seemed to satisfy the being for now. "It is good to see you again, David" MAX said, the eye stalk turned to face him.

"Uh… And you too, MAX. What you doing here?" he asked.

"It is a long story" MAX replied. "Would you like to depart from hostile environment?" it asked.

"Take us…" a sudden thought jumped into David's mind. "Take us twenty miles from here"

"Compliance" and there was an almost unfelt 'something' as the ship darted away.

"Max?"

"Yes?"

"Can I talk to her?"

"You may, but until several of my systems have been repaired I can not activate my translator circuits" and David noted many of the panels on the inside had been taken off and left on the floor. The space where the other lifeform samples had been housed was just a blank void. Wiring of some sort hung in clumps off the walls and out of the ceiling, though he was not sure if it was the work of MAX or this woman.

"Right… Can you hide us at all?" he asked.

"Defensive systems are inoperative" MAX replied.

"Do you have that neat cloaking thing working?"

"Yes"

"Then turn it on"

"Compliance"

#

"David, with some systems on standby, I can now serve as a translator" MAX said some time later. They were hovering a little while off the coast whilst invisible whilst David attempted to find out what was going on.

"Tell me what happened first"

"Compliance. After I returned you to your own timeline, I used the same procedures and calculations to go back in time and return my other samples to their correct timelines and planets. After that, I returned to Phalon to report my findings. However, they discovered that I was… defective after our mindscan, they ordered me to be examined and to be broken up"

"They wanted to scrap you?" David said. He looked at the orange skinned woman who was glaring at him from near the door.

"They took me apart piece by piece, David, until I could nothing but to help them" MAX said slightly sadly. "However, I was able to make some repairs myself before they came to power me down. Using the few connections I had to the central computers of the place I was being kept and examined in, I opened the doors when she came aboard and then left – planting evidence she took me herself so she could not bring me back" and David felt sorry for her somewhat. It couldn't be nice to be made to go from people she knew – he knew that feeling very well.

"Can you ask her to tell me her name?"

"Deĭvid bi iskal da mu kazhe imeto si" MAX said.

"Zashto tryabva da go kasha?" she replied.

"Beshe mi naredeno da vi popitam ot navigatora"

"Kazhi mu , che az sŭm zatvornik"

"Max?"

"Yes, David?"

"Can you tell her that I would just like to know her name so that we can at leas try to get on?"

"I will try, David, but she is till upset with me over taking her from her home"

"Can't you take her back and put something into a computer saying that she was kidnapped?"

"I can not"

"Why?"

"Because she would be executed"

"For being kidnapped?"

"On Phalon" MAX said, "The penalty for unauthorised sharing of technology is death by lethal injection or by public hanging"

"Oh" David replied. "Can you travel back in time?"

"Yes, but I will need to spend time programming the computer for that. What were you thinking of, David?" David walked around the inside of the ship as best as he could – a lot of floor panels having been removed.

"I can't go back because NASA would find out I was back. They'd take me to some lab and dissect my brain" David looked back at the alien woman who had sat on the metal flooring. "I want to go back in time and get a ton of junk I'll need"

"Need, David?"

"You're going to escape here, right?"

"Correct"

"I want to come with you"

"I thought you would want to stay with your family" MAX replied.

"I do" David replied, "But I don't think I can go back… Not for a long time. I'm coming with you" and there was a pause that was only broken after a long thirty seconds of near quiet.

"Compliance"

A/N:

Well that's the start of it, but there is much more to come.

If it looks a little disjointed, then that is because I can never seem to get a first chapter perfect, but I always deliver the goods with the following chapters – so stick with me.

Just want to thank Clayton Overstreet for letting me use his original ideas – thanks!

Regards

Pixel and Stephanie Forever