It was New Year ‘s Eve 2119 and over a hundred passengers were on a mars transport ship which was on a routine voyage to Los Angeles when some of them were abruptly awakened by the loudest member of a drunken group of college students. She shouted, “What the hell is that creepy guy back there doing?” in the direction of a porter, and pointed to a tall, slim, awkward looking guy who was pacing in the shadows near the back row of seats.
“Calm down ma’am. That’s just the General…ya know…General Mark Thompson. He’s the head of the Supreme Officers Department back on Mars and he’s got a lot on his mind this morning. You see, uh, he just got back from a two-day mission into the Beta-Dimension.” She immediately sat down, shut up and looked down at the floor with a terrified look on her face. The porter leaned down and whispered to the frightened woman quietly, “Don’t worry alright? Going to the Beta-Dimension is not as crazy as it seems. Can I get you something to drink? A coke?” The woman said, “No, that’s alright. Thanks. I’m…fine.” And the porter shrugged and walked away.
M ark Thompson had mostly grey hair and was barely in his 40’s. He knew more about the suffering that is involved in inter-dimensional travel than most people because he was one of the first soldiers to ever go through the first vortex that led to the Beta-Dimension. He was preoccupied with images of his recent trip as he continued to pace while he thought about how he wished he had hitched a ride on a supply ship instead.
He had booked passage on that particular vessel solely because of the speed and for no other reason. Nothing quieted his mind because it was difficult to readjust to our normal perception once people go through. He also was aware that at any second the aliens, who he and his colleagues at the Department had encountered in the Beta-Dimension on a number of occasions, might find him because his body still resonated with an electro-magnetic signature which they were capable of easily detecting. He had been in many intense battles with their soldiers and he managed to destroy hundreds of their ships over the preceding 11 years; but all of his victories were unrecognized because they occurred in the aliens’ dimension.
Thompson turned and looked along the top of the rows of seats in a panicked state. He focused in on the formerly loud woman who suddenly became silent and still, but didn’t pay attention to her for too long. Mark began to run and then fell to his knees and screamed “No! Oh my God. Get back you bastards,” before he laid flat on the ground. Everyone in the section turned to look. Workers from the Martian fusion power plants, a man in a lab coat, two Chinese businessmen, and people from all over the world, and from all walks of life, turned and became incredibly alarmed.
General Thompson jumped over to the window and yelled, “Oh shit! They’re actually here. NO. Everybody get to the other side of the ship…NOW.” The alien ship traveled faster than anything the passengers had ever seen before and it was headed right for them on a collision course. The Captain ran out and frantically instructed everyone to get to the escape vehicles immediately that were programmed to bring them directly back into the Mars’ Orbit. Mark Thompson didn’t think that the Captain’s warning would cause the people to move out of harms way in time, but was filled with hope anyway.
The alien ship looked very bizarre and it was just a few kilometers from the side of the humans’ ship. The General starred out the window at the spot where he first saw the craft but there was only the utter blackness of space and the reflection of his white shirt.
A security officer shouted from front of the ship after running out of the Captain’s deck in a terrified state. The passengers were only able to hear the first part of the phrase he tried to say, “Everybody get down,” before they watched his head burn and explode; but only when he was in the line of several beams of light that shined through all of the windows. Everyone else who was either standing or sitting next to the windows also exploded and started to fall to the isles in front of General Thompson, who desperately attempted to crawl to the front of the plane to try to land it without being exposed to the deadly beams. There was also a mild weapons system on board that he considered using to deter the alien’s brutal attack.
Suddenly, the light got brighter and brighter until the hair on his head was singed as he climbed over one last body in order to lay next to the captain who was luckily still alive-although his arm and ribs were badly burned. Thompson yelled out as he quickly reached up and pressed the buttons to stop the ship and to extend the massive solar panel array. Right after he accomplished this incredible feat, part of his arm and hand exploded and the flesh around the injury boiled and sizzled. He ripped off a piece of his shirt and bit down as he screamed and panted and he drifted in and out of the early stages of shock. The ship began to vibrate and shake fiercely and then it finally stopped.
Mark Thompson was thrown around and he bashed his head in three places but then he mustered up just enough energy to look out the front windows only to see that the alien ship had completely vanished. Thompson’s superior understanding of the aliens’ limited experimental inter-dimensional technology as well as his eminent death lead him to think quickly enough to realize that he could just reflect the fatal beam back toward the aliens by using any large reflective surface available. The aliens were temporarily forced back into the Beta-Dimension temporarily but the General knew that they were only learning from their failure, studying the reasons why, and that they would be back for him and eventually for the rest of humanity. He knew too much about the new enemy and they wanted to keep the knowledge of their existence completely hidden.
In a haze of pain, excitement, and panic General Thompson picked up a communication module and pressed the buttons so he could call up a military base so that he could quickly brief them on how to beat the aliens by using mirrors and other reflective surfaces. There were a few other bits of intel that could give people a competitive chance at destroying them for good.
“Houston, this is General Mark Thompson…and I need to speak with a high-ranking officer about a critical situation immediately. This is a matter of…life and death…international security.” The older woman on the other end tried to calm him down in order to find out if it was an authentic transmission by saying, “Sir, Sir, please stop shouting at me. Now, what is your name, rank, and serial number please?” “You don’t understand. You’re gonna be attacked. We’re all…going to be killed.” He started to cry from the relentless pain and gave her the name of the ship they were on and the coordinates and then he mumbled, “Please listen. I can help. I know how to… I can save us all. I can save us.”
Mark Thompson passed out in a state of extreme shock right next to the unconscious Captain who had hit his head when the vessel violently shook just a moment before. Only 5 passengers survived but none of them took the opportunity to escape. Two middle-aged men ran to help the General and to resume the conversation with the officer in Houston in order to tell them where they were and about the morbid events that had just occurred. The ship still and hovered in that exact location where Thompson had left it, with an alarm going off in the cabin over and over again, and 7 survivors who held the key to the survival of humanity.