Black Shell

"Maybe time is a shell and we float along it?" Mabel says.

John looks through the glass to the smoke environment where long black suckers curl around static inkwells.

He breathes in through his hazmat environmental suit while he watches Mabel, the mother of his child. She breathes in the modified air because she has pressed the red button. But she cannot remember what choosing it means.

"How do you know that? Are you guessing?" John asks.

Mabel shakes her head and her blue eyes drench to black to show she is communicating with the visitors.

Their inkwell language changes shapes on glass and Mabel's eyes flick in response.

The alarm sounds as John's air has 45 seconds before it runs out.

Mabel's eyes drain of the black liquid and she carries John out with her new visitor strength.

"I need to go and stop a war starting then they will be safe. Later we will be safe, then at the top of the black shell of time they will be safe again." She says to John.

"What now? Mabel you know you aren't making sense right? What the hell is a black-shell-of-time?" John says.

"What I just said makes sense to me. Using the shell theory where the base of the smallest curl takes you back to the top of the widest part of time."

"Oh, wait, so they told you time isn't a line but a circle?"

Mabel shakes her head, "No they showed me time as a movie. It's pretty bizarre but I can only see it once I press the red button to consent to them changing me."

John pouts as he wants to be the leader, "They hid the red button from me when I went to press it."

Mabel nods and buzzes the team to unhook John so they can talk over lunch.

She knows if John went in it would be war because of his truculence. She wanted calm because the baby kept her up all night. In her mind she kept repeating shush, headache, quiet, peaceful future.

The tall visitors whose black curved flippers moved through the foggy environment of their ship want peace above all.

"They chose me because I want my headache to stop." Mabel replies to John.

They look at each other, pick up a green pot whose contents they wobble and click together in cheers.

"It's jelly time!" They say together and suck all the fruity pudding down until the odd visitors’ presence melts away from their thoughts until tomorrow. 

Tomorrow, the next move up the shell of time where each layer interconnects as multiple layers overlay.

#

It’s day two and the visitors show her the start of the shell and the middle which she is in.  Then the future shock of life extinction. 

While black gloop flows down her face as she cries from the horror they show her.

Somehow she can read the splodges of inky liquid.

She reads an odd part of their message where connecting layers of time can rewrite the main layer. Her mind hurts from them flowing change into her conceptions of time and space.

She asks them if they can rewrite universal death or the annihilation in the future that wipes all life out.

They point at her. Have another offspring, they whisper in her mind.

Trouble is they had to get IVF for 2 years, with her as a pin cushion, to have their son.

They see her anguish of waiting and bruises from the hormone injections. More black tears gush from her eyes though a bucket from inside is flushing something out. Liquid splurges on the glass.

One more sentence flows from their shared consciousness to her mind.

Your baby is now within you.

 She hears the sentence in her mind. With emotions of joy bubbling from them, because the change has started to save the future.

The onyx gloop on her cheeks is absorbed by her skin.

John is banging on the glass with huge eyes and white knuckles. She blinks and the onyx goo recedes to show her usual human eye colour.

She says, "I am fine John, the visitors showed me their hurtful future which is ours unless I help."

#

Military from the government arrive to take over the first contact platform to access the visitor’s, initially designed by Mabel and built by John. Mabel sees the nuclear weapon in the military truck and her eyes flick as she updates the visitor’s.

That afternoon a green military man in uniform is burned when he doesn’t ask permission from Mabel to enter the contact platform. By the time the argument calms down between John and the top military, the thin black line which is the alien ship has risen away from the platform.

Mabel’s eyes are flicking as the visitors give her their last instructions and move along the growth of her baby.

#

“She is coming, John we need to call them to deliver her safely as she is special,” Mabel says that evening the visitors leave.

“Which hospital love?” John says feeling confused.

Mabel points to the sky and says, “Them who made her.”

John goes into the garden and screams, “What the hell have you done to my wife? We spent years trying to make our first born. N\ow you wave your ink at her and hey-presto instant baby!”

While John is in the garden waving his arms Mabel’s eyes flick that the baby is coming. A black slit appears in the wall of her lounge and she steps through it onto their ship where she floats.

Her mind is filled with bubble sounds as the delivery ink chamber envelops her. They ask her to breathe in their liquid essence so the baby can swim out without any stress from temperature change.

By the next evening Mabel is home with her new little girl who she has named Grace

while auntie Carol looks after their seven month old baby boy.

John feels odd around the new baby as her eyes are permanently black and her hair is pure white.

“She has all her fingers and toes right Mabel?” John is pacing the bedroom carpet as baby Grace cries for her bottle that's warming for her.

“John, stop fretting. She is human with the ability to talk to the visitors anytime. That’s why her eyes are black right now, but will be blue as she matures into a teenager.”

John clenches his fists, hears the baby’s cry and unclenches them.

“I guess so, but how come it is this easy to have a second child when you went through hell the first time?” John blurts out.

“They healed something and improved other things so baby Grace will grow quicker than most children. By tomorrow she will be ten years old. Do you want the visitors to help you forget they made her?”

John nods as he cannot bring himself to look at the tiny pale thing in a pink blanket. In his mind the word freak rolls over. He is worried he may hand her over to social services but doesn’t want to hurt his wife.

Mabel’s eyes flick and baby Grace stops crying and calls out, “Dadda.”

John freaks out but feels the pull to hold her for the first time. On contact with baby Grace he forgets his horror of being father to a hybrid child with visitor abilities. New memories enter his mind of an amazing birth where he was the first to hold his first little daughter. Laughter at her first birthday when frosting sits on her nose and transfers to his when they hug.

#

“Grace, it's time to get in the car for college now. Mum has packed us four lovely lunches and your older brother will meet us there as he has a surprise for you.” John says.

Loud boots thud down the stairs to the front door with the bright smile of Grace to make John’s heart warm up with pride.

“Sorry Grace but I’m gonna get soppy now.” John says.

Grace rests her hand on her hip and pretends to be cross while he gives her praise for being a wonderful daughter.

“Thanks dad you’re the best, I mean it.” Grace says hugging John, wiping away the last remnant of doubt in his memories.

#

At university Grace is settling into her dorm room and feels calm while she looks at her watch. Her eyes flick as the visitors tell her it’s time. She checks inside the long gym bag to clean the scope. Unzipping the metal zip she slides her finger down the barrel to the end.

Her mission is to stay alive and go to the conference in the city to shoot the man who will create the ultimate artificial intelligence. The WethMan who in the future turns the heat up on Earth and boils all the sea dry and all the oxygen from life. 

The visitors watch time revert back to the day they met Mabel in the field before John saw them and panicked. This time they share the update sooner so things will go smoother this time around. They uncloak their ship and call Mabel in and encourage her to press the red button.

“I’m suffocating, wait, stop. My hazmat suit has sprung a leak and I can’t breathe your atmosphere.” Mabel cries out in a panic.

The voice of the visitors is a deep audible thud which Mabel cannot understand, so she shakes her head as she chokes. Collapsing she shudders. 

Black gloop flows into her body. Huge gasps in and Mabel finds herself looking at a ceiling of the infirmary.

John’s face is peering at Mabel’s and as her eyes flutter open he babbles sentence after sentence at her until she hugs him.

“Sorry John darling, I should have got out after the visitors agreed that I press the red button.”

John paces, “Mabel you know the protocols for goodness sake, you wrote them!”

“I need to go back in once I've had a coffee. They want to show me something important.”

“I’m going in with you and I will record everything just in case,” says John.

Mabel nods, so they go in to meet the visitors both wearing their environmental gear.

Her eyes go black and John screams at the visitors and bangs on their communication glass. After sometime her eyes return to blue and flick.

Seeing she is okay John calms down, particularly when Mabel side-eyes him then pulls off the head gear to breathe in the visitor’s atmosphere of swirling gas.

“What have they told you?” John asks.

"Maybe time is a shell and we float along it?" Mabel says.