Finn

Chapter 2 - Lecture

The sound of clicking on a keyboard and footsteps wakes me. The cold steel frame partially stuns me as my body continues to wake up. I open my eyes and scan the room. What appears to be a secret laboratory covered with computer monitors surrounds me. Directly to my left is a man in a white lab coat typing away. He has some sort of machine on his left ear, it looks like half of a futuristic pair of headphones. A decently loud sound comes from the machine he is currently typing into. I start to pull on the arm restraints tying me to this what seems to be an operation table. I try to harness my strength to my arms to pull , I see my right hand becoming red and I pull once more. I see the strap starting to give and I flex my bicep. It begins to rip , suddenly a red alarm falls from a compartment in the ceiling. I panic and start to pull even harder and with more panic.
"Relax, relax, Finn if you let me finish this test it will be beneficial for both of us." He says turning around and placing a small cold rock on my chest. It's colder than the steel on my back ,but it soothes me.
"Dude I don't know what you want or like anything at all just let me go please!" I say slowly letting my arms relax.    
    "I saw you touch the meteorite last night, I need the power you possess. Getting it won't kill you , more than likely won't even hurt or annoy you. For now just lay back and relax I won't be doing anything for a bit," he flicks on one of the more secluded and raised monitors to an episode of a cartoon I don't recognize. "I was going to hopefully contact you in a more polite manner ,but you happen to not look where you were going and if I tried to approach you last night I would've ended up like Zach Kilman back there. You have no idea what kind of abilities you just gained from that little interaction last night do you Finn?" He says laying his right hand on my left shoulder. He takes off the rock ,but the calmness stays within me.
    "There is a problem though, you only touched a small portion of that rock. As I was driving I saw what appeared to be five pieces scatter into the night sky. Those pieces were intended to land within a mile of each other ,but at least three flew out of my site and one landed within a mile of its intended crash site. I know I'm skipping over a lot of details ,but for now you only need to know  the specifics. I can fill in your questions later," he finishes explaining and moves back to his station.
    "How could this benefit me at all? You said this would be beneficial for both of us," I say still kind of pulling on my arm straps. "My mom is gonna worry about me if I'm not home soo-."
    "I have that covered , OH how rude of me. I'm Professor Tunk, I kind of assumed you'd know ,because I know a lot about you," he says pulling down a chart from the ceiling like an old school teacher would. The chart has 2 human bodies, one with skin , and another that shows organs and bones. "You see Finn, your body is going through changes. Even more changes than typical puberty. Last night you touched a ZupctoMagnet which has more electricity and just pure power that the human brain couldn't even comprehend. I barely understand the pure power and I had it drawn out to a Tee what this power can do."
    "I've never heard of this Zupcho," I start
    "Zupcto" he corrects me.
    "Yeah sorry, ZupctoMagnet stuff before. I took chemistry last year and never ever heard that word said," I finish as he comes over and unties me.
"I should hope so, it comes from a moon so far that even Earth's greatest telescope can't even reach half the distance from here to it's closest revolution path," he finishes the last leg restraint and pulls me up. He flips a switch , all the lights in the room fade to darkness while a light behind the chart shifts the human body's appearance to a glowing red. "As you can see here your body is heating up on the inside ,but your organs have adjusted rapidly. You see the human body couldn't handle the full power of the ZupctoMagnet rock which if my calculations are correct you probably touched the smallest chunk of the entire rock and your body would have exploded or melted into a puddle nearly instantaneously. Now I can only hope your now magnet pull can lead me.. us to the rest of the pieces." he coughs out the final words and inhales to catch his breath.
"Like the one I had last night?" I return.
"Like the one what?" he asks.
"The pull I had to the rock last night," I explain with the extra detail.
"Really? That's absolutely absurd, your body should have no attraction to a Zupcto material if anything you should feel a sickness approaching within a mile of its crash site which is why I was bewildered to see another human there," he gives a scientist point to a monitor behind him with a pencil in his hand. The monitor appears to have notes written about last night. He walks over and deletes the second note.
"Another human?" I wonder and give off what was some sort of shoutish tone.
"Finn , you have a lot to learn yet ,but we have time to go through them if you'd like," he walks back over to me with a clenched fist. "If you feel like you might have some sort of panic attack or just overly stressed right now place another Ciplto Rock on your chest," and places it on my empty hand.
"Okay , where are all of these crazy rocks coming from and what did you mean by another human?" I begin the questionnaire. He pulls down another chart of a very weird mismatched colored rock that is a combination of red , blue , green , white , and a weird orange-ish color.
He begins, "Both the ZupctoMagnet and Ciplto Rock come from a moon which is twice as far as the strongest telescope that Earth could possibly reach. With that other question it's hard to explain. The fact that people on this planet don't believe in aliens is almost ignorant in a way. An infinite area with only 1 planet with life is with lack of better words... stupid. I didn't think I'd have to explain this to a 16 year old who has had the most chaotic 24 hours of any 16 year old ever that life isn't anything how it seems. Yes , science is right. Humans have evolved ,but in only very small ways. The most notable is that the fifth finger became a thumb and the second tongue slowly disappeared over time. Back to the main topic, Humans arrived to the planet via a dozen or so pods carrying around 500 humans a piece and when they crashed they were given an amnestic completely wiping their memory of anything that happened in their life before that fateful step onto the soil. The pods slowly dissipated ,but the pods weren't only sent to what is now called Earth. An extraordinary amount of lightyears away another planet received pods of humans and basically the same things happened there as it did Earth. The only difference is that over the span of the what I think is 100,000 years is that the Humans on that other planet had better resources for advancing society that now they have technology far greater than humans here. This technology led to an expansion when their planet ran out of natural food resources to sustain their growing population. Luckily for them they had a few dozen close options to expand to. After a few years of resear-,"
"How do you know any of this? How do I know you aren't just making all of th-," I try to start.
"Well if you let me finish this lecture, anyways. They found out that only 3 of those planets could successfully hold life. Unfortunately there was already someone who had their sites on that planet. The two civilizations met and with a long discussion with no compromise they declared war. This opposing civilization was far more technologically superior weapons wise ,but overall science they lacked. This opposition is only known as "Guppords" ,which to those humans is a slur for people who are aggressive and ignorant was out numbering humans 4 to 1 and with the better weapons the war didn't last ,but only 4 Torcim weeks which only 2 Earth months. Torcim , the original planet of those humans , was now being targeted by the Guppords for another expansion. In a panic the humans of Torcim created very strong defensive measures to hold their home planet safe ,but with projections by top scientists they assumed the Guppords could eventually break through their defenses in around 6 Torcim years or around 3 Earth years. Torcim had known of Earth for a decent while and were becoming desperate. They recruited the top 25 qualified people to see who would be worthy and willing to travel to Earth and ask for help. Of those 25 , 20 lied or stretched the truth on documents , 2 were afraid of never coming back to their family. This left 3 individuals. They were called in to do some physical tests and psychological evaluations. On the flight back to Torcim one of the recruits' planes was shot down. Plenty of precautions were taken to get this person back from the war safely ,but the travel back from a war ridden planet to a planet surrounded by that same enemy was just improbable from the start," Professor Tunk sat down realizing he'd been talking for almost 15 minutes straight. He takes a few sips of water and a minute of visible thinking with a plethora of hand gestures later he begins again.
"This left 2 candidates , Zucker Kelkin and Reisha Gonfe. Also yeah their dialects , languages , and names are very similar to Earth's. So around 2 and a half Earth years ago they sent 2 most qualified people possible to Earth, a simple co-op mission. Now Finn with all this very absurd alien stuff that  already has you confused and curious that I won't even try to explain wormhole space traveling to you. Either way the  year and a half of travel was difficult to say the least. They encountered various challenges and the ship approximately half the size of the moon traveled pretty much invisible to any technology Earth will be capable of possessing in the next 250 years. During this 1 year trip they were attacked by several roach type bugs that would leap from passing rocks to the ship. The damaged ship had been carrying 3 pods that would carry the 2 passengers had been nearly destroyed or lost countless times. These pods would be used to launch the crew members to the Earth with a less damaging impact than you know, the moon hitting Earth. The plan would be to enter the pods and land within a mile of each other then make contact ,but besides that everything isn't as clear to me. I've been told that things didn't go to plan," he finishes.
"Did you meet one of these people or things? That's the only way I could see you knowing all of this," I counter.
"Meet. No, I fell in love Finn," he says with a smile and points to a curtain across the room that I hadn't noticed until now.
He presses a button and the curtain spins around a large glass tube and what sits inside is something I'd never see.
A humanoid figure ,but with a smaller nose and ears. The thumbs look a little displaced.  Maybe you wouldn't see a difference ,but anything more than a passing glance you would see that this thing isn't "human". I feel my heart skip a beat and a cold rock is placed on my shoulder then I feel calm again.
"You see what she told me was true ,but not everything. You see their population is growing at such an advance rate ,because people aren't dying. A mineral on their planet called Zupcto that had been implemented in such a way that I don't understand ,but it extends their life. The one downfall is that here the Zupcto mineral is essentially a timer," he says before I interject.
"Wait does that mean I'm going to die soon!" I start to yell .
"No , no you are still young and you don't have enough contact , plus Zupcto affects us differently. Reisha here had some "powers" as you would call it ,but it extended her life to be almost 230 years. I don't believe you are in any danger and have nothing to worry about. Either way , she was losing this life extending boost and what you touched is what I believe was meant for her ,but didn't reach in time. Now that I think about it ,we both saw that meteor , if that collided with Earth we would be reduced to dust. This leads me to believe the rock separation was on purpose. I don't suppose they meant to have these rocks land so far apart," he says, pulling up a chair to a large computer with a monitor the size of a large TV. Numbers and graphs are flying around the screen as a globe of Earth appears. "It appears that one rock , the one you touched landed half a mile from the meteors projected crash site. Give me a second here." He starts typing again.
"Are you saying the power I possess will be used to bring her back to life?" I question.
"Hopefully, like I said earlier this Zepcto mineral can extend the life of a human or at least the human subspecies on Torcim ,but I'm unsure if it can extend your life or bring Reisha back to life," he finishes typing and points up to the screen. "If my calculations are correct, that's the most nerdy thing I've said today," he laughs, "the other parts of the rocks aren't too far ,besides the biggest fragment. It looks like 3 of the 4 rocks are within a 100 mile radius , I can only hope all landed in fields like ours did. Ugh, it appears the largest rock was lost from my satellite radar , so it's harder to track. My best ,but likely incorrect guess is somewhere far east. Possibly New Jersey or New York which is just the best thing ever for us," he says sarcastically.
"So , if I got this all correct. Reisha was sent here to get help for Torcim. Her goal was to make herself known then send help from us back and while in this process the Zupcto Mineral wore off or something and she died," I paraphrase what he explained over the last 30 minutes or so in a nice summary.
"Well, technically this pod is keeping her 'alive' in a comatose state ,but yes," he corrects.
"Now we must go get these minerals and put their power together to recreate the initial energy needs to bring her back?" I suggest.
"In a way that would work, we could just bring the rocks here and hold them up to her. You know what I could create a contraption to hold all the energy from these separate fragments and transmit them to her via injection or transfusion. Unsure for now," he clicks a pen that was laying beside a keyboard.
My mind spins. I think now I'm just processing everything that was just brain dumped onto me. Aliens, there are ALIENS! Even if you don't count the "humans" of Torcim there enemies are aliens. One of life's biggest questions just got thrown at me after all that has happened the last 24 hours. Would I be considered a superhero, I can't fly or lift buses like the cliche heroes , at least that I know of. I close my eyes and my mind races thinking about imaginary scenarios where I'm saving a beautiful girl from getting hit by a train by swooping down and flying off into the sunset with her on my hip. More specifically a girl named Miranda Sawl.
The most amazing girl in the entire school. As a senior especially one of her class would never stoop to a sophomore like me especially one on the south side. Her smile is one people never forget , perfectly straight and clean teeth. Her eyes pop out of her head like two little blue lakes that lay upon her face. They remind me of Lake Michigan and how blue the water was. My family would go up there every summer before my dad got sick. I still remember him telling me to cherish my senses, especially sight. He always told me to be more perspective and see the finer details in things. I guess this is why I fell so hard for Miranda after dad passed away. I was then able to truly appreciate her outer and inner beauty with more personal value. Her skin , flawless doesn't describe the perfection well enough, never had a pimple or skin discoloration. A cute button nose that crinkles when she laughs or smiles. Oh , her laugh. My heart and body warms when I hear it. It's usually in a short little giggle ,but when she really is excited it's a loud non-obnoxious laugh that I can't help ,but smile in return to. What means more to me than any of her countless amazing physical traits are her actions and accomplishments. I remember when she was awarded class president for her Junior class. The entire school sat in the auditorium watching the years best of the best students getting awarded for their prestigious actions. The list of her actions went on for what seemed like an hour. Hours upon hours of community clean ups , countless sessions at an animal rehabilitation center , tutored over 15 kids in her Spanish class and around 30 in Spanish classes in the grades beneath hers , highlighted how much food she donated to local food drives with money she earned at her job. There were many more things ,but by that time I was fixated on the teal dress that she wore. I was sitting on the second story balcony ,but that dress helped her eyes radiate a sky blue. I never got my chance to make a first impression on her , not sure if she even knows who I am.
She did drop a book at the end of last year and I did happen to be at the right place at the right time to pick it up for her. She thanked me and her voice was like music to my ears. Her hand brushed against mine, soft as I imagined. I almost guarantee I'm not the only one with this infatuation for Miranda ,but I'd like to hope I stand out in the way that I value her inner self more than her outer qualities.
I notice how I've been daydreaming about her for little to long about saving her in various ways. I zone back in , and open my eyes. The room is dimmer than before. I survey the room as I did once more to see Professor Tunk slouched over with a wallet or what appears to be a wallet in his hand. I sit up from the now not so cold table and walk over to  him. His body looks fairly uncomfortable sitting in this office chair. I wonder if he stayed up all night even before the meteor. The only monitor on now is the one sat right in front of him, the bright light illuminates his face. The monitor's background is a picture of him and Reisha in a car at what looks like to be a fast food restaurant. Both of them are smiling ear to ear. I can see their hands are interlocked and he has a red lipstick mark on his left cheek. I see a text document shortcut titled "Finn".
I click and the file covers the entirety of the screen with text that appeared to be labeled  with time from the last 24 hours. The text is highlighted in various colors and as I scroll there are several more logs dating back all the way to January. I scroll back to the more recent entries and find the one closest to the crash time. I find one and begin to read.
        Sunday August 29th 2021     8:53 p.m.
    Reisha told me that the resupply of Zupcto would be arriving in roughly 2 hours. I know I shouldn't be more excited to love and kiss on her again than to save her planet ,but it's true. It's like a knife being twisted in my gut every time I look over and see her in there. Either way my plan is to receive this supply and convert the energy into something that can bring her back. I'm unsure how much time I will have to get to the supply before someone reports a meteor hitting the Earth that wasn't seen by NASA or some other agency. Reisha never did get to explain how they were able to make their ship and this Zupcto supply invisible to our telescopes and naked eye. I'm guessing a jell that reflects light in a way we see through or around the object. I'm heading out to my observation deck now with the telescope that she made for me that can pick up a vision of the supply. Not my favorite way to spend a possible final day with someone ,but I remember how necessary she made it sound that  I find this cache and bring it to her which of course with all the explaining she did I understood and settled for being a mechanical assistant for the day.
            Monday August 30th 2021     2:34 a.m.
    How, how did this kid beat me to the supply. The telescope only gave me a few minutes warning before I saw the full spectrum and mass of what appeared to be disguised as a meteor hit the Earth or whatever had happened. I get to the crash site and all I see is a kid which I would later find out named Finn walking with his hands glowing like stop lights. I dashed away , just to drive around behind him to see who it was. I almost lost him ,because he took off a lot quicker than I figured. He lives right next to where I used to play poker. Finn Walker , dad died of cancer last year , moved out of the nice part of Lovington , apparently to FaceBook his mom became very distraught , he has been quiet however. No marks on his record , no FaceBook posts claiming anything bad about him , nothing out of the ordinary.  His car however has a rather large dent in the shape of a crater on it so maybe he's not all that appears to me. I'm furious that I wasn't able to get my hands on the supply ,but it appears that a larger percentage of this supply was split into the sky before the impact. I tracked as much as I could and as soon as I got my hands on Finn I'm going to use him to help me find the rest and bring her back Reisha. For now I'm going to figure out as much as I can about what happened and theorize ways to get Finn to me.
            Monday August 30th 2021 8:55 a.m.
    Knowing Finn likely goes to Lovington High School I waited outside the school to see if maybe I could talk with him before school. As soon as I concluded he either skipped the first day or just didn't go there I see this kid flying down the street going what I can guess around 40 miles per hour. At first I thought it was a small motorcycle ,but no it was just a kid pedaling like his life depended on it. I decided to then just come back here until around 3:00 when he gets outs.
            Monday August 30th 2021 4:15 p.m.
    So my plan was to just pull my research van in front of him and get out and talk with him. I saw minutes before that he had nearly sent a bully into orbit and he started to pedal off in the different direction. I was able to speed up to the road he was on and park in front of him. It was going to plan until he turned around for a bit too long crashing into the side of my van. Besides a few thousand dollars of damage to equipment inside and a dent the size a deer would leave.  He was knocked out cold and now he is laying on my examining table strapped down , I have no clue what other abilities he could have beside that super pedalling , Reisha told about how if a Earth Human found this Zupcto it could lead to a catastrophic event. I wish I would've put a blanket under him ,because that table is bound to be FREEZING.  He should be waking up anytime soon. Oh I think I heard him move. I haven't slept for nearly 36 hours , the next log will be a doozy.
Monday August 30th 2021 7:54 p.m.
I'm deciding if I should tell him my hypothesis of how high his power ceiling is , I'm thinking he could even sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
    The line of S's go on for several rows. The curiosity of what he thinks my 'power ceiling' is feels like it's killing me. Wait. If Torcim thinks they have 3 years time to hold off the Guppords, they sent Reisha and that Zucker Kelkin guy around 2 and a half years go, which that trip tip took eighteen months. If my math is correct, thirty-six months of defense minus the 24 for the selection of recruits and their travel leave around 1 year. The logs go back as far as January. That means we have less than 2 months to get back to Torcim before the Guppords break through their defenses. What if Torcim gets overrun then the Guppords come here? My heart starts pounding fast and I feel myself getting light headed. I turn around back to where I was sitting and just beyond my table is a Reisha being kept alive with a mask and engulfed in some sort of blue plasma. All of this was too much and I faint again.