The Tears of the Stars Pt. 01

I have to submerge, he remembered the strange words. Jackson dunked his head under the surface. He felt the liquid move about his skin. Luminescent green tendrils of fluid wrapped around his limbs and torso and neck. They held his body in place keeping him submerged. Panic set in and Jackson tried to thrash and move for the surface, but it held him under. He struggled and fought. His eyes shot open unable to reach the air a mere foot away. He couldn't hold his breath any longer. His mouth opened and he inhaled involuntarily. The fluid filled his lungs and his body went still as the fight left him and his body floated limply, suspended in a sea of brilliant green.

******

Jackson Travers burst out of the stone basin in total blackness. He couldn't remember where he was. His stomach convulsed and he retched an endless stream of fluid. Why couldn't he breathe? He retched again pouring fluid from his lungs. His entire body ached, every inch from his toes to his scalp. He gulped in his first good breath. His mouth gaped open gasping and searching for more.

He crawled from the tub and fell to the hard stone floor. He felt around blindly until he touched his shirt and shorts. His shorts, he thought. He'd put an extra flashlight in there. He remembered now. He fumbled through the pockets and found the light, frantically searching for the button, and rejoicing at the sight of the thin beam. He looked around the room again. He pulled on his shorts and shirt and knelt down to lace his boots, still gasping. The headlamp was still on the basin, so he grabbed it, pressed it on and off and knocked it on its side. No luck. It was good thinking to bring a second light. Then he reached into the liquid and removed the book.

He set it back on the table. That thing almost killed me, he thought. Nobody would have found him down here. He would have been lost forever. Assumed missing or killed or run away. He almost walked out, but he turned back. He took the pieces off of each book and fit them back together. At least he'd get a souvenir.

Jackson climbed the steps carefully. He took the dangling rope he'd dropped through the hole earlier and tied it to his waist as he moved up. He didn't trust his legs, even his bones hurt. Everything hurt. He could hear Fudge howling. He reached his arms up onto the surface and pulled himself out rolling onto his back.

Fudge came running over licking his face and whining. "I wasn't gone that long." He scratched behind his floppy brown ears. But the dog looked too happy to see him. The sun was still high. He'd be home by early evening.

Jackson covered the hole with sticks and leaves and dirt. He packed his tools and shouldered his bag, pulling out the sandwich he'd made before he left that morning. He split it in half and gave part to the dog who drooled as he watched. Jackson felt like he hadn't eaten in ages. They walked together, making their way back through the forest, out into the open fields that led back to the road. It took hours.

The corn in the fields was waist high already. The green stalks stood in tall, straight rows. Berne, New York wasn't really known for much at all. It was a small community in the Catskill Mountains just west of Albany. It was full of simpler people. Jackson had grown up here his whole life. He didn't really know much else. They didn't have much money either. It was never a conscious decision to stay here after high school. He'd started working at odd jobs, which turned into a regular handyman thing, and then he found he had a knack for woodworking. Now he built custom furniture and cabinets and whatnot, but the demand was low in this area. He didn't make a lot of money, but it helped out with the house and bills.

Jackson felt good helping. His mom had a gift for making people feel guilty. That was part of it, but his dad died when he was just seven, and the years had been hard. It felt like his obligation, like he was the man of the house. His sister, Stacy, was seven years younger than he was too. She was still swaddled when it happened. And she looked up to him, as she grew older. He'd raised her and been her best friend when his mom spent long shifts at St. Peter's Hospital. They'd been inseparable. And helping was as much for her as anyone else.

He kicked a stone when he turned onto Ketchum Road watching it skip and bounce down the dusty ditch off to the side. It was just a little ways further before he turned to his left down the gravel driveway to their modest one-story home. He wondered if Stacy would be there. He remembered how sad she was this morning. Jackson had felt bad for her. He wished he could take away her pain. He wished his mother went easier on her with all the Catholic guilt and the strict rules. She wasn't a kid anymore. She'd graduated this year and turned eighteen. But she'd probably get stuck in this town like the rest of everyone.

Jackson walked around back to the barn he used as his workshop and dumped his tools. He hefted the large door back on its track and latched it closed. Then he made his way toward the back of the house, up the wooden steps onto the deck he'd built the year before, and opened the sliding glass door that accessed the kitchen.

******

Stacy Travers had been sitting at the kitchen table with the phone in front of her for God knows how long now. She'd taken to biting her lower lip and fondling the silver cross on her neck. Her blue eyes were puffy from crying and lack of sleep. She still looked like a picture of innocence, sweet and hopeful and beautiful. When the back door opened, it was most assuredly an answered prayer. There was no other way to explain it. Momma told her if she prayed hard enough and long enough that good Lord would listen. And he had.

She jumped from her seat with such emotion that it tipped over backward fell to the floor. The tears started again but they were happy tears this time. "Jackson! My God! You're home! Where have you been? We've been terrified. We called the police. People have been looking for you. Momma's just a mess over the whole thing..."

Fudge snuck through the door and devoured the food that was left in his bowl. Jackson looked at his sister with queer eyes. "Why would you go off and call the police?" He asked. He was tired and the pain was still scourging through his bones. He looked at the clock on the stove. It was 5:30pm. "I've only been gone since eight this morning. I went hiking with Fudge, like I always do."

"Four days ago, Jackson! You left four days ago! What I am supposed to do without you? You can't ever leave me. Ever." She bawled and threw her arms around him.

"What are you talking about four days ago? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. I haven't been gone four days." He wanted to think she was joking but the tone in her voice and the worry on her face began to concern him.

Stacy grabbed his hand and pulled him to the counter where her cell phone was charging just a few feet away. She unlocked the screen and showed him the date that popped up clear as day. Tuesday.

"Tuesday?" He read it, confused.

"What happened to you?" Stacy asked looking at him covered in filth and grime.

"I just need to take a shower and get some sleep okay. I... I'm not sure exactly what happened. Just let me get cleaned up."

Jackson peeled off his clothes in the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. Something didn't look right. He leaned forward with his face an inch in front of the mirror and held his right eyelid open with his thumb and forefinger. His blue eyes were flecked with luminescent green. He blinked twice and looked again. It was definitely there, like it was inside them, a part of him now. Maybe he was just tired, he thought.

The shower felt particularly good. He scrubbed himself clean of all the dirt and worry and concern. It felt like he washed off pounds of burden. It felt good, better than good, it felt cathartic. He thought he might just stay in this shower for four days. But he knew the hot water would only last another ten minutes. Four days, he thought again. He ran over the events in the cavern. Could that be true? Jackson wrapped himself in a towel and walked down to his bedroom. He hopped on his bed staring at the ceiling. He could never remember being so tired.

Stacy knocked on the door and walked inside. "Jackson?" She said in a low voice. "Aren't you going to tell everyone where you were?" She sat on the bed next to him. "Aren't you going to tell me at least? Momma's gonna be home soon. She'll want to know."

It was hard not to notice the smile on his face. He looked up at her. "Come here, squirt." He said. She hated that nickname. He patted the bed beside him and she laid down with her head on his chest, just like she had this morning, or was it a few a days ago, he wasn't sure. Before either could utter another word, he was fast asleep.

******

Jackson was having the most vivid dream. He'd been floating through space, past galaxies and planets and civilizations, tumbling effortlessly, peacefully. He was surrounded by the most beautiful creatures with long, thin, delicate limbs and slender bodies. Their skin glowed like white pearl, smooth and soft. Their faces shaped like gentle ovals with narrow mouths and supple pearly lips. They had slight round outcroppings for ears and thin narrow noses, which barely looked like noses at all. Jackson couldn't help but gaze at their eyes. They were big and round and curious, almost overly large, and they were black as ink with the most brilliant, luminescent green in the center, as if you were looking at a thousand green exploding nebulas all at once, constantly changing, and as one spread out across the dark black ink, another exploded in the center anew.

Something about them made him want to cry. He felt hope and sadness, happiness and despair, as if they cried out for all things. Then they pushed him forward with their gentle fingers into the brightest light of space he'd ever seen. Brighter than he knew anything could be, blinding and beautiful, and it covered him, and filled him up, and made him feel like he'd explode into a trillion rays.

Jackson sat straight up with his eyes wide. "They couldn't procreate!" He exclaimed with sudden realization.

"Ooh child! Don't you go giving me a start like that! Oh Lawd, you done give me a heart attack." The nurse fluttered her hand over her chest. "Now, what was that you were saying?"

Jackson was still focused on his revelation. "They couldn't procreate." He repeated. "They lived a billion years on their own. It was too long for one life." There was more to it than that, but he couldn't figure it out completely.

"Child, Eighty is too long. Seventy-five would be just fine with me. Anything past that and may the good Lord take me. Amen!" She threw her hands up in praise. "I guess I gotta send the doc in. You some kinda something she never seen before."

That's when it occurred to him that he had gone to sleep in his bedroom and woken up in a hospital. It was confusing. Jackson eased himself from the bed and walked into the bathroom. A loose hospital gown hung off his frame. He could see the green flecks in his eyes. The dream had brought clarity. Not much, but some. He'd seen a vision of himself in that cave. That fluid was meant to bind the Ancient knowledge to his DNA. It was inside him now. Enoch was right. It cleansed him, but not how he had thought. It cleansed him genetically. It rid his body of imperfections and coded it with information. But beyond that, he still didn't understand much at all. He didn't know how to use it. He went back and sat on the hospital bed trying to understand. If these beings were so intelligent, why hadn't they just explained to him how it worked? It didn't make sense.

"Jackson," The woman said coming in with her chart, "I'm Dr. Monroe. It's good to see you awake. You gave your mother quite a scare. Do you remember what happened?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"Well, how do you feel? Let's start with that." She asked.

"Great, actually." That was the one thing he could say with absolute certainty. Physically he felt great.

"Do you know why you're here?"

"Not really." He replied. "I went hiking on Saturday morning. I came home in the evening and took a shower and went to sleep. When I woke up I was here."

"I see." She said pushing her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose. Jackson noticed how attractive she looked with her brunette hair pulled back. "Well from what I've been told, you went hiking on Saturday. You were missing for days. Your sister reports you coming in on Tuesday evening and acting confused. Then you went to sleep. Now your mother called me on Thursday when you hadn't woken up. She was concerned. So she brought you in to the hospital to monitor you. That was three weeks ago."

"Excuse me?" He asked.

"Well, what I'm saying is you went hiking almost a month ago. And what you're telling me is you went hiking yesterday. Did anything happen to you? Did you fall? Did you hit your head? Anything that you can remember?"

"What are you saying? I've been in a coma?"

"Not exactly." Dr. Monroe replied. "I never put in an IV or a feeding tube. We did an MRI and you had such bizarre results that the technician can only assume that machine was malfunctioning. It seems that you've been sleeping. Just sleeping." She stopped and leaned forward, looking at him carefully. "I'm going to be real honest, Jackson. Your mom is a friend of mine. I promised I'd run every test there is to run. I've had to hide what I was doing which could get me in trouble. Hospital bureaucracy and red tape is tedious and I wanted tests done, not to wait for authorization. Not to mention, I had to hide the results I did get because other doctors would be very interested in you. You haven't eaten in almost a month. You haven't gone to the bathroom. You haven't had any exercise. But you have increased muscle mass and bone density. The MRI says you have phenomenal brain activity, like nothing ever recorded. I'm not sure it's a malfunction. You are the most perfect person I've ever examined. Your organ functions are perfect. All of them. You're in better shape than when you came in. Leaner. Toner. It seems everything I test is perfect. It doesn't make sense. So help me make sense of it."

"I can't." He said.

"Because you don't have any idea, right? What's happening here is not medically improbable, it's impossible. It goes against logic and reason. I need logic and reason. So, I don't know what to tell your mother. I don't know what to tell my colleagues." She stated calmly, truthfully.

"I don't know what you want me to say." Jackson replied standing up. He found the running pants that they must have dressed him in before bringing him here. He pulled the gown off while the doctor stood there. He looked down noting his body for the first time. "Oh man." He whispered as he touched his chest and abdomen. He looked at his arms and flexed his muscles. He glanced up at her. "I didn't look like this before. I'm not really sure how to explain it."

"I'm not going to lie, Jackson. I've never seen someone in such perfect shape." Dana Monroe flushed as the young man stood in front of her naked. He was younger than her, but his eyes looked wiser than she felt. His body was thin and cut with muscle. And his... She caught herself staring and looked away shyly, suddenly feeling unprofessional.

Jackson stared down and saw that his cock was as enhanced as the rest of him. It was bigger and thicker than he remembered as it hung limply between his legs. He slid on his pants and found the t-shirt pulling it over his head. He looked at the clock. "It's late." He said. "I'd like to go home. Can I go home?"

He hadn't answered her questions, and she knew there was no reason to keep him here. She longed for answers. All she could seem to say was, "Yes. I'll drive you home... if you let me ask you some questions and check in on you in the next few weeks." He nodded.

They walked together down the hall. The night staff scurried back and forth marking charts and entering doors. These were his mom's friends, her coworkers; although he was thankful the other nurses hadn't noticed him yet. Jackson was still confused with a quiet in his heart. The weight of what had happened suddenly felt burdensome. Why him? What was he supposed to do with this gift? It made him feel alone. He liked the doctor at his side. He could sense her intentions were genuine. He was comforted by her smile and the smell of her hair as she walked beside him. He was attracted to her, and he could feel his body react as the urges filled him. It wasn't like him to react this way to a beautiful woman.

Dana hung her white coat in her office and put away his chart while Jackson stood gazing through a window into a separate part of the hospital. He watched a mother holding a little boy's hand as if she were afraid to let it go.

"It's the children's wing." Dana said coming up behind him. "Leukemia patients mostly." She noticed him staring at the little boy. "He doesn't have much time left. He barely sleeps due to the pain. We let his mother spend the nights at his side now. Such a sweet boy."

Jackson opened the doors entering the large room. Hospital beds lined the wall on either side. Half of them were filled with small bodies hooked to big machines that droned with rhythmic beeps and hums. He walked down quietly until he stood at the end of the little boy's bed. Dana padded along behind him trying to keep up.

"Hi." Jackson said in a loud whisper to the boy. His hair had fallen out completely and his eyes were sunken. "I saw that you couldn't sleep. I couldn't sleep either. And I thought I would say hello. My name is Jackson."

"My name is Josh." He replied with pained breaths.

"How old are you, Josh?"

"Five."

"Do you like stories? My friend, Dr. Monroe, says you're not feeling well, and I always like to hear a story when I'm hurting. It's not very long."

"Okay!" He said, wheezing his excitement.

Jackson looked at his mother who smiled sweetly with the saddest eyes. He pulled up a seat and sat right next to the bed. He took Josh's hand in his. Dr. Monroe watched with a sincere smile as he comforted the child.

"This is a story that took place a long time ago. It happened on the other side of the universe. So far away that it would take us ten thousand years just to fly there in a rocket ship. But way out there on the other side of the universe there was a planet with people that look a lot like you and me. Their planet had huge fields of tall grass that stretched out as far as the eye could see. And the people built these great grass houses and they farmed the land. At night they played music and danced and sang."

Josh was mesmerized by the story already. He listened intently as Jackson continued. "One day, a boy got sick. A boy about your age. The villagers brought in all the doctors and all the healers to try and make him better. But no matter how much they tried there was nothing they could do. His family was so sad. Each night after they went to sleep, the little boy would walk out into the grass fields and stare up at the stars. There were a billion glittering stars over his world. He'd stare at the stars and pray to get better so his family wouldn't be sad anymore. The boy got sicker and sicker, but he would still crawl out of his grass house in the middle of the night and pray to the stars. He'd pray that much harder. One night, a single star was so moved listening to the boy's prayers that it filled up with sadness. It got bigger and bigger and brighter and brighter until it exploded into a million yellow tears. The tears floated down from the heavens covering the boy and healing his illness."