"Maybe they’re for an alien Christmas tree," van Els joked. "They have no hooks because of anti-gravity.
Or maybe they’re ornamental. Maybe they’re pretty for the sake of being pretty."

"Ugh!" Sammy exclaimed in disgust as she lifted down another filing box. "Look at the dust!" She took a breath to blow the film of neglect away. Instead, she gagged on a mouthful of ancient dust, and backed away coughing. After she caught her breath, she blew her nose, and shook out her clothes and hair. "I should have worn a hat or a doo-rag," she whined. "Yuck!"

"Doo-rag?" van Els queried as he frowned at a featureless metal cylinder.

"It’s a kerchief or whatever… that you wear on your head to protect your hair," Sammy explained. She lifted the top off the filing box and discovered about four dozen… things. "What do you suppose these are?" she called to van Els.

"Some kind of ball," he replied.

"I know that," she retorted. "But look, they aren’t spheres. They’re sort-of egg-shaped, and they all look identical. I think they’re hollow; they hardly weigh anything."

van Els sighed and walked over to see. He wasn’t exactly interested, but he wasn’t bored, either. "Who knows? Maybe it’s just alien poop."

Sammy laughed. "Prettiest poop I’ve seen!" She clacked two of them together, but when nothing happened, she put the balls back in the box and the box back on the shelf.

"Maybe they’re for an alien Christmas tree," van Els joked. "They have no hooks because of anti-gravity. Or maybe they’re ornamental. Maybe they’re pretty for the sake of being pretty."

Sammy shrugged and blew the dust off another filing box. "We haven’t seen anything that indicates a sense of esthetics," she commented, and glanced at van Els, who was examining a soft, bendable device that let out very low notes when tipped. "This," he said, "is the aliens’ version of jug-band music."

"Are you okay?" Sammy asked him.

"Why do you ask?"

"You seem like you’re at loose ends. Usually you’re the one who’s driving everything around here, giving everyone ideas and and hints and pushes… And now we’re digging through boxes like... like trash-pickers, and you’re cracking jokes, but you’re not smiling. At all."

van Els didn’t realize his malaise was so obvious. At the same time, he didn’t care. Yes, he acknowledged silently, I’m apathetic and I don’t care. Aloud he replied, "Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just tired. Not physically tired, but…"

"Maybe you need a vacation?" she offered.

"I just need a change. I just need to find something to pique my interest and spark my enthusiasm."

"Okay," she acquiesced. "But I don’t feel like I’m being much help here."

"You are!" he assured her. "I couldn’t go through all this stuff without your help. For one thing, I don’t know the language, but for another, I couldn’t force myself look through this junk if I were alone."

The two of them were slowly making their way through a room full of alien technology. None of it had been cataloged or identified. No one had the least idea what any of it was, or what any of it did. And the room was not only full, it was huge. And as large as it was, the room was only a small walled-off portion of an enormous cavern that sat under the town of Timbuctoo, California.

Sammy, a pretty young woman, had a pretty strong grasp of the alien language, and she knew better than anyone how powerful the alien devices could be. Not long ago, Sammy had been an awkward young man named Sam — until her entire physical being was transformed by an alien machine at the hands of Isaac van Els.

van Els had quite rightly been chastised for being high-handed and careless in his experiments. He was lucky enough to pull some exciting and significant discoveries out of his mistakes, and thanks to him we know a great deal about the aliens’ physiology.

He’d also come to understand the interface to the aliens’ transformation device — the machine that had turned Sam into Sammy. Although he didn’t understand every detail of the machine, he’d worked out the major functions, the general ideas, as well as a test plan that maximized the elements studied in each experiment.

And even though all the testing and the details were yet to be discovered and worked out, van Els was no longer interested. After the big breakthroughs, the work became boring. Working out the rest of it… all the little details… just seemed like clerical work to him.

He wanted — he needed — a new challenge. He had to find something else that no one, including himself, understood at all: a big unknown he could dive into; a new frontier he could feel out and map.

But also, he wanted to be distracted from his disappointment: even though he’d discovered the transformer’s functionality and most of its options, he had no idea how it worked or where it drew its power from. He felt like a caveman who’d figured out how to make a Ferrari run. A caveman could by chance, turn the ignition key and jerk forward a few feet before stalling. The other cavemen would be impressed; they’d regard him as an expert, but if that caveman had half a brain, he’d know he wasn’t doing it right. He’d have no idea what caused the magic to happen. He’d have no idea how to fix it when it failed. In a very real sense, his very success underlined his ignorance.

"Are you looking for anything in particular?" Sammy asked as she pulled out another box.

"No," van Els replied. "I expect that I’ll know it when I see it."

As he said the words, Sammy lifted the lid off a small box. van Els caught his breath and watched Sammy’s delicate fingers lift a device out and set it on the desk.

It consisted of a round, black, disk-like tray, about a quarter-inch high and ten inches in diameter. At the center of the tray, a small platform was attached, three inches high and six inches in diameter. A metal band, a half-inch high and about eight inches across, rested on the tray. Sammy picked it up. "This looks like it goes on your head," she observed. "Probably a neural interface."

"Let me see," van Els said, taking it from her hand. As he lifted it toward his head, he felt a familiar sensation. "Yes, a neural interface," he confirmed. "Let’s see what it does." van Els slipped the band over his head, and as it moved into place, the initial mild sensation that signaled the presence of the alien interface grew until it filled his awareness. He closed his eyes and saw the dark, vague outline of a human body. He opened his eyes, and it was gone. "Did you see that?" he asked Sammy.

"See what?" she answered.

"It must be only in my mind," he told her. "Sing out if you see anything."

He shut his eyes. The figure was still there. It was the vaguest of silhouettes: he couldn’t tell if it was tall or short, male or female. It was shadowy, featureless, indistinct. As he watched, the shape morphed and took on a woman’s gentle curves, and then — as the interface followed the vague, musing inclinations of van Els’ mind, the figure began to take on the photographic likeness of a very specific woman…

"Oh, my God!" Sammy cried in delighted surprise. van Els’ eyes snapped open and followed Sammy’s awestruck gaze.

There, on the tiny platform of the alien device, a tiny figure was dancing. It was a woman, a beautiful naked woman, four inches high, with a lovely face, long red hair, and not a stitch of clothing on her. Sammy gently reached forward to touch her, but her finger passed right through the image.

"Ooh, like a hologram!" she exclaimed. "Except that it doesn’t disappear, the way a hologram would." She turned to van Els, who stood open-mouthed in wonder. "Who is she?" she asked.

van Els blushed. He cleared his throat. "It’s uh, the actress Dana Delaney," he confessed. "I was watching Body of Proof last night. She’s uh… she’s quite a striking woman."

Sammy nodded and poked her finger through the image of light a few more times. van Els took the band off his head and the tiny dancing woman vanished.
 

In his embarrassment, van Els put the device back in its box and told Sammy they were through for the day.

But when she came to his office the next morning, she found him with his feet up and the band on his head. Another tiny figure of light was dancing on the device’s platform, but before Sammy could make out who it was, van Els whipped the band off his head and the miniature woman was gone.

van Els’ face was crimson. "Sammy, I don’t think I’ll need you today. I want to have a look at this device, and uh… see what there is to see."

Sammy grinned and shrugged. Then she asked, "What do think it’s for? Why do you think they made it?"

"I don’t know," van Els replied. "Maybe it’s just pretty for the sake of being pretty."

"I don’t think the aliens do pretty," she replied.

van Els looked down and plucked a document from his IN box. He pretended to examine it, as though it were very important. "You shouldn’t be so suspicious," he told her.

In spite of his instructions, Sammy gave him a searching, suspicious look. "You're sure you don’t need me today?"

"No, no, not at all," he replied. "Thank you for your help. I’ll call you if some... er... language issue comes up."
 

Once the sound of Sammy’s departing footsteps disappeared, van Els got up, shut the door of his office, and went back to the alien device. Instantly, a figure appeared on the platform: a miniature Sammy, completely naked, posing with her palms open, facing forward.

van Els ripped the halo off his head and swore silently. He had to be careful; this machine could quite literally read his mind. So he sought his memory for a different woman, and the first woman to come to mind was his ex-wife, Regana. He could see her in his mind’s eye, the way she was on the day they met — wearing that amazing black dress that clung to her curves, and the cowl neck that nearly fell off her shoulders. He’d love to see that dress again.

So he put the halo back on, and in an instant saw a Lilliputian version of Regana, posing, her hair, her body exactly as they were the moment Isaac met her, but she wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing.

van Els tried several times, visualizing as well as he could some of Regana’s outfits — not that he remembered them all that well — but try as he might, she always appeared naked on the minuscule platform.

He tried searching the internet for pictures of famous actresses, but the alien device never rendered their clothes, only their bodies.

Then, quite unexpectedly, another woman popped into his mind. Winona, a girl he dated very briefly in college. Back then, he’d been infatuated, but she couldn’t have cared less. They managed to go on two dates, and he had never seen her without her clothes. Even so, Winona appeared on the alien disk in her birthday suit.

Fascinated, van Els went on experimenting, but at some point his scientific curiosity gave way to a more prurient interest. He became furtive, like a fourteen-year-old who’d discovered his father’s secret Playboy stash. A parade of women appeared in miniature before his eyes: real women, imaginary women, movie stars, old flames, co-workers… and soon he was unable to stop.

He tried to make the minikins larger, but couldn’t. He tried to control their movements, but whatever secret algorithm made them dance or pose or gesture, it was beyond van Els’ power to influence.

His "experiments" were interrupted only when his bladder could resist no longer. Hunger and thirst were ignored. The need to sleep was defied, but at some point the doctor’s body took over, and he slumped into a dreamless sleep.

When he woke, he felt funky and gross. His mouth was dry as straw, but ignoring all that, van Els put the halo back on his head and called up yet another woman from his memory. He spent the day assuring himself that "this will be the last" and "only ten more" and "only until lunch time" but soon the day was gone.
 

On the sixth day, Sammy was racing down a hallway. Dr. Kang stopped her, but Sammy didn’t want to be stopped. "Let me go, Dr. Kang — I need to find Dr. van Els. I’m worried about him!"

"I’m worried about him, too," Kang replied. "And I know where he’s holed up. First let’s talk strategy; then we’ll confront him."
 

At that same moment, Dr. Isaac van Els, the guiding light of the Timbuctoo Alien Technology Project, was lying in fitful sleep on the floor of a tiny room above the cafeteria. He hadn’t been to bed, bathed, or brushed his teeth in days. The room was an uncomfortable little box of a place with a low ceiling. Heaven knows what the space was meant to be, but it wasn’t even fit for storing boxes. However, our furtive doctor had sniffed it out and found it perfect for his needs. No one would find him, no one would interrupt him, no one would see what he was doing. No one would know what magical nakedness he was conjuring out of the air.

van Els slept. While he slept, he dreamt. While he dreamt, he wore the alien halo, and tiny figures, quite literally the stuff of dreams, flitted across the miniature alien stage.

Dr. Kang, with Sammy in tow, crossed the cafeteria, heading for the stairs that led to van Els’ lair. Kang was relentless, she was thorough, and she was very lucky, and that was how she found the great man’s hideout.

As the two real-life women ascended the stair, van Els’ dreaming mind pulled up the memory of Marilyn Monroe. Specifically, the iconic nude of her lying on a red background, knees bent, both hands on her head, elbows out. van Els’ sleeping mind remembered hearing that Hugh Hefner had paid $50 for the photo, and become a millionaire, and that Marilyn herself had never gotten a penny. He stirred in his sleep, but he was deep in dreamland. The figure of Marilyn clarified on the alien device.

Sammy and Dr. Kang arrived at the door. They could hear van Els’ heavy, even snores and see the light from the alien device shining under the door. Dr. Kang snorted in disgust, and turning to Sammy said, "Time to wake him up!"

Sammy set her jaw, stepped up to the door, and rapped out a loud rat-a-tat-tat with her knuckles. At the same time she called out, "Dr. van Els? We need you! Dr. van Els?"

Inside the stuffy little room, van Els started with a jerk, shocked into wakening. His sleep was so deep, his mind was so far off, that he barely knew where he was, what was happening, or who was calling him. His heart gave a great wrenching leap. He cried out in surprise, and as he opened his eyes he saw the edges of the tiny platform on the alien device glow, grow bright, flash, and go dark. The figure of Marilyn disappeared.

van Els, Sammy, and Dr. Kang later reported that at the time of the flash, they all felt a sort of wave strike and pass through them, though it seemed to have no effect at all.

In fact, it had no effect on them, but it had a big effect on a number of other people. Sammy and Dr. Kang could hear their confused screams and cries, and even the sleep-dazed van Els heard it, though it barely registered.

Dr. Kang burst through the door and took possession of the alien device. She tore the halo from his head. Sammy looked down at the cafeteria below and couldn’t believe her eyes.

"Doctors!" she shouted, "Dr. Kang, Dr. van Els! Come look! There are four of them… four of her… four…"
"Four what?" Dr. Kang demanded as she approached the railing, then, "Oh, my God!" as she saw what Sammy had already seen.

There below were four very confused and frightened people, each of them the perfect image of Marilyn Monroe.
And from the shouts farther off, it sounded like there were several more…

© 2013 by Kaleigh Way