Many of the characters within this story, and the universe they inhabit, are the intellectual property of Jason Katims Productions.
Roswell: Re-Imagined
Written by Horatio Jaxx
Chapter 38: Strength in Numbers
"Her name is Tess, Tess Harding," Isabel insisted stridently. "And she's a senior at Goddard High. Max, we're not alone. There's more of us."
"Are you sure?" Max questioned, with a bewildered expression.
"Max," Isabel hammered back. "I held a conversation with her for thirty minutes and I didn't open my mouth once. She's just like us. And she says she knows of three more like her … like us, Max."
Max took a moment to ponder this before asking his next question. "And they're going to meet us there tomorrow?"
"Yes, Max, all of them," Isabel confirmed with an excited expression.
"Okay," Max agreed with a stunned look on his face.
Max called Michael that evening and advised him of this new event. He was more amazed by the news than Max and endorsed the meeting wholeheartedly.
"Do you know what this means, Max. Maybe now we'll get some answers," Michael enthusiastically exclaimed.
"Isabel said she seemed to be just as much in the dark as we are," Max countered calmly.
"Yeah, but still we have to meet them and find out what they know," Michael insisted vociferously.
Max gave no argument to that. He knew that this meeting had to take place. The fact that there were others like them suggested possibilities that he had either not considered or had discounted a long time ago. The identical age of these others to them was one of the mysteries that he was pondering. He dismissed the idea that he, Isabel and Michael were triplets. He could tell from their features that they were too dissimilar for that to be true. The rational that he had been favoring up until then was that the three of them were part of some artificial insemination project. The fact that there were at least four more of them living at the north end of the city suggested to Max that their number could still be larger than the seven of them. The question that bothered him the most was what were they put there to do?
Max and Isabel left their home at eleven o'clock in the morning the next day. They then picked up Michael at his home and setoff for the twelve-noon meeting. There was little said between the three of them in the ride to the abandoned soap factory. Each of them anxiously counted the minutes in silence. They arrived outside of the old, three-story red brick building at a quarter to twelve. There were no other vehicles there, or at least none that they could see. Max, Isabel and Michael gave no thought to that. As soon as they got to within thirty yards of the building, they could tell that there was no one there like them. Together, they entered the building and cautiously made their way to the large docking and storage area at the rear. The large empty space felt to them like a natural meeting place.
At three minutes passed twelve, Max, Isabel and Michael heard the faint sound of a car at the front of the building. A second later they felt the presence of four powerful minds. At the instant their minds felt the auras of the others, the three of them looked at one-another with stunned expressions.
"They're here," Isabel whispered to Max and Michael.
The three of them fixed their attentions on the doorway into the storage area. Several seconds into their wait a thought from outside the building rang out and resounded inside their minds.
Isabel, is that you?
Isabel gave Max a look of surprise before responding back with a projected thought.
We're in the storage room in the back, Tess.
The three of them listened and soon heard quiet movements at the front of the building. A little more than a minute later a young male, six feet one inches tall, slender and with thick dark hair, walked through the entry way to the storage room. His features gave him an almost effeminately attractive look. He quickly locked his attention onto Isabel, Max and Michael as he stepped through the doorway. He moved into the center of the room at a slow pace while alternating his focus on the three of them. Three steps behind him, another male walked into the room. Standing an inch shorter than the first, he was broad shouldered, muscular, with short blond hair and had handsome features. He followed the first male into the center of the room. Following behind him, by two steps, was Tess. And a step behind her was another female, five feet nine inches tall, willowy, attractive and with long auburn hair.
The four of them stretched out in a line less than ten feet distant and directly in front of Max, Isabel and Michael. They stood at arm's length apart from one-another. Their attentions were held fast to the three strangers in front of them. For the first few seconds, no one said anything. And then Tess spoke.
"Hi, Isabel," Tess greeted with a smile.
Isabel responded with a "hi" and then turned to Max and Michael for introductions.
"This is my brother…"
"Your brother?" the second male questioned suddenly with an inflection of surprise. "Do you know your biological parents?" He asked an instant behind.
Isabel was caught off guard by the sudden question. She paused for a moment to consider the motive behind the abrupt inquiry. She shortly comprehended the confusion her announcement engendered and spoke up to address it.
"No, we were adopted by the same parents."
No sooner had Isabel explained that did a floodgate of inquiries begin to pour out from all present.
"Do you know why we're here?"
"Do you remember anything before you were adopted?"
"Who sent you?"
"How old were you when you were adopted?"
"Do you know anything about the people who put us here?"
"Do you have strange dreams?"
"What do they want from us?"
"Is someone coming for us?"
"Are we human or what are we?"
"Do you know what that thing is out there that keeps calling to us?"
"Are there more of us?"
"Do you know where we come from?"
"Have you been contacted by anyone else like us?"
"Why are we all the same age?"
The deluge of questions being tossed out by everyone there made it impossible for anyone to provide any answers. Max was the first to take note of that and quickly shouted out a command to correct it.
"Wait!"
The questions immediately stopped, and all attentions turned to Max.
"There's a quicker way to do this," Max gently declared as he searched the eyes of the four in front of him.
"No, Max," Isabel responded a second later. "I don't want to merge our minds," she nervously continued. "I don't … we don't know them."
"I agree," the second female softly announced. "I don't feel comfortable with that."
"So, you've done it before?" Max questioned the four newcomers.
"Yes, we've done it once," the first male answered.
"We only did it the once because it made us feel uncomfortable sharing so much of ourselves with each other," the second female bashfully explained.
"It feels intimate," Tess concurred.
"Yeah, we only did it once too," Isabel softly reported with a large smile. "I mean it feels okay while you're doing it. But afterwards you feel … exposed."
"Exactly," Tess confirmed with a soft grin.
"Well, you need to get over that," Michael bluntly declared. "It's the quickest way for all of us to get up to speed."
"I agree," the second male endorsed gruffly. "Let's just do it and get it over with."
"We need to do this," Max asserted.
Max examined the faces there, one by one, for any dissent in that decision. With some reluctance, all agreed with either nods of their heads in the affirmative, or a soft "okay," or both. At the end of that vote, they all went quiet. For a brief time, they examined the faces of each other as they, instinctively positioned themselves into a ten-foot diameter circle. When all were stationary, they shut their eyes and began blending their auras into each other.
It took just under ten seconds for the seven of them to merge the auras of their minds into a single collective consciousness. Suddenly the lives and history of all became the property of a single identity. Max, Isabel and Michael learned at the instant of the blending was completed that the first male they saw was Jason Ross, a student at Goddard High School. They knew that the second male was Aaron Crawford, a student at University High School. And they knew that the second female was Julie Kessler, a student at Goddard High School. But in that moment, it was not they who perceived this. It was the identity they had created that was recognizing these multiple personalities within itself. Their parents, their childhood, their friends, their fears, were all there to ponder over. There were no seven different minds accessing this information. There was only one mind rummaging around inside the multiple personalities that it possessed.
The seven of them remained standing there with their eyes closed for more than ten minutes. This was more than five times longer than either group had spent when they first merged. The new mind had the memory of the other mergers to compare against, and the difference was astonishing. The new mind was amazed with all that it was perceiving. The new mind was touching on things more than three miles away in all directions. The strength of their new collective consciousness immediately became more interesting to it than the lives of the separate entities that came together to comprise it. And what was nearly just as exciting was the feel of the rock outcrop in the desert calling to them. The sensation was stronger than they ever felt it before, and for the first time there was directionality to its location.
The collective consciousness decided it was time to disband when it felt there was nothing more to learn. The seven of them broke from the merge and began to marvel at what they had experienced. Smiles and grins spread across the faces of each of them as they looked upon one-another with shock and astonishment.
"That was incredible," Jason announced suddenly with a stunned expression.
"That was the most amazing thing I ever experienced," Tess declared with a wide-eyed expression of excitement.
"That was really awesome," Julie agreed with astonishment. "It felt like half the city was inside my … inside our heads."
"I think it was," Michael responded with a look of wonder on his face. "Well, maybe not half … but a good chunk of it."
"I can't believe how big our mind was," Isabel reported with bewilderment.
"Our minds had to be touching on things over a mile away," Aaron concurred with a shake of his head.
"The more of us there are, the more powerful our combined consciousness is," Max discerned out loud with an amazed look on his face. "And not just larger," he continued with an introspective look, "but exponentially larger."
They continued to talk on like that for several minutes, and then Michael changed the subject.
"Did you all feel the outcrop?"
All acknowledged an affirmative to the question with words and/or shakes of their heads.
"You know, Max," Michael continued with an enthusiastic inflection. "I think we've been searching for this thing all wrong. I believe if we all get close enough, we can find it with our minds."
"Or, if more of us got together, we could find it from here," Aaron blandly asserted an instant behind.
All eyes turned to Aaron with questioning looks. Max was the first to challenge Aaron on the thinking behind this statement.
"You think there are more of us?"
"Why not?" Aaron retorted with a calm expression. "If we all came from the same children's home in Albuquerque, then it stands to reason that there could be dozens of us spread out across the state."
They all paused to ponder that with a mixture of shock and worry. After a minute of silence, the majority agreed that this was something they needed to let develop on its own. Michael and Aaron were in favor of a proactive approach.
"We can't put out an advertisement for seventeen-year-old telepaths," Jason insisted.
Michael grudgingly acquiesced to that thinking and allowed the subject to pass. After an awkward pause, the seven of them moved on to lighter discussions. For the next two hours they mused over their varied lives and experiences. There was no discomfort in that. They were no longer strangers to one-another. The merge had made them the closest of friends. They all knew from the moment their minds separated that they were bonded for life.