Creation began on 01-29-24
Creation ended on 01-30-24
Species II
Herman Cromwell's Restoration
A/N: The one that feared the possibility is the one that deserves to have their credibility for the truth rewarded, and some rewards are worth the realization of the truth.
"Herman Cromwell," the disgraced former scientist of Standford University heard his name being called from outside his cell, and raised his head up as the door was being opened. "Herman Cromwell?"
"Yes," he answers the man that stepped inside to room, holding a key. "What is this?"
"You must have a guardian angel from up on high or something," the man tells him, approaching him and unlocking his shackles. "You're being released."
"What?"
"Your alien conspiracy or whatever about Mars was heard by someone with a lotta pull. They ordered for your immediate release. You're going home."
Herman couldn't believe this. It felt like a deception by the government, who could do whatever they wanted if they wanted to silence someone that knew things they didn't want the public to know about. Why would they release him from this institute after everything that happened? As he was being escorted out of the cell, he gazed upon a dark-skinned man in a suit that looked like he'd rather be in plainclothes than a suit.
"It is nice to make your acquaintance," the man spoke to him, "Dr. Herman Cromwell."
"Who…who are you?" Herman asks him.
"Such a question deserves an honest answer. I'm the guy that just threatened the government to wash your slate clean and give you back your job at Standford."
"R…really?"
"I never lie to good people. Oftentimes, people anywhere and everywhere owe me a favor or two for whatever I do for them. Whatever personal effects you had when they brought you here, you better get them before we leave. It's time to get you back to work."
-x-
It wasn't easy, but what made the goal worth achieving was the people that deserved recognition for what they either did, tried to do, or receive justice for what had been done to them unwittingly. Based upon the number of offspring the infected Patrick Ross sired prior to his death, the government concluded that a total of nineteen women had been killed by him, including his fiancée and two women from the fundraiser he attended. It took a total of two weeks to narrow down the identities of all the victims and rounding up their remains for cremations and memorials. A funeral was held for Patrick Ross to honor the man that he had been before the alien DNA he became infected with led him down a dark path he couldn't turn back from, with an additional funeral held for Anne and Henry Sampas, additional victims of the alien DNA and its repercussions.
"…So, they gave Cromwell a full apology?" Preston Lennox asks Laura Baker as they walked through Standford University one day.
"Yeah," she answers. "Apparently, someone the government didn't want to make an enemy out of pulled a lot of strings to make sure the world knew of their former contact with extraterrestrial lifeforms and weren't afraid to expose themselves. I was actually surprised that we owed anyone any favors of such a magnitude."
"I guess someone threatened to rain the wrath of God on them."
"Yeah, you could say something like that."
From a considerable distance, the dark man, the same one that sprung Cromwell from the institution, smiled as he sat on the grass and looked up at the sky, dressed in casual jeans and a green shirt. He was enjoying a little free time as he waited for a class Cromwell was preparing to teach in another half-hour.
"You never did tell me who you were," Cromwell told him upon making sure he got home. "Do you really work for the government?"
"No," he answered him. "One way or another, I answer to and for everyone that was dealt a bad hand and needed a hand to get them back on track."
"I…I never thanked you for what you did."
"So long as you get to return to your life, Dr. Cromwell…you'll never have to."
-x-
"…But if there are aliens truly out there in the deepest depths of space," a female student says in response to what Cromwell had hypothesized, "how can we ever be sure that there are actual friendlies out there instead of hostile ones like the kind we see in the films?"
"The truth is…we can't," Cromwell explains to them all. "For all we know for sure, we have only ever encountered just one extraterrestrial species, just one race of intelligent life beyond our planet. If there are other aliens out there, sending messages across the stars, just waiting for someone to pick up on their transmissions, it's always a matter of time before someone picks up and discovers something that could be either a friendly intelligence…or unfriendly. I just pray the next alien that ends up coming to Earth is a friendly one."
Watching in the back of the classroom, the guy that got Cromwell back his position at the university and his freedom, could only smile as Cromwell stated a potential truth; the Earth had only encountered one type of alien race, and there were other kinds of aliens out there, either in decline or more advanced than the alien species that sent the transmission that had been picked up to contain the secrets of a new form of energy and the alien DNA with the methods on how to combine it with human DNA. If Earth was ever to encounter another race of aliens, it was hoped that they would be friendly, unlike the ones they had encountered in the short years that have passed by.
But they don't know just yet, he thought as Cromwell was asked another question regarding the Martian meteorite that he had done research on. There are friendlies out there, traveling among the stars, hiding on moons, dying because of defects in their bodies or are more advanced than human beings will ever be, and they're waiting to find Earth. Waiting for Earth to become better than it is now. Some aliens out there are friendly, just as friendly as E.T., but stay in hiding to keep peace from turning into tyranny or lead towards destruction. Others that are just as malevolent and seek only to survive at the expense of other species. Hell, even a handful that are in such decline will send a few of their own to other worlds in order to survey and discover if the life forms inhabiting those worlds have what can save them from going extinct without sacrificing their wellbeing.
In another truth, he had encountered other aliens out there in other galaxies that humans had yet to encounter…and wouldn't encounter for a few more centuries. Both friendly and hostile. He had met the Bridarians, a friendly race of humanoids that were almost exactly like humans in every sense, inside and out, the Harvesters, a cold-hearted race of beings that thrive through the death and destruction of other planets to ensure their own survival and advancement, the Hork-Bajir, another friendly race that looked fierce, an example that people periodically would state about not judging a person based solely on their appearance but by their behavior and personality, and even the Strangers that could alter physical reality by will alone and the energy race that had evolved past the limitations set upon them by their biology. Some of these races would live to see the next few millennia to come, through either a symbiosis with other races or their aid, while others would fall in the generations and centuries to come, but he would either give them a chance to atone and survive or cause them damnation for their arrogance.
"Um, Dr. Cromwell," he utters when the man asks if there are other questions, "hypothetically speaking, if aliens have been on Earth in the past and are likely to return in the future, what do you suppose are the chances, however minute, that human beings will be considered an addition to the coalition of intelligent beings that spread across the universe?"
"Hypothetically speaking," Cromwell responds, "that possibility is within believability."
Fin
A/N: I feel better doing this chapter, as nobody has seemed to do anything about Cromwell's predicament. What did any of you think? Also, I used the aliens from other franchises as examples of the friendly and unfriendly aliens that people will have yet to meet in the future, such as the fictional race from someone named JB who wrote this PG-13 story called A Night To Remember, which was amazing because it was just good fiction that tickles the funny bones of the imagination. Read it if you can find it on the Internet somewhere, for it is out there, waiting to be discovered or rediscovered.
