Oooh boy. I uploaded this without revising it because I have strep throat and feel terrible. Typically I go to great lengths to check spelling and grammar so I apologize in advance if you find mistakes :/




Man is confounded by the universe around them. They are driven to understand it interact with it and change it. No other organism on Earth has ever tried to alter their environment to suit them. Man remains an enigma of his environment. He continues to attempt understand it while causing himself to alter and change it, thus he never can attain the understanding he seeks.

As I sat there watching Stan prepare for my session I realized my nervousness was growing. Everyone at the lab had tried it except for me. Stan told me it was insane for the first scientist to ever encounter alien life to not attempt, as he called it, "The Tide." I didn't know who this creature was or why he'd come to Earth or if even it was a 'he.'

The Ride was nothing more than a neural connection. The technology that had been developed and used by psychologists for years was now being used to enter an alien mind. It was actually my idea but it came about as a joke. Now hundreds of scientists were lining up to find out first hand about this creature that we named Jalma based on what linguists could decipher of the images in the creature's head.

I was reluctant. Some had experienced mild delusions after traveling through Jalma's mind. Though many had taken The Ride, everyone was anxious to see what I would do, the discoverer of Jalma and his already dead crew aboard their ship in a loose orbit around Earth. Jalma was injured and all attempts to permanently heal him, even without congress' approval had failed. Jalma wasn't dying, he was sustained. His tank filled with the same methane heavy atmosphere that was found on his ship. Jalma wasn't completely unaware of the things going on around him. His eyes, the three large nodules on the front of his head were constantly in motion. His mind was a hub of activity mostly of his home-world and constantly changing. Stan had talked about seeing his journey to Earth, seeing some sort of battle. I wasn't ready. For some reason I'd feared Jalma since I discovered him. He had looked at me and whispered something guttural from the small round hole on the front of his face. It was the only thing he ever spoke and I still have no idea what it meant. Perhaps he would show me.

"Ready David?" Stan asked. I nodded and stood walking over to the tank where Jalma lay. His enormous head seemed too heavy for his body and his normally brown skin seemed odd with bluish hues.

"Perhaps something is wrong with him today?" I asked hopeful that Stan, the man who'd been Jalma's care giver since his discovery would tell me I should wait.

But my hopes were soon crushed when Stan said, "Jalma's been a little off color lately!" he laughed. "Get it!"

I laughed nervously and sat in the lab chair next to Jalma. "Just relax," Stan said and as he linked the monitors and the telepathic headband to me I felt like I was meeting the end of something. "Here we go," Stan said and instantly the room around me was gone.

I was in a room . . . no not a room but everything was dark. The sky was filled with black clouds and the entire land around him was black. I began to walk but everything seemed to stretch out before me as if I could not reach my destination wherever it may be. I looked around to see if there was some sort of change in the land. I couldn't get my bearings and each direction felt like the way I'd already traveled. I looked straight up at the sky and shouted, "Stan! Get me out of here!" My voice seemed to echo though there was no sign of anything for it to have reached. "Stan!" I shouted. But no answer ever came.

I sat on the ground. It was hard and cold. . . some sort of rock. I curled up tight as cold winds began to blow. "Stan," I murmured every once in a while hoping that someone would hear me. Finally the wind died down and I fell asleep. I fell asleep hoping that I would wake up in the chair next to Jalma with Stan standing over me, but when I finally did awaken I was in the same void. Now voices seemed to pass me as if there were creatures walking around me but I could not see them or understand them. They almost seemed like ghosts or shadows. The noise grew at times and lessened at others. At one point I felt as if someone was touching me but I could not see them or understand them. I felt my chest being touched with what seemed like something cold. But there was no one there.

I could not understand why things happened this way. Even the people who had had trouble with The Ride hadn't come back with tales of this desolate place. They'd seen wondrous things from Jalma's homeworld, from outer-space. But suddenly I had a thought. "Jalma! I called out," but there was no answer. I cried out again, but there was no answer. I cried over and over to the sky but there came no answer.

I don't know how long I existed in this place but it seemed like a life time. I started to try to count the days but the environment changed. Sometimes the voices came, sometimes they went. Whenever I slept I was never sure of how long I slept or how long I was awake.

"Jalma!" I cried constantly in-vain until a voice seemed to come from no where and everywhere at once. It was the same voice I'd heard that day more than a year ago, that same guttural voice. As it repeated I could hear and feel it. Those same words over and over. He hadn't known what they meant at the time but as he heard them now, some how he knew, "Please, let me die here."

But we hadn't let him die. We hadn't let him live. We had kept him in a prison lingering between life and death, never to return to the world he knew, never to get to know this foreign world; to be trapped in a void for the rest of his life. Now I understood that Jalma wouldn't let me return to my world until I released him.

"I understand!" I shouted to the sky and wasn't sure if anyone had heard me but soon after the darkness began to fade and I was again sitting where I began with Stan standing over me with a huge smile. "So how was it!" he asked excitedly.

I shook my head and looked at Jalma whose calm eyes were watching me. "Fine, fine," I said stumbling away from the chair.

"Whoa fella, just relax! You can't just jump up and go. We've got to get you stabilized." Stan said trying to sit me back down. I struggled against him. "Stan just let me go!" I said. He backed off probably realizing that I was the lead scientist at the center and he didn't want to be in the middle of something that could lose him his job. I walked towards the monitors that were hooked up to Jalma's tank. All I had to do was flip the methane and he'd be dead. I knew it as well as I was standing there. I turned to Stan for a moment, his eyes widened with fear. He had risked his entire career on this project and I was about to destroy everything. But how long could the creature survive like this? Probably indefinitely with our technology, but, I shook my head. It was wrong. I flipped the switch and the tank emptied. Jalma took a slow gasping breath from that round hole in his face and then his eyes closed.

"You! What have you done!" Stan screamed in a rage. He was ready to kill me. His hands were already moving towards my throat. I fought him off but he sounded the security alarm and soon I was boxed in by men who didn't give a damn about anything except their 11 dollars an hour.

As they put me in cuffs, I caught a glimpse of the lifeless creature that sat in the tank. Stan was leaning against the tank sobbing. Stan later testified against me saying that I was always reckless and would have killed him too had the security forces not arrived. I was charged with the first ever murder of a sentient alien life-form. As I sat in the court room flocked by press. The judge read my sentencing. I was to receive life in prison without parole.

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