The Lost Grey – A Tale of Interspecies Redemption #3
PART 3. A radical plan to save Aubrey!
PART 3
Start with PART 1. Parts 2 & 3 will be waiting for you when you come back.
Oban
The universe had certainly changed for Dr. Adrien Kelsey since Aubrey’s arrival. His surroundings seemed superficial in a new kind of way.
He stood now in the car park of the supermarket in Oban, the nearest town and point of civilisation. The nights were drawing in rapidly and the sky was already overcast and dark. There were lights in the windows of the traditional stone dwellings, common in Scotland, which overlooked the modern car park and its utilitarian structures with their veneer of corporate branding. It was raining lightly.
Bobby didn’t travel well. He was excited and, left unsecured, would try to get between Kelsey and the steering wheel. He sat sniffing the air from the small gap left open for him at the rear seat window.
Kelsey had managed get most of the things that were needed.
Aubrey needed sugar, and syrup was going to be the primary the source. Animal fats could also be consumed, but nothing solid. Everything had to fully absorbed. Coco powder was a particular request. It wasn’t the Cocoa itself that Aubrey needed, but the copper it contained.
It was difficult to source a scalpel. The art shop had been closed. Instead, he had fresh blades for his Stanley knife.
Acquiring a significant quantity of petroleum jelly had been surprisingly difficult. The supermarket sold them now only as ‘Vaselene’ in finger sized pots. He had to visit several pharmacies in the town.
“Are these for yourself?” the woman behind the perspex screen had asked in the first one, a larger chain store. He looked down at the accumulation of jars on the counter and realised that it had been a mistake to try to buy all of them.
There was flesh underneath Aubrey’s bio-synthetic exterior that was unused to being exposed and would dessicate if left unprotected. The petroleum jelly would be used as a substitute barrier.
“No, they are for an alien being that is staying with me at the moment,” he did not say. Instead, he explained that he lived remotely and often bought things in bulk.
“You’re only allowed to buy one,” she had replied matter of factly, while making it clear that it was pointless to argue.
He had better luck at an independent pharmacy and had a total of eight jars now. More would be needed, but they could be purchased in bulk online later.
Flesh, Blood and Bone
Kelsey released Bobby from his anchor point in the rear of the car once they got clear of the town. His dog rode the rest of the way back with his head sticking out of the passenger window enjoying the wind.
During the return, Kelsey reflected on how he had begun to think of Aubrey as a ‘she’ ever since he had named it. It had responded that there was no concept of sex differences in Greys themselves, although they understood it in humans and others. It was OK with being a ‘she’, if Kelsey preferred that. It made no difference.
She did not lift her head as usual when Kelsey returned to the room. It was he who did that with both hands under Aubrey’s chin.
“Urgency required,” she said non-vocally, “hesitation is not.”
She weighed no more than 90 lbs. He knew what needed to be done. Things had already been explained to him.
This was the first time Aubrey left the room. He made it to the top of the stairs with her in his arms and pushed open the door to bathroom. He laid her gently down on the tiled floor and started the taps on the bath immediately.
“No scalpel. Stanley knife?”
There was no reply, but Kelsey took that as a “yes.”
He left her briefly and hurried out to the shed to find the knife. Outside, Bobby looked up from his spot beside Maggie. He sensed that things were afoot.
Kelsey grabbed the other items that would be needed on his way back.
The bath was nearly full now. He handed the blade to Aubrey, who lay face up. He wasn’t going to do this bit, he already knew that.
Whatever reserves Aubrey had, she used them now and took the knife dextrously out his hand. Three fingers were no handicap. Without hesitation, she made a long incision vertically down her own torso to the point between the legs. She made a further incision horizontally across the chest and, switching hands, down each arm.
Kelsey watched silently. The skin, he understood, was not her own. Quite how things looked underneath, he was yet to witness. The incisions being made were precise, but he wondered how much this hurt, if at all. It was a shocking sight, nevertheless.
His turn would come shortly.
More incisions were made, including one from the back of the neck. He helped by lifting Aubrey’s enlarged head off the floor while it was done. A cut was made over the top of the head, down between the oversized eyes and to the neck. He held her forward as she did the legs.
She had finished.
He pushed a finger under the grey outer skin where two cuts met on her chest. It was about two millimetres thick here.
“It’s OK. Do it now.”
He peeled it back.
There was a sticky substance underneath the outer skin. The distinct smell of ammonia reached him as it came away. In places, Aubrey had cut deeper than intended and there was blood. The blood was a dark red – almost brown. What was he expecting?
Under the skin, Aubrey was not grey, but a light shade of pink. The flesh was not unlike his own, but had rarely seen the light of day. There were no nipples, but she had a rib cage, collarbone and, turning her over, he saw shoulder blades. The arms were disproportionately long for her body, but the realisation struck him that the overall body plan was the same as any mammal on Earth. With the exception of the hands and feet, she had a bone for every one he had.
These creatures had been travelling between the stars long before apes had walked upright on Earth. Aubrey had come from a distant place using technology beyond anything he understood. And yet, underneath it all, was a little thing of flesh, blood and bone.
The realisation affected him deeply, but it would have to wait until later, he thought.
Now, he was seeing many small white filaments, like hairs, that connected between the synthetic outer layer and into the living flesh underneath. They were simply pulled out as the outer layer came away as a sheet.
“Does this hurt you?”
“It matters not.”
The hands, feet and head were left for later. He had to get Aubrey into the water now. He lifted her from the floor and plunged her into the warm water of the bath.
Bobby had managed to get into the house. He had long figured out how to open the back door by standing on his hind legs and depressing the handle, which Kelsey had forgot to lock in his haste. He could hear him sniffing under the bathroom door from the outside at the top of the stairs.
Almost immediately, the water began to turn brown with substances emanating out of Aubrey’s tiny body. This was how it was done – osmosis through the skin. The smell was overpowering.
Ocean
Aubrey was covered head-to-toe in petroleum jelly and wrapped in a duvet, as Kelsey carried her down the stairs.
“Cold now,” she said.
She was warm blooded but, without the bio-synthetic outer skin, her body had difficulty regulating temperature. The cuts to her body were not deep, but would not stop bleeding and there was dark blood on the duvet. The petroleum jelly had helped and they would eventually heal, but it would take a very long time, she told him.
Bobby followed, trying to sniff what was wrapped inside the bundle.
Back inside the room, Aubrey needed water. She would need much more from now on. He tried to hold the glass, but she indicated that she could do that for herself and took small sips.
Bobby stretched forward, still unsure, trying to sniff her. She held out a three-fingered hand for him.
Kelsey fetched more duvets and blankets, and fired up the boiler.
Over the days, Aubrey began to eat and Kelsey did not envy her diet – syrup and small quantities of lard which she allowed to melt in her mouth. The diet would need to improve as Aubrey’s body needed protein and many other substances. The were discussions on this and Kelsey made up a ‘sugary broth’ according to instruction.
She liked Lucozade, but only if it was flat. Immersion in water would need to be repeated periodically, but the exercise would not be as traumatic as the first.
The last remaining fragments of bio-skin on her hands and feet were removed. She had no finger nails, he noted. The black polarising film over her eyes would remain as the eyes could not survive exposure to the air. Underneath the film, however, she assured him that her eyes were grey.
Aubrey was now learning to appreciate simple pleasures, the nature of which were once alien to her, and asked Kelsey a rather unexpected question.
She asked if he would take her to see the ocean.
“Of course,” he had replied.
They visited the coast, several days later, in the early hours when they were sure not to encounter anyone else.
With the bio-skin removed, her feet were sensitive and they tried out several pairs of oversized human boots. That was when he learned that she actually four digits in her feet but the bones had been allowed to fuse so that, in effect, there were only two rather thick toes.
For the first time, Kelsey discovered that he knew a thing which she did not – she didn’t know how to tie human shoelaces. She needed only a single demonstration, however.
The hands of a Grey were, indeed, different to that of a human. It wasn’t simply that she had only three fingers and an opposable thumb, but rather the muscles used for their articulation were entirely located in the hands themselves rather than the forearm. It meant that Aubrey’s hands were weak, but more dextrous than his own. The difference was evident in how she tied the other boot herself – with lightening precision.
Communication was now fluent between them, and she read his curiosity. She explained that, while much of their early genetic heritage was shared, there had been much divergence since the exodus from Venus aeons ago, not to mention some deliberate alteration.
“If you were going engage in bio-hacking, why didn’t you give yourself two opposable thumbs?” he asked with his characteristically dry humour. “Then you’d be able tie your shoelaces with just one hand.”
She understood the joke.
They made the short journey by car on the first outing, but she did not enjoy the motion of the vehicle made for humans. Travel in vehicles made by Greys was motionless to its occupants through what Kelsey understood to be antigravity precisely applied to counteract its acceleration. Without it, the acceleration of their craft would easily be capable of reducing any living thing inside to pulp – or the craft might even be a spinner, depending on the design. Inside, it made no difference – there would be no sensation of motion whatsoever.
She was dressed in several layers of child-sized thermal undergarments, which Kelsey had managed to buy in Oban, and wore a heavy child’s coat over the top with a hood. In fact, from a distance, she looked very much like a human child. In any case, there was no other soul within six miles of them.
At night, she could see the ocean better than he, but they could both discern the swell as the waves lapped against the shoreline well enough. The moon made a brief appearance between the clouds, and they left just before the first signs of dawn.
On the next occasion, she would walk the distance to the sea herself.
The Light in the Darkness
Over time, Aubrey’s body adapted somewhat to being without its synthetic skin. She remained fragile, however, with her airways prone to terrestrial infection.
The exchange Kelsey and she shared had always been both ways. Kelsey’s mind was busy assimilating concepts previously imaginable, while she had drawn from him new ways of relating to things and a new way of being. It was a simpler one for her, but one that was richer in a way she had previously been unable to conceptualise either.
During the winter months, Kelsey unpacked the boxes that had lain in the room untouched. Many possessions of his former existence were discarded but, amongst them, he found treasures of the past. This was how they discovered that Aubrey liked books and tales of human adventure.
He had dug out “Treasure Island”, a book which had once belonged to Kelsey’s own father during his childhood during the 1960s. The simple physical nature of a book, containing nothing more than phonetic symbols, intrigued her in a way that would be analogous, perhaps, to how a 21st century programmer may be drawn to the idea of a Victorian computer. Within its pages were drawings and scribbles made by Kelsey’s father when he had been a child so many years ago.
Kelsey knew, however, that Aubrey was older than many of the books they now read together.
While they read many books, it was stories of Earth’s seas that held her fascination, along with the risk-seeking mindsets of creatures which had once navigated them in vessels constructed of mere wood and sail.
Bobby lay with them, sleeping beside the fire. Kelsey read, while she followed his conscious flow. They were three very different creatures with so much to share.
They were not alone…
For there was yet another presence with them which was as different again as they were from each other. The physical act of marooning herself here had been easy. The conception that had made it a possibility had not – that possibility had been illuminated for her. The entity with them now had been the one to hold out the light in the darkness which Aubrey had followed.
She would not live long, Kelsey understood. They would have the winter and, perhaps, the summer.
Kelsey’s world had been illuminated also. He knew now that the universe was of a fundamentally different nature to the one he had hitherto understood with such limiting certainty. It did, indeed, have another side which was as every bit as real as this one.
When the end came, Aubrey promised to wait for him there.
First published on The New English Review, October 2024.
This is a work of pure fiction. It is highly improbable that you could actually befriend a Grey.
Andy Thomas is a programmer, software author and writer in the north of England. He is interested in the philosophical implications of science, the nature of nature, and the things in life which hold ‘value’.
© Andrew Thomas, 2024