Chapter Three - Bryce
From The Chee Programming Code
Chee Are Brothers and Sisters. Their True Feelings Shall Be Known Always.My name is Bryce. Or it’s my name for however long this lifetime lasts. Once, during the Great Depression, I was twelve year-old Colin Baker and I worked in a coal mine in Arkansas. There was a cave in and though I survived, a human being that age could not without a satisfying explanation. And I didn’t have one.
My real name, the one given to me by my creators and masters, is Chee Ikos. Chee means “friend” and “Ikos” is the pale gray sea near the home of my master, Sanje. Thousands of years ago, Sanje, like the rest of the Pemalite race, was violently killed by the Howlers for no other reason than for their own amusement.
The Chee survived the genocide and together, we relocated to Earth and combined the essence of our masters with wolves. Whenever you throw a Frisbee to your dog and he catches it with pure enthusiasm, or whenever she runs up to you and licks your face after you’ve been gone all day, that is the spirit of our Pemalite masters.
I held back a sigh. Not a terribly impressive feat, since we don’t breath. We do feel emotions, which are transmitted to the holographic projector, so that our disguise can properly convey the feeling to whomever we may be interacting with at the time. And at the moment, there were two people I wanted to heave that annoyed sigh towards.
The first one was Erek. Not that Erek needed to see me to know that I was frustrated with him. Erek is also a Chee and is connected to me and every other Chee through an internal network. According to the rules set by our programmers, no Chee can hide his true feelings from another Chee, no matter how disagreeable they may seem.
Erek was also one of the first Chee to get involved in infiltrating the Yeerks; a race of parasitic slugs who are determined to make Earth their latest trophy in a long half-century of conquering and infesting races.
Until a few short weeks ago, there was nothing standing between the Yeerks and conquest. As Chee, we are programmed to never take any action that would lead to the harm of a living being, no matter how evil. When the Andalites came to try to usurp the Yeerks foothold here, we could not interfere or assist them, even though some of us desperately wanted to.
Then, an Andalite prince named Elfangor managed to crash land at a construction site that five humans just happened to be using as a shortcut. Erek wasn’t there, but another Chee named John witnessed the violent death of Elfangor at the hands of Visser Three, the only Andalite-Controller in the Yeerk Empire.
It was through John and Erek that the rest of us learned that Elfangor had given those humans the power to morph. Among them, was an old friend of Erek’s named Marco. Marco, coincidentally, was the son of a high ranking Yeerk’s host body. Because of this, it reinforced Erek’s belief that the Ellimist had somehow arranged for them to be in the construction site on that night.
The very next day, Sean accidentally discovered the morphing technology in the place where Elfangor died. Sean's dad had been captured and was being forcibly infested by a Yeerk named Kullan 926. And because I knew that he would be in danger, I asked Erek to teach Sean how to morph. Based on what we knew about the technology, Erek was able to teach Sean how to use his new power. He also told him about the invasion of the Yeerks and what he knew about his father's infestation. But he didn’t tell Sean about the others.
Sean thinks the word Animorph was my idea. It was actually coined by Marco, who combined the word animal and morph together to explain what they were. Erek over heard it and it gave me one more thing to lie to Sean about. He also thinks that he is the only person to discover the morphing ability and by default is the only person who can fight the Yeerks.
<I understand your feelings,> Erek said. <Do you know much I wish to tell Marco that his mother is alive?>
This time I did sigh. Sighing in public isn’t considered weird, unless you’re trying to passively manipulate someone. There was no way I could manipulate Erek and none of the humans I passed on the street took notice of me.
<Of course I know,> I replied, sarcastically. <You feel responsible because you were there at the marina and you could have stopped Visser One from leaving. We know all of this Erek. But that’s not the same thing and we both know it.>
A debate erupted among the Chee who were listening in on our discussion. I tuned it out. Our programming said we couldn’t hide anything from each other, not that we had to actively listen to it.
<Please don’t be upset with me Bryce,> Erek said. <I wish things could have been different. I wish Sean could have been in the construction site with them, but then we wouldn’t have been able to reveal ourselves to him. And Kullan 926 would likely have had Sean infested long before now, thus removing our ace in the hole if anything happens to Marco and the others. A morph capable host in the hands of an insane Yeerk who is bent on taking Visser Three’s position? Because of that, I truly believe the Ellimist chose for this to happen.>
The Ellimist is an ancient Pemalite deity. Many cultures believe in one variation of the Ellimist or another and many Chee, including Erek, believe the Ellimist is a being that lives on a higher plane of existence.
<I don’t want to debate the Ellimist’s role in this again, Erek. If the Ellimist did exist, he wouldn’t approve of how Sean just used his morphing power.>
Even now, as I was speaking to Erek, and looking through a window at a display of gold watches, I could hear the police dispatcher reporting a dog attack in the campgrounds where Sean’s family was staying. No one was hurt. But a pair of shoes went missing. You don’t have to be an android built by an advanced civilization to put two and two together, but it certainly helped when the first two was your best friend the other two was a dog you personally helped him acquire.
Erek chuckled. The audacity would have annoyed me, except annoyance was actually not allowed by programming. Frustration could be explained and reasoned with. Annoyance was irrational and therefore couldn’t be rationally abated. That’s Pemalite logic for you.
<You should see what Tobias and Rachel did just a few weeks ago.> He said. <If no one is complaining about setting an elephant trying to free a bird then I doubt you’ll have much trouble with Sean’s episode.>
There it was. The frustration that could be explained was back again. How could Erek downplay the importance of an Animorph using a dog to exact revenge on someone, even if the revenge was justified by the human and didn’t actually end in physical harm? Emotional damage and the damage this behavior would do to innocent dogs all over New England was more than enough for me.
<Relax my friend,> Erek said, analyzing my frustration. <Listen, the Animorphs have been really demoralized since Tobias went into hiding. I have five of them to deal with on top of a handful of surviving Andalites that have made it to the area. One of them is in the crashed dome ship under water and the other two don’t want to be bothered at all. I’m sorry things are turning out to be more difficult than you planned, but you’re the one who asked me to recruit Sean.>
Were I human, or any of the other species out there who had developed a dictionary of colorful languages, I would be well within my rights to utter an obscenity or respond with a gesture that the entire CheeNet would witness. As such we could think it but we couldn’t do it.
Besides, Erek was right. Whatever my difficulties with Sean were, the California Animorphs were five times that for Erek and the Chee supporting him. Six, when the young Andalite aristh was eventually found.
I muttered something about getting in touch with him and resumed my walk along Main Street. I tuned into the transit bus’ radio frequencies and listened for busses passing the movie theater Sean was at. I wasn’t sure if he would take the bus, which actually pulled across the street from me, or if his aunt and uncle would drop him off.
Should I lecture him about the dog incident? I wondered. This was, of course, met with a choir of responses from Chee I was neither directly asking nor passively seeking the advice of. Rhetorical questions aren’t against our programming, but not voicing our opinions one way or the other is.
<Pain…>
I stopped. My programming was too swift and a look of distress came over me. An elderly lady noticed my look and it made her pause.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” She asked.
I smiled.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” I said, politely. “I just remembered I have to meet someone.”
Which was half of the truth, but it made the old lady happy and she shuffled on. The full truth was that the Yeerk…the one in my head…had said just said something distressing.
Post Merged: February 17, 2011, 03:09:59 PM
Chapter Four – Sean
There’s something about a movie that makes you completely forget about the outside world. I don’t know if it’s the big bin of salty popcorn or the two hours of pure sensory bombardment. But a movie theater really is a place where time and reality have no meaning, even when it’s an animated feature.
After nearly peeing myself with laughter (both literally and figuratively as I hate getting up during a movie even with a full bladder) at Kuzko, Ezma and Cronk, I was ready to take on the world. When the warmth of the sun hit my face I felt like everything could be as comically timed as it had been when Ezma and Kuzko tried to order their dishes without cheese, much to the frustration of the press ganged chef, Cronk.
I was so happy that I decided to take the bus into town and I promised Aunt Susan I’d be back at the cabin by dinner. I wasn’t sure where Bryce was going to meet me, but I knew that Chee could monitor the radio chatter between the busses and would no doubt be waiting near the bus stop to greet me.
For all I knew the bus driver was a Chee. It’s not like they all greeted me with a special handshake or anything, but I had met quite a few in Vermont, and some from New York and New Hampshire as well. So it stood to reason that there could be Chee in Massechusetts as well.
There were probably a few holed up wherever they parked the spaceship that brought them here. I always imagined the Chee spaceship to be something like the ship the Tomorrow People escaped to when they needed to sort out their internal issues. If only I could teleport like the Tomorrow People, this invasion would be over.
The bus hit a few potholes and a familiar nausea settled into my stomach. As I watched a crow fly overhead, I mentally berated myself for not having Bryce meet me in the mountains where I could fly. Then I remembered how hard it was for the seagull morph to handle hills and areas away from water and I withdrew my internal argument.
A better bird morph was definitely on my list. That and something big and preferably with sharp teeth, something that could handle the Hork-Bajir more convincingly than an attack dog. I shuttered with the memory of the Hork-Bajir’s claws slicing my arm clear off. Reflexively, I rubbed my wrist and hand, thankful that my human body wasn’t affected by damage done in morph.
I had no doubt that Bryce knew what I did in the park. Animal control was probably all over the park looking for an insane Great Dane. And I knew without even seeing him that Bryce was upset because of what I did with a dog morph. On some level I agreed. It’s not like the cops would know one dog from another, or that the dog could speak up for itself.
But on that same token, I didn’t shed any blood and half of the story those brats told would be severely suspect by the fact that it would sound like a pot induced hallucination.
“Well you see officer the dog demanded my shoes because my little brothers were trying to hurt this frog, which is protected by wildlife conservation laws by the way. Oh and we chased the kid that tried to stop us from breaking said law into the lake and didn’t bother to call for help when it seemed like the kid was drowning.”
Yeah. Either they would lose the cops at the part where the dog spoke to them, or they would talk themselves into an attempted murder charge. Or at the very least a lengthy visit to a psychiatric ward. Either way the dog and me will be off the hook by sundown and it still won’t change the fact that I’m the only person out of the thousands who know about the Yeerks with the power to do anything about it.
When Bryce gets a little blood on his hands after tearing into the flesh of an alien that looks like a reject from Mortal Kombat, then we’ll talk.
The bus stopped at the K-mart plaza in the center of North Adams. When I got off, I saw Bryce. My height with dark hair and freckles that I could see from all the way over here, Bryce looked like an average All American kid just wasting his week vacation hanging out on Main Street. He wore light tan jeans and a long-sleeved green t-shirt. Or at least that was what his holographic image was made to look like.
As I crossed the road, I also noticed Bryce putting a hand to his head and wincing. That didn’t look good.
“Are you okay?” I asked when I was close enough.
Bryce shook his head and looked up at me. He smiled, but something seemed off about it, like when you’re suffering through a bad headache but you still want to be polite.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “How was the movie?”
“It was awesome,” I said, unable to get the concern out of my face. The Chee are practically invincible, so there was only one thing that could be bothering Bryce enough that it made him appear to be suffering “How’s Junior?”
Junior, of course, was the pet name I came up with for the Yeerk that Bryce had willingly taken into his head. It happened yesterday, while I was still here in North Adams.
“He’s doing all right,” Bryce said. “Erek has been telling me what to do to keep him alive and happy.”
Bryce seemed to shake off whatever was bothering him. I tried to push my concern aside, but it was hard, knowing the Chee’s inability to do a heck of a lot that was helpful to me. We went to Burger King for lunch, but it was so packed with kids that we decided to bring our lunch to the Graylock school playground.
“The lock in was brilliant,” Bryce said, in an ironic fashion. We found a nice grassy spot in the shade and sat down. “I got there on Friday and there were forty other people. Families with kids. It seemed so normal at first, with board games and flashlight tag. Then the,”- Bryce put his hands up to make air quotes with his fingers, -“Baptism started.”
I nodded. My dad’s Yeerk had a trusted lieutenant named Sestran. In the host body of a well known religious figure in my home town, Sestran has been using various churches and religious services to quietly obtain hosts for Kullan’s movement against Visser Three.
Visser Three, the leader of the invasion of Earth, uses a similar method in the California area known as The Sharing. Like the church groups, the Sharing is basically a front that attracts people with big and attractive events like cook outs and beach parties. People are then offered the chance to become voluntary hosts to the Yeerks.
So far Kullan has been pretty quiet about it though. My dad is a successful investigative journalist and because of that, he has many valuable contacts that Kullan 926 has been using to get access to abandoned churches and other useful buildings in Vermont, New Hampshire and New York. The worse part of it was that Kullan wasn’t working for Visser Three.
Kullan 926 was either one of two things. A rogue Visser with plans to take over the entire Yeerk Empire. Or a crazy underling…with plans to take over the Yeerk Empire. Either way he was putting my dad and countless innocent humans at risk by trying to build his own personal army.
“So what have you learned so far?” I asked, after telling him about the incident in the woods.
“Nothing much,” Bryce said, admittedly. “I was infested yesterday. Sestran was very specific that I needed to keep an eye on you. If you start acting oddly or you start becoming a risk to Kullan, I’m to drag you to the nearest Yeerk pool and have you infested.”
I snorted.
“And I’ve gone a whole month without giving Kullan a reason to suspect me,” I said. “I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be,” Bryce said with a frown. “Your little stunt with the dog in the woods…you remember the news article your dad wrote, right?”
Now how did I know this subject was going to come up? But, Bryce was right. Kullan was smart, using my dad’s journalistic integrity to alert the community about a rabid dog attack on the “good” reverend.
“So Kullan might think there’s another Andalite running loose in Massachusetts as well as Vermont,” I pointed out. “We know there are Andalites somewhere in California. Maybe Kullan will get paranoid and this will actually keep him quiet enough to avoid attracting Visser Three’s attention.”
“Or, or,” Bryce cut in, irritated. “Dogs will start getting put to sleep for no reason. You know we can’t hide every single dog on the face of the Earth, they have to come up for air eventually.”
I sighed and pulled an onion ring out of the bag.
“I’m sorry,” I said, munching. “Look, I’m under a lot of stress here. I’m sorry if I put innocent dogs in danger Bryce, but I didn’t exactly see you volunteering to help me out in the woods. Where was the Chee hologram of the Park ranger trying to save an innocent frog? Or trying to keep me from nearly killing myself getting away from those pricks?
“The frog?” Bryce rolled his eyes. “Are you telling me you would have saved it without knowing you could morph it?”
“Morphing was a perk,” I pointed out. “But I saved your shiny gray ass once too you know. And that was before I knew about Yeerks, Chee, or the fact that you would have been better off if the bullies had just hit you.”
Bryce laughed. We both did at the memory of how Erek revealed himself to me. Then Bryce’s attitude changed as his skin suddenly went pale.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Bryce seemed grabbed his stomach. I didn’t think he could get sick, what with having no organs, but that seemed to be what was happening. Not knowing what else to do, I put my hand on his shoulder.
“I….” Bryce stared at me blankly. “The Yeerk…”
Paranoid, I looked around to see if anyone was near us. A jogger, a woman dressed in bright clothing, stopped and give Bryce a concerned once-over. “Is he okay?”
“Burger King,” I said quickly, holding up the bag. “I think he had an undercooked burger”
The woman nodded, wrinkling her nose. “There’s a bathroom in the museum there.”
She pointed to the building at the end of the park. Not wanting to draw more attention, I helped Bryce to his feet (Which should have earned me an Olympic medal given how heavy he was) and guided him to the building.
“Erek..” Bryce moaned. I knew the other Chee must be aware of what was going on, but it struck me as weird that he would speak out loud to them.
“Don’t talk to Erek outloud,” I whispered. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”
My heart raced.
I lead him up the stairs and into the air conditioned building. Before the receptionist could say anything, I asked where the men’s room was. Fortunately, when a kid looks like he’s going to hurl, no adult who doesn’t relish the idea of cleaning it up will ever stand between you and the appropriate place for it.
Once in the safety of the bathroom, I took a step back. Bryce leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor. Bryce looked up at me with pleading eyes and grabbed his head.
“What is going on?” I said in a low voice, so as not to attract attention.
“The Yeerk…” Bryce began to sob. “The Yeerk is…”
Before he could finish his sentence, the slug started crawling from his ear. I didn’t think the Yeerk could escape the head of a Chee. But as I watched the tiny little thing fall onto Bryce’s shoulder and then slide onto the floor, I noticed it beginning to…dissolve.
“Oh man,” I crouched down for a better look, completely horrified by what I was seeing. Then Bryce said three words that will forever haunt me.
“I killed it.”
