Just Plain Weird (37 page)

    
    
“And a base station,” I said.

    
    
He eagerly walked over and grabbed the box, crunching across the discarded plastic packaging and other debris, and retreated back into the basement, the mess completely forgotten.

    
    
“You do realize your father is nuts,” I said to Eliza.

    
    
She nodded her head sadly, and leaned over to rest it on my shoulder.

    
    
“How long is this going to take?”

    
    
Just as she spoke, a new message flashed onto the screen:

Please load more movies.

    
 
   
Eliza and I turned to stare at each other in disbelief.

    
    
We didn’t have a big selection of DVDs, just what Eliza had grabbed-- I suspected more for her own personal use than for anything else. I rifled through the cases, and found
Close Encounter of the Third Kind
,
Rocky
,
Mr. Roberts
and
Forrest Gump
. I loaded them all in, and again we waited for the next message, which came a little quicker this time.

Please, more comedies…

    
    
“Oh, this is not happening,” Eliza said, clearly rankled. “This is so not happening. We went through all this trouble for what?-- to show this thing movies?”

    
    
“Actually, you can probably learn more about humans by watching movies than from reading a thousand psychology books,” I said, searching through the DVDs. I found
Some
Like it Hot
and
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
, and loaded them. Eliza ran upstairs to check her room, and returned with a collection of Three Stooges shorts and
Blazing Saddles
. She also brought
The Pride of the Yankees
, which, although it was far from a comedy-- actually it was about the saddest movie I’d ever seen-- I loaded it just the same.

    
    
“I don’t get this thing about comedies,” Eliza complained.

    
    
I shrugged, and watched the screen.

 
Please, more sad movies…

    
    
“Oh, this is ridiculous!” Eliza cried.

    
    
“Wait,” I said, searching. “All we have left is…
King Kong
, the 1933 version.
 
That’s sort of sad, isn’t it?”

    
    
“Yeah, sure, a big ape falls off the Empire State building, and croaks. Sure, that kind of thing chokes me up all the time.”

    
    
I loaded movie, and the response was immediate.

 
Please, more movies with animals…

    
    
“Travis, please tell this thing that movie-time is over. If it behaves, we’ll get it an ice cream cone later. For now, ask it how we get out of this mess.”

    
    
“We’re out of movies anyway-- except for
The Attack
of
the Killer Tomatoes
, and don’t even know what it would think of that.” So I typed on the keyboard:

No further movies available.

To which it replied:

 
Why?

Because we don’t have any more.

Why?

Because there are no more at this location.

Please, find more.

We can’t.

Why?

Too dangerous to leave this location.

Why?

Because aliens have landed on planet and are stripping it of resources.

Have they taken all the movies?

No.

Please find some later then
.

Agreed.

    
    
“Terrific,” Eliza said. “You’ve made the world’s first interstellar agreement-- about movies!”

    
    
So I typed:

Do you know how to return everything to how it was?

Query not comprehended.

Do you know how to undo the damage done to the natural timeline of this planet?

Query not comprehended.

How can you not understand?

Still building communication matrix. More time require to complete. Repeat query later.

How long?

Eight point three one earth hours.

Agreed.

Please, more data input.

No more available.

Nothing?

Just
The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
.

Agreed.

You sure?

Please load.

    
    
After a moment, it asked:

Is this a comedy?

    
    
I had to look at Eliza, who just shrugged.

I guess that’s open to interpretation.

Agreed.

    
    
We left the artifact alone, then, presumably to mull over
The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

    
    
Eliza was exhausted. Her green eyes looked faded, and there were pouches-- adorable pouches-- beneath them. She stretched out on the sofa, and almost immediately fell asleep.

    
    
Sitting on the floor, I watched her for a long time. Her mouth was open, but she wasn’t snoring. Her head rested on the side of her forearm. Every once in a while, she stirred slightly, closing her mouth, biting her lower lip, fidgeting her bare feet. I shook my head, thinking, At least she was honest. She said she would be nothing but trouble, and now look at her, look at everything…. And yet, I had to admit, it all seemed worth the trouble.

    
    
I shifted over, leaning against the bottom of the sofa. I tried to shut my eyes and take a nap, but I was too pumped by the idea that we’d been communicating in a meaningful way with an alien intelligence. It all seemed so fantastic. I stared ahead at the blank blue screen of the computer monitor. I figured what the heck, the artifact didn’t need sleep and I couldn’t sleep. Maybe I could talk to it for a while. It probably wouldn’t be able to talk on all levels until it finished building its communication matrix-- whatever that was-- but maybe just a little small talk between sentient beings. I started typing…

Hello?

Hello,
it responded, and I imagined the word was rendered in a friendly off-hand way.

    
    
Already I was stuck, though; how do you strike up a conversation with an alien computer? It’s not exactly like running into somebody you know and saying, “Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?” I wondered whether its communication matrix was complete enough for it to convey what had happened the first time we tried to set everything right-- it still baffled me; everything had seemed to be working, and then, boom, we’d been snapped into the current reality. So I typed:

Can you explain to me how we arrived here, in this reality? What went wrong? You were supposed to return to your own planet, and we were supposed to return to how things would be here if you had never been discovered.

Things changed.

    
    
Though I waited a long time, the artifact didn’t elaborate. I stared at the screen, at the mysterious “Things change.” To be truthful, I had to admit that maybe I was a little afraid to ask what it meant by that exactly. Finally:

What changed?

Home turned out not to be home.

Can you explain what you mean?

Yes.