M55

A Day of Knowing Tale

By Robert Brockway

Published by Brockwar Press: The
Fightin’est Press In The West

Copyright 2015

About the Collection

The Day of Knowing is a
collection of interconnected horror shorts that each build upon a
larger fictional world. Every tale is self-contained, and no single
story will require that you read any others first. However, every
short also builds the lore of the Day of Knowing universe, and
readers that follow all of the stories in chronological order will
reveal a larger tale that spans dozens of short stories across
several decades. The order thus far is:
M55, Carrier Wave, The Judas Goat
(collected in
Tomorrow’s
Cthulhu
from Broken Eye
Books).

About the Author

Robert Brockway is a senior
editor and columnist for Cracked.com. He is the author of
the
urban fantasy/horror
Unnoticeables trilogy from Tor Books
,
the cyberpunk novel
Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity
, and
the apocalyptic non-fiction essay collection
Everything Is Going To Kill Everybody
. The Day of Knowing shorts and others are published on his
website,
Robertbrockway.net
.
Follow him on Twitter
@brockway_llc
.

“
If you were the only human being
alive on earth, and you’d never seen a sand dollar before, what
would you think when you first found one?” I asked the pair of
them.

Jen’s eyebrows knit together. A
little lopsided ‘y’ formed in the folds between her eyes. It was
cute. But then, everything she did was cute.

“
I’m not following the train of
thought here,” Peter said. He seemed to be emptying the entire
sugar container into his coffee mug.

“
I mean, you’d think it was a stone
or something, right? Some little rock with a neat pattern in it. At
least at first. Then when you walked down the beach and found
another with the same pattern, you’d get to wondering. Then you
find another. And another. Dozens of them, all with nearly
identical, improbably intricate patterns. ‘Okay,’ you’d think,
‘clearly somebody is making these things. This is proof that I’m
not the only human out there.’”

Nobody snapped at the
bait.

“
You’d think it was a sign, but it’s
nothing. It’s not even a stone, it’s an animal. It’s just nature.
There are all sorts of patterns in nature,” I said, and I pulled
out my finishing move. I set an immaculate sand dollar in the
center of the table, just beside the ketchup and the plate full of
destroyed, runny eggs that Jen had barely touched.
Peter said nothing. He just kept pouring sugar.

“
So you think we’re wasting our
time,” Jen said. When she finally spoke, it was slow and measured.
Emotionless. Adorable.

“
No, of course not,” I smiled, if
only to prove how totally affable and lovable I am. “SETI is a
valuable, hell – a vital program. Now that we’re advanced enough to
look for alien life, it’s a moral imperative that we do so. We’re
obligated as a species to keep looking, if only for the sake of
science. Even if we never find anything.”

“
Bullshit,” Peter said. He looked at
me as he spoke, never one glancing down at the ceaseless stream of
sugar emptying into his mug. “There’s gotta be alien life out
there. I’ve seen a lot of my little corner of the universe. No way
in hell are we the most intelligent life in the whole damn
thing.”

“
No way in hell
are
 
you
drinking that coffee
,” Jen
said.

“
Of course not. It’s empty,” Peter
said.

“
Then why…?”

“
Because
 
it’s empty,” Peter grinned, a
vicious little break in his face, entirely without humor. “That
bitch of a waitress never came back with a refill. Now she’s got a
solid mug full of wet sugar to deal with.”

Jesus. The people in this town
dislike us enough without little stunts like that. You’d think
they’d be grateful for our presence. Before we’d built the Big Ear
here, the most remarkable thing about Delaware, Ohio was a stained
wall that kind of looked like JFK if you squinted hard and tilted
your head sideways. It’s always been a college town; you’d think
they’d be used to visiting academics. But no, everywhere we went it
was just glares and the cold shoulder. No smile from the
waitresses. No chit chat from the bartender. No friendly advice
from the pharmacist. No suggestive winks from the college
girls…

These people had no reason to
dislike us – we spent most of our time buried at the observatory.
They barely even saw us.

Maybe
 
that’s
 
why they didn’t like us.

The waitress came by to drop
off the check. I smiled at her extra hard. Look how god damn
friendly we are, you stupid yokel.
 
Love
us.

She just frowned down at the mound
of white spilling out of Peter’s cup, and walked away without a
word.

These people, I swear to
god.

…

Jen walked out in front. She walked
like she thought she was being stalked by somebody, just one loud
noise away from sprinting. To her, a walk was just an inconvenience
between places she had to be.

“
I’m telling you, that pattern is
repeating,” Peter hollered from somewhere behind us.
I was in a light jog, trying to keep up with Jen. But I was also
trying to make it look like I was just walking nonchalantly. Arms
down at my side, legs sliding forward and back in barely controlled
leaps like I was miming cross country skiing. I hoped it looked
more natural than it felt. Peter didn’t bother trying to keep up.
He just ambled along behind us, closing ground when we stopped for
cars, yelling his half of the conversation without caring how many
stares he gathered.

“
I said, that pattern is repeating!”
He yelled again. Like we didn’t hear him. Like we weren’t just
ignoring him because the little old ladies of this town were
worried enough about us bringing aliens down on their
heads.

“
I said, that-“ He started
again.

“
We heard you!” I finally yelled
back. “Nobody’s saying it’s not repeating. I’m just saying the
pattern could be natural. Nature’s full of patterns!”

Did he not even hear the sand dollar
speech? God damn it, I practiced that for hours last
night.

“
Patterns that regular, that
intense?”

I couldn’t jog-walk and yell at the
same time. Jen was getting away. Her hunched shoulders bobbing away
into the night, like some sort of sexy Frankenstein.

I decided to hell with Peter, and
broke into a run.

“
I said, ‘patterns that regu-“ Peter
yelled after me.

…

Jen made it back to the observatory
first. She’d already had time to kick her boots off – she always
walked around the focus room barefoot – and was blowing her nose
over the trash can, like an angel.

I could feel my face burning from
the workout. Jen wasn’t even breathing hard. I looked at her tall,
lean frame. Limp red hair. Thick black glasses. Beautiful, thin
lips. Body like somebody had put a mannequin on the rack and
stretched it out. I poked my own moderate paunch, straining at the
edges of my worn Speedracer T-shirt.

Like she’d ever be with a shlub like
me.

Peter came in last, still yelling
his half of a conversation nobody had heard.

“
-and you can’t use nature to
dismiss an intentional pattern like this. Look at this – a full 72
seconds…”

He grabbed the sheaf of printout
from globular cluster M55. He held it up to my face and shook it. I
had a mad impulse to slap it out of his hands – it would be so
dramatic – but I swallowed that down and just smiled at him.
Weakly.

“
Right man, look at the pattern.
It’s all over the place,” I said.

“
But those big spikes are
unnaturally regular deviations from the hydrogen line,” Jen
said.
My heart sank. It was the first uncute thing she’d ever
done.

“
Yes, those few spikes are regular,
but everything in between is all over the map. Look,” I said, and I
took a step back so I could stand between them. “I’m not saying
it’s not weird, I’m just saying we need more info before we make
something big out of this.”

Peter let out a low groan. He did
that when he was thinking about something he didn’t like. Jen
scratched her neck and looked away. Neither spoke.

Science prevails.

…

I kicked open the door to the focus
room.

“
Merry donut day, nerds!” I
yelled.

The lights were off. The chairs were
empty. I set down the three cups of coffee and dozen donuts on my
terminal. I thought I should bring a little peace offering after
our tiff last night, so on my way in, I had asked a guy on the
corner where I should go for donuts. He said “New York,” then
walked away. So I had to swing by a phone booth and look it up in a
soggy book hanging from a chain. Friendly town.

I shouldn’t be the first in. Jen
should still be on the early shift, and Peter should be stumbling
in by now, three hours late for his rotation, reeking of vodka and
devouring his customary three plain pieces of bread. Should I call
somebody? Who do I even call? We’re all volunteers. As far as I
know we can just up and walk away. Jen could have pissed off back
to…oh man, can you believe I don’t even know where she came from?
God damn if I missed my only shot with her because I was
too…

The door banged open and Jen
shuffled into the focus room. She hadn’t changed her clothes from
last night.

“
Rough night?” I asked.

I laughed, because she
didn’t.

“
You could say that.”

“
Oh, I was just kidding, because you
were late and all… everything okay?”

“
No, I had nightmares.”

“
Ah, sorry. Happens to me sometimes,
too.”

“
I have never had a dream before in
my life. Not that I can remember, at least.”

“
Wow,
that’s
 
super interesting
,” I said, “what
was this one about?”

“
I don’t know, it’s hard to talk
about. I’ve never had to discuss a dream before.”

She fell quiet. Thinking before she
spoke.

“
I was watching television, only
nothing was on…”

‘
That’s the dullest dream I’ve ever
heard,’ I thought about saying, but apparently she wasn’t done.
Just putting together the words.

“
It was static. Little white flecks
dancing and zipping all over the screen. But there was a parallax
effect. The little black flecks weren’t moving at all. Just the
white ones. See, the black flecks weren’t flecks at all; they were
the only visible parts of a background, or a bigger object. The
white ones started getting farther and farther apart from each
other, and I realized they were all moving away from something.
They were making a space around a black spot in the center. Like
they were afraid of it. It just kept getting bigger and bigger, and
I couldn’t stop looking at it.”

“
Huh. Well, that doesn’t sound too
bad, as far as nightmares go. This one time I dreamed I had
sausages instead of fingers and I got really hungry so I started
eating my own sausages and then my dad-“

“
It was just pure terror, the
feeling I had when I looked into that black spot. I felt like
everything I was, was being sucked into that space, never to
return. And the worst part is, just before I woke up, I thought I
saw something in there.”

I blew on my coffee. I waited a few
seconds, but I guess she needed some prompting.

“
What was in there?”

“
I don’t know. I don’t remember.
There was a face, and I knew it was young, but I don’t think it was
human. And it was all black, anyway – how could I see a face in
there? I woke up feeling so strange. The whole time I was walking
down here, I was just so angry. But at nothing. I saw nobody. Just
leaves and trees. Yet they made me angry. And then, when I walked
in here, my first thought when I saw you was ‘I could kill this man
and nobody would ever know it.’ Isn’t that strange? I’ve never had
a thought like that before.”