The Future Is Short (20 page)
“Jeez, Joe, that gets me every time!” said Benson, wiping a tear away. “That never gets old.”
His partner yukked; his grin was ear to ear.
“Even after forty years.”
The guffaws trickled down to chuckles, then light laughter, then titters, eventually pooling into snickers, and finally evaporating into silence.
“Well,” said Joe.
“Well,” said Benson.
“What’s happening outside?”
“Same old red,” Benson said. “Wanna look?”
“Nah,” his partner voiced. “Call me if you see a rescue ship,” he said unenthusiastically.
“Will do, commander,” said Benson. He craned his neck at the window, and then twisted again with a grunt, at an awkward angle, to peer at the back of Hermes One via the mirror, which gave him that rear-view. “I sure could swear I saw something out there.”
“Uh, huh,” the commander of Hermes One nodded unconvincingly at his crew of one. Joe then smiled to himself and looked back 200 million miles and wished he could go back and change his mind. He and Benson had been the prime crew for the flight, deemed secret and experimental. The NERVA rocket was only a prototype and worked too well for orbital trials. What was supposed to be a wide Earth orbit and a splashdown after a few days got extended when both Houston and the crew couldn’t shut down the engine. Hermes One went well past its intended flight path. He and Benson never could get an answer from Mission Control about why the flight computer was programmed for a Mars window. NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) worked too well, all right.
“There it is again,” said Benson, contorting himself to get a better angle from the mirror.
“Just beyond that ridgeline.”
“Sure,” said Joe.
“Really, Joe, take a look.”
Joe hated two things about looking outside. First, the bad angle was more trouble than it was worth. Their ship lay on its side with a list that offered a bad view of the landscape, and it hurt to cant oneself for a look. Second, Mars never changed; the view was the same. No trees, no fall colors, just permafrost now and then in rust-colored desolation.
There was a piece of the sky, Joe could see. A line of clouds scudded westward like a wagon train from another time and another place. The pastel hues reminded him of Janet, who would have adored the pinkish shades, the dominant color of her bridesmaids’ gowns, which she so loved and he so hated. Off in the distance, a row of rusty mountains had been weathered down for uncounted eons by the thinnest wisps of air, air that carried dust to coat everything to the outside of every nook and cranny and crevice of Mars, and to the inside of every crumple and crack of crashed Hermes One. No, there was nothing new out there. The same as it always was. How he longed for home and for Janet, for he hoped they were still—There.
It slowly came over the ridge; a cautious track of its wheels slowly purchased each inch of ground that gave underneath. Time meant nothing to it as it slowly panned the landscape with something new to see.
“Hmm,” observed Joe. “Curiouser and curiouser.”
With every inch, every turn, every pebble of Gale Crater over which the wheels spun, the thing came closer to the ship. The discovery of the crash site didn’t strike the thing as shocking or give it even a passing fancy. It lumbered at the same slow pace as before.
“There’s nothing alive in there,” said Joe.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Benson. “There’s nothing alive in here, either.”
The robot poked its electronic eye into the shattered window, past the cracked, weather-worn mirror off to the side of the long-gone-cold wreck.
It was here that the lonely Martian winds for time uncounted had whipped a-frenzy its red dust in its high, opaque altitudes, skittered across its salmon plains, and wafted over its crimson, barren peaks. For here is where its fine grains had finally settled, more recently on the remains of the broken shell of Hermes One, burying what they could.
And also on those within it.
Allen Quintana is a California native. He doesn’t need a “feminine side” since he’s sided from all points of the compass by five daughters and his lovely wife of 24 years and counting, which inspires his muse with plenty of drama and humor and then some.
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46.
Karl J. Morgan
The day they arrived was neither the disaster authors had imagined nor the scientific boon academia had suggested. Massive starships hung like cumulonimbus high in the atmosphere, casting surreal shadows over the Earth. The ships were not metal military masterpieces, but instead were soft, gelatinous blobs that seemed incapable of traversing space. Millions panicked, while most prepared for the inevitable Armageddon when the aliens landed.
Yet the ships just hung in the sky for days, turning into weeks without activity. “What are they waiting for?” became the most common phrase spoken. After the third week, people tried to get back to their lives, since they had to work in order to eat. After five weeks, life resumed its natural course, even while governments tried to find solutions to the situation.
It was early on a Tuesday in the eighth week when something changed. Small moss-green vessels left each starship and landed in the center of every large city. It was noon in San Diego when odd figures emerged from the ships. They looked human, but very tall and thin with green skin and moss-like hair. The aliens walked away from their ships and stood waiting while crowds formed around them. The same scene played out everywhere. Where it was night, lights were set up. Where it was raining, free umbrellas were handed out.
At 2:00 p.m. San Diego time, the aliens spoke in the native language of each city. “First, we need to apologize to you,” the aliens said. “What has happened here is our fault and we freely accept and acknowledge our responsibility. It was probably inevitable that you would enlist unnatural harmonics in your desire to learn and grow. But now we have discovered it, and are here to fix the damage.”
“I don’t understand,” shouted a voice from the crowd. The alien walked over to the young man standing just behind the barricade. “What have we done wrong, and who are you to tell us to change?” the man asked.
The alien laughed out loud. The glint in his eyes and the teeth in his mouth seemed completely human. He reached out his green arm and touched the man on his shoulder. “What is your name?”
“My name is Dave Brewster.”
“Hello Dave. My name is Pando Krakus, and I suppose I am your brother. We colonized this planet long ago. On my planet, people evolved to look like me. On this planet, humans evolved to look like you. There are many human species in the galaxy. The one thing we have in common is our refusal to allow unnatural harmonics.”
“What does that mean?” Dave asked.
Pando frowned. “Look around you!” he shouted, waving his arm at the skyscrapers and at the concrete they stood upon. “You have corrupted Nature’s sacred balance. These structures were built with unnatural harmonics and must be eliminated. It is an atrocity to subject this globe to such acts.”
“But these are our homes and places of work,” cried a woman from across the circle. “Where shall we live? How can we survive?”
Pando walked back to the center of the circle as a deep guttural rumble began. “The natural harmonic you hear will continue for several rotations, continually gaining volume. After the third rotation, decibel level will be powerful enough to disassemble the unnatural harmonics. I suggest you use that time to distance yourself from these things. We cannot protect you if you stay here. Once the natural balance is returned, we will come back with new technologies to help you.”
An old woman standing next to Dave Brewster screamed and fell to her knees. He knelt next to her as she clamped her hands over her ears. Then he yanked her hands free and pulled out her screeching hearing aids, which dissolved into dust in his hands. “You can’t do this to us!” he begged the alien.
“Leave the city now. Your atrocity is at an end,” Pando snarled, pushing his way through the crowd and boarded his vessel, which lifted off noiselessly and headed back into the sky.
Karl J. Morgan is the author of the Dave Brewster series of science fiction novels and the Heartstone series of fantasy novels. The Hive was awarded an honorable mention at the 2013 Southern California Book Festival. He lives and writes in Southern California.
http://www.karljmorgan.com
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4
7.
Jeremy Lichtman
“Roman Candle drives are simple things,” declared Wilbur. He brandished a large adjustable wrench in his right hand. “The mathematics are hairy, I’ll grant you that, but the machinery itself is trivially simple.”
He made a small declaratory tap of the wrench on the base of the auxiliary capacitor bank. “Tesla could have built this,” he added, further clarifying his intentions with a slightly harder tap.
“Sir, you’re likely to get your jacket covered in grease,” said Fox, attempting to divert Wilbur’s attention , and potentially avert tragedy. “If you’ll allow me, why don’t I take a look at it while you chart our course?”
“An excellent idea,” said Wilbur, heartily, and handed the wrench to his valet.
“Wouldn’t do for us to run into a big rock, or some such.” He headed forwards to the ship’s relatively luxuriously appointed bridge (it had leather command chairs).
Fox adjusted his monocle, then thought again and placed it in his outer jacket pocket. “Here kitty, kitty,” he said quietly so that Wilbur wouldn’t hear him. The man doted on the cat. “Damn cat. I bet it urinated on a wire or something.”
He fished in one of his trouser pockets and drew forth a small treat, which he waved around in what he thought might be an enticing manner. A pair of furry ears protruded from behind some bulky, chrome-plated machinery.
“Tsk, tsk, here kitty, kitty.” The entire cat cautiously shimmied forth, keeping a safe distance from Fox. Neither trusted the other, with cause.
Fox waved the treat around a bit more, then tossed it through the hatch and into the corridor. The cat stared at him for several long seconds.
Fox jerked, as if he was about to launch himself at the cat. It twitched slightly, but didn’t move, calling his bluff. “Enough of this,” he said, and charged at it.
“Not that direction,” he muttered, catching himself on a large brass pipe to change his momentum into a different direction. The two of them circled the room several times, the cat obviously moving with far greater alacrity.
Triangulating, he managed to cut it off so that the exit hatch became its safest escape route. It hissed at him. “What?” he said. “Get out of here. Scat! Go have your treat.” It left, with a dirty look backwards at him. Fox shut the hatch behind it.
He reached into his pocket for his monocle. Not there. He patted several other pockets. Not there, either. Must have fallen out. He peered around nearsightedly. After several more moments of futility, he fished out a small, collapsible pair of glasses, unfolded them, and perched them on his nose instead.