“I don’t understand.”
I saw in my mind a picture of the dead fish lying on the beach.
You have poisoned our world. We know how to make poison too.
I saw a picture in my mind of crowds of people all lying still on the ground.
“No!” Tears blurred my vision. I formed in my mind a picture of my grandfather and then my mother and finally my two little sisters also laying there in the crowd. “No.”
You have attacked us. The poison is making us sick and we now have no food.
“I didn’t harm you!” I protested. “My mother and sisters…they didn’t make you sick!”
There was silence from the creature for a few moments.
Very well. We will not destroy humankind. But what they have done will not go unpunished.
I rushed in to tell my grandfather what the new little gray one had said.
He nodded. “So. They’re not aliens, then. They come from the sea.” His eyes seemed to be focused on things I could not perceive.
In the morning, I awoke to sunlight streaming down on me. Blinking, I tried to understand why.
Mother was there, cleaning the small one-room dwelling.
“What happened?” I asked her.
“The plastic tarp dissolved in the night,” she explained.
All around the room were shreds of bubbled goop. It was then I noticed that our metal table was red and thick with rust.
“The metal too?” I asked.
She nodded.
The gray ones! I got up and rushed out. They were in a metal container!
I found them on the bottom of the rusted out tub. All the seawater had leaked out through a hole.
“Oh, no! I’m sorry.” Except for the newest one, none of the gray ones were moving.
We have taken your metal and your plastic. The words floated up into my mind.
So…somehow they had caused what had happened. I picked up the remaining gray one and carried it with me. Inside my grandfather’s shack, I found a ceramic bowl and poured water into it. Then I plopped the gray one in with a splash.
“Are you all right?” I asked it.
I continue to function.
“But the others?”
They have expired.
“I’m sorry.”
It does not matter.
“But how can you say that? Aren’t they…your family or something?”
They were probes created by our masters. I am a communication and observation device. My function has been impaired. Soon I too will expire.
“What did it say?” a voice behind me asked.
I startled, realizing that my grandfather was staring at me from his bed.
“It said that it’s a device.”
Grandfather came and sat down at the table, looking at the thing. “Of course it’s a device.” He touched it tentatively. “They must have advanced biological engineers now. Explains that,” he said, indicating the counter that held the remains of a rusted, melted cell phone.
“Ask it, ‘What will they do now?’”
We will die, the thing said into my mind, without being asked.
“Die,” I repeated.
“No,” said my grandfather. “That won’t do. I think I saw one once, you know…a long time ago.”
I stared at him.
“You must come inland,” he said, leaning towards the creature. “Come into the bay and up the rivers and into our lakes in Northern Manitoba. That water has not been poisoned and there are many fish.”
I looked at my grandfather, bewildered.
The little gray one trembled and then was still. When I touched it, the thing didn’t respond.
“I’m sure they understood,” said Grandfather, shuffling back to bed. “They will come. They don’t want to die.”
“What should I do?” I asked him.
“If I were your age…I would watch for them.”
Every day, I watched for them where the river entered the bay near the beach. One week later, I saw them, swimming deep under the clear water. Grandfather had been right!
One of them looked up at me as the school passed by. Eyes of blue, creamy white skin, and golden hair that made a halo around her face. She gazed at me for only a moment, her look unreadable, before she sped away, propelled by a powerful tail of scales.
Things are much different now; without plastic or metal, society has gone back to simpler ways in only just a few years. There are fewer people in the world but humans are resilient. Scientists still look for a method of combating the bacteria that consumes things made of plastic and the self-replicating catalyst that causes iron to rust too quickly. They continue to blame aliens. Grandfather passed away this past summer. Now only I understand the truth. But I will keep their secret, in the hope that one day, perhaps, we may be friends.
Lucy, the P.I.
“I bet you wouldn’t stay in that hotel for a night,” said Jeff, leaning forward and placing his elbows on the big, brown, wooden desk.
“What, are we back to giving dares, like in Jr. High? Why would I want to stay in some sleazy, cheap motel?” asked Lucy. She sat, leaning back in her chair, on the other side of the desk and tried to ignore the excitement in his eyes. Lucy wasn’t sure she liked the direction this job interview was headed.
“You know why you wouldn’t want to.”
“Because I’m some rich kid born with a silver spoon in her mouth?” asked Lucy. “I’ve been in this business for two years already. I’m not totally green, you know.”
He laughed then. Lucy couldn’t tell if it was a good-natured sound or not.
“You’ve heard the rumors?” he asked.
Lucy nodded. Yeah, she’d heard all right… all the bloodless corpses turning up. Why did things always have to get weird? Spending a night at some cheap motel wasn’t her idea of a good time but she needed to prove herself to Jeff. If this were to be some sort of initiation, she would do it. He was the head of the best private detective firm in the city. And she was new in town.
“I wouldn’t make the challenge if I didn’t think you could handle it. From what I read in your resume, you seem fully qualified. But I need to know for sure. My agents need to be able to handle anything.”
Lucy nodded again.
“Here…” Jeff yanked open the top drawer of his desk. He pulled something out and quickly tossed it at her. “You might need that.”
Lucy caught the garlic and put it down on the desk. “Uhhh…thanks.”
So that’s what it was to be: survive a night in a cheap motel on the wrong side of town. But Lucy could handle it. She’d handled worse.
***
Lucy sat on the sagging mattress, watching the sun go down through dusty window panes. The room wasn’t half bad. She didn’t see any bugs and the sheets looked clean - not that she’d be sleeping. Slowly, the pink in the sky was replaced by purple. Then darkness fell.
Lucy took the lone garlic from her jacket pocket and placed it on the nightstand. She smirked. Jeff thought garlic would keep them away. Then Lucy heaved her large suitcase up onto the bed. The springs creaked and the mattress rocked, protesting the weight. Lucy fumbled with the straps and then slid the zipper open. She flipped up the lid, revealing her other weapons. Radishes. Lucy pulled out her food processor and several ice cream pails from under the pile of radishes.
When the plant was crushed, the glucosinolates and the enzyme, myrosinase, combined to form allyl isothiocyanates. In extremely high concentrations, allyl isothiocyanates was lethally toxic to humans. The substance could also be used as tear gas, insecticide, and bacteriocide. Lucy had discovered another use when surprised one day while chewing on a radish.
Lucy plugged in the blender and plopped in a few radishes. She supposed the motel’s residences wouldn’t mind too much, considering all the other noises she heard coming through the thin walls. Lucy pressed the button and blended the vegetables to a soupy pulp. She poured the radish juice into a pail and repeated t
he process.
Then the doorknob began to turn slowly. She hadn’t bothered to lock it, purposely making herself an easy target. Perhaps she would entice some of them her way and spare other motel patrons. Lucy was ready.
The door flew open. There stood a grey, bipedal creature about the height of a large dog. Lucy sloshed the contents of the pail towards it. Direct hit! The creature sizzled and hissed, lost turgor, and slumped down into a slimy blob of goo at the doorway. Thankfully, even small amounts of allyl isothiocyanates were toxic to aliens.
Lucy swung the door shut with a bang, splashing the goo out into the hallway. This was going to be a piece of cake! She turned the blender on again and smiled. This new job was in the bag.
The Call
He heard wailing in the distance and shuddered. That would soon be him if he were discovered. Max closed his eyes and shivered, partly from fear and partly from cold. He was only a teen…and he was alone. A light snow was beginning to fall. Why had he let this happen? How could it even have happened?
A shooting star flashed across the night sky, brighter than the light of the moon. Max didn’t believe in luck anymore. When a meteorite burns up, what happens to its mass? he wondered. Ever curious about science, even now, probably on the verge of death…and that’s what had gotten him into this position.
The clouds thickened, blocking out the light of the moon. He decided to run for it. There was a chance they might not see him. No use just shivering and waiting for the end to come. Max stood up and ran down the blackened street. The twisted forms of ruined skyscrapers added to the dark, apocalyptic landscape. After half a block, his lungs were burning. How can anyone survive?!
Ahead, Max saw a light. A dim, flickering light. It was either them or another human. In any case, he was sick of being alone. Still running flat out, Max turned down the alley from which the light was coming.
The source of the light was closer than Max had expected. He hit something hard and was suddenly sprawling in the alleyway. The pavement was wet and slick. He was scrabbling in the now-darkness to get his feet under him again.
“Hello?” a feminine voice whispered.
A girl! I thought they had all been rounded up and terminated first?
Max reached out and felt human flesh. He wasn’t alone.
“We gotta get out of here.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her along with him. They had to get out of the open. They had to get out of the city. How had she stayed alive so long? “Do you have somewhere safe?” he asked her.
“No,” she told him breathlessly, as he continued to pull her along with him.
Eventually, they came to a large culvert. It was undamaged and dry. He ducked inside. The girl followed.
“I’m Max,” he told her, as they huddled together for warmth and waited for the day. She said nothing. Morning was almost safer as they seemed less active during the daylight hours.
The snow had stopped. The world was not the powdery clean white that Max remembered it being other winters. This year, the snow had melted upon reaching the ground, leaving the landscaped blackened and dark. When Max looked at the girl beside him, he could hardly make out her form, the darkness was so deep.
Then his thoughts assailed him again. It had only been a game…for fun. How was he to know he would really contact the other side?
His invention had come to him in a dream. He had dreamed of a place with two moons. And there was a beautiful girl there. Green eyes that were…indescribable. She was calling to him. And then these ideas were in his head. Ideas to build something. And he couldn’t let them go. The complex science drew him on. No one had believed in him. No one could have guessed what he was developing in his mother’s garage. A game system with one fantastic game, hard-coded into it. It would be better than the Wii, the PS3, the Xbox…the best gaming system ever! A game that would be so popular that it would take the world by storm. It had taken him two years to perfect it. When his game became available, everyone had bought it. The biggest hit that ever was. And then…well…they had taken the world by storm.
Max had no delusions of setting wrong things right, though he had brought this horror to his world. He accepted the constant guilt that gnawed at him as his penance. But he did hope to save his own life. More than anything, Max wanted to live.
Sleep came slowly as he was still shivering intermittently. Max was glad he was not alone.
The gray light of dawn awoke him in a panic. Then Max remembered where he was. He was safe…for now. And with her. Max looked down at the girl snuggled up beside him. It was her! Even with her eyes closed, he could tell that it was really her. And suddenly, everything made sense.
Slowly she awoke and looked at him, her eyes pulsating green. She smiled a cat-like grin.
“I’m Eve,” she said, her voice sultry, “mother to a new world”.
She had called to him to bring her to his world. And then, somehow, she had found him and drawn him to herself…like a moth to a flame.
Once in a Black Moon
The smell of something burning drifted from the kitchen to where Jay sat at his computer in the living room. He rushed to open a window and turn on a fan. He didn’t want the smoke detector going off again. Black smoke poured from the toaster oven and Jay could see that there was a fire inside. He remembered something about ‘not pouring water on a kitchen fire’ so he yanked the plug from the wall and carried the toaster oven outside. Hot! He tossed it out into the snow bank.
Come to think of it, Jay reasoned, he really wanted pizza anyway. It was dark out and he looked up, even though he didn’t want to see it. The stars twinkled merrily but the night sky was marred by the black moon. The scientists had not been in agreement about what had caused it, but, over the span of several months, black had crept across the surface of the moon. China said a manned mission should be sent to check it out, but NASA didn’t have a space program anymore so the USA wouldn’t be part of that future endeavor. The government officials said it didn’t matter, whatever had happened to the moon, it wouldn’t affect the earth. The moon was so far away…but the doomsday types were having a heyday - calling it the end of the world…again.
Jay went back inside, ordered a pizza, and sat down to watch T.V. Most of the channels were carrying the same story: a news report showing some hysterical reporter in Bangladesh. People were running and screaming. They pointed frantically at the black ground. Apparently, there had been some sort of bacterial outbreak in a rural area around there. Jay flicked the T.V. off. He went back to gaming on his computer. Who cares? Bangladesh is so far away...
In an hour and a half, the doorbell rang, startling him out of a game. Finally! Took them long enough. Jay opened the door for the pizza delivery.
The snow under the streetlights caught his attention. It was no longer glistening white but oozing black. The dark slime covered everything he could see; the snow, the streets, the cars, even the lamppost. Good thing I parked my car in the garage. He looked at the pizza delivery boy who looked back at him, with wild eyes.
“Here,” the boy said, thrusting the box towards him.
Jay quickly pulled a twenty from his pocket and handed it to him. Poor kid… he needed a tip on a night like tonight. Jay brought the pizza box to the kitchen counter and opened the lid.
He cursed under his breath. On top of the pizza was oozing, black goop. Jay slammed the lid closed, opened the front door, and tossed the box out into the blackened snow bank to join the toaster. Gotta always check inside the box before paying, he chided himself.
Light Speed to Nowhere
He stared into the cold of space. He had always thought it would be beautiful, like the stars from Earth. How they had shimmered in the deep, ethereal sky; how they had called!
Out here, they were nothing but cold, white pinpricks in the void of endless black.
He slid the gray, window-portal covering into place. The barrage of radiation was constant. Humans were never meant to be in space; of that Derek was sure. Yet here
he was, living his life in this cold silence. Traveling at light speed to nowhere.
He was the proverbial tree in the forest. No one knew where he was or that he was alive or that he had ever been.
“So do I even really exist?” he asked, his voice quiet and somber. He stared into the ship’s full spectrum light.
His watch never told the right time anymore. It gained 42 minutes a day, according to the time that the ship’s computer gave. He had stopped bothering to set it right. Derek didn’t have the tools to try to fix it. But it didn’t matter. He rarely looked at it anymore anyway, and then only out of curiosity. He no longer had any need of time. Derek was alone. As far as he knew, he was the only human alive in the universe, or in any universe.
He wondered why he had chosen this life. What had made him long to live among the stars? Now, he was wandering, forever lost. Going the speed of light, never aging, without any way to slow down. No way to turn around. No way to steer his ship at all. What a fool. How many years had it been now? The closest stars and planets were whizzing by.
He strapped himself into the vertical bed that filled half the cabin, pressed a button that dimmed the interior lights, and closed his eyes.
He should have shared with someone the secret of faster-than-light propulsion before he tried it, before he left. The greatest discovery in human history would die with him. If he ever did die. Waves of frustration swept over him again and again as he regretted, desperately, what he could not change. He would probably be the last human alive.
Derek never turned off the lights completely. Darkness depressed him even more than the loneliness. The only way he could ever be free would be to end it himself. He was too frightened to do that, too afraid of what would come after, so he continued on and on.
Although his eyes were closed, he felt as though he was staring into the burning of space again. Tiny points of light from far away and long ago, rushing hopelessly by. He drifted off to sleep.
Something woke him. He lay still, strapped into the spineboard-like bed. He listened and peered around the small, dim room. Fear, which he had not felt in a long time, began to creep in on him. In this great silence, what could have woken him? He had only been asleep twenty minutes. Micrometeors would have triggered the alarms but all was quiet now. He slowly, quietly, released the buckles that held him in.