The Last Man in the World Explains All, and Other Strange Tales
By
D. Krauss
*****
Copyright 2007, 2012 by DOA Enterprises, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Adult Reading Material- graphic violence, language, sexual situations
To Alexander Key, and his Forgotten Doors
Table of Contents
Forward
The Last Man in the World Explains All
Ghost Woods
Invisibility
Not With a Bang
Do-Over
An Unfortunate Choice of Words
The World Without Souls
Reparations
Inherit the Earth
An Inappropriate Response
About the Author
Like These Stories?
FORWARD
Mundane—characteristic of, or relating to, this world. Sometimes.
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The Last Man in the World Explains All
(original version in Ezine Bewildering Stories, issue 325. https://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue325/last_man.html)
A windblown paper wrapped around my leg while I was walking down Pennsylvania Avenue a few moments ago and, instead of irritably kicking it away, I pulled it off and looked at it. Banner headline: "End Of The World!" And below, the old accusations.
Let me be clear. It was my fault. All mine. Not Cleveland’s or Marebeth’s or Dante’s, just mine. They, actually, tried to save everyone.
Dante saw it first. He was always checking my work, even up to the last minute, hoping to catch me out and prove to Marebeth he was the better physicist. Like that would make her drop me or something. Damned irritating and downright laughable, until...:“Jerry,” there was concern in his voice. “I don’t think this is right.”
“What?” I somewhat asked, more concerned with gauge settings than anything Dante thought.
“The lithium absorption. I think you may have overextended it.” His eyebrows, two wrestling caterpillars, bunched and roiled in alarm.
“One minute!” the sergeant reading the countdown shouted.
“Right,” I’d said. Shut up already, you jealous little jerk.
Marebeth walked over, her non-existent eyebrows roiling in the same buggy way. She traced the same line on the sheet that Dante had, then gasped, her little porcelain hand flying to her mouth. “Jerry! He’s right!” she looked straight at me and her face went paler, if that was possible.
“What!?” I completely lost my cool. If Marebeth agreed with Mr. Bad Science, then it was time to panic.
“Ten seconds!” the sergeant called.
Cleveland leaped for the bunker door, frantically pulling at the heavy bolt. “Stop the countdown! Stop the countdown!” he shrieked.
Too late.
The world went white and hot, a new sun over Bikini. The pressure waves slammed into our bunker and then subsided, and generals and admirals all slapped each others' backs and Alvin called over the intercom: “More megatonnage than expected!”
Of course. Dante and Marebeth and Cleveland just stared at me. “You’ve killed us all,” she said quietly.
Not immediately. There was plenty of time to pack up and hide what we knew and act like everything was okay and scurry back to Washington to brief and be briefed and get awards. In between ceremonies and conferences, the four of us watched the weather and demanded plant and animal surveys in ever-widening circles around the atoll.
“Why are you so worried about that?” an intern laughed one night. I fired him on the spot, and the other interns got back to work, keeping their sniggering little comments to themselves.
We read the reports and grew quieter, more depressed.
We stockpiled as much oxygen as we could, in sealed and hidden bunkers we could access as needed. Stop-gap. But it would give me time.
The others stopped blaming me after five years or so. It just wasn’t helping. At first, I didn't think I was to blame at all, figuring it was something unanticipated, some unforeseen reaction, like maybe an extra neutron. But no. You see, 6 times 6 is 36, not 35. Stupid, stupid, stupid little error. And we all die for it.
Because when you offer a little more hydrogen than necessary to the gods of fire and death, they greedily accept. And reach for more.
No one else noticed until the ozone layer began to change. Marebeth developed a plausible "greenhouse gas" story and dropped it here and there. Everyone bought it. Then there was the Amazon die-off, and Dante came up with overharvesting and Bolivian peasants. Everyone bought that, too. But, eventually, too many things showed up in too many places, and someone got suspicious and grew alarmed and called in a few buddies. And figured it out.
When the first accusations were leveled, Marebeth phoned, her voice as pale as she still was. “Did you hear what they called me?”
“Yes.” I paused. “Kali.”
She started to cry. “More time,” I pleaded, “just a little more time.” She hung up.
As the uproar grew, they went into hiding, leaving behind some documents and formulas that made it look like I was innocent. Oh sure, I got interrogated and was even in prison for a while, but they'd done a good job and I was absolved. When they got caught, they played it out because I needed more time. If I was strung up next to them in front of the U.N. and left there for days while crowds ran by throwing stones and tearing at dangling feet, then it would all be for nothing.
I attended their execution, of course, to keep up appearances. I stood in the crowd and cheered as they dropped, Marebeth’s eyes searching me out, the blame full in them. Funny she recognized me, since I'd lost a hundred pounds and all my hair. Pretty much like everyone else.
But that's all ancient history now, one you’ll never know because everything’s, finally, ready. I’m slogging through the blizzard of papers and overturned cars and thin, cyanotic skeletons piled on every corner, no longer squeamish as dried-out birds and maggots crunch under my feet, carrying the last bottle of oxygen, no more than a half hour's worth. That's all the time I need. Or deserve.
I had to start from scratch, of course. We only had Univacs and the 701 at the beginning, and I had to learn Fortran and experiment with it and rewrite and reapply and wait for better systems and languages. Kilby came along, and Metcalf; then Wozniak and Gates. And the blessedly complex, but easier to write, computer languages.
It just took a lot of time: forty-six years.
No matter. At least, no matter to you. When the reactor fills the grid with thousands of years of power, you'll be reborn. It will feel seamless. You'll go through your day and work and fight and die and marry and have children, and they'll work and fight and die. It’s actually a simple loop, with so many branches and iterations it will seem like individuality.
I've programmed some interesting events for you, like a disputed election and an attack on New York and a bizarre couple of wars with Iraq and Iran and a few more bad things here and there. I don't want any of you getting suspicious. Some good things, too, like a manned landing on Mars (coming to you in 2046) and reception of radio signals from Altair.
You’re going to have a great life. You’re going to have a great world. The memory of what really happened will be gone. As am I. I programmed myself out. I programmed Marebeth and Cleveland and Dante in. They deserve to live. I don’t.
In about ten minutes, as soon as I enter the vaults beneath the White House and hit two switches, there you’ll be. And minutes later, I won’t b
e.
Fitting.
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Ghost Woods
(originally published in the Ezine Silverthought, August 2007. https://www.silverthought.com/krause01.html)
"Goddamn CSI," Mark snarled.
Greg, popping gum as usual, shook his head. "It's just a TV show, Mark," he scrutinized a clipboard, "and you're just a crank."
Mark glared at him. He accepted the crank label but knew, even if Greg-the-punk-ass didn't, how that dumb show had ruined things, convincing half of America the science of crime scene processing was a mere matter of waving arcane and non-existent technology over a general area then, presto! fibers and fragments and prints, oh my. Thanks, Hollywood, thanks a lot.
Frustrated, he stood at the base of the trail, one foot on the shoulder of the road and the other on the hill where the trail began its climb. People, including the hundred-thousand or so gawkers strung along the road and craning their country-ass necks at him and the uniforms and the taped-off woods and the jostled-together police cars forming a cordon around this portion of the road, would expect CSI-like miracles for this case, as would his bosses. And miracles it would take. How he was going to extract any evidence from a scene where so many goddamn dumbass useless civilians tromped their yokel open-mouthed fat feet, picking their noses and staring at the body of Mr. Smith while the newly widowed Mrs. Smith, still dressed in apron and slippers, screamed and screamed at the top of the trail, he didn't know. The three thousand boot prints left by the goddamn uniforms when they herded the yokels out was just icing.
"Shitheads," he cursed.
"Hey," Greg pointed the clipboard at the now sedated Mrs. Smith being bundled into the ambulance. "Take it easy."
"Yeah, yeah," he waved a hand. His performance reports labeled him 'insensitive,' but that was wrong. He was hypersensitive, to victims and unfairness and incompetence and office politics and butthheads getting promoted and hotshot know-it-alls invading the detective ranks (except for Greg, who was a good guy, even if a punk-ass). Just because his voice carried well at inopportune moments didn't make him insensitive. Did it?
"You don't see this very often," Greg said.
"What?"
Greg gestured at the curiously tented white sheet draped over Mr. Smith. "Arrows. Bows and arrows. Downright medieval."
"And that tells you what?"
Greg shrugged. "I dunno. Killer didn't have a gun."
"Which is odd for a robbery, ain't it? Would you take a bow and arrow seriously?"
"If someone was pointing it at me, I would."
"No you wouldn't, not as seriously as you would a gun, not in this day and age."
"If someone was pointing it at me, I would."
"Ach," Mark became more irritated, "listen. A bow and arrow is clumsy, hard to conceal, doesn't have a fear factor, has a surprise factor. Your victim is going to be puzzled for a few moments, and you want your victim scared, handing over a wallet, not looking at you like you're some kind of nut."
"So, what is it, then?"
"Accident."
"Accident?"
"Yeah, accident. Couple of idiot kids with a new no-shit bow and arrow."
"Right," Greg looked down at the clipboard. "Nobody saw any kids."
Mark watched a DC camera crew that was trying to move its van past an increasingly red-faced traffic cop. Great, any minute, a freakin' news helicopter will descend, blowing whatever shreds of possible evidence left into the next county. "Nobody ever sees anything," he said.
Like now. Thirty minutes ago, the crying and increasingly hysterical Mrs. Smith had told him she flew right out the door when their Husky returned alone, terrified, dragging its leash behind. She ran to the tamed suburban wooded path located in the cul-de-sac at the end of their street, not even bothering to change out of her house slippers. She knew, just knew, that her husband was in deep trouble. If the clumsy old fool had merely hurt himself, caught his ankle or broke a toe as he usually did at least once a month, he would have dragged himself home somehow, trying to hide his discomfort until he fell into the living room and made a big show of this week's injury. She'd have laughed and shook her head and railed at him and bandaged or soaked or wrapped whatever it was he had damaged. He would never, ever, have let the dog go. That would be undignified. Mr. Smith was anything but undignified.
She had slapped down the trail, her heart pounding in fear. She expected the worst but didn't expect what she found. There, just at the angle of the trail's dropoff, where it dumped unceremoniously onto Powhatan Road so that, if you weren't careful, gravity would fling you far too quickly into traffic, Mr. Smith was crumpled against a fallen tree, one of the dozens left by the latest windstorm and which Fairfax County always took its sweet time clearing. It was the arrow, buried in his lower chest and carrying remnants of his heart out the back, which made her scream. Her screams attracted the yokels. The yokels destroyed the crime scene. Perfect.
Mark had taken careful notes because tiny details solved cases. Mr. Smith always walked the dog as soon as he came home, still dressed in suit and long coat, carrying himself with great import and soberly nodding at the neighbors because this was a Responsibility. He'd always been about Responsibility and Appearances. That amused her. He was bluff and posture but harmless, and why would anyone want to kill such a blustering but sweet, amusing, white haired old man? Mark had kept his face stone and professional and asked her the standard follow up questions about enemies and persons with grudges, but, inwardly, wailed her bewilderment, her sudden and unlooked-for loss. Mark's heart carried hundreds of such tiny wounds, each a murder he'd investigated these past thirty-five years. The two or three unsolved ones still bled.
Greg shot a measurement with the range finder. "You got us an approach?" Mark asked him.
"Think so." Greg added a couple of touches and then turned the sketch where Mark could see it. "Straight in." He pointed at a line.
Mark peered at the drawing. "We could try the other side."
"Yeah, but this hill is steep. We'll have a better chance of finding something just below the body. Gravity, ya know."
"Okay." Mark pulled out his Alternate Light Source and hooked it to the generator. "You got the camera?"
Greg slapped his pocket twice and pulled out his own ALS. Mark took the left side, as usual. They both stepped once and peered and prodded the ground and laid their lights obliquely along the path, searching. Greg slipped a filter in front of his, looking for organics, marked the sketch, nodded, and they stepped again. It took them about thirty minutes to reach the body.
"Crap," Mark muttered. They hadn't found anything.
Greg gripped one end of the sheet, nearest the head. He looked at Mark, raising an eyebrow. Mark nodded and Greg gently pulled the sheet off. Mark stared.
"Mark," Greg said, looking back towards the road. "Kray's here."
Mark saw the coroner emerging from his telltale black ambulance. "Good," Mark said, "now we can get Mr. Smith on the table."
"Funny lookin' arrow," Greg observed.