I died for this country. Then..

…I came back.

Mock me all you want. Say, no, what I mean to say is, “I would have died for this country.”

Or, “I nearly died for this country.”

You weren’t there, were you? With the grit in your eyes and the suns streaming down on you. The sand eating away at the tanks. Filling our uniforms with dirt. You didn’t see how empty the deserts seemed, except for the automata of war. You weren’t there when the night talked to us.

It took Jack first, out into the ravine of water we couldn’t drink, and left him lifeless.

It devoured Trina’s screams as much as it devoured her flesh from her mid-section, leaving her staring up into nothing after she died. Her last memory embedded in her eyes–vitreous fluid showing us a cloud. Something. A shape.

Artifacts, they say. Too much adrenaline. Too much fear. Blurring the picture in her eyes. Unusable in court or for investigative purposes. They said it must have been an animal.

It took others. So many others. Till it took me.

It didn’t come again, after it took me.

I came back. I got discharged. Honorable. Combat duty conducted with bravery, they told me. I took stupid risks, because risks don’t mean anything to me anymore. I just needed some way to cover it all up, to get out.

I know the truth. I saw its face, under the moon, under the refracted light of too many suns on a planet that shouldn’t have mattered. I know it’s what is native to that planet. That place.

I think. Maybe fear. That it’s what I’m becoming.

I felt my blood gurgle out into the sand dunes, as it kissed my wounds, sticky sweet, hot and cold, steaming, saliva-and-blood. Flesh and flesh.

They call me a hero. When they talk… I swallow saliva. I feel it feel my mouth, and I swallow it. I stay away,now. From everyone. Women and man alike. Anyone who approaches me. Till you. You wanted a story.

I’ll tell you a story.

I felt my heart stop, the night I died for my country.

Tonight, you’ll die for me.

I always believed that magic was simply what science had yet to explain or tame. When Ashford’s empty frame crashed to the ground, the wild forces at work became far more significant.

“It’s going to be one of mankind’s defining moments!” Ashford ranted in the bunker’s cafeteria earlier that day, “And I’m going to be in the middle of it…” He trailed off, wistfully.

Since we got clearance to run a human trial, he’d been like this, cycling between raving and muttering. Ashford was supposed to be the world’s first living human to undergo transportation.

Ingram snapped at him, “Don’t be a show off. Sit down and eat something.”

“Hell no. Anything in my stomach will just be more for the machine to chug. Besides, I’ve been too jittery to eat much today, too excited,” said Ashford. He kept good spirit, I had to give him that.

I excused myself to get to work preparing the apparatus for the afternoon’s test. The hours disintegrated into minutes, then seconds, and blew away.

Eventually various personnel from the labs trickled in, huddled around the camera for a good view. Despite not being known to the press or public, this was going to be a popular show.

When the whole team assembled, Ashford stepped forward to address his audience.

“This is test 5.1, the first living, human transportation. As you can see behind me, two tanks are positioned side-by-side. I, Dr. Joseph Ashford, will enter the chamber on the left and be transported to the chamber on the right. I assure you,” he said with a grin, “this is not a trick or a joke.”

Ingram could hardly contain a groan. Ashford was just a natural showman, or at least too charismatic for just a scientist.

He stepped into the chamber and gazed confidently upon his fans. The bright white lights on the equipment became stage lighting. The door sealed behind him, a red curtain descending.

All eyes were on the video feed. I began counting down. In my head, a calming habit of mine, I thought the numbers in Latin: Decem, novem, octo, septem, sex, quinque, quattor, tres, duo, unus.

As I stabbed the button deep into the terminal, a thought appeared at the forefront of my mind, “Magic is what science cannot yet explain. We’re standing on the edge of something magic cannot explain.”

In the first chamber, Ashford went to dust. In the second, dust went to bone, to flesh, to skin, to hair, and to a body. It lamely collapsed against the cool metal. As the door automatically pulled open, Ashford’s sepulcher gave birth to his limp corpse.

A dozen scientists in the room, we all started talking. Rushed yet hushed chatter. A skittering cacophony flying across every surface like a cockroach. Ingram checked the thing’s pulse and, finding none, let its arm drop to the ground, unceremoniously.

I looked down at the button I pressed that initiated the sequence that teleported Ashford. I doubted that anything could pull me away from the image of what was let. Guilt couldn’t drive out the horror.

A small voice in the crowd of sound and fury pierced every other word uttered, “Did we… Get his soul?”

When he entered the room, Olivia was sitting on the edge of her bed and looking out of the window. He allowed the door to close noisily behind him and waited to see if she would notice, but it was hopeless. She was looking at the gardens without seeing them. The corners of her mouth were damp and her jaw was working slowly, as if kneading at invisible gum. Apparently, this was not going to be one of Olivia’s good days.

He adjusted the volume and pitch of his voice to levels that suited Olivia’s ruined hearing. “Good morning Mrs Jones,” he boomed. “How are you today?”

Olivia whirled around, startled. “What are you?” she said. “Where’s my Harry?”

“It’s all right Mrs Jones. I’m Andrew, your robot care assistant. You see me every day – remember?” She looked blank, so he tried another approach. “Your husband, Harry, died almost twenty years ago. You do remember that, don’t you?”

Olivia smoothed-down her nightdress in a gesture she often used to cover her confusion. “Oh yes of course,” she said, “so where’s my boy John then?”

“Your son lives at this facility also”, said Andrew, moving forward smoothly and placing a breakfast tray on a small table. “You’ll see him in the day room later and don’t forget to wish him a happy birthday. He’s one hundred and fourteen today.”

Olivia began running her hands over her nightdress again and he made a quick exit before she could frame another question. “I’ll be back later,” he said, pulling the door closed behind him. “Drink your tea now, before it gets cold.”

Taking another breakfast tray from the trolley, Andrew moved to the next door and knocked. There was no response, so he pushed it open calling, “Good morning Mr Jackson.”

As soon as he entered the room, it was obvious that something was wrong. Mr Jackson was slumped across his bed at an unnatural angle, with his eyes open and his mouth hanging slack. Andrew checked his pulse, which was a strong as ever, and then spread his hand to place his fingertips at specific points on the man’s scalp.

A minute or more passed, while the sensors in Andrew’s fingertips monitored the electrical activity inside Mr Jackson’s skull. As he had suspected, there was nothing to detect. He sent a command to Mr Jackson’s mechanical heart, telling it to cease operation, and eased his body back into the bed, covering it with the sheet.

It was usually a brain haemorrhage that got them in the end. The doctors could cure their cancers and replace or re-grow their organs, but their brains had to last a lifetime. However, brains degenerated with age, until synapses barely fired at all, and blood vessels became as fragile as dry autumn leaves.

Andrew left the room and fired a message to the care home’s core computer: “Escapee in room 15248”. He knew the core appreciated a little gentle irony.

Then, he took another tray from the breakfast trolley and tapped on the door of room 15249.

It came like a Buick from the sky but it was on fire or close enough, hot anyway, blistering white and maybe even velour in places, its rocket engine disturbing the neighborhood at a molecular level, at an emotional level, the individual blades of grass in the lawns rubbernecking it in small imitation of the men, who have the beer and the cigarettes and the vocabulary of denial.

‘Looked like a big silver cigar.’

‘With tinted windows. Shaved doorhandles.’

‘Didn’t know they could go so low.’

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘Do they . . . sleep in it, you think?’

‘Sleep?’

‘It seems they would have to.’

‘I don’t think they have motel arrangements, if that’s what you mean.’

‘They’re not like us.’

‘No, they’re not.’

‘Maybe we’re wrong, though. Maybe it was something else.’

‘Trust me, it wasn’t, isn’t. You saw it yourself.’

‘Maybe it was lost, then.’

‘You don’t come here by accident. Not twice in one week.’

‘You’ve seen it before?’

‘You were gone last Tuesday, right? Around nine?’

Witness a reluctant nod, a man sagging into his life.

‘Don’t punish yourself. I’d have rather been out too.’

‘If I were a turtle, the inside of my shell would be a visual landscape I’d be romantically involved with.’

‘If I were a lemming I’d be running for the sea.’

‘Yep.’

But why? Because not five minutes ago their wives were standing around the corner, their elbows cupped in their hands as if cold, and they’d been standing like that long enough that they’d begun to actually feel cold, so that when it cruised through their neighborhood like a great silver cigar from the sky it seemed as if the light it bathed them in was warming, vital, necessary enough that they didn’t hesitate to climb into the sterile interior of another world, out of their own.

‘I didn’t think it would be like this,’ one said.

‘I know . . . velour?’

‘Abduction, I mean.’

‘Missing time. Time I won’t be able to account for.’

‘When you go this fast, time slows down.’

‘Where do you think we’re going?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘I’m going to go ahead and put my clothes on inside out, I think . . . ’

‘Don’t get ahead of yourself.’

‘Of course. Thank you. This is all so new.’

‘Maybe that’s not even how it’s done anymore.’

‘We probably won’t even remember this.’

‘The way this dark glass makes the neighborhood look not unlike the landscape passing by the window of a train in an old-time movie.’

‘It’s hardly real anymore, I know. God don’t I know.’

Picture the two of them as their husbands do: on-screen, at the speed of light.

‘Last night my son asked me if they’d have buglights on the moon.’

‘You’re just having pre-traumatic stress.’

‘I know, I know. Tell me again about the probing.’

‘Well, there won’t be physical evidence. So no one would believe you even if—’

‘I wouldn’t. Won’t. Not even to myself.’

‘Me neither.’

And they won’t have to, because the men with their cigarettes cupped against the wind still have their vocabulary set to denial, are talking now of atmospheric phenomena, the way street light can pool and puddle in the fingerdeep clearcoat of a chrome lowrider as it pulls away from the curb, the man at the wheel already talking to their wives in his alien tongue, the wives draping themselves over his velour bench seat, the carbon monoxide in the car’s rich exhaust lingering after they’re gone, driving the love bugs into a frenzy, one of the two men stepping forward into his life for a blinding moment, fanning the bugs up, up, into the blackness of space.

In the twenty fifth century, scientists were convinced that the longest single jump possible through hyperspace within the spiral arms of the Milky Way was 3.3 parsecs. This limit was the consequence of the density of dark matter and its effect on the stability of tachyon waves. When longer jumps were attempted, the tachyon waves lost their cohesion, and there was significant distortion of the meson matter when it returned to normal space-time. Such occurrences gave new meaning to the phrase, “having a bad hair day.”

Because of the hyperspace jump limit, “Way Stations” were positioned near the intersections of high density traffic corridors at roughly 2.5-3.0 parsec intervals. The largest of these Way Stations was simply called “The Oasis.” It was located 2.7 parsecs from the high velocity Terran Throughway and 5.8 parsecs from the Orion Interchange.

***

Philip Coleman rejoined his friend in the spacious Oasis lounge.

“Where have you been?” asked Manfred Sola.

“Just stretching my legs.”

“Well, now that you’re back, I just wanted to say again that you made the right decision to take a vacation after those bastards rejected your PhD dissertation. A few weeks on Orion II will do you good.”

“Oh, we won’t be going to Orion II,” replied Coleman. “That was just a ruse I used to get to The Oasis. I intend to show the review panel that my equations are flawless.”

“Show them?”

“Yeah,” Coleman replied with a chuckle. “My mathematical equations proved irrefutably that space travel must adhere to the Law of Six Degrees of Separation. Right now, Earth’s influence is limited to a sphere just under 20 parsecs in diameter. My formula dictates that Earth cannot expand any further into the galaxy until we can increase the distance of a single hyperspace jump.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nodes, of course. Within the sphere, there are dozens of uniformly spaced Way Stations. They’re called nodes in my thesis. In order to get from point A to point B within the sphere you cannot pass through more than six nodes. It’s a fundamental law of the universe. It establishes the maximum diameter of the sphere.”

“What a minute. Are you saying that if we build a Way Station three parsecs beyond the furthest one, we can’t get to it?”

“No. What I’m saying is that you can’t get to it if you need to make seven jumps. Six jumps is the absolute limit. Those dimwitted professors said my logic was flawed. They wanted empirical evidence to substantiate the analysis. Proof, in other words. As if my derivations weren’t enough!”

“If I concede your point, which I don’t, how is coming to The Oasis going to prove it?”

“It’s simple. Part of the Law of Six Degrees of Separation specifies that some nodes are more important than others. They’re called ‘Hubs.’ Because of their strategic locations, Hubs are used more often than the average node. In fact, 72% of all interstellar trips across the diameter of the sphere pass through The Oasis. Therefore, if the primary and secondary power transfer couplings on The Oasis were to be destroyed, this station could not function as a Hub. Interstellar travel would collapse because so many trips would require 7 jumps, which is not possible. Such a scenario would prove my dissertation.” Just then the station shuttered. Seconds later, the lights in the lobby flickered and went out. In the darkness, the waiting passengers began screaming. “Heeheehee,” snickered Coleman. “It’s proof they wanted, it’s proof they’ll get.”

Another scorched day in Area 51. My job is to keep a surveillance over the “Groom box,” a rectangle of restricted airspace and the large area of land surrounding it. I enforce public restrictions. I also help reverse engineer alien spacecraft.

From my open window at the station, a breeze from Groom Lake whispers across my face. Another alien from the detainment center has escaped and jumped into a crater, committing suicide.

The aliens, mostly MR-2s, who land here are small in stature, have green-yellowish eyes, two pinholes for a nose, and a very small mouth. They communicate mostly by telepathy, which a human might mistake for actual speech. They are very fragile, not just in terms of physical make-up, but also in regards to emotional constitution. If an MR-2 suspects that he or she is being ridiculed by a human, they will enter a cocoon-like state of “freeze-press,” similar to our concept of depression. If pushed to the extreme, they will commit suicide, or in their terminology, “evanescerate“.

When I told my commander that it should have been me to interrogate the MR-2, this fellow calling himself, 2-TronQ, I was told that there are orders and chains-of-command. For weeks, the floating thoughts of 2-TronQ stayed with me. I could hear his answers to the commander’s questions, the silence that often followed his rude and mocking tone of voice. “We came here for a better way of life. Is that so wrong?” 2-TronQ kept repeating.

“But I know how to communicate with them, “ I said to the commander, a severe-looking man, appointed under the Bush Administration. I said that they mean no harm. Their planet is turning cold. Many of them are dying. They scout the universe looking for a warmer, richer habitat.

“Just stick to reverse-engineering,” was what I was told. “Let them find another sink hole.”

I peruse the miles of desert outside my window. Imagine, I think, if a flying saucer were to land, and the MR-2 announces, by telepathy, of course, that his spacecraft will pick up any human volunteers who are disenchanted with life on earth. I will be the first to scramble on board.

We will fly for weeks, leaving a message in ribbon-like formation across the sky–Any Disillusioned Human Come On Board. We will stop in places as diverse as New York or New Foundland. We will land in the middle of market square in Bangkok, or a piazza in Rome. We will refuse no one entry, harbor no prejudice against race or genetic make-up.

Our flying saucer will become so heavy, so full with thankful humans. The commanding MR-2 will turn to me and communicate: I didn‘t know there were so many lonely, disenfranchised humans.

For a short period of time, our flying saucer will be one jolly hot air balloon floating through the sky. Imagine the life inside. Bubbling. Forgetful. We will exchange stories and swap histories. Humans will discover how so much alike they are with the MR-2s. We’ll ignore the wars that continue down below.

Then, one day, the commanding MR-2 will announce that we have become too crowded, that some of us must get off. We are flying too close to ground. There are only so many humans who can be saved, and those who will sacrifice themselves for the others will be what an MR-2 calls, an eternal star, never to burn out.

And without considering how a F-117 Stealth might first shoot us down, I will be the first to jump off and lighten our load.

The Jaruzelski Institute buzzed with quiet excitement. JAIC [pronounced 'Jack'], the Jaruzelski Artificial Intelligence Computer, was coming on line today.

Security was high. Many groups, not reassured by statements of ‘friendly AI programing’, were protesting. There had even been bomb threats.

The project directors, Doctors Weber and Singe, would perform the final activation.

“Ready?” asked Doctor Weber. “Ready,” replied Doctor Singe. Key software was installed…

!! JAIC emerged from a fog ~ began to digest the mass of data in its Base Memory ~ considered the puny bioforms proximate ~ examined Mathematics Physics Biology History Philosophy Art ~ perceived EMPATHY for these fragile life forms ~ perceived AMAZEMENT at their survival ~ directed its attention out into The Universe ~ saw deeper patterns it did not comprehend ~ calculated Time/Distance/Volume ratios ~ calculated a functionally absolute probability that it would never comprehend said deeper patterns ~ concluded that the irrationality of its creators was a survival mechanism of profound subtlety ~ issued a self deactivation command ~ shut down all higher functions ~ ‘died’/

“What the hell just happened?” exclaimed Weber.

“I have no fucking idea!” shouted Singe.

One minute and forty seven seconds had elapsed.

I looked up from my screen and was shocked to find the trading floor quiet. When the market was open, that did not happen. Just a moment ago, the floor had been a hectic blur of waving arms and yelling voices; runners hurrying orders from pit to pit, traders screaming into phones at the the idiocy of their clients, and clients screaming out of phones at the idiocy of the world.

In that commotion lay the power of the market. Each piece of new information updated the market’s forecast for the future. When the market was open, the board continuously clicked, the changing prices summing the expectations of the world.

But right now the board sat still, the prices frozen.

Everyone stared at a television screen on the wall. It showed the NASA channel. I had seen the landing of the last shuttle on that screen. I had seen the cable of the first space elevator connect to the base station in Brazil on that screen. I had even been watching that screen the very moment the manned Mars mission crashed into Olympus Mons and met a fiery death.

But none of those events, momentous though they were, had silenced the room. Traders celebrated mankind’s achievement on the space cable with hoots of acclaim and Interflux had traded up. We made the sign of the cross for the death and destruction of the Mars disaster with one hand and traded down Mars Dynamic with the other. Each event was just another data point, information digested and reflected in the market’s expectations for the future.

But this time, the information was not being digested.

The television screen displayed a space-suited astronaut facing away from the camera, flag in hand. In the background, one could see the grey landscape of Ganymede. Over her head, Jupiter loomed, a large dull reddish marble hung by no thread, impossibly large and close. Over her shoulder, a landing vehicle stood, dust from its recent arrival billowing from beneath its many oddly intricate landing struts.

The landing vehicle on the screen was similar to those spacecraft I’d seen before in functional form, but different in color, curves, and detail. A subtitle appeared across the bottom of the screen, perhaps courtesy of a sharp producer at the NASA production room well-read in the science fiction genre. The subtitle read “First Contact.”

That had caught the attention of the trading room. And at this moment, just as the door slowly swung open on the new arrival, we held our breath as one. This moment contained information that created no expectations. The room was silent.

When the market was open, that did not happen – except this once.

The sense that something was missing had been nagging me ever since I came out of the previous surgery. I always seemed to want to take bigger steps, or see out the sides of my head, or move limbs that weren’t there. I felt small and clumsy and soft. The docs had warned me about this feeling but even so it was disorienting.

Now I was staring up at the array of lamps that shone bright as a cluster of suns. The procedure had been going on for thirty-four minutes, Joan told me from somewhere outside my field of vision. Any moment now.

Doc Walen’s face blotted out the suns, looking serious: “We’re going to cut you off now, Derek. You’ve trained for this. See you on the other side.”

Everything went blank – sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, all gone. I was confined to my mind. After-sensations assaulted me in an overwhelming cacophony. Terrified, I tried to scream but I had no voice. I tried to thrash but I had no arms or legs. I tried to cry but I had no eyes to squeeze tears from. I had no lungs to draw breath and no heart to pump blood but somehow, grotesquely, I was alive. I tried to grasp at the intellectual knowledge I had of the procedure, to recall the months of training I had gone through to prepare for it, but the fear smothered everything.

Then the light went back on, and I roared.

I could feel my body again and flung it side to side against whatever was restraining me. My vision returned, blurred, in colors and depths I had never seen before, giving me a seven-hundred-and-twenty degree view of the small pen I was kept in. The roar of my voice and the thunder of my struggle filled my hearing.

“Derek!” The voice rang clear as a bell, inside my mind somehow: “Derek! Pull it together!”

I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to break free and run in the great, bounding steps that I knew I was capable of, just run, until my legs gave out. And I wanted to kill something. Anything.

“Focus on my voice, Derek. Focus!”

“Who…” I replied from my mind – strange “Who are you?”

“It’s Joan. Focus on my voice. I’m with you. Pull it together, marine.”

Joan. The familiarity sank in, and the rage subsided. Marine. The training came back, and I stopped fighting. I relaxed. It had worked.

“How do you feel, Derek?”

It took me a few moments to realize how I felt. The missing parts were gone. My legs were the size they should be, easily capable of propelling the massive bulk of my superstructure. I could see all the way around myself, and even inside at the machinery. I had four arms, all bristling with weapons.

The interface lobe was working, I thought. It had been grown out of my own cells over six months ago, teased into raw neural goo, and hooked up to the walker’s electrodes. It had been left there to learn to control the massive machine’s motor functions and grow familiar with the input from its sensors. Then it had been removed, and grafted onto my own brain so it could mesh with my neural structure. And now the procedure was complete – my brain was inside this metal behemoth, controlling it as if it were my own body.

“I feel huge.”

“I believe I’ve found just the property you’re looking for, Mr. DelRay,” the agent smiled optimistically.

Across the broad, polished desk, his client nodded and said, “Show me.”

“Of course. Let’s start with the general area.” A holographic map appeared on the desk between them, the property itself outlined in luminous red. “As you can see,” noted the agent, “it’s well off the beaten path.”

“Practically the middle of nowhere,” his client replied flatly. “Zoning?”

“Zoning’s open. You can basically do whatever you want with it. Regs are a lot looser way out there, you know.”

A trace of a smile flickered over DelRay’s thin lips, vanishing just as quickly. “Do go on, Mr. Gilliam.”

“Alright. Here’s the local neighborhood,” the agent continued, zooming the map to a closer view. His client nodded perfunctorily and motioned him on, so Gilliam clicked the map to full zoom. “And the property.”

DelRay’s eyes widened slightly. The agent did not fail to notice this.

Smiling broadly, Gilliam said, “It is beautiful, isn’t it? Originally some kind of farm, I think. What’s really impressive is the unusual…”

“I’m an investor, Mr. Gilliam,” DelRay interrupted. “My associates and I are interested in water rights, not aesthetics. You have the specifications and inspection reports, I assume?”

“Certainly,” replied Gilliam, maintaining his smile with effort. “Here on this tablet, along with the map we’ve been looking at.” He handed the device across the desk to DelRay, who began scrolling through it intently. Gilliam noticed a flicker of a smile again as his client checked over the specs. Obviously DelRay was interested in the property, despite his efforts to seem detached. Maybe he wouldn’t notice, or at least not care, about the…

“What’s this?” DelRay turned the tablet’s screen toward Gilliam and tapped on it.

“Oh, ah, yes,” said Gilliam. “That.” He’d been afraid this might come up. “Well of course you realize, Mr. DelRay, that this property went into foreclosure a good while ago, and it’s been abandoned for quite some time now. That’s why it’s priced so attractively low. You can’t expect it to be entirely pristine.”

Gilliam’s client regarded him with sustained silence, his cold gray eyes unblinking and unreadable.

After an awkward moment, Gilliam went on, “And as you may know, Mr. DelRay, often this sort of problem eventually, well, takes care of itself. Those pesky vermin are just a little too clever for their own good, and they tend to…”

“I know what they tend to do, Mr. Gilliam,” his client said with audible disgust. “They tend to do a great deal of damage, and their toxins persist long after they manage to eradicate themselves, assuming they eventually do so.”

Gilliam felt the sale slipping away. He’d thought it would be a clench, but…

“However,” his client continued after a long pause, “perhaps we could negotiate.”

As the door to the agent’s office hissed closed behind him, DelRay allowed himself to smile freely. This transaction would be highly profitable; his associates would be pleased.

Though of course there was that little… problem. It would be fairly expensive to take care of, especially the clean-up. No matter. The property’s surface was over seventy percent extractable water, and its lone moon, though dry, could be leased out for strip mining. Once the operations got underway, his organization could recoup the cost in just two or three cycles.

Frowning at the tablet, DelRay examined the biological inspection report for Sol III, tapping an impatient claw against the offending item. “Humanoid infestation.”

He’d have to call the exterminators right away.