Cynthia stared at the immense green lawn without really seeing it. Her body was frozen, but her mind was going a mile a minute, running over and over and over the shock of what she had found out.
What was it exactly? There was no proof of anything. Undoubtedly her wonderful husband and her equally fabulous parents would dismiss her conclusions as another of her weird fantasies, giving her that look that said she was not only mentally defective, but just plain bad. Bad through and through, like a rotten tomato. (Have you ever experienced a rotten tomato? They really stink!)
For a minute her conviction wavered and she thought she had really lost it this time. How had she gotten to this conclusion that aliens were taking over earth? But then she went over it again, and it all added up to the same thing. The worst part was that she suspected, no, she was sure that her husband and her parents were in it somehow. They had always seemed like old friends from the first time they met.
"Wow, I'm really getting paranoid these days, finding conspiracies everywhere. And I'm talking to myself, too. Actually, I'd rather be crazy than right about this."
Someday, she thought, her husband would come home from work or wherever and announce that he was an alien, and she could choose to become (become? no, remain) his slave, or to be terminated. Great choice!
And her parents... She had never known what to think about them, but she knew she was on the outside, and she was so different, almost like she was the alien. She had never been good enough for them. They methodically taught her she was an unwanted failure. At least now she knew why. The aliens had been infiltrating earth for many years, sending their messages of worthlessness, making humans ready to be willing slaves. It was almost time for the harvest. Humans had become ripe for the picking, pathetic people pleasers. (Alien pleasers)
There was no reason to live anymore. Hadn't been for quite a while. The same intense longing swept over her that always came when she thought about that. Would she never really be loved, really love another person? Was there any love anywhere to joy in?
A soft breeze touched her face, and a whisper spoke in her mind. "I am here, Beloved Treasure. Come with me and share my joy."
Cynthia's face changed from surprise to delight. She reached up toward this Lover, ready to get out of her chair, but then her arms dropped and she slumped over. Her head rested on the table, her mouth curved in a smile, and her eyes closed peacefully. She stood up and looked down briefly at her body, then took His hand and danced happily out into the air, gliding toward her new home.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
What happened to February 30th?
This is an entry for the Friday Challenge for May 15, 2009.
It's gone. February 30th, that is. And I'm the one who did it. I had every justification, though. I'll tell you everything that happened, and you'll agree.
There I was, minding my own business... Well, I was also minding a few other peoples' business, but they were my children, I had every right. You see, I had always been afraid that a disaster would come along and destroy me. I worried about it constantly, and that made me watch what I did very carefully. I spent time every day in thought about what I could do to ensure my safety and the safety of my family. I was never foolish, never reckless. I investigated all possible insurance before insurance was even invented. But it didn't do any good. The disaster came anyway.
When I was a child, I was taught many things, and the most important thing was that there is a God, and he created everything, and he rules the earth and controls everything. I figured out that if I wanted to be happy, I had to please God, so he would give me a good life. I became very picky about obeying the rules. If I messed up the slightest bit, I had to make up for it by sacrificing an animal. That was what you did back then when you broke a rule. It would pacify God so he wouldn't punish me by sending a disaster.
Trouble was, I broke the rules so often. Mostly it was little stuff, but I couldn't take any chances. After a while I got into the habit of sacrificing every day, because even if I couldn't remember breaking any rules that day, I knew I wasn't perfect, and I couldn't imagine going through a whole day perfectly. Sometimes I would sacrifice on behalf of my children, in case they forgot. They didn't seem nearly as worried about it as I was.
After several years of sacrificing every day, I stopped worrying so much, because it seemed like it was working. I was happy and successful and rich, I had a big family, and I couldn't think of anything else that would make me any happier. I concluded that God was pleased with me.
That's when the disaster arrived. It was so sudden I couldn't believe it. All my money and investments were stolen, and on the very same day, all my children were at a party, and a tornado ripped through the building and killed them all.
Only my wife remained, and that was truly a mixed blessing, because she screamed questions at me night and day, asking me what horrible thing I had done to displease God so much that he took away her children. She didn't believe my denial of all horribleness. She said she wished God would strike me dead.
I sat alone in the dark and tried to think what I had done to deserve this. I couldn't think of anything. All I knew was that what I had been dreading all my life had finally happened, and everything I had done to prevent it had been useless.
And if that wasn't enough, I woke up with oozing, infected sores all over my body. They were terribly painful, and I couldn't find any position to rest in. It hurt to sit, it hurt to stand, and it hurt to lie down. It even hurt to talk. I said nothing for days, while my mind scrambled to find a reason for all this suffering.
I found no answer. I had done nothing.
It was then that I got rid of February 30th. I stood and cursed it aloud, before all my friends who had come to comfort me.
Let the day of my birth be erased, and the night I was conceived.
Let that day be turned to darkness. Let it be lost even to God on high, and let no light shine on it.
Let the darkness and utter gloom claim that day for its own. Let a black cloud overshadow it, and let the darkness terrify it.
Let that night be blotted off the calendar, never to be counted among the days of the year, never again to appear among the months.
Let that night be childless. Let it have no joy.
Let those who are experts at cursing--whose cursing could rouse Leviathan--curse that day.
Let its morning stars remain dark. Let it hope for light, but in vain; may it never see the morning light.
Curse that day for failing to shut my mother's womb, for letting me be born to see all this trouble.*
Of course, you know that's not the end of my story, but it was the end of February 30th, my birthday.
* Job 3:3-10 NLT
Card:
It's gone. February 30th, that is. And I'm the one who did it. I had every justification, though. I'll tell you everything that happened, and you'll agree.
There I was, minding my own business... Well, I was also minding a few other peoples' business, but they were my children, I had every right. You see, I had always been afraid that a disaster would come along and destroy me. I worried about it constantly, and that made me watch what I did very carefully. I spent time every day in thought about what I could do to ensure my safety and the safety of my family. I was never foolish, never reckless. I investigated all possible insurance before insurance was even invented. But it didn't do any good. The disaster came anyway.
When I was a child, I was taught many things, and the most important thing was that there is a God, and he created everything, and he rules the earth and controls everything. I figured out that if I wanted to be happy, I had to please God, so he would give me a good life. I became very picky about obeying the rules. If I messed up the slightest bit, I had to make up for it by sacrificing an animal. That was what you did back then when you broke a rule. It would pacify God so he wouldn't punish me by sending a disaster.
Trouble was, I broke the rules so often. Mostly it was little stuff, but I couldn't take any chances. After a while I got into the habit of sacrificing every day, because even if I couldn't remember breaking any rules that day, I knew I wasn't perfect, and I couldn't imagine going through a whole day perfectly. Sometimes I would sacrifice on behalf of my children, in case they forgot. They didn't seem nearly as worried about it as I was.
After several years of sacrificing every day, I stopped worrying so much, because it seemed like it was working. I was happy and successful and rich, I had a big family, and I couldn't think of anything else that would make me any happier. I concluded that God was pleased with me.
That's when the disaster arrived. It was so sudden I couldn't believe it. All my money and investments were stolen, and on the very same day, all my children were at a party, and a tornado ripped through the building and killed them all.
Only my wife remained, and that was truly a mixed blessing, because she screamed questions at me night and day, asking me what horrible thing I had done to displease God so much that he took away her children. She didn't believe my denial of all horribleness. She said she wished God would strike me dead.
I sat alone in the dark and tried to think what I had done to deserve this. I couldn't think of anything. All I knew was that what I had been dreading all my life had finally happened, and everything I had done to prevent it had been useless.
And if that wasn't enough, I woke up with oozing, infected sores all over my body. They were terribly painful, and I couldn't find any position to rest in. It hurt to sit, it hurt to stand, and it hurt to lie down. It even hurt to talk. I said nothing for days, while my mind scrambled to find a reason for all this suffering.
I found no answer. I had done nothing.
It was then that I got rid of February 30th. I stood and cursed it aloud, before all my friends who had come to comfort me.
Let the day of my birth be erased, and the night I was conceived.
Let that day be turned to darkness. Let it be lost even to God on high, and let no light shine on it.
Let the darkness and utter gloom claim that day for its own. Let a black cloud overshadow it, and let the darkness terrify it.
Let that night be blotted off the calendar, never to be counted among the days of the year, never again to appear among the months.
Let that night be childless. Let it have no joy.
Let those who are experts at cursing--whose cursing could rouse Leviathan--curse that day.
Let its morning stars remain dark. Let it hope for light, but in vain; may it never see the morning light.
Curse that day for failing to shut my mother's womb, for letting me be born to see all this trouble.*
Of course, you know that's not the end of my story, but it was the end of February 30th, my birthday.
* Job 3:3-10 NLT
Card:
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Tornado at Work
Entry for the Friday Challenge for 4/03/09
Tornado at Work
This coming Monday will be April 13. Weather dot com is predicting rain and thunderstorms. Hopefully there won't be any tornadoes running around this time, since I am expecting a group of ladies to visit my home in the evening. Eleven years ago, that wasn't the case. In fact, I collided with a tornado that time.
I was working as a contract programmer with several part-time clients. I got a call from one of them. Someone was having a problem. I tried to talk her through some stuff over the phone, just to get more information about what she was experiencing, but she was one of those unfortunate computer users who cannot put into words what she is actually seeing on the screen. I remember another person once who kept telling me there was absolutely nothing on her screen. It was completely blank. I finally said, "Read me what your screen says." Then suddenly all kinds of error messages were gushing out of her mouth. Amazing.
Anyway, this user not only couldn't express what she was seeing, but she didn't want to take the time. She just wanted me to come and fix it. I got in my car and drove up there, but I didn't actually get to do any fixing.
The radio in the car was talking about tornadoes. Tornado warnings, tornado watches, and tornado touchdowns about five minutes before I reached my destination, and only a few miles west of where I was.
As I parked next to the back door, the employees were streaming out to go home. It was five o'clock, and they weren't wasting any time, wanting to get home before the storm hit. By the time I got in and logged on, there was only one other person left in the building with me - the CEO. I had no idea he was there, since his office was in the other side of the building. The office building was like a one-story strip mall, with the "stores" occupied by different companies.
As I tried to zero in on the problem program, I couldn't help but hear the storm outside. The room where I was working had concrete walls and no windows, but the noise kept getting louder. I decided to take a break and head for the rest room, which was the only small interior room I could think of.
Less than a minute after I settled myself on the floor in the last stall, the power went out. No windows in there, either, so I just kept sitting there wondering what was happening. That room had better sound protection. I heard a few loud bangs, but other than that I couldn't hear much of the storm. I felt my ears popping a few times, telling me there were pressure changes. It wasn't hard to figure out that there was a tornado very close at the least.
My main thought was, "What do I do now?" I actually had time to wonder what to do! That just doesn't seem right, somehow. The obvious answer was to pray. When you're helpless, there's only one place to turn. But what do you say? I mean, it's stupid to tell God that you're in a tornado, as if He doesn't know. All I could think of was, "God, I'm here."
It seemed like a long time sitting there wondering when it would be safe to come out, and then I heard a toilet flushing next door. That told me there was somebody else there, and he evidently thought it was safe, so I got out of there as fast as I could in the dark.
The CEO had watched the storm from his office, which had a full wall of window. He was very, very fortunate that all the damage was at the back of the building. The computer room where I had been working, had lost its roof, and it was raining. There was already an inch of water on the floor. We got busy carrying computers into the dryer part of the office. The AS/400 was sitting in the water, but I knew it had a few inches of empty space at the bottom of its case, so I wasn't worried about it. Days later, after everything was cleaned up and reconnected, it came back up fine.
The windows at the back of the office (past which I walked on my way to the rest room) were all broken. Shards of broken glass were stuck in the opposite wall like darts thrown at a target. There were even some in the upper part of a chair behind a desk, where an occupant's head would have rested.
I knew it was time to leave when I started smelling gas. That was when I got to see my car. It was an dark green Saturn, a beautiful emerald. Every inch of it was pock-marked by the river rocks that had been on the roof that was no longer there. Those rocks are round, reddish, about two to three inches in diameter. They were everywhere, all over the pavement, in my car, even on the dashboard under the windshield, which was the only window still in place. It was cracked badly, but still held. The other windows were all broken out, leaving broken glass both inside and outside the car.
Between the glass and the rocks on the pavement and the gas smell, which was just as bad outside as inside the building, I decided to leave my car there. That was the last straw for it, because it stayed there in the rain for two days before the cops would let me back in the parking lot to get it. The interior was soaked, and I'm allergic to mold and fungus. Time for a new car. My twelve and twelve was on the shelf under the back window, so it got soaked, too. But I dried it out, and it's okay. Warped but still readable. A reminder of God saving me again.
The weather service says:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lsx/climate/torcli/stlouis.php
A small tornado left a path of damage across west St. Louis County, from the WestPort area in Maryland Heights to near Ashby Road in Overland. Most of the damage was F0 in intensity; primarily damage to trees, power lines, roofs and some decks and porches. About 30 homes and 40 businesses suffered some type of damage. The F1 damage was limited to a small area near Lackland Road and Lindbergh Boulevard. The Carol House Furniture store suffered the most damage, losing part of a wall and the roof. Two nearby automobile dealerships had about 200 cars damaged. One school had roof damage and windows broken. The one injury occurred when a century-old oak tree crashed into the kitchen where a man was sitting. He was treated for head and leg injuries.
A storm chaser says:
http://www.siue.edu/~jfarley/chase413.htm
Tornado at Work
This coming Monday will be April 13. Weather dot com is predicting rain and thunderstorms. Hopefully there won't be any tornadoes running around this time, since I am expecting a group of ladies to visit my home in the evening. Eleven years ago, that wasn't the case. In fact, I collided with a tornado that time.
I was working as a contract programmer with several part-time clients. I got a call from one of them. Someone was having a problem. I tried to talk her through some stuff over the phone, just to get more information about what she was experiencing, but she was one of those unfortunate computer users who cannot put into words what she is actually seeing on the screen. I remember another person once who kept telling me there was absolutely nothing on her screen. It was completely blank. I finally said, "Read me what your screen says." Then suddenly all kinds of error messages were gushing out of her mouth. Amazing.
Anyway, this user not only couldn't express what she was seeing, but she didn't want to take the time. She just wanted me to come and fix it. I got in my car and drove up there, but I didn't actually get to do any fixing.
The radio in the car was talking about tornadoes. Tornado warnings, tornado watches, and tornado touchdowns about five minutes before I reached my destination, and only a few miles west of where I was.
As I parked next to the back door, the employees were streaming out to go home. It was five o'clock, and they weren't wasting any time, wanting to get home before the storm hit. By the time I got in and logged on, there was only one other person left in the building with me - the CEO. I had no idea he was there, since his office was in the other side of the building. The office building was like a one-story strip mall, with the "stores" occupied by different companies.
As I tried to zero in on the problem program, I couldn't help but hear the storm outside. The room where I was working had concrete walls and no windows, but the noise kept getting louder. I decided to take a break and head for the rest room, which was the only small interior room I could think of.
Less than a minute after I settled myself on the floor in the last stall, the power went out. No windows in there, either, so I just kept sitting there wondering what was happening. That room had better sound protection. I heard a few loud bangs, but other than that I couldn't hear much of the storm. I felt my ears popping a few times, telling me there were pressure changes. It wasn't hard to figure out that there was a tornado very close at the least.
My main thought was, "What do I do now?" I actually had time to wonder what to do! That just doesn't seem right, somehow. The obvious answer was to pray. When you're helpless, there's only one place to turn. But what do you say? I mean, it's stupid to tell God that you're in a tornado, as if He doesn't know. All I could think of was, "God, I'm here."
It seemed like a long time sitting there wondering when it would be safe to come out, and then I heard a toilet flushing next door. That told me there was somebody else there, and he evidently thought it was safe, so I got out of there as fast as I could in the dark.
The CEO had watched the storm from his office, which had a full wall of window. He was very, very fortunate that all the damage was at the back of the building. The computer room where I had been working, had lost its roof, and it was raining. There was already an inch of water on the floor. We got busy carrying computers into the dryer part of the office. The AS/400 was sitting in the water, but I knew it had a few inches of empty space at the bottom of its case, so I wasn't worried about it. Days later, after everything was cleaned up and reconnected, it came back up fine.
The windows at the back of the office (past which I walked on my way to the rest room) were all broken. Shards of broken glass were stuck in the opposite wall like darts thrown at a target. There were even some in the upper part of a chair behind a desk, where an occupant's head would have rested.
I knew it was time to leave when I started smelling gas. That was when I got to see my car. It was an dark green Saturn, a beautiful emerald. Every inch of it was pock-marked by the river rocks that had been on the roof that was no longer there. Those rocks are round, reddish, about two to three inches in diameter. They were everywhere, all over the pavement, in my car, even on the dashboard under the windshield, which was the only window still in place. It was cracked badly, but still held. The other windows were all broken out, leaving broken glass both inside and outside the car.
Between the glass and the rocks on the pavement and the gas smell, which was just as bad outside as inside the building, I decided to leave my car there. That was the last straw for it, because it stayed there in the rain for two days before the cops would let me back in the parking lot to get it. The interior was soaked, and I'm allergic to mold and fungus. Time for a new car. My twelve and twelve was on the shelf under the back window, so it got soaked, too. But I dried it out, and it's okay. Warped but still readable. A reminder of God saving me again.
The weather service says:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lsx/climate/torcli/stlouis.php
A small tornado left a path of damage across west St. Louis County, from the WestPort area in Maryland Heights to near Ashby Road in Overland. Most of the damage was F0 in intensity; primarily damage to trees, power lines, roofs and some decks and porches. About 30 homes and 40 businesses suffered some type of damage. The F1 damage was limited to a small area near Lackland Road and Lindbergh Boulevard. The Carol House Furniture store suffered the most damage, losing part of a wall and the roof. Two nearby automobile dealerships had about 200 cars damaged. One school had roof damage and windows broken. The one injury occurred when a century-old oak tree crashed into the kitchen where a man was sitting. He was treated for head and leg injuries.
A storm chaser says:
http://www.siue.edu/~jfarley/chase413.htm
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Friday challenge for 3/27/09
This is an entry for the Friday challenge for 3/27/09
The Yellow Time Machine
The time machine was ready, he knew it! Jack had held back his excitement dozens of times now and gone over all the calculations in his mind, looking for any flaw, even the tiniest one, but it had been many days since he had found and fixed the last error. It was perfect. Now all he needed to do was test it.
There was the guinea pig test. That worked exactly right on this end. The cute little brown and white guinea pig had popped back into existence at the very moment he had programmed the machine to send it back. Of course, there was no way to tell if Bunny (who would name a guinea pig “Bunny” anyway?) had gone to the place and time it was supposed to. Or how long it had stayed before automatically returning.
At least he had the returning part down. And Bunny was still alive and healthy. All that would help when he was persuading a person to participate in a test. (To be a human guinea pig.) Hmmm. The thought of looking for someone named Bunny seemed weird, but it fit. He typed “Bunny” into the search box and hit enter. 71,700,000 results. Very helpful. Wait, the first one mentioned the Easter Bunny. There was an idea! There should be lots of those running around right now.
He looked up costumes in the yellow pages and found a store that rented costumes less than a mile away. He wrote down the number and called. It didn’t take long to find out they did have some Easter Bunny costumes, but they were all rented out. He hung up and dashed out to his car. Some things had to be done in person.
At the store, Jack was a master of persuasion and innocence. He explained that he was doing research for a class project in psychology. It was a study of what kinds of people rented costumes and required that he interview several. Since the clerk was young and female, he used all his charm and smiles, and she became very helpful. He ended up with the names of three people who had rented an Easter Bunny costume, two men and one woman. The three were college students with addresses near the campus. He immediately paid a visit to all three.
The two men were reserved and uncooperative. He suspected they didn’t believe his story. But the woman, a beautiful redhead named Sandy, was much more friendly. He was able to set up a time for the “interview” next week.
“I can’t do it this week, because I’m practicing for the Earth Day drama this weekend, and my parents are coming in town to attend the festivities with me,” Sandy explained. At Jack’s look of interest, she invited him to watch the drama, too.
“Thank you, I think I will. It will help my project a lot.” He smiled even more charmingly than before.
****************************************************************************
It was when Jack was on his way to the Earth Day events that the accident happened. He was walking up to the entrance of the park, when he heard screeching of tires and the crashing of large metal objects colliding. There were three cars involved. Apparently one had run a red light and crashed into two cars going through the intersection in opposite directions.
Jack and several other bystanders ran over to the mass of crumpled metal. He knew immediately it was Sandy. The Easter Bunny was slumped half way over the front seat, not moving. The ambulances and paramedics arrived quickly, and before he had even recovered from the shock, Sandy and her parents were on their way to the hospital, along with two other injured people from the other cars.
****************************************************************************
He went to visit Sandy at the hospital a few days later. She was recovering nicely from her injuries, which were mostly bruises and surgeries to remove her spleen and repair a few other internal things. However, her parents were both killed. He didn’t quite know how to talk to someone who had just lost her parents, but he figured she had to need some friendly faces right now, and he wanted to make sure she saw at least one.
He was the only visitor she had, so he kept coming back. Sometimes he found her in tears, and she burst forth with the sad details of her life. She had discovered her parents had not had insurance, and the emergency medical bills were eating up what savings they had. It was quickly becoming evident that she would not be able to continue school. The house was heavily mortgaged, and she would have to sell it to pay that debt.
“I don’t know how they could afford to give me any money for school,” Sandy sobbed one day. “And how could they not have insurance? I just don’t understand.”
Jack did his best to comfort her during his visits, and gradually she stopped sobbing and became silent and moody. That was why he was very surprised one day to find her yelling and shaking her fist at the TV in her hospital room.
“She is such an idiot!” Sandy was glaring at the TV. Seeing Jack’s surprise, she explained. “That crazy singer, that Lady … somebody, I can’t remember her name. She thinks she was born in the wrong era, and she wishes she could go back in time and seduce John Lennon and keep the Beatles together so they could have produced more songs and still be alive and singing.”
Jack just looked at her, at a loss to know what to say. “Why are you so upset?” he finally asked.
Sandy quieted down. “I think it would be wasted on her. She has everything she needs. She shouldn’t get to go back and try to change history.” She was silent for a moment, then a small smile peeked out on her face. “Listen to me! As if I could go back in time and change things. I’m sillier than she is.”
Jack couldn’t believe his ears. Was this going to fall into his lap, without all his planned manipulations and persuasions? “Well, maybe that’s not as impossible as you think.”
****************************************************************************
Two months later, Jack was preparing the time machine for its first big test: sending a human back in time. At last he would have the answer to the question of whether or not history could actually be changed with time travel. Well, he would have that answer some time today. The deal he had worked out with Sandy was that she would go back for a short test first, and if everything went okay with that one, then she would do a longer test and attempt to change history.
He was still mystified by her enthusiasm, or rather, her stubborn determination. The first test was for Sandy to go back to her parents’ house the day before she was born. He could understand how cool that would be, going to meet your parents when they wouldn’t recognize you, but he was afraid she had ulterior motives.
The doorbell rang, and Jack opened the door to find a very conservatively dressed Sandy. She was wearing a gray suit, had her hair pinned back, and carried a briefcase. “Who are you going to be?” he asked.
“An insurance sales person,” Sandy answered, pushing her way past him. “I need to convince them to buy insurance for their daughter in case something happens to them.”
Jack could see by the look on her face that no one was going to get in her way, and now he understood her purpose in wanting to help him test the time machine. He hadn’t wanted her to try to change history on this first test, but he shrugged. It was actually a good idea, just trying to change one specific thing.
“Okay, that’s good. I want you, no, I want both of us to write ourselves a note saying what you’re doing and what you’re going to attempt to change. I don’t know what will happen if you succeed. Will we remember the way it was before? The notes will show us what it was like before, in case we don’t remember.”
Sandy frowned slightly as she thought over what he had said. “But if we change history, won’t that mean the note will disappear?”
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.”
****************************************************************************
Sandy walked briskly up to the door of the house she had grown up in. It wasn’t a very big house, but she had many good memories of her life there. It looked very much the way she remembered it, but the tree in front was much smaller, and the door was a different color. She pressed the doorbell and waited.
The woman who opened the door was quite a bit younger than the way she was used to seeing her, but she knew her mother immediately. Sandy took a breath and prepared to launch into her sales pitch, but before she could even get the first word out, she stopped, paralyzed in shock. Her mother was not pregnant!
“Oh hello! I’m so glad you could make it after all. I’m Joan.” Sandy’s mother was holding out her hand. Sandy automatically took it, but her brain was lost in a whirl of questions. “Won’t you come in? Would you like some coffee?”
Sandy followed her mother in to the living room, running on auto-pilot, turning down the coffee, and sitting in the chair her mother pointed out, hardly listening to the torrent of words pouring from Joan. She’s more nervous than I am, she thought.
“I was hoping you could tell me some details, like will you call us when the baby is born? We want to know if everything is alright, and we want to know how much she weighed, and what time she was born, and what color her hair is, and all those things. I have a baby book here on the desk, and I’m going to fill in everything.” Joan jumped up and almost ran over to the desk to pick up the baby book.
“Oh yes, I’m sure you will be notified,” said Sandy, while she was frantically casting about for something to say that would fit in with this situation. She had to get around to the insurance. “Actually, I discovered there are a few things that haven’t been covered yet in your file, so I was hoping we could go over those.”
“Oh?” Joan looked surprised. “What things?”
“I don’t see any record of you and your husband having life insurance. You know, that’s very important to have, in case something happens.”
“Oh yes! We will definitely take care of that. You’re right, it’s important. I guess we just haven’t thought about it.”
“Will you promise me you will do that today?” Sandy persisted.
“I promise,” Joan said with a smile. “Anything else?”
“Well, there isn’t a very thorough note here about why you are doing this,” Sandy said impulsively. She very much wanted to know about her adoption, since her parents had never said a word about it to her.
Joan looked distressed. “Oh. Well, I can’t have children. I know I told the other case workers that. We have waited so long, hoping against hope that the doctors were wrong, but we can’t wait any longer. I’m almost 40 now. And Jim is 41.”
“Did you try fertility drugs or anything else like that?”
“No,” said Joan quietly. “We asked about it, but the doctors wouldn’t consider it, because of …. of what happened.”
“Because of what happened?” repeated Sandy.
Joan looked even more distressed. “I was gang raped when I was thirteen. They were very brutal. It took weeks to recover, and the doctors said I would never be able to have children.” She burst into tears.
Sandy moved quickly over to sit beside her mother on the couch, and she held her and rocked her for a long time, while Joan let her anguish spill out after all those years of keeping it bottled up. Sandy listened in horror to the tragic story.
Joan’s parents had taken her to England for vacation, along with several of her cousins. They were eager to experience the wild music of Liverpool, from which the Beatles were emerging. One late night, Joan had gotten separated from the others and pulled out into the alley by a group of teenage boys who were drunk and looking for excitement. After the police interrupted their assault on Joan, it came out that the boys had felt their girlfriends were paying too little attention to them and too much attention to the Beatles. They had decided to get their revenge on any girl who was in the Beatles’ audience.
****************************************************************************
Sandy popped back into Jack’s lab with fire in her eyes. He took a couple of steps back, not knowing what to expect.
“Yes, it worked,” Sandy said abruptly. “It didn’t hurt, and I remember what I wrote in the note. Where is it?”
Jack held it out, and Sandy snatched and read it. “I remember this. It says I was going back in time to find out why my parents adopted me, and why my mother killed herself when I was thirteen. I found out.”
Jack read his own note. It said the same thing. “So we know the time machine works, and it doesn’t do any damage, although we should get you checked out by a doctor before you travel again. We’ll do the next test as soon as we have the doctor’s okay. And this time you’ll try to change history. Do you know yet what you are going to change?”
“Yup. I’m going to kill the Beatles.”
Jack protested in surprise. “Wait a minute! You can’t do that! They’ll arrest you.”
“Okay, then I’ll just demolish their group. That should do it. I’ll do the opposite of what that Lady Gaga wants to do. I can seduce John Lennon just as good as she can, only I’ll just seduce him right away from the group, out into oblivion.”
****************************************************************************
Sandy was ready to time travel back to Liverpool. Jack made them write notes again, both of which said she was going back to prevent the Beatles from becoming a famous group by seducing John Lennon away from Liverpool and music. She had packed a wad of money in old bills from her insurance money. If nothing else, she would pay him to go away with her.
****************************************************************************
Sandy popped back into the lab with a lost look about her. She also looked older. She had been gone three months in the time she went to, although it was only three days in this time.
“You okay?” Jack asked. He was concerned that she looked so much older. “Were you gone three months, or was it longer?”
“Yeah, it was three months. I’m fine. It was hard this time, though. If I hadn’t known how important it was, I don’t think I could have gone through with it. He wasn’t the nicest man in the world to be with, but after three months with him, I was beginning to like him.”
“But you succeeded in protecting the president. That’s worth a lot more than any frustrated rock star wanna-be. They’ll be giving you medals for this one.”
“They can keep the medals. I just want the money. Gotta keep my Bunny in the tastiest cat food, ya know. You did remember to feed her while I was gone, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. I went over there every day. I even petted her. She’s a sweet kitty. Where did you get her?”
“I picked her up at the Humane Society the day I got out of the orphanage. They never let us have pets there, so that was the first thing I wanted to do when I left.”
“Well, we’re about done here, except for reading the notes. Does yours check out? Mine does. I remember writing this. You were going back in time to kill John Lennon to prevent him from coming over to the U.S. and shooting President Bush on the street.”
Jack looked up expectantly.
“Yes,” Sandy replied. “Mine says the same thing, and I remember writing it.”
****************************************************************************
The Yellow Time Machine
The time machine was ready, he knew it! Jack had held back his excitement dozens of times now and gone over all the calculations in his mind, looking for any flaw, even the tiniest one, but it had been many days since he had found and fixed the last error. It was perfect. Now all he needed to do was test it.
There was the guinea pig test. That worked exactly right on this end. The cute little brown and white guinea pig had popped back into existence at the very moment he had programmed the machine to send it back. Of course, there was no way to tell if Bunny (who would name a guinea pig “Bunny” anyway?) had gone to the place and time it was supposed to. Or how long it had stayed before automatically returning.
At least he had the returning part down. And Bunny was still alive and healthy. All that would help when he was persuading a person to participate in a test. (To be a human guinea pig.) Hmmm. The thought of looking for someone named Bunny seemed weird, but it fit. He typed “Bunny” into the search box and hit enter. 71,700,000 results. Very helpful. Wait, the first one mentioned the Easter Bunny. There was an idea! There should be lots of those running around right now.
He looked up costumes in the yellow pages and found a store that rented costumes less than a mile away. He wrote down the number and called. It didn’t take long to find out they did have some Easter Bunny costumes, but they were all rented out. He hung up and dashed out to his car. Some things had to be done in person.
At the store, Jack was a master of persuasion and innocence. He explained that he was doing research for a class project in psychology. It was a study of what kinds of people rented costumes and required that he interview several. Since the clerk was young and female, he used all his charm and smiles, and she became very helpful. He ended up with the names of three people who had rented an Easter Bunny costume, two men and one woman. The three were college students with addresses near the campus. He immediately paid a visit to all three.
The two men were reserved and uncooperative. He suspected they didn’t believe his story. But the woman, a beautiful redhead named Sandy, was much more friendly. He was able to set up a time for the “interview” next week.
“I can’t do it this week, because I’m practicing for the Earth Day drama this weekend, and my parents are coming in town to attend the festivities with me,” Sandy explained. At Jack’s look of interest, she invited him to watch the drama, too.
“Thank you, I think I will. It will help my project a lot.” He smiled even more charmingly than before.
****************************************************************************
It was when Jack was on his way to the Earth Day events that the accident happened. He was walking up to the entrance of the park, when he heard screeching of tires and the crashing of large metal objects colliding. There were three cars involved. Apparently one had run a red light and crashed into two cars going through the intersection in opposite directions.
Jack and several other bystanders ran over to the mass of crumpled metal. He knew immediately it was Sandy. The Easter Bunny was slumped half way over the front seat, not moving. The ambulances and paramedics arrived quickly, and before he had even recovered from the shock, Sandy and her parents were on their way to the hospital, along with two other injured people from the other cars.
****************************************************************************
He went to visit Sandy at the hospital a few days later. She was recovering nicely from her injuries, which were mostly bruises and surgeries to remove her spleen and repair a few other internal things. However, her parents were both killed. He didn’t quite know how to talk to someone who had just lost her parents, but he figured she had to need some friendly faces right now, and he wanted to make sure she saw at least one.
He was the only visitor she had, so he kept coming back. Sometimes he found her in tears, and she burst forth with the sad details of her life. She had discovered her parents had not had insurance, and the emergency medical bills were eating up what savings they had. It was quickly becoming evident that she would not be able to continue school. The house was heavily mortgaged, and she would have to sell it to pay that debt.
“I don’t know how they could afford to give me any money for school,” Sandy sobbed one day. “And how could they not have insurance? I just don’t understand.”
Jack did his best to comfort her during his visits, and gradually she stopped sobbing and became silent and moody. That was why he was very surprised one day to find her yelling and shaking her fist at the TV in her hospital room.
“She is such an idiot!” Sandy was glaring at the TV. Seeing Jack’s surprise, she explained. “That crazy singer, that Lady … somebody, I can’t remember her name. She thinks she was born in the wrong era, and she wishes she could go back in time and seduce John Lennon and keep the Beatles together so they could have produced more songs and still be alive and singing.”
Jack just looked at her, at a loss to know what to say. “Why are you so upset?” he finally asked.
Sandy quieted down. “I think it would be wasted on her. She has everything she needs. She shouldn’t get to go back and try to change history.” She was silent for a moment, then a small smile peeked out on her face. “Listen to me! As if I could go back in time and change things. I’m sillier than she is.”
Jack couldn’t believe his ears. Was this going to fall into his lap, without all his planned manipulations and persuasions? “Well, maybe that’s not as impossible as you think.”
****************************************************************************
Two months later, Jack was preparing the time machine for its first big test: sending a human back in time. At last he would have the answer to the question of whether or not history could actually be changed with time travel. Well, he would have that answer some time today. The deal he had worked out with Sandy was that she would go back for a short test first, and if everything went okay with that one, then she would do a longer test and attempt to change history.
He was still mystified by her enthusiasm, or rather, her stubborn determination. The first test was for Sandy to go back to her parents’ house the day before she was born. He could understand how cool that would be, going to meet your parents when they wouldn’t recognize you, but he was afraid she had ulterior motives.
The doorbell rang, and Jack opened the door to find a very conservatively dressed Sandy. She was wearing a gray suit, had her hair pinned back, and carried a briefcase. “Who are you going to be?” he asked.
“An insurance sales person,” Sandy answered, pushing her way past him. “I need to convince them to buy insurance for their daughter in case something happens to them.”
Jack could see by the look on her face that no one was going to get in her way, and now he understood her purpose in wanting to help him test the time machine. He hadn’t wanted her to try to change history on this first test, but he shrugged. It was actually a good idea, just trying to change one specific thing.
“Okay, that’s good. I want you, no, I want both of us to write ourselves a note saying what you’re doing and what you’re going to attempt to change. I don’t know what will happen if you succeed. Will we remember the way it was before? The notes will show us what it was like before, in case we don’t remember.”
Sandy frowned slightly as she thought over what he had said. “But if we change history, won’t that mean the note will disappear?”
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.”
****************************************************************************
Sandy walked briskly up to the door of the house she had grown up in. It wasn’t a very big house, but she had many good memories of her life there. It looked very much the way she remembered it, but the tree in front was much smaller, and the door was a different color. She pressed the doorbell and waited.
The woman who opened the door was quite a bit younger than the way she was used to seeing her, but she knew her mother immediately. Sandy took a breath and prepared to launch into her sales pitch, but before she could even get the first word out, she stopped, paralyzed in shock. Her mother was not pregnant!
“Oh hello! I’m so glad you could make it after all. I’m Joan.” Sandy’s mother was holding out her hand. Sandy automatically took it, but her brain was lost in a whirl of questions. “Won’t you come in? Would you like some coffee?”
Sandy followed her mother in to the living room, running on auto-pilot, turning down the coffee, and sitting in the chair her mother pointed out, hardly listening to the torrent of words pouring from Joan. She’s more nervous than I am, she thought.
“I was hoping you could tell me some details, like will you call us when the baby is born? We want to know if everything is alright, and we want to know how much she weighed, and what time she was born, and what color her hair is, and all those things. I have a baby book here on the desk, and I’m going to fill in everything.” Joan jumped up and almost ran over to the desk to pick up the baby book.
“Oh yes, I’m sure you will be notified,” said Sandy, while she was frantically casting about for something to say that would fit in with this situation. She had to get around to the insurance. “Actually, I discovered there are a few things that haven’t been covered yet in your file, so I was hoping we could go over those.”
“Oh?” Joan looked surprised. “What things?”
“I don’t see any record of you and your husband having life insurance. You know, that’s very important to have, in case something happens.”
“Oh yes! We will definitely take care of that. You’re right, it’s important. I guess we just haven’t thought about it.”
“Will you promise me you will do that today?” Sandy persisted.
“I promise,” Joan said with a smile. “Anything else?”
“Well, there isn’t a very thorough note here about why you are doing this,” Sandy said impulsively. She very much wanted to know about her adoption, since her parents had never said a word about it to her.
Joan looked distressed. “Oh. Well, I can’t have children. I know I told the other case workers that. We have waited so long, hoping against hope that the doctors were wrong, but we can’t wait any longer. I’m almost 40 now. And Jim is 41.”
“Did you try fertility drugs or anything else like that?”
“No,” said Joan quietly. “We asked about it, but the doctors wouldn’t consider it, because of …. of what happened.”
“Because of what happened?” repeated Sandy.
Joan looked even more distressed. “I was gang raped when I was thirteen. They were very brutal. It took weeks to recover, and the doctors said I would never be able to have children.” She burst into tears.
Sandy moved quickly over to sit beside her mother on the couch, and she held her and rocked her for a long time, while Joan let her anguish spill out after all those years of keeping it bottled up. Sandy listened in horror to the tragic story.
Joan’s parents had taken her to England for vacation, along with several of her cousins. They were eager to experience the wild music of Liverpool, from which the Beatles were emerging. One late night, Joan had gotten separated from the others and pulled out into the alley by a group of teenage boys who were drunk and looking for excitement. After the police interrupted their assault on Joan, it came out that the boys had felt their girlfriends were paying too little attention to them and too much attention to the Beatles. They had decided to get their revenge on any girl who was in the Beatles’ audience.
****************************************************************************
Sandy popped back into Jack’s lab with fire in her eyes. He took a couple of steps back, not knowing what to expect.
“Yes, it worked,” Sandy said abruptly. “It didn’t hurt, and I remember what I wrote in the note. Where is it?”
Jack held it out, and Sandy snatched and read it. “I remember this. It says I was going back in time to find out why my parents adopted me, and why my mother killed herself when I was thirteen. I found out.”
Jack read his own note. It said the same thing. “So we know the time machine works, and it doesn’t do any damage, although we should get you checked out by a doctor before you travel again. We’ll do the next test as soon as we have the doctor’s okay. And this time you’ll try to change history. Do you know yet what you are going to change?”
“Yup. I’m going to kill the Beatles.”
Jack protested in surprise. “Wait a minute! You can’t do that! They’ll arrest you.”
“Okay, then I’ll just demolish their group. That should do it. I’ll do the opposite of what that Lady Gaga wants to do. I can seduce John Lennon just as good as she can, only I’ll just seduce him right away from the group, out into oblivion.”
****************************************************************************
Sandy was ready to time travel back to Liverpool. Jack made them write notes again, both of which said she was going back to prevent the Beatles from becoming a famous group by seducing John Lennon away from Liverpool and music. She had packed a wad of money in old bills from her insurance money. If nothing else, she would pay him to go away with her.
****************************************************************************
Sandy popped back into the lab with a lost look about her. She also looked older. She had been gone three months in the time she went to, although it was only three days in this time.
“You okay?” Jack asked. He was concerned that she looked so much older. “Were you gone three months, or was it longer?”
“Yeah, it was three months. I’m fine. It was hard this time, though. If I hadn’t known how important it was, I don’t think I could have gone through with it. He wasn’t the nicest man in the world to be with, but after three months with him, I was beginning to like him.”
“But you succeeded in protecting the president. That’s worth a lot more than any frustrated rock star wanna-be. They’ll be giving you medals for this one.”
“They can keep the medals. I just want the money. Gotta keep my Bunny in the tastiest cat food, ya know. You did remember to feed her while I was gone, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. I went over there every day. I even petted her. She’s a sweet kitty. Where did you get her?”
“I picked her up at the Humane Society the day I got out of the orphanage. They never let us have pets there, so that was the first thing I wanted to do when I left.”
“Well, we’re about done here, except for reading the notes. Does yours check out? Mine does. I remember writing this. You were going back in time to kill John Lennon to prevent him from coming over to the U.S. and shooting President Bush on the street.”
Jack looked up expectantly.
“Yes,” Sandy replied. “Mine says the same thing, and I remember writing it.”
****************************************************************************
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The Heart of Happiness
This week's Friday Challenge is here. It was supposed to be
"Hence this week's assignment. I want you to think about, plot out, and make at least a promising start towards writing a modern, updated, 21st century (or later) good clanking hard sci-fi remake of Heart of Darkness."
I'm not sure I do "good clanking hard sci-fi," but this is my story --
The Heart of Happiness
The world has been changed, no doubt about that. The doctor appeared out of nowhere, set up shop, and proceeded to create a thriving business. By the time the media started checking out his background, there were actually lines of people waiting to get in to his clinic. When they could find no record of any medical school or license to practice, nobody cared. He was working miracles.
I was his first patient. Really! I’m not making it up. He was fastening his name plate next to the door of the clinic when I collapsed on the steps. I was exhausted and just needed to rest. When you weigh 355 pounds, walking takes a lot out of you. And if you’re carrying a bag of groceries, it totally wipes you out, especially if the bag is full of foods that are good for you. Apples and grapefruit are a lot heavier than marshmallow bread and bags of chips. And cantaloupe! That’s really good for you, but impossible to carry two and a half blocks.
“Are you alright, ma’am?” He was a tall, fit man with warm brown eyes and blonde hair. He was quite handsome, almost as though he was an actor playing the part of a doctor, not actually the doctor himself. He looked at me with concern, and then he came down the steps and put his hand on my shoulder. "Please come in and let me see if I can help you feel better."
He helped me up, then took my bag of groceries and carried them through the door. I felt I had no choice but to follow my groceries, but if I had it to do over, I don't know if I could have entered that clinic.
The inside was very spacious, with a large waiting room full of empty chairs, and a long desk-counter-top with computers and phones for eight assistants to make appointments and process payments. It looked huge for a new clinic. I thought the doctor must have a large following from his previous location.
“We don’t open until tomorrow, so let’s consider this an introductory session for a neighbor, free of charge.” He smiled. “I am Doctor Conrad, and I’m pleased to meet you. Do you live very close?”
“Yes, just around the corner. I’m Maryann Blaise. It will be nice to have a clinic in this neighborhood. Is it a general clinic, or do you have a specialty?” I asked.
“We do have a specialty, Maryann, but it encompasses so many areas that there are very few things we don’t treat,” replied the doctor. “We strive to enable our patients to enjoy perfect health and happiness.”
He was interrupted when a beautiful young woman in jeans walked in to the waiting room, holding an armful of disposable gowns.
“Ah, there you are, Jean. We have our first patient, Maryann, a neighbor from around the corner. Would you please take her into one of the examining rooms while I wash my hands? I will be in shortly.”
Jean dumped the gowns onto the desk and turned her attention to me. She was very friendly, and soon had me sitting in a nearby room, where she took my blood pressure and temperature and all those basic measurements of health. She started a patient record for me and was just finished writing down the last thing when Dr. Conrad walked in, this time wearing a white coat. He read what she had written, and then asked me a million more questions. It ended up with him telling me my worst problem was my weight (as if I didn’t know!) and that would be what he would treat first. I tried to tell him about all the other doctors and how their treatments hadn’t worked, and the multitude of diets and self-help groups and books I had tried, all to no avail, but he assured me he would not fail to help me.
Then he launched into an explanation of the treatment and how it worked. I don’t think I understood very much. What he described seemed like x-rays or some kind of magnetic waves, but different. He promised me it wouldn’t be painful or harmful in any way, and that it would gradually make me more healthy, week after week, until I would reach a normal weight. And the first treatment was free, if I would do it today. He had a lot more to say, but it was even harder for me to understand, because it seemed so magical. He could make me happy and beautiful and young. It sounded so too-good-to-be-true that I almost turned down his free first treatment. But it was free. I couldn’t pass it up.
He took me into a treatment room, where I sat in a lounge-chair thing. He pushed a button, and the chair stretched out and became a soft table. Then he pushed another button, and the big machine next to the chair hummed for a few minutes until he turned it off. He made the table fold up into a chair again, and then we went back to the examining room where I stepped on the scale again. I had lost ten pounds!
It was hard for me to concentrate on his summary of what the machine had done, because I was arguing with myself over the ten pounds. I couldn’t help but feel it was fake, that Jean had recalibrated the scale while I was in the treatment room. After all, I didn’t feel any different. But I forced myself to listen to him. He said the machine had agreed with his diagnosis that I needed to weigh less (duh!), and it had found several of my organs were not working as well as they should, so it had taken away ten pounds and boosted my thyroid production and refreshed my adrenals and removed scar tissue from my liver, all with the idea that it was improving my metabolism. Those were the things I recognized. I’m not exactly a medical professional or anything, so I didn’t know what the rest of it meant--stuff about the chemical balance in my brain.
He ended by saying I should give it a week and see how I was feeling. If I wanted to continue the treatments, I could come back in and schedule appointments and arrange a payment plan. I asked him how much it cost, and he was a little vague, but he did say that the cost of a single treatment was $200, and that the cost per treatment went down the more treatments were needed, down to only $50 each or less, depending.
So, I went home with my groceries. The first thing I did, of course, was weigh myself, and yes, I had really lost 10 pounds. At the end of that week, I had lost another pound. That was the first time in many years I had actually lost weight just from dieting. It sure looked like Dr. Conrad’s machine had gotten my metabolism going better.
It wasn't until a few days later that I noticed the tiny mole on the side of my nose was gone. I don't know a whole lot about moles, so I concluded it had disappeared the same way it had suddenly appeared several months ago.
So here I was at the end of the week, arguing with myself constantly about whether or not I wanted to go back. In the end, I won the argument, and I went back to the clinic. I knew it was my only hope for losing weight. However, this time there were eight assistants sitting at their computers and maybe ten patients sitting in the waiting room. I went right up to the desk and started asking questions about the cost. I found out that every time I told someone about Dr. Conrad, and that person came and got an introductory free treatment, then I would get a free treatment, too. That sounded terrific to me. I signed up for a year of weekly treatments, which reduced my cost to $40 per week.
The weeks went by very quickly, and I lost ten pounds every week until I was actually at a normal weight. It was a miracle! I also got 38 people to try the introductory treatment, so I ended up not paying for very many weeks. But that wasn't the only thing that was happening. My gray hair disappeared, and one time Dr. Conrad asked me if I would like to change my hair color, so I did. I chose auburn. It was permanently changed. No roots to touch up.
There were so many things that changed. My body became very healthy and fit, and my face gradually became beautiful. I almost didn't recognise myself when I looked in the mirror. I felt confident, I had new skills, I could speak four other languages, I could play the piano beautifully, and most of all, I was happy. Ecstatically happy!
Meanwhile, Dr. Conrad opened up more clinics all over the world. I don't know how he found so many people to run them or how he made so many of those machines, but he didn't seem to have any trouble with that. He was curing incureable diseases and handicaps of all kinds. He actually made starving people gain weight! Half the world had been in his clinics, and he was given awards and so much news coverage that it was hard to find any other topic on TV. The world began to treat him as if he was a god or something. He could do no wrong.
When the spaceship appeared, nobody was worried. They were too happy to worry. But when the occupants of the spaceship took over all of the media we no longer talked incessantly about Dr. Conrad. Instead, they told us who he was and what he had really been doing. I had a hard time listening to it, because I just didn't believe it.
Turns out the machines were swapping and transforming things. They pulled out things from people that had too much and put it in people that didn't have enough. There were a lot of fat people in the world, and the machines were turning the excess fat into other things -- more machines, more staff, supplies, and buildings for the new clinics that were springing up everywhere. They took tumors and scar tissue out and put in feelings of happiness and self-esteem.
Then we learned what the media hadn't told us. People not only didn't worry any more, they didn't care any more, either. Nobody helped any one else. They were too busy being healthy, beautiful, and happy. Hospitals closed, leaving no emergency care for injuries. Staff in old folks' homes walked out and went to the beach, leaving helpless patients to die. Churches were deserted. Priests and nuns took off their robes and went on vacation.
CEO's retired and walked out on their jobs. People didn't need to work any more. They could get whatever they needed from Dr. Conrad's machines.
At the end of the alien's speech on TV, he told us Dr. Conrad was "The Evil One" who had come to steal our souls. His goal was to get us to go to him instead of God for everything we wanted or needed. He had done this to other planets, and these aliens were following him to fix the damage he had done, because he had stolen their technology to do it.
I'll never forget his final words. "We will use our science to repair your planet. You will go to sleep, and when you wake up, everything will be the way it was before Dr. Conrad came here." And I'll never forget what I felt when I heard that. I knew I would no longer be thin, beautiful, healthy, and happy, but I wasn't worried or afraid. I was ecstatically happy.
The earth slept. And woke.
"Oh, God..."
"Hence this week's assignment. I want you to think about, plot out, and make at least a promising start towards writing a modern, updated, 21st century (or later) good clanking hard sci-fi remake of Heart of Darkness."
I'm not sure I do "good clanking hard sci-fi," but this is my story --
The Heart of Happiness
The world has been changed, no doubt about that. The doctor appeared out of nowhere, set up shop, and proceeded to create a thriving business. By the time the media started checking out his background, there were actually lines of people waiting to get in to his clinic. When they could find no record of any medical school or license to practice, nobody cared. He was working miracles.
I was his first patient. Really! I’m not making it up. He was fastening his name plate next to the door of the clinic when I collapsed on the steps. I was exhausted and just needed to rest. When you weigh 355 pounds, walking takes a lot out of you. And if you’re carrying a bag of groceries, it totally wipes you out, especially if the bag is full of foods that are good for you. Apples and grapefruit are a lot heavier than marshmallow bread and bags of chips. And cantaloupe! That’s really good for you, but impossible to carry two and a half blocks.
“Are you alright, ma’am?” He was a tall, fit man with warm brown eyes and blonde hair. He was quite handsome, almost as though he was an actor playing the part of a doctor, not actually the doctor himself. He looked at me with concern, and then he came down the steps and put his hand on my shoulder. "Please come in and let me see if I can help you feel better."
He helped me up, then took my bag of groceries and carried them through the door. I felt I had no choice but to follow my groceries, but if I had it to do over, I don't know if I could have entered that clinic.
The inside was very spacious, with a large waiting room full of empty chairs, and a long desk-counter-top with computers and phones for eight assistants to make appointments and process payments. It looked huge for a new clinic. I thought the doctor must have a large following from his previous location.
“We don’t open until tomorrow, so let’s consider this an introductory session for a neighbor, free of charge.” He smiled. “I am Doctor Conrad, and I’m pleased to meet you. Do you live very close?”
“Yes, just around the corner. I’m Maryann Blaise. It will be nice to have a clinic in this neighborhood. Is it a general clinic, or do you have a specialty?” I asked.
“We do have a specialty, Maryann, but it encompasses so many areas that there are very few things we don’t treat,” replied the doctor. “We strive to enable our patients to enjoy perfect health and happiness.”
He was interrupted when a beautiful young woman in jeans walked in to the waiting room, holding an armful of disposable gowns.
“Ah, there you are, Jean. We have our first patient, Maryann, a neighbor from around the corner. Would you please take her into one of the examining rooms while I wash my hands? I will be in shortly.”
Jean dumped the gowns onto the desk and turned her attention to me. She was very friendly, and soon had me sitting in a nearby room, where she took my blood pressure and temperature and all those basic measurements of health. She started a patient record for me and was just finished writing down the last thing when Dr. Conrad walked in, this time wearing a white coat. He read what she had written, and then asked me a million more questions. It ended up with him telling me my worst problem was my weight (as if I didn’t know!) and that would be what he would treat first. I tried to tell him about all the other doctors and how their treatments hadn’t worked, and the multitude of diets and self-help groups and books I had tried, all to no avail, but he assured me he would not fail to help me.
Then he launched into an explanation of the treatment and how it worked. I don’t think I understood very much. What he described seemed like x-rays or some kind of magnetic waves, but different. He promised me it wouldn’t be painful or harmful in any way, and that it would gradually make me more healthy, week after week, until I would reach a normal weight. And the first treatment was free, if I would do it today. He had a lot more to say, but it was even harder for me to understand, because it seemed so magical. He could make me happy and beautiful and young. It sounded so too-good-to-be-true that I almost turned down his free first treatment. But it was free. I couldn’t pass it up.
He took me into a treatment room, where I sat in a lounge-chair thing. He pushed a button, and the chair stretched out and became a soft table. Then he pushed another button, and the big machine next to the chair hummed for a few minutes until he turned it off. He made the table fold up into a chair again, and then we went back to the examining room where I stepped on the scale again. I had lost ten pounds!
It was hard for me to concentrate on his summary of what the machine had done, because I was arguing with myself over the ten pounds. I couldn’t help but feel it was fake, that Jean had recalibrated the scale while I was in the treatment room. After all, I didn’t feel any different. But I forced myself to listen to him. He said the machine had agreed with his diagnosis that I needed to weigh less (duh!), and it had found several of my organs were not working as well as they should, so it had taken away ten pounds and boosted my thyroid production and refreshed my adrenals and removed scar tissue from my liver, all with the idea that it was improving my metabolism. Those were the things I recognized. I’m not exactly a medical professional or anything, so I didn’t know what the rest of it meant--stuff about the chemical balance in my brain.
He ended by saying I should give it a week and see how I was feeling. If I wanted to continue the treatments, I could come back in and schedule appointments and arrange a payment plan. I asked him how much it cost, and he was a little vague, but he did say that the cost of a single treatment was $200, and that the cost per treatment went down the more treatments were needed, down to only $50 each or less, depending.
So, I went home with my groceries. The first thing I did, of course, was weigh myself, and yes, I had really lost 10 pounds. At the end of that week, I had lost another pound. That was the first time in many years I had actually lost weight just from dieting. It sure looked like Dr. Conrad’s machine had gotten my metabolism going better.
It wasn't until a few days later that I noticed the tiny mole on the side of my nose was gone. I don't know a whole lot about moles, so I concluded it had disappeared the same way it had suddenly appeared several months ago.
So here I was at the end of the week, arguing with myself constantly about whether or not I wanted to go back. In the end, I won the argument, and I went back to the clinic. I knew it was my only hope for losing weight. However, this time there were eight assistants sitting at their computers and maybe ten patients sitting in the waiting room. I went right up to the desk and started asking questions about the cost. I found out that every time I told someone about Dr. Conrad, and that person came and got an introductory free treatment, then I would get a free treatment, too. That sounded terrific to me. I signed up for a year of weekly treatments, which reduced my cost to $40 per week.
The weeks went by very quickly, and I lost ten pounds every week until I was actually at a normal weight. It was a miracle! I also got 38 people to try the introductory treatment, so I ended up not paying for very many weeks. But that wasn't the only thing that was happening. My gray hair disappeared, and one time Dr. Conrad asked me if I would like to change my hair color, so I did. I chose auburn. It was permanently changed. No roots to touch up.
There were so many things that changed. My body became very healthy and fit, and my face gradually became beautiful. I almost didn't recognise myself when I looked in the mirror. I felt confident, I had new skills, I could speak four other languages, I could play the piano beautifully, and most of all, I was happy. Ecstatically happy!
Meanwhile, Dr. Conrad opened up more clinics all over the world. I don't know how he found so many people to run them or how he made so many of those machines, but he didn't seem to have any trouble with that. He was curing incureable diseases and handicaps of all kinds. He actually made starving people gain weight! Half the world had been in his clinics, and he was given awards and so much news coverage that it was hard to find any other topic on TV. The world began to treat him as if he was a god or something. He could do no wrong.
When the spaceship appeared, nobody was worried. They were too happy to worry. But when the occupants of the spaceship took over all of the media we no longer talked incessantly about Dr. Conrad. Instead, they told us who he was and what he had really been doing. I had a hard time listening to it, because I just didn't believe it.
Turns out the machines were swapping and transforming things. They pulled out things from people that had too much and put it in people that didn't have enough. There were a lot of fat people in the world, and the machines were turning the excess fat into other things -- more machines, more staff, supplies, and buildings for the new clinics that were springing up everywhere. They took tumors and scar tissue out and put in feelings of happiness and self-esteem.
Then we learned what the media hadn't told us. People not only didn't worry any more, they didn't care any more, either. Nobody helped any one else. They were too busy being healthy, beautiful, and happy. Hospitals closed, leaving no emergency care for injuries. Staff in old folks' homes walked out and went to the beach, leaving helpless patients to die. Churches were deserted. Priests and nuns took off their robes and went on vacation.
CEO's retired and walked out on their jobs. People didn't need to work any more. They could get whatever they needed from Dr. Conrad's machines.
At the end of the alien's speech on TV, he told us Dr. Conrad was "The Evil One" who had come to steal our souls. His goal was to get us to go to him instead of God for everything we wanted or needed. He had done this to other planets, and these aliens were following him to fix the damage he had done, because he had stolen their technology to do it.
I'll never forget his final words. "We will use our science to repair your planet. You will go to sleep, and when you wake up, everything will be the way it was before Dr. Conrad came here." And I'll never forget what I felt when I heard that. I knew I would no longer be thin, beautiful, healthy, and happy, but I wasn't worried or afraid. I was ecstatically happy.
The earth slept. And woke.
"Oh, God..."
Thursday, March 5, 2009
The Nihilist Ranger
The Friday Challenge for 2/27/09 was Nihilists in Space.
Jack486 emerged abruptly from his dream and rolled out of his sleeping net. The ship’s alarm was screeching stridently and unceasingly. He strode forcefully into the control center and looked for indicators to tell him what the problem was this time. It wasn’t going to take too many more of these early morning episodes for him to get to the point of dismantling the alarm, no matter what headquarters said.
There it was on the proximity warning screen. A system with planets was about two days away. He punched the buttons that told the alarm he had seen the warning and was complying with the directive. It shut off immediately. He rubbed his eyes and waited for the com unit to connect.
A scene from his interrupted dream floated into his thoughts. What was that thing, anyway? It was a vine with thorns, and it had a very thick, strong stalk. He always dreamed about plants, either plants fighting each other, or else himself fighting off a gang of plants. And always the dream ended with the Cleaner destroying all the other plants.
The Cleaner was the ultimate weapon that he carried from planet to planet. It was a superplant, stronger and more virulent than any other plant that had ever existed. Its job was to clean up planets whose sentient inhabitants had socially imploded. He would seed it over the planet, and in a few days, it would cover the surface. After a decade or so, there would be no sign of civilization, no evidence that any other entities had ever been there, whether animal or vegetable.
But the best thing about the Cleaner was that after about a hundred years of being the only thing alive on the planet, it would get sick of itself and mutate. No one could predict what creatures would spring up on any planet. It was different every time. There would be a wide variety of plants and animals and eventually, sentient beings. And then the process would start all over again. Each new planet would begin with eager virility, but after thousands of years they all ended the same way. They would give up on their goals and dreams and turn on each other, becoming more and more self-destructive until they finally reached the implosion point, and society died.
“Jack?” The com unit had connected with headquarters.
“Yes, I’m here. I’ve received a proximity warning of a system with planets.”
“Have you attached your monitoring device, yet?” The voice was female, and he could swear he caught some motherly overtones. That was probably on purpose, to get him to obey orders. A slight smirk touched his lips. She hadn’t read his file yet, if she thought he would respond favorably to a reminder of his mother.
“No, I haven’t done anything but wait for your voice, HQ.”
“That’s good, Jack. You may get out the device and attach it now. Let me know when you are ready to test it.”
He pushed another button, this time on the door of the monitor dispenser. The door opened, and one monitor popped out. He scooped it up and pulled the strap over his head, positioning the little gadget so a sensor plate was over his temple, and a tiny tube was next to his ear. He didn’t really want to know how it worked, but he knew it measured him in hundreds of ways, from temperature and heart rate to what he was thinking and feeling.
“Ready for testing,” he said.
“Beginning calibration,” the HQ voice replied. There was a short pause. “Your temperature is a bit low, your pulse rate is a little high, your bladder is full, and you are feeling irritated. Did the alarm wake you?”
“Yup. Again,” he said emphatically.
“Is there anything unusual? Are you feeling well?”
“Nothing unusual, and I’m feeling fine.”
“What are you thinking about the planets up ahead?”
“I wasn’t thinking about them. I was thinking I want some coffee.”
“Your attitude is not very cooperative this morning. You know this is to help you as much as it will help us. We are trying to find out why planet checkers are disappearing.”
“Yes, ma’am, sorry.” He tried to say it as cooperatively as possible. No use getting HQ on his case.
“So, what are you thinking about the planets up ahead?”
“Nothing unusual. I feel ready to check them and carry out all functions necessary to the situation I find. I’m not having any strong emotions about them, and I hope I don’t have any. I’d really rather this was another routine case where nothing goes wrong.”
There was a slight pause, then HQ asked, “Are you feeling any fear or reluctance to approach the planets? This is the first time you have expressed a preference not to experience whatever may be happening to others in your group.”
Jack thought about it for a few seconds. “It’s possible that the lack of any concrete information about these disappearances over such a long period of time is making me a bit apprehensive. We’ve been monitoring for almost two years now, haven’t we? And there are no answers yet.”
“That’s true, but we do have a great deal of data, and statistical analysis of that data is beginning to provide some common threads. I have no doubt we will eventually find answers.”
“Okay, well, I just hope I won’t be one of the contributors of that data. I want things to go on the same as always.”
“Test complete,” was HQ’s response. “Your monitor is calibrated and recording. I have turned on your ship’s hourly reminders. You are ready. Any questions or comments before I go?”
“No, ma’am. I’m good.” Really ready for coffee, too, he thought to himself.
“Then good luck, and enjoy your coffee.” The com unit clicked off.
Guess the mind reading part is working, thought Jack.
An hour later, when the first reminder started, he was on his third cup and reading the report he had retrieved about the nearby planets. So far he had discovered only one of the planets had any life on it, and that planet had been Cleaned about two hundred years ago. He would get to see the beginnings of a new world. Or rather, a renewed world.
“This is your hourly reminder.” The ship’s voice was smooth, calm, and confident. And male. Nothing disturbing. “Have you noticed anything unusual? Are you feeling different in any way? Please report to the monitor.”
Jack automatically spoke aloud to give the monitor something to record. “I feel normal. I have not noticed anything unusual,” then returned to his reading. The monitor perched above his ear buzzed for a second, then the com unit clicked on and off again. Report sent.
A few minutes later, the com unit clicked on. “Jack486?” This voice was male, but not smooth, calm, or confident. It was more interested, maybe a trifle irritated.
Jack was startled. Now this was something unusual. “Yes? Who is this?”
“This is HQ. I was reviewing your report, and I see you were noticing something unusual, but you didn’t report it, something about two hundred years and a new world. Please explain.”
Getting over his momentary surprise, Jack explained that he had been reading information about the planetary system he was approaching. He read that part of the report to HQ. “Is that unusual? I know I’ve never been near a planet that soon after Cleaning, but I assumed other people had.”
“You are right, other people have observed planets after Cleaning, but what is unusual is that your ship has plotted a course to this system much earlier than necessary. It takes at least a couple thousand years to get to the implosion point.”
“Oh, oh yeah.” Jack was thoroughly embarrassed. “Sorry, that didn’t even occur to me.”
HQ didn’t seem to notice his discomfort. “I want you to run a diagnostic on the ship’s directional program. In fact, run diagnostics on all programs. When you get the results, send them through.”
“Sure, right away.”
The com unit clicked off.
“Hey, wait! I noticed something unusual. HQ called me. That’s unusual. And I felt embarrassed. That’s very unusual.”
HQ was already gone, but his monitor buzzed for several seconds, and the com unit clicked on and off. Report sent.
He stood there nonplussed for a moment, and then he grinned from ear to ear. “I noticed something unusual. And that is that I noticed something unusual. And the monitor reported it.” The monitor buzzed and the com unit clicked on and off. Satisfied, Jack486 prepared to run diagnostics.
* * * * * * * *
Two days later, Jack stared at the screen showing the planet’s surface as the ship passed over it. This was supposed to be the planet that had been Cleaned two hundred years ago, but it was not what he had expected to see. It was uniformly covered with the Cleaner, but instead of strong, healthy plants, they were wilted and had brown tips. Here and there, he saw open patches, where nothing grew.
“Uh … I am seeing something un…,” he began. Just then the hourly reminder broke in, asking for the umpteenth time if he had noticed or felt anything unusual. “Yeah, yeah, yeah…..give me a chance, will ya?”
Then he gasped. A crashed ship had flashed by on the screen, in the middle of one of the bare patches. It was a ship just like his, manned by a planet checker. He rapidly pushed buttons and started programs to look for life forms and remnants of civilization. He didn’t have any programs specifically designed to look for crashed ships, but they would be included in remnants of civilization.
The readout streamed data so fast he could barely keep up with it. It reported ship after ship, all crashed in the bare patches. The Cleaner plants were reported as life forms, but that was it. Nothing else was alive on the planet. He kept looking until the report started repeating. Hundreds of ships had crashed here, but not a single planet checker had survived.
He knew it was a lost cause, but he turned on the com unit anyway, to listen for SOS signals. His jaw dropped in amazement. There were hundreds of SOS recordings, so many that he couldn’t make out the individual messages.
“Ship, separate out one signal,” he demanded.
“Which signal?” asked the ship. “The signal from the life forms, or the signal from the remnants of civilization?”
“Wha…? The signal from the life forms.” It was wishful thinking. There were no living inhabitants of those ships.
Nevertheless, the ship was broadcasting the signal. “There is nothing. All life ends in nothing.” The message repeated over and over, while Jack sat horrified, eyes on the screen showing the planet’s surface. The plants streamed by, endlessly wilting, lamenting the death of all life, refusing to begin again one more time.
The ship shuddered. Jack looked around wildly. There were red lights flashing and alarms buzzing all around the control center. It was about to crash!
His last thought was that the monitor was overdue to report to HQ. It had failed to report that he had noticed and felt unusual things. It had reported nothing.
The ship crashed into a thick bunch of the Cleaner plants. There was a small flurry of activity, which soon subsided. By the time the next planet checker came along, Jack’s ship was in a bare patch, and it was broadcasting an SOS message. “Task finished, Jack486 logging out. There is nothing to be done here. There is nothing here. There is nothing.”
Jack486 emerged abruptly from his dream and rolled out of his sleeping net. The ship’s alarm was screeching stridently and unceasingly. He strode forcefully into the control center and looked for indicators to tell him what the problem was this time. It wasn’t going to take too many more of these early morning episodes for him to get to the point of dismantling the alarm, no matter what headquarters said.
There it was on the proximity warning screen. A system with planets was about two days away. He punched the buttons that told the alarm he had seen the warning and was complying with the directive. It shut off immediately. He rubbed his eyes and waited for the com unit to connect.
A scene from his interrupted dream floated into his thoughts. What was that thing, anyway? It was a vine with thorns, and it had a very thick, strong stalk. He always dreamed about plants, either plants fighting each other, or else himself fighting off a gang of plants. And always the dream ended with the Cleaner destroying all the other plants.
The Cleaner was the ultimate weapon that he carried from planet to planet. It was a superplant, stronger and more virulent than any other plant that had ever existed. Its job was to clean up planets whose sentient inhabitants had socially imploded. He would seed it over the planet, and in a few days, it would cover the surface. After a decade or so, there would be no sign of civilization, no evidence that any other entities had ever been there, whether animal or vegetable.
But the best thing about the Cleaner was that after about a hundred years of being the only thing alive on the planet, it would get sick of itself and mutate. No one could predict what creatures would spring up on any planet. It was different every time. There would be a wide variety of plants and animals and eventually, sentient beings. And then the process would start all over again. Each new planet would begin with eager virility, but after thousands of years they all ended the same way. They would give up on their goals and dreams and turn on each other, becoming more and more self-destructive until they finally reached the implosion point, and society died.
“Jack?” The com unit had connected with headquarters.
“Yes, I’m here. I’ve received a proximity warning of a system with planets.”
“Have you attached your monitoring device, yet?” The voice was female, and he could swear he caught some motherly overtones. That was probably on purpose, to get him to obey orders. A slight smirk touched his lips. She hadn’t read his file yet, if she thought he would respond favorably to a reminder of his mother.
“No, I haven’t done anything but wait for your voice, HQ.”
“That’s good, Jack. You may get out the device and attach it now. Let me know when you are ready to test it.”
He pushed another button, this time on the door of the monitor dispenser. The door opened, and one monitor popped out. He scooped it up and pulled the strap over his head, positioning the little gadget so a sensor plate was over his temple, and a tiny tube was next to his ear. He didn’t really want to know how it worked, but he knew it measured him in hundreds of ways, from temperature and heart rate to what he was thinking and feeling.
“Ready for testing,” he said.
“Beginning calibration,” the HQ voice replied. There was a short pause. “Your temperature is a bit low, your pulse rate is a little high, your bladder is full, and you are feeling irritated. Did the alarm wake you?”
“Yup. Again,” he said emphatically.
“Is there anything unusual? Are you feeling well?”
“Nothing unusual, and I’m feeling fine.”
“What are you thinking about the planets up ahead?”
“I wasn’t thinking about them. I was thinking I want some coffee.”
“Your attitude is not very cooperative this morning. You know this is to help you as much as it will help us. We are trying to find out why planet checkers are disappearing.”
“Yes, ma’am, sorry.” He tried to say it as cooperatively as possible. No use getting HQ on his case.
“So, what are you thinking about the planets up ahead?”
“Nothing unusual. I feel ready to check them and carry out all functions necessary to the situation I find. I’m not having any strong emotions about them, and I hope I don’t have any. I’d really rather this was another routine case where nothing goes wrong.”
There was a slight pause, then HQ asked, “Are you feeling any fear or reluctance to approach the planets? This is the first time you have expressed a preference not to experience whatever may be happening to others in your group.”
Jack thought about it for a few seconds. “It’s possible that the lack of any concrete information about these disappearances over such a long period of time is making me a bit apprehensive. We’ve been monitoring for almost two years now, haven’t we? And there are no answers yet.”
“That’s true, but we do have a great deal of data, and statistical analysis of that data is beginning to provide some common threads. I have no doubt we will eventually find answers.”
“Okay, well, I just hope I won’t be one of the contributors of that data. I want things to go on the same as always.”
“Test complete,” was HQ’s response. “Your monitor is calibrated and recording. I have turned on your ship’s hourly reminders. You are ready. Any questions or comments before I go?”
“No, ma’am. I’m good.” Really ready for coffee, too, he thought to himself.
“Then good luck, and enjoy your coffee.” The com unit clicked off.
Guess the mind reading part is working, thought Jack.
An hour later, when the first reminder started, he was on his third cup and reading the report he had retrieved about the nearby planets. So far he had discovered only one of the planets had any life on it, and that planet had been Cleaned about two hundred years ago. He would get to see the beginnings of a new world. Or rather, a renewed world.
“This is your hourly reminder.” The ship’s voice was smooth, calm, and confident. And male. Nothing disturbing. “Have you noticed anything unusual? Are you feeling different in any way? Please report to the monitor.”
Jack automatically spoke aloud to give the monitor something to record. “I feel normal. I have not noticed anything unusual,” then returned to his reading. The monitor perched above his ear buzzed for a second, then the com unit clicked on and off again. Report sent.
A few minutes later, the com unit clicked on. “Jack486?” This voice was male, but not smooth, calm, or confident. It was more interested, maybe a trifle irritated.
Jack was startled. Now this was something unusual. “Yes? Who is this?”
“This is HQ. I was reviewing your report, and I see you were noticing something unusual, but you didn’t report it, something about two hundred years and a new world. Please explain.”
Getting over his momentary surprise, Jack explained that he had been reading information about the planetary system he was approaching. He read that part of the report to HQ. “Is that unusual? I know I’ve never been near a planet that soon after Cleaning, but I assumed other people had.”
“You are right, other people have observed planets after Cleaning, but what is unusual is that your ship has plotted a course to this system much earlier than necessary. It takes at least a couple thousand years to get to the implosion point.”
“Oh, oh yeah.” Jack was thoroughly embarrassed. “Sorry, that didn’t even occur to me.”
HQ didn’t seem to notice his discomfort. “I want you to run a diagnostic on the ship’s directional program. In fact, run diagnostics on all programs. When you get the results, send them through.”
“Sure, right away.”
The com unit clicked off.
“Hey, wait! I noticed something unusual. HQ called me. That’s unusual. And I felt embarrassed. That’s very unusual.”
HQ was already gone, but his monitor buzzed for several seconds, and the com unit clicked on and off. Report sent.
He stood there nonplussed for a moment, and then he grinned from ear to ear. “I noticed something unusual. And that is that I noticed something unusual. And the monitor reported it.” The monitor buzzed and the com unit clicked on and off. Satisfied, Jack486 prepared to run diagnostics.
* * * * * * * *
Two days later, Jack stared at the screen showing the planet’s surface as the ship passed over it. This was supposed to be the planet that had been Cleaned two hundred years ago, but it was not what he had expected to see. It was uniformly covered with the Cleaner, but instead of strong, healthy plants, they were wilted and had brown tips. Here and there, he saw open patches, where nothing grew.
“Uh … I am seeing something un…,” he began. Just then the hourly reminder broke in, asking for the umpteenth time if he had noticed or felt anything unusual. “Yeah, yeah, yeah…..give me a chance, will ya?”
Then he gasped. A crashed ship had flashed by on the screen, in the middle of one of the bare patches. It was a ship just like his, manned by a planet checker. He rapidly pushed buttons and started programs to look for life forms and remnants of civilization. He didn’t have any programs specifically designed to look for crashed ships, but they would be included in remnants of civilization.
The readout streamed data so fast he could barely keep up with it. It reported ship after ship, all crashed in the bare patches. The Cleaner plants were reported as life forms, but that was it. Nothing else was alive on the planet. He kept looking until the report started repeating. Hundreds of ships had crashed here, but not a single planet checker had survived.
He knew it was a lost cause, but he turned on the com unit anyway, to listen for SOS signals. His jaw dropped in amazement. There were hundreds of SOS recordings, so many that he couldn’t make out the individual messages.
“Ship, separate out one signal,” he demanded.
“Which signal?” asked the ship. “The signal from the life forms, or the signal from the remnants of civilization?”
“Wha…? The signal from the life forms.” It was wishful thinking. There were no living inhabitants of those ships.
Nevertheless, the ship was broadcasting the signal. “There is nothing. All life ends in nothing.” The message repeated over and over, while Jack sat horrified, eyes on the screen showing the planet’s surface. The plants streamed by, endlessly wilting, lamenting the death of all life, refusing to begin again one more time.
The ship shuddered. Jack looked around wildly. There were red lights flashing and alarms buzzing all around the control center. It was about to crash!
His last thought was that the monitor was overdue to report to HQ. It had failed to report that he had noticed and felt unusual things. It had reported nothing.
The ship crashed into a thick bunch of the Cleaner plants. There was a small flurry of activity, which soon subsided. By the time the next planet checker came along, Jack’s ship was in a bare patch, and it was broadcasting an SOS message. “Task finished, Jack486 logging out. There is nothing to be done here. There is nothing here. There is nothing.”
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