by J. L. Wood
“This is just all so weird,” Justin said. “Venus exploding, creatures that can see everything and practically see and move through time itself. Living in Lerner 4.”
“It doesn’t sound that far-fetched,” Jessica said. “I mean, if the creatures can see duration, it creates a complexity we would not understand. We see time as linear, but that isn’t necessarily so, say, for the dikap. No wonder the Akabko have formed this relationship with them. They aren’t restrained by the boundaries of our world.”
The group sat in silence as Sherrie rummaged through the cabinets and pulled out a bag of sugar and a jar of honey. She mixed the ingredients in a small ramekin.
“What’s in the storylines for the dust storms?” Mary asked. “Are they going to save the planet just for everything to die?”
Sherrie ate a spoonful of the sugar mixture. “I can’t see it,” she said. “We have to figure that out on our own.”
Jessica held up her index finger. “The Project LMS reserves,” she said. “They have bunkers there, ten around the U.S. with enough food to hold a thousand people for ten years. If the Fall is three months of dusting, it could help us get through that period.”
Mary shifted in her seat. “You never said what would happen to the adults who weren’t fit for the dikap. Where will they go? Do they die the way Ariel killed that insane man? Do the dikap rip them apart?”
Sherrie took another spoonful of sugar. “I would assume they would be left here. I can’t see those storylines yet. They’re not unraveled.” She paused and thought about the people not fit for the new world. They were creating left-behinds just like the people of Amity did, but this was different. Through the storylines, they would be able to weed out the evil of the world. People like the assailants at the school who killed so many innocent children. They deserved to remain on Earth.
Justin held his hands up and stared at Sherrie. “Listen, I’m sorry, but am I the only one asking the real questions here? Why are you eating sugar? If you’re hungry, we can make you something.”
“Oh,” Sherrie said, looking at the bowl. “This must look strange. The dikap feed on their host when they use them. When I looked through the storylines, that was through the dikap. This is the closest I could get to viot, which is the dish traditionally eaten to feed them. They consume it after it enters the bloodstream. It’s like catnip to them.”
Jessica, Justin, and Mary all stared at one another, wide-eyed. “Um…” Mary said. “Okay, then. Why didn’t Ariel do that after she used her dikap?”
Sherrie finished her bowl of makeshift viot. “Because they ate him.”
Jessica cringed and shook her head. She covered her face with her hands. “This is…so fucked up. Never in a million years would I have ever thought…” She paused and let out an uncomfortable laugh. “I can’t believe after all these years of searching for something beyond Earth, this is what I find.”
“Tell me about it,” Justin replied. “And you want to infest everyone with those critters? I say we just leave things as they are and see…”
Sherrie clenched her stomach as the dikap began to feed. She was used to pain, but at the moment, it felt like one of the old days, lying in her hospital bed.
“Dr. Dressner, are you okay?” Mary asked, placing her soft hand on her shoulder.
Sherrie leaned over and gasped. “It’s okay, they’re feeding. I…I see the Ambassador.”
Jessica jumped up and rushed toward Sherrie, kneeling beside her. “Ask him what his real name is.”
Sherrie clenched her eyes shut and then placed both of her palms on the kitchen bar. “He said…his name is…Donald Wolf.”
– 33 –
Pillars
Jessica shook Sherrie’s arm until she opened her eyes. “Is the…feeding over?” she asked, concerned.
Sherrie sat up. “It is. Each time it will get easier as I get used to it. I need to call to the other chosen children to make sure they are safe.”
“Guide,” Lois whispered. “The Fall is close. I can help.”
“No,” Sherrie replied. “Not until you’re older. I don’t know how you will handle the feeding.”
Mary jumped from her barstool. “I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand any of this. There is going to be this great Fall. Their friend is your Ambassador. We’re not going to die, and I just ate like twenty thousand calories today for nothing. But like you said, we’re saved and—”
“That’s all that matters,” Chris interrupted. “We’re saved.”
“We’re saved?” Mary hissed. “No, Missy is saved. She’s living it up on Amity, and we’re here about to live in a dust bowl.”
“No,” Sherrie said. “Missy is away from her home. We are the saved ones.”
Jessica held out her hand to Sherrie. “Stop it, everyone. We can discuss this later. Right now, we need to prepare. I don’t know what to expect, but everyone needs to get to the panic room.”
Sherrie accepted Jessica’s hand and let her pull her to her feet. She stared at Jessica for a moment and smiled before following Mary, Chris, and the girls to the small room on the first floor.
“What was that about?” Justin asked.
Jessica walked to the living room and pulled back the curtains. She stared at the deserted street in front of the house. “I think she knows I’m not going in there.”
Justin jerked his head toward Jessica. “And why not? Who knows what’s really going to happen? Maybe that dikap shield or whatever won’t hold. Come on.”
“I can’t.”
Justin grabbed her arm. “You can. Please don’t do this. Let’s go to the panic room. Let’s talk more about Don as the Ambassador. We can ask Sherrie. Maybe he’s sporting a loincloth or some sort of traditional Akabko getup. Maybe he’s wearing tribal paint.”
Jessica continued to stare out of the window. “I can’t,” she said. “You wouldn’t understand. I need to see it.”
There was a brief silence, and then Justin grabbed her hand, interlocking his fingers with hers. “Then I need to see it too. We saw the beginning, and we will see the end.”
Jessica looked at him, teary-eyed. “I promised my dad I would show him aliens. I can just…feel it. He’s at his house, terrified from the news reports. The shield will go up, and he will go outside and look at it as well. This way, we can look at it together.”
There was another silence, and Justin leaned in and kissed her. She pulled him in close and wrapped her arms around him. It was comforting and long awaited. She could feel her tears as they touched his cheeks. Feel his hand as it rubbed the nape of her neck.
And then the sound came. A strong, heavy pulse that rocked the house. Jessica could feel it beat inside of her. Then it was gone. They stared at each other.
“The FRBs,” Justin whispered while looking at his smartwatch. “It’s the sixth day, when we were to detect them here on Earth. The pillars, could they be the tower we saw on the Lerner exoplanets? Were they practicing?”
“Maybe,” she said as she stared out the window. She had thought her discovery of aliens would play out differently. She’d never expected it to be this. They terrified her. They fed on humans. A new world order of peace and unity felt like a pipe dream. Humans weren’t made for peace. There would be another set of left-behinds on Earth, one that she believed would encompass the majority of adults. She grabbed Justin’s arm as she felt the pulse and heard the sound again.
“That was three minutes!” Justin exclaimed, looking at his watch.
“So, according to the data from the FRBs, we should get another pulse at the six-minute mark that would continue at intervals of threes until the last one at twenty-one. The Fall will begin in eighteen minutes,” Jessica said. “It should last for forty-two.”
“What should we do before then?” Justin asked.
Jessica smiled and left for the kitchen. When she returned, she pulled a deck of cards from her bag. “For old times’ sake, I want to challenge the gin rummy king.”
“Wise choice,” Justin said. “But don’t think I’ll go easy on you, even with the Fall upon us.”
*
“Gin!” Justin cried.
Jessica tossed her cards on the floor. “This is just not my game.”
Justin’s watch alarm went off, and they looked at each other. Jessica grabbed his hand and led him to the window. Thousands of dikap descended from the sky and swarmed the street outside of Don’s house. They glided around each other, swirling in a concentric funnel. Jessica gasped at the size of them. It was one thing to see them on camera, but up close, they were each the size of a baseball.
Justin squeezed Jessica’s hand. “Should I be scared or fascinated?” he asked.
“Both,” she said as she continued to watch the dikap swarm. They barreled through the neighborhood, sticking to the road but destroying anything in their way. Street signs were ripped from sidewalks. Fire hydrants exploded. Then there was silence. The dikap were gone.
“I need a better view,” she said.
Justin led her to the second story of the house and opened the window to Don’s office. Carefully, he crawled out of the room onto the slanted roof, and Jessica followed. She stood up, surveying the area. “There they are!” she yelled, pointing north.
“There’s so many,” Justin replied. One of the dikap flew toward Justin, and he ducked, nearly losing his footing. “We should go in now,” he said, but Jessica ignored him.
“They’re forming the pillars!” she cried. Thousands upon thousands of dikap gathered in the sky, circling each other. A heavy wind picked up, and Jessica held her hair to stop it from whipping her in the face. A portion of the swarm formed a large pillar in the sky and then forced itself into the Earth. The ground began to crack, and buildings nearest the pillar began to fall. Don’s house rumbled, and Jessica slid to the edge of the roof, her legs dangling and kicking as she tried to pull herself up.
Justin scooted down the roof and grasped her shirt while the wind, still stirring, attempted to knock him down. “I’ve got you! I’ve got you!” he yelled as he pulled her back up.
Jessica kicked her way back up near the window. The wind was even more forceful now, biting at her cheeks. Trash and debris flew through the air while the ground continued to crack. When she looked back toward the top of the house, she could see part of the roof caving in.
“What a destructive way to save us!” she yelled over the wind.
Justin tugged at her arm, but she jerked it back. “We should go!” he yelled.
Jessica stood upright on the roof and watched as the pillar began to glow a light pink. She was wild with excitement. “Dad!” she yelled, grinning ear to ear. “Are you seeing this? Are you outside with me?”
The pillar shot a pink beam into the sky, and she could see the remaining dikap moving upward, increasing even more in size. They covered the sky, and the light to Earth tinted pink.
“It’s so beautiful!” she yelled.
The fender of a car flew toward the house and shattered the windows of the dining room. Justin tugged on her again as he held on to the window frame to keep himself from being blown away. She leaned down, and with the help of the wind pushed him into the window opening. “I’m sorry!” she yelled. “I just need to see it!”
Her heart pumped as the last of the dikap fell into place. The remaining swarm joined the pillar, but the wind continued to blow. She leaned against the brick face of the house. She could feel Justin’s hand grabbing for her ankle.
And then the Fall began. Outside the pink barrier, large asteroids were being destroyed by the dikap. They came so quickly, dozens at a time. As the dust and debris fell to the surface of Earth, the wind picked it up, whipping it violently around the city. Jessica pulled up her hoodie and tugged the strings to keep her hair still. She then pulled her shirt over her nose and mouth and continued to watch the sky.
Tiny pieces of rock bit at her hands and cheeks. She squinted through the dust storm. She could hear the yells of Justin through the window. He returned to the roof, crawling on his hands and knees, and grabbed Jessica’s leg to pull her in, but she pulled back.
“Not yet!” she yelled. As she looked back at the pillar, barely visible now through the dust, she saw a green street sign barreling toward her. She tried to dodge it, but the strong winds slowed her. She fell to the roof and looked toward the pink barrier. Carefully, she touched the metal sheet that was embedded in her stomach. She tried to breathe but couldn’t. She tried to move, but the pain wouldn’t let her. As her eyes began to close, she pointed at the pink sky.
“The aliens are there,” she whispered. “Do you see them, Dad?”
– 34 –
Shield
Amy stared at the large jacaranda tree. Although she had been briefed on Project LMS, she’d never imagined it would be a space station. And even if she did, she never would have believed it would look like this. She had never seen anything so futuristic. It was as if a whole world of technology had been kept a secret. It made her wonder about other things she didn’t know—of possible human colonies dispersed throughout the universe. She thought it unfair, and with that thought, she understood why such secrets were sometimes kept. She remembered the false news of the L8 bacteria, which turned out to be creatures from Messier 83. I kept secrets too, she thought as she grabbed her bag and followed the group of new Amity citizens to the elevators.
The lobby was full of people conversing, and Amy weaved through them in search of her brother. She wasn’t sure which ship he’d been assigned, since he was in London when the notifications for LMS went out. The thought of him being a left-behind filled her mind, and she pushed forward through the crowd to the elevators.
I’ll drop my things off and then check, she resolved as she pushed the elevator button for the twelfth floor. The walk was long, but Amy was fit and enjoyed the movement after being cramped on the spaceship. She opened the door to her room, hoping to find her brother waiting for her, but it was empty.
Amy sat on the bed and thought of all the people she had left behind. She thought of her parents and her sister, none of whom she could take. It hurt to know that she had chosen one person. When one of the directors at the CDC told her about the list, she thought it would be nothing, just a precaution. Never had she imagined actually needing to be in a safe zone. Never had she imagined working on a project where she discovered micro-animals that killed without hesitation. Or speaking to the president, finding out that there was life outside of Earth, and even leaving the planet. Everything began to sink in, and her stomach churned once more at the thought of everyone back on Earth, possibly waiting for their deaths.
She looked out the window at all the stars and the large silver planet Amity orbited. It seemed unreal almost, fake. When she leaned over to pull the curtains closed, she caught sight of a small booklet on the nightstand. “Amity Station Two,” she whispered as she flipped open the booklet. She scanned through the first page and then tossed the booklet on the bed. “What the hell is an amisow?” she asked herself before leaving her room.
*
The line to the clinic on fourteen was long. Amy looked back at the people who’d arrived after her. “Do you know what the amisow is?” she asked a woman behind her.
The woman shook her head. “Not really. I mean, I heard it was for safety. Like to give you access to places instead of using a key card. That’s it.”
Amy moved forward with the line. She didn’t feel comfortable having anything implanted in her without knowing exactly what it was intended for. Keeping her life private had always been important to her. She was a social network recluse. Her life was in person or on the phone. Never anything else. To her, being visible was dangerous, especially in her line of work at the CDC. She had to keep secrets, and the thought of any sort of device implanted in her made her doubt her safety.
When it was Amy’s turn in line, a man dressed in Amity attire—dark-gray pants and a jacket with a single purple stripe down the side—led her to on
e of several small rooms. “Get undressed. Ties go in the front,” he instructed, handing her a gown.
Amy took the hospital gown and waited for the man to close the door before sitting on the exam table. She tossed the gown aside and gazed around the room. It was small, set up like an ordinary doctor’s office. Through the wall, she could hear a commotion from one of the rooms. The wall muffled the voices, but it sounded like arguing, followed by crashing noises. What the hell is going on over there?
The door to her room slowly opened, and a woman entered, wearing gray scrubs with purple accents and a lab coat. “You didn’t undress,” the woman said, pushing a small cart into the room, covered with a blue cloth.
“No, no, I didn’t,” Amy replied. “I am Dr. Boughan from the Centers for Disease Control. Can you please tell me what an amisow is and why I would need to undress to get one?”
The woman sat on the stool near the exam bed and searched through her electronic tablet. “Dr. Boughan, yes. I am Dr. Aran. Well, I’m sure this is all pretty confusing. I need to give you an exam, just to make sure you’re healthy. And if you are, we can talk about the amisow implant.”
Amy shook her head as she hopped down from the exam table. “My health is none of your business. Let’s talk about the amisow implant now.”
Dr. Aran placed her tablet on the counter. “The exam is a requirement, as is the amisow if you are well.”
“And if I’m not well?”
The doctor sighed. “Are you refusing to be compliant with the rules set forth by Amity?”
Amy’s eyebrows rose. “If that is what you want to call it. But I am not your patient. And I never read or signed any agreement. I’d like to speak to the person in charge.”