ERO

by F. P. Dorchak

  To that tank.

  Yes, there really was something to be afraid about in these woods....

  He just couldn’t remember what it was.

  3

  Lake Clear, New York

  11 July 1976

  1717 Hours Eastern Time

  Jimmy lay back in the lawn chair, his battered Marine Corps utility cap pushed back on his head. He stared up into the barbecue’s smoke as it curled throughout the limbs of the spruce tree above. His dad had built the BBQ fireplace himself several years ago. He used yellow brick for the firebox, then above the brick, up the sides and the rest of the fireplace structure had packed stones, round and otherwise, into cement. It was a cool looking brick, stone, and cement thing, with a heavy iron latticework grill that always bit into his hands when he moved it around. The coolest part about it was the warming tray area part-way up the chimney stack, the year “1969” sculpted into the cement between two horizontal slabs of flat stone. The slabs formed a food storage area. But even cooler than that was the small set of deer antlers above that, cemented into the top of the stone chimney stack.

  Deer antlers.

  Jimmy stared at them.

  “Dad,” Jimmy asked, casually redirecting his gaze back up into the billowing smoke from the barbecue, “there’s nothing weird in our woods, is there?”

  Everett chuckled as he busied about setting up the burgers and dogs on the grill.

  “Weird? What you mean?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  His dad looked up to him briefly as he rolled up the packaging to the now sizzling meat and tossed it away into the small cardboard box he’d used to bring up all the food in. Kneeling, he leaned a supporting elbow on a knee as he again regarded his son; chuckled and shook his head. “You ask the weirdest questions.” He got to his feet. “Well, there’re no rattlers. There’s always bear, but they avoid human contact unless provoked...”

  “There’s deer, though, right?”

  “Yeah, but I’d hardly call deer ‘weird.’”

  Jimmy laughed uncomfortably.

  “Did you see something?”

  Did he see something?

  The water tank.

  Woods. Lots of woods.

  The rusted-out area at the bottom of the water tank. Him bending over to look into those holes...

  What was it about those dang antlers? Jimmy thought, studying them.

  “No... didn’t see anything. Just asking.”

  His father continued on with what he was doing, and Jimmy stared back up into the smoke-filled spruce branches; to their tree house that was up in those branches. The hodgepodge of boards and tossed-out wood used to build it. He could see some of the green-painted board used in one of its “walls,” the one with a window in it. Watched the smoke dance and play inside the branches, wending its way up ever higher into the sky. His mind drifted... it was 1976... where would he be in twenty years? Thirty? In the year 2000? Why, in 2000—2001, like Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, he’d be like, forty. Wow, that was a long way from now. Would he be an astronaut, like Poole or Bowman? Be in some space station—hopefully not with some insane computer, like HAL, though? Or like Roger Torraway, in Frederik Pohl’s Man Plus? Exploring interplanetary space? What would he be doing?

  What would he be doing at fifty?

  Sixty?

  Eighty?

  Would he live that long?

  Of course, he would—he’d live forever! Surely, by then, science would have achieved longer life in—what year would that be?

  Jimmy scrunched his forehead, trying to work out the numbers. If he was fifteen now, he would be eighty—when?

  He counted off in tens, using his fingers. Seventy-six, eighty-six, ninety-six, oh-six. That’s thirty years. In 2006, he’d be forty-five.

  Wow. What a thought.

  So, in forty years from that—in 2046—he’d be eighty-five.

  Holy cow!

  That was almost too much to imagine! Eighty-five?

  What would life be like in 2046? Would people be living in space? Would he? Would he have a space babe? And they’d go exploring? Well, he’d be old, but maybe he’d still look like, maybe, twenty? And she’d be hot....

  What would it be like to be in a space ship? Would it be like being in a submarine, like his dad did in the Navy?

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, son,” his dad said, now kicked back in his own lawn chair, pipe smoking, and his Stetson angled down over closed eyes.

  “What was it like in submarines?”

  “Well,” he said, taking a couple more pensive puffs, “it’s kinda like being stuck in a small room. With the doors and windows closed and no way out.”

  Jimmy mulled over that. “Only under water,” he said back to his dad.

  Everett chuckled, peeking out from under his Stetson, amused. “Yeah, only under water.”

  “Was it scary?”

  Everett took a couple more puffs.

  “A little. At first, and every now and then. But you get past that. You had a job to do, and you just did it. We were all tough guys. Underwater warriors. Not scared a nuthin.”

  Everett again cast a quick, amused glance to his son.

  “Wow. I can’t image being stuck under water in a small thing like that.”

  “It was exciting. We were doing brave stuff; going places most people will never go,” Everett continued, taking occasional puffs between his words. “It was pretty exciting.”

  “Why’d you stop doing it?”

  “Well... as time goes on you just want to do something different. Like when you’re playing with one set of toys and you want to play with a different set?”

  “Oh.

  “Did you go all over the world? Under the North Pole?”

  “We went... everywhere.”

  “Wow.”

  Jimmy again looked over to his dad, and lay back like he was. Crossed his ankles like his dad had. Angled his hat over his eyes like his dad, and closed his eyes like his dad.

  Everett checked out his son without him seeing him do so. He smiled, again closing his eyes and puffing on his pipe.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s the scariest thing you ever did?”

  Everett paused for a moment as he puffed. He opened his eyes and pushed back his Stetson, staring up into the blue sky and swirling smoke from the barbecue.

  For a moment, he thought—swore—he was back on the Threadfin, SS410. And they were steaming a direct course for Cuba under 400 feet of water.

  October, 1962.

  He was a Radioman, Petty Officer, Second Class. Their mission to quarantine Cuba.

  Oh, shit, they had thought, every one of the eighty-three officers and enlisted onboard that boat, what had they gotten themselves into now?

  But, there was something else... something else about that passage... something that sent a shiver down Everett’s spine. An ill-defined terror like a nightmare just barely remembered—forgotten. What was it about that voyage that so scared the shit out him—even now....

  Everett got up and grabbed the long, iron poker and knocked around the burning wood in the fireplace. Cleared his throat.

  “Well... it was always kinda scary down there, so you just took your mind off what it was you were in and where you were... and just focused on your job.”

  “And you were a radio operator, right?”

  “Yup,” Everett said, nodding, grateful that his son didn’t press the issue. After adjusting the firewood, he placed the poker back against the side of the barbeque and sat back down. Stared into the fire.

  “But probably the scariest thing that ever happened to me was when I was electrocuted in the radio shack on the Sailfish.”

  “What happened?” Jimmy asked, sitting back up.

  “Oh... we were doing some work in the radio shack—where all the radio equipment was kept—and, well, something just happened, my feet slipped, and I got shocked—like when you’d stuck th
at paperclip into that electrical outlet? Only much worse. Knocked me clean on my ass. Knocked me out. I had to be put into a decompression chamber to recover.”

  “Decompression chamber? What’s that?”

  “Normally it’s used to help divers who get too much of a gas called nitrogen into their blood stream when they dive. If you get too much of it—nitrogen—it can kill you. This chamber helps get it out of you without killing you. Very technical stuff. Anyway, it also helped me recover from my electrocution.”

  “Wow.”

  Jimmy paused, mulling things over.

  So... in thirty years he’d be forty-five... and in seventy years he’d be eighty-five. It was almost too far to imagine. How old would his dad be in thirty years?

  And what would he—little Jimmy Cherko—be doing at forty-five?

  Chapter Eleven

  1

  ERO Operations

  1 June 1986

  0100 Hours Mountain Time

  Cherko had been sitting at his console, performing his on-orbit operations, when the by-now routine and supposedly telepathic communications had made themselves known. He’d just finished transcribing the information strings, when he posed his question.

  Why are we doing this?

  Because you have been trained to do so.

  Why have I been trained to do this, and what is the purpose of what we’re doing?

  Your answer should be apparent.

  You are alien?

  From another perspective, perhaps, you could be considered alien.

  You mean “apparent” in that we’re doing this to communicate with you. An alien race.

  Silence.

  But what are we going to do with all this communication? How are we putting it to use, since I seem to just be transcribing numbers? Why do you need someone like me to do this?

  Information string terminated.

  He/she/it was gone.

  Cherko stabbed F10.

  So... he wasn’t about to learn much about Project operations.

  And wasn’t it amazing how easy he was accepting of all this?

  He was taking supposed-alien-telepathic communication in stride. Like it was something he did every day.

  Which, basically, it was.

  Amazing at how the fantastical became... normal.

  Who would have believed?

  He was sure that was part of the point.

  But look at the answers he got... just enough ambiguity so that he had nothing concrete. No straight answers. Was it really alien communication, or was he just being toyed with?

  But the upshot of the whole thing was that he had been communicating with something or someone through no visible, physical means. The information presented itself through a wholly nonphysical, mental, medium. Or at least, he was addressing its mechanics in this way; he supposed these messages could be beamed into his head from elsewhere by microwaves, or whatever “wave” was capable of penetrating so many feet of concrete and steel and dirt. So maybe the same line of thinking could be applied to the “alien” concept. Maybe it wasn’t really all that alien,

  (From another perspective, perhaps, you could be considered alien...)

  but the circumstantial facts appeared so.

  Were made to appear so?

  The more rational thinkers insisted there was always an answer for everything supposedly unknown. That there only need be the right light shed upon a subject to cast away its ignorant darkness... to peel away any such “mysterious” perception.

  Perception.

  Things were only eerie and unknown because we were unfamiliar with them. Once brought out into open light and objectively studied, then there was no need for fear, superstition, or conjecture, and said items of interest became as commonplace as a table or the clothes on our backs. Shakespeare had it right, but science makes it right.

  During their brief conversation Cherko had picked up images. It was not so much like He/She/It was being evasive, as it was that He/She/It didn’t deem the line of questioning as important enough to pursue. That was his true feeling, was what he really picked up. Like all that was needed from the communication was that it was being performed.

  It just really felt as he perceived it to be. He couldn’t get around that. That what his mind perceived was absolutely not human. Not at any familiar level.

  And, just like him, he was sure whatever alien was contacting him certainly had other additional duties to perform. Maybe He/She/It was even pissed that He/She/It even had to perform such a lowly task with such a “primitive,” like himself. Maybe He/She/It had had a bad sidereal day, or even had issues with the task itself. Maybe He/She/It thought themselves above such efforts, but that they were somehow necessary for the Project. Like in order to write you had to learn grammar.

  And he had been told he’d been the first.

  So, maybe, it wasn’t so much about the information transferred, as he was just part of a protocol, an investigative etiquette of some kind. Nothing more.

  The first.

  The first for what? Alien communication?

  Too unimaginatively limiting. Since—to him—aliens were obviously involved with whatever was going on, any communication with them had to have gone on far and away a long time ago. Perhaps that was the big deal behind Roswell, first Big Time (government) contact and all, but by now, no, things had to have progressed way beyond such mundane considerations; he had to be the first for some other form of higher alien interaction, some as-yet unknown method by which their relations were to be put into a more significant application.

  But with this string of data he’d entered, he felt something decidedly... unsettling.

  2

  ERO Operations

  17 June 1986

  0320 Hours Mountain Time

  77900/Subject84289346582/68434238/860614/PotentialityforRecall77/ResidualPain32/NerveResponseCurve09/BodyNormalization88/03730N10400E///

  This was Cherko’s first communication in which actual words had been involved. And he didn’t like what he was getting.

  What is this communication? he asked. Is this an abduction?

  A pause was introduced to the transmission.

  Tell me—what are you reporting through me? You’re abducting us, aren’t you? Abducting humans?

  I am not abducting anyone.

  But there are those you are in contact with who are. Why are you doing this?

  You are not authorized an answer. Continue for further information strings.

  Before Cherko could press the issue, another string was sent, this time only numbers. Communication termination was immediate once Cherko transcribed the data.

  He hit F10. His satellite duties complete for the moment, he got up.

  “I’m heading to the john,” he announced to the crew commander, and left the ops floor.

  * * *

  Cherko sat in the restroom, head in hands, eyes closed.

  Just what the hell was going on—what was he being used for? Just a telepathically activated relay?

  A transcriptionist?

  This was his big job about which he couldn’t tell anyone?

  Okay, he was apparently communicating with alien intelligence, but about what was he communicating? The past several sessions with these guys he’d gotten similar data. Text intermixed with the numbers, but this was the first time where he’d received

  Potentiality for Recall.

  Residual Pain.

  Nerve Response Curves.

  Body Normalization.

  It sounded like humans were being abducted and tests were being run on them!

  Why?

  Why the hell would an apparently advanced race have the need to abduct anyone?

  Jesus Christ, he was mentally communicating with them, for crying out loud, and they needed to physically abduct humans?

  What kind of sense did that make? If they used mental telepathy as a matter of course, wouldn’t it also stand to reason that they had other capabilities that no longer required re
sorting to

  (Residual Pain...)

  abductions and physical—bodily—experimentation?

  Look to their crafts... flying saucers breaking all the rules of known human physics! He’d never personally seen any—at least not that he knew—but come on.

  So, now, he was finding, with such advanced technology, alien races were still resorting to primitive snatch-and-grab techniques that involved pain responses?

  Didn’t make sense. Not one lick. Unless—

  It wasn’t aliens doing the abducting.

  Or they weren’t as advanced as we thought they were.

  After all—look at us. On some kind of a proportionate level, we have all this advanced science and engineering, yet look at how we’re applying it.

  Spying.

  War.

  Bombs and bullets.

  With all our advances you’d think we’d expend more in the way of peace... better fuels and fuel mileages, more food, less poverty, better government, better health care, wipe out disease... violence.

  But what was getting all the press? All the dollars?

  So, on a proportionate, extrapolated level, yeah, humans had all this technology, but its uses were mainly funneled toward the military industrial complex. And if the legends were true, even Atlantis had had similar issues... issues that brought about its extinction.

  So, what made him think an alien existence would be any different? If aliens physically existed, might they also have very similar—not exact, mind you, but an “alien equivalent”—of physical predilections and weaknesses? Greed and power? Maybe to be physical was to be imbued with an inherently physical, ethical, challenge?

  But, still—why communicate all this through him?

  The next time he got one of those messages, he was going to remember the locations, the lat and longs given in the message that trailed after the text. He’d had enough.

  He was nobody’s tool, alien or otherwise.

  * * *

  ERO Operations

  18 June 1986

  0213 Hours Mountain Time

  77900/Subject9476123904/11120057/870234/PotenialityforRecall67/ResidualPain77/NerveResponseCurve45/BodyNormalization65/03901N10435E