Year Zero

by Rob Reid

  “So he doesn’t have an owner?”

  “Not as far as I can tell. No collar. Tomorrow I’m gonna go to a vet to see if he has an ID chip, look for flyers around where I found him, check Craigslist—that sort of thing.”

  “And if your new man’s really single, is he a keeper?”

  “Hell yes!”

  “Great. And the two of you can come by for a drink and some catnip whenever you want.” A brief, cuddly montage filled my mind of Manda and me watching TV with Meowhaus; of Manda and me reading on the couch with Meowhaus; of Manda and me screwing athletically with Meowhaus nowhere to be seen.

  “Cool—and we can get started on that right now.” I tried very hard to believe that Manda was miraculously referring to my montage’s glorious finale. But she just pulled a bottle from a canvas bag that she’d brought in. “Is this the stuff you were talking about?” she asked, handing it to me.

  By God, it was. When I poured her a humble glass of Maker’s Mark the night before, the conversation turned to bourbon, and I mentioned that the best stuff I’d ever tasted was this twenty-three-year-old hooch named after a guy called Pappy Van Winkle. A classmate of mine at law school who’s part hillbilly on his mom’s side sourced some out of Kentucky once, and I hadn’t tasted the stuff since graduation. Now for the umpteenth time since meeting her, I fell in love with Manda Shark. “How in the world did you find this?” I asked.

  “I shouldn’t admit it, but it was pretty easy. I only had to go to three places. They’ll cough up the good stuff if you bat your eyelashes the right way.”

  I nodded. Bat them the right way, and the Librarian of Congress would cough up the Gutenberg Bible for you, I thought. “You need to try this. I’ll get us a couple glasses.” I headed into my kitchen, which is about the size of a jet’s galley. A normal person would find it maddeningly small. But anything beyond a fridge and a cereal cupboard is wasted on me.

  Just as I was grabbing the glasses, this crazy sound started coming from the living room. I dashed out and saw Meowhaus squaring off with my bedroom doorway. Crawling toward it in a low, predatory posture, he was hissing like a cracked airplane window. The bedroom was dark. The door was half open. I was starting toward the bedroom myself when the lights suddenly cut out in the rest of the apartment. Then Manda screamed. I pivoted and saw a pulsating red orb emerge from the floor in front of her.

  * * *

  1. Luckily, Manda didn’t drop in during the week when the Robyn Amos canon was casually arrayed throughout my apartment in hopes of catching her eye. While I had presented myself as a Renaissance man with diverse interests, a taste for African-American bodice-rippers might have seemed odd. From its product suggestions, Amazon.com is now convinced that I’m a middle-aged black woman.

  FOUR

  METALLICAM (ME)

  The orb was maybe three feet wide, and it rose majestically. Heavy gray smoke poured from its surface and oozed to the floor. There it spread, until we seemed to be adrift on a roiling, fog-choked sea. The orb was translucent, and a deep, red, pulsating glow emanated from its core. It rose to chest height, then stopped.

  “Smoke on the water,” it boomed in the sort of voice that Zeus might use if he were auditioning to play Satan in a Russian speed metal video. The fog beneath our feet churned and convulsed.

  “Fire in the sky!” Bolts of flame shot up from the fog. Searingly bright, they weirdly gave off no heat.

  Manda was deeply spooked, but also bedazzled by all this Sturm und Drang. And I wasn’t unimpressed. But this was my third alien encounter, and so far they had been harmless. So my main feeling was one of relief. Manda was seeing this, too—and I no longer had to worry about my sanity!

  “What … are you?” she managed, gazing at the orb.

  “I’m jet fuel, honey.” This odd claim was followed by a blinding red flash, along with an infrasonic thud that rocked my innards but was barely audible.

  This seemed to render Manda mute, so I leaned forward. “You’re what?” I asked.

  “I’m …” The orb paused awkwardly, clearly expecting more shock & awe, and less Q&A. Then, “I’m TNT. I’m … dynamite.” At this, it unleashed a cool explosion effect, with flames in the shape of a skull.

  “You’re not the first to make this claim,” I said, affecting an urbane calm that I hoped would fluster our visitor. I’d heard the TNT/dynamite thing before, although I couldn’t quite place the source amid all the excitement. “Try being more original.”

  “I’m … a mean go-getter,” the orb sputtered. That one I knew. It was a lyric from that Quiet Riot song. Not “Metal Health”—the other one. “But enough about me. I’m here to learn about you, Carter. To start with—why did an alien infiltrator just cross the universe to visit you in your office?”

  At this, Manda fixed me with a look of unbridled awe, which was most welcome. No way was I going to admit that I’d been mistaken for a Backstreet Boy moonlighting as a copyright lawyer.

  I was thinking up a response when the orb’s form started distorting madly. First it stretched violently into a tall, narrow oval. Then it jerked into a short, wide oval. Then it smeared into an S shape, then an arch. As it shifted forms, it cycled through colors—blues, oranges, yellows, and countless others beyond the Crayola basics that I can name.

  Suddenly the silhouette of a cat appeared in the orb’s center. This was accompanied by an angry screeeeeeech, which came from right behind us. I spun around, and saw that Meowhaus was battling a waist-high, Tinkertoy-looking contraption just inside the bedroom door. Actually, “mugging” may be a better word. His foe was a sleek metal skeleton made of brushed steel, with a giant purple sphere at its base. It almost looked like a Dyson vacuum cleaner—only it had spindly arms and wiry hands. It was clutching a small, glimmering object that Meowhaus was clawing for. The object fell after a brief struggle. As it hit the ground, an explosive crack sounded from the orb in the living room. At that, the orb jerked upward—then it shrank, until it looked like a harmless, shriveled disco ball hanging from the ceiling.

  “Stupid cat!” High-pitched and nasal, the vacuum cleaner sounded like a cartoon rabbit with asthmatic lungs. He retreated deeper into the bedroom, rubbing one wiry hand with his other wiry hand. Meowhaus ignored him, utterly transfixed by the strange, alien lump on the floor. As the glowing object cycled through colors in perfect sync with the shifting colors of the shrunken orb, he batted at it repeatedly. Each time, I could see a little silhouette of a paw flash through the orb’s center. So the lump was a projector of some sort. And Manda’s new cat had a violent weakness for shiny things.

  Seeing that Manda was taking all this in with the thunderstruck gaze of a geek on the holodeck, I turned to the vacuum cleaner and pointed theatrically at the lump. “Tell me about your little toy,” I commanded, showing off a bit.

  “It’s a stereopticon,” he answered in that wheezing squeal. “It makes projections.”

  “So it projected that … globe thing? How?”

  “Self-organizing light. It bounces in a way that forms solid-looking images before the eyes of every conscious being in the room.”

  “I assume it also does something similar with sound?” I asked, starting to miss the orb’s orotund boom. The vacuum cleaner’s squawk really savaged the ears.

  “Clearly.”

  “That aside, breaking and entering is a serious crime,” I said, suddenly very harsh. This guy seemed to fluster easily, and I wanted him back on the defensive.

  “But I didn’t break anything,” he wheezed. “I came in through a Wrinkle.”

  Wrinkle. Carly and Frampton had used that word in discussing their transit to a distant star. “Whether you slip in through a Wrinkle, or barge in with a bulldozer, it’s still breaking and entering. Not to mention—” I groped for a more serious charge, but criminal law isn’t my thing. “Aggravated attempted ambushing.”

  “But I didn’t even mean to lay eyes on you,” he whined, and started pacing—or something like that. He’d ro
ll a few feet in one direction, do a hundred-eighty-degree pivot, then roll back. “My boss sent me here a couple hours ago, and a Wrinkle’s scheduled to pull me out in ten minutes. I honestly didn’t think you’d be back this quickly!”

  “Oh please. That orb of yours was clearly designed to give us heart attacks.”

  Our visitor started pacing faster. “Was not! That was just a stupid animation that came with the stupid stereopticon when it was assigned to me. It’s a harmless cartoon! And I wouldn’t even have projected it at you if that stupid cat hadn’t assaulted me before my Wrinkle took me away!”

  I turned to Manda. “Wrinkles are … kind of like teleporting.” Might as well start the explanations somewhere.

  “Riiiight,” she said softly, still struggling to process everything without going into shock.

  I turned back to the vacuum cleaner. “So where did you Wrinkle over from?”

  “Somewhere … local.”

  “Well, you better cough up more detail than that, or you’ll be spending the night in the local jail,” I bluffed gruffly. “And trust me—the inmates there will make short work of a little plastic vacuum cleaner like you.”

  “Goddammit, I’m not a stupid vacuum cleaner,” he shrieked indignantly. “And I’m certainly not made of plastic. I’m made of metal. Heavy metal. The heaviest metal—in all of the cosmos!”

  “Seriously?” That actually sounded kind of cool.

  “Yes. That’s why they call me … Özzÿ.”

  “Wa-wait,” Manda said. After all the organic chemistry she suffered through in college, she couldn’t let that one go by, however freaked out she was. “You’re saying that your metal can form into … organic life?”

  “Yes. It’s a superheavy element that your scientists haven’t encountered yet,” Özzÿ squawked. “You’d probably call it something stupid like unseptiquadrium.1 But we call it metallicam. Because it’s the heaviest metal that can possibly exist in this universe.”

  Manda looked at him blankly.

  “Look,” I told her. “I’ve got a lot to explain to you. But the CliffsNotes are that these guys really like human music.” There was a pause. Then—

  “Wait,” she said. “Metallicam?”

  I nodded.

  “As in—’Metallica’?”

  “Yep.”

  “As in … the band?”

  “I was disappointed, too,” Özzÿ said, making a shrugging gesture. “I was hoping for ironmaidium. But back when we renamed it, the votes were with Lars and the boys.”

  “And what other … superheavy metals do you have?” she asked, clearly more stunned than ever.

  “Well, there’s vanhelium, which is tough as steel but has a negative mass that lets it float heavy objects. Defleppimite, which is used in prosthetic limbs. And of course, slayerium, which is the most energetic element in all of creation. And then, let’s see, you’ve got your megadeathium, your ledzeppimite, then there’s anvilium, sabbathide …” As he went through this list, Özzÿ’s voice seemed to be getting higher, raspier, and softer.

  “What about bonjovium?” I asked. I’ve always had a weakness for “You Give Love a Bad Name.”

  “Of course, it exists. But bonjovium is certainly not a heavy metal by our standards,” Özzÿ sniffed. “It has an atomic number of just fifty. You call it ‘tin.’ ”

  “Well, thanks for the science lesson,” I said, remembering that a Wrinkle would be pulling this guy out of our hands in a few minutes. “But it’s time for you to tell me what you’re doing on Earth.”

  “What would a metallicam creature do, anywhere, but handle metallicam?” This aphorism seemed like a bumbling attempt at being cagey. But it came out in such a harsh rasp that it was hard to interpret.

  “Hey, what’s up with your voice?” I asked.

  “My … atmosphere is quite … sssssimilar to yours,” Özzÿ hissed, now sounding almost woozy. “Except there’s a teeeeeny lit-tle trace of iodine in our air. And I seem to be more sssssensitive to its absence than expected. It’s making me—what did the bards say? Dazed and confused …”

  “Well, that Wrinkle of yours will have you out of here in a jiffy, so I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said, angling to keep him calm and milk his growing delirium for useful information. “Meanwhile, what were you saying about … handling metallicam? On Earth?”

  “I’m sorry,” Özzÿ slurred. “Must not say anything about … canceling our debts to humanity.”

  “What debts to humanity?” I said slowly and succinctly, hoping he wasn’t about to clam up. I wondered if Google had any thoughts on how to waterboard a vacuum cleaner.

  “Ssssso sssssorry. Feels like … going off the rails. On the crazy train …”

  I looked at Manda. “I think we’re losing him.”

  The need for action yanked her out of her daze. “He needs to inhale iodine,” she said, dashing into my eensy kitchen. “So let’s burn up some fish, fast! Do you have any?”

  That threw me. “In my kitchen?” In my world, fish comes from restaurants.

  “Exit light, enter night,” Özzÿ rasped, drifting around my living room in a vague figure-eight pattern. “Off to never-never land …”

  Manda was already ransacking the refrigerator. “You seriously have nothing in here but beverages.”

  “I’m sure there’s some butter, too,” I said defensively, trying to keep myself between Özzÿ’s swaying form and my plasma TV.

  “On my way to the promised land,” Özzÿ gasped weakly, waving his spindly arms like a televangelist leading a pledge drive. “Na na na, highway to hell!”

  Manda was now rummaging through cabinets that hadn’t been opened since the day I moved in. “You literally have one pan!”

  “Seriously?” That was precisely one more than I thought I had.

  Özzÿ was now holding out a beseeching hand toward Meowhaus, like a dying sensei imparting life’s secret to a loyal apprentice. “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now,” he advised in a hoarse whisper.

  “Salt!” Manda was gazing in disbelief at another empty cupboard. “You simply must have salt. Where is it?”

  “The spice drawer,” I yelled, and with one small step I burst into the kitchen2 and yanked open the cache of ketchup, soy sauce, and mayonnaise containers that years of takeout had deposited in my home. Several packets of Burger King salt were among them.

  Manda splashed my lone pan with scalding tap water, set it on a gas burner (which amazed us both by working), and threw in the salt. “It’s iodized, so it may help. Get him over here so he can breathe it.”

  The heavily salted water boiled quickly as I rolled Özzÿ into the kitchen. Figuring he took in air like your basic vacuum cleaner, we stood to either side of him and lifted, positioning his base over the rising steam. This involved bracing ourselves against each other, because he was remarkably hefty.3 So we ended up cheek to cheek again. And once again, I felt a sudden, mad loyalty toward the creature who had brought this about.

  “Come on, Özzÿ,” I urged.

  Nothing happened. The water boiled. Manda spied an additional salt packet, and added it to the brew. But Özzÿ was silent.

  Just as I was losing hope, Manda held up a finger. “Did you hear that?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Shhhhhhhh.”

  Listening intently, we barely detected a faint whisper. I pointed at a small orifice at the top of Özzÿ’s handle. “It’s coming from there.” We lowered him to the floor and hovered our ears over it.

  Moments later we heard an even fainter whisper. It began with something indecipherable, followed by “over the water.”

  I was about to hoist Özzÿ over the boiling pot again, but Manda stopped me. “I think he’s trying to tell us we’re doing something wrong.” Then, “Özzÿ, can you hear me? If you can—say that again!”

  There were several seconds of silence. Then, as we both held our breath, we could barely make out “I’m not a goddamn vacuum cleaner!
That’s my ass you were putting over the water!”

  “Flip him over,” Manda shouted.

  “Right!”

  We lifted Özzÿ, turned him upside down, and held him over the boiling pan. Within moments, we could feel a tiny breeze trickling into the opening at the top of his handle. And within seconds, he was sucking in air like—well, like a vacuum cleaner; inhaling every puff of iodized water vapor rising from the pan.

  “Thank you,” he said in his normal atrocious, high-pitched wheeze about a minute later. We flipped him over and set him down on the kitchen floor.

  “You’re welcome,” I said as he settled onto his little rubber wheels. “And by the way, there’s no need for any secrets between us. Your boss told me everything.” I’d been wondering who his boss was since he first mentioned having one, and figured this lie might trick him into shedding some light on that.

  “He told you about humanity … destroying itself?”

  Manda’s eyes widened with horror. I just nodded at the now-familiar theme.

  “Yeah, we seem to have a knack for that,” I said obtusely, hoping to provoke a reaction.

  “A knack for it?” Özzÿ wheezed. “You mean you think you’re good at it? Please. We hacked every firewall on your stupid little Internet looking into this last week. And trust me—you suck at it!” This fact seemed to personally offend him. He started pacing again. “A devastating ice age should have started in the nineties. I can show you the data! But your stupid CO2 emissions staved it off completely,” he wheezed. “Then a tropical bacterium evolved that should have wiped you all out. Some clueless grad student sequenced its DNA, and parked the data on a genomics site that we’ve examined. It was a monster! But some idiot ranchers burned down its corner of the Amazon before it could infect anyone! And you think you’re good at destroying yourselves? Please.”