by Jack Colrain
“Well, you do seem a little old for walking door-to-door.”
“Truth to tell, I retired ten years ago, but with the world the way it is, and the younger guys all registered for the draft lottery, coming back seemed like doing my bit.”
“For our country,” Daniel acknowledged, hoping he’d have felt the same as this man standing in front of him if he’d been the same age.
“For people, son. Country’s just an accident of birth.” He handed over a form on a clipboard. “Anyway, here’s the form for re-registering. As I understand it, they’ll all go into a database of contacts for those eligible for the draft lottery.”
Daniel nodded as he filled it in. He wasn’t sure whether he should be eager or whether he should lie to get out of it, and in the end, like most people probably did, he completed it in a sort of bureaucratic daze, the way people filled in any paperwork from officialdom. When he was done, the USPS guy signed to show that he had witnessed Daniel fill in the form, face to face. Daniel could only make out the surname, Spinney.
“It’s gonna be different this time, I think,” Spinney said. “When I was drafted back in ’72 for ‘Nam, the lottery was for all men between eighteen and twenty-five.” He hefted his delivery bag “I daresay women will do fine, but forty-five’s no age to try to get through a bootcamp. They’ll probably kill half their inductees with heart attacks and strokes, just trying to get them fit enough to march in line, if they pick people that old.”
“‘Nam? The Vietnam War?” Daniel asked. Spinney nodded. “If there’s going to be a war this time, I don’t see how we’re going to win if we can’t even touch their ship, or that... that Death Star or whatever the hell it is they’ve got up there.”
“Win?” Spinney echoed. “What’s winning, kid?”
“Getting rid of the threat. Getting our lives back to normal—”
“Bringing back all the folks they ghosted in Houston, Sydney, Shenzhen...? Seventeen million non-winners there, even before they hit New Delhi and Islamabad last month.”
“So, what would you call winning?”
Spinney grunted, the action turning into a coughing fit. “Not losing.”
“Well, I guess they are opposite things—”
The man frowned at him. “No, son, they’re not. Not in this kind of war. Maybe if you start a war to steal some land or something, then getting it might be what you’d call winning, but a war just for life? Losing is dying; surviving isn’t the opposite of losing, just the absence of losing. Look at me; I didn’t get anything out of ‘Nam. I didn’t win anything, for all my good soldiering. But I didn’t die, either. I survived, the war ended, and I got out; that’s what counts.”
“Getting out alive.”
“For sure.” He sighed. “Getting out alive. Getting your buddies and loved ones back home alive, too. You lose a war, or the war ends. That’s it. I guess the best way to not lose it is to end it. By killing the other guy, if that’s what it takes. That’s how you end a fight.”
“You mean win a fight.”
“I mean end, without losing. And the longer it goes on, the more chance a GI has of losing.”
Three
New Haven, CT.
Daniel West’s weekday life for the past four years had been centered on his pleasant studio apartment in downtown New Haven, a block’s walk from the New Haven Green, the park that was the centerpiece of both the city and Yale University, where he had been studying. He had never felt pressured by his parents to follow any particular career path or study law; it had simply felt natural, and he enjoyed it. It felt like he was working towards something good and helpful.
And it felt like something his sister would have wanted for him. The one family photo he had in the apartment was of himself, his parents, and Elizabeth, set in a frame on the glass coffee table in front of his TV. It had been taken twenty years ago, when his parents had been a younger handsome couple, he himself had been six years old, and Elizabeth had been seven. She had only had one more birthday.
Classes had been suspended yet again, so Daniel’s afternoon was free, and he felt he would rather occupy himself than mope around wondering if his final semester would actually be completed while sitting and drinking alone. The apartment was feeling more like a waiting room these days than a home.
There were always the TV talk shows filled with arguments over whether the suspension of the Constitution was legal, and experts debating what the Mozari might look like or what their home environment might be like, but none of those appealed, either. He dressed in some nice casual gear and went out. There were some good food places on Chapel Street, across from Old Yale, where he could get something nicer for lunch than a TV dinner. Something red to go with it, maybe, or something brunette.
The Green at the end of Chapel Street seemed a little subdued, though it was still fairly busy. It was definitely less thronging than it had been a couple of weeks before, though. Then, the whole of downtown had been packed with thousands of protesters demanding the restoration of the Constitution. Now, there were maybe a couple dozen of them drifting aimlessly around the Green.
Daniel recognized one of the cops watching them from near a line of cabs and strolled over to say hi. The cop was lean and long-legged, like he’d been built for a career as a marathon runner. He was all legs and arms, but with a swimmer’s powerful shoulders, too, which Daniel figured was handy when it came to handling suspects. His name was Jerome, but he’d gone by Jay ever since he’d been a classmate of Cody’s at the Academy—which was when Daniel had gotten to know him as one of Cody’s and his occasional drinking buddies. Daniel had always thought it was a sensible idea for someone who wanted to train as a federal attorney to get to know some of the law’s representatives on the streets. “Hi, Jay.”
“Hello, West. Not joining in with the protest today?”
Daniel shook his head. “Would there be a point?”
“In wanting to restore the Constitution? The actual foundation of our nation is pretty damn important, don’t you think?” Jay asked him.
“Absolutely. Without it, we’re living in... well, not the United States we all grew up in.”
“Well, then.”
“At least it seems to be quieter for you guys.”
Jay shrugged. “Yeah, I think what’s left are just the folks who feel a duty. Whether to their cause or just to virtue-signaling, I couldn’t tell you.” Jay shrugged. “But they’re harmless. They’re not protesting anybody in particular, so it’s just an afternoon stroll for them, and watching them pays my rent without requiring paperwork, so... I guess it works out in the end. If that’s a waste of time, I’m happy with it. Don’t tell them I said that, though. Maybe they’ll get lucky and get what everybody wants.”
“If nothing’s been done yet, nothing’s going to, and you know it isn’t.”
Jay looked surprised, and not a little disappointed. “You’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, then, West? Gone in for that head-down-and-don’t-be-noticed-by-the-Man thing?” But he could barely keep his face straight. “That works for me, too; the more, the merrier. Less paperwork in the end.”
Daniel laughed. “Nah! Look at those dudes, Jay; there are, what, about a couple dozen of them? Where are the reporters, and the TV news cameras?”
“Well, they’ll say there’s censorship—”
“I bet they will. It’s more reassuring that way, you know? That means somebody’s noticing them enough to do something about them. If there were cameras here but none of the footage airing, that’d suggest censorship. What this is is just... yesterday’s news. Don’t get me wrong; I think protesting can make a difference, and it’s happened before, but it only makes a difference when people are watching. When nobody’s watching... nobody’s going to notice or think about it.”
“That’s kind of a depressing view,” Jay said, archly.
“It should be; it’s a depressing fact. It’s just such a waste, isn’t it? Everybody here is pretty bright, so them wasting their time waving
cardboard around and marching in circles when nobody’s watching... Yeah, it is depressing. Disappointing, too, maybe.”
“You been drinking, West?”
“Not a drop.”
“Then it’s probably time you did. Loosen you up a bit.”
“Not a bad idea, man. Food first, though.” He nodded goodbye to Jay and headed across the Green towards a steakhouse that he knew had decent craft ale.
Daniel managed to catch the sweet spot in the afternoon, when the lunch crowd had mostly gone back to work and the first of the evening diners were still a couple hours off. That meant he got a table to himself for a juicy steak and good beer. Then, he started back along the edge of the Green, pausing to check out the latest issues of Time and Newsweek on one of the few remaining newsstands. The former was leading with a bleak white-on-black text cover: “UNITE AND LIVE, FIGHT AND DIE.” Daniel grimaced. He’d had enough of the Mozari’s communications style when those words had taken over the TV, net, and cellphones a couple of months before. They should have been hopeful words. Perhaps they would have been, too, if they hadn’t been followed by two meteor impacts on Islamabad and New Delhi a month ago. He’d gotten the message, though. Everybody had gotten the message when the capitals of two countries that decided to fight each other had been destroyed by the interlopers.
A curvaceous girl with cornrow hair, a turtleneck sweater that was tight in all the right places, and even tighter black jeans was looking at Newsweek, which had a more interesting cover, referencing an internet viral meme he’d started seeing recently; it was about some supposed other meteorites that had come in after the destruction of Houston and Shenzhen. “‘Who Has the Mozari Pods?’” he muttered unconsciously. “Well, whatever they are, I haven’t got them.” He wasn’t even sure they existed; the memes and the talk shows always quoted unnamed sources and anonymous radar technicians, while NASA and NORAD waved away such pieces as speculation.
He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud until a female voice beside him answered, “The Church.” Daniel turned, finding himself face-to-face with the girl with the cornrows, who looked to be a few years younger than himself.
“Church?” he echoed.
“The Church of the Mozari.” She held up one hand, which was clutching a bunch of folded leaflets bearing some kind of wannabe-esoteric symbol and a stylized ‘M’. “There are quite a few members around campus now.”
“What’s the Church of the Mozari?” Daniel asked, though he could probably have taken a good guess. New religions sprang up every year, and for most of his childhood, the documentary channels on TV had been filled with stuff about UFOs and aliens—especially alien gods.
“The path to happiness.”
“Don’t all religions call themselves that?”
“I guess so. But their gods are imaginary, right? Invisible sky creatures. The Mozari are definitely from the sky, but we can see them.” She noticed his poker face and smiled faintly. “Well, at least we can see their ship, right? Or could if we were in the southern hemisphere.”
“You’ve got me there,” Daniel agreed. “Though I dunno about the path to happiness.”
“You’ve seen the messages, right? They want us to unite. To train ourselves. To better ourselves.” She gave him a coquettish look. “In unison.”
When she turned, Daniel began to stroll alongside her, down the edge of the Green. “OK, I’m all for doing things in unison.”
“Then you’ve learned the first lesson of the Mozari: uniting. Worshiping the Mozari, and uniting, is the way to pursue happiness for humanity. They teach us that. At the First Church, I mean.”
Daniel resisted the urge to dismiss her bizarre claims; she was a redhead, after all, and he had kind of hoped that a pretty girl like her might appear and take his mind from its darker corners. He didn’t say that, though, lest she claim that her appearance was a miracle of the Mozari.
“The pursuit of happiness?” he repeated. “Wasn’t there a movie called that?”
“I don’t know, but there have been movies called pretty much everything, haven’t there?”
“Pretty much. If there was a movie by that name, I never saw it anyway. Just sounds kind of familiar.”
“Everybody wants to live happily ever after, so that’s why they make movies about it. And that’s why the Mozari came and stopped our wars. So people can live happily ever after.” Daniel wasn’t sure why he didn't point out the millions who certainly would not, thanks to the Mozari’s meteors. “That’s why,” she continued, “they’re training us—teaching us to have better lives.”
“I can’t say I’ve thought about happily-ever-after lately. But happy here-and-now is a start.”
“Of course, it is. Ever after is made up of lots of nows.”
“Here and now happiness is more about...” he searched for a suitable word. “Bliss.”
“Bliss?” she echoed. “Bliss is good.”
Daniel smiled. “Mm-hmm. The bliss of shared touch, intimacy... that warm glow of skin against skin, that lasts when two people blend and merge... or unite.”
She brushed her hand against his. “That sounds wonderful. Bliss is a good word. I think we can work with bliss.”
“Bliss is a good feeling, too; a healing feeling.” He winced at the unintended rhyme, but she ignored it, nodding enthusiastically. “Call it the first step towards happiness, and, yeah, I’d like to see you happy. I’d like to help you feel... bliss.”
“I think I’d like that. You seem like you like helping people.”
“It’s a vice of mine. Perhaps we should go somewhere a little less public?”
“Where did you have in mind?”
“My apartment’s not far.”
“Cool. I think you’re going to have a happy time there. And I think so are we.”
Daniel brushed her hip with his as they walked more closely, and his heart began to
speed up.
“So, afterwards,” she continued, “you’ll come back to the Church, and we can tell them how we’re happy. Tell them about our bliss and learn to spread that bliss with the Mozari. For the Mozari.”
“What?” That sounded weird… was he supposed to give a report on what they’d done in bed? What was that all about? They’d reached a crossing point on the street, and he paused there.
She glanced left and right, giving a slight nod in each direction. It seemed a weird way for her to acknowledge that she’d looked both ways before crossing the road, but that level of weird he could put up with for a couple hours of bliss. He started to step forward, then noticed that a guy to the left had stood up from a bench and started towards him. The guy was his age, looked like he worked out, and was wearing a turtleneck under a buttoned shirt even though it was a hot day. He had a smart, casual look that made the outfit look like some kind of office uniform, without actually being something you’d wear in the office.
Then he sensed movement to his right; another athletic guy in a turtleneck and buttoned-up shirt was strolling in from his right. Two guys in such similar outfits was undoubtedly suspicious, and he turned to hustle the girl along, only to see her smile and beckon to them. She hadn’t been checking traffic safety. He suddenly noted that above the pleasantly tight parts of her sweater, the neck was a turtleneck, and he doubted that the similar garments on the two guys were coincidental. Some line from Animal Planet came to him, about big cats hunting in groups where two or more would flank their prey before bringing it down.
Whether they were guarding her to keep guys away or to make sure that new recruits to their wacko religion signed up, Daniel couldn’t tell, but it killed his ardor for sure. “I changed my mind,” he told her bluntly, his smile vanishing as if it had never existed, and with that he started to walk away.
“But you wanted bliss,” she reminded him, hurrying along behind him.
“Yeah, the kind you get in bed, not the kind you get in Kool-Aid from aliens who nuke cities.”
“The Mozari only want to make us h
appy. You’ll see.” She darted round him, blocking his path. “You will see,” she repeated more firmly.
He sidestepped her, snapping, “No, they don’t, and I won’t.”
The delay had been long enough for one of the guys to grab at Daniel’s shoulder. “Come on,” the guy said, “she’ll show you a good time; it’s what the Mozari want.”
Daniel tensed, holding himself back from just punching the guy, and tried to stay polite. “Take your hand off me, or I’ll snap it off and keep it as a souvenir.” That was about as diplomatic as the guy made him feel.
“You know you’re interested in happiness, so why deny—”
Daniel’s patience could only stretch so far. He shook himself free from the guy’s grasp and shoved him aside so that he stumbled into a table, sending a couple’s coffee cups to the ground. The other guy threw a short jab to Daniel’s face, but it skipped off, stinging. Daniel didn’t know much about fighting, but he knew that the sooner he got these guys out of his face, the less he’d need to know about it. His hand bumped against a cafe’s chair, so he grabbed it and hit the guy with it. The chair was lightweight, but solid and an awkward shape, so it knocked the guy back. The second guy started grabbing at Daniel’s collar, and pulling. Daniel toppled over, pain flashing in his hip, and rolled in the hope of getting out of the way before the guy could get a kick in.
No kick came, though; instead, he heard a police siren wail once, and shouts. As he got to his feet, he saw the two guys and the girl running across the Green while a couple of people took camera phone pictures of the scene. No doubt, his landing on his ass would be all over the internet in an hour.
Two cops were there, one radioing in from the car. The other was Jay. “What happened here, West?” he asked.
“Some kind of... I dunno. This girl said she was from some kind of Church for the Mozari or something.” He spotted a fallen flyer and picked it up. “This bunch. I’ve never heard of them.”