“I see. But wait. What do you mean now?”
“Now that you are finally in my arms, and we don’t have to run circles around each other.”
“I didn’t notice you running any circles around me.”
“I’m just really good at it, dear.”
And then Fah’s memory returned, as if she remembered the details of one horrible dream, a dream that never happened!
Nyoko!
Her own death…!
And then…
… being drawn back to the light by two angels.
Nyoko and Daichi!
They did it!
They mastered the Mushin flow!
They saved her life!
It was such an emotional realization that Fah started wailing and crying, completely confusing Veronica, who blurted out: “What did I say?”
“It is not you!” sobbed Fah and hugged Veronica. “Nyoko is gone! She… she…” Fah could not put it into words. “She faded…”
***
After those last words, Fah typed “FADE TO BLACK”, a direction to fade out the scene of her feature screenplay. “Honey, I did it! I finished the scene!”
“Oh my god, congratulations, dear!” exclaimed Veronica and ran in from another room of their luxurious penthouse. “Should I open some chocolate wine?”
“Yeah, in a minute. Come over here, I want to read it to you.”
Some time passed, and the two were hugging each other, reminiscing over the crazy events of their past five years, how Fah had become a trendy best-selling fiction author and was now working on the screenplay adaptation of her smash hit about alien conspiracies and two young samurai finding their way to Mushin, in order to save their friend’s life.
“Honey, I think there is an Oscar waiting for you”.
“We shall see. Why do you think stories of aliens spying on us is so popular? Is it because humanity subconsciously suspects it?”
“I don’t know, dear. All I want to know is that they are not spying on us.”
Veronica and Fah for a moment looked out the window of their prestigious Bangkok apartment. If smog were to make its way to the 86th floor where they lived, they’d simply move. Now they had the means to do it. But so far, they had enjoyed a piece of the sky above the grey smog blanket.
Everything seemed blissful, except for the pesky little fly crawling on the window.
7
LOVESICK
YEAR 2325.
MONROVIA, LIBERIA
Ny sat in the living room, drowned in soft afternoon light. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes as she gripped a tiny flat object in her sweaty palm. A holo-recorder. Seventy-year-old Anika Borgess sat in front of Ny, quietly sobbing. She gave up on trying to compose herself while delivering the news of Otis’ destiny. Ninety-year-old Ny looked young for her age, but Anika barely looked forty. Citizens born on the Fourth Orbital Colony were a mystery to the rest of humanity as if they concluded an unholy alliance with the spirits of death.
“Fifty years…” Ny uttered and broke into tears. “Fifty years I carried imaginary conversations with the father of my child, trying to find out what went wrong! Why now?”
Anika looked Ny straight in the eyes and whispered: “I am so sorry…”
“Otis died not knowing he had a son. Derek has children of his own now. Five children. Otis would be so proud…”
“Five? Ny, what I am about to tell you is hard to believe. You must keep it in absolute secret.”
“What exactly are we talking about?”
“The file you are holding in your hands is a diary, Otis recorded it after his arrest. It was confiscated. I spent all these years trying to get it back. He made me promise that I would give it to you.”
“Is he dead?”
“Oh… I’m afraid it’s a long story. But first, let me ask you this. Does your son or any of his children experience recurring, vivid dreams?”
***
When Anika left, Ny remained sitting in the living room for hours, until the sun disappeared behind the horizon and the room sank into a velvet cloak of darkness. Outside the panoramic window of her living room was a view of the pier. The boardwalk was lined with street lights that illuminated the white foam thrown at the shore at regular intervals. Fifty years ago, Otis and Ny had enjoyed the same view of the Atlantic Ocean from Anglers restaurant, sharing the intimate bond of new lovers. Feelings of excitement, longing, and sexual desire had enveloped the two like a cloud. There, at Anglers, Ny had talked to Otis about his strange recurring tsunami dreams, but all she could think of was his warm, well-defined body, and his touch on her skin, the way his short beard felt on her cheek… and on other parts of her body.
She was dizzy, drunk on sensations, and irrationally self-absorbed.
She was lovesick.
Losing someone in the moment of greatest emotional attachment was the worst thing that could happen to a person. Love like that never goes away. Feelings never fade. In fact, memories become obsessive, all-consuming and unavoidable. They possess the grieving person for the rest of her life, like ghosts, like never-ending nightmares.
Fifty years later, Ny had become used to living with the feelings of all-consuming love, grief of a loss, and an obsessive desire to look at the faces of every man in the crowd, like a puppy that had lost its master. It was sickening, nauseating, and completely unavoidable. Even when Derek had been born, or Derek’s five children, which had given Ny the highest happiness she could possibly experience, these feelings of grief and loss had never gone away. They played over and over like parallel tracks of two different songs, one happy, and one devastatingly sad, and both created a distortion, muddying each track and turning them into noise.
Ny’s life had become a noise. That was why she almost preferred grief. That way she could focus on one track and savor each note, each sound, without any interference. And now she was about to listen to a real sound track that would finally play in harmony with her grief. And that was what scared her. She didn’t know how much grief her heart could take at a time.
Otis’ diary most definitely would overload the limits of grief Ny was used to.
But it was a risk she had to take.
In the quiet dark room, the ninety-year-old woman placed the recorder on the coffee table and pressed ‘play’.
DAY D+3
I made my living on space history and space mythology. In human ethos, they always come from space: big ships in low orbit, panic, laser beams evaporating crowds of mortified people. Sometimes we think of aliens taking human form: blended in, studying, spying, or even altering us to their secret agendas. The reality is more unbelievable than fiction. Three days ago, on October 21, 2275, the aliens emerged from the Atlantic Ocean on the Liberian coast. My name is Otis Solarin, and this is my eyewitness account of the First Contact.
I am writing these notes from jail, where the coast guard soldiers booked me for trying to save their sorry asses from starting an inter-galactic war, but, as the saying goes, there is no prophet in a homeland. In all honesty though, I can’t blame them for doing what they did. It is not every day that aliens walk out of the ocean. It has been three days since I was thrown in my cell, in such a rush they even forgot to search my belongings. My v-pad wristlet remains on me, powered by my body heat, so I will not run out of charge merely recording these notes… well... as long as I am alive. So, recording notes is all I can do. Actually, it is the only thing I can do to remain sane.
Over the past three days, I have not seen anyone outside my cell except for one SEMI-AI guard. He is just standing there, staring at me with his single blue eye planted in the middle of his faceless head. There is precisely zero chance of getting any information from this fella, thus I remain in complete oblivion as to what is going on outside. Are we conquered yet?
Are we at war?
Maybe the en
tire human civilization is already extinct, and I will never find out about it. This SEMI-AI will provide me with food for as long as it is in the storage, or someone overrides his current instructions. It is unheard of in 2275 to keep someone in detention for three days without any further investigation, and all I can think of is that I was simply forgotten. Something is definitely going on out there, something big enough to interfere with all the automated processes in place. Normally even before an offender reaches the jail, their file is already cross-referenced through various databases in terms of risk assessment. From then on, a quick decision is made to bring the file before the judge or not. Spending three days in a solitary sell is highly irregular, this is why I suspect something has gone terribly wrong.
DAY D+4
I am currently riding in the back of the presidential aircraft, filled with various military advisors. A lot has happened since my last entry. They took the video of the First Contact that I recorded, but they did not find my notes, because I accidentally started writing them in my history lecture file. I will continue writing my notes in this file, because it appears to be the only way I can keep a record of the events. And the events are stranger yet.
Yesterday I finally received my first visitors in jail: a military General and his bus boy. “Apologies, Dr. Solarin, for keeping you here for so long, but I am sure you can understand that what was going on a few days ago brought an end to any sort of ‘normal’ that the humanity was used to.”
“I imagine so…” I reluctantly agreed.
“I am a General so-and-so (I did not remember his name), and I am here to talk to you about the Voyager record.”
“What about it?”
“First, how did you realize that it was the record from the 20th century spacecraft?”
“Are you serious, General? I teach space history in the Robertsport University!” The General uncomfortably cleared his throat. “Now it is your turn to do some explaining. I was here for three days, and have no idea what the hell is going on! Are we invaded? Why did our soldiers initiate fire?”
“What makes you think they initiated fire?”
The General gave me a suspicious look as if laying a trap.
I bluffed. “I was there, remember?”
The General cleared his throat the second time. “I have to admit, that our soldier committed an irregularity…”
“Are you kidding? He panicked? That’s it?”
“The situation, as you could tell, was ambiguous,” said the General defensively.
“Is this how you are going to spin it for the public?” All of a sudden, I saw it all too clearly. “Of course, how can you admit that the biggest diplomatic fuck-up in human history was committed because some idiot soldier panicked…”
“Dr. Solarin, watch your language. Last time I checked, you are booked for assaulting a military person during a combat situation. If we decided to get creative with the books, you could go down for aiding the enemy.”
“This will not stand in any court!”
“In any civilian court it might not stand, Dr. Solarin. But the entire Earth Nations Federation is under a martial law. There are no civilian courts left.”
“So we are under attack, aren’t we?”
“Mmm… It is more complicated. First, you must sign this non-disclosure agreement.”
And he passed his iPad through the bars requesting my fingerprint.
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Like I said. Your choice is either working for us and sign this confidentiality agreement, or go back to the company of the SEMI-AI. I’m sure you two will spend many wonderful years together.”
“This is insane! I have rights!”
“Dr. Solarin, cut the crap already. Humanity entered an uncharted territory. Some collateral damage is bound to happen.”
Needless to say, I signed their damn confidentiality agreement.
According to it, I could not talk to the public about anything related to the First Contact or especially about the Voyager’s record. Apparently, they concealed this small detail from the public. Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to the other guy who recognized the record. I hope he was given an option to cooperate with the government, otherwise this is the darkest hour of humanity, and like the General said, some collateral damage is bound to happen.
“General… I need a favor. I was there with the woman.”
“Yenplu Obungo.”
“Where is she?”
“She was looking for you. She showed up in every government office she could think of.”
“She is alright then!”
“She is.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“I’ll think about it. In time, perhaps.”
“Can you at least carry a message for me?”
The general finally exhaled and slouched back.
“Dammit, Solarin. You are going to be a troublemaker, aren’t you?”
DAY D+5
Technically there was no invasion. What I have learned over the past two days was that the aliens simply disappeared after our soldier overreacted and opened fire against the direct orders of his superiors. In a sense, I understand why he opened the fire. When the music started playing and the box with the record emerged from the side of the alien ‘submarine’ craft, anyone could panic. Nobody ever was trained for anything like that. The most remarkable and classified piece of information I have learned was how exactly the First Contact ended. When the smoke and panic subsided, the box with the record was found on the beach, half-buried in the sand. It was immediately tested for potentially harmful substances, and once it was cleared, it was delivered to Rabat, the headquarters of the Royal Moroccan Fleet.
In one of the classified and isolated bunkers, where I am assigned to work as a civilian extraterrestrial consultant (stop raising your eyebrows, I’ll explain it later), this record is currently studied by a swarm of useless quasi-experts. The case seems to be rather simple: the clear container, in which the record was kept, was engraved in various human languages: HUMAN LOST, UNKARI FOUND. This simple statement led to a few profound conclusions, and despite how complicated my fellow top-secret researchers tried to make it, the case was simple:
First, our visitors are an alien race called Unkari.
Second, they know us very well, and we can be sure of it at least on the basis of them going to the extent of translating this phrase to 18 our languages.
Third, they basically responded to an invitation that our ancestors so carelessly extended 300 years ago. Finally, at least for now, they came with peaceful intentions and attempted to establish diplomatic relations, but, as it became obvious, the meaning was lost in translation. The military keeps a tight lid on the details, but the Pandora’s box was opened, because a few dozen scared-to-death tourists and Liberian locals remained at the scene and broadcasted the whole event live. After some deliberation, the military decided that it may be for the better, because fear is very useful for controlling huge populations.
Almost without any resistance, the civilian government of the Earth Prime, six Orbital Colonies, and several extra-terran colonies surrendered authority to martial law and delivered it in the hands of their military generals. I am isolated from the news and cannot communicate with anyone on the outside. Every day we receive a 15-minute briefing on what they think we need to know about the world in general, after which time we collectively consume gallons of coffee and mountains of club sandwiches, poke around the lab and mainly gossip, pretending we know what we are doing. Rumor has it that the military conducted the widest sweep of the ocean and extensive search of nearby space, and no trace of any aliens was found.
They vanished into thin air.
DAY D+18
No real news to date. The new-coming science folk told us the news from ‘the outside’: civilian unrest caused by the clashes between
the ‘Stop Them’ and ‘Welcome Them’ groups. Violent outbreaks occur all over the world. It appears that the activists are not well organized yet, and the military is trying to keep it this way, but the tension is growing with each passing day. The aliens vanished, and some believe that we ‘deeply offended them’, as the result we are deemed unworthy of further contact. I personally find it hard to believe, because if they studied us long enough to learn 18 of our languages, they probably already figured out that our species are knit from contradictions, and it didn’t stop them from contacting us in the first place.
I have a lingering suspicion that I keep to myself.
What if they predicted our course of action? What if they wanted us to somehow overreact? What if they played us like poker virgins? It’s a lot to assume from this little piece of information, but it is not too far stretched. I fear that they dragged us in a waiting game, and something tells me that they have plenty of time to spare.
DAY D+56
Some new people joined the research club lately. The rumor is that the Earth Nations President and the Congress leaders are in hiding. Something is not right and they are not telling us. It’s been far too long since I was forced to join this club, and since then we ran all possible tests on the record, to the point that there is absolutely nothing left to study on it. We positively verified its authenticity, and beyond that we could not do much. We are going nuts here. A curious fact was discovered by a former citizen of the Court Orbital who is the linguist for the Royal Moroccan Fleet. Apparently, one of those languages belongs to an old 15th century manuscript. Not sure what the fuss is about it. But once the news broke out, this gal, Anika, was isolated from our worthless sandwich-eating club. I haven’t seen her in days.
***
Ny’s red face with dried streams of tears was illuminated by the blue light from the holo-recorder, as she hugged the pillow listening to the voice of her lover, the voice she hadn’t heard in fifty years. The recording was interrupted by an incoming video call.
“Hi mom, how are you? I saw you were online, why get up so early?”
329 Years Awake Page 20