Glassing the Orgachine

by David Marusek

  There were no commercial flights the day after the Skyburn, or the next, as the FAA studied the effects of the strange aurora on the safety of the air travel system. Despite the early flurry of rumors, it appeared that no aircraft had been affected anywhere in the world, except for a missing Malaysia Air jet in the Pacific that disappeared from radar and was presumed lost at sea.

  Eventually, Vera found herself in the boarding lounge of Ted Stevens International. It was snowing quite heavily in Anchorage, and her flight might be cancelled, further delaying the project. She watched the plows clearing the runways outside the concourse windows. Luggage carts zipped by this way and that like speedy caterpillars. She had found a little corner window enclave away from the other passengers who otherwise would mob her with friendliness and leave her no headspace to simply think.

  Her plane arrived at the gate, deplaned, was cleaned and refueled. It wouldn’t be long before they announced its boarding. She could see the rear of the plane from where she sat, its tail adorned with the smiling face of Joe Juneau.

  Actually, Joe Juneau was an earlier logo that Alaska Airlines used to adorn the tails of their aircraft when she was growing up in the 1960s. It depicted the face of a bearded gold miner and his pick. He was replaced by an Eskimo face in the 1970s, but the old name had stuck.

  Today’s Joe was a merry-looking Native fellow with a welcoming smile and a round face framed in a dark fur ruff and bright auroral halos. She’d always liked that logo, and today was no — Wait! As she looked at Joe Juneau she got a case of goosebumps. There was something about him that reminded her of someone, but who? That craggy face, that beard. She’d recently met a man with an outrageous proposition for her, a white-bearded old sourdough who . . . Where was this? In the Frozen Desserts aisle at Fred Meyer. She was holding a carton of chocolate gelato that was melting in her hands. He wanted to talk to her. She’d thought he was a bit of a kook, but she respectfully listened to him as she did to everyone. He had a funny, made-up name. Mr. Prophet. He claimed to have a mountain fortress — his NORAD of the North — near McHardy where he and his family planned to wait out the Tribulation, and he said he’d made a place there for her and her family. She’d thanked him and went on about her business.

  In the terminal, the boarding announcement was made and passengers began to line up, but she hung back and called Bradd.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Listen, there’s something I need you to look into.”

  TS4 1.0

  CINDY LAWTHER CAME into Rory’s room and gently shook him awake.

  “Whaa?” he said in sleepy alarm.

  “Wake up, dear, and come outside. You should see this.”

  “See what?”

  “The sky.”

  “What about the sky?”

  Cindy went to the window and opened the blinds. A flood of swirling, psychedelic colors lit the room.

  HIS PARENTS WERE standing in the driveway peering up at the sky when Rory joined them. “What is it?” he said. Neither of his parents had the faintest idea. The sky was absolutely crazy. All up and down the street their neighbors stood in yards and on the street and watched. They watched until everything turned orange and faded to black.

  The Lawthers returned to the warmth of their living room to look for news bulletins on TV. But their rooftop dish failed to lock onto a signal. Even the local Anchorage stations were off the air. The internet was up, though it was very slow, and they browsed for some explanation of what they had just witnessed.

  All they could find was wild speculation. Whatever the strange phenomena was, the whole world had seen it. Much of the planet’s satellite-based telecommunication was disrupted. President Obama had put the nation’s defenses on high alert.

  Rory said, “I tried to call Ginger, but I got sent to voicemail, and her mailbox is full.”

  His mom said, “But you already knew they don’t have service out there.”

  “Isn’t that typical?” his dad said. “Obama spends five million dollars of stimulus money extending service out there for a population of no more than a hundred survivalists and end-of-the-roaders. At fifty thousand dollars per head, you’d think at least you’d get a few bars on your phone.”

  “Easy, dear,” Cindy said. “You’ve already used up your Obama quotient for the month.”

  Rory waited for his parents to finish and said, “I called because I got a text from her.”

  His parents’ heads bobbled, and his dad said, “And you’re only telling us this now?”

  “I didn’t know I had it until just now, so I’m telling you now. All right?”

  His mom said, “What does your sister say?”

  “She texted the sky show was AMAZING, in all caps, and that everything’s good out there and she loves us and still wants to stay there.”

  Cindy said, “She must have been in McHardy when it happened.”

  Rex said, “Maybe she’s still there. Try calling her.”

  “I told you — I just did!”

  “Then text her. Maybe she gets text.”

  Rory looked at his mom who smiled. “It wouldn’t hurt to try again, Rory.”

  So Rory called again and texted.

  The text went through, but the phone got the mailbox full recording.

  “I don’t like it,” Rex said. “I think we should drive out there and pick her up.”

  TS5 1.0

  ADAM SPENT A couple of hours he didn’t have to spare searching the tunnels for Proverbs. No one had seen their brother for two days. Poppy had refused to loan Proverbs the keys to the Bearcat, but when Proverbs repaired the damage that Ginger (or her kidnappers) had done to its wiring, he apparently installed a secret ignition switch to bypass the lock. Then he drove all over the countryside searching for his lost love. Now the Bearcat was parked in its usual spot, but Proverbs was nowhere to be found.

  When Adam had searched the various chambers of the keep where Proverbs was most likely to be, he began searching the least likely places, and there he was, in the powder room.

  Proverbs had recreated the prison cell, complete with cot, honey bucket, and camp heater. When Adam shined a light in, he found his brother lying on the cot.

  “What are you doing?” Adam said.

  “What’s it look like?”

  “It looks like slacking off to me.”

  “Then you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  His brother’s tone told Adam to slow down and start over. Proverbs had been through a lot lately, from murdering three men to losing his fiancée. It occurred to Adam that retreating to the powder room was the same as when he had to go out to his cabin on Trapper’s Slough to be alone for a while. He was in a fragile state and was only trying to get himself together without lashing out at the family.

  “All right,” Adam said. “We’ll say a special prayer for you tonight, and I’ll have the girls bring you a dinner tray.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  Before he left, Adam had an idea. “Listen, you’re way behind on taking turns at the gate. It puts an unfair burden on the younger boys. If you want to be alone, why don’t you take over the night shift from now on. You can sleep out there without anyone bothering you as easily as here. What do you say?”

  “All right.”

  PROVERBS STOOD AT the sniper port and drew sharp breaths of pure, frigid air. He’d taken an extra Prednisone tab with dinner and — surprise, surprise — it seemed to be working. Not only was his migraine dissipating, he could feel a blissful wave of drowsiness settling over his brain — he would likely get some sleep tonight! Praise Him. Praise His holy name.

  After midnight, grateful, even a little bit excited, Proverbs shut the sniper port door and sank into the soft folds of the sleeping pallet covers. And slept.

  Outside, the sky caught on fire.

  The Earth Question

  EQ1 1.0

  JACE STOOD IN the middle of Lucky Strike Lane under the maniac sky. He’d already been asleep in bed, b
ut light through the bedroom window had roused him. So this was the alien’s signal flare for summoning roadside assistance. Hard not to be impressed.

  When the sky turned orange and began to fade, he started walking toward Main Street to see if anyone else in town was outdoors watching. His phone chimed a text message:

  Visit this one ASAP

  Really? Right this minute? Jace was quite wiped out by the adventures of the last few days, but if he was going to be crawling around the Prophecy property again, it was probably best to do so in the dead of night. So he sucked it up and went to the house to get ready.

  He filled a thermos with hot soup and tossed it, along with energy bars, extra flashlight and batteries, and all his usual walking-around survival gear into a rucksack. He strapped on his .357 Ruger under his parka and fueled up the snowmobile. Before leaving, he went to the shed to fetch the tool kit he’d assembled for knocking down a tulip. Jace no longer felt he needed proof of the alien’s presence. Tonight’s light show was proof enough that something weird was up with the sky. No doubt a crew from Homeland Security was already on its way to McHardy to interview or arrest him. So he didn’t actually need a tulip, but he thought he’d like to have one anyway. He’d earned it, no? He could hang it on the wall like a trophy.

  And if Turdboy complained, Hey, that’s Missing One’s intergalactic knowledge aggregator, he would reply, Really? That was Earth’s premier auroral research facility.

  Jace wasn’t saying he would actually knock down a tulip, only that he wanted to have the option available.

  AS IT TURNED out, he lugged the heavy bag of tools up the side of the mountain for nothing. Of the six, tall, unbreakable tulips on the ledge, only one remained. The others lay in a heap of shattered glass. One of the fallen tulip crowns was still intact, but when he picked it up, it poured through his fingers like sand.

  While Jace was wondering if he should try to take the sole remaining tulip, it keeled over on its own, fracturing into a million sparkling splinters.

  Jace brushed alien sand from his gloves. Crashing tulips — what did it mean?

  HERE HE SAT, his legs dangling over the black void of the ventilation shaft to an abandoned copper mine. Perhaps a timely recap was in order before taking the plunge.

  • Space aliens were real. And some of them were space rangers.

  • Human zombies were real too, albeit nothing like the Walking Dead. They could, in fact, pilot helicopters and handle sarcasm.

  • Dogs could communicate with aliens telepathically, and through them with humans.

  What was he missing? Oh, yeah . . .

  • Deut hated his guts.

  When Jace climbed to the bottom of the shaft, he shined his light through the gap into the connecting shaft, but Turdboy was not there.

  “The hell,” he said. “ASAP means ASAP.” He checked his phone in case he had missed a text message before leaving home. Nope, nothing. He noticed a scrap of paper lying on the rocks at the opening of the gap. Thinking it might be an old-fashioned handwritten note, he picket it up and examined both sides. Nope. Nope. It looked like it had been torn from a perforated notebook, and he tossed it away. As he settled himself in the narrow space to wait, the alien spoke, so close he jumped.

  This one is here.

  But though Jace twisted his neck all around to shine his headlamp on it, the alien was nowhere in sight.

  “Where?”

  This one is turning on the lights. Don’t be alarmed.

  The scrap of paper at his feet began to glow with a bluish radiance that grew more and more intense until it illuminated the entire shaft with what seemed like natural daylight. It was so bright that Jace had to squint until his eyes adjusted.

  “Over here.”

  When Jace turned, he was stunned to see a whole new tunnel entrance, many times the diameter of his ventilation shaft, where a moment ago there was nothing but rock wall. And not three feet (1 m) inside the tunnel stood the alien creature.

  “Whoa,” Jace said. “How’d you do that?”

  “What you see is a projection, like a hologram.” Missing One held out its hand. “Try to touch this one.”

  Missing One’s hand seemed so close to Jace that he only needed to reach out to touch it. But when he did, all he encountered was limestone.

  “This one is in a forgotten tunnel deep in the mine where its host family is unable to harass it.”

  “Uh-huh. I see. Good.”

  The two life forms took a moment to examine each other in the bright light. The little non-terrestrial looked different, better. Its head was still enlarged and elongated but no longer brown and wrinkly.

  It wore not a stitch of clothing. Nor did it seem to have anything in particular needing to be covered. It was built along the same plan as humans: a head on a neck on top of a torso with two arms and two legs. Between its legs was no dongle or flap or slit of any kind. No breasts or nipples or belly button. Jace couldn’t tell from his vantage point if it had a tail or anus. There was no body hair anywhere, just smooth, freckled skin, plumped up like a sausage. Its fingers and toes resembled breakfast pork links, only greenish.

  The alien’s face had a small, thin-lipped mouth, chubby cheeks; a tiny up-swelling of a nose; and two enormous, bulging eyes that peered at Jace without blinking.

  “Is this your actual size?” Jace said. That is, about three feet (1 m) tall.

  “Yes.”

  There was one visible blemish, a puckered scar on its left shoulder, presumably where the Prophecys had wounded it. But even this looked to be mending well.

  “I must say, you look . . . healthier than before.”

  “If that is true, then this one has you (and Uzzie) to thank. In fact, allow this one to express its gratitude. Thank you, thank you, brave ranger, for your assistance and trust. You had this one worried for a while there, but you came through in the end. Bravo. You have well earned a boon for your people. This one awaits your choice, but first, there is a much more urgent matter to discuss and little time to discuss it.”

  “You’re welcome,” Jace said, “but first tell me, did your flare work? Is roadside assistance on its way? No, before that, tell me how many people got hurt at HAARP — or died. Dr. Yankovich and his science crew. How many killed? How many injured?”

  “No one killed or injured. Several were treated for smoke inhalation at the scene but were released.”

  “How many of them are now strivers?”

  “None. Missing One has made you a promise.”

  “Good. I don’t mean to insult you; I just had to be sure.”

  “This one understands. Unfortunately, the HAARP facility was severely damaged. Due to Dr. Yankovich’s unnecessary and overly aggressive suppression efforts, the power plant and Operations Building suffered total incineration. The flare was using geothermal energy by that point and no longer required power from the generators. Most of the thirty transmitters failed by the end of it, either exploding or burning.”

  “The place was totaled?”

  “A smoking ruin. The boon you choose will be able to more than compensate for the loss. As to whether or not roadside assistance saw the flare, that’s still unknown, but the signal this one created did achieve threshold resonance, power, and duration, so a positive outcome may be anticipated.”

  “Good, I guess,” Jace said. “So, what happens now? They come, you pay your tab, and then you all leave our solar system, right?”

  “Not exactly. That was what this one wants to discuss.”

  Jace didn’t like the sound of that. “Go on.”

  Missing One sat down on a bit of rocky debris and looked straight at Jace. “Because you have shown yourself to be open-minded, honest, and resourceful, this one concludes it wise to inform you of the threat that hangs over your planet.”

  Jace wanted to sit down too and found a suitable boulder on the bottom of the shaft.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “Don’t be alarmed, but — “

&nbs
p; “Stop saying don’t be alarmed! Just get on with it already.”

  “As you wish. An extra-solar force of unimaginable power has marked Earth for complete destruction.”

  “Say what?”

  “An extra-solar force of — “

  “Yes, yes, I heard you. What force?” A truly horrible prospect occurred to him. “Are you an advanced scout? Did I play into your hands and enable you to contact your invasion force after all?”

  “No, absolutely not. Put that out of your mind. The People have no interest in invading Earth.”

  “Then what?”

  “The hostile force in question is known to this one, but few other details. However, this is not the time or place for a full briefing. Return home and this one will speak with you tomorrow.”

  “You could have told me this while I was at home. Why have me come all the way out here to hear it?”

  “In order to give you a communication kit to facilitate cooperation. Your telephone system is a little too primitive to be of much use.”

  “There have been a lot of outages lately, but it seems to be working now, better than ever, in fact.”

  “Thanks to this one, both for the outages and the improvement. Still, your system is inadequate.”

  “Okay, where is this kit?”

  Missing One pointed to the dazzling scrap of paper lying in the debris. “You have actually already picked it up and discarded it. This one has remembered how to make one of these, and it made it for you. Take it now and return home. Contact this one when you’re ready to talk.”