Glassing the Orgachine

by David Marusek

  The boys were finishing up when the blue and white Cessna 172 flew over. It made a couple of exploratory passes. The makeshift windsock, one of Poppy’s undershirts tied to a pole, demonstrated the absence of a breeze. When the plane finally touched down, it looked like there were two passengers.

  “Do you think you can distract your mother?” Poppy asked Adam. “Keep her and the kids inside the cottage and don’t let them know what’s going on. She’s not a big fan of Vera Tetlin.”

  Adam said, “Are you planning on giving them a tour, lord?”

  “Not me. Your brother will, and only the governor’s husband. Proverbs, I want you to show him around; let him see the cottage from outside the chamber only, and whatever you do, don’t let him run into Mama.”

  Adam said, “You don’t want us to tell Mama what’s going on, but what is going on, lord? Why are we letting the government into our keep? How do they even know about it?”

  “Think back, son: Governor Tetlin was the one the Lord told to give us the money to buy the mine from Beehymer in the first place. Then the Holy Spirit led me to meet her when we was in Wallis and invite her to shelter with us.”

  “You did? You invited the governor of Alaska to take shelter with us?”

  “Yes, her and her family. Only Bradd Tetlin gets a tour. I’ll keep the other man with me in the prayer cabin.”

  But Proverbs wasn’t happy with the plan. “How do you know that’s the governor’s husband?” he said. “How did you find out they were coming? What if these are Troopers come to arrest me?”

  “Does that look like a Trooper airplane? Relax, the Holy Spirit is in charge.”

  While that was technically true, it wasn’t the Holy Spirit who had given Poppy the heads-up about their unexpected visitors. It was NJB, who had managed to elude his demonic jailers and spend hours at a time visiting Poppy over the last few days. Poppy had begun to look forward to these visits, though he no longer called the murdered sodomite his friend.

  The pilot taxied to the top of the Prophecy airstrip and made a U-turn before shutting down the engine.

  “Bradd Tetlin,” the pilot said as he deplaned. He removed his glove and offered his hand to Poppy.

  Poppy had long imagined meeting this man, who was Joseph to Vera’s Mary. He had studied the colored snapshots of him printed in Vera’s bestselling memoir and judged him an enabler, maybe even a fixer, but not a rival.

  “I know who you are, Tetlin,” Poppy said, shaking his hand. “I been expecting you.”

  “Is that a fact?” Bradd gave Swayne a quizzical look. “Did my wife call you?”

  “Nobody called us,” Poppy said. “We don’t even have phone service out here. But that don’t stop us from keeping ourselves informed. You’re here to check out the mountain keep. Vera sent you.”

  THE PROPHECYS LED their visitors to the tailings slide beneath the gate where Poppy halted and said, “This is far enough.”

  Bradd looked around. “I thought you were taking us to the mine.”

  “You, yes. Him, no.” He gestured at Swayne.

  “Colonel Swayne is our military advisor. He needs to assess the defensive possibilities of your, uh, keep.”

  “No, he don’t. I never said we’d let anyone in but Vera and family. That’s you. The colonel can wait with me over there in my cabin. My boys will take you up to the keep.”

  There didn’t seem to be any profit in arguing, so Bradd followed Adam and Proverbs up the switchback trail to the mine while Poppy led Swayne to the prayer cabin. The militia leader was an affable young man who talked way too much for Poppy’s taste. But he did seem to be part of the governor’s inner circle, so Poppy let him gab on awhile as he warmed his backside next to the barrel stove. Reading between the lines, Poppy got the impression that Vera Tetlin was doing her best, within the confines of civil society, to prepare the state population for the troubles ahead, and he was more curious than ever whether Father God intended to join them together (especially now that Mama had lost her mind) in spiritual collaboration.

  About ninety minutes later, Proverbs returned to the prayer cabin with Bradd, and Poppy escorted the visitors back to the airstrip. As they said their good-byes, Poppy added an important caveat to his invitation:

  “When we throw the bolt, we’ll be locked up inside the mountain for seven long years. That means if you want in, you need to bring seven years worth of provisions for each of you. Not just food, but personal items too and medicine and fuel. No freeloaders will be admitted.”

  “No worries, Mr. Prophecy,” Bradd said. “If we come, we’ll bring along a whole warehouse of supplies.”

  BACK IN THE air, Bradd circled the compound several times so Swayne could glimpse the mine adit with its fortified gate and assess the vicinity for a paramilitary encampment.

  “Does that mean you think their mine is defensible?”

  “I do, actually. I wish you could have seen it yourself. They put a lot of work into making it livable too.”

  “The old coot doesn’t seem very inviting.”

  “I think we can let Vera deal with him.”

  Bradd described the mine and improvements and answered Swayne’s questions. The colonel didn’t seem sold, but as soon as they got clear of the mountain, Swayne’s phone chimed with messages.While he attended to his phone, Bradd landed the plane and taxied to the end of the airstrip. When he glanced at Swayne, the man looked positively spooked.

  “What?” Bradd said.

  “Maybe the governor knows more than she lets on.” He held up his phone for Bradd to see a NASA news release photo of a little tan planet.

  BASED ON INITIAL observations, NASA scientists calculated that Planet X would narrowly pass Earth without harmful consequences. Nevertheless, its appearance took the fizz out of the President’s second inaugural ceremony. Mr. Obama made no reference to it in his address, but that did not prevent overheated GOP partisans from blaming the rogue planet on his administration.

  Governor Tetlin had skipped Obama’s first inauguration back in 2009. She had boycotted her opponents’ swearing in, the patriotic songs and speechifying, the triumphant parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, the adoring, shoulder-to-shoulder masses. She avoided the inaugural ball coverage as well, the gowns, the shoes. She was having a beef with God at the time. Yes, it was a truly historic event celebrating the first African-American to take the Oval office, but it was supposed to have been her swearing in, her celebration, her (and the senator’s) special day. She had returned to Alaska angry and confused. Why had God opened the door to national office only to slam it in her face? Her crisis of faith almost caused her to quit her gubernatorial office halfway through her first term. But God let her know, with the miracle of the fisherman on Lake Lola, that He still had special plans for her.

  This time, Vera did watch the inauguration on the flat screen in her Wallis living room. She was joined by members of her preparedness task force, and she took pains to hide from them the petty glee she was experiencing in seeing how diminished her black nemesis seemed. The announcement of the strange planet, so soon after the bizarre and as yet unexplained Skyburn, had ruled the news cycle. Halfway through Obama’s inaugural address, what she called his “feel-good litany,” she asked the others in the room if they minded muting the sound so she could pray for the nation. No one objected, and they joined hands with her in prayer.

  Then the unthinkable happened, something so incredible that it could only be an instantaneous answer to her prayer. The network actually preempted the President’s inaugural address for a news bulletin from the Pentagon. And what news! Ongoing observations had caused NASA to revise its previous calculations: it was now certain beyond any doubt that Planet X would indeed strike the Earth.

  The news took the Earth’s collective breath away. Vera changed the channel to MSFOX where talking heads were already spinning breathless speculation into watertight fact. Half the screen was taken up by a shot of the rogue planet itself. In contrast to the earlier images
, the current ones came from the Hubble telescope and were clear, crisp, and close up.

  Planet X matched the Earth in size but possessed much less surface water and a thinner atmosphere. It appeared to be barren of vegetation. The polar regions glittered with ice caps. Long, sinuous cordilleras ran north and south and were interspersed with narrow inland seas. Near the equator the ground had a bluish-green tint but elsewhere appeared tan. The planet did not rotate, and on the visible side, at least, there were no cities or canals or other marks of civilization.

  On the screen beneath the planet a countdown clock appeared, and Vera gasped when she realized it was a doomsday clock counting down her life and the lives of everyone she knew: 45 days, 23 hours, 49 minutes. Good Lord God Father in Heaven, have mercy on us all.

  Vera killed the TV and looked at her advisors. They all seemed as struck by the news as she. “Major Brown,” she said, “what does the Air Force know about this Planet X?”

  The young man cleared his throat. “It appears to be real.”

  “Ya think?”

  “I mean to say that the most logical explanation is that it’s a hoax because, frankly, it’s impossible. Something of that size just doesn’t sneak up on you. We should have seen it coming for months, or even years. And it’s traveling pretty fast too, faster than experts say a natural object should. The fact that it still has an atmosphere suggests that it hasn’t been traveling so fast for very long. But it’s really there; multiple observations from multiple sources confirm it.”

  The young officer, having pressed his point, moved on.

  “Furthermore, we should now consider it to be a missile intended to destroy us. There has been some disagreement on this point as long as it was calculated to miss us. But now, well, the odds of an unknown planet suddenly appearing in our solar system going at exactly that speed and vector cannot be an accident. Add to that the still-unexplained Skyburn and we believe we are presently under attack by forces of great power. Who, why, how — all unknown.”

  “Thank you,” Vera said, “for such a concise assessment.” She paused a beat and continued, “We may not know the answer to who, why, or how, but I do know one thing for sure: our disaster preparations are more important now than ever, and we will redouble our efforts.”

  Army liaison Major Hidalgo spoke up. “But, Governor, I think what the major is telling us is that this is a planet killer. If it hits us, no one and nothing will survive. Therefore, preparations are pointless. More important is maintaining civil order through Zero Hour.”

  “I’m aware of that, Major. That’s exactly what the Antichrist wants us to believe.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “We’re under attack by an ‘impossible’ force, to use Major Brown’s word, that will utterly destroy the Earth, right? I encourage everyone here to bone up on Revelation. Nothing of this sort is recorded in the Bible. Therefore, it’s a hoax. A diabolically clever and scary one, I’ll admit, but one we can’t allow to sap our resolve or distract us from our goal. Let others flop around in fear and hopelessness. We will continue to prepare our people to fight and survive.”

  The Man in the High Cabin

  MH1 1.0

  JACE LEAPED OUT of bed and threw on some clothes. He tended the wood stove and made a pot of strong coffee. Then he reached to the top shelf for the cookie jar in which he kept his stash. The baggie of Mercury 4 was almost empty, down to a single bud, enough for a single joint. Jace hadn’t gotten high in weeks because he was saving his last bud for a special occasion. What better occasion was there on a dreary January morning than deciding the fate of humankind? He rolled a fat one and fired it up.

  All it took were two puffs. He laughed out loud. Why hadn’t he thought of this sooner and saved himself all the drama?

  Good weed endowed Jace with a second “augmented” consciousness on top of his everyday one. A consciousness that made surprising connections between unrelated things that seemed so obvious that he wondered why his straight mind never saw them coming. Sometimes getting high was like taking the express elevator to the penthouse suite of enlightenment.

  And the truth that Jace now saw, one so blindingly simple he knocked himself on the head, was that those three thousand movers and shakers, the current crop of Masters of the Universe, as a group, would be lucky to be transformed into strivers.

  Why?

  Because it was the only chance they would ever get to redeem themselves.

  Redeem themselves from what?

  From the disgrace of screwing up their job.

  Our masters had one job, one lousy responsibility to justify their privileged existence, and that was to keep the milk flowing so they could skim the cream off its top. To keep the sheep fat and happy for fleecing. To keep the goose content that laid the golden eggs.

  But could the rich bastards do that? No, they could not. They screwed the goose. They ran scams and schemes that crashed the global economy only four years ago. Whether through avarice or negligence, they wiped out trillions of dollars of ordinary people’s assets, costing them their jobs, homes, savings, retirement, and dreams.

  And then, after bringing the world to its knees, did they own up to their blunder and resolve to make the world whole again? No, they did not. Did they even acknowledge their culpability? Just the opposite, they doubled down. They mortgaged the prosperity of future generations in order to bail themselves and their cronies out of the hole they themselves had dug. They shafted us and generations to come.

  And now, with the planet itself on the line, these same grifters had the chance to make things right, to lay down their rarified lives in service to humankind.

  These three thousand kings and queens had the priceless opportunity for total redemption, and I, Jace Kuliak, have the authority and burden to make it so.

  Jace took a final puff before tamping out the joint and calling Found One.

  You’ve made a decision. What is it?

  “Redeem the three thousand.”

  Does that mean turn them into strivers?

  “Exactly. Make them make us proud. Final answer.”

  Klaatu Barada Nikto

  KB1 1.0

  WITH THE DECISION made and verdict delivered, the weight of the world fell from Jace’s shoulders and he was able to return to his normal life of minding his own business. Not only that, it was still before noon, and he was still pretty high, which was cool. He returned the unused portion of the inspirational joint to the cookie jar (with the few dozen hermie seeds he’d collected) for later.

  A small airplane flew over his house on its way to the airstrip.

  “Was that just the mail plane?”

  Yes, it was.

  Tuesday already. He’d lost track of time.

  Feeling pretty footloose, Jace drifted through town to the Sulzer house. He paused at the corner of his street to glance up Main Street toward Barbara Jean’s house. He’d been so distracted deciding the fate of humankind that he was surprised a week had passed since that disastrous brunch. Maybe it was time to admit he was wrong about her and try to move on.

  The usual snowmobiles and ATVs were parked in the Sulzer yard, which meant that the weekly Mail Day gathering must be in full swing. Jace wasn’t in the mood for blueberry goo and small talk, so he decided to skip it and just pick up his mail.

  Inside the breezeway, a hand-lettered sign was tacked next to the house entry door:

  DONT NOCK

  LOOK BELOW

  ⬇︎

  On the floor beneath the arrow sat a large postage bin with a second sign:

  GENERAL DELIVERY

  McHARDY AK 99562

  Ordinarily, Ginny only put the general delivery bin out in the summer during tourist season, not in the middle of winter, and Jace was surprised to see so many letters and packages in January from addresses all over the country.

  Jace found his own mail in its usual spot on the potting bench. A few belated Christmas cards and a small package. He figured the package must be from his sist
er, but the return address said it came from a compounding pharmacy in Seattle, Zombion Pharmaceuticals, LLC. He hadn’t ordered anything from a pharmacy. The package didn’t rattle when he shook it.

  On his way home, Jace encountered two men on foot, both of them strangers. He nodded a greeting as he passed, and one of them stopped to ask for directions.

  “Hello, friend,” the man said with a slight drawl. “Mind telling us which way to the post office?” They were wearing new-looking parkas and boots. Apparently, the Japanese aurora-watchers weren’t the only off-season tourists this year.

  “Sure. We don’t have an official post office, but the Sulzer family over there lay out the mail in their screened porch.” He pointed to the house. “You all part of a tour group or something?”

  The man shook his head. “Nah, just visiting.”

  “Well, welcome to the park. Hope you have a great visit.”

  The second man sneered. “What are you, the welcoming committee?”

  Without thinking, Jace had fallen into his summertime role as friendly ranger/greeter. But he was off-contract now and out of uniform and didn’t give a flying fuck what kind of visit these two guys were having.

  “Have a lousy visit then. Whatever.”

  Walking down Lucky Strike Lane, Jace spied two figures standing on his porch, one of them a dog. He picked up his pace, and when he got close enough he recognized Deut.

  “Hello, hello,” he called and waved. Deut waved back, but the dog only watched him approach with a wary eye.

  “Is this Crissy Lou?” Jace said. “Hello, dog. How’s it going?” He stooped in front of the German shepherd and offered his hand for her to sniff. She sniffed, but her tail made not a single wag. She had a scabbed-over gash wound on her nose.