The Best of Subterranean

by William Schafer

  I was still trying to conjure a response to this when I heard Rod’s voice in my ear again. He wasn’t speaking directly to me this time, but what he said was so weird I decided that from then on I was just going to ignore everything except what was happening in front of me. Rod’s voice was on the edge of cracking.

  “What the fuck do you mean?” he was shouting, to someone, “Time is slowing down?”

  I assumed he was ragging out some technician and it was a geek wiresand-sockets thing. Whatever. Their problem, not mine. If they couldn’t get this idiot off the air I’d just have to plough on regardless. The show must go on, always. This was precisely what I got paid the big bucks for. Well, the bucks, anyway.

  I smiled at Camera Two, the one currently showing a red light. “Well, thank you caller, it’s been really great to hear your own special perspective on this. But just right now I want to ask Rusty here something.”

  I turned to my co-host, the first time I’d looked directly at him for maybe a minute or two. I should have checked back before. He’d got stressed, nervous, a big old dose of stage fright. The line of sweat droplets I’d seen forming earlier had decided to all go over the top at once, and fresh ranks were following in their wake—taking with them what appeared to be a thick layer of make-up. Every guest gets some pancake, to smooth out blotches and variations and make everyone look nice under the lights. This make-up was a lot thicker than that, though. And, I noticed, looked kind of like…latex.

  I stared at Rusty. Rusty looked back at me.

  I noticed then that his eyes were perhaps suspiciously blue, too, like they were contacts. And that where the make-up was running or melting or whatever it was doing, the skin underneath seemed to be both rough and warty and also a unusual color.

  “Rusty,” I said, suspiciously, “Are you green?”

  He turned away suddenly, tilting his head toward the speaker hanging above us, out of shot. He barked something angrily at it and now his voice didn’t sound like it had before. It didn’t sound like he was from the South. It sounded like a large bucket of nuts and bolts dropped down an old drain pipe. Then he made another sound, even louder. The force of the utterance caused a whole strip of skin to fall off one side of his face, revealing something that looked like a piece of steak that had being lying in a parking lot for a couple weeks.

  “Okay,” I said, into the silence. “So I’m guessing maybe you’re not from East Texas after all?”

  The voice from the speaker spoke once again.

  “No, he is not,” it said, “And his polish belongs to us. In reality it is a foodstuff. And we are running perilously low. It must be returned to us.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “Back up. Who’s “us”? Who am I talking to?”

  All around me cameramen and production assistants and random techs were frozen like statues. No-one was doing anything any more. They were just staring up at the speaker from which the voice was coming, and all looked like they’d never move again, like their minds so wanted to be somewhere else that their bodies had been left to their own devices for a while.

  But I’m different. Used to the challenges of going live. And a godamned professional, too.

  “We are from a planet you do not have a name for,” the voice said. “In our tongue it is called…” And he made a sound I’m not even going to try to describe. You wouldn’t want to hear it outside your house late at night, that’s for sure. “The being you call ‘Rusty’ is one of us. We are allowed to leave the ship every now and then on a strict rotation basis. But he has outstayed his leave. And he is selling what belongs to us alone.”

  “Wait there a second,” I said, holding my hand up. “Ship? What kind of ship?”

  “A scout ship.”

  “From where? Okay, right, the unpronounceable place.” I turned to the being that I had previously been introduced to as Rusty. “But what are you doing here?”

  “We have been experiencing some technical difficulties,” Rusty/it muttered, his voice now halfway between Southern drawl and hacking flucough. “Because the captain is a complete…”

  And then suddenly he/it vanished.

  The thing that had been Rusty was gone, leaving only a small pile of clothes, two vivid blue contact lenses and a head and beard wig, lying on the floor.

  And over the speaker came the sound of something very bad and physical and permanent happening.

  Suddenly there was movement amongst the assembled people in the studio. Some running, a little shrieking, a lot of men and women crying out. But it didn’t amount to much. I heard someone in back shouting that all the doors had mysteriously become locked. I glanced over at the window to the control booth once more and saw everyone in there was still standing still, watching me through the glass. I think Rod was still shouting things in my ear, too, but I wasn’t listening. He was never any help.

  “If you’re some kind of scout ship,” I said, talking direct to the disembodied voice again, “How come you can’t just phone home? Contact the mothership or whatever, tell them you’ve got issues and to send help?”

  There was a pause, then something that sounded a little like a human cough.

  “We’re not supposed to be here,” the voice said.

  “Why?”

  “Long story,” the voice said.

  “You got lost?”

  “No,” the voice said, irritably, as if I’d opened a huge great can of worms. “We were going to invade. But there was some last-minute discussion onboard over the ethics of the thing. Your world is protected, theoretically, and there was some…heated discussion. A small amount of equipment damage ensued. The remote control for the radial neo-transponder matrix got stepped on, and without it the ship doesn’t work.”

  “So you’re stuck?”

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  There was something like a sigh then, a sound that reverberated through the studio like a gust of wind wandering alone through the Grand Canyon, in the dead of night.

  “Eleven point five thousand of your years.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “That’s quite a layover.”

  “Yes. To be honest, the time’s beginning to drag.”

  “I’m not surprised. Holy cow. Where are you, exactly?”

  “In a mountain.”

  “In a…”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “And you’re completely alone here?”

  “There’s a crew down in Key West. But not our kind. They’re spindly. And assholes, actually. And they won’t help.”

  “Have you tried changing the batteries?”

  There was a pause. “Excuse me?”

  “Well,” I said, “this radial neo-transponder matrix widget or whatever sounds like the kind of thing that’s going to need some juice, right? Couldn’t it just be the batteries went flat? Have you checked?”

  There was a long, long pause. I mean—really, really long. Another cough. Then a further pause.

  Finally: “I don’t believe our technicians have explicitly evaluated that possibility, no.”

  “You think maybe they…should?”

  “Even if your suggestion has merit, the batteries of our kind are completely different from yours. Actually…do you say different from or different to?”

  “Whichever,” I said. “You’re the boss.”

  “They are both different from and different to your batteries. They are transquantum piso-structures one mile square in five dimensions. And not available here.”

  “Have you tried a universal remote?”

  “Universal remote?”

  “Sure,” I said. “In fact…wait here.”

  I ran out of the studio, back into the green room, and searched through the various piles of crap spread all over it. Spare jackets and ties, bits and pieces left from other random segments, free samples from previous Special hours.

  After a minute—thank god—I found what I was looking for and which I thought I’d remembered seeing a coupl
e nights before. Then I strode back out into the studio, already talking direct to camera as I hit the floor.

  “Do you suffer from ‘remote proliferation’?” I asked. “Is your den deluged under a pile of remotes, your sitting room swamped with switches and kitchen ka-flumped with controls, each one designed to work with only one piece of equipment? Do you have one for the television, one for the satellite, one for DVD, CD…maybe even one for the cat? You do, right? So do I. Or I did, that is, until I discovered the Relco Universal OmniRemote.”

  I triumphantly held up the remote I’d found. It caught one of the big lights overhead, and glittered like a chalice.

  “Truly, my friends, this is a leap forward in both technology and tidiness, a breakthrough in convenience and style. I’ll tell you right now—and regular viewers know I don’t say this often—I’ve even got one of these babies myself at home. I’d have two, but…”—and here I paused for a trademark winsome smile to camera: I was back in the zone—“…you’ll only need one, right?”

  “We don’t have a den,” said the voice over the speaker. “This is a space ship.”

  “I get that,” I said, “My point is you could maybe use one of these things. Reprogram it to work a radial neo-transponder monkey, or whatever it is you said.”

  “Hmm,” said the voice. “Hold on a minute.”

  There was a brief humming sound, followed by utter silence. Then the voice came back.

  “Put it in the middle of the floor.”

  “What?”

  “The device of which you speak. Put it in the middle of the floor with a minimum of two Trajelian Nippits of clear space all around it. That’s approximately a ‘yard,’ in your currency.”

  I walked out from behind the counter and placed the remote carefully in the middle of the floor. Then I stepped back, shooing the cameramen and production flunkies away, so there was a lot of space around it.

  “You got it,” I said. “Now what?”

  There was a sudden rushing sound, followed by a brief whirr. Both sounded as if they came from inside my own head. Then a simple and very loud ping.

  And the remote on the floor had disappeared.

  And everything was silent.

  There was not a sound in the studio. Everyone stood, waiting. It was as if the world outside had disappeared.

  Then, from over the speaker, came a noise that sounded like distant and somewhat relieved cheering.

  Everyone in the studio looked at each other.

  “Well, who knew,” said the rough, liquid voice, coming back. “So the monkey-people finally came up with something useful. Point to you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “So now you’re free to go?”

  “Our engines are coming up to speed as we speak. We are going to need that tin of ‘polish’ on the counter there, though. Leave no man behind. Or evidence, I mean.”

  I picked up the tin of Supa Shine and went around to put it in the cleared space in the floor. Wind/whirr/ping—and it was gone.

  “Remain right where you are,” the voice said.

  I stayed put, frozen in the middle of the floor.

  “You have been helpful, people of Earth. We are grateful. Now…we’re going to have to destroy you all.”

  “What?”

  “You know too much.”

  “We know shit,” I protested. “Really. Zip. Nada. Especially me.”

  “Sorry,” the voice said. “Health and safety.”

  People began to break down in earnest then. They knew this was the end. They understood suddenly that this was irrevocable, that no argument, however cogent, well-argued or frankly even right, would ever make a difference once health and safety had been invoked.

  “Well, look, Christ,” I spluttered, anyway, knowing I had to keep talking until the very end. “That seems kind of harsh, you know? We fixed your, you know, that thing that was broken. We helped you out, right?”

  “No,” the voice said. “You did. Say good bye.”

  I looked around the studio, at the people all terrified and flinching, the tear-running faces and trembling shoulders. I glanced at Max and Clive and Jeff, the camera and lights crew, not looking so tough now. At Mandy from make-up, and Trix and Pinky the PA girls, and finally through the window at Rod and his open-mouthed producers and other familiars: at these people, my colleagues and acquaintances, the people I had worked with, these fellow-toilers at the sharp end of retail.

  These humans. Every single one of them remains burned into my mind. They’re the last I ever saw.

  “Goodby…” was all I got out.

  Then my mind went white, and there was the sound of wind, and then a whir, and then a ping.

  * * *

  The viewers at home never saw me vanish, or what happened to Rusty. They never even heard the strange voice over the speakers—all they saw was a whacky few seconds where James Richard seemed to be going very seriously off message…before the Home Mall signal went fuzzy for a couple minutes. Then the channel abruptly left the air forever, as the studio, warehouse and surrounding city block was vaporized—by what was later explained, I gather, as an unexpected meteorite. I guess the CIA or NSA or some other bunch of spooks covered the whole thing up somehow. Clearly someone back at home knows where Earth stands in the bigger picture—since I’ve been away I discovered there’s even a secret website at www…oh, I guess I shouldn’t say. But that’s how I know the official US government classification for what happened to me: a close encounter of the seventeenth kind, one involving “a commercial transaction conducted over some form of mass telecommunication (including but not limited to television, radio or particle net sub-rotation) and involving individual items valued at one hundred dollars or less.” It’s kind of rare. In fact I think I may have been the first. To survive, anyhow.

  So—there’s the scoop on how I came to be here, like you asked. Edit as you see fit, of course—I know it’s kind of long for a press release. I’m sure my new agent will want other cuts too: the stuff about my name won’t mean a lot to a guy called fLKccHL±±sgdo273-fx2, I guess.

  Anyhoo. Got to go, bro. The bright lights call. I’m five minutes away from a two-hour pan-galactic Special for a consignment of mesquite-roasted Alpha Centaurian pengulnuts and their associated serving dishes and cookware. Yum yum. The buying public awaits eagerly, always, and James Richard is their friend, adviser and honest guide through the retail jungle… …whatever damned planet they’re from.

  Dispersed by the Sun, Melting in the Wind

  by Rachel Swirsky

  The last word ever spoken by a human is said in a language derived from Hindi. The word is trasa. Roughly translated: thirst or desire.

  * * *

  The second-to-last human to die is a child who lives in the region that was once called the Blue Mountains of Australia. She has the strange light eyes that children are occasionally born with, the way they are sometimes born as triplets or with white hair or with another baby’s empty body growing from their bellies. Her mother calls them water eyes, a sign that the child shares the changeable spirit of the ocean which can shift from calm to storm in the space of a breath.

  On the last day of her life, the light-eyed child finds a pair of ancient skeletons exposed in the silt by the river near her camp. She pulls out the ribs with a sucking noise, loosing the foul stench of trapped gas. Pelvic bones lie in the mud below, tangled with metal things no one can make anymore. As she teases them free, the light-eyed child unearths rusted chains and hollow disks the diameter of her wrist.

  The light-eyed child rinses the bones clean in the river. She runs her hand over the long femurs, marveling. People no longer grow so tall.

  The light-eyed child sets the bones in a loose pile underneath a scribbly gum tree. The skulls preside on top, regarding her with hollow eyes. The light-eyed child kisses each in the center of its caved-in forehead.

  Goodnight, Grandpa Burn, she says. Goodnight, Grandma Starve.

  * * *

  The
last major art movement is invented near Lake Vättern in Sweden. With the help of enough processing power to calculate the trajectories of a beachful of sand over a millennium, the artist taps a feeder loop directly into her brain and uses it to shape a three-dimensional holographic image of her father. For the first time, human thought patterns take direct, physical form. Her father’s projection repeats sequences of fragmented memories. His limbs trail into images of people and places he loved when he was alive; his hair winds into the tapestries he was famous for weaving; his face flickers cyclically from youth to gray. It’s not my father, the artist explains. It’s how I think of my father, his imago.

  Within five years, her invention revolutionizes art. Artists show the world how they conceive of childbirth, fire, finches, walk bodies, urtists, religion, synthesis and death.

  Within twenty years, the technology to create such work is destroyed. Art falls backward. Humanity falls farther.

  * * *

  The man who will survive to be the last human lives in the region once called Nepal. Amid the still-falling ash from a series of volcanic eruptions, he and his son dig their way free of a cave-in.

  Ravens perched on branches overhanging the cave mouth observe their progress. When the son grows weak, the last man tries to scatter the birds by throwing stones. They flap a short distance into the naked trees and witness the boy’s death from there, watching events unfold the way birds do: turning their heads to look first with one eye, then the other, to see which version of life is more appealing.

  * * *

  The last scientific discovery excites the neurons of an amateur stargazer. Even before the cataclysm, she is the last of an increasingly rarefied breed—air and light pollution have made ground telescopes useless, so she has to pay for satellite time to peer out in an era when almost all of humanity’s technological eyes are aimed inward. One lonely night when all her mates and children are away, she trains her screen to watch the cloud bands on Jupiter’s gaseous surface and glimpses a city-sized object hurtling toward the earth.

  Oh, God, she says, an asteroid.

  * * *