Dark Valentines

by Mark Onspaugh

  Though he had dressed her in that same sheer and ephemeral confection, he had also modestly clothed her in a simple white bra and cotton panties. She might be lost to him, but he could not shake such ingrained feelings of propriety. Those feelings resurfaced when he saw that she still wore the lingerie. It was silly, but he was glad his sweet wife had not roamed the Earth naked and bloody, some perverse Venus bringing nothing but wailing and terrible teeth.

  Marie had often gone without makeup, and he had not applied any to her before leaving. He wouldn’t have known where to begin. He had brushed her shining hair and pulled it through a scrunchy into a ponytail. She lay there, looking much like she had on that picnic. He held his tears until he and Taylor were on the transport, and then could stay them no longer. He thought he might never stop weeping.

  Now there was an ugly gash on her left bicep, and he wondered if it caused her pain. The wound was bloodless, and the physician in him surmised that she must have caught her arm on a projecting bit of rebar or a shattered door jamb.

  Wandering was not without consequence for his Marie.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, old tears reappearing with surprising swiftness, “I’m sorry I have been away from you all these years.”

  She stood there, her face neither forgiving nor reproachful, no tears of happy reunion or festering resentment. If he stared long enough into her frozen face, he was sure some trick of the light would lend her the appearance of animation like those old wax figures, but he knew better.

  She was dead.

  And yet…

  In such a time where death brings no rest, might not the mind itself be active? Might old pathways fire, however sporadically? Might not old memories bloom like temporary fireworks across the scarred and barren mindscape?

  Couldn’t there be something beyond hunger, beyond the drive for hot blood spilling over mouths that should be forever closed?

  Might not the girl he had first seen under a tree orgasmic with cherry blossoms be there still?

  It was a question that might never be answered, and his time was short.

  He told her of their son and his family. That their eldest granddaughter had a child of her own, one named Marie in her honor. He told her of his work, his patients, of the trials of living underground and how much he missed her.

  He told her how he loved her, and that he had decided --

  “Doctor Walsh?”

  He turned, the sound of a human voice and his own name like foreign things, syllables of a long-dead language.

  Mac regretfully pointed to his watch. “We gotta get back…changing of the guard.”

  He nodded, thinking of what waited back in the Underground. Years of retirement spent with other seniors. Perhaps some teaching or lectures, he might even write a book.

  And then, the grinders. No bells tolling in the Underground, just the massive drums studded with metal teeth, their hollow booming the mechanical equivalent of the wailing topside. There was no one who would smuggle the corpse of Doctor Dylan Walsh to the surface. His children were too pragmatic, products of living in confinement with chaotic and ravening storms outside the gates. Storms that might literally consume them if they did not live practically.

  What happened next had only been a vague contingency when he had gotten up that morning. A silly pipe dream that his logical side had nearly forgotten, for it was foolish and selfish and risky, particularly to his young friends.

  But sometimes an old heart can be surprisingly strong against a mind grown weary with too many years of memory, too many years ahead of emptiness.

  He turned and pretended to kiss Marie’s cheek, placing the gel capsule in his mouth and crunching down on it. He then motioned to Mac and Dana. Something in his face caused them to hurry to him.

  “I thank you both for bringing me out here,” he began.

  “We owe you a lot, Doc,” Mac said, Dana nodding.

  “I have just ingested a lethal amount of Harrowcept,” he told them, and watched their faces move from incomprehension to horror.

  Mac moved to pick him up and Walsh waved him off.

  “Mac, you know this is where I want to be. Where I should be.”

  “They’ll look for you, Doc.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll be frozen before reanimating. No one is going to expend the resources to bring one old man down to the grinders.”

  They looked doubtful, and he could see the guilty looks as they consider the ramifications to their careers.

  “I’m sorry, I know this will complicate things for you,” he admitted.

  “No worries,” Dana said, “we… we don’t know anything.”

  “Yeah,” Mac agreed, “your disappearance will be a mystery to us, should anybody ask.”

  “And Corporal Oganesyan?”

  “We’ll take care of Chuck,” Mac promised.

  Dana kissed his cheek. He couldn’t feel it. The Harrowcept was weaving a net of numbness over him.

  Mac gave him a rough hug, wiping a tear from his eye. The two made their way back to the gate, looking back at him several times. It was difficult to wave, so he saved his energy.

  As the gate closed, he placed his arms around Marie’s waist, her extended arm providing just enough support to hold him up. He placed the flowers between them, hoping some of their brightness might attract her eyes when sight returned.

  “Please know me,” he whispered into her ear, “please know me and take me back. I’m sorry I left you. Please don’t leave me alone in the dark.”

  He rested his cheek against her shoulder, tears freezing his eyelids shut.

  “Come the spring,” he whispered hoarsely, “we’ll go on a picnic.”

  Walsh thought he could hear her sigh, though it may have been an errant breeze. Still, he smiled and let the cold take him.

  * * *

  THE LAST VALENTINE

  The young girl padded out of the Hall of Records, the checkerboard tiles cool under her bare feet.

  Outside, the sun was brilliant as it emerged from billowing clouds, and there was a scent of honeysuckle and jasmine on the gentle breeze that teased her hair.

  Perfect flying weather.

  She unfurled her wings and rose gracefully, catching the updrafts with practiced ease. Many still opted for wings of snowy white, but Emeline had chosen a color pattern like a snowy owl. It was grand, but she thought she might change to something in black and teal, with bright red wingtips. She would try the new pattern when she went home.

  She rose high over the meadows and fields, the aroma of sweet grass and wildflowers and distant pines teasing her nose.

  She did so love to fly!

  Her route took her far beyond the mountains to the north, past the frigid wastes of Valhalla and over the jungles of Rama’s kingdom, until at last she came to a small chain of islands.

  There, on one of the tiniest, she found him smoking a pipe and painting a waterfall.

  The painting was not very good, but Emeline made no comment.

  Saint Valentine looked up and nodded. “I like your wings,” he commented.

  She blushed with pleasure, then shook it off. She was on a mission, after all.

  “Saint Valentine, your presence is needed on Earth.”

  He looked at her and laughed. “Is this a joke?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I’m needed.”

  “Yes.”

  “On Earth.”

  He looked at her a moment. “How old are you?”

  “I was eight when I transitioned.”

  “And how long have you been…”

  “A messenger? One year.”

  “Look…”

  “Emeline, my name is Emeline.”

  “Look, Emeline, you seem like a nice kid, but someone is playing a prank on you. This may be Heaven, but they aren’t above that sort of nonsense here. I’ll bet it was Jerome or Nicholas – they’re a couple of cut-ups.”

  �
��No, sir, this comes from… above.”

  “Emeline, you… you must know there hasn’t been a human on Earth in over five hundred years. “

  “I know, sir…”

  “Call me Rufus.”

  “Really?”

  “What can I say? I had red hair… when I had hair.”

  “Rufus, I know no one lives on Earth… supposedly. I myself was born in the Parnell Colony, out in Orion’s Belt.”

  “I met Orion,” Rufus Valentine replied, “he’s got a big head, always going on and on about how important his constellation is.”

  “Umm, right. Anyway, sir… er, Rufus, the thing is…”

  “Yes?”

  “Prayers have been received.”

  “Prayers?”

  “Yes.”

  “From Earth.”

  “Yes,” she said, her eight-year-old’s patience nearly at an end.

  “Strange,” he said, puffing on his pipe. He peeled a bit of pigment off his thumbnail and tossed it into the ferns. “And this unknown supplicant… asked for me?”

  At this Emeline looked down, and her wings drooped. She dug her big toe in the sand, which sent a small scarlet-colored crab scuttling away.

  Valentine looked at her. “Emeline, how many saints did you visit before you got to me?”

  She sighed. “One hundred and forty six. I just left Mother Teresa.”

  “And why isn’t Terry going?”

  “She’s teaching a pottery class.”

  “And…” he gestured upward, even though Heaven was all around them.

  “Oh, well, there’s the possibility of Armageddon coming, and there’s a big barbecue this weekend for the Beatles and the Stones.”

  Valentine nodded and puffed on his pipe. Emeline wondered what she would do if he told her to get lost. She was nearly out of saints, and the ones who were left were either busy flagellating themselves or were very dour and unpleasant to talk to… or both.

  St. Valentine smiled. “Okay, kid, let’s pack up for Earth.”

  Emeline smiled back, and thought she might try her new wings for the trip.

  The journey to Earth took no time at all, and Emeline was excited to see the planet that had spawned humanity. Of course, it looked nothing like the pictures. The skies were filled with toxins as were the waters. The landscape was uniformly the color of ash and there was nothing in the way of plant or animal life. Compared to pictures she had seen back in the colony, it was a depressing place.

  No wonder people left. It was like living inside Valentine’s pipe.

  Despite the sameness of the geography, it was fairly easy to find the supplicant, who was located in an area once known as Peru.

  St. Valentine and Emeline manifested themselves in a clearing near a toppled pyramid. They waited a moment, then a creature emerged from the stones.

  It was a robot, a very early model with a head like a domed coffee can and two protruding ocular cells and an inset speaker grill.

  “Welcome, humans!” it called out, its voice slightly scratchy and distorted.

  The robot hurried to them, its joints creaking. “I am sorry to keep you waiting, my masters, I am DR-00987, Domestic Robot 987. I am pleased to meet you.”

  “I’m Rufus Valentine,” the old man said, “and this is my friend Emeline.”

  The robot bowed low and froze in place for a moment. Something whirred inside and then it spoke. “This is… most embarrassing. I seemed to have become stuck. Would you mind helping me straighten?”

  Valentine and the girl got DR-00987 upright again and he nearly bowed again in gratitude, then thought better of it.

  “So, DR-00987,” Valentine began.

  “Please, call me Jenkins,” said the robot, “it is the name you humans liked to use, and I have not heard it in some time.”

  “Very well, Jenkins, you sent a prayer our way.”

  “Prayer?” the robot sounded puzzled, then nodded. “I suppose I did.”

  “So,” said Valentine, “what do you need?”

  “We need,” Jenkins corrected, and motioned with his hand. Several more robots emerged from the pyramid. They were all the same early model. Some were severely dented or scratched, and one had no legs and was being carried by two of its fellows.

  Jenkins looked at Valentine and Emeline. “We need someone to tell us what to do.”

  The robot explained they had been in a storage facility in Canoga Park, California. They had been inert for nearly six hundred years. Finally, the facility had collapsed, and they remained in place, silent statues from an earlier age. About five years ago, the sun had finally broken through the suspension of ash and toxins and had activated their solar cells. They had spent the years since looking for humans to boss them around.

  “I’m afraid all the humans are gone,” said Saint Valentine. “They gave up their birthplace and moved off toward the Galactic Center in generation ships.”

  “We were afraid of that,” Jenkins said. “DR-07765, Ruth, found some data modules we could still read. I guess… I guess we were obsolete and left behind.”

  “Count yourself lucky,” Valentine groused. “They left me behind and I was awake.”

  “Can you… can you take us to the humans?” Jenkins asked.

  “After abandoning you and leaving you to rust, you still want to be among humans?”

  “We do not rust, but I imagine you were speaking metaphorically,” Jenkins said. “And the answer is ‘yes’ – serving humans is what we were made for.”

  The other robots nodded in agreement.

  “Can’t you… Can’t you perhaps… Live your own lives?” Valentine asked.

  “Records show there are still viable plant and animal specimens in a special facility,” Emeline added. “You could terraform the Earth, make it your own.”

  “Oh, I am sure we would be good at that,” said Jenkins. “Ruth, how long would that take?”

  “To return the planet to a pre-human pristine condition? One thousand years, five months, two weeks, one day, six hours, twelve minutes…”

  “A good, long time for a project,” interrupted Valentine. “And I’m sure you could build more of your kind. This could be a wonderful place.”

  “Without humans we have nothing,” said Jenkins sadly. “We will always wait for them.”

  Valentine looked at the sad and dented little band, and smiled. “Come to me,” he said, “I have very little in the way of technical knowledge, but I believe magic is very much like technology.”

  “According to sage Arthur C. Clarke,” Jenkins began, but then Valentine laid his hands on the robot and it thrummed and whirred as circuits were re-routed and programs repurposed.

  And so, as you may have guessed, Saint Valentine gave the robots the ability to love, to love one another, to love themselves, to love home and hearth and all creatures great and small.

  Love became their program, their mantra, their philosophy and way of life. Earth became a paradise and soon the robots (who now called themselves the Vals of Terra) were colonizing the outer planets, then other systems, spreading the message Humanity had neglected to pack when it abandoned Earth.

  And Jenkins lives on Earth to this day, a paradise now off-limits to humans, except for one slightly cranky saint and a little girl with constantly changing wings.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mark Onspaugh grew up in the San Fernando Valley of Los

  Angeles, California. His father, writer and aeronautical engineer

  Carl Onspaugh, was a fan of science fiction and Mark visited

  many strange and wonderful places, thanks to editors like Judith

  Merril and Groff Conklin. Besides his father he counts Ray

  Bradbury, Robert Sheckley, Robert Bloch and Eric Frank Russell

  among his early influences. A proud member of the Horror

  Writers Association, he lives in Cambria, California with his wife,

  writer Tobey Croc
kett PhD.