The Book of Ralph

by Christopher Steinsvold

  “The report never mentions aliens. Officially, it was just a technical report about engineering, and those we asked didn’t know we’d asked anyone else.”

  “You’re not answering my question,” I said.

  “Markus, in all seriousness, I’m not obligated to tell you anything, so don’t be naïve. Suffice it to say, I had good reason to investigate this possibility.”

  Francis the scientist turned back into the national security advisor. His coldness put me in my place. I had been hoping to see this other report, but right then it was pointless to ask.

  “Just to be absolutely clear, you are telling me there’s an alien in the cylinder out there. This is our first contact with an alien species, and the alien decides to come down to Earth in a can of soup?”

  “No other option makes any sense.”

  Francis picked up his phone that had been ringing. After listening a few seconds, he jerked his head up, picked up binoculars, and looked out the window.

  “Something’s happening.”

  He grabbed my arm, and we were running to the cylinder through the Rose Garden.

  V

  FRIEND

  Putting a Geiger counter up to the cylinder revealed no hazardous radioactivity. In fact, there was less radioactivity near the cylinder than in nearby areas. The temperature around the cylinder was lower as well. Various detection dogs, trained to sniff out explosives, firearms, drugs, human remains, and electronic equipment, had been walked around the circumference of the cylinder—they detected nothing.

  The FBI bomb squad was camped back on the South Lawn, on standby, in case evidence of explosives came into play. Using handheld devices I had never seen before, the CDC was checking the environment for pathogens and evidence of bioterrorism: anthrax, ricin toxin, plague, hantavirus, etc. The CDC had found nothing. The few marine officers stood outside the cordoned area, which was fifty feet away from the cylinder, while scientists and dogs did their work.

  At this point, no one had actually touched the cylinder.

  Everyone, except Samantha, was wearing a gas mask with a respirator. She was standing less than fifty feet away from the cylinder, just inside the cordoned-off area, when I approached her shouting at a young marine. Francis trailed several yards behind me.

  “As the secretary of defense, Lieutenant, I am ordering you to shoot a hole in this cylinder. If you can’t do it, surrender your weapon, and I’ll do it for both of us.”

  The marine looked at his commanding officer, a major, who nodded. The lieutenant slowly pulled his sidearm from the holster while everyone else backed away. I could sense his reluctance behind the gas mask as he stared at his weapon. I wanted to say something, but there was no reason for anyone to listen to me.

  Francis ran up. “Hold your fire, Soldier. Holster your weapon. Samantha, calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down, Francis, and don’t contradict me. You have no military authority here.” She turned back to the marine. “I command you to stand your ground and fire one round into that fucking can.”

  Soldiers don’t like to turn down challenges from beautiful women, and this was Samantha Weingarten. Francis put his head down and shook it. The marine released the safety on his sidearm and aimed an eye-level shot, square into the base of the 400-foot tall cylinder. I started to shake. Something inside me said this was completely wrong.

  “No,” I shouted and lunged at the marine as he shot, but it was too late. The single gunshot banged in my ears as the marine caught me by the neck with his free hand and forced me backward with a rough push.

  When I landed on the ground, my eyes spun to the cylinder, but it was too far away. I used my binoculars to see the tiny black dot of a waist-high bullet hole on the white surface. All I had done was skew the marine’s aim by a few vertical feet. When my eyes returned to the lieutenant, he had his gun aimed at my face.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. You may holster your weapon,” Samantha said calmly while glaring at me. The lieutenant let his sidearm hover over my face a few extra seconds before holstering it.

  I climbed off the ground and slowly moved in to inspect the bullet hole in the cylinder. While everyone else backed away, Samantha and Francis followed behind me. The three of us were less than ten feet away when I sensed something different about the air around the cylinder.

  I kept moving. None of us said a word.

  From less than five feet away, I realized the cylinder caught the bullet clean in its wall.

  As the three of us stared at it, the lodged bullet was slowly ejected from the wall, seemingly forced out by something or someone inside. The bullet landed on the pavement, and I focused on the fresh, dark hole in the cylinder

  I put one knee on the ground in front of the hole and placed my right hand on the cylinder for balance. Before I could react, the left side of my body smashed onto the pavement. With the wind knocked out of me, I couldn’t even yell out the pain.

  I didn’t even remember the sensation of touching the wall.

  I looked at Francis and Samantha. All I saw was their surprise.

  A dog let out a bark from far behind. I looked back outside the cordoned-off area to see the crowd of gas masks staring at me. I waved my hand to indicate I was all right and stood up.

  I placed my right palm on the wall of the cylinder again, not to lean on it, but only to feel it. The temperature of the wall was normal, and the surface was pristine, but the texture was somewhere between lubricated ice and pure nothingness. When I had tried to lean on it for balance, I had slipped so fast I barely felt anything before hitting the ground.

  Startled by the unexpected sensation, I yanked my right hand away from the wall and rubbed it with my left, expecting to feel an oily substance. But there was no oil or anything. My hand was as clean as it was before touching the wall. I put my hand back on the wall to check again, waving and gliding my palm over the inexplicably slippery surface.

  The wall was so unreasonably smooth it made me dizzy. I kept thinking there must be a thin film of lubricant covering the wall, but there was nothing. There was so little resistance on the surface it was difficult to feel the wall at all. When I attempted to put any pressure on the wall, my hand would instantly slip away. As far as I could tell, the wall was close to frictionless.

  And there was another conundrum—if the wall was near frictionless, why didn’t the marine’s bullet ricochet? How did the wall catch the bullet so perfectly? If the bullet had ricocheted, it could easily have killed someone, which would not have boded well for the passenger of the cylinder—so, I thought, there was a conscious decision to catch that bullet in the wall.

  Only Francis, Samantha, and I were near the cylinder, and I was the only one close enough to touch it. For whatever reason, none of us had said a single word.

  I used my binoculars to look back at the dogs. Each was sitting and staring wide-eyed at the cylinder, almost hypnotized with open mouths and gently wagging tails. In the confusion, one of the detection dogs, an old German shepherd, became unattended and had wandered near us.

  The dog ran up, circled around us, sniffed the hole in the cylinder, let out a single high-pitched yelp, then sprinted away to a patch of grass. From afar, I could see the dog rubbing his head and face hard into the grass, as if to wipe off an invisible enemy that had attached itself to his face.

  Samantha moved closer. She picked up the bullet off the ground and showed it to me. It was as undamaged as could be. As if the bullet had been shot into water.

  “How?” she said and then instantly smiled quizzically. The sound of her own voice gave her pause. I smiled as I bent over again to look inside the bullet hole.

  I could see nothing inside the hole but darkness and noticed the bullet hole was slowly shrinking. The wall, somehow, was repairing itself, and the hole was about to vanish.

  I had an idea.

  I knelt down quickly on both knees with my face up close to the hole in the cylinder. I looked back at Samantha, gave her a wink
, put my lips flat over the tiny disappearing hole and inhaled.

  I tried hard not to laugh when I heard Samantha gasp. When my lungs were full, I stood up, turned around, and in my best Donald Duck impersonation ever, I yelled back to the crew and asked, “Does anyone have a portable mass spectrometer?”

  Despite the gas masks of the crew, I could hear healthy laughs—even the marine who shot the cylinder was grabbing his gut. A hazmat worker answered me by going to his van and pulling a spectrometer out. After activation, my suspicion was revealed to be correct.

  The cylinder was bleeding helium.

  In comparison to normal air, sound travels three times as fast in helium, which is why it raises the pitch of your vocal cords. It is why my voice, Samantha’s voice, and the dog’s bark were distorted.

  More importantly, it became obvious the cylinder was a helium-powered blimp.

  Samantha stared at me, her quivering lips resisting a smile. Francis patted me on the back and laughed, giddy with diffused tension. When I looked back at the hole, it was gone. I rubbed my finger where the hole had been moments earlier, and there was no trace of a scar, not even a bump.

  The cylinder was perfect. No part of the surface was uneven, and the walls were inscrutably round. It seemed like the geometric ideal of a cylinder. I circled around but couldn’t find a door.

  I stared upward and around to get a feel for the humungous size of the cylinder and an old memory forcefully returned. There is a giant statue of a clothespin outside city hall in Philadelphia, and the giant can of soup gave a similar psychological effect to be near. It made me feel small. I remembered feeling the same visiting St. John the Divine in New York City, a large cathedral that dwarfs its visitors.

  A flock of pigeons had gathered near the cylinder, impressively unimpressed. Francis swatted at a pigeon in the air that came too close. That pigeon flew over to the group and pecked at the face of another pigeon. This second pigeon, in turn, pecked another. I was irresponsibly mesmerized by this behavior when Francis said something. His voice went from slightly effeminate to downright girly under the influence of the helium, which is probably why he said little as he handed me the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Markus, could you stop making so much noise outside?”

  “Are you really in there?”

  “Your voice sounds funny.”

  “When are you coming out?”

  “Whoa. Slow down, Speedy Gonzales. You want to see me naked?”

  “How did you get Francis’s number?”

  Ralph laughed for half a minute and said, “I want to come out soon, but I gotta get serious with you. I must do something so your people know I don’t want any trouble.”

  “So you’re an alien,” I said.

  “Markus, you’re embarrassing me.”

  “For all I know, you’re some friend of Francis piggybacking on this whole event, trying to make me look like a fool. Why would an alien come down to Earth in a helium blimp disguised as a can of soup?”

  “. . . I’ve put a lot of thought into this. You got a better idea?”

  “Why not show off your power? Impress us with some spectacular display of your superior knowledge and technology?” I said, expecting some banter in response.

  Ralph paused.

  “What a primitive response,” he said slowly with a downward shift in tone.

  The shade of his voice had turned black. His disappointment was palpable, and it engulfed me, giving me nausea. His voice had the power to make you feel what he felt. Ralph was not human. He was angry.

  “Is that really what you would do, Markus? Really? That’s what you do when you meet people you’re superior to? You show how superior you are to intimidate them? Is that a good way to make friends, Markus? When was the last time you made a friend, Markus?”

  I got angry and hung up.

  VI

  TELEVISION

  After further inspection and tests, the area outside the cylinder was deemed safe. A command post was set up near the southeast gate, where the FBI and CDC waited to inspect its interior. All military personnel were ordered to stand by inside the White House, and Captain Hathaway’s helicopter was recalled to Andrews Air Force base in Maryland.

  It was 9:00 a.m.

  Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues had been shut down from Fifteenth Street to Seventeenth Street, but the blockade should have been wider. Media, tourists, and local onlookers were prevented from coming close, yet, at a height of 400 feet, roughly six times the height of the White House, it was easily seen from afar.

  Distant photos and video footage of the cylinder went viral immediately: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, HuffPo, Drudge, etc. At that point, it was only embarrassing for the government, and embarrassment was the least concern.

  Samantha was going back to the Oval Office alone. I joined her. We ignored the curving driveway and walked straight across the lawn.

  “Do your instincts tell you this is dangerous?” I asked.

  “My instincts tell me this is hilarious. Did you hear Francis’s voice with the helium? Ha. What a sissy bitch.” It felt good to hear her laugh. “And you, you bastard, I almost burst out laughing when you asked for a spectrometer. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “My head tells me this is dangerous. My head says we are being seduced.”

  We walked into the empty and quiet Oval Office. Samantha bent over to look in her bag when the TV flashed on.

  “Watching TV’s a good idea,” she said. “We should know what people are thinking.”

  “I didn’t turn it on,” I said, spying the TV remote on a desk across the room.

  Her eyes spun at me.

  On channel 210 was a light and breezy morning show: weather, traffic, news, and call-ins. The commercial ended and the host, Tricia Tanaka, made it clear why someone wanted us to watch.

  “By now, you know about the supersized can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle that floated down beside the White House,” she said cheerily with distant footage of the cylinder in the background. “As promised before the break, we have a caller, Waldo, who claims to be inside that can. Waldo, tell us a little about yourself.”

  Tricia Tanaka didn’t care if Waldo was inside the cylinder, but it made for good TV. I thought it was a prank, but when I heard his voice over the airwaves my gut melted.

  Waldo was Ralph.

  “Well, Tricia,” Ralph said, “I’m from out of town, never been here before, and I’m looking to make some new friends in DC. I’m starting to wonder if this was the best option.”

  “Well, with an accent like that, I’m sure lots of ladies will want to meet you. Where are you from, Waldo?”

  “I’m still from out of town, Tricia Tanaka, and I hope to meet lots of ladies and gentlemen. I’d much like to meet the president.”

  “Whoa. You are ambitious. Not sure what the first husband would say about that.”

  “I’d like to meet him too. I’d like to know lots of people, including you, Tricia. I know we’ve just met, and it is insane in an informal sense, but here’s my number: 1-866-328-7687. Call me potentially.”

  “Oh boy, I bet you’re gonna get a lot of calls now.”

  “That’d be great.”

  “This is quite a stunt, Waldo. Why do you want to meet the president so badly?”

  “A whole bunch of reasons, but I would like to mate with her.”

  “What?”

  “I’d like to have sex with her.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m sorry. My English is not very natural. I mean, I want to fuck her.”

  The show immediately went to a commercial.

  “Call him. Call Ralph and tell him to come out,” Samantha said, handing me her phone.

  VII

  USED

  “Hello! Who’s calling?” Ralph said, with heavy noise in the background.

  “Ralph, it’s me, Markus, I—”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t hear you very well. Ple
ase speak up.”

  “Ralph, it’s me, Markus. Can you hear me?”

  “I can’t hear you. Speak louder next time.”

  “Can You Hear Me Now?”

  “Ha-ha. Just joking, I’m unavailable right now. Please leave a message after the beep.”

  Beep.

  I told him to call me.

  Samantha rolled her eyes, lit a cigarette, and called the president. No one answered. She finished her smoke with me on the couch as we watched various news channels.

  We learned nothing from TV, which was good. By then, every network, local, and cable news program was reporting on the event.

  Reporters smirked as they made questionable puns. Fox News labeled the story ‘SoupGate,’ while CNN went with ‘Chicken Soup for the Pol.’ NBC was the first to report on the official ‘no comment’ response from Campbell’s, and everyone else immediately followed. Most guessed it was a publicity stunt. But the best guess came from MSNBC, who suggested it was some form of street performance art by the infamous Banksy.

  Again, I called Ralph, but he didn’t answer.

  The adrenalin was flowing, though neither Samantha nor I had slept. I yawned and tried to hide it. Samantha, looking at me, yawned and smiled. My heart beat stronger when her eyes lingered on mine. She brushed her hand against my leg. I had to tell her.

  “There’s something you need to know,” I said, sitting back a little. “Something Francis and I know. I don’t really know how to tell you—”

  Without warning, she slapped my face.

  I stood up and stepped back, glaring. Calmly, she stood up and put her face in mine.

  “Say it.”

  I walked away from her, looked outside, and shut my eyes. “Ralph is not from this planet . . . He’s an extraterrestrial, an alien.”

  I felt like the greatest idiot on Earth, but saying it relieved more tension than I knew. In response, she paced back and forth, occasionally breaking her pace to glare at me.