Startoucher

by C. J. Odle

  Gemini had reluctantly agreed. Billy had taken photos and a GPS reading with his phone and then used the compass and decided Jake’s route would be easier to return on, even if longer, because they would the avoid the steeper sand. It took half an hour of stumbling across the desert to reach the dirt road and turn left onto level ground. Luckily, the sky had then begun to cloud over. Nevertheless, it had taken another eighty minutes before Marina spied the end of Kelso Dunes Road to their left, and they’d crossed over the short patch of desert to join it.

  By the time they’d returned to Gemini’s basement after stopping to eat at a diner, it was nearly five in the afternoon. All three had crashed, exhausted. Adam in his bed, and Billy and Marina on thin mattresses. Adam had gotten up at midnight and raided his parents’ huge fridge upstairs before making coffee and waking the others.

  They could barely contain their excitement as they sat on the floor, slurping coffee and munching sandwiches.

  “His car came from nowhere, man,” Adam said, flicking some crumbs off his bright-yellow T-shirt.

  “There must be some kind of alien vortex in the desert,” Billy said, swiping his unruly hair from his eyes with the back of one hand. “If we hadn’t been so totaled, we could have checked it out. We’ve got to get back.”

  “I thought you didn’t like walking?” Marina said, her eyes teasing.

  “This is different. One of us was smart enough to get the GPS coordinates.”

  Adam punched Billy playfully in the arm. “Yeah, if we drive to the end of that track running south of Kelso Dunes Road, it’s not too far from there.”

  “I’m making some tea, you know I don’t really like coffee,” Marina said.

  “Go for it,” Adam said, nodding.

  Marina got up to walk to the kitchenette by the basement entrance and brushed her hair with a hairbrush while the kettle boiled. She thought about calling Jake again, but every time she’d tried on the way back from the desert, it had gone straight though to voice mail. He obviously didn’t want to speak to her. Billy and Adam polished off the rest of the sandwiches and took their mugs of coffee to their desk and logged on. Marina walked to the beanbag, tea in hand, and watched.

  Gemini sliced their way through the world’s computers, two very different-looking halves of an efficient whole, splicing code together with the speed and skill of jazz musicians improvising. Marina got a sudden image of penguins, so awkward on land, but the moment they hit the water, they swam with preternatural grace.

  “Holy crap!” Adam said, running his hand through his Afro.

  “Insane!” Billy added, blinking furiously.

  “What’s happening, guys?” Marina asked, standing up.

  The guys glanced up and did a double take. Marina didn’t take it personally.

  “There are important people missing,” Adam said, smiling.

  Billy nodded. “The president, the president of China, a prominent scientist… it’s all been hushed up.”

  They went back to hacking their way into government mainframes, although “hacking” wasn’t an elegant enough word for what the two of them did. It suggested an axe when they were a scalpel, picking apart seams to slip discreetly inside. Gemini swapped information with a few trusted hacker associates in different locations. Marina watched as the two of them read communications between US and Chinese officials, none of them quite trusting the others to really say anything useful. Some pointed the finger at Russia, or even North Korea, but no one believed them.

  She sat back down on the beanbag and used her laptop to do some research of her own, heading out to forums for alien enthusiasts and abductees, those who saw visions and those who merely felt as though there had to be something more out there in the universe. Marina often fared better than Billy or Adam when it came to networking with others. For all their fame among a certain kind of netizen, the guys tended to start flame wars while Marina preferred to find common ground, even with those she disagreed with.

  There had been new UFO sightings in Switzerland, Italy, China, Los Angeles, and the Mojave Desert. The local times varied, but from what she could work out, the first would have been in Switzerland. No one had posted any new visions about aliens on the forums, but a couple of her psychic friends reported strange dreams about an apocalypse. Marina swapped her laptop for her tarot cards and did a quick spread. Everything pointed to change and transformation, but she couldn’t discern the details.

  “Hey, come and check this out!” Adam gestured for her to come over.

  “Totally awesome!” Billy added.

  On Billy’s monitor, Marina could see a list of the latest UFO sightings, lined up against the locations of those missing. Two of the three matched. The president of China in Beijing and the scientist in Geneva, Switzerland.

  “What about our president?” Marina asked. “Nothing in Washington?”

  Billy kept tapping his middle finger on the desk, the pi tattoo oscillating up and down.

  “I’ve got it,” he said. “Let’s check the weather today… Look… Washington was cloudy. Even if there had been a UFO, unless it flew really low, no one could have seen it.”

  “You’re right,” Adam said, hands flying over his keyboard. “Beijing and Geneva had clear skies. Plus, in Beijing it would also have been night.”

  Billy pressed a key with a flourish. “Taking into account time zones, the last eye witness account came from the Mojave at ten thirty a.m. While we were there!”

  “We must have been that close to the alien headquarters!” Adam said, almost shouting.

  Marina checked her watch—three a.m.

  “Guys, where’s Jake?”

  Billy tapped into Sergeant John Richards’ e-mail account and hastily photoshopped a warrant while Adam tried to access the Vatican mainframe. Less than half an hour later, Billy had the information Marina wanted.

  “For a while, he was stationary at a location in Venice Beach, then he switched to downtown. But now it looks like he’s heading back out to the desert.”

  “Adam, Billy,” Marina said, “it’s time to prepare the Beast.”

  Gemini had won enough money in gaming competitions to afford a state-of-the-art RV. It had Wi-Fi, a small satellite dish, and even its own generators. However, all the technology was cleverly hidden, so from the outside it looked like one of the many middle-of-the-road camper vans seen heading out of the city every day. Painted white and deliberately scuffed up, its exterior gave no hint of the hi-tech payload inside, or indeed of the bespoke pizza oven in the kitchenette.

  The guys weren’t going to go back to the desert unprepared, and “prepared” for them meant enough computers to hack the Pentagon, not to mention half the contents of Adam’s parents’ refrigerator. Marina also lived in Mid-Wilshire, not too far from Gemini’s headquarters, and “prepared” for her meant picking up a change of clothes, sunscreen, and a large tent that she used for music festivals. By the time they were finally ready to drive out of LA, it was almost 4:20 a.m.

  “I think we need to start telling people about this,” Marina said as she steered the Beast onto Interstate 10. Adam relaxed in the front passenger seat, and Billy tapped away on his laptop farther inside.

  “You’re right,” Adam said, pulling out his phone. “The more the merrier.”

  Billy and Adam began to leave messages in as many places online as they could think of. Plenty of people didn’t believe them, even on forums whose members claimed to believe anything and everything Gemini and Marina could think of, plus a few things they’d never even considered. At least one poster accused Billy of being a government shill, although he couldn’t understand why someone would think that. A small poll started on another site about the most overused locations in sci-fi series until one of the administrators bumped it over into a separate thread.

  On every site they visited, Gemini left the same message. “There are aliens in the Kelso Dunes. They’ve probably kidnapped the president. We’ll see you there. Bring stuff for the desert.�
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  Lying in Sarah’s arms, Jake had only slept for two hours before waking up alert and ready to make preparations. He’d gently roused her and explained that their memories of the last two weeks would be wiped if humanity won, and so they’d filmed a short video on his phone. Jake hoped like never before that one morning he would check his inbox to discover a video of himself holding hands with a beautiful woman who talked about mustangs.

  How do you say goodbye to everything you’d ever known? For Jake, it was almost depressingly easy. After leaving the gallery, they drove back to his penthouse and he changed his clothes and then looked around the spacious interior with Sarah beside him, trying to determine if anything from his old life warranted taking with him to the new one. Confronted with the designer furniture and expensive gadgets, he felt like a stranger stuck between the past and an unclear future. If it came down to it, what would he really need from here if the aliens took them to another world? All the things tucked so carefully away in drawers and cupboards… well, now it seemed nothing more than flotsam and detritus.

  Sarah was all he needed. She sat beside him while he drove through the outskirts of LA, retracing the journey he’d taken only five days ago. As the neon streetlights and cars flashed by hypnotically, his mind wandered to the few occasions in the past when he’d driven in the dark to meet a crucial witness or an important client. He thought briefly about the people at the office. About Giles, so bluff and focused, the man he’d been so certain he wanted to emulate. He’d been following in his footsteps, working himself into a better office, a better apartment, an early grave.

  Sarah was making a phone call to her grandmother, obviously struggling to think of the words. What could she say? If she started talking about a man taking her to see aliens, Jake felt pretty sure her grandmother would do the sensible thing and call the police.

  “Hi, Nana. No, nothing’s wrong. Sorry, it’s very early. I’m fine, really. I just wanted to call to see how you are. Well, actually, there is something. I wanted to say…” Sarah’s voice caught for a moment. “I love you. No, really, nothing’s wrong. I just realized I don’t say it very often. Yes, I’m sure I’m OK.”

  It must be hard, trying to have this conversation without talking about what was really going on. Jake reached over with the hand not holding the wheel and touched Sarah’s arm to show support. She looked over and smiled.

  “It’s just… I might be going away for a while,” Sarah said. “No, I haven’t been arrested. No, it’s… there’s this opportunity that’s come up, and it’s not one I feel like I can turn down. No, that’s not right. It’s not one I want to turn down. No, I can’t talk about it. Yes, there’s a guy involved, but…”

  The conversation carried on, and Jake found himself envying it, just a little. He wished he had someone he could call. Someone who might demand to know why they hadn’t heard all about this new person he was seeing, and whether they were planning to have children in the near future.

  Eventually, Sarah told her grandmother that she loved her once more and then hung up.

  “Are you OK?” Jake asked her.

  “Actually, yes,” Sarah replied. She looked puzzled as she spoke. “I shouldn’t be. I should be upset, and angry and all kinds of other things, but I’m not. I’m OK. I think a lot of it is because you’re here. And that’s kind of weird too.”

  Jake smiled. “I know what you mean.”

  It was strange, almost bizarre, how OK it felt. The world might be ending soon with aliens busily preparing to judge them, yet Jake felt calm and relaxed. Even unfazed about the prospect of going to live on an alien world many light-years distance from his own planet. The changes due to the cosmic plasma were partially responsible for this, but as least as much came from Sarah being there with him. Whatever happened now, there would be someone to share it with.

  They drove into the night, the rhythm of traffic constant even at 4:20 in the morning. Jake wondered if any of the people driving had the faintest idea about what was about to happen and the potential consequences.

  Half an hour after Marina and the guys had left Mid-Wilshire, someone recognized Gemini’s RV and started to follow close behind. A few minutes later, a hacker associate also pulled into the line. A couple were guided to join them by social media, and shortly afterward, it grew to a size where it began to be noticeable. As the Beast trundled east along Interstate 210, people used Instagram and Twitter to post images, asking what was going on.

  Billy turned around and saw vehicles trailing behind them like a string of fairy lights. Despite the unearthly hour, a whole convoy had formed, with usernames taking the place of CB handles, and phones, laptops, and tablets filling in for actual radios.

  Marina focused on the driving while Gemini kept up with the ever-expanding digital conversation building up online. It spread out in blog posts and Twitter arguments, forum threads, and startled emojis.

  “Even though I told him what happened in the desert,” Adam said, scrolling on his phone, “Bunnyninja78 says he doesn’t believe we’ve found magically appearing cars or aliens. He reckons the whole universe is an illusion created by the machines.”

  “He?” Marina asked. “Bunnyninja78 is a guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But he’s still following us out to the dunes after what he said?” Marina asked.

  “Yeah, he is.”

  As they left Interstate 210 to head northeast along Interstate 15, Billy gazed at the ever-increasing convoy of cars, trucks, camper vans, and motorbikes.

  “Hey, Adam, turn the radio on. I think there’s a news van.”

  Adam scanned the channels and found a talk radio show discussing it live.

  “Well, I don’t know what these people are up to,” one of the callers said. “Driving off into the middle of nowhere together! It’s probably some kind of cult!”

  “Thank you for your contribution,” the host said in the carefully measured tones of someone who allowed people to say what they wanted so long as it helped his ratings. “If anyone else has any ideas or opinions, please call in now.”

  They did. There were plenty of people who agreed with the first caller, or who thought it would turn out to be something worse: an effort by terrorists to herd people into one place, a serial killer looking for victims. Other callers thought it might be some kind of marketing stunt, with free samples of soft drink or clothing waiting at the end. One elderly lady appeared convinced a famous singer was trying to set up a secret gig in the open air. The convoy got much longer after that.

  “Should we call in and try to explain?” Marina suggested. “Maybe if people understood we’re going to the desert to try and find aliens, it would prevent a lot of disappointment. We could also tell them about the missing people.”

  “The people who’d believe us already know,” Adam said. “And the others won’t believe us.”

  Probably true. The arguments were already breaking out on the radio, with the presenter ostensibly moderating them but mostly just encouraging it all. Even this early, they managed to dig up pundits, who commented on the convoy’s probable route and on what it could all be about.

  “I think we can discount with some certainty this nonsense about aliens,” a retired physicist said. “And even more preposterous, the rumors about the two missing presidents.”

  Marina listened but also thought about what they might find. What would they be able to show to the people who followed them so enthusiastically? Jake’s car had come out of thin air, and they knew that he’d received visions of aliens in the desert. Two world leaders were missing, plus a prominent scientist, and two of three had vanished from locations where a UFOs had been spotted. On top of all this, the last UFO sighting was from the Mojave itself. But what did it all mean? Despite Gemini being convinced of the answer, she really didn’t want to let so many people down. However, she suspected quite the opposite. Those in the convoy interested in the strange, the different, the alien, were heading to the right place. Whatever lay the
re waiting for them, Marina’s instincts told her it was going to be huge.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Around five a.m. on Saturday morning, two hours after driving out of downtown, Jake and Sarah felt hungry, so they left the Interstate 15 at Barstow and pulled into a twenty-four-hour diner. Jake had driven slowly so far, cruising at around sixty miles per hour, aware that this could be their final drive on Earth. Every sensation became poignant. The car lights, the highways, the trees, the dark silhouettes of the mountains in the distance, the feeling of Sarah sitting next to him as she nodded off to sleep.

  The lights of the diner seemed brash after the nighttime interior of the Porsche, and they quickly made their way to an empty table by the window. A few men sat quietly at the counter, methodically eating their large plates of grilled food and knocking back cups of black coffee.

  After the waitress took their orders for the “light” breakfast, Jake put down the menu and smiled. Sarah was wearing a jade-green dress with beautiful circular prints designed by her mother. Sarah had dug the dress out of her wardrobe and changed into it before they’d left her gallery, explaining to Jake that the dress was a gift for her twenty-first birthday. The turquoise pendant hung over it, the silver chain shining under the fluorescent lights of the diner.

  “How much farther is it to the dunes?” Sarah asked, yawning.

  “Should take around an hour and half, maybe a bit more.” Jake reached across the table to take her hand.

  A thin man with a moustache got off his stool at the counter and smiled at them before opening the door to leave.

  The waitress returned with their wheat pancakes and fruit, along with two cups of coffee.

  “Refills are free, just holler.”

  Jake cut off a piece of his pancake and held it in midair on his fork.

  “Let’s hope this tastes better than aquarium sushi!”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Sarah replied, taking a sip of her steaming coffee.