by Ted Myers
The copter landed twenty yards off, in the center of the great quad. The four troopers, assault weapons in hand, leaped out as soon as the door opened and nervously formed a defensive semi-circle, weapons trained on the animals and people on the quad. Davis and Zvonar descended and surveyed the situation for a moment. Then Epps came forward, striding confidently across the lawn to meet them.
“You don’t need your guns here, Chief,” said Epps. Davis had his men lower their weapons.
“We’ve come to take you out of here, sir,” said Davis. “Come with us and join the evacuation.”
“I’m not going,” said Epps.
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. I’m staying here.”
“You really think these animals can stop the asteroid with their thoughts?” Davis chuckles. Zvonar does not.
“I’m betting my life on it. Listen, Davis, I was wrong about these animals. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things. But I see clearly now. You and your men are welcome to stay here and help us, or you can go home and pack. But I’m staying here.”
“I’m gonna be awful pissed off if you’re right,” said Davis, smiling. “I have to admit, there’s something about this place that kind of knocks the wind out of your sails.”
The two men shook hands. Then Davis motioned everyone back into the gunship and they took off for home.
Epps returned to work as if nothing had happened. Mama Angelica, Fluffy and Bernard exchanged looks and smiles, as if to say: “See, no one is beyond redemption.”
From out of the bowels of West Kill Mountain, the first new arrivals began to file down the dirt path toward the campus. Mama Angelica told the kitchen crew to make extra rations; the population at Animal U was about to double.
Chapter Fifteen – The Final Push
The people and animals worked day and night for ten days. On Tuesday, June nineteenth, the Telekinesis Amplifier was ready to be tested. Dr. Handler was at the control console. He wore a headset with earphones and a mic which enabled him to communicate, not only with the circle of animals here but also with the three other Animal U’s around the world who had also built Telekinesis Amplifiers. The test target was a small asteroid, fifteen million miles out in space. He trained the Galileo on the object and magnified the image until it looked nearly as menacing as the giant rock that was almost at their doorstep. All the animals at Animal U who could fit gathered under the giant umbrella; others clustered around the edges. Every eye was fixed on one of the monitors. Dr. Handler placed a small white arrow on the screens to the right of the object, pointing to the left. There was another arrow to the left of the object. He addressed the crowd over a P.A. “When I say ‘now,’ everyone concentrate on moving the object to the left, all the way to the left arrow. Ready? Commencing countdown…” He counted backward from ten to zero and said “NOW.” Silently, everyone focused their energy. The asteroid did not move. The Invention Team huddled. “We have to go over the plans and all the circuitry again,” said Handler, shaking his head.
“Either we need to increase the power, or there’s a glitch somewhere,” said Hacker.
Bernard addressed the crowd: “Don’t lose heart, everyone. Obviously, we need to figure out and fix the problem. We still have a little time. Give us a few days, and we’ll do another test.”
Over the next ten days, the Invention Team disassembled the Telekinetic Amplifier, painstakingly tested every component, and put it back together. Everything seemed to be in order.
Laura interviewed the Invention Team for CNS, recording everything on her handheld for later broadcast. She had decided not to release any of the footage unless and until the disaster had been averted. There was no sense in getting the world’s hopes up if the experiment was a failure.
On Friday, June thirtieth, they scheduled another test. “There is nothing wrong with the device,” said Dr. Handler. “The problem is we were not able to generate enough force. We’re out of time. This time, we have to deflect the asteroid that’s coming toward us.”
Once again, all the animals at Animal U and around the world were assembled beneath the big umbrella. Bernard made sure Fluffy—his prize student—was in the front row, near the center of the circle. Pandora was a few rows back. Dr. Handler brought up the image of the giant rock on the monitors. There was dead silence, as everyone gathered all their concentration, all their strength. Dr. Handler commenced the countdown. When Handler said “Now,” everyone concentrated on moving the object to the left. It didn’t move. It just kept coming. A deathly pall fell over the crowd.
Fluffy asked to speak with the Invention Team. “I don’t pretend to know anything about these things,” she said. “Maybe it was a science program I saw on TV when I was young, but I was thinking…”
“Yes?” they all said as one.
“Well, maybe we could slow the asteroid down by pushing it back, instead of to one side…”
“Yes,” said Dr. Messner excitedly, “if we can slow it down—even a little—its trajectory and the Earth’s will no longer intersect, and it will miss us.”
And so, they decided to try pushing the asteroid back to make it slow down. Everyone was quite exhausted, so it was decided to go for the final push bright and early the next morning. The next day was July first; the day before the asteroid was scheduled to hit.
Everyone dispersed and went back to their dorms. Fluffy went with Riordan and Indira to sleep in the main house, but few got much sleep that night.
Very early the next morning, Fluffy was awakened by the buzzing of her tablet. It was an urgent message from Pandora: “Fluffy, I need to show you something important. Meet me in room 321 in the main house in 20 minutes.”
Room 321 was a small, rarely-used classroom on the third floor of the main house. Indira and her dad were still asleep, so Fluffy silently left the room and went upstairs to room 321. It smelled musty and old in there and, indeed, the building itself was more than 300 years old. Van Dusen Manor had been built in 1774. The architecture was in the neo-gothic style of a grand English manor house. Fluffy thought it looked like Manderley in Hitchcock’s Rebecca.
She entered the silent room and, the moment she did, the door slammed shut behind her. She heard a key turn in the lock. She was locked in. “Pandora? Pandora, this isn’t funny. We have to be on the quad in a few minutes!” But there was no answer from Pandora. Fluffy looked around the room. There were old wooden desks lined up in front of the teacher’s desk, a blackboard. It was a typical old-fashioned classroom. She leaped up onto the radiator and then the window sill and looked out. She was looking down at the quad. The animals and people were beginning to assemble for the final push—to put Fluffy’s theory to the test. She tried to get the window to open, but it was jammed shut. She looked for something she could use to pick the lock on the door, a paper clip maybe, but she could find nothing.
Below on the quad, Bernard and the others were looking and calling for Fluffy. “She is my strongest student,” said Bernard. “Not having her in the circle could make the difference between success and failure.” Meanwhile, Pandora had moved up closer to the center of the circle and now occupied Fluffy’s place. Bernard scrutinized her. “Pandora, do you know where Fluffy is?”
“No, I have no idea. But I’ll do my best to take her place.”
At that very moment, Fluffy was trying to contact Bernard telepathically but was getting so much cross-talk from the gathered throng, she couldn’t train in on his frequency.
Desperate, Fluffy picked up a desk and, with all her telekinetic might, flung it against the door. But the ancient solid oak door did not budge. Then she thought of throwing something through the window, but she was afraid it might land on somebody below. She searched through the drawers of the teach
er’s desk, which had been purchased a long time ago at a secondhand store, and at last found a marble. A tiny marble some teacher had confiscated from some little kid centuries ago. This would be tricky. She had to fling the marble through one of the panes of leaded glass, but not let it fall to the ground. She hurled it and broke the glass nearest the window sill. Then she snatched it back through the hole it had made. She did this twice more until there was a hole in the glass big enough for her to crawl through.
“I appreciate the thought, Pandora,” Bernard was saying, “but we really need Fluffy for this.”
Pandora seethed inside, but she remained outwardly calm.
A hundred feet above them, Fluffy crawled out onto the outer window sill, then cautiously along the ornate stonework of the building’s façade, clinging to gargoyles and finials. “Hey!” she shouted, hoping someone would hear her below. Then louder: “Helloooo down there!”
At last, Bernard looked up. “My god, it’s Fluffy!” he shouted. The others looked up and saw her.
Riordan was terrified. “How do we get her down?”
“Get the golf cart,” cried Mama Angelica.
Riordan got the concept instantly. He ran for the little golf cart with the canvas roof. He drove it right up against the façade of the building and right below where Fluffy was perched. “Fluffy, do you think you can jump onto the canvas?” he called.
“I think so,” she said. And not wanting to give it too much thought, she took the leap. A hundred feet below, she came crashing through the canvas roof and landed in the cushioned back seat of the golf cart, miraculously unhurt.
“Hurry, there’s no time to lose,” said Handler.
In her penthouse apartment, not far from Riordan’s place in Kingston, Valerie Trump was frantic. By her own decree, she was not allowed to take more than two hundred pounds of belongings. What should she take, and—more importantly—what should she leave behind? She had boxes of precious jewels, but what good would they do her on Gliese 667 Cc? By all accounts, it was a cold, dark planet with more gravity, less light, and thinner air than Earth. It would be like life on the old frontier. Maybe she should just take her camping clothes. She might have to live in a makeshift shelter for years until proper residences were constructed. And what about all her gorgeous furniture and art pieces? She really wanted her beautiful things around her in this strange new world, but they would surely exceed the weight limit. And where would she hide 600 pairs of shoes?
She had her faithful manservant, Rusty, an anatomically correct tenth-generation Epsilon Android, Model 324M (the M was for male), crate everything up and mark it SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS. Since Rusty would not need a sleep pod, Valerie had arranged for him to accompany her on the voyage. What the hell. What was the point of being the most powerful person on Earth if you couldn’t bend the rules occasionally? “Note to self,” she muttered, “lay in a good supply of euphorium, and the means to make more.”
On Thursday, June twenty-eighth, pandemonium reigned at Kingston Airport, as thousands of elite cons, all armed with special invitations, poured in from far and wide, all clamoring to board the Electrojets that would take them to the Huston Space Center.
Valerie, Aurora, and the entire Epsilon upper management team traveled together in a stretch limo that carried all seven of them in comfort. But when they alighted at the airport it suddenly became every man for himself, and even the top executives were shoved aside by those with greater size and strength, bent on reaching the boarding gates first. When push comes to shove—and it seems that it has—humans have not really evolved past the stone age, thought Valerie. And this is who I’ll be stuck with for the next fifty years…
The chosen boarded the planes that flew them to Houston Space Center. There, ten moon shuttles made constant trips to Moonbase and back, delivering the evacuees and supplies over a period of three days. By Monday, July first, all of the evacuees were in their pods in a state of cryogenic hibernation and, manned by a robot crew, the starship Epsilon fired up its massive engines and departed for Gliese 667 Cc, henceforth to be known as the planet Epsilon.
At Animal U, Fluffy joined the others in the great circle under the umbrella. Pandora was right beside her. Their eyes met, Fluffy’s asking “Why?” Pandora looked away. I guess humans are not the only ones who do stupid things for stupid reasons, she thought. But this was not a time for recriminations. Fluffy knew they all had to push together or die.
The Tuareg drummers had been called on to provide a hypnotic rhythm that would enhance the animals’ ability to concentrate. As the appointed hour approached, they started their slow, relentless beat. The animals swayed imperceptibly as Handler began the countdown: “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, NOW!” They looked intently at the big rock, tumbling end over end on the monitors. “Push it,” cried Handler, “push it back!” They pushed on the rock with all their might for five full minutes and still, nothing was happening. At last Dr. Messner cleared his throat over the P.A. “It’s slowing,” he said. He began to read out the speed: “18,125 miles per hour…18,018 miles per hour…17,908 miles per hour…it’s working, keep pushing! 17,887 miles per hour! You did it. The asteroid will miss us!” Everyone cheered. The drum beats got faster, livelier, and soon the somber circle turned into a circle dance, with everyone embracing and dancing for joy. Sally’s kittens would be born, Hacker and Mitzi’s babies would grow up, and Fluffy could look forward to a life of endless possibilities.
The next day, July second, was to be Doomsday. The sky began to darken, and huge winds began to blow. Tidal waves rose out of the oceans and wiped out seacoast towns. Kingston harbor was heavily damaged. At noon, the animals looked up, and the sky had turned to stone. The giant asteroid was passing right above them. It moved in slow motion, its fearful topography seemed close enough to touch. The howling winds blew stronger and stronger, knocking down trees and tearing roofs off some of the buildings. Everyone huddled together in the Great Hall, which had withstood centuries of inclement weather. Hours passed. Finally, the sky brightened, and the sun shone at Animal U once again.
Laura interviewed Bernard, Hacker, Handler, Messner, and Epps for the final installment of her report to CNS: “Dr. Handler, how close to the Earth did the asteroid pass?”
“We calculate about 300 miles. It just missed the Earth’s atmosphere. If it had been any closer, it would have burst into flames and burned up much of our planet.”
“Dr. Messner, what were some of the obstacles you had to overcome to make the asteroid miss us?”
“The most important breakthrough, I think, was made by Fluffy here.” Indira handed him a reticent Fluffy. Messner cradled her lovingly in his arms. “Without any formal physics training, this brilliant cat figured out that it would be easier for the animals to slow the asteroid down than to push it to one side. But the most amazing thing was the wonderful team effort made by all the telekinetic animals around the world, who pulled together and saved our planet.”
Jeremiah Epps cut in. “I – I want to say something… I was responsible for exterminating thousands—maybe hundreds of thousands—of GAB animals. I can never make up for that sin. Yet, these animals and people here at Animal U welcomed me with no malice, no hatred in their hearts.” He teared up, dabbed his bad eye with a handkerchief. “I was wrong—terribly wrong—about the GABs, about a lot of things. We have a lot of rebuilding and rethinking to do. If I’m a part of that, I want the GABs included in planning our new world. They have so much to teach us.”
“For CNS, this is Laura Larson reporting from Animal U somewhere in the Catskill Mountains.” Laura edited together all the footage she had amassed and sent it on to CNS. The next morning, Laura was all over every TV screen on Earth.
“What will you do now, Fluffy?” asked Riordan. He searched her face fo
r some hint of human expression. “Indira and I were hoping you would come home and live with us. We could be a family.”
“I would love that, Dad. But at least for now, I think my place is here. There’s so much work to be done building the new world, and this is where it starts. But I can come home for holidays. Will you both be living in the penthouse in Kingston?”
“No. I’ve decided to give that to Art and Laura—if it’s still there. The light there is very good for painting. I’m going to move into Indira’s little place in Cambridge. From the first moment I arrived there, I felt that place was my home.”
“I can’t wait to see it,” said Fluffy. “Cats love cozy places.”
The next day, Riordan, Indira, Handler, Art, and Laura said their goodbyes and made their way up the dirt path to the tunnel through West Kill Mountain. As they emerged through the falls on the other side and climbed up the west bank to the footbridge, they were somewhat surprised to see Art’s van, still parked in the same place, unscathed.
“Oh,” said Art, “I almost forgot, professor…” He opened the back door of the van and pulled out a canvas wrapped in cloth. He unwrapped it and presented it to Riordan. It was the portrait of Fluffy, abstract, colors blazing, but clearly her: the pink nose, the whiskers, the white face peaking in a star point, and those green eyes, shining with intelligence and curiosity.
“It’s perfect, Art. Just as I imagined it. Thank you.”
Epps stayed behind at Animal U. A few days later a helicopter would come and take him home, but he wanted to stay and help with the rebuilding. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like,” said Mama Angelica.