We have decided to make it live.
It dogs its helmet again. Apparently, this conversation is over.
~~~~~
Their lander lifts straight up in a swirl of sand and dust, then accelerates hard to the northeast. The sun is directly overhead now, a fat festering pustule in the center of a blood-red sky.
“This one seems pretty clear-cut,” Asif says. “I didn’t like the tone of that conversation at all. Any objections?”
I rub my face with both hands. I’d like to object. I’d like to say that the continued existence of seventeen ghosts, buried in the mantle of a dead planet, re-living the best days of their lives over and over again ad infinitum, isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit — let alone the lives of God knows how many furry starfish.
But I don’t. I just shake my head and say, “No, Asif. No objections.”
A thin beam of shimmering light lances up from the north. It pins the retreating lander, turns it into a white-hot fireball, bright enough to cause the dome to darken. A half-second later, another beam, then two, then three leap straight up toward the mother ship, a black dot sliding across the face of the bloated sun.
“They’re running for it,” Asif says. “Boosting out at ... twenty-five gees.”
“Zero-point?”
“Affirmative. We have contact...”
A new star appears, just east of the sun, accelerating hard enough that I can see it even from here. It grows brighter and brighter...
“How are they still alive?” Asif mutters.
Two more beams rise up from the south to join the others. The star flares, and the dome goes black. It stays that way for ten seconds, then twenty. When it slowly clears again, the star is sinking toward the horizon, still glowing brighter than the sun.
“Are we done here?” I ask.
“We are.”
“Five beams?”
“Yeah, and all five batteries are drained. Do you have any idea how many anti-protons those bastards just absorbed? That’s twenty thousand years worth of power dropping below the horizon over there. We’re gonna need to slow down the clocks again.”
I draw a deep breath, then let it out slowly.
“We could have let them go.”
Asif gives me a moment of incredulous silence before replying.
“Are you kidding me, Jim? They had a zero-point drive — a fact which they went to a huge amount of trouble to hide from us — not to mention whatever tech let them absorb damn near our entire energy budget before exploding. These guys came here loaded for bear. They were not wide-eyed seekers of knowledge.”
And he’s right, of course. This was the eighth time someone has stumbled into our system over the last four billion years, and the eighth time that we’ve taken them out. And I get it. Honest to God, I do. If they can accelerate a starship close to c, they can accelerate a projectile close to c. A few thousand kilos moving at that speed is enough to crack a planet, and there’s not a hell of a lot you can do about it, because the light that tells you that your extinction is on its way gets there ten seconds before the projectile does. We can’t let them live. We can’t, because they know all of this as well as we do, which means they can’t let us live.
I look out over the red desert. A black cloud is coming up over the horizon, far off to the north.
“They said they knew our kind,” I say. “You think they’ve done this before?”
“I’d guess so. Probably not with the exploding part, though. Probably not with folks who’ve been in this game as long as we have.”
That’s almost certainly true. I’d be surprised if there’s anyone out there who’s lasted half as long as we have at this point. The galaxy is a dangerous place.
“Any chance they got a call out?”
“None. Big Eye made sure of that. There hasn’t been a whisper of EM leaving this system since they crossed Neptune’s orbit.”
Fair enough. I take one last look around. I have a strong premonition that this will be my last time topside.
I won’t be missing much.
I walk back into the central office, crack the tank, take off my clothes, and lie down inside.
“Get me out of here,” I say. “I’ve got fish to catch.”
~~~~~
I’m running for shore, a light breeze filling my sail, three fat lake trout in my cooler, when I see Asif standing on the beach. Maggie’s there beside him, completely motionless, a blank smile frozen on her face.
Something is very wrong.
I pull up the dagger board twenty meters out, then hop into the water and pull the boat up onto the sand when I feel the keel touch bottom. The motion of the water stops dead as soon as I’m out of it.
“Asif,” I say. “What’s going on?”
Maggie still hasn’t moved.
“Hey, Jim,” he says. “Were they biting today?”
“They’re biting every day, Asif. You know this. What’s wrong with Maggie?”
“We don’t have the cycles to maintain her as a full-interactive right now, Jim. We’ll get her moving again when I’m gone.”
“What are you talking about, Asif?” I take two steps forward, and poke my finger into his chest. “You need to conserve power, do it somewhere else. I want my wife back.”
He takes a half-step back and glares up at me.
“It’s not about power, Jim. It’s about clock cycles. We’re running at better than 1,000,000:1 right now.”
I open my mouth, then shut it again.
“You mean 1:1,000,000, right?”
“No, Jim. That’s why I’m here. We’ve got a bit of a problem. Remember our furry starfish friends?”
My stomach drops.
“They got a call out?”
He shakes his head.
“No, we don’t think so. There hasn’t been enough time for a response yet, even if they had. More likely they had this set up as a dead-man switch — something they set moving before they came in-system, that they could have diverted if they decided we weren’t worth whacking.”
“How big, and how fast?”
“Mass is unknown exactly, but it’s big. Probably twenty million kilos at a minimum. Speed is 0.95c.”
I stare at him. He gives me a half-apologetic smile.
“It’s gonna hit us dead-center,” he says. “Best estimate is that it’ll punch through the planet like a bullet through a rotten apple.”
I’m not sure what to say to that. After a few seconds, Asif claps me on the shoulder.
“Oh, cheer up. There’s some good news. There’s a reasonable chance that this thing’s gonna dump enough energy into the system to shake the core loose, liquify the mantle, and re-start plate tectonics. Come back in a few million years, and this planet might have a magnetic field, maybe even a real atmosphere again.”
I sit down heavily in the sand and look out over the lake. A wave is rolling in, frozen in mid-swell.
“How much time do we have?”
Asif sits down beside me.
“Realtime? A little less than eight seconds.”
I laugh.
“Eight seconds?”
“Yeah,” Asif says. “That’s why we cranked up the clock. No sense in saving power now, right?”
“No, I guess not.”
He puts his arm around my shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Jim. You’ll get in plenty of fishing yet. And when the time comes, we just won’t re-instantiate you one morning.”
I turn my head to look at him.
“So I get to die in my sleep?”
He shrugs.
“Sure. That’s a good way to think about it.”
We sit together in silence, and watch the frozen lake. After a few minutes, Asif stirs, then stands. He offers me a hand up. I let him pull me to my feet.
“I’ve got to get back to Main,” he says. “Call me soon, though. I’ll bring Mandy down for a fish fry.”
“I’ll do that,” I say.
He winks, then disappear
s. The lake lurches back into motion. Maggie shakes her head, and her eyes focus on my face.
“Jim?” she says. “What happened? Weren’t you just out on the lake?”
“You must have been daydreaming,” I say. I lift the cooler out of the boat. “Good catch today. You up for cleaning some trout?”
She smiles.
“Aren’t I always?”
I drop the cooler and pull her close. Her arms wrap around me. I can feel her breath, soft in my ear.
“What a perfect day,” she whispers. “Tell me it’ll always be like this.”
I close my eyes tight. Her hair is warm from the sunlight and smelling of jasmine.
“It will,” I say. “I promise, Maggie, it will. Always and forever.”
~~~~~
~~~~~
Edward Ashton is the author of more than a dozen short stories, which have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Every Day Fiction, The Future Fire, and Escape Pod, among other places. You can find him online at smart-as-a-bee.tumblr.com.
(Back to Table of Contents)
Letters to a Useless Nephew on a Backwater Planet
by Iain Ishbel; published February 10, 2015
I.
Dear nephew:
You are an idiot.
My sister remains, of course, entirely delighted with you. She spends her days boasting of your triumph: the runt of her first litter, her little baby babooshka — you see, learning Earth languages is not difficult — assigned to a real-life planetary Overthrow. And yet to me, nephew, you have revealed your idiocy in a single letter. This before even arriving in your assigned system!
I have spent thirty-five periastrons in the Diplomatic Service, and the Overthrow Division for eight before that, and I have never heard a local pseudonym more at odds with the major languages of the target planet. Can you truly believe "Yngwie Malmsteen" could be plausible, anywhere on Earth? Either you are joking, or you have failed to examine human languages with any care. You will have to do better.
Nephew, it is not yet too late to admit you are out of your depth. This pseudonym debacle would serve as a warning to any person with a working pair of brains. Admit, I beg, that you lack the ability to handle a planetary Overthrow. Earth is a tiny world and backward, but there is simply too much thinking to be done.
I can help. If you would like me to arrange a cancellation — perhaps a quick environmental catastrophe? — I still maintain numerous contacts throughout the Diplomatic service. Certainly you would seem unlucky, but that is not nearly as bad as seeming incompetent, is it? After all, which of us has never suffered from poor timing?
Excepting your uncle, of course.
Foresight and preventive adaptation: That is how I have achieved my current exalted rank in the service of their Majesty the Queen. Do not sully my accomplishments, nephew.
Your affectionate uncle,
Solomon W. Gazzola
p.s. Can you see the quality? That is how to choose a pseudonym.
~~~~~
II.
Dear nephew:
No, I do not think I was unnecessarily harsh in calling you an "idiot". In fact your blunderous arrival on Earth renders the term, if anything, an understatement.
You see, I did watch your live feed last night, though I saw only the first sixth before throwing a glass bulb of intoxicant into the wormhole projector.
Instantaneous communications are such a blessing, aren't they? So much faster than the electromagnetic broadcasts that humans use. And speaking of which: I suspect that you might have examined those light-speed EM signals while you were, perhaps, roughly, more or less, at a guess, thirty-eight light-years from Earth?
I suspect this, nephew, because you made the idiotic mistake of reproducing local clothing thirty-eight solar years out of fashion. True, it is very easy to forget the light-speed limitation of EM communications. This is why that reminder is in large lettering on the cover of your approach instructions.
If you had taken even the elementary precaution of looking out the window at the humans surrounding your landing site, you might perhaps have noticed that very few of them were wearing white disco bodysuits. And by "very few" I believe I mean a value mathematically identical to zero.
The bell bottoms were also a mistake.
Your mother has argued that you are to be congratulated for noticing your mistake so soon and zipping up the front fastener, though even she was slightly troubled by your subsequent swearing. If you choose to grow that much chest hair, nephew, you should be prepared for some of it to interact with your clothing, I should think.
I do concede that you have done better than before in selecting a local pseudonym. I am glad that you listened to me, in this at least. Even if you plagiarized the name — and I don't want to know if you have — "Barry Gibb" has been accepted reasonably well by your hosts.
I also agree that "The Bee Gees" follows logically as an acceptable local name for our race. It seems to me that you have inadvertently done at least one thing reasonably well. Perhaps there is a modicum of hope for you.
Your affectionate uncle,
Gazzola
~~~~~
III.
Dear Barry:
One in thirty-two.
No, that is not your intelligence measurement, though I am sure it is very close. "One in thirty-two" is the proportion of mammalian races whose brains have evolved to rely heavily on first impressions.
Do you know what a first impression is?
Or let me ask instead: Did you even notice they were mammals? No — I will go further and forestall your response. You did not look at a single local person. Because if you had noticed that the humans were mammals, you might have realized there was one chance in thirty-two that these beings would make up their minds about you in the first day of your visit.
Which might have suggested that you shouldn't eat any of them.
I am so irritated by your sloppiness that I will write no more this evening.
G.
~~~~~
IV.
Nephew Barry:
Do not send any more letters of apology. I do not care how hungry you were.
Your mother forgives you anything, of course, but I am a senior member of the Diplomatic Service. I have spent three times the racial average on my own education, and was already Research Fellow to their Majesty the Queen before you were born. Because of this extensive education, and my vast experience with interpersonal psychology, I had already assumed that you "hadn't meant to cause any diplomatic incidents." There is no need to send a letter clarifying this, thank you.
Instead, you might wish to spend time explaining your Overthrow plan. I accept your analysis, as Division representative in the field, that the political leadership of Earth is not executive. I concede therefore that it is necessary to win over the populace of the human planet.
However, I would like to know more about how you will accomplish this seduction. In your last letter you do not explain your plan. Instead, you assure me that you have one, which fact I had also assumed. I hope you are not planning to send them another group email? Even your mother thought that was a brainless and ineffective idea.
Your uncle,
Gazzola
~~~~~
V.
Barry:
Propaganda? Really? To Earth people?
This culture to which you've been sent on Overthrow duty is literally exceptional in producing EM radiation. There are entire industries devoted to using EM radiation to influence the mental states of huge segments of humanity: They are called "advertising", "journalism", "professional sports", and "pornography". Resisting this influence is the one area in which Earth people excel — and you thought that you could convince them to submit to their Majesty the Queen simply by discussing it?
You may think you are convincing, Barry, but the truth is that your mother never liked to oppose y
ou in arguments because you were such a feeble nestling.
Your logic is simplistic, your rhetoric insulting, and your grammar appalling. You would not have been selected to Overthrow a high-media race such as this if there was any realistic possibility you'd use propaganda.
Did you design it yourself? The color scheme is intestinal.
On a related note, I have discovered that the name "Bee Gees" is not in fact a unique name among humans. A simple search of public records, which I undertook on a whimsical hunch and took less time than emptying my lower bladder, shows that the name was originally applied to a popular political triumvirate of the distant past, now badly in disgrace.
The disgust of the humans now toward that name would have been quite obvious to any individual with even a single operational cortex. So, yes, on that basis I expect that you simply failed to notice.
On Homeworld, however, you may recall that we receive a live feed of your planet's local transmissions, via the instantaneous relay you yourself placed in lunar orbit. The global riots, the chants of "Death to the Bee Gees", and a 3D re-release of the musical entertainment "Saturday Night Fever" — all these have been seen planetwide here, and are the talk of Homeworld. It is rare for an Overthrow team to be this badly despised, so you have gained some significant notoriety.
Your propaganda did indeed have remarkable results.
I have only one question: What will you do next?
Gazzola
~~~~~
VI.
Nephew:
Your latest letter is intriguing.
You claim that you have finally won the trust of Earth humans. That is a remarkable feat. Trust is a necessary component of any Overthrow, of course, if we are not to overtax the resources of the Military Corps. And yet when you last wrote, it seemed that you had managed to alienate most of humanity.
Still, your mother is relieved, and is once again discussing you openly with her friends and her gambling association.
But for myself I worry that you might have forgotten the basic tribal instinct of proto-civilized cultures. Do you remember that there will be tribes in competition with each other? And that tribes in competition might actually lie to you?
My prayers to their Majesty now include a daily entreaty that you have not taken up with a tribal unit such as the Americans, the French, or any other politically desperate group. I pray that you are in fact a friend to all mankind and that you have truly calmed their outrage and become popular.
My hopes, however, are not high. Because, as I may possibly have said before, you are an idiot.