With them also is a SALAMANDER CHEF, nineteen and happy, broad and more built and tough than the others, in a bright orange and blue apron over a light brown uniform. The Chef carries only a picnic basket, while the others carry a bowl of green soup and bread on a colorful plate, and portable equipment, which they wheel out and efficiently assemble.
Janus pretends indifference, but peeks at the Salamanders from the side of his eye.
At his side they assemble a small beach-side camp as it were: a bright orange and white striped canopy secured over a table, a generator which powers a small refrigerator, a grill, and a clear cabinet cooler, stocked with brightly colored drinks with labels printed in colorful, playful alien scripts. The final touch is a picnic basket loaded with utensils and napkins. The Chef carefully sets a butter knife, a butter plate with butter, a spoon, and a napkin at the table, with the soup and bread.
Janus can't help but laugh, though he stifles it very well.
The Salamanders march away.
Janus gives the orange and white canopy a look of puzzled recognition. Scenes flash through his mind.
EXT. BEACH--DAY
JANUS THADDEUS AGE FOURTEEN and NEREUS THADDEUS AGE THIRTY-SIX, both in swim wear, chase the wake of a wave as it recedes down the beach. They run back up the beach. Janus stops and looks up shore. There under a bright orange and white striped umbrella sits HELEN THADDEUS, in swim wear, thirty-seven, white, with fiery red hair, fit, feisty, strong and compassionate, her beauty an embodiment of Americana, the American Dream. She looks at Janus with a sort of trance of open adoration. Her eyes pierce his soul.
JANUS
What?
Nereus smiles and looks at her with admiration. She doesn't answer.
JANUS
What?
NEREUS
What do you mean, 'what?' You know what.
JANUS
Uh, no.
NEREUS
You're a wonderful, intelligent, handsome, adorable boy, that's what.
JANUS
Uh, oh.
Janus returns his Mother's smile, and blushes.
EXT. SPACE--NIGHT
The fires of five hundred atomic blasts pour over the human fleet in the battle to end all battles. A wall of light approaches the shield and glass at the front of the Command Battleship, while quicker, advance flames lick at it.
INT. COMMAND BATTLESHIP DECK--NIGHT
The Military personnel gaze in horror at the wall of fire that approaches the large view glass of the front deck. Quicker advance flames lick at it. Commander Nereus Thaddeus, however, is not afraid. He howls in pure rage at the flames, raises his microphone box, and depresses the orange button on it.
NEREUS
BY THE GOD OF ALL THE EARTH, YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE LAST OF HUMANITY!
He raises his fist in defiance and howls in rage. The flames shatter the deck, and all goes instantaneously white.
EXT. AIRFIELD--DAY
Janus lies on his back on a horizontally reclined folding chair, beside the makeshift "beach" camp.
He howls in rage, howls for his losses, and openly bawls.
EXT. AIRFIELD--DAY
Janus lies on his back on a horizontally reclined folding chair, beside the makeshift "beach" camp.
Two of the triple suns peek over the mountainous east horizon, the dawn sky ablaze with red, indigo and violet. Xenon and four soldiers come to him. He wakes to the sound of their march, but lies still. They bring a bowl of green soup, and scrambled eggs on a colorful plate. They exchange these for the uneaten soup and bread at the table, and march away.
FADE OUT:
THE END
PREVIEW OF “FORSAKEN”
Excerpt of the prose short story
At the cusp of obliteration, Father was prompted to deeply consider the inmost chambers of his soul. There, as he stared at the last star he could see—for how long he did not know, nor did he know how long it would be until the light from it, too, would seem to vaporize—he considered his many wrongs.
Forty years old, and tall and stocky, with grizzled dark brown hair, he was very tough yet gentle—gentle, when he chose to be. An ineffably sunny, joyful demeanor was sculpted into his face, which would perplex any observer who knew too well the contradictions under the surface. At the moment, however, all that sunniness was sucked away.
He came to a conclusion.
“Family Council!” he shouted.
Mother and the children hurriedly assembled under the orange iridescent light, around the kitchen table, then waited, breathlessly, for Father to arrive there, which he did.
He sat. “Children, I do not think that things have been quite right between you and I, nor between I and your Mother—”
Mother looked afraid and grieved—
“By which I mean for my part,” he hurriedly added, then continued, “I mean that I do not think I have been entirely right towards your Mother, for my part. Nor indeed towards you children, for my part.”
Mother looked relieved.
“I have thought about it long and hard, and I have concluded that there are altogether too many times—”
“About twenty per day,” fourteen-year-old Timothy interrupted. Timothy, brown-eyed and brunette, had eyes with a very playful, intelligent light in them, and he was tall and gangly, yet wiry—very tough.
Father looked stunned for a moment, but then continued anyway.
“Well, I suppose you must know what I'm about to say, as usual. So anyway, I've concluded that there have been altogether too many times when I've spoken, it breaks my heart to say so—I've spoken too often in aggressive anger.”
“About twenty times per day,” Timothy repeated.
“Yes, I suppose that's about right,” Father agreed.
“No, it's exactly right,” Timothy continued, “if you average it all out to a per-day rate. I don't know why that is. It's some kind of internal barometer, I guess. Twenty explosions per day, then you're all settled. You're all done. Time's up. Time to tuck in and curl up. No more anger left.”
“How many times have you thought this?” Father wondered.
“Does it matter?” Timothy replied.
Sixteen-year-old Iris, observant and compassionate, beautiful and doll-like, and with very reddish auburn hair, spoke. “Does this account for the explosions of a magnitude to justify calling one explosion twenty?”
“Certainly,” replied Timothy. “The puzzling thing is that there's so little middle-ground. It's either one big explosion out of nowhere, interspersed with long silences, or a series of roughly regularized explosions, again, at about twenty per day.”
Father hid his face in his hands, and sighed. “Lord, have mercy on me.”
Iris tried very hard, and partly failed, to stifle laughter.
“Which is very unusual,” continued Timothy, almost as if Father had said nothing at all— “because aggression, generally speaking, is typically highly unpredictable. I wonder if you could enlighten us—”
“Timothy,” interrupted Mother, gently, and gave him a bemused but warning look, a look which said yes this is fun, but should you continue?—and Timothy got the hint and stopped.
Iris again stifled laughter.
Mother, thirty-nine years old, and of whom Iris was very much an image, looked on her children with affectionate bemusement. The only difference in Mother's hair from Iris was the fair amount of gray.
But Mother's amusement quickly faded, and between them all there was a long pause of breathless, anguished silence.
Father finally broke the silence. “Well, so anyway, I'd like to apologize for all that, and make a solemn promise to you all to do my very best to never yell again.”
“That will be very easy once the black hole consumes us, I suppose,” observed Iris.
“Quite right, and I detect a touch of irony in your tone, you clever little lass,” said Father fondly.
“Father?” queried Iris.
“Yes, love,” replied Father.
“Do you
recall that last year—”
Mother shook her head and offered a look of gentle caution to Iris, who silenced herself immediately.
“Yes, I recall,” said Father. “I made the same promise. My rate was about thirty times per day back then, and it agonizes me that it's not zero now. This whole conversation is of course agonizing and utterly boring, isn't it?”
“Not entirely,” said Mother, and glanced at Timothy, then winked at Father.
“Yes, yes,” said Father. “Ha. Ha. Ha.”
“But are you quite sure you'll ever cut that rate to zero, Father?” asked Timothy. “I think it's quite as likely that you'd ever stop yelling at us—if we ever get out of this sticky mess—as it is likely that you would ever stop lusting after other women.”
Mother, Father, and Iris gasped. Father flushed, and scowled, furiously, at Timothy. He opened his mouth to shout, then willfully strangled back his words, to instead make an enraged sort of odd, gargling sound.
But he did not shout.
“What on Earth, no, what in Hell have you said to your Father, Timothy?!” demanded Mother.
“I suppose then, Mother, that you never saw the encrypted files?” Timothy crossed to the small partition between the kitchen and living room, and logged into Father's profile on the computer—
“What in the name of—” Father began to protest, and stepped forward to stop Timothy, but Timothy raised a hand, palm out, in a clear and forceful stop gesture to Father.
“Tut-tut, Father, crucial revelation underway!”
Timothy opened a folder and navigated to a file, then opened it. It prompted for a password. “You're wondering how I followed your