The Fall

by J. L. Wood

  The knocking continued while Don grabbed last night’s black T-shirt off the dresser and slipped it on. Skiddy was standing at the bedroom door, shaking, terrified of their late-night visitor. Don leaned over and scooped Skiddy up, holding him close to his chest to calm him and hopefully suppress any more barks his companion intended to let escape.

  As Don approached the foyer, he flicked on the lights, bringing an end to all the heavy knocking. Cautiously, he looked through the peephole, regretting not bringing a gun with him in fear that outside events had escalated while they slept. His view through the tiny window was blurry. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and tried again, this time seeing a large head on the other side staring in, one that he knew all too well.

  Don slowly unlocked the door and pulled it open, motioning for Justin Sage, his old coworker from Cadence Science, and a mystery woman beside him to come inside. After he locked the door, he faced Justin. “Justin, what the hell? Do you know what time it is?”

  Justin pushed past Don into the living room adjacent to the foyer and looked back at the woman, who was still standing uncomfortably next to the front door, her hands clasped behind her back. “Over here,” Justin said, waving from the living room. “Don’t be shy. Don’s cool.”

  The woman kicked off her low-top sneakers in the foyer and joined them in the living room. “I apologize for the late-night visit—” she started.

  “No need for that, Jess,” said Justin. “I can call you Jess, right? I mean, I saw it on the birthday card on your kitchen counter when you went to change clothes. I didn’t know you had a birthday recently. Happy belated.”

  Sensing the woman’s uneasiness, Don shook his head at Justin. “Still a snooper, I see. What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, Don. We need to get down to business.” Justin laughed nervously while staring at his blue paw-printed boxer shorts. “But, buddy, you need some pants, and we need some coffee.”

  Don hushed Justin while Skiddy trembled in his arms, his small, thin tail tucked between his hind legs. “You haven’t answered my question. What are you doing here? Who is she? What was with all the banging on the door? You need to be quiet.”

  Justin took Skiddy from Don’s arms. Excited to see his long-lost friend, he put his small front legs on Justin’s shoulder and showered his neck in tiny wet licks while Justin scratched him behind the ears. “Pants and coffee, man. Then we’ll talk. In that order. And hurry, time is of the essence. We’ll be in the dining room.”

  Don stared at the woman, trying to remember if he knew her. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite pin it. “Not until you tell me who she is and why this couldn’t warrant a phone call.”

  The woman looked up, her eyes fixed on Don’s face. “Mr. Wolf, I am Jessica Koland, a technical director from Cadence Science. My team specializes in the detection of fast radio bursts and radio waves. I started right as you were leaving. We tried to phone you, but we both use the same phone network, and it seems to be down—there was no dial tone or even static, just silence. I apologize for the intrusion, but we needed to speak with you as soon as possible.”

  Justin chimed in. “Yeah, so, like the lady said, we kinda work together. Well, not together, together, I’m on another team, but…kind of with me. In a rival sort of way. A lot’s changed since you left.” He picked up a hand-painted blue clay vase from one of the bookshelves on the back end of the living room, facing the front of the house. Carefully, he examined it, then shrugged before setting it back down. “Hey, your place looks different. A woman lives here. Is it Karen?”

  That was a name Don hadn’t thought about in a long time. She’d exited Don’s life as quickly as she entered when she realized he was a has-been. When he voluntarily left Cadence Science to live a life of simplicity, removed from others in his world of internet acquaintances, he’d found her side of the closet empty, as if nothing had ever been there. It was a nightmare he had for weeks finally come true. He never hated her for leaving; she was too good for him.

  He was a has-been, grouped together with all the other used-to-bes, with only stories of the past to tell, nothing recent. Nothing to look forward to, nothing to plan except the next in-game raid or the next guild meeting or the next Fun Friday because there was pizza involved. She’d saved herself, and Don had never blamed her. Missy would save herself next. The clock was ticking. How many Fun Fridays would occur before he found her closet empty? The realization that it was coming angered him. Missy had known what she was getting into.

  “Cut the shit,” Don replied angrily. “What do you want, Justin? Keep your voice down. And no, it’s not Karen. And yes, a woman is here, one who will be very upset if you wake her. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, seeing as the closest you could ever get to a woman is a body pillow with a face drawn on with crayons.”

  Justin let out a chuckle and smiled at Don. “You got me there. Well, we don’t want something—it’s about what we need. Now get some coffee going, because this one? This one is a life-changer.”

  *

  Don watched as Jessica ran her finger along Skiddy’s deep claw marks on the wooden dining table. He knew Missy let him eat her leftovers on the table while he was away. Sometimes he spoke up, but more often than not, he didn’t. He pulled Skiddy close, smelling the faint scent of oatmeal-and-lavender shampoo in his fur. Skiddy turned himself around in Don’s lap to get comfortable and started licking between his paws. The shaking of his body against his stomach made Don feel nauseous. Calmly, he stroked the dog’s fur until he stopped and settled in his lap.

  Don was tired of sitting at the table with Jessica and Justin. His mind began to wander while Justin’s voice seemed to fade into the distance, until all he heard was a low murmur of nonsense, and then his name out of nowhere, snapping him back to the present.

  “Right, Don?” Justin asked. Don looked at Justin and nodded, unsure of what the question was.

  An hour had passed since Jessica and Justin arrived, and Don was still not on board with the importance of investigating the fast radio bursts. In his heyday, he’d manned the Pitch, one of the fastest spaceships on Earth at the time. It was a byproduct of the space boom of the 2020s. The Pitch was part of Phase I of the NASA Collaboration, to document and explore, and it now sat abandoned, waiting for NASA to reclaim its materials. It had once been the highlight of Cadence Science, traveling throughout space, investigating the great beyond.

  As technology continued to rapidly advance, it was eventually retired, as well as the old Cadence station, in favor of a more intelligent and reliable design. Manning the Pitch took old-fashioned skill and manual work, not like the ships today that were nearly fully autonomous, and Don was the only pilot who Justin kept in contact with that could man it.

  Jessica cleared her throat and took a sip of her coffee. “I know that you don’t know much about me, but Justin has told me a lot about you and how you and Kenny shared the same vision. I share that vision. I worked very closely with Kenny, up to the day of his death, and he believed in my work. Justin mentioned that you still own fifty percent of Cadence Science, which means that you could take the ship to Messier 83 if you wanted. I know a lot has changed for you following the events of why you left.”

  Don swallowed a lump in his throat. “Let’s not talk about that right now. We need to focus on what you’re asking. Taking a step back from Cadence Science was one of the best choices I made in my life. It’s given me a second chance. I was…I was not so well before I left, and I would prefer not to go back to that time in my life. I am a silent partner, and as a silent partner, I am not to get involved in the daily dealings of the company. That was the deal I accepted.”

  Don could feel the disappointment stemming from his old friend. He couldn’t look at him; it was too painful. He could see how passionate they were, and he missed that feeling, the excitement that enveloped you whole. The natural high that came with the discovery, the math, the physics. He wanted to be there with them, but his earthly ties h
eld him down, kept him grounded.

  He also wasn’t certain whether he still had it in him. His departure from Cadence Science was still crushing, the guilt buried deep inside of him, and sometimes the tide would wash away the layers of dirt until it surfaced. His dark friend, Shame, would pull him up, floating in space, arms tightly grasped around his waist, holding him still. “Again,” it would whisper, holding its head against Don’s, forcing him to look. And then “again,” and “again,” until Don couldn’t take it anymore, forcing him to retreat to his office and back onto his game, where everything was fine and he was in control.

  With Justin came the tide, and the pain tore at him like a cat holding a mouse down, scratching at its stomach with its rear claws, the intestines oozing out. He was the mouse. His eyes were fading as he remembered Kenny standing by his side. The two of them, the Cadence Science founders, Don in charge of exploration while Kenny led the laboratory, sharing the passion to discover the unknown.

  A tight-knit team spawned an excitement for education and research that spread to the thousands, and then the millions who waited in anticipation for their next discovery, devouring it whole with their hands out, requesting more. And because talent could stem from anywhere, they seeded schools with funding to enhance their science and math programs. They aimed to create a world of scientists, astronomers, and astrophysicists who would join them and eventually take the reins, pushing out farther and farther into space with each generation, learning, documenting, experiencing the close-kept secrets that space had to offer.

  “This is humankind’s destiny,” Kenny would say as he put another pushpin on the twenty-foot map of the Milky Way galaxy that hung on the main conference room wall.

  “It will all make sense eventually,” Don would reply, staring at the hundreds of pins, his heart heavy with awe.

  And then there was the collision that changed it all, the collision that tragically ripped Don away, introducing him to Shame, the powerful force that took control of his life. The company’s primary source of income, the Cadence, funded entirely on public donations alone, that provided students in their science and math programs with the opportunity to see space firsthand, ended after nearly a decade. A mechanical failure, as it was discovered, caused the shuttle to lose power, eventually changing its course to the Moon and then into an asteroid that ripped it to shreds. Twenty students and four Cadence Science employees dead. That was enough for their once-loyal fans and supporters to turn on them. One failed trip out of nearly two hundred to lose trust and funding.

  Don absorbed that failure as his own. He should have ordered one last check, one last confirmation. In retrospect, everything seemed so clear. After all the investigations and digging, it was ruled that all the safety checks turned up clear, and the fault lay with the manufacturer of the faulty mechanical board. With all these assurances that he’d done all he could do, Don still held his hand out for Shame and withdrew to his small office in his lonely home. He ended his career on his own terms, even while Cadence Science regained its stature in the science community, Kenny now at the wheel alone, keeping Don’s spot warm for whenever he was ready to return. As the years passed, Kenny remained hopeful that he would, until his sudden death over three years ago. A cerebral aneurysm, Don was told. No one saw it coming.

  David Malick, Kenny’s only son, was now his new partner, fifty-fifty. With him came a new vision for the company, and Don was too heartbroken to care. He should have returned; he should have been there to help Kenny. Shame returned. Shame was persistent, holding him down, now forcing him to watch the change at Cadence Science, covering his mouth with its tight grip, keeping him in silence.

  Loyalty was the first to change. No one at Cadence Science during Kenny’s time made a salary worth bragging about—not even Don or Kenny. They lived simplistic lives, along with their employees who shared their dream. David’s first demand was an increase in salary for everyone, putting them well above market value. When the money came pouring in, the cheap belief that money doesn’t buy happiness flew out the window, along with everyone’s conscience. With that, he gained the acceptance of nearly all the employees at Cadence Science—they were in the palm of his hand and gladly accepted the next change, moving away from education to for-profit.

  David’s third change was to remove Don from Cadence Science entirely and attempt to take on full ownership, which Don refused. He always thought he would return someday; he was just never sure when that day would arrive. David responded by increasing his payments to remain a silent partner, with no interaction with the company except on a consultancy basis for five years, which he was now three years into. Don gladly accepted, and over the years, David suppressed the use of Don’s name until he was just a distant memory to his new employees. To them, David was the sole owner of Cadence Science, the man who brought about change.

  Don tried to clear his head and push Shame back beneath the surface, hidden from his guests. “You said you have figures?” he asked Jessica, who was sitting silently while looking through her phone.

  “Yes,” she quickly responded, reaching for her bag. She pulled out a large binder and pushed it on the table toward Don. “Everything is there,” she continued. “And the markers on the side will take you to the projections.”

  Don flipped to the first marker and stared at the graph. “So we are now on day two. Interesting,” he whispered. He continued to flip through the binder while Jessica and Justin sat in silence, waiting for the verdict. He wanted to help them. This was just not a good time for him to ruffle feathers, especially with two years still remaining on his contract to stay out of the business of Cadence Science. His visitors had rekindled something in him; it was just misplaced at the moment.

  If the contract with David held, he could lose everything, including the education fund to which he dedicated ninety-nine percent of his silent partner earnings. Known as Kenny’s Kids, a tribute to his late business partner, it provided full college rides to students with no means to afford an education of their own in the science field. Through the fund, Kenny lived, and through the fund, Don felt more complete.

  Don stared into his coffee mug, refusing to look at his guests, while he continued to internally suffocate Shame. “You know, I always thought I would return one day, that when I would walk back into that building, people wouldn’t look at me differently. There were days that I would get dressed to go into the office but then just stop at the door.”

  Shame reached up and grabbed Don by the neck, startling him, causing him to release his grip. “Now that David is there, things are even more…complicated. This is just not a battle I want in my life right now. This sort of thing will not go unnoticed. It’s not as simple as me just showing up and taking control again. And how can you even ask this of me? I could lose everything.”

  “Or you could gain everything,” Jessica replied, taking another sip of coffee, which was now turning cold. “If this proves to be some sort of signal directed to us, just think of all the research and opportunities we would have. Think of how happy Kenny would have been—”

  Justin let out a loud sigh. “Don. You’re doing nothing all day but playing house with the woman that lives here. You need this in your life. This isn’t you, you’re not the Don I remember. Who are you, buddy? Tell me, because from here, it really seems like all that radiation from space cooked your brain.”

  “You don’t get it,” Don replied defensively. “I have a life here. You couldn’t understand what I’ve been through.”

  Justin stood up and leaned over the table, staring his old friend in his eyes. “What you’ve been through? Quit living in the past. I was there too! We all felt the crash when it happened. We were all on that team. Look at you. Don’t you want to do something with your life? You’re out of shape. Now I’m thinking you can’t even man the Pitch if you wanted to. All you can do is give directions. You played games till how late again? The Don I knew didn’t give a damn about politics. All he wanted to do was get out t
here and discover. But you, you’ve turned into a lazy, incredibly out-of-shape has-been who talks to internet strangers all day and who’s let Cadence Science turn to complete shit and fill itself with money-hungry idiots.”

  Don patted his stomach. He had gained a good forty pounds since he left Cadence Science, but he wouldn’t go so far as to say he was really out of shape. He had let himself go, but he could still fit into his old spacesuit. Still, maybe Justin had a point. He was beginning to go bald and was holding on dearly to the small amount of hair he had left. He used to take the utmost pride in himself, with a strict vegetarian diet and an active lifestyle. These days, all he wanted to do was play with his guildies, where he felt safe and included, and eat cheeseburgers while Missy was at work. He always hid the wrappers deep in the trash bin so that she wouldn’t notice that he had abandoned a cause they were once both invested in.

  “And if these FRBs are nothing?” Don continued. “Then what?”

  “That is up to you,” Jessica replied. “You can say that we pressured you into doing this, and Justin and I could lose our jobs, which I’m fine with, and I’m sure Justin is too.” She glanced at Justin, who gave an awkward thumbs-up. “I have an entire team who will corroborate this. Or you can always reestablish yourself in the company and get us back on track with what Cadence Science used to stand for. It would be nice to get a foothold again in the education sector and continue with our research. You are still an owner of Cadence, and you still have power there.”

  Don felt cornered. All their points were valid, and the data that Jessica presented was sound. He couldn’t find any loopholes. There was something going on in Messier 83; he just didn’t know what. He flipped a page in the binder and studied the five-day projection again. “So, in three days, the FRBs will be completely identifiable outside of the Earth? Our satellites would be able to pick them up from there?”