Ghost-Dad was a real jerk. He would pull the rug under our feet at the top of the stairs. He’d make the light switches shock us. He was the reason our garbage disposal never worked: one time it “jammed,” and when Mom reached in to clear it, it started up again. She only lost the tip of her ring finger, but we never trusted the sink monster again.
Jimmy had it worst. Ghost-Dad could make him fall for the trap almost every time. He’d go in for a hug and come out bruised or bleeding.
Mom and I started fighting about Christmas in November. I understood that she had painful memories — we all did — but didn’t she understand that it was Christmas? We were still kids, and we needed presents, decorations, cookies, all of it… with the possible exception of a visit from Santa.
I took it upon myself to sneak the holiday into the house. I went up to the attic, a task made much more daunting by Ghost-Dad, who wouldn’t allow the light to stay on, or a flashlight to work, or even a candle to stay lit. I felt his malign presence as I struggled to stay on the little causeway of plywood and not fall through the ceiling. I reached a box I suspected contained Christmas stuff, opening one dusty flap and pulling out the first thing my fingers found, a cool sphere.
Immediately the lights came on, and with a moan the likes of which I hadn’t heard since last Christmas, Ghost-Dad was gone. I held a shiny red ornament, paperclip hanger still attached. With the box open, I located the other boxes, dragging them toward the pull-down stairs. With the box closed the lights went out again, and my feet were pulled out from under me, and down into the house I fell.
Nothing was broken. None of my bones, anyway. One box of Christmas had tumbled down with me, and I found myself surrounded by shattered glass and tangled string lights. But Ghost-Dad was gone again.
After I cleaned up the mess, Ghost-Dad returned. But I’d been thinking in the meantime, formulating a theory. Jimmy took one wobbly step toward Ghost-Dad before he remembered what I’d told him to do. He pulled out the Santa hat I’d given him and put it on his head.
Before Ghost-Dad dissolved, he screamed and covered his eyes in terror. Yep, Ghost-Dad was afraid of Christmas.
A demonstration convinced Mom to let us celebrate, and we did so in relative peace. Ghost-Dad didn’t bother us, but our memories of Real-Dad did. We missed him, maybe for the first time. Our presents to him had been packed up with the rest of Christmas, and there they still were, wrapped and ready. We put them under the tree, where they remained through the whole sad holiday.
New Year’s came and went and our decorations stayed up. Then Valentine’s Day. I think we were all afraid to take them down. Jimmy wore his Santa hat almost all the time, and Mom had to steal it from him in the night to wash it every now and again.
When the tree was fully dead we threw it out. We un-decked the halls as much as we dared, leaving a garland here and a stocking there to ward off Ghost-Dad. It worked.
But those three presents weighed on me until one summer day I covered up all the decorations. I held my gift to Dad in my hands, obscuring its reindeer paper, until Ghost-Dad appeared, still wearing his Santa costume.
“I want to show you something,” I told him. He rattled the windowpanes. “Still mad, I guess. I get that. I’m sorry we didn’t save you. But look, I made you a present.” I unwrapped the paper and crumpled it up, then opened the little box.
It was a lame present, one of those things we did in school every year, but I hadn’t had any better ideas. An ornament made of our family portrait, decorated with glitter and ribbon and love.
The curtains blew in an unearthly breeze, then settled down. Ghost-Dad took the ornament out of my hand and hovered it to the mantel. He smiled and climbed right up the chimney.
We still keep a few candy-cane candles and sprigs of holly on side tables, but I don’t think we’d see Ghost-Dad even without them.
***published in Every Day Fiction, December 29, 2015
Story notes:
I’ve always had a vague dislike of Christmas, so when I was asked to submit something for Every Day Fiction’s holiday lineup in 2015, it wasn’t going to be a heart-warming tale. Unless you count hearts on fire. The opportunity to give it a punny title was just the icing on the burnt Santa-shaped cookie.
No Alphabet Can Spell It
For lack of a better name, I call myself Laika. We’ve both been shot into space and abandoned, though not necessarily in that same order. But unlike the original Laika, I intend not to die.
To that aim I rouse Belka. She swings at me, but her arms are tangled in her cocoon’s elastic straps so I don’t have to dose her with the tranquilizer I hold behind my back. After a minute the wildness dissipates out of her eyes. But it stays close, held in by the gravitic mass of her insanity. She looks through me. “We must be there, huh?” she asks, as though I’d come to offer her another gray and mushy frozen dinner instead of a wide-open planet under a real sky.
I nod, and she extricates herself from the sleeping pod and moves toward the Wildest Dreams’ flight control area. She seems compliant, so I retrieve the syringe cap from a zippered pocket and stow the now-capped tranquilizer in another pocket before she can see it. But I keep my distance. The image of Albert trailing behind us into the frozen void, the sound of Belka’s hysterical laughter, will be with me for however many centuries I live.
A lot of things didn’t survive the forty-five-trillion-kilometer voyage to CelBod, the planet now hanging hugely before we three remaining Fixies like a gray-blue waxing marble, furry-edged against the black of space: the flavor of real food, comms with Earth, optimism, Belka’s sanity, and Albert, to name a few.
Gordo is waiting for us by the wide forward window, and I let the zero-g tides pull me to him as they always do. We hold hands nervously, as if we were still pre-teen orphans in NASA’s strictly controlled dormitories and not fifty-something Fixies mere hours from colonizing an exo-planet. Assuming Belka doesn’t decide to crash and kill us all.
Something has apparently gone wrong with the dual-particle transmitter between Earth and CelBod, because according to mission specs we’re supposed to be bouncing messages to the planet for instant relay to Earth. But it’s not working. It’s hard to say exactly when the problem started, because we were somewhere in the middle and there was still an awfully long lag between us and either side of the DPT, but the last transmission we did receive didn’t exactly fill us with joy. The woman on the other end was distracted, and asked us to wait a minute (which was funny, because I think we were waiting almost two years at that point anyhow), and then she looked offscreen and said, “What the hell is that?” And then all we saw was static.
I have been clinging to the idea that the transmitter on CelBod just needs some tweaking that the CREATORs and AIs can’t handle. Gordo doesn’t disabuse me of that thought, even though he is the mission engineer and knows everything about the DPT, and even though we all know that the robots built the damn thing in the first place and probably know how to fix it better than any human.
But I try to put those thoughts aside. Through the front window, Celestial Body #8972642158 is so gorgeous that I could almost call it Eden or Goloka or Valhalla or Shangri-la or any of the other names romantic Earthlings tried to stick on it. CelBod shimmers as we dive toward her, two moons hiding behind her like shy children.
I hope the planet is more eager to meet us.
#
The landing doesn’t kill us, even with no support from Earth or the AIs seeded on this world, and despite Belka’s wild cackling as she pilots us through the planet’s bumpy atmosphere. In fact, we land within a few kilometers of the targeted landing zone, on a huge volcanic flow that looks eerily like the barren stretch of New Mexico we trained in. The land we can see out our windows is smooth reddish-gray, with rocks that rise high above the Wildest Dreams like ocean waves. All of it is bathed in light from the yellow sun.
I want to jump out of my chair and pop the hatch and run to the settlement that the AIs and CREATORs have been
building these past decades, but gravity immediately makes its presence known, and everything becomes hard. It takes me a few tries just to get my hands up to the buckles on my harness. I barely manage to lift them out of my lap, and then I overshoot and hit myself in the face. Then I laugh, watching Belka and Gordo struggle with their own gravity.
“Gravity is such a downer!” Gordo yells, laughing like a maniac as he tumbles from his jumpseat.
I finally stand up on my wobbly fawn legs. They don’t immediately snap, so I take a few steps. The world is heavy and I am weak, but there’s a familiarity to it that’s also solidly reassuring. After a few minutes we all manage to stand and stretch, and before we can stop her Belka opens the hatch latch. Fresh air streams in, ruffling our hair, and we breathe deeply.
“It’s a good thing the O2 reports the AIs sent back were right,” Gordo says, still laughing a little. “How funny would it have been to get all this way and die when we opened the hatch to poison air?”
“Hilarious,” Belka says, but despite the flatness of her voice, I think she means it. I can easily picture her laughing breathlessly even as she asphyxiated.
I just shake my head, turning my back on the two comedians and heading for the ramp. I am the first one down, but I have no momentous words. Actually, right then gravity catches up with my bladder, and I urgently need to pee. It’s such a perfect mockery of our whole epic undertaking that I start to laugh too, joining the chorus of hyenas that we astronauts have become. We giggle like schoolchildren, getting our land legs as we run and cautiously jump and spin around on the blood-red rocks. Which is, of course, exactly what we must look like; none of us were older than twelve when we were Fixed, decades ago.
As we finally sit, giddiness ebbing, soaking in the warm rays of sun through atmosphere, reality starts to sink in. We are here. We’re on an alien planet, breathing alien air, and sitting under an alien sun. These things are subtly different from those we left behind: the air a little thinner, the sun brighter, the sky a darker, almost indigo blue. But after a decade in the tiny vessel behind us, it’s like home. Which is good, because it is home now.
“Can you believe we live here?” I ask, another wave of hysteria threatening to overcome me.
The others shake their heads. Of course, we actually live eight kilometers to the southwest, near the shore of a brackish ocean. Gordo and I debate the merits of walking that distance to the settlement, the conditions of which are unknown. Our alternative is to spend yet another night in the goddamn Dreams, and even if any of us could stomach that thought, the ship is only outfitted for zero-g sleeping. With the ship on the ground, I’m not sure any of our bunks will be usable.
Gordo pushes hard for the hike, almost yelling in his squeaky voice, but Belka silences us with one quiet word. “Listen,” she says. She is sitting far from us, near the top of a wavy ridge, but we hear her and are immediately silent. At first I don’t hear anything, and then I do: a little crack, with a little echo. “What is that?”
The sound comes again, and Gordo looks at Belka with what I call his “imminent tantrum” look. “It sounds like a twig snapping. So what?” he asks.
Before words can come I’m on my feet, walking past Belka up the rise. “This planet doesn’t have trees, remember? So how can there be twigs?”
“And if they’re not twigs, what are they?” Belka adds ominously. “Not to mention the question of who or what is stepping on them.” She opens her eyes wide, and I know that now she’s just trying to scare us. We may have watched too many horror films in our years aboard the Dreams. In a spaceship, everyone can hear you scream.
From the top of the volcanic wave we have a panoramic view all the way down to the coast. It’s breathtaking, but not in a way any of us expected. The distant sea shines greenly, topped with whitecaps. Next to it we can just make out the cylindrical units of the settlement, built by the CREATORs from native minerals and parts shipped ahead. And in between here and there, where there should only be swirls of striated rock and wispy alien shrubs, is a vast field of trees.
That would be strange enough. Due to spotty info from our early robotic scouts, questions of what flora and fauna should be unleashed on CelBod were to be left to me, the mission biologist, upon our arrival. But the strangeness doesn’t end there.
Imagine an orange grove, with trees in orderly rows. Imagine the already round trees shaved into perfect spheres atop oddly straight and uniform trunks. And then imagine that they aren’t orange trees. Oh, some are—I can see a row of them stretching diagonally down until I lose sight of the orange fruits peeking from the leaves—but there are also apple trees, and other fruit, and pines shaped like designer Christmas trees. The lines of trees display a level of perfection that’s flat-out unreal. And between them, ribbons of water glimmer in rounded right-angle formations, like the printed paths of circuit boards.
“Um … ,” Gordo says.
The cracking sound comes again, off to the left, and we all snap our heads around to look.
The robot’s body is short and spindly; it stands on four long legs with a cylindrical midsection resembling a fuel tank and a smaller head stacked on top of that. This seems to be tipped at a quizzical angle, with two lens-like eyes pointed in our direction. In its two long arms the robot holds a stick, and as we watch it snaps the stick in two and inserts both halves into a hole in its thorax.
I find myself unreasonably frightened. The thing doesn’t look unfriendly. In fact, it looks like a misshapen mechanical dog trying to understand its master, and I don’t immediately see anything weapon-like on or around it. But still goose bumps raise the hairs on my neck and arms.
This robot is not from Earth.
As I’m staring, slack-jawed, Gordo’s hand slips into mine. I pull my gaze from the surreal sight and see my shock reflected in his face. I squeeze his hand, and he smiles vaguely. And then from the creepy orchard more of the robots emerge, one by one, until a line of them gazes up at us from the tree line.
I’m racking my brain thinking of things we can use as weapons, but we came in peace. I still have the syringe in my pocket, a less-than-useless weapon against a metal foe. We have tools, perhaps, that could be used as clubs. These are stowed both inside and outside the ship, but the ship is behind us and I don’t know how fast robots can run. But then Gordo starts to laugh, He’s trying to contain it, but I can feel his mirth through his slightly sweaty grip as he draws himself up and addresses the legion of robots. “Take me to your leader?” he says.
#
As it turns out, robots are good carriers. They easily tote everything we need from the Wildest Dreams, and I get the sense that they could have carried the whole damn ship on their shoulders, like robotic ants, if there’d been a wide-enough passage between the manicured trees. Their limbs telescope in addition to bending at joints, and they navigate the terraced landscape as gracefully as ballerinas, their heads always level. We walk alongside them as they mutely lead us down the steps and over the thin streams of water to the settlement. We stay quiet too, in some mixture of awe and fear. The robots stop sometimes to break errant twigs away from the trees or to pluck them from the ground, which is clean and smooth and flat, with no rocks or leaves to be seen.
With perhaps a mile to go to the settlement, we are ambushed again.
Figures swing down from alcoves in the increasingly odd-shaped trees. The noises are terrific, shrieking and beeping and something that might be a purr or a growl. Instinctively I reach for Gordo, and he for me. Behind me I hear Belka emit a squeak.
I don’t know what I expected. Some kind of alien monkeys, maybe, or agile and noisy robots. But then I see the ambushers, ringing us in a slightly menacing way, although their hands are empty. They have hands. They are human beings.
Teenagers, to be exact. They are taller than us, taller even than Earth teenagers. They are naked, their secondary sex characteristics dangling here and there for all to see. Breasts. Armpit hair. The works.
For a lo
ng moment nobody speaks. Our robot porters continue on without a pause, even though we’ve stopped dead. Some of the teens are still making an assortment of noises that sound more mechanical than animal. One girl, looking me right in the eyes, beeps angrily. And then almost at once, as if on an unseen cue, they erupt in laughter. “It’s just a couple of kids!” one particularly tall boy calls out. His accent is strange, kind of staccato. “Where did you come from, little kids?” asks another. “What’s wrong with your skin?”
They don’t wait for answers. They’re all around us, and all we can do is move with the herd. I tilt my head back to see how Belka is, but she’s gone without a trace, just like Albert. I do not mourn her loss, though I miss him intensely right now. He was our psychiatrist.
The teens lead us into the settlement, which looks better than I’d dared hope. Some of the pods Earth sent ahead seem to be missing, but there are other buildings made from metal and glass and what looks like silk, in bright if childish patterns. Some of the buildings are tall, some scarcely above ground, but all are what I would describe as whimsical, covered in spired turrets and domes and ladders and catwalks and some features I don’t have names for. Among them I recognize some of the pods, and more importantly the looming Eiffel Tower–shaped antennae of the dual-particle transmitter. All in all, I feel like Dorothy seeing Oz for the first time, surrounded by tall munchkins in a gaudy new place.
Living Forever & Other Terrible Ideas Page 16
