at a clump of weeds and pointed at three gravestones. “These three markers all share the same holographic display. Press the button and hear another part of the memorial’s story.”
The prospect of viewing humans instead of aliens excited Beverly, and she pressed the button on the center tombstone. The glass lenses installed in each marker winked and projected a trio of young men out of light and shimmer.
“Hello, friend. My name is Kevin Aldrich,” spoke the hologram on the far right.
The center figure tipped a ball cap. “My name is Gavin Masters.”
“And I’m Hunter Garvin,” nodded the third.
Jayce grinned. “It feels like I’m being reunited with lost friends, Bev. These three men were the first responders to the crashed alien saucer. We’ve read all about them in our Starwatch textbooks. They’re the very men who subdued the alien and carried it to New Bethany.”
Hidden speakers played more patriotic music, a grand song of trombones, clarinets, tubas and trumpets that lifted Beverly’s soul, wholesome music like the kind once regularly performed by marching bands as they stepped in community festival parades. Beverly tapped her toes to the rhythm, and she smiled to remember how caramel apples and funnel cakes tasted when she had watched those parades as a young child with her grandfather, before the alien blight harmed the environment and collapsed the economy until no vendors remained to sell corndogs and pork patties. The music summoned such fond memories, and hearing the melody dispelled much of the fear that gathered in her heart after watching the alien warrior dance with such hatred in its eyes.
The faceless narrator’s voice returned as the shimmering young men smiled at the guests. “These three young men answered New Bethany’s fire siren that warned fire raged through the woods surrounding the town. They had sacrificed many of their weekends to learn the skills that allowed them to extinguish that fire before it could reach their home town. Though exhausted by their firefighting efforts, these men didn’t retreat when they came upon the fallen, alien saucer. They didn’t run when they looked upon the alien that challenged them at that crash site. When that alien brandished its weapons and roared its war cry, these men stood their ground and subdued that attacker. Realizing New Bethany must be warned of the menace, those men courageously brought the alien to town so that humanity realized its peril.”
Jayce lifted his hand to his heart and folded his chin to his chest to give the holograms a Starwatch salute.
Simon cleared his throat. “I hate to have to say it, but I’m afraid the narrator doesn’t have much of the story straight. Kevin, Gavin and Hunter never volunteered for anything, and they were simply out drinking and hunting with their coon dogs that night when the alien landed.”
Jayce glared at the caretaker. “Say something like that again, and I’ll let the Starwatch heritage offices know they’ve got an employee on the payroll who’s defaming the fine people of this memorial. You should be thankful for what these folks did for you.”
Simon sighed. “Perhaps you’re right, son. My mind’s too trapped in the past sometimes to realize the way things should be. Follow me a bit further if you can forgive me.”
The third stop in Simon’s itinerary was a heart-shaped headstone whose decorative stonework set it apart from its neighbors. Fine cursive scrolled across the headstone, with delicately carved stone roses surrounding the letters. Bouquets of plastic flowers were piled upon the tombstone, and wooden crosses holding pink ribbons were pinned all about the grave.
“Look at that color photograph taped to the headstone,” pointed Beverly. “That woman was beautiful.”
Simon nodded. “They really painted her up like a real looker.”
“Was she the nurse who first tended to the alien?” Jayce asked. “Was she the woman who so courageously tried to show the alien a little compassion?”
Simon pointed to the button installed atop the headstone. “You better listen to what the Starwatch wants you to hear.”
The projector’s glass eye winked and floated an attractive figure of a smiling, young woman into the air. The woman’s face was the same as that captured in the photograph taped to the headstone, and the lady wore a nurse’s blue smock and clean, white tennis shoes. The holographic woman smiled timidly before she spoke.
“My name is Lori Page, and I worked at the county emergency care center. I administered first aid to the alien after it was carried into town.”
Beverly shook her head. “I would never have done such a thing.”
Jayce chuckled. “The people of New Bethany probably didn’t know the alien was a threat yet, Bev. It probably took them a little while to realize an invasion was happening, and that woman was just doing the best she could out of the goodness of her heart. The Starwatch says that the care that woman tried giving to that creature proved that we’re a better type of species than those aliens.”
Simon chuckled before the faceless narrator’s voice spoke from the headstone’s speakers.
“Lori Page took great risks when she gave what comfort she could to the alien carried into New Bethany. Due to her exposure to that invader, Ms. Page contracted a contagion that rendered our modern medicine powerless. Ms. Page suffered for the mercy she still administered to that alien, and she gave her life to show humanity’s great compassion. Though we have little means to know if Ms. Page’s mercy eased the alien’s suffering, her mercy represents the best of us.”
Simon covered his mouth with his swollen hands, but his twisted fingers failed to suffocate his laughter as the caretaker wheezed for breath.
“What’s so funny about that?” Jayce growled. “That woman died at a very young age thanks to that alien. Just think about all she lost to show a little kindness.”
“I think what that woman did was very noble,” added Beverly.
Simon caught enough breath to speak. “Lots of visitors call Lori Page noble. They call her all kinds of nice things that folks in town never called her before Starwatch erected all these headstones in this cemetery. But I remember how it was. Lori didn’t lift a hand to help the alien those three boys chained to a truck bumper and dragged all the way back into town. She screamed she wouldn’t do a thing to help ease that pitiful creature’s hurt. She locked herself in her home, and the rest of us didn’t have the stomach to look at the pain in that alien’s oversized eyes. We couldn’t look at that alien’s mangled and broken limbs. Lori’s actions shouldn’t have surprised any of us, seeing how she never took her famous bedside manner with her into her work.”
“You’re a stinking liar!” Jayce hissed. “Say one more thing and I’m going to knock your ass onto the ground, old man or not.”
The laughter vanished from Simon’s eyes. “I don’t doubt you would try, son. Nor would you be the first guest to this memorial to try.”
“He’s not worth it, Jayce.”
Beverly stepped between her husband and Simon. The visit to the memorial was meant to be only a short diversion from their drive to the mountains, only a short distraction from the drive to the stone cottage of Jayce’s mother, where the two of them would wed before enjoying a short honeymoon before her new husband returned to Starwatch and his duties. Beverly feared Jayce might lose his temper. She would hate to see him strike the old man for mumbling such horrible things about the dead. No matter how Jayce might be justified to strike that caretaker, she feared such an assault would land him in jail, so that their wedding would have to be conducted in some county jail cell and their honeymoon ruined.
“It doesn’t matter what that caretaker says,” pleaded Beverly. “The shimmering holograms tell us the truth. We just have to press the buttons to know what really happened in New Bethany.”
Simon shook his head when Jayce didn’t throw that threatened punch. “Doubt there’s anything in this cemetery going to shake whatever faith the both of you have carried to these stones.”
Beverly took a breath before following Simon to the next memorial. Jayce’s body language clearly conveyed that he was not happ
y, and that Simon had stoked her fiancé’s temper by his crude comments regarding those memorialized by the shimmering holograms. She hoped the Starwatch academy instilled a sense of patience within Jayce, as well as it had given him a commitment to duty. Living upon the world’s remnants took a toll on the hardiest soul, and it was a safe assumption to suspect that the years might’ve severely weakened the caretaker’s mind. Simon was an old man, and Beverly hoped Jayce’s uniform taught her fiancé to practice forgiveness. But Beverly didn’t know what the academy taught its cadets; for all she knew, Jayce might’ve learned that anyone defaming the heritage of resistance so displayed through that cemetery’s glowing holograms deserved brutal punishment, regardless of age, regardless of lucidity.
Simon made a few turns and took them to the very center of the cemetery, where he lifted his long arm to point at the statue of a rifleman perched upon a marble column that rose several stories into the air. A stone tomb rested in the background of that rising column, weeds and vines growing across the sealed, double doors that separated its dead shadows from what
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