House of the Galactic Elevator

by Gerhard Gehrke

  “Keep it quiet, recruit,” the man said.

  With a hiss, the face mask opened. The man put a thick stub of cigar between his teeth, producing it out of thin air.

  “Here, you’ll need this,” the man said. He pushed something large and round into Jeff’s hands. It felt heavy. “That goes on your head.”

  When Jeff continued to stand there, the man took the helmet from him and planted it on his head. He heard a click as the helmet locked into place. Jeff shrugged his shoulders. He wore something different than the hospital clothes. It felt stiff and thick. Then the world was illuminated in a soft blue glow. Jeff could clearly see a barn around him, as well as the man in front of him.

  The man wore a bulky costume that covered him head to toe. It looked like an astronaut’s space suit but with enormous shoulder pads. He had a long rifle with a large barrel over one shoulder. He also wore a name tag that read “ALPO.”

  “Feeling better?” the man asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. “Good. Now if you make any more noise, I’m going to stomp your guts out. The E.T.s are close. It’s just you and me now, kid.”

  Jeff shook his head. He felt dizzy and hot. He also detected a strange buzz in his gut, an odd excitement. The sensation twisted through him like a triple shot of espresso. But where was the hospital? Where was his wife? What was for lunch? Why did he now have a rifle in his hands, which he instantly knew had a dozen settings? He saw a selection on a visual cue of his helmet that told him the safety was off, and that currently the weapon was set for Rock and Roll. The settings scrolled when Jeff’s gaze lingered. He could also select Burn Baby Burn, Ice Nap, Explosion!!, Frappe, and One Shot Sniping. He looked away, felt the room spin.

  “We’ve got movement!” ALPO said. “Take the north side.”

  With that, ALPO (Jeff guessed he was a sergeant; they were always sergeants) did a power-assisted leap upward into a loft.

  “I’ve got targets!” ALPO shouted.

  White bursts of fire flashed from the loft and through the sides of the barn. ALPO’s weapon split the air with concussive bursts. On Jeff’s helmet, a multitude of red dots appeared on a circle. It reminded Jeff of a radar display as they appeared in so many movies. These dots began to wiggle closer to one another. Jeff felt confident that he was the center and all the dots were things unknown heading his direction. He had a weapon. His hands were poised on the forward stock and the trigger, even though he hadn’t consciously placed them there.

  “Private Abel, cover the north side!” ALPO shouted.

  The north side of the barn lit up, a visual cue provided by his suit prompting him in that direction. He saw a pair of shutters over a window. A perfect firing position. The majority of the dots were coming from the north. More flashes, red and orange, streaked through the barn from the outside. Jeff heard a thunderous clatter. The barn rumbled, and there came an explosion from the loft. Dust filled the barn.

  “I’m hit,” ALPO said. “There’s still fight in me. Get to the north side or I’ll kick your teeth in.”

  There came another series of staccato bursts from ALPO’s weapon. Over on the north side, something opened the shutters. Thin hands with abnormally long fingers reached inside. A bulbous head looked in, with a pair of glowing green eyes. An “identify friend or foe” tag illuminated the creature in a red outline. Yes, you can kill it. You have the weapon. You have the training. You have the moral obligation to wage war on this creature that’s here to kill you and eat your children.

  Jeff’s weapon was up, pressed to his shoulder, as if of its own volition.

  “Perimeter breach!” ALPO screamed.

  Jeff almost pulled the trigger. Then he dropped the weapon. He went to the barn door and opened it wide. A moonless sky looked down on him. Flying saucers lit with white pulsing beacons zipped about, leaving contrails of red light. From a dark line of trees came flashes of green that spattered about Jeff. Some struck him. There came the mild sensation of pain. His suit indicated that he had been hit, with a bland indicator adding that he had lost a quarter of his health. Jeff closed his eyes, inhaled, flexed his hands. Felt fine. He took off his helmet and dropped it on the ground.

  ALPO was firing like mad from within the barn. Shouting, too. More threats, more entreaties. Apparently Jeff’s dog would hurt after the beating ALPO would bring down upon his wayward private.

  Alien blaster fire riddled the air. More struck Jeff. The ground shook, this time intensifying until Jeff thought he would fall over. A large spaceship filled the sky. Lights switched on, shining up and lancing through the air. White, yellow, and red beams lit Jeff and almost blinded him. The ship above hung like a cloud that stretched to the stratosphere. It groaned as if it were a submarine adjusting to ocean pressure. From the sides of the ship erupted turrets and missile tubes, all aiming in Jeff’s direction. The sheer number of them was ridiculous. A swarm of smaller fighter craft erupted from a pair of hangars. To the right of the trees, Jeff saw a landed craft with an open cockpit. The cockpit blinked once, beckoning him.

  His HUD confirmed that was the way to go.

  “Stop it,” Jeff said in a low voice.

  The aliens at the tree line kept firing. The giant ship above him began to descend. Its weapons tightened their aim. It got to point-blank range, the monstrosity quivering with all of its pent-up munitions about to be released. The fighters circled and began their attack run on the barn.

  From inside, ALPO yelled, “Get your helmet on and send these bastards back to where they came from! Private Abel, pick up your weapon! Fight! Fight! Fight!”

  “Just stop it,” Jeff said. “End game. End program. Exit.”

  The action around him lurched once, moving forward for another heartbeat, then stopped completely, like a paused movie. The big ship, little fighters, aliens, and blaster bolts all froze in midair.

  In Jeff’s head and across his eye he saw the words “Continue? Exit? Access Universal Game Items?”

  He looked about. The words followed him. He still existed in the world with the barn. He walked up to it. Hit the wooden door. He looked inside and saw ALPO was in mid-fall from the loft, his armor burned and torn, his face mask cracked, the cigar still firmly in place. He still had his weapon in hand, though, was spraying Frappe rounds at something coming through a new hole in the roof. Thousands of glowing needle projectiles flew upward in a cone of blendering doom.

  “Sorry, Sarge,” Jeff said.

  He took a last look at the barn, the sky, and the awesome array of bad guys floating in the sky above him. If this was crazy, crazy played across all five senses perfectly.

  “Exit,” Jeff said, and the invasion went away, just like that…

  ***

  …and he came to looking up at Doctor Carol looking down at him. Big Albert stood behind the doc, arms crossed, a scowl on his face.

  “Jeff, can you hear me?” Doctor Carol asked.

  Jeff lay on the floor of his cell. A phantom ringing in his ears passed quickly. He sat up. He pushed his hair from his face. The tablet was still in his lap.

  “Let me help you up.” Doctor Carol tried to take one of Jeff’s hands. Jeff waved him off. “We need to get you to the infirmary. You’ve fainted. Albert found you on the floor of your room.”

  “Game end,” Jeff said, his throat raw as if he’d been shouting for an hour. “End simulation. Exit.”

  The doctor stepped aside, and Big Albert took Jeff under the arms and picked him up. Jeff clung to the computer. The device was there for all to see. He thought he might drop it, but didn’t. Big Albert and the doctor said nothing about it, and neither took it from him.

  “End game,” Jeff said.

  Albert led Jeff from the room. They headed down the hallway towards the infirmary.

  Doctor Carol followed behind, saying, “The nurse said you weren’t at lunch to take your medication. With this incident, we’ll have to adjust your dosage.”

  Jeff’s head rolled back, tried to get a look at the doctor. Thi
ngs looked blurry. All he could see was the doctor’s tie: some brown, hairy puppet with a fleshy, ridged nose. Alf the alien from the old TV show, flashing a peace sign, with a star field over one shoulder.

  They passed Myron and Henry from his group. Henry looked skittish and clung on to Myron. Myron gave a knowing nod and surreptitiously flashed Jeff the Star Trek communicator that was hidden under one arm. He then winked and shushed Jeff.

  They entered the infirmary. Bottles of medicine in glass cabinets lined one wall. There was a chair with loose restraints pushed up into a corner. The air held a stinging astringent odor that burned Jeff’s nose. The male nurse waited for him next to a vinyl exam table already lined with a sheet of paper. Big Albert sat Jeff down on the table.

  The nurse began to prep a needle, then stuck it into a glass vial with a rubber top. Clear liquid filled the reservoir as he pulled back the plunger.

  “Try to stay calm,” Doctor Carol said.

  Jeff tried to stand, but Big Albert had a hand on his shoulder. The tablet chirped. Jeff looked down at it. No one else paid it any mind. The screen lit up, the device having bypassed the unlock screen on its own.

  A window in the center of the screen asked, “Accept Friend Request from CephLuvsPlankton007?”

  Jeff didn’t wait for the request to make sense. He hit Yes.

  The nurse swabbed the inside of his arm.

  “Jeff Abel,” Detective Ceph’s disembodied voice said inside his head. “It’s been a dog’s age.”

  Jeff’s laugh came out as a giggle. To anyone else listening, it must have sounded like the titter of a madman.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Galactic Commons must fall if it would be reborn. This should be understood by any intelligent being capable of comprehending the basic principle of entropy. A system, when isolated, will break down. The potential of a glass window will never be to become a bigger, stronger window unless some builder takes the time to add a coating of paint to the trim, change the panes, or redesign the entire window. The glass left on its own had but one choice: when to break. That was its destiny once the possibility of any builder stepping in was removed.

  The city had become stagnant. The best the city managers could come up with was to introduce humans to the mix, but the species by all indicators had none of the artisans of the sort the Galactic Commons needed. In fact, most of the current residents could never measure up to the pantheon of founders who had done the building in the first place. So the now-isolated city, without new craftsmen to add to its glory, suffered from an increase in entropy. It would never improve beyond its current state. It had to be allowed to fall so it could be born again.

  Lord Akimbo consulted his plans. With his new ideas, the city would once again flourish. The necessity of its fall was only the momentary pain of a surgeon’s scalpel before a new limb could be attached. Why bother with two legs when you could have three, his mother had always told him.

  The virtual map spread before him like a phantom landscape painted in green laser light. The new city-to-come spun and twisted on three axes with Lord Akimbo’s every gesture.

  “A seawall where there is no tide here,” he said. “A beanstalk to the stars where no ship will ever dock there. The Arctic Colosseum, once the polar region is thawed. Chariot flyways. Parks with swings and a sunset generator for when lovers roam the jeweled paths. And if we keep their dirty feet off the walkways, it will remain pristine. Beauty everywhere.”

  He expanded a central structure, pulling it to the center of the display. It snapped into focus. The building filled a quarter of the cityscape, a flat-top pyramid that looked like a steel mesa. With an adjustment to the colors, the textures became visible. It appeared as if its sides were giant mirrors.

  “And isn’t the centerpiece to any culture its people? And from the chaos of such a multitude, I foresee order. A place for all to rest.”

  He revolved the view, examining the building from each of its four sides.

  “Rest and play. Playtime for all. For when the people play, the city continues to lay clean and pristine while the populous dreams. Our new friends have provided us the tools to make all dreams come true.”

  A red light blinked in one corner of the display. An intruder alert. Multiple signals joined the first. Lord Akimbo swiped the city of the future away and brought up a screen that showed the layout of the transportation terminal. There in the lobby winked a dozen blinking dots, all approaching his position among the shut-down elevators.

  “Ohhh, how perfect. Do you see them?”

  A worm crept down from a shoulder to one of Lord Akimbo’s hands. He extended a finger, and the tiny thing wiggled out and stood erect, like a bird upon a perch. Lord Akimbo kissed the worm.

  “And oh, my little darling. Take nothing with you on your quest, not food, nor a change of clothes, nor tool kit, nothing. But take some friends, as your work is set out before you.”

  “I live, I think, I am,” the worm said.

  The worm dropped to the floor. A score of others joined the first and they inched away. As they moved to the bottom platform, they crept over a pair of Galactic Commons security personnel, both of whom lay on the floor, motionless, with a look of unease on their faces.

  Lord Akimbo waited. He absentmindedly traced a circle with his finger under his chin.

  Blaster fire soon echoed from the front of the station. Lord Akimbo tittered. The sounds didn’t last long.

  “They rest, too.”

  He pulled down a virtual control pad and hit a switch. From below the ramps and elevators came a metal groan as some ancient part of the city long forgotten began to open. A scrabbling sound rose from the depths. Lord Akimbo looked over the side of his platform. Hundreds of worms already moved about at his feet. Now thousands more climbed up from the pits below the city, an endless wave that soon clung to every space, their tiny forms quivering in anticipation.

  “Soon, soon, my friends. We begin by building castles in the sky. These we will fill with the citizens of the old city, soon to be residents of the new as the old will be no more.”

  He tittered some more, covering his mouth with one hand.

  “And then we will be on hand to keep things clean, won’t we? But for now we will wait in this house of the galactic elevator for progress. But isn’t that what the Commons has become? Just a way station for merchants plying their trade. It could be so much more.”

  He considered the glowing controls before him and the single empty elevator berth.

  “But each step at its own time. A lesson we learned from infancy. We need to make it rain before we tear it all down. And to make it rain, we need our new friends to finish their work. For that, we will wait.”

  He picked up one worm from the floor and gave it a most tender kiss. The other worms waited patiently for their turn.

  ***

  “If you move, your friend dies,” Irving the Grey said.

  Oliop froze only for a moment. He didn’t see what had preceded his sidekick’s sudden collapse. They all were entering the human hangar on Earth when Jeff Abel fell down. Oliop leaped over the Grey and lifted Jeff’s head off the floor. He patted a cheek. He checked him for signs of abuse but didn’t see a burn mark or medicine applicator or anything that the Grey might have struck him with. The Grey wasn’t holding a weapon or anything, either. It just had a sneer on its face.

  “What did you do?” Oliop asked.

  “I neutralized him,” Irving the Grey said. “There was no other way I could get your cooperation.”

  Kwed scurried over, his feet a bewildering pattern of motion. He snaked around Oliop and the fallen human.

  “You broke the human,” Kwed said. “You said he could fix the elevator. Now we’re really stuck here. The other humans will get us for a certainty.”

  “We’re not stuck here,” the Grey said with a sigh. “Besides, the creature most capable of fixing the problem is our technician friend here and not the human.”

  Kwed considered Oli
op. Disappointment filled his face and his mandibles clicked. “I’m going to prepare my surrender speech,” he said. He flowed towards the rear of the hangar, the patter of his many tiny feet tapping away into the recesses of the large space.

  “So are you well and truly motivated?” Irving asked Oliop. “Get the elevator running, and I’ll revive him.”

  Oliop gave Jeff a sniff. He detected human sweat and also the uninteresting soap Jeff had purchased from a Galactic Commons soap co-op. The aroma almost registered as odor-free, but Oliop detected a hint of citrus. Of the multitudes of possible self-cleaning products the human could try, he had chosen the one with no personality whatsoever. But Oliop also detected no traces of natural toxins. The scent cyclopedia would identify anything produced by a member of the Galactic Commons or any spore, plant, or venom from any of the registered homeworlds.

  He put an ear to the human’s chest. His heart was beating, but whether this was a normal speed, he didn’t know. The first aid applications hadn’t included human biometrics yet.

  “Can you hear me, technician?” the Grey said.

  Oliop nodded. “So if I get the elevator working, you’ll revive him.”

  “That’s the deal.”

  “And you’ll abandon us here.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. We need you at the Galactic Commons. Work with Lord Akimbo and me. He holds the key to getting the entire elevator system back online. You’ll only have to indulge a few of his eccentricities.” The Grey had one hairless eyebrow raised. There came the scent of tangerines. Since the troubles and the invasion, the Grey scent packets were now properly translated. The tangerine odor said, “Trust me.” But there was but a handful of races that didn’t know how to conceal truths in their communication, and the Grey wasn’t one of them.

  “Revive him now.”

  “That’s not the deal.”