All of the Above

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  “I hope so,” said Linda, turning away to hide the tears that welled in her eyes.

  “Grace is the third child of your father,” said Alice, pushing herself up onto her elbows.

  “Yes,” said Emily.

  “Why is she not here?”

  “She’s been … sick,” said Emily. She got up and pulled a scrapbook from her shelf. “Would you like to see her?”

  Alice sat up. “Yes.”

  Emily sat down and flipped through the pages, finding a recent snapshot of her sister. “This is her at her last birthday party,” she said.

  “This is Grace?” asked Alice, the skin of her forehead wrinkling slightly, as if she were experimenting with how to make a frown.

  Emily nodded.

  Alice smiled slightly. “I have met her,” she said with a nod.

  The phone rang and Linda went down to answer it.

  Alice came face to face with Emily, seizing her with her huge black eyes. “I have met her,” she repeated slowly.

  19.9

  Cole woke with a start. It was after midnight and the room was darkened. Something was wrong. The beeping had stopped. The beeping…. He launched himself toward the call button but the nurse appeared before he could punch it.

  “What is it?” she asked, making her way to Grace’s bed. She was an older woman, stick-thin and full of energy. Her eyes were kind. She quickly checked Grace’s pulse as Cole looked on. “We’re gonna need some help,” she said as she punched a button on the intercom system. At once an automated voiced announced a code blue in Grace’s room.

  The cardiac monitor started beeping again. “Grace,” whispered Cole. He stood at her bedside, watching as her eyes moved rapidly behind their lids. “She’s dreaming,” he said as the nurse hurried about. The door opened and the room was soon filled with doctors and residents and nurses.

  The thin nurse reported what had happened. “But she’s normal now,” she said. As if to prove her wrong Grace flat-lined again. The doctors and nurses crowded around. Cole stepped out of the way.

  And then Grace disappeared. She was there, and then she wasn’t. The resident who’d been holding the stethoscope to her chest almost fell forward as his hands dropped to the bed. “What the—?” he said. He pulled back immediately. One nurse turned and ran out of the room. A young, male resident gasped. Grace’s bed was empty.

  Then Grace reappeared, looking as whole and real as she had a moment before. The medical staff stepped back. Cole moved forward and put his hands on the railing. “C’mon, Grace,” he said, his voice soft but intense. Grace disappeared again. A nurse behind him began to weep. The rest stood transfixed. After a minute Grace reappeared briefly, then flickered out again. Cole held on.

  And then the Universe itself disappeared. All that remained was Cole and Grace, two hearts, two sparks, two souls alone in the void. Cole reached out and took Grace’s hand and asked whoever was listening for help. The Universe flickered back into existence and Grace, once more on her bed, opened her eyes and smiled.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said.

  One of the residents fainted.

  19.10

  Cole and Grace drove up to the house just before 9:00 the next morning and Linda and the kids ran out to meet them. Moments later Dennis appeared, running across the pasture, barking his fool head off. Cat followed behind, trying to keep up. “Sorry!” she called out. “He woke up in the middle of the night and I kept him in as long as I could but he’s been barking all morning and then he escaped out the cat door—” Cat stopped short and her jaw fell slack, to see the missing President walking out to meet her. Dennis did not stop short.

  Hugs and kisses and welcome-homes filled the morning air. Dennis’s tail would not stop wagging. Fanny ran the paddock’s perimeter, kicking up her feet. Even the goats joined in the party, bumping heads and nibbling fingers, which delighted Alice to no end.

  Alice met Grace in the flesh and Grace told them all how Alice had appeared in the night and shown her how to realign with the frequency of her own flesh. Alice told how Grace had helped her to transverse the solid rock over Mork’s cell. Cat frowned in confusion, to see this strange, tiny child, and to hear such things from children so young. After a while she just shook her head in surrender, said goodbye, and headed back home. The rest of them went back into the house. They were finally all together again.

  Nobody knew where to start. There were too many stories needing to be told. Cole had died and come back to life. Emily and Iain had seen their grandfather shot before their eyes. They’d flown in a UFO and walked through walls to escape a psychopath. Grace had traveled across the Universe and battled scary people. Linda had been chased and threatened and beaten and abused. She’d fallen in love and then had that love taken away, and then restored once again. Alice had seen the alive ones leave and the Plan disintegrate, and had watched her mother disappear into the sky. Grace had seen her dead mother take off on her own next adventure. They tried to speak of these things but found themselves strangely tongue-tied. As if to speak of them would dishonor them. As if to speak of them would bring them into the world of the mundane, where they could never be fully understood.

  After an uncomfortable silence, Alice slid down from the sofa, where she’d been sitting with Grace, and addressed them like the ambassador she was, looking each in the eye as she spoke. “It is time for us to say goodbye to our dead,” she said. “We must honor their lives and release them, so that they may freely take the next steps on their journeys.” When nobody spoke she cocked her head quizzically. “Do you not know this?”

  Linda laughed with delight at Alice’s wisdom and reached out to hug the girl. “You’re right, Alice,” she said, her face buried in the tiny hybrid’s long, straight, milk-and-honey hair. “That’s exactly what we need to do.” Her throat caught as she spoke and she started to weep. And that was the beginning of it.

  They cried. For Linda’s mother, whose whereabouts remained unknown. For Obie, the amazing uncle the kids had never known, and the friend and advisor that Linda would sorely miss in the days and months ahead. For Ruth, the kids’ mother, whom they still missed every day. They cried and laughed and told stories and cried some more. They cried for Grandpa Ben still in the hospital. They cried for Pooch and for Keeley, for Utterpok and Immaqa and the dead Inuit whose names they had never even heard. They cried for the guards Ben had hired to protect his grandchildren. They cried for Mary, who might still live, and for Jack, who was trapped between worlds. They cried for the world, for the forests and oceans that were groaning under the weight of the human assault, for the animals and plants that cried out for their aid, for the polar bear and the walrus, the caribou and eagle, the rabbit and the seal and the fox, who had come to their aid.

  Alice insisted they go even further, including Mork and the other alive ones who’d stayed behind to help, who had perished in the destruction of the human-alien facilities. Including Bob, Alice’s mother, gone now on some healing journey of her own. Including Mr. Random. And including Mr. Rice. Though Cole recoiled at the idea, Linda understood. “The hunt that fails to show proper respect will give the offended spirits cause to avenge themselves,” she said, repeating the last words they’d heard from Sina. “The age of separation has ended.” So they said what they could, to honor Theodore Rice.

  At last they cried for themselves, for Cole and Linda, for Iain and Emily and Grace, for Alice, even for Dennis. They cried for their pain, their fear, their exhaustion, their love, and their loss. They cried until their tears were no more. They cried until they were finished. They cried until the new light dawned in their souls. Though Alice did not join them in the tears, she was present in every way she could be, with soft words and gentle touches and her deep, dark eyes.

  “May you leave with our thanks and blessings,” she said at last, her face to the heavens. And that was the end of it.

  19.11

  Cole made lunch, heating some soup he’d found in the freezer and making a salad from
the greens an unknown neighbor had left on their porch. They sat together at the table, eating peacefully, sharing kindnesses and passing the salt. Emily and Grace competed for Alice’s attention. Alice chose to sit between them, watching them both intently, even smiling her stiff, slight smile as Grace goofed around. Iain sat quietly, slurping his soup and staring out the window. Cole smiled and sighed. Linda smiled in return.

  It was Iain who broke the spell. “I don’t want to go back,” he said, wading into a patch of silence.

  “Go back where?” asked Linda, after a moment.

  Iain shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, looking around the house. “I just don’t want to go back.”

  “I don’t want to go back to school,” said Emily.

  “I don’t want to go back to Washington,” said Linda at the same time. She and Emily looked at each other and broke out laughing.

  “I’m not sure I even want to be here,” said Cole, admitting something he hadn’t even known he was feeling.

  “How can a person go back anywhere?” asked Alice, innocently. The whole family cracked up.

  It was Iain, again, who finally put it into words. “I mean, how can we go back to our old life after all that’s happened?” he asked, looking around the table.

  Nobody had an answer for him. As sad, tired, and beat up as the past week had left them, it seemed that none of them were all that glad to be back in “the real world.” They’d tried it: the movie, the pizza, the popcorn, the games. It was fine for an evening, as a reprieve from the intensity, but, ultimately, it just didn’t satisfy. For all its pain and loss, the past week had meant something very real, for themselves and for the world. Their regular life felt pale and bland in comparison.

  After lunch the kids headed upstairs. They were going to witness as Dennis told his story. Alice would translate. Linda and Cole settled down on the sofa and turned on the news.

  The world was in turmoil. That was the phrase that kept bouncing around in Linda’s head. Due in large measure to the more than ten-year-long “great recession” that had circled the globe, rescue and cleanup resources were stressed beyond their limits in places all over the planet. Reports continued to filter in, of strange events and unexplained destruction. Albert Singer was clearly in way over his head. The world was demanding answers and he had none to give. And he was really awful at making things up.

  “We can’t just hide here,” said Linda after a while.

  Cole nodded but said nothing. He knew she was right, but he did not want to admit it. He reached out and took Linda’s hand and squeezed. For now, they were safe. His children. His love. He would cherish this moment for as long as he could.

  Upstairs Dennis barked and the kids laughed.

  19.12

  It was two more days before Linda made her whereabouts known to anyone else in the government. It took that long for her to find and put together a small group she felt she could trust. Alice’s help was instrumental in that regard. Her knowledge of the worldwide organization known informally as “the People” was extensive. She knew which members of Linda’s cabinet, which Senators and Congressmen, and which military leaders, had not been a part of that operation and its “Plan.” Linda had been greatly dismayed to learn how few there were whom the People had not in some way compromised.

  Linda turned first to the Undersecretary of the Navy, an amiable older man named Stan Walsh whom she’d met earlier in the year at a White House reception. Initially suspicious of her phone call, he finally agreed to bring together the nine others Linda named for a meeting, all of whom had been cleared by Alice.

  Many in the group were quite irritated by the time Linda, Cole and Alice walked into the vacant ski-club Cole had found and rented in nearby Granville. Walsh had told the group only that an answer awaited them, and had relied on his reputation, and in some cases his personal relationships, to compel the others to make the trip to rural Vermont.

  They sat shivering and grumbling in the cold empty space, then rose in surprise as the President walked through the rear door. “We have work to do, folks,” Linda said with a smile. She shook hands and gave a couple of hugs and then the ten of them sat for a meeting that lasted the rest of the day. Eyebrows were raised as she told her tale, but the presence of a tiny human-alien hybrid brought Linda the credibility she needed, and the fire Cole started in the woodstove warmed their bodies and soothed their concerns. Two military leaders, two cabinet members, two senators, two congressmen, one Supreme Court justice and the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence: this group would serve as her core, her starting point. From here, she would take back her government.

  “But it may not look like you think it should,” said Linda, toward the end of their meeting. “This hidden government, this network of powers that has been controlling things behind the scenes, will not be taken down with a frontal assault. Not right now. Even with the aliens having withdrawn their support, the shadow government still has a great deal of power and wealth at its disposal. If we try to take them out with accusations and arrests and trials, I fear it would tear us apart. These people are used to being in control. It’s possible that many of them are psychopaths. They will not give up easily. And I, for one, have no wish to meet with the same sort of accident Ed Bickle encountered.”

  Helen Hurt, the Secretary of the Interior, shifted in her chair. Her expression was pained. “So, what is it you’re proposing, Mrs. President? And what do you need from us?”

  Linda smiled. “I need you to trust me, Helen,” she said. “All of you.” She looked around the room. “I need you to be here for me. I need you to hold me and support me and encourage me when it seems hopeless. I need you to be my council of elders.” Linda stopped for a moment, letting her words sink in. She knew the work ahead of them might feel huge and daunting to these people. She leaned forward a bit, to decrease the distance between them. The age of separation has ended. “I don’t really have a clue what to do next, Helen. Everything has changed. Everything. And I’m afraid that I shall have to lead us all down a path that many will not wish to travel. I will look … crazy, I think. Sometimes I will look as if I’ve lost my mind. And I don’t think I’ll be able to do this if I don’t have you all behind me.”

  Linda looked at her council members. There was much that they did not understand, but these were good people. They could learn the truth of things, just as she had. They would have to. “Are you up for this?” she asked, moving from face to face. None of them looked away. Every one of them eventually nodded. Linda let her tears of gratitude slip down her face, in honor of their courage.

  19.13

  “Good afternoon, General,” said Linda as she stepped through the wall, hand in hand with Alice.

  The General looked up, surprised, glancing for a moment at the tiny child before settling his gaze on the President. “Interesting,” he said, regrouping a smile.

  Linda looked around his office. It was rich and well appointed, with huge windows looking out over a small pond. She returned his smile. The General was just a small, tired old man who thought his medals meant something. “You got out while the getting was good, I see,” she said.

  The General nodded. “It’s always nice to have a place to… retire to. When things start to get out of hand.” His eyes flicked nervously back to Alice for a moment, before returning to the President. “You doing okay?” he asked.

  Linda nodded. “Nietzsche was right.”

  “Really? How’s that?”

  “You didn’t kill me, General. You made me stronger.”

  The General said nothing.

  “Do you know where my mother is, General?” asked Linda.

  “I’m afraid I have no idea, Mrs. President,” he said. “That sort of thing fell to Mr. Rice.”

  “He said you took care of it,” said Linda with cold tension in her voice.

  The General smiled. “I’m certain by now you’ve learned not to believe Mr. Rice,” he said. He settled back in his executive chair and pu
t his hands behind his neck in a display of confidence. “Our little morph can walk through walls now, I see,” he said, not looking at Alice. “I’m glad you’ve returned her to me. That little trick will come in handy.”

  “You can’t be that stupid,” said Linda. “The whole game’s changed. Certainly you’re not going to keep playing the old one?”

  The General leaned forward, bringing his elbows to his desk and resting his chin on his hands. “You got a better offer, I suppose,” he said.

  Linda smiled. “Let’s just say I have a different game. One we should have started playing a long time ago.”

  “A different game, you say?” mused the General. “And obviously a game you think so compelling that I shall fall over myself with eagerness to join.”

  “There’s a seat at the table for you, General. If you agree to follow the rules.”

  “I see.” The General sighed. “And what do we call this new game?” he asked.

  “How about we call it ‘Avoiding Extinction,’ General? Or maybe ‘Growing Up as a People’? You interested in a game like that?”

  The General frowned. He swung his chair around, to stare for a moment at the ducks in the pond. “I might be,” he said without turning back. “As you say, the old game seems to be over. Our friends in high places have taken their ball and gone back home. And then there’s Rice and his gang…” His words trailed off. He turned back to face them, glancing over at Alice and smiling. He looked back to Linda. “There’s a place for me at the table, you say?”

  “If you follow the rules,” answered Linda.

  “And who’s making the rules?” asked the General.

  “The planet and her creatures are making the rules, General. The laws of physics and biology and chemistry are making the rules. The Universe is making the rules.”