Forbidden Planets

by Peter Crowther (Ed)

  “Thank you,” said Tomas. “So tell us, Selene—why Earth?”

  “And why now?” buzzed Ursula. “I don’t remember Earth being so thrilling the last time that it was worth this kind of effort.”

  Selene stared off ahead of them through the clear hull of the flitter and then looked at the empty mug in her hand, unable to remember having drained it.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” said Selene. “It just seems like the thing to do.”

  “It’s those movies, you know,” said Karl, refilling her drink with a pass of his hand. “She’s become hooked on them. I have no idea why she wants to go there now, but she loves those movies.”

  “We could have watched them at home,” said Karl.

  “We could have watched anything at home,” said Tomas.

  “I don’t quite understand the attraction of those dead art forms,” said Karl. “They’re so simple. Simple and simplistic. Like children’s stories.”

  “As if you remember children’s stories,” said Tomas.

  “As if you remember children,” said Ursula.

  “There’s more than one kind of simple,” said Selene, struggling to put the static that warred in her head into words. “It doesn’t always have to be derogatory. What I liked was that those people had their limits.”

  “Maybe they only seemed to,” said Tomas, playfully. “Maybe you only thought they did. You only know them from their movies. Maybe they were just like us.”

  “They weren’t like us,” said Selene. “They couldn’t do everything. They couldn’t rewire their bodies or dissipate their souls or wear whatever flesh suited their moods or . . . or just take a pill. They had to deal with whatever they were dealt.”

  “And you think that makes us any different?” asked Ursula. “You’re getting lost in the details. They were just like us.”

  “But look at us,” said Selene, her eyes suddenly filled with tears. “Look at us.”

  Karl leaned forward to peer at himself in Ursula’s chrome shoulder, then looked at Karl, then looked at Karl, then laughed. Tomas laughed with him.

  “For some of us,” said Tomas, “that’s easier done than for others.”

  “Life is a metaphor,” said Ursula. “Just because we get to choose a few more of them each year doesn’t make us any freer in the grand scheme of things. We all believe what we’re programmed to believe.”

  “Or what we choose to believe,” said Selene.

  “I choose to believe that there wasn’t really a need for this,” said Karl. “As I said, there was no need to travel back to Earth, dear. Whatever you wanted to see of it back home, you could just have asked for it, asked for any dream you wished, and we would all have been able to see it.”

  “Is taking a trip with me really that much trouble?” said Selene. She dropped her cup and was pleased to see it shatter before it was reabsorbed into the floor. “What else were you doing that was so terribly important?”

  “Nothing,” said Karl.

  “Nothing,” said Karl.

  “Nothing,” said Karl, “is so important that I wouldn’t stop doing it in an instant for you. I’m only thinking of you, Selene. I only mean that you can have the prize without all this effort. Such a dead art form can’t be worth all this.”

  “Sometimes the effort is the prize,” Selene said sternly.

  “Now that isn’t boring, Ursula,” said Tomas, here, there and everywhere. “Can you remember when she last spoke to him in that way?”

  “I can remember everything,” said Ursula, tapping at the databanks buried deep in her waist.

  “Brava, Selene!” said Tomas. “Keep going.”

  “No,” said Selene, her feelings fluctuating wildly. “No more talking just to fill the time if this is what we still talk about. Let’s get to Earth now.”

  And so they did.

  But when they rose and spread out against the walls of the ship, peering in search of a planet, all they saw was the same vaporous space that had been their companion for the first part of their voyage. The flitter, which should have popped across the universe and come to rest in orbit around the birthplace of humanity, instead floated in a void. The sun shone blisteringly hot at them with no intervening atmosphere.

  “Where are we?” said Selene. “This can’t possibly be right.”

  “And yet it is,” said Karl.

  “We’re exactly where we’re supposed to be,” said Karl.

  “We’re exactly where you wanted us to be,” said Karl.

  “But we can’t be,” said Selene. “Where is the Earth?”

  This time, Selene felt for sure that if she would lose herself to a wrenching bout of tears. It had been a long time since she had felt pushed to that extreme. And then, as she heard her husband speak again, the notion was flushed away.

  “There’s no reason that it shouldn’t be right here,” said Karl. “These spatial coordinates should have placed us in exactly the same relation to the Earth as when we’d arrived the last time.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Selene. “The Earth couldn’t just disappear.”

  “Nothing is impossible,” intoned Ursula.

  “How long has it been again?” asked Karl.

  “How long has it been?” said Selene.

  “No,” said Tomas. “Definitely not boring.”

  When Tomas shivered with delight, Selene could feel the goosebumps.

  “I didn’t come this far just to talk about it,” said Ursula. “I’m going out.”

  She pushed herself from the hatch to hang in space. Selene watched as her friend slowly somersaulted beneath the ship. There should be blue below her, blue oceans and white clouds and cities and the ruins of men.

  “Selene, dear,” said Karl. “We may just have to accept the fact that the Earth is gone.”

  “Can we be sure we’re in the right place?” asked Karl.

  “Oh, we’re in the right place,” said Karl. “There’s no doubt about it.”

  “But what could have happened?” said Selene.

  “At this point, does it really matter?” said Tomas. “Planets are born, and planets die. Just because this planet happens to be Earth doesn’t mean that it gets to go on forever. It could have been attacked. Or perhaps someone blew it up for spite. Or maybe the last person out simply turned out the lights, and then it just ceased to exist, expiring from lack of interest.”

  “It doesn’t matter why,” said Selene. Even as she said it, she realized she’d spoken a little too quickly, even for her. “I don’t really care why. We’ve got to put it back the way it was.”

  “All the way back?” asked Karl. “Is that what you want, dear?”

  “Should I gather the pieces?” asked Tomas.

  “Should I bring them all back and make them bustle once more? It might even be a challenge. I’ve never puzzled out a working world before.”

  “No,” said Selene. “Not all the way back. That would be meaningless. Just restore the Earth to as it stood when I was here last. When I was here with Karl last.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?” said Karl.

  “You didn’t let me and Ursula tag along with you here that last time,” said Tomas. “I’ll need a reference. Do you mind?”

  Selene shook her head. In a moment, she felt an itching in her brain, and then, as quickly as he had entered, Tomas was gone.

  “Ah, I see it now,” said Tomas. “I see how it was.”

  That’s all that it took, for suddenly, Earth was there below her. Spinning there, it was just as Selene had remembered it, the swirling clouds hiding a purer past beneath. And having experienced Tomas’s work a thousand times before, she was sure that it truly was exactly as she had remembered it.

  “Let’s go down,” whispered Selene. “I can’t wait any longer.”

  “Ursula, dear,” Tomas called out. “We’re going down now.”

  “I’ll meet you all Earthside,” said Ursula.

  She tucked her chin into her chest and kicked her
feet away from the flitter. Rockets ignited in her heels to push her down toward the surface below. Selene watched hungrily, jealously, as her friend became a dot in the distance and then vanished from sight.

  “Should we just—” said Karl.

  “No,” interrupted Selene. “We shouldn’t. The old-fashioned way. We’re doing this the old-fashioned way.”

  The flitter dropped into a low orbit as Selene surveyed the terrain.

  “What are you looking for, dear?” said Karl.

  “What are any of us looking for?” said Tomas.

  “You’ve grown much too metaphysical of late,” said Karl. “Go join your wife.”

  “I’m already with my wife,” said Tomas. “And besides—I put a planet together today. Don’t you think I’ve earned the right to wax a little metaphysical?”

  “What do you see, dear?” asked Karl.

  “I see us there,” said Selene, jabbing a finger at the horizon. “We’re going there.”

  The sky turned blue as they descended to an even lower orbit. Ursula pulled up beside them and waved, spiraled about the flitter while laughing, and then sped ahead. Moments later, they dropped to the surface, setting the ship lightly down in the center of a deserted city. The frozen moment resurrected by Tomas reflected a time when no one was left to greet them. Some of the buildings still towered over them, but others lay in rubble. Tall grasses swayed. Stepping from the flitter and pausing to listen, Selene could hear the sound of birds and the occasional thunder and crash of a collapsing building. The abandoned planet was once more a dying planet, and now that Tomas had set its clock ticking again, Earth hurried along again to its inevitable end.

  “It’s exactly as I remember it,” she said. “Perfect.”

  “Why didn’t you want me to return Earth to its glory, rather than its decline?” asked Tomas. “I would have welcomed that. It would have been more of a challenge.”

  Selene didn’t answer. Selene couldn’t answer. Selene merely stood transfixed, studying each inch of territory between her toes and the horizon until Ursula landed with a thud beside them.

  “Well, we’re here,” said Ursula, setting right a car that had flipped on its side ages before. “What are we supposed to do now?”

  “That’s entirely up to Selene,” said Tomas. “This is her party. We’re just here as her guests. Or witnesses.”

  “Witnesses?” said Ursula. “It isn’t as if this is a wedding.”

  “Dear?” asked Karl. “It’s up to you.”

  “Come,” said Selene, holding out her hands to her husband. “Let’s take a walk together.”

  Karl came up on her left side, and Karl came up on her right, and Karl stepped ahead to walk before them with both hands dangling back to join theirs. Ursula cleared a path ahead of them, concrete and brick being crushed into a smooth powder beneath her. She came across a tumbled lamppost and, laughing, tossed it toward the sky. Selene never saw or heard it fall.

  “Remember the first time we came here?” asked Selene, giving her husband’s hands a squeeze.

  “How could I possibly forget,” said Karl in her right ear.

  “It was our honeymoon,” said Karl in her left.

  “It seems like a lifetime ago,” called Karl back over one shoulder. “But I’m sure that it was much longer than that.”

  “When Ursula and I decided to bind ourselves to each other,” said Tomas, “we went everywhere.”

  “Earth was quite enough for us,” said Selene.

  “I’m sure it was very nice,” said Ursula.

  “Who needs the entire universe, when this is where it all began?” said Selene. “Not just us. Everything.”

  “Poor Selene,” said Tomas, wickedly. “Feeling overly nostalgic? They have a pill for that, too, you know.”

  “Tomas!” blared Ursula, turning to the sky. “If you had a neck, I’d wring it.”

  “What did I say?” said Tomas. “I never meant that in a bad way. We’re all friends here, aren’t we?”

  “Pretend that you have a tongue,” said Ursula. “And hold it.”

  “I want to see it all again,” said Selene, unshaken by Tomas’s words. Playful or punishing, they could not affect her. In that place, at that moment, for one of the very few times in her life, she felt like a rock. “I want to visit the museums, see the movies, and . . . and everything. I want to see the way that people lived before. I want to watch what choices they had to make.”

  “Assuming, of course,” said Tomas, “that in their art, truth was being told about the way that people lived before.”

  “Tomas!” said Ursula.

  “I’m only saying—”

  “Enough,” said Ursula. “Selene, do you think all those things you need could possibly still be here?”

  “Except for a little more decay here and there, it’s just as we left it,” said Selene.

  “Thank you,” whispered Tomas.

  “I recognize this city,” said Selene. “I recognize this street. Karl, do you recognize this street?”

  There was no answer, not from Karl nor Karl nor Karl, which made Selene squeeze his hands all the harder.

  “We’ve just a few blocks to go,” she said, pausing for a moment in the middle of an intersection. “And then you’ll all see what I mean. That way.”

  “Let’s do it then,” said Ursula.

  Ursula swelled from her default size into her gigantic self. With hands the size of couches, she scooped her four companions high up into the air, and ran in the direction Selene had pointed.

  “No!” shouted Selene, bouncing several stories above the cement. “Ursula, please, it can’t be like this. Put us down.”

  Ursula froze so suddenly that her metal muscles squealed. She shrunk in on herself until Selene and the others touched lightly down.

  “Thank you, Ursula, and please forgive me,” said Selene. “But what happens here today, you have to understand, I don’t want it to be done our way. I need it to be done the old-fashioned way.”

  “If it’s important to you,” said Ursula, “then I understand.”

  “Well, I don’t,” said Tomas.

  “Tomas . . .”

  “But whatever you need, Selene,” he quickly added.

  “This is where the art museum was,” said Selene, gesturing to the decrepit building in front of which they stood.

  The front wall of the marble and granite structure had collapsed, so they were forced to pick their way across a field of rubble. They climbed atop a pile of huge shards that blocked the entrance and then slid down inside through where a wall had split open. Most of the paintings were no longer on the walls, having fallen in some past catastrophe. Tomas wrapped himself around one that had dropped facedown in the dust, and the large canvas rose and floated in the air, presenting its face to each of them in turn.

  A man and woman gazed out at them, their hands lightly touching as they stood in a flowering garden. A young girl sat between them in the grass, hugging a ball in her lap. They stared at the painter who had captured them, stared, without being entirely aware of it, into the future Selene occupied. Selene stared back, trying to peer into that past.

  “Is that all we once were?” said Ursula, as the canvas spun again to her. “They look trapped in their flesh. Except for size, they look almost exactly the same.”

  “For them,” said Selene, “that was difference enough.”

  “At least, that’s what they had to keep telling themselves,” said Tomas.

  “Come along, Tomas,” said Ursula. “Let’s give Selene and Karl some time alone.”

  Ursula climbed back out the way they had come. As the painting dropped against a wall, Selene hoped, but could never be quite sure, that Tomas had followed his wife. After a moment, Selene could hear the slamming together of great objects. She smiled.

  “I hope Ursula is having fun,” said Karl.

  “Some people just know better than others how, I guess,” said Selene.

  Selene and Karl and Karl
and Karl made their way through what remained of the museum, where she tried to feel as a long-ago tourist might have, visiting on a summer day for a break from her busy life. She imagined how it must once have looked with its walls arranged neatly, its paintings organized according to a lost scheme Selene could not comprehend, its halls populated by contemporary visitors in search of a mirror. Selene lifted up each painting as lovingly as would a mother a child, and found each a place amidst the ruins where it could be seen and perhaps understood. She had no desire for blotches or geometric patterns today, though, and when Karl would overturn anything reeking of the abstract, she quickly abandoned it. She needed only the representational today. She needed . . . life.

  A great fish, trapped at the end of a line, frozen in midair, yanked toward a small rowboat. A bowl of fruit that was only a bowl of fruit, and nothing more. A dog, its fur sparkling, proudly posing with a limp duck hanging from its maw. And the faces of the people, the endless faces of the people.

  She mostly studied their eyes. They did not look unhappy to her. They did not look discontented. She was not fooled into thinking that their lives as they lived them were perfect; no, she was too smart for that, but she knew that what problems they had were not just symptoms of their times. They did not seem enslaved by the paucity of their choices. In fact, they were probably just as bewildered by the multiplicity of them as she was by her own.

  “Selene,” said Karl. Her name startled her. She lost hold of the last painting she had been studying, and Karl and Karl had to stumble forward to catch it. “Sorry. But Selene—what are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She studied her husband’s faces over the frame that was between them. Their eyes were equally sincere.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Karl.

  “I don’t know that either.”

  Karl tugged at the frame that separated them, but Selene held it in place. Karl stepped back and left them like that, coming around to place a hand on the small of Selene’s back.