The Klaatu Terminus

by Pete Hautman

  “It will take you to where you need to be,” Awn said. “But you must go soon. Outside forces are meddling with the diskos. The creature you just observed, for example.”

  “The maggot,” Tucker said. “You once told me they were made by Boggsians for something called the Gnomon.”

  Awn thought for a moment, then said, “The Gnomon are a conservative faction of the Klaatu. It is no surprise that they will object to the diskos. Already their future actions echo back through the timestreams.”

  “What does that mean?” Tucker asked.

  “Intent and the ability to perform a task is sufficient,” Awn said. “Consider your footfalls upon the earth. You intend to step forward. You have the capability to do so. Therefore, it is as if done. In this fashion, we both control the future and cause it to occur.”

  “But suppose I intend to step forward and something stops me.”

  “Then you did not have the capability in the first place.”

  Tucker and Lia looked at each other.

  “She can be very irritating,” Lia said in a low voice.

  “Yes,” said Awn. She propped the ax on her shoulder. “Come. I will take you as far as my dwelling. From there you must proceed on your own.” She set off down the trail, walking swiftly.

  Tucker and Lia followed. On the way, they told each other about what had happened while they were apart.

  “That Boggsian, I think he’s the guy who built the diskos,” Tucker said as they climbed a slope toward the crest of a hill. “It’s like, as soon as I told him about the diskos, he decided he had to build one, and all of a sudden they’re popping up everywhere. Like what Awn said, as soon as he intended to do it, it was done.”

  Awn turned to them and said, “It is more than intent. The means must also be at hand. The Boggsian had already developed the technology, but he had yet to apply it. Now, however . . .” she pointed her ax at a disko perched upon the top of the hill. Tucker could have sworn it had not been there a moment ago. “The diskos come.” She stepped off the trail and approached the disko. “This disko has a malevolent aspect.” She prodded its surface with the ax handle, then backed away. The disko spat out a handful of reddish dust.

  “A genocide,” Awn said, rejoining Tucker and Lia. “And the death of any unfortunate creatures who should pass through it. The Klaatu have a taste for the macabre.” She continued along the path, speaking over her shoulder. “The Klaatu believe themselves to be superior creatures, and in many ways they are. However, they lost something of themselves when they transcended. One might say they worship the lives they left behind.”

  “Like a religion?” Tucker asked.

  “Not in the sense that you mean.”

  “One of the Boggsians told me they have no religion, either,” Tucker said.

  “The Boggsians cannot be trusted to say what is true,” Awn said. “They do not even trust themselves.”

  “I once believed in the religion of the Lah Sept,” Lia said. She turned to Tucker. “I used to think you might be the prophet named Tuckerfeye. But now I am not so sure. According to The Book of September, Tuckerfeye saved the Lah Sept from the Digital Plague.”

  “What is The Book of September?”

  “The Book of September is the Holy Bible of the Lah Sept. It is like your Bible, but different. According to the teachings, it was written by Father September. Your father. According to the Book, Father September sacrificed his only son, and then the son rose from the dead and saved the Lah Sept from the Plague.”

  Tucker said, “Wow.”

  “Yes. Wow.”

  “So that’s why my dad wanted to kill me?”

  “Yes, to make The Book of September true. But you were not sacrificed. You escaped.”

  “Does that mean we changed history?”

  Awn stopped again and faced them. “History is what is written. We do not know whether the diskos are capable of changing that which may have happened, nor can we ever know, for were an event to be undone, it would never have occurred.”

  Tucker said, “So if we change something that happened, it never happened?”

  “One may experience only a single timeline, though it is possible that multiple timelines exist.”

  “You mean there are other versions of me in other timelines?”

  “This is a theory that may never be provable. Judging from their actions, the Gnomon believe that such timelines exist independently of one another, and that any entanglement could be catastrophic.”

  “But we can change what happens?”

  “Yes. No.”

  The trail led into a meadow studded with tree stumps. On the far side of the meadow was a pile of logs, and what looked like the start of a log cabin.

  “My home,” said Awn.

  In the future, Tucker thought, this is where Awn will die.

  Awn said, “As I stated, my ability to manipulate the diskos is limited; I cannot create them at will, nor guarantee their destination. The disko atop the Cydonian Pyramid will take you to your own time, though I cannot promise that you will arrive in Hopewell.”

  “You mean it might take us to the top of Mount Everest?” Tucker said.

  “A disko on Everest has yet to be conceived by the builder, so no, you need not fear that.”

  “But we might end up someplace not in Hopewell?”

  “Hopewell is a place of special interest to the designer. You are likely to find yourself near your home.”

  “Who is this designer? Is that another word for God?”

  “Only if your concept of God is very limited. The designer of the diskos, and my creator, calls herself Iyl Rayn. She is a Klaatu.”

  “I have met her,” said Lia. “She is no god.”

  During the third phase of their debate, Iyl Rayn and the Gnomon Chayhim discussed the fate of Tom Krause.

  “Memories,” Iyl Rayn maintained, “are not reality.”

  Chayhim disagreed. “Are you suggesting that the qualities that make us who we are can exist independent of our memories?”

  “I am suggesting that memories simply model reality for our edification and amusement. They are not in and of themselves the sum total of who we are. I, for example, was transcended without my full complement of recollections. Does this make me any less real?”

  Chayhim emitted a dismissive pulse, indicating a complete rejection of Iyl Rayn’s argument. “Even if your assertion were true, you cannot deny that memories influence action, and action implies reality. The boy Tom Krause, for example, acts in accordance with memories which are not reality-based in his timestream. He is caught in a time stub. The boy is disturbed. Your actions have inconvenienced him.”

  “He will adapt,” said Iyl Rayn.

  “You cannot know this to be true.”

  “Neither can you know it to be untrue.”

  “A moot point. The Timesweeps will right matters.”

  “Your Timesweeps are more likely to exacerbate the problem.”

  “Ah, so you admit there is a problem?”

  “Yes. A problem that did not exist before you unleashed your Timesweeps.”

  — E3

  HOPEWELL TIME STUB, NOVEMBER, 2012 CE

  KRAZY KRAUSE, THEY CALLED HIM.

  At first, when Tom had returned to school, everybody wanted to hang with him. They all wanted to know what had happened. Tom just kept saying he didn’t remember. But then Will had opened his big mouth. Tom wished he’d never told Will about the things he remembered — about Tucker, and the rope swing, and being in the futuristic hospital, and getting zapped by those two guys with the black coats and hats. But Will had wheedled it out of him, and now his bigmouthed little brother had the whole school thinking he was as crazy as old Mrs. Benson.

  Krazy Krause. He had found it scratched into the paint on his locker. Nobody said it to his face, but he knew they were talking about him. The fact that maybe he was crazy made it worse. He was living in two different worlds. There was the world that arrived through his senses — t
he world people told him was real — and the world that existed in his memories. The world where there was a rope swing at Hardy Lake, and a boy named Tucker Feye. At times, he was ready to accept that he had dreamed the whole rope swing adventure, but what about Tucker? He hadn’t made up Tucker Feye, but nobody seemed to remember him.

  The Feyes’ house was still there, but it was vacant. He asked around, but no one could remember who had lived there.

  Tom remembered being in a hospital in the future. He remembered seeing Tucker that snowy night in downtown Hopewell, and all the old cars, and seeing a younger version of the Reverend Feye. And the two men in black who had zapped him with something. He remembered falling into Hardy Lake. Suppose it had all really happened just the way he remembered? Did that mean everybody else was crazy?

  He had started cutting himself with his pocketknife. Just little cuts on his arms, to feel the pain, to see the blood, to know he was alive. When his mom noticed the cuts, he told her they were thorn scratches.

  Did crazy people know they were crazy? He thought about Mrs. Benson, with her house full of cats and wearing galoshes year-round and talking about her husband, who had died before Tom was born, as if he were still alive. Did she know she was crazy?

  One day over dinner, he asked his dad if he ever remembered things that had never happened.

  His dad gave him a concerned look and said, “Of course not.”

  His mother laughed. “Yes you do, Jack! Just last week you said you thought you’d paid the electric bill, when in fact you had done no such thing.”

  “That’s different,” his dad said.

  “Memory plays tricks on all of us,” his mother said.

  What he should do was just act like everything was normal, and do normal things, and try not to think about Tucker or the rope swing, and not cut himself. People pretended all the time — pretended that things had never happened. The Lambs of September, for example. That had been in the papers, and just about everybody he knew had been in the park that day, and half his friends had been calling themselves Pure Boys or Pure Girls. Everybody remembered that. But none of them wanted to talk about it. He’d talked to Kathy Aamodt one day in the lunchroom, back when everybody was trying to get him to say what had happened to him while he was gone, and he said something about how stupid it was that they had gotten involved with the Lambs. Her face went all stiff and red.

  “That’s really rude,” she said.

  “Why?” Tom said, genuinely confused.

  “As far as I’m concerned, none of that ever happened.” With that, she turned away, and had not spoken to him since.

  Not only could he not talk about the things that nobody else remembered, there were things he couldn’t talk about that were real.

  It’s all about pretending, he thought. Maybe if I just believe what everybody agrees is real, then everything will be okay.

  He tried. But most afternoons he found himself back at Hardy Lake, sitting under the cottonwood, making shallow cuts on his arms, remembering things that had never happened.

  One evening, he returned from Hardy Lake and found his parents and Will already sitting at the dinner table, eating chicken casserole. There were only three place settings. His mother looked at him with a puzzled expression.

  “Well, who do we have here?”

  “Will, is this one of your friends?” his dad asked.

  Tom thought they were messing with him. Was he late for dinner? Then he saw the bewildered expression on Will’s face and he knew they weren’t kidding.

  “I don’t know him,” Will said.

  Tom was too shocked to breathe, let alone speak.

  “Young man,” his father said, standing up, “may I ask what you are doing walking into our home without knocking?”

  “Maybe he’s lost, dear,” his mother said, looking at Tom with an utter lack of recognition.

  “Mom! It’s me!” Tom said. “Tom!”

  Mrs. Krause blinked, her face blurred, then snapped back into focus.

  “Tom,” she said. “Where have you been?” She stood up. “Let me get you a plate.”

  His dad grunted and sat back down, shaking his head in confusion. Will was staring at Tom as if he had sprouted antlers.

  “What happened to you?” Will asked.

  “Nothing,” Tom said, even as he was thinking, Everything happened to me! Either he really was Krazy Krause, or the entire universe was going nuts. Numbly, he sat down at his usual place. His mother set a plate and utensils before him, and he served himself some chicken casserole. It tasted the same as always — a favorite comfort food — and the rest of the meal went on as if nothing odd had happened.

  HOPEWELL, 1997 CE

  THE TWO-LANE HIGHWAY RAN DEAD STRAIGHT INTO THE setting sun. Kosh brought the Mustang up to one hundred miles per hour. Pedal to the floor, he leaned back in his seat and stared at the rapidly advancing horizon. On either side, snow-dusted fields of harvested corn, white, gold, and black, blurred to flickering yellow-gray. One oh two. One oh four. He came up over a low rise; at the top, the weight came off the wheels, and for a moment he was flying. The Mustang touched down. One oh five.

  Ahead, a yellow sign announced a coming curve. He eased back on the accelerator, disappointed. He’d gone faster than that on his bike. He’d hoped for more from the Mustang. He touched the brake, brought the car down to thirty, eased onto the shoulder, and pulled a tire-screeching U-turn.

  The dash clock read 6:36. Emily was expecting him at seven. He brought the Mustang back up to eighty and headed back toward Hopewell.

  He was so dead. So totally, irredeemably dead.

  Emily’s best friend, Karen Jonas, lived just south of Hopewell in a house set into a cornfield that had once been part of the Hauser farmstead. George Hauser had been selling off parcels of his land for years, some to other farmers, some to folks looking to build homes. Karen’s father had a job with the county, something to do with taxes. He’d put a three-story home on a half acre notched into Hauser’s east field — a blocky square house sitting on a square half acre of perfect lawn walled on three sides by dry cornstalks.

  Kosh pulled into the short driveway and beeped his horn. Seconds later, the front door opened and Emily ran out to the car, her open parka flapping in the wind. She hopped in and kissed Kosh on the cheek. Kosh put the car in gear and backed out onto the highway.

  “What’s the plan, Stan?” she said.

  “Chicken cacciatore,” Kosh said.

  Greta had remarked, a few weeks earlier, on how much time Emily had been spending with Kosh.

  “It’s unseemly,” she said.

  “Oh, Greta, leave the girl alone,” Hamm said.

  Greta pursed her lips and gave her head a shake. “People will talk,” she said.

  It was true. Kosh and Emily spent every available hour together, more than she and Adrian ever had, and people noticed. They were careful how they behaved in public, but it was hard. People noticed how closely they walked with each other — close enough to hold hands, though they never did. People noticed how they looked at each other. It was a small town. Greta was right. People talked.

  Kosh and Emily took to meeting in secret. On this night, Emily had told Greta she was spending the night at Karen’s. Karen, of course, knew what was going on. Tonight, as on many other nights, Emily would go to Kosh’s, and they would cook, and she would act as if this was her life. As if it was real.

  Like little kids playing house, she thought.

  Kosh drove Adrian’s Mustang all the time now. His pickup had a bad clutch, and it was too cold to ride his bike, and what difference did it make? When Adrian got back from Jerusalem, the car would be the least of it. Again and again Kosh imagined the occasion.

  Welcome back, brother. Your fiancée and I are in love. Sorry about that.

  The fact that he was using the Mustang against Adrian’s express wishes was nothing, a tiny pimple on the vast, bloated sin of stealing his brother’s fiancée.

  Kos
h had tried to talk Emily into running away with him.

  “I’ll be eighteen in a few months,” he said. “I can get a job up in Minneapolis. We can get an apartment.”

  “Oh, Kosh,” Emily said sadly, putting her hand on his forearm. “It wouldn’t be fair to Adrian.”

  “But you can’t marry him now!”

  “I know.” Emily sighed. “I’ll break it off with him after he’s home and gets settled. I can let him down easy.”

  “Adrian doesn’t do anything easy.”

  “We’ll work it out, Kosh. For now, can’t we just be happy?”

  He was happy. But he was also miserable. Adrian’s return was hanging over them like a time bomb, and even though it was more than two months away, he thought about it constantly.

  The chicken cacciatore was a disaster. Kosh burned the chicken, Emily’s salad was oversalted, and the ice cream they’d bought for dessert turned out to be fat-free frozen yogurt that had spent too many months in the freezer at Economart. It didn’t matter. They laughed their way though the awful meal, and talked about things that had nothing to do with Adrian and the coming apocalypse, and for a time, Kosh was as happy as he had ever been since before his father died.

  It was after two in the morning when Kosh dropped Emily back at Karen’s. He turned off the headlights as he approached the house so as to not wake up Karen’s parents, kissed Emily good night, then sat in the car and watched as she let herself in the side door. Driving home, the weight of what he was doing filled his belly and dragged him down, as if the burned chicken in his gut had turned to mud. Why did something so pure and clean and wonderful as his feelings for Emily have to have such a monstrous consequence attached? Why hadn’t he fallen in love with someone else? The answer was clear. There was no one else for him. Kosh was not big on fate or karma, but being with Emily. . . . If anything in this universe was inevitable, if anything were truly meant to be, it was his arms around Emily Ryan, his lips on her lips, his soul and her soul together forever.