M55

by Robert Brockway

  M55

  A Day of Knowing Tale

  By Robert Brockway

  Published by Brockwar Press: The Fightin’est Press In The West

  Copyright 2015

  About the Collection

  The Day of Knowing is a collection of interconnected horror shorts that each build upon a larger fictional world. Every tale is self-contained, and no single story will require that you read any others first. However, every short also builds the lore of the Day of Knowing universe, and readers that follow all of the stories in chronological order will reveal a larger tale that spans dozens of short stories across several decades. The order thus far is: M55, Carrier Wave, The Judas Goat (collected in Tomorrow’s Cthulhu from Broken Eye Books).

  About the Author

  Robert Brockway is a senior editor and columnist for Cracked.com. He is the author of the urban fantasy/horror Unnoticeables trilogy from Tor Books, the cyberpunk novel Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity, and the apocalyptic non-fiction essay collection Everything Is Going To Kill Everybody. The Day of Knowing shorts and others are published on his website, Robertbrockway.net. Follow him on Twitter @brockway_llc.

  “If you were the only human being alive on earth, and you’d never seen a sand dollar before, what would you think when you first found one?” I asked the pair of them.

  Jen’s eyebrows knit together. A little lopsided ‘y’ formed in the folds between her eyes. It was cute. But then, everything she did was cute.

  “I’m not following the train of thought here,” Peter said. He seemed to be emptying the entire sugar container into his coffee mug.

  “I mean, you’d think it was a stone or something, right? Some little rock with a neat pattern in it. At least at first. Then when you walked down the beach and found another with the same pattern, you’d get to wondering. Then you find another. And another. Dozens of them, all with nearly identical, improbably intricate patterns. ‘Okay,’ you’d think, ‘clearly somebody is making these things. This is proof that I’m not the only human out there.’”

  Nobody snapped at the bait.

  “You’d think it was a sign, but it’s nothing. It’s not even a stone, it’s an animal. It’s just nature. There are all sorts of patterns in nature,” I said, and I pulled out my finishing move. I set an immaculate sand dollar in the center of the table, just beside the ketchup and the plate full of destroyed, runny eggs that Jen had barely touched.

  Peter said nothing. He just kept pouring sugar.

  “So you think we’re wasting our time,” Jen said. When she finally spoke, it was slow and measured. Emotionless. Adorable.

  “No, of course not,” I smiled, if only to prove how totally affable and lovable I am. “SETI is a valuable, hell – a vital program. Now that we’re advanced enough to look for alien life, it’s a moral imperative that we do so. We’re obligated as a species to keep looking, if only for the sake of science. Even if we never find anything.”

  “Bullshit,” Peter said. He looked at me as he spoke, never one glancing down at the ceaseless stream of sugar emptying into his mug. “There’s gotta be alien life out there. I’ve seen a lot of my little corner of the universe. No way in hell are we the most intelligent life in the whole damn thing.”

  “No way in hell are you drinking that coffee,” Jen said.

  “Of course not. It’s empty,” Peter said.

  “Then why…?”

  “Because it’s empty,” Peter grinned, a vicious little break in his face, entirely without humor. “That bitch of a waitress never came back with a refill. Now she’s got a solid mug full of wet sugar to deal with.”

  Jesus. The people in this town dislike us enough without little stunts like that. You’d think they’d be grateful for our presence. Before we’d built the Big Ear here, the most remarkable thing about Delaware, Ohio was a stained wall that kind of looked like JFK if you squinted hard and tilted your head sideways. It’s always been a college town; you’d think they’d be used to visiting academics. But no, everywhere we went it was just glares and the cold shoulder. No smile from the waitresses. No chit chat from the bartender. No friendly advice from the pharmacist. No suggestive winks from the college girls…

  These people had no reason to dislike us – we spent most of our time buried at the observatory. They barely even saw us.

  Maybe that’s why they didn’t like us.

  The waitress came by to drop off the check. I smiled at her extra hard. Look how god damn friendly we are, you stupid yokel. Love us.

  She just frowned down at the mound of white spilling out of Peter’s cup, and walked away without a word.

  These people, I swear to god.

  …

  Jen walked out in front. She walked like she thought she was being stalked by somebody, just one loud noise away from sprinting. To her, a walk was just an inconvenience between places she had to be.

  “I’m telling you, that pattern is repeating,” Peter hollered from somewhere behind us.

  I was in a light jog, trying to keep up with Jen. But I was also trying to make it look like I was just walking nonchalantly. Arms down at my side, legs sliding forward and back in barely controlled leaps like I was miming cross country skiing. I hoped it looked more natural than it felt. Peter didn’t bother trying to keep up. He just ambled along behind us, closing ground when we stopped for cars, yelling his half of the conversation without caring how many stares he gathered.

  “I said, that pattern is repeating!” He yelled again. Like we didn’t hear him. Like we weren’t just ignoring him because the little old ladies of this town were worried enough about us bringing aliens down on their heads.

  “I said, that-“ He started again.

  “We heard you!” I finally yelled back. “Nobody’s saying it’s not repeating. I’m just saying the pattern could be natural. Nature’s full of patterns!”

  Did he not even hear the sand dollar speech? God damn it, I practiced that for hours last night.

  “Patterns that regular, that intense?”

  I couldn’t jog-walk and yell at the same time. Jen was getting away. Her hunched shoulders bobbing away into the night, like some sort of sexy Frankenstein.

  I decided to hell with Peter, and broke into a run.

  “I said, ‘patterns that regu-“ Peter yelled after me.

  …

  Jen made it back to the observatory first. She’d already had time to kick her boots off – she always walked around the focus room barefoot – and was blowing her nose over the trash can, like an angel.

  I could feel my face burning from the workout. Jen wasn’t even breathing hard. I looked at her tall, lean frame. Limp red hair. Thick black glasses. Beautiful, thin lips. Body like somebody had put a mannequin on the rack and stretched it out. I poked my own moderate paunch, straining at the edges of my worn Speedracer T-shirt.

  Like she’d ever be with a shlub like me.

  Peter came in last, still yelling his half of a conversation nobody had heard.

  “-and you can’t use nature to dismiss an intentional pattern like this. Look at this – a full 72 seconds…”

  He grabbed the sheaf of printout from globular cluster M55. He held it up to my face and shook it. I had a mad impulse to slap it out of his hands – it would be so dramatic – but I swallowed that down and just smiled at him. Weakly.

  “Right man, look at the pattern. It’s all over the place,” I said.

  “But those big spikes are unnaturally regular deviations from the hydrogen line,” Jen said.

  My heart sank. It was the first uncute thing she’d ever done.

  “Yes, those few spikes are regular, but everything in between is all over the map. Look,” I said, and I took a step back so I could stand between them. “I’m not saying it’s not weird, I’m just saying
we need more info before we make something big out of this.”

  Peter let out a low groan. He did that when he was thinking about something he didn’t like. Jen scratched her neck and looked away. Neither spoke.

  Science prevails.

  …

  I kicked open the door to the focus room.

  “Merry donut day, nerds!” I yelled.

  The lights were off. The chairs were empty. I set down the three cups of coffee and dozen donuts on my terminal. I thought I should bring a little peace offering after our tiff last night, so on my way in, I had asked a guy on the corner where I should go for donuts. He said “New York,” then walked away. So I had to swing by a phone booth and look it up in a soggy book hanging from a chain. Friendly town.

  I shouldn’t be the first in. Jen should still be on the early shift, and Peter should be stumbling in by now, three hours late for his rotation, reeking of vodka and devouring his customary three plain pieces of bread. Should I call somebody? Who do I even call? We’re all volunteers. As far as I know we can just up and walk away. Jen could have pissed off back to…oh man, can you believe I don’t even know where she came from? God damn if I missed my only shot with her because I was too…

  The door banged open and Jen shuffled into the focus room. She hadn’t changed her clothes from last night.

  “Rough night?” I asked.

  I laughed, because she didn’t.

  “You could say that.”

  “Oh, I was just kidding, because you were late and all… everything okay?”

  “No, I had nightmares.”

  “Ah, sorry. Happens to me sometimes, too.”

  “I have never had a dream before in my life. Not that I can remember, at least.”

  “Wow, that’s super interesting,” I said, “what was this one about?”

  “I don’t know, it’s hard to talk about. I’ve never had to discuss a dream before.”

  She fell quiet. Thinking before she spoke.

  “I was watching television, only nothing was on…”

  ‘That’s the dullest dream I’ve ever heard,’ I thought about saying, but apparently she wasn’t done. Just putting together the words.

  “It was static. Little white flecks dancing and zipping all over the screen. But there was a parallax effect. The little black flecks weren’t moving at all. Just the white ones. See, the black flecks weren’t flecks at all; they were the only visible parts of a background, or a bigger object. The white ones started getting farther and farther apart from each other, and I realized they were all moving away from something. They were making a space around a black spot in the center. Like they were afraid of it. It just kept getting bigger and bigger, and I couldn’t stop looking at it.”

  “Huh. Well, that doesn’t sound too bad, as far as nightmares go. This one time I dreamed I had sausages instead of fingers and I got really hungry so I started eating my own sausages and then my dad-“

  “It was just pure terror, the feeling I had when I looked into that black spot. I felt like everything I was, was being sucked into that space, never to return. And the worst part is, just before I woke up, I thought I saw something in there.”

  I blew on my coffee. I waited a few seconds, but I guess she needed some prompting.

  “What was in there?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember. There was a face, and I knew it was young, but I don’t think it was human. And it was all black, anyway – how could I see a face in there? I woke up feeling so strange. The whole time I was walking down here, I was just so angry. But at nothing. I saw nobody. Just leaves and trees. Yet they made me angry. And then, when I walked in here, my first thought when I saw you was ‘I could kill this man and nobody would ever know it.’ Isn’t that strange? I’ve never had a thought like that before.”

  “Ha ha,” I laughed the most unconvincing laugh in history, “well being killed by you might not be so bad…”

  I regretted it the instant I said it. What does that even mean?

  Well, nothing to do now except stare at our terminals in terrible, awkward silence. We stayed that way until three in the afternoon, when the police arrived.

  “Afternoon,” the first officer said, poking his head through the door. He didn’t knock. “I’m looking for the workplace of a Mr. Peter Hoover. This the right place?”

  I thought Jen would answer – she was closer – but she didn’t even look up.

  “Yeah I uh…hey, what’s this about?” I said. I stepped around Jen and stopped a few feet away from the officer. I was about to shake his hand. Is that normal? Is that a normal thing to do with a cop? Or is that like considered a threatening action or…

  “This is it,” he yelled to somebody on the other side of the door, then stepped in and stood off to the side.

  A fat man in a dark blue windbreaker trudged in, looking like he was expecting bad news from a doctor. He puffed out his cheeks and stared in every corner of the room before looking at either me or Jen. He put his hands in his pockets and sighed.

  “Uh is everything…?” I just trailed off.

  “Turble,” the fat man said. I thought he might’ve just burped.

  “What?”

  “Sherriff Turble. That’s me. I’m Turble.”

  He sighed again, and fished through his pockets for something but apparently didn’t find it. He just gave up and let his hands dangle by his sides.

  “Hi,” I said, “I’m-”

  “Peter Hoover,” Turble said. His voice sounded like somebody had knocked the wind out of a Bassett Hound. “He works here.”

  “He does,” I said, though I wasn’t sure it was a question.

  “Beat up a waitress,” Turble said, and he pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled loudly.

  “What?” Jen blinked. It was the first time she’d looked up from her terminal all day. “What happened?”

  “Peter Hoover beat up a waitress,” Turble said again. He went to make a gesture, it was almost a shrug, but he quit on it before it even got started. “Got him in lockup.”

  Turble turned to leave.

  “What? Is that – what do we do about that?” Jen called after him.

  Turble said something like, “ahhhhhdungimmadambou-” as he walked away.

  The other officer stepped out from behind the door.

  “Hoover couldn’t remember the number for this place,” he said, “for his phone call. Couldn’t even remember the address. Just said it was ‘the space place.’ We had to come down here to let you know where to see him, when to post bail and all that. Sherriff Turble, he doesn’t like doing stuff.”

  The officer smiled at Jen before leaving. The son of a bitch.

  …

  Peter looked like he’d withered since we’d last seen him. Though maybe that was just my own mental association after seeing him sitting on that little plastic bench in his cell, all alone. His head was down in his hands, and he was saying something over and over, too soft to hear. He looked up at us through red, swollen eyes. He’d been crying. I couldn’t imagine Peter crying, but this didn’t look much like Peter. It looked like somebody had freeze-dried what Peter used to be so he’d fit into a smaller package.

  “Hey…hey, guys,” he said. He laughed a little. “Had a rough night.”

  “What the hell happened, Peter?” I said. I wrapped my hands around the bars. I shook them a little. I didn’t expect them to feel so solid.

  “I just…I couldn’t sleep last night. I couldn’t think of anything else but that fucking waitress, you know? The one from yesterday morning, at the café? She didn’t refill my coffee. Not even once.”

  “So you attacked her.” Jen said.

  “Yeah,” Peter answered, even though what Jen said — it didn’t sound like a question. It sounded like she was finishing his sentence. “I just, it kept going round and round in my head. And I kept getting angrier and angrier about it. And it’s like, she can’t get away with that. You know? People can’t get away with stuff like th
at. It’s the principle of the thing. The principle!”

  Jen nodded.

  “The principle? Of not getting enough coffee? Are you fucking insane?” I said.

  Peter slammed his head right into the bars. Right where my hand was. If I’d moved a second later, it would’ve broken all of my fingers. A thick trail of blood ran down his forehead.

  “What did you call me?!” He screamed so loudly his voice cracked. “What did you say? I’LL KILLYA. KIIIYAAA. KIYA MA!”

  And then he was just making noises. Barking and frothing at the mouth. He headbutted the bars again, and again.

  “Ahhh,” Turble sighed from the door behind us. “I knew you were gonna make more work for me.”

  …

  When we left, Peter was still scrabbling at the bars of his cell, trying to get to me. His eyes never left mine. He screamed nonsense syllables until his voice gave out. Jen didn’t seem all that fazed by Peter’s fit, but I couldn’t stop my own hands from shaking. I could barely hold my coffee cup steady.

  The waitress had filled it right up to the top – I mean, to within a millimeter. Why do they do that?

  Scalding liquid kept seeping over the rim, running down the ceramic and burning my fingers. I set my coffee down. Jen was staring out the window of the All Hands Diner, watching cars pass through the rain. They plowed through the increasingly large puddle forming in the intersection of Williams and Washington, kicking up great arcs of cold slate water. Every once in a while, one of those arcs would catch the passing headlights from another car, and light up. Like tiny stars suspended in mid-air.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Hmm?” Jen blinked and looked at me.

  “I said it’s kinda pretty – the headlights in the rain. Looked like you were watching them.”

  “No,” Jen said, “I was thinking about Peter.”

  “God,” I let out a breath that practically winded me. I guess I’d been partially holding it all this time; breathing high and shallow in my chest. “I know, right? Why would he do that?”

  “Exactly,” Jen said, “it makes no sense. Why would he beat her up? And then leave her alive? I can’t figure it out.”