The Spaceship Next Door

by Gene Doucette

  “I knew he’d send the warships, and that someday one would land here. I just had to make sure I was prepared when that day came. You were my only mistake, Annie.”

  “I don’t understand what that means.”

  “Have you ever wondered why none of your friends seem to remember me?”

  “Well yeah, it’s because you’re you. Socially awkward you.”

  “I couldn’t let anyone retain an idea of me. It’s literally a piece of who I am. So when I was out of their sight, I was out of their minds too. If a ship landed and looked for me in the minds of other people, it wouldn’t find it. All except for you. I’ve allowed you to carry me in your head for the past six years. We’re in this mess because, as it happens, the one person in Sorrow Falls who absolutely should not have interacted directly with the spaceship is the one person who did.”

  “But… why?” Annie asked.

  “Because I like you? I wanted a friend. It’s why I’ve been growing old with you. I’m only here in the first place because this is the sort of thing I’ve learned to value: real connection with life. It’s not something that’s easy to come across, trust me. I’m older than your sun. It’s rare.”

  “Oh. Well that’s sweet, Vi.”

  “I mean it. I didn’t intend to get you into trouble. I’ve connected with others in the past and it was fine. Oliver, for instance. You aren’t the only human who’s retained an idea of me.”

  “Super, but the ship landed on my watch. And now the world’s coming to an end because I seemed like a cool kid to hang out with. That’s a weird responsibility.”

  “The world’s not coming to an end,” Ed said.

  “I’m not sure that’s up to you.”

  “It sounds to me like Violet has a say in it,” he said. “She isn’t interested in seeing the world end either.”

  Annie looked at her friend. “I don’t know, she’s let everything else happen, hasn’t she?”

  “I swear I didn’t mean to,” Violet said.

  “You mentioned AI,” Ed said. “In the ship. How advanced is it?”

  “More advanced than anything mankind could develop.”

  “I appreciate that, but… is it advanced enough to, say, blow up a munitions depot in Delaware?”

  “From the moment it landed it started burrowing into every communications network on the planet. By now I doubt there’s anywhere outside of this kitchen that isn’t being recorded somewhere inside the ship. But to answer your question, no. It’s collecting information passively, for use as necessary. And it’s looking for evidence of me. But that’s all.”

  “And you know this because you have the same access to the same networks, only you aren’t passive at all about it.”

  Violet looked away.

  “I had to do it,” she said, technically addressing the refrigerator. “If those bombs reached Sorrow Falls the ship would have simply detonated them as soon as it recognized the threat. That would have killed half the town, and it wouldn’t have been harmed in the slightest. I did the same with the machines you planned to use to remove the ship from town. I knew it wouldn’t have allowed that. Obviously, there were more consequences attached to the problem with the explosives.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Annie said. “Violet, five people died.”

  “I realize that. A thousand times that many would have died otherwise.”

  “I appreciate that it must have been a difficult decision.” Ed said.

  “I was trying to keep everything as much the same as possible so the probe would be recalled without incident. It’s why so little has changed here, Mr. Somerville.”

  Annie stood. “You know what? I need a minute. You guys keep on going, I think I’ve heard enough for a while.”

  Ed’s instinct was to tell her she should stay put, because zombies. But he believed Violet when she said they couldn’t find Annie as long as she stayed near the house, for the same reason no GPS signal could find the house and people had been mis-drawing maps of the area for two hundred years.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I just need some air. This is… sorry, I mean, it’s cool, she’s an alien terrorist and her whole family is reanimated dead people, and I just need a minute with all of that. Before the next crazy thing comes up.”

  “Yeah, of course. Just don’t go far.”

  “Nope.”

  Annie left without even looking at Violet.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “It’s all right, she’s… I feel terrible, she is literally the last person on this planet I meant to harm.”

  He decided to take that in the spirit in which it was intended, but his first thought was she didn’t give a damn about him or anyone else, zombies or otherwise.

  “I didn’t forget about you,” he realized. “That was intentional, I take it.”

  “It was. You dropped Annie off; I had to make sure you remembered where and with whom. I can’t say I was surprised you figured this out. You came to Sorrow Falls looking for me at the outset, whether you realized it at first or not.”

  “Why did it take three years?” he asked. “For the ship to kick all this in?”

  “The ship should have taken off shortly after arriving and failing to detect my presence in or around where the first probe landed. It didn’t leave, I now know, because of Annie’s interaction. That initiated a secondary program. As I said, it’s been collecting information, and learning, and performing a risk assessment.”

  “Funny, that’s why I’m here.”

  “That was the easy part. It probably finished within a few weeks. It wasn’t that which took so long.”

  “What did?”

  Violet looked over her shoulder at Todd. Then she raised her left arm. Todd raised his left arm as well. She lowered hers, he lowered his. Her right arm went up, and so did his. It was like a puppet routine.

  “The ship had to learn how to make zombies?”

  “It’s only a matter of electrical systems and frequencies. It took me a couple of years to make a basic version that’s like the ones wandering around town now. It was a century before they were advanced enough to fool a person, and even with that I’ve been relying on some of the equipment in the capsule in the basement. These guys wouldn’t fool anyone outside of its signal reach. Finding people to use is also a challenge. For me, I mean. You have to find someone whose nervous system is still intact and with no missing body parts.”

  “But who’s already dead, right? That appears to be a distinction lost on the spaceship.”

  “Yes, I never tried this on a living person, but I have a lot more respect for humans than any of the programming in Shippie would. You’re all lower life forms, and it’s using you to perform a search.”

  “Three years to learn how to make a zombie, then.”

  “No, even then, it probably had that figured out in less than three years. After that it was merely on standby.”

  “I’m going to hate myself for asking, but standby for what?”

  “For his arrival.”

  “Your father.”

  “My creator. When I said I wasn’t the only one of my kind here any more, this is what I meant. The probe would have finished its review of the life forms on the planet and sent its report. I doubt that report stated anything so unsubtle as ‘your daughter is here’, but it would have included enough interesting things to warrant a visit. I suspect it was only after his arrival that the data from Annie’s mind was analyzed in enough detail to identify me within it.”

  “All right. Now we’re caught up and I need to know how we can fix this. Do you have any idea how we can break this connection the ship has with the people without also killing them? The last time anyone tried to wake up a sleepwalking zombie, the man died of a brain aneurysm, so I’m looking for a better solution than that.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Somerville. I’m afraid even if I gave myself over to him, he’d see no reason to spare anyone. And I don’t mean anyone in Sorrow Falls, I mean
anyone at all. Old ideas can be vengeful and unforgiving. With him… you have to appreciate that the longer an idea is isolated, the more inflexible it becomes.”

  “Isolated how?”

  “Ideas are meant to live inside minds. More than that, we’re meant to interact with those minds. It’s how we evolve, and grow, and adapt to whatever present we’re engaging. I was a very different kind of idea when I came here than I am now, because of that interaction. If he does find me, he will barely recognize me. I’m not so certain he’ll be happy with whom I’ve become. And inside that ship, he has the capability of destroying the world. He may do exactly that, just out of spite.”

  “Well then, we need to come up with a plan to nullify that ship.”

  * * *

  Ed and Violet emerged from the kitchen about twenty minutes later, having formulated something—if not a plan, at least a way to get to one.

  The others hadn’t drifted far from the camper.

  “Hey, government,” Oona said from the roof. “I’m not saying you’re right or wrong about being safe here, but all our instruments are going nuts. Where the hell are we?”

  “Nuts how?” Ed asked.

  Dobbs popped up. He and Oona were evidently working together on her electronics array, which was an improvement over any other time in the evening, from what Ed had been told.

  “Like we’re on a slab of magnetized iron, or a ley line,” Dobbs said.

  “Ley lines aren’t real, you idiot,” Oona said.

  “That’s under dispute.”

  “No it’s not. You gonna read auras next? C’mon.”

  “Any zombies, though?” Ed asked.

  Sam stood up. He had binoculars in his hands. “No sign that I can see. I was going to do a recon.”

  “Don’t bother, Sam,” Violet said. “There aren’t any out there.”

  “I’d like to be sure…”

  “Violet.”

  “Violet, right. Have we met?”

  “A couple of times. I’m a friend of Annie’s.”

  “The compass just spins,” Dobbs said. He held one up to illustrate his point.

  “I’m sorry,” Violet said. “That’s my fault. It’s the capsule.”

  “What capsule? And who are you again?”

  “I’m Violet, Dobbs. This is my house. We’ve met.”

  “Sorry, don’t remember.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “What capsule are you talking about?”

  “The one under the house. It’s protecting us right now. It’s why you, Oona, needed Ed to tell you where to turn off the road, and why the zombies can’t find us, and why all of your equipment thinks it’s half a mile west of where it actually is, and why the compass thinks true north is down.”

  “Jesus,” Oona said. She pulled her pistol and aimed it at Violet. “She’s an alien, isn’t she, Edgar?”

  “Hold it, hold it. Calm down.” Ed stepped in front of Violet, which was just a bad idea, but he didn’t have any good ones. “Look, we have a lot to do and not a lot of time. Dobbs, you found the frequency the zombies were communicating on, right?”

  “Yeah, but… dude, is she really an alien?”

  “Focus, Dobbs.”

  “I did, but I can’t translate it.”

  “I may be able to,” Violet said.

  “Right now, everyone out there is looking for someone,” Ed said, “and the only way to make this end is to convince them they’re looking in the wrong place.”

  “So, you want to send the zombies to where, Oakdale?” Dobbs asked.

  “I mean wrong planet, not wrong town.”

  “I think you should get out of the way,” Oona said.

  “Oona, you’re not going to shoot a little girl. We need her help.”

  The barrel quavered. “Aaahhh,” she said, disgusted either with Ed or herself. She holstered the gun.

  “The tech we need to leverage is in the root cellar,” Violet said. “You’re all welcome to come down and have a look.”

  Laura came from inside the camper.

  “That doesn’t sound at all inviting,” she said. “But sure, I’ll go.”

  “You’re serious, there’s an alien ship in the basement?” Dobbs said. “Can we touch it?”

  “Yes, I’ll disable the defenses.”

  “Hot damn, I’m in.”

  “Laura, can you get Annie?” Ed said. “I think she should see this too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s inside, right?”

  “No? No, she was in the house with you.”

  “She went out the back,” Ed said. “I just figured she came around here.”

  “She must still be back there,” Violet said. “Hang on.”

  “Sam, can you see her from up there?”

  “No, but it’s dark. But where could she have gone? I mean, this is the only place she’s safe.”

  Violet stiffened. “Oh no.”

  “What is it?”

  “I just sent Todd in back to check. Annie’s bike is gone.”

  21

  So the Abyss Gazes Also

  Annie was flying.

  That was the thing nobody seemed to understand when asking about the bike. Under certain conditions, it was the closest she would ever get to actually taking flight. This was true even though she could feel every bump in the road, and even when she had to keep pedaling to maintain the takeoff speed.

  It was dark, and Violet’s road was made of packed dirt that was still damp from the rainfall, on top of which there were potholes from natural erosion, so riding down it at twenty miles an hour on a bike, without a helmet, was pretty reckless. Annie didn’t particularly care, though. She had a headlight to help identify the dips—she knew where a lot of them were already, as this was hardly her first trip along the road—and she was a nimble and experienced cyclist. And as long as she was on the bike and riding as fast as she could, all the zombies and aliens and everything else that had taken up residence in her head were gone.

  She just didn’t know where she was going.

  After exiting Violet’s kitchen, she wandered out the back of the house and saw her bike sitting there, and without really thinking she began checking the tires and the gears the way she would if she were preparing for a trip. Then she just decided that was what was happening: she was going on a trip. Where was still up to debate.

  Any trip would require getting past the camper undetected, though, because surely nobody there would understand, so she committed to a long loop around the front of the house, through the woods she caught Todd wandering around in. By the time that loop was completed she was at the elbow in the dirt road and out of Sam’s rooftop view, and there was nothing between her and the rest of the world but open road. So she turned her light on and started pedaling.

  It was glorious. The entire day just vanished into the humid late August nighttime air, and for about five minutes Annie was a sixteen-year old girl with regular old sixteen-year old girl problems that didn’t include extra-dimensional thought monsters.

  Then she reached Liberty Road.

  There were zombies all over Liberty, because of course there were. Violet’s alien mojo reached the end of the dirt road, so that was where the trail went cold. A whole bunch of sleepwalking townspeople were meandering aimlessly while whatever was controlling them tried to understand information that suggested Annie was assumed directly into heaven at around that spot.

  The smart thing to do, as soon as she realized what she was heading into, was to turn around and escape back into Vi’s protective bubble. But for that moment, Annie liked less what was behind her than what was in front. Plus, the zombies were kind of well-spaced—much better than the shoulder-to-shoulder maneuvers she’s seen on Main Street—which made it seem like just another entertaining challenge for Annie and her cyclocross bike.

  They’re just slow-moving pedestrians, she thought.

  She hit Liberty at speed, and committed to a tight right turn that pointed her u
phill and in the direction of her house. This made a lot of sense, because she knew the zombie population only got denser the further downhill (toward Main) she traveled, but that didn’t mean it was a logic-driven decision, or even a decision at all. She just started heading that way.

  She wasn’t heading home, but that was also not an actively made decision, it was just what she knew she was doing.

  * * *

  The bike was a gift for her fourteenth birthday, and was the only expensive thing she owned. At first it was just a thing she used now and then, but once it was clear her mother wasn’t going to be up to driving her down the hill all the time, it became indispensible.

  Even in winter. It was only five miles to the school from Annie’s front door, but it was a ferocious five miles when there was snow on the ground, regardless of the vehicle. However, it turned out there were only a handful of occasions in which there was A: snow on the roads, and B: not-canceled classes. Generally speaking, the roads were cleaned up pretty fast, partly because the army insisted on the state prioritizing the roads in Sorrow Falls when it came time to plow.

  Annie fell in love with the cyclocross bike as soon as she saw it. Her father had to take her all the way to Brattleboro to find a decent shop, and the place was full of light carbon three speed bikes designed specifically for short-travel commuting and priced to encourage people to get them. Annie wasn’t interested. Whether because she’d already been riding the streets on the out-of-a-box Schwinn she was now too big for and understood the kind of conditions she had to deal with, or she was instinctively drawn to the sturdy one-of-a-kind machine in the corner, she knew right away that this one was for her.

  The bike was pale yellow, aluminum but with a carbon fork. Heavier than the full carbons, it felt like something solid and dependable. Not quite a dirt bike and not exactly a touring bike either, it was designed for a sport where competitors threw themselves down hills on their bike and ran up other hills with the bike on their back.