The Spaceship Next Door

by Gene Doucette

  Eighteen months after the ship landed there was a plan in place to hit it with a surface-to-air missile from forty yards away. The idea had a lot of supporters, but most of those supporters were people who were convinced it would have no effect and only wanted to take the measurements that would come out of such an experiment. Well, that and they wanted to be proven right about it. The detractors argued that deliberately and actively antagonizing an advanced race with advanced technology just to see what would happen was a really dumb idea. This counterargument was also used when someone suggested they just drive a Jeep straight ahead really fast, and when someone else suggested crashing a jet into it.

  The counterarguments carried the day, which meant the upper limits of the protective shield around the spaceship had never been tested but it was assumed—unreasonably, as it turned out—that a sufficiently large non-nuclear weapon would be adequate.

  But that was only part of the problem. Not one of the men and women with multiple degrees and Nobel prizes and so on ever advanced the notion that this shield might be expandable.

  There was no reason whatsoever to entertain this thought. Yes, they all knew about the munitions explosion, and the truck breakdowns, but half were convinced this was a case of the government giving up after coincidental setbacks and not actions initiated by the ship. Also, it was already assumed that the ship was using a tremendous amount of energy just doing what it did in a five-foot radius. The energy needed to turn the same shield into a dome covering the entire town?

  Staggering.

  When asked for a more precise calculation by none other than the President of the United States, the scientists offered other words that also meant “staggering”, which was unhelpful.

  After the shield—clearly not weakened by the expansion—dealt with the two thermobaric bombs they dropped on it in a manner similar to the way a windshield dealt with two mayflies, the first question was not what do we have which is bigger that we can deploy instead? It was what do we do if the shield keeps expanding?

  This was a very good question, because while nobody was going to say it—certainly none of the scientists with advanced degrees were going to—but there was a thing going on inside that Sorrow Falls bubble, and that thing involved zombies.

  This seemed like a really good reason to try and prevent the ship from doing anything else.

  At a little after two in the morning, a three-star general in the Pentagon cracked open a top secret action plan for the nuclear destruction of Sorrow Falls. Enclosed was a list of U.S. and world leaders who were expecting calls. Those leaders had been briefed on this outcome, and were expected to provide the kind of assent a sitting president needed to cover his butt when nuking his own people.

  The missile would be fired by a nuclear sub that was patrolling the waters between Long Island and southern Connecticut, specifically for this contingency.

  The plan included a token evacuation plan for Sorrow Falls and the surrounding towns, but that was mainly for show because there was no reasonable expectation that anyone would make it outside of the blast radius in the time allotted, and the radioactive fallout could potentially reach New York and Washington anyway. It was going to be the most devastating and horrific event in the history of the country, and the only reason it was under serious consideration was that the president and his advisors had reason to believe they were preventing something that would have global consequences.

  One thing the author of the nuclear option hadn’t considered was what to do if there was reason to believe the ship could weather an attack from a thermonuclear weapon. As the men and women tasked with executing the plan took the necessary steps to hand the president all he needed to sign the order, someone decided to try and reach the plan’s architect.

  His name was Edgar Somerville, and he was unavailable.

  * * *

  “Why do you want her?” Annie asked.

  “She is mine.”

  “That’s a terrible answer.”

  “I do not see any reason for… elaboration. Are these all your questions?”

  “What makes her yours?”

  “I thought of her. She was my idea.”

  “Ideas can have ideas of their own?”

  “It is not something that can be explained easily to someone so limited.”

  “How am I limited?”

  “You are trapped in that body. That is a limitation. There are places you cannot go because your body cannot make the journey. I have no such limitations. I am an unbounded idea.”

  “…that can have ideas of its own.”

  “Ideas can be simple, and ideas can be complex. Simple ideas do not often obtain sentience. They are too… inflexible. They cannot adapt. Ideas never die, but ideas can become useless, or irrational. Something over-specific would not thrive independent of where it was born. An aquatic creature riven from liquid media.”

  Annie laughed. It echoed through the ship. She wondered if anyone outside could hear them.

  “A fish out of water, you mean.”

  “Your metaphors are new to this one. But such is a simple idea. There are many ideas in every civilization in every world, everywhere. She is not a simple idea, which is why although she is in you, she is not of you. Your idea of her is a shadow of her entire conception. It is the version of her which casts that shadow I would like back.”

  “All right, so you’re an idea and you had an idea, and that’s who my friend is. What was the idea that became her?”

  “This is difficult to explain.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “It is… it’s true. I didn’t intend to create a new idea.”

  He hesitated.

  “I was once a new idea. I remembered what it was like, and that remembrance became something other than myself. Then that something left me. I can remember what I lost, but I can no longer feel it. This is why I say she is mine. She took something from me and she is something from me.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re starting to sound kind of human.”

  “You’ve developed an idea of me. It’s been a long time since that has been true.”

  “Apparently my idea of you uses contractions when he talks.”

  “This is humor.”

  “Hey, don’t go nuts.”

  He went silent.

  She tried to gauge how long she’d been in the ship, and wondered what was happening outside, and as soon as she wondered that, the images in front of her coalesced to show the field.

  “Whoa, did I do that?”

  The alien didn’t answer. It was clearly a current image, though. The soldiers remained frozen in place, and Dougie and Dill were still at the car. They were arguing about what to do, pointing frequently right at Annie, which was to say right at the ship.

  They were discussing whether to leave her, go in after her—if the ship would let them in—or stay where they were.

  Higher, she thought. The view became a bird’s-eye view of the field and the surrounding area, and it was quite literally a bird’s-eye view. The ship was borrowing the eyes of a bird.

  Zombie birds.

  “Yep, I’m definitely doing this,” she decided.

  “Annie.”

  “Oh, there you are.”

  “I have located Oz.”

  “Oh? Okay?” She crossed her fingers and hoped the next sentence would have to do with Australia. It didn’t.

  “You have lied to me.”

  “That’s totally unfair. I may have misled you, but only a little.”

  “This Dorothy, this place called Oz, they are fictions. There is no wizard. These are lies.”

  “It’s a movie, and a movie is an idea, and ideas are real.”

  “You no longer amuse me. Reveal where I can find her, or I will cease the atmospheric intake of all the drones in this place you call Sorrow Falls.”

  * * *

  Ed had this notion that the spaceship hidden in the root cellar was going to be at least the si
ze of the more familiar one on the other side of town. It was considerably smaller: roughly the size of a coffin for a child, and shaped like a vitamin capsule.

  “Did that come from the ship?” he asked Dobbs, who had gone down with Violet, Todd and Susan. (Ed didn’t know what to call Todd and Susan. He knew they weren’t people and he knew they weren’t aliens, and they didn’t behave like zombies. Faced with such a quandary, he continued to refer to them as Todd and Susan.)

  “That’s it,” Dobbs said. “That’s the whole thing.”

  “Is it at least heavy?” The aforementioned non-human Todd and Susan were carrying it in a blanket.

  “It’s heavy,” Violet said. “But not so heavy as to represent a risk to the camper.”

  Ed hadn’t actually thought of that, but was glad someone had.

  They slid it into the back of the camper on the floor next to the toilet and under a rack of leather clothing. The device was the same matte black as the ship, and when Ed put his hand on it he found the kind of friction-free material Annie described. This explained the blanket, as surely it would slip right out of anyone’s hands, even the undead kind.

  While that was happening, Laura and Sam siphoned gas from the car. There wasn’t a whole lot to add, but it was better than nothing.

  Oona took the time to change out of her pajamas and into something more futuristic dystopian warlord. He imagined she’d been waiting for a long time for the opportunity to dress in a way she considered appropriate for the circumstance.

  “What’s the plan, Edgar?” she barked, while verifying that she had a full cartridge in one of her handguns. This was probably for Violet’s benefit.

  “Start driving, head for the ship, try not to kill anybody.”

  “Should I start the screamer?” Dobbs asked.

  “May not be needed,” Ed said. “Assuming it still works.”

  “We’ll man the roof,” Laura said, pulling Sam along, “and keep an eye out for Annie.”

  The camper got moving. Ed knelt down next to the alien device.

  “I guess it doesn’t make sense to call this a ship,” he said.

  “It’s closer to a probe, or as you said before, an antenna array.”

  “Does it open?”

  “Put your hand back on it.”

  He did, and after a second or two of nothing, his mind was flooded with images. It looked like a travelogue for a beam of light, only one that took detours outside of regular space.

  “Wow,” Ed said. “I’m not really sure what any of this means, am I supposed to?”

  “The visuals are a form of communication, yes. It’s going to figure out you’re not an advanced being. The next step would be to activate its defenses, but I’ve disabled that feature.”

  “Oh good, thanks.” The images stopped, and he removed his hand. “What defenses are we talking about?”

  “Just a sonic alarm. Dobbs, would you like to try?”

  Dobbs did want to try. He put his hand on and acted suitably impressed by the show going on in his mind.

  “But it didn’t open,” Ed said.

  “Oh, right. Wait until he’s finished.”

  “Was that eighth dimensional space?” Dobbs asked.

  “Yes, very good. It’s a short cut. The universe is incredibly large if you’re stuck inside of it, but very reasonable otherwise. Dobbs, think about the capsule opening.”

  “Okay.”

  A horizontal line creased the center of the tablet, and then it popped open like an old-fashioned lunchbox. The interior was bathed in a baby blue light.

  The device was full of stacks of circular discs or coils. It appeared almost solid-state.

  “This looks like a large radiator,” Dobbs said. “Probably isn’t, though, huh?”

  “No, it’s much more than that. You’re familiar with quantum computing technology?”

  “Oh, wow, really?”

  “You’re only seeing the portion of the machine that exists in this dimension. It’s actually much larger, if size even means anything in this instance.”

  “What’s the power source?” Ed asked. “Is that here, or is it hanging out in the extra dimension?”

  “It’s both. It uses a combination of zero-point energy resources and… there’s no word for the secondary technology. Imagine a way to collect and store chaotic energies. Discharges from the corona of the sun, kinetic energy from a gravitational slingshot, and so on.”

  “That would violate the third law,” Dobbs said.

  Violet smiled. “Yes, it would, in a closed system. The waste product of this energy storage would be entropic, and it is, but the entropy isn’t manifest in this dimension.”

  “Okay,” Ed said. “But nothing nuclear?”

  “Oh, yes, there’s a nuclear core too. It’s only a backup, though. Like a battery in an alarm clock if the house loses power. The core isn’t active right now.”

  Ed stepped back instinctively, and nearly fell over. Dobbs decided he didn’t want to touch the probe any more.

  “It’s shielded,” Violet said. “Don’t worry. Radiation would do the same to me as to you.”

  “Sure, but you can go find another body,” Ed said, “we’re sort of stuck with these.”

  “Comin’ up on zombie world, everyone,” Oona announced from the driver’s seat.

  “Is this still extending the… I don’t know what to call it… invisibility cloak?” Ed asked.

  “It is.”

  Ed walked to the front to look out the windshield. “Stop at the turn, I want to see what we’re facing.”

  “A lot of confused marionettes, Edgar,” Oona said.

  The zombies in the street looked like their equilibrium had been severely compromised: a hundred instant inner-ear infections and extreme vertigo.

  “Perfect,” Ed said. “Violet, can you shut it off?”

  “Why would you do that?” Oona asked.

  “I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

  “It’s done,” Violet called.

  The zombies righted themselves.

  “So now they’re all in my way and you don’t want me to kill anybody, so how do you plan to get there from here?” Oona asked.

  “They’re not moving.”

  “Yeah, I know they’re not moving, that’s my problem.”

  “No, I mean they’re not moving toward us or away from us. Honk.”

  Oona honked. The zombies immediately in front of her got out of her way. Slowly, but successfully.

  “What the hell.”

  “Annie made it to the ship,” Ed said.

  “How do you know?”

  “They’re not looking for her any more. They’re on standby, in some sort of basic self-defense mode.”

  “It’s gonna take us a while to get to the ship, just honking and rolling.”

  “Do the best you can.” Ed turned the back of the camper. “Dobbs, maybe try the screamer again to get some of them moving. It might help.”

  “Okay.”

  “When we’re close, I’m going to need you focused on finding that signal again.”

  Ed sat back down next to Violet, with her alien capsule at his feet. The zombie parents were standing across from them, holding their balance pretty well in the rocking trailer.

  “Do you want to tell me what you’re doing, now?” Violet asked.

  “Not sure yet. But I have a few questions. First, how big can you make that invisibility cloak extend?”

  “I’ve never tested its range, how far did you want it to go?”

  “How about the same size as Sorrow Falls?”

  She studied him carefully.

  “Perhaps. But why?”

  “Maybe question two will answer question one for you. What did Susan and Todd die of?”

  “Susan perished from tuberculosis. Todd was crushed by a carriage wheel.”

  “Todd looks pretty good.”

  “Yes…” And then she understood. She smiled.

  “How long would it take?” he a
sked.

  “I don’t know. But if it works, everyone is going to be extremely hungry afterwards.”

  * * *

  Annie had no particular strategy in mind when climbing into the ship, or at any subsequent point in the conversation—possibly except for the part where she mingled Dorothy Gale of Kansas with Violet Jones of Sorrow Falls. She didn’t expect that to actually work, but thought it would be funny if it did. It was funny, up until the part where she pissed off the super-powerful alien in the planet-ending spacecraft.

  She’d been rolling with the just keep him talking rule that really only made sense in different contexts, like talking a jumper off a building, giving law enforcement time to trace a phone call, or keeping someone with a concussion awake. She was pretty sure it didn’t make as much sense here, because if she was stalling, she didn’t herself know what she was stalling for. There wasn’t anyone coming to the rescue.

  Except of course there was. Ed would come running. So would Sam. Dobbs, Oona, Laura… they probably would too. Maybe even Violet.

  Violet was the only one who could actually rescue anybody, and only by surrendering. Likewise, Annie could rescue herself just fine by telling the alien where to look. But as angry as Annie was at Violet, it was the kind of angry she expected to get over eventually. When she did, she wanted Violet to still be around.

  Besides, Violet’s dad was turning out to be a scary combination of innocent and amoral.

  “Drones, you mean all the zombies?”

  “That word doesn’t correspond to their function. I have heard it said many times tonight and reviewed the meaning.”

  Annie thought about mentioning the whole undead thing, which was definitely a zombie standard, but it seemed beside the point. He recognized that a lot of his drones were living people and was threatening to change that, so he understood alive versus dead.

  “So you’re an evil idea,” she decided.

  “No. Ideas are neither good nor evil. It’s only in their application that they can be one or the other, and even then they can only be judged one or the other from a subjective viewpoint. If I tear apart this planet looking for my daughter, you would no doubt see these as evil actions, but I have seen a million such worlds and consider her of far greater value. I would call it a good thing. Now tell me where to find her or I’ll begin with the drones and stop only after I’ve set the world on fire and picked her out of the remains.”