Just Plain Weird

by Tom Upton

  “Well, maybe that’s not a bad idea,” he said. “Keeping your options open.”

  After two weeks of questioning me about the artifact, Doc began to get frustrated. He had accumulated six full legal pads full of notes, but when he pored over them, trying to make sense of all the data, he found the artifact as mysterious as ever. It was as if each scrap of information was a puzzle piece, and none of the pieces fit together to form a picture.

  With his head bowed to stare down at a page of notes, he’d nervously rub the top of his head until I was sure his bald spot was getting bigger by the day. He’d complain that this didn’t make any sense, or that that didn’t seem right. He’d go over questions he had asked me days before, and checked to see he had the right answers.

  “Things just don’t add up,” he’d complain.

  One day I suggested to him that maybe the problem was in the translation.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Well, first I’m receiving information telepathically, right? So many times, all I receive is ideas and impressions. I’m assuming that this is the way the artifact communicates with its own people, people who know how to interpret these ideas and impressions, and put them into their language. Then, too, I think there might be a big translation problem going from their language to English. For example, when you asked it about the temporal coordinates, you put down that it gave no answer. That’s true, but the feeling I had was the same feeling you get when you try to remember a word but can’t and it’s as though it’s stuck at the end of your tongue. So I take that to mean that it may not know what you’re talking about, but it may have an inkling that doesn’t quite make sense to it. So one problem may be the way it thinks. The other problem is definitely in its language. It doesn’t seem to have a word for ‘space’ or ‘time’ or ‘energy’ or ‘thought’, but looks at those things as if they were all the same thing. And for that they have one word, and the closest translation to that one word is ‘travel.’ You see the problem? We have ‘here’ and ‘there’, but they only have ‘here.’ When you ask about the artifact, it’s here. When you ask about the spaceship, it’s here. When you ask about its home planet, it’s here. To them it’s as though everything is at the same place and time. The same problem with ‘then’ and ‘now’; everything with them is ‘now.’ So how could you possibly get it to understand what you mean by temporal coordinates?”

  Doc frowned, and it seemed the furrows in his forehead were getting deeper by the day.

  “We have to rephrase the questions, then,” he finally concluded. “Try this. Bring up the view screen, and place an indicator on Batavia, and then ask it how to return there.”

  When I did this, the artifact conveyed uncertainty to me-- again the same feeling of not being able to recall something.

  “Sorry, Doc,” I said. “It just doesn’t understand. Either it has no word that’s the equal of ‘return,’ or it doesn’t understand why you’re asking the question because the way it looks at things you’re already there. Remember, it doesn’t seem to distinguish between past, present and future. If you’re there in the future-- well, you’re there; you don’t need to get there.”

  “Well, try other words,” Doc suggested, starting to lose patience. “Try ‘again.’ Try ‘twice’ Try ‘revisit.’”

  When I did this, the artifact shot a word into my mind, for which, apparently, there was no English translation. Oddly enough, it placed the word in my mind using our alphabet, as though it, too, were trying to communicate as desperately as we were, and might be phonically spelling the word, which was ‘destromalinacasil.’ A moment later, it relayed two other words: ‘kamalinacasil’ and ‘settomalinacasil.’ Each of these words I printed out for Doc to mull over.

  It didn’t take long for him to throw up his hands in frustration.

  “There has to be a better way to communicate,” he said, stalking around the room. “All right. Each of the words has a prefix-- at least that’s something recognizable. But there is no English word close to any of them…. Well, what about the base word, -malinacasil, is there an English word close to that?”

  I thought the question, and the answer sprang into my head.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It means ‘paradox.’”

  “Paradox? So presumably they have three words that are variations of the word ‘paradox,’” he said, wondering, and then added, “Wait a minute. You mean they have three words for ‘paradox,’ and ‘space,’ ‘time,’ ‘energy,’ and ‘thought,’ are all represented by a single word? Does that make any sense?” he asked earnestly.

  “To them, it must,” I noted.

  “And that’s probably it,” he said. “The key to their language may be entirely in the way they think, the way they view things. They might have been humanoids-- and in many respects don’t sound very different from us-- but the way they reason-- that’s an entirely different matter. And language does develop over a long period of time according to reasoning and point of view.”

  “Then I suppose if they have three words for ‘paradox’ then, maybe, they consider it a more important word.”

  “Probably.”

  “Then that’s why you couldn’t reset the temporal coordinates to return for your wife.”

  “Is this you talking, or it?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Sometimes it all seems the same to me.” It was as if the artifact had been communicating to me on a subconscious level, our thoughts blending so perfectly I couldn’t tell where it stopped and I began. What I said next I said as though I’d learned it all years ago and in my mind, it was common knowledge. “The artifact has a failsafe system to prevent paradoxes. You must have set the temporal coordinates for a time that you and Eliza already occupied. You can’t be in two places at one time, you know? That would be a paradox, right? I’m not sure what would happen, but it can’t be anything good, or else whoever designed the system wouldn’t have made it that way.”

  Doc considered all this, and then seemed pleasantly surprised.

  “That means all we have to do is work around the paradox problem.”

  “Yeah, Doc, that’s all,” I said wryly.

  “Well, it’s something,” he said, shrugging. “It may not be impossible.”

  “Is next to impossible that much better?”

  “Hey, anything to hang your hope on is better than letting it lie on the floor.” The gloom of his attitude began to lift. He eyed me curiously, then. “It’s done something to you, hasn’t it?” he asked. “You certainly don’t seem like the simple quiet kid I met only a couple weeks ago.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t feel any different. I think, though, that I’m seeing things in another light-- you know, as though I’m looking at every little thing from a different point of view. I’m realizing new things every single minute, it seems-- sometimes. Then there are other times that it seems like--” I had to pause here, struggling to find the right words to describe a strange feeling-- “It feels like something is being taken back, too.”

  “Taken back?” he wondered.

  “Yeah. Not stolen or anything, but swapped. I learn something, sure, but then I teach something, too. I don’t think it’s harming me in any way, though it can be a bit--distracting. Sometimes, I suddenly recall a memory-- not the way that memories normally occur to you, but as though the memory is being drawn to the front of my mind. Like suddenly a word, a common word-- like ‘family’ will pop up. Sometimes it just comes and goes, in the blink of an eye, and sometimes it lingers there as though I am puzzling over it, only it isn’t me that’s doing the puzzling. At other times, it is something more complicated than a word; it might be a feeling or some event that I had lived through at one time. I don’t think any of it is doing me any harm, though. Even the sad memories that pop up don’t seem so very sad, although when I think about them at other times they are very sad…. Once, when I was about four years old, we had a dog, Herbie, that ran out in the street and got run down by a passing tru
ck. I saw the whole thing. I saw him go under the truck. I heard him cry. I saw what was left over after the truck was gone. I had nightmares about it for-- well, a long time. Even now, when I think of that dog, I’ll feel bad, but that’s when I think of him on my own. I had the same memory earlier, and I didn’t feel sad at all-- I didn’t feel anything-- as though the event was just a plain simple fact, with no emotions attached to it. It was interesting really; that memory popped up just after the word ‘friend.’ I don’t know, I think seeing things in the two different ways is letting me learning more about myself somehow. It’s definitely not hurting me, though, and I don’t feel the least bit different-- just more aware of things that are happening and that have happened in the past.”

  “Well, you sure seem different to me,” Mr. Laughton now commented. “Anyway, I have some serious thinking to do. I think I’ll go down to my office,” he added, as though that were the place where all great ideas were conceived. Then he suggested I go upstairs and talk with Eliza. “She’s probably brooding up a storm right now. It’s the first door on the right. Knock loud-- sometimes she has her headphones on, listening to music really loud.”

  I walked up the carpeted stairs, and as soon as I turned the corner to head for her room, I heard a door shut. Not only wasn’t she in her room, listening to music, she had been creeping around upstairs, no doubt trying to eavesdrop on what her father and I had been saying. I found it both amazing and comforting that I understood her so well despite the fact we had just met. I knew she could be sneaky, and knowing this somehow made her not sneaky at all.

  When I reached her room, I rapped on the door hard.

  “Who is it?” I heard her say.

  Who is it? I laughed inside. This girl kills me.

  “Travis.”

  “Oh, Travis, my room’s a mess,” she said.

  “It is not,” I said. “It looked perfectly neat through the telescope.”

  Abruptly the door swung open. She grabbed my arm, yanked me inside, and shut the door again.

  “You did not see this room through the telescope,” she said, rankled. “Nobody sees my room. I mean, I’ll allow you to now, though you hardly deserve to, but normally nobody sees it-- not even Doc. It’s sanctum sanctorum-- that’s Latin. You know what it means?”

  “Yeah, I know what it means,” I said, and oddly I did.

  “What?”

  “Inner sanctum, a private place, or the place where the Ark of the Covenant is hidden.” I looked around her room; I didn’t see the Ark of the Covenant around. In fact, her room was almost as starkly furnished as the living room. There was a single bed in one corner next to the window. On the opposite wall, there was a dresser next to a set of bookshelves half filled with books. More could be learned about the person who slept here by what you didn’t see. There were no clothes scattered on the floor. There were no posters taped to the walls. There wasn’t a single stuffed animal anywhere. And everything that was there was neatly hidden away in drawers or in the closet. The books neatly lined the bookshelves, and were in alphabetical order. Even the top of the dresser was clear of debris or adornments, and was obviously dusted regularly, as there was no dust, just a shiny piece of oak that smelled like lemon.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  Here I couldn’t stop thinking of a bumper sticker I’d once seen that said: NEATNESS IS THE SIGN OF A SICK MIND. “It’s very-- tidy,” I said, but had a hard time making it sound like a good thing.

  “I suppose Doc and you are finished with all the serious talk for the day,” she said, not even trying to hide that she was annoyed at being left out. “Well, that’s the way it ought to be, I suppose. Nothing I have to say could possibly be of any consequence, I’m sure-- I would just be a hindrance to the onrush of pithy concepts.”

  “Eliza, please--”

  “Oh, no, don’t get me wrong,” she said, now sounding truly wounded. “I understand-- I really do. Two heads are better than one-- two’s company, three’s a crowd-- these truths are self-evident.”

  She carried on like such a brat I felt like going home. “I’d think you’d be at least a little excited at the thought of getting your mother back.”

  “Oh, really,” she said. “Why is that? Have you ever met my mother? How do you know she’s not an abominable witch? Maybe I’m glad to be rid of her.”

  “Is she?-- an abominable witch?”

  “No, no, she’s not,” Eliza said solemnly, “but then how could you know that?”

  “You know, when you’re like this, there’s no point in even trying to talk with you,” I said, and made a move to leave.

  “No, Travis, please,” she said, and grabbed my arm. “I’m sorry-- don’t leave, please. I don’t know what’s happening. I just can’t help it sometimes. I’m stuck up here…. You know, I feel like a piece of furniture or something-- just an extra piece of baggage. Just like all the times Doc dragged us all over the place, digging for his pieces of broken pottery-- just another piece of luggage…. Don’t be mad at me,” she added in such a heartbreaking way it was impossible to be mad at her.

  “Doc is in his office, trying to figure out a plan to rescue your mother,” I said.

  “What did you find out?” she asked, all innocent.

  “Like you don’t know.”

  “I don’t,” she insisted, and then quickly went on, “Well, okay, I heard some of it, but not enough to know the whole deal. After you leave, Doc doesn’t say anything-- he just goes over his notes again and again. Is it true, though, that the artifact is really communicating with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you know all about the people who built it.”

  I had to think a moment. Everything Doc and I had gone over dealt with the operation of the artifact, to the exclusion of all other information the artifact was sending me. “Yeah, actually I do.”

  “Well, why don’t you sit down and tell me about them?”

  “Sit where?”

  “Just come here, and sit on my bed with me.”

  I glanced at the shut door, and said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your father might not like that.”

  “Doc,” she snorted. “Doc can take a flying leap at a falling fig. I don’t care what he likes,” she said, and started tugging my by the arm toward her bed.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, while she sat in the center with her legs crossed in front of her.

  “Okay, tell me what you know. I’ve always been very curious. Do they have, like, fives eyes or anything?”

  “No,” I said. “Actually you might be disappointed.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, they don’t sound much different from us, really. Try to imagine us in about ten thousand years.”

  “Really old,” she said, and she laughed. It was a forced laugh that didn’t sound right. It was clear she was trying way too hard. “I was just kidding. Seriously, do you know what happened to them?-- the ones who landed here.”

  “It doesn’t know. All it knows is that the leader-- there is no word in English for his title, but I guess you’d call it ‘commander’, though it’s really not that impersonal-- anyway, the commander sent out a scouting party, about thirty people, and they never returned. When he sent out a search party, it never returned. Every search party he sent out never returned. They were people who, while exploring, never believed in leaving anyone behind. Their actions in rescue efforts were driven by sentimentality, not common sense. So the commander kept sending out search parties until the entire crew was expended, over seven hundred people. The last six people on the ship-- I guess you’d call them officers-- finally left the ship, never to be seen again. That was about 15,000 years ago.”

  Eliza was enthralled. “And the artifact was left alone for all those years.”

  “Just waiting,” I said.

  “For the crew to return?”

  “Yeah, all the way up until you found it,
” I told her. “When you and your parents showed up, it believed you were descendants of the crew, returning to retrieve it.”

  “That’s very sad, if you stop to think about it,” she remarked. “Makes me think of a little puppy left out in the rain, waiting at the back door for his master to let him in.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “And the people weren’t very different, you said?”

  “Not really. They had hopes and dreams and fears. They met, got married, and had children. You know how they say ‘love at first sight’?”

  “Yeah,” she said, leaning forward, very interested.

  “Well, here it happens, but it’s rare. With them, it’s always like that-- it’s always love at first sight. It’s just something that’s in their nature.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and added in afterthought, “Actually it’s pretty practical-- never having to waste much time wondering about where you stand with somebody.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, because of it, they get married younger-- like, maybe the equivalent of sixteen. There’s never any fear of it not working out, because it always does. It always lasts until they die, although most of the time they live to be all over two hundred. There’s no such thing as divorce; it unheard of-- their language doesn’t even have a word for it.”

  “Sounds like they were people who believed in fate?”