by M. C. Norris
The female edged aside. She sensed that a fight was imminent. Her suitor reared back on his massive hindquarters, clattered his pincers at the stars, and swung his horned head from side to side. Toppling into the sea with a thunderous explosion, he charged toward the heart of the luminosity.
Every male was born with a burden of armor. The weight of weaponry hung heavily upon his head. Oppressed by the natural laws of a world poised to destroy or deny him, he’d little choice to but to embrace that decree of his being that demanded he wage a forever war against every light in his path, until every last twinkle but his own was smashed to blackness.
From the safety of the sea, she watched her mate obliterate the lights. She admired his sweeping horns that slashed through towering columns, and the rippling bulk of his sheer tonnage, as he reared and plunged into the ground. Whole sections of the colony flickered and died with every blow, as the alpha male bulldozed its core. The flowing streams of lights slowed to a stop. A massive cloud spread from the epicenter of the carnage, and spilled out over the sea. Only the spiked back of her mate’s carapace remained visible above the haze. Evidently satisfied with the level of destruction he’d wrought, the alpha male’s bioluminescent signature cooled to a lavender hue as he departed the smoldering ruins, and returned to the sea.
Although the destruction of lights didn’t bring her the same satisfaction, she understood him, and she was aroused by his display. This one had pursued her, only her, all the way across the ocean. He’d proven himself as being focused, loyal, and very powerful. Here was a male who would defend her against the flesh-eaters of the deep, the great ones that inhabited the darkest trenches, and he’d protect their brood from the slithering hordes of scavengers. This one had passed every test. She accepted him as her mate.
****
“Order of bangers and mashed—and be careful, the plate is really hot. I’ll get you a refill on that pale ale, and if you need anything else, my name’s Collin.”
“Is your name Collin even if I don’t need anything else?”
His companions all laughed. It took Collin a few seconds to wrap his mind around the joke, and once he’d done so, he found it to be more annoying than humorous. When he was at work, he was normally running on autopilot, protecting his introverted mind from the restaurant’s barrage of stimuli by steering his thoughts elsewhere, anywhere but where he actually was.
“Yeah, I guess it would be,” Collin replied, forcing a terse smile. He then slipped back over to the bar to fetch what would be the comedian’s sixth or seventh pale ale, as if that table needed any more alcohol. He wasn’t going to waste his time fawning for a big tip from those guys. Drunks were lazy tippers, always rounding up their bill to the next ten. Kind of a shame that Collin had learned so much about waiting tables over the last two years.
It was strange. Time had passed, but Collin hadn’t been able to move on. His presence of mind remained trapped inside that hovercraft, watching his future burn. He couldn’t have imagined how quickly those creeping government wheels could actually turn, in the event that the military needed to save face in the public eye. The NEWT program was terminated before they ever returned to base. They arrived to find their barracks cleared, their belongings boxed and staged along the airstrip. Four drone choppers were standing by to dump them on the Australian mainland. It felt as though their failure was some infectious disease, and the Allied Navy was taking every precaution to prevent it from spreading. Their program never even existed, which reduced the two most outstanding years of their careers to a smoking hole in their work histories. Collin, being the youngest, fresh out of school when the Navy adopted their program, probably suffered the greatest impact because those missing years comprised the whole of his professional experience.
Collin returned to the table of drunks, pint in hand. The four sailors were crowded over to one side of their corner booth, where they were all squinting down at the comedian’s phone. Quite frankly, Collin was relieved to find them distracted, and no longer in the mood for heckling him. Their brows were furrowed. Their jaws hung slightly ajar.
“Your refill, sir.” Collin replaced the empty glass with the full one. The men didn’t so much as acknowledge him. As Collin turned away from their table, he became suddenly aware of a stifling silence that had settled like a pall over the entire restaurant. Every patron in the joint was frowning down at a phone.
“Turn on the news!” one diner shouted from the bar, directing an accusatory finger at the big monitor, where the tied football game was underway with minutes to go. “Tokyo just got wiped off the map!”
Peak of the dinner rush, and the dull roar of conversation, clinking silverware against plates, and shouts from the line cooks in back had all been silenced. It felt as though a breaker on the circuit of all activity in the establishment had just been flipped. There were only whispers, and soft cries muted by hands.
“Working on it.” The bartender managed to sync his phone to the monitor. The game disappeared, and was replaced by a scene that didn’t at first make sense to the eyes. The headline mentioned a tsunami in Tokyo, while the news ticker scrolling at the bottom of the screen displayed an estimated death toll so large that it was beyond the scope of the imagination. Talking heads babbled in secondary windows, while the same event was replayed from every possible angle. Despite the ample coverage, not a single video drone had been able to capture it in its entirety, whatever it was behind the wave. It was just that enormous.
Collin felt his phone vibrating in his pocket, but he could not bring himself to look away from the screen. He slipped his hand in there, and retrieved it with his fingertips. A downward glance informed him that the caller was unknown.
The same event unfolded from another angle. There was the wall of water appearing out of nowhere, smashing into Tokyo with such devastating force that most of the drone feeds were terminated by the concussion. The skyline waned to gray, an instant before those structures crumbled like sculptures of ash. In an instant, millions of lives were ended with simultaneous indignity. Another drone camera fizzled out. A new feed captured the same cataclysmic blow from an even more intimate view. The drone floated between buildings, close enough that countless people behind windows could be discerned running mindlessly through their office spaces, or poised frozen in terror before the shadow of the inevitable.
Collin’s phone began to vibrate again. As he glanced down at the unknown caller in his hand, he realized that he was wearing the same disbelieving frown as everyone else in the establishment. He lifted the phone to his ear, and cleared his throat. “Hello?”
As the voice on the other end identified himself as an officer with the Allied Navy, Collin struggled to divide his concentration between the caller and the video imagery that now filled the screen. The new angle was from a seaward perspective. The same mountain of water slammed into Tokyo’s skyline, but from this perspective, Collin could see that his initial perception had been correct. There was something else. There was something behind that wave, pushing it right into the city. It was streaming with rows of red lights.
“This is he.” Collin plugged a finger into his opposite ear. The shell-shocked restaurant recovered, all at once. The stunned ambiance became a clamor of voices. Wails keened beneath the deafening staccato of a helicopter’s hacking blades. Collin could barely hear his caller. Cranking his neck around, he scowled through the windows at the patio, where a drone chopper bearing the crossed trident insignia of the Allied Navy was landing amidst the tables and chairs. Patrons fell over one another to get out of harm’s way. The miniature aircraft touched down, flushing napkins from the tables like a tumult of white birds.
“I’ll be right out,” Collin replied, nodding his head with a sort of numbed complacency, as he loosened the strings of his apron. He hesitated, just before ending the call. “I’ll need to stop by my apartment. I’m not leaving without my dog.”
****
It was becoming difficult to sustain itself, out there i
n the open ocean. While the seas were rich and teeming with life, much of that life was too small to effectively utilize. It had grown too large, and it was starving. The algae and microorganisms that it absorbed through its permeable skin sufficed to maintain a lowly existence, but those meager nutrients were not enough to fuel its core bioreactors, and it needed to be able to defend itself. For the first time in its life, it was feeling vulnerable.
Out of water, its body was heavy and ponderous. It preferred the cover of darkness to make brief forays onto land. It could feed for hours beneath the cool light of the moon, which didn’t blister its skin like the rays of that infernal sun. On account of its size, it was rarely recognized as being a great devourer of all life. It was simply so huge that the eyes of the land dwellers seemed to pass right over it in the darkness of night, as though such mountainous enormity was categorically benign in the scope of their minds.
Land was interesting. Unlike the ocean’s barren floor, the world of the land dwellers was carpeted with nutritious greenery. Within the lush shags of foliage hid various creatures with new and exciting flavors. They were always fun little surprises. It rippled over rows of indigestible hives, forcing its inverted stomach through fragile portals into compartmentalized interiors, where their scuttling occupants were digested. All living matter could be devoured, from the towering canopies to the fluttering tenants of their branches, and converted into energy for its bioreactors. It tasted every petal of every bloom, every strand of hair atop a head, as the translucent mass digested all life in its path, leaving a steaming trail of refuse in its wake.
It crested a bluff, engorged with liquid energy, and scanned the horizon with a beaded whisker extended through its permeable skin. The organ oscillated back and forth, mapping the energy signature of the unexplored land ahead, and what its senses detected was perplexing. It was a pattern of energy that sprawled like a grid from one horizon to the next, racing in every direction from a nucleus of raw power so intense that it defied measurement. It appeared as a forest of energy, jutting skyward in a copse of columns emanating the collective life force of millions. It recognized their energy signatures. These were the same scuttling creatures that dwelled inside the rowed hives, and it found them to be quite delicious.
Urging its sloshing mass over the precipice, it half-slithered and half-rolled down the escarpment of rowed hives, but it didn’t bother the creatures inside. It picked up speed, whipping its beaded whiskers to and fro, as it bore down on the massive colony. There was no sense in raiding dwellings that housed just two or three, not in the shadow of a place where the prey were concentrated in such vast numbers.
Things began to swarm, overhead. Its bioreactors activated. The hovering things had energy signatures, and they circled in a sentient manner, yet they were not alive. The blob didn’t trust these contradictions.
It oozed between jutting columns as its defensive organs charged, forcing its inverted stomach through a thousand apertures at once. The vibrations of its terrified prey thrilled its senses, as ropes of gelatinous guts poured through hundreds of levels of compartments, liquefying everything therein. The swarm closed in. It appeared as though they were preparing for some sort of an attack.
Glowing with plundered energy, the blob discharged its bioreactors in a phantasmagorical explosion of plasma that lashed like crackling vipers at every object in the sky. The swarm plummeted, smoldering down to Earth. This place was its new feeding ground, and it had no intention of ever leaving.
****
“We cannot begin to discuss a return mission to Europa without first facing the prospect of the long and difficult journey that lies ahead. As scientifically minded people, we tend to lose ourselves in the vast minutia of details along our roads to discovery. Perhaps that’s our survival technique. Perhaps, deep down, we know that if we dare to look up from the laboratory bench, if we dare to let go of that security blanket of little details, and we stare directly into the yawning abyss, we might falter. We might lose our resolve to press forward when faced with the magnitude of the mission that awaits us.
“A return trip to Europa is intimidating. It presents monumental challenges, both financial and technical. Ladies and gentlemen of the scientific community, there is perhaps no other living person more qualified to put long journeys into perspective than our guest speaker tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, I am honored to introduce a brilliant scientist, pioneer, American hero, and the sole survivor of Moonwalker Mission One, Ms. Skyler Hale.”
“Break a leg,” the backstage coordinator whispered, placing his hand on Skyler’s shoulder. He then covered his eyes and recoiled. “Oh, my gosh. That was horrible.”
“It’s okay,” Skyler replied, offering the mortified man a reassuring smile that she’d perfected for just this sort of an occasion. “Not a big deal.”
Backstage hands swept in to open the door for her. The applause hit her like a great wave of sound. It made her heart skip a beat, and made her mouth go dry. Fortunately, she had a bottle of water. Public speaking was not exactly her forte, but she understood why she’d been selected to evoke sympathy and interest from what was quite possibly the largest crowd of scientific investors ever assembled. Before she was halfway ready, someone grabbed the handles of her wheelchair, and rolled her right out across the stage. This was happening. Skyler took a deep breath, and exhaled through her lips.
The stagehand wheeled her to a stop around three meters from the podium. As instructed, she waited patiently for the applause to subside before making her big move. The wheelchair was basically a prop. It was no longer a necessity for Skyler, after eight months of physical therapy. However, the theatrical masterminds behind tonight’s New York symposium had determined that her entrance would be more dramatic, and more metaphorical to overcoming difficult journeys, if they presented her in the same crippled condition in which the world probably remembered her, following the pirate attack.
Once the audience settled, Skyler performed the trick intended to lift hearts and blow minds by rising slowly to her feet, and taking her first publicized steps. She’d been walking with the assistance of a cane for more than a year, so she felt like a bit of a phony sitting in the wheelchair, but she went ahead and played along in the big performance that someone else had envisioned.
The audience rose with her. When she took her first step, the roar of applause was so thunderous that it dizzied her. The celebrity host, a young actor from a science fiction television series that she’d heard of, but never actually watched, approached her with her trusty titanium cane that she’d stashed earlier behind the podium. She thanked him. He kissed her on the cheek, and stood escorted her to the podium.
Skyler wondered if the applause was ever going to end. The rolling sea of people showed no inclination to ever sit back down. The deafening white noise of clapping hands, piercing whistles and howls was embarrassing, to say the least, and not to mention a little bit terrifying. She’d imagined that this gig was going to be pretty scary, but if she’d just had any idea of how frightening it was actually going to be, she might never have accepted the invitation. Public speaking was rattling enough in front of a crowd of this size, but Skyler also happened to be afraid of heights.
Beyond the crowd, the glass walls of the ballroom situated on the two-hundredth floor of the Synerdyne Tower offered an electrifying view of New York City at sundown. Skyler was a Kansas girl from the American heartland, where the tallest structure in her flattened world was probably the Ferris wheel at the state fairgrounds. She maintained her professional smile, thanking the audience, but inside she was quivering like a rabbit. Over her shoulder, her own gargantuan face filled the teleprompter screen, magnifying every defect a thousand-fold. She didn’t dare turn around.
Remembering the water bottle she’d hidden, she groped around inside the podium before her tongue had a chance to turn into a chunk of balsa wood, and before her lips could start sticking to her teeth, making her look like a snarling weirdo. Her knuckles bumped in
to something about the right size and shape, but instead of a plastic bottle of drinking water, her fingers encircled a steel canister that she recognized all too well. Its familiarity quelled her anxiety, and slowed her racing mind. At last, the crowd quieted, and audience members began to take their seats.
Skyler closed her eyes for a moment. She just clasped the canister that had traveled all the way to Jupiter and back, the only one to have survived the piratical raid, and just breathed. She recalled the roaring baboons, the slashing teeth and claws, and the sack of canisters being ripped from her hands. However, the demon didn’t get them all. There was a deeper connection between Skyler and this object than she could have thought possible between a person and an inanimate object. After all of this time, it still felt like her only child.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, reopening her eyes and clearing her throat. The gravity of the moment suddenly crushed down upon her. “We are not alone.”
The crowd resurged in a joyful cacophony.
This was one of the greatest announcements in scientific history, and it would be her voice that would carry it into the far-flung future to inspire wonder in generations to come. Tears filled her eyes, and they were strange ones, wrought of a bizarre cocktail of pride and shame. She was honored to be a part of this historic event, but she was ashamed of what she knew would be an everlasting connection between her image and this moment, when so many deserving others could not be standing up there beside her.
Thankfully, someone had anticipated her emotional reaction, and they were prepared for it. The symposium host swept in with a handkerchief. Skyler thanked him, and dabbed the corners of her eyes. Once the crowd had calmed, she continued. “Two years ago, in the heart of China’s Yellow Sea, Moonwalker One recovered twelve canisters of pure water from Europa, Jupiter’s frozen ocean moon, moments before we became the victims of a ruthless and senseless attack.” Skyler dabbed her eyes a second time, and then placed the handkerchief inside the podium. “Although the thieves’ motives remain unknown, they failed in their attempt to deprive the world of the greatest treasure of all.” Skyler lifted the sample canister, and held it up for all to see. “That treasure is knowledge, ladies and gentlemen.” Skyler smiled, fighting to keep her eyes from misting. “We embarked on a great quest for evidence of extraterrestrial life, and we found that evidence in abundance. Europa’s oceans are teeming with life, ranging from simple unicellular forms to larger, multicellular organisms that are astonishingly compl—”
