A Spider Sat Beside Her

by K E Lanning

  “Fear is the seed of anger. It is what compels the human beast to do horrendous acts. Courage is simply not letting fear win.”

  He sneered. “What do you know of fear? Have you seen your family starving because the land that had been yours for thousands of years is stolen from you? All the animals and fruit you ate to survive—gone? Fear and anger come from an empty belly . . . and an empty heart.”

  Silence enveloped the hut except for the rise and fall of Adam’s breath.

  Then he said softly, “My tribe was a happy place when I was a child. Singing filled the air, and wonderful food filled my belly. But during a flood, our village was washed away, and I was separated from the tribe. I wandered for days until I was found by a doctor. She spoke of the wonders of the modern world, so I followed her out and went to school in the States—that was my undoing. I never could return to the ways of the tribe after that.” His voice quivered. “Today marks twenty-five years since I was ripped from my home. You see, Lowry, my anger blossoms from the death of my life as I knew it.”

  “Adam, destroying all of these innocent lives aboard will not change the world. Surely, neither your family nor the tribe would want this.”

  “Who said they are innocent?”

  Lowry’s head sagged back, and she grimaced at the sight of Poppy’s mangled body hanging just above her head.

  Adam’s voice became harsh. “Everyone on board is guilty! Guilty of putting their techno-god ahead of Mother Earth, and for that, they shall die.”

  Lowry felt his shoulders slump as he continued. “My tribe does not know anything about this, and the other two involved only wanted to make a protest statement by momentarily shutting down the station.”

  He shifted under the net. “What they didn’t know was that the OPAL message I created not only had the temporary shutdown file but also contained a virus allowing me access into the main computer. Once the temporary file had run its program, it destroyed itself—only the kernel virus program remained, buried in the system like a tick imbedded in the skin, waiting patiently for me to instruct it to begin the final stage. When the security people ran a full scan, they didn’t bother to check a simpleton’s personal files, or they would have found the file which mated with the kernel to give me control of all the power systems.”

  He leaned his head back toward her, and she flinched as his hair brushed against her neck.

  He whispered, “I called it, ‘A Spider Sat Beside Her.’ Do you like the name?”

  Involuntarily, Lowry shivered and swallowed the bile that backed up into her throat. She now fully realized Adam’s madness.

  Then her legs shook, not from fear, but from the ground beneath her.

  “Adam, what is happening?”

  “I have become a burning ash on the wind to incinerate this false world.”

  “My god, what have you done?”

  “Your religion speaks of the destruction of false idols. This golden calf of the modern age will be thrown to Earth just as Lucifer himself was thrown down due to his arrogance for thinking himself equal to God.”

  She snarled, “You may take us down for your own reasons, but the US government is accusing the Inuit Eskimos of the attack in order to steal their lands.”

  “The US wanted the attack to be from the Inuits. It fit their agenda, and if not this, they would have found some other excuse to disenfranchise them.”

  The shaking became worse, and Lowry felt the boom of explosions from underneath her and then, like a final death knell, the faint sound of crumpling metal. One final shudder, and then a deathly silence enveloped them. No sound of birds, no wind in the trees.

  Adam whispered so quietly Lowry could barely hear him. “You see, Lowry, the governments of the world are not on the side of the creatures of the world, including the native peoples; they are on the side of power, wielding it for their good and not for the good of the Earth.” He sighed heavily. “The only protest they hear is an attack on their control, and technology is one of their weapons. That is why I’m taking down the ISS. It represents the highest form of their supremacy.”

  “Adam, I know it is maddening, but the system does eventually work.”

  Adam leaned back, and Lowry flinched against the rigidity of his shoulders. “For whom, Lowry?”

  Lowry stared into the dimness of the hut. The root of civilization is fairness and respect for the individual—even a mule will kick at the traces with an unjust master holding the reins.

  The bungee webbing pressed around her as she bobbed slightly upward. Her heart throbbed as she realized the station must no longer be rotating. Poppy’s head lifted, and her legs began to float—a zombie marionette, awakening from the dead.

  The netting vibrated with the reverberation of new explosions. Cocking her head, Lowry listened for more, but only an eerie silence followed. Then a trace of artificial gravity eased her body back to the ground, loosening the grip of her cocoon. A motion over her head startled her, and she watched Poppy’s torn body wilt back into its death pose once again.

  A stillness descended upon them like the quiet before a storm. A flock of confused chickens passed near the hut, clucking their disapproval over this mad state of affairs.

  Lowry flinched as the webbing slowly tightened with the G-force of acceleration. Her lips trembled as she asked, “Please tell me, Adam. What is happening?”

  “I have programmed the station to shoot itself like a comet directly into the Earth’s atmosphere. We are just beginning to feel the acceleration into the outer layers.” His voice softened as he said, “I know you are not the same as the others on board, and I am truly sorry, Lowry, but there is no going back now.”

  She looked up at the roof of the hut and exhaled a little prayer. Please don’t let this be my end.

  The vibration became worse, and the ground tilted. Poppy fell from her hook, and her head detached itself from her body, bouncing into Lowry’s lap. Poppy’s melancholy eye stared up at Lowry. Shivering, she twisted her body to the side, throwing the rog’s head off. The head rolled across the slanted floor until the metal edges snagged in the cargo netting.

  Abruptly, the station’s center of gravity changed. The ground beneath them tilted beyond the angle of repose, and the shell of the hut flipped over, tearing away from its ties. The hut lurched down the steep slope with the remains of Poppy’s mangled body chasing behind it. Lowry groaned as the netting holding her to the steel pole dug into her skin.

  Now they were exposed to the chaos of the Garden gone mad. Brush and trees swayed insanely on the edge of the clearing, and the deafening screams of terrified creatures filled the air. Like a ship sinking in a storm, the station listed further to its side, and the cargo net tightened its grip on Lowry’s body as the turmoil accelerated.

  They heard rushing water in the distance, and they were surrounded by a myriad of animals racing through the clearing. The lakes had been thrown out of their banks and now drained down the slope, and a wall of water headed toward the clearing.

  Adam cried, “Hold on, Lowry!” as the water came toward them.

  The newly formed river struck them, lifting them up as far as the netting would let them rise. Adam and Lowry held their mouths above the churning water filled with squirming fish and mud. The water moved over their heads, and Lowry couldn’t breathe.

  The river shifted with the twisting space station and drained away from them. Gasping, Lowry shook the muddy water out of her eyes, staring at animals caught in the raging flood, their heads bobbing up and down as they struggled to keep their heads above the water. The station continued to spiral, and the mad river carried the helpless animals out of sight.

  Screeching birds filled the air, circling high above their heads, afraid to land on any semi-stationary object. A rabbit leapt along the muddy ground until the twisting space station bounced him into the air, and in the shifting gravity field, he soared in slow motion over the trees like a superhero.

  A lightening of the sky drew her eye to th
e ceiling of the space station garden. They were entering the atmosphere.

  “God help us,” she whispered under her breath.

  The clear skin of the roof glowed yellow, and smoke rushed across the transparent glass as the edge of the station burned away in the friction of the atmosphere. Lowry’s eyes were transfixed on the dome above her head. The lights dimmed, flashed once, and then died, and she and Adam were enveloped in darkness except for the bizarre dawn breaking outside the skylight windows. They heard a grating sound, and a huge metal piece flashed by the window, followed by a crumpled arm of the space station.

  They were beginning to break up.

  The animals were deathly quiet now. The only sounds were the eerie groans of metal stressing beyond its specs. Drifting on a breeze, the nauseating scent of blood hit Lowry’s consciousness. She shuddered at the smell of death from all of the innocent creatures destroyed as the station plummeted to Earth.

  The sky lightened further, and shreds of metal raked the surface of the dome, scarring the glass. Then a human body slammed into the dome and bounced off the window, disappearing as the station sped downward.

  Adam looked up at the noise.

  Lowry hissed at him, “That should make you happy.” More bodies flashed past the glass, blood streaming from the exploded faces.

  She wondered what was happening to the rest of the station. It was strange; the Garden was a self-contained sphere, and they still had air, though at any moment, a large piece of metal could puncture the roof. Decompression at this height would kill them. Lowry began to make out shapes around her; they were descending into the sunlight.

  The station shook and then began to revolve in the dense atmosphere. Peeled like an orange by the friction, parts of the station flew by the dome. The station was disintegrating like a meteor.

  The webbing bit into her limbs as the remnants of the station spun like a Whirl-a-Twirl ride at a carnival. Lowry’s head was pressed down onto her chest, but then she heard a whirring sound and, with effort, twisted her head to look up. The roof panels heaved up and down like the chest of a runner. She chewed her lip. The fragile sphere of the Garden could not take much more.

  Lowry pushed her head back against the pole. She was determined to see her end. North America and the ocean spun out of sight to be replaced by the dark blue of the sky, and then the continents reappeared in a few minutes. They moved across Africa, descending toward the Atlantic Ocean. The final crash to Earth was near.

  Adam twisted his head toward her, screaming into her ear, “Hold on as tight as you can!”

  A shrill whistle deafened them as the ISS tore through the atmosphere on its collision course. From the corner of her eye, Lowry saw the languid white crests on a still blue ocean rushing toward them. With a thundering splash, they plunged into the ocean waters, waves of sound and water reverberating outward as if a meteor had struck the Earth.

  Chunks of debris and water rained down upon them while Adam and Lowry flailed like puppets on strings, helplessly beating each other and the pole that held them fast. The pole broke in two and she catapulted away from Adam. Her last vision was the muddy ground, covered with flattened blades of grass, accelerating into her face.

  CHAPTER 29

  Lowry awoke with the side of her face smashed into the wet grass. She opened her eyes, slowly focusing on a butterfly folding and unfolding its wings as it sunned itself on the carved finger of Sedna. Lucent in the sunlight, the ivory talisman was stuck point-down into the soft ground in front of her face.

  She felt blades of grass in her mouth, and when she shifted her face out of the muck, the butterfly flew away. As she twisted onto her back, pain shot through her body, and she closed her eyes, waiting out the waves of agony. Then she became conscious of the ground rocking gently beneath her.

  Lowry smelled the saltiness of the air and gazed at the shattered dome above her. She was floating on the ocean. Miraculously, the Garden had survived the fall from heaven. “My god, we’re on Earth!”

  She pushed herself into a sitting position, crying out as she put pressure on her left arm. Looking at the odd angle of the arm, she knew it was broken. Head throbbing, she examined her bruised and battered body, taking deep breaths to clear her mind.

  Once her pain subsided, Lowry looked around and realized she was several meters away from where the hut had stood. Glancing back to the ivory carving, she found it amazing that Sedna’s finger was delicately poised in the mud and hadn’t disappeared in the madness of the fall. With her relatively undamaged right hand, she plucked up the finger, cleaned the tip on her shirt, and then carefully placed it back into her pocket.

  Lowry exhaled, not looking forward to moving, but she had to see how Adam had fared. Clenching her teeth against the pain, she wrenched herself onto her knees and crawled across the ground toward the now shattered pole, where pieces of the netting were strewn about like spaghetti. At the base of the metal pole, tangled in the shredded net, was Adam’s motionless body, surrounded by a flock of seagulls glaring at her with their beady eyes.

  “Adam, we made it!” Lowry shouted to him. Then her smile faded, and she touched his foot, which was half-buried in the muddy hole that was his fire ring. “Adam?” She reached out, grabbed his arm, and pulled him over—and then gasped. The steel pole had snapped, burying its jagged end into the side of his skull, scattering pieces of his brain across the ground.

  Lowry shuddered at the horror before her and collapsed in a heap at the sight of his lifeless eyes staring into the intense blue sky of his beloved Earth. Perhaps in death, he was happy at last—a tortured soul with no place to call home.

  The greedy seagulls hopped back to Adam, casually picking up bits of brain and flying away with their dinner. Gagging, she covered her mouth as another bird went after the fresh meat. She shouted, and picking up a stick, she threw it at him. The flock flew up and patiently waited in the bushes nearby.

  Averting her eyes from the scene of death, she gazed at the once-bucolic garden, now devastated as if a hurricane had passed through it. Even though he was the cause, Adam would have been appalled, and she imagined him fussing about, raking and picking up the ubiquitous rubble. But instead, Adam’s mangled body lay supine, and every so often, she had to toss a stick to keep the seagulls from feasting on his brains.

  Lowry sat pondering her next step until thirst drove her to crawl through the debris where Adam’s hut had been. She found a small bottle tied to a stake and drank thirstily. Her broken arm ached, and she twisted some of the snapped bungee netting into a sling to stabilize it. She eased down onto the matted grass, the pain of her injured body pulsing like an unwelcome companion.

  The sunlight shifted on its path through the sky, and the glint of something metallic caught Lowry’s eye. It was the head of Sevy’s rog, Poppy, entangled in a pile of brush. She shook her head, reflecting on the friends she had lost in the crash of the space station—Sevy, Zoë, and even poor Adam.

  All dead, and for what purpose? The misguided souls of the world—some like Sevy, who substitute technology for human relationships—worshipping a techno-god instead of having real friends and lovers. On the other end of the spectrum, there was Adam, who hated this worship, believing that technology was a weapon of the powerful, and who had brought down the space station from the sky, but to no avail. It would not change a thing.

  Technology was not the enemy. It was merely a tool. But if it became friend or foe, isolating humans from one another, therein lay the danger. And all of these innocents, separate and lonely, were marks to be manipulated by the power brokers of the world, who knew how to play them for their own nefarious purposes.

  Lowry started at the beat of a chopper hovering over the gaping hole in the dome. The rescue had come at last. Painfully, she stood up as two men rappelled their way through the hole in the dome. With her good arm, she waved at them excitedly as they landed on the ground.

  They unstrapped from the rope, pulled out their guns, and ran toward her. S
tunned, Lowry blinked at the resolute looks on their faces—they were hunting for blood. She stood very still as they approached her.

  “Where is he?” one of the men yelled at her.

  “Who?” she asked, puzzled that they seemed to know who they were after. “If you are looking for the gardener, Adam, I’m afraid you are too late. He did not survive the crash.”

  “Yes, the gardener.”

  The leader of the group told the other man to check out Adam’s condition. The subordinate jogged over, kicking Adam’s body flat onto his back. The leader pulled Lowry aside, positioning his body to shield her from what the other man was doing.

  “I’m Captain Stevens. Are you hurt, miss?” She tried to see around him to observe the other man bending down, going through Adam’s pockets.

  “A broken arm and bruises, but nothing life-threatening.” Lowry looked up at the captain. “You know he was the one who sabotaged the station, not Jean-Luc and the Inuits. Apparently, this all stemmed from a protest of the A’wa tribe in Colombia, but Adam took it too far.” Again, she tried to look around the captain’s body as Adam was being stuffed into a body bag. “I’m afraid poor Adam was out of his mind.”

  Captain Stevens looked at her obscurely. “No, miss, he was just the gardener.”

  Lowry felt a jolt in her gut. “Then why did you ask, ‘Where is he?’ when you first came down?”

  The captain turned toward his lieutenant, who was walking back toward them with Adam, now in the body bag, thrown over his shoulder. The lieutenant nodded his head to the captain.

  Captain Stevens turned to her and said, “You may be the only survivor. The medics are minutes away, and we have to go clear the way for them to land.” He pointed to the hole above them through which he and the lieutenant had rappelled.

  They jogged back to the rappelling lines.

  Lowry shouted after them, “Why are you taking Adam’s body with you?”

  Her words were lost in the noise of the helicopter still hovering above the hole. They hooked themselves onto the ropes, with poor Adam’s body still slung over the lieutenant’s shoulder. They were pulled up through the hole, disappearing into the fuselage of the helicopter. Moments later, they used the skids of the helicopter to break a wider opening in the dome so the larger medical helicopter could land through the gap. Once they had finished expanding the hole, they flew away, the sound of the rotor blades fading into the distance.