by V R Tapscott
We all talked together, soberly looking at the destruction.
In the end, I suppose it hadn’t made much difference whether we were in the house or in the yard, but it sure seemed like it when those blazing rods of light were coming from the sky.
Olive shoved past a board and poured some water or tea on a hot spot as she rounded the back of the Jeep. She looked just as shell-shocked as the rest of us. She came up to us and gave me a wordless hug. I could see the anguish in her eyes, so I told her how pleased I was with her and thanked her for saving us. That seemed to clear some of her anxiety, but she still looked a wreck. I’m sure she was mostly kicking herself over the fact that it had gotten her ship away from her with a simple trick.
Bailey’s car had been parked in the front of the house in the main driveway. Thank goodness she’d not had it parked up at the barn, otherwise it would have been a smoking hulk as well. Bailey and I opted to go down to Safeway for supplies, which you should read as chips, salsa and alcohol. Everyone else headed into the house to take showers and wash the accumulated sweat and tears off. The smoke from the barn fire had permeated all of us, right down to the core.
Bailey and I rode down to town in silence, but once we got to the store we started to talk, at least a little.
“Wow. What a day.”
I echoed, “Yeah, what a day. Poor Olive, she must be really feeling like crap.”
“I can’t even imagine. It’s like it was all a lark, but it turned serious so fast. And then we got home and found …”
“Yeah.”
We fell silent again, choosing various and sundry comfort foods to take back to our cave.
“Reeces. M&M’s. Snickers. Definitely Snickers. How about a nice assortment bag to just have everything in it. And something to take home with us too.”
Bailey high-fived me. “Already on it, sister.”
We gathered our treasures, along with the chips, salsa and assorted beverages. We piled them in a cart. We piled them in the trunk. We did sit in the parking lot and eat some but not nearly a whole bag. And then we headed back home. We’d leave the pile in the living room and split off for our own showers. Thank goodness for Kit’s instant hot water machines, no worries about running out.
When we got home, we made our offering on the coffee table. Georgia and Olive were already there, so we all hugged and kept going our own ways. Times like this I missed Dale, but figured he had better things to do than come running. I headed upstairs to my room, Bailey down to hers.
I took a long, hot shower. I wished I had time for a nice bubble bath. I was pretty well healed up, but the muscles along my front and back still ached if I overused them, and I suppose that our trip to New Mexico counted as overuse.
When I popped out of the shower, I found Olive sitting there on the edge of my bed. She looked so morose, I slipped on a robe and sat down beside her.
“You ok?”
She shook her head, at the hairy edge of losing it. “No, not at all.”
I didn’t say anything, just bumped up against her shoulder with mine. We stared at the floor for a while.
Finally she sighed and said, “I can’t say you didn’t warn me. But like all teenagers, I thought you were full of it.”
“In regards to?” I knew what she was asking but didn’t want to put words in her mouth.
She waved her hands in the air, and I could see tears flowing. “The whole being human thing. I mean, I’m only a little bit there, in reality, but I’m already being ruined by it.”
I gave her a one arm hug, pulling her to me. “I’ve always told you that being human was more than the body, love.”
She dashed at the tears, said, “Yeah. I know. But I’ve always thought that was just you pretending to care. Or not so much pretending to care as just being you. The one that never hurts anyone and will take any amount of pain to keep from telling anyone else that you’re hurting.”
I sat back, my hands around my knee, and kind of rocked a little. I stopped that pretty quick as it pulled something amazingly painful in my chest. I gasped a little. Immediately, Olive propped me up and said, “Are you ok?”
I took a breath, feeling ok now that I wasn’t stretching anything. “I’m fine. Sorry about that. Being human is the pits, isn’t it?”
She took a sobbing breath, “Yeah, it is. At least I guess I’ll never have any body-pains unless I decide to inflict them on myself. Oh, Jane. I feel so stupid. Your barn, Threepio, the Jeep. All that in ruins and it’s all my fault. I’m so sorry …”
I leaned against her and ignored the twinge as I did. I rested my head against hers, and said, “Are we all alive, dear one?”
“Well, yeah. I guess.”
I laughed and straightened. “You guess? Is one of us dead that I don’t know about?”
She blew out a breath and said, “Well, no. I just … that seems like too much leeway - ‘is anyone dead’ isn’t the standard I’m looking at coming up to.”
“Well, no, none of us are. But you have to admit that if all we suffered was property damage, we came out amazingly well. Mom was here, she could have been outside and been too tempting a target to turn down. But she was inside, safe. The house was untouched, and the barn was old and a fire hazard anyhow. It was well past time to replace it, it just was comfortable to have it there. And we also know that you can rebuild it to look just like it was yesterday, at least once we have the carpenters here to make it all look official.”
She sniffed. “Yeah, I guess.”
I punched her lightly. “More than you guess, honey. And don’t forget that between you and Kit, we have enough to replace that barn without even noticing the money. And you KNOW that Kit did his magic on that van. I’d be willing to bet when we pull that barn off the top of Threepio, he’ll be sitting there unscratched. Some kind of an excuse from the insurance company about a miracle that the boards or roof or whatever fell just the right way to keep the van from being smashed.”
She gave me a watery smile. “Yeah, you’re right. And I just beefed up some of it a few days ago, just making sure that if anyone shot - or rayed - at you, Threepio could take it.”
I shrugged. “So, we get a new Jeep, probably a red one this time instead, and we get a nice, clean new barn out of the deal. What’s the downside here, love?”
She sighed. “Nothing, I guess. But …”
I smiled. “What now, drama queen?”
“Well, what will I obsess over now?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I can see that’s a problem. We’ll take it up again later. Meanwhile, scoot outta here so I can get dressed and come downstairs. There’s a whole bag of Reeces down there with my name on it.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve seen you naked, you know.”
I rolled mine right back at her. “Of course you have, just a few minutes ago for that matter, miss peeping Thomasina. But I still have modesty problems, being human and all.”
She smiled and kissed my forehead. “You’re sexy, you know.”
I have to admit I blushed. “I doubt that. But I’ll let Dale know, too. He might not be aware of how sexy I am.”
She snickered. “I’ve seen him look at you when you’re not looking at him. He knows. Trust me.”
I smiled, a happy thing warming me up inside.
By the time I slouched downstairs, everyone was there and in a party mood. The amount of stuff we keep here, along with all the stuff Bailey and I had brought from the store really made for a nice spread. About then, the doorbell rang and SubShop delivered a party-size sub just to top it all off. I’ve made that connection before, that people in emotional turmoil eat. And that’s certainly borne out by this. We tried to get the Sub guy to stay, but he laughed and said he had a lot of other people to deliver to, so he’d just he’d keep us in mind.
I was still getting used to being able to eat real food again, so it was heavenly. We all made pigs of ourselves and ate far more of everything than we should have. I had the sense to go easy on the vodka th
ough, this time. No more head splitting mornings for me, I was too old for that crap.
We all celebrated chasing the big bad alien away, but I know deep in our hearts that we were all thinking about where it had gone, and how we were going to find it. Time enough for that tomorrow though. Or the next day. He’d have to lick his wounds for a while.
Chapter Thirteen
Moving forward.
Next day was sunny and warm. We all sat at the usual space and had breakfast. Cai was in his element today, having gone to McDonalds and brought back breakfast. He’s good at making waffles, but he can also make the car fly to McDonalds. Nice to have fallback skills.
I had worried about everyone being on a downswing from the near disaster yesterday, but I think it may have been a good thing, in the end. It cleared the air and kept us from having to think, for a little while anyhow, about when an attack from whatever might come. It had been pretty bad yesterday, but it could have been worse. He didn’t seem to be seeking out humans to kill, she was either looking for Olive, or trying to gain materials. Which, thanks to Olive’s defenses, he’d been completely denied. She’d used a lot of resources to do what he did, and he’d have to start at nearly ground zero.
“Mom, do you think you can track him this time? Or will it be another nothing shot?”
“I’m not sure, honey. I think it’s a good chance it won’t be tracked, and to be honest it would be better if it weren’t. If anyone looks at a strange object racing away from this location, and a police and fire report of a very peculiar fire with no visible means of ignition, it could be very bad. Especially if they see me attached to all the above. No, I hope they saw nothing, and I don’t intend to call their attention to it.”
I nodded slowly. “I can’t say I’m not disappointed, but it’s certainly true about keeping a low profile. Olive, do you think any satellites might have been tracking it?”
Olive had a smug look on her face, “Yes, I happen to know satellites were tracking it. And through a back channel that they don’t even know about. So, we know about where and how it went, but no one else does. Or at least, no one that I know about.”
Excited murmurs broke out around the table.
“Ok, then where and how?”
“Dantooine. They’re on Dantooine.”
There was a stirring about the table, then a rustle of laughter. An outright guffaw from Cai. And a blank look from Mom.
She said, “Where is Dantooine? It sounds vaguely Russian. Siberia or something?”
More laughing. Mom looked irritated. “I take it this is a joke that I don’t know and everyone else does?”
“Mom, Dantooine was from Star Wars - that movie? Olive, and the rest of us for that matter, love to throw in movie quotes and Star Wars is rife with them.”
She looked even more irritated. “I hardly think this is time for a joke, where is the alien?”
Olive sighed and put on a more straight face, “Oddly enough you’re right. It’s in Siberia. I guess we should have suspected that the Yucca Mountain plant wasn’t real. At least in retrospect, it seems like it would be a bad place to try to remain undiscovered. I mean, they’d always be watching and sooner or later someone would see something. Yucca was mothballed many years ago, but it stays on the mind of the military and the nuclear protesters, both for and against. After all, we spent … well, you spent … billions of dollars there for pretty much a hole. And they keep trying to revive it. Right now, it’s going through another round of talks with people pushing it forward. And rightfully so, in many cases. The temporary measures you earth people…“ she paused to snicker, ”you earth people have made are ludicrous. I’m really tempted to just go in and suck it all up at the different locations around the country. Now wouldn’t that cause some uproar if all their nuclear waste was gone. I’d have a nice supply of fuel without having to dig up any of my own.”
Mother’s eyes got a little big. “You can use nuclear waste for fuel?”
Olive laughed. “I can use YOU for fuel, sweetie. I’m not limited, any matter works.”
Sounding regretful, mom replied, “I suppose it would cause a lot of political and scientific upheaval to have all that waste just disappear. “
Olive giggled, “Especially if they had pictures of a woman in the containment area walking around waving a net and having it disappear into the net.”
We all looked at her.
“What? It sounds like fun! Maybe a wand or something …”
I snickered. “A vacuum cleaner.”
“A sharknado!”
“Dyson has balls.”
That one made us all crack up. Poor mom was sitting there staring around like we’d all gone crazy. Right then, I felt a little sorry for her, having lost her life while living it. Or at least that’s what it looked like to me.
She spoke up a bit loudly, “I believe we were discussing an alien being that’s readying, as we speak, to hunt and attack us again.”
We all fell silent. I’m not sure anyone was exactly sure why they felt chagrined, but it might have just been that effect of having been given a talking to by your mother. At any rate it worked, and we were all silent and looking at her.
“Well, don’t look at me! I’m just along for the ride.”
“Oh mom, that’s pretty hard to believe. What do you think we should do? You have real combat experience, and probably you’re the only one in the room unless Cai has been military.”
Cai shook his head, “I’ve restored statues of warhorses, but that hardly counts.”
Mom shrugged. “Well, he knew we were coming last time. He apparently has a pretty good sense of timing and psychology. Didn’t you say that Kit was very good at reading you? And for that matter, no matter how she tries to hide it, Olive is the same.”
“I’m not the same as Kit!”
Mom smiled at her. “No, I don’t mean the same behavior as Kit, I mean the same in knowledge.”
Mollified, Olive sat back in her seat and appeared to be asleep. Which I didn’t believe for an instant.
Gently, mother said, “Olive, what do you think?”
Olive looked up. “Me? Why me?”
“Because I think you’re most qualified to tell us which direction to run.”
“Well, I don’t think we should run anywhere. At the least we should run toward it, if we were to do any running. And remember, we can’t destroy it - kill it. We can just put it in stasis and hope it never gets free again.”
“How do you capture something like that?” This came from Cai. “Can’t it just teleport back out of anything you put it in?”
“Well, yes, it can. But remember that it takes an enormous amount of power to teleport. And in point of fact, if we can keep it running, keep it moving - then we will run it out of power and as long as it’s not able to absorb any from the outside world, it should be unable to ever move again.”
I swallowed. “Won’t it be ... Olive, will it be conscious of time passing?”
She frowned. “I don’t know, Jane. Kit kept himself in stasis until certain conditions were met, so time passed without awareness. This intelligence may have been awake the entire time. Awake, and alone. But that seems very unlikely. Even at the low use of power a single entity simply remaining still would take, it’s still not enough to last forever. So, I think it’s almost a surety that it was asleep until touching it with a power source - woke it.”
I thought about that for a minute. It felt like relief, since the thought of spending millions of years awake and aware and yet trapped was, well, unthinkable. How would that even be possible to maintain any kind of sanity.
Soberly, I said, “I hope it was asleep.”
Olive nodded. “Me too, Jane. Me too.” She sighed, then went on, “We’ll need to hunt it down in Siberia and keep chasing it where it goes. At this point it’s no longer a real threat, or at least not anything like as much of one. At least as long as we keep pushing it. We need to find its real base and either take, disable or destroy
all its equipment.”
Georgia spoke up, “Is there any chance it might be just mad and need a hug?”
Everyone chuckled, but Georgia said, “I don’t mean that as a joke. What if it’s lonely and needs someone to just say hello. Just treat it like a human instead of a dog with rabies? It’s got to be a thinking being, doesn’t it?”
“No, it doesn’t. It’s possible, but unlikely.”
“But then, why did it leave that Jack O’Lantern in the cave? Why did it bother? And why didn’t it kill Jane’s mom? She was right there. A quick one of those purple bolts through a window and she’d have been toast.”
Everyone kind of looked at each other.
Olive replied, “It’s certainly worth considering. But it’s far more likely it’s simply an overwhelmed intelligence that’s not even enough alive to be aware of itself.”
Stubbornly, Georgia said, “The pumpkin was a joke. A prank. It wasn’t put there by a non-living creature only caring about survival and killing others.”
Bailey chimed in at that point, “I have to agree with Georgia. I hadn’t thought about it before, but why in the world would it leave such a message if it was really just a rogue thought pattern?”
Olive ground out, “It almost killed Jane. It burned down the barn and destroyed Jane’s Jeep and her van. It’s a dangerously insane rogue and has to be stopped by whatever means.”
I watched my friends firing back and forth at each other, worried we were arguing over the wrong things. “Hey, guys, it’s ok. Olive’s right, we have to do something about it, but maybe finding the biggest weapons we can to try to kill it isn’t the best way to go. If it’s even vaguely possible that it’s a ‘person’ like Kit and Olive, we need to consider finding a way to talk to it. Of course, it may mean that we have to capture it first, before we can make it sit still enough to listen. And that, in turn, means we have to shoot it hard enough to drain its power. Remember though, that it’s basically indestructible and we can’t easily harm it as a long term thing.”
I turned to Olive. “I love you dear, just remember that.” I smiled. “We can’t do this for revenge. I’m alive. The van and Jeep and barn can be replaced. Nothing important has been lost. So, if we plan to capture this intelligence, it will be to help it, not to get revenge on it for having hurt me. I don’t believe at all that it ever meant to hurt me, it just came to life and jetted away without even knowing what it had done. For one thing, consider that when it went to ‘sleep’ humans or even anything remotely resembling them didn’t exist yet.”
