Never Never Stories

by Jason Sanford

  Only when the station arched away from me did I finally relax. But relief was temporary. I had no doubt the rocket would fire in an hour and a half when Freedom 2 came back around. I was still trying to figure out what to do when Tess tightbeamed me. “Show me the message,” I ordered Bee, even though I no longer trusted the computer.

  A proxy of Tess appeared on my suit's visor, looking to my eyes like she was standing in the air before me. She now wore the pure white robes of a Seeker celebrating attainment of her destiny. “I see you've discovered my little trick,” she said with a serene smile.

  I asked the proxy what the hell it was up to, but the proxy wasn't programmed for that question. I rephrased. “What are you doing?”

  “I'm launching the rocket at the biggest target in the sky. All the previous debris sprawls have been too small to achieve a significant cascade. But a major space station exploding? That'll block access to space for decades. Maybe longer.”

  I stared at Tess, wanting to punch the image floating before my eyes. “You used me,” I muttered.

  To my surprise, the proxy was programmed for that comment. “I deeply apologize for that. But my destiny is to stop humans from reaching space. Unless we focus on this world and what we have here, everything is lost.”

  A sudden razor-thought edged through my stomach. I'd heard those words before. “Who gave you your destiny?” I asked.

  The proxy smiled. “Why Sister Dusty, I thought you'd never ask. Brother Page gave it to me.”

  As the gondola pinged again, I suddenly knew my destiny no longer lay in space.

  * * *

  Since Bee wouldn't lower the aerostat, I couldn't slide back and override her controls. I considered climbing hand over hand along the boom, but that was well over a hundred meters and I couldn't do that in my pressure suit. Besides, Tess had only given me until the next launch window to jump from the Gossamer Angel. She'd sworn she'd pick me up, even tell the authorities I was an unwitting pawn in her scheme. Not that anything would reverse the damage she was about to do.

  I considered smashing the Angel's access panel, but without heavy tools I couldn't accomplish anything. I might also cause the rocket to launch prematurely, and I refused to let Tess and Brother Page be the death of me.

  The only option was the balloon's envelope.

  Releasing my safety harness, I threw the hook end toward the guide lines at the top of the gondola. On the third try, the hook snagged. I tugged hard, guessed it would hold, then climbed up.

  The Gossamer Angel's helium tanks were arrayed along the outside edge of the gondola, so the rocket could shoot up the middle without hitting them. There was no way I could reach the rocket, but fortunately for me balloon designers were descended from a long line of redundant-loving engineers. The Gossamer Angel's designer had placed the back-up valves for the helium lines along the gondola's top edge so someone like me could access them if needed. While I couldn't release the helium inside the envelope, I could open the valves and pump all the remaining helium into the envelope.

  As soon as I opened the first valve, the Gossamer Angel began to rise. The Beatrice's access boom strained, pulling the aerostat along with us. The boom finally released as Bee's safety protocols kicked in.

  I crawled across the gondola, opening valve after valve as the Beatrice disappeared below me. Without Bee's telemetry, I wasn't sure of my altitude or how fast I climbed. High altitude balloons didn't have a solid upper ceiling; a few had made it to 75 km but those had been small experimental models. The problem was that as the pressure outside decreased to an almost literal nothing, the gases inside the balloon expanded until the envelope ruptured. Because large balloons like the Gossamer Angel cost so much, no one ever attempted to discover their maximum limit.

  I couldn't see the Beatrice below me and hoped I didn't hit the ship when I jumped. Having nothing else to do, I stared down at the Earth as the sun sank below the horizon. Suddenly, faint lines of electric blue erupted in the blackness before me, as if a giant had thrown neon-colored string into orbit. The noctilucent clouds Brother Page had mentioned. The Gossamer Angel appeared to float parallel to the glowing clouds, even though they were probably dozens of kilometers away. I watched them in silence, happy for the first time since getting kicked out of NASA.

  I woke from my daze as something pinged beneath me in the gondola. Even though the time Tess had given me wasn't up, I threw myself over the edge of the gondola. I'd fallen several hundred meters when the Gossamer Angel exploded and the rocket climbed like a tracer away from me.

  * * *

  Two months later, Johnie met me outside the Outpost Tavern. Despite my protests, he'd insisted on bringing me here. As we entered, Johnie waved to his fellow astronauts before leading me to the wall of honor, where two thousand photos showed every person who'd made it to space. There, surrounded by a red ribbon, rested my old NASA mug shot.

  Johnie told me with pride that he'd estimated I'd ridden the Gossamer Angel to well above 80 km. While most of the world didn't consider that space, the U.S. did and that was good enough for Johnie to place my photo here.

  I smiled as the weight of destiny lifted from my shoulders. I laughed at why some silly thing like this had ever mattered in the first place.

  When Tess realized what I'd done to the Gossamer Angel, she'd reprogrammed the rocket and launched it at a large orbiting telescope. The resulting impact created the third major cascade event. But because the satellite was much smaller than the space station, the cascade wasn't anywhere near as bad as if Freedom 2 had been hit.

  Of course, I didn't know that at the time. I fell for more than ten minutes, feeling like I merely floated above an unchanging Earth. Less than 30 seconds to reach the speed of sound. The fastest human in the world. But still floating. Watching. An eternity before the cloud deck rushed up to greet me and I again heard air whistling by and my parachute deployed and I was home.

  NASA eventually admitted I was a hero, with one administrator confiding that Brother Page had been the one who'd outed me as a Seeker. The next time I saw Tess and Brother Page was at their arraignment. Both wore white robes signifying achievement of their destinies, although Tess's was stained brown on the sleeves, meaning she'd only reached part of her goal. I stood outside the courtroom and glared at Brother Page, wanting to know what had been so important about his destiny that he'd been willing to sacrifice my life.

  As if knowing my question, he'd shouted a question – “Haven't you ever wanted to know what happens when two destinies collide?” – before his lawyer shut him up.

  Damn them, I thought as Johnie led me to a table, where a pitcher of beer waited for us. I hugged Johnie and thanked him for being a true friend. Embarrassed, Johnie muttered about a new joint project of the Air Force and NASA. They wanted to set up manned aerostats to patrol the mesosphere.

  “Know anyone who might be interested in that?” he asked with a smirk.

  I eyed my picture on the wall. I thought about Brother Page and how he'd almost killed me over an inane philosophical question. I remembered Tess's fanatical obsession with keeping humans on Earth, and my once-burning obsession with reaching space.

  I picked up my beer and chugged it.

  “Screw destiny,” I told Johnie. “It's not up there and it's not down here. Destiny's just something to mess with people and I want no part of it.”

  For once, Johnie understood exactly what I meant.

  Here We Are, Falling Through Shadows

  Miker drove our fire engine through the dark neighborhood, the red emergency lights flash-synching to the deep bass of the rumbler siren. Parked cars and flower gardens and mailboxes flashed by, illuminated for seconds before sliding back to night. We used to turn the siren off on quiet streets like these to avoid disturbing the peaceful, sleeping taxpayers. Not anymore. Now we wanted everyone to know there were still those who braved the darkness.

  But bravery didn't mean we were stupid. While Miker steered, the rest of us aimed spotli
ghts all around, jumping burn-deep shadows off everything we passed. As we entered one intersection Karl, the probie four months out of the fire academy, yelled “Ripper!” For a moment we saw it – a black line reaching with stick arms. But then the ripper shifted and we realized it was only a tree's shadow, cast by a front porch spotlight.

  Karl muttered “My bad.” While everyone had made the same mistake at some point, Miker grumbled “Rookie” from the front seat and we laughed.

  The laughing stopped when we reached the fire.

  “It's fully involved,” Miker said. We stared out the engine's large windows. Only three months ago, we rarely encountered fully involved house fires because someone would call 911 at the first sight or smell of fire. Now no one went out at night and fires too often grew massive before people noticed.

  “A guy's hanging out the third floor window,” Karl said. “He has a kid in his arms.”

  I cursed. Karl reached for the door handle.

  “Do not open that door!” our squad leader, Lt. Helen Stivers, ordered.

  Karl looked like he wanted to argue – hell, we all did – but we knew she was right. Helen had that weird mix of caring and kick-ass attitude found in all great leaders. During her three decades with the division, a few macho-cocky firefighters had defied her orders, but never twice. She'd once smashed a disobedient firefighter across the face with a tire iron. None of us would go against her.

  “Forty-five seconds, boys,” Helen said calmly, stating how long it took our engine's booms and remote spotlights to properly deploy. Once arrayed, the lights made it difficult for shadows to exist in our field of operation. “Keep a good watch,” she ordered.

  So we searched for rippers. Our spotlights star-brighted the neighborhood until the fire receded to a dull glow, as if cowering before our power. Lights also shone in the houses around us, showcasing people peeking from behind the security blankets of curtains and blinds. In the house across the street, a picture window framed a pink-robed woman kneeling in prayer.

  “The guy's screaming,” Karl whispered, stating the obvious as all rookies did. I looked at the dying man, sickness gagging my throat. Helen counted the seconds out loud – fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen – steeling our nerves and hers – as the superheated air boiling out the window cooked the man alive.

  To the man's credit, he didn't let go of the little girl, holding her clear so the heat and smoke couldn't reach her. After a final pleading glance at us, the man's strangled face disappeared completely into the smoke. Only his arms hung down from the spewing clouds, like an unknown god debating whether to spare the girl's life.

  “Twenty-nine, thirty, damn it, we can't wait,” Helen yelled. “Go!”

  Karl opened the door and we sprinted toward the house. The man's grip had weakened so he barely held the screaming girl. She was small, a toddler, and Karl and I held out our hands to catch her. But, as she fell, the tall blackness of a ripper rose from the ground beside us, protected from our spotlights by the barest sliver of a tree's shadow. The damn thing had been waiting, hoping the man would drop the girl through its dark rip in space.

  Trusting Karl to catch the girl, I flipped on my portable spotlight and illuminated the ripper. For a split second I saw another world through the ripper's body – a surreal scene of darkness upon darkness, of shadow creatures slipping here and there screaming unknown obscenities and begging for my soul. Then the combined illumination from my spotlight and the engine's lights overwhelmed the ripper and it singled out to nothing.

  When I turned to Karl, he held the crying girl in his arms. She pushed away from his face, more afraid of his protective gear than of the fire or ripper. I glanced up at the man's down-slung body as Helen and Miker grabbed a ladder to try and save him.

  He was dead by the time we reached him.

  After we'd extinguished the fire and sent the girl to the hospital, Helen told Karl he'd done good. Karl kept glancing at the dead man's sheet-covered body. Helen slugged the rookie in the arm to distract him.

  “Least he didn't get sucked into that ripper's hell,” Karl muttered. “That's gotta be worse than burning alive.”

  As the wind shifted and blew across the sheeted man, carrying the greasy whiff of cooker-burnt meat, I prayed Karl was right.

  * * *

  After my shift, I arrived home to discover my sixteen-year-old daughter Sammy slumped on the sofa, watching the news on her reader. I leaned over to hug her, but she shot a scowl which stopped my arms in mid reach.

  She held up her reader with a disdainful flick of her wrist, showing me the video of the fire and ripper. Obviously one of the neighbors had filmed us last night.

  “The man's name was Aaron Wills,” Sammy said in the word-flattening voice she'd adopted since her mother was taken. “His wife was staying across town helping a sick relative. Their daughter's in Children's Hospital. Expected to recover.”

  “He was a brave man,” I said. “You have to honor courage like that.”

  Sammy snorted, like she did anytime I mentioned an emotion or ideal not grounded in pure cynicism. For a moment I stared at her and didn't see her close-cropped hair – sheared off in the bathroom by her own hand – or the black ripper tattoo on her cheek – reaching for her right eye as if to pull her sight into another dimension. Instead, I saw Sammy as she'd been at nine, the girl with flowing red hair whom I'd tickle until she laughed tears from her eyes. The girl who hugged me in a tight python grip before each shift, and always kissed my cheek as she whispered to be careful.

  Now such love seemed beyond her. As if to taunt me, Sammy muttered how I should have let the ripper take the girl.

  I couldn't believe she'd say that. “Why?”

  “She'd have ended up doing something worthwhile with her life.”

  “And you know this ...”

  “A friend told me.”

  I groaned. If Sammy had spent the night talking to a ripper, I was going to get an earful from my mother-in-law.

  * * *

  I got an earful.

  Turned out my mother-in-law had caught Sammy talking to the ripper outside her bedroom window. Scared Arlene silly, seeing that monster in the backyard, Sammy grinning at it from the window like some idiot-struck firebug.

  I tried telling Arlene not to worry. The ripper had appeared in our backyard for the last two weeks, but I'd installed spotlights outside Sammy's windows, which kept the damn thing several yards from the house. However, Arlene had no patience with my ideas of safety. “Never your fault, is it?” she asked, tired razor eyes slicing my words to ribbons. “What's your plan? Let the damn things take your whole family?”

  I tensed, the exhausted part of me screaming to beat the crap out of her. But instead of giving in to anger, I took a deep breath as I looked at Arlene's tired face and saw my wife. Or, I saw what Carie would have looked like in another two decades if we'd been allowed to grow old together. Red hair turned grey. Thin bones and muscles etched with strength and determination.

  Arlene and I both knew Sammy's morbid fascination with the rippers resulted from her mother being killed by one. Well, not killed. Disappeared. Transformed. Whatever you called the painful things those creatures did to those they took.

  When Sammy had first talked to the ripper outside her window, I feared she'd let it in. For some reason, rippers only appeared when there was no light and they wouldn't cross the simplest of barriers, whether a shut door, a closed glass window, or even a tent's fabric. They wouldn't follow ventilation shafts or bends and curves inside buildings, almost as if they were truly shadows which couldn't leave the path of whatever blocked their invisible light.

  Some people said rippers didn't enter our houses out of a minor respect for humanity. Others searched for a scientific reason. But in the end, all that mattered was if you left a door open at night, or a window cracked more than a hair, a ripper might reach in and steal you away.

  With such devils outside our homes, it's a wonder anyone slept at all. Even d
uring the day, everyone looked numb and scared. Few worked their jobs anymore. Instead, people rushed out by day to find food and supplies and rushed back home before night fell.

  I thanked Arlene for watching Sammy. Arlene sniffed and apologized for being so angry – ”It's just the tired speaking,” she said – and walked to her car.

  “My fault,” Sammy droned from the sofa after Arlene had driven away. “You said not to act weird while Gramie was here. ‘Act weird.' Your words.”

  I winced at the accusation. Instead of taking her bait, I told Sammy not to worry about her grandmother. “She simply misses your mom.”

  If I expected Sammy to say she also missed her mother, that was expecting too much from my emotionally disconnected teenage daughter. Sammy stared at me blankly before returning to her reader.

  Unable to handle any more drama, I walked to my room, closed the door, and fell into bed to cry.

  * * *

  I'd met my wife two decades back. Carie was a successful artist who painted beautiful illustrations for children's books. She also spent her weekends volunteering as a rural firefighter. Her tiny department responded to car crashes and brush fires thirty minutes outside the city.

  One night my department was called to assist Carie's. We arrived at a full-gone warehouse fire to see Carie dragging out a fellow firefighter overcome by heat. I'll never forget the sight of that determined woman – red hair crowding her facemask as she dragged a man twice her size to the ambulance.

  After we beat down the fire, Carie and I talked. Carie said when she wasn't volunteering with her department, she worked as a freelance artist. “My last book was Boo Boo Gets a Choo Choo,” she'd said, wiping sweat and black soot from her face.

  How could you not love someone like that?

  Because of Carie's experience, she understood the dangers and stresses of my job. Where another spouse might have worried about my safety, Carie waved it off. In fact, I worried far more about her volunteer work than she ever did about me.

  The rippers stole her on the night they'd first appeared. She'd been on a routine medical call, walking toward a house where a child had broken his arm, when a ripper appeared. Carie vanished before her squad could react. All they heard were her screams echoing from nothingness as the ripper tore and twisted her body and soul into things they were never meant to be.