Planetary annihilation has never been so much fun
This post contains the first 5 chapters of our science fiction story, A Ripple in Space. Normally a new chapter is published every week via our award-wanting Substack The Interesting Times Harold. If you’d like to keep up with the story, you can check us out and subscribe for free!
CHAPTER 1
THE SIGNAL
The Signal swept through the solar system and washed over the Earth on New Year’s Day. Satellites tethered above the planet by gravity, as well as astronomic dishes anchored to the planet’s surface and scanning the cosmos like lost children trying to find a familiar face in an ocean of strangers, squawked, beeped, and hummed in pre-programmed excitement for just such an event. There was no mistaking the alien origin. It was a deliberate communication embedded in a wide beam of energy, undeniably sent by an advanced intelligence.
With humanity’s comfortable centricity in the universe suddenly demolished, the peoples of the world collapsed into the existential crises one would expect when a sentient race finally learns they are not alone in the Universe. It was thrilling. It was terrifying. It was chaos.
This story isn’t really about that, however.
This story is about humanity’s astonishment at the fact that the Contact Message (as one of the most significant events in human history was lamely labeled) was coded in English, and was far more plain and direct than any who dreamt of this day ever expected.
Dr. Frank Lee, astrophysicist, breathlessly read the message to the President of the United States at almost the exact same time as Professor Ivan Belyaev read it to the President of Russia. Which was pretty much the same time as the message was being stammered and shouted and sputtered to nearly every world leader on the planet that so much as had a telescope pointed at the sky.
GREETINGS DAVE WONDERFUL NEWS MANDATORY ANNIHILATION OF YOUR PLANET MAY NOT BE PLEASE BE READY FOR MEETING AT YOUR PERIHELION GOOD DAY CHEERIO
Of all the answers humanity yearned for since the question “Is there life on other planets” was first asked, the unexpectedly most important one was, “Who in the world was Dave?”
* * * *
Sal Esposito died after a chance encounter with a Sub-Saharan reptile known for its propensity to end anything it bit. Mr. Esposito, up until then, had lived a life many would generously describe as “storied,” but most would call “sordid.” The previously mentioned reptile ensured Sal’s life could also be described as “over.”
Sal’s most enduring legacy was his restaurant, the history of which was a confusing and nebulous affair. For much of its existence, Sal’s Dive (planted in the extreme southern orbit of Baltimore) was a restaurant in the same manner that a junkyard was a shopping mall. Over the decades, the establishment’s name and appearance morphed, but at its heart, the Dive was an eclectic magnet of eccentric people and bizarre events which deserve their own story at a later time.
His nephew, Rizzo, had rebranded “Sal’s Dive” to “Sal’s Bistro” several years before the reptile biting incident, in hopes of garnering some of the upscale corporate power lunches. Rizzo still served microwaved frozen pizza, but he smeared avocado and chopped sweet potato on top, to make it “cuisine”. It added 75 cents to the cost and $15 to the price. He assumed none of the stuffed suits would notice. So far they hadn’t.
Shortly after Sal’s passing, it occurred to Rizzo that he might get the evening family crowd by adding televisions with sports, cartoons, and gameshows. This too had shown promise. The crown of the newly re-rebranded “Sal’s Lunch Bistro And Family Fun Emporium” was now a 75” LED 4k TV just inside the door, immediately capturing the customers as they walked in and luring them into a TV-induced stupor.
Sal himself had occasionally over the years tried to add a strange sort of ambiance to the Dive (as old-timers continued to refer to the small, decaying enterprise). Two favorite pieces of what he called his “exotic decor” was a massive crystalline lamp he claimed was carved from a single piece of Himalayan salt, as well as an ugly stone table in the middle of the restaurant Sal swore was a piece of Stonehenge. Sal knew only one of these claims was true. However, he was completely wrong about which one.
On this day, just as the news of extraterrestrial contact began breaking across televisions worldwide, a “Dave” entirely unrelated to anything involving aliens, Dave “Razorback” Mitchell, had decided his best lunch option was Sal’s. It was the culmination of a lifetime of poor choices, which recently forced him to enter the FBI’s Witness Protection Program under the unadvisedly self-chosen name Reginald Deny. The fact that Rizzo and his sister Becky (the one waitress employed at the Emporium) called him “Dave” was a clue to how well life was going for him under the WPP.
Integral to his decision to dine at Sal’s on this particular day was it was the best place to have a shot or two of Old Tolerance whiskey, in hopes the whiskey would give him what he needed to face “Intolerance” Whitney, his new boss at his new job at the SuperiOil Lube Shop.
Dave had been an ASE-certified mechanic for almost 35 years in his pre-WPP life, but Whitney thought she had something to teach him.
Of course she did have something to teach him. For instance, the first time he pulled a cabin air filter out of a sedan, with actual living seeds sprouting in the compost of leaves and debris gathered on it, he asked if the little old lady wanted to pay way too much for an overpriced cheap knock-off of the OEM filter. The poor widow driving the aging vehicle didn’t have the money, so he shook it off, blew it out with the air compressor, and put it back in. It was nowhere near good as new, but it certainly had more life in it than moments before.
Whitney spent 30 minutes explaining to him how that was not policy. Their air compressors were for customers who paid to have their tires filled to the proper level, even if the SLS Technician had to let 5 PSI out to prevent yet another overfilled tire from exploding. But while Dave was a master at complicating his own life, he had an amateur talent for helping those in need. Clearly, he thought, his employment at SuperiOil was not to be a long-term affair.
He was right. Just for the wrong reason.
As he walked into Sal’s, there in front of him, in unmistakable 3” letters was the Message. And while line after line was stacked in 75 inches of glowing LED 4K magnificence, Dave’s eyes only locked onto a few words:
“DAVE.”
“ANNIHILATION.”
“BE READY.”
The brain can do odd things, especially if it has been wired over a lifetime of terrible decisions to panic. Thinking he had been found out by the biker gang he had turned informant on, he fell into one of the chairs at the entrance, or “foy yay” as Rizzo called it, and immediately called his contact at the FBI. Voicemail. He called home to warn his wife. Also voicemail.
The terror that made him agree to leave his old life behind returned in force. In the time it took to make those calls, his brain had scratched out a reasonably paranoid scenario: he figured the FBI dude was already aware the jig was up, and was frantically calling Dave’s house to alert his wife it was time for them to escape through the back door.
He was right, but only to a point. The FBI “dude” was calling his wife, but not for the purposes of escape and planning and regrouping. It was actually much simpler than that. “Razorback’s” wife was having an affair with his FBI contact, and they were engaged at this particular moment in activities that did not involve watching breaking news or answering phones.
And since making poor choices was reflexive for him, Dave didn’t bother looking at the TV again. The adrenaline had already smothered rational thought, and he bolted out the door.
CHAPTER 2
THE DLC
Dr. Frank Lee left the Oval Office briefing, dismissive of the frothing national security apparatus that remained with the President. Elated, he nearly danced through the narrow halls of the less-photogenic side of the White House, back to the office of the Chief Operating Officer of the National Space Council.
Of course the generals were terrified, he chuckled. They see the world in degrees of threats, and the most insidious threat to a military brain was the unknown. But this was the most significant event in human history! We’re not alone! The cosmos is about to open up to us, and the brass are scrambling doomsday planes.
Well, to be fair, the Message did include the word “annihilation.” Even though the context was, in Frank’s mind, quite positive, such a word was admittedly problematic.
Frank hummed happily as he unlocked his closet-like office and planted himself at his desk. Had he been more reflective, he might have realized he hadn’t felt this excited and energized for most of his adult life. “Happy” is not a word with which Frank was intimately familiar and “joyous” was an outright foreign concept. But, that’s exactly how the bespeckled astrophysicist felt.
We’ve made contact!
A heavy knock on his door intruded just the slightest bit on his euphoria.
“Yes?”
A hulking shape of a man opened the door. As if pulled straight out of a catalog for Secret Agent Weekly he looked like the Terminator reprogrammed for Men in Black duty.
“Dr. Lee, your presence is needed immediately at the DLC. Please come with me.”
Frank tossed the acronym around his frontal lobe for several moments before shrugging in confusion at Agent Terminator.
“The Dave Location Committee. Please come.”
* * * *
For most people, the extent of their knowledge of the stars is that they produce light and heat.
For those who have taken Graduate Studies into Stars and have listened to the Sun, a song by They Might Be Giants, they know “the sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees.”
They also know iron and aluminum and many other elements exist as a gas in the Sun, such is the great heat.
For those who have gone on to their layman’s post-Doctorate Degrees, they also heard on PBS that individual photons can bounce around inside a star for a million years before ever escaping the gravitational pull.
Photon xj6 * 10 ^ 13 million (for such is how photons name themselves) just had his 1,000,723rd birthday. His parents had finally allowed him to travel as long as he agreed to stay with several trillion of his closest friends.
As they departed Sol, setting out on what was to be the most thrilling 8 minutes and 20 seconds of their lives, they blasted their way toward the best party planet in the solar system.
The entire trip was full of horseplay and bouncing around at an incredible speed. As they neared Earth, xj6 * 10 ^ 13 million said, “Listen up chaps! This is it! This is the big show! This is where we make our mark on the world! Hang in there and follow me!”
They arrived shortly before 5:56 am GMT, on Sunday, July 4th, 1943, at Stonehenge.
The park ranger heard there were disturbances out around the great old stones. He knew tourists often tried to get small pieces of them as souvenirs. What was taking place in front of him was light years beyond any such horrible defacement.
In the early morning gloom, right in front of him, a thoroughly inconceivable event was playing out. Someone had managed to bring a spectacular wet saw and a variety of trucks to the site, and cut a 8-ft x 3 ft by 3/4 inch slab off of one of the stones. As he drove upon the scene, the hooligans had just finished loading it into a 4-wheel drive flatbed.
Just as his headlights revealed the scene to him, the flatbed squealed its tires and sped away. The ranger stepped on the accelerator just as a gust of wind blew a path through the fog, which parted the clouds as the sun arose above the horizon.
Several trillion photons struck him square in his optic nerves. He raised his hands to shield his eyes. His loosened grip on the steering wheel then let his front wheels slip in a rut, which pitched his vehicle into a ditch as the flatbed roared off into the distance.
* * * *
“We’ve narrowed it down to about two dozen candidates,” said the Director of National Intelligence Amanda Phelps just as Frank sat at the end of a long, exquisitely-polished conference table. The massive room where the Dave Location Committee had set up operations was crammed with people hunched over phones and computers, making phone calls, and barking orders at one another.
“You have?” asked Frank, surprised that the DNI had even noticed him come in. “I just heard one of your agents say hundreds of people are calling authorities all over the country, claiming they’re the one the aliens want to speak to. It’s taken you less than a day to winnow out the millions of Daves in the world down to 24 people?”
“Well, it’s not as hard as it sounds,” said the Director. “Most of those phone calls are from crazy people. Some even admit they’re not even named “Dave.” They refer to themselves as “spiritually Dave,” or something. Plus, an awful lot of calls from swamp country in Florida.”
Director Phelps handed a stack of folders, each with its own Top Secret cover sheet, to Agent Terminator, who then walked it over to Frank.
“We started,” continued Phelps, “with the assumption that “Dave” is someone an advanced alien intelligence would want to speak to. So that rules out nearly every single Dave out there.”
“Ouch,” muttered an analyst from somewhere behind Frank, presumably named Dave.
“What criteria did you use, then?”
“Massive intellect, probably an astronaut or astrophysicist. We also considered philosophers and linguists.” Phelps gestured to the committee members. “Every agency pooled their collective resources to extract names of people that aliens might feasibly want to interact with. Named “Dave,” of course.”
Frank looked over his copies of the dossiers. David Ternny, astrobiologist. Davis McClain, exoplanet research. Dave Washington, theoretical astrophysics. Summaries of some of the world’s most brilliant minds lay before…
“‘Razorback?’ Who is…” he squinted, “Dave Mitchell? He looks, as much as anything, like someone you might see spray painting his teeth shiny silver.”
“Oh,” said a voice from behind Frank. “My department added him.”
Frank turned to see a wiry, older man with neat gray hair which provided an odd frame for his enormous and chaotic eyebrows. His badge indicated he was with the FBI.
“The dossier says he’s a mechanic,” said Frank. “As in…for satellites?”
“No. Kias, I believe.”
The room went quiet as the DSC wordlessly demanded an explanation.
“Mr. Dave Mitchell is an interesting fellow,” said FBI Assistant Director Eyebrows. “Up until this morning, he was part of the Witness Protection Program, which he entered because of his assistance in taking down a notorious biker gang, called the Black Sams.” Eyebrows nodded understanding as Director Phelps glared at her watch.
“The Black Sams were smugglers. They had their hands in everything, from exotic animals to rare works of art, to sophisticated weapons. It so happens one of their most unusual acquisitions over the years was a large segment of Stonehenge, which has in the past couple of decades been in the possession of one Sal Esposito.”
“What the…Stonehenge? Like, in England?”
“Well done, Dr. Lee,” replied Eyebrows coolly. “The very same.”
“The aliens are planning to communicate with Dave at the perihelion,” interjected Director Phelps. “We have reason to believe the contact will occur in the vicinity of Stonehenge.”
“And why do you think that?” asked Frank.
“That’s classified,” answered Phelps.
“Back to Dave Mitchell. You see, this morning, not 20 minutes after the media reported the Message, Mr. Mitchell vanished. And during normal times, the sudden disappearance of a WPP asset would have only caused your typical institutional panic.”
“Understandable,” said Frank. “And why did news of this disappearance make its way to the DLC?”
Eyebrows looked over the Director Phelps, who nodded.
“His last location was at a restaurant called Sal’s Lunch Bistro And Family Fun Emporium. The establishment is owned by Sal Esposito, the current possessor of the block from Stonehenge.”
“Ok, I admit that’s weird. But still…”
“And as of six hours ago, the ‘restaurant’ is missing as well.”
The comment didn’t make sense. But Frank chose to ask what he assumed was the easier question first.
“Why the air quotes?
“Welllll, we say restaurant,” replied Eyebrows, “but Sal named the place Sal’s Dive, as it was a bar. But the establishment has mutated into a variety of businesses over the years. At one time, he named it At the Office. And before that, it was To Get Some Groceries, which incidentally was my favorite.”
“Don’t forget Sal’s Tavern,” chimed a man from the National Security Agency. “That was back when Beatlemania was at its peak. Sal seemed to think by putting on a British theme he could make a few bucks. That’s when he acquired the Stonehenge artifact.”
“Oh, and then there was Sal’s Eats and Smokes,” said a woman with a redacted name badge. “He tried to pull in the hippies for a while until he realized they only wanted to pay with dope or sitar music. Not his best idea, but I loved his energy. All of which were the same dive bar, but Sal was the only one honest enough…”
“Excuse me, I hate to interrupt,” said Frank. “But why does the FBI, the CIA, and evidently the entire Intelligence Community know the history of a dirty bar outside Baltimore? And just how old is this Sal person? It sounds like he should be pushing 90 years old or so.”
The silence was disturbed only by the air conditioning.
“That’s also classified,” said Director Phelps. “Forget we mentioned it.”
CHAPTER 3
THE BENEFACTOR
The third planet in the Sol system rolled toward perihelion, the closest point in its orbit to the sun. Called Earth by most of its inhabitants, the rocky world silently spun beneath a gravity-cloaked alien vessel. The ship settled into a geosynchronous orbit above the northern hemisphere’s ancient navigation wheel on the surface below. It waited.
* * * *
There’s an age-old recipe (or law, if you will) used almost without fail throughout the universe. All things, whether a batch of homemade hickory syrup, a fusion-based doomsday device, or a small cat simply cleaning itself, follow this recipe. It has three dimensions: height, width, and depth.*
Well, almost without fail. Currently, the grandfather clock that sat ticking away was allotting the customary one tick per second. Perfectly ordinary with the one exception. It lacked depth.
Sight of this clock would set a philosopher into a self-induced coma, so deep would their thoughts be. It would lead a physicist to cry into a bottle of Old Tolerance, had one ever seen it.
Razorback was just annoyed at the clonking noise the clock made when it struck the hour. But since it always coincided with a very full and sleeping bladder, and he preferred a clonk to a wet mattress, he never gave it much thought. Over the years he had gotten used to it, even in spite of the fact that the clock, which had never changed at all, seemed to only exist in his dreams, or just after he would awaken.
“It’s time to wake up, sweetie.”
Clonk.
Razorback didn’t open his eyes. He managed to keep his face passive as panic pinned him to the bed. There were a couple of reasons for this. First, his wife, who he hadn’t seen in over 24-hours, not since before his freak-out at Sal’s, never called him sweetie. If he was lucky, she called him Dave. But since he was never lucky, she usually used a range of epithets that would make a US Marine do a double-take.
Also, his wife was decidedly female. The voice waking him was not only male, but his articulation of “sweetie” was absolutely packed with the promise of a beat-down. He lay motionless, hoping that whoever this goon was, he had the decency to let him…
Clonk.
Rough hands seized him, and he felt the world spin as he slammed into a wall. The sheet from the bed managed to wrap around his face, so he could see nothing. But he did hear heavy footsteps thumping toward him.
Clonk.
Now that clock was starting to irritate him, he thought, just as his assailant tore the sheet from him. Razorback looked up, and just managed to mouth “What the f…” just as a hood was slammed down over his head. He was then hefted into the air and whirled around. Cold metal cuffs cut into his wrists, and he felt himself dragged from his room.
Clonk.
*And like many such defined laws, it was fundamentally incorrect.
* * * *
According to the most recent census of the United States of America, there were almost 11 million people who carried as a moniker some variant of the name “Dave.” If you then add in the world as a whole, the number swells to over 11 million.
Some of these Daves are brilliant, pushing personal, professional, and spiritual boundaries in the quest to wring the most out of life. Some are stupefyingly dense, who make it a character trait to never learn how to use “there” and “their” properly. But most are middle-of-the-road guys who just want to do well, be decent, and live fulfilling lives.
Then there are a few that fall outside of these categories altogether. A few Daves who found themselves climbing life’s ladder and slipped, falling and slamming into each rung on the way down. They may be brilliant (though not likely), they may be dullards (also unlikely), but in the frenzy of the brief time granted in this life, these Daves manage to see existence from numerous perspectives. And they usually do not like what they’ve seen.
Dave Kelly, current resident of Towson, Maryland, and hypothetically the world’s first ambassador of Earth to an advanced alien race, hadn’t seen the news. This was because just minutes before the Contact Message raged across televisions the world over, his electricity was cut off due to lack of payment.
He fumed at his television and would have called Baltimore Gas and Electric had his cell phone service not also been disconnected for lack of payment the day prior.
It wasn’t a money issue, as such. The money was almost always there. The issue at hand was a fundamental approach to commerce.
In spite of countless phone calls and letters, the gas and electric company would not allow the meter readers to issue receipts, nor did they carry sufficient change to break a gold Krugerrand.
The water company felt the same way. And the cell phone company has insisted they don’t even have people walking around reading any meters.
Grumbling, he padded down his dark hallway and into the bedroom from where he had only just emerged moments before. He absently swept his hand across the inert light switch, and the clinging darkness reminded him he needed to pay his bill, but more importantly, he needed to pick it up.
Without light, he banged around the bottommost drawer in his dresser until his fingers touched a thick papery stack. It was the last one, he realized, as he tossed the money on his bed. Dave wasn’t too concerned about this. After all, it was the first day of the month, which meant a quick trip to the abandoned abattoir would ensure he could have the cable television on by the end of the day. Still, it seemed the money was vanishing faster all the time.
His mind wandered as he dressed. As he fought to escape the t-shirt he slipped over his head, Dave’s brain scanned through ragged memories in an attempt to audit recent spending and assign blame for the current financial distress.
It wasn’t the fact he ate fast food for every meal. It couldn’t be the alcohol. And surely it wasn’t the monthly trips to England.
Oh wait. Those.
For what seemed like the millionth time (it was actually only the 300th), he wondered why he wanted…no, needed…to travel so often to a country he never wanted to see again. All he knew was every few weeks he felt compelled to jump on a flight to London, then hop on a bus to Wiltshire, England. There, he invariably found himself sitting at a tiny café, drinking tea and counting the minutes until he felt allowed to return home.
Dave shook his head and cleared his throat. It certainly was a mystery. Almost as mysterious as whoever it was who kept giving him large sums of cash for no reason at all. On that note, Dave headed out the door and into a world turned upside down.
* * * *
“Frank Lee, astrophysicist…DOCTOR Frank Lee, astrophysicist…Doctor Frank LEE, astrophysicist…no no, please, call me ‘Doctor Lee.’ Or just Doctor. No need to stand on formalities.”
Frank smiled at his reflection in what he hoped was a charming way. Last night, to his astonishment, he had been asked by the White House to make the “talk show circuit,” and he had been practicing his banter all night in preparation for his interviews.
“Oh no, most certainly not alone,” he said, turning serious to his reflection. “I’ve argued for years this could happen, although many mocked my theories that extraterrestrial life may respond in English. But we’ve been transmitting, nay, broadcasting to the universe at large for decades, with all the TVs, and radios, and I’m sorry, what’s that? Oh my dear, yes I am single, but I’m old enough to be your fa-brother. Somewhat older brother. Yes, I do like Indian food, but…”
“Um,” came a voice from his office door.
“I thought I asked you to knock before entering!” Frank said.
“I did, Doctor, but you apparently did not hear me over your…dictating your findings…”, said Gina, one of his newer lab assistants. “There’s been some activity, and I was asked to see if you were aware yet.”
“Dictating my findings. Yes. Exactly,” Frank silently excused himself from his reflection and turned to Gina. “I’m unaware of any activity. Bring me up to speed.”
“Well, analysis of the speech patterns embedded in the Contact Message indicate a subtle English accent. But only in portions of the message. In other parts, it’s more New England, “she said.
“What do you mean, “accent?” It was a simple computerized voice synthesizer that was broadcast.”
“That’s the other thing I need to bring you up to speed on.” She handed a stack of papers to Frank. “The data that carried the voice message was meant to be layered. Meaning, there were multiple versions of the same message across different parts of the radio spectrum. David, the janitor, accidentally merged them, but in doing so the modulation became clearer and we heard the accents.”
Frank held up a hand.
“The janitor merged the tracts?”
“Um, yes. You see, this morning David helped himself into the studio and tried to set it up to appear like he was interviewing ‘Stephen Baldwin’ about black holes. For, um, for a TikTok video to impress this girl he liked.”
“Stephen Baldwin?” Frank turned this over in his head. “Do you mean Stephen Hawking?”
“That’s what I asked him. He said, ‘Naw man! I mean that Bill Nye dude in the wheelchair!’’ So yeah. He meant Hawking.”
“Bill Nye dude?” Frank asked.
“I’m assuming he meant ‘scientist.’”
“Wait! Did you say his name was David? Any chance he’s our Dave?”
“He was faking a Stephen Baldwin black hole interview.”
“I suppose that was too much to ask, wasn’t it?” Frank finished glancing through the papers Gina had given him and set them on his desk. “So you’ve heard the actual audio?”
“Yeah, I watched the whole thing” she replied. “He was as fastidious with his black hole facts as he was with his mastery of Stephen Hawking’s name.”
“No! The audio from the extraterrestrial transmission,” exclaimed Frank.
“Oh yeah. Def two different people, um, beings. Whatever.” Gina looked lost as she struggled with her words. “Like two voices divided up the words to be said. But there was no awkward hesitation as they transitioned from Elliot to ET. It was a seamless message delivered by two voices with different accents.”
“Elliot to ET? What on Earth are you talking about?
“That’s what me and the guys in the lab are calling the two aliens who recorded the message. After that movie. You know, the ET one?”
Frank pulled off his glasses. It was an attempt to look stern, something his father used to do to him. He folded his hands on his desk and leaned forward.
“You’re saying our aliens have British and New England accents? Gina, I have an interview with George Stephanopoulos in 20 minutes. Am I supposed to tell him that the aliens probably like soccer and the Boston Red Sox?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “Maybe leave that out, until we can review it again.”
“Thank you.”
* * * *
The alien ship descended deeper into the Earth’s atmosphere. Perihelion was only two days away. The triangular vessel slowly rotated, pausing at times, as though searching for something. The gravity cloak bent the light around it perfectly, and so invisibly it sank into high cirrostratus clouds For just a moment, the cloak dropped, and the solid, silvery triangle pointed toward the Earth. Hexagonal segments suddenly became translucent, and vague, humanoid shapes gazed out at the world below. Then the windows became opaque once again, and the cloak was restored. It waited.
There are certain methods, or approaches, to waking a person. These methods are simple, using sound and touch, and can be applied in varying degrees depending on the motivations of the person doing the waking. The person experiencing the waking will usually respond quite differently based on the application of these methods.
For example, touching someone gently while whispering their name has the best chance of rousing a sleeping person in the most comforting and reassuring manner. We’ll call this Grade 1 Awakening. It could evoke the caring call of a parent, or perhaps a lover. Taking it up a notch, whispering a name while emphatically shaking the sleeper awake suggests someone has broken into the house, and perhaps you are the better one to confront the threat. This can be called Grade 2 Awakening.
Grade 3, where both voice and touch are highly unpleasant, is basically malice. The waking person is not interested in anything but directing the sleeper’s attention to the fact that they are about to become infinitely more miserable.
Over his complicated life, Razorback felt he had experienced Grade 1 Awaking far too rarely, and Grade 2 Awaking far too often. And while a single instance of Grade 3 Awakening in one’s life was already too many of them, he had recently accepted he was in for a few more of that kind. However, at the moment, Razorback was experiencing something that did not fit this mold at all, but that was precisely because the approach was flowing the opposite direction.
Clonk.
“Hey” Smack!
“UH!”
Clonk.
“I said, ‘HEY!’ What are you deaf?” Kick!
“OW UGH!
Clonk.
Razorback opened his eyes. At least, he thought he had. He certainly wanted his eyes to open. But what drifted before him now made little sense, and he struggled to assign some order to what he saw. Plus there was that clock.
“Can you please tell me why that grandfather clock goes clonk instead of dong?” asked Razorback. Then he looked around the room.
It was a strange sensation for him. Like looking in a periodical, scanning the photos, only to find one that was mostly blue with an odd white triangle, only to have it coalesce into a sailboat on a deep blue ocean.
There seemed to be a drawing that was a stone slab table. There was also a drawing of a pink salt lamp. He realized he was expecting drawings of big screen TVs.
There was the clock. The clock had always been real. But two dimensional. And only in his dreams. But it had never been at Sal’s. And Sal’s had never been two dimensional.
And an old man he had never seen was working on it, trying to fix the clonk, apparently.
“Rizzo.”, said the old man, as if that was an entire thought. “He can buy TVs. He can buy yams to put on microwave pizza. But can he keep up with the dimension invoices?”
“Um. Er. No?” said Dave.
“OF COURSE HE CAN’T!” shouted Sal. “These things are tricky enough to work on without missing an essential dimension. What are you doing here anyway? You ain’t dead.”
* * * *
Dave Kelly stared, mouth agape, at an empty hole in a brick wall that marked the southeast corner of the old Harvey O’Donnell meat processing factory. There wasn’t much in this part of Baltimore, littered as it was with run-down and shuttered businesses rooted in a long-gone boom era. Prosperity swept through like a wave back in the 1970s, but since departed and left little more than the decaying flotsam and jetsam of boarded buildings.
It’s not there. But it’s always there. It has to be there!
Dave jammed his hand back into the small recess and ran his fingers along the rough crumbly inside. Nothing. Not a bug, not a rock. Certainly not several stacks of mixed currencies with various denominations worth around ten thousand dollars.
He slumped down on a nearby curb, cracked and frigid from the January cold. His eyes drifted here and there for a few moments before darting back to the empty space in the hopes his money would magically materialize.
It’s not that crazy, he thought. Like magic, every single month for what, twenty years? Give or take? There have been stacks of cash left here, or in various other spots in blighted areas this side of town. The location only changed when the drop point was demolished or bought by someone clearly not his secret benefactor.
Decades-old questions Dave had long ago stopped asking barged into consciousness as he sat freezing in the desolate abattoir’s parking lot. Who was the guy who had bankrolled half his adult life? Dave assumed it was a guy, but only because it was a guy who delivered him that note back in the mid-1990s, at the lowest point in his life at the time.
“Hey buddy,” said a voice from the past. “You Dave Kelly?”
A much younger Dave, sitting on a park bench with most of his worldly possessions in a backpack at his feet, looked up from a worn paperback book. Older Dave’s memory tried desperately to misremember the title of the book. It could have been Guns, Germs, and Steel, right? Maybe something provocative, like Lolita. Hell, why couldn’t it have been a comic book? But no, it was Atlas Shrugged, and he had to live with that.
“Yeah,” said younger Dave. “Why?”
A dark haired man wearing tan chinos and a blue golf shirt who smelled strongly of grease and cheese handed him an envelope. “This is yours,” he said. “My boss said to make sure you read it and to see if you had any questions.”
Dave put down his copy of The Old Man and the Sea and took the plain white envelope. It wasn’t addressed like a proper letter at all. Someone had simply written Dave Kelly using a blue marker on it. In the brightness of midday, he could see the outline of the letter within.
“You need help opening it? Sheesh, let’s get going. I got stuff to do,” said Chinos, who glanced over at an illegally parked, ancient white Toyota Corolla that didn’t idle so much as cough and sputter. “I got places to be.”
“Who are you, exactly?” asked Dave, as he ran his finger along the inside of the envelope to open it. “You’re not with the Air Force. They wouldn’t send someone in a car like that.”
“Just open it, for cripes sake.”
Dave pulled the letter out and read it. He read it again, then looked at the messenger who delivered it.
“Any questions?” asked Chinos.
“Yes. I don’t understand it at all,” said Dave. “What is this?”
“I dunno,” the messenger said, and he turned back to his coughing vehicle. “I don’t have any answers. I was just told to see if you had questions, and to tell you to do what the letter says. Have a nice day,”
Dave watched the man jump into the rusting car, and felt a twinge of surprise when it wheezed into motion. As the Corolla disappeared into traffic, he looked down at the letter.
THERE IS A RUSTED TRUCK LOCATED ON AN ABANDONED PROPERTY ON THE NORTH EASTERN SIDE OF INNER HARBOR. TWO FEET SOUTH OF THIS TRUCK IS A STORM DRAIN. LOOK WITHIN THIS DRAIN NO LATER THAN 8 AM ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE MONTH. CHEERIO.
Older Dave needed a drink. He stood and looked down the street.
Huh, there used to be a restaurant or something on the corner there, he thought. Sal’s, I think it was called. I guess they tore it down.
* * * *
“Something is wrong,” said a voice from within the primary command module of the Regalian Ambassadorial spacecraft. Actually, it wasn’t a “voice” in the sense Earthlings understood it. Were a human to have been present near the command module, all she would have heard would have been a quiet humming sound. Regalians had learned long ago how to communicate telepathically, although always accompanied by the gentle hum.
“You always say that,” replied another voice. One might think since their communications didn’t involve the vibrations of fleshy chords disturbing the air, Regalians would all “sound” alike in the minds of those who received their messages. This was not so at all. This second “voice”, for instance, sounded far more pretentious than the first.
“That is because things are usually wrong,” said the first voice. The command module, which resembled a translucent soccer ball large enough to hold, say, a Toyota Corolla, opened on one side. Faint outlines of text and images within were briefly visible, but faded quickly as the owner of the first voice emerged from the ball.
“What is wrong now, Kh’rall?” asked the pretentious voice, owned by a tall, slender form standing next to the module.
“First, Sovereign Dave has given no indication he has received our message.” Kh’rall stepped completely out of the module and waved his thin-fingered hand. The opening vanished and the module melted into the floor. “We are less than two Sol days from perihelion, and we don’t know if Earth’s ruler has prepared his people for what must be done.”
“This was expected,” replied the pretentious voice. “Earthians are sentient but also stupid.”
“‘Still learning,’ is what you mean, is it not Ehl’vash?” A wide panel materialized in the solid metallic wall in front of Kh’rall. A vast panorama of a night-shrouded Earth stretched out before them.
The Regalian called Ehl’vash considered this.
“I mean both, I think.” he answered. “Stupid and still learning. Do not forget that these are the same creatures that have learned to split atoms and weaponize them.”
“That is evidence of knowledge, is it not?” asked Kh’rall.
“But they have them pointed at themselves,” Ehl’vash retorted. “So, no. I believe it demonstrates stupid. Now, what is the other thing that is wrong?”
“The Celestial Navigation Wheel is still non-functional.”
Ehl’vash’s smooth features brightened, his large, almond-shaped eyes expanded into excited black pools. “Yes? Yes!”
“These are sentient creatures,” chided Kh’rall. “Your excitement of the potential destruction of their planetary system is beneath you.”
Ehl’vash nodded. “That may be, but allow me to ask: have you ever watched a star explode? It is magnificent.”
Kh’rall considered the comment for a moment.
“That does sound like a wondrous experience. But if it’s all the same to you, let’s try and save these creatures first. If it doesn’t work out, then we’ll enjoy the show.”
The man sitting in front of him was a tenured professor at a prestigious school, Frank reminded himself. The dossier resting on the table described someone capable of whittling away the mysteries of the Universe into understandable slivers of insight and understanding. And yet…
“Would you repeat that?” asked Frank.
The man shifted in his seat. He was agitated now.
“I believe the extraterrestrials are after my cat, Dave Jr.” he said, as though speaking to a child.
Frank glanced wearily at Agent Eyebrows, who he had learned was actually named Greg Mulroney. However, Frank was unable to think of him as anything else but “Eyebrows” at this point.
“And, uh, why are they after your cat, Professor Ross” asked Eyebrows, “and not you, the accomplished theoretical physicist after whom your cat is named?”
The meaty man sighed and exhaled a breath of pure contempt. He scratched his curly beard and began a lecture.
“Since we expect the extraterrestrials to arrive within the next two days and they made a casual reference to destroying our planet, I’ll make this as simple as I can,” said Dave Ross.
“Everything I’ve ever achieved has been because of Dave Jr. Including the things I did before I even adopted him! You see, quantum mechanics explains how future events can influence the past. Let me draw you a picture.”
Frank stood up and waved to Agent Terminator. “Excuse me, Professor Ross,” he said. “But I spent the morning speaking to television anchors and political pundits, and that wasted enough time.”
Agent Terminator rumbled up beside the professor. “This way to the exit, doc,” he said, laying the world’s most muscular hand on Ross.
“Thank you, Professor,” said Frank, as he was escorted away. “Please give our regards to Dave Jr.”
“That’s our 14th interview, and I don’t think humans or aliens would talk to most of these Daves,” said Eyebrows. “I bet that cat is a hostage too.”
Frank picked up the next dossier and frowned.
“Hey,” he called out, causing if not a silence to settle on the room, at least a lower level chatter. “Have we got a bead on Dave Mitchell yet? We’ve gotten through our first-tier choices, and I’m curious how anyone called “Razorback” is on any shortlist aside from ‘Inmate of the Month.’”
A Homeland Security agent approached, holding a tablet. He tapped something on the screen.
“Um, sir, he’s still missing. We think we identified the neighborhood he was in just last night, and sent a collection team there this morning.” The agent flipped through some data Frank couldn’t see. “But when they got there, it seems he may have been…abducted.”
The hairy tufts on Eyebrows’ face nearly leapt from his head.
“No! No no no! I mean, yes, but not that kind of an abduction!” the flustered agent said. “Remember that Mitchell joined the Witness Protection Program because that criminal gang wanted him dead. We’re afraid that they may have gotten to him just before we did.”
Frank felt a wave of hunger and nausea. It had been an excruciatingly long day, and he suddenly realized he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, nearly 16 hours ago. He stood up and grabbed his coat.
“I need to get some dinner,” he announced. “I trust you can continue without me for a bit. But just a thought…what are the odds that he’s actually the Dave the aliens want to speak with, anyway? I mean, it’s awful he’s been kidnapped, but we’re no closer to finding the guy these beings want to speak with than when the Message was received. This Razorback fellow seems to be, and I’m being generous here, useless. I’m not sure it’s worth the time going after him.”
Eyebrows was silent, but after a moment reached forward and picked up one of the many dossiers on the table. He opened it up.
“I suppose the aliens are more interested in speaking with Dave Jr,” he stated. “We’ll send out a collection team with some catnip to get him.”
Frank sighed. “Okay. Point made. Let’s find Razorback.”
* * * *
Razorback’s body awoke to the unnerving sensation of being hurled. If there is one point upon which evolutionists and creationists agree, it’s that the human body was not designed to be hurled into or through anything. In this case, his body landed in what was clearly the back seat of a vehicle of some kind.
An engine roared to life, and the sound of squealing tires filled the air for a moment.
Shreds of the bizarre dream where Sal — what was his name? Rubio? Ratatouille? Whatever. But shreds of that dream evaporated quickly, along with a faint, final clonk. Razorback, lying on his side, tried to sit up, but the butt of a handgun slamming into his temple convinced him to stay down.
“Don’t move,” said a voice to Razorback’s left. The hood over his head worked really well. Hardly any light broke through, and he was sure he would asphyxiate if it didn’t come off soon.
“Can’t breath,” wheezed Razorback. There was a momentary pause.
“It’s good practice,” said the voice. Dave nearly wet himself.
“Look,” he said. “You got the wrong guy. My name is Reggie Deny. I’m an auto mechanic who is late for work. I don’t know what you think you’ve got here, but it’s wrong. Please.”
“Reginald Deny? That is the dumbest name I’ve ever heard, Razorback.”
Crap. For a moment Dave thought he could see lights through the hood, but it turned out they were flashes likely caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain. So this was it then.
“Will you leave my wife alone?” he asked. “She’s got nothing to do with anything.”
The mystery man sitting beside him burst out laughing, but suddenly stopped. He heard him mutter “sorry, boss.”
Suddenly another spoke from the front, probably in the passenger side of the front seat, by the sound of it.
“Dave Mitchell,” said a raspy, aged voice. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news just before we seal you into a barrel and sink your body into the harbor. But your wife, she is having an affair with the FBI Agent that managed your WPP identity.”
Few people would be able to describe what happened next, nor would they try. A deep but barely audible strumming sound swept through the vehicle, and Razorback’s stomach lurched as though he had become momentarily weightless. Behind the veil of his hood, the darkness and the flashes suddenly blurred and contoured somehow.
Clonk.
Dave “Razorback” Mitchell suddenly awoke. He was back in his room, in the filthy apartment where he had been just before being kidnapped. He reached for his face. No mask. He looked at the wall. No grandfather clock. He looked at his watch.
“What the…” he breathed, but the sound caught in his throat.
There were footsteps outside. The kind of footsteps that were trying like hell to not make sounds, but the old apartment building refused to cooperate. Dave quietly stepped out of his bed and shuffled to the door and gingerly looked through the peephole.
When he had been abducted…or rather dreamt of being abducted…or whatever happened, Razorback got a quick look at his kidnapper just before the hood went over his head. That same wide, sweaty, no-nonsense face was creeping up the hall. Hood in one hand, and handcuffs hanging from a belt.
Razorback shook his head. He didn’t have time to figure out if he saw the future or was being given a second chance or maybe just experienced the world’s most horrifying sense of deja vu. But this time, he was ready.
He grabbed his jacket, slipped on some crocks, and dashed into the bathroom. He slid open a window and jumped out just as his front door slid open. Dave landed on gravel, and started running for his life.
* * * *
“Did you feel that? Was that a Ripple?” Kh’rall turned slightly and an opaque screen materialized before him. An image of the Earth filled most of it, sparkling with electric jewelry in the night. “Reverse the recording .003 percent,” he said.
The Earth in the image flickered, and the African continent shifted to the right as the recording obeyed. Both aliens silently watched as a blurred line dashed across the planet. The moment it did so, the African continent again shifted right.
“Did…did you, by chance, rewind the recording again, just now?” asked Ehl’vash.
“No.”
“That is what I was afraid of. This is not good.” Ehl’vash looked down, then out the primary portal where the Great Kingdom island nation was visible in the darkness. “Perhaps it would be best to just detonate their star. Before things get worse.”
Kh’rall shook his oval-shaped head.
“Exploding stars seems to be your only solution to problems,” he said. The audible hum that accompanied his telepathic voice became louder. But then, the hum subsided.
“I apologize,” he said. “You are right. Things are likely to become worse now. But I like these creatures. And Sovereign Dave…I can’t help but feel that saving his planet would make him feel better. Don’t you agree?”
Ehl’vash looked again down on the planet below.
“No. I think that might make Sovereign Dave feel worse.”