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seymoure“Between A Rock and A Hard Space”
When, at college, he had finally gone to see “2001” it was after much discussion in class about the film. One of the things discussed was that when the film was originally released the producers had issued printed notices of science articles that were given to film goers. Those articles had been about recent realizations that, unlike what had been formerly thought, people would not explode immediately upon being thrust into a vacuum.
There was a scene in the film where an astronaut survived for almost a minute in space without a space suit and everyone knew that people would have lost their ability to believe once that happened. Thus, the hand outs.
It still surprised TD that he had not exploded in space.
But, as he hurdled towards the sphere of molten what ever it was, he knew it didn’t much matter.
Then, soundlessly, he was incased with something the color of tinted windows, but with a consistency of jello.
In this gel-bubble, he bounced off the blazing ball and ricocheted to the right, slowing as though caught on the end of a fishing line and being pulled back.
He wiggled around attempting to see his destination, and saw that he wasn’t heading back towards the hole in the wall of the mall. He couldn’t have gone there because the hole that had been blasted in the wall by the giant bowling ball from Hell, was no longer in evidence.
Everything was, it would seem, just as it had been before.
With the exception of the fact the Mall, on a large divot of parking lot, was floating in space, that is to say.
He was being pulled atop the mall, towards a hat box shaped metal object. It was about the size of a small house and sat in the center of the roof.
Around it scurried a group of tiny naked children.
As he zoomed towards them, he was struck by the silence of it all.
He also noticed the beauty of space.
For a while as a child he had wanted to be an astronaut, but that, like so many other dreams was replaced with other dreams.
He still, occasionally, looked wistfully through a telescope. It was amazing to wonder what was out among those stars.
Now he was out there among the stars.
It wasn’t scary, or even cold, as he had thought it might be. The sky was a velvet mural with diamonds scattered everywhere.
With a collision that should have merited a “thud” were he anywhere that sound carried, he came to rest on the roof.
His gel capsule expanded to cover himself and everyone present. It ever covered the metal structure in the center of the roof.
The tiny men walked up to him.
He didn’t know if their faces were capable of smiling. If they were capable, they didn’t appear inclined to do so.
“TD Jackson,” he said, a bit surprised to hear his own voice as he held out his hand to the closest alien.
That creature turned to the next closest and said, “Remove the evidence!”
With that the little man raised a hand that appeared to have some sort of mitt covering it. The mitt, a metallic blue number, radiated sound and blue light for a nanosecond and then shot a beam that battered TD between the eyes.
It lifted him off his feet by pure impact, and, before he could fall to ground, his senses went dead.
“Nowhere Is Now Here”
TD Jackson had awakened in a lot of strange places. He had been in college, after all.
He had never awakened sitting in a chair, at a table with a large, over dressed Rabbit to his right and a man in an oversized hat on the other.
“It was the best butter,” said the rabbit.
“Oh, wait,” said the man as he noticed that TD was awake, “Our guest is back with us.”
“Then,” Said the bunny, adjusting his spectacles, “We had best get on with it.”
“Yes,” agreed the Hat man, “We have little time to spare.”
Suddenly they were Groucho and Chico Marx.
Groucho, “Say the secret word and win $100!”
“Hey, boss,” said Chico, “For $50, I’ll tell you the word!”
It went quiet.
“Information,” said TD.
Alarms went off, confetti fell and balloons were released.
“Well, if that’s the way you want it,” said Groucho in a tone that sounded cheated.
“We don’t come from around here,” whispered Chico.
“Your Aliens?”
“He’s an alien, but I’ve got my papers,” said Groucho, “Not that I read the papers.”
“Would somebody stop the bullshit and tell me what’s going on?” TD insisted.
With that both figures became non-descript 1950’s style TV scientists in lab coats.
“Alright, here is the complete story, but please take notes, I don’t want to repeat myself.” Said the male scientist.
The female scientist was looking through the papers on her clipboard.
“As many of your people have guessed, we have been coming to your world for a long time. But not for the reasons you think.” He said.
She added, “First, let us get it straight, we don’t do anal probes. That’s something somebody made up.”
We have studied you ever since a scientific team found that you humans all radiate something we call “Psilisin.”
“We radiate something?”
“It’s not something you intended to do, or even know about,” the female told him.
“Your core being, what you call your ‘soul’ flakes off and flies from you as you live.”
“Much,” the male added, “As you skin flakes off and becomes much of the dust in your homes.”
“Yeah,” TD mused, “I read about that. Most of the dust in people’s houses is dead skin.”
“Well, your souls shed dead particles the same way.” She told him, “But since the center of the soul is a powerful electronic generator, that dead particle is charged with amazing strength.”
The Male added, “And, while your waking self still extrudes the charged particles, your sleeping self is a veritable turbine of Psilisin.”
“You perceive this loss only on an unconscious level.” She went on, “You notice it as the passing of time.”
“But, while asleep, you perceive it as dreams.” He gleefully topped her.
“So, our dreams are our souls radiating this stuff out of our bodies?” TD tried to get his head around the whole idea.
“Huge, vaporous clouds of it.” The man said.
“So, that’s why the stuff in the mall was from our nightmares? It was that stuff from our dreams?”
“Yes, exactly!” the male said.
“Why was it here?” TD queried.
They both looked a bit embarrassed.
“That was our fault.” The woman said.
“Our people, not us personally.” The male added.
“This radiation is possibly the most powerful source of energy that the planets have ever come across. It had to be studied,” she explained, “And to really study it, we needed to be able to gather enough for a worthwhile sample.”
TD eyes grew wide, “That big ball!”
“Yes,” said the man.
“We had been working on a collection method for hundreds of your years. Then when we found it, we had to collect enough for a worthwhile sample.”
“So, this is the first time you had enough?”
They both looked embarrassed again.
“We picked storage site that we thought were ‘out of the way’ and wouldn’t endanger any of your people. There we planted collection repositories.”
“So, this isn’t the first?”
“Ah, no,” said the female.
“The first was in Siberia.” The male added.
“What happened?” TD asked.
“If you check the records, newspaper clippings and such from around the turn of the century, you’ll find the name Tugusta, or some such,” he said, “I’m not totally fluent in all your languages.”
“Wasn’t there some kind of huge explosion?” Jackson gasped.
“They compared it to an atomic bomb, before the 1920’s” the male agreed.
“We learned from our mistake and created a stronger containment vessel. But, it leaked.”
“And that was?” TD ventured.
“Something called Chernoble, I think.” The man said weakly.
“That brought us to this one. Buried in the wasteland of Ksandis,” she read from her notes.
“Kansas, it is shorted to Ks as an abbreviation.”
“Well, anyway, we got enough Psilisin and now we’re taking it home.”
“What about us?” TD was thinking about his family and friends.
“Everything will be as it was, we can put everything back as it was and no one will remember a thing.”
“You can do that?”
“Our abilities are great.” She told him.
“Then, why explain it to me?”
“Within a year we will have worked all the kinks out of the process of making Psilisin into fuel. Your planet will become a source for great power.”
“And, everybody’s going to come in and steal our dreams?”
“We are going to want to come in and sign a treaty for our mutual benefit. We will take only what we need, “ She explained.
“And it will be a tiny portion of what you produce,” he added.
“And we will, in return, give you the ability to use your own dreams to produce power and protect yourself. You can join our alliance, and, I have no doubt, become a prime mover in the galactic community.”
“I still don’t know what you want me for,” TD told them.
“If you tell anyone before we come back what you know, they will think you just another . . ”
“Whacko?”
“That’s the word,” She smiled.
“Whacko..” the male laughed.
“But, when we come back we will need a liason who knows we are coming and who we are. We would like you to be our representative on your planet.”
“We get the technology to do all the things I’ve seen you can do…and it will cost us?”
“The equivalent of one night’s dreaming on your world out of a year. The rest will be yours. You will be able to light every house, power all your transportation, control your weather, fly to other planets and cure most if not all disease.”
“That sounds far to good to be true.” TD said.
“Isn’t that what dreams are supposed to be?” said the male alien.
He held out his hand, and TD took it.
“Well, now, we have to return your world to the way you knew it. Remember, you will be the only one who remembers until we return.”
TD got an idea.
“Could you guys make the Mall a success before you go? A lot of people have put their life’s work into this place. I understand you’re coming back and everything’s going to be buttered English muffins then, but they could use a little dream come true till then.”
The two aliens were fading, and he could feel his consciousness slipping away, as the female said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Jackson, there are somethings beyond even our abilities.”
“Sometimes There Is Just An Ending”
TD Jackson awoke to screams.
He opened his eyes and saw his wife cradling him.
“Lookatit Daddy!” Shannon shouted.
He sat up and saw, in the middle of the mall, a giant boulder, still red from re-entry, smoking on the ground.
His old friend Topzepopoulous was giggling as the flock of on lookers were buying out his stock.
Along with the police and fire department folks, there were a dozen news crews, two of them national.
“The guys from the university,” said someone over a bullhorn, “Have assured us that there is no radiation. But, stay back, it is very hot.”
Molly giggled, “This is amazing. We couldn’t have bought this kind of exposure.”
Everywhere you looked people were running into the mall. Children were playing in the play area, people were eating in the food court.
“Is he okay, Doctor?” Molly asked the man in the lab coat.
“He just got knocked over when the thing fell through the roof. He’ll be fine.”
He looked up at the doctor and recognized the face of the male alien. They smiled at each other.
“We pulled a few strings,” he leaned over and whispered.
“Did I say the secret word?”
In a perfect Groucho the doctor said, “That’s the silliest thing I ever hoid of!”
The man in the lab coat then disappeared into the growing mass of people all trying to see something amazing that had come from the stars.
TD took his wife’s hand, and she helped him up.
In his pocket he found some red licorice that he gave to his daughter as they went back into the restaurant.
