COLONY part 2

Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

By R. Peterson

            I never received the vast amounts of life science transference that others did but I know one thing; the creature that crawled out of the eight-hundred foot diameter bio-metallic ball scientists for decades had been calling a Sfärer was not of this world.

Our scientists were wrong about so many things and those that are left alive … still are. For three decades sheets of ice have moved downward from the north freezing plants animals and people. Global Warming advocates still insist it is only a brief hiatus in Earth’s perpetual warming trend as each year they accumulate thousands of petabytes of empathetic Climate Change facts. What they do with the non-supportive data is anyone’s guess. New York City will surely be under water soon … if not this century then the next. Right?

The Sfärers were not indestructible globes but eggs that took sixty-nine years to hatch. Over a quarter million people in Pittsburg and the surrounding areas jammed the electrical slot system trying to leave the city. The world population peaked in 2026 at 7.7 billion and less than two centuries later was a little over 900 million. Over half of these shivering people now lived in Brazil.

Sexual encounter simulators and 3D holographic encounter videos had become so adapt at satisfying people’s wildest desires … physical sex between humans seemed old fashioned and went out of vogue. Children, for those with enough energy credits to afford them, were designed, planned and carried to term in a glass womb in a pediatric center.

What was once a smooth-as-silk transit network that allowed super high speed self-driving cars to merge effortlessly into the first available empty space was now complete chaos. Horrified hackers overrode the transportation computer systems turning the super highways into free-for-all automotive stampedes with fanatical laser wielding ISLS-snipers cutting rails and thinning the stragglers in the name of their damned merciful God.

            The alien creatures resembled spiders in that they had eight legs but their size alone would have made them the monsters the press was calling Terrors. I was one of the few who chose to stay where I was. At One-hundred twenty-one years old I was considered merely middle age and not yet past my child rearing years, easily able to travel, but I was just tired. Perhaps it had something to do with my ancient twenty-first century unmodified genes but I had lost my husband when Yellowstone blew away almost the entire Republic of California and my daughter was now living in German occupied London. I was abnormally happy most of my life and I deserved the relief that comes from being depressed.

For months hundreds of U.S. Air Force F-438 non-radiant nuclear drones blasted away at the invaders shaking apart the tectonic plates under North America and collapsing historic buildings … with no effect on the Terrors. There was no standard electrical grid although Alvin Sullenger’s self-charging Nobelium batteries were predicted to last a thousand years. The sub-zero solar panels on my building’s roof had all shattered like glass from the bombing and I broke into numerous abandoned apartments and sliced up expensive antique furniture with an Apple I-Pocket laser for firewood. Most of the rich gave their pets language or other skills and I shared what exotic meals I could scare out of Nobelium operated Kitchen Chefs with a congenial rat (Mickey), great for slipping under metal doors and finding spare keys and someone’s shy abandoned Python (King Lear) that could recite all of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

“This were to be new made … when thou art old

and see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.”

We huddled together in a dark corner at night, listened to classic music from the twentieth century on a solar-powered hippy-robot radio station KRNR in Vermont that had been broadcasting for two hundred years …

“There must be some kind of way out of here!”

… and tried to keep each other warm.

Less than a year later it was once again quiet. The military didn’t run out of missiles … they were just tired of trying to provoke a fight from the aliens. The Terrors, for the most part, ignored people the way zoo elephants would a micro ant colony. The sound, or the lack of it, nearly drove me and my new friends crazy.

-------2-------

It was an unusually warm day the summer of 2170 … almost fifty degrees in mid-July. I almost forgot to shiver. Damn those Chicken Little Climate Scientists; we should have been stockpiling self-heating thermal artic underwear … not building Noah’s disaster boats. We decided to venture out.

The buzzing sound could be heard from two miles away. One of the Terrors, there were a half dozen in North America, appeared to be dozing. Mickey, always adventurous, wanted to go check it out. King Lear held back not sure that the massive aliens might think him something to play with … or nibble on. Mickey bit his tail and with a wild laugh said “Tastes just like chicken!” An angry King led us toward the sound.

The giant arachnoid-like creature had been digging. It and the others seemed to double in size every few weeks. A massive hole on the southwest corner of Bedford Avenue and Crawford Street looked to be hundreds of feet deep. “I thought the terrors just stood around with their heads in the clouds looking dumb,” Mickey said.

“No one has been able to figure out exactly what these creatures eat,” King Lear began to make himself into a coil. “It could be the Terrors draw elements out of the ground and then change them into whatever they need the same as we do only using some biological function.”

“Or it could be they’re digging a hole for a huge Dutch oven,” Mickey said glancing slyly at King. “And they plan to slow-roast every snake they can capture!”

I had no opinion one way or another. Biology was just one of many subjects my parents were too poor to have loaded into my cranium. “The fact that these monstrosities appear to be docile has to be a good thing,” I told them. “I can’t figure out why all the people who left Pittsburg haven’t returned yet.”

            “There’s no need to,” Mickey said. “It’s too cold here and since the City of Steel rusted away centuries ago the main source of income outside of energy production of course is matter transference and assembly and they don’t need people to work on that.”

            “Robots? That’s nothing new,” King Lear said. “And technology has been able to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear for centuries. But the power costs have to be enormous. When you’re using energy you’re literally sinking money into your business venture.”

            “Not many people know this … but it’s no big secret for my species,” Mickey said. “Follow me I want to show you something.”

We passed several other people mostly alone or in tiny groups who seemed to be in a hurry. We didn’t make eye contact and they scurried away.

Mickey led us down the street to a large plain building without any decorative flora or ornamentation. I’d passed the same building several times while foraging and always thought it was a warehouse. There was no slot-car parking or highway access ramps. Mickey slipped under a steel door in a space I thought barely large enough to insert an energy certificate and was back a minute later. The door opened. The main floor area most of it underground was massive. Row upon row of molecular printers were busy manufacturing hundreds of different items out of what looked like mountains of dirt. I was aware of the basic science of twenty-third century manufacturing technologies but was shocked by the thousands of workers.

            “Ever since some greedy industrialist decided to implanted knowledge into the cerebral cortex of animals slavery has returned to the modern world.” Mickey twitched his whiskers a habit I associated with him being annoyed. “It’s against the law to own a human … but there are no such laws for animals.”

Most of the animals operating the high tech machines were raccoons, probably because of the dexterity of their human-like fingers. Large herbivores pulled bins filled with materials much the way I imagined the animals working a thousand years ago. A large breed of shaggy dogs, probably bred for the cold weather, ran between stations barking orders and stopping and starting production lines.

            “They work twenty-four seven,” Mickey said. “With no pay, no vacations and only minimal rest cycles.”

            “This is cruel and disgusting!” The words soiled from my mouth almost like a scream.

            “People don’t get rich working their fingers to the bone,” Mickey said, “they get some other poor slob …or in this case species to do it for them. It’s not much different than the way they used to export jobs to China two hundred years ago. This isn’t the only place. Almost every manufacturing plant in the world uses the same basic production model.”

            “Why doesn’t someone do something?” King Lear had risen half his body length vertically and was looking up and down the thousands of work stations with dismay.”

            “Every animal in the place was genetically engineered for complete loyalty,” Mickey said. “They have no idea there is another kind of life and if they did … what are they going to do about it?”

We left the building and I felt saddened. For more than a hundred years I had enjoyed thousands of exotic food dishes prepared by a Kitchen Chef in just seconds and traveled via slot car system to any location I desired with no effort on my part with no thought to the pathetic animal slaves who were doing all the manual labor. I felt like crying.

            “The manufacturers don’t want people to know,” Mickey said. “They have too much energy invested in something with too many wild isotopes that people wouldn’t understand. They don’t call this the Technetium Generation for nothing.”

The day that had started out sunny and almost fifty degrees was suddenly much colder. A gust of wind pelted our faces with icy snow as we headed back to my apartment building.

            “I’ll never feel sorry for myself again,” King Lear said as he slithered past a giant holographic display offering a wild night of simulated sex with any movie star god or goddess from the last three hundred years for only two hundred energy credits. “To wake up not knowing what the day brings has to be one of the best feelings on earth.”

            “I never thought about it that way,” Mickey said. “Waking up hungry and without a plan is a good thing?”

            King Lear closed his eyes and resorted to his immense knowledge of Shakespeare. “In contrast to the wormlike submissiveness, and therefore the dishonor …”

The ground was shaking. We decided to take the long way home. The spider that towered above our part of the city appeared to be moving. I caught a glimpse of giant bristle covered legs moving between skyscrapers and flinging drifts of snow hundreds of feet into the air. Digging? The worst part of the alien Terrors was their seeming indifference to the world that they found themselves in. We couldn’t hurt them … and they ignored us. I wasn’t sure about the creatures drawing elements out of the ground. My thought patterns were largely un-programmed and it just didn’t seem right for some reason.

-------3-------

The winter of 2171 was the longest I’d ever endured in my life. The solar panels atop the building were coated with ice and no longer worked. I hadn’t heard from Juliet in months. She said Europe was becoming one giant glacier and now they had their own terrors. One of the creatures hatched right inside Buckingham Palace. The German Chancellor said nothing could be done. Her and Mitch were thinking of moving to Africa.  

My non-human friends and I huddled in a corner of my apartment operating the Kitchen Chef with a Nobelium battery that Mickey stole from an abandoned Twenty-Seventh Street sexual simulator. Sometimes I punched in twentieth century twenty-pound roast turkey just so we could stick our feet, in King Lear’s case tail into the steaming cavity to keep warm.

“Do you ever wonder where this is all going?” King Lear said one morning as we were deciding what to have for breakfast.

“I live for the day,” Mickey told him as he appeared from beneath a mountain of thermal reflective blankets.

“I mean every few days I go outside just to feel the sun on my scales and there are fewer and fewer humans about. I’d be surprised if there were a hundred people left in this entire city and hardly any pets.”

“If the slot system wasn’t jammed I’d be leaving too,” Mickey said. “I hear Florida is nice! Some days it gets up to sixty degrees and you can go outside without thermal wraps.”

“I hear there are swamps in Brazil,” King Lear mused. “I wonder what it feels like to swim in water that isn’t frozen on the surface?”

“I’ve wondered about that too,” I told them. “The world’s population has been declining for centuries ever since people decided that they could have the pleasures of sex without a human partner. But lately the loss of total life on Earth seems to be accelerating.”

“It’s the Terrors digging holes all over the city,” Mickey said. “That and the cold. People just don’t care anymore. It used to be that you had to work to eat but with Kitchen Chefs making any kind of food out of smoggy air that doesn’t happen.”

After eating European white truffles with a white wine sauce that made my toes curl we decided to listen to the radio. KRNR was playing music from the 1960’s. King Lear surprised us with a perfect pitch voice as he sang along with Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Mickey had been suggesting for weeks that we immerse ourselves in embryotic fluid and go into hibernation until spring. He had been scavenging and knew where we could find three chambers that still operated. I spent half the morning staring out the window. The snow was still coming down in blankets. I couldn’t see the Allegheny River only three blocks away. I said yes … and King Lear didn’t want to be alone so he came with us.

-------4-------

The embryotic chambers were in an underground complex on Mason Street. The machines were powered by sixteen massive self-charging Nobelium power plants guaranteed to keep a person in deep sleep for thousands of years. The time dial on the operation console went from one hour to infinity. I set all three for six months and climbed inside. The fluid was surprisingly warm. I heard King Lear hiss with delight and with his eyes closed I’m sure he imagined swimming in a swamp. Mickey kicked his legs a few times and then was still … like a cold mouse drowning in a bucket of hot water.

It seemed like I’d slept for centuries … and I had.

-------5-------

I was aware of the sound of rushing water and something reminded me of seeing Old Faithful erupting many years before with my husband Rod. It had to be just another in an endless series of dreams. I didn’t realize how many. Something was wrong and my eyes opened. I pressed the controls which allowed the chamber to drain opened the hatch and stepped outside. I was standing in water up to my ankles before I fell. A cool-air fan blew me dry and a vacuum sucked off the fluid residue. A post-hibernation transfusion began to regenerate my muscle tissue. After two sequences I could stand.

The chamber where Mickey had slept was empty. I could see where he’d tried to gnaw open the lock on my tube … he never was good at computer overrides. King Lear was still inside his chamber … but he was long dead. I never thought I’d cry for a snake but he was more than that. “The valiant never taste of death but once.”

A sequence readout on the operation console showed the embryotic chambers had reset themselves more than nine-thousand times over two thousand years before finally correcting. The huge Nobelium batteries that took up most of the floor space looked swollen and melted. I hadn’t eaten for two centuries and my bio medical wrist band still said I was 6.3 pounds overweight. Damn! I could hear a large pump running somewhere.

-------6-------

It only took a few hours to find my way out of the basement building but it felt like forever. I was a good swimmer … I had to be. Pittsburg was an ocean with the tops of structures sticking out of the water like iron and cement Islands. It was warm. I hoped to find Mickey … but it was impossible. The air felt like the medical center laundry rings that washed and dried your clothes when you walked through them. The terrors were everywhere and surely in the thousands … more like millions … billions … wading through the water with the upper parts of their bodies lost in the clouds. I was so small I’m sure they didn’t even know I was there.

I finally understood. The holes they were digging were for eggs. Our world now belonged to them and without a fight. I wondered about my daughter Juliet and also about Mickey … but two centuries had passed … It was impossible and I felt so alone. The Climate Scientists were right about global warming … they just had the time all wrong.

It was harder swimming underwater to the embryotic chambers but I made it - through the force of will. This had to be the end. I spent most of the day with my hand on King Lear’s scale-covered head. The pumps sounded like a heartbeat. He felt warm … almost as if he could still be alive. Let’s not go there.

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind …”

After carefully setting the controls … I had to be sure.  I climbed inside with my last friend. I tried to smile as the chamber filled with warm fluid but it was too hard. We as a species had too much life and lived too long. They say ideas and feelings are forever … moving forward and backward in the space-continuum like the pendulum on a universe-sized clock. If you are receiving this thought transmission from one Naomi Lyn Medford who was never really a part of the madness … then it must be true.

Eternity is a very long time.

THE END ?

COLONY

Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

By R. Peterson

Looking back, I have lived a long and abundant life with few regrets – of course I have them (regrets) everyone does but I try not to dwell on them. The only one that really bothers me about my life is it shouldn’t have turned out this way. As a world we went through too much over the millions of years of evolution to have something this horrible happen to me and everyone else … and the worst part is … we should have seen it coming.

I was born Naomi Lyn Medford, July 31^st. 2047 two days after the first international manned voyage to Mars launched from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. I was one of the last natural-womb births carried to full term in the emerging PRC (People’s Republic of California) and therefore was given no Genetic Modifications at that time. Cloverdale was one of the final cities in the Republic to be absorbed into the Global Electric Slot System, the elevated transportation rails were still under construction and my father actually drove my mother to a primitive health care complex on the grounds surface in an ancient internal combustion vehicle … no doubt operating the primitive weapon manually and swerving to avoid solar arrays and hydroponic farm clusters. It’s a wonder we all didn’t explode in a huge ball of fire or die from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Three months before my fifth birthday my mother received a grant from the International Culture Committee (16,000 units of pulse energy) and she used the credits to have my genes coded for patience, good health and longevity. At that time there were only three configurations available for non-military personnel.  Mother had enough credits left over to have a Master of Sub-Atomics Degree implanted in my cerebral cortex and bought a new 3D household printer.

My father operated 4.7 acres of ground that he inherited from his grandfather and although he utilized every inch of available space outside our elemental procurement structure our family barely made 65,000 credits of pulse energy a year from the fields of aging and inefficient solar panels. At age six I went to work at Gravitron West as a System’s Monitor third grade just to help make ends meet.

I was shy and awkward around my co-workers, most of them had at least one attractiveness modification to their genetic makeup for mating purposes, and I felt like a lingering black hole that reflected no social light at all. I was that way for many years.

I met my husband Rod Jennings at a company picnic. The management of Gravitron transported all full time employees to one of the oceanic domes orbiting the moon and we all had fun swimming naked in zero gravity and eating tiny Zonko fish that wandered into our nutrition tubes. He followed me to a beach area and lay beside me on the sand. I ask him if he would like to have sex and he said he’d tried me out on a Sensations 500 in the dressing room and enjoyed it very much but now he was exhausted. I was sad but kind of glad … those encounter simulators always make you appear much more skillful than you really are. I felt fine but my medical bracelet was ordering all my food prepared with three hundred fewer calories and 500 mg of citric acid because of an iron deficiency.

I was surprised to learn that Rod was also a womb baby and was also delivered in an ancient care facility in Missoula. He was six years older than me and actually remembered riding in a liquid propellant vehicle. We spent almost an hour talking about our past in Montana before it joined the Republic of California and the large eastern portion along with both Dakotas that the Sioux Indian Confederation once again took ownership of in 2053.

Rod’s A BETTER YOU medical hand-cuff sensed his skin was getting too hot from the artificial sunlight and so it started to rain in our portion of the sphere. I was flushed and pink all over but it wasn’t from the heat. We both ran to a tropical island shelter built to resemble a Polynesian dwelling from the twentieth century and that’s when he kissed me for the first time, right on the lips and no lingering endorphin discharge and static buildup from a simulator. I felt like some kind of lusty animal. Rod’s bracelet sounded an alarm and said there was a biological error in data transmission. Mine was flashing as we laughed. We both decided we liked the old ways … and from then on we were inseparable.

It was June 2^nd. 2078 at 11:58 AM just before lunch. We were in the company cafeteria and I had just pulled steaming hot exotic-mushroom Lasagna from the company’s Instant Chef (actually like all food in the latter 21^st. century the lasagna was just soybeans and water with artificial color, texture and flavor). I had a medical attachment encoded in my credit scan and I could still taste the reduction in calories and added vitamins even though the manufacturer of the top of the line food assembler insisted that was impossible. I guess I was born a few years too early to have my brain completely washed clean and remade by a machine. Someone had opened a hologram on one of the tables showing a news channel and we all watched with gaping mouths as a half dozen bio-metallic? looking spheres up to a mile in diameter floated from the sky and settled gently on the city of Pittsburg. In minutes the ensuing panic spread from The U.S. rustbelt areas to the Republic of California … and then to all parts of the world.

-------2-------

Pittsburg and most of Pennsylvania were evacuated twenty four hours later and the world watched in awe as for ten days American F419 (Zero Radiance) Nuclear Bombers blasted away at the invading globes, or Sfärers as the official international FREE NEWS in Stockholm was calling them, with no effect what-so-ever. They didn’t even get hot.

Scientists from as far away as Tasmania and the former British territory of Australia recently deeded to China as the providence of Dàishǔ came to examine the strange intersteller travelers and hopefully find out what they were. After six months of close examination and every available test known to science one thing became clear. The Sfärers posed no immediate threat, radiation or otherwise to the general population. They were just there.

The only damage to the area came from the U.S. highly selective nuclear strike force and of course any buildings or humans that happened to occupy the space before the impossibly large things landed. What was there where they are now was gone, vanished without carnage. A massive Red Maple which had shaded Davi Avenue for almost a century was found to be still growing, thriving even, with half its trunk and most of the branches on one side disappearing forever into the curved surface of the glowing metallic? orb. There was no apparent danger.

It took six years but the rusty city slowly returned. People can adjust to almost anything when there is no other place to go. The New Century Insurance building was cut a third of the way through the thirteenth through forty-seventh floors by the curved surface of one of the smaller spheres; interior decorators found creative ways of dealing with the impossible-to-remove obstacles and worked around them. The metallic half of one large office area was used to provide mood lighting in a reception area and provided a mega-challenging racket-ball surface in another. A decade later, the Sfärers were as much a part of the city as the Botanical Gardens and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

-------3-------

It was our first real vacation in years. Rod leased a new slot-car from the reorganized Ford Motor Company and the performance indicator on the holographic dash promised merging into a select spot on the super highway system in less than two seconds without any annoying G forces or motion sickness. I was nervous. I’d never traveled privately since highway speeds exceeded the sound barrier but Rod punched in our destination and a few moments later we were flying west on a knotted tinsel two-inch diameter thread above the city at 857 MPH.

My life partner obviously wanted to give me a thrill so he vanished our view of the car’s exterior and interior and we were suddenly hurtling through the sky like seated human projectiles. I felt like a witch flying with an invisible broomstick.

The view of the Midwest was spectacular. Most of the land was covered with solar collectors, people still have to make a living, but there were still hundreds of acres of wheat and corn set aside by preservation societies so that our past would not be forgotten. We saw some real pigs … I have the holograms.

The parking area at Yellowstone National Park was huge, over sixty thousand slot cars in one massive spiral facility. We couldn’t get close enough to see Old Faithful with our naked eyes, but we watched from a platform built on the shore edge. The famous geyser that had erupted every hour or so for thousands of years was now a continuous fountain throwing boiling liquid minerals three-hundred feet into the air and creating an ever-widening lake of hot water.

Native species were leading people around the park. Some opportunistic park ranger had the animals gene-coded for language adaptation and we watched as a highly vocal grizzly and another herbivore led a group of tourists through the park both of them speaking Japanese and fluent Mandarin Chinese. I offered the grizzly a marshmallow as the group went past but he shook his head and pointed to a Do Not Feed sign. I guess my mother was wrong … she told me the bears in the park loved the sugary treats.

-------4-------

It was the summer of 2112 when we decided to have a child. Rod wanted to have a natural birth but I figured at sixty-five years of age I was at the edge of my prime. The technology and facilities were also vanishing. If it wasn’t for that damn medical bracelet that kept me on a perpetual diet (it claimed I was still 6.3 lbs. overweight) I would have felt wonderful.

We’d been saving energy credits for years and opted for a Crystal Tube female conception with Rod’s nose and my ears, with a slow and careful  three-month incubation and gene-coded for theatrical comedy and drama. We both loved William Shakespeare’s words; some things are timeless.  “ … despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.”

Juliet was delivered to our apartment rooftop on September 11^th. 2113 by a chattering drone that was vinyl form-fitted to look like the legendary stork.

Our beautiful daughter started school at three years old and two weeks later emerged from the learning center with a master’s degree in singing and dance. It took every credit we had but it was worth it. Our beautiful daughter could emulate seventeen musical instruments with her voice and made Fred Astaire look like a blundering ox.

-------5-------

We were in the living area of our Pittsburg Apartment after eating … Juliet and I … May 11^th. 2137.  My daughter had Beef Wellington and I slowly gnawed on a combination Pizza, from the Home Chef next to the disposal, that tasted like old cardboard. No matter how many times I submerged my medical bracelet in scolding hot bath water it still decided how my food at home or in a restaurant was to be created and how many calories to subtract. Rod was on business out west and we both missed him. Juliet was entertaining me with an ear-splitting rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s classic masterpiece Purple Haze using only her mouth and her fingernails on a decorative concrete wall that made the titanium implants in my left leg do some kind of crazy African dance.

Of course we felt the trembling. It was the worst earthquake I’d ever felt or have ever felt since. We both thought it was close perhaps somewhere on the east coast … New Jersey? We were shocked when we found out it was Yellowstone in the far west … exploding from beneath the Earth’s surface in one of the largest natural catastrophes in history. The Sioux nation lands and most of the Republic of California were instantly vaporized. They never found Rod’s body.  Along with eight million other souls, he’d been wiped from the face of this planet. We stayed in the apartment for weeks … ate little and cried.

-------6-------

Three years later Juliet decided to move in with her boyfriend who lived in London. It was as if my greatest fears had come true … I was alone. I couldn’t show her how I felt … she needed her own life. I watched as she boarded the trans-Atlantic slot lines in Boston. Her and Mitch crossed the ocean at seven times the speed of sound and were home in his apartment in less than an hour.

I spent the next seven years feeding ducks at the local zoo. I had names for all my favorites … Donald, Daffy and Dudley. My hometown and everything I remembered was gone. The world had moved on. Most nights I visited with Juliet via a hologram but it wasn’t the same … you can’t hug a beam of light.

The loaf of cracked wheat bread cost 27 credits (everything real is very expensive) but I know Daffy enjoyed it. I could see the largest of the Sfärers looming over the city skyline like a huge beach ball glowing in the morning light. I thought the sound was lightning at first (there wasn’t a cloud in the sky) … then hundreds of slot car horns began to honk. Somewhere emergency sirens began to blast. Instead of stopping the noise expanded. I covered my ears but couldn’t look away. The huge cracks in the sides of the glowing alien spheres were un-mistakable … military aircraft filled the skies.

The Sfärers were hatching …

TO BE CONTINUED …

HER DARK DAYS part 3

Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

“Mistakes once made … have the capacity to spread like fire in a high wind.”

Part 3

By R. Peterson

            The woman who couldn’t remember who she was knew something was wrong as the long black limousine carried her through the streets of Manhattan. The name “Johnny” awakened in her a memory of pain and regret but she knew it wasn’t because she thought her infant son had perished in a swimming pool. The name was connected to the memory of the man throwing clam shells on the beach, and somehow she knew that, as surely as she knew that “Jane” wasn’t her real name.  She glanced over at the well-dressed man sitting in the backseat with her and knew deep down he was not her husband. Why was he lying to her and why had he shown her photographs that obviously had to be fake? The name he had mentioned had caused her to rush blindly into something without really looking.  What have I done? The mistakes I’ve made seem to be spreading like wildfire.

            “I want to go back to the bakery,” she told him.

            “What! After searching for you for a full week and finally finding you? No way I’m letting you go. Don’t you want to see your son … Johnny?”

            “I have no son named Johnny,” J.J. told him. “A woman would remember if she had a son … and you’re not my husband. I would remember something like that too.”

Edward Coffee (Fast Eddie Black) started to pull out the photos he kept in his wallet J.J. told him to put them away. “Stop the car and let me out,” she demanded.

            “You’re not yourself … you don’t know what you’re doing!”

            “You’re right on both counts … but I’m not going anywhere with you!” J.J. opened the door on her side and Eddie grabbed her just before she flung herself out. The long black limo careened sideways and came to a stop alongside a taxi on Park Avenue. “What the hell are you looking at?” Eddie yelled at the bearded driver who was staring at him from beneath a large green Sikh turban.

            “Help me!” J.J. screamed. The man turned away, shaking his head. Infidel women in America have no respect or obedience to their men.

            “You need to put her out,” Eddie told the limousine’s driver and moments later she leaned over the front seat with a hypodermic needle in her hand. Her left arm was in a cast obviously it had been broken.

            “I should never have gotten mixed up with you,” Benji told Eddie as he held a screaming J.J. down and Benji reluctantly prepared to give her an injection. “You have over a hundred beautiful girls working for you that are forced to do anything you ask … and you’re never satisfied.”

            “Make sure you give her enough to knock her out but I want her alert when I return from business downtown.”

J.J.’s head swam as the drug began to take effect. Minutes later the limo came to a stop in front of a fifty-story apartment building with iron railed balconies on each level. “We’re not going up there are we?” J.J. pleaded. She was dizzy and felt drunk as she craned her neck to look upward. “I have acrophobia!”

            “Nonsense,” Eddie told her as he and Benji dragged her past the doorman, who discreetly looked away, and to the elevators. “What’s to fear? You’re home now, Baby!”

-------2-------

            She woke up in a round Abdolhay Parnia bed covered in black chinchilla.  It was night and only city-light came in from the floor to ceiling windows. Thank God she was alone and still dressed! A large framed photograph on a Chateau Beauvais bedroom chest showed her and Edward on what looked like the deck of a very expensive yacht. A close-up inspection of her face looked vaguely familiar, but she still didn’t recognize the black man with his arm measuring her waist … who claimed to be her husband.

Obviously this apartment occupied an entire floor of the building. J.J. waded through white shag carpet that tickled her ankles as she wandered through a dozen rooms looking for the front door. It was locked from the outside and beating her fists and yelling did no good. After crying for what seemed like hours she decided to explore the apartment.  Paintings by Andrew Dasburg and Arthur Dove covered the walls and they didn’t look like reproductions. Bright colors surrounded by soft tones. More photos this time her Edward and baby Johnny in what looked like a church! An eighty-six inch flat-screen TV with a dozen surround sound speakers covered almost an entire wall but J.J. couldn’t get any response from the remote controls. Wedding pictures? She didn’t recognize any of her attendants. If Edward were really her husband why did he have to keep her prisoner? Their baby was cute …but she didn’t recognize him … what kind of mother was she?

She felt like she was suffocating, luckily the access to the balcony was unlocked. J.J. almost fainted when she walked to the edge of the iron railing. It was forty-seven floors to the street below and the heavy night-traffic looked like specks of glitter floating both directions in a dark rain gutter. She took a deep breath, stepped back quickly and closed both glass doors. Her legs were shaking.

J.J. was sitting on the bed with her head in both hands when she heard the front door unlock.  How could she have been so stupid? The girl driver of the limo came in with a bundle wrapped in her arms. “Johnny fell asleep waiting for you,” Benji said. “I thought you would like to see your son!”

“He’s cute but he’s not mine,” J.J. told her. “I don’t know what’s going on here but I’m leaving!”

“I can’t let you do that,” Benji said as she placed the sleeping toddler on the bed. A gun was suddenly in her hand. “Eddie will kill me if I mess this up!”

“What’s with you people?” J.J. screamed. “If I’d ever been married and had a child that I would remember!”

“You still don’t know do you?” Benji said still pointing the gun. “Of course! Those Italian immigrants who found you don’t believe in radio or television! You haven’t seen the news have you?”

J.J. shook her head.

Benji reached behind the giant TV screen where a power-strip had been unplugged. Moments later she was scanning through channels until she found a news station. The volume was up very high. She didn’t try to adjust it. “I’m sorry,” she yelled. “I was supposed to make sure you couldn’t watch any of this but I just can’t leave you here with no memories. Do me a favor, if Eddie returns … tell him you found the power cord and plugged it in yourself.”

-------3-------

J.J. heard the front door close and lock and Benji was gone with the toddler. A commercial for 2018 Dodge trucks was just finishing and the nightly news came on.

            Authorities in New York City are now in the second week of the investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Academy Award winning actress Robyn Janette. A police spokesman earlier confirmed that Warner Brothers action star Brent Andrews had been taken into custody as a person of interest in connection with her disappearance. A film clip showed the doorman being interviewed in front of J.J.’s apartment building. “Miss Janette ran out of the building upset and crying,” he said. “A few minutes later Brent Andrews came out of the building with blood on his face and ran in the same direction. I should have never let that bastard into the apartment but he had a recording of him and her making a date. He said it was going to be a surprise.  J.J. if you’re still alive … I am so sorry!”

J.J. was so shocked she almost fell to the floor. The memories came back to her in a rush … who she was … a superstar … and everything about her glistening career … and also what she had done. “Johnny! I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she walked across the room. “I live on a high hill and once you start a stupid mistake rolling down it just keeps picking up more and more stupid like a growing snowball and there doesn’t seem to be any way to stop it.”

She was deathly calm as she opened the doors and stepped outside. “I now know who I am … and why I didn’t want to live … not without real love.” She tried to laugh but knew it would take hours of rehearsing. “I would have been better off not knowing. Johnny, my dear Johnny! I only hope I didn’t hurt you.”

A strong breeze was blowing on the balcony and J.J. felt like she might be swept over the edge. She didn’t care. She could still hear the audio from the TV blaring inside, this time it was Brent Andrews giving an interview as he came outside the police building with his lawyers. She turned to look and found that she couldn’t hate him … not like she hated herself.

            “… suspect Andrews was reportedly released today on one million dollars bond …”

“Sure I had sex with her,” Andrews blurted to over sixty-million viewers.  J.J. cried real tears as she climbed onto the railing.  “But it was consensual. After all, I’m on the cover of Time Magazine as the world’s sexiest man. I mean what actress wouldn’t jump at the chance to say they slept with me?”

            “Did you kill her?”

            “Of course not!”

            “Then why was there blood on your face?”

Andrew’s lawyers cut the reporters off with a NO COMMENT as they whisked their client into a waiting limo.

J.J. tried to stand upright on the railing but her fingers were frozen tight and she couldn’t let go. It was consensual sex … almost. It was her fault. She was a stupid bitch. Nausea swept over her like a first time drunk. Suicide is never as easy as it looks in the movies. If I just drop over the edge my falling weight will pull my hands loose. I had everything. All my princess stories that I dreamed about as a young girl growing up in Cloverdale came true … and then I burned the damn fairy tale book and danced on the ashes. I didn’t want to remember who I was and what I’d done. I still don’t. How could any person be that stupid?

She remembered the look in Johnny’s eyes just before he turned and walked out of her bedroom almost ten days before and the pain in her heart came back … Astonishment? Sadness? Betrayal? The sound of the keys as he dropped them on the table. She really had hurt him … even more than herself!

There was a banging sound on the front door and Zanobi Esposito’s voice yelling about the bastard Edward Coffee and how his Mafioso friends had beat the street thug into talking. They had found her and were only waiting for someone to unlock the door.

-------4-------

J.J. released her fingers and stood up. It was easier this time. She felt like she was on the deck of a sailing boat during rough seas at night … looking for her home lights in the dark. The busy street almost five-hundred feet down seemed to tilt from side to side. There were police lights far below flashing in front of the building.

A voice like a warm blanket on a freezing cold night suddenly came from the television. An international reporter was interviewing Johnny Lang from a movie location in Spain. J.J. felt her heart flutter the way it had whenever he walked into a room. There was no other man in the world like him. She turned slowly toward his voice hoping to catch a glimpse of his dreamy image one last time. As always, the sight of him took her breath away. She stretched her arms to keep her balance.

            “Bad times are a part of life and Robyn Janette is a light that will burn forever,” Johnny said softly. “Whatever happens to her she has the guts, ability and determination to soar high above it.”

J.J. suddenly felt like a young girl with hope and dreams aplenty on the long road before her. Johnny Lang was the only man in the world who could ever make her feel this way. She had to do right by him. He has to know that you will love him forever … even more than life itself.

            “There have been reports that you and her have broken up. Superstar Brent Andrews has admitted sleeping with her. If she is found alive … is there any chance that you two will get back together?”

A sudden gust of wind prevented J.J. from hearing Johnny’s last words clearly. More banging on the door. What did he say? Why did that damn reporter have to ask him that? It was so close! Did I hear him right … does it really matter?

The rushing air sounded like the audience applauding at her first High School performance … as Jean Janette Robinson slowly turned, closed her eyes and stepped off the railing.

THE END.

HER DARK DAYS part 2

Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

Part 2

By R. Peterson

J.J. often didn’t know who she was when she first woke up; it usually took a minute. Acting for eighteen hours a day under bright studio lights will affect a person that way. This time however the mind-storm went unnoticed. She was sprawled halfway in the street next to Washington Square Park in lower Manhattan and knew only that she hated who she was. The Academy award winning actress and Grammy nominee’s Fifth Avenue apartment was ten blocks north but she didn’t know that. Her mind had gone astray in a nightmarish urban jungle of gloom, remorse and self-destruction.

The elderly man wearing a ragged fedora and a stained overcoat who stopped while others walked past thought she looked familiar but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t go to the theatre or movies and had only a tiny AM radio in his apartment tuned to an Italian language station. Possibly the granddaughter of a friend? “È una bella botta in testa,” he said as he helped her to stand and carefully touched her bleeding head. “Forse dovrei trovare un telefono … so you can see a doctor?” She was a little surprised that she understood him.

“I don’t want un'ambulanza o un medico,” J.J. replied in Italian wiping filthy hair out of her eyes. “I want to die.”

“We all will go when the master calls,” the man said sadly. “Why enter a race? My name is Zanobi Esposito. Perhaps I can help you?”

“Unless you have a razorblade, a gun, or a full bottle of Vicodin in your coat pocket I don’t see how,” J.J. told him while raking cigarette butts and tiny bits of dog feces out of her hair with her fingers.

“Foolish talk from such a … pretty … young lady. Tell me your name and I won’t mention what you said to your poor mother!”

“My poor mother and father are both dead … and … I don’t know who I am.” J.J. found herself stunned by the sudden knowledge, but she didn’t think being an orphan was what her trouble was. She had lost someone very dear to her … but just couldn’t remember who. A fleeting image of a breathtakingly handsome man throwing a clam-shell down a sandy beach and laughing together with him at fighting seagulls made her insides blister but she didn’t know why. Was he dead too? What happened? The woman with no name couldn’t think about that right now … it was just too painful.

“Frost on a few vines and you want to burn your fields!” Zanobi took off his hat and brushed arthritic fingers through his greying hair before he sighed. “The people selling tickets for the ship lied when they told us America was a land of goat-herds and honey.”

“Oh, the dreams are here alright,” J.J. told him. “But if you don’t have enough cash in your pockets those goats transform into demon-herds and you’re apt to get stung.”

Zanobi looked at the torn jeans and the sneakers she was wearing with the laces untied. The glittery but dirty yellow t-shirt with a screen print of I LOVE NY on the front looked expensive but then everything in Manhattan did. He took her hand as they crossed 6^th. Avenue and he led her west into Greenwich Village. “I’m sure someone must know where you belong.”

-------2-------

Zanobi Esposito led the bewildered young woman down several streets in the village and no one knew her although several said she looks familiar. “She looks like the girl who played Jane in Tarzan,” a woman selling Hobo sandwiches suggested.

 “Nah,” a man putting spicy mustard on a roll corrected her. “Robyn Janette has a robust figure. This poor woman looks like she works in a broom closet.”

“Robust? Look at the face - not her boobs … you guys are disgusting!”

“If they didn’t want us to look they wouldn’t film so many close-ups of a young girl running half-naked through the jungle!”

“Anyone know who this young lady is? She seems to have lost her memory!” Zanobi shouted to several people across the street.

Zanobi and J.J. crossed the street and after stopping at a café to get a sandwich and using the telephone the Italian immigrant decided to try a different section of the village. “Don’t worry,” he told her, “you belong somewhere … everybody does! If we can’t find your life we’ll just have to make you a new one … and find you a job and get you a place to stay.”

“I don’t want a job … and I don’t want to live.” J.J. began to cry.

-------3-------

A smiling black brother wearing a six thousand dollar Brioni suit and eight-hundred dollar shoes watched and listened from a café service entrance next to the What a Ride! taxi parking area. Eddie had just finished slamming a seventeen-year old runaway’s head into a wall for holding back fifty from her last three-hundred dollar fare. He’d started by twisting her arm just a little. Girls from Kansas are always so slow to learn. Now a dishwasher would have to be paid to clean the blood from the brick. Eddie forgot about his troublesome intern when he recognized the superstar and heard the word amnesia mentioned. He slipped the brass knuckles back into his jacket. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. Of course Eddie didn’t come forward or say anything; that wouldn’t be good business.

Edward Coffee (Fast Eddie Black) was always on the lookout for opportunities. Most of his legitimate money came from his café and from securing models for the hundreds of form artists in Greenwich Village just one canvas away from success. The illegal uses he found for his unemployed girls (and sometimes boys) made a thousand times that amount. The taxi service was by appointment only and on a Saturday night every hack was continually in service. If the woman wasn’t Robyn Janette she was her identical twin … even without makeup and with sidewalk smeared on her face.

Three of Robyn’s golden-framed movie posters graced Eddie’s bedroom walls including her Oscar winning movie Escape the Night and he had over two hundred publicity photos downloaded to his smart phone. A few of his favorites had been photo-shopped by desperate computer artists into full-frontal nudes. Robyn had a tiny mole in the exact same place as this woman on her lower left cheek and a few others in less viewed places. This was no lookalike. Eddie thumbed through some of his collected images now. To say this sexy entertainer was an obsession was an understatement.

Eddie used his iPhone to call several associates. People had to be warned. No one in the direction the pair walked would give them any help at all … or else! Then he texted an employee who drove one of his fleet of custom equipped taxis (fold-down back seats) and with special dark tinted windows – currently at a local carwash being cleaned - apt clean/class - stock expensive size 3 bitch / white-blow no cuts ASAP This would get things rolling. He’d give Benji Jets more detailed instructions later. The young blonde from Seattle had been moved from back seat entertainment to tour-driver because of a broken arm. If the bitch messed up this time, or if he just decided to have some fun, she was in the river … she wouldn’t be the first. Now all Eddie had to do was come up with a business plan.

As J.J. and Zanobi walked away, Fast Eddie followed … sniffing, wiping his nose, cool as rain. A smiling African American just off the boat driving a BMW with fresh paint and a new serial number. Praise the Lord and show no frown! There do be a God in New York Town! And Eddie wasn’t talking about his friend Slicer the president of East Harlem Crips. He wasn’t going to lose sight of this particular sweet-thing … No way! This was a dream-ride sent to him from heaven … waiting just down the street to be jimmied, hot-wired and driven all over the city.

-------4-------

J.J. may not have known who she was but she still was perceptive to her surroundings. As she and Zanobi grew near his Bleeker street apartment building, people became friendlier although none seemed to speak English. Many of the residents seemed to know him; some even called him “Pappa” Esposito. “The people in your neighborhood like you,” J.J. said.

“What’s not to like,” Zanobi told her. “You treat people with respect and they do right by you.”

It wasn’t just that the people liked him, J.J. detected an underlying sense of esteem from his neighbors that made her look at the old man wearing scuffed shoes a ragged fedora and a stained overcoat in a new way. “This is the building where I live. Don’t worry, mamma knows you’re coming.”

J.J. was surprised at the elegance of the apartment building. She expected dark hallways in a shabby tenement overflowing with children and trash cans. Where Zanobi lived was modern and elegant. Mrs. Esposito met them at the elevator. “Look at that nasty bump on your head! And he has you walking around half the city!” She ushered J.J. mother hen like into a large, white-carpeted apartment tastefully furnished in modern glass and chrome.

J.J. noticed the bright artwork hanging on the walls … it looked original and expensive. Mrs. Esposito noticed her amazement. “Mio marito lavora molto duramente! Do we have to live like hobos?”

The well-dressed gentleman opening what looked like a medical bag in the kitchen took J.J. by surprise. “Have a seat,” he told her. “While I have a look at your pretty head.” J.J. stared at Zanobi accusingly.

            “What? I knew you would refuse be taken to a hospital … so I had someone come here!”

            “I didn’t know doctors made house calls anymore!” J.J. winced as the doctor cleaned the bump on her head with an alcohol soaked tissue.

            “He’s not just any doctor,” Mrs. Esposito corrected her. “Benny is finest Neurosurgeon in all of Manhattan.”

            “Mr. Esposito and I go back a long way,” the doctor who introduced himself as Benito Russo told J.J. as he tracked the movement of her pupils with a small light, “All the way from Sicily! Pappa has done many kind things for my family over the years … it’s a small thing for me to come here and look after one of his friends.”

            “I’m afraid I don’t know if I have any money!” J.J. began to get worried.

Dr. Russo allowed his voice grow gruff with mock sternness. “A smile is my fee for house-calls … and I demand to be paid at once!”

J.J. managed a small grin and Zanobi applauded. “Now! That’s more like it!”

            “I don’t detect any apparent temporal lobe damage that would cause your memory loss,” Dr. Russo told her gently. “It’s my opinion that you probably don’t remember who you are … because you don’t want to.”

            “Why would I do that?” J.J. had a feeling that he was correct.

            “Sometimes people have things done to them or do things to others that are so horrible that they want to forget … so they do.”

The misty image of a man throwing a clam shell down a sandy beach flashed through J.J.’s mind and then was quickly gone. “I remember something … but it was a happy memory!”

            “It’s like after someone you know very well dies,” Dr. Russo told her. “We only remember the best things about them.”

Sadly that seemed to make sense to the woman who didn’t know who she was. Whatever her life had been before - it was now gone forever … she had overwhelming feelings of guilt and regret. Had she hurt someone? Had she done something illegal? Were the police looking for her? It didn’t seem likely but it was still probably best to bury the past. “I do want to live,” she told Zanobi. “Thank you for helping me … and perhaps I can find a job and hope my memory returns!”

-------5-------

Fast Eddie Black had spent a week learning everything he could about Robyn Janette from her rise to Hollywood stardom to her current romance with newcomer Johnny Lang.  Word on the street was they had had some kind of blowout. Now he looked up and down the hallway as two of his associates, Bill (Beef Boy) Nelson and Lester Holmes kicked a door open on the sixth floor of a shabby nine-story tenant building. They didn’t bother knocking.

A sickly pale Steven Bates, and a swarm of circling flies, jumped from a torn and stained sofa and made a dash together for the bathroom – the only room in the filthy apartment with a locking door. Lester grabbed him by the neck and body-slammed him onto a rug covered with cigarette butts, wood splinters, beer-soaked upholstery-padding and stale popcorn.

The Walking Dead was playing on a battered black and white TV and Beef Boy punched his huge fist through the bulky picture tube without wincing. “Relatives of yours?”

“I’ll pay you the money in the morning! I promise!” Steven squirmed as Lester pinned his head to the floor garbage with his foot.

“Damn! Don’t you ever clean this stink-hole up?” Eddie covered his nose with a silk handkerchief.

“I will tomorrow,” Steven bawled, “right after I get you your money!”

“You still have that photo equipment … or did it all go shooting up your arm?”

Steven pointed to a digital camera covered with a dirty dishtowel on a tripod and a color printer next to a battered Apple computer. “Yes I still have them,” Steven closed his eyes. “The hock-shop will only give me a hundred bucks for everything … and it’s my only way to make any money.”

            “You still have those pictures you took of Robyn Janette at the airport and in the park? The ones nobody would buy because they looked too domestic?”

            “Yeah sure!” Steven said feeling better. “I must have several hundred. I followed her for two weeks the last time she came to town. You want me to make more Photoshop nudies for you?”

Eddie handed Steven a stack of photos of himself. “I want you to put me in the pictures and make them look real … no dirty stuff … washing the family car, dining together on a cruise ship that sort of thing. Oh, and a baby. I want us to have a baby together. I want it to look like me and Robyn Janette are the happiest married couple you’ve ever seen … you got that?”

            “I can make you a whole photo album … wedding pictures with all the attendants and the honeymoon … you want a cruise to the Caribbean? I can do that!” Steven felt born again.

            “You have a week,” Eddie told him. “You do a good job and maybe I’ll forget about the money you owe … Hell! I might even throw in a taxi ride!”

Beef shook his head. “Not until after I’m finished,” he said.

            “You won’t be sorry,” Steven promised. “Her own mother will think you two are married!”

-------6-------

            It had been a week since Zanobi took J.J. home and he had begun to think of her as his own daughter. Mrs. Esposito had two of her younger friends give the girl, who couldn’t remember who she was, a complete makeover cutting the gum out of her hair making it short and putting in blonde highlights. “As long as you don’t know who you are … you might as well look pretty!”

J.J. even had a new job working in a local bakery. Zanobi had many friends ready to do anything for him and slowly the pain of J.J.’s past, whatever that was, was beginning to slip away.

One morning J.J. who everyone now called Jane, somehow the name seemed familiar, was just carrying a large pan filled with Danish muffins to the rack to cool when a well-dressed black man came in the shop. “Where on Earth have you been?” he demanded as his eyes filled with tears.

            “Right here,” J.J. was stunned. “You know me?”

            “Of course I do … you’re my wife,” Eddie told her.

            “I don’t remember you,” J.J. said dropping the still warm pan on the counter.

            “We’ve been married for two years … we have a son,” Eddie looked frustrated as he tried to convince her. Then he opened his wallet and showed her the pictures. “You disappeared after Johnny’s accident and we’ve looked everywhere for you!”

The name Johnny sent cold shivers down J.J.’s spine. She knew the name was dear to her and somehow connected to her guilt and memory troubles.

            “You thought our son had drowned in the family swimming pool while you were supposed to be watching him … but by some miracle the doctors brought him back!”

            “Johnny’s alive?” J.J. was already taking off her apron. All she knew was that she had to find him.

            “He’s home from the hospital and off from life support … he’s been asking for his mamma.”

            “I’ve got to see Johnny,” Her head was swimming. She didn’t remember much but she remembered the name Johnny. J.J. burst into tears as Eddie followed her outside to the waiting limo.

            “Don’t worry,” Eddie said under his breath as he flipped the window sign on the shop to CLOSED and then pushed her into the back seat. J.J.  was bawling tears of joy. “When I get tired of you, you’re going to see lots of Johnny’s.”

And the long black car sped away …

TO BE CONTINUED …