Complete Stories (106 page)

“Mom?” whispered Jack.

There was a slight noise from the closet.

Jack swung open the closet door. No sign of his mother—but, wait, there was a big lump on the top shelf, covered over with a silk scarf.

“Is that you, Mom?” said Jack, scared what he might find.

The paisley scarf slid down. Jack’s mother was curled up on the shelf in her nightgown, her eyes wide and staring.

“Those horrible children,” she said in a tiny, strained voice. “They butchered their parents in bed. I hid.”

“Hurry, Mrs. Vaughan,” said Gretchen. She was standing against the wall, peeking out the back window. “They’re starting up the grill.”

And, yes, Jack could smell the lighter fluid and the smoke. Four little Pig Chefs in the making. A smallish alien craft slid past the window, wedging itself down into the backyard.

Somewhat obsessively, Jack went into his bedroom and fetched his packed suitcase before leading Gretchen and his Mom to the front door. It just about cost them too much time. For as the three of them crept down the front porch steps they heard the slamming of the house’s back door and the drumming of little footsteps.

Faster than it takes to tell it, Jack, Gretchen, and Jessie Vaughan were in Jessie’s car, Jack at the wheel, slewing around the corner. They slowed only to pick up Tonel and Vincente, and then they were barreling out of town on Route 501.

“Albert was saying we should come to the Casa Linda and help him,” said Gretchen. “He said he’d be watching from the roof. He said he needed five pure hearts to pray with him. Six of us in all. We’re pure, aren’t we?”

Jack wouldn’t have stopped, but as it happened, there was a roadblock in the highway right by the Casa Linda. The police all had pointed ears. The coffee in their cups was continually swirling. And the barbeque pit beside the Banana Split was fired up. A gold UFO was just now angling down for a landing.

“I’m purely ready to pray my ass off,” said Vincente.

When they jumped out of the car, the police tried to take hold of the five, to hustle them toward the barbeque. But a sudden flight of the little angels distracted the pig-eared cops. The tiny winged beings beat at the men’s cruel faces, giving the five pure hearts a chance.

Clutching his suitcase like a talisman, Jack led Gretchen, Jessie, Tonel, and Vincente across the parking lot to the Casa Linda. They pounded up the motel’s outdoor concrete stairs, all the way to the roof. The pointy-eared police were too busy with the next carload of victims to chase after them. Over by the Banana Split, hungry mantises were debarking from the gold donut.

They found Albert Chesney at the low parapet of the motel roof, staring out across the rolling hills of Killeville. He had a calm, satisfied expression. His prophecies were coming true.

“Behold the city of sin,” he said, gesturing toward Killeville’s pitifully sparse town center, its half dozen worn old office buildings. “See how the mighty have been brought low.”

“How do we make it stop, Albert?” asked Gretchen.

“Let us join hands and pray,” said Chesney.

So they stood there, the early morning breeze playing upon the six of them—Albert, Gretchen, Jack, Jessie, Tonel, and Vincente. There were maybe three dozen toroidal UFOs scattered around Killeville by now. And beside each of them was a plume of greasy smoke.

Jack hadn’t prayed in quite some time. As boarders in the rectory, they’d had to go to Reverend Langhorne’s church every Sunday, but the activity had struck him as exclusively social, with no connection to any of the deep philosophical and religious questions he might chew over with friends, like, “Where did all this come from?” or, “What happens after I die?”

But now, oh yes, he was praying. And it’s safe to say the five others were praying too. Something like, “Save us, save the earth, make the aliens go away, dear God please help.”

As they prayed, the mothlike angels got bigger. The prayers were pumping energy into the good side of the Shekinah Glory. Before long the angels were the size of people. They were more numerous than Jack had initially realized.

“Halle-friggin-lujah!” said Vincente, and they prayed some more.

The angels grew to the size of cars, to the size of buildings. The Satanic flying donuts sprang into the air and fired energy bolts at them. The angels grew yet taller, as high as the sky. Their faces were clear, solemn, terrible to behold. The evil UFOs were helpless against them, puny as gnats. Peeking through his fingers, Jack saw one of the alien craft go flying across the horizon toward an angel, and saw the impact as the great holy being struck with a hand the size of a farm. The shattered bits of the UFO shrank into nothingness, as if melting in the sun. It was only a matter of minutes until the battle was done. The closest angel fixed Jack with an unbearable gaze, then made a gesture that might have been a benediction. And now the great beings rotated in some unseen direction and angled out of view.

“Praise God!” said Albert Chesney when it was done.

“Praise God,” echoed Jack. “But that’s enough for now, Lord. Don’t have the whole Last Judgment today. Let me go to college first. Give us at least six more years.”

And it was so.

A Greyhound bus drew even with the Casa Linda and pulled over for a stop. BLACKSBURG, read the sign above the bus window. Jack bid the quickest of farewells to his mother and his friends, and then, whooping and yelling, he ran down the stairs with his suitcase and hopped aboard.

The Killeville Barbeque Massacre trials dragged on through the fall. Jack and Albert had to testify a few times. Most of the Pig Chef defendants got off with temporary insanity pleas, basing their defense on smeel-poisoning, although no remaining samples of smeel could be found. The police officers were of course pardoned, and Danny Dank got the death penalty. The cases of Banks, Price, Sydnor, and Rainey were moot—for with their appetites whetted by the flesh of the children’s parents, the mantises had gone ahead and eaten the four fledgling Pig Chefs.

The trials didn’t draw as much publicity as one might have expected. The crimes were simply too disgusting. And the Killeville citizenry had collective amnesia regarding the UFOs. Some of the Day Six Synodites remembered, but the Synod was soon split into squabbling sub-sects by a series of schisms. With his onerous parole conditions removed in return for his help with the trials, Albert Chesney left town for California to become a computer game developer.

Jessie Vaughan got herself ordained as a deacon and took over the pastoral duties at St. Anselm’s church. At Christmas Jessie celebrated the marriage of Jack to Gretchen Karst—who was indeed pregnant. Tonel took leave from the Navy to serve as best man.

Gretchen transferred into Virginia Polytechnic with Jack for the spring term. The couple did well in their studies. Jack majored in Fluid Engineering and Gretchen in Computer Science. And after graduation they somehow ended up moving into the rectory with Jessie and opening a consulting firm in Killeville.

As for the men in the back room of the country club—they completely dropped out of sight. The prudent reader would be well advised to keep an eye out for mibracc in his or her hometown. And pay close attention to the fluid dynamics of coffee, juice, and alcoholic beverages. Any undue rotation could be a sign of smeel.

The end is near.

============

Written in May, 2004.

Infinite Matrix
, December 2005.

For the years 1980–1986, I lived with my wife and kids in Lynchburg, Virginia, the home of televangelist Jerry Falwell and headquarters of his right-wing “Moral Majority” political action group. I ended up writing a number of stories about Lynchburg, transreally dubbing it Killeville.

During our final years in Lynchburg, I was proud to be a member of the Oakwood Country Club—it was a pleasant place and the dues were modest enough that even an unemployed cyberpunk writer could afford them. I was always intrigued by a group of men who sat drinking bourbon and playing cards in a small windowless room off the men’s locker room—isolated from the civilizing force of the fair sex. Somehow I formulated the idea that at night the men were rolled up like apricot leather and stored in glass carboys of whiskey that sat within their “golf bags.” I was thinking of a power-chord story somewhat analogous to Phil Dick’s “The Father Thing.” The power chord here is “alien-controlled pod people.” Another archetype I wanted to touch upon is the Pig Chef, an icon that’s always disturbed me. I wanted to push this concept to its logical conclusion, so that everyone would finally understand the Pig Chef’s truly evil nature!

I think the story is funny and logical, but it’s also so mad and strange (ah, Killeville!) that I had trouble getting anyone to publish it. Fortunately, the writer and editor Eileen Gunn gets my sense of humor. Like my earlier story “Jenna and Me,” this weird tale found a home in Eileen’s online magazine
Infinite Matrix
at www.infinitematrix.net, which was, as long as it lasted, something like a clear channel border radio station.

“There’s a new way for me to find out what you’re thinking,” said Amy, sitting down across from her coworker Rick in the lab’s sunny cafeteria. She looked very excited, very pleased with herself.

“You’ve hired a private eye?” said Rick. “I promise, Amy, we’ll get together for something one of these days. I’ve been busy, is all.” He seemed uncomfortable at being cornered by her.

“I’ve invented a new technology,” said Amy. “The mindlink. We can directly experience each other’s thoughts. Let’s do it now.”

“Ah, but then you’d know way too much about me,” said Rick, not wanting the conversation to turn serious. “A guy like me, I’m better off as a mystery man.”

“The real mystery is why you aren’t laid off,” said Amy tartly. “You need friends like me, Rick. And I’m dead serious about the mindlink. I do it with a special quantum jiggly-doo. There will be so many apps.”

“Like a way to find out what my boss thinks he asked me to do?”

“Communication, yes. The mindlink will be too expensive to replace the cell phone —at least for now—but it opens up the possibility of reaching the inarticulate, the mentally ill, and, yeah, your boss. Emotions in a quandary? Let the mindlink techs debug you!”

“So now I’m curious,” said Rick. “Let’s see the quantum jiggly-doo.”

Amy held up two glassine envelopes, each holding a tiny pinch of black powder. “I have some friends over in the heavy hardware division, and they’ve been giving me microgram quantities of entangled pairs of carbon atoms. Each atom in
this
envelope of mindlink-dust is entangled with an atom in this
other
one. The atom-pairs’ information is coherent but locally inaccessible—until the atoms get entangled with observer systems.”

“And if you and I are the observers, that puts our minds in synch, huh?” said Rick. “Do you plan to snort your black dust off the cafeteria table or what?”

“Putting it on your tongue is fine,” said Amy, sliding one of the envelopes across the tabletop.

“You’ve tested it before?”

“First I gave it to a couple of monkeys. Bonzo watched me hiding a banana behind a door while Queenie was gone, and then I gave the dust to Bonzo and Queenie, and Queenie knew right away where the banana was. I tried it with a catatonic person too. She and I swallowed mindlink dust together and I was able to single out the specific thought patterns tormenting her. I walked her through the steps in slow motion. It really helped her.”

“You were able to get medical approval for that?” said Rick, looking dubious.

“No, I just did it. I hate red tape. And now it’s time for a peer-to-peer test. With you, Rick. Each of us swallows our mindlink dust and makes notes on what we see in the other one’s mind.”

“You’re sure the dust isn’t toxic?” asked Rick, flicking the envelope with a fingernail.

“It’s only carbon, Rick. In a peculiar kind of quantum state. Come on, it’ll be fun. Our minds will be like Web sites for each other—we can click links and see what’s in the depths.”

“Like my drunk-driving arrest, my membership in a doomsday cult, and the fact that I fall asleep sucking my thumb every night?”

“You’re hiding something behind all those jokes, aren’t you, Rick? Don’t be scared of me. I can protect you. I can bring you along on my meteoric rise to the top.”

Rick studied Amy for a minute. “Tell you what,” he said finally. “If we’re gonna do a proper test, we shouldn’t be sitting here face to face. People can read so much from each other’s expressions.” He gestured toward the boulder-studded lawn outside the cafeteria doors. “I’ll go sit down where you can’t see me.”

“Good idea,” said Amy. “And then pour the carbon into your hand and lick it up. It tastes like burnt toast.”

Amy smiled, watching Rick walk across the cafeteria. He was so cute and nice. If only he’d ask her out. Well, with any luck, while they were linked, she could reach into his mind and implant an obsessive loop centering around her. That was the real reason she’d chosen Rick as her partner for this mindlink session, which was, if the truth be told, her tenth peer-to-peer test.

She dumped the black dust into her hand and licked. Her theory and her tests showed that the mindlink effect always began in the first second after ingestion—there was no need to wait for the body’s metabolism to transport the carbon to the brain. This in itself was a surprising result, indicating that a person’s mind was somehow distributed throughout the body, rather than sealed up inside the skull.

She closed her eyes and reached out for Rick. She’d enchant him and they’d become lovers. But, damn it, the mind at the other end of the link wasn’t Rick’s. No, the mind she’d linked to was inhuman: dense, taciturn, crystalline, serene, beautiful—

“Having fun yet?” It was Rick, standing across the table, not looking all that friendly.

“What— ” began Amy.

“I dumped your powder on a boulder. You’re too weird for me. I gotta go.”

Amy walked slowly out the patio doors to look at the friendly gray lump of granite. How nice to know that a rock had a mind. The world was cozier than she’d ever realized. She’d be okay without Rick. She had friends everywhere.