Gabriel’s Watch - Book One: The Scrapman Trilogy (16 page)

“Is it alien?” I asked, hating the way the word sounded as it came out of my mouth.

“I think so,” Mohammad agreed, making me feel only slightly better. But an awkward silence lingered thereafter when neither of us really knew what to say next.

“You think they’ll come back?” I asked finally.

Mohammad shrugged. “I can’t say for sure, but I’ve been worried about what would happen if they did.”

“You think they’d be pissed?”

“Ha!” Mohammad exclaimed, slapping himself hard on the knee.
“Pissed
is the understatement of the century, Miles. They’d be
furious.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I nodded. “I just figured they already knew, and that they’d decided to leave us to our own demise.”

“And perhaps they have,” he agreed. “Perhaps, after ten years of debate, they’ve concluded that simply being human is punishment enough.”

“You could say that again.”

We observed the thing for a few more minutes as it hung there in the distance, but I soon got the creepy sensation that it had been watching us as well. The thought, like a wet and frigid finger, seemed to slide itself down to the base of my spine. Perhaps Mohammad had shared the same feeling, because he got up just a moment later to gather his things and head back to the gate.

“I’d better get back to the city,” he said. “Who knows what people are gonna start doing when they see that thing up there.”

I nodded, letting him through, and then locked the fence behind him. “Ya gotta do whatcha gotta do,” I said, wishing I had something more profound to share.

“Take care of yourself, Miles,” Mohammad insisted as he began his journey. “All superstitions aside, people are rallying on the side of Saint John. He is a rather persuasive individual, after all, and those without hope seem to bear the weakest of minds.”

“Point taken, but there’s little more I can do than lay low right now; luckily laying low just happens to be my specialty.”

“Forgive me if I’m skeptical.” Mohammad gave me a weary glare. “Look—whatever it is that you’re not telling me—just stay out of trouble, Miles—whatever you do, just stay out of trouble.”

I
waited for the Fijian to blend back into the horizon before I slipped safely inside the refrigerator door, and ventured down those steep steps. I was eager to share the news of the unidentified craft, but soon found I’d been foolish to think that Alice and Zeke were still unaware of it.

As I made my way into the shop, I found them in front of an entirely new hologram, one that looked somewhat familiar in its irregular design. While Mohammad and I observed the craft from a generous distance, Zeke had managed to bring it up into full view, capturing each and every little crack and crevice, down to the most minute details.

Squeezing myself beside Alice, who didn’t seem to notice me right away, I placed what remained of the rabbit before her. Even with her attention focused on the gleaming spacecraft, she still managed to reach out, tear off a chunk of meat, and place it blindly in her mouth. Whether she’d indeed found the rabbit tasty, I was unaware, for her facial expression had not offered up that information.

“You okay?” I asked, squeezing her shoulder.

But she didn’t look at me, and her expression never faltered; all she did was lift her right hand and extend it out toward the glowing image.

“Look,” was her only response.

I turned then to examine the craft. It was bulky in nature, yet somewhat sleek and sinuous at the same time. And like the huge ships that had taken refuge on our planet just ten years prior, it looked as though all the wiring had been run through rows of blackish conduit from the outside, weaving in and out as some connected to—what looked like—large propulsion systems, while others broke off into smaller box-like sub-systems.

But this ship, however similar in design, was just a fraction of the size of the freighters that landed here before, a mere adolescent compared to its hefty predecessors. Zeke was able to run a dimensional scan on the object, informing us that the thing was about three hundred feet long.

Its wings—or lack thereof—were hardly ripples on either side of its hull. Clearly this craft, unlike those born of Earth, did not have to consult Bernoulli’s principle to sustain flight. Anti-gravity is a term that any former science fiction fanatic could describe at great length, but I’d have trouble trying to explain the theories behind such technology— something about using a planet’s magnetic field to repel against the forces of gravity.

“I heard something,” Alice said finally, turning her gaze to meet mine. “When you were up there with Mohammad, I heard something.”

“What do you mean?”

“Arcturus was sending the ship a message ... and I heard something.”

“What did you hear?”

“I don’t know ... a rustle ... a whisper ... all I know is, it was something.”

“We can talk to it?”

Alice nodded, “Just talk and Arcturus will relay it for you.”

“Really?”

Alice raised her arm toward the object and nodded. It was a gesture that said,
be my guest.

I leaned forward, feeling somewhat uncomfortable with what I was about to do, as I scrambled to assemble a descent message. “Unidentified flying spacecraft,” I began, “my name is Miles Stone of the planet Earth. We welcome you to our planet and sincerely hope that you will enjoy your stay. And if there’s anyway I can be of service to you, all you need to do is ask.”

I looked to Alice for some kind of approval, but she was far too busy shaking her head to grant me such support. I simply shrugged. “Sorry, I really should have rehearsed that, huh?”

“You think?”

Turning back to the projection, I requested the image’s attention for a second time, “Unidentified spacecraft, do you copy?”

But the moments that followed were filled with only silence. I waited a few extra seconds before repeating my previous question: “Unidentified spacecraft, do you copy?”

But still no audible response, only the silence that a lifetime of cold reality told me would be there.

“Nothing,” I whispered to Alice.

“It can hear us,” she said. “I know it can hear us.”

“What’s it doing here?” I wondered aloud.

“Maybe it’s some kind of scout ship,” Alice theorized, “come to gather information.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It must have come to check on our progress.”

“Progress?”

“Yeah, think about it. If your kind had indeed been integrated on Earth, think about all that would have been built. Think about how your kind would have
thrived
here. And someone—say, ten years later—would want to come back to see how you were doing.”

“In that case, they must be pretty disappointed.”

“I’d imagine so, yes.”

I watched as her eyes widened a bit, a faint smile pressing a dimple to her cheek. “Do you think they’ll retaliate?”

“Are you actually smiling on that thought?”

“Just answer me.”

I pondered her question for a moment, thinking back to those technologically advanced creatures, how they had brought with them nothing of negative value, how they’d met us with the utmost warmth and kindness as they came to place necessities into our outstretched hands.

If I were to choose only four words with which to describe them, they would be: tall, pale, gentle, and calm; all of which were abundantly true. I’d even go so far as to say that not a single one of them would harm a fly, although I did witness one of them gathering a flighty specimen into a glass container—but I’m fairly positive the insect was quite comfortable in there.

What happened to the fly thereafter, I cannot say for sure. It probably underwent a whole series of tests, got its entire gene structure mapped out, and then had a couple of its most useful attributes transferred over to Alice’s kind. And this—I believe—could be the very reason behind her messy table manners.

“I’d hate to ruin the moment,” I started, “but I really don’t think they’re that kind of species. They’d probably put us all through anger management courses before they’d ever consider destroying us.”

Alice seemed disappointed by my answer. “But just think if they did. We’d be free. There would be no reason for us to stay down here anymore.”

“You
are
free, Alice.”

“Bless your heart, Miles,” she said, placing her hand on my chest and patting softly. “Don’t you think for a second that I don’t appreciate all you’ve done for me, along with all the risks you took to do so. But what you have done for me—no matter how amazing it is—it’s not freedom, Miles.” She took her hand from me to point back to the hologram. “It’s not what
they
would have wanted for me.”

“I really hope you get the freedom you speak of one day.”

“Me, too.”

“But I hope that I’ll be the one who can give it to you,” I finished.

The projection diminished to nothingness once Alice, Zeke, and I decided to get on with the day. No more time would be spent looming over the mysterious spacecraft, although I knew Alice would still be drenching herself with the possibilities behind its presence. I’d catch her getting lost in thought, her hands ceasing to turn wrenches or screwdrivers, as her mind—instead—would seem to twirl in their places, spinning off into the great blankness of her stare.

“Earth to Alice,” I chuckled once or twice.

“Oh, I’m just thinking,” was her most common reply.

We’d managed to keep ourselves busy enough that the day seemed to wrap itself up in a fleeting moment. In just another hour the sky would go black, leaving our side of the planet doused in its usual collage of constellations. But we did not have any urge to go out of our way to admire them on this night.

Alice was active on the workbench, as usual, and her device was starting to take form. It looked like a weapon of sorts, bulky at the back and then coming to a point at (what I’d assumed was) the barrel. What it did exactly, I still wasn’t sure.

This must be my birthday present,
I told myself countless times, getting very anxious for a demonstration.

I watched her prop up a couple pieces of wood before she asked me and Zeke to join her.

“Okay,” she said. “This is just a trial run here, so no promises.”

She flipped a couple switches on the thing, adjusted a potentiometer, took aim, and fired. I had my hands cupped over my ears, which proved to be unnecessary, given that what had come out of the barrel wasn’t actually a bullet, but rather a thin beam of scarlet light. The light skipped around for a second or two, tracing a deep blackness into the wood beyond its wake, and then burst the thing into flames the following moment.

“Wicked,” I approved.

“You think so?” she asked, shutting down the device and going to tend to the small fire.

“Heck, yeah.”

“Zeke let me look at his projection lasers,” Alice began, knocking the block of wood into a bucket of water as a plume of steam rose after the hiss of its quenched flame, “and I was able to come up with something much more powerful. It runs on 18 volts and has a water-cooling system. I had to yank a flyback out of an old TV for a transformer, but—you see—it works.” She smiled upon her brief description, but a look of concern soon fell over her pretty face. “But I had to put Dinah away. I’m not sure how she will react to this. You know how she gets.”

The image of the cat bolting through the cavern, its tail engulfed in flames, was a horrific and yet semi-amusing thought all at the same time.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to keep a foolish smirk off my face. “So now I can cook up some mean raccoon in only half the time.”

“I don’t think so.” Alice strapped the device to her arm, held it out, and incinerated yet another helpless block of wood. “This one is mine.”

“Yours?” I scratched the top of my head. “I thought it was my birthday present.”

“Nope.” She shook her head. “Trust me—your birthday present is much better than this.”

She then took me by the hand and led me to the chair in front of the alcove of display devices. There she instructed me to take a seat.

And so I did, plopping down and rubbing the palms of my hands together emphatically. “Oh, I’m excited.”

“You should be.” Alice stood before me, leaning forward to place her hands on my thighs, as she brought her face just inches from mine. “You are a lucky man, Miles.”

“Am I?” There was something like a spark within me, like the ignition of an old and rusty machine. I could feel it clanking about, some churning of collaborative mechanisms that had lay dormant for quite some time. Now they’d been awakened, rustled again to release a feeling I’d nearly forgotten. And it was, without a doubt, extremely intoxicating.

Alice moistened her lips and continued, “To have had the family that you had and to have been loved the way you were loved.”

I could see then that her eyes were beginning to well with tears.

“What’s wrong, Alice?” I tried to stand up, but she kept me in place with a simple pat on the shoulder.

“Nothing.” She shook her head and wiped her eyes. “Everything is perfect.” Alice rose and took a step backward. “Just sit, Miles. Just relax.”

I was starting to feel a little uneasy about this, but I did as she’d requested, staying put for whatever she had planned that late evening.

Alice turned to Zeke and nodded, “Okay.”

Upon her request, the robot’s head appeared to glow as its projector came alive with another image, casting it so close to me that I had to adjust my vision just to take it all in.

When I saw what it was, I could hardly speak. My tongue wrapped itself up into a solid state of disbelief. And in the midst of my obvious shock, Alice took it upon herself to explain how I was seeing this image.

“I understand your reaction,” she started, “and I hope you’re not mad, but I thought it was something you’d like to see. We found it the other day. I just ... wanted to find the right time to show it to you.”

I reached out to touch the image. It rippled beneath my fingertips, so I pulled away again, wishing there was a way I could physically touch it. What I would have given just to hold it.