Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
I was a detective in a trench coat. American, I didn’t speak French, but I was working with French detectives. Although I didn’t speak French, they understood me when I spoke English and I understood them when they spoke French. This startled me in the dream, causing me to pause and ask, “How is this possible?” I didn’t have a chance to pursue an answer because there was a crime to solve. I zipped around Paris with the detectives, flashing my badge, interviewing people, asking the other detectives questions, and answering their questions. The crime and mystery were never definitely stated in the dream, yet I knew what it was. The dream ended with me looking at the Eiffel Tower, as that’s where the clues led.
I think the dream arose because I’d watched a dose of The Sommerdahl Murders before I went to sleep, though why I ended up in Paris with French detectives isn’t explained. Haven’t been to Paris since the last century. All in all, a mild and innocuous, pleasant dream, although this detective dream left me with a mystery.
But don’t they all?
My wife was preparing for bed and removing her Fitbit. It was a few minutes after midnight. She said, “There’s no way you’re going to have more steps than me today.”
A weird thing to say a few minutes after midnight. The Fitbit resets at midnight.
She showed me her steps: 69,697.
WTF?
The next morning (yesterday), she was at an even 70,000. “Fix it for me,” she said. “I tried syncing and I couldn’t.”
Well, I logged in and looked at her settings. Everything was good. She hadn’t synced, her account said, since last November. I synced it and searched for why she may have had a surge. Nothing came up on the net and the Fitbit working fine today.
Just one of those mysteries, I guess. I do have a theory and I’ll check that later.
It’s a frustrating dream, at once very clear but not understood. I dreamed it twice.
The first time I dreamed it, paperwork was being hunted for me. As Fred discovered it and brought it to me, I had my pecker out and was looking for somewhere to pee. Taking a hint, I woke up and went to the bathroom.
While awake, I reflected on the bizarre dream. People had been telling me that they’re been a day when aliens had contacted some. I was incredulous. It was like a big, open secret among these people.
When I returned to sleep, I dreamed it again.
I was at a friend’s home, having a beer. Somehow a conversation took place where they revealed there was a day when aliens contacted them. They’d documented it. Three primary people emerged: Pat, a person who I used to work with; Fred, father of a childhood friend; and Greta Thunberg. There was also a larger group of people that I knew but who remained vague in the dream.
Pat was a big, jovial smart guy who worked in Intel for the USAF and the NSA and DIA. Fred, my friend’s father, was also a big guy, quiet and solemn, who worked for U.S. Steel. You’re probably familiar with Greta. I’ve never her, but have seen and read about her.
A fourth person was the one telling me about it. He had a chart on graph paper showing when the aliens contacted him and what happened as a result – weather and stock market changes. There’d been a twenty-four hour period when the aliens were with humans. Most humans were completely ignorant about it.
Fred, coming in to give me another beer and ask if I was hungry, confirmed what the other guy said. Fred had also been contacted. He had written about it and had a graph like the first guy. I asked if I could see it. He agreed.
This kept going like this. More people came forward with the information, telling me the same thing. Then Pat dropped the bombshell: the aliens had contacted Greta.
I was eating and drinking beer as all of this was taking place. I wanted more information. Someone gave me an information packet that they’d put together. I asked, “Has anyone put together and contacted an entire list of who’d been involved with the aliens?”
Either no one could or no one would answer the question. As I put information together for myself, I discovered a pink sheet of paper. I noticed that everyone had charted their own involvement in a green sheet of graph paper; the pink sheet of paper on top of the package in my hand was a summary.
I sat everyone down. Twenty-two people were present. We were in a large commercial dining room with round tables. A friend, Shari, had joined us. She confirmed that she’d been contacted. I read everyone the pink summary. I can’t remember a thing that it said but all agreed that it was right. I asked if anyone had ever compiled the graphs and analyzed them; no, they all agreed.
That floored me. I decided I would do that. But, the place was closing; everyone needed to leave. They all began departing. Pat was at a table. He was making calls to find more information. I went in and used the restroom. When I returned, I began singing Joe Cocker’s cover of “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window”. Pat, sitting at a table alone, sang it with me. We sang the verses, “Didn’t anybody tell her? Didn’t anybody see? Sunday’s on the phone to Monday. Tuesday’s on the phone to me.”
I left the building. It was a long, two-story place like a U.S. motel. My car, a dark blue sedan, was parked on the street. I was in a happy mood as I walked across the unpaved parking lot and looked at the gathering dusk.
The dream ended.
You’d think the start was when the body was found. That’s the beginning of the crime investigation. It isn’t, of course, the crime’s beginnings. For that, you need to slip into a wayback machine and ride time to when the killer was young and beginning their career, back to before the victim and killer had ever met, back to a nascent moment when everyone was happy and oblivious to the future.
After all, the killer just wanted revenge. Their victim had killed first, but the body hadn’t been found. At least, that’s what the killer believed.
They were always one to act on their beliefs.
He’d watched one night, two, three, along with the days in between, driving the dark blue Tesla down the streets a few times through each period. Electric, silent, fast, rechargeable, the Tesla was ideal. If he was a burglar in the real world, the Tesla would be his choice of vehicles.
Lights had broken the tidy homes’ darkness a few times. Nothing sustained. Patterns reminded him of night lights. He thought, creatures creeping through places. Raccoons, skunks, opossums, or maybe bigger things like cougars, wolves, coyotes, bears. Nothing like that here, though, right? No, he’d looked for their prints, scat, and kills. He didn’t know what was triggering the night lights, but he didn’t think that it was big animals like those, but his mind kept entertaining visions of meeting them.
He finally chose a neat white craftsman on the corner. Lacy white curtains were drawn on the windows. The flowers were dead in the window boxes. The house wasn’t too big, probably fifteen, eighteen hundred square feet, maybe. Well maintained. Solid. Probably built around 1910, like a whole other era. A whole other time. A whole other existence.
It hadn’t shown any lights. He approached it during the day. Felt better, safer, that way, being in strangers’ homes during the day. First, he walked cautiously around the yard through the tall grass, watching the windows and listening. Not even a wind broke the sound, though there was sometimes a bird singing or flying by overhead.
Closing on the house, he went up the front steps onto the green painted porch and to the door. He lightly knocked. He used to say, “Hello,” but then he’d learned to dislike hearing his voice in that silence.
Nobody answered the first, second, or more impatient third knock. Between the second and third, he held his breath and tried opening the door, confirming it was locked. Everyone locked up like they’d gone away but were coming back.
It was a pretty door, stained hardwood with beveled panes of glass. He hated breaking a pane, but it was necessary. So was the cold Smith and Wesson that he wrapped his fingers around in his pocket. You never knew what waited inside. He used to carry a shotgun, but he wasn’t a shotgun person.
Leaving his bags on the porch, he entered the house. The floor creaked with his ginger steps. The first thing he saw after entering and closed the door was a wall of photographs. Some showed servicemen who might have been in World War II or Korea. Others were definitely of the Vietnam and Gulf War vintages. Poor saps. Loving couples were on smiling display. The family’s growth was demonstrated through a succession of photographs. Holiday scenes told on their religion.
Stilling, he drew back from the wall. They must have lived here a long time.
He felt brazen and crude for his presence.
They would understand, wouldn’t they?
Hard to say, hard to say.
Questions like that had many sideways directions.
As did his existence. Were they all still alive elsewhere, and he was the dead one, or was this a dream? Perhaps, he sometimes speculated, he’d gone sideways into another reality.
He’d given up on hope that he’d slide back. Passing the wall of memories, he made his way straight back down the narrow hallway toward where he thought he’d find the kitchen. Nobody was dead inside. The air demonstrated that closed house mustiness of disuse, but lacked the qualities of sickness and death. Dust motes cavorted in the sunlight.
As expected, the kitchen was found at the hall’s end, a magnificently updated and warm place, made for people to cook as others gathered and chatted, sipping coffee, wine, or tea as they told about where they’d been and what they’d been doing. He wished they would tell him now.
The pantry was full, as expected. Pasta, crackers, cereal, oat meal, flour, rice, dried beans, canned goods, coffee, tea. Going back for his re-usable shopping bags – no more plastic or paper bags, thank you – he stocked up. He found Kalamata olives, which pleased him. They felt like a reward. Untouched Gouda cheese was in the refrigerator. He stood and looked in at the cold, lit refrigerator interior for a long time. The vegetables and fruit had gone bad. He removed them and tossed them out back for the rest of the world.
After the kitchen, he found a liquor cabinet and a wine cabinet and filled up his bags. He didn’t take everything, just in case there were matters that he couldn’t predict, like their return, because there were matters he didn’t know, like where they were. He didn’t open any drawers or closets in the bedrooms. He didn’t need anything from them.
After putting his bags in the Tesla’s trunk, he came back and cleaned up the glass on the hall floor from where he’d broken in. Finding a workbench in the garage out back, he covered the window with taped cardboard, just in case, and then paused in the open doorway, looking around. You would think, he thought, that he’d be done with the emotions. Well, you’d be wrong, he answered. You’d be dead wrong.
Good-bye, he said without speaking, and closed the door on where he’d been.
To recap. The Beagle is a colonizing starship that arrived at a new world, Feynman. Juancho Ferrado is a bureaucrat who lives and works on the Beagle who was selected as part of the Coronado landing party. Shortly after the Coronado’s successful descent to the surface of Feynman, the Beagle inexplicably exploded. All personnel onboard were assumed to be killed. That left the Coronado’s crew as the only survivors. Four years later, only Juancho remains when Roger Lancey startles Juancho with his sudden appearance on the Coronado.
Then Lancey disappeared.
Now, the tale continues. Don’t worry, it’s certified completely organic and vegan, GMO-free, non-fat, and with no added sugar.
###
“Hi, Vaughn.”
Opening his eyes wide, Vaughn Parks looked around Captain Mayhew’s office. Vaughn had once been a heartbreaker, a man with a slender, athletic build that prompted thoughts of grace, and green eyes that glistened like wet emerald jewels. Pronouncing, “I’ve seen enough of life, and now I want to experience death,” he’d chosen to age and die once they’d reached Feynman. “Captain.”
“How do you feel?”
“I feel like I was dead, and now I’m apparently alive again. I feel like warmed-over leftovers, something you may not know, Captain.”
Captain Mayhew chuckled. “I’m older than I look.”
“Probably.”
“I know what leftovers are. I like leftovers.” Captain Mayhew smiled at private memories.
Vaughn saw that and changed vectors. “Virtual stimulation via artificial intelligence?”
“What?”
“I’ve been brought back by virtual simulation via artificial intelligence?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“We need your opinion.”
“On?”
“I’m about to impart that.”
“Sorry. I seem to think very fast.” Vaughn gazed up at the ceiling. “It’ really interesting, like I’m experiencing time on a different level.”
“Perhaps you can follow up on that when we’re done here.”
“Oh.” Vauhn swiveled his look to the Captain and grinned. “Yes, you brought me here for a reason, didn’t you? What sort of emergency has invoked the virtual regeneration? This is the first time I’ve been back, right?” Face crinkling with humor, Vaughn continued, “Never mind, I’m catching up with my records. Unless you’ve manipulated my records, this is my first time back since I died, just two years ago.”
His expression changed. “Just two years? We’ve been on Feynman for two and a half years, and now there’s a problem that you think I can help you with?”
“Correct.”
“Well, fill me in, then.”
“It’s Juancho.”
“Juancho.” Recognition flushed Vaughn’s green eyes. “The ship’s artificial intelligence?”
“Yes. You should have access to Juancho’s logs.”
Looking inward, and mildly squinting, Vaughn said, “I do.”
“Go ahead and read them.”
“I have.”
“Already?”
“They’re digital, I’m digital…there’s a certain digital sympatico taking place.”
“Oh.” Captain Mayhew looked interested. “That’s fascinating.”
“But something to pursue after this.”
“Yes, if you’re interested, and willing to stick around.”
“Well, we’ll see. So I’ve read the document….”
“Yes, you’ve read the document.”
“What do you think?”
“Of it? I don’t understand that question.”
“Well, Juancho appears to be fantasizing about the Beagle exploding, and essentially, being the last human on Feynman and living on the Coronado.”
“Yes.”
“Is there reason for us to be concerned?”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s A.I. Do you think Juancho will act on it?”
“Oh his fantasy?”
“Exactly.”
Leaning back, Vaughn crossed his legs and stroked his mustache. “I don’t know.”
Mayhew exhaled. “That’s not thrilling to hear.”
“Sorry.”
She stared at Vaughn. “This doesn’t concern me?”
“I’m still thinking about it.”
“What about the part where he pretends one of the crew members is looking for you, and doesn’t know where you went.”
“I thought that was interesting.” Vaughn grinned. “I wanted to know where I went.”
“Does any of this worry you, though?”
Slicking down half of his mustache with one finger, Vaughn uncrossed his legs, and replied, “No. It’s just simple fantasy. My take is that Juancho is a powerful A.I. system. He brought the Beagle across the galaxy to Feynman. That required tremendous resources. Now, I suspect, he’s bored.”
“Bored.”
“Yes.”
“That’s what some of the engineers suggested.”
“They’re probably right, I think. Let me ask you this.” Straightening his frame, Vaughn said, “Have you asked Juancho about it?”
“We tried to. We’ve sent people in, but he plays games with them. He will only permit certain people in, in the first place. For example, he wouldn’t talk to me.”
“Yes, yes, I read that. He said you were disturbing his muse.”
“Yes, exactly. That’s why we’re worried.”
“But, other than this fantasy, he’s functioning normally, and nothing has gone wrong.”
“Yes, but we’re worried. You can see why.”
“Sure, sure, I can.” Rubbing two stubby fingers together and looking at them, Vaughn inhaled. “What do you want me to do? Want me to talk to him?”
“Do you think that’ll help?”
Vaughn shrugged. “I don’t think it’ll hurt. Hang on a moment. I’ll be right back.”
Mayhew’s brown eyes widened. “You’re going to do it now?”
“Why not? You have a reason why I shouldn’t? I’m here, he’s there…let’s get it on.”
“Okay. Great. Do it, then.”
“Okay.” Eyes becoming lost in a nest of wrinkles, Vaughn smiled, flashing straight, white teeth. “I’ll be right back.”
Coming tomorrow: the conclusion.
I, Juancho, finished my first blackberry margarita of the day. It was so refreshing, but I drank it so fast, and I was anxious, that I clutched my handgun and ordered another, to drink more slowly.
The man had not returned to the break room. I thought he’d be back by now. The Coronado is not large. There is the quarters car, and the community car, where I sit in the break room, also called the social club, because there is a break room in the biz car, and another in the ops car. I don’t believe the utility car has a break room. I may be mistaken. I’ve visited it, because that’s where the utility vehicles are housed, and because Madi used to spend her time there. I watched her on the security camera. There was nothing else to do. I was waiting to see who would be last, and I worried that she might be a killer. I don’t know why I wished to stay alive, in this terrible situation.
Holding the gun in my left hand, and my drink in my right, I visited the security post in the room’s corner. From there, I can set down my drink, or my gun, and change monitors and look for people. The system has said that Roger Lancey is dead, so I don’t know if it’ll find him on the ship. I have no idea how he entered the car. No alarms went off. He entered the break room as though he’d been onboard all along. This, I know, is impossible. I, Juancho, have been on the Coronado for four years. The last six months have been alone. Before then, it was Madi and me. We were the last little Indians.
He’d been asking questions about his Uncle Vaughn. Yes, his Uncle was an important man. Apparently, he disappeared before the Beagle’s explosion. I don’t know what that’s about. Perhaps it’s meaningful; a number of the Coronado’s survivors disappeared without apparent reason. It scares me, Juancho, to contemplate the meaning behind these disappearances, and whether they can be connected.
The system does not find Roger Lancey. I, Juancho, am not surprised. I use the manual features to check the cameras, going from place to place. The engineer was looking for Commander Alves, so I look where he should look, at her quarters, and her office in the ops car. Roger Lancey isn’t at either location. I look in the control deck. He’s an engineer, and this seems likely as a location for him to go. He can attempt to contact the Beagle from there. It seems strange that he does not know about the Beagle. But, then, if he is onboard, and it exploded, he was killed. This is why the system calls him deceased.
Yet, he is here.
This begins me on a new tour of my private circle of hell. He is either a zombie, or I am insane. If I’m insane, I could be imagining him, or I could be imagining this entire story. In that regard, as I said to Ricardo before his disappearance, we could be in a virtual simulation or game, couldn’t we? We wouldn’t know. That seemed to greatly upset Ricardo. He disappeared within two days of our conversation. Deceased, the systems say.
I can’t find Roger Lancey anywhere. I think, perhaps he’s gone to the utility car to take one of the remaining vessels and leave. I, Juancho, can’t conceive of where he would go, but other engineers on the Coronado discussed that as an option before their disappearances. The cameras don’t find him there. The vehicles remain.
I, Juancho, am disturbed. He is gone, as he came, without clues or warnings. This seems too much for my personal systems. That cannot happen.
That cannot happen.
He must be on the Coronado.
Yes, I, Juancho, realized. He was hiding, waiting for me to come look for him, so that he can kill me.
That can be the only explanation of events.
Well, I, Juancho, laugh at that. I am a bureaucrat. We are conditioned to wait. We must be patient. Everything takes time. The systems, decisions, and events, cannot be hurried. We understand that better than others. I, Juancho, decided I will have another margarita, and wait for Roger Lancey to give up on his ambush and return to this room to find me.
And I, Juancho, will have my gun, and will be ready for him.
He’ll be sorry that he plotted to ambush me.
I, Juancho, was concerned.
Science may explain many things, but not everything, not everything. Even the scientists will tell you so.
I am concerned when science and technology tells me the person addressing me is dead. My sanity may be abridged, or they may be a zombie. I lack the wherewithal to address my sanity. If I am insane, then I am insane. I inhabit a bubble of impressions and thoughts, do I not? Someone must help me from the outside.
I don’t know how to even think about how I can be insane. If this man is here, from the Beagle, but —
But, you see, but, I, Juancho, know that we on the Coronado know that those on the Beagle passed away. All were gone, killed for reasons we don’t know.
So I believe, if, I, Juancho, am sane. Perhaps I’m insane, and the Beagle never exploded and killed all onboard. Conversely, perhaps, I, Juancho, am as sane as I thought I was before this man appeared, and he is a zombie.
I, Juancho, am just a bureaucrat. I have shot weapons with sufficient accuracy to be awarded points and a carry permit, but that’s no matter, as I’m not armed.
The man across from me doesn’t appeared armed, either. He is wearing a standard Beagle utility uniform, the sort worn by engineering corps on the ship. The consistency of my possible insanity impressed me. “We have arrived at a frightening crossroads,” I said.
He watched me with narrowed eyes. “What crossroads?”
“My systems tell me that you’re deceased. If you were onboard the Beagle, then you must be dead.”
He pursed his lips, eyes narrowing more, a suspicious and irritated expression. “I was onboard the Beagle. I don’t see how that would make me dead.” He sounded petulant and childish.
Tread carefully, I, Juancho, told myself. “Do you know what happened to the Beagle?”
He became as still as a person can. I’ve seen such stillness in other aspects of my position when sharing news that surprises other people. He did not know what had happened to the Beagle. But, of course, if he was onboard it, it may have exploded and killed him without warning.
“What happened to the Beagle?” he asked.
“I, Juancho, can show you. We have records. I’ll show you.” I watched him carefully, and vowed that I would keep wary eyes on him. Whether he died onboard the Beagle or not, that was four years ago, if the Coronado’s records were correct. Where has he been in the interim?
Although he didn’t appear the least decayed, he could still be a zombie, which made him a threat to me. I, Juancho, could still be insane. It’s a conundrum. I feel haggard, and wish for a drink. I still have alcohol. The systems can compile it from collected materials, and has been doing so. If he’d arrived later in the day, I would have already been enjoying my afternoon alcoholic buzz.
“Let us go look,” I said. “This way.” I indicated for him to walk.
He eyed me. “You first.”
“No, I insist. You go first.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Nor can I.”
“Then I guess we can’t go.”
“Then we will remain at a troubling, frightening crossroads.”
His obstinance irritated me. “First you won’t tell me your name. Now, you refuse to go see the records which will show to you what happened to the Beagle.”
“Why don’t you just tell me?”
“I do not believe you would believe me.”
He shrugged. “Why should I?”
“Why should lie to you?”
“Because you’re alone on the Coronado.”
“Clarify what you mean.”
“I mean what I said. You’re alone on an exploration vessel that should have a crew of thirty. You’re being evasive and obstinate.”
“I am not being obstinate. You’re being obstinate.”
He smiled. “I don’t see it that way.” Standing, he stretched, flexing impressive muscles. “I’ve had enough of this. I think you’re a troubled individual. I wish I could stay and help you, but I need to get back to the Beagle. I’m going to go find someone who can help me, because you, obviously, can’t – or won’t.” He shrugged. “The difference is immaterial, because the outcome is the same.”
He walked off, a smug, muscular, broad-shouldered blond man in a tight Beagles engineering corps utility uniform.
I did not like him. I decided that despite the hour, I would get a drink. I decided that I would also get a weapon, because he, the prig, would be back, and I, Juancho, wanted to be ready.
The prig could still be a zombie.
Michael Seidel, writer 