Wednesday’s Wandering Whimsies
Do you ever imagine that invisibile beings surround you, watching what you’re doing when you’re in your home alone, commenting on it to each other?
They seem to come in three flavors: aliens from space, time travelers from the future, and deceased individuals — especially family — returned as spirits. What they say and how they watch varies, depending upon which group they’re in, and their intentions.
So, for example, aliens crowd around you in the kitchen as you clean up, remarking upon the cultural significance of your routine, applauding your efficiency (or lack of it), comparing it to their own processes and habits.
No? You never have this happen?
Yeah, neither do I.
The Bureau
Patrick felt like warmed-over crap. Aches gnawed his spine. Coffee tasted like tar in his mouth. Betrayed by coffee. How was that possible?
Squinting at the ceiling, Patrick loosened a long and heavy sigh. “God, universe, whatever, please, please, change my luck for me. I seriously need a change.”
A small person at a gray desk floated in front of him instantaneously. She was about four inches tall, seated as she was, in a pleasant black suit with a white shirt. As he gaped at her and backed away, the napping black cat arose from his desk and hurried over, ready to pounce on the newcomer.
“Control your cat,” the little pale-skinned female with short gray hair said. “I don’t want to hurt it.”
Grabbing Loki, Patrick asked, “Who the hell are you? How’d you get here?”
A little disapproving cluck came out of the little one. “Call me Hortense. I’m with luck prayer services. You prayed for a change of luck. I’m here to address your request.”
Meowing, the cat squirmed in Patrick’s arms while keeping hot green-eyed focus on the little floating agent. “I’m never heard of…what’d you call it?”
“Luck prayer services. I’m Hortense, your account manager. You asked for more luck. Unfortunately, you’re out of luck. In reviewing your account, I see that you were born with a great deal of luck. Intelligent, talented, white, male, born in the United States of good parents…minor issues with them… No genetic issues. Yes, you were lucky. Unfortunately, you’ve used it all up.”
Tapping a keyboard, she leaned into the screen. “Several car accidents while drink driving in which you escaped unhurt and without legal repercussions. Tornados. Hurricane. Earthquake. Promotions. Stock purchases. Health. You smoked cigars for ten years and had no respiratory problems when COVID-19 struck. You realize how lucky that is?”
“I…yeah, yeah.” Patrick bobbed his head. “I know, I know.”
Loki broke free and leaped for Hortense. Something caught and held the cat in mid-air.
“Told you to control that cat, sir,” Hortense snapped. “If you don’t, I will.”
“I – sorry.” Patrick took Loki and put him in another room and closed the door. Hortense and her desk followed him throughout.
Turning and encountering her in the hall made Patrick jump. “Jesus, you.” He shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. It sounds like you’re telling me that my luck has run out.”
“I am, sir.”
“That doesn’t sound good for me.”
“No sir.”
“Anyway I can get more?”
“Of course.” One thin eyebrow jumped on Hortense’s tiny face. “It would take more money than you now have but you can buy more luck.”
“That doesn’t sound promising.”
“A deal with the Devil is highly rated.”
“Yikes. Don’t think I’m ready to do that. Isn’t there anything else?”
“You can try to create your own luck. Some people have luck with that.” Hortense chortled. “Or you can steal some.”
Loki yowled at the door and vigorously clawed it.
“Are you seriously suggesting that I steal someone else’s luck?” As he asked, Patrick amended his thinking. “Can I choose my victim?” He was thinking, Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump both seemed pretty damn lucky. Or Soros. Gates. Musk.
“You can but that rarely works out. Hard for most to differentiate between good and bad luck. You might accidently pilfer their bad luck.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want that.” Patrick felt resigned, which oddly made him feel better. It was like, this wasn’t in his control. Knowing that relieved him of responsibility. Nothing he could do about it. “Is there anything else?”
“Well…yes. According to your records, you are eligible for employment.”
Patrick went still with thought. “Go on.”
“If you work for us, you can be compensated in good luck.”
“Who is us?”
Hortense smiled. “We just call ourselves The Bureau. Capital T, capital B.”
“You’re recruiting me.” Patrick suspected a setup. “So I do a job for you and The Bureau pays me in good luck.”
“Yes.”
“I assume whatever it is won’t be easy.”
“They’re normally not. But let me tell you. With your luck, if you don’t take this offer, you’ll be dead in a year.”
That’s how Patrick’s career began. Hard to believe but now he was about to start his tenth mission.
He’d need all of his hard-earned luck to stay alive.
Introductions
Many thoughts were lapping my head.
“Who is he?” the stranger asked.
“Don’t know.” I considered the dead man and holstered my gun. “He didn’t introduce himself. Speaking of that…” I cast a net over the short woman beside me. She’d walked up just after the other breathed his last. She was fortunate I didn’t shoot her.
She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Oh, my name. Nancy Sinatra, I’ve decided.”
“You decided.” She didn’t have a car. Numerous new questions joined my mental list.
The stranger chortled. “I’m an alien. Don’t have a human name. First time I’ve had a body like this. First time to Earth.”
Alien. Figured. I’d need to delve into that.
I shifted my victim to look at his face. Nice forehead shot, I congratulated myself. Been lucky to kill him. He’d had the most important element — surprise — but I was faster. “Can you help me with this body?” I’d decided to toss him over the nearby edge into the ravine below. Wasn’t nothing but starlight and a skinny moon’s cast for illumination but I knew the ravine was there. Sure wasn’t burying him. Figured it had to be done fast. Before others arrived.
She picked up the body. All five four of her hefting six feet plus something inches and a few hundred pounds, putting him over a shoulder like a light jacket.
“Geez,” I said. “Respect.”
She nodded. “Where to?”
I directed her, “Follow me.” I hope she wasn’t going to kick me over with my dead guy. “Be careful.”
“I will. I can see better than you.”
“Oh. I see.” Ha, ha. I use humor to cope. It’s not good humor.
“Why’d you kill him, Tate?”
“You know my name.”
We stopped and looked together into the dark valley at our feet. “That’s why I’m here,” she said. Not even breathing hard.
“Toss him,” I said.
She did.
We listened to his downward journey and the final silence. A warm wind licked my skin. A cricket began a lonely solo.
“You didn’t say why you killed him,” Nancy Sinatra said.
“Self defense. He tried to kill me when I arrived.”
“Ah. Prompts a difficult question, doesn’t it?”
“What?” I knew what but I was challenging and measuring. Figuring out who Nancy Sinatra was. Wondering why dead guy was alone.
“You came back in time. So how did he know you’d be here?”
The billion dollar question. “Same as you, I suppose.”
“Nope. You told me to be here. I didn’t tell anyone. So how did he know?”
That’s what worried me. Yet he was alone. “Yep. If I do it again, I’ll need to come back a little earlier. How are your shoes? They made for walking?”
“What?” Nancy Sinatra’s puzzlement carried like an echo across a canyon. “They’re shoes. What else would they be made for?”
I chuckled. “Forget it. Start walking. I’m going to teach you a song.”
I knew the song from my future. I wondered why she chose that name.
Cake
The SLEDE train slit the air.
Corwin pulled out of his office to consider life outside the work center’s broad windows. SLEDEs were almost everywhere but beyond some were serious gray clouds over dark chocolate mountains. Lightning tongues flicked Earth to sky, holding his gaze and propelling him down a might-of-been road. Unbelievable from some perspectives, they were going eighty miles per, forty feet off the ground. Dad and Mom would’ve been impressed. Or depressed. Maybe angry or resentful.
Tall, skinny, energetic with hypnotizing exuberance, Cake bounced into the room. “Alongsides coming up. Me and Elf are hailing eats. I’ll fly and buy. You in?”
“Hell yeah. Just in time. You’re a hero.” Corwin grinned, standing, stretching. “Shift is about over. I’ll take a cheeseburger with it all, and fries.”
“Plant okay? Can’t afford true bee. Or chick. Or anything but plant.”
“Course. And a beer shake?” At Cake’s smiling nod, Corwin specified, “Stout. Alongsides got a good one.”
“Or had.”
“Yeah. Well, you know me. Anything dark, ‘kay?”
“Sure.”
As Cake descended, Corwin called, “And thanks.”
Cake’s generosity made him happy. Corwin returned to his seat, manifested the office anew, finished admin matters, and logged out. Minutes later, Alongsides docked beside them. Leaning, he looked down and watched Cake leave their SLEDE and hit the stofe. Elf followed three seconds later.
A ping lit Corwin’s Backhand. He shifted attention to the cute guy on the fone. Only after joking with Karlyl, hanging up as his stomach rumbled, did he realize, food hadn’t arrived.
Alongsides was gone. Forty minutes, too.
He flipped the fone to Cake.
No, screw that. Corwing galloped down the spiral. “Cake?” He’d eat down there anyway. Get out of the work area where he’d been for nine hours.
A glance left. No one in the cockpit.
He swung right. No one in group. Kitchen. Dining room.
Nor the patio.
“Cake? Elf?” He tapped their doors.
Tried to enter.
Locked.
Using the fone, he called, wondering, did he misunderstand? Did they stay on the stofe to eat?
Cake’s number said it was unassigned. Try again.
“Call Elf,” Corwin told his fone.
The fone couldn’t comply, explaining, he needed to be more explicit about who or what he was attempting to reach.
Corwin didn’t bother providing more. This was too much like what had happened with Mom and Dad.
He wasn’t ready to go through that again.
Waste
It was a lot of waste.
Morgan was uncomfortable. It felt unnatural. All these years of recycling and trying to reduce waste. Now he was piling it outside.
“There.” Grinning in delight, ogling their pile of junk, Joyce backed away from it. “That’s a pretty good pile of junk and garbage.”
His wife peered up into the sky. “When are they supposed to come?”
“Any time.” Exasperation frosted Morgan’s tone. This had been explained numerous times. “They know it’s here. They’ll come and get it.”
Joyce answered, “Why can’t they tell us when?”
That, too, had been gutted as a topic. “I don’t know.”
He and Joyce studied their pile. Old printers and laptops. Unused televisions. Rugs. Boxes of junk. Old paint. Bags of shredded personal papers. Joyce insisted they be shredded. She didn’t trust the aliens. Like, what did she think was going to happen? These extra terrestrials from another solar system had come to Earth to steal their personal information?
It was good that they’d come. First, they cleaned all the oceans, and then junkyards. They paid well for everything.
“This is a great place,” a leader, Galic, said in a televised press conference.
Galic was a gorgeous black woman. Every female alien he’d seen was eye-watering stunning. He’d not seen any males among the ET, formally known as Porqzens. R-Q-Z was pronounced as a hacking sound.
Galic said, “We love your junk. We’ll take all of it that you can give us.” They were also eager to tear down houses, buildings, and bridges not in use. They wanted it all. “We’ll you if you want. Gold, dollars, diamonds, crypto. Just name it.”
Not everyone liked it. “Why are they doing this? What do they want it?” Mostly conservatives were asking these questions because Galic told them, “We’ll reprocess it to create materials and energy. We’re already so efficient that we have no waste.”
Humans weren’t appeased. They had reasons behind their doubts. “How do we know they’re real?” GOP Presidential candidate asked. “What if they’re taking all these resources to build machines to take us over? What about the recycling and garbage disposal companies? They’ll all go out of business. That’ll put unemployment up.”
Others speculated, “This is a liberal trick. There are no aliens. They’re using these materials to secretly build death rays and disintegration guns. They’re gonna use the disintegration guns to take away all our guns.”
Yes, it was a pickle.
Flat-earthers were freaked. “The Porqzens are Underworlders. They’ve lived on the other side of the planet, the bottom. They’re coming to take us over.”
Morgan didn’t care. All he had to do was put his junk at his curb for pickup? Lot easier than loading it up, hauling it to the various places, and unloading it. And they were paying him, instead of him paying them? Groovy.
A Porqzen popped into the space in front of Morgan and Joyce. Gorgeous, of course. Tight dark red outfit. Looked like leather. Blonde. Smile like a billion watts.
“Hi, Morgan and Joyce. I’m Zugar. We’re taking your waste now.” She handed them dark goggles. “Most people want to see it happen, so we provide these goggles. Please cover your eyes so the light doesn’t hurt them.”
Morgan and Joyce did. Through the lens, Morgan witnessed a dull light cover his pile. Looked purplish under the lens. Stayed there for about five seconds.
“That’s it,” Zugar said. “All gone. You can take your goggles off. Those are yours to keep for future pickups.” She whipped out a slim wallet and counted paper money out. “One thousand dollars, as agreed. It’s the minimum, I’m afraid.” She sounded like she meant it.
Joyce took the money. She and Morgan stared at it.
Zugar said, “It is real U.S. currency.” She laughed. “We sold a bucket of leftover lithium to the U.S. government.” She handed Morgan a card. “Just call us when you’re ready for your next pickup. Any questions?”
The humans shook their heads.
“Then I’ll take my leave. You all have a great day.” With a small bow and a bright smile, Zugar disappeared.
“Well, that was easy,” Joyce said. “She looked like Farrah Fawcett, don’t you think?”
Morgan nodded. “Do you think we’ll ever go to their planet?”
Once in a Lifetime
Day 2. He rode in silence. Forty miles an hour. The open car drove itself, allowing him to gape at the scenery.
So gorgeous. He knew now what breathtaking meant.
Although he’d eaten breakfast after an overnight stop, he snacked as he went. Nervousness.
Other people weren’t encountered. Only bots. They didn’t interact. Once this had been cities. New York. Pittsburgh. Philadelphia. As climate changed and space travel advanced, people departed the planet. Pockets of humanity remained. Some worked for the place he visited, the Great Earth Library. Built in the twenty-third century, trillions of books lined the high, massive shelves. Paperbacks and hardcover books were still being published on less advanced planets.
That’s where he came in.
The car slowed. He could have teleported to the location. Where’s the fun in that?
Turning right, the small vehicle approached a librarian station. The car hummed to a halt. A bot came out.
Stiffly he climbed from the car. Stretched. Picked up the packet from the other seat.
The bot said, “Merr Liu-Gardner?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve been expecting you. Would you like to sign our guest book? It can be done digitally with your bios or cursive on paper. Many guests prefer the latter.”
“I’ll do cursive.” He picked up the pen. Bic. Blue ink.
A fresh page awaited. He flipped to the previous page. One entry, six years before. Ngato from Mars Station Five.
Smiling, he signed his name, dated it, and added his home, Cixin Outpost, Trisolaria. Despite that name, only one sun warmed his world. Three moons, though. One red. Two white. All beautiful.
His great-grandfather named the planet and led the colonizing expedition. He’d taught his grandson cursive writing, feeling it important to know. “Let’s not let the old knowledge die.”
Poul Liu-Gardner II handed the box to the robot. “My great-grandfather wrote and published these books. The Library was established after he died but Dad always thought the books deserved to be here. Two are non-fiction, a history of our world and another about our city. The other six are fiction.” He smiled. “Three murder mysteries and three thrillers.”
“I understand. Thank you for the gift. These are the first from your world. We will shelve and honor them.”
“I know. There are more books from my world in the car. I just wanted to personally deliver these.”
“Of course. We’ll unload them.”
“Thanks.”
“Feel free to walk the shelves and enjoy the books. You can remove them from the shelves and read them here, but they can’t be removed.”
“Thank you.”
Poul II watched the bot take the books away. Lost and empty-handed, he gazed up at books.
Deep breath. Sigh.
He’d smelled books before. Grandpa Poul had established a library. Of course. Today’s smell dizzied him. Maybe it was the sheer number of books. Perhaps it was the thoughts behind them, or the readers’ thoughts.
Probably all those things. Strolling among the shelves, he thought that he might write a book. He’d always thought about writing one. The desire now was an urgent weight.
Sitting on a bench, he drew out his pad. Opened it.
A blank screen waited.
He could type. Or use voice. Grandpa Poul always printed his first rough draft.
He didn’t have paper.
His fingers tapped.
Once in a Lifetime
Chapter One
The stranger from Trisolaria was a formidable presence.
