The first three chapters of the second story in the Quasar 169 series.
Falling, I am falling
Down and Down and Down
and the whole world is spinning
Around and Around
Can’t you hear the music playing?
Can’t you see the colors fly?
I’m falling ever deeper
why, perhaps I’ll even...die
—EDD “October Leaves”
1
I think I was six when I first thought I was going insane.
The day was hot and sultry with heat rippling the air above the pocked tar and the candy colored cars with their amphibious tails drying beneath a cruel golden star. Hot, hot, hot, and I wiped liquid salt from my forehead with a narrow arm lightly sprinkled with good sweat-catching brassy fine hairs. I gazed directly up at the sun without really thinking about it, and my heat-baked brain obliged me for one startling moment with an eerie replay
of a solar eclipse created by the arrival of a great floating ball of purplish mists. Chrome ice slid along my lower spine and I inhaled haltingly as a terrible shudder wracked my too-thin shoulders.
Detecting a poorly muffled cough, I turned my toward the source of the sound. I saw myself. I saw a small wisp of a boy whose flyaway blond hair looked almost white in the bright noonday sun where sweat hadn’t plastered it darkly to his forehead and neck, worn clothes baggy on his twiggy frame, one shoelace untied, staring
directly at me, forehead pinched, dark eyes squinty and confused by the trick. I was watching him through round,
green, waxy leaves, gaining little comfort from what little shade the shrubbery provided, aware of a small,
velvet-bodied spider too near me on a low branch. The kid I stared at breathed hard, his ribs rising and contracting quickly beneath summer-bronzed skin, panting during this unbroken late July heatwave.
The boy I stared at was Alex Roglitz.
I turned my head again, and saw myself turn away from the itchy shade of Mrs. Worthington’s well-kept hedges. Pretending not to see myself, I felt mischievous relief flood me.
Excellent.
Shaking my head to clear the odd double-vision from it, I darted left, pivoting on one of my torn canvas tennis shoes, then spun abruptly in the opposite direction and lunged after the boy in the bushes. In the second that Bobby’s smug assurance I’d spotted one of the other boys nearby and gone in pursuit of him changed to watery fear and surprised anger over having been the one I’d been after all along, I was able to crash through the greenery and
snag his left shirtsleeve in my hard little fist and yelp, “Tag!”
Finley rose and dislodged me with a violent twist. My grin of victory vanished quickly with a gulp. I stared blankly at him, still a tad disoriented from my bizarrely shifting point of view, and staggered a few steps
backward, nearly falling over Mrs. Worthington’s soaker hose. “You little shit! You’re cheating! I don’t know
how, but you always do!”
Davey Horner appeared from his hiding place behind the Worthington garage. “Whassup?”
“It’s Alex! He’s cheatin’ again! He always finds us before we can get to home base!”
“So I’m through playin’ with him anymore, an’ you’re not, either!”
Steve Eastman strolled over, still unable to work out the basics of his new yo-yo, but practicing at every
possible opportunity he got. “Hey! Who stopped the game?” I dodged a bolo-like swing of the wooden toy past my
earlobe.
Bobby pointed at me, face pinched and red, wide ears flushed like an upset wolverine’s. The three boys were all older than me, Stevie the eldest at twelve. They were fifth graders—nearly adults! “Cheatin’!”
Eastman shrugged and executed a perfect Hang The Dog, as it refused to walk for him. “He always does.”
“Well we ain’t playin’ with him, Steve.”
“Who’s not?”
“You an’ Dave an’ me!”
“’kay.”
Bobby Finley spat in my direction. I had known the missile was incoming a split second before he’d prepared it and scooted back just in time to see it raise dust an inch in front of my right shoe. I glared back at him from beneath lowered eyebrows so pale yellow they were nearly invisible against my school vacation tan.
Eastman, who’d moved behind me during the distraction, gave me a good shove, and I pitched forward onto hard packed powder, skinning the heels of both palms. A brief sound of protest escaped my throat, but I refused to whine like a girl lest I get accused of being one. I rose slowly to my around three foot height and brushed small pebbles, bits of broken green glass, and shards of rain-starved grass off of and out of my already scabby knees. They had fled by then. I could hear them taunting me over their shoulders as they made their way across various backyards. “Cheater! Cheater! Alex’s a cheater-peter-eater!”
With the fading of their stinging cries came a slow silence that settled thickly over the neighborhood.
A gnat darted into one nostril. I sneezed it out and rubbed at my watery eyes with gritty fists. The sun would be setting soon, and I remembered I had to be home around dusk—preferably just before.
I started plodding my way home with my little head of shaggy, dirty blond hair bowed with the weight of intense thoughts filling it.
I neither saw nor heard the car until its whitewalls squealed and its horn blared a long, shrieking moan which sliced with almost painful suddenness through my thick mental fog. Whipping my eyes up from where they’d been contemplating the scuffed rubber toes of my shoes, I was met with the piercing, wide-eyed stare of a small boy. He seemed either terribly frightened or amazingly angry, his dusty, startled features too hard to read well through the bug-speckled windshield. The image was suddenly replaced by that of a curly-topped,
pimple-faced teen glaring at me from behind the wheel of his pollen-peppered vehicle. The horn screeched again
and I bolted from it in terror.
I didn’t pause for breath until I reached my front yard. We occupied a small house painted battleship grey
with black shutters where they hadn’t rusted at the hinges and fallen away from the curtainless windows. It was
early twilight, and the domicile appeared to be attempting to slink away into its own particular hue of dusk, the
jungle of surrounding tall weeds happy to help it along. So far as I could tell, there were no lights on inside, and the only mode of transportation parked outside was the dented, matte black bicycle with a flat tire lying on its side atop the crabgrass-choked driveway, an old length of knotty spiderweb swaying languidly from the uppermost part of the handlebars.
The lock had broken long before, part of a key still lodged within it, so I pushed the door open only enough to admit me, then closed it as quietly as I could manage. It was difficult to control my still labored breathing, but I needed total silence to listen for any sounds of my younger brother or father. The house held a stale odor devoid of either cooking or cleaning smells. The air was stagnant and tepid, long sealed from benefit of breeze
or humidity. It was the chokingly dry atmosphere of the inside of a coffin.
Dad was sitting alone mere feet from me in what passed for our living room, his slouched form blending well with the shadows and silhouettes of the mostly lightless interior. He occupied his favorite chair—the overstuffed one that swiveled for a look out the window behind it or the filled bookshelves beside it. Tolstoy, Chekhov, and the American, Twain, held places of honor next to thick volumes full of Shakespeare bound in cloth, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Dickens, and Kipling. I’d read them all myself or had them read to me and could recite lines from a selected title upon request, but they were to be removed and sold tomorrow. Mom’s books.
The ones she’d saved up pennies to buy in already poor condition, hoping I could teach her how to read English
someday. I’d never enjoyed being forced to read and re-read and even explain the meanings behind the lines. After
mom’s disappearance the year before, they’d almost filled in for her, and I’d huddled alone in my room with them
throughout the winter months, reading them aloud at a whisper as though she was still there to hear, explaining
entire paragraphs at a time, sometimes even arguing with myself over them, hoping to make her understand, hoping to please her...glancing up expecting to see her puzzled smile. There was nothing else in the house left of
her. I cherished what few physical mementos remained.
The rough-carved man in stiff work clothes hunched forward over his knees, a brown bottle dangling by its neck from a set of thick, callused, and prematurely aged and veined fingers. I hadn’t eaten all day, but I knew
better than to ask about dinner. We’d subsisted on little more than raw potatoes, black bread when we could afford it, and thin soup flavored with too much salt and pepper and too little meat or vegetable. As a matter of fact, the last meat we had consumed had been the remains of a dazed opossum dad had seem staggering across a tree-lined
road one night after it had just barely survived a brush with a speeding new sports car. Anyway, I needed to talk to
someone just now, not eat. I needed the answers to questions I wasn’t yet able to put into words. Why were the other kids always accusing me of cheating lately? What had gone wrong today during tag? Why had the high-school kid in the car acted so angry at me, when he’d actually been concerned for me and a little shaken on the inside.... But I was only six and didn’t know where to begin.
So I stood there by the coat closet while night fell. Stars came out over dad’s head, and I could make out the mysterious flickering glow of heat-lightning beyond the rooftops across the street.
Eventually, my father glanced upward to focus on me momentarily as if he’d just noticed I was there. He stared blearily at a tiny boy, much too small for his age, nearly skeletal, with uncombed hair, a dirt-streaked face, and huge, questioning eyes that sought what? And the lad was a mirror image of myself at that exact age, except with hair much lighter than my own jet locks and an overall lack of muscle, lean sinew, good for hard work in short bursts. This blessed child before me lived in a real house devoid of the chinks that let in the knife-like icy draughts that sliced one’s feet and fingers, had a luxurious bed all his own full of goosedown instead of musty straw as the one I’d shared with my brother had been. He owned store-bought pajamas where I had slept in a crude,
shapeless shift my grandmother had fashioned with her knobby, twisted, red knuckled hands. He received at least
one meal of some kind a day where I had often survived for days in a row nibbling on a chunk of moldy crust I’d
hidden beneath a loose floor board, and I’d had to work odd jobs for neighboring villagers just to get that and a swig of bread alcohol to wash it down with and keep me warm.
What on earth could this spoiled child want? Why does he stare at me so? Old enough to play away from home, young enough not to have to worry about money or women yet.... It couldn’t be his mother. He knows better than to ask about her anymore. But there’s...an agelessness to his eyes...like black water in some time-forgotten
swamp...and sometimes I can see the stars in them...a chill and goosebumps rise along my arms, lifting the coarse
black hairs there.... Fuck him. Can’t stand those eyes...like hers...it’s why I drink. Why I’ve lost my job! Not that
anybody ever paid me what I’m worth...Goddamn him! I’d kill myself to get away from him, but then who’d look
after David? Or Alex. And today the electricity...but I’ll sell the books tomorrow and we can have that back again. I can take my pocketwatch to the pawnbroker, maybe buy that gun he has so we can get fresh squirrel and rabbit in our bellies before they cave in completely.
A tear slid down my face, but when I moved to wipe it, I saw it was Dad’s tear, Dad’s face.
He swiveled suddenly toward the window. I thought I heard him make a sound.
Backing from the room and the uneasy silence reeking from the corner by the bookshelves, I hurried for my spartan bedroom. David had been sleeping with Dad since Mom’s disappearance just about a year before, and Daddy wouldn’t talk to me at all like it was my fault she’d been taken away. I peeled off my chalky shorts and used my inside-out shirt to wipe some of the grime off of my skin. They called it an abduction. They had yet to find the perpetrators. But, it wasn’t my fault. She’d just slipped away when my back was turned and been caught by some sort of sparkly light that pulled her up into their spaceship. I certainly hadn’t encouraged her to abandon us, and I
hadn’t intentionally let go of her hand, so I couldn’t understand why Daddy was always so angry with me.
And now lately I could feel what he was feeling and thinking, almost hear the words inside his own head, and it felt a lot like fear and frustration and less like anger...more like some disturbing sort of hatred.
And it hurt so deep, so bad.
So I cried.
And now the tears were really mine as they glided down fleshy cheeks still youthfully round, creating paths of light tan through the powdery grime, cooling as they fell and found my ears as I lay still and stiffly upon the old afghan atop my stinking feather bed. I tried to still my breathing completely as I gazed unseeingly up at the
cracked ceiling where the shadows of small saplings swayed erratically in night breezes I could neither feel nor
hear. The tang of cheap beer coated my mouth with a sourness as I sat contemplating the house directly across the street from ours where the family within was sitting down to a sumptuous late meal prepared by the lovely svelte
mother and the three blossoming daughters who all worked after school as candy-stripers. Their huge oval dining room table was set before their beautiful new bay window where I could see the eldest of the plump daughters
carrying in a steaming platter of roasted meat surrounded by fancy carved carrots and boiled parsley potatoes
glazed with gold butter. My mouth did not water because I could neither recall smell nor taste of such
home-cooked delicacies. So I watched the shadowplay dance across my ceiling through eyes that burned and brimmed with tears of sorrow and self-pity and saw the handsome father smile while he placed large slices of dripping meat on everyone’s plate and decided to keep my problems to myself.
2
I woke upon satiny sheets, yawned and stretched in air-conditioned chillness, the scent of coffee I’d driven all the
way to Connecticut for on a lark drifting serenely up the stairway. I’d neglected to set my alarm clock before
retiring as usual, but my automatic percolator had arisen precisely at six to perform its simple, yet necessary
function of rousing me with ample quantities of hot caffeine. I reached toward the floor with my left arm, seeking the television remote and managed to snag the power cord of the clock, sending it to the ridiculously plush carpeting. It hardly made a sound as it struck the floor, but my partner awakened beside me anyway.
When they’d told me at work hat I’d be keeping my newest partner with me at all times—including off-duty—I’d considered opening up the sofa bed in the guest room. Unfortunately, Amanda always managed to wind up with me regardless of where in the house she had originally dozed off, so I’d finally just given in and allowed her to share my king-sized mattress.
Ignoring her, I lifted the remote enough to activate the TV. Early morning programming. News. News.
Popeye—an old black and white one. News. Infomercial. Weather and time. Exercise program—ha! News. News.
Talk show. Bugs Bunny. I yawned loudly. When I could see again, I discovered that Amanda had scooted next to my feet near the foot of the bed. As usual, her hair looked perfectly combed, her eyes bright and clear of morning daze. It was actually a little irritating. She was clad in a long pale blue satin shirt. I couldn’t recall if it was the
same bit of apparel she’d worn while crawling into the bed with me the night before. That’s one of the perks of
living with a Quasared roommate—they don’t take up any closet space.
I sat up and yawned again over my bent knees while she reached out to toy with a few twists of my hair. I sped through the channel selection a second time. What the hell, I thought, Bugs Bunny’s not so bad. He’s a lot easier to digest first thing in the morning than a plane crash in Peru or a train wreck in India, rebellion in your choice of Arabic countries, guerrillas shooting someone somewhere. I shushed her busy fingers away so I could comb my own digits through the mass of dark honey snarls, untangling knots as I came to them. Another yawn I followed with a groan, then opened my eyes to find that I was suddenly alone.
“Uh, ‘manda?” No response. It wasn’t uncommon for her to literally vanish suddenly. She’d either reappear by my side at her leisure, or I’d find her elsewhere in the house while getting ready for the day. “Hey! Hey!”
My partner stood on a solid green colored grassy knoll in a watercolored forest with her pale arms folded
across her small breasts. A tall grey rabbit leaned comfortably against her shoulder noisily gnawing a carrot. Elmer
Fudd had drawn his shotgun on them both. Neither intended victim seemed particularly disturbed by this.
My forehead was instantly clammy. My left cheek twitched once. Waitaminute. I’d been through this before. Apparently I was only dreaming that I was awake...I hated these dreams. They could sometimes go on through several instances of me thinking that I was awake to find I’d only dreamed it all again. My hands shook a little and I delivered short, quick breaths through clenched teeth. Felt real. Awful damned real. They always did, though. It took some particularly bizarre occurrence to allow you to convince yourself that yes, you were really still asleep and it was time to wake up now. I blinked hard several times, then leaned far enough off the edge of the bed that the end of my nose made contact with the fuzzy static on this side of the glass screen. I smiled uneasily and uttered a soft, sharp exhale of a laugh. Amanda had enlisted with Warner Bros. I fumbled numbly for the remote to switch it off until I wondered if I might inadvertently harm her somehow that way. Why should I worry about her if
this was all a dream, though? It was just a dream...right? Uneasily, I backed from the tube until the bed’s wooden headboard stopped me. Elmer Fudd was talking in close-up, and I worriedly muttered, “Amanda...” to find her sitting right beside me. She smiled politely as though waiting for me to deliver the punchline to some outdated joke while I stared at her and wondered if any of this was real. Out of curiosity, I crawled from the mattress and approached my dresser, never taking my eyes from her as I felt for and located one of my cordless phones. I
punched numbers on the keypad, dialing up information, then had them place the call I wanted to make. A bored male voice answered curtly.
“Did you see that? What was that? Who was that on TV?”
The voice attempted to sound crisp and professional. “Wha? Hold on, sir. I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“On TV. Bugs Bunny. I was sitting here having breakfast with my son and we just saw a woman or girl on TV with the rabbit.”
“Um.” Long pause. “A cartoon woman?”
“A real woman. Or girl. I’m not really sure.”
“Well, sir, nobody else has called the station about it and I’m sitting here right now watching the show and I sure haven’t seen anything weird like that on there. Maybe it was bleedthrough from one of the other stations.”
That gave me some relief. No one else had seen her. “Yeah, well, sorry. That’s probably all it was.
Thanks.” I hung up and sighed. “You little shit! What the hell is going here? Am I still dreaming or did you just pull some kind of Quasar stunt or something?”
She ignored my outburst, completely absorbed with trying to follow the story of the animated program.
Stretching the arm that held the remote, I hit the power button for spite. The remote rang. I jolted in
astonishment, then realized I was still holding onto the phone. “Hullo?”
“James!” Nobody ever called me by my middle name unless there was serious trouble. “It’s me, Smirkle!”
“Yeah?”
“Did you see? Were you watching? Like a minute ago? On TV? I want you in here now!”
The phone slipped from my fingers. My chest constricted and a chill coursed through me. If I wasn’t dreaming, then I was possibly in shit so deep I wouldn’t see light until the sun went nova. I wondered briefly how much gas it would take me to drive to Cuba.
Refusing to meet Amanda’s eyes, I yanked on the nearest pair of discarded pants and the shirt I’d worn the day before. My keys hung from the hook inside the door of the downstairs coat closet, and from there I sprinted to my car and made the drive to work in record time.
3
I’d known Michael on and off since we were children and had never seen him hysterical over anything. He paced his office like a caged tiger, and the power of his concentrated emotions along with the dizzying speed of the
thoughts racing his brain was sufficient to keep me pinned unobtrusively in the chair I’d drawn up before his handsome desk. He was out of uniform, dressed in tennis whites which hung absurdly from his lanky figure. He’d replaced his frameless granny glasses with a more expensive pair of prescription sports shades secured to his head with a strap of red leather. His tones were soft and almost reverent as if he feared waking the nuns sleeping outside his door in the hallway. “I can’t believe something like this could have ever happened. It’s simply not possible. Have you any idea how this could affect the future operations of ArtReal? StarNet? Can you fathom the implications of it all? This was never meant to occur, nor anything remotely like it! I can’t believe....” he trailed off, his wild gaze settling on me.
Despite his fluctuating emotions, there was also a strangely eerie, defeat-like calm which seemed to preside over all. Disbelief, reluctant acceptance, outrage, incredulity, even slight amusement whirled around inside
his mind like a tiny tempest. I gazed at him uncertainly, mouth agape, almost smiling for a second, losing it as he
raced through the more negative feelings again. “Sh-should I bring Amanda back in? To, uh, to stay here, then?”
The pacing slowed, deposited him at the front corner of his desk. His face brightened as he eased back upon it, still balancing himself on the floor with the toes of one foot. “Yes. Definitely. We wouldn’t want them to
see our top of the line model before we’ve seen theirs!”
My cog wheels ground to a screeching halt. “’scuse me?”
“I’d go with you...I’d deeply love to, but I’m already late for brunch with the Elfenlanders. Nice people.
Business people. Wealthy people. Drop off Amanda as soon as you can this morning and I’ll have all the details
and the address ready. I want a full report on anything you learn. Feel free to be sneaky. Use your-” he cut himself
off abruptly, smiling as he tapped his temple.
“Mikey?” I hesitated, searching for the proper words even as I continued to scan him mentally for a clearer picture of what was going on here. “What the hell are you talking about?”
He was almost stunned that I’d asked that. “What?”
“What did you see on TV this morning?”
“Th-the news. Channel ten. A man named Payson. Corbin Westmore Payson in a brief blurb. He made a statement to the press claiming he’s developed his own Quasars at a far lower cost than ours, faster, and with a substantially lower mortality rate. He may even have achieved Double A’s from his descriptions of them.... In the
time it took you to get over here, I was able to get up with him personally and set up a meeting between the two of
you as I really have to be elsewhere I’m afraid. I chose you because you’re not currently on a case, and I think a
science-type might make him defensive or suspicious of spies. Just have him or his people give you a tour. Ask
intelligent questions if any occur to you. Make sure you actually see the Quasars.”
I was numb. Other Quasars? Double A like my Amanda? Impossible! My partner had been a fluke we still had yet to reproduce. It was highly unlikely that anyone else could’ve purposely developed their own...Amanda was
pure accident, and we’d gone through one hundred and sixty eight others before her without achieving results
anywhere close to what she was. “Well, hey, waitaminute! Maybe I should bring Amanda—with me, I mean. If I don’t let on what she is and she actually behaves for once....” I could see the doubt in his eyes. “I’ll go get her,” I groaned reluctantly. “I’ll put on a clean shirt.” I rose to depart.
“By the way, Alex.”
Uh-oh. “Eeyeah?”
“What, exactly, did you see on TV this morning?”
“Wabbits.”
Continued
in the sci-fi collection entitled
Quasar 169: Silver Sphere Sightings
Talcon Star City has been honored as a "Finalist" of the 2012 International Book Awards in the "Fiction: Science Fiction" category.
Commodore Robert Sheppard fights to save the peacekeeping Alliance of Worlds from otherworldly aliens in Gary
