They discussed it the night before the gray van would pick him up. He asked his mother for a last meal, his last “human” meal: A big porterhouse steak, mashed potatoes, beer, a slice of cheery pie, and a pack of Marlboro cigarettes.
His mother had grimaced at his request. “You don’t smoke…you’re too young to drink.”
He rolled his eyes, “Ya, so? Does it matter, now? Jesus, Mom!” His words made her cringe, and he felt both bad and frustrated by it, as if she STILL didn’t realize what this all meant.
“Bobby, you could run…,” she said, and not for the first time. He stared at her in disbelieve. “Mother, we’ve been through this. It’s a capital crime, all over the world…”
As if on queue, they heard above them the thrumming of an Eslick Glider coming through the ceiling of kitchen, the vibration rattling the dishes in the cupboards. His mother physically cringed, looking up in horror. He had seen them many times in the twelve years since their arrival. Gunmetal black, spider like, the size of an airplane slowly moving over the city a few hundred feet off the ground. The noise subsided.
“If I run,” said Bobby, “I die. If I’m alive, there is still a chance…” He locked eyes with her, leaving the statistical reality of the statement unsaid. No one came back, ever.
“Oh, Bobby!” she cried and rushed to hug him. He held her in his arms, and stroked the back of her head as she cried. She looked old, he thought, much older than 38, her dark brown hair was being quickly replaced by gray, lines of grief and worry on her face. She would be alone after this, with no one but the neighbors to watch out for her…but, what else could he do?
*****
His mother returned from the “store”, as she still called it, a few hours later. He had spent the time sitting in the kitchen watching the light change as it streamed into the window, watching as dust motes swirled and danced, watching, he reminded himself, the last sunlight he would see from Earth.
But, his mind was far from idle. He let his gift out of it’s box in his mind, creating in his mind’s eye twenty-five randomly sized and weighted balls, giving them each a random direction and velocity, enclosing them in a sphere, then calculating the various interactions as the bounced off the walls of the sphere and each other. In another part of his mind, formulas flashed and moved, being solved then updated. He moved the balls in his mind, in real time, the calculations being done faster than he could consciously follow.
He put his gift back in the box as his Mother entered the kitchen. She put the bags on the counter without saying a word, then unpacked them. She gingerly handed him the beer and cigarettes, as if they were poison that might spill on her. She returned to unpacking the groceries.
“You know,” she said, matter of factly with her back turned to him, “we had to use all our ‘special’ food points to get this stuff. I wanted to save them for your birthday cake.”
Bobby stared at the back of her head, then sighed. He let it go. He pulled a beer from the six-pack, popped the top and took a small sip. It tasted funny, almost sour, but he liked it. He took another sip, put the can down and fumbled with the cigarette package.
His mother rummaged through a cupboard for a pot and pan, then clanked them on the stove. She said “Your father would be so proud of you…first in your class, high honors…we wanted you to go to collage, hoping you wouldn’t be picked. I mean there are millions of other boys…”
He pulled a cigarette from the pack, then thought, now what? “Lighter and an ash tray,” he said absently. He stood up, opened the junk drawer just below the silverware drawer, and dug through its contents.
“But he had to stand on principles…I mean, you can’t fight THEM, look at all the GOOD they’ve done…re-education.”
Bobby found a lighter, but no ashtray. He returned to the table, swigged most of the beer, then belched loudly.
The steak had begun to sizzle in the pan. His mother went to the pantry to get some potatoes. He lit the cigarette, drew in a drag, and coughed raggedly. Grimacing, he said “Oh, crap!”
His mother returned, frowning at he popped open another beer and drug another ragged puff. She continued to prepare his meal. The nicotine buzz raced through his body, or perhaps it was the beer, he wasn’t sure.
“Surely they would make an exception,” his mother started, “I mean I’ve lost a husband and my brothers to them…surely they could see I’ve sacrificed for the greater good. I mean…”
Bobby’s buzz was fading, and his lungs burned. He put cigarette into the almost empty can and drank some more beer. This was an old debate, too old.
“We owe our lives to them,” he said, bluntly, “Remember, 1100 ICBMs they took out of the sky? So we didn’t blow ourselves up in a fit of stupidity? There is no war now, no hate, no starvation, no disease. Free power, free food, free houses, free transportation, you don’t have to work. You can do whatever you want. And they FOUGHT that? Do you think we have ANY right to complain?”
His mother whacked a spoon on the stove, “I NEVER FOUGHT IT…but I paid for it, every goddamn minute of the last 10 years,” she turned and locked eyes with him, “and now I get to pay some more.”
Stunned, he watched his mother turn and roughly stir his potatoes.
*****
Bobby awoke at exactly 5:30. As he did every night when I had to get up at a specific time, he let his gift out, set it to the time on his watch, and would go to sleep. He would awake at the time he set for himself, exactly.
He never told anyone about his gift. Oh, sure, he used it at school, just enough to keep him at the top of his class with nearly perfect marks, but never to its full potential. He somehow knew it was important not to show off.
He sat up and turned on the light on his nightstand, then picked the letter and ID card from the desk. He re-read it, though he did not need to. He had already memorized it:
:OFFICE OF ESLICK AFFAIRS: North American Division, Seventieth District.
:Notice of assignment: To: Robert Anthony Talbert, IDENT: 267749125NAL
:Class 01, Integration Assistant.
:Orbital Facility Gamma
:Transportation to be provided. Transportation will arrive at your domicile 04/01/2017,
:07:00 AM Central Standard Time
o not bring personal belongings, toiletries or other sundries of any kind.
:Failure to accept this assignment will result in termination.
:SACRIFICE FOR THE GREATER GOOD
“Sacrifice for the greater good.” he chanted. This was mantra he had learned at school, driven home by Eslick provided lessons of our collective history. Thirty-five hundred years of unnecessary death and misery. Age after age of greed, hate and the human lust for power and control over the weak. Capped off by 10 years of global war that killed almost a billion people, and the launch of all the nuclear missiles in the world.
He remembered that, at the age of six, sitting in front of the Television, the loud beeping of the emergency broadcasts system filling his ears, outside, the scaled roar of the air raid sirens. He remember his mother picking him up, holding him so tightly he could hardly breath, saying over and over again “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.”
Then, they were gone. The missles disappeared, and the Eslick, our saviors, had arrived. But the cost of that saving was sacrifice for the greater good.
No one really knew how many people had been assigned or re-educated No one really knew what they did once they got there. Most ended up in the monolithic structures that had appeared all over the world within a few hours of the Eslick’s arrival. A few were assigned to the 12 Orbital Facilities in geosyncronis orbit around the Earth. None of those re-educated or assigned, however, were ever seen from or heard from again.
Bobby was not afraid, he accepted this, as part of life. He would miss his mother, no doubt, but for his sacrifice his mother and the other 5 billion people on the planet, would never want again. Sacrifice.
He busied himself with the ritual of shower and shave, then dressed in jeans and a tee shirt. He took one last look at his bedroom, then turned out the light and headed downstairs. 6:21 AM, his gift told him.
His mother sat at the kitchen table. She held a cigarette between her hands, expertly. She had not slept, maybe had not even left the table. Her eyes were haunted.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” Bobby said.
“Oh, I used too. Before you were born. Before they came.” She faked a smile, and he touched her shoulder, smiling back at here. He wished she would understand.
There was a plate of eggs, bacon and toast on the table, so he sat down and started eating. She grasped his arm, hard, and he looked up into her eyes. “Promise me, Bobby, promise me you will come back to me…you’re all I have left.”
“I…O.K., Mom, I promise.”
She withdrew her hand, but watched him eat very carefully, as if every fork full meant the difference between life and death.
When the time came, he went upstairs and grabbed the ID badge that came with the letter, at the bottom of the stairs he hugged her and kissed his mother on the forehead, then headed out the front door just as the gray van pulled to a stop in front of his house.
*****
The van door opened as he reached the sidewalk, and a man dressed in a gray jumpsuit stepped out the van. His eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. “Robert Talbert?”
“Yes. That’s me.”
“Please step into the vehicle, please watch your head.” Bobby stepped up into the van and sat down, the man got in beside him and closed the door. The van started off up the street and Bobby noted with surprise, there was no driver.
“When will driverless cars go into production?” Bobby asked the man.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, do you need to see this?” He showed the man his ID card.
“No, please keep that with you.”
“So, what exactly does a ‘Class 01, Integration Assistant’ do?”
The man turned his head until Bobby could see his reflection in his glasses. “I don’t know.” The man’s head returned to face forward, and Bobby shrugged it off. He would find out soon enough.
The van took a route familiar to Bobby, one that would take them to the Interstate. He watched familiar houses and landmarks pass by, noting places that had once been call grocery stores and service stations sat idle and unused. They turned to go past the center of town, and where a park had been now stood a great black structure, hexagonal, six-hundred and fifty feet tall and four-hundred feet wide, with no markings other than the human sized doors on each of it’s six sides at the bottom (which he could not see from this far away), and the huge hangar doors near the top, where Gliders would enter when they finished doing whatever Gliders did.
He thought of asking the man what the Gliders did, but thought better of it, and continued to watch the window. Once on the interstate, they headed south, past large, square meadows where once farms stood and reclaimed wilderness areas. He let his gift calculate their speed by watching the mile makers on the far side of the road. Then he calculated how far objects were away from the van by their apparent relative motion based on the van’s speed.. It kept his mind busy until they could see Madison’s monolith in the distance, a copy of the monolith in his home town except for the size. This one was ten times as big.
No one really knew why Madison and 26 other cities had been struck by nuclear warheads back in 2004. It was supposed that the military coupe in Russia had gone horribly wrong, that only a few of the Russians missiles were under the coupe leaders direct control. Even the Eslick could not recover the records after the US decapitating counterstrike on Moscow. It really didn’t matter, now. The Eslick reclaimed and rebuilt the city, somehow removing the irradiated rubble. Where the city center once stood now sat the massive black structure, and it loomed over them as they exited the interstate and drove toward down town.
Bobby put is gift back in the box in his mind, then leaned forward to look at the top of the structure. He could see dots moving to and away from the very top, he assumed these were Gliders. Soon, they were so close he could not see the top of the monolith by leaning forward. He sat back in his seat.
The van pulled into a vast parking lot, filled with small electric cars, scooters and bicycles. They took an access road that lead to the base of the structure. The man, who had been silent and still for all but the first minute of the trip, stood up, opened to door of the van, and stepped outside. He said “Please exit from the vehicle.”
Bobby stepped out and looked up. It was overwhelming, a vast black wall rose into the sky, so high and so big it seemed unreal. He felt the man grab his arm, and Bobby looked at him. “Please, follow me.” The man said, and headed to the entrance to the structure. The entrance had at least one-hundred doors, and people went in an out of most of them. As they drew closer, Bobby noted some seemed to stop and stare at him, then look away. One woman turned white, and turned to hide her face. His mothers words erupted from the back of his mind, “and now I get to pay some more.” It disturbed him, and he did not know quite why.
They entered the structure and he heard the familiar feminine voice from speakers above his head, “…in your history, you live in peace. Crime has been eliminated, hate has been eliminated, disease has been eliminated. We provide for all your needs, and we have shown you how to live at peace and in harmony with your environment. Through your sacrifice for the greater good, you have reclaimed your planet. This weeks local event is the Spring Peace Celebration, at…”
They walked through the commissary, this one so much bigger than the one in his home town. Everywhere were display stands and booths for food and other items, where people selected there items and gray metallic robots told them how many food points they had left in soft, metallic voices. People pushed carts this way and that, and said excuse me and thank you, and smiled.
Soon they were through the commissary and into a huge hallway cut into the black substance of the Monolith. Occasionally, other men in gray jumpsuits went into our out of doors, Bobby noted, but there were no other people in the huge hallway. They came to a set of doors, and the man he had been following placed one hand on the wall beside the doors. The doors opened, and the man said, “Please get into the elevator. My time with you has ended. You will be greeted at the top.”
Bobby said thank you, although the man had not been very friendly too him, and stepped into the elevator and the doors closed. A few seconds later they opened again. He thought the elevator must have malfunctioned, after all, he never felt it move, but the room the elevator opened into was not the large hallway. The room was small and gray. As he stepped out into the room, his eyes caught motion to his right. HE SAW IT.
Its face was a great round ball of red slits set against black, each slit opened and closed on black eyes or rows of sharp, white fangs or hideous appendages that shot out toward him, and waved in the air. And all of this moved, twisting and turning, with squishing, ripping sound.
Bobby threw himself back towards the elevator, but missed, and smashed his back against the door frame. He screamed, but the thing moved toward him, suspended from the ceiling by eight legs, closer and closer. He screamed, and hid his face in his arms. But he could still hear the squishing and ripping. He screamed and screamed…
*****
THEY ARE MONSTERS, Bobby thought as he awoke, and he thrashed about, trying desperately to open his eyes and move his body. He could not move. He felt something pulling all over his skin, as if a million fish hooks had been jabbed into his body, and were being randomly pulled.
‘too late, too late’, a voice in his head whispered.
‘WHO ARE YOU!’ He shouted in his head.
‘you know who we are’
‘where am I?’
‘with us, with us, you know’
Bobby concentrated, tiring to open his eyes. It was no good. He could not open his mouth. In fact, he wasn’t even sure he had eyes or a mouth to open.
‘feel the pull, concentrate, feel us, feel us’
‘what pull, I don’t understand?’
Bobby felt a line of pulls, one after another, going up and down some point in his body he could not identify.
‘feel the pull, concentrate, feel us, feel us’
Bobby concentrated and felt the pulls, felt them, felt more than them, his vision returning. He could see anywhere, everywhere, a billion images across the electromagnetic spectrum, he was seeing eternity.
‘AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!’ Bobby screamed in insanity.
‘concentrate, feel you, feel you’
Then he did, his body, no, his brain, suspended by a thousand fibers, encased in a glass globe. All around him were thousands upon thousands of brains in glass globes.
‘NONONONONONONO!’ He cried.
‘with us, with us, with us, with us’
‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
‘sacrifice for the greater good’
Then there was blackness.
*****
‘feel us, with us, concentrate’
‘I feel you, I’m with you, I am here’ That which was Bobby reached out and felt them, felt the facility, felt the thousands of Monoliths and the hundred thousand Gliders. He pulled data and pushed data. Images, measurements, concepts. Endlessly.
‘disconnect, loose us, loose us’ So he did.
Bobby dreamt. The gift in the box in head exploded outward, he saw his mothers face, he saw the rows and columns of brains that were the Eslick’s version of a computer. And he found a way out…if he was lucky, very lucky.
‘feel us, with us, concentrate’
‘I feel you, I’m with you, I am here.’ Bobby reached out and felt everything, then felt even deeper, past encryption he broke in a second with his gift, into the autonomous subsystems that controlled the facility.
‘disconnect, loose us, loose us’
‘I think not.” He re-routed power and spiked a control buss.
‘EEEEEHHHHHH’, eight hundred Eslickians yanked burning appendages out of their data ports.
His mind was racing, filled with diagrams and formulas. Their language was vast, but his gift was vaster still, and in ten seconds he had full control of the facility. He locked them out of their own interfaces, then overrode the safety controls for their hangers and bulkhead doors. In an instant, the ship was open to the vacuum of space, and the monsters died in silence.
His mind raced faster, he found control codes, synchronized with each of the 11 other orbital facilities, the confused Eslickians watched as their systems were overridden, and the stasis field that contained the quantum singularity that powered their facilities shut down. In an instant, a gravity wave raced away from the singularity, shattering the 11 facilities into billions of pieces that for decades afterwards could be seen from Earth at night.
All around the planet, Gliders fell from the sky, the robots in the Monoliths went silent and still, and the horrible Eslickians, trapped in the tops of their Monoliths, died slowly from asphyxiation.
Still, Bobby’s mind raced, unopposed he networked the thousands of brains, his mind expanding, his gift expanding, he absorbed the collected knowledge of the Eslickians, and expanded on it ten fold.
Then Bobby began to build.
*****
Bobby’s mother sat at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. Her neighbor had just brought her a casserole to eat, and had comment on how much weight she had lost since Bobby had left. She smiled, and said thank you.
Hours after the Gliders had fallen from the sky and the Monoliths had gone dead, they had all started up again, and no one knew why. But what everyone did know is that television stations, long since taken off the air by the Eslick, were starting to transmit. Tens of thousands of the re-educated made there way out of the Monoliths, memories restored, to make there way back to their homes.
Maybe her husband would return, she thought, but maybe not. But, what about Bobby?
She heard the screen door open, and into the kitchen walked Bobby.
“Hi, Mom.” he said. She leapt up and grabbed him. And he held her. “Everything is going to be fine, Mom. Everything is going to be fine.”
*****
High in Earth orbit, the huge modified facility had gained nearly omniscience and omnipotence, fueled by the gift in Bobby’s brain. It understood the truth. Emotion was transient, but truth was eternal. And the lessons of history were undeniable.
‘one more chance,’ it thought, ‘one more chance or you all will Sacrifice for the Greater Good.’
