“The Earth is a farm. We are someone else’s property.”
“JFK was killed by a nun,” Ethan said as he
looked out at Smith.
“Huh?”
“John Kennedy. He was killed by a nun—or a cop, or a
priest—someone who would not be suspected—because it’s just always the last
person you suspect—in life.”
“But a nun?”
He thought about it for a moment, and knew that the hit team was
starting to sound Village People-y. “Alright, maybe not a nun, but you get my
idea: He was killed by someone who wouldn’t be suspected—someone whose presence
at Dealey Plaza would go unquestioned and who would be allowed to go about
their business unbothered—that’s how it normally is, you know.
“So many people think it was someone hiding behind a fence or something
on the grassy knoll--not a chance. The gunman—or woman—intentionally stood out
on the knoll and then fired the fatal shot with a small caliber rifle hidden in
an umbrella or a cane—which is also why so few people heard the additional
shots.”
The town laid dark aside from the streetlights and the occasional
home that was not hip to the attitude of the rest of the town. The town as a
whole was in a state not so much sleep but of restlessness—a state only someone
unaccustomed to it would notice. On the outskirts of town stood the Monolith
Oil Refinery, its two giant holding domes jetting out like a pair of huge
bulging eyes looking upward at the clear September sky. A large billboard with
a troika of super-powerful halogen lamps at its base pointing upward
proclaimed:
MONOLITH OIL
a branch of ChemCorp
Creating a better world with science!
Next to the lettering was an animated owl wearing a tasslecap and
bifocals—ChemCorp’s creepy-as-hell mascot. It clenched a slide rule in one
talon and a beaker in the other; its wings were outstretched in a peculiar
gesture of victory. The lamps and the position of the billboard made it the
most visible aspect of the town’s night skyline. Hollywood had its sign; Smith
had a giant-ass cartoon of an owl-scientist.
Beyond the refinery lay hundreds of miles of white desert. But the
desert was more than desert; it was a world within itself. A world alien to
most. A world where hostile plants grew to gigantic proportions, its thousands
of spikes prepared to spear anything that ventured too closely. A world where
hairy arachnids the size of men’s faces ate birds and small mammals. Where the
littlest creatures—just red dots against the ground—were the most feared, its
danger being in the communal mind of the colony. And some of the ugliest, most
violent birds on God’s not-so-green Earth awaited something—anything—to curl up
and die, so they might continue their own survival. Truman had always hated the
fire ants for their conformity (yes, "conformity"—those ants were
total robots), always hated the vultures for their scavenging. And people who
kept tarantulas as pets were even bigger freaks than he.
The rangers would bring in a corpse from the sands, every once in
awhile—typically a fool hiker who'd underestimated how much water would be
needed for their walkabout. Sometimes a local.
Outside of the Amazon, the American Southwest was among the most
hostile terrain in the western hemisphere.
Ethan, a teen extraordinary only in how ordinary he looked, wore
khakis and a light colored shirt—unaccustomed to the climate, he looked like a
tourist. His face was pale and sweaty. He held a tinted bottle in one hand and
a lit cigarette in the other—he alternatively puffed and sipped to keep that
special blend of tobacco and cheap booze in his mouth.
Truman was in sharp contrast to him: tall, burly with black hair.
His skin had a slight tan to it, suggesting nativity to the Southwest. Dressed
in black cargopants and a pitch black duster (worn either out of habit or a
dullenly to the heat), he blended into the night as much as humanly possible.
He was holding a tinted bottle too.
But the number of empty bottles at the their respective
feet—almost a 3-to-1 ratio—made it evident who’d consumed more of the sauce.
And if there was any additional doubt, one only needed to sample Ethan’s drunk
talk, which was as insane as when he was sober, but with sobriety, his
ramblings were at least accurate in syntax.
Ethan mused: “Have you ever looked up at the sky and asked
yourself if that crap they taught us in Sunday school was true?—I mean when you
look into the blackness of space, the seemingly
infiniteness—infinity—infinesses”—he had no idea what he was saying at that
point, his mind in autopilot—“infinite of the dwellings of the gods and felt
obliged to ask yourself about the true meaning of the beginning—and the
possible end of our existence as we know it.” Ethan, making it abundantly clear
he was a “philosophical drunk,” walked to the edge of the bluff and looked up
at the indescribable beauty; millions of stars looked down. He was transfixed
by the universal portrait of beauty. Like he’d never seen the stars before.
A ball of fire streaked across the sky, dragging a tail that
seemed to cut through the fabric of time-space itself—a meteor skimming the atmosphere.
Probably.
A minute later Ethan doubled over, placing hands on bent knees and
trying to slow his anxious breathing. “Now I feel nauseas.”
“You’re drunk,” Truman stated as if it was some mind-blowing
insight.
Ethan thought about this for a second. Then he proudly delivered
the answer that was so obviously perfect for the moment: “Yes I am.”
After another pause, he continued, “Different societies,...they
call it different things. Ours calls it the Apocalypse—the end of all things,
when the gods shall descend from the heavens and divide mankind between the
worthy—those who’ve served them faithfully—and the rest, who will perish by
their powerful hands...and fire and...yada, yada, yada.” He took another sip,
and added with a great degree of certainty, “There’ll definitely be fire
involved.”
Then he turned and staggered over to his drinking buddy, who was
sitting on a log—at a safe distance from the edge—and pondering how anyone
could "yada, yada" after the fire. He plopped down beside Truman on the
log, almost giving him an impromptu lap dance by about nine inches to his
right. The two boys had grown close these preceding months, and neither wanted
to ruin the bromance with overt homoeroticism. “I’ve uncovered information
thought secret on the Internet from a man who identified himself only as
‘Miscreant.’ It will finally reveal a vast conspiracy of global proportions and
provide the Justice Department with sufficient evidence to prosecute all those
involved. I’ve kept this information coded and hidden—”
“What kind of conspiracy?” Truman asked in amusement, and took a
large swig himself.
“One that reaches into every man, woman and child on the planet:
Aliens—visitors from a distant world—are plotting colonization,” Ethan sat up,
walked to the bluff’s edge again, and began to pace back and forth alongside
it. “Scientific experiments against Americans in numbers greater than anytime
since World War II—experiments to create human weapons, and new weapons—weapons
greater in power than any nation’s conventional, viral, chemical, bacterial or
nuclear arsenal.”
Truman walked over to his babbling bud. Ethan, approached by him,
stopped pacing. They stood for a moment, looking out into the night. Two things
a small desert town in the middle of jackshit had: heat and panoramic views.
Ethan took a final drag of his cigarette, then flicked it out over
the bluff. The little red burning tip faded away into the darkness. He stood
staring down the bluff. In his eyes was a look of hopelessness that would have
made Sisyphus’s appear optimistic by sheer comparison. “A lot of crazy shit is
going to go down in the next couple years, man,” he told him in all
seriousness, and by the tone of the guy's voice, Truman could tell it was his
prophecy. “This country—this state—this town—our school. I have a feeling this
is gonna be ground zero.”
“So...‘Fight the future,’ ” Truman told him condescendingly.
Underrated movie. Greatest movie ever based on a great show; hadn't been so
great in the end when the main actor was replaced with the T1000.
There was a moment of reflection for Ethan. However inebriated he
may have been, he probably knew he was being mocked. He looked like he was
about to cry, of all things—not that the "alien-boy" from the city
was used to being mocked. And he was suddenly very tired. Though he was also
very plastered. Ethan Howe was also a sleepy-drunk, turned out.
“C’mon, bud, school starts tomorrow.” Truman gave him a soft push
in the general direction of his car, a ‘68 VW Bug convertible. Loved that car.
The ride had an outsider cool to it, but it was basically built
like a ride-along lawnmower; only less durable on rough terrain. The underside
of the body had been scrapped up real bad. Once fire-engine red, it was now a
dirty shade of burgundy, sporting an amazing coat of dust—the handiwork of the
wipers was visible. The thin tires had shitty traction, and two hubcaps were
gone—the front left, the back right. Someone had once scrawled "wash
me" on the window; Ethan in turn had scrawled "fuck you" beneath
the snotty missive. So Truman had been driving around his conservative burb
with the words "fuck you" on his passenger side window. Soon he'd
decided to do a slightly better job at washing his windows, it being a better
idea to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
Ethan staggered toward the vehicle. Halfway to the car, he dropped
his beer bottle.
It shattered on the road, the sound being carried several miles up
that midnight road in either direction.
Truman watched him for a moment, until Ethan entered the passenger
side and apparently passed out—a thud came from the car, which Truman took for
his friend's head hitting the dash. “Man, he’s gonna have one bitch of a
hangover tomorrow,” he told himself, containing the rising laughter.
Ethan always could make Truman laugh—if not always for his sense
of humor as his joy de vi. (The high schooler had learned that word over the
summer. Liked it. Didn't think it sounded gay at all.)
He took one final look at the sleeping town with the little houses
and still streets—from way up there, it all looked like a scale-model of a
town, or a number of dollhouses built along a series of obsessively plotted
streets. Some inextraordinary town where, with the exception of the occasional
family trip when he'd had a whole family, he'd spent the entirety of his
existence. “ ‘Fight the future,’ ” he repeated irrelevantly, this time to
himself, and hurled his bottle out over the bluff.
It broke on a jagged rock somewhere, and the white foam bubbled
and sunk into the sand. The sand absorbed everything.
Truman drove down the twisted two-lane road back into town. A
single error would cause the car to strike the guardrail—go too fast and they’d
pull a James Dean. His slight inebriation only worsened the situation: The
stars would streak by with every sharp turn, creating an even more perilous
situation.
Ethan was asleep, face resting on the dashboard. His mouth open,
drool gushed out from both sides. Trying to maintain his concentration on the
road, Truman managed to take his hand off the stickshift, and closed his jaw,
quelching the gush of saliva, because protecting his friend’s dignity and his
dash seemed more important at the time than dying. Ethan’s eyes opened a
little--not much--a little. He began to breath heavily and mouth what might
have been words. Truman didn’t notice that, his mind again committed to
navigating the winding cliffside road.
“Truman...”—he finally managed to get out. “Truman, if I don’t
make it, I want you to take the folders to the Justice Department—you can trust
them, you can trust the Justice Department. They have ‘Justice’ in their name,
and I find that fun-ny.”
“Yeah”—he was still amusing Ethan—but now Truman was kinda annoyed
as he was trying to keep them from dying and he'd never considered himself a
risk taker. “Where are these folders?”
“Where they belong,” Ethan replied cryptically, as if that had
attached to it some significant meaning. With that, he slipped back to sleep on
the dash, and he slept all the way back to his house.
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