Short Story: Our Benevolent Friend Part 1

December 8, 2015January 6, 2018 ~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Discovery

An arid sun baked a desolate patch of sand somewhere between Libya and Lake Nasser in the seemingly endless Sahara. Around it, for a moment, people were scattered like ants tending to the entrance of their colony. Even smaller specks from their equipment and instruments outnumbered them twenty to one in the vast dune of the place. There was but a single anomaly in the uniform flatness and waves of windswept dunes to break the otherwise immaculate, golden sea; a blackness, no larger than a common automobile, in the center of the people and their instruments.

At a near enough proximity, the blackness became a hole– an opening to an underground cavern, where the refraction of light from dust occasionally swirled or spilled inside. The archaeological dig here hoped one day to prove what few scientists and archaeologists believed. These conspiracists, as they were sometimes called, believed they had stumbled upon the oldest, most comprehensive cache of ancient knowledge in existence.

Only time would tell what the diggers might uncover as they shoveled, pick-axed, and brushed their way deeper into ancient catacombs. Speculation and theory ran rampant; perhaps it was the lost library of Alexandria, or perhaps somewhere inside, was the chamber to the lost city of Atlantis. The academic ponderers kept themselves grounded, speculated it might be the tomb of the oldest, first pharaoh. One that predated Narmer, and even still the first Egyptian dynasty, thereby solidifying that the Narmer was not, in fact, he who unified the lands of Egypt in ancient times.

If such were the case, who then might have? The King Scorpion, speculated to have passed unified Egypt to Narmer? Or was it perchance, one yet unknown to the historical community? If so, was the loss of his name due to time’s ravages? Or was it from the tyranny of his rule? Had he decried the population were heretics, struck them down? Was that the reason for this tomb to be so far out of the way, buried where no-one could ever dream to look?

This last speculation had merit, if only for the nature of the catacombs’ discovery– seemingly the most fortunate mishap of man to date. Its serendipitous nature may have rivaled even the great, but wholly misconstrued tale of Newton’s apple and gravitational theories.

While it is common knowledge that both sandstorms and earthquakes are known to occur, their frequency within the deserts and lands surrounding Egypt are less known. Earthquakes are prevalent on the coasts, rare within the confines of the desert. Sandstorms inversely so. But on one particular day, the two seemed to coincide.

An earthquake beneath the Mediterranean sea, felt as far as the Sudan, caused a tidal wave to wash over much of Cairo. It was a terrible thing to happen. Terrible, but revealing. Most of all, it was fascinating. As the ocean swelled, the shock-wave of the most catastrophic earthquake ever recorded occurred. The latter forced the former deep into the desert, threw sand into the air that caused a storm almost equal to that of the Earth’s shakes. The inhabitants hunkered down in their coastal cities, held on until the end might come. For many, it did. Others were more fortunate. The desert though, was soaked by the massive tidal wave that moved inward for hundreds of miles.

This waves destruction walled up sand in its path, collided with the sandstorm to strengthen its reserve. The latter raged forward in destruction where the water could not. After days-long floods, and still more, smaller storms the climactic series of events finally ended.

Clean up and rescues efforts were enacted immediately. Humanitarian aid was sent from all over the world in the forms of food, water, clothing, even helicopters. It was one such ‘copter, diverted from Libya, that was ordered to fly low over the desert and survey the damage. The hole in the Earth was first spotted then. The helicopter’s crew made note of it, continued forward until their fuel forced them back toward the cities.

It is a curious coincidence that a Doctor, who shall go nameless, was searching for a hidden set of catacombs when the seas rose and the dust blew. It was curious, but not altogether uncommon. When he received word of Earth’s peculiar opening, and travel in the regions had been restored, he bee-lined to the site. It took ten, harrowing days before his group uncovered the stones that marked the catacombs’ start, a further two days before the blocks were removed, and the passage was opened.

Gathering their instruments, wits, and their skepticism, the Doctor and his team climbed down into the shaft. They lit their way along with twenty-four hour flares that burned illuminated the passage, threw shadows of a the dozen bodies along its cramped, narrow walls.

At a brick wall deep within the passage, the Doctor and his team were forced to remove more bricks. One-by-one, they gingerly placed bracing devices to stabilize the tunnel, carved out, then heaved out the blocks. With the passage open again, they ventured forth, their shoulders scraping the side walls despite their single-file trudge. They followed the twists and turns for hours, dropped flares every few feet, and headed deeper into the Earth at a gradual slope.

Unlike most tombs and catacombs, these passage ways were unmarked, composed solely of granite blocks arranged in a usual manner. Their fervor was restored when someone speculated this lack of symbology might connect the Great Pyramid to whomever lay buried ahead. The easy air of speculation and banter returned. It was only another half an hour after this that a second brick wall, larger and wider than the last, appeared before them. Again, they placed their braces, carefully removed the bricks, and stepped through.

Nothing less than a spectacular, massive chamber, greeted them on the other side. Flares and headlamps reflected light off golden walls, supplemented a strange irradiation from an even stranger bio-luminescent rock scattered about the room. Again there was no writing, but the presence of stacks of gold coins, gold-plated pottery, and other artifacts bore the unmistakable glyphs of ancient Egypt. Though this dialect was new, or rather so old it was unknown, there could be no doubt of its lineage.

The room’s center was occupied by a most unremarkable slab of stone– at least, it would have been unremarkable were it not for its ornate surroundings. At its head, over-arcing others, was a statue of Nut, the night-time Sky Goddess. Beneath her to the left, Ra, the Sun-God, while at the right, a massive Ankh of life. Someone posited that this pharaoh must have been looked upon as the creator of life, bringing the sun from the darkness.

Something struck the Doctor; the pharaohs were all identified by the headdresses upon which their grave slabs were inscribed. But here there was none. It was not unheard of, but strange given the obvious reverence placed upon this particular ruler. Why had they not included this? Surely, he commanded their respect and loyalty. It was suspicious to say the least.

The Doctor gave the word that they must open the slab at once, an instinct that he would later recollect upon as his greatest compulsion in life. The others would agree.

Together the dozen men and women fought the top of the slab, pried it apart carefully. It slid sideways, was set to rest upon the ground. Shock once more flickered through the faces of those present; they found no discernible identity to whom lie inside the ancient sarcophagus within the slab. Again, not unheard of, but suspicious given the sarcophagus was cast in that same, pure-gold that lined the walls.

What happened next was nothing less than truly mesmerizing.

Slowly but surely, electricity began to arc from the walls of the chamber. Some fled in fear of electrocution, but the Doctor was frozen in place beside the slab. The electrical discharges grew in speed, strength, quantity, but only zapped from the walls to the sarcophagus. The room filled with the buzz and cracks, and blue light of electricity. In the center of it all, was the Doctor.

The ancient coffin began to stir, and with a light click and a hiss, it parted in twain. Its top rose slowly, as if on silent, mechanical hinges. After a moment of unfathomable uncertainty, the electricity stopped. The room was darkened, silent again.

A fine layer of dust and smoke had rose from the innards of the open sarcophagus, while the rest of the team inched their way back toward the Doctor. He led them the pair of steps forward, to look down in bewilderment at the coffins’ contents. It was a man, or rather, something man-like. Nonetheless it was there, perfectly preserved. The bio-luminescent rock shined off of a gray-blue skin, its brilliance metallic, yet leathery.

With a joyous cry, the Doctor exclaimed, “It’s breathing! Look, the chest!”

Indeed, the creature’s chest with a hypnotic, rhythmic motion. Silence fell once more, not a man nor woman dared to breath, fearing they might steal the creature’s last breaths. The eyelids began to flutter on the oblong head, and in an instant, snapped open. Two, bulbous eyes looked out upon the team and the Doctor, as it eased upright.

It spoke a garbled, indiscernible dialect of ancient Egyptian, seemed frustrated at multiple attempts of the same pattern of words. The team engaged each-other in debate of how best to explain their speech. It silenced itself at once.

After a moment, the Being closed its eyes, tilted its head downward. A moment later, its head rose again, and with a fickle gesture its hand, the rocks grew brighter, the room enveloped in a day-time light. It stood promptly. The slab hissed, clicked, sank lower into the ground. The group had frozen in curiosity, terror. The Being stepped across the chamber to a wall, waved its hand. A doorway appeared. It disappeared inside, returned momentarily, clothed in garments of an ancient, ornate fashion.

The group had watched in utter perplexity. Their minds alight with possibility, but their bodies and tongues too stunned and tied to move. The Being stepped for the doctor, its robes trailing behind it, and bowed its head.

It spoke flawless English, “What year is this?”

The Doctor fought his frozen muscles to explain the shift from Egyptian time to that of the Roman system. “It is possible you’ve been here ten thousand years.”

The Being pondered this for a moment. No doubt his species was aware of his presence here, why then, had they not come to check on him, the Doctor wondered.

“I will explain to you in a moment, the fallacy of this expectation,” he said to the Doctor, knowing his thoughts. “For now, I must inform you that I require sustenance.”

Hands went to pockets and backpacks, offered the Being masses of energy bars, sandwiches and other, easily accessed consumables. Someone collected them, handed them over. The Doctor passed forward a large jug of water. The Being sat, gestured for them to join, and promptly devoured each morsel. With the fury of a man denied sustenance for ten thousand years, it shoveled the food in with table manners at home only within the tomb.

It finished, wiped away bits from its leathery skin, and thanked them, “I have not eaten in millennia, I was beginning to feel it.”

Chuckles emitted from the group as an air of elderly storytelling descended upon them from their guest.

“I must confess,” the Being began. “I expected to be roused much longer ago than this. But I am satisfied to be here now. I will relay to you my own history, before I ask that you relay your own.”

The Doctor was satisfied with this, as were the others. Each of them sat in their various ways, looked on the Being with undivided attention.

It continued, “I came to this planet thousands of years ago, from a place even further away than that in light’s time. There was a war on, and many whom wished not to fight were allowed safe passage and sustenance enough to last them their million-year life-span. I, being a social adept, wished not to live alone, but left as such in any case. My ship’s automated scans located a world– this one–, which read that possibility of intelligent life had begun to evolve. As a curious mind, I wished to observe this evolution. I landed here, rather unsuccessfully, and took a detachable pod to look-over the planet.”

It seemed to bear a happiness in its chest that seemed familiar, yet uncanny in its alien features; “I traveled every passing step of it time and again, making observations. Then, one day, appeared an intellect of rather knowledgeable species. I began to teach them, much as you would an animal. As time carried on and their intellects grew, I further advanced their knowledge in all walks of life. In gratitude, they asked for help in construction of a shrine. I wished for no shrine, but granted them the means to build one. In this, they built a massive pyramidal structure, resembling my ship. The technology I had given them however, was not cohesive with the primitive tools they used to construct it. And so, we broke them down, used their parts.”

A note of sorrow seeped into its voice beneath the warmth of recollection, “More time passed and it came upon me that, perhaps one day, I would no longer be with the people I had found here. Either in death, or for some other reason, I might no longer be capable of imparting things to them. So, I had them print the entirety of my ship’s databases onto their scrolls. Perhaps you can answer later, what became of them.”

The note of sorrow became a chord, as if a symphony were harmonizing it together beneath its voice, “Then, one day their came a plague that spread across the planet. Resources in certain areas grew scarce, and other civilizations I had not seen to became envious. In-fighting began, but I wished not to witness it. I also however, wished not to leave. So, I set upon building my freezing chamber. Those who worshiped me, as it soon became evident that some did, aided in the construction of this place. The assumed luxury served a purpose I chose not to regale to them– the electricity might baffle them, but I couldn’t allow that it might one day be used for their warring. And so, after my chamber’s completion, I buried my ship and laid myself to rest, waiting to be awakened by a war-less civilization.”

There was a moment of quiet introspection before its gaze shifted outward with a warm smile and its uncanny face, “And here you are.”

The team exchanged some manner of shame. The Doctor, as with the others, contemplated how best to explain. He did his best to retell the expanse time, Humanity growth, and its ills and deeds. In short order, the Doctor had built a rapport with his ancient acquaintance.

Finally, tired but elated, the Doctor raised a singular question, “What will you do now?”

The Being thought intensely, replied with a succinctness, “I must un-bury my ship–” It hesitated at a slight air of disappointment that rippled over them. Someone asked if it would return. “In due course, of course. It shall only be a year. Our technology is well off enough that even ten thousands of years ago, I was able to make this destination in a few months time. I will update my data-banks, see what has become of my civilization. Then, I shall return to you and your cultures, in the galactic name of peace.”

The Being stood, stretched, its movements curiously human. The others mimicked the motion as the Doctor spoke in earnest, “My friend, you’re a most benevolent being, but may I ask; upon your return, will you reveal yourself to the masses, tell your story?”

It smiled its best smile, “In due course, of course.”

And so, the great ship lifted from beneath that tomb, rocketed skyward and disappeared into the heavens. The Doctor and his colleagues watched, eager for the day it would return and bestow upon them more curiosities than man could quite conceivably imagine. No doubt with a life-span such as theirs, eons of progress had commenced during its hibernation that now required a renewal of knowledge. With each passing night and day, the rumors of its existence spread and humanity slowly glances skyward– searching for our benevolent friend on return from the stars.

Short Story: I Remember…

December 1, 2015January 6, 2018 ~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

I remember the ships that hovered over our world in conquest. I remember it as if it had only just happened. Though it was decades ago now, nothing is so vivid in my mind. They came from the sky on glowing trails, like someone had hurled fire-bombs at us. An apt comparison given what came later. The only difference? They never hit the ground. They never had to. They came to a rest, searing heat and all, just above the tops of the tallest buildings.

I remember sitting on the couch, then later, standing in the streets, seeing the giant television in then times-square that revealed we’d been beaten, or rather surrendered– the beatings came later. I can’t remember those. I don’t want to. What I do remember was wandering, guided by my mother’s hand, through New York’s chaotic streets. I’d never known the scent of fear– real, pure, human terror– until then. It was palpable on the tongue, stank like the homeless did, like we all do now.

My mother… she had a gentleness that died with her, as if the world took such a soft creature to protect her from the wrath her child’s generation would bear. Even now, I remain glad that the madness of those first days claimed her. Though I was terrified and alone for a long while, I knew even then it was safer to be dead than subject to the horrors to come.

The first mistake we made as a civilization was existing. That was all it had taken to bring them from the skies over Alpha Centauri, have their forces launched across the openness of space to our backyard. Before the tele-streams and internet died for good, someone had calculated that they’d left their home system for Earth sometime around the broadcasts of Kennedy’s election, hadn’t arrived until the late 2010’s. It led to our second mistake.

I remembered being eight years old…. Christ, it feels like a life-time ago now. Maybe it was. Eight years old, with a gun shoved into my hands. It was a nine millimeter, fifteen round magazine with a thumb safety, and heavy. I remember that much. With that tool came the first beatings from my own kind, to instill in me how to hold it, aim it, kill with it. All because some armchair-genius had calculated the invaders expected our technology to be stuck in the sixties. What a fool.

It was only later that we learned, collectively, that our technological prowess would have never matched theirs. Not in a million years. They didn’t have to speak, or scream, or fire weapons. They simply arrived and the planet was already conquered. When we took up arms in resistance against our governments’ fealty, we spent immeasurable amounts of ammunition trying to kill them. They took full magazines from whole battalions of armed militias, their bodies riddled with holes, but bled not a single drop of fluid from their leathery hides. They were modern-day Khans, each of them, but even his conquest paled in comparison to theirs.

Their tactic was simple. To remember it now almost makes me laugh, but I can’t. I haven’t known joy or laughter, or anything more than fear for decades. I doubt there’s a human that has. As it was explained by a former-scientist just before his untimely execution, these humanoid creatures have some type of reinforced cartilage across their bodies– like the stuff our noses and joints are made of, but so strong it can withstand the force of bullets. They were walking kevlar, and because of their gel-like skeletons and regenerative abilities, nothing short of a nuclear weapon could stop them. Believe me, we tried them all; grenades, bombs, TNT, nothing worked. We learned that the hard way. Every one of them is like a walking terminator. Every. Single. One. Like those terrifying machines, they have only a goal to achieve– whatever it is– and they eliminate anything in the way of it.

Evidently, Humanity’s a part of that goal, because I remember the day their darkest weapon was revealed. As if compelled to by my own muscles, my body, fraught with the peril a rat faces in a sewer– and stinking like one at that– I encountered one of these invaders.

I was in an alley, running for my life after my militia detachment suddenly fell to the ground, began to seize, writhe, foam at the mouths. A few others and I managed to escape, but were split up. I had learned long ago not to scream nor draw attention. Even so, one of them must have sensed me, pursued me. It cornered me in an alley.

They don’t so much walk as float. Though they have two legs, it seems they’re useless. Their arms work though. I’ve seen it, felt it. They drift, lame, wherever they go. Queer-looking face tentacles take the place of mouths above three-fingered, malformed-hands with claws attached to arms longer than their legs. They make a god-awful sound– like someone’s ground metal against a cheese grater in your ear. It’s paralyzing. Both from fear and an auditory pain that seizes your muscles. It’s not even their greatest weapon– the one they conquered us with, or that I saw that night with my own eyes.

I remember sometimes doing things, even at a young age, and not remembering why I’d begun to do them or how. It was as if I simply materialized into the middle of an action, forgot everything about it. They have this way of doing that to you; making you freeze, drop your weapon, lie. For years, we thought we were gaining ground on them, and had received numerous reports about their deaths. We’d heard the war-stories of units that felled them in battle, and even I suspected the scientist’s words had been erroneous, that they could be killed.

How wrong I was. How wrong we all were.

They were lies; every story, every battle scar, ever supposed death of an invader. They’d fabricated the memories in the militia’s minds, used them as walking surveillance drones. They kept mental links through some kind of ESP, allowed them to spread their stories through the militias. Those stories flared into hope for victory, spread like wild-fires around the world. My best friend, the only person I trusted, was one of their plants. What she and I shared… it was the closest thing to joy left in the world. Even still, we could never smile. All of it was lies.

It’s been decades since they first came, and now all hope is lost. We know now what happened, even though we can’t remember how, or why we missed it. I remember hearing from a medic after a patrol that a person will sometimes forget the moments before and after a traumatic experience, sometimes including the trauma itself. It just sort of gets buried in your mind, so impossible to cope with you literally can’t. You fabricate things to put in its place, or else lose time altogether. It has something to do with an electrical overload in the brain that doesn’t allow memories to consciously form.

All I know is what happened after the raids. As if in a flash, we went from believing we might one day win, to knowing there was never been a fight to begin with. They simply appeared– walked in the front door as it were, and we were disarmed. Not a single one of us took up our weapons to fight. We couldn’t. We’d been brain-hacked, mind-controlled not to.

Now, I stand jam-packed with three-hundred other humans in a cage no bigger than a dozen feet squared, like cattle on a killing-floor. I don’t know where we are, or where we’re going, but I remember how we got here. I remember smiling and joy and happiness that once made days of sadness and sorrow worthwhile. But now all I know is despair and the sickly putrescence of two-hundred-odd other bodies smothering me. I forget my name, my friends’ names, even my home. But somehow, I remember my mother’s gentleness. I miss her. I miss the warmth of summer sun, and of childhood– what little of it I had– and the taste of fresh-water. I remember all of the good that came before the bad, something I cannot forget despite the doom we all face.

Maybe one day there will be hope again. Maybe not. All I know is that I remember it….

Bonus: Louis; PhD, MD, Custodial Artist

October 28, 2015October 27, 2015 ~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Louis; PhD, MD, Custodial Artist.

A couple of soon-to-be new parents, the woman in labor, stumbled past Louis (That’s lew-iss but it’s okay, a lot of people get it wrong) as he stepped from Wayside hospital. They begged his pardon, slipped and slid past for the doors in the cold snow. Louis was scared the mother would fall butt-first up the icy steps, so “elsewhere” was her attention focused. As large as her belly was, she’d have taken her poor husband along with her for the trip. Louis even suspected, that if she fell just right, the baby would’ve popped right out of her, slid down the icy steps into the heel of his boot.

Fortunately for all parties, she kept her balance, left a trail of foggy breath from those “birth-giving” spurts she’d taken– you know the ones: he-who, he-who, he-who. There was just enough time for him to wish them luck before the automatic doors slid closed on the father’s backward, half-wave. Louis shrugged to himself, walked on through the snow, and ’round the corner to the dumpsters for his noon-time cigarette.

Louis (one last time, lew… iss) Sacker, forty-three, was a master– nay, grand orator– of the custodial arts at Wayside Memorial Hospital. Like any other hospital custodian, his job ranged from the mundane, to the gross. From mopping floors to cleaning toilets, Louis had put in his ten-thousand hours. Meanwhile, his down and off-time were spent in deep states of self-education. Over the years, these times had gathered him knowledge of everything from herbal medicines to anatomy. But Louis’ favorite subject was physics– that’s the study of forces and motions with lots of math and other stuff Louis liked. But it wasn’t the math he liked most about it, or even the interesting, sometimes daring experiments he’d read of. It was the uses of physics he liked most to know; how rockets flew, how planets orbited, and why they didn’t fall right out of space on top of him.

His job at Wayside Memorial was just another one of these personal pursuits; a job that put him in better place to learn things his way. And since the jobs of doctors and nurses were always changing from new ideas, there was always something to learn.

He lit his cigarette, and billowed out smoke from beneath his thick, black mustache. He knew he shouldn’t smoke, but it was one’a the only bad habits he had left since he’d quit biting his fingernails to the nub. He took his due of suffering from the cold air that stung his lips, signaled the coming, January snowstorm. Even with as much as he loved his job and its chances to learn, he still hoped to return home before the storm hit. The weather man had said there’d be heavy snowfall for three or four days. It had already buried cities, trapped people in their homes, and would only get bigger. In Wayside, the houses were small, even easier to bury than usual– and this was being called the “largest blizzard in decades.” From the skin around Louis’ mustache, he felt it well-named.

As Louis stood beside the dumpsters to puff his stinky tobacco, he smiled to himself at the comparison of his big brain and his meager, little work. It wasn’t a bitter smile by any means, but rather, an amused one that one gets about oneself. He was a Doctor of physics, math, and science, and learned enough to know so, but only ever mopped floors and cleaned toilets. It was even a funny thing to others that knew him (Once they learned how deep his knowledge went.) ‘Course there were those that looked at him funny too. His odd appearance and arrangement of long side burns, beard, and pulled-back hair were repulsive to certain types. It was no matter, he felt, either he’d impress them with his way, or he’d have no need of them.

He squatted to put out the stinky cigarette in the snow, made sure the fire was gone, and the cigarette was good and wet, then threw it in the dumpster. His hands slid in his pockets as he bunched up his body for warmth against the wind and started for the hospital’s front doors. A peculiar scent smacked his large nostrils, stung worse than the icy air. It was like a mix of floor cleaners and car exhaust, almost the same smell from the time his truck’s engine had caught fire.

He followed his nose to the hospital’s emergency road and entrance way, the same place the couple’d stumbled past him along. He sniffed the air, traced the scent’s origin to the road’s center. Normally, everything about the entrance was inviting, friendly, even its smell. But this foul stink made his stomach rumble. He fine-tuned his sniffer downward as far his posture’d allow, like a floppy-eared hound-dog with its nose along the ground. Several wet spots along the entrance road steamed heat in the cold air.

It was odd– Or was it? This is where the ambulances rushed the sickest patients it, and the burning engine smell made sense if it’d leaked something. Maybe hot water? Maybe it’d mixed with something, caused that putrid stench? In any case, the odor was too strong for Louis’ sensitive beak. He was forced to rush back into the lobby, unable to stand it any longer. His stomach gave a final rumble as he jogged through the doors and took a deep whiff of the inviting smell.

He sniffed his way toward the tall reception desk where Ginny– the dimpled, red-haired receptionist waited to sign him back in.

She scribbled loud scratches on her plastic clip-board, “Snowin’ yet?”

“Not too bad yet,” he replied with a friendly smile.

Louis always smiled at Ginny for two reasons; it was polite, and he liked to see her smile back.

Even though there was something sad in her voice, she smiled back as usual, “Guess there’s no hope for me gettin’ home early then.”

The smile flickered with the start of a frown, so Louis smiled bigger, “I wouldn’t worry. Storm’ll hit tonight, but it won’ do nothin’ before the mornin’. You’ll get out ‘fore it does.”

He handed back the clip-board, and she took it, “See ya later, Lew.”

“You too. But if I don’t, good luck!”

Her smile followed him all the way to big hallway’s elevators, infected him ’til he reached the top-floor Maternity ward. He wondered for a moment how the young couple’d fared. They were at the beginning of a long road, and the more he thought of it, the longer it got. The wife and new-mother would be so tired by the end, she’d probably forget the time after a few days.

He headed along the wide hallways, adorned with lots of cutesy stickers and wall-hangings, passed the reception desk, and the six rooms between it and his tiny office to the left. If Louis was honest, and he always tried to be, it was more a closet than an office. Its size didn’t bother him though; it comfy, cozy. He stepped in as the door banged a mop and rolling bucket, shut it again to sidle behind the large desk that took up half the room. He flipped on the radio to its usual, low volume, sat down to kick up his feet and lift a book from the desk top.

For a moment he’d forgot to tell the nurses he was back, but as soon as he remembered, he picked up the phone. “Suze,” He said after a quick ring the echoed outside, “Back in if ya’ need me.”

She thanked him with a tired voice. They exchanged good-byes, and he hung up the phone to lifted his book another time and enjoy more down-time. It had been in large supply these last few days, and with the snowstorm on its way, it was likely to last even longer. He read with a certain, satisfied smile. It was more physics– some he knew, and some new to him; black holes, and parallel universes, and light waves and particles. Every word in the book was interesting, and Louis was content with being interested by them.

It only took a few hours for the young mother in the ward outside to enter the final stages of birth. As the only pregnant woman there, Louis could hear her shouts from his office across the quiet ward. He readied himself for the call, placed the finished-book on the table that his brain had gobbled up with growling hunger, and grabbed his mop and bucket. He set it on a cart with a yellow garbage bag and the peculiar bio-hazard symbol on it, and pushed it out into the hall.

He held the mop’s stick so the bucket wouldn’t jostle forward and slosh dirty water around the clean floors, wheeled it to the bathroom in the middle of the six rooms ahead. He went about his usual routine of rinsing the mop in the sink, refilling the bucket with water and a few drops of stinky floor-cleaner. The water frothed and foamed with suds, the sink’s tap too quiet to hear beneath the mother’s nearby shouts.

He glanced out the window over the toilet to keep his mind off her cries, and knew there was no doubt he’d been wrong when he’d spoke to Ginny earlier. The storm had only just begun to hit, and its heavy flakes had already piled up in the parking lot outside. He watched a small pile form in the corner of the window, judged how long it took to get to a certain height. It piled up so fast, even Wayside’s plows wouldn’t be able to keep off.

Ginny had been right, the hospital would be snowed in with all the patients and workers stuck there. Louis didn’t mind, but he wished he’d brought another book. He felt better when he thought of Ginny’s smile. It infected him again, and he plunged the mop into the foamy water. A cry of pain tore through the air like paper ripped in half. Louis’ ears told him it was from the mother’s room, but it wasn’t her pain, it was someone else’s; clearly a man’s.

Perhaps the new mother had squeezed the new father’s hand especially tight. But it came again, and Louis was certain that wasn’t the case. This voice was more like Doc Hawkins’, deep and old despit the high yelp. He’d heard it at the same volume lots’a times when he was mad, but this was a shout of pain, Louis was sure of it.

For a moment, Louis thought he should run and help, suddenly remembered he worked in a hospital. This was the only place in all the world where his skills in medicine were surpassed by the people around him. He shook his head, pulled the mop from the bucket to slap it on the bathroom floor in the furthest corner by the toilet. It made long, wet streaks from side to side that shined with the overhead lights.

Doc cried out again. Louis’ nerves were rattled. He couldn’t help it, he had to check in on Doc Hawkins. They were too good of friends for Louis not to. He slapped the mop back into the bucket, jogged from the bathroom for the one, closed door on the ward. Doc’s cries came louder now, repeated every few seconds. Louis hurried into the door, stopped in his path at the scene in the room.

Doc Hawkins was knelt room’s middle, dressed in his blue scrubs, face-mask, and head-cap. He clutched one hand with the other, whimpered like a wounded dog. The nurses had frozen alongside the mother, her legs up on the bed. They stared, horrified by smoke that rose from burns on Doc’s hands. The young wife fought her labor-pains with a purple and white face, the husband at her side in a constant stream of apologies.

Louis saw smoke, but no fire: It had to be a chemical that had caused it. He grab for a bottle of vinegar on his cart, rushed forward.

He popped off the lid, “Hold out yer’ hand’s, Doc!”

Doc couldn’t hear him, the pain was too bad. Louis did the only thing he could; dumped the bottle over Doc’s arm and hand until it was nearly empty. Doc Hawkins fell backward on the floor, the smoke gone, but his hand red and burned. He bent forward over Doc, pinched his cheeks and felt his pulse. For the most part he’d be okay, but his hands would be scarred.

He lifted Doc’s top half, “Nurses, I need some help ‘ere.” No-one moved. “Ladies, please!”

They snapped from their stupor, grabbed his legs to carry him to a chair in the room, lay him over it. The poor young woman still screamed, forced through birth as the attention shifted to Doc. The nurses checked him as Louis had, bandaged his hands over the mother’s shrieks.

Louis shouted, “What happened here?”

One nurse shrugged. The other shook her head, speechless. He looked to the new mother, her face more purple than ever; then the new father, whom stared at the ground in shame. Louis did the math, summed up that the mother must’ve caused it somehow..

But how? No woman could do that, ‘n why would she?

He thought of great practical jokes and jests of women whose insides were pure evil, like acid to the skin. But this, and other stories like it, were pure fiction– not real– and this was reality, real-life. The mother’s cries went silent, but her heavy breaths continued between loud grunts and groans. She was clearly ready to bring her baby into the world, but how’d that explain Doc’s hands? If she’d done this, why, and how?

Louis had a wild thought, so wild it almost made him laugh: maybe she wasn’t human, but a humanoid— something that looked human but wasn’t. The thought was wild, but somehow appropriate, and the only explanation that made sense to Louis. This beautiful young woman, a young, brown-haired, average human who didn’t look more than thirty, wasn’t actually a human.

Though it was far-fetched– outright unbelievable, even– Louis considered life outside of Earth as a mathematical given. Even the thought of extra-terrestrial life living quietly among them didn’t surprise him entirely, but it was stretch. It took a lot of imagination that lots of people his age didn’t have left, to even think of it. Fortunately for him, he did have some left, but never in a million thoughts or years had he considered they’d appear human in any respect.

He looked the young couple over, studied every line and curve of their faces and bodies. It had to be trickery, like some kind of advanced magician. Louis blinked, startled when the woman shrieked again. She was ready to finish the birth. Everything Louis knew about babies being born made him sure of it. And it wasn’t gonna’ wait for him or anyone else to accept crazy theories. The poor mother needed help, and human or not, she deserved it.

He rushed to his cart, pulled out a few pairs of acid-resistant gloves. They would’ve saved Doc’s hands earlier, but he’d have never known to use ’em. Louis always had a pair in his cart for cleaning dangerous spills, and they’d earned their weight in gold more times then Louis could count.

He pulled his gloves on, passed pairs to the nurses, “It’ll protect ‘ya. Trust me.”

An hour passed in screams and shouts as Louis and the nurses coached the mother to squeeze her baby out. Their gloves fought a good fight against the acidic body fluids, held up with nary a scratch. It was late in the evening when the child was finally freed of its mother’s womb and cleaned off to be wrapped in a blanket.

When the nurses passed the human baby to its mother, it was a perfect, newborn boy– or at least, looked like one. The mother succumbed to exhaustion, fell asleep with the child in her arms. The father took him as Louis and the nurses cleaned the room with their special gloves and other special cleaners. They were each too confused to talk, instead let the ward return to its empty silence.

When Louis finally finished, he approached the father with a small smile. He looked up from his son’s eyes to Louis’. A strange glimmer of light appeared in them, as though love and awe had mixed with something that scared him. The father stammered and stuttered a “thank you,” handed the sleepy baby over to a nurse who placed it in a cart. The father asked Louis to follow him from the room, headed for the elevator with Louis’ curiosity trailing behind him.

He stepped into the elevator and a jumble of words fell out of his mouth. The new father chuckled, and Louis took a deep breath to start over, “Where have you come from?”

The man’s quiet mix of fear and other things clung to his hushed words, “Far from here. Your people designate the planet only with numbers, and to us it’s merely called home.”

The elevator’s doors opened in the empty lobby, and Louis saw that Ginny was the only person left in the whole place. Outside, snow had piled high, already trapped the people in the hospital. He gave a small smile and nod to Ginny, her own smile already there from his sudden appearance.

Louis continued with the father down a long hallway past the reception desk. Louis whispered so he wouldn’t be heard, “So, why are you here?”

The father’s eye twitched with sadness, “There’s much to our world we wished to escape– to keep our child safe, and raise them well without fear of wars or pain from faith or otherwise.”

“How do you mean?” Louis asked quietly.

The father angled around another door for the large, empty cafeteria ahead, “Our people always fight one another. They are unhappy. It’s easy for a child of our kind to become the same way. We wish only love and happiness for our children, so we decided leave, hide away from it.”

“And you chose here?” Louis asked, rather sarcastically.

He apologized promptly for his tone, but the man laughed, “Do not apologize, friend. I understand your humor. But you must believe me when I say; even with its problems, your species is much safer and happier than mine.”

“I see,” Louis said, though really he had heard and not seen. In either case, he understood their reasons for coming, but continued to question it. “But what about your child’s future? Won’t he wish to have a wife and a child of his own one day?”

“Perhaps.”

“And what happens then? Does he have to go home?”

The father smiled, “Now friend, I never said my wife and I are the only of our kind here.”

Louis’ eyes gleamed with excitement, “There are more of you?”

“Many more. So many, in fact, we’ve begun to lose count.”

The father procured sustenance from a vending machine, as he told more of his world and its ways. Many of their people had left home for Earth. Like he and his wife, they were refugees that had come to hide from their terrible world and seek happiness. They chose Earth because, as fortune would have it, the people that fought on their world would never think to go there. The refugees could then live peacefully, pursue their dreams of happiness, family, or otherwise without fear.

The father explained that learning of his true nature was never intended, “We knew our child’s birth was inevitable. It is why we chose Wayside: your town is small, your hospital smaller still. We knew the time would come where we would have to reveal ourselves to a select few, and hoped it would go well. Apart from the Doctor’s wounds, it has. We’re very sorry he’s been injured. He’s a wonderful man, very helpful. Unfortunately, it seems our bodies are so unlike yours that parts are dangerous to you.”

“But you mean us no harm right?” Louis asked carefully.

The father smiled wide, “Of course not, friend.”

The truth was written in the strange man’s face– or what looked like a face, and that was good enough for Louis, “Well, Doc’ll recover. But.. how d’you hide yourselves?”

The father explained, “We can shape-shift parts of our form, and what we cannot hide is protected by a natural defense from our minds that fills in the gaps. This is our real form.”

He touched Louis’ temple and was instantly changed. The man was almost orange, with a long, curvy human-like form beneath an oblong face and head. His eyes were like giant, black-metal eggs with glows of yellow at their center. One hand kept a finger at Louis temple as the other waved at him with its fingers and palm twice as long and stretched as Louis’ own. The other hand left his temple, and the shape morphed back to the man he’d seen before.

Louis was alight with joy, “But your child! How’d he look different?”

“Our children are sentient at the moment their birth begins, and are born with all of the intelligence and knowledge of their parents. He knew to change himself before he ever entered the world.”

It was the perfect image of life, Louis thought, but he spoke his fears aloud, “But soon others will know! There will be more births, right?”

The father nodded, “Yes, of course. They will be handled in much the same way as this– or perhaps better, I hope. We are fortunate enough as a species to have been gifted with foresight. That is, we can see a short way into the future, enough to know if there will be problems.”

Louis face glowed excitement and happiness, “Really?”

The man gave a nod, “My wife and I knew that bumping into you as we walked in would help us later on. Otherwise, more people may have been injured. The others here respect you though, and you can explain to them that we mean no harm.”

Louis was humbled at his importance, promised to do everything he could to keep them safe.

And in time, so it went. The two talked more, finished their snacks, and returned to the mother’s side. Questions began then, and Louis lined up the nurses beside the doctor– who was now awake– to answer them as they came. At first, they refused to believe him, but the new parents revealed the family to them and Louis explained what he’d been told, convinced them the family meant no harm. A curiously giddy joy spread through-out the room. Even Doc, with his bandaged hands, was alight that he’d delivered the first alien baby on Earth.

They agreed to keep the family’s secret, to protect them until they were ready to reveal themselves to the world, then celebrated the birth into the night. Life returned to normal not long afterward– or at least as normal as it could be after that night. A week before it was one year since the birth, Louis stepped to the door of his home. He blew Ginny a kiss good-bye, shut the door, and checked the mail before he headed off to start the night shift. He found an envelope with no return address, but a picture inside of a light-haired, baby-boy, with words scribbled on the back: Louis “Doc” Smith Invites you to his 1^st Birthday.

Louis smiled at the scribbles beneath that told the date, time, and location, and requested an RSVP with a phone number beside it. He skipped to his truck, ready to call the number as soon as he got to work. It was, after all, the first birthday of the first alien child born on Planet Earth.

For Erin: Happy Birthday