Brad had forgotten his headlamp, but found a flashlight in his jacket pocket. He didn’t need it for long. The lights were on in the lab where the young man led him. The black countertops, glassware, and lab equipment were only familiar to Brad from his college chemistry lab.
“What are we doing, exactly?” Brad asked.
“We test the water quality to make sure it doesn’t have any chemical or biological contamination. It doesn’t take very long,” Robby said.
“Oh,” Brad said.
He watched Robby work. The young man moved around the lab confidently. He donned gloves and took smaller samples from the two cups. Some he loaded into a centrifuge—a word which Brad pried from the back of his reluctant memory—and some he loaded into a big machine which looked like a laser printer.
When the machines were loaded they hummed and spun. Robby and Brad took seats and waited
“Who taught you to do this stuff?” Brad asked.
Robby pointed to a shelf near the back of the room—“This lab is ISO certified, so all their processes are documented. The water quality tests are documented right over there. It’s really pretty easy to follow. I think it has to be, to pass the audits.”
“So you learned the process from those books?” Brad asked.
“Yeah,” Robby said. “I can show you. I mean, after you follow them a couple of times it’s pretty easy.”
“That’s okay,” Brad said, “I trust you. But how did you even know to do this?”
“Do what? Test the water?” Robby asked.
“Yeah,” Brad said.
“It just made sense,” Robby said. “We have to test the water. It’s the most important resource. We could go around drinking bottled water for quite a while, but eventually that’s going to run out, and it’s not really convenient for showers and washing and stuff.”
“Seems like there must be a million wells around here though,” Brad said. “I had one at my house. If I had just hooked up a generator, like you have here, I could have pumped all the water I wanted.”
“True, but they all come from the same aquifer,” Robby said. “And you don’t know how long you could continue to trust the supply.”
“I’ve been using it for years,” Brad said. “I don’t know why I wouldn’t keep using it.”
“Well, before you were relying on the community to some extent,” Robby said. “If your neighbor discovered a problem, you’d be more likely to investigate your water supply. We don’t have many neighbors now.”
Robby had a way of explaining things so it didn’t sound like he was lecturing. He delivered his statements in a way that made them seem like ideas he was formulating that moment. But they were so well constructed, they didn’t invite as much argument as newly minted ideas. Brad imagined the young man in a situation where adults would have no reason to listen to his opinions. He figured Robby had developed this method of explanation as a defense-mechanism so he could get his ideas across to hostile adults. Brad admired his diplomacy.
“You mentioned something funny about the water down in New Hampshire,” Brad said. “Does that have something to do with your caution?”
“Yeah, the liquid. I guess,” Robby said.
The centrifuge shut off and decelerated as the timer beeped.
“These tests weren’t designed to detect that kind of thing, but who knows,” Robby said. He got to his feet and waited for the centrifuge to stop spinning before he plucked one of the test tubes from the device. From the sample, he prepared slides for different machines.
Robby showed Brad what to look for, and how to gauge the results based on photos and tables in the books he laid out on the counter. All of the tests came back negative, and Robby cleaned up quickly. Brad considered himself a quick study, but he didn’t really pay much attention to Robby’s instruction. As carefully as Robby explained it, Brad didn’t see much of a need to learn the process. He figured it was harmless obsession for the young man, but not really a necessary use of time.
As if he sensed Brad was merely humoring him, Robby let Brad in on his theories as they made their way back to the truck.
“I figure it’s best to consider ourselves under attack,” Robby said.
“Yeah?” Brad asked. “Still?”
“Yes,” Robby said. “I could come up with a lot of ideas about what happened, but I’ve decided to focus on the one which requires the most caution.”
“Makes sense,” Brad said. He held open the door to the garage for Robby, whose hands were full with the next batch of testing supplies he would leave in the garage.
“The more I think about it, it must be aliens, and they’re here to colonize Earth,” Robby said. “But you argued against aliens last night.”
“I just didn’t want to put a label on it,” Brad said. “What’s the point of putting a label on something we don’t understand?”
“Because like I said last night, it changes what we decide we can do about it,” Robby said. “Let’s say your force is something that’s always been around. It’s the force that caused the last ice age, or killed off the dinosaurs.”
“Or brought life to this planet,” Brad said.
“Sure,” Robby said. The young man wheeled the dolly over to one of the barrels. “Could you tilt that back?”
Brad helped him muscle the barrel onto the dolly.
“But what are we supposed to do if there’s a giant omnipotent force that wrecks the planet for us?” Robby asked.
“Or fosters it,” Brad said. “People were doing a pretty good job of wrecking the planet. Maybe this force is the planet itself.”
“Exactly,” Robby said. “That’s one of the things I considered too. So there’s this giant force which has always been around and it sweeps through and changes everything. That doesn’t leave us anywhere to go.”
“How so?” Brad asked.
“Well you’ve proposed a force which can’t be defeated, or at least it doesn’t have a motivation we can defeat. You’re already at checkmate,” Robby said.
“But maybe we don’t have to defeat it,” Brad said. “Perhaps the job is done now and we can start rebuilding. But in your model, we can’t afford to sit back and wait to see what happens. We can’t assume that the cause of all this was a benevolent force that means to just hit a giant reset button on the planet,” Brad said.
“Yes, that’s what I think,” Robby said.
“And we can’t just assume all the changes are done? We can’t assume that knocking out almost everyone on the planet is good enough for these aliens?” Brad asked.
“Well, I’d counter that with the example of the dinosaurs,” Robby said.
“What about them?” Brad asked.
“If all this is the same as the dinosaur extinction, then I think it’s pretty clear what our fate will be,” Robby said. “I mean, you don’t see any of them still walking around, do you?”
AFTER THEY LOADED up the truck, Robby drove through a neighborhood bordering the marsh. His driving still bothered Brad. It wasn’t just the way Robby pulled the seat all the way up to reach the pedals, Robby ignored all the stop signs, rolling through intersections with barely a glance. Robby turned a lot. He turned down side streets that didn’t have any tire-tracks at all yet in the thin snow.
“Why do you do that?” Brad asked eventually.
“Do what?” Robby asked.
“You keep turning down side-streets that don’t have any tracks on them. Are you trying to throw off an imaginary pursuer?” Brad asked.
“No, not really,” Robby said. “Well, kinda. I mean, yes, I don’t want to have all the tracks pointing exactly where I’m going, but I’m also trying to see all the parts of town to see if there’s anything else going on. That’s how I found you—I saw your footprints and I just followed them.”