At a little after two in the morning, a three-star general in the Pentagon cracked open a top secret action plan for the nuclear destruction of Sorrow Falls. Enclosed was a list of U.S. and world leaders who were expecting calls. Those leaders had been briefed on this outcome, and were expected to provide the kind of assent a sitting president needed to cover his butt when nuking his own people.
The missile would be fired by a nuclear sub that was patrolling the waters between Long Island and southern Connecticut, specifically for this contingency.
The plan included a token evacuation plan for Sorrow Falls and the surrounding towns, but that was mainly for show because there was no reasonable expectation that anyone would make it outside of the blast radius in the time allotted, and the radioactive fallout could potentially reach New York and Washington anyway. It was going to be the most devastating and horrific event in the history of the country, and the only reason it was under serious consideration was that the president and his advisors had reason to believe they were preventing something that would have global consequences.
One thing the author of the nuclear option hadn’t considered was what to do if there was reason to believe the ship could weather an attack from a thermonuclear weapon. As the men and women tasked with executing the plan took the necessary steps to hand the president all he needed to sign the order, someone decided to try and reach the plan’s architect.
His name was Edgar Somerville, and he was unavailable.
“WHY DO YOU WANT HER?” Annie asked.
“She is mine.”
“That’s a terrible answer.”
“I do not see any reason for… elaboration. Are these all your questions?”
“What makes her yours?”
“I thought of her. She was my idea.”
“Ideas can have ideas of their own?”
“It is not something that can be explained easily to someone so limited.”
“How am I limited?”
“You are trapped in that body. That is a limitation. There are places you cannot go because your body cannot make the journey. I have no such limitations. I am an unbounded idea.”
“…that can have ideas of its own.”
“Ideas can be simple, and ideas can be complex. Simple ideas do not often obtain sentience. They are too… inflexible. They cannot adapt. Ideas never die, but ideas can become useless, or irrational. Something over-specific would not thrive independent of where it was born. An aquatic creature riven from liquid media.”
Annie laughed. It echoed through the ship. She wondered if anyone outside could hear them.
“A fish out of water, you mean.”
“Your metaphors are new to this one. But such is a simple idea. There are many ideas in every civilization in every world, everywhere. She is not a simple idea, which is why although she is in you, she is not of you. Your idea of her is a shadow of her entire conception. It is the version of her which casts that shadow I would like back.”
“All right, so you’re an idea and you had an idea, and that’s who my friend is. What was the idea that became her?”
“This is difficult to explain.”
“You keep saying that.”
“It is… it’s true. I didn’t intend to create a new idea.”
He hesitated.
“I was once a new idea. I remembered what it was like, and that remembrance became something other than myself. Then that something left me. I can remember what I lost, but I can no longer feel it. This is why I say she is mine. She took something from me and she is something from me.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re starting to sound kind of human.”
“You’ve developed an idea of me. It’s been a long time since that has been true.”
“Apparently my idea of you uses contractions when he talks.”
“This is humor.”
“Hey, don’t go nuts.”
He went silent.
She tried to gauge how long she’d been in the ship, and wondered what was happening outside, and as soon as she wondered that, the images in front of her coalesced to show the field.
“Whoa, did I do that?”
The alien didn’t answer. It was clearly a current image, though. The soldiers remained frozen in place, and Dougie and Dill were still at the car. They were arguing about what to do, pointing frequently right at Annie, which was to say right at the ship.
They were discussing whether to leave her, go in after her—if the ship would let them in—or stay where they were.
Higher, she thought. The view became a bird’s-eye view of the field and the surrounding area, and it was quite literally a bird’s-eye view. The ship was borrowing the eyes of a bird.
Zombie birds.
“Yep, I’m definitely doing this,” she decided.
“Annie.”
“Oh, there you are.”
“I have located Oz.”
“Oh? Okay?” She crossed her fingers and hoped the next sentence would have to do with Australia. It didn’t.
“You have lied to me.”
“That’s totally unfair. I may have misled you, but only a little.”
“This Dorothy, this place called Oz, they are fictions. There is no wizard. These are lies.”
“It’s a movie, and a movie is an idea, and ideas are real.”
“You no longer amuse me. Reveal where I can find her, or I will cease the atmospheric intake of all the drones in this place you call Sorrow Falls.”
ED HAD this notion that the spaceship hidden in the root cellar was going to be at least the size of the more familiar one on the other side of town. It was considerably smaller: roughly the size of a coffin for a child, and shaped like a vitamin capsule.
“Did that come from the ship?” he asked Dobbs, who had gone down with Violet, Todd and Susan. (Ed didn’t know what to call Todd and Susan. He knew they weren’t people and he knew they weren’t aliens, and they didn’t behave like zombies. Faced with such a quandary, he continued to refer to them as Todd and Susan.)
“That’s it,” Dobbs said. “That’s the whole thing.”
“Is it at least heavy?” The aforementioned non-human Todd and Susan were carrying it in a blanket.
“It’s heavy,” Violet said. “But not so heavy as to represent a risk to the camper.”
Ed hadn’t actually thought of that, but was glad someone had.
They slid it into the back of the camper on the floor next to the toilet and under a rack of leather clothing. The device was the same matte black as the ship, and when Ed put his hand on it he found the kind of friction-free material Annie described. This explained the blanket, as surely it would slip right out of anyone’s hands, even the undead kind.
While that was happening, Laura and Sam siphoned gas from the car. There wasn’t a whole lot to add, but it was better than nothing.
Oona took the time to change out of her pajamas and into something more futuristic dystopian warlord. He imagined she’d been waiting for a long time for the opportunity to dress in a way she considered appropriate for the circumstance.
“What’s the plan, Edgar?” she barked, while verifying that she had a full cartridge in one of her handguns. This was probably for Violet’s benefit.
“Start driving, head for the ship, try not to kill anybody.”
“Should I start the screamer?” Dobbs asked.
“May not be needed,” Ed said. “Assuming it still works.”
“We’ll man the roof,” Laura said, pulling Sam along, “and keep an eye out for Annie.”
The camper got moving. Ed knelt down next to the alien device.
“I guess it doesn’t make sense to call this a ship,” he said.
“It’s closer to a probe, or as you said before, an antenna array.”