“You sound like a movie villain.”
“My speech is built upon your expectations. The intent is mine but the syntax is based on what you anticipate. The voice I’m using has been lowered by your expectations as well.”
“So, but the threat’s legit.”
“Yes. You’re running out of…”
“Why do you think she came here?”
“…continuously changing the subject is not going to result in a solution.”
“No, no, I understand that. Look, I’m sorry, you’re the first alien I’ve talked to. Well, second, but the first one didn’t tell me what she was, so I never had a chance to ask things. I get it though, you’re a really, really old idea. I’m not all that clear on how I’m talking to one, because we’re not used to ideas with sentience, but okay.”
“There are many ideas, but only a few are powerful enough to live forever.”
“And, to live outside of whoever thought you up. That’s the part there. Like, if you’re ever in a situation where you have to explain yourself, in the future, I’d start there.”
“You are not advanced enough, as a species, to understand.”
“Yes, yes, I know, we’re primitive, I get it. And my friend, your daughter—or offspring, or piece of you or…whatever—she’s another super-advanced being, right? Then why do you think she’d come here, to hang out with a bunch of people who, so far as you’re concerned, can’t even understand what she is?”
“…I don’t know.”
“She’s your idea, and your idea had an idea and that idea was to come here and hang out for a few hundred years. If I ask her she’ll say it was to hide from you, but she did a pretty crappy job of that. So why was she really here?”
The alien began showing a series of images. These were different from before, in that Annie didn’t feel so much like she was experiencing them. They were purely visual, and none of them were moving. It was a photo album.
They were extraordinary. She wished they were more interactive, because the scale and scope was magnificent. Great cities of iron, of crystal, of frozen gases and sculptured lava. She saw platforms to slingshot a vessel from the surface into upper orbit, and humanoids with webbed clothing to help them to fly. There was an undersea kingdom beneath a sky of eternal permafrost, and vast libraries of knowledge preserved on stone and cloth, in jars of electrical impulses and three-dimensional models made of silk. She saw ships powered by starlight traveling through holes in the universe poked open by controlled singularities, and beings of radiation living on an artificial ring around a dying sun.
“To be an idea such as myself is to be a part of the greatest accomplishments in the history of all histories. I existed—I was born—as an idea inside of these beings. They were a part of what made me, as I was a part of who they became. But the great civilizations are all gone.”
“Wait, I don’t understand. Which one of them thought of you?”
“All did. It’s equally reasonable to say I thought of them. I appeared in the minds of those who were ready. From their perspectives, I was something new, even as from mine I was older than their stars. But each of these civilizations had different ways of using me, for good or ill. There is a sense of connection, and belonging, and growth, and that’s what your friend Violet took with her. The sense of being something new again. That’s what I truly want back. And that is what I’m sure led her here. To belong. Even among beings unprepared to accept her, which was immature of her.”
“I never told you her name.”
“I know. I’ve found your true idea of her.”
“But we aren’t done talking yet!”
“I have no need of you, or this place, any longer.”
She heard the hiss stop, as the alien cut off Annie’s air supply.
“EDGAR, we’re here!” Oona yelled through the ceiling. Ed was already on the roof with Sam, Laura and Dobbs, who was perhaps the most important person in Sorrow Falls for the next few minutes.
Sam was marching up and down the right side of the camper, which faced the ship. He’d been misidentifying various members of the zombie class of the town as Annie for the entire journey, and now he was mostly just angry and looking for someone to shoot.
“Whole base is here,” he said. “Look at ‘em, lined up in a row. We’re not gonna get through without running them down. I think they’re operating on different orders.”
“We don’t need to get through,” Ed said. He leaned over Dobbs at the computer. “Can you find the signal?”
“I don’t know, I told you this isn’t my equipment.”
“Oh, get out of the way,” Laura said. She pushed Dobbs aside and tapped a few commands. “You gotta at least bring up the array first.”
The ‘array’ was a series of microphones on a stanchion in the middle of the camper, with small parabolic dishes cupping each of the microphones. Dobbs spent the better half of the trip reassembling the array because it had been partly broken down earlier that evening to amplify the screamers. (That it took so long for anyone to point this out only underlined exactly how tired everyone was.) It also meant they made the trip without the one proven means to disable zombies.
“That’s got it,” Dobbs said.
Oona popped up through the trap door. “I’m just gonna leave us in the middle of the road. Don’t think anyone’s driving down here anytime soon. Did you screw up my computer, Dobbs?”
“Not yet.”
“Why we looking for the signal, Edgar?”
“You’ll see. Where’s Violet?”
“The zombie queen’s downstairs fiddling with her magic suppository.”
“I’ll be right up,” she shouted from below.
“I’ll be damned. PICKLES?” Sam shouted the last part, and Ed for just a few seconds wondered if the soldier was now hallucinating gherkins. Then he remembered Dill Louboutin’s nickname.
“Hey Sam!” Dill shouted back.
Dill was standing next to a Humvee on the other side of a crashed-in fence, just at the edge of the ship’s safety zone. He had a kid with him, but the kid wasn’t Annie.
“The hell you doin’ over there?”
“Waitin’ for you. See you got a better ride. You want me to mow down these dead-eyes for you?”
“Better stay there. What were you thinking, did you try to run over the ship?”
“I was thinking maybe it was worth a shot. But then the girl went in, so we were just waiting on you. She said you’d be by.”
Sam turned to Ed. “The girl… went in.”
“How’d she do that?” Ed asked.
“How’d she do that, Dill?” Sam asked.
“She said she was here and the thing just opened. Someone should’ve tried that before we had zombies, you ask me.”
“I’ve got it, I think,” Dobbs said. “Just sounds like breathing. Did he say Annie was in there?”
“Yeah, can you hear her with that?”
“No, it’s just the breathing.”
Violet came up. “She went inside.”
“Can you get her out?” Ed asked.
“Only by taking her place.”
“It may come to that.”
“I realize.”
“Then go do it,” Sam said. “Get her out of there.”
“Not yet, Sam,” Laura said.
Sam didn’t like the plan, and had said as much more than once.
She can take care of herself, Ed thought. For at least a little while longer.