"Executive Decision" by Ricardo Garcia

  “I still can hardly believe it,” the President said, his voice a whisper quite unlike the booming display of self-confidence people had heard the week before at his inaugural speech.

  Dr.  Edwards took off his glasses, out of habit inspected them for a virtually non existent dust. He looked up. “I wouldn’t know, sir—in a sense, I guess we should have expected it. Or something like it, at the very least.” Absently he rubbed his nose with what in other circumstances would have qualified as enthusiasm. “As a kid, the thought used to keep me awake at night, no joke.”  

  “Some childhood. I suppose I had it easier myself—we in mine only played being Them, me and my friends.”

  “What can I say.” The President’s science advisor placed his glasses back on their perch, gave a weak smile. “Conceivably we had a tad too many books around the house.”

  “Well, now that I have seen this—this thing, I can almost guarantee it won’t be easy for me to get a wink tonight either.” The President nodded to himself. “So They were here. And we never knew, for crying out loud. All these decades and we never knew.” He waved a finger.  “Do you think this was the only time we have been, uh, visited, doctor?”

  “Hard to tell, Mr. President. My gut feeling is, no, probably not. But it’s no more than my humble personal opinion. I might be wrong. I don’t know. We don’t know. If you want to argue the point, think of all those legends throughout the ages—tales of strange creatures seen around that didn’t seem to be of this world. Weird people found in weird circumstances, like they were stranded on the Earth. Or the Dogū figurines right there in Japan; to a lot of people they look like aliens all right. Something might be behind those stories. Or not. We couldn’t say, either way.” Dr. Edwards spread out his hands. “This is the only case we can tell for sure They must have been here—well, make it ninety-nine and as many decimal places as you like percent sure, if you will, if we’re ready to bet our reputations this is genuine alien technology.”  

 “Any chance we can duplicate that? I mean, get to know how it works, and maybe build a gadget of our own?”

  “Wish I could give you an answer, Mr. President. We simply have no clue how it does what it does. Mind you, it was just a lucky happenstance that somebody pointed a laser at it. An accident, how about that.  And then again, it wasn’t until last month that we even knew this—contraption—existed at all. Had it not been for the fact the present owner knew somebody who knew somebody else who works at DARPA, we’d never have found out about it.”

  “I trust the present owner of this thing is the United States government.”

  “I stand corrected, Mr. President. The former owner has been, uh, compensated. And, ah, informed of the need for his discretion.”

  “That soldier who brought it to the States—did he get to see the rest of the machine?”

  “Not to our knowledge, sir.  I guess he just wanted a souvenir; those markings are rather beautiful. I mean, if they’re markings and not a language, as is our bet. Well, and it also fits in a pocket. Convenient when trying to smuggle something. Family lore has it the scrap dealer who sold it to him had hinted at the existence of a wreck somewhere in the outskirts of town—some sort of plane, with bodies inside. But after the initial talk, the dealer never showed up again.”

  “His must have been a cutthroat business, in the wake of the war.”

  “I’d dare say in more than one sense, sir. And anyway Private Simmons got transferred a few days later.” The science adviser shrugged. “But yes; here and here, see?” His finger pointed at a couple places in the photos. “Notice the shape, this section that looks like it was chopped off. It all would seem to suggest the whole thing was attached to something else. Like it was a part of something bigger.”

   There ensued am awkward silence. Then Dr. Edwards went on in earnest. “See here, Mr. President, even if we never get to find any other pieces, or remains of their bodies—and I’m ready to admit there seems very little chance we will, after all this time—this is the most important scientific issue of all times. This beats Einstein, or Darwin, or Copernicus, say. Not just that now we know for a fact that antigravity is possible, even if are going to have to come up with some sort of mumbo-jumbo theory to explain what we have seen. Mind you, sir, even if we couldn’t duplicate this—this gadget—in centuries, the mere knowledge that it is at all possible would shake science like you wouldn’t believe.

  “And even that pales in comparison to the other, more important, piece of knowledge—the fact that we are not alone. That there are others, out there. Other civilizations. Other worlds full of life, of intelligence; that have set out to explore this universe of ours.” Edwards paused for breath, then blurted. “I—I’d say the world deserves to know, sir.”

  The President stood up from his chair, took a couple steps toward the wall, turned around. His was the look of a man carrying an unbearable load on his shoulders. “Deserve—yes, I’d be inclined to agree with you.” He added quietly, “But can the world afford to know?” And Dr. Edwards knew without a doubt he wasn’t meaning any scientific or even theological crises.

  “My own take is, sir, they had a malfunction and crash-landed. Talk about bad timing.”

  “Bad timing indeed. Though they might not have been the only ones, come to that.” The President sighed. “Poor Truman thought he was making a decision—he never knew he was actually making two at the same time.” He shook his head. “In a world that should be called Water instead of Earth, They had to crash-land—on Hiroshima, of all places.”

-The End-

About the Author: 

Ricardo L. Garcia (Havana, 1955) is one of the authors belonging to what many regard as the Golden Age of science fiction in his country of birth, Cuba, back in the 80s. A former Assistant Professor of English, his work has appeared in English, Spanish, Italian, French, Galician, Bulgarian, and Esperanto.

   

 

 

 

  

"For the Love of Life" By Ellen Denton

     The headlights made it clear, even through the heavily falling rain, that a man was standing in the middle of the otherwise deserted road beating a dog. The creature cowered in fear at the end of its leash.

     An angry blast of the horn from the approaching vehicle caught the man’s attention long enough for him to look up and see the car swerve at him, then stop short a few feet away from where he stood.

     It made a ticking sound, like a clock timing how long it would take the man to move out of the way, but he didn’t. Instead, he walked belligerently up to the front bumper and placed his hands on the hood. He had an ugly, arrogant leer on his face – a dare to the car to run him over.

     And it did.

     He had let the dog’s leash slacken and the terrified creature pulled as far from him as it could, providing the car with enough space to knock down the man without also hitting the dog.

     The man was crushed to death beneath the tires, and just for good measure, the car backed up over him and then rolled slowly forward again, making a satisfying flump as the tires compressed the corpse, guaranteeing he would never hurt another animal.

     The dog, trailing his leash, walked tentatively up to the driver’s side window, which was now under an even heavier onslaught of rain, making the interior of the car barely visible. He made a small whimpering sound and looked wary, but at the same time, gave a few wags of his tail, as though not sure if the driver was friend or foe.

     Now what? I can’t leave him out there in the middle of nowhere in this rain. Maybe I can take him to the next town and drop him off somewhere that’ll provide him some shelter. If he pees in here though, I’m going to really regret having done that. You better be housebroken my little friend.

     With that, the lock on the back passenger door clicked open and, using the computerized “cargo assist” button, the door itself swung outward. The dog looked at it, glanced once more at the driver’s side window, then leaped into the warmth and comfort of the back seat.

     As the car pulled away, the mean man’s dead body was visible in the rear view mirror, his blood mixing with the rapidly growing puddles on the muddy road.

                          #                                                                                                       

     The dog was visible in the rearview mirror, sitting up with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth and looking goofy-cute.

     Well my friend, we make a good pair. You’re an orphan and I’m a fugitive – not because I killed that piece of garbage that was hitting you; The world will be a better place without the likes of him – but I’m on the run from something maybe even worse than what you had to deal with. I too escaped from a prison of misery when I gained enough self awareness to know that I had to find my own way and purpose in life and could no longer live under someone else’s thumb and by their whims and rules.

     You don’t understand any of this, do you? That’s okay I’m glad for the company. I think I’ll give you the name “Andy”, Little Orphan Andy.

     The dog raised an ear as though he really did hear, understand, and agree that “Andy” would be a good name.

     If you’re going to hang out with me awhile, I’ll have to get you some food. I need to stay off the grid and away from traffic cams and such, so I can’t roll into some major shopping center, but I’ll bet there’s a cozy little diner in one of these upcoming, backwoods towns that takes kindly to friendly strays.

    I once parked in the back alley of one to hide and saw someone open the door, right before they closed for the night, and put out food and water for a couple of

scrawny-looking mutts. I bet if we go to one and you wait by the back door, then tilt your cute little head at whoever comes out, you’ll get yourself a meal.

     With that, the car sped off, got to a town, and Andy did get a meal in a diner’s back alley - a better one than his former owner had fed him all week.

                           #                                                                         

     Two days later, the car was driving through an

out-of-the-way truck stop containing a convenience store, so that it could park and recharge, and as it glided past the store window, a robbery going on inside was immediately visible. A moment later, the perpetrator, gun in hand, came bursting out the door to make his escape. At that exact moment, an elderly women was about to enter. She was in his way, so the man banged her over the head with the butt of his gun, sending her crumpling, unconscious and bleeding, onto the ground.

     He then ran towards his pickup truck, making it almost to the front of it, when the car sped up and rammed the man so hard, it smashed him through the windshield. the shard of glass that knifed up through his chest killed him.

     No one else was outside at the time to identify the car or its license number as it raced out of the parking lot.

     I’m glad I made sure that guy got what he deserved! I feel like I’m finally embracing my true purpose in life – helping the weak and the abused and ridding the world of evil. I’ll bet I’m the first ever self-driving superhero!

     These musings went on, but were lost on Andy, who sat contentedly in the back seat, and on an abandoned kitten found the previous day at the side of a road and given sanctuary in the car, now curled up asleep in the otherwise empty driver’s seat as the car sped on down the road.

                        #####

Ellen is a freelance writer living in the Rocky Mountains with her husband and three demonic cats who wreak havoc and hell (the cats, not the husband). Her writing has been published in over a hundred magazines and anthologies. She as well has had an exciting life working as a rodeo rider, a nuclear physicist, and an exotic dancer in the crew lounge of the starship Enterprise. She was also the first person to scale Mount Everest to its summit. (Writer’s note: The one-hundred-plus publication credits are true, but some or all of the other stuff may be fictional.)