The Spaceship Next Door (36 page)
Read The Spaceship Next Door Online
Authors: Gene Doucette
“She was being monitored closely,” Corcoran said, to Ed.
“So here’s your problem, major. You’ve got a spaceship in an established orbit carrying sensitive data from every government database in the world. You think since the ship took off after I climbed out, and the message appeared in that secret computer while I was in custody, therefore an alien is still on board, planning something terrible. If that’s the case, I must be lying to you. But that’s only one possibility. The other possibility is I’m telling you the truth.”
“Then how did the message…” Corcoran stopped in mid-sentence, because that was when it came to him. “Oh.”
“C’mon, I even signed it for you guys. But look, it doesn’t matter. Either there’s an alien presence controlling the indestructible spaceship, or the sixteen-year old you’ve been trying to intimidate for the past half hour is. One way or another, we’d both like it very much if you arranged for me to go home now.”
“
S
o are
you going to tell me what really happened?” Ed asked.
It took about a week to convince the necessary members of the government that Annie, a sarcastic but otherwise seemingly harmless young woman from a tiny Massachusetts town could exert control—somehow—over an extra-terrestrial warship. This was undoubtedly how long Ed had been holding onto this question. It might even have been why he insisted on being the one to return her to her home.
They were crossing the southern bridge to Main Street when he asked. At that point they were already seeing some of the impact on the town from the last time they were in Sorrow Falls. The bridge they were going over had scuffmarks on the side railings, there was still broken glass and debris in the margins, and the traffic was about double what it should have been. Up ahead, right near the library, there were several mobile satellite towers.
The media had returned.
Two days ago, Annie spoke to the most positive-sounding, enthusiastic woman on the planet. Her name was Nita, and she was a publicist. Nita was arranging a modest media blitz. This was something of an unfortunate inevitability. Annie needed the media to make sure everybody knew who she was. She was still the little girl who touched the spaceship when nobody else could and didn’t particularly want people to know that, but she appreciated celebrity as a form of protection in this case.
The ship in orbit holding international secrets was a better form of protection, but one couldn’t be too careful.
Soon, Annie would be appearing on national television in a variety of controlled settings and telling
her side of the story
. She hadn’t decided yet what that story was going to be, but there was still some time.
For the short term, she could ignore all the mobile TV units who would no doubt fall over themselves to talk to her.
“You didn’t like the story I gave to the army?”
Ed laughed.
“That was barely a story at all.”
“Where do you want me to start?”
“How about with
so I met an alien
.”
“Okay. So, I met an alien. He was pretty much as Violet described.”
“Terrifying, vengeful, willing to destroy the planet?”
“Maybe not terrifying. Confused. But that isn’t what I mean. He was a sentient idea. So I treated him like one.”
“I’m not sure I understand how one treats a sentient idea.”
They made it off the bridge and hung a left, up the hill to Spaceship Road. The whole area was an unfortunate combination of wrecked vehicles and roadside memorials. There were entirely too many memorials. Even more than when the ship first landed, Sorrow Falls was never going to be the same.
“Ideas aren’t meant to be alone,” Annie said. “They’re supposed to be shared. I asked him to share himself.”
“To… is there a non-creepy way to phrase that?”
“Probably.”
“So, um, was he a good idea?”
“Not a clue. He was right when he said he was too advanced for me to really understand. But that didn’t matter. As soon as I had him in my head I started thinking of a nicer version of him.”
Ed didn’t have a response to this. He just looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
On their left, they were coming up on the field where the ship had been until recently. The army still had the place cordoned off, and a state policeman was directing traffic. The campers were all gone. This made Annie sad.
“You gotta understand, everything worked different in that ship. It responded to thoughts. Actually, no, that’s not really right, it responded to ideas. I had to formulate a complete idea and… push it to the ship, I guess is the only way to describe it. The alien was kind of the same way, only more… pure. I couldn’t
think
the ship into being something other than what it was. But I could
think
him into being a slightly less malevolent idea.”
“Even if you didn’t understand it?”
“Apparently, yeah. Because I took his idea and imagined a version of him that wanted to leave the planet and go find another one.”
“And that worked.”
“He left, didn’t he?”
Ed smiled.
“Annie, honestly I’m in the same position as everyone else. You tell me he left and I have no way to prove that’s true or untrue. I’ll take your word for it.”
“C’mon, Ed, after all we’ve been through, would I lie to you?”
I
t was
another twenty minutes of traffic and wreckage before they arrived at their destination, which was not Annie’s house. They went
past
the house, but her mother wouldn’t be back from Boston for another four days, so technically Annie still couldn’t stay there alone. That was sort of okay, because her address wasn’t a secret and there were two news trucks parked on her lawn already.
The destination was Violet’s house.
They’d called ahead; Violet was sitting on the porch waiting. As a courtesy, her ‘parents’ weren’t around. There was no point in maintaining that illusion any longer.
“Meant to say, thanks for keeping her out of this,” Annie said.
“You’re welcome. I didn’t have a lot of choice, though. Nobody else remembered she was even there. I would have come off as crazy, talking about the dead kid with the anti-zombie baby coffin space capsule. I have about a million more questions for her, though, so I’m planning on coming back. Unless she makes me forget her too.”
“I think it’s too late. You’ve got an idea of her now.”
“I’m not going to get used to that.”
“I don’t expect to either.”
She leaned over in the car seat and gave him a long hug.
“Thanks for everything,” she said. “And hey, we saved the world or something.”
“I think we did,” he said. “Thanks for being the best translator I could have asked for.”
She kissed him on the cheek, and then climbed out.
Ed waved to Violet, and drove off.
Annie stood at the base of the steps for a time, just listening to her own breathing and appreciating the silence and isolation of the woods. Violet’s cabin was a whole lot more appealing to her this time around. After the past couple of weeks, it was exactly what she needed.
“So,” Violet said.
“So.”
“I’m glad you came back.”
“Yeah. Me too. I didn’t really know where else to go, anyway. You’re the only one who can understand. Plus, you’re my best friend.”
Violet came down the steps and hugged Annie, then leaned back and looked her in the eye for several seconds.
“He’s still in there, isn’t he?” she asked.
“I think I’m gonna burst. I need a chalkboard and a computer and a ton of paper and then you have to explain to me what all of it means, because I don’t get half of it. But it’s beautiful.”
She smiled.
“I’ll do my best. Are you hungry? I still have some of your food here.”
G
ene Doucette is
an award-winning screenwriter, novelist, playwright, humorist, essayist, and owner of a cyclocross bike, which he rides daily. A graduate of Boston College, he lives in Cambridge, MA with his family.
For the latest on Gene Doucette, follow him online
T
he Immortal Novel Series
“I don’t know how old I am. My earliest memory is something along the lines of fire good, ice bad, so I think I predate written history, but I don’t know by how much. I like to brag that I’ve been there from the beginning, and while this may very well be true, I generally just say it to pick up girls.”
Surviving sixty thousand years takes cunning and more than a little luck. But in the twenty-first century, Adam confronts new dangers—someone has found out what he is, a demon is after him, and he has run out of places to hide. Worst of all, he has had entirely too much to drink.
Immortal is a first person confessional penned by a man who is immortal, but not invincible. In an artful blending of sci-fi, adventure, fantasy, and humor, IMMORTAL introduces us to a world with vampires, demons and other “magical” creatures, yet a world without actual magic.
At the center of the book is Adam.
Adam is a sixty thousand year old man. (Approximately.) He doesn’t age or get sick, but is otherwise entirely capable of being killed. His survival has hinged on an innate ability to adapt, his wits, and a fairly large dollop of luck. He makes for an excellent guide through history . . . when he’s sober.
Immortal is a contemporary fantasy for non-fantasy readers and fantasy enthusiasts alike.
“Very occasionally, I will pop up in the historical record. Most of the time I’m not at all easy to spot, because most of the time I’m just a guy who does a thing and then disappears again into the background behind someone-or-other who’s busy doing something much more important. But there are a couple of rare occasions when I get a starring role.”
An oracle has predicted the sojourner’s end, which is a problem for Adam insofar as he has never encountered an oracular prediction that didn’t come true . . . and he is the sojourner. To survive, he’s going to have to figure out what a beautiful ex-government analyst, an eco-terrorist, a rogue FBI agent, and the world’s oldest religious cult all want with him, and fast.
And all he wanted when he came to Vegas was to forget about a girl. And maybe have a drink or two.
The second book in the Immortal series, Hellenic Immortal follows the continuing adventures of Adam, a sixty-thousand-year-old man with a wry sense of humor, a flair for storytelling, and a knack for staying alive. Hellenic Immortal is a clever blend of history, mythology, sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, mystery and romance. A little something, in other words, for every reader.
I
mmortal
at the Edge of the World
“What I was currently doing with my time and money . . . didn’t really deserve anyone else’s attention. If I was feeling romantic about it, I’d call it a quest, but all I was really doing was trying to answer a question I’d been ignoring for a thousand years.”
In his very long life, Adam had encountered only one person who appeared to share his longevity: the mysterious red-haired woman. She appeared throughout history, usually from a distance, nearly always vanishing before he could speak to her.
In his last encounter, she actually did vanish—into thin air, right in front of him. The question was how did she do it? To answer, Adam will have to complete a quest he gave up on a thousand years earlier, for an object that may no longer exist.
If he can find it, he might be able to do what the red-haired woman did, and if he can do that, maybe he can find her again and ask her who she is . . . and why she seems to hate him.
But Adam isn’t the only one who wants the red-haired woman. There are other forces at work, and after a warning from one of the few men he trusts, Adam realizes how much danger everyone is in. To save his friends and finish his quest he may be forced to bankrupt himself, call in every favor he can, and ultimately trade the one thing he’d never been able to give up before: his life.
I
mmortal Stories
“…if your next question is, what could that possibly make me, if I’m not an angel or a god? The answer is the same as what I said before: many have considered me a god, and probably a few have thought of me as an angel. I’m neither, if those positions are defined by any kind of supernormal magical power. True magic of that kind doesn’t exist, but I can do things that may appear magic to someone slightly more tethered to their mortality. I’m a woman, and that’s all. What may make me different from the next woman is that it’s possible I’m the very first one…”
For most of humankind, the woman calling herself Eve has been nothing more than a shock of red hair glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, in a crowd, or from a great distance. She’s been worshipped, feared, and hunted, but perhaps never understood. Now, she’s trying to reconnect with the world, and finding that more challenging than anticipated.
Can the oldest human on Earth rediscover her own humanity? Or will she decide the world isn’t worth it?
T
he Immortal Chronicles
Adam's adventures on the high seas have taken him from the Mediterranean to the Barbary Coast, and if there's one thing he learned, it's that maybe the sea is trying to tell him to stay on dry land.
H
ard-Boiled Immortal
(volume 2)
The year was 1942, there was a war on, and Adam was having a lot of trouble avoiding the attention of some important people. The kind of people with guns, and ways to make a fella disappear. He was caught somewhere between the mob and the government, and the only way out involved a red-haired dame he was pretty sure he couldn't trust.
I
mmortal
and the Madman (volume 3)
On a nice quiet trip to the English countryside to cope with the likelihood that he has gone a little insane, Adam meets a man who definitely has. The madman’s name is John Corrigan, and he is convinced he’s going to die soon.
He could be right. Because there’s trouble coming, and unless Adam can get his own head together in time, they may die together.
When he’s in a funk, Adam the immortal man mostly just wants a place to drink and the occasional drinking buddy. When that buddy turns out to be Santa Claus, Adam is forced to face one of the biggest challenges of extremely long life: Christmas cheer. Will Santa break him out of his bad mood? Or will he be responsible for depressing the most positive man on the planet?
Adam has accidentally stumbled upon an important period in history: Vienna in 1814. Mostly, he'd just like to continue to enjoy the local pubs, but that becomes impossible when he meets Anna, an intriguing woman with an unreasonable number of secrets and sharp objects.
Anna is hunting down a man who isn't exactly a man, and if Adam doesn't help her, all of Europe will suffer. If Adam
does
help, the cost may be his own life. It's not a fantastic set of options. Also, he's probably fallen in love with her, which just complicates everything.
O
ther works
What would you do if you could see into the future?
As a child, he dreamed of being a superhero. Most people never get to realize their childhood dreams, but Corrigan Bain has come close. He is a fixer. His job is to prevent accidents—to see the future and “fix” things before people get hurt. But the ability to see into the future, however limited, isn’t always so simple. Sometimes not everyone can be saved.
“Don’t let them know you can see them.”
Graduate students from a local university are dying, and former lover and FBI agent Maggie Trent is the only person who believes their deaths aren’t as accidental as they appear. But the truth can only be found in something from Corrigan Bain’s past, and he’s not interested in sharing that past, not even with Maggie.
To stop the deaths, Corrigan will have to face up to some old horrors, confront the possibility that he may be going mad, and find a way to stop a killer no one can see.
Corrigan Bain is going insane
. . . or is he?
Because there’s something in the future that doesn’t want to be seen. It isn’t human. It’s got a taste for mayhem. And it is very, very angry.
“You can call me Hector. Nobody else does, and I only thought of it three seconds ago, so you will not find anything about me by knowing this. It’s better than
you with the gun,
however
.”
Before leaving work for the weekend, Anita’s boss gave her a file for safekeeping. Now the killer sitting in her bedroom wants the file, and is willing to kill Anita and her wounded, unconscious husband if he doesn’t get it. But if she hands it over, he might kill them anyway.
Alone, unarmed and dressed for bed, can Anita save her husband and herself? Can she survive Hector?
C
lub Himeros
(as G Doucette
)
Himeros: one of the Greek Erotes, Himeros is the primordial god of erotic lust.
“It seemed at first as if there were only maybe a dozen people in the room. They all had their own masks on, and while the lighting was not fantastic, it seemed like each mask was a distinct color. Beyond that, everything looked as normal as it could be in a party where everyone has a matching mask.
"But as her vision improved she became aware of some of the happenings on the edges. Just off to the side of where people were sitting and talking quietly over what looked like bottles of water, there was activity that was so discordant she wasn’t positive it was actually happening…”
As the adage went, when one door in Lindy’s life closed another door certainly did open, but she never expected anything like Club Himeros to be on the other side of that door.
It was a strange time in her life. Lindy’s relationship had just fallen apart—for reasons she couldn’t pinpoint—her friends were asking questions she couldn’t answer, and now a secret club was asking her to wear a mask and attend. Alone, into a private world full of mystery an danger. It wasn’t the sort of risk Lindy normally took.
Once there she could hardly believe what she was seeing. Soon, she couldn’t believe what she was doing. Then she discovered all she’d been missing.