5/21/15

Hounds Bounce When They Bark
By Joseph Patchen


Rodney awakens to a high pitched, whirling whine outside his eleventh story window. Peeling back the curtains he sees a sky full of saucers firing their rays on the city below. He knows his office is going to be closed today.

The sun’s reflection off the invaders is blinding. The city cracks, splits and explodes all around him.

As his own building quakes and his possessions are thrown off the walls, Rodney tries to call, text and email each and every one of his networks, only to find they’ve all disappeared. There is no television and no radio. The everyday intimacy and security that he’s known through his technology has washed away.

And fear - not only of the terror outside - but the fear of being alone supplants his cyber-camaraderie, as someone else’s technology is raining down death.

What to do? What to do? He thinks, over and over. How extensive is this invasion? Who’s invading?

Running up and down his hall, banging and kicking on doors. No one is home or, at least, no one answers. His calls for help change to shrieks as plaster sprays down from the ceiling.

Careening down the staircase towards the lobby, he continues shouting for help. Once there, he finds furniture overturned and smashed; the steel mailboxes that were so securely embedded in concrete walls are torn out and crumpled like scrap paper.

Onto the street, debris continues to rain down - piling up on cars, bodies and more debris.

The saucers keep flying overhead and shooting at everything below.

Rodney huddles in a pocket of debris between three cars that has become its own cave. He debates his options. Thinking about his parents, his brother and sister; what’s happening to them?

Funny, the things you think about.

For all the times he’d cursed his work and his mundane life, he now wishes he could take it all back. He wishes he was sitting in his cubby, sipping lukewarm coffee, eating day-old danish, reading his bosses' imperious pronouncements on the office intranet.

The assault does not stop. How long has this been going on? How long will it continue? Rodney knows he was sleeping, but any idea that this may be a dream doesn’t enter into his thinking.

The explosions increase. There is no way to pinpoint exactly where. He’s choking on the smoke and fumes of burning gas, oil and rubber, and assorted other carcinogens that, until today, had been neatly wrapped and buried out of sight and mind, deep within the bowels of the big buildings.

There is nothing to do but cringe and pray and contemplate suicide. There is not another soul around: no rats or stray cats, no flies or beetles, not even a cockroach. Rodney wonders if he is the only one left alive.

Eyes are burning; His throat feels full of tar. Rodney’s head is swimming, trying to come to grips with the loss of all.

Through a hole no more than the diameter of a quarter, he spies above. The saucers don’t quite look like those in the movies or on television: there are no long necks or pulsating arrangements of lights. These are sleeker: stripped down, with no markings, about as wide as a standard passenger jetliner. Pretty utilitarian and generic looking, and there are thousands of them.

Gold, silver, red, blue; their color appears to change depending on their positioning against the sun, the clouds and the smoke-- also depending on whether they’re firing or not. At times they even appear clear, almost invisible.

Rodney can’t discern their sound above the explosions. He knows one is hovering over him. It hangs over his makeshift cave for what feels like an hour, although he knows it’s only seconds.

Through his peephole, he watches its underbelly some thirty feet above, and the craft is silent.

Rodney recalls his childhood: baseball, street hockey, army men; Christmases past: that bike, those drums and his favorite catcher’s mitt.

Then Rodney remembers his dog Skye, a devoted hound that followed him everywhere.

Funny, the things you think about.

Time has stopped. It doesn’t matter if it’s 1 pm or 6 am. No trains are running, no meetings to attend, no television to watch. It doesn’t matter if it’s Tuesday or a Friday. Weekend plans are insignificant.

Funny, the things you think about.

The saucers hover. The bombardment ceases. Smaller, egg like crafts exit bellies, floating down to the surface. These black, glass-like ovals skitter about, four feet above the rubble, scanning. They’re searching for survivors: firing on the wounded and near dead just for luck.

Now the moans and screams are heard. Pleas for mercy and God are swiftly met with a ray and silence.

Pile to pile they move, burning or not. One survivor has a pistol. He pumps round after round at the invaders. The bullets are absorbed into the glass void and the blaze of a ray meets his high pitched scream.

Rodney wants to run. But what is the point?

For one week every summer his father would take off from work. The family would take day trips to the beach. Skye was always by his side.

Funny, the things you think about.

The glass eggs converge, methodically following a grid of linear coordinates. They not only kill everything that moves, but with another ray, pulverize everything – concrete, steel, bodies, and trees - into fine dust.

As they close in, Rodney can now see for miles. The city is gone. The dust and smoke are gone, and so are the sounds of demolition. There are no more pleas for mercy. No more sobbing and moaning, just the silent efficiency of machines.

And soon it comes to pass that Rodney is face to face with one. Seeing his reflection in the deep black glass he knows. For the first time all day he chuckles and says, "You know hounds bounce when they bark”.


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Joseph J. Patchen's work has appeared in print, online and on podcasts. He is the literary critic for www.lurid-lit.com and you can read more about him at josephjpatchen.weebly.com.

1/15/15

Operation Destiny
By Joseph Patchen


The first part of the mission went like clockwork. Clear day, flawless launch and pinpoint landing. And in between there was nary a communication glitch or dulled sensor.

It was perfect.

It had to be. The window on this mission was thin. Landing, investigation, technical set-up and re-launch had to be accomplished in a scant 48 hours; all before the planet, a rogue wanderer floating through space, an orphan star without a solar system, moved just out of reach of our moon as it travels out of our solar system for another 5,000 years.

PSO J318.5-22 is a planetary body floating free throughout space. Scientists theorize it to be a ‘baby’ planet, using the spectrums of color to date the birth to some 12,000,000 years ago. First discovered by an observatory in Hawaii in 2012 using a Pan-STARRS I telescope, the rock appeared to be some 80 light years away. That is until it appeared over the shoulder of our own moon this Spring.

With no explanation and little theory NASA felt compelled to act.

The mission was to visit, study and tag the planet, like an animal in the wild tracking its journey across the heavens, making this rock an interplanetary space lab for the ages.

The crew was carefully chosen; a disciplined and driven crack military squad of four with stellar IQs and advanced scientific degrees.

The entire mission was calculated and destined to succeed, hence its name ‘Operation Destiny’ but fate had something else in store shortly after landing.

What began as a small ‘dirt devil’ mere meters to the right of the landing quickly became what Mission Control charted as an F-5 tornado confined in that small area where the spacecraft stood. The twister lasted almost five minutes.

The ship weathered the storm as it should, yet post disturbance things just didn’t seem right.

While the crew went about their business, their personalities seemed altered. They worked hard but without any discussion; without any of the camaraderie they had prior. Even their responses to Mission Control seemed sterile and robotic.

Fatigue?

Maybe.

Fear? They tested out from that concept.

The treasure trove of data transmitted back to Houston was rich and curious. The flight home to Andrews Air Force Base was uneventful, that is until after the landing itself.

Commander Rader stated they were disembarking but never did. Repeated calls were made to the command module and all went unanswered.

After ten minutes the order was given to the ground crew to carefully approach the craft and force open the hatch. When they did they heard screams, but not of the crew; the screams were that of a woman in deep and dire pain. The screams lasted about as long as the storm.

The crew was dead; nothing but skeletal husks in space suits; fresh, clean, un-punctured space suits.

Retreating quickly out of fear of a potential interstellar contagion, the ground crew, confused and unarmed found themselves on the tarmac face to face again with the crew.

The four astronauts appeared as themselves, in flesh and bone, dressed in their overalls but holding strange looking weapons pointed at the frightened men.

It was here that man’s destiny was forged. It was here, at this very moment that Man learned he was not the king of the dark and vast jungle.

Soon the entire base would learn of its impotence. Soon man would learn that its haste, arrogance and curiosity opened the door to an invasion from a chameleon like race from a lonely planet seeking refuge from a cold and barren orb for the warmth and vitality of a sun.


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