New Decameron Thirty-Eight: Shiv Ramdas (Patreon)

EARTH’S TERRIBLE, NO-GOOD, VERY BAD DAY 

SHIV RAMDAS

It all began with a missing gate. Which ordinarily would be no big deal, things go missing all the time, but since the Gate in question was important enough have a first name like Golden, a last name like Bridge, and at the time of its disappearance, 122 vehicles on it, including one containing the Mayor of San Francisco, circumstances were unfortunately far from ordinary.

When Ripley heard the news, she did what any decent, self-respecting government official would- she refused to believe it.

“I’m sorry, I must have heard wrong,” she said. “I just landed at the airport from SF, and I assure you, the Golden Gate Bridge is exactly where—“

Here she stopped, wincing and holding the phone away from her ear as a barrage of words poured out from the other end. She waited patiently for the speaker to pause for breath. This took no mean time, because as Ripley well knew, he was possessed of a set of lungs as big as his brain was small.

Then, sensing a lull in the monologue, she replied, pronouncing each word carefully, as though explaining herself to someone who lacked the capacity to follow complex concepts, like words. 

“There is no power on earth that could make the Space Needle vanish, Mr. President.”

There was silence on the line. Encouraged by this and driven by the sense of bounden duty a good official must possess, Ripley went on, explaining why the disappearance of a 1.2 mile long, 887 ton structure as though by magic was completely impossible. She was barely halfway through when she grasped the real reason for the sudden forbearance of her audience- her cellphone battery had died. 

Ripley swore, looked around at the Secret Service agents surrounding her, and enquired politely as to which of them would supply her with a charger. In response, she was treated to the dubious pleasure of watching 12 identically dressed men shake their heads in choreographed unison. She looked around for a charging port, and finally spotted a Verizon-branded kiosk. Towards this she now walked briskly, closely pursued by a group of men, now hurrying in unison. 

She plugged in her phone, and began to wonder for the umpteenth time why she had ever accepted this job. Granted, Ripley reasoned, there were worse things than being Secretary of Defense of the United States of America in the year 2030, but there were also better things, such as not being Secretary of Defense of the United States of America in the year 2030. And somehow those better things had found a way to pass her by. She might have spent more time pondering the subject, except that at that moment, the kiosk shimmered, and then, before her very eyes, it disappeared. 

Ripley blinked, rubbed those now very startled eyes and looked again, but sure enough, it was gone. Taking her cellphone with it, in what she was pretty sure was a highly illegal fashion, at least in 49 states. There was no telling what was legal in Mississippi anymore.  

Ripley turned away from the kiosk, just in time to see the agents now standing behind her shrug in unison.

“Does anyone here have a secure phone?”

The agents shook their heads in unison again.  

Ripley swore again.

“Get the car. And if you nod together, you’re all being replaced.” 

#

A quarter of an hour later, Ripley sat in the backseat of the car, scowling at the now-ringing phone attached to a thin snakelike cord. Finally, with a deep sigh, she answered it, holding it a safe distance away from her ear as another inevitable cacophony burst forth. Until, pouncing on an opportunity, she posed the question she’d wanted to ask since this particular diatribe had begun. 

“Coke? Did you say Coke? Only the cans? Yes, the classic Coke, I understand. Well, on the bright side, at least the Diet’s still safe.” 

Another loud outburst followed. Ripley waited patiently until the end.

“No, I don’t know anyone who drinks it either. Yes, I’ll make some enquiries, Mr. President. I’ll be getting on a VC about it immediately. Yes, it’s an absolute outrage. Don’t worry, sir, we’ll solve this. And the Golden Gate Bridge problem too, all of it. Good luck for your speech. Yes, of course I’ll be watching. I’ll call you as soon as you’re done.”  

She ended the call, stared into space for a moment, then dialed a number.

The flatscreen television in the limousine came to life, just in time to show her a tall, extremely muscular man with an exceedingly unhappy look on his face. 

“Anderson. Good, you’re awake. Now put on your Deputy Secretary hat and tell me what the hell is going on.”

“It’s terrible! Unacceptable!”

Anderson, in contrast to his appearance had an almost comically high-pitched voice. It made it fairly difficult to take him seriously when he got excited. This was a problem because Anderson was almost always excited. 

“Since this afternoon, we’ve had over 300 calls from fire departments nationwide asking if this is a terrorist attack. Fire hydrants, would you believe it? Just vanished! Oh, and fire trucks too! America is now the world’s biggest fire hazard!” 

Ripley had never before been struck in the face with a wet sock full of sand, but it felt like every time she spoke to someone today she left with an enhanced understanding of the experience.

“Any idea what’s happening?” 

“None. But most countries have reported mysterious disappearances. No discernable pattern to any of it!”

Ripley began to answer, only to be interrupted by the timer on her phone. 

“Anderson, I’ll call you back after the address. Keep looking into this, and I suppose you have a team on the Golden Gate Bridge vanishing too? Good, good. Oh, I almost forgot. Apparently there’s no Coke left, either. Yes, Coca Cola. Just the classic Coke. Only the cans. They’re gone too. Put them on the list as well.”

She disconnected the call, reached for the remote and changed the channel, just in time to see the screen filled by the most colorful man in America. His hair was carroty, his shirt loud and his face was flushed, as usual. He stood there, looming over the podium like a freshly boiled lobster that was exceedingly unhappy with the fact. 

“My fellow Americans,” he began. 

It was a unique voice, beginning as a growl somewhere in his stomach but by the time the words came out, they had a clear, ringing tone. The effect, depending on how you looked at it, was either that of a lion trying to imitate a Christmas tree, or a really angry bell. 

“Today we have been attacked!”

Behind him an image of the Golden Gate Bridge appeared, looking just as it had when Ripley had last seen it, which apparently had also been the last time anyone else had seen it.

“Today a terrible blow was struck against our great nation! Today, Coca Cola was stolen from us!”

He glanced back over his shoulder. “Oh, and this thing disappeared too.” 

He seemed about to say more, and certainly would have, except for the inconvenient fact that at that moment, his head disappeared, leaving behind a flushed neck that now ended in what appeared to be a perfectly cauterized wound.

Ripley watched the headless figure totter on the stage for a long moment, then topple forward like a wounded bowling pin, knocking the podium into the shrieking crowd. 

“Well, fuck,” said Ripley. 

She turned off the TV, took a deep breath, and dialed a number.

“Anderson? Forget everything else. I’m heading to the Pentagon. Meet me there. And put together a small Top Level Committee for an emergency meeting. You got that? Stop sniffling, Anderson, we’ll take care of it. Just remember, a small Top Level Committee. We’ll sort everything out, there’s no problem that isn’t made better with a Little TLC.”  

Disconnecting, she knocked on the glass panel separating her from the driver.

“What’s the delay?”

“Traffic, Madam Secretary,” came the reply. 

Ripley peered past him at the road ahead and was treated to the sight of a series of serpentine queues of traffic, although apparently to the drivers of those vehicles, the term queue seemed negotiable, the actual shape resembling a line far less than a drunken polygon trying to pull itself together.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Traffic lights all gone crazy. They’re all green.”

Ripley sighed. “Just wake me when we get there.”

#

The air in the meeting-room was heavy, tense, broken only by the sound of the Vice President of the United States of America eating Doritos. 

“OK, lets figure this out,” said Ripley, looking round the table. “Any updates?”

“There have been 2 lulls worldwide in the disappearances,” said the Director of the CIA. “The first occurred before the President’s head… ah… left. Since then, nothing else anywhere. It’s inexplicable. But Parker here has a theory, based on science or something.”

Ripley looked down to the far end of the table, where the Director of NASA was leaning forward, almost crying, he was so excited. 

“It’s aliens!” he shouted. “Aliens, Madam Secretary! First contact for the- um- first time.”

“Dr. Parker, are you sure about this?” asked Ripley, her tone designed to convey the preferred answer to any but the most oblivious listener. 

Which turned out to be Dr. Parker. 

“Yes, definitely,” he said happily. “We now have semi-confirmation of a UFO over Moscow. No doubt about it, it’s aliens.”

The Vice-President slammed a fist on the table, scattering Doritos everywhere.

“I told you we should have bombed Mexico!”

“No, not those kind of aliens, “ Ripley told him. “Real aliens. Alien aliens.”

She watched with fascination as his face changed, an uneaten chip dangling from a mouth widening in horror. He’d gone pale. 

“You mean... Arabs?”

Ripley inhaled deeply, counted to ten and looked for the Secretary of State. “Where’s Hannah?”

“Stuck in traffic,” said the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

“Get us a visual,” said Ripley, turning towards the screens lining the side of the room. All of them except one flickered to life, showing an image of what appeared to be empty airspace above St. Petersburg. 

“That’s your confirmation?”

“Best we can do. Excellent cloaking technology. Only it’s not cloaking technology, they appear to be actually invisible. But there’s a ship there all right. Whoever they are, they don’t like being seen.”

“Has anyone opened a channel of communication?”

“We have. Or we tried. I’m assuming the Russians have too.”

“And?”

“Nothing.”

“So we still don’t know what they want?”

“No clue.”

“How are the Russians reacting?”

“Badly,” said the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

“It’s beginning,” said the Director of the CIA, gesturing at the screens, where a large number of soldiers had now appeared in what appeared to be the Red Square, pointing various sorts of weapons skywards. They were accompanied by various other tactical units, from mobile anti-aircraft units to actual tanks.

“It’s a terrible idea,” said Dr. Parker. “As we’ve already seen, their technology is far beyond anything we have. It’ll be over in seconds.”

Almost on cue, a missile sailed upwards. The soldiers didn’t put up much resistance, lasting about as long as this sentence. Except for one, made of sterner stuff than his companions, who stuck around till the end of this one. 

Then the Square was gone too, an empty gaping hole, like a massive, toothless mouth. It almost seemed about to burp.

Ripley turned away.

Well, so much for the Red Square. And as she thought it, there was this long moment where everything seemed to go still as she swung around to stare at the screen on the side of the room, red and unchanging, feeling that rush of emotion and happiness and euphoria that is the inevitable companion of what men of great ideas and limited vocabulary have termed a Eureka Moment.  

“Hydrants, fire engines, Coke, the Golden Gate Bridge! They’re all different shades of red! These aliens are taking all the red.”

“Red?”

“Taking the red?

 “All the Red?”

She looked around at them. “Yes, all the red.”

“What about The President’s head then? Why’d they take that?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“What about the Golden Gate Bridge? That’s not red.”

“Yes it is,” said someone else.

“No it isn’t!”

“Is the dress blue or gold, Laurel?”

“My name is Yanny!”

“That’s what I said!”

Ripley rapped on the table. “Everyone, just a minute, please. Yes Dr. Parker?”

“I was asking, why would they take red?” asked Dr. Parker. “It’s just a wavelength. You could find it anywhere. Hell, you could create it almost anywhere. Why travel all the way here just to take something you don’t need to travel for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stupid aliens,” muttered the Vice President, who had now run out of Doritos.

She turned away. “Broadcast a signal to the aliens. Transmit the colour red. Just red. Figure out a way to do it.”

She waited, and a few minutes later, it happened, a broad cylindrical beam of light, appeared in the room, seeming to come from somewhere above.

“What’s that?” asked the Director of the CIA nervously. 

Ripley eyed him. “I think it’s a diplomatic invitation. Dr. Parker, you’re with me.”

She stepped towards the pillar of light, began to enter it, and turned around, looking at the Vice President, who had stood up and was unsuccessfully attempting to make words.

“Oh, and someone get him another bag of Doritos.”

#

Ripley stood in the pillar of light, looking out at the strangest looking room she’d ever seen. Except it wasn’t a room, it was the Golden Gate Bridge, and her pillar of light was balanced on a pinion at what appeared to be the very top. There was so much red all around it hurt her eyes. Fire hydrants, fire engines, classic Coke cans, what looked like the Red Fort from Delhi, millions upon millions of red leaves and other myriad red objects from all across the world, each suspended in their own pillar of light, just hovering there. 

“Here! Look up. primitives! Look here!” bellowed a familiar voice and she did an exaggerated double-take, even as Dr. Parker clutched at her, his own jaw dropping in horror Just above of her, in its own pillar of light levitated a head, all by itself, and it was the head of a very loud President. 

“Mr. President!”

“What? No, no, this is just a communications device. We don’t have a means of talking to you otherwise, primitives that you are.”

“His personality seems unchanged,” said Dr. Parker.

The head scrunched up its nose. “Stop moving around so much. Stay inside the beam. Your fleshcovers won’t survive outside the lightsheath for a second, and you’ll make all kinds of squealy noises which are very unpleasant to listen to. Now, what do you want?”

“I’m here to negotiate,” Ripley told the head.

“What does that mean?”

“It means we’re willing to help you get what you want.” 

“We want red.”

“Why?”

“It’s red.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You cannot understand.”

“Try me. Who are you and why do you want red?”

The head rolled its eyes and pursed up its lips before it answered.

“We are Rangeela.”

“Why can’t we see you?”

“We come from a region beyond your…visual spectrum, you call it. Where beings are civilized and cannot intrude on others’ vision.”

Ripley looked at Dr. Parker, who was staring at the creature, slack-jawed. Apprehending that he was about to prove as useful as a bicycle on a sinking ship, she turned back to the head. “Why are you here?”

“Missions were sent out to collect the seven rare wavelengths. Ours was to acquire the shortest. We were successfully doing so until our scanner malfunctioned. We thought it was fixed, but it mistakenly took this lipflapper, which we have repurposed for this…negotiation. So we now have a problem and are very busy arguing about who to blame.”

“So you can’t scan for red now?”

“The scanner no longer functions accurately at distance.”

Ripley frowned, and that was when she had another Eureka Moment. A means to not only end this dreadful situation, but turn it to advantage.

“Very well,” she said, hoping she could successfully hide her sudden elation. “I’ll tell you about all the red we have, if you’ll then go away peacefully and never ever come back. Deal?”

“Deal!”

“Ok, you can start with the Russian President.”

“What?”

“The Russian President. He’s a Red. A really nasty one. Nobody likes him anyway. And tomatoes. Always hated tomatoes. Also, there’s this baseball team. The Boston Red Sox. You can have them.”

She turned to Dr. Parker, who was now making squawking sounds, and shrugged.

“What? I’m a Yankees fan.”

She returned to her task, naming every single reddish thing she could. Roses. Strawberries. Mao’s Red Book. It took a while, it was surprising how many things were red.

Finally, she ran out of ideas.

“That’s it, she said. “That’s the lot.”

“All the wavelength?”

“Yes, you’ve got all the red. And more. Can we now conclude this and you leave and never come back, at least until after I die?”

“Rangeela Extraction Team Ommh thanks you. You have helped us. We return you now.”

She looked up. “Goodbye, then.” Then without thinking, she extended her hand before she remembered that she was offering a handshake to a head. 

And as her hand grazed the edge of the beam of light, she felt a searing pain in like a knife had slashed her. 

A malevolent, cold silence filled the air and she realised that the head wasn’t looking at her anymore. Well, not exactly. It was staring at her hand, mouth open, eyes wide with excitement, even as a loud, blaring siren began to screech. 

As did the head. “Inside! They have it inside!”

And there, on her palm, just where it was stinging, Ripley saw a row of dots. A ruby bracelet, tracing its way across her hand, tiny, individual beads glistening in the light that bounced off them. Blood.

Red. 

###

********************************************

They are both laughing as they finish reading. "Sometimes something ridiculous is the absolute best thing," he says.

"That's so silly it's awesome," Maya agrees. "And what a clever way to end it."

"Doritos?" he offers.

She takes a handful. "You didn't get the coke?"

"I haven't touched the stuff for years," he says. "But these Doritos are good."

Maya nods. "But we'll have to wash our hands again."

When she comes back from washing her hands, he is already back, sitting with the cat on his lap and an orange book in his hands. He puts it down with a guilty motion as she approaches. "Is that your book?" she asks.

"No, no, just looking for our next book," he says. 

"What is it," she asks, suspiciously.

"It's extracts from Ellen Kushner's next Riverside book," he says, handing her a blue book from the top of the pile.

"Really!" Maya's squeal causes the cat turn his head and look at her disapprovingly through his rainbow whiskers. "Is it about Richard and Alec? Or is it --"

"It's about Jessica, the Black Rose's daughter," he says. "But I think Richard and Alec may be in it."

"Oh wonderful wonderful wonderful," she says. "I love reading whole stories, but I also love these glimpses into worlds I already know and people I already care about. Give it here!"

He passes her the book, and they read.