Electric Dreams Read online

  BRADSHAW INSURANCE

  [OR]

  NOTARY PUBLIC

  He pondered. Critchet’s place of business. Did it also come and go? Had it always been there? Something about it made him uneasy.

  ‘Hurry it up,’ Paine ordered the driver. ‘Let’s get going.’

  When the train slowed down at Macon Heights, Paine got quickly to his feet and made his way up the aisle to the door. The grinding wheels jerked to a halt and Paine leaped down onto the hot gravel siding. He looked around him.

  In the afternoon sunlight, Macon Heights glittered and sparkled, its even rows of houses stretching out in all directions. In the center of the town the marquee of a theater rose up.

  A theater, even. Paine headed across the track toward the town. Beyond the train station was a parking lot. He stepped up onto the lot and crossed it, following a path past a filling station and onto a sidewalk.

  He came out on the main street of the town. A double row of stores stretched out ahead of him. A hardware store. Two drugstores. A dime store. A modern department store.

  Paine walked along, hands in his pockets, gazing around him at Macon Heights. An apartment building stuck up, tall and fat. A janitor was washing down the front steps. Everything looked new and modern. The houses, the stores, the pavement and sidewalks. The parking meters. A brown-uniformed cop was giving a car a ticket. Trees, growing at intervals. Neatly clipped and pruned.

  He passed a big supermarket. Out in front was a bin of fruit, oranges and grapes. He picked a grape and bit into it.

  The grape was real, all right. A big black concord grape, sweet and ripe. Yet twenty-four hours ago there had been nothing here but a barren field.

  Paine entered one of the drugstores. He leafed through some magazines and then sat down at the counter. He ordered a cup of coffee from the red-cheeked little waitress.

  ‘This is a nice town,’ Paine said, as she brought the coffee.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’

  Paine hesitated. ‘How—how long have you been working here?’

  ‘Three months.’

  ‘Three months?’ Paine studied the buxom little blonde. ‘You live here in Macon Heights?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A couple years, I guess.’ She moved away to wait on a young soldier who had taken a stool down the counter.

  Paine sat drinking his coffee and smoking, idly watching the people passing by outside. Ordinary people. Men and women, mostly women. Some had grocery bags and little wire carts. Automobiles drove slowly back and forth. A sleepy little suburban town. Modern, upper middle-class. A quality town. No slums here. Small, attractive houses. Stores with sloping grass fronts and neon signs.

  Some high school kids burst into the drugstore, laughing and bumping into each other. Two girls in bright sweaters sat down next to Paine and ordered lime drinks. They chatted gaily, bits of their conversation drifting to him.

  He gazed at them, pondering moodily. They were real, all right. Lipstick and red fingernails. Sweaters and armloads of school books. Hundreds of high school kids, crowding eagerly into the drugstore.

  Paine rubbed his forehead wearily. It didn’t seem possible. Maybe he was out of his mind. The town was real. Completely real. It must have always existed. A whole town couldn’t rise up out of nothing; out of a cloud of gray haze. Five thousand people, houses and streets and stores.

  Stores. Bradshaw Insurance.

  Stabbing realization chilled him. Suddenly he understood. It was spreading. Beyond Macon Heights. Into the city. The city was changing, too. Bradshaw Insurance. Critchet’s place of business.

  Macon Heights couldn’t exist without warping the city. They interlocked. The five thousand people came from the city. Their jobs. Their lives. The city was involved.

  But how much? How much was the city changing?

  Paine threw a quarter on the counter and hurried out of the drugstore, toward the train station. He had to get back to the city. Laura, the change. Was she still there? Was his own life safe?

  Fear gripped him. Laura, all his possessions, his plans, hopes and dreams. Suddenly Macon Heights was unimportant. His own world was in jeopardy. Only one thing mattered now. He had to make sure of it; make sure his own life was still here. Untouched by the spreading circle of change that was lapping out from Macon Heights.

  ‘Where to, buddy?’ the cabdriver asked, as Paine came rushing out of the train station.

  Paine gave him the address of the apartment. The cab roared out into traffic. Paine settled back nervously. Outside the window the streets and office buildings flashed past. White collar workers were already beginning to get off work, swelling out onto the sidewalks to stand in clumps at each corner.

  How much had changed? He concentrated on a row of buildings. The big department store. Had that always been there? The little boot-black shop next to it. He had never noticed that before.

  NORRIS HOME FURNISHINGS.

  He didn’t remember that. But how could he be sure? He felt confused. How could he tell?

  The cab let him off in front of the apartment house. Paine stood for a moment, looking around him. Down at the end of the block the owner of the Italian delicatessen was out putting up the awning. Had he ever noticed a delicatessen there before?

  He could not remember.

  What had happened to the big meat market across the street? There was nothing but neat little houses; older houses that looked like they’d been there plenty long. Had a meat market ever been there? The houses looked solid.

  In the next block the striped pole of a barbershop glittered. Had there always been a barbershop there?

  Maybe it had always been there. Maybe, and maybe not. Everything was shifting. New things were coming existence, others going away. The past was altering, and memory was tied to the past. How could he trust his memory? How could he be sure?

  Terror gripped him. Laura. His world . . .

  Paine raced up the front steps and pushed open the door of the apartment house. He hurried up the carpeted stairs to the second floor. The door of the apartment was unlocked. He pushed it open and entered, his heart in his mouth, praying silently.

  The living room was dark and silent. The shades were half pulled. He glanced around wildly. The light blue couch, magazines on its arms. The low blond-oak table. The television set. But the room was empty.

  ‘Laura!’ he gasped.

  Laura hurried from the kitchen, eyes wide with alarm. ‘Bob! what are you doing home? Is anything the matter?’

  Paine relaxed, sagging with relief. ‘Hello, honey.’ He kissed her, holding her tight against him. She was warm and substantial; completely real. ‘No, nothing’s wrong. Everything’s fine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Paine took off his coat shakily and dropped it over the back of the couch. He wandered around the room, examining things, his confidence returning. His familiar blue couch, cigarette burns on its arms. His ragged footstool. His desk where he did his work at night. His fishing rods leaning up against the wall behind the bookcase.

  The big television set he had purchased only last month; that was safe, too.

  Everything, all he owned, was untouched. Safe. Unharmed.

  ‘Dinner won’t be ready for half an hour,’ Laura murmured anxiously, unfastening her apron. ‘I didn’t expect you home so early. I’ve just been sitting around all day. I did clean the stove. Some salesman left a sample of a new cleanser.’

  ‘That’s OK.’ He examined a favorite Renoir print on the wall. ‘Take your time. It’s good to see all these things again. I—’

  From the bedroom a crying sound came. Laura turned quickly. ‘I guess we woke up Jimmy.’

  ‘Jimmy?’

  Laura laughed. ‘Darling, don’t you remember your own son?’

  ‘Of course,’ Paine murmured, annoyed. He followed Laura slowly into the bedroom. ‘Just for a minute everything seemed strange.’ He rubbed his forehead, frowning. �
��Strange and unfamiliar. Sort of out of focus.’

  They stood by the crib, gazing down at the baby. Jimmy glared back up at his mother and dad.

  ‘It must have been the sun,’ Laura said. ‘It’s so terribly hot outside.’

  ‘That must be it. I’m OK now.’ Paine reached down and poked at the baby. He put his arm around his wife, hugging her to him. ‘It must have been the sun,’ he said. He looked down into her eyes and smiled.

  Introduction by David Farr

  Story & Script title: The Impossible Planet

  David Farr is a theatre and film writer and director known for the television series The Night Manager, for which he wrote the screenplay, and the feature film The Ones Below, which he wrote and directed. Farr also wrote the screenplay for the 2011 feature film Hanna, which he is currently developing into a television series.

  The Impossible Planet is a very short story. It runs to just a few pages and is really just one simple idea. But when I read it I just fell in love with the proposition—two galactic nobodies think they can make a mint out of a VERY old lady by taking her on a ride on a spaceship to nowhere. But who is kidding who?

  It’s one of Philip K Dick’s great gifts that even his simplest stories conjure timeless themes. The Impossible Planet deals with loss, the past, memory, and our terror that life on Earth is ephemeral and possibly doomed. It questions what it is to be human, and has a robot who may be more emotionally loyal than either of its mortal protagonists. In doing so it questions what it is to have a soul.

  At heart the story is a moral tale. When I adapted it I added a strangely romantic element that isn’t really in the story but just leapt out at me. That’s the pleasure of adaptation. It’s like digging in the original for what is inherent but not always expressed. In this case lost love, lost paradise, and the possibility of it being regained.

  For such a slight story, The Impossible Planet is suffused with a strange loss and nostalgia for many things, and most of all for an earth that no longer exists.

  Or does it?

  The Impossible Planet

  ‘She just stands there,’ Norton said nervously, ‘Captain, you’ll have to talk to her.’

  ‘What does she want?’

  ‘She wants a ticket. She’s stone deaf. She just stands there staring and she won’t go away. It gives me the creeps.’

  Captain Andrews got slowly to his feet. ‘Okay. I’ll talk to her. Send her in.’

  ‘Thanks.’ To the corridor Norton said, ‘The Captain will talk to you. Come ahead.’

  There was motion outside the control room. A flash of metal. Captain Andrews pushed his desk scanner back and stood waiting.

  ‘In here.’ Norton backed into the control room. ‘This way. Right in here.’

  Behind Norton came a withered little old woman. Beside her moved a gleaming robant, a towering robot servant, supporting her with its arm. The robant and the tiny old woman entered the control room slowly.

  ‘Here’s her papers.’ Norton slid a folio onto the chart desk, his voice awed. ‘She’s three hundred and fifty years old. One of the oldest sustained. From Riga II.’

  Andrews leafed slowly through the folio. In front of the desk the little woman stood silently, staring straight ahead. Her faded eyes were pale blue. Like ancient china.

  ‘Irma Vincent Gordon,’ Andrews murmured. He glanced up. ‘Is that right?’ The old woman did not answer.

  ‘She is totally deaf, sir,’ the robant said.

  Andrews grunted and returned to the folio. Irma Gordon was one of the original settlers of the Riga system. Origin unknown. Probably born out in space in one of the old sub-C ships. A strange feeling drifted through him. The little old creature. The centuries she had seen! The changes.

  ‘She wants to travel?’ he asked the robant.

  ‘Yes, sir. She has come from her home to purchase a ticket.’

  ‘Can she stand space travel?’

  ‘She came from Riga, here to Fomalhaut IX.’

  ‘Where does she want to go?’

  ‘To Earth, sir,’ the robant said.

  ‘Earth!’ Andrews’ jaw dropped. He swore nervously. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She wishes to travel to Earth, sir.’

  ‘You see?’ Norton muttered. ‘Completely crazy.’

  Gripping his desk tightly, Andrews addressed the old woman. ‘Madam, we can’t sell you a ticket to Earth.’

  ‘She can’t hear you, sir,’ the robant said.

  Andrews found a piece of paper. He wrote in big letters:

  CAN’T SELL YOU A TICKET TO EARTH

  He held it up. The old woman’s eyes moved as she studied the words. Her lips twitched. ‘Why not?’ she said at last. Her voice was faint and dry. Like rustling weeds.

  Andrews scratched an answer.

  NO SUCH PLACE

  He added grimly:

  MYTH—LEGEND—NEVER EXISTED

  The old woman’s faded eyes left the words. She gazed directly at Andrews, her face expressionless. Andrews became uneasy. Beside him, Norton sweated nervously.

  ‘Jeez,’ Norton muttered. ‘Get her out of here. She’ll put the hex on us.’

  Andrews addressed the robant. ‘Can’t you make her understand. There is no such place as Earth. It’s been proved a thousand times. No such primordial planet existed. All scientists agree human life arose simultaneously throughout the—’

  ‘It is her wish to travel to Earth,’ the robant said patiently. ‘She is three hundred and fifty years old and they have ceased giving her sustentation treatments. She wishes to visit Earth before she dies.’

  ‘But it’s a myth!’ Andrews exploded. He opened and closed his mouth, but no words came.

  ‘How much?’ the old woman said. ‘How much?’

  ‘I can’t do it!’ Andrews shouted. ‘There isn’t—’

  ‘We have a kilo positives,’ the robant said.

  Andrews became suddenly quiet. ‘A thousand positives.’ He blanched in amazement. His jaws clamped shut, the color draining from his face.

  ‘How much?’ the old woman repeated. ‘How much?’

  ‘Will that be sufficient?’ the robant asked.

  For a moment Andrews swallowed silently. Abruptly he found his voice. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Captain!’ Norton protested. ‘Have you gone nuts? You know there’s no such place as Earth! How the hell can we—’

  ‘Sure, we’ll take her.’ Andrews buttoned his tunic slowly, hands shaking. ‘We’ll take her anywhere she wants to go. Tell her that. For a thousand positives we’ll be glad to take her to Earth. Okay?’

  ‘Of course,’ the robant said. ‘She has saved many decades for this. She will give you the kilo positives at once. She has them with her.’

  ‘Look,’ Norton said. ‘You can get twenty years for this. They’ll take your articles and your card and they’ll—’

  ‘Shut up.’ Andrews spun the dial of the intersystem vidsender. Under them the jets throbbed and roared. The lumbering transport had reached deep space. ‘I want the main information library at Centaurus II,’ he said into the speaker.

  ‘Even for a thousand positives you can’t do it. Nobody can do it. They tried to find Earth for generations. Directorate ships tracked down every moth-eaten planet in the whole—’ The vidsender clicked. ‘Centaurus II.’

  ‘Information library.’

  Norton caught Andrews’ arm. ‘Please, Captain. Even for two kilo positives—’

  ‘I want the following information,’ Andrews said into the vidspeaker. ‘All facts that are known concerning the planet Earth. Legendary birthplace of the human race.’

  ‘No facts are known,’ the detached voice of the library monitor came. ‘The subject is classified as metaparticular.’

  ‘What unverified but widely circulated reports have survived?’

  ‘Most legends concerning Earth were lost during the Centauran-Rigan conflict of 4-B33a. What survived is fragmentary. Earth is variously described as
a large ringed planet with three moons, as a small, dense planet with a single moon, as the first planet of a ten-planet system located around a dwarf white—’

  ‘What’s the most prevalent legend?’

  ‘The Morrison Report of 5-C2 1r analyzed the total ethnic and subliminal accounts of the legendary Earth. The final summation noted that Earth is generally considered to be a small third planet of a nine-planet system, with a single moon. Other than that, no agreement of legends could be constructed.’

  ‘I see. A third planet of a nine-planet system. With a single moon.’ Andrews broke the circuit and the screen faded.

  ‘So?’ Norton said.

  Andrews got quickly to his feet. ‘She probably knows every legend about it.’ He pointed down—at the passenger quarters below. ‘I want to get the accounts straight.’

  ‘Why? What are you going to do?’

  Andrews flipped open the master star chart. He ran his fingers down the index and released the scanner. In a moment it turned up a card.

  He grabbed the chart and fed it into the robant pilot. ‘The Emphor System,’ he murmured thoughtfully.

  ‘Emphor? We’re going there?’

  ‘According to the chart, there are ninety systems that show a third planet of nine with a single moon. Of the ninety, Emphor is the closest. We’re heading there now.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Norton protested. ‘Emphor is a routine trading system. Emphor III isn’t even a Class D check point.’ Captain Andrews grinned tightly. ‘Emphor III has a single moon, and it’s the third of nine planets. That’s all we want. Does anybody know any more about Earth?’ He glanced downwards. ‘Does she know any more about Earth?’

  ‘I see,’ Norton said slowly. ‘I’m beginning to get the picture.’

  Emphor III turned silently below them. A dull red globe, suspended among sickly clouds, its baked and corroded surface lapped by the congealed remains of ancient seas. Cracked, eroded cliffs jutted starkly up. The flat plains had been dug and stripped bare. Great gouged pits pocketed the surface, endless gaping sores.