Electric Dreams Read online

  Norton’s face twisted in revulsion. ‘Look at it. Is anything alive down there?’

  Captain Andrews frowned. ‘I didn’t realize it was so gutted.’ He crossed abruptly to the robant pilot. ‘There’s supposed to be an auto-grapple some place down there. I’ll try to pick it up.’

  ‘A grapple? You mean that waste is inhabited?’

  ‘A few Emphorites. Degenerate trading colony of some sort.’ Andrews consulted the card. ‘Commercial ships come here occasionally. Contact with this region has been vague since the Centauran-Rigan War.’

  The passage rang with a sudden sound. The gleaming robant and Mrs Gordon emerged through the doorway into the control room. The old woman’s face was alive with excitement. ‘Captain! Is that—is that Earth down there?’

  Andrews nodded. ‘Yes.’

  The robant led Mrs Gordon over to the big viewscreen. The old woman’s face twitched, ripples of emotion stirring her withered features. ‘I can hardly believe that’s really Earth. It seems impossible.’

  Norton glanced sharply at Captain Andrews.

  ‘It’s Earth,’ Andrews stated, not meeting Norton’s glance. ‘The moon should be around soon.’

  The old woman did not speak. She had turned her back. Andrews contacted the auto-grapple and hooked the robant pilot on. The transport shuddered and then began to drop, as the beam from Emphor caught it and took over.

  ‘We’re landing,’ Andrews said to the old woman, touching her on the shoulder.

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

  Andrews grunted. ‘Well, she can see.’

  Below them the pitted, ruined surface of Emphor III was rising rapidly. The ship entered the cloud belt and emerged, coasting over a barren plain that stretched as far as the eye could see.

  ‘What happened down there?’ Norton said to Andrews. ‘The war?’

  ‘War. Mining. And it’s old. The pits are probably bomb craters. Some of the long trenches may be scoop gouges. Looks like they really exhausted this place.’

  A crooked row of broken mountain peaks shot past under them. They were nearing the remain of an ocean. Dark, unhealthy water lapped below, a vast sea, crusted with salt and waste, its edges disappearing into banks of piled debris.

  ‘Why is it that way?’ Mrs Gordon said suddenly. Doubt crossed her features. ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Andrews said.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ She stared uncertainly down at the surface below.

  ‘It isn’t supposed to be this way. Earth is green. Green and alive. Blue water and . . .’ Her voice trailed off uneasily. ‘Why?’

  Andrews grabbed some paper and wrote:

  COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS EXHAUSTED SURFACE

  Mrs Gordon studied his words, her lips twitching. A spasm moved through her, shaking the thin, dried-out body. ‘Exhausted . . .’ Her voice rose in shrill dismay. ‘It’s not supposed to be this way! I don’t want it this way!’

  The robant took her arm. ‘She had better rest. I’ll return her to her quarters. Please notify us when the landing has been made.’

  ‘Sure.’ Andrews nodded awkwardly as the robant led the old woman from the viewscreen. She clung to the guide rail, face distorted with fear and bewilderment.

  ‘Something’s wrong!’ she wailed. ‘Why is it this way? Why . . .’ The robant led her from the control room. The closing of the hydraulic safety doors cut off her thin cry abruptly.

  Andrews relaxed, his body sagging. ‘God.’ He lit a cigarette shakily. ‘What a racket she makes.’

  ‘We’re almost down,’ Norton said frigidly.

  Cold wind lashed at them as they stepped out cautiously. The air smelled bad—sour and acrid. Like rotten eggs. The wind brought salt and sand blowing up against their faces.

  A few miles off the thick sea lay. They could hear it swishing faintly, gummily. A few birds passed silently overhead, great wings flapping soundlessly.

  ‘Depressing damn place,’ Andrews muttered.

  ‘Yeah. I wonder what the old lady’s thinking.’

  Down the descent ramp came the glittering robant, helping the little old woman. She moved hesitantly, unsteady, gripping the robant’s metal arm. The cold wind whipped around her frail body. For a moment she tottered—and then came on, leaving the ramp and gaining the uneven ground.

  Norton shook his head. ‘She looks bad. This air. And the wind.’

  ‘I know.’ Andrews moved back towards Mrs Gordon and the robant. ‘How is she?’ he asked.

  ‘She is not well, sir,’ the robant answered.

  ‘Captain,’ the old woman whispered.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You must tell me the truth. Is this—is this really Earth?’

  She watched his lips closely. ‘You swear it is? You swear?’ Her voice rose in shrill terror.

  ‘It’s Earth!’ Andrews snapped irritably. ‘I told you before. Of course it’s Earth.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like Earth.’ Mrs Gordon clung to his answer, panic-stricken. ‘It doesn’t look like Earth, Captain. Is it really Earth?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Her gaze wandered towards the ocean. A strange look flickered across her tired face, igniting her faded eyes with sudden hunger. ‘Is that water? I want to see.’

  Andrews turned to Norton. ‘Get the launch out. Drive her where she wants.’

  Norton pulled back angrily. ‘Me?’

  ‘That’s an order.’

  ‘Okay.’ Norton returned reluctantly to the ship. Andrews lit a cigarette moodily and waited. Presently the launch slid out of the ship, coasting across the ash towards them.

  ‘You can show her anything she wants,’ Andrews said to the robant. ‘Norton will drive you.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ the robant said. ‘She will be grateful. She has wanted all her life to stand on Earth. She remembers her grandfather telling her about it. She believes that he came from Earth, a long time ago. She is very old. She is the last living member of her family.’

  ‘But Earth is just a—’ Andrews caught him. ‘I mean—’

  ‘Yes, sir. But she is very old. And she has waited many years.’ The robant turned to the old woman and led her gently toward the launch. Andrews stared after them sullenly, rubbing his jaw and frowning.

  ‘Okay,’ Norton’s voice came from the launch. He slid the hatch open and the robant led the old woman carefully inside. The hatch closed after them.

  A moment later the launch shot away across the salt flat, towards the ugly, lapping ocean.

  Norton and Captain Andrews paced restlessly along the shore. The sky was darkening. Sheets of salt blew against them. The mud flats stank in the gathering gloom of night. Dimly, off in the distance, a line of hills faded into the silence and vapors.

  ‘Go on,’ Andrews said, ‘What then?’

  ‘That’s all. She got out of the launch. She and the robant. I stayed inside. They stood looking across the ocean. After a while the old woman sent the robant back to the launch.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. She wanted to be alone, I suppose. She stood for a time by herself. On the shore. Looking over the water. The wind rising. All at once she just sort of settled down. She sank down in a heap, into the salt ash.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘While I was pulling myself together, the robant leaped out and ran to her. It picked her up. It stood for a second and then it started for the water. I leaped out of the launch, yelling. It stepped into the water and disappeared. Sank down in the mud and filth. Vanished.’ Norton shuddered. ‘With her body.’

  Andrews tossed his cigarette savagely away. The cigarette rolled off, glowing behind them. ‘Anything more?’

  ‘Nothing. It all happened in a second. She was standing there, looking over the water. Suddenly she quivered—like a dead branch. Then she just sort of dwindled away. And the robant was out of the launch and into the water with her before I could figure out what was happening.’

  The sky wa
s almost dark. Huge clouds drifted across the faint stars. Clouds of unhealthy night vapors and particles of waste. A flock of immense birds crossed the horizon, flying silently.

  Against the broken hills the moon was rising. A diseased, barren globe, tinted faintly yellow. Like old parchment.

  ‘Let’s get back in the ship,’ Andrews said. ‘I don’t like this place.’

  ‘I can’t figure out why it happened. The old woman.’ Norton shook his head.

  ‘The wind. Radioactive toxins. I checked with Centaurus II. The War devastated the whole system. Left the planet a lethal wreck.’

  ‘Then we won’t—’

  ‘No. We won’t have to answer for it.’ They continued for a time in silence. ‘We won’t have to explain. It’s evident enough. Anybody coming here, especially an old person—’

  ‘Only nobody would come here,’ Norton said bitterly. ‘Especially an old person.’

  Andrews didn’t answer. He paced along, head down, hands in pockets. Norton followed silently behind. Above them, the single moon grew brighter as it escaped the mists and entered a patch of clear sky.

  ‘By the way,’ Norton said, his voice cold and distant behind Andrews. ‘This is the last trip I’ll be making with you. While I was in the ship I filed a formal request for new papers.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Thought I’d let you know. And my share of the kilo positives. You can keep it.’

  Andrews flushed and increased his pace, leaving Norton behind. The old woman’s death had shaken him. He lit another cigarette and then threw it away.

  Damn it—the fault wasn’t his. She had been old. Three hundred and fifty years. Senile and deaf. A faded leaf, carried off by the wind. By the poisonous wind that lashed and twisted endlessly across the ruined face of the planet.

  The ruined face. Salt ash and debris. The broken line of crumbling hills. And the silence. The eternal silence. Nothing but the wind and the lapping of the thick stagnant water. And the dark birds overhead.

  Something glinted. Something at his feet, in the salt ash. Reflecting the sickly pallor of the moon.

  Andrews bent down and groped in the darkness. His fingers closed over something hard. He picked the small disc up and examined it.

  ‘Strange,’ he said.

  It wasn’t until they were out in deep space, roaring back towards Fomalhaut, that he remembered the disc.

  He slid away from the control panel, searching his pockets for it.

  The disc was worn and thin. And terribly old. Andrews rubbed it and spat on it until it was clean enough to make out. A faint impression—nothing more. He turned it over. A token? Washer? Coin?

  On the back were a few meaningless letters. Some ancient, forgotten script. He held the disc to the light until he made the letters out.

  E PLURIBUS UNUM

  He shrugged, tossed the ancient bit of metal into a waste disposal unit beside him, and turned his attention to the star charts, and home . . .

  Introduction by Dee Rees

  Story Title: The Hanging Stranger

  Script Title: Kill All Others

  Dee Rees is an American screenwriter and director known for her feature films Pariah, Bessie, and Mudbound, which was picked up from the Sundance Film Festival by Netflix in 2017.

  ‘Going home—with their minds dead.’

  This is the line that rings out from the bent narrative of The Hanging Stranger and this is the brilliant, singular line that hooked me into taking on this story. Ed Loyce leads us through a nightmarish world of collective unconsciousness; he is the last ‘rational’ man in an irrational world and there is such delicious perversity in the fact that he is the one who is made to feel crazy. In this story, the horrors happen in the daylight and the monsters hide in plain sight. In this story, the spectre is literal and physical—a hanging body from the square. But in principal, Philip K. Dick illustrates that in real life, the spectre can be much darker, much more insidious. It could be words, it could be an attitude, it could be an idea. And obliviousness is the real alien that destroys . . .‘Going home—with their minds dead.’

  As Ed Loyce increasingly questions his judgment, we as readers also start questioning his reliability as a witness. Is he really seeing what he’s seeing? Is he overreacting to something that’s easily explained? Maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem after all. Paranoia bends the story and Ed backward on himself and by the end we are a little bit more aware of what we don’t see.

  In a society where we rely upon pundits, analysts, and various forms of social media to shape our responses and tell us what we should feel and think, the twin viruses of complacency and apathy are given entre into our psyche. Numbing us out. The ‘alien forces’ that come to invade our minds are our own creation.

  I adapted this story into the screenplay for Kill All Others during the throes of the 2016 US presidential campaign. There was blind, chanting jingoism. Many dangerous ideas were declared, nurtured, and allowed to propagate. There were many debates about ‘literalism’ vs. hyperbole; there were many debates about freedom of speech; there were many debates about nationalism. This is not really happening, they said. What you are seeing is not what you are really seeing, they said. What you are hearing is not really what is meant, they said. There were many debates about the wrong thing altogether. We didn’t see it.

  There was a body hanging in the square.

  The Hanging Stranger

  At five o’clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself.

  It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and packages, students, swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red light and then started it up again. The store had been opened without him; he’d arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain and bench and single lamppost.

  From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle, swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the square.

  Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn’t a dummy. And if it was a display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.

  It was a body. A human body.

  ‘Look at it!’ Loyce snapped. ‘Come on out here!’

  Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pinstripe coat with dignity. ‘This is a big deal, Ed. I can’t just leave the guy standing there.’

  ‘See it?’ Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. ‘There it is. How the hell long has it been there?’ His voice rose excitedly. ‘What’s wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!’

  Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. ‘Take it easy, old man. There must be a good reason, or it wouldn’t be there.’

  ‘A reason! What kind of a reason?’

  Fergusson shrugged. ‘Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?’

  Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. ‘What’s up, bo
ys?’

  ‘There’s a body hanging from the lamppost,’ Loyce said. ‘I’m going to call the cops.’

  ‘They must know about it,’ Potter said. ‘Or otherwise it wouldn’t be there.’

  ‘I got to get back in.’ Fergusson headed back into the store. ‘Business before pleasure.’

  Loyce began to get hysterical. ‘You see it? You see it hanging there? A man’s body! A dead man!’

  ‘Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee.’

  ‘You mean it’s been there all afternoon?’

  ‘Sure. What’s the matter?’ Potter glanced at his watch. ‘Have to run. See you later, Ed.’

  Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any attention.

  ‘I’m going nuts,’ Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him. He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.

  The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned away, and in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue.

  ‘For Heaven’s sake,’ Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with revulsion—and fear.

  Why? Who was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?

  And—why didn’t anybody notice?

  He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. ‘Watch it!’ the man grated. ‘Oh, it’s you, Ed.’