Archive for the ‘Daniel Braum’ Category
The Box
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
It was first spotted in the no man’s land of Nevada; vast desert with nothing but space and sky and military bases, both official and secret.
A floating metal box. Three feet square. Painted drab army-green.
It had turned a swath of desert into manicured suburban landscape, not quite unlike the development I grew up in. How? No one knew. Then it disappeared.
Thousands of miles away in my Miami office the military spooks saw fit to question me.
#
Over the next few months, stories popped up in the media, both mainstream and underground, ranging from urban lore to wrath of god stuff. The more colorful items were that it housed the ghost of a mad general, and the various flavors of alien conspiracies.
It showed up in three other places since that day in Nevada. The little development for military families where I lived as a teen, the farm where my ex Terrence was raised, and the Eiffel Tower.
The box turned the development into desert. Metal street signs became cacti. Houses became sand dunes. It wasn’t much but I had loved that place. The farm was where Terrence retreated to after our first break up. It simply vanished. The Eiffel tower was transformed into solid turquoise. I hate blue. Pairs was the place I always dreamed of going. I’d only told one person that. Terrence of course. The night before he left for officer school. He’d asked me to marry him. He was a man who never listened, a man I could never control. I said no.
#
Gazing out my office window, I saw the metal box wink into existence. Cars skidded and swerved. Slowly it floated up the street ignoring the traffic light and chaos beneath it. Then it descended and turned into my building.
The elevator door dinged and there it was. So close I could see four little gyroscopes at its base spinning as it titled minutely to adjust itself.
Everyone in the office scattered in panic but Jim from the next cubicle stood in front of me. He froze. He turned cactus green, then spines burst from his thick skin. Two yellow flowers bloomed out of his eyes. The box just floated there for a second. I looked around. Could I make it to a window and jump? I noticed the crappy artwork on the walls was changing. Images of Terrence and me as the stupid kids we were appeared, rendered in the style of bad oil paint and motivational photography.
With his career as a military scientist and all his power as general, Terrence could still never control me. But what had happened to him?
I had suspected. I had guessed. I had denied and wished it wasn’t true. But having it here, before me, I knew.
“Terrence,” I said, gathering all of my presence and courage. “You change that man back, right now. And change everything back. Make it right.”
The little gyroscopes titled and I thought it moved just a little closer to me.
I wondered if this time, he would listen.
– END –
Wooden Ships
Friday, August 29th, 2008
David’s Geiger counter went click, click, click. The melted copper dome had once been part of a fancy church brought over brick by brick from Europe. Once upon a time it had stood next door to what was once David’s favorite Deli, an odd but welcome sight among the suburban sprawl.
It had been six months since it all happened, and supplies in the bomb shelter were running low. David had donned one of the suits and went scavenging. If he ran into soldiers from the other side he was done for, if he stayed put, they were all done for anyway.
The counter clicked away at every ruined building. David pointed the counter at the mass of vines snaking over the rubble where the pet store once stood. And the clicking stopped. David walked over and found a man reclining in reclining in the sun, having a smoke and a snack. He could tell from his coat he was from the other side.
David expected an attack and thought maybe he should attack first. The man noticed David and smiled. Why didn’t he have suit on, David thought.
Everything was gone and nothing mattered anymore. Still David was curious and hadn’t heard any news since it all happened.
“Is there something you could tell me please,” he asked. “Who won?”
The man shrugged. He motioned for David to take off his suit. David didn’t comply.
“Don’t trust me, check your counter,” the man said.
David did. It was all clear. He reluctantly took off his helmet.
“I’m out of supplies. I need to find some food,” David said.
The man pointed to the vines spread around the rubble. Ripe dark purple berries hung from under their green triangular leaves.
“They keep us all alive,” the man said. His tongue was stained purple.
“Us all?” David asked.
“Come,” the man said.
They followed the vines away from the rubble- a line of green snaking through cindered remains of trees and burnt out strip malls. They led into a settlement, bustling with people.
Dozens upon dozens of vines converged into one giant vine, thick as a hundred trees, reaching up into the sky, like from Jack in the beanstalk. The massive vine reached as high as David remembered the highest planes used to fly.
Where the vines thickened and combined at the base of the main stalk were organic pods that looked like the hulls of wooden sailing ships without masts or sails. People walked into them. The vines rustled and moved the wooden-ship-pods up the stalk, slowly, then faster as they climbed higher in the sky.
“Where do they go? Up into space?” David asked.
“I don’t know,” the man said. “Somewhere far away, I bet. Where we might laugh again.”
David radioed the shelter to reported his find.
“Come in alpha-bravo. Uh, I’ve found a settlement of sort. Um, there are vines. With berries. You can eat them. The vines seem to take away the radiation like a houseplant sucking cee-oh-two.”
“You’re crazy, gamma-delta,” the shelter radioed back. “You’ve got radiation sickness. Come back at once.”
“No. This is real. You should all come.”
The radio went dead.
“Come, if you’d like,” the man said. “You’ve told your friends. Its all you can do. Or stay. We are leaving, you don’t need us.”
“Guess I’ll set a course and go,” David said.
He tried the shelter again, then took off his suit and climbed in the nearest ship.
-END-
* inspired by the song, with the same name, by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young *