Archive for the ‘David Kopaska-Merkel’ Category
Handbag
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
“Jordan! Did you pick the cat up from the vet ?” he looked startled, then guilty, then pushed the door shut with his foot. Sounded like she was in the kitchen. That meant it had been a hard day for her, which was always bad news.
“Uh, no. I forgot. I’ll do it tomorrow.” He rolled his eyes, then headed for the kitchen.
“Tomorrow is Saturday. They’re closed on the weekend. You can’t get her till Monday, which is a holiday. So you can’t get her till Tuesday. That’s 75 bucks room and board. I’m getting just a little tired of this.” She was wearing her “get out!” apron and holding a spatula. Batter dripped onto the floor.
“In fact,” she continued, “I am tired of it.” Donna picked Jordan up and dropped him in her purse, which stood open on the table.
Inside, Jordan fell a considerable distance, landing heavily on a red compact. He sat up, rubbing the back of his head. There was a sizable amount of room, far more than he had expected. In the dim light and he saw keys, lipstick, a pencil stub, crumpled pieces of paper, and other things not immediately identifiable. Then he noticed the people. A couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses, their starched shirts looking a bit rumpled; someone who might have been a repair man or meter reader; a cop; a couple of teenage boys; a well-built young woman with a head full of red ringlets. No wonder he hadn’t been able to get her on the phone.
“Oh wow, Gloria! How long have you been in here?”
“Since the day you cheated on Donna, but told me you weren’t seeing anyone.”
Jordan reached for her shoulder, but she stepped back “Get your hands off me. I think you’ve done enough already. I just thank God we used a condom.”
Jordan let his arm fall to his side and looked away to avoid Gloria’s glare. He noticed four guys slumped around a card table in the shadows. “Who are they?”
“Other former boyfriends. She sure can pick ’em.”
“What do you–? Oh.” Jordan closed his mouth, and they stared at each other.
Darkness fell with a snap.
“What’s going on?” Jordan cried, unable to keep panic entirely out of his voice.
“Brace yourself.”
Hotel Antarctica
Monday, November 16th, 2009
Jake jerked his head up. He’d been drooling. He wiped his face on his sleeve, looked around, then saw the message flashing on the screen. The scanning electron microscope had finally finished pumping down. They really needed that new machine.
He groggily clicked thru the startup procedure, finally got an image of the sample. One am. He had 6 hours left till anyone else had the machine scheduled.
Zoom in, focus, zoom in, focus, Jake was reading license plates before it registered that he’d imaged a city on an antarctic meteorite. One of those meteorites that, mineralogically, seemed to have come from Mars.
Jake excitedly scanned the rock surface. The city covered a good part of it. This was incredible! Forget the thesis. Nature, Science, a Nobel prize!
Jake feverishly scanned and photographed streets full of dwellings, temples, public buildings, focusing in on smaller and smaller details. Fountains, park benches, things that could be statues or streetlights, even people. Hundreds of people, all froxen in place, the monochromatic SEM display reminding him of the ash people of Pompeii.
“This stupid machine,” Jake grumbled. No matter how he focused or adjusted the stigmation he could not resolve facial features. He became obsessed with getting the perfect shot. Backscatter electrons didn’t help. He tried an alternative view and suddenly, one of the faces swam into focus. It had a pair of wide-spaced oblong eyes, a thin, sharp nose, and a wide mouth. The martian looked up at Jake, beckoned with a finger.
Jake began to doubt, for the first time, that he was awake.
—
“I don’t know,” Sara said. “Jake was supposed to be on overnight. I unlocked the door, and the place was a mess.”
“Ew. His clothes are here.” Jili poked her foot at the crumpled jeans and T-shirt that lay on the floor between the chair and the SEM. The worksurface was littered with empty Mountain Dew cans, candy wrappers, and a spiral notebook, open to a blank page. “He doesn’t use a laptop?”
“No, and it doesn’t even look like he was working last night. He didn’t take any photographs. Do you suppose he ran out of here naked?”
Jili woke up the screen. “He’s got a sample in there, but at such a high power and so out of focus you can’t see a thing. Well, let’s clean up and get to work.”
end