Mackey Chandler

Unedited snippet of “I Never Applied for This Job”

Son of One Eye finished a circle of their settlement, leaned on his spear, and contemplated sitting down for a moment. Experience informed him that if he did, he’d go to sleep sitting up. If the sun didn’t waken him before his replacement arrived, he’d get a beating for neglecting his duty. He sighed and started another circuit.

Part way into his next circuit he heard a faint noise and looked back. There was a glow coming from between the huts he’d just passed. Nobody kept a fire going at night and for a moment he was terrified there was an accidental fire started. That fear subsided when he realized the glow wasn’t the yellow of open flame. It was not only bluish tinted but lacked the flickering of open flames. He retraced his steps until the source was in sight. That raised more questions than it answered.

In an open spot between the huts a brilliant rectangle of light shone like nothing he’d ever seen. This wasn’t any night raid of Teen forces. It never occurred to him anything other than a raid would happen on his watch requiring action. This didn’t seem a danger but he was certain this month’s Leader would be upset if he tried to ignore it as outside his duty as night guard. He needed to investigate even though this strange thing scared him. That shamed him and he was determined not to let it show. He was already certain he’d need to go waken the Leader and that was something to dread all by itself. If he didn’t go investigate closer his Leader would want to know why he didn’t have more information to report.

“We’ve got a live one,” Tom reported. “This is an amplified image. The pad camera isn’t as good as dedicated night vision. With normal biological vision you’d barely be able to see something was out there twenty meters away. The light from the pad really helps. It’s very dark there with no moon and nothing but starlight.”

The image was dark with only the Bunny’s eyes reflecting brightly. The edges of his image blended with the black night behind him and visible areas pixelated as he moved.

“If his eyes are anything like ours it will totally ruin his night vision to look at the screen,” Jeff said. “Do you have it set to minimum brightness?”

“I didn’t think of that,” Tom admitted. “I made it bright to help them find it. I’m dimming it now.”

Son of One Eye took a couple of tentative steps towards this oddity and stopped when it slowly grew dimmer. If it went completely dark that was fine with him. He could continue on his rounds and forget he ever saw it. Unfortunately, it only dropped from its eye searing brightness to a much gentler glow. At the new level he could see something on the ground in front of it. He steeled himself and continued to approach.

The image on the screen didn’t make sense to him at first. April knew that might be the case and included the image of a Bunny from the earlier video transmissions for scale with a literal scale projected beside him. The Bunny image was of the sort Son of One Eye knew from before he was sentenced to the gap work gang. It moved but ran a short time and repeated. The rest of the screen was in color and much clearer and sharper than the gray scale images of Bunny video. There were also windows showing a short video of Jeff, April, and the Badgers together. Jeff gave a solemn nod, April smiled, and the Badgers both waved hello.

The one window not repeating on a short cycle was Lee. It didn’t take Son of One Eye long to decide that window was a live transmission. He flipped his spear over and grabbed it behind the head to prod this thing without getting too close.

The part flat to the ground as covered with all sorts of tiny buttons. When he pushed on the front edge with the butt of his spear it slid a little on the ground. Up close he could see a border around the glowing picture. When he pushed gently on the picture it tilted back and the part on the ground lifted. He let off before it tipped over.

The mouth worked on the Human and it said, “No break. Ask you. No break.” But the mouth movements didn’t match the loud Bunny words he heard.

“Much loud,” Son of One Eye said. “Much quieter.” He requested with a downward pushing gesture of his flat hand that was perfectly understandable. If that thing kept speaking so loudly, it would have half the camp up and in ill humor in short order.

Lee muted her mic, looked off camera, and spoke with someone before responding.

“Better?” Lee asked in almost a whisper. “Permit we talk?” Lee asked.

“Yes, yes. I go get Leader. You talk with Leader,” he suggested.

“Take me to your leader,” Lee suggested.

She had no idea why Jeff had a giggle fit he struggled to stifle. It seemed a better idea than bringing the leader out in the night to her pad.

“Yes….” Son of One Eye said, hesitating. He was shy to pick up the strange device. He’d already been warned not to break it.

“Close thing,” Lee suggested and illustrated what she meant with her hands.

“Oh.”

They watched as he griped the top edge of the screen and slowly pulled it down with exaggerated care. Their screen went dark as the camera was covered.

“What is wrong with you?” Lee asked Jeff once the transmission cut off.

“Take me to your leader was a cliché line for little green men and flying saucer jokes long before any Human made it to orbit,” Jeff informed her.

“I don’t know history,” Lee admitted. “I guess that would be funny if unexpected.”

“You had to be set up for it to be funny,” Jeff admitted. “It’s a once funny for sure.”

Son of One Eye set the strange device down and cranked the precious flashlight a minute to make sure it would work. He avoided using it if he didn’t need to. They only had three and when they broke or the battery failed there wouldn’t be any replacement. He laid his spear out of the way outside the door and went in with the flashlight aiding him and the Human’s pad under one arm. The light didn’t rouse the leader at all. Not even when he shone it directly in his face.

Shaking him just got an unintelligible mumble and an arm thrown over his eyes. Son of One Eye opened the alien machine. There was a sudden realization for him working the hinge that it was a machine. Thankfully, the light came back on. He pulled aside leader’s arm and the unnatural light did what the flashlight couldn’t. His eyes came open if only slits and his nose clutched shut like something stank.

“What in the darkest pits of hell is that thing?” Leader demanded. Such references to superstition was one of the offenses that got him sentenced to the gap.

“Some kind of machine that communicates better than a whole video studio. It appears to be sent by space aliens and they want to talk to us. I’m just a night guard. You can have the joy of talking to them and the blame if you screw up.”

“Space aliens are something grandmothers use to scare the littles,” Leader said.

“Tell that to them,” Son of One Eye said pointing at the screen. “Maybe they aren’t space aliens. Maybe they are from your pits of hell. But they want to talk to you.”

Leader sat up and really focused on the screen for the first time.

“Piles of foul excrement upon the common foot path,” Leader proclaimed. “I have two days left before next month’s Leader. Why couldn’t this wait?”

“I had a similar thought about it befalling us on my guard shift.”

“I’m getting a lot of new words and grammar from this guy,” Tom told his Humans.

“What are you?” Leader asked the screen.

“I’m called a Human,” Lee said. “I wanted to show you these other aliens that are with us. They are called Badgers. There are others kinds not with us right now.”

“Why talk to us?” Leader wondered. “I’d think you’d want to talk to the Teen and all his slaves in the big city. We are escaped outlaws and poor.”

“I’m guessing you don’t know why they came for all the supervisors and stopped you working to cut a pass in the mountains?”

“No idea. Some have speculated a crop failure or a sudden epidemic. Whatever it was, I knew that we as criminals would be given the worst jobs to fix it with the least resources. At least cutting down the mountains we got fed. I wasn’t going to go back to even worse conditions. Do you know what happened?”

“Yes, we aliens came and were speaking with the Teen’s men in the city. We were ordered to land so the Teen could inspect his ships. When we refused… Well, I’ll show you video of what happened,” Lee said.

The month Leader watched and didn’t dismiss Son of One Eye so he watched too.

The English sub-titles were auto-translated from the transmission. There were three of the natives seated before the camera and others came in and out, laying down documents and picking up notes the three made.

Luke speaking: “We will not land. Stop asking. We expect (see literally) you take our (literally, not Teen) ships if we land. Teen is your Teen. We have no Teen. We no want one.”

First native: “If Teen not own everything (unknown word) to far stars – Teen owns almost nothing. One star in all the (unknown word) heavens is nothing. Either he owns all or our law and (peace?) is (unknown word, may be a curse) nothing (zero?).”

Second native: “We have no way (hand literally) (to? variation on word make) them land. What you suggest we do?” (Face of native is very contorted. This may indicate great stress.)

First native: “Tell it to Teen.” (His face assumes similar contortions. This statement may not have been a serious suggestion, but identifying sarcasm in a new alien language is chancy.)

Third native: “We are doomed (dead?).”

First native: “Tell Teen this!” (He rips off his collar. The second native jumps up, snatches it from his hand, and grabs him in a headlock from behind.)

Third native: (Looks at struggling pair. Then looks back at the camera lens.) Says: (three unknown words. Camera feed cuts off. Carrier signal follows quickly.)

“Shortly after this the city started burning and it spread to the other two cities. We didn’t mean to start this. Nobody tried to talk to us with video or radio again,” Lee said. “Here is how that looked. The aerial view showed plumes of smoke on the wind from all over the city. It zoomed in close enough to see gridlocked traffic, cars burning, and a bridge down.

This month’s Leader surprised Lee by laughing and slapping his hands on his legs. They didn’t even know that Bunnies laughed.

“Good. Burn it all down,” Leader said. “Thank you for giving the little push it needed. I doubt they will come bother us for a long time. You talk better now than before.”

Find my books on Amazon

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories