by Robert Reed

“Last year,” Robert Reed says, “when my daughter was in second grade, she wrote a story about being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night. Her mother and I told her that she had to hurry, that we were making an emergency trip to Disneyland. She didn’t hesitate. In the story, she was packed in minutes, and we were on our way. So what is an ‘emergency trip to Disneyland?’ “ It may not be quite what we expect, but at least it’s . . .

Emergency

Cory was asleep and then he wasn’t asleep. He was dreaming and then there wasn’t any dream. There was only his father kneeling beside the bed—a big urgent man with a quick voice that wanted to scream, that needed to scream, but was refusing to let itself become loud.

“Wake up, Cory. Wake up. Are you awake?”

Cory nodded and rolled over, his eyes closing again.

“Get up, son. This is important.”

“Dad—?”

“I mean it. Get up.”

The clock on the nightstand showed three red threes standing in a row. Cory had trouble telling time, but this was early. He knew that much. People should be sleeping. The world should be asleep. Except Dad was inside his room and the hallway was full of light, and, shouting from the nursery, Mom said, “Get him ready, Jim. Come on.”

Dad stood up, knees cracking. Grabbing Cory’s backpack, he spilled out the papers and pens before opening the drawers of the dresser, shoving random clothing into the empty pockets. “Up, Cory. I mean it.”

“Why?”

“There’s an emergency.”

The boy sat up slowly. “What emergency?”

All motion stopped while Dad considered his next words. Then a siren began wailing in the distance, and Mom sounded like she was crying. And that’s when a slow strange smile broke out on his father’s weary face, and with a voice as relieved as it was confident, he said, “We’re making an emergency trip to Disneyland.”

“Really, Dad?”

“Really. Right now. So use the potty, get your clothes on, and let’s get on the road!”

“God Bless Us All!”

Jim didn’t usually stay up past midnight, but earlier that evening he pushed his way through the final chapters of a political thriller. Scandal, murder, and kinky sex made for a lot of fun, and afterwards he was too keyed up to sleep. He checked on the kids and Nance before returning to the living room. An Ava Gardner marathon was running on Turner Classics. One of the delights of being a middle-aged man was an easy lust for dead actresses. Jim happily settled down to watch Gregory Peck and Ava face the end of the world, and he managed to stay awake long enough to catch the beginning of The Sun Also Rises, watching poor Tyrone Power loving one of the world’s great broads yet not being able to do a damned thing about it.

His eyes closed during one of the bullfights. Most nights Jim would have stayed asleep in his lounger until morning, somebody on the television started talking, the voice loud and insistent. Then someone else made noise about an unfolding emergency, some kind of international trouble, and that’s when his brain jolted itself awake.

CNN had taken over TCM. The man behind the desk was young and unfamiliar—a weekend anchor barely above the rank of intern. But rapidly unfolding events had dropped in this lap, and the youngster smelled opportunity. Sitting forward in his chair, he looked enthusiastic. Effervescent. Thrilled. “We’re waiting for a statement from the president,” he explained, and probably not for the first time. “Details are scarce. Officials are refusing to comment. But White House sources claim that high-level meetings began after midnight, Eastern Daylight Time. Since then, United States military forces have been put on alert. One early report mentioned an accident at Los Alamos, but that has been denied. Also, at this moment there is no evidence that either Russia or China have made overt moves toward war.” The correspondent paused for a moment, calming himself before admitting, “Within the last twenty minutes, Washington has begun contacting governors, and martial law will soon be...

“Wait.” The young man interrupted himself, pressing a finger to his ear. “We’re switching live to the White House.”

Jim jumped up and sprinted into the master bedroom, shaking Nance until she sat up, gasping.

“Out in the living room,” he ordered. “Hurry.”

Neither one of them voted for the president, but they had grown comfortable with his grandfatherly presence. Yet this didn’t seem like the same man. The hour and lack of makeup made him look even older than normal. Judging by the persistent grimace, the president was in some kind of pain. Anybody could see that he was terrified. With a flat, labored tone, he reassured his tiny audience that every precaution was being taken, that the government was still functioning, and whatever happened, citizens should remain calm.

“Calm about what?” Nance muttered.

“I don’t know,” Jim began. “Maybe some sort of—”

“‘Comet’? Did he just say—?”

“Or an asteroid,” the president added, as if defining the astronomical beast genuinely mattered. Then he paused, yanking papers from a hastily assembled stack of notes and reports and abbreviated briefings. Those next moments were necessary to gather his wits. Fifty years of experience on the public stage were barely enough to keep his voice from breaking. “The asteroid was discovered several hours ago,” he reported with a flat slow agonizing voice. “Approaching from an unexpected direction, and there is no doubt that it’s going to strike the earth. In another ninety-five minutes, I’m told. Yes. The impact will take place in the Pacific, far from the mainland, but earthquakes and tsunamis will spread the damage across a wide, wide portion of the world.

“Listen to me. Listen.

“This is going to be a very bad day for the world. We don’t know the exact dimensions of this disaster. But if you live near the West Coast, it is imperative—imperative—that you leave immediately. Pack nothing. Drive east. Minutes matter, and you mustn’t waste time.

“God bless us all, and good luck!”

One Wonderful Day

Without doubt or complaint, Cory accepted the adventure. But his silly little sister couldn’t. Even when things were wonderful, Amy had to cry. She was crying now, screaming and dripping tears and holding her stupid sea turtle while tugging at the straps of her little-girl chair. She practically begged Mom to come into the back seat and keep her company.

Mom was listening to the radio. She and Dad had a loud fight when they were leaving the house. Dad wanted to know why the van was out of gas, and Mom wanted to call Grandma again, and Dad started throwing grocery sacks into the trunk of his car, and Mom asked if it was smart to waste time with clothes and crappy canned goods?

“We’re a long ways from the sea,” Dad said. “And we’re going to need these supplies.”

“When we get to Disneyland,” thought Cory, leaping into the back seat.

They were still on the driveway when Mom tried calling Grandma again. And she kept trying once they were underway. But nobody answered and she finally gave up. Now she was bent forward, listening to the speaker in her door. She listened right up until Amy suddenly fell asleep.

On the radio, Cory hear a man saying, “Listen to me. Listen.”

Mom turned down the volume.

“Same old, same old,” said Dad.

“Quiet.”

They were driving on the highway. Buildings appeared in the distance, lit up by signs and streetlamps, and suddenly they were close, almost blurring as their car streaked past them.

“So try your mom again,” Dad said.

Mom looked at her phone. “I told you. She turns hers off at night.”

“She’ll be awake by now,” he said. “The sirens will get her up.”

“What about her pills?”

“Even drugged, the woman’s going to hear something.”

“God, Jim. You make her sound like an addict.”

“Sorry.”

“My call isn’t going through.”

“Too many people trying,” said Dad. Then he cursed and pushed his foot down, and the tires made a bright squealing sound.

When they first got to the highway, it was almost empty. But cars were coming from everywhere, everybody moving in the same direction now. It was like there was a race going on. Except for Dad who had to slow down suddenly, cursing and jumping lanes, and the tires made more noise. Sitting up tall in his big-boy seat, Cory saw several cars stuck together. There was fire and smoke, and he smelled the oily smoke, and, impressed beyond words, he turned around to watch the accident shrink and then vanish behind them.

“We’re lucky,” said Dad.

Mom didn’t seem to hear him. She was slumped forward, one ear pushed close to the radio speaker.

“Why?” Cory asked.

Nobody noticed him.

“Why, Dad?”

“Why what, son?”

“Why are we lucky?”

That brought a thoughtful silence. Mom looked at Dad, and Dad clung to the steering wheel, and the engine changed its sound, humming louder, and the whole car began to shake as they moved even faster than before.

“I know why we’re lucky,” the seven-year-old volunteered.

“Yeah, buddy?” Dad replied. “Why’s that?”

Then a new voice came on the radio. Mom said, “Quiet,” and got low again, listening hard. Dad listened as he drove. They were out ahead of the worst of the traffic. They didn’t need to hear why they were lucky. Everybody knew. Except for Amy, sleeping through all the fun. That’s what Cory was thinking, sitting back in his big-boy seat and closing his eyes, imagining the wonderful day to come.

Take A Laser

Sure, the Secret Service talked a mean game. Their reputation was that each of them would take a bullet for their president, and before morning coffee too. According to their own press, every threat was considered serious, and nobody was above suspicion. They were a tough, highly trained team of warriors—the modern Praetorian guards—ready to defend their emperor to the last man and last woman. But all of that was just public smoke. The real Secret Service was a bunch of bright, humorless souls trained to respond to predictable threats and prosaic madmen. And there was nothing conventional or ordinary about tonight’s threat.

Joan was sitting outside the Oval Office, watching people walk in nervous and walk out again, terrified. While the door was open, voices were heard. She knew the president’s voice, and Higgins’s. The Chief of Staff was always loud, but this was different. “Somebody is goddamn to blame,” he roared. “And don’t you tell me otherwise!”

The door was still open. A voice she didn’t know tried to tell him otherwise, talking slowly, quietly. It was a teacher’s voice, if she had to guess.

Three strangers were meeting with the president. Joan knew their names and the branch of government that they had climbed down from, but nobody seemed eager to involve the security detail in those particulars. On a whim, she Googled one of the names and found a website to an NSF project in Hawaii. For a couple of minutes, she read about astronomers watching the universe, but instead of telescopes, they were using a giant brick of fancy metal, searching for clues into the composition and behavior of dark matter.

Dark matter couldn’t have meant less to Joan. She never liked science, never would. Practicality was her strength, and the practical answer was that this Hawaiian lab was a convenient cover for something more important than a team of nerds hunting for ghostly theoretical particles.

She went to Wikipedia to read up on cosmology. A few minutes later, the Chief of Staff emerged from the Oval Office, looking at a collection of strong men and one strong woman, everybody waiting for orders that he couldn’t deliver.

“Screw the chain of command,” Higgins seemed to decide.

He approached Joan—she was closest—and with a stern expression and tight, quaking voice, he reported, “Something bad is happening.”

She nodded, amazed how quickly the terror grabbed hold of her.

“We have to move as many people as possible,” he said. “To safety,” he said. “What we’re planning to do . . . we’re going to tell the public that a comet is about to hit. But that’s just the cover story. Get people scared enough to run, but not causing a total meltdown panic.”

The agent beside Joan was a twenty-year man, imaginative as a fencepost and legendary for his poise.

“The cover story is a comet?” he cried out. “What the hell’s worse than a comet?”

Higgins sighed, making ready to lie.

This was what people did when they were inventing a story. Joan knew that expression and the purposeful silence that went with it. Yet she couldn’t find any reason not to believe the man when he stated what sounded utterly impossible. With a clear, rock-certain voice, he told the president’s Praetorians, “We are being invaded. Aliens are coming. The earth is under attack!”

Such a ludicrous, juvenile story, yet just like that, Joan was trying to figure out the best way to throw her body in front of a laser beam—as if that could do any damn good.

Extraordinary Circumstances

Jim finally told Nance it was time to stop calling her mom. That was an awful thing to say, but he had good reasons. He really did. Nance responded with surprise and reflexive anger, eyes glaring at him in the darkness. But as she started to talk again—as soon as she began asking what kind of monster said such things—Jim pointed out, “It’s too late, darling. The president’s second address was pretty damn specific. Ten, eleven minutes from now, it hits. The asteroid is here. Either your mother knows or she doesn’t. If she does, then she’s driving right behind us. But if she’s still asleep, why wake her up? Unless you want to make her last moments into a horrible nightmare, that is.”

Cold as it was, his logic had its deserved impact. Nance wept quietly. Her anger persisted, but at least she dropped the useless phone back into her useless purse. Maybe for the first time she began to consider their future. The world was about to be remade. An unprecedented disaster was looming, and they were carrying a week’s worth of food and little else. A long glance into the back seat told her that the kids were still sleeping. That was good news. Then she insisted on holding one of Jim’s hands, as if they were dating again. Jim kept the Accord at ninety-five, the front end shaking from the abuse. But he left just that one hand on the wheel, holding her hand, waiting until she finally asked, “Where exactly are we going?”

“East,” he stated. “As far as possible.”

“Where east?”

He had no idea. Yet she wanted a destination, something concrete and familiar, and that’s why he said, “Vegas.”

“Why?”

“We know it.”

She dwelled on that for a while. Then with an edge to the voice, she said, “Everybody’s going there. We should think of someplace else.”

“You’re right,” he admitted. “Rand-McNally’s under the seat. The flashlight is in the glove compartment.”

Bending, she asked, “How much farther can we drive?”

Jim retrieved his hand just before a patch of rough road. “We’ve got another two hundred miles in the tank, maybe.” Holding tight to the wheel, he admitted, “We’re way ahead of the rush now. So we can probably gas up somewhere along the way, if we want.”

Nance settled into her research.

And Jim was pleased with himself. He thought about all the kinds of luck that had found them. He happened to wake up in time and hear the warning. They started with a full tank of gas, and inside the trunk were sacks of lunchmeat and canned food and other treasures. It was hard to imagine any tsunami with the height or muscle to reach them here. Even the mother-in-law situation was a blessing. The old gal might have picked up the phone and panicked, refusing to save herself. Then Nance would have made them drive over to her house, and all of them would be doomed. But when Jim looked at the whole night, he decided that his finest moment came with Cory. Their son could have been a nightmare. He wanted to know where were they going, and one wrong word would have started a screaming fit that would have made this drive into even more of a nightmare. But when Jim opened his mouth, that beautiful perfect lie about Disneyland just sprang out.

At the time, he felt wicked. But didn’t things end up all right? Both kids were sound asleep, innocent and untroubled by the coming madness. Jim couldn’t help but smile about that. And his mother-in-law was someone else’s problem. And he didn’t have to go to work Monday. Imagining the new world, he wondered how many times ordinary men were flung into extraordinary circumstances, but then managed to succeed beyond anyone’s expectations

Jim was going to be one of those great successes.

That’s what he told himself and that’s what he believed, pushing their car past one hundred miles an hour, ignoring the rattles and shimmies as he raced hard toward the Sierra Nevadas.

Mirror

The astronomer’s face reddened, features twisting in agony. His head was tilted, concentrating on the voice buzzing in his ear. When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he said, “Shit, no.” He said, “This is what I told them.” Then he let loose, unleashing what seemed to be one enormous sentence, talking about mirror matter and “the facility” and something called pepper effects, and he finished by saying, “Yes, and the scalar transmutations, yes.” Then after a brief pause, he began talking again, throwing out what seemed to be a tangle of arbitrary syllables and random lettering—the dense personal language of someone trying to prove his expertise to whoever was listening to his tirade.

Joan drifted closer.

The astronomer noticed her, absently lifting one hand.

Gazing east, watching the sun and the impossibly green mountains, Joan realized that she wasn’t quite as terrified as before. Certainly not like when the helicopters were lifting off from DC, carrying the bare-boned essentials of the government into the wilderness. At the time, that airborne caravan seemed to be a peculiar tactic: If Hollywood had taught people anything it was that aliens could shoot down slow-moving planes. Yet someone decided that the president needed to be in West Virginia, hidden inside the deepest bunkers, and the best way to go there was to fly. But as soon as they touched down, someone else decided there wouldn’t be any journey underground. Apparently the nuclear-hardened facility afforded no more protection than did the skies and lush trees.

Whatever the truth, Joan didn’t know it. When pressed for an explanation, the twenty-year man—older and far wiser—stared at his toes, and after hard consideration declared, “Fuck if I know.”

To keep the agents busy, each was given some tiny task. Joan was responsible for a piece of ground near the perimeter, and that’s what she was defending when she noticed the astronomer standing in the sunlight, arguing passionately with the voice inside a secure sat-phone.

“Well, Marvin,” the astronomer said. “I guess I didn’t do the job you wanted. Maybe I screwed up. But maybe you shouldn’t have been playing around with this shit in the first place.”

The invisible Marvin offered a few conciliatory words.

And the astronomer shook his head. “Yeah, you should have talked to the president. Not me.” The empty hand was still raised, forgotten. Looking at the mountains, he shook his head even as he made agreeable sounds. “I know. You were really busy. You and your team were fighting the cascade. Which you didn’t manage to stop, or even slow down appreciably, by the way.”

The buzzing voice began.

But the astronomer cut him off. “I warned you, Marv. Didn’t I? Didn’t I? This wasn’t my project. We are colleagues, and that’s all. You woke me in the middle of the night with a crazy story, and then you told me to explain what I don’t understand to a room full of people who failed high school physics.”

The astronomer stopped talking, waiting for the reply.

Nothing seemed to happen.

One last time, he said, “Marvin?” His back straightened, eyes round, and he turned until he was facing Joan. His empty hand was still floating between them. He lowered his arm gradually, as if the motion took an enormous amount of strength. “I just lost the connection,” he admitted.

“Call Marvin back,” she suggested.

Which seemed too obvious. No, he preferred to stare at the sat-phone, apparently puzzled by its nature. Then he tried to set it on the picnic table beside him, but his hand was shaking and he missed, watching numbly as the expensive machine landed hard on the graveled yard.

“Maybe later,” he said. “I’ll try again later.”

Joan approached until she was beside him, taking one deep breath before asking, “What’s really happening?”

He winced and dropped his eyes.

“The president wants an update,” she lied. Though it wasn’t much of a lie: What rational creature wouldn’t crave the latest news?

The astronomer sucked at his teeth.

“You’re going to tell me,” she insisted. “What’s mirror matter, and what does it have to do with us?”

“Mirror matter is everywhere, and it means everything.”

“Okay,” she managed.

He leaned against the picnic table, breaking into a lecturer’s voice. “Most of the universe is profoundly dark. Except for a few percentage points of normal matter, we can’t touch or taste, much less see, most of what is out there. Mirror matter wants nothing to do with the likes of us. Most of the time, the only thing we feel is its gravitational pull.”

“Dark matter,” she guessed.

“One species of dark matter, yes.” Both hands swirled in the bright air. “The Hilo Experiment was testing a hypothesis. If our new models are accurate, something like mirror matter will, with help and on very rare occasions, turn baryonic. That means it becomes a neutron or proton. You know, something like us. And by the same token, sometimes normal matter becomes dark. Researchers on Hilo . . . my old friend Marvin . . . these people were watching for atoms emerging from nothing, and sometimes they would coax our atoms to vanish into this ghostly other realm.”

“So why?” Joan pressed. “Why should I care?”

“The experiment was designed to run both ways,” he explained. “Which made sense, because that doubled our odds of seeing interesting results. But the problem is—what I kept trying to explain to the president...”

His voice fell away.

“What about the aliens?” she demanded.

“Right. The aliens.” He laughed softly and desperately, wiping at one eye with the back of a hand. “You see, the work was going normally. For months and months, the data was pretty much following the predictions. Then all of a sudden and for no good reason, the transmutation began running hard in one direction. A trillion trillion trillion trillion times faster than anybody imagined possible, the baryons in the detector were turning into their mirror equivalents. I explained what I could to the president. I described how Marvin was busy trying to suffocate the cascade before it breached the reaction chamber. But that Chief of Staff . . . that ignorant prick . . . he kept seeing conspiracies. Evil influences. He wanted to know what mirror matter looked like. What did it want? Maybe I was stupid, but I mentioned speculations that there are worlds made of the stuff. A world set on top and inside our own planet, and we don’t even know it. Different EM rules and nuclear forces, and maybe there’s odd kinds of life in this alternate realm. I warned everybody that this wasn’t my specialty. And really, nobody knows anything for certain. But people . . . you know how people are. We hear something that sounds a little familiar, and right away we jump to the easiest conclusion. I said, ‘Life,’ and he heard, ‘Alien.’ I talked about the runaway cascade, and he heard, ‘Invasion.’ “

“So there’s no invasion?” Joan asked hopefully.

“Aliens from space coming to conquer us?” The astronomer hesitated, grimacing as he bent and retrieved the phone. Then he was laughing, shaking his head slowly as he explained to her and maybe to himself, “Aliens would be easy. A pack of blood-hungry monsters might at least listen to reason.”

She stepped back, trembling now.

He glanced at his watch.

In the distance, someone shouted a few words . . . something about losing Hawaii...

The astronomer looked up, nothing like surprise in his face. He was angry but continued laughing in a loud, despairing fashion. Speaking to the trees and sky, he confessed, “What I want to know, if someone can please tell me . . . how the hell did all of this unravel so easily. . . ?”

* * * *

BRAT

I DID NOTHING

NOTHING?

I (TASTED)

(TASTED) WHAT?

SHADOWS

I TOLD YOU ABOUT SHADOWS ABOUT WHAT THEY MEAN ABOUT WHY THEY ARE SCARCE ABOUT RESPONSIBILITY ABOUT BEING GOOD

YES (FATHER) YOU TAUGHT ME

YOU (TASTED)?

YES

NOTHING ELSE?

(LOOK) AT ME

DID THE (TASTES) (SPEAK) TO YOU?

MAYBE

DID YOU (TOUCH) THEM (SON)?

BECAUSE (TOUCHING) CAUSE TROUBLES FOR SHADOWS

I KNOW (FATHER)

(TOUCHING) IS WRONG

I DID NOT DO THAT (FATHER)

SHADOWS ARE SO WEAK

YES I KNOW YES

SOMEONE (TOUCHED)

YES

WHO?

MY (BROTHER) DID

YOUR (BROTHER) REACHED INTO THE SHADOWS?

YES

BUT WHY WOULD HE?

(LOOK) AT ME (SON)

I AM (LOOKING)

WHY WOULD YOUR LITTLE (BROTHER) REACH INTO THE SHADOWS?

I DO NOT KNOW WHY

YOU HAD NO ROLE IN THIS?

NONE

NOT EVEN AS A SUGGESTION OR PERHAPS A DARE

NEVER (FATHER)

MAYBE . . . MAYBE MY (BROTHER) WAS CURIOUS

CURIOUS?

WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG (FATHER) DID YOU (TASTE) THE SHADOWS?

YOU ARE THE SUBJECT (SON) NOT ME

AND DID YOU EVER (TOUCH) THEM?

YOU ARE THE TOPIC (SON)

AND MY (BROTHER)

WHO WAS COMPELLED TO DO WHAT ONE SO YOUNG SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO IMAGINE DOING

YES MY (BROTHER) IS A LITTLE BRAT AND WE SHOULD BE ANGRY WITH MY (BROTHER) AND WHAT CAN WE DO (FATHER) TO TEACH THAT BRAT A GOOD LESSON?

Pretty To Think So

Cory was dreaming and then he was awake.

They were still driving fast. Dad was talking about a movie, or maybe it was a book. A man and woman loved each other, but there was a problem between them. The boy couldn’t decipher the exact difficulty, but it sounded important and maybe painful, and a lot of things happened to those two people. But nothing changed about their lives. Then at the end of the book, the man and woman were riding together inside a car, and the woman said something about how good they could have been together, if only. Then the car made a turn and they slid together . . . and here Dad said that he wasn’t sure about the particulars; he hadn’t read the book since college . . . but he thought that was when the man said to the woman, “Well, it’s certainly pretty to think so.”

Dad started to laugh. It was a funny high sound, not like his normal laughs.

Mom looked back and saw her son, and she started trying to smile at him.

Then she looked up.

“Jim,” she said, once and with a terrible voice.

Dad looked into the mirror and then over his shoulder, pushing hard at the brakes.

“Stay in the car,” he said.

Mom asked, “What’s happening? What am I seeing?”

“Stay here,” Dad repeated, pushing open his door and going outside.

They weren’t going anywhere. The world was very quiet and still, and Mom looked at Cory and then looked farther, gazing out the back window, a soft weak sound leaking out of her. Cory tried to turn around and look but couldn’t. He punched the seat belt button while Mom climbed out of the car, grabbing Amy out of her baby seat and offering him a hand. “With me. Now.”

They stood together at the back of the car, looking down the highway. Everybody had stopped, pulling onto the shoulder or staying in the middle of the road. Radio voices were talking about something coming, something fast. Yet Cory saw nothing but blackness where the stars should be, where the ground should be, all wrong-looking somehow and a little scary, but not too scary. He held Mom’s hand and reached for Dad’s, and Mom asked if this was the comet, and Dad knelt down and Mom did too, holding Amy close, and that’s how they were when the light came, blazing and funny-colored and full of weird roaring noises.

After a long while, the noises began to make sense.

Eventually Cory learned how to see again.

First in his family, he gazed out at the new world, and with a voice that sounded very big and very mature, he said, “Look.” To the cowering reborn entities beside him, he declared, “This is better even than I thought it would be!”