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Continuum

Michael Grigsby

    Black screen. Then video raster. ‘DAY FOUR’ streaks across the monitor.
    “So this is from the crash?” a commanding voiceover asks.
    “Just retrieved it, sir. Processed it, cueing it up now.”
    “The President see it? CIA? NSA?”
    The video fades in. ‘DAY FIVE’ appears in the corner.
    “No one.”
    “So these are images from the spaceship, like a flight data recorder. Did the people inside know they were being recorded?”
    “No idea, sir. This is all that remains.”
    The screen settles on a middle-class house with 1970s decor that includes a piano, bean bags, a lava lamp and Keep On Truckin’ over the fireplace.
    A well-groomed middle-aged man with dark hair and eyes sits stiff at the kitchen table and does the crossword puzzle in pen. The newspaper headline reads, ‘Watergate!’ He sips his coffee with an upturned little finger. He finishes his eggs Benedict and English muffin and dabs his chin with a cloth napkin.
    “Even thirty years later Watergate gives me a bad taste.”
    A young frumpy Hispanic girl stumbles out of the downstairs bedroom and yawns with bed-head. She wears a green housecoat, lime flannel pajamas, and plastic-soled sea-foam house slippers.
    “Getting in touch with your inner leprechaun?” he asks.
    She gives him a look and turns on the TV. He sighs, looks at his Rolex and rolls his eyes.
    “This as good as it gets?” the commanding voiceover asks. “You’d think an advanced alien—”
    “Here it is, sir. We only have one chance to see this.”
    “Sleep well?” the girl asks.
    “No. I hate this place. Can you turn that off?”
    She scuffles to the pantry. One side, labeled ‘Marvin’, is well stocked. The other, nearly empty, displays ‘Lusita’. She grabs a half-full bag of chips.
    “Potato chips?” Marvin scoffs. “That’s what you get—”
    “‘I get by with a little help from my friends.’”
    “I hate that song.”
    “It would be cool to pool our food and beverage resources.”
    “When I came downstairs, I heard—”
    “Amazing, isn’t it?” She looks around, as if seeing it for the first time.
    “No.”
    Lusita touches the wall and feels the kitchen Formica.
    “It looks so real. It’s like, like—”
    “This is, like, no exit,” he says.
    Lusita yawns. “I’m so groggy when I don’t sleep with my woman.”
    “Are you gay?”
    “Bisexual. It doubles my chances. So it’s hard getting out of bed.” Lusita strokes a pet rock.
    “Now, I know the blood flow has not reached above your neck yet, but the upstairs corner bedroom—”
    “I would like to see the sun.”
    “No, please do not.”
    Lusita clears her throat and looks up. “Hello? I’d like to look outside, really look outside.”
    Lusita goes to the window. Day changes to night. A dull roar, like a powerful engine, echoes throughout the house.
    Lusita opens the blinds and looks out. She sees stars. She looks below and sees only an ocean of stars. The outside changes from night to day and Lusita sighs. The sound of the rocket engine fades away.
    “No sun. Another lame idea.” Lusita plops down.
    “We are light years from the sun,” Marvin says, “inside a spaceship. Even the oak tree out back is illusion.”
    Marvin gets up to shut the blinds. He looks outside. Blue lights and squirming tentacles absorb the spaceship. He shudders and checks his watch.
    “Not much time,” he says. “Turn the TV off. We have seen the same five episodes over and over.”
    Lusita gets up and turns it off. “Can I ask you to help me rearrange my bedroom, professor? I’d like—”
    “Am I a furniture mover now?”
    Lusita glares at him.
    “Why do you think the lights were different last night?” he asks. “Any opinion?”
    “I have no opinion.”
    “Right, there is no group here telling you what to think. No matter. I will figure it out.”
    Lusita pours herself a cup of coffee. She stops by the fridge, gets a pat of butter and slumps at the table. She stuffs potato chips in her mouth. She tries to butter a chip, but the butter won’t spread. She puts the pat near the coffee’s heat and the butter slides off into her cup.
    “That is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen,” he says.
    Lusita eyes the coffee cup, shrugs and takes a sip.
    “I stand corrected,” Marvin says and rolls his eyes.
    Lusita makes a face. “Terrible,” she says. “I have no good ideas.”
    Marvin straightens his sweater vest and heads to the great room. A strange tone sounds and she hurries to follow him. They sit on the couch and look up.
    “Good morning campers,” a cold, metallic voice thunders throughout the house. “Welcome to day five of our week-long all-expense-paid trip to you-don’t-know-where! You girls and guys out there are waiting for either Shangra La or the Eternal Beyond.”
    “Why does it have to do this?”
    “Today is a special day,” the spaceship continues, “so let’s see who our lucky winner is. Drum roll, please. It’s Marvin, fellow travel-naughts. Marvin are, you with us?”
    “Yes, I am with you.”
    “Of course you are. Where else would you be? Marvin, you’ve already seen how the Native Americans were targeted for elimination, and how that failed. You have also seen how the Jews were nearly eliminated, but that failed. Care to wager who will be the next group of humanity scheduled for extinction?”
    “No, I do not care to wager.”
    “Come on Marvin, play along. Marvin, Marvin, Marvin!”
    “It won’t stop until you do,” Lusita says.
    “Marvin, Marvin, he’s our man. If he won’t wager, no one can!”
    “Very well. Unwanted babies?”
    “Bzzt! Marvin, sorry, but you do not seem to have your thinking cap on today. Unwanted babies are not a genetically isolated faction of humanity’s gene pool. Try again!”
    “I do not know. This is ridiculous!”
    “Yes it is, Marvin, since I have been waiting for you for an honor of unspeakable merit. But wait, there’s more. Not only are the kitchen knives available but, for a limited time only, you and a person of my choice will have a hand in the next phase of Earth’s evolution, namely the elimination of all humanity.”
    Marvin jumps up. “If you think I am going to help participate in the destruction of humanity you have a screw lose.”
    “Ha ha ha. Marvin, you are a joy to work with. I cannot have a screw lose since I have no screws. Now, behind door number one is the object of elimination, the factor of humanity targeted for eradication. Are you ready? Blondes, Marvin, blondes.”
    Lusita perks up. “Blondes?”
    “That’s right, space fans, blondes. They will no longer have more fun, Lusita. Blondes will be targeted for obliteration, eliminated from humanity’s symbiotic structure.”
    An odd hum begins from above them. “Oops,” the spaceship says. “Gotta go, kids. We’ll chat later. Don’t take any wooden lasers!”
    They hear a ding. Lusita stares at the ceiling.
    “What do you make of that?” she asks. “Think it can really eliminate blondes? I mean, would the world really be such a bad place without blondes?”
    Marvin sits, pensive. “I have no idea, yet. Maybe that explains the upstairs corner bedroom rumbling.”
    “Did you go and check it out?”
    “I do not ‘go and check out.’”
    “I just wish it would get on with whatever it is so we could go back home. Even though we have a TV, we can’t get any new signals.”
    Marvin gets up and looks out the window. “I have to do something about this.”
    “Right, you have to save the world.”
    “Who else is going to do it? You?”
    “I’m a college student, what do I know? We can’t even call anyone for help.”
    “I have to do this myself. I will find a way to stop it.”
    “We should join together on this.”
    “I am not much of a joiner.”
    “It must be cool being high and mighty, not even using contractions, perfect posture and so superior.”
    “God, no. It is very lonely.”
    The screen flickers. ‘DAY SIX’ fades into the corner.
    Marvin goes to the kitchen, gets a bottle of wine from his side, pours himself a glass and walks toward the library. He passes the downstairs bedroom. He hears voices from behind the door. It sounds like the spaceship.
    In the library, Marvin scrawls on a legal pad and sketches the house. He hears a scream and a crash from the downstairs bedroom. He jumps up, runs there and opens the door.
    Lusita slouches against the wall and holds her arm. Splintered glass shines on the bathroom tile.
    Marvin goes to her. “It is a bad cut.” Marvin dashes to the bathroom linen closet and snatches a plastic box with first aid supplies. He cleans the cut and bandages her arm.
    “The linen closet? I wouldn’t have thought to look there.”
    “I have never slipped on the floor like that. There is no clinic here, no drive-thru pharmacy.”
    “I can’t stand the sight of blood. Blood, worms and barf make me barf. How did you know where it was?”
    “Where what was?”
    “The first aid. You’ve never been in this bedroom before, right?”
    “Was the spaceship, if it really is a spaceship, just talking to you?”
    “When?”
    “A minute ago, right here.”
    Lusita admires Marvin’s bandaging. “Were you a nurse’s aid or something?”
    “I, a nurse’s aid?”
    “Oh, right. Silly of me.”
    Marvin returns to the library. He sits erect at the desk and writes on a pad. Lusita shuffles in.
    “I wonder where it got this house,” she says. “This was not in your 1970s past?”
    “I am doing something here.”
    “Don’t you think it needed something to base it on? It’s no place I’ve ever been. I grew up in a—”
    “Even though I am always a-tingle with anecdotes from your deprived childhood, I—”
    “How does that compare to your childhood?”
    “I would like to be left alone. I am figuring out a way to destroy this thing, get us—”
    “Destroy what? The ship we’re flying in? You teach music! What do you know—”
    Marvin jumps up. “I tower above the rest! There is nothing beyond me!”
    “Escape is beyond you. How did you end up here?”
    “The spaceship saw I was superior.”
    “Do you think I’m superior?”
    Marvin rolls his eyes and sits back down. “I am in no mood to talk right now.”
    “So what else is new. You know, I was really uptight about taking your music composition class.”
    “I am making a plan to save us.”
    “Good luck with that. You should try to get along with the voice. Everything we have, it gave us.”
    “Imprisonment and a chance to destroy the world.”
    “I’m sure that’s just an exaggeration. Joining is positive.”
    “I wonder what Native Americans, Jews and blondes have to do with destroying humanity. Any idea?”
    “It’s probably not a good one.”
    “Undoubtedly not.”
    “You do not appreciate the two-heads-are-better-than-one thing. I know about you. You hate committees, you hate groups. But ‘One is the loneliest number...’”
    “I hate that song, too.”
    “No man is an island.”
    “Actually, each of us IS an island in the most isolated manner possible. We are all alone.”
    “What a crock!”
    “Then you tell me what Native Americans, Jews and blondes have in common.”
    “There’s a lot I don’t know. But I believe we all need each other.”
    “How very hippie/flower-power of you.”
    “It takes a planet, it takes us all. That’s why they tried to eliminate Native Americans, to eliminate Jews. I bet they tried to off other groups.”
    Marvin adjusts his collar, thinks and then stares at her. “I do not know if you are right, but it does almost make sense.”
    Lusita jumps up. “Get out! Think my idea is cool? Imagine, no blonde bimbo stealing my boyfriend. Lusita taps his knee. “You need me. Get it? Knee? Need?”
    Marvin sighs and heads to the kitchen. He pours a cup of coffee and sits at the table.
    The screen flickers, damaged images fly by and then stabilize.
    Lusita shuffles to the kitchen table.
    Marvin looks at her. “When these aliens tried to destroy humanity earlier, they failed, so they are not omnipotent. I wonder what caused their failure?”
    “It’s a drag wasting time thinking about things like that.”
    “They will invade the earth, and I am all that stands—”
    “Maybe the voice is right. Joining—”
    Marvin leans into her with clenched jaw, intense and whispers “Are you on its side?” Marvin puts his hand to her throat. “Are you fighting me, plotting against ME?!”
    Her lip tightens. Marvin holds her neck a long moment. He blinks, then lets her go and picks up his coffee cup.
    The screen jumps. Weird angles spin across the monitor.
    Marvin and Lusita sit in the library.
    “The TV listings show the blonde cover girls: jiggly Chrissy, pouty Margaret, over-permed Gloria, with re-runs of midriff-showing Jeanie,” Lusita says.
    That horrible tone clangs. They jump, thunderstruck.
    “It is not briefing time,” Marvin says.
    Lusita sprawls on the couch. Marvin freezes in the chair.
    “Hello again boys and girls,” the spaceship echoes. “We have a little job to do. Marvin, I’m afraid you have done some thinking about escaping, disabling me or some kind of nonsense and that’s just not something I’ll cotton to. So, if you’ll just stand up we can get this over with post haste.”
    Marvin looks around and gulps.
    “Come on Marvin, chop-chop. Make quick like a bunny.”
    Marvin swallows hard and stands tall.
    Suddenly a high keen sounds and lightning bolts strike him. He sizzles and convulses with electricity. Then, he crumples to the ground, unconscious, his pants wet.
    “I just love the smell of human flesh in the morning,” the spaceship says.
    “I tried to talk him out of it—” Lusita says.
    “You lie like a rug, little girl.”
    “I know. What can I do to help you?”
    “Tell her what she’s won, Bob! I knew you’d join the home team!”
    “Can you really eliminate blondes?”
    “Nothing to it but to do it.”
    “So we’re going to a place and time before blondes and will prevent the beginning of blondes?”
    “You rock and roll, baby cakes! That’s why you’re in charge!”
    Marvin stirs and groans. The loud ding reverberates.
    “Maybe we should try to cooperate,” Marvin moans.
    “Cool,” Lusita says. “It’ll be thousands of years before humanity actually dies out and we’ll be long gone.”
    Marvin holds his head and sees that he’s wet himself. He looks at Lusita in a panic. “Oh...oh my God!”
    “What? You wet yourself? I do it at every frat party.”
    Marvin snatches a Kleenex from the desk and tries to wipe his pants. He shakes his head, tries to straighten up and pounds the floor.
    “Great! Just great!”
    “Check out what the voice wants to do.”
    “You better make sure the house has a full supply of Depends, right?” Marvin asks.
    “Will you get a grip? Listen, the ship is taking us to a place and time before blondes. Before—”
    “So you are really not going to make my life hell given that you know I have...urinated all over myself like common trailer-park trash?”
    “If you want to wallow in self pity—”
    “The owner’s wife bought him a pair of gray pinstripes, in your closet—”
    “How do you know that? What owner?”
    “He never wore them, they were not bell bottoms. They are clean.”
    Marvin gets up and points Lusita to the bedroom. He trudges to the dining room and puts his head in his hands. He sits very still for several minutes.
    Lusita brings the gray pinstripes to him. Marvin nods his thanks.
    “You were right,” Marvin says, very quiet. “This place is from my past.”
    She eases down in the chair and looks at him.
    “My mother was the maid here, cleaned the house for this couple. I had to come here after school. My father was an alcoholic, never had a job, we were on welfare. We moved constantly, running from bill collectors. So my mother cleaned houses for a living. She was not part of some team of maids, she did it by herself.”
    “She sounds like a good mother.”
    “Yes, real good. She drank. Taking care of me was too much for her.”
    Marvin swallows hard.
    “She would often tell me, when I was bad, that she would just leave me, leave me alone on some curb, might not pick me up from school, leave me here in this house, something. And I would be left all alone.”
    “She threatened to leave you?”
    “Then one day...in this house. I was playing, probably doing something I should not do, and I broke a glass picture frame. She screamed that it would have to come out of her salary, which already was not enough...”
    “...and then?”
    “She took me upstairs to the corner bedroom and spanked me, a lot. I deserved that. She screamed that I did not deserve her, I did not deserve a home and that she had had it with me and that she would whip me and then leave, once and for all, just walk out and leave. And...that is just what she did. She left. I was upstairs alone, crying, and I heard my mother... slam the door, walk out, start her car...and leave! I was alone. I was there from ten in the morning until the owner came back eight hours later. I did not dare move. My mother left me...”
    Lusita takes his hand.
    “I have never told anyone that before. They tried to call my father but he was in jail for drunk and disorderly. The owner let me stay there that night. I cried and told them how sorry I was I broke their picture frame. They said I could pay it back out of my allowance. I did not actually have an allowance. About a week later my mother came back and got me... but I never trusted her again.”
    “You never trusted anyone again.”
    Marvin looks out the window. “I can see that oak tree, a hundred feet high. I remember it was tall and strong. But lightning hit it one day. When I ran out to look, it was hollow, rotted from the inside.”
    Lusita gets him a Kleenex.
    “It towered over the rest,” she says.
    “That is—I mean that’s—nice of you to say.”
    The screen cuts. The video rolls and ‘DAY SEVEN’ fades into the corner.
    In the upstairs game room, Marvin wears the different pants and Lusita sits and ponders.
    “It’s afternoon briefing time.”
    “The voice is late.”
    They hear the irritating clang and look up.
    “Good morning,” the spaceship says. “I mean good afternoon, sports fans. Welcome to day five of our—”
    “It’s day seven,” Marvin says.
    “Wow, it’s been so fun I forgot how time flies, I mean goes slower, some damn thing. So I’ve already explained how World War II failed to eliminate the Jews, white men failed to eliminate Native Americans, Roanoke failed to—”
    “You never mentioned Roanoke before,” Marvin says.
    “I’ve never mentioned the Bermuda Triangle either and now I have. It’s time to give you your assignment, a chance to be part of the cornerstone of New Earth. Here’s how we’ll rid the world of blondes and prepare the way for a new force of intelligence to inhabit your lovely little planet. Hurry on down, down, down, because tomorrow we will land and—”
    “That’s a day early.”
    “We will not de-spaceship tomorrow, just land. There is a cave man and a cave woman down there, who are about to produce the first blonde, creating a creature designed to withstand the frozen tundra. You two will copulate with that blonde-producing couple and snip the blonde gene right out of the pool.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Lusita will mate with the cave man—no worries, it’s not the Geico cave man—and you will mate with the cave woman. The blonde gene is recessive, thus wiping them out, oh happy day!”
    “Why would we cooperate?”
    “On land, my mental manipulation powers are nearly irresistible. That was how I got you here in the first place.”
    “Why don’t you just kill the cave man and cave woman?”
    “I can only suggest, and suggesting they kill themselves will not work. Once humanity has vamoosed we, the new inhabitants, will live here.”
    “What will the new inhabitants be like?” Lusita asks.
    “Oh, wonderful big blue lights the size of a house wearing a bucket of worms,” the spaceship says.
    Lusita gags.
    “So, when we land, I do not need your consent, your mind or your approval—only your body.”
    A loud hiss goes off, again from upstairs.
    “A spaceship’s work is never done!” the voice thunders. They hear a ding and all is quiet.
    “You still want to help this thing invade our planet with lights and worms and change our history?” Marvin asks.
    Lusita looks at him and then looks up. She shakes her head. “Cool it. It sees and hears all.”
    “Whatever we do, we will have to do quickly and quietly. And it has to be planned by you.”
    “Me? No way. I can’t—”
    “Yes, you can. The voice suspects me. It thinks you are on its side.”
    Lusita gestures for him to follow her. They go to the downstairs bedroom. They turn on the shower in the bathroom and the TV very loud. “I’m not sure what to do.”
    “My last idea got me electrocuted. You have unique gifts.”
    Lusita shakes her head.
    “Your teachers have talked about you. You have a singular voice. But you only join the choir. You are unique, maybe even a soloist.”
    “You think?” Marvin nods. “Thanks, Marvin. Really... thanks.”
    “So what do we do about Mr. Windbag?”
    “As we get closer to our destination, the voice freaks out.”
    “Navigation in space-time, at light speed, millions of—”
    “So, now’s the time.”
    “After it lands, it’s too late.”
    “There must be some kind of controls, some kind of technology.”
    “Right. Where could it be?”
    “One room we’ve never been in. I’ve never needed to, and you never wanted to: the upstairs corner bedroom.”
    “I can’t go into that room. I’ll die, crumple right to the ground—”
    “Congrats on using contractions, that’s a step forward. The spaceship knew about your past. I can try to distract it, you have to get into that room and disable it.”
    “What if it crashes?”
    “Maybe nothing. Or maybe we die with me giving orders and you starring on Team Lusita saving the world.”
    “I don’t know if I can.”
    “Are you a ‘the glass is half empty’ or a ‘the glass is half full’ kind of guy?”
    “I’m a ‘get a smaller glass’ kind of guy. I can’t do—”
    “I need you to join.”
    Marvin swallows hard. “You have any wine left?” Lusita shakes her head. Marvin smiles and they walk to the pantry. Marvin grabs a bottle from his side. “My last one. I’ll share.”
    Lusita blinks in surprise. Marvin pours her a glass and drains his in one long gulp.
    Lusita smiles. “Any comments about the fruity bouquet?”
    “So you will distract it?”
    “Trust me.”
    “Okay. Time to kick some ass!”
    Lusita nods and Marvin spins toward the stairs. Lusita turns on all the lights, clears her throat and looks up.
    “Hey, voice!” Lusita yells. “Excuse me, voice?”
    “What is it sweetie?” the nasal spaceship asks. “Daddy’s a little busy right now.”
    “Yeah, I’m sure. Listen, I’m going stir crazy here. Can you GET ME OUT OF THIS DAMN THING!” Lusita goes to the wall and pounds on it. She runs to the dining room, screams and kicks. “How much longer do I have to go and not see the sun? The only company I have is a dried-up old fart who loves the sound of his own voice! If you had to trap me here with a guy, what’s wrong with a young non-pot-bellied buff hard body, huh? And there’s no diet food here, have you heard of a salad, have you seen my ass?! There’s no cable, no DVDs! Get me out of—”
    “We’re on a landing cycle now. We’re almost through, finished—”
    “Don’t you have any advanced alien cocaine or something?”
    “I’m trying to do thousands of things a second—Marvin! What are you up to? I know what you—”
    The screen cuts. Marvin runs up the stairs and turns to the corner bedroom.
    “—are planning,” the spaceship thunders.
    Marvin looks up as a bolt of lightning just misses him. A terrible sound fills the house. It shakes. Another bolt of lightening and Marvin jumps. “I’m going to pull the plug, you loud mouthed worm-bucketed alien!”
    Marvin runs into the upstairs corner bedroom door but bounces off. He backs up, charges full speed and bursts into the bedroom.
    Black screen.
    “What happened?” the commanding voiceover asks. “That’s it?”
    “That’s all we have, I guess. What do you want me to do with it?”
    “Nothing. It’s irrelevant.”
    “What was all that talk about ‘blondes’?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “What is a ‘blonde’, sir? Is that like a race or something?”
    “Don’t know. I never heard of it. Let’s dump this and get a cup of coffee.”

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