By Grant Gordon
I am a bomb. They tell me I’m not, but I am. I believe the note because I know it’s true. I can feel it deep within me. I know there is a small device resting in the sloshing, organ-rich cavern of my middle meridian and that device is powerful enough to send me-shrapnel through every gilded wood panel of this zeppelin. I very much know this to be true. One may wish to follow up by asking why, then, am I sitting alone in my stateroom drinking expensive yet disgusting whisky and trying to force more tears to sally forth from tear ducts that have well dried up? It’s because the demands of the note are impossible to fulfill, and I am too cowardly to hurl myself into some unassuming lake or ocean far below us. If I can’t be extorted, if I can’t be a hero, I might as well be drunk. I am a drunk bomb, and that’s the last thing I’ll ever be.
Things were easier forty-sevenish minutes ago. This was before we found the note. I was enjoying a whitefish dinner in a saffron butter sauce and looking out a porthole at a sunset over the Caucasus mountains. Even peppered by the towering fortresses left over from the recent Russo-Persian conflict, the view was diverting. A mild case of indigestion was nothing out of the ordinary, and the service in the marble and mirrored dining room was as exemplary as usual, complete with a solicitation by a young Bulgarian waitress named Daria. She had big, beautiful black eyes, eyes which caught the flickering candlelight in the most unearthly way. Most remarkably, she seemed undeterred by my reputation, which is my third favorite aspect of any woman.
As my mother was my dinner companion, my meal was the high point. The view was a necessary distraction, and the wine? Heaven sent.
“Must you flirt so garishly in front of me?” she inquired after the Bulgarian girl wrote her shift schedule and cabin number on my hand.
“You’re not jealous, are you, Mother?”
“Don’t be revolting. You’re just like your father. So crude.”
“Like father? Now I know you’re not jealous.”
Mother shook her head like she was evicting a swarm of flies. “You do recall why we’re in this beastly floating contraption don’t you?”
I rolled my eyes. It was purely performative. I may not share my mother’s sense of duty, but I understand it, and I am terribly attached to her purse strings. “We have an appointment in France. This seemed to be the best way to get there after the thing in Australia fell through.”
“It didn’t fall through; you embarrassed the poor girl we were going to marry you off to.”
“Girl? Yes. She was barely older than sixteen. Poor? Certainly not. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Besides, how was I to know she wouldn’t think it was funny to come home to the entire local rugby club naked in her pool?”
“You are not going to embarrass us this time. The DuContes were very gracious to even entertain our visit. Once we land in Clermont-Ferrand you will be on better behavior than anyone you have ever met.”
“Within or without rugby circles? Wait a moment. Clare-where? We’re not even going to Paris? What is this backwater burg you’re condemning me to?”
“Clermont-Ferrand may not be a capital or especially large, but it is a metropolitan area. I am sure that once you’re married, collecting on your trust, and my own money is liberated from your grasp, you can find all manner of debauchery to attend to while your wife frets at home with her spoiled child. Just like your father.”
I was missing my wine. I absentmindedly dispatched it during my mother’s last speech. We were approached by the steward while I made an attempt to demonstrate the emptiness of my glass to any server who might be looking. He was a stout and stalwart man called Surya with sharp, dark little eyes. He smelled vaguely of estuary.
“Madam, sir, I was walking by sir’s stateroom when I noticed this pinned to the door.” With a practiced little flourish, he presented a small envelope. It was the zeppelin company’s stationary with a gold filigree border. My name was printed on the front in inelegant block letters. It was unsealed, and I flushed out the note.
Unlike the envelope, the paper on which the terrible little missive was written was from a common lined journal. Parts of the paper were tinted yellow. The handwriting was clear but unsteady, reckless and smudged in places. I read it slowly and felt my intestines creeping up like vines through my diaphragm and wrapping around my lungs.
It read:
Salutations, while you fueled last night’s drunken stupor, a small reverse ionic fission device was fed to you within a microwavable canapé. It is capable of monitoring its surrounding conditions and will detonate with any change in heat or humidity beyond an acceptable threshold. To be clear, it will explode within one minute of being expelled.
We will disarm this device only if our following demands are met: a cash donation of $2.4 million to the West Canadian Liberation Front and the complete dismantling of the security apparatus in your father’s British Columbia laboratory. You have 20 hours from 6 PM to respond before the explosive in your belly brings down this entire dirigible.
I handed the note to my mother. I was unable to speak. I was, however, able to get a waiter’s attention, and he sauntered over to pour the rest of my bottle into my glass. She looked over the few short sentences with one eyebrow impossibly perched.
She spoke, long after I had pulled heavily twice from my glass, “well this is just absurd,” but her face had lost some color. “Who ever heard of such a small bomb? Silly, really.” She took a slow, conspicuous breath.
“Silly?” The word stumbled out, clutching its chest. I choked on the dryness of my throat. I begged anything in my body to find some purchase on reality. “It’s the size of the bomb you take issue with?”
“Of course, dear, if you are going to fake a threat at least use a believable lie.”
“You’re so familiar with explosives that you’re sure it’s a lie?”
“And a very silly one too.”
I focused on the gashes of creased makeup encroaching on her eyes. My head continued to wobble lifelessly upon an imitation neck. My mother was reclaiming her composure far more quickly than I was taking stock of my bodily functions. “What if it’s not a lie?”
“Honestly, you worry too much. It’s merely some sick peasant having a bit of fun with a premier family. I mean,” she tasted her words before spewing them across the table, “why would anybody be concerned with any of your father’s Canadian laboratories?”
“It’s your lab, too.”
“I try not to stick my nose into the business. Your father does just fine on his own building up my share value.”
I thought about it for a moment. I knew very little about any of my family’s business concerns. As long as the income was steady and immense, I was happy. “British Columbia? Isn’t that the lab that attracts all those EAUM nuts?”
“EAUM?”
“Yeah, I think it is. EAUM, um, Extra-Aerial Unknown Machine?”
“I wouldn’t possibly know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m sure it is. I think. All these people believe an alien space-vehicle crash-landed near there fifteen or so years ago, 1947? And since father’s lab went up quickly and shortly after, they assume he has the vehicle and the aliens?”
Predators like my mother were not supposed to scan their surroundings so nervously. “Preposterous,” she said, “I’ve never heard of that. I think all they do is research and development on conductive liquids for biocomputers.”
“Yes, you know what they do, but it doesn’t stop these lunatics from thinking father has scientists carving up little fuchsia men out there.”
“We’ve gone off topic. This stupid little note is nothing to worry about. Some idiotic prank. Steward,” she addressed Surya without looking at him. I too had forgotten about the poor boy. He was ever the picture of duty, waiting to be addressed. “Thank you so much for wasting our time with this frivolous nonsense.”
Surya bowed slightly and backed out of the room. I saw him make a punching motion into the air for the benefit of the dining room host, who laughed. I supposed most of the staff at that point had envisioned themselves inflicting some violence upon my mother. It was nearly enough to draw me from my own terrible reverie. My mind played for me a rather imaginative montage of all the ways in which my torso violently exploding might play out. I lounged in a hot tub, a sauna, my stateroom, on the deck, in the lounge. I found it remarkable how many forms of lounging I was versed in. Each moment of blissful relaxation was spectacularly interrupted by my whole person bursting into shards and ribbons which pierced the balloon above, the floors below, and everything in between. My favorite bartender impaled by a rib, the masseur with the calloused right hand clubbed by an errant half a femur, my own mother strangled by a bit of intestine.
“Are you even listening to me?” Her voice cut through and dragged me back into the room. The gentle clatter of civilized dining whimpered around us. Only the caustic growl of my mother’s well-worn voice could out-unpleasant my mental sudden-bodily-decompressions.
“Truth told? I was not. I was rather preoccupied with our imminent demise.”
“If you’re not going to be reasonable, I’m going to go to my room. Will I see you at the casino later?”
I looked up at the gaunt woman as she stood. My face felt numb as I searched her eyes for anything that might resemble humanity.
“I think,” I searched for my words very carefully, “I think I may not be in the mood for gambling tonight, Mother.”
“Suit yourself. You’ll know where to find me if you need me.”
That was an interesting thought. Have I ever needed my mother? A mother, perhaps, but this one? My wine had gone down admirably in small, deliberate sips, but it was quite distasteful when poured at this new accelerated rate. I would have to find something else. I had heard things about beer from some university friends, but this didn’t seem like the moment for experimentation. It was with a regrettable recommendation from my least favorite bartender and after a slow walk back to my room that I found myself in my current condition.
In order to set the present scene, it should be said that I am seated on the floor, I am gripping a silk tufted throw pillow to my chest, and the lights are off. Only the faint glow of an informational display illuminates the room. It’s on a loop. I had turned it on to contact my father. I am having difficulty stirring up the courage to do so.
My hand, numb with nerves and alcohol, dials my father’s universal number on the remote pad that has been warming my left palm while the whiskey cools the right. The informational display switches to the lifeless blue of the calling screen. An old telephone receiver fades in and out of sight. Its regularity mocks the oscillation of my vision.
He answers just in time to prevent me from nodding off. He makes no effort to hide the human-shaped mounds of his latest mistress dominating the bedclothes behind him. If I cared about his infidelities, then I would also take my mother to task for her romps with half the fresh-faced crewmen on this voyage.
I explain my current predicament as coherently as I can, awaiting his fatherly concern and assurances of assistance.
“This is exactly your fucking problem,” he says, a forehead vein bulging at a record pace.
“In the immediate, yes, I recognize this. But I was hoping you might help me out of it.”
“What? No, not the bomb bullshit. Your inability to tell what is or isn’t bullshit. You can’t tell when someone is bluffing. It’s why you lose so much of my money fucking around with poker, and it’s why you’re an easy mark for these fucking con artist, denim-clad terrorist assholes.”
“Father, I don’t think it’s a lie. I really do think they fed me a bomb.”
“Jesus Christ, boy, are you crying?”
“No,” I answer, wiping my eyes with my sleeves in case there are tears bubbling up again, “I’m drunk.”
“Well there’s a goddamn surprise. Listen, you want to be a great man like me? You gotta learn when to smell bullshit and stand up to thugs and roustabouts. That’s how I got here, and that’s your only way out of this mess you made of your life.”
“Okay, fine, but for this moment, can we–”
He does not permit another entreaty. His great meaty fingers glow in the light of his screen as he jabs at it to end the call. He fails, and I have to watch him fall bare-assed on his mistress before I can shut down the communication myself.
The informational screen cycles back to the main dining room waitstaff. I watch their smiling faces tick by and read their names. Germane, Plumb, Beatrice, Serhiy, Zenzi, Thomas, Alma, Shirli, Ione, and Joe. It’s an unremarkable sort of entertainment, but something strikes me: my Bulgarian waitress is not listed. Perhaps she joined recently, but it’s unlikely the system wouldn’t have updated the moment of her transfer. My heart is pounding. This is unusual. This is anomalous. This is something. Perhaps there is another way out of this situation. I’ve read a mystery or two. How hard can it be? I’m no Hercule Poirot, but I have nothing to lose. Hell, how many other gents in my circle can say they’ve solved their own murders?
I stand up with new vigor, with charged resolve, and I tumble aggressively into a table and vase. Both spill their contents to the floor. I admit that Hercule Poirot seldom had a fifth of a fifth of top-shelf whisky and a bottle of white in him when he set about to find the murderer, but we must all do things in our own way. I find the door and congratulate myself on this small victory. In the corridor, I will my eyes to focus on the writing on my hand. Crew cabin 47. I can find that. I believe in my abilities.
The corridors are treacherous at this time of night with this blood alcohol content. They make it deliberately difficult to get above decks to where the crew sleeps, but I find an entrance using cunning, guile, and the directions supplied to me by a busboy I encounter. His strange, dark eyes betray the recent abuse of a combination of opium and nesh. Upon leaving the reprobate, I catch an odor that momentarily takes me back to my uncle’s estate as a boy, the day my cousin threw me into their pond. Perhaps we are flying low over some wetlands.
The corridors in the crew section of the zeppelin are shockingly drab and smell of lithium grease and copper filings. Up here, it is suddenly beastly cold. The doors that guard the crew cabins are simple wood planks, no variety. Bland tin numbers adorn each in turn. As I approach number 47, my body begins to forget my mission and turns its systems back toward considerations of coitus. She really was a lovely specimen. It’s not like she would have a cabin if she wasn’t crew. Her omission from the informational roster must be a simple oversight. If I really must bring down this whole vessel, I might as well spend my last hours cradled in the soft flesh of a willing Eastern European beauty.
I reach the door in question. I would rate my zeal to solve this mystery at around fifty-four percent, the drive to bed this stranger forty-two percent, and my desire to eat half a baguette and drink a pint of water at four percent. I knock and wait. I don’t hear anything from within, but let no man say I lack patience. I knock again a little harder and hear a bump. I put my ear to the door and listen. I hear a scraping across the floor and what sounds like a little moan. Damn. I’m too late; she’s already taken up with another. I certainly hope I hadn’t lost my opportunity to a lowly member of the crew.
I move my unsteady and volatile body to leave, and the door swings open. I turn back, ready to give her and this usurper a piece of my mind, but she’s alone. Daria stands like the painting on the front of a dime pulp. One hip cocked, one leg skillfully sneaking out of a silk robe draped with casual disregard over shoulders and other contours. Her black hair flows in expressive brushstrokes which lead my eyes around the whole picture.
“You came,” she says, her words fringed by a demure giggle.
“Of course,” I countered, a sloppy slur cradling my own.
“Would you like to come in? I can pour us a drink.”
“I think I’d like that.” I follow her into the tiny interior cabin with as much grace in my step as possible considering I had forgotten my shoes in my own stateroom.
The lighting is harsh, and the bedding is inadequate, but the strange liquor she pours is charming. It is a sort of dirty blue, and I’d swear it glows. It’s lightly sweet and has playful, fruity notes that are wholly unfamiliar to me.
“What is this?” I ask.
“You wouldn’t know it. It’s very rare because it’s not from here,” she says and kisses me. It’s a breathtaking display of power wrapped within such soft lips. I want to set my glass down and wrap my arms around her. I want to feel her body against mine, but she places two cold fingers against each of my wrists and keeps them against my thighs.
“Was that nice?” she asks, but her tone is distant. It’s almost inhuman.
“It was,” I say. It’s a hollow thing to say. My brain twists itself into knots searching for something charming or witty to add but finds only static. Her strange liquor is taking over my senses quickly. Her perfume grows distant, floral, yet boggy?
“I think, I had—um—more, or different in mind.”
“Different how?”
“Um,” I want to say questions. I want to ask. I want. My lips heavy. My eyes. My eyes fuzzy. A figure enters the room. Another. They blur. I don’t like them. I think I hear them talking. They meld together. No. Everything melds together. I try to look at my fingers. Numb fingers. My hand won’t move. My drink spilled?! Oh yeah, three figures. Still? They are wrong. They.
I awaken. Time has passed. My head is split in half. Not literally, I don’t think.
“We monitored your call last night.”
“Huh?” Speaking hurts, not just my head, everywhere.
“You must feel miserable. I am sorry about that. Our liquor is not like what you are used to. How would you put it? It packs a punch?”
“Punch, yes, I feel like I’ve been punched—” The colorful shapes around me are all edged with gyrating gauze, “you monitored my call?”
“With your father,” the girl is talking, the Bulgarian girl, Daria? She is sitting on her bed, and I am tied to a wheely chair. “It seems like he wasn’t interested in meeting our demands. He must not care if you explode?”
“I—” I gasp in pain; I’m nauseous and can’t stay focused. My every syllable is a hammer and anvil reverberation through my skull. “I don’t think he believed the bomb.”
“Yes,” another voice offers. I battle an impossibly stiff neck to look. I hadn’t imagined the other two figures. They sit on the bed flanking the girl. The one speaking is Surya, and this comes with an inexplicable pang of betrayal. The other is the high busboy from the night before, his name tag reading Scott. Surya continues, “he was most reluctant to believe you. This was surprising. We thought your people valued their offspring.”
“I would have thought you’d have dealt with enough wealthy types to know better than that,” I said.
The busboy scoffs. “The trouble is, we can’t disarm the device without our demands being met. Then we wouldn’t be taken very seriously. So what are we going to do?”
“Are Canadian terrorists taken very seriously to begin with?”
“We’re not terrorists,” Surya states, with a little less humor than I feel the statement deserves.
“If I remember correctly, the WCLF commits acts of terrorism, ipso facto… “
“We are not members of the West Canadian Liberation Front,” he says, his tone suggesting I should know that already. “They are a convenient partner, but we are not with them, necessarily.”
Daria interjects, “We need their resources to access your father’s lab, and they need your money in payment. Two birds, one bomb, as you might say.”
“What’s so important that you need to get into my father’s lab?” My entire body is wracked by dehydration and something else quite untenable.
“That’s not really your business,” snaps the busboy.
“Then what are we doing here?”
“Brainstorming,” says Surya, nearly pleased with himself. “We’re going to figure out how to get your father to say ‘yes.’”
“Perhaps you should have put the bomb in him?”
“We tried once,” says Daria, “in defiance of everything we know about human anatomy, he defecates three times a day. We had to disarm it before it damaged public works.”
“Wait,” I say, “it’s not the same bomb, is it?”
“We only have one.”
“I’m going to be sick,” I say, and I am. They take care cleaning me up. To my dismay, the device is not in the mess.
“Maybe, maybe we call him again? Get you three on screen telling him what’s at stake? His wife is on this thing. If he knowingly puts her at risk, that’s enough to void her life insurance payout. That might be enough motivation?”
They huddle up and speak quickly. I can’t understand a single syllable. After a prolonged minute, they look at me and nod as one. They maneuver my chair to face the screen in the wall and turn on the display, standing behind me as Daria types in my father’s number. I am amazed that they make no effort to obscure their faces.
“What now?” my father answers. He’s shirtless, his mistress is still in the bed in the background, and because mercy does not exist in this life, the blankets are gone. It should be about midday there.
“Jesus, is this some sort of joke?”
“We understand that you are not going to meet our demands.”
“So, you’re the jokers who have my boy thinking he’s a bomb? Listen you pernicious shits, if I kowtowed to every country grown terrorist who threatened my family with something improbable, I’d be nowhere in this life.”
“Sir,” says Daria, “your wife is on this vessel.”
“And?”
“And,” the three look at one another with confusion, “and we’re told you won’t get her life insurance payout if you knowingly could have prevented her death.”
My father looks concerned. Flummoxed even. He starts slow, “even if that is true, I still don’t believe you have a bomb small enough that even my son could eat it without noticing and that it could take down a whole fucking airship.”
I watch my three captors in the small video in the upper corner of the screen. They are deflated, worn. I almost pity them, and I’ve been fighting battles of attrition with this man my entire life. I almost want to comfort them as I watch their faces droop. Then, they split. Something is wrong. I can see it in my father’s face too. Their eyes migrate to the sides, their backs hunch and widen, their mouths rip up and left and right, teeth pour from every angle, bony outgrowths sprout from their shoulders and hips, their knees snap back and into place. and their flesh turns a sickly green and pink and bumpy. I want to scream, but the pain in my head forces the air to remain a forced yet violent exhalation.
My father’s surprise fades quickly. “So this is it, huh? You want your friends back? Well, this is Earth you alien fucks, and the rule of law here is finders keepers.”
The three speak in a unified voice. It’s a tangled root system of guttural and strangled sounds.
“Relinquish unto us our comrades and our vessel, and your child and spouse will live.”
“You kidding me?” my father snaps, laughing. “The information I’ve gotten from digging around in your friends and stripping your ship for technology will keep me rich and alive for centuries. It’s worth more than all the life insurance payouts on that entire zeppelin. Hell, you’ll be doing me a favor. Fuck the insurance. If my lovely wife burns up at low cruising, her majority shares in my fucking company transfer back to me. Now get the fuck off my phone.”
He hangs up. The four of us are left in silent dismay.
With some undignified jockeying, I wheel the chair around to look at them.
“Listen,” I start, striving to get past their appearance, past the momentousness of the occasion, “I’m sorry about him. He’s always been like that.”
The one that was Daria looks at me with their big dark eyes. I am trying to figure out if I still find them attractive, or if sex as I know it is the same for them. “You’re sorry?”
“Yeah, I guess. I mean, I don’t like what you did to me, but it’s clear where you’re coming from, and that man was born a stubborn asshole like the universe was almost out of stubborn asshole and decided to use the rest of the barrel on one last stubborn asshole.”
“I don’t think we can disarm the bomb.”
“I see.” I drop my head to my chest and feel the stretch in the back of my neck. It’s soothing, almost calming. “Why not?”
“We have a better chance of being taken seriously next time if we follow through on our threat.”
“Okay. Won’t you die too?”
“Our people have an ability to regenerate quickly and quite substantially compared to yours. We’ll be hurt for a while, but we’ll be fine.”
“I get it. You have nothing to gain from letting me live. I respect that; I honestly do. You’re in an impossible situation. I’ve spent my adult life trying to avoid getting stuck in a marriage. I couldn’t imagine being stuck on the wrong planet. But listen, if you disarm this thing, I won’t tell anyone about this, and I’ll get it back to you when it passes. It’s the least I can do.”
They sit back down and confer again. It’s in their own language, I presume, and they make no effort to hide it. The one who had once been Surya, the steward who is very late for his shift, shakes his head slowly. It’s strange watching such a distinctly human mannerism executed by this creature.
“This has gone on too long. There must be real consequences for your father’s cruelty. If he will not open his laboratory up to us, we must demonstrate how serious we are.”
“How much longer do I have?”
“A little over four hours.”
“Wow. Can I at least spend it at the casino?”
The trio agree to allow me to spend my last few hours of life gambling away my father’s money. They change back into their human shapes and follow me to make sure I don’t attempt to throw myself out of the airship. We enter the casino one at a time. I am walking slowly, still aching from the varieties of alcohol consumed the evening before. I sit at the nearest blackjack table and type in my room code to access my account on the pad. An eight-thousand-dollar bet feels like an appropriate reaction to my frustration. I bust immediately, and for the first time. It feels really good. I’m going to raze my parents’ accounts before my sudden omnidirectional decompression.
Three more hands, and the house is ready to buy a small liberal arts college. That’s when I hear my mother’s voice carrying over the heads of the other dead-eyed morning gamblers surrounding me. “What are you doing? What is happening? Stop.”
She’s a flurry of slender limbs crashing through the throngs. She lands on the side of the table trying and failing to stop me from placing a fifth sizable bet and hitting again on twelve.
“Nineteen,” barks the dealer.
“Hit me,” I say, smiling at my mother.
“No,” she wails.
“Twenty-five,” says the dealer, an endearing lifelessness to his voice, “bust.”
My mother grips my upper arm in her talons and yanks me from the table, “What do you think you’re doing? I’m eating brunch and am suddenly accosted by emergency alerts that our accounts are bleeding like an artery in this very casino.”
“Mother,” I state in an even tone, “we are all going to die in a matter of hours. I do not see any purpose in leaving any additional funds for father if I can avoid it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“At about 2 PM, I will explode, and this whole zeppelin will crumple around me and crash to the earth.”
“This still?”
“Yes, mother, this still.”
“I thought we discussed this. The whole thing is nonsense. There is no bomb.”
The dealer is looking at us with understandable concern. I move us a few feet away from him. “Mother, I promise you there is. Since father won’t give in to the demands, I have been assured of our fiery demise.”
“I can’t believe you’re still prattling on about this. There is nothing worth exploding you over in your father’s lab.”
“It’s your lab too,” I say. Slowly, inspiration dawns.
“Mother, quick, to your room.”
I half-drag my protesting mother along the halls to her stateroom, beckoning the confused Surya, Daria, and Scott to follow. The five of us burst in as the housekeepers are in the midst of making fun of her undergarments. I chase the two giggling women out.
“What do you mean by this?” my mother asks, “and what are these three doing here?”
“These three are who fed me the bomb.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“It’s quite obvious, mother, they conspired to make me eat a bomb in order to extort the family.”
“What? Why on earth would they do that?”
“Perfect wording, mother. If you three wouldn’t mind getting comfortable?”
The aliens in their human form exchange wary looks but ultimately decide I must have my reasons. Once more, I am treated to their horrific transformation. To my mother’s credit, the old fainting couch in the corner is unnecessary.
“Ah, I see,” she says after a moment’s thought, “that’s what this is all about. I thought the old bastard had all of you strapped down or locked up. I guess not.”
“Mother,” I say, carefully, tactfully, “I believe you can help.”
“You know I can’t convince that man of anything.”
“You don’t have to.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mother, you own a majority of the company. You can order the lab security to stand down. You can open the doors.”
“Why would I do that? We’re still making a lot of money from that laboratory.”
“Because if you don’t, we’ll die?” I believe my face bears some of the confused indignation that I am feeling within, but under the prolonged effects of the alien liquor, I can’t be sure I’m not merely drooling over last night’s dinner wear.
She looks at the aliens who are standing in a manner of familiar social discomfort. They nod. She deflates. She looks like she lost something dear somewhere nearby. She wears the suggestion of a brittle socialite, but deep in her molten core, she is every bit an unyielding hardass like her husband. She hates to lose, but she knows she can’t win the great battle, having been converted to ash and viscera and flitting to the rocks and plains below, tangled in a blazing wreck. She makes a call. A timid-looking man in a soiled lab coat and a terrific mustache appears on the screen. He affords my mother all of the deference and brown nosing possible in such a venue. She takes it in stride. I believe she checks to see if the aliens are watching. It’s important to her that they understand how important she is.
“Thank you, Henrick,” she says with royal formality. “You have done a very fine job up there, given the wretched conditions in that backwater country.”
“Thank you,” says Henrick, his little scientific mind churning through the possible reasons for the call.
“Now,” she searches for a way to convey the impossible, “I’m afraid the majority shareholders have decided that your mission is complete. Upload any remaining data you have to the central servers, release the subjects, give them control of their craft, and evacuate with haste. Should your guests wish to express their displeasure at their prolonged captivity, I authorize you to flee in any fashion that makes sense in the moment. Any of your team who survive are to report to the London office for reassignment.”
He sputters and flails with admirable liquidity, finding no solid hold in space and time.
“Oh, of course, ma’am, but um, has your husband approved this decision?”
“Henrick, if I required my husband’s input for anything, I would have attempted to speak with him at some point in the last three years. I no more require his permission to shut down one of my laboratories than any of my current lovers require pharmaceuticals to perform in bed. Do as I have ordered, and if you hesitate even a second, your reassignment will be to the floating lab in the north arctic taking the rectal temperatures of the nastiest bears we’ve managed to grow up there.”
Henrick manages to salute with a shaking hand above a rapidly paling face. He disconnects the call amid the chaotic sounds of scientific panic.
Within minutes, a device held by the Daria alien, whose contours I’m still endeavoring to classify, chirps with a delightful little tone. They check a curious black and green screen upon which flashes of symbols are crashing and cascading over one another. They nod once at me and exchange a few short but emotional words with their comrades.
The trio return to their human forms. The one who looks like Daria again gives me a sad smile. “They’re free and happy for it. They will be picking us up shortly after we land. Thank you.”
They move as one toward the door to return to their assumed duties in the airship.
“Pardon me,” I say, arresting their exit. I attempt to sound calm and casual, like I’m asking to see a mid-tier watch to appear sociable. “I can’t imagine it would be too much trouble to ask you to disarm the bit of bomb ticking away in me now?”
“Of course,” stalwart Surya says, pressing a button on a simple remote control he reveals from the depths of his formal attire.
“Are you going to want it back? Once I’ve uh–”
“Absolutely not,” Scott says, “we’ll be long gone by then.”
They leave without another word, and for a moment, I feel a little bit like myself again. I’m free of the burden of imminent death. I have my whole carefree life in front of me. I’ll release the device into the waterways of the world and go on authoring some of the most legendary debaucheries known to myth or ballad. I’m already planning my celebration when the disgustingly quaint wattle and daub houses of Clermont-Ferrand rise up into view of my mother’s state room windows. There is a dull thud as the zeppelin sets down and a gentle whistle that echoes through the vessel announcing our arrival.
“Right, mother,” I say, “let’s go meet my wife-to-be so that I can scout out the bar scene in this miserable little town. I’d like to begin my new betrothal with a bang.”
Grant Gordon is a writer, husband, father, and rugby player living in rural New Hampshire, as if there is another type of New Hampshire. He has a BA in communication from the University of New Hampshire and remains an avid student of written and interpersonal communication. He will complete his MFA in writing in the spring of 2025.