Stories

Excerpt from "Beta Geminorum"

The brave but ultimately futile efforts of local police were finally bolstered when FEMA mobilized the national guard. Einrich would be haunted for years by memories of reservists in full combat gear wading into the seething mob with paint guns, pneumatically-propelled nets, and quick-setting immobilizing foam. Troublemakers would be tagged with long-lasting, high-visibility ink delivered via paintball. The troops were given authority to automatically detain anyone caught with more than three marks. The method of detainment usually involved application of the glue or the nets—sometimes both—which would be reeled in by motorized winches attached to modified dump trucks. The netted detainees would be read their rights en masse before being dumped into the truck bed, where soldiers in HAZMAT gear waited to bind them to the rubber-padded walls with Velcro straps and nylon zip ties. Despite the deployment of these measures in every major urban area, order wasn't restored to the continental United States for six months.

The spectacular proof of civilization's fragility and the wholesale brutality unleashed when it cracked left Einrich deeply shaken. Though he felt obligated to remain on duty during the long, agonizing cleanup period, the detective was never again able to approach his work with his former bureaucratic indifference. He wandered through the next decade, haunted by the possibility that the damage could have been mitigated had he pursued the Dawes case more diligently. Upon retirement, Einrich rededicated himself to the case he'd once been content to leave open.
Comparing notes with other Fall investigators, Einrich finally concluded that the pattern of dispersal had been remarkably uniform across earth's surface. On average, there had been one impact every ten square feet. The final estimate of around thirty billion fallen omitted the countless others that must have landed in major bodies of water whose depths made dredging impractical. But reports from private and commercial vessels, many of which unfortunately capsized in the event, seemed to confirm that the dispersal ratio had been pretty much the same over the oceans.
The chaotic aftermath rendered an accurate report of the initial death toll impossible to confirm, but the faux bodies had hit with sufficient force to seriously injure anyone in their path, and hundreds of thousands must have been killed instantly on impact. If residual damage resulting from traffic and other accidents, plus heart attacks and stress-related causes were taken into account, casualty figures soared into the millions worldwide.
Einrich's knowledge of the tragedy's fallout in the third world was largely relegated to rumor as the more secretive dictatorships immediately sealed their borders and implemented total press blackouts. Predominantly rural countries faced surprisingly little tumult; the unwanted detritus simply being plowed under.
As for the rest of the world, disposal of the countless counterfeit corpses filling the streets became a hotly contested matter of public policy, and finally a startup industry. Most nations first sought to inter the bodies in mass graves, but available space was soon exhausted. Burning was tried, but the choking smoke clouds hanging over the chimney stacks of vast, hastily-constructed crematoria soon raised health concerns. Many of the fallen were simply left to the depredations of wild fauna and microbes. The resulting wave of disease accounted for many thousands of additional casualties.
Other countries, viewing the human facsimiles as a resource to be exploited, found rather creative means of disposal,. Einrich greeted their unorthodox measures with everything from approval to amusement to horror. Japan reclaimed large swaths of the seabed through the use of landfills. Brazil rendered their fallen cadavers into bio diesel. Persistent whispers leaked out of North Korea that the starving populace's hunger problems had been resolved in a rather sudden and sinister manner.

Excerpt from "Reign of Terror"

Thompson stared into the Styrofoam container, swirling the contents for a few seconds as though indignant at being rushed. Finally, he continued. “Told me 'bout a friend of his from the war—W W two,” he said, pronouncing each letter slowly. “They'd been stationed at an airbase on Guam together. Stayed in touch after they got out. Other guy ended up at a flyspeck air field in northern Michigan. Anyway, their outfit's reunion comes around, and the Carson controller catches up with his old war buddy. Near the end of the night, after the guy from Michigan's got a few drinks in him, he opens up and tells my source this story.
“So his Michigan buddy was working alone one night at this tiny air strip outside of Marquette when a call comes in over the radio from a solo pilot over Lake Superior. The pilot asks him if anybody else filed a flight plan along the same route as him. The controller checks it out, and there aren't any other flights scheduled. He gets on the horn and tells the pilot that he's clear. Pilot says no, it's not clear. There's somebody else up there—right in front of him. He can even hear the props. The pilot holds his mic out the window, and sure enough, the controller hears these big engines purring over the sound of the caller's little Piper. My source's buddy says he'll look into it.
“The controller calls every air strip in the vicinity, and the only other air traffic at that altitude is a couple more single-engine jobs. But they're miles away from where the call's coming from, and no way are they making the kind of noise he heard. As soon as he gets off the phone, the same pilot's on the radio again. Says the big plane's still there. The controller asks if he can ID the other aircraft, but he can't because the visibility is close to zero. All he knows is, it's big and right in front of him, flying low over the water. My source's buddy says that both planes should be on his scope soon, and maybe that'll help them figure things out.
“Sure enough, a couple minutes later, two blips show up on the screen. He can't get a good lock on the lead one. It sort of comes and goes. The controller doesn't know what to make of it.
“The two of them decide to try reaching whoever's flying the unknown plane. After a couple of tries, the pilot makes contact. It sounds to him like there's more than one person on board, but he can't understand them. They're speaking some kind of foreign language. The controller keeps trying to get through. He thinks he does: once, and just for a minute. The guys on the other end are definitely not speaking English. My source's buddy was stationed in Europe before getting transferred to the Pacific, and he's pretty sure they're speaking German. The signal cuts out before he can talk back. Never raised them again.”
Achison fixed Thompson with a skeptical frown. “Was that it?” he asked.
The old man raised the cup to his withered lips and took another gulp. “My source's buddy had one last conversation with the solo pilot. Seems that he lost the big plane around the same time their transmission cut out. Never showed up on radar again, either—not at Marquette or any other air field in range: he checked.
“This fellow was the meticulous type, and he'd recorded the whole thing. He played it for some ex airmen who'd served longer in Europe than him and were pretty good with German. Apparently, they listened to what was on the wax cylinder like it was a joke, just like you're listening to me now. Their smiles soured when they got to that German transmission.”
“What did they say it was?” Achison inquired, straightening his face.
“At first, they accused him of pulling their legs. Thought it was a hoax. When he insisted otherwise, they got up and left. He managed to stop one of them on his way out the door; practically begged him to translate the message. I can't say if what the ex airman finally told him was true or just a way to get my source's buddy off his back. What he swore the guy told him was that the recording held a distress call from a German bomber crew, saying they were lost in low visibility. The last part was just them repeating their call sign over and over again. The fellow who'd made the recording asked the other guy what had spooked his friends so bad. The airman hesitated like he was afraid or something, but the controller pestered him until he caved. The names and serial number given by the German crew matched those of a Junkers Ju 86 that his squadron had lost over the English Channel.”

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