They call it The Blue. Advanced technology offering you anything you could possibly want. Eternal youth and life. Flight. Telepathy.
When aliens arrive offering this boon to a struggling humanity, almost everyone accepts.
Almost everyone.
Those few who don’t are herded onto neglected precincts and left to fend for themselves.
This is their story.
An excerpt:
TWO SETS OF FOOTPRINTS
Brent held his cardboard belongings box on the steps of the institution and looked like skinny yellowed hell. His throat ached from talking to therapists. He lacked sleep. His stomach rumbled while his appetite disagreed. He felt empty and broken. A drink wouldn’t have hurt.
He looked at his belly.
“Fuck you,” he said. Then he nodded, so resolved.
Seeing the box in front of said belly, he opened it, then shut it in disgust. For what the suit cost, you’d think it would survive a tussle. They put it in a plastic grocery bag inside the shoebox. Thoughtful. Half a month’s salary, in the long ago. The before-time. Brent said it like a caveman in his head.
He went to the trash can by the front door and squished the thin cardboard until the box with the shopping bag with the suit in it fit through the circle. He brushed his hands together. He’d never stand before the bench or a jury box again. No need to burn calories.
Somehow that didn’t bother him like he thought it should. It brought unexpected relief.
Objection overruled.
His wrists hurt from the cuffs, even days later. Lyman. The man put them on too tight and double locked them for an hour out of sheer spite. That urgent electric metal on bone, like the pain you get yanking a short hair with a zipper. Oddly, Brent had never been cuffed before, despite many an incident of debauchery. He understood the general irritability of most of his clients after such a thing. And he hadn’t even suffered holding. Straight to the booby hatch for you, Mr. North.
The complete breakdown and total loss of personal control stung more. A five-year-old again, having a tantrum, knowing what he might gain wouldn’t outweigh the punishment, that what you lose is far worse. Doing it anyway. The adult version hurt more.
It also felt good. Really, really good.
He saw the Res liaison vehicle roll down the long driveway toward him, past the beautifully manicured lawn. Actually, Brent realized, a beautifully engineered lawn would fit better. No one cut it. This here magic grass just fucking stopped where they wanted it to and self-repaired, or got shorter or longer on cue. Grass did that now.
How long since a car drove this road? Years? Family might fly in to visit, but they would never sully the ground with a car. Perfect roads, the tech allowed for that, but no people on them. A well-oiled typewriter with ribbon and no paper.
How quick they forget. How slow to think. He hated them all.
No.
He didn’t hate them. Not out loud. He “lamented their sublimation.” There. An elegant, complicated way to say a blunt dumb thing nice-like. Remember the jury.
Well, not any more.
Did he ever actually even like the law? He wondered with no conclusion.
An actual Blue, not a converted human, Krupke halted the car with stiff mechanical proficiency. He opened the door to its exact maximum without bouncing the spring. He stepped out, standing straight without grunting or bad form. An actor playing a blue-tinged robot in some bad fifties movie, but a man, in the end just a man. Like Brent. Machines, deep down, of uncertain purpose.
Krupke could be a robot. Krupke could be a cloud. He could be a dog or a cat or nothing at all. He chose to be the liaison to Precinct Nineteen and shepherd unruly Holdouts. Brent didn’t know if he respected or mocked that. Perhaps both. It amused and disgusted him in equal measure. It made him curious. He wanted not so much to know this creature as to understand it. But he also liked knowing him, in a way. The thing had good intentions.
Krupke wore a uniform not unlike his namesake’s, a police officer’s dark blue with the big black belt, the polygon hat, the shiny shoes. He even kept close-cropped hair, growing it a pleasant shade of brown. Actual Blues could change their physiology much faster, which freaked out converts, so often they avoided it. Krupke initially tried making his hair mirror the person he was talking to, early on, but that went over like shitting on the table at a wedding during a speech. People who don’t want to become something hate seeing that something become them. It scares them.
“Young man,” Brent said.
Krupke, who was one hundred seventy-three and, in fact, quite young for his kind, smiled. “Brent.”
Krupke’s voice was thin and hesitant. Reedy. You had to listen to hear him most of the time. The electric car and its insulation helped their habitual drives of cultural exchange and semi-friendship more than Krupke could know. He opened the passenger seat for Brent like an alien butler. Brent got in.
He fumbled with his seatbelt, but the old latch didn’t want to work. Irate and erratic, he jammed the buckle, failing to click, finally throwing the whole apparatus to the side, banishing it to the great door-seat valley with a good stuffing motion and a few choice curses.
“Is everything all right?”
Brent grunted. “Four decades putting on a seatbelt by rote. I don’t have to wear them any more. It’s stupid to wear them. I still try. I don’t even know what for.”
“This is a problem?”
Brent snorted, a little half laugh.
“What’s funny?”
“I’m fucking institutionalized.”
“You are free, Brent.”
“I was speaking metaphorically.”
“I understood. I merely wished to emphasize the more important sentiment. Freedom is also a metaphorical illusion of sorts.”
“Balls.”
“You’re angry.”
Brent arched an eyebrow at Krupke, adopting a voice. “I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly.”
“The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Krupke said, immediately.
“Thought for sure you wouldn’t know that one.”
“It was one of the first films that I watched. It is important to the alien invader panic canon. How long have you been saving that quote?”
“Since I first saw it as a kid, but also since the day before the day my Earth stood still. Caught it for the first time in years on one of the free streams at Dad’s.”
“There is a better notion a few sentences on. Would you like to hear it?”
“Go for it, Klaatu.”
Krupke gave a passable fake smile. “We do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works.”
Brent laughed.
“That’s funny?”
“You do realize that quote came right before he threatened to burn the world to a cinder?”
Krupke shrugged a passable shrug, not as good as the smile. “It was the fifties.”
Brent laughed harder.
“That was a good joke?”
“Yes,” Brent said. “That was quite good. You’re getting better at humor.”
Krupke lifted a flat hand and wiggled it. He stuck out a tongue. Too precise.
“How long did that take you in the mirror?”
“I don’t need a mirror. I can see myself from the outside if I concentrate.”
“Of course you can. Why not?” Brent saw the nurse on the porch staring at them, her blue arms folded. Krupke did not, oddly. Too caught up in dreaming of being a real boy.
Then he did. “Oh hell.”
If the surprise was an act, it was a good one.
The car rounded about.
***
Brent stretched, pushing his head back against the rest and making arm wings. He groaned.
“Sore?”
“Those county beds aren’t the best.” Brent rolled his head around. “You don’t have any cigarettes or booze in the first aid bag?”
“No.”
“You should keep some in the trunk like one might a spare tire or an emergency flare.”
“Would you like to stop on the way home?”
“What I would like is for you to stop being so damn obliging. You should have let me stew in there. I’m taking three hours out of your day. You aren’t acting inconvenienced in the slightest.”
Krupke methodically jerked the wheel while applying the brake. The car came to a perfect stop on the side of the road. His finger snicked the switch and unlocked the passenger door. “Get out, asshole.”
“Good,” Brent said. “Very good.”
Krupke locked the door and pulled back into traffic. “I worried it was too extreme.”
“It wasn’t, generally, but I could have really freaked you out by calling the bluff. What if I opened the door and got out? You’d need a comeback.”
“I could drive away and then return.”
“You’d have to really commit, not just drive off. You drive off, then you drive back fast and pass me going the other way, flipping me off. Then you come back, but slowly, and just as you’re about to get to me, you roll down the window, ask how much I charge for a blow job, then you speed off again.”
“Do I drive out of sight?”
“It depends on how long you’ve known the person, or who the person is,” Brent said. “I myself, with you, would probably go fifteen feet and stop. But it also depends on how you know the person will take it. I’d take it well. Bobbie might stab you.”
Krupke hmmmed in a forced way.
“You can’t solve for X with humor. You have to test shit out and fail. Commitment is the only real constant. Watch.” Brent folded his arms, looked at Krupke. “Fuck you.”
“Not funny. Serious.”
Brent made comical double middle fingers and circled them for effect. “FuUuUuck yeeoouuu!”
“I see.”
“Note the silly voice.”
“I have.”
“Your biggest problem is your low self-confidence.”
“I find low self-confidence to be a universal problem.”
Brent smiled. “Is that a joke? An alien joke?”
“It was,” Krupke said. “How long do you have to live?”
Sighing, Brent rubbed at his wrists without realizing.
“That was wrong,” Krupke said. “Apologies.”
“It wasn’t wrong, per se. You just want to dance around a thing like that. Keep it close to the vest. Come at it sideways. Say something like ‘Hey, yo, buddy, I was out getting Violet a pail of that beer she likes. She’s doing great and all. She asked after you, though, said you were having a bad go of it. Something about your health.’ Then you get all quiet and wait, let me spill the beans on my own terms.”
Krupke frowned.
“What?”
“I have a confession that may anger you. I already know your presumed life expectancy, along with the type and ferocity of your cancer. I know every detail of your attempted suicide and incarceration. My assumption was that if I told jokes and then asked, it would be similar in intent, on my part, to the appropriate behavior of dancing around that you just described. Clearly I am in error, but I’m having trouble determining how. Can you help me?”
“It’s contextual. You may never be able to pull it off.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re you. Original Blue. I’ll always assume you know more than you let on. You’re one of Them, with a capital T. And that’s okay. That’s part of your charm.”
“People hate me for it.”
“Your charm with me, I should clarify,” Brent said. “Humans hate. That’s their thing. Don’t take it personal. You’ll be sad forever.”
“I am not sad. I am puzzled.”
“The point is, you didn’t wrong me.”
“Then I am glad.”
“Try again. It’s okay.”
Krupke let the road go by. He didn’t have to. He already knew what he would say. Appropriate pauses were part of human dialogue. “I was very saddened to learn of your sickness, Brent, given our friendship. Are you doing okay? Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I’m not okay, since you ask. My father used his flunky cop friend to involuntarily commit me, and that’s three precious days of remaining life down the toilet extricating myself, along with one more last bad memory to carry with me of my shitass father.”
“And days are more precious to you now, because there are so few remaining?”
“Even if there were many days remaining, I wouldn’t relish being in a cell.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Of course. But people don’t tend to say that, facing death. They pretend they’re at peace with it and cling to naive optimism.”
“You do not.”
“I’m resigned to the facts. I’m mad. I’m afraid. I’m sad. Being those things doesn’t change that I’m a dead man. You don’t say fuck the pancreas, the pancreas says fuck you.”
“I have trouble contextualizing this response.”
“Because you have no conception of death. Neither will humans, soon, more or less. You could even argue that they never had one back before the Blue, but that’s another conversation entirely.”
Brent rubbed at his wrists again. Krupke observed. A symbol of some kind of distress. An instinctual act?
“Did you know there are cases in court now where they’re arguing that a DNR should legally be considered attempted suicide?”
Krupke noted the quick change in subject and chose not to mention it. “A poor argument.”
“Suicide isn’t even treated like a crime almost anywhere, even where it’s on the books, but I’m sure that shit will come roaring back. The religious fucks. A faux moral thing. They’re still clinging. ‘Got a lovely pink skin there, pally. Be a shame if something wasn’t to happen to it.’ Mafia shit.”
“The cults are often dangerous, and their heinous acts—”
“I know, I know, don’t get bogged down.” Brent patted the air with his hand.
“It is fallacious to assume a DNR an attempt at suicide. Allowing something to die and choosing to make it die, be it another thinking agent or yourself, are two different logical propositions with different ethical complications that—”
“Oh, Krumcake. I’m well aware of all that. You’re well aware of all that. They’re well aware of all that. Contrary to the police report, I wasn’t attempting suicide. If I wanted to kill myself, I would have.”
“They did provide you due process,” Krupke said.
“I don’t deny that. The door was cracked. It was my father’s home. He invited the police in. They had a duty to treat his false version of the story as plausible even if the officer in question was briefed beforehand, in all likelihood. I can’t prove Lyman was. A great frame-up, honestly.”
“Preceding the event you declared your explicit intention to kill yourself.”
“I did. But I didn’t say when. That was their assumption. I’ll bet that wasn’t in the report.”
“You were holding the gun when they arrived.”
“Yes.”
Krupke allowed for another pause. “Is it insensitive to ask you why?”
“It is, but with certain people, like close friends, it’s okay to be insensitive.”
“And we are close friends?”
“Keep asking and I’ll call you a son of a bitch.”
The faked smile again.
“I was holding the gun because I wanted to know what it would feel like when I decide that it’s time. Okay?”
“How will you decide?”
“I don’t know.”
“That must be frustrating.”
“It’s frustrating to you,” Brent said. “For me it’s exciting. It makes me feel alive, even as I’m dying. That’s the whole point of any of this. The Res. Holdouts. Life.”
“I see.”
“Hey, pull over here, will you?” Brent pointed at a former gas station in the near distance.
Krupke obliged. Brent got out.
Empty racks. Typical. Even three years ago, way out here, you might find a lonely clerk willing to turn down Brent’s service for not taking the Blue. Nothing now. Damned if you don’t, damned when you do. Not a cigarette. Not a bottle of booze. Chips, shelves, cameras, empty space with stains instead of a register.
It still felt wrong to take things off the shelf, not to stop on the way out and give someone money. It felt wronger that he wanted nothing on any of the shelves, like the world passed him by somewhere and he missed it. He grabbed a few things anyway, desperate.
“Hello ello ello ello!” Brent hollered. “Has anyone seen Charlton Heston, eston, eston?”
Not funny. Not a good joke. Just sad in a way he couldn’t explain to his friend or himself.
It all happened so fast.
***
They entered the forest roadway. Shade and the sun peeking through. Nice in the ordinary course of things, until Brent tasted more sugar than usual in his gratis beef jerky and made a sour face.
“Gas stations used to be the place to reluctantly go for bad food on the go,” he said, balling the plastic wrapper with contempt. “Somehow they’ve gotten worse.”
“In what fashion?”
“Before you could find at least some of the old overpriced healthy staples. Also, they got rid of all the fun stuff. Smokes. Booze. Chew.”
“Do you chew tobacco?”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“We’re invisible now, we human types.” Brent glanced back the way they came. “The food was all sugary before, but it got twice as bad the minute people could have all the sugar they wanted without consequence. No booze to soothe the soul, not for people who can will themselves drunk. It’s not like I can drink anyway. I’m not thirsty. I’m not hungry. I’m Bilbo with his stupid toast.”
Krupke knew all of this, but letting Brent say it might help, so he did not interrupt. After Brent stopped, he waited for more venting to come. None did.
“How should I honor you when you die?”
“Me?” Brent considered. “Live your life in the fashion you’d like to, not in the fashion others want for you.”
“Very well.”
“I mean it.”
“I shall,” Krupke said. “I have another question I am reluctant to ask.”
“Why?”
“Because I value your friendship, and the last time I asked, you got hostile with me. Reasonably so, perhaps. But there is a mitigating factor that has changed between then and now, months have come and gone, and—”
“You want to ask me why I won’t take the Blue when it can save my life. When the problem is suddenly urgent.”
“Yes,” Krupke said.
“So did the doctors. So did my dad. So did Officer Lyman.”
“I do not wish to be like them.”
“You’re not. Which is why I’m going to tell you when I’d never tell them.”
“I am flattered.”
“Here goes,” Brent said. “The total final answer. The absolute truth. Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever hear that stupid and oft-repeated story joke about God and the man on the roof in the flood?”
“No.”
“It’s tired and it’s boring, and it’s the opposite of funny if you’re an alien studying humor or a human comedian, but it goes like this. There’s this dude on a roof, right? He’s caught in a flood.”
“I follow.”
“Anyone who tries to come help him, boat, helicopter, whatever, he just tells them to fuck off. Why? Because, he says proudly, showing his faith, ‘God will save me!’ ”
Krupke affected a smirk.
“Well, of course the waters rise, and the dumbass drowns. And then, being dead, he goes on to Heaven.”
“Is this the Christian heaven, or—”
“It doesn’t matter, it’s all lies. What matters is that he dies, and when he sees God, he’s naturally angry. He says ‘God, I put my faith in you! Why didn’t you save me?’ And God, being God, makes with the wisdom. He says, ‘Look, fool. I sent you a boat, a helicopter…’ “
“And this is the punchline? That you should not ignore proffered help because of an irrational belief in God?”
“Other people might take it as ‘Don’t ignore signs from God to suit your narrative’s pride.’ “
Krupke puzzled. “I have trouble with religious notions and their practical application in human life.”
“You’re not alone.”
“I presume you disagree with this notion, which is why you mention the story?”
“I take the story as a mockery of someone who committed to a thing and stuck to it. It’s a story that frames a hero to look like a villain. The man was not foolish. The man had faith, and he served what was his truth. In his world, in his story, God exists. In his world, if you think about it, God betrayed the man. He didn’t help him.”
“How?”
“God played a game with his life. God refused to save him if he didn’t make God’s preferred choice. God was passive aggressive to the max. And do you know what the most important part of that story joke is, the part that no one notices, my dear Blue friend?”
“Tell me.”
“God sent the fucking flood that killed that man.”
Another pause. Krupke saw tears well in his friend’s eyes and did not understand.
Tears fascinated Krupke. He understood emotions. He even experienced them, though to a much lesser extent than humans. But tears. So spontaneous. So unpredictable. Most of his strong feelings shaded toward a peaceful calm, a feeling of being one with all. Melancholy at most, never sadness. Disgust or disapproval, perhaps, but not anger. Never sadness. Though he would certainly miss Brent, he knew. Alarmingly so. He held Brent’s gaze, wanting to understand, needing to know, his eyes too long from the road.
They hit the deer.
***
Krupke went to speed and reached the deer before Brent even opened the door.
It fascinated Brent in the way tears fascinated Krupke. Going to speed didn’t look like a superhero in a movie. No trail of color followed them like in a comic. They didn’t disappear and reappear elsewhere. It looked more like fast forward on an old VCR.
Some teacher once told him that when movies first started showing in theaters, people would run from trains coming at them on the screen. Analytically, he knew that when the line between fiction and reality blurred, science deserved more credit than magic. Still, seeing it, not instinctively knowing it, caused a break in your consciousness you couldn’t reconcile until later, when you rationalized it.
It must get different when you see it all the time. But maybe not. According to Krupke, after taking the Blue you could track the motion. You could process it, like you process the world around you when running at full speed. Memory too worked differently. You could rewind things, see details, experience things again. Multiple things at once, if you wanted.
Brent didn’t want. It seemed like hell to him, even factoring only the bad breakups, to say nothing of every pain and failure on the road to his present self.
Krupke knelt, his hand to the deer’s bloody matted fur. He examined where the car tore open flesh and crushed bone. Sending himself into the animal, he felt the distress, ascertained the state of critical processes, and knew it would soon die.
Administering pain relief to any animal violated no ethical protocols, so he did, casting out the proper chemistry and managing it without altering the creature’s essential genetic makeup. The deer’s fright diminished, limited to being this close to other creatures whose intention it could not divine. It breathed deeply, unable to move.
Brent squatted, wiping his cheeks. He felt clearer, though things were far worse. A crisis. A thing to fix. No more practicing law. Time for some actual immutable law.
“She will die,” Krupke said.
“How long?”
“Four minutes.”
Brent put his hand where there wasn’t blood. The pelt felt cold and lumpy. Ticks? He watched her eyes. He saw the fear. He lamented the sublimation.
“Fix it,” Brent said, standing and stepping away. “Make this right.”
Krupke granted a puzzled look that was, for once, genuine. “I don’t understand.”
“Give it the Blue.”
“I cannot.”
“You can. They say any living thing.”
“You misunderstand. I mean that there are human rules against it.”
“There are Blue dogs everywhere in the city. In the alleys. I’ve seen them.”
“The animal in question must be domesticated, or owned in a farming situation.”
“Then I take ownership of this deer. Here and now. I’ve inadvertently captured it, but it’s within my rights. It will be the first for the combination meat farm and petting zoo I have long intended to build.”
“You are lying.”
“You reading me?”
“I am not. Per our agreement.”
“Good. Then you don’t know if I’m lying or if I’m not. Due process. Remember? Like what my dad did. Officer Lyman. You are legally and morally bound to take my statement at face value in a crisis situation, are you not?”
Krupke was not. He did not say this.
“Just put your fucking Blue hand out and wiggle your magic fingers and Blue that deer before it dies. That’s how you can honor me.”
“Brent.”
“Do it or we’re not friends any more. I mean it.”
Krupke could know. He could reach into Brent and see. One look. An examination of heart rate. The eyes. He didn’t have to. Humans are terrible liars. The blessing and curse of his mission, these interpretations, these choices.
Closing his eyes, Krupke put hands to the deer. Blue washed forth, tinging the hide, marking the hooves. Wounds closed. The distress he sensed left her. Only puzzlement, now, at the paralysis. Krupke let the doe stand, but he quieted its mind to keep it in place. He cocked his head and examined the car, sending himself out again. The engine would run. Purely aesthetic damage. Still.
“How shall we return this deer to town?”
Brent smirked. He went back to the passenger side.
“Boat. Helicopter. Your call.”