Contents
May 21, 2440 – 10:27:00 PM
Matt switched off the screen. Like everyone else he had spent the day with a news fixation. Aliens were on the way. What would that mean for him and the freehold? Nothing had been his conclusion last night and was still his conclusion tonight. Whatever it meant there were sure things in the world. Dawn came too early, especially for those who had to et up well before it. Farm chores still needed doing. Employees still need paid. You couldn’t buy food that didn’t get harvested.
He tipped back the last of the bourbon and looked to the bottle and decided tonight was not the night. He texted Oxana. Despite their age difference and their growing affection, he wasn’t sure she was the one to help him save everything. Maybe another six months and he would be able to tell her he loved her and not betray Amy’s memory. He erased the text, he knew she would answer back and it wouldn’t be long before he went from nightcap to needing her tonight.
He rinsed the glass, filled it with water sucked down his vitamins and sat the phone on the night stand.
May 22, 2440 – 3:03:23 AM
Matt came wide awake with the sound of the Freehold’s Emergency Response System.
“What is it, Alfred,” Matt called to his house AI as he made for the bathroom. He had learned in the military so long ago that one never missed a chance to pee as a matter of practicality. He might still draw stares from every girl over ten interested in boys when he went shirtless, but his 42-year-old bladder didn’t much care. It named itself priority numero uno.
‘Priority Alert – Angelina Reyes from Columbia, MO
Freehold Homestead and Arrow Rock Declared Alien Landing Zone
Non-Discretionary Evacuation Ordered
Yes, Matt, That Means You, Too.’
“Call her back, Alfred.”
“Took you long enough to call,” Angelina snapped wondering what he had spent the last three minutes doing. Peeing shouldn’t take that long when you didn’t have to sit down or wipe or any other countless other things men didn’t have to do.
“Stopped for a beer,” he said putting the coffee pod in the machine already scrolling through his tablet for what he had missed. “Give your mom and dad my love. Hug the kids for me. I will call you back later.” He raised one hand above his head and with a snap Alfred ended the call silencing anymore from her for the next ten minutes.
“ASSHOLE!” the immediate text reply read.
He did text Oxana this time. ‘I am sending those with kids to your house. Keep them safe, but stay rested. I might need you later. It was said they were attacked and they might have injured.’
Oxana read her reply wondering if she really wanted to send it and back spaced deleting her I love you for the forty-ninth day in a row. She added, ‘STAY SAFE!’
May 22, 2440 – 3:35:00 AM
Matt stood sipping coffee, leaning on the porch railing as the pickups all pulled in one by one. Each a mark of their owner’s personality. Mostly they had been gifts from him to people so loyal they would ignore non-discretionary evacuation orders. Some days you just knew you had done okay as a man and king when your people showed up for you.
“Angelina, told you all to evacuate.”
“She told you, too,” Dave Roxas chuckled.
“I am her boss,” he said, shaking the man’s hand.
“Yeah, since when? I remember in kindergarten you told her she was pretty and she punched you in the nose.”
“So much for being nice,” Matt said, watching the young Arrow Rock crowd who had never heard that story chuckle. He also looked at young Amy Chan who he knew desperately wanted someone to think she was pretty. He looked to Dustin Corde who he could tell thought she was but needed some encouragement to tell her. He looked at Paisley and Adam holding hands. He had signed their marriage papers two weeks ago, both barely sixteen, but that made them legal adults in this post collapse piece of Missouri. How they took care of each other and that baby that was about five months away would be the actual test of that word.
He looked at each and every face. He didn’t know Kenner well and as the only non-citizen here, he hoped someone in this crowd would sponsor her. He could do it himself, but he also thought that set a bad president and established favorites or at least the perception of favoritism. He nodded to her.
I will get on the coffee,” Kenner said, tapping two other young couples out as she headed in.
May 22, 2440 – 4:48:00 AM
“I say it will miss the house. It is being too careful and cautious. The will need people or at least want to talk to people. Seven books,” Dave said, bidding his hand, watching Matt for a tell. He and Matt had partnered for too many years not to know a tell when they saw it, even if now they had divided up to teach these young pups how to play spades like the bosses they wanted to become.
“Nine books,” matt said without having actually picked up his cards. Dave and Amy were at 230 and he and Carlos sat at 210. Someone was going to win this hand or go down hard and decide the two out of three match play.
Dave explained for the kids.
“This is classic Marmaduke play. If he is right he wins. If he is wrong, he loses. However, if he is wrong, but still keeps his opponents from being right, the game isn’t over and will have at least two more hands.
“Every hands a winner, every hands a loser,” Matt confirmed.
“You won’t be dying in your sleep tonight,” Kenner said refilling coffee cups with her latest pot.
May 22, 2440 – 5:02:00 AM
The call buzzed, then connected to a gruff voice.
“Matthew Jonathan Boone Marmaduke here. What the hell do you want?”
“Captain Marmaduke, you are being recalled to active duty with Amazon Military.” Alexa told him in her ancient yet timeless voice.
“The fuck I am,” Marmaduke shot back. “Put a person on.”
“Captain, this is Colonel Hal Jordain. Are you refusing recall?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I’ve got 96 hours for 25 years after I leave service. Right now, I’ve got a spaceship about to tear up a good stretch of my crop and maybe level my home. I’m willing to cooperate with Amazon but this is my show on my land. I’ll send my terms later. I assume you can read my encryption package?”
“We can, Captain.”
“Good. Send me what I need and reactivate my full credentials.” His voice was calm, iron-edged. “I’m the guy on the ground. Stand by for updates.”
The call ended with a signature ‘fuck you’ click, now sold as a premium feature on modern phones.
Leonard exhaled sharply. “Get his credentials back online. Send the full data package. I want real-time updates from him the moment that ship hits dirt.”
He turned to the room. “And keep a channel open to Marmaduke. He may be a stubborn bastard, but right now, he’s our best asset on the ground.”
Zero Hour 9:00 AM
Matt held the binoculars up one last time and thought about the ship now on a glidepath that would miss his house and the town but wasn’t about to admit it yet.
Part of him had wanted to right and stand right in the middle of it. His death would be epic. Lost in a game of chicken with a spaceship. Knowing his people though they would find some justification that didn’t make him look like suicide by starship. They would frame it as him playing Alfred the Great showing his humility through an inability to command the tide.
He let the music flow through him and wished he had brought out an instrument.
I miss the earth so much
I miss my wife
It is lonely out in space
On such a timeless flight
and I think it’s gonna be a long, long time
(Ooh) ’til touchdown brings me ’round again to find
(Ooh) I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no (ah)
I’m a rocket man
The last line would have been a great epitaph had he been standing in front of the massive mountain of space steel.
