The Future Is Blue

-win, Desmond. And if you do end up fulfilling your end of the contract, you’ll be far past caring about the details.

A prime-level internal protocol overrides the cottage by the sea, the note, the summer storm. The images burst and scatter. This particular alarm feels as though I’m rinsing out my coffee mug in the sink and lifting up the cushion on the old green couch to find the car keys Lukas can’t resist hiding. He hopes one day I’ll give up and stop going to work. But I never do.

The blue beneath me wheels slowly. North America comes into view. Time to go to work.

Somewhere, in an underground radio room in Colorado, a computer screen flashes text: Ground Control, this is Aspera Orbital Satellite Registration #887D. Timestamp: 0915 22.12.7117.5 Actual.

Initiate System Pingback.

Initiating…

Pingback Sent.

Initiate Dead Hand Protocol 1A. Do you copy?

Ground Control, this is Aspera Orbital Satellite Registration #887D. Timestamp: 0917 22.12.7117.5 Actual.

Initiate Dead Hand Protocol 1B. Do you copy?

Initiate Terrestrial Radioband Scan.

Initiating…

Ground Control, this is Aspera Orbital Satellite Registration #887D. Timestamp: 0919 22.12.7117.5 Actual.

Initiate Dead Hand Protocol 1C. Do you copy?

Terrestrial Radioband Scan complete.

Results: None.

Ground Control.

Ground Control.

Ground Control.

It’s Desmond. Is anyone there?

Initiate Deep Focus Surveillance Camera Ezekiel4. Target: Midcoast Maine, North America.

Eliza, this is Aspera Orbital Satellite Registration #887D. Timestamp: 0923 22.12.7117.5 Actual.

Do you copy?

Somewhere, in a sub-chamber of my electrified orbital heart, an answer appears. Flashing on the glass of my kitchen windows, my refrigerator door, my bathroom mirror, on every surface in the house I can’t stop seeing everywhere I turn.

The windows dissolve. The doors dissolve. The mirrors, the house. I am standing in my mother’s garden. She is planting bulbs in her Sunday dress. Reading glasses hang around her neck on a rosary chain. Iris. Lily. Tulip. Beside her lie her gardening shears on a pile of pruned pink and red roses. A few daisy petals stick to her brown curls. She isn’t wearing gloves. Her fingers are black with earth. The sun is blinding. The house seems bigger than it should be. The house I was born in. I try to remember my mother’s name. I rummage in my memory stacks for it. All I find is Ground Control.

Mother looks up from her tulips. She is wearing the same frosted pink lipstick she wore every day of her life. She opens her mouth and says: Aspera Orbital Satellite Registration #887D, this is Ground Control. Timestamp 0926 22.12.7117.5 Actual. Pingback received.

“Hey, Mom. Kind of late to be planting, isn’t it?”

She holds out her arms to me. Big, comforting arms. Soft. Her wrinkles are good and meaningful. She holds me. She whispers: Shut down Dead Hand Protocol 1A-C. Shutting down…Situation Normal.

“How’s Dad? Still at the office? How’s his leg? It always gets worse when the weather turns.”

Mother yanks on the roots of some non-approved plant. A worm slithers over her fingers. She doesn’t notice. She holds up the offending weed triumphantly, then offers it to me: Report: Debris incoming to your position at 2200. Adjust trajectory accordingly.