Speculative 15th Chapter

Ragle hurried towards the spaceship and greeted Walter, shaking him by the hand.

“How did you—” Ragle exclaimed, his voice trailing off as he gazed inside the spaceship.

“Do all of this?” asked Walter, also turning to survey the inside: the white spacious interior with lacquer finish and silver lining; the multitudinous cabinets with labels ranging from wiring and radios to oxygen and breakfast cereals; the huge, centered, transparent structure that housed the ship’s three puffy, cream-colored space suits, all covered with various panels and snakelike tubes. “1998’s a lot different from 1959, Ragle. A lot different.”

Walter then turned and crossed the threshold of the spaceship, and Ragle followed closely behind him. Both men passed through the central hub and entered the cockpit, where Mrs. Keitelbein was busy preparing the rocket for takeoff.

“Hello, Ragle. Please take the seat on the right. Walter will strap you to your chair.”

Ragle nodded. He circumvented the middle chair (presumably Walter’s) to get to his own.

“Don’t worry, Ragle,” Mrs. Keitelbein resumed, as Walter began stretching multiple cords over and across Ragle’s torso, securing them into place. “Both Walter and I are experienced pilots. We’ve piloted several flights before. In fact, we only asked you to join us in the cockpit so that you could get a wonderful view of the moon, at the very least.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Almost no time had passed before the spaceship was prepared for takeoff. Ragle felt the thrusters burning, the floor rumbling. This is it, he thought. I’ll be leaving Earth again. And this time not Venus but the moon. I’ll be free again from gravity, free from the restrictive force that’s kept me tied down to the Earth.

The ship was now shaking violently and, within seconds, it lifted. The force of the takeoff arrested Ragle, fixing him tightly to his seat. He struggled to swivel his head and, with limited vision, managed to observe the Keitelbeins. He heard Walter tapping buttons and flipping switches; he saw Mrs. Keitelbein inspecting a few of the many LCD monitors, some which were synced to various cameras both inside and outside the ship.

Repositioning his head, Ragle noticed that the cloudy, muddled sky had now transformed into the silent black of space, but a blackness gleaming with golden stars. The universe, Ragle thought. The vast, vast universe. With stars counted in the billions…galaxies unexplored…teeming with new energies, new possibilities—new life.

Amazing, Ragle thought. Too much for words…

Filled with these thoughts, Ragle looked beyond the windshield and noticed that several stars, including Sirius, were now blinking—blinking rapidly, in fact. That’s odd, Ragle wondered…why are those stars blinking?

“Do you see that?” Ragle asked aloud.

But there was no response. Even the sounds from the tapping of buttons and the flicking of switches had ceased to resonate throughout the cockpit.

Turning with what little movements he could make, Ragle checked to see if either Walter or Mrs. Keitelbein had witnessed this strange occurrence with the stars. But where the two pilots should have been, Ragle found instead a slip of paper floating in front of him, adorned with another word:


THE KEITELBEINS


Not again, Ragle thought. How could it happen here? How could it get the Keitelbeins?

He nervously returned his gaze to the spectacle beyond the windshield: the rapidly blinking stars were also expanding at this point—and, he realized, proliferating. More stars had materialized--all blinking, all expanding. The vacuum of space in front of him was no longer the giant black monolith it once was but rather an ecstatic and dazzling (albeit unexplainable) phenomenon. Even the chairs that the Keitelbeins had once occupied (if they even had at all) had dissolved into mere slips of paper. The windshield, the walls—everything that wasn’t yet paper was being reduced to it.

But all at no cost to Ragle. Somehow, he was still breathing.

In almost no time, the entire cockpit had been reduced to paper. But this time, something else happened: each slip of paper began to move. In the same direction, even: towards the stars.

Picking up velocity and torque, each word whipped past Ragle, heading towards some central point. Suddenly, he wondered, why am I not paper?

But before he could complete this thought, Ragle witnessed what was surely a brilliant spectacle: all of the words convulsed and crashed together, producing a radiant explosion that blinded him. And when he looked up, he found a single raggedy piece of paper, floating on a black, starless background, complete with one word, the consummation of all the others:


LOGOS


The final slip, the LOGOS, pulsed and beat with life. Like a heart, Ragle thought.

And it moved towards Ragle.

And it got close.

So close that he could reach out and touch it.

Chapter 15

Aboard the ship, Ragle ran his hand down the polished, perfect surfaces. Everything along the entry way was lit with a clean light. He at once was struck with a sense of awe followed by quiet recognition. Of course, this had been his life, Ragle thought to himself, it seems so obvious now.


"Would you like to take a look in the Captain's den?" Walter reappeared behind him after securing and locking the boarding door. The young man had a dazzling smile.



As they set off within the capsule, Walter hailed and introduced various uniformed men and women.

"Captain Hilgaurd! Come say hello to Ragle Gumm!"

" Its a honor to see you sir. Its amazing to have you back." Captain Hilgaurd had a sharp face about him with tidy blue eyes. Ragle liked him immediately and wondered briefly, after the shy smile that Hilgaurd flashed him, if he hadn't in fact liked him before.


"Where are the windows in this joint?" Ragle's question caught even himself off guard. He realized then that the lack of this feature struck him as odd.

"Fuelling inefficiency." Walter said. "For deep space probing like this, windows are a weakness to the conditions out there. A risk we don't like to take just for the view, you see. And besides that, we're going where there is practically nil out there to look at anyway!"

"Oh yes, I remember now," Ragle murmured to himself, the comfortable feeling of recognition once again rising inside him.

"Of coarse, we have one small exception," Walter continued, "If you really want a peep out there, and I mean 'peep'!" Walter led Ragle to a panel in the wall. The surface was smooth all over except for a small puncture in the center, the shape of a key hole. The key hole had been outlined in red paint and a non-assuming plaque beside it read in bold capital letters:




OBSERVATION WINDOW


Ragle stooped slightly to fit his eye in line with the small hole. Dim shapes seemed to dominate the terrain on the other side. Shades of grey and murk.

"Oh its lovely," said Ragle.


Down one long corridor, two lefts, a right, and shimmering dissolving door later, they arrived in the den. The room was octagonal in shape. Ragle noticed the fine craftsmanship of each arching cubicle and appreciated the efficient modes of technology present. Maroon and silver pillows dotted the place in the notches of the wall, indicating chairs. Even a rug with an intricate braiding design was cast on the floor. This already feels like home, he thought to himself, and there are the radar screens so we know how to steer in place of those windows.


"This bunk is for you," said Walter. He raised his hand. A transparent bed gained solid property before his eyes.


After Walter left him alone in the den, assuring him he need do no more on the trip but rest, Ragel settled in to his bunk to do just that. His last thought as he drifted off to sleep was how happy he was to finally find solid comfort and contentment.





"Dammit he's stuck in this simulation now. I thought he was supposed to be a genius!"


"Give him credit, Rick. The man has just shattered through his reality. Its a miracle that in doing so he didn't shatter himself in the process. He has time to travel through our next stage."

"You mean jump through our next hoop."


The two men watched on through their shiny looking devices as Ragle's star ship navigated the filmy sky. Simultaneously very fast and very slow.

Fifteen

Ragle sat at his old oak desk, studying the papers strewn across it intensely. A tap on his office door interrupted his thoughts.

“Come in.” Ragle said. The door quietly opened and a boy of ten tiptoed inside. Ragle took a last glance at one the papers in front of him and looked up. His serious expression faded. “Walter!” he said, happy to have a break. He’d been working for eight hours straight and had even missed dinner. Walter smiled back at his dad and Ragle leaned backwards in his chair, more relaxed than before. Seeing that he would have his full attention, Walter pulled something he had been holding from behind his back.

“Look what I made today!” he announced proudly.

Ragle stood up from his chair and bent down in front of his son, holding out his palm. Walter placed a small toy model inside it. Another one of these things, Ragle chuckled to himself. Walter was always coming up with these toys; they were made of things he found around the house or outside. A very resourceful kid, Ragle thought. He studied it closely now. It wasn’t anything recognizable, just the product of a kid’s imagination. But it was well made.  Aluminum foil was used to make the shape of a sphere, hollow inside. There weren’t too many wrinkles in the foil since he had built it so carefully. Beneath it was a thin piece of wood, beat up scrap he must of found outside somewhere. Puffed out cotton balls surrounded the base, so stretched out that they resembled smoke. An opening on the side was cut the shape of a rectangular door.

“I’m going to add a light too, one that’ll fit inside- make it really nice. Mom says she’s got some old Christmas lights I can use. I’ll take them apart and then it’ll be done.”

“That will be great, Walter. Keep going. This one might be your best.” Ragle then bent closer to the toy and peeked through the doorway so he could see inside the sphere. There was a small triangular window cut out directly across on the other side. He looked through both, and turned it clockwise until he could see Walter’s face through the openings.  Through the triangle window, Walter beamed.

 

Another memory, the most significant one yet, had come back to him. Seeing Walter with that colored light had triggered it. Walter, not just a 16 year old who admired him, but his son. The imaginative young boy who had made those fascinating toys was now outside with a real spaceship, waiting to take him to the moon. Walter had to have built it, or at the very least designed it. The ship outside resembled the toy from his memory so closely. 

The old desk, too, that he and Walter had carried from the basement was actually his. Mrs. Keitelbein, Beverly, he corrected himself, had said that the desk was her father’s, Walter’s grandfather. It had been a gift to Ragle from his father-in-law. He looked over at Beverly, Mrs. Keitelbein, his wife who had infiltrated the system with a false identity to save him, along with their son. She could already tell he had remembered them. I’m not alone, Ragle thought. I do have a real family, besides the one that had been created for me. And now we’re going to the moon, all three of us. Together, Ragle and Beverly looked outside the window at the ship and the colored light. Walter, still standing there, was waving for them to hurry up.  It was time for them to board.  

Stepping out of the vehicle, Vic was let out on the highway with no one in sight. Turning he saw Ragle's smiling face, but no longer did he feel the warmth back to him. Where did the anger come from? How could we suddenly hate each other so much after this journey?

"Take care Vic." Ragle yelled, preparing for liftoff, "Hopefully we will meet again under better circumstances."

"Yeah...", said Vic, knowing full well that now they were enemies, no longer family, the civil war had truly begun for them. Vic felt no need for any other words to be spoken, turned on his heel, and walked down the long, windy highway.

December 1, 2009.

Long past due, Vic finally stepped off the ship and onto the platform on Mars. The trip had been rough, every time he flew to Mars he felt sick, part because of the guilt of leaving his country and partly because he knew this could be his peoples home someday, no matter how much he did not believe in space colonization. Thank god for this day, Vic thought. The past 10 years had been brutal, lives taken and families split, civil war that destroyed the once unified structure present on Earth. The toll had been too much for President Vic Nielson to handle, he had to act, he had to gain some sort of peace with the Lunatics.

Mars had become a safe haven. A place for the "One Happy World" and the Lunatics could meet to negotiate without any sense of harm. It was time to negotiate for the last time, he and Prime Minister Gumm needed to make peace, or else the Earth would be destroyed. The Lunatics had developed far superior means of bombing and their points of attack had improved every step with Ragle on their side, now their leader and commander of the attacks. With his knack for spotting patterns, Ragle always kept the "One Happy World" guessing.

Waiting awkwardly, Vic finally saw Ragle, and with mixed emotions shook the traitor's hand.

"Hello, Ragle." Vic asserted, "I think it's time we ended this."

"Couldn't agree more with you Vic," Ragle said forcefully, " I knew you would come to terms eventually."

Chapter Fifteen

Margo sat in the idling Volkswagen, staring out at the huge vans bogging down the late-afternoon traffic.
“Look, Sammy,” she said. “What do you suppose they’re doing here?”
Pressing his face to the window, Sammy abandoned the yellowing pages of the old magazine.
“Wow! Just look at them!”
Examining the vehicles, Margo noted the odd shape and strange features of the van. An uneasy feeling settled in her stomach.
“I’ve never seen anything like those before,” Margo said. But suddenly she felt restless and uncomfortable, as if something vague and hidden was struggling to be seen.
Glued to the sight of the strange vans, Sammy squirmed around to see more clearly.
“I think they’re busses! They’re probably the newest kind there is. There’s no one in them, though! Mom, I’ll bet Dad wants to ride home on one of the new busses today! Can I go with him?”
Making the left turn into the entrance to the store’s parking lot, Margo took a deep breath and shifted down into second.
“No,” she said abruptly. “We’ll wait for him. They may not be busses at all and we’re already here. Besides, your father needs to get home quickly so he can lie down. He’s been having those awful headaches and I have a lot to do before dinner.”
“Aw,” Sammy muttered, devastated. Gazing out at the unfamiliar vans, he speculated loudly. “I’ll bet they’re not busses anyway, they’re probably some kind of new spaceship. Maybe they’re here to protect us from the enemy!”
Angrily, Margo turned to face him. “Now, listen young man. You have absolutely no idea what those vans are for and neither do I, but they aren’t spaceships and they certainly have nothing to do with the ‘enemy.’ So you keep your thoughts to yourself.”
Grumbling, Sammy picked up the crumbling magazine and flipped through, looking at the faded pictures.

At six-thirty, Vic looked up from his dinner to the TV set. A flustered newscaster announced that a city official was about to make an important announcement.
“I wonder if it has anything to do with my petition,” Margo said.
“Dad, look at this!” Sammy picked up the old magazine with a crazed excitement and pointed at a page.
“Not now, Sammy,” Vic said.
Adjusting the volume on the set, Vic had a deep feeling of unease, even fear.
Sammy said loudly, “Dad, look! It’s Mr. Black!”
Sure enough, Bill Black was looking out at them from their television screen, looking almost as disturbed as Vic felt as he watched him fidget with his tight-fitting pants. Abandoning the dirty dishes, Margo came in from the kitchen wearing an expression of disbelief.
“As many of you noticed earlier this evening, some government vehicles have been dispatched to our town. I cannot disclose the full details of the situation, but tomorrow morning you will be evacuated to another location for your own safety in those secure transport vehicles. Tomorrow morning at 10:00 am sharp, your family must be at the town square, bringing only one change of clothes per person. Do not be late, and do not attempt to bring anything more with you. We ask that everyone stay calm and follow our instructions exactly, or you will be taken into custody until the town is emptied.”
Bill Black swallowed and continued.
“I understand that this is sudden and frightening. Nonetheless, we ask for your cooperation in this grave matter. Thank you.”
Margo and Vic looked at one another in silent horror. Running to Vic, Sammy said excitedly “Dad, I was trying to show you. Look!” Vic picked up the magazine and examined the photograph on the page.
“See it? It looks almost exactly like the new vans!” An oddly familiar feeling of cold dread came over Vic as he stared at the picture. Some kind of deep-seated recognition stirring in his gut. Searching frantically through the magazine, he found a faded article about some old fashion craze called Miss Adonis hats, and another article a few pages in describing some kind of property litigations on Venus. He scoured the page for a date.
May 10, 1997.