Puny Humans – Part One: The Arm – Chapter Seven

Despite, or perhaps because of its fairly unsophisticated practice of space exploration (a pursuit often likened in intergalactic circles to rooting around in ones underwear looking for pirate gold), Earth’s immediate post atmospheric space is rather liberally strewn with garbage. In the grand neighborhood that is the galaxy, Earth looks a bit like an extraordinarily unkempt trailer park.

The denizens of Earth have no real consciousness of this, outside of those space agencies that enacted the original missions, and the government programs that monitor the skies and, with limited interest, what lies beyond them. With full knowledge of this space debris, they recognize that, occasionally, tiny pieces will fall out of orbit, breach the earth’s atmosphere and make contact with the surface. 99 times out of 100, they figure, those pieces land in the water. Once or twice of 10,000, the pieces that land on the ground actually hit something important. But in between the water landings and the catastrophic international incidents, there are your run of the mill land-fall events that amount to little more than a piece of scrap metal that a local national guard unit can clean up during exercises. So when a microscopic piece of debris flickered onto the radar and made contact in dense Washington forest, air traffic monitors made a note of its landfall location, made sure a fire hadn’t started, and got back to waiting for something important to happen.

Agent Thomas Ross of the Portland FBI Field Office, however, notified his supervisor that he would be out for the rest of the afternoon on casework, and left promptly thereafter. His supervisor promised to save him a piece of cake from the birthday in the conference room, but that was a lie. He didn’t like Agent Ross. Most of the office tended to bristle around him.

It wasn’t due to a particularly grating personality; he was actually quite affable and occasionally flirted with the receptionist, brought in donuts in the morning, and told mild, office appropriate jokes. What bristled them was the arms’ length at which he kept everyone in the office, a distance which one didn’t notice at first, but became more vivid and obvious the more time one spent around him.

Agent Ross was tall, blonde and slim, though clearly muscular beneath the well-pressed black suit he always wore. And he wore the same black suit and pressed white shirt every day, though the tie was of a different pattern and color. He seemed to own five of them. He didn’t seem to observe Casual Friday, and no one knew what he wore on the weekends, because no one had ever seen him after 5 pm on a Friday. Not even from pictures, because there were no pictures. Not on his desk, not in his slim wallet when his coworkers had happened on a glance inside. There was no evidence that this man had a family, a partner, even parents. And his record was a slim, spotless file that merely remarked upon the 5 years of faithful service he had offered the FBI from the Portland branch office. He had been there longer than the current supervisor by a year. Agent Ross was an utter mystery – a mystery far above their security clearance.

Puny Humans – Part One: The Arm – Chapter Six

The doorbell rang at 3:45 in the afternoon.  It had been 4 days, and Annabelle’s parents were still on their trip.  Annabelle was still getting used to the new hand, which seemed to react to her phone’s touch screen and didn’t electrocute her during any of her showers or trips to the bathroom, but was nonetheless a new, alien appendage about which new questions never seemed to stop arising in her mind.  To assuage the anxiety, about which she felt she could largely do nothing, she began writing her questions down in one of the many blank journals she had received from well-meaning gift givers.

What is this thing made of?

Where did it come from?

What do I do if it breaks?

Would I know if it were broken?

Can I go to the doctor?

Would the doctor call the government and have me locked up in some kind of underground science lab?

Why can I still feel my fingers?  I feel these fingers…

Why do they stretch? 

Why do they shoot…whatever they shoot? 

How do I make it shoot again?

What else do they do?

She was pondering these questions when the doorbell rang, and she asked yet another one. Do I have any gloves?  The metal that stretched over her forearm shimmered as though it were laughing at her as she dashed to the downstairs coat closet and rummaged quickly through her parents’ Mardi Gras trunk, finding a sparkly pair of violet opera gloves and yanking them up her arms quickly.  A Justice League t-shirt and opera gloves?  She blinked at her attire briefly, and then yanked on a pink feather boa and a large, floppy flowered hat from the trunk before dashing to the door, the bell ringing a second time.

Josh hadn’t worked for the brown shorts for long, but at this point he knew there was no way to match the conceivable contents of the package to the address to which it was delivered, or the person who would answer the door.  It was just as well, as Josh wasn’t prone to asking, or thinking of, a lot of questions.  So when he drove the delivery truck up the steep, winding hill, along the tree-lined private drive toward the French provincial manor home – one of several hidden in the dense groves of western Washington forest, apparently – he was nonplussed.  Similarly nonplussed as he rang the doorbell, which was answered after a few stumbling, shuffling sounds, by a life-sized muppet, from what he could immediately tell.  The door swung open very quickly, and his startled rush of adrenaline helped him to focus on the tall, relatively formidable female figure that stood before him.  Her light auburn hair was hanging in strands from the floppy, flowered red hat into which it had been tucked, and the large pink feather boa wrapped around her coordinated, strangely, with the purple sequined opera gloves and blue t-shirt she wore.

He wouldn’t have found this any more unusual than the elderly man in a red silk kimono who answered the door of the geodesic dome house the other day, or the middle aged woman who was clearly drunk at 9:30 in the morning and offered to let him come inside for a tip, despite his repeated reminders that one doesn’t generally tip package delivery persons, or even the black giant schnauzer who had clearly been trained not only to open the door and accept the package, but to sign for it with a tiny stamp that he held in his mouth, if his gaze hadn’t traveled to her eyes, where he made contact with their impressively deep brown depths and lost himself for an immeasurable 3 or 4 seconds.  They were a golden, maple brown, almost edible in texture, that, as he studied them in awe, seemed to be overlain with the faintest hints of violet and silver, like a fine metal screen stretched over her irises. He would probably have stood there for several moments, his lips parted slightly thanks to his slackened jaw, had she not blinked a few times and tilted her head in confusion toward the package he held.  The subtle movement seemed like a bucket of cold water that sent him a staggering step or two back from the door.  He blushed in chagrin and looked down to the box to identify its recipient.

“Annabelle…Gross?” Oh, that’s sad, he thought.

Annabelle nodded, smiling with the same tight politeness she mustered whenever her surname garnered a puzzled reaction, which was often.  Josh toggled through his signature pad, ducking his chin deeply, simultaneously hoping to ward off his blush before she signed for the package and desperately searching his rather fried mind for something to say to her.  Beneath the feathers, he noted what looked like Batman’s boot peeking out on the front of her t-shirt. He smiled and relaxed as her nerdity became apparent, and looked up to her as he offered her the signature pad. “I liked The Dark Knight.”

“Huh?”  Annabelle blinked, looking up from the signature pad with a confused smile, which stunned Josh. Why did I lead with that?  It’s a cartoon Batman!  He blinked, and half pointed at her t-shirt as he worked his mouth, no sound coming out on the first few tries. “Your…t-shirt…with the Batman…” He shook his head and smiled “My thoughts got out of order on that one.”

“Yeah, the weed is killer in this part of the country.” Annabelle chuckled and took her package as she handed the signature board back to Josh, who sputtered and coughed a few times as he blushed.  She raised her left hand to her chest, lifting the feathers enough for him to see. “Justice League.  It’s the cartoon.”

Josh nodded as he recovered, his eyes glancing across the t-shirt.  As he took in the faces of America’s superheroes, his eyes became distracted by the shimmering violet metal that wound around her upper left arm – or, at least, the glimmer that he could see before she yanked her glove up and her shirt sleeve down. “That’s um…”

“Thanks!” Annabelle was shoving the door shut before he could say anything about the metal, already growing a bit dizzy from the stress of his having seen it.  As Josh stumbled back from the heavy front door, he found himself wondering if he could get his route switched with Doug and maybe hazard delivering a few more packages this way.

Puny Humans – Part One: The Arm – Chapter Five

A few words about Venusium.

It’s important to note that, despite its name, Venusium has no relation to or providence in the planet Venus.  It was actually discovered on Bellatrix V accidentally by a golf course attendant named Roger Venusi who, unfortunately, did not live to see his namesake element reach intergalactic scientific acceptance.   The only thing left of Roger Venusi once his unfortunate discovery saw the light of day were the premolars forensic scientists were able to identify as distinct and separate from the remains of the two hazardous materials workers who were also absorbed by the expanding molecular material before they were able to contain it in a crystalline aluminum for further study.

Scientists and theologians alike across the galaxy have debated, since its discovery, whether or not Venusium can be considered a life form. Though in its active state, Venusium exhibits metabolism, reproduction, and reactionary qualities, its elemental atomic structure seems to preclude the necessary complexity of life.  The resulting confusion regarding its classification has bred a fear of Venusium in the layman that has bled over into the scientific community – to this day, despite its usefulness and the relative ease with which technicians and operators can contain and manipulate the substance, Venusium technology, though versatile and relatively clean, is as controversial and terrifying as the debates that surrounded heyday of the nuclear arms race.

To call Venusium a metamorphic substance doesn’t quite do justice to the phenomenon.  As an active element, Venusium expands at an exponential rate, consuming nearly all matter in its path, save the few boron group elements with which it occurs naturally.  When one finds a Venusium deposit, it is invariably at the center of a larger deposit of iridium, gallium, or aluminum, which seems to serve as its natural buffer and inhibitor, as unchecked Venusium consumes and converts unchecked until trapped by a buffer.  Though Venusium is unquestionably a metal, in its standard conditions for pressure and temperature it has all the fluidity of a liquid, and flows with a viscosity similar to quicksilver or molten lava, and shares a relative density to them, plus or minus whatever other matter it has consumed and digested. Venusium converts all non Boron group elements into more active Venusium, and within a .25 margin of error maintains the original physical and dimensional properties of the consumed matter.  Scientists discovered this last property only after the night janitor was discovered to have been using the existing sample vat as a garbage disposal rather than carrying the lab waste down the stairs.

The applications of the transmogrification were fairly staggering.  In addition to new technology, Venusium is used in conjunction with buffering aluminum and existing nanotechnology to absorb and reconstitute old or broken technology, among other applications, which range from martial to educational to medical to entertainment. Venusium’s high conversion rate means that it is an ideal trash repository, so long as one has room for the extra venusium that is produced.  Troops outfitted with venusium weaponry find that their artillery is limited only by their aluminum supply (as firing raw Venusium at ones enemy has been deemed a war crime).  Their venusium armor has a staggering ballistics absorption rate, though leakage in cheap containment is a logistical vulnerability.  The galaxy’s premiere amusement parks on Betelgeuse IV boast roller coasters and thrill rides built with quick shifting venusium tracks and support structures that guarantee that, unless they want to, no guest rides the same ride twice.  In the world of medicine and rehabilitation, sensory replacement technology has been combined with venusium to increase ease in motility and limb assimilation among amputees and other recipients of venusium prosthetics.

Of final note, nowhere, to the knowledge of modern xenogeologists, does Venusium occur naturally on Earth.  Given the grey nature of galactic interaction with the planet, venusium technology is tightly controlled by any non Earthbound Humans, and protocols and sanctions have thus far made piracy of venusium technology to unsophisticated planets such as Earth a highly unattractive option.  Which is exactly why Fred and Sam found themselves participating in an unauthorized grey stop on the planet, engaging their supply transport’s clumsy cloaking devices and settling down in the deepest expanses of the Eastern Washington desert.  The commonplace compliment of their supply vessel was enough to get them arrested and incarcerated for a very long time, and, rugged as their nerdy good looks were, neither of the supply transport technicians was cut out for prison.  Unbeknownst to them, however, were two mitigating factors that endangered not only their freedom, but Earth’s security and continued welfare: a casual inventory cataloguing error had resulted in an inappropriate prosthetic supply; and Annabelle had an extremely inquisitive mind, and the ability to order sophisticated hand tools on the Internet.

Puny Humans – Part One: The Arm – Chapter Four

The systems panel started blinking and beeping simultaneously, which was a warning to Sam that something was really wrong this time.  If it was blinking, that usually just meant that the door below the panel had popped open, and if it was beeping, he didn’t have his seat fully locked into place, but if it was blinking and beeping then something was actually going on.  Sam looked down from the instruments to the system panel, and the flashing light that informed him that TORPEDO BAY had FIRED.  Which was not the best news.  Especially since they weren’t actively carrying any torpedoes, to his knowledge.

“Hey Fred?” Sam called back over his shoulder, to no response. Sam pulled up the aft viewer, and cursed under his breath.  Behind them, Earth glowed benignly, nearly in its entirety blissfully unaware of their passage, at least for the moment.  Glittering behind them in the ether, however, was evidence of their departure, a twirling trail of peppershot that threatened to reveal their presence to the unsuspecting planet behind them.  Propelled by the torpedo’s launch mechanisms, the unidentified payload made its way determinedly toward Earth. I just hope it burns up on impact, or we’re going to have to file a crap ton of reports. Grumbling, he unbuckled his seat belt and locked in the autopilot before stepping back into the galley.  Fred was making a sandwich on the tiny counter, his headphones unable to contain the heavy bass regardless of how tightly he screwed the giant earpieces to his head.  Sam grasped the vinyl cup and popped it off of his ear belligerently.  “FRED!”

Fred didn’t have time to exclaim, grabbing his meat and bread and clutching them to his chest in a startled sandwich wad.  Sam snorted at him and snapped his headphones back.  “I hope you weren’t keeping anything important in the torpedo bay.”

Fred’s startled expression dropped into a low face of fear and disappointment.  “Oh…no.”  He set his sandwich wad on the counter.  “Look, I’ll clean it out…”

“There’s nothing to clean out,” Sam snapped, raking a hand through his hair.  “Whatever it was, we just shot it at Earth.” And if it was the porn, you’re wearing a dress for the rest of this trip, he thought to himself in anger, though the mental image did make him smirk a little bit.  He turned away from Fred to hide the growing laugh, and then looked down the hatch toward storage, noting the nearly empty supply shelf. “Hey…where’s the first aid kit?”

“In the…. um, in the tube.”  Fred’s voice was a little higher than normal as he responded, instantly regretting having said anything.  Sam snapped his head back around and stared at Fred in disbelief for a moment before jumping down the hatch into storage.

The compliment for a 4-week supply haul was already a minimal concern. Food supplies were synthesized from the nutrient vat, and the first aid kit was a small carton of necessities – a dermal regenerator, some painkillers, antiseptic, and a catchall venusium prosthetic in case one of them got an arm or a leg ripped off somehow.  Sam had always assumed that the better-safe-than-sorry rhetoric of corporate planning had resulted in its inclusion.  But all of those things were gone from the simple shelf that had housed them, and sitting on its side in their place was a karaoke machine, still in its box.  The tubes from the nutrient vat were ripped and dripping from where the synthesizer had been cut off at the airlock and blown out into the ether.  Sam blinked in disbelief, grabbing the tubes and clamping them off quickly, shutting off the necessary valves.

“When did you buy a karaoke machine?” Sam called up from the storage hatch to where Fred stood in the galley, meekly chewing on his crumpled handful of sandwich.

“I…we were…at that flea market, and it was cheap…” Fred blinked, the gravity of his error slowly beginning to weigh on him, widening his eyes as his fight-or-flight response began to kick in.  “I…we don’t have a torpedo…I just moved the stuff there to make some room.  I swear, I thought the bay was deactivated!”

“Yeah, so did I…” Sam frowned and climbed up from the hatch, returning to the operations bay and pulling up the systems information. After typing through a few textbook diagnostics, he frowned and grumbled “It must have switched to the default and gone back online when we updated the system software.”  Sam cursed under his breath as he manually deactivated the torpedo bays and set a dual redundancy on their airlocks

“Yeah,” said Fred, thoughtfully speaking through a mouthful of sandwich.  “Totally should have rebooted the ship after we upgraded.”

Sam shook his head and grumbled as he finished saving the protocols.  “We’ve got a bigger problem.  Well, two.  Two bigger problems.”  He spun around in his chair and looked up to Fred, who finished the last of the sandwich pieces and brushed his hands together.  “First, you just shot off our food synthesizer and our first aid kit.  We’re going to have to make a grey stop somewhere and you know we’re going to get a fine if we screw it up.  We’ve already got enough paperwork with the glitter trail back there.”

Fred groaned and nodded, settling in the seat next to Sam in the operations bay, and began grimly looking up coordinates. “Looks like there’s still plenty of space to land it in the Mentayna area, but then we’d have to figure out land transport…”

Sam looked over his shoulder at the maps and nodded. “Sure.  Looks good to me.  I think they pronounce that ‘Montana’, though.” Fred rolled his eyes, repeating Sam’s interjection in a higher voice.  “Whatever, Puny Human.  I didn’t realize.  What’s the other thing?”

Sam chuckled, then sighed as he remembered. “Crap.  Our first aid kit has a Venusium prosthetic, and you just shot it at Earth.” Fred groaned and rolled his eyes, tapping through the system directories to find the GPS transmitter all consumables on the ship had been outfitted with.  Rigel Shipping kept such a close accounting of its resource compliments, Fred was probably going to have to tally how many slices of meat he’d used on his sandwich wad.  “It looks like it’s in…huh.  It’s maybe 700 miles west of Mentay – Mon-TAN-a…” he shot Sam a look as he checked the maps.  “Oh…no.”

“No?  What ‘oh no,’ Fred?” Sam spun his chair around, looking at Fred’s read out “What’s wrong?  Is it in the water or something? We might be able to let it go if it’s in a lake or the ocean or something, as long as it’s not ruptured – “

“No…it looks like it’s activated.”  Fred looked at Sam, the color draining from his already pale face as his expression grew even more grave.

“Are you serious?  That’s virgin soil.  Those puny humans won’t know what – “

“Don’t you think I know that?!” Fred grumbled, tapping through the geo-synchronizer as Sam changed their trajectory, turning them back toward Earth. “I think I’ve got a lock on its location, we’re just going to have to pray that none of the containment nanos were damaged in the crash.”

Sam nodded, tapping in the coordinates.  He was, himself, running on autopilot as his mind raced from the ramifications.  The company was going to fire them at best if they couldn’t recover this technology undetected.  “Alright, try to tune in some of their entertainment or news or something.  I don’t want to try to sneak around down there talking like a caveman.”

Puny Humans – Part 1: The Arm – Chapter Three

Annabelle’s left thumb, fore, and middle fingers were gone.  She still had all three fingers, just not the ones she had been born with, clearly.  The long, tapered phalanges were a light, cool metal, a faint violet chrome that now spread down the back of her hand and coiled in delicate tendrils around her ring and little fingers, down her forearm to the elbow, and around her upper arm to the shoulder.  Her palm and the back of her hand felt hollower than before; some kind of metallurgic stigmata, she thought.  Otherwise, it didn’t hurt or even feel that stiff, but it did seem to vibrate slightly when she touched it with her other hand.

She could still feel her fingers.  They were still functioning digits that wiggled, flexed, and flipped the bird as necessary.  Annabelle knelt in the ditch, still staring at her hand in disbelief.  The mud caking her clothes and hair made laundry and a shower a foregone conclusion, which begged a few logistical questions regarding her new appendage that, for the moment, distracted her from her ongoing visual diagnostics.  As she moved to rise, she reached out her left hand unconsciously to steady herself against the trench wall, and didn’t noticed as her fingers stretched and elongated into a tripod that perfectly calibrated to balance her weight against the shifting imperfections in the ruptured earth wall.  It is rare that any human takes notice of something that occurs effortlessly.

It’s hard to say when Annabelle would have noticed the benefits of her new appendage if her rise from the trench hadn’t startled a little clique of rabbits that had been nibbling clover near the scorched earth.  They dashed rapidly across her path, startling her and offsetting her balance.  Afraid that she would take another tumble into the ditch, Annabelle’s arms wind-milled in an entirely ungraceful fashion, the brief panic of which caused her new hand to reflexively force off a few projectile stingers in the direction of the rabbits before stretching into a longer tripod to steady her on the ground.    As she stepped back to balance herself, she nodded at her long outstretched fingers before wrenching her neck in a double take. Her fingers fluidly retracted to their resting length as she flexed them, turning her wrist to regard the cool metal appendage that hummed like a serene, well tuned machine as her non-altered hand rubbed her wrenched shoulder. What else is it going to do?  She walked toward the house in a daze, limping slightly as drying mud slowly flaked from her jeans and shoes onto the driveway.

Puny Humans – Part 1: The Arm – Chapter Two

This was a serious situation, and Annabelle had put on pants for it.  Her parents’ grounds covered 10 acres, sheltered by a ring of dense woodland, and the trench stretched nearly 5 truck lengths by Annabelle’s estimation.  Smoke rose lazily from the earthen wound that ended roughly 50 feet from the pool shed, and Annabelle dutifully trudged along the length, periodically taking cell phone pictures of the damage as her mind reeled from the ramifications.  Am I supposed to call the insurance company for this?  Do we have a policy for space debris? God, I wish I lived in a van…

The trench was several yards wide and at least 8 feet deep at the furthest end. Her mind reeled over the damage, her head still fuzzy and fatigued from soreness and her recent nap failure.  As she grumbled and stomped out a small pile of smoldering pine needles, her footing slipped at the edge. The slippery, uneven ground gave way and she tumbled into the shallow ravine, gasping and whimpering futilely as her left shoulder slammed into the dense bank of earth. Immediately, Annabelle was consumed by thoughts of death.  This is it, she thought.  This is how I’m going to die, and my parents are going to come home from Barbados and bitch about the dishwasher not being unloaded and they won’t even find my body next to this stupid space rock until they call a landscaper.  She continued to think this way, certain that her life was about to come to an end in this undignified fashion, even as she lifted herself quite easily to her feet, brushing the grass and loam from her Spiderman t-shirt.  As she rolled her shoulder, wincing at the growing inflammation and the bruise that was certain to form, her eyes traveled along the ground until they reached the source of the slowly ebbing smoke trails.

The black orb was surprisingly small, she thought.  The violet hued chrome shimmered in the spring sunlight, an oblong sphere buried firmly in the recessed earthen bank it had carved into the lawn.  Like a shiny, stretched out bowling ball, Annabelle thought, especially with the three indentations toward the topside of the exposed curve that seemed candy-like and inviting to her inquisitive mind.  Brushing her shaggy hair behind her ear, Annabelle reached out her left hand, touching her fingers to the indentations and sliding them into the holes.

Instantly, Annabelle regretted her lack of impulse control.  The holes constricted hotly around her fingers, drawing her palm down onto the orb.  As the chrome scorched her hand, she winced and screeched from surprise and pain.  Who touches a smoking space rock?  Who?  She squirmed, and groaned as the orb’s firm grasp of her hand wrenched her shoulder anew, sending a hot pain coursing down her arm.  As she groaned and helplessly relaxed her pull on the orb, she could feel the metal’s heat calm to a soothing, healing warmth against her blistering skin.  The permeating anesthetic relaxed her muscles and gave way to   She sank to her knees in front of the orb, her arm stretching above her as the metal clung to her fingers and swiveled in the earth to follow her decline, humming serenely to life and seeming to glow with a light that slowly throbbed in response to the aching pain in her shoulder.

The passage of time was a moot point.  Her vision went white as the blood rushed from her head, and she numbly leaned her body against the earthen wall, her hair filling with crumbling dirt as her head rested, heedless and overwhelmed.  The warmth traveled down her arm, slowly enveloping it in a comforting sort of embrace as the metal’s vibrations hummed deep into her bones and her shoulder socket.  Her awareness only really returned when the sensation stopped, her hand was released, and she felt her arm slowly slide down the wall of the trench.

The sun was setting as her eyes blinked open.  Her gaze traveled upward, past the wall of dirt to the lawn, where she came face to face with a confused young fawn, a few long strands of grass hanging from its mouth, mid chew.  She blinked and stared for a beat before slowly beginning to rise, and the startled creature bolted into the woods, kicking a solid clump of what she hoped was dirt at her face as it departed.  She gasped and lifted her hands to her face, rubbing the dirt away unconsciously, but as her vision cleared and she pulled her hands away, her eyes widened in disbelief at the sight of her hand.

Annabelle had never had the kind of unconditional love for her body that all of the post women’s-lib empowerment rhetoric told her that she had to have in order to be a complete person.  Frankly, she kind of thought that that sort of self-aggrandizement was a kind of mental disorder and that promoting unattainable goals that left women feeling psychologically and humanly inadequate was really just another kind of social control, but she didn’t work for a publication, and as long as her blog hits stayed in the teens, she didn’t figure her opinion was going to ring true with the post-feminist world at large..  As it was, she’d always worried about the mannish dimensions of her hands and fingers.  Their stubbiness affected her view of her femininity, which gauged her self-esteem like an ice pick. So it was the length of the fingers on her left hand that first caught her attention as her blurry vision started to focus again.  Graceful and tapered, her hand and fingers seemed like a portrait she would show a cosmetic hand surgeon, though much larger than she might have liked.  Larger, and shinier it seemed.

Puny Humans – Part 1: The Arm – Chapter One

Annabelle pressed play on her Mystery Science Theater video before rolling over and attempting to sleep.  Since her divorce, since she’d finished school, since any number of life events that had occurred before the moment in which she found herself, she was largely unable to fall asleep without some sort of background noise.  A not uncommon problem, most turn to simulated rain or nature sounds, but Annabelle had long felt that the witty repartee between comical robots and the captive human test subject with whom they had been launched into space was a more fitting lullaby. Especially since she was taking a nap at one in the afternoon on a weekday.

Annabelle wasn’t really a loser, but she sure looked like one from the outside.  90% of all losers are really just suffering from a bad case of burnout, as was Annabelle’s case.  Fibromyalgia was a vicious circle of pain, depression, and fatigue that generally culminated in a caffeine and sugar coma under a comforting blanket of cheeto dust as her tired hand lurched to manipulate the computer mouse that set her Sims on fire and deleted the ladders from their pools.  Torturing the imaginary was a common mode of self-medication for the post-Gen-X depressive.

Annabelle had walked out on a husband who fell rather solidly within the 10% margin of the loser-sphere, after which she moved back in with her parents and enrolled in college.  She was older than most students when she summarily went back to school, but also much smarter, and now she did have a college degree which goes a long way toward proving ones incongruence with loser-dom.

Said efforts sadly bore her little fruit, however, thanks to a post graduation job market that found many denizens of the once stable middle class staggeringly close to fighting one another for meat in their manicured cul-de-sacs.  Her hopes of post-graduate study were similarly desolate in an academic climate devoid of grant funding, and as such, her mental labors these days largely consisted of comparative analysis of the gender role expectations expressed in later seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Annabelle was fortunate enough at least to have wealthy parents with whom she could continue to live.  Wealthy parents who traveled quite a bit, leaving her alone in a very large, remotely situated house.  The experience was luxurious, but the lack of true independence did little to bolster her fractured self-esteem.  So it was from beneath elegant down comforters and high thread count sheets, into which she had retreated in defeat, that the faint whistle in the sky above her parents’ house first irritated Annabelle from her malaise.  Initially, she merely grumbled and rolled over in bed to turn up her volume.  But as her hand touched the speaker knob to drown out the incursion, the house began to shake, and the whistle enveloped her for a few seconds that felt like several minutes as her bed jostled and framed artwork swung and fell from their wall moorings, culminating in a loud, but dull shearing sound that was followed by a hot metallic groaning that sounded to Annabelle like some kind of vehicle ripping itself apart in the yard.

Wide awake, with a harsh cramp in her side, Annabelle sat upright and stared out her window at the deep, smoking trench that had been cut into her parents lawn.