Author: Alexander Fawn

Over a number of months, they spoke frequently on the phone.

He worked in an office at one end of the country and she in an office at the other. From the word go they had hit it off. He always looked forward to contacting her, with her happy, sing-song voice. For her part, she looked forward to his calls, with his calm voice and friendly manner. In no time at all, their communications became quite chummy. For two people that had never actually met, they seemed to just naturally get along. This situation would have remained this way, if his manager hadn’t suggested he attend a one-day seminar in the town where she worked. He readily agreed to this and at the first opportunity, during a regular business call, gave her the news and suggested that during his lunch break they take the opportunity to meet up in a nearby café. Although he detected a slight hesitation on her part, it was arranged that they meet up at a given time and place.

On the day, it is hard to say which of them was more surprised when they met, but regardless, they found a table and settled down with a bit of small talk. After he had ordered their drinks and when the waitress had brought them to their table and when they had each overcome their mutual embarrassment, she was the first to smile.

She asked, “So, how long have you been with the company.”

“About a year now, I started straight from school,” he said.

She nodded and said, “I got the impression over the phone that you enjoy your work.”

“I do. It’s interesting and the company is good to work for.” His eyebrows went up, as he tried to keep his voice normal, he said, “And you; have you been there long?”

She giggled. “Most of my working life, actually. I retire next year.”

It was all about mood, really.

If he hadn’t been thoroughly fed up with life when it happened, things may well have turned out differently. As it was, he’d been living alone since she walked out, been made redundant and been out of work for months, was having trouble paying the bills and feeding himself, had to sell the car to make ends meet and had been seriously wondering whether it was really worth going on for quite some time. None of this was his fault. It was the world he lived in that allowed all these bad things to happen to him, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it!

He was wandering through the high street, when the event took place. Right out of the blue, the stupid woman pushing a stroller with a kid in it, stopped dead. He banged into the back of her, cursing. It took a beat or two before he realised that she had more than just stopped… she was frozen! He looked around. They were all frozen; shoppers, pedestrians, traffic, everything! The few trees that dotted the median strip through town were stark still. Not a single leave was moving. No wind. No air movement. Looking up, he watched for a while to see that the clouds were not moving. Was he having some kind of episode?

He was doing this when, out of the corner of his eye, he detected movement. The thing that approached him from across the street, weaving its way through stationary vehicles, was around his own height, extremely thin and completely grey. Straight off, he knew that it wasn’t human. The thing seemed to be wearing a neck-to-toe, matt-grey wetsuit. Its head was oddly round, with eyes that were much too big, a silly looking button of a nose and a lipless mouth that sagged a lot. In short, it was downright ugly.

Coming to a halt in front of him, the alien, it had to be an alien, seemed to be saying, “I come to you, unsolicited…”

He looked around. Everything was still frozen. “What?”

“I have studied your communication, and I come to you unsolicited. Do you understand this?”

“Well, I know about unsolicited mail, I get a load of the stuff; it drives me crazy.”

“That is good. I come to you as representative of the Galactic Council.”

He sighed. “Look mate, or whatever you are, like unsolicited mail, I’m not interested.”

The alien flapped its spindly arms slightly, before going on. “We are here to carry out the Millennial Clearing Program and it is protocol…”

“Protocol?”

More arm flapping. “It is my duty to communicate with a representative of a targeted planet…”

His hand went up, “Hang on, targeted? What the hell do you mean by that? Some nerve; you’ve got. I mean, first, everything gets stopped…”

The skinny arms being raised stopped his reprimand. With what appeared to be a slight shrug, the figure turned and made its way back through the unmoving traffic, and disappeared into the crowd across the road.

After a few short seconds, everything began to move again.

That’s how it happened… before the clearing started.

It was only meant to be a quiet walk in the countryside at the time.

The student liked to take these breaks to wander around unfamiliar parts of the tiny island he lived on. Most of the island’s inhabitants regarded it as a paradise. It was a twenty-minute journey by power boat to the mainland. The people who lived there had always regarded themselves as self-sufficient. With a population of just over a thousand, they grew all their own food.

Meanwhile, the student, not knowing he’d picked up somebody else’s water bottle during chemistry class the day before, had taken it, along with sandwiches he’d made to take on the ramble. After a couple of hours of hiking, he began to look out for a convenient lunch and rest area. Passing a farming property, he found a suitable spot to sit. Having ate most of his food, he took a swig from the bottle. However, the bitter taste made him jump, causing him to drop the bottle. The fact that it fell into the drinking trough would have no significance until later.

The trough was on land owned by a farmer. He was the only dairy farmer on the island. His farm provided all of the milk for the entire community. It was noted at a later date, that the strange behaviour of his heard of cows the following morning drew little attention at the time.

The contents of the afore said bottle turned out to be the synthetic chemical, lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD. It happens to be a substance that is both colourless and odorless, but with a bitter taste.

What followed during the next few days cannot be detailed here, owing to there being several court cases currently in progress.

It all began as soon as Marley was old enough to see the funny side of it.

Mr and Mrs Marley, Eric and Gertrude, probably thought it clever at the time, to name their son Marley. Quite naturally, Marley himself had no opinion about having Marley Marley as a name during his very early years. It was certainly of no concern to him back then that, in fact, his full name was Marley M Marley, but this was destined to change with the progress of time. Moving into young boyhood, he saw how confused people became when informed of the fact. He soon found that he could derive much pleasure by deliberately annoying people with it. He would get a kick out of seeing that look of frustration on their faces.

This form of ongoing amusement was good as far as it went. Unfortunately, there would be those occasions when somebody would ask him what his middle name was. This would all seem to fall flat when he had to explain that his middle name was Madison.

However, he knew how to fix this.

He just couldn’t wait for his next birthday to come around, at which time it would be legal for him to change his name by deed poll, without needing anybody’s consent.

Neither can he wait to be Marley Marley Marley and drive everybody nuts!

Even as a youngster, he’d been very playful.

His teachers had frequently referred to him as being irrepressible. However, he was interested in physics and eventually knuckled down to hard study… Now, in his early forties, he was a respected scientist. Within the scientific community, he was known for his fun-loving approach to his work. Here, in his small home-based laboratory, he enjoyed both the solitude and the quiet environment when immersed in a project. In the middle of his worktop, he had an array of pieces of equipment, each thing connected with a series of cables. His recent testing regime had come up with excellent results. As far as he could see, the thing was finished. Unhappily, he would have to stop playing with it, as he was nearing the point where he needed to go through the serious business of sharing the results and his incredible success with his fellow scientists.

There was a gentle knock and the door opened. His wife stuck her head in saying, “I’m just doing a sandwich for lunch. Would you like one?”

“Yes please. Cheese and pickle would be good, thanks.”

She nodded and left, closing the door gently behind her.

He had second thoughts.

He looked down at the controls for a moment before switching the thing back on. He toggled the switch to ‘Minus’, then typed ‘seconds’ into the small screen, before turning a dial to ‘15’.

He stood waiting.

There was a gentle knock and the door opened. His wife stuck her head in saying, “I’m just doing a sandwich for lunch. Would you like one?”

Supressing a smile, he said, “Yes please. Ham and tomato would be good, thanks.”

He just couldn’t help himself.

She was very young when she began texting.

As a kid, she was grateful that her parents let her have and use a mobile phone at an early age. Her mother said it was for her own safety, just in case she ever got lost. This meant that it was only her older friends that had cell phones. There were dozens of little faces that could be used, but she only used a few of these regularly. These pictures seemed to be all she required to sum up her feelings when messaging her friends. It was a lot easier and quicker than sending texts. She fell in love with their tiny coloured faces, with their different expressions. There was a whole gallery of them on her phone and she got to know every one of them.

It was much later, when she was in her early twenties, that the images came. At first, she thought they were peoples’ auras, but she came to accept that they were small puffy clouds that hovered just above a person’s head, each one containing the image of an emoji!

It was at this stage that she decided to seek medical advice. The eye specialist diagnosed that she suffered from ‘a visible manifestation of images spectrum’. It wasn’t exactly auras the she was seeing, but emojis. Images that showed the true mood and nature of the person it hovered above. It has to be said that in the main, people took it all as a joke, a prank, a windup. It was around this time that she fully realised that other people couldn’t see what she could!

This was also when, as a result of this unusual manifestation diagnosis, that reports of it began to appear in medical journals. That is when things began to heat up. First with local reporters wanting interviews, followed by the national newspapers picking up on the unusual story.

Then came the government people… they wouldn’t say what agency they were from, only that they wanted to carry out a series of studies on her. Both she and her parents could well imagine the value this strange ability would have as a useful tool in the business of spy craft, or even some kind of military application.

None of this sat well with her. So, when the time came, her parents were perfectly happy with her decision to disappear.

Within a few short days, with the aid of a fake passport provided by a visit to the dark web, a haircut and colour change performed in another town, and bags packed with several new clothes, she was ready to become invisible.

Now, with a new life and a new name, she can be found serving drinks in a beach bar in Barbados, where she has rediscovered the private enjoyment of reading her customers’ feelings, along with the newly found freedom of not doing anything with what she sees…

The boy seemed to have muddled ideas about rebirth.

He’d been getting books out of the library on the subject for some time. The staff there had been very helpful, although he had received some funny looks from time to time. He knew that a lot of people didn’t believe in it. He also knew that there were those that didn’t believe in any kind of afterlife. He did realise, that as a youngster, it wasn’t common to take any real interest in such things. In fact, he had found that any attempt to discuss coming back from the dead with his peers was a waste of time.

When discussing it with his Religious Studies teacher it became obvious that he had never really understood what he was reading.

This was made clear to him, when the teacher said, “I honestly don’t think you can say that your grandfather has returned from the dead to replace the manager of the sweet shop in town!”

There can be little doubt that his was a complicated mind.

If only the conundrum could be stated so simply. It was a puzzlement that ran continually through his thoughts; an inexplicable something that would not have been even a second thought for most. Yet, there he was, continually playing the one thing off against the other; an ongoing encounter between the values, between the two irrevocable concepts. They were continually being compared. He was forever placing each in its tray on either side of the scale. Judging the weight of either corporal entity was particularly hard. After all, although completely real, neither had any actual weight. Both were important to him. Indeed, both were unique to him, alone.

For him, it was an ongoing battle for supremacy between his reflection and his shadow.

Looking back now, it all seems to be entirely inevitable.

2019 Was the beginning of the great viral epidemic that spread throughout countries around the Earth’s planet, impacting world economy and ultimately the failure to arrest climate change.

2082 When the first test flights for the Earth-based mass-transportation ships were carried out.

2094 Saw the first fleet take off from Earth to colonise Eristatem, a world outside of the solar system.

2114 The great uprising of the Kabagion Empire took place, making its presence felt by the inhabitants of Eristatem.

2126 The ongoing wars between the Kabagions and the Belmavians ends with the Belmavian Empire establishing a regime of total rule throughout the Cygnoriogen sector, including the inhabitants of Eristatem

2160 Saw the exodus of Eristatems, leavingfor the safer planet of Victalia in the Augachian Sector.

2173 The arrival of the Belmavian ships with new demands being made of the Kabagions.

2175 Talks between the Belmavians and the Kabagions break down and the threat by Belmavia to use the Unfusion Ray was first made.

2182 Saw the full use of the Unfusion Ray to vaporise the entire area, including the old Earth and its solar system.

Eristatems, ancestors of Earth’s original inhabitants on planet Victalia in the Augachian Sector, looked on sadly as planet Earth disappeared.

People still blamed Covid.

It was only a machine, but it was aware of its environment.

As usual, it looked around and wondered why it had been put there, of all places? It knew that there were others of its kind, so much better placed; in warm corridors in hospitals, dark corners of night clubs, near the entrance in cinemas, cosey corners in bars. The list went on. Anything would be better than this, a cold, drafty platform at a railway station. The station itself served the people in the village on a line that was rarely used. Tonight was no exception. Just five travellers, stamping their feet in an effort to stay warm. None of it seemed to be doing any of them any good.

As vending machines go, it didn’t get a lot of custom. It dispensed confectionary items, nothing in the way of hot drinks. Despite this, it thought, tonight may be different. It watched as an elderly gentleman fished around in his pockets for loose change. He approached and fed coins into the slot. He looked really grumpy. He had chosen the most expensive chocolate bar the machine held and pressed the appropriate buttons. The machine paused. The mechanism that released the bar began to move, then paused. The bar sat halfway out.

At this point the old misery got even crankier and gave the machine a couple of angry thumps. The bar didn’t move. After a few more ineffectual bangs on the side of the machine, he swore under his breath and wandered off to look for a corner out of the wind. The machine gave a wicked internal snigger.

It was further gratified when it was aware of passenger number six arriving. The young lad was obviously in a hurry as he came up the steps. Walking out onto the platform, he was relieved to find others waiting. He looked up at the clock, and being more relaxed, sauntered his way to the machine. As he looked to see what was on offer, inside the machine a great deal of unseen excitement welled up.

The boy was peering in and using the sleeve of his jacket to clean the glass when it happened. The large chocolate bar dropped with a loud clatter. The noise echoed along the platform. All those waiting, heard it; including the old codger who had paid for it!

Fate would have it that, minutes later as the train pulled in, he found the boy standing next to him greedily eating the chocolate with a happy grin on his face. The old man scowled at him. The boy had no idea why, but he made sure he got into a different carriage.

As for the machine… sometimes, it just wanted a bit of fun.