Now This
by Norm Burnett
"Good lord!" I said.
I rose and paced about the room. Could it have been my antennae? I knelt and peered into the screen. I saw clearly that other people were scurrying around behind the announcer. I could see them easily, as they all wore bright clothing. The man reiterated his announcement and seemed to grow even more desperate. I think he said he would stop at nothing, and he would move heaven and earth by midnight Sunday, and just then a man shoved a piece of paper into his hand, and he signed it, and the man ran off!
I worried about the little woman. She was out there somewhere, in traffic. What if there was a massive tie-up, what if exit routes became blocked? I pondered the dire ramifications of this fast-breaking news story.
Minutes passed. I needed a drink. There was only one big orange left in the house, and I gulped it. Just as I finished, the front door flew open and the little woman burst into the room.
"You made it!" I shrieked. "I was beginning to--"
"I made it," she said, slumping. "The traffic was bad, but it's always bad, like our hosts said it would be."
"The news! Have you--"
"I heard it on the radio." Her voice was calm, but grim.
"A simulcast?" I was surprised: Radio, TV together usually spelled music of some kind, usually of a higher order. But not straight prose. I had observed that nuance early on. "Tell me what you heard, exactly!"
"He--the man--was shouting. There were muffled voices in the background. I heard car doors slam. Then squealing tires. He said--he said--Sunday may be too late! He said--come on down here! Just like that!"
"I'm not leaving this house! Not me!"
"But he needs help! You can see he needs help! What if everybody--"
"It could be a trick!"
"You think so? What should we do--I feel so helpless, so guilty...." She became silent.
I began pacing as before. Suddenly the TV flickered brightly, the sound once again boomed against the walls. We jumped--turned toward the screen.
"Good lord!" I said.
"My God, it's spreading!" she said.
Somehow a huge pile of oriental rugs had become animated, cascading with frightening speed from the rear of a large ugly room to the front of that room. A man with a bristling black mustache was shouting: "...planeload...court order...must go...bankruptcy...staying open for you NOW...must not miss this...." Such random words and phrases I heard, but could make little sense of them.
I tried to get a grip. "What do you mean, spreading? Is that man the polizei? Is he an official? Why are they all trying to concentrate us downtown?" But the little woman just sat and stared. Then, as suddenly as he appeared, the mustachioed man disappeared from the TV screen. The noise abated. Once again the audio and the video resumed a dim, mindless mumble:
"Mmmm...Buzzz...cops, cars, teens...more cops...buzzz...FREEZE!...buzzz...teens talking smutty...buzzz...cops with personal problems...mmmm...car off a cliff, slow motion, fireball...buzzz." I knew it was fiction, it didn't bother me, it was of no consequence. Our hosts, indeed, before they left on vacation, even while looking dully at what they called "sitcoms," would say, "There's nothing on." Of course there is, I would argue. But later I comprehended.
"We'll leave a note.'
"What?" I said. The little woman had looked up from her reverie, then spoke suddenly and forcefully.
"A note. To our hosts. We're leaving, H.G. The first solar shuttle out of here tomorrow. It's a local, it stops at Moonbase One, but we're going." She swelled her two-foot frame, clenched her jaw, and set to writing.
I didn't argue. The sudden conscription of Earth's citizens in urban used car lots and tacky warehouses was wholly unexpected, and I was a two-and-a-half foot bundle of nerves. "I'll pack," I said. "It'll be good to get back home again. I miss the red dust at sunset. In fact, I miss the whole planet!"
--H.G., the son of Wells
15 Canal Way
Redstone City
Mars 22307