Martin Greenberg - The Future We Wish We Had

“Yeah, I know it,” I said. “Got any friendly neighborhood aliens with spaceships to stop by and pick me up? I could use a lift.”

After the few seconds’ timelag, Devon would smile at my corny joke, since we had both loved that story, published when we were kids, of an alien rescuing a stranded astronaut. Where was a good alien when you needed one?

“We’re seeing what we can do,” Devon said. “And don’t give up hope just yet. We’re still working on this.”

“Sure,” I said. “Has it got out to the press yet?”

“No,” Devon said. “We’ve kept a lid on this for the moment, and no one’s paying any attention. It was just a regular day for you guys out there.”

“Yeah, real regular,” I said. “After you guys finally figure out that my goose is cooked, I’d like to talk to Tammie.”

“Copy that,” Devon said, nodding, as if my request didn’t just go in. “We’ll be back in a half hour.”

With that, the screen again went dead.

“He sure trusts that I’m still going to be here,” I said out loud. My voice echoed in the empty control room.

I sat back and stared out the front port at all the twisting shadows cutting out the stars and then blinking them back on as they moved past, a slow-motion light show.

I glanced at the clock that told me what time it was in Phoenix where Tammie and I lived. Five in the morning. She would still be asleep. What horrible news to wake up to.

We had built a wonderful home on top of a rock ledge overlooking the green fairways of a private golf course that wound through the rocks and cactus in the valley below us. Actually, Tammie had built it while I was on one of my Mars runs. And I didn’t play golf, but that scene was so beautiful, I had decided I liked the place.

I commuted to Houston, being home on most weekends when I could and when I was on the ground.

Last time I was home, Tammie said she had learned how to play golf, had been taking lessons. She said she really loved it. I had planned on joining her on the links after this mission, although, to be honest, I just couldn’t see myself being happy doing nothing but that. I wanted to move into test piloting some of the new suborbital planes being developed.

I stared out the viewport. I just hoped all the drifting shadows out there gave me enough time to at least say goodbye.

Suddenly, a very large shadow seemed to block out all of the stars in front of the viewport. I could see nothing in the pitch black, and the brains back at Mission Control had just never thought that headlights on these ships were worth the expense.

Looks like I wasn’t going to get to say goodbye to anyone.

I braced myself and held my breath.

Nothing happened.

The shadow remained in front of me, covering every star as if someone had just put them all out like candles on a cake.

Then there was a slight tingling in my arms and legs, and the next moment I found myself standing, facing my best friend.

Devon was sitting in a huge, ornate throne that seemed to fill a very strange, very massive chamber covered in ornate drawings and strange lights of red and blue and purple. It felt like you could put a basketball court in the space and still leave room for a lot of spectators around the edges.

He was wearing the same clothes he had been wearing on the communications link.

And he was the only one in the chamber besides me.

I stood there, staring, trying to grasp what I was seeing, but my mind felt numb.

Nothing made sense, nothing felt right. Even the air smelled of great age, not burnt wires.

“Sorry it took so long, buddy,” he said, smiling. “We had to make sure the situation really was as bad as it seemed.”

“I’m dead. It doesn’t get any worse.”

My voice sounded just damn silly and was swallowed like so much silence in the massive chamber.

“To the rest of the world, yes.” Devon said. “The Klondike, in about two minutes, will be completely destroyed by the impact from a four-meter wide asteroid.”

“But…?”

I stared around, trying to figure out a pattern in the strange lights, then back at Devon, the pitiful question sort of hanging there.

“But what’s all this?” Devon asked, indicating the vast chamber around us. “This is the Peace-Maker, on loan to us for missions like this from the aliens everyone in the tabloids refer to as the Grays.”

I nodded. “Now I know I’m dead. Or being gassed by some environmental leak.”

“Well, this is the future we always wanted,” Devon said, laughing. “Remember as kids how we used to dream about going to the moon, going to Mars, exploring out here and beyond? And finding friendly aliens to help us along the way? Well, they found us.”

“ Roswell?” I asked, shaking my head at the stupidity of my question.

“Actually far before that. Roswell was just an accident with one of their small training ships as we were trying to learn how to fly them.”

“Come on, Ben,” I said to myself. “Wake up. You’ve got to wake up, check the gas levels. You’re hallucinating.”

“Yeah, I didn’t believe it either,” Devon said. “But the truth is, you’re alive, but to everyone else, you are officially dead and you can no longer show yourself to anyone. You’ll either live and work at Area 51 or on the base on Titan.”

“Titan? We have a base on Titan?”

“Actually, the Grays do, and they let us use parts of it. The Grays will be returning for their next visit to our system in twenty-three years, and we’d like to impress them with our progress. You’re going to be a great help to us. We need some experienced test pilots for some new deep spacecraft we’re testing.”

I wanted to slap myself, but didn’t. This was one hell of a hallucination for a dying person.

Devon reached out and touched something in the blank air in front of him, and half the wall to my right vanished, showing me the blackness of space and the Klondike floating there. I could see the extensive damage from the two impacts. For such a proud ship, it looked very, very sad and small and helpless.

“Coming in from the right,” Devon said, his voice clearly upset by what was happening and what had happened to the rest of the crew.

I stood there, transfixed, watching what I was sure was my own death as the shadow seemed to appear out of nowhere suddenly, then smashed into the Klondike, ripping it apart and sending pieces swirling off in many different directions.

“You are now officially dead,” Devon said, his voice soft. “I just wish I had gotten here in time to save the others from real death as well. But we thought the repair plan would work.”

I stared at him, my mind still not grasping this, but I had one question that just pissed me off if anything about this dream was real.

“How come, if we have this, we let people like me go out into space on ships like that? How come we let them die?”

“Because we have to,” Devon said. “The Grays only lent us this one ship. We have to fight our own way out into space, prove that we can survive out here, that we belong out here, and that takes growth and sacrifice. We have to pay the price.”

“Five good men just paid a very heavy price,” I said, disgusted.

“Yes, they did,” Devon said. “And all six of you will have your names on the memorial in ten days, in a very large and impressive service. But what you learned out here won’t go to waste. As you discovered, there are vast riches out here, more than enough to keep the space program going for another hundred years, until we finally figure out how to reach the stars and find even greater riches.”

I glanced down, suddenly realizing my feet weren’t sticking to the floor.

“Artificial gravity?”