Hugh Howey - Machine Learning

I tried to explain this to whoever would listen, but they would only lock me up for my troubles. They would lock me up before I ever got the chance to heed those voices the way Lieutenant Randall had. I was locked up years later and therefore not a part of that massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, which put an end to the war with our red kin. I was locked up while more cattle went missing and a great sickness swept the land, millions and millions of people dying like my brother had. It has not yet come, this thing from the east that whispers for me to clear the land in preparation. It has not yet come. But something stirs and will talk to those crazy enough to look and listen. There is something across that dark sea, across that expanse of space that men saner than me say no one will ever cross, but I wager my red brother thought the same thing of the deep blue Atlantic that lapped their former shores—and here we are. We who hailed from the east, who came from that rising sun too bright to see, who came first with scouts across the pitch-black, standing tall and ignorant and proud atop some deadly ridge.

Very few of my stories came as assignments or via writing prompts. Most are ideas that have been percolating for a long time. I enjoy the luxury of writing whatever seizes me, rather than being stuck writing the same type of story over and over. “Hell from the East” was different. I was invited to submit something for an anthology, and the stories needed to be “weird Western.”

I’ve always been a fan of this genre, which makes it strange that I’d never explored it on my own. The TV show Firefly is a weird Western in a way. Science fiction is the new frontier, a role that Westerns used to play. And survival on the edge will mean relying on cobbled-together technology, being in sparsely populated areas, and a dive back into lawlessness at times.

The theme I wanted to explore with this story is the idea of alien invasion and the settling of the New World. There’s a legend that some Native American tribes would raid during the rising sun and ride in from the east, so they were hidden in the glare of the sun. This got me thinking of how Europeans arrived from the east, and kept arriving from the east, conquering, stealing land, spreading disease. They had bizarre machines and gadgets. They arrived on strange ships. Europeans were the alien invasion.

In this story, the invasions are nested. As we push west, there’s a different threat coming. And you can only see it if you stare into the sun.

In the Long Ago, there was a beast who couldn’t be caught. She roamed the woods by a small village, where the men would hunt for her and the women would lay traps for her, but the beast could not be caught. She taunted them from the tree line in their own tongue, calling out her eternal threat of “Just wait.”

“Just wait,” she would screech, over and over, trying to scare them. She would fly through their hunting parties and their traps, laughing and mocking them, “Just wait.”

One day, an old man from the village was fetching water down by the stream when the beast came close, as she was fond of doing. The man ignored the beast. He no longer had fear in his heart for her. Despite the many close calls of his youth and her eternal threats, she had never done him any lasting harm.

Standing on the rocks that jutted out over the stream, he lowered his bucket toward the distant gurgling far below, passing the braided rope through his wrinkled hands. While the swaying bucket descended through the air, the beast came closer, her belly to the grass, her breathing audible.

The man let the currents of the stream catch the rim of the bucket and waited for it to be filled no more than halfway; he could stand to hoist no more. Snapping it from the foam, he pulled the bucket hand over hand and set it on a flat moss-covered rock. He wheezed from the effort while the beast crept closer, her shoulders down, her tail slicing the air.

The old man knew the beast was there. He ignored her, but being so close reminded him of younger days, days spent chasing this beast who could not be caught, his hands swishing at air, her screeching laughter, him and his friends in the dirt, hugging nothing. And now the black beast was nearer than ever, taunting him, and he knew in his old bones that he had one lunge yet.

Smiling to himself, remembering what it felt to be young and lithe and full of power, he smeared his feet into the moss, working his toes into their soft grip. Slowly, ever so slowly. He bent his knees and reached for the bucket as if to carry it off. The water inside was still moving. Joints creaked like bent wood, and he saw in the bucket a wrinkled reflection of himself. With one hand, he unknotted the long fetching rope from the bucket. “Just once more,” he whispered to his bones. “Like old times.”

The fetching rope was salty as he placed it between his teeth. Behind him, he could hear the animal creeping closer, attempting to torment him with her shadowy presence.

Whirling, the old man leapt for the beast. He was airborne again, flying, arms wide, eyes taking in the whole world. He saw the black fur on the beast ripple with alarm, saw the tail drop, the paws splay in the dirt, the head jerk as it prepared to run, but then he was on her, catching what couldn’t be caught. They rolled to the ground. The old man scrambled to the beast’s back and wrapped his legs around her midsection, hooking his feet together. His arm went across her neck where it was impossible to bite. The rope went quick around one paw, and then another. Old hands make the best knots. Her back legs were looped with the rest of the rope, all of it done in a moment.

The beast screeched madly and bit at the air, but she could not move. The old man looked from her heaving ribs to the roofline of the village far up the hill. Someone would have to come for him, he thought. He imagined the stories they would tell, his children and grandchildren. They would be telling this story forever.

“What of you, beast?” he asked. He rested on his knees. One of the beast’s dark eyes swiveled his way. “Long have you mocked us, and yet here you are.”

The beast stopped biting the air and seemed to smile. The old man had taken note of her reach, the limit of her snarling mouth. He did not fear her and moved closer, double-checking his knots.

“They said you couldn’t be caught,” the old man wheezed. The knots were secure. He had done it. He searched himself for injury, for some claw mark, but found none.

“Who says?” the beast asked, with that voice that had all the years taunted and promised so much.

“Everyone,” the old man replied. He looked down at her black fur, gleaming in the sunlight. The day was brighter, his head lighter from the exertion.

“And what do they know of me?” the beast asked, her voice subdued.

The old man said nothing. He looked back to the village, wondering how long it would take for someone to notice he had not returned.

“I will tell you what of me,” the beast hissed.

The old man turned.

“Come,” she said. Her tongue slid out and smoothed her whiskers. “Bend low and I will tell you of this chase we make.”

The man laughed, but he was indeed curious to hear. He glanced back toward the village, saw the bucket and felt suddenly thirsty, but he bent closer to the animal’s smiling teeth, remembering well their range and keeping out of it.

“Tell me your story,” the old man said. He was dizzy with the opportunity to know the unknown. “Start at the beginning.”

“It is not my story I tell,” the beast said. “And I know nothing of beginnings.”