Robert Butler - Mr. Spaceman

It is empty. But it would be, if this is the dream. Still, I glide to the machine. I move my hand. I seek the voice of Claudia Lambert recorded on Earthtime December 31, 2000. She is not here. There is no record. But she wouldn’t be. There is no reason for the dream machine’s records to correspond with the real machine’s. But why am I not waking? I stomp about the room now, moving my feet and legs like the Earthlings. I stomp and my feet flare with pain and my jaw vibrates from the blows.

I am already awake. In the empty interview room. I turn to my machine. I try once more to retrieve Claudia’s voice. It is not there. She was a dream.

My next move is clear. I go out into the corridor and down to the place where my visitors are sleeping. I go in to Claudia’s room and I find her there. I bend near her. I move my hand. She opens her eyes and turns her face to me.

She says, very softly, “Have you come for me?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Do I vaguely remember shooting my pistol?”

“Yes. But you did not hurt anyone.”

“I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry.” She sits up now and wobbles a bit. I touch her shoulder to steady her.

“You will be fine in a moment,” I say.

“Really. The irony is that I’m happy to be here,” she says. “In spite of the impression I gave. Now that I know …”

“Yes. Yes,” I say, and I find that I am beginning to flush hot inside and I do not know why, exactly.

And we go, Claudia and I, down the corridor, and she is very gracious and curious and friendly and I grow more and more agitated.

And now she is sitting before me in the interview room and she says, “What should I do?”

“Just relax,” I say, and I move my hand.

In the brief moment before we begin to speak together I realize the source of my agitation. I am afraid of the power of my dreams. And I am Claudia Lambert. And I say, I feel like I should give you a formal welcome. …

And so together, swept along by the solar wind of Claudia’s life, we spoke the words I had dreamed, precisely, she and I together, the very same words. She gave her Earth-voice to the yearning for answers to the big mysteries and now she falls silent, and I should not be afraid of my prophecy, I should perhaps try to understand it as a reading of Claudia’s mind, not unlike the exchange of thoughts between members of my own species, effected here only in this state of dreams. But I am, nevertheless, afraid. This was a different thing. I have become a different being. Different from my own species. But different, too, from the primary species of Earth. And I am afraid the prophecy may continue to be fulfilled. Are there men with torches and pitchforks just outside the door waiting for me to speak my hope for a welcome on Earth, as I had in my dream? I keep my mouth shut. In spite of the fifty-five greetings carried on Voyager, I cannot expect a cheery hello tonight.

Claudia is looking at me, intently. “Looking into your eyes, I feel like I’m dreaming,” she says.

“Did you not believe …?”

“In you? That you existed? Yes.”

“This is not a dream,” I say, and Claudia looks over my shoulder, but I think I suddenly recognize the heliopause, that boundary between my spaceman’s life and this other state, and I have just popped out of the bubble and I am heading into the vast interstellar darkness of dreams. I try to stop. I press my eyes open wide. I move my hand before my own face.

“You look tired,” Claudia says. She is focused only on me. I am awake once more.

“I am very tired,” I say.

“Can we speak again?” she asks.

“There will be a supper tonight, as the moment of the millennium approaches. My wife Edna Bradshaw is cooking even now. We can speak then.”

Claudia leans forward, her hand coming out to me. Yes, Claudia Lambert, you may have the beating of my heart. You have sought it and you shall have it. I take her hands in mine.

She watches this entwining, conscious, I am sure, of the thing I am giving her. I say, “I am glad that after our hour of conversation you want to hold hands.”

She looks at me. “Yes,” she says. “Thank you.”

And I escort her back to her space and she accepts my suggestion of rest. I pass my hand over her and I am unsteady on my feet and I glide away, into the corridor and back to my bed, and I am full of trepidation. I must sleep. This will be my first formal seeking of the state since I have begun to dream. I wonder if the formality of this will alter the dreams.

I pull back the covers and I wish that my wife Edna Bradshaw were lying down beside me, but she has prepared a way for me, even as I pull the covers up to my chinny-chin-chin. Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep if I should die before I wake … Rockaby baby on the treetop when the wind blows the cradle will rock when the bough breaks the cradle will fall … It is no wonder that the children of Earth learn to dream. They sing of death, over and over, before they sleep. They die. They fall. I hear the solar wind outside the window. I hear the soft pad of Eddie’s feet across the floor. And Dick Clark stands before me. I have never interviewed Dick Clark, but for many years I have watched him, we have all watched him, when there were others of my species on the spaceship, and we all admired Dick Clark as he emceed the latest in popular music and moved his hand over a large room and people danced and danced before him and we would, too, we spacemen, we would do the twist and the stroll and later the frug and the mashed potato, though we knew that we were pitifully inadequate, floating instead of strolling, gliding instead of mashed potatoing, but Dick Clark and all his Earth Angels, all his Teenagers in Love, who danced for him taught us many things about this world while we hovered far above, imitating the steps, knowing, however, that we were Only the Lonely, and now he is dressed in his stylish blue parka jacket and his hair is carefully coiffed around his headset and he holds a microphone and it is night and beyond him is Times Square in New York City and there is a steady roar behind his characteristically sweet and reassuring and happy words, a roar like the noise from deep space, and it is the crowd, a million strong, two million, on this special New Year’s Eve, and he draws our attention to the lighted ball on the tower at One Times Square and he explains it will descend and he turns to look over his shoulder and suddenly Dick Clark says, “Holy shit.”

And I recognize my spaceship. It is hovering over the tower.

At first glance the ball has begun to descend, but no, Dick Clark’s deep-rooted reportorial skills have been activated and he is announcing to the world this most extraordinary story.

“Ladies and gentlemen and young people everywhere,” he says into his microphone, “this is not the traditional ball descending the tower at One Times Square. Instead, a circular craft, clearly of extraterrestrial origin, has appeared and is hovering over the tower. What we see, illuminated by some unearthly unknown source, is what appears to be a spaceman. He is descending slowly from the spaceship. The whole of Times Square has seen him now. A great hush has come over the massive crowd. Listen.”

And Dick Clark points his microphone out in the direction of the crowd and he is right, the roar has ceased, there is only silence coming from the millions as they watch this figure descend from the machine.

Only I recognize the figure. I am. I am the figure ablaze there in light, moving before the tower — in precise time with the countdown to the millennium, as a matter of fact, which does not escape the notice of Dick Clark, who is announcing like he has never announced before, he is in the zone, in the flow, this is the zenith of his career — well, perhaps his first introduction of Chuck Berry, whose voice even now is flying out to the stars, representing the planet Earth to all the rest of us, perhaps that was a comparable moment for him — but this is a big scoop, off the entertainment pages, top of the news, and Dick knows it. He says, “This spaceman is actually counting in the new millennium for us — five, four …”