I walk into the office. There's a tall guy standing at my desk, his back to me, staring at a wall mounted photomosaic of Mars. He senses me and starts to turn around, while I increase my pace towards him, reaching into my jacket pocket as I close the gap. He manages to flash a badge and a smile before I flash the Saturn 5 out of my pocket and ram it hard into his chest. Right on target - his mouth goes slack and a long breath rattles out. As he staggers back against the wall, the badge dropping from his hand, I look into his eyes, but he doesn't meet my stare, choosing instead to gaze very blankly in the general direction of my bookcase. The rattle stops and he's dead, his legs buckling. I follow him to the floor, hanging onto my Saturn 5, not wanting it to be twisted out of his chest - it's a good plug and I don't want blood on my carpet. I'm considering where to stash the body when the phone trills. I sweep it up in one smooth movement.
"Hi, this is Colonel Parker." I catch sight of myself in the mirror. I look good. I look fucking great.
"Sorry Colonel, I had a Mr. Kempner from the FBI in here just now talking about that death threat. He wanted to ask you some questions. Has he found you yet?"
Only by violently kicking my left shin with my right heel and biting my left index finger do I manage to stop myself screaming to whoever else is listening that I'm going to stab them repeatedly with a fucking moonrocket until their body is drained of every last drop of blood.
"Um...no, I haven't seen Mr...ah...Kempner...did you say death threat, Jimbo?" I pick up the remote as I talk and fire up my wall mounted Bang & Olufsen.
"Yes sir. Some loon who thinks that anyone talking to aliens should be macheted into little pieces. You're the main man Colonel, so this guy wants to start with you. Guess the Feds have gotta follow it up."
Jimbo's tone implied that the notion of me hacked into little pieces by a mouth foaming religious fundamentalist was staggeringly funny. Fucking moron. I briefly imagine plucking out Jimbo's eyes with the Saturn 5 and feeding them to my angel fish, before relenting and making a mental note to have the retard fired instead.
"Yeah, I guess they do. Thanks for the call, Jimbo. No more now, OK? I gotta put my best suit on, gotta date with the alien, remember? I'll speak to Mr. Kempner if I see him." Laughing, I cut the connection and turn to the FBI man. He's spread out on his back, a small smile on his face, the Saturn buried to the base of its second stage in his chest. I gently retrieve it. Thankfully, there's hardly any blood on the Saturn and only a slowly spreading stain on his white shirt - not enough to mess my carpet. Good. I drag the body across the office and stuff it in my toy trunk, as 53 Miles West of Venus by the B-52's flows mellifluously from my pen shaped Bang & Olufsen speakers.
Once, in 1976, the skin of the Viking 2 lander was burnished smooth. Today, it is pitted and scarred, the result of over thirty years bombardment by micrometeorites and abrasive Martian dust. No longer alien in appearance, the lander now looks like a relic of the extinct Martian civilisation that it once came to seek. Bent, battered and long dead, the Viking's parabolic antenna aims beyond the pink sky of Mars and towards a point in the heavens traversed by Earth during its journey around the sun. But the home planet is no longer listening.
Later, suited up and almost ready, I gaze through the west window of the observation deck at the swollen redness of the late afternoon sun. Through the opposite window, I observe my waiting shuttle, less than three kilometres away. I know the shuttle to be a pure white creature, but the setting sun has mutated it into a bloodied and vengeful bird of death. Different rays of light from the same sun easily penetrate the window and add colour to my wall mounted print of Escher's Castrovalva. There are no people in this picture, just a barren hillside and empty buildings. A babble of voices floats upwards from the waiting phalanx of press, whose defences I must now penetrate to reach the sanctuary of the shuttle. I consider Simpson, with his insane plan to convert the dead beauty of Mars into a festering cesspit of humanity and I'm able to put my own madness into a cool perspective. Simpson's dead now, but his kind are too numerous and I can't stop them on my own. It's my good luck that the Enkassans chose to announce themselves at this critical juncture. Despite their peaceable nature, I'm sure that they have destructive capabilities. All that's required is a little provocation. I drop the Saturn 5 into my flight bag and head for the elevator.
© Dan McNeil 2000.
The Wrong Stuff was first published in Redsine, thereafter in the print edition of Alien Contact (German Translation)
