The Last Christmas On Earth

EPISODE V-8

"Please, Mrs. Murphy, leave me! I told you I'm not a veterinarian," Adam said, full of exasperation.

"Help me, please, help me," the old woman began to repeat, shouting and crying, and at that point he looked around, distressed. Probably, if he had still stalled the cat would have died, and if someone had witnessed that desperate act he would have the whole town against him. Aware that he had no other choice, he slipped the key from the lock and followed her.

"Lead the way," he said brusquely to the woman, pulling the door towards him.

"Helen, we have to go now," Luke said, but she didn't answer because she was continuing to spell something she had just read in Harry's medical file.

"Helen, what's the matter with you?" We need to get out of here right away! "He urged her to move, placing an arm over her shoulder, but this time she didn't seem to hear it either.

"Helen, will you listen to me? We must get the hell out of here!" Luke snapped, turning around to face her, and only then realized she was sobbing.

"Helen ... what happened?"

Without answering, she shook herself, quickly replaced the medical file and ran to the stairs.

Dr. Parker had found Miao blissfully sprawled on the couch and in perfect health, so much so that he hadn't even had to give him an injection. Mrs. Murphy had insisted until she was exhausted to visit him anyway and had finally managed to get rid of both after a tiring push and pull. Coming back to Cain he found him sitting on the sidewalk, furious for the long wait he had to endure and for a lot of other reasons.

"Wait!" Adam barred his pace opening the door.

"Are you joking? What the hell I have to wait for?" He said more and more annoyed, he was anxious to adjust the air-conditioning of the clinic at full capacity and to place himself under it.

"I have to check something."

"Can I know what all these secrets are? You've really become paranoid," Cain told him, standing in the doorway while he walked into the study.

"Shut up, please," Adam silenced him, looking at him sternly as a father looks at his disrespectful son, then went off to continue the inspection.

"If you had forgotten, there is a helicopter waiting for me, ready to leave me on a platform in the middle of the Atlantic," Cain insisted, "and those of the Under Water Explorations don't like to wait. If we don't make a move, they might even decide to start the expedition without me, and you know that it would be a disaster."

"This will not happen, you are the leader of the expedition and they would never leave without you."

The other snorted repeatedly, considering whether to leave anyway or not because all those stories had bored him.

"Anyway it's all right, now you can come in."

"Finally ... do you want to explain to me what happened?"

"We've just had visits," Parker explained to him, handing him the small detector that had slipped out of Luke's Bermuda pocket when he leaned over to put the rug back. Not at all worried, turned on the PC to watch the recordings made by the security camera; he was sure that his prerogative to know how to exploit even the most negative unexpected events for his own benefit would soon have given him a fantastic idea.

"Hey, this is a pager that comes with the Men in Black," Cain said thoughtfully.

"Don't worry, that thing hasn't come here the way you believe it."

"... so what?"

"Do you want to finish with all these questions once and for all? You've gotten worse than your mother, you won't let me breathe!" Muttered Adam annoyed. Cain replied with a look full of resentment, he had not like that comparison.

"Eureka!" His father exclaimed soon after, he had found the song he was looking for just when the idea took shape in his head. He saved the recording on a floppy disk, then opened the diary and calmly wrote an e-mail address on a post-it note while Cain kept staring at him in silence, his hands on his hips and his eyes almost out of their sockets due to anger. Adam applied the sticky note to the disk and dropped it in a drawer, then bolted the door and went to peel off the ancient atlas painted on sheepskin. He carefully removed the frame. With the aid of a paperweight, he removed an invisible stopper from the lower splint and then gently shook it: a small golden key wrapped in a cloth came out and fell on the table. Cain looked bewildered at his father, he would never have believed him capable of hiding an object of such immense value in such a banal place.

"The key ..." he murmured, watching it fascinated.

"The Key that opens the Stargate," Adam said as he wore it around his neck like a necklace. Cain hadn't seen it for a very long time, he put it in the palm of his hand to weigh it, and turned it over in his fingers, fiddling with it, then spread the elastic collar of his open-work shirt and let it fall inside.

"Now we have to go downstairs and get to work right away, it's time for a gigantic clear-out," Adam told him, pushing the carpet aside to open the trap door.

"I'm sorry, but you had to hurry up the moment I told you, my pager is vibrating and I have to leave immediately, or I can say goodbye to my mission," Cain replied, walking toward the door.

He looked at him pissed off but said nothing, went to close the door again and then slipped into the trap door, muttering that it was always the same story: it was always his turn to do the dirty work.

Luke had chosen an outdoor table at Time Out Pub to wait for James. Helen had followed him like a robot and sat down next to him. As hours were passing, the attendance to the Festival had grown exponentially in number; indeed, at that time the jetties and streets of Rockland were invaded by a real swarm of people. Along the boardwalk, at every step, they could meet acrobats and mimes, waders and dudes masked by lobster or prawn to amuse kids. There was also a man who was already drunk lying on the flower beds, he had made a feast of Black Tiger in hot sauce accompanied by the aperitif and he was now dozing under the hot sun, waiting to digest and then start again. Luke curiously scanned all that circus wondering what was so funny about walk in such chaos. However, he did not mind looking at the girls who were walking in bikinis and the ones lurking in the corners of the streets to distribute smiles and flyers.

"It is really a mess ..." he commented pointing to Helen the stream of people, yet attempting to bring her back to Earth, but again she didn't answer. Luke turned to see if she was still sitting next to him and found that she was indeed there, but in reality, it was as if she wasn't there. In the short journey that separated the center of the town from the coast, she had completely died out and now she stood motionless staring at the sea without even blinking, bent forward with her elbows resting on her knees continuing to spell incomprehensible words. If it hadn't been for the drops of sweat that from time to time oozed from her chin and for some sporadic nervous contraction of the muscles on her face that reflect her inner agony, she would probably have even seemed embalmed.

"Damn Helen ... what's going on with you?" He asked feeling sorry for her and gently placing his hand on her arm. Except for an imperceptible movement of her head in denial, she did not react, she remained closed in her silence continuing to wonder if what she had seen in the laboratory was true or if it was not rather the fruit of her tired mind, because as far as she knew what she had read about that medical record was humanly impossible to achieve. Humanly, indeed. And yet that had seemed to her the clear confirmation that the imaginary pregnancy she had had so many years before had not been so imaginary eventually, as indeed it had not only been the fruit of her imagination all the nightmares in which she was lying on a bed under a blinding light. Now that she had visited that basement, her dreams had definitely taken on the connotation of real memories. But after all, even forcing herself to relegate it to the depths, in order not to have to deal with issues that are too difficult to understand, that awareness had been carried around for years.

However, even in the midst of all that mental chaos, she had found a positive fact: now she was finally able to understand the special bond she had always felt towards Harry. Besides, she also understood why, knowing that he was always present in her nightmares, she had never managed to see even a shadow of him.

Wearing that ridiculous gray jumpsuit, the heavy helmet to protect herself from Willy's telepathic waves and the computerized backpack overflowing with sensors loaded on her shoulders, who looked like a being from another galaxy at that moment was Margareth. She had been standing at the entrance of the Studio for at least ten minutes, and now she was performing breathing exercises in an attempt to calm herself down; meanwhile, Willy was patiently waiting for her standing over the door with his hands clasped behind his back. In the previous days, each of the girl's teammates had carried out their duty very well, now it was up to her to try to capitalize their efforts and put them to good use, to complete the absolutely most important part of the whole mission, that was establishing a rational communication code with Willy. She knew that she had nothing to fear from him, he had proved docile and sociable and, above all, willing to relate to them. In the days before he had done gymnastics with Carbel, he had tested the biomedical machines designed by Lia, he had let Summerfield explain to him with his charts the functioning of his new home. He had even decided to stop walking naked and had finally begun to wash up seriously. But although they had supplied him with the most fragrant and expensive bubble baths on the market, his glands continued to produce a very strong sulfur smell, so that in order to fix this, some scientists had equipped themselves with cotton swabs to put in their nostrils before coming into contact with him. Margareth shook herself and looked back over the glass, it was time to ask Willy what he had come for on planet Earth and she hoped with all her heart that she would not disappoint Professor Hamilton and the Team.

"Come on, nothing bad will happen to you. In fact, he'll probably like you much more than the rest of us, if only because you're the only one he can chat with," Lia Robson encouraged her, winking at her.

"Yes, Lia is right," agreed John Litterman, nodding. "Come on, it's your moment of glory. Now go to him and let the Terrans make a good impression!" He added, patting her on the back.

James gave the last directions to his colleagues in the second round, then left the colonnade of the Main Lighthouse Museum, where he had taken refuge in search of a bit of coolness, and finally joined Helen.

"So, what's so urgent?" He questioned her cutting to the chase, he was still angry with her for giving him that morning on duty Benelli as a partner.

In addition to being able to keep Benelli away, he had to fight against a million bores, against Andy's words that were still repeating in his head and against that terrible heat; he had really risked messing his head. Helen pointed to the free chair inviting him to join them.

"Thank you, but I prefer to stay standing, if I sit down my sweat will stick my pants to my buttock and I will get a nerve attack."

"James, please sit down," Helen insisted in a voice that seemed to come from far away, but which had all the taste of an order. He snorted and moved the vacant chair into a cone of shadow.

"So, can you tell what the hell is going on?" He asked again as he sat down right on the edge of the chair, propping up his legs and avoiding leaning back, to let a minimum of air circulate around his torso.

"We have been in Dr. Parker's doctor's office," Luke informed him.

"What are you talking about, he was here until recently ... did you sneak in?" Echoed James looking at Helen. She shrugged, continuing to follow the evolution of the colored sail of a Kite Surf with her eyes.

"We were there when that little metal box started ringing, the closer we got to the door and the more it played," Mc January justified himself, spreading his arms.

"I didn't ask you!" James hissed, then turned back to her. "Well?" He insisted, looking her straight in the eyes, but she looked away and went back to contemplating the sea, struggling to push back her tears.

"Helen, please ..." James insisted uselessly. Then he turned to Luke spreading his arms. "I can't stay here all day! Come on, let's hear what's the important thing you need to tell me," he urged, banging his hands on his thighs in a gesture of restlessness.

"A secret laboratory is hidden under the doctor's office ..." Luke began to say.

"A secret laboratory?" James echoed, straightening in his chair.

"Take it easy, do you want everyone to hear us?" Mc January reproached him. James nodded, bringing a hand to his mouth and he went on explaining.

"It's very strange, down there are stacks of centuries-old stuff mixed with futuristic machinery, a surgery room, and a prison."

"Are you kidding me?"

"You don't know how much I wish I were, trust me," she found the strength to say before finally letting her go off a liberating cry.

"Helen, please pull yourself together ... we're putting on a show," James said. Several passers-by stopped to watch the scene. Helen wiped her eyes and blew her nose, then spoke again.

"Meg and Toby are locked up there ..."

"Meg and Toby?" He said more and more skeptically.

"Yes, and with them, there are also the two false journalists from the other night. And then..."

"... And then?" James asked, looking at her, puzzled.

"And then we found some replicants of Eve and Dr. Parker. And then ..." she continued with a tremor in her voice that caused a shiver down James's back, more and more confused, "and then Harry" she wanted to say, but she cut short the sentence in the middle because she was about to start crying again.

"That's impossible," said James.

"But it's all true," said Mc January, "there are also the clones of two other people we don't know, but they are present in some of my photographs, one is a blond boy and the other ..." he was continuing, but with a killer look, James forced him to keep quiet. He thought back to the meeting he had just with Cain and Andy's words and something terrible started to shake him inside. He didn't want to surrender to the evidence and to the fear that something terrible was coming down on them, something to overwhelm them definitively.

"This is impossible," he said, more determined to convince himself than to respond to them.

"But it's all true," Luke confirmed once more with a nod. "If I told you what else we saw down there you wouldn't believe me."

"And in fact, I don't believe you! I don't believe both of you, and I don't know for what purpose you invented this senseless story," James said, leaping to his feet to leave.

"Toby died last week," he said to Helen, pointing at her index finger, "and you know very well that Meg went to see her sister in Wisconsin because you told me yourself. As for you, Luke Mc January, instead of staying as good as promised, you involved also the Sheriff in your absurd fantasies. Do you realize that if someone had seen you sneaking into the clinic, you could have lost your job?"

"Helen is an adult and vaccinated woman, she is perfectly capable of deciding with her head and I didn't force her to do anything," Mc January replied laconically. James instinctively raised an arm to hit him, but the knowledge that they had a lot of pairs of eyes on them made him stop.

"Please James, calm down," Helen murmured, starting to sob again, and he looked at them seriously, shaking his head.

"It's all true, you have to believe me ..." Helen pleaded, but he remained impassive.

"James, listen to me, there's a mountain of documents downstairs. And on some of those documents, it is written that Eve ..."

"I'm fed up," shouted James so loudly that he caught the attention of passers-by again, "I'm really tired! Did you hear me? I'm sick and I don't care! I do not know what you have in your head, you and this other visionary" he went on more stubbornly than ever, denying reality "but that's enough. You must leave me and my wife alone. That's my family, do you understand?

It is my family and no one will be able to destroy it," he growled through clenched teeth, then he walked away cursing the whole world that was conspiring against him and Helen and hid his face in his hands.

"What do we do now? Are we going to ask for the warrant?" Luke proposed.

"Leave me alone," said Helen without looking at him.

"But..."

"I said you have to leave! Leave me alone!"

"But what about those poor people?"

"Let them all go to hell."