The Odd and The Strange: A Collection of Very Short Fiction

The Past and The Future-1

THE PASTThey checked the probe over carefully to make sure that it functioned optimally and at full power before the largest, most ambitious, and most expensive mission ever to hit the Space Agency’s controversial history had been given the go-ahead to launch it into deep space. From the idea’s inception all the way up to this final point just before its release from an otherwise safe and cozy home on a space cruiser into a cold and lonely oblivion, the mission had taken almost twenty years to put together. Billions of dollars, hundreds, if not thousands hours of labor, and the full weight of the Agency’s bureaucracy had been thrown into this one single project, such that it just had to succeed, it must succeed, in collecting information from new and uncharted territories of the unknown universe.

It would travel light years ahead, just to relay its blips and beeps into Mission Control, only that the technology had become so advanced as of late, that they could also outfit the probe with artificial intelligence, so that it could more easily convey, in very understandable terms, what this plucky little probe saw out there, what experiences it had, and return the entirety of the information and all of its experiences to these scientists who desperately hoped that it would one day save their precious Union of Planets from near destruction.

The scientists who had assembled the probe knew full well that the mission had to succeed, or else the Union of Planets would dismantle the Agency in total and terminate every single one of their contracts. All operations would cease, and the entire Agency would have to close its doors, until a better economy could be resurrected from the brutal Civil War among all planets had ended, a war that had taken millions of lives and had dragged on for nearly twenty years of fiery destruction, mayhem, t*****e, pestilence, and fear. The mission, now that the planets had arrived at an Armistice, represented a new beginning for the Union. It was a collective sigh at a near conclusion and terrible exhaustion of war, a collective agreement that came with a reluctant admittance that no one could continue anymore, and that no would ever win.

What would happen to these scientists, then, if this mission to launch the probe failed? The reality of losing their jobs was only the tip of the iceberg vis-a-vis the sheer gravity of continuing the war amongst their Union of planets. Every citizen in the Union craved a much-desired peace that most had kept quiet about, as they all witnessed the war machine spinning out of control, until it just got too much for anyone to bear. The prospect of an end to the brutal war that pitted planet against planet, brother against brother, gave the Agency more than enough motivation to build the best, most advanced probe ever in the history of the Agency. They put in their sweat and spent countless sleepless nights overseeing the project through to this final point in time, just before these humble but brilliant scientists were about to collapse in sheer exhaustion, not even having enough energy to clink glasses of campaign together or pat each other on the backs after the mission was on the verge of beginning.

The work over the twenty-year time span had been so grueling, that it would have been much better for them to take a break from each other, perhaps for several months, before they reconvened to assess the probe’s progress. But more importantly than the work and the money and the time they put into this medium-sized probe that stood in front of them, a probe with a height of a professional basketball player, they carried the hope of millions upon millions of people, thereby, basing all of their dreams of a new and better world on this one plucky probe almost ready to be launched into the depth of space and poised to discover whatever it could get that would benefit their war-torn race.

Above the lab-coated scientists who surrounded the probe and worked on it diligently for this final launch stood Mack Fidelis within a quiet office surrounded by wide, tinted windows. It was dark inside his office above the Control Center, and he liked it that way. He smoked a cigarette for some reason, a relic of a distant past, as his forefathers had once owned tobacco plantations on his home planet of Quzar before the Union declared tobacco illegal and then later demolished what remained of the entire industry and confiscated his lands to make way for new refugee camps.

After a stunning career in the Air Force, he came to the Agency and slowly climbed the ladder to where he was now, the Director in charge of Space Operations. He had worked hard to get there, and being a non-scientist by trade, he had fought a lot of skepticism, discrimination, and criticism for being the only one among them without a doctoral degree in the sciences. He was simply a very skilled bureaucrat when it came down to it, and everyone knew it. Even he knew it. Because of the war, the Union, whatever remained of it, had to cut costs dramatically until the efficacy of peace had demanded that each planet contribute to this particular project.

He sat in the near darkness of his office as the curls from the glowing tip of his cigarette swirled into the dense, stale air of the room. He remained in deep thought, wondering if this mission would actually work. When he heard a knock at the door, he didn’t feel like answering it. He preferred isolation. He liked it better. It allowed him to think and ponder, even to an absurd extent on some nights. But still, he preferred it. But as the scientists readied the probe below for launch, he knew that he had to answer the door on this important night. The Representative for The Union of Planets was behind the door, and even though he didn’t want to see anyone, he had to receive him and at least discuss this final stage of the work into which they had both put twenty years of their lives.

He pressed his cigarette to the bottom of his ashtray and calmly opened the door to a balding, middle-aged man in a white, flowing silk gown, regal in his appearance but woefully mediocre, if not inadequate, in his looks. His appearance contrasted sharply with an otherwise well-built Mack Fidelis whom many women in the Agency believed to look like the famous movie star that had mesmerized them in the big, outdoor halls where they showed the Union’s weekly p********a films.

The representative was roughly the same age as Mack, and both had witnessed the horrors of the terrible Civil War. They had known intimate friends and close relatives who had perished. And while their two home planets had fought against each other much more directly than the others, their home planets nearly decimating each other’s in an attempt to grab hold of power and control over the ever-weakening Union, they held a tacit resentment towards each other that had to be buried deeply in order to complete such an important and costly project.

They had been meeting on and off for a period of twenty years, at least three times a week. Mack ran the Agency, and this representative, Albrecht Ottoman, served as the liaison between the now powerless and ineffective Union Common Council and the Agency that Mack now directed. Albrecht dealt with the money and the politics, as Mack focused on getting the projects done for the least amount. For this mission, the Common Council spared no expense, as the last of their reserves, with the exception of monies allocated for humanitarian aid to civilians and refugees, such as food and medicine, had been spent trying to keep the Union together. The Council’s hands were tied, as every planet had been out for itself.

The Council was but a symbolic political body that represented what it used to be like among the planets in the Union - the distant past and those halcyon days of peace and prosperity, harmony and goodwill, before a treacherous coup d’état on one planet had a chain reaction and spread like a contagion to another planet and then another, igniting the complete overthrow and dismantling of the Council and, in its place, the installation of a cruel dictator whose rule would ensure tyranny for every living soul who existed within the jurisdiction of the Union. It took only a handful of criminally minded men with incredibly high ambition to appoint a despot and start a war that never seemed to end.

Most reacted towards this simple and neglected idea of an Armistice with nothing more than incredulity. But the Common Council needed this pause in the fighting to dig its way out of the bloodshed that formed rainclouds over them. Every single person who had been spared from the horrors of war needed peace. No one had the strength nor the will to continue. Their people had given everything and wound up with nothing.

“No one wins a war,” said Albrecht.

“Until the next one, anyway,” said Mack, pouring himself a drink from the bar next his wide oak desk, the stale breath of cigarette smoke floating away into the darkness.

Albrecht joined him in a drink, and together they walked to the wide glass windows and studied the scientists and how they made their final preparations for the launch. Mack knew that he would go home to his lonely apartment after the night had ended, an apartment once occupied by a wife who recently divorced him. Once there, he would drink himself silly. It would be a bittersweet celebration of accomplishment and tremendous loss, now that the war was just about over.

Albrecht drained his drink, and then looked at the man he had been working with side-by-side for nearly twenty years.

“This mission has to work, Mack. It’s our only hope. A new generation of war-torn children will be watching this from their homes. It is the only thing we’ve ever had that represented any kind of peace to them.”

“You really think this war is over, eh?”

“I think so,” said Albrecht. “It has nowhere left to go.”

“Then why am I so skeptical?”

“Because this war never seems to end. It’s natural. We’re used to it. We have forgotten what peace is like. We have a new generation who has no idea what peace is. It is a foreign and alien concept to them. No one can really imagine our Union without ongoing war.”

“Y’know, Albrecht, I never liked you. And we’ve never seen eye-to-eye. But for once I think you have a point.”

“I’d rather be happy than right,” he smiled, as he held up his glass of liquor to meet his. “To the new universe?”

“Yeah,” said Mack, “to the new universe. Shall we never revisit war again.”

And then they drank and smiled to each other, their drinks as satisfying as the end of the war itself.

They then adjourned to the floor of the Command Center where the scientists had put their final touches on this glittering space probe. It had been outfitted with the Agency’s finest equipment, from the artificial intelligence software and communications system, to the high-powered nuclear batteries that would last for many years while it hurtled through never-ending space.

The probe had an antenna that protruded from its top. It was a communications tower that that would relay its valuable information to Mission Control. Everything was finally set. A war-hardened press corps surrounded the hard-working group of scientists and other ancillary Agency workers, their digital cameras and recorders commemorating the launching of the probe into the plasma hologram television sets of war shelters, trenches, refugee camps, and broken homes of each and every child. No one would be spared from this news. It would hit all media outlets on every planet of the Union. There would also be a parade on Quzar, the fabled home of the Union’s destroyed aristocracy. The very next day, this parade would feature the members of the Union Common Council and the leaders of each planet, celebrating what the next generation had continuously yearned for.