The Lies Roxanne Told

Foreword

There is a reason and rhyme for everything we do.

There is a reason for why I am writing this pamphlet. There is a reason the people documented in this pamphlet did what they did. I could not see these reasons at first. Sometimes you have to dig, but everything comes clean in the end. We all come clean in the end.

Just remember that this was not written to entertain. Perhaps it will, but I am not telling stories or fabricating lies. Everything I tell you here is true.

-Ryan MacNeil

The First Day

There was something strange about looking at the Center for Science in the Global Interest in the flesh. I have no doubts that you could picture this building perfectly in your minds. I have confidence that you have seen this picture on the glossy pages of magazines, around blocks of text in our school’s textbooks, and in the types of newspapers that I reported for. Yet, there was something about that building that no camera lens could ever catch. It was a certain shine and gleam that made it sparkle against a blue. It was lovely, with intricate arches and slopes.

Yet it was the coldest building I have ever stepped foot in. The way it towered over you and the way the floors echoed when you stepped in the hall, it was demanding. It had no love or feeling. I did not think that way when I first entered; but as soon as I had left, those feelings rushed towards me. It was as though the building gave some sort of aftertaste that made me dislike it.

I know that sounds foolish. I was only stating what I felt. I wouldn’t want to sway your opinions. After all, what I felt was a fact. And everything I tell you here is true.

“Mister MacNeil!” a voice said pleasantly as I stood in the gaping mouth of the front hall, “It is so nice to finally meet you!” Doctor Antuan Sommers rushed towards me, with a feeble smile on his face. He was the kind of man you predicted to blow away in the wind. A girl followed behind him, his daughter Sophia. She must have been at least twelve, but she looked to be about nine.

I shook his hand without wasting any words. I have a hard time gauging human emotion, but the look in his eyes looked slightly upset from my lack of reaction. I hardly remember now, “I’m here with the Gaian Worldly Investigator to ask some questions regarding the mission to Earth,” I recited. I had corresponded with the man weeks before this meeting, but I had practiced that line far too many times not to use it.

“Yes, I am aware,” the man said, adjusting his coat, “If you would please follow me,” he said, forever with that chipper smile on his face. Sophia stared at me as I followed him. She followed me, both with her body and her eyes. It was unsettling, I’d suppose. I tried my best not look back, only catching glimpses of her through the corner of my eye. She never backed her gaze down.

“You have a reporter from the Investigator going to Earth, don’t you?” Sommers asked as he turned down the hall, entering a room. It was large and dark, with stadium seats and rows of computers. It looked just how you imagined it: high-tech, large, and built for lots of people. This was the operations room. At that moment, it was empty save for five people, all of whom were working diligently, “Do you happen to know her?”

“I do,” I said tightly, not wishing to talk more about it. This was the Roxanne I mentioned in the title of this piece. She was to send reports of what she found on Earth to the Investigator’s office, via transmitter. She never did. Not to the office, at least.

“It’s dangerous down there,” Sophia whispered, “People come from down there. They are helpless. They come up here,” she said with the wide eyes I suppose only a child could have. I wasn’t interested.

He proceeded to give me the tour of the operations room. I have documented the tour in great detail in my appropriately titled article “The Room Behind the Curtain” (Volume 134; issue 65). However, this is not a document designed to paint an image of the working quarters. These are harder facts.

After the tour was completed, Doctor Sommers left his daughter with a coworker and took me down to the break room for some coffee, “I do love coffee,” he sung to me as he heated up the coffee maker, “It is one of my favorite treats brought from Earth. Would you care for a cup?”

“Doctor,” I said carefully, shaking my head, “Is it true that you are one of the driving forces behind the Magic energy system?” I finally ask, flipping out a new sheet of paper. Ever since I spoke to this man through the transmitter, I had been itching to know the truth. I had been starving to know more about the Magic system. Everyone in the reporting world had. He decided to talk to me. This was rightfully my story to tell. This was my big break into the journalism business. As I spoke, my heart pumped with anxiety. It was the kind of anxiety I hardly ever felt.

“I am,” the man said, wandering over to a vending machine as he spoke. Doctor Sommers never traveled; he simply wandered, “Marvelous thing to be a part of,” he said dismissively. I knew at that moment that I was not getting anything out of him. The light on the coffee maker went off, followed by a small bell noise. He hardly turned around, “Fix my coffee, will you? I simply cannot decide; should I get the Tastie chips or the KingPop bar?” he asked no one in particular. Perhaps I was mistaken and he had asked me. It hardly mattered; either way, he wasn’t getting an answer.

I sighed and filled up a cup, having nothing else to say. I didn’t know if he liked cream or sugar. So I filled it the way I had always fixed it, with special ingredients from the break room cabinet. I put it on the table and he drank it, simple as that. He looked at me with that feeble smile; I suppose there was something about me that he approved of.

“Come back tomorrow,” the Doctor said to me. I stood at him and stared, pulling out my notepad once again and beginning to scribble notes, “The operations room is all well and good. However, you should see the room where we keep the artifacts from past missions to Earth. Now that’s really something!” he laughed.

That was how I was set on the path to being a regular visitor at the Center. I know it sounds crazy. I know it seems like a story people would tell their friends to make them impressed. But it isn’t. Everything I tell you here is true.

Transmissions from Earth

My transmission device began to vibrate that night, while I was sipping a cup of coffee of my own. I was mauling over the notes I had taken while in the operations room. The last thing you would ever want to mess with is a reporter working to a deadline. This goes double when it is the middle of the night and the reporter was heavily dosed on caffeine. So it is needless to say that I was not happy with the prospect of communicating with anyone, let alone Roxanne.

The device began to roll as the transmission came in, “Ryan? This is Roxy,” a female voice said through the clicks and pops and white noise. “This is coming to you from my first day on Earth. Since you are listening to this, it is safe to say that many weeks have passed,” she started.

I froze in my place. Really, there was no reason for her to be contacting me. There was no reason for her to be sending any information past the editor and straight to me. I am not a good writer and I am certainly not high on the Investigator’s food chain. I should have shut off the transmitter and crawled back to my desk. I should have turned my back and gone back to trying to make my daily dime.

But I didn’t. There is a reason and rhyme for everything we do. And whether I knew it or not, I had to find hers. I had to listen to the tape and find out what she was doing, if this was real. If I did not, I knew that curiosity would just swell up within me like a giant balloon, and it would never deflate until I listened to that transmission.

“The scenery is wonderful here. I wish you were still my partner, because then we could see it together. There are no real words to describe it. It’s lush and green, with vines crawling over the gravel and small heaps of our human destruction. It was as tough n the midst of despair, the plants rose up to overcome. They have taken over, leaving very few animals in sight. They seem to breath as the winds blow, the plants. It’s as though they have become the new humans. They are us; walking the planet softly.”

This was the problem with Roxanne: her career was disintegrating. She didn’t like facts as much as I do. When we were reporting together, I began to notice little quirks. Quirks like leaving out important details and adding in some of her own. I created headlines. She fabricated stories. Once I found out, I told the staff, who had seemed to know for a long time. The lies Roxanne told began to catch up with her. She was the girl crying wolf. And in this tale, the wolf always catches the liar.

I think this is why she volunteered to go to Earth. No one would know what to believe from galaxies away. No one would be able to point a finger and tell her that she was wrong. She wanted to save her career. I wanted to write the story of a lifetime. No one could blame us for that.

She continued:

“The air smells strange though. Rotting and unsettling, almost. There seems to be a faint smell of despair floating through the breeze. Even against the perfect green trees and the clearest skies you have ever seen lays the softest hint of darkness lurking in the trees. Tomorrow the team is off to find a more suitable area for camp, one without as many plants and farther from that awful smell. I will be reporting from there. Please be well, Ryan.”

She added:

“Also, don’t be too greedy with your stories. Sometimes you can’t tell them all. Sometimes there is something to say for your imagination to fill in the gaps. This is just another kind of truth. It’s a kind of truth we all have to find within ourselves.”

I rolled my eyes, believing that she lied, again. So I put the transmission onto a tape to save it forever. Then? Then I tucked it away. Every word she said just sounded like her search for “truth” and not her search of accurate events. I didn’t even think of sending it in to the Investigator. I couldn’t afford to send in her kind of information, especially when they were supposed to be receiving it. They would have found my story faulty. They would have charged me for stealing and exploiting. And no matter what kind of lawyer I had, I would be found guilty and many dollars in debt, not to mention out of a job.

I had to keep my mouth shut then. Now I have nothing to lose.

The Second Day

The Center was bustling, unlike the day before. The day I had come at first was meant to be quiet day. I did not want the distraction of other work going around me to distract from my job. I wanted to focus only on the story. I did not want to see the hustle and bustle of what the building was really like. Perhaps this is my own way of closing myself out to reality, much like Roxanne did. But also like her, it was how I worked best.

He was waited with his daughter again. I remember asking myself why he brought her to work at least fifty times while walking up to them. It made very little sense at the time, bringing such a small girl to work in a science institute. There must have been other places she could have been sent for the summer. After all, she barely ever spoke, let alone seemed to know much about science.

“Hello Sir,” I said with the biggest smile that I could muster. I stuck out my hand, where the Doctor shook it firmly with an equally large grin.

“You are horrible.” Sophia said while pointing at me. Sommers released my hand and stared at his daughter and a disapproving look. I believe I simply stared. If I had any trace of shock or disgust on my face, I couldn’t tell. She continued, “You’re smiles are thin. Just a thin lie. Like Magic.”

This got me interested. I immediately pulled out my notebook. In those days, it had become reflex for me to pull out my notebook every time someone mentioned the word ‘Magic’. There was, within that word, a story no one else had covered. There were stories, of course. But they were nothing more than the kind of lies that Roxanne told. Just guesses and imagination. I was looking for facts on the Magic System that inspired more than just rumors. I looked at the little girl and her wide eyes. “A lie? Why do you say that?”

As you may be able to imagine, this did not make her father happy. Doctor Sommers was the kind of man who silently demanded to be constantly appeased. You never wanted to make him unhappy, even when you weren’t sure what the repercussions were. He spoke up, “Sometimes the idea of what I do scares her.” He assured me with his smiling eyes. “I tell her that the Magic System is perfectly safe. But she doesn’t believe me. We’ll get to that later. Come, let’s go to the Earth Artifact Room. Sophia can come along this time, instead of going to daycare.”

“I’m too old for the daycare here,” she informed me as we began to walk. The doctor started walking ahead of us as I listened to her speak. I am not one for little kids, for they tend to imagine things. However, when it came to Magic, I felt the need to listen anyway. Her father helped develop the system. If there were any child on Gaia likely to let any information slip, it would be her. It provided especially useful that she went to work with the genius every day. I wondered if he home-schooled her. Or work-schooled, if there even is such a thing. “Daddy takes me anyway.”

I nodded, wanting to take her back to the topic of the energy system. However, I resisted, for I knew that her father wouldn’t have it. Besides, if I was lucky, I knew I could find a story within the Artifact Room.

The artifact room was another room that look unimpressive and exactly as you would picture it. There were tables lined up along the walls and display cases in the center of the room. It was much like a museum. However, instead of little gold plaques, there were clipboards next to each item, collecting and recording data from the artifacts. There were tons of them, more than I expected. “How many times have you sent people to Earth?” I asked the doctor, my notepad out and ready to record his answers.

“Many times.” The man said simply, standing by the door as I looked around. He still had that smug grin on his face. Sophia walked around the room, surprisingly well-behaved for a child. “They were mostly filled with scientists. But we had sent a few ships of civilians. I believe that was covered in the papers?”

I nodded, biting my lip. I looked up from a bunch of wires salvaged from an old computer. “They never returned.” I said, as composed as possible. “There were malfunctions in getting back. I believe they must have burned up in the atmosphere. Am I right?”

Sophia looked up at me and shook her head a few times. She walked up to me, as to tell me something. But before she could, her father spoke up: “Sadly, that’s right. However, we hope that there will be better luck. We were able to bring back a ship of these artifacts. How much more of a stretch would be bringing back a ship of people?” He smiled, trying to be reassuring. I didn’t care, but I nodded and jotted it down in my notebook anyway. I looked back at Sophia, but she was no longer interested in talking. Kids.

The items were nothing spectacular, mostly pieces of rock and wires from old technology. There were a few plant seeds and soils, but no real signs of life. Not like the kind that Roxanne had told me the night before the visit, anyway. To me, that proved that the she was imaging things again. But even so, things didn’t quite add up. “How much do you know about Earth, Doctor?”

“Not much,” he confessed with a small sigh. “I will do best to answer all of your questions, but it isn’t really my department. I can give you the name of the head of the Earth Studies Board, if you would like.”

“I would like that, thank you.” I said absentmindedly. He told me the name and I wrote it down. I have since ripped out that page and handed it or to my boss, who sent another reporter to talk to him or her. I don’t remember the name at all nowadays. “Do you know how much on Earth is now decomposing? Animals, specifically?” I asked him, hoping to find the cause for the alleged smell that Roxanne had mentioned.

The look that this comment received was unsettling, to say the least. He stared at me with his wide eyes and his face pale. There was something suspicious that even a plain man like myself could catch. It was clear that something was being hidden on Earth. Perhaps this wasn’t a truth stated, but it seemed to be a truth all the same. I think it was then I started to realize what the female reporter was trying to teach me.

The doctor cleared his throat and returned his smile to his face. “It is possible. After all, our scientists brought back samples of dirt without many decomposers in the soils. This is possibly because of the pollution we caused there a thousand of years ago. After animals die, it could easily an abnormally long time to decompose.”

I nodded, not successfully shaking the thought of his previous expression out of my head. Sophia was done with looking at all of the rocks and rusted and crumbling machinery. She made this clear by heading towards the door and announcing: “It’s time to go.”

“Of course Sweetie.” Her father obliged her whim, stepping away from the door to let her pass. He looked up at me expectantly. I had enough notes to write a novel; it was safe to say that I was done there. So I stepped out of the doorway, letting the man shut the door behind us. “Are you hungry Sophia?”

He was making an excuse to go to the break room. Even I could see that. Fortunately for him, the girl nodded. Unsurprisingly, he responded: “Oh good. Then let’s go to the break room.”

I felt my chance of asking about the Magic System slipping away. A chance to get a front-page story was dripping through my fingertips and flowing right towards the break room, where we would have our coffee and the doctor would bid me goodbye. “Sir. I have a few questions about-”

“Not now. I need my caffeine break. Do you mind if you make my coffee again? I need to feed my little Sophie.”

“Don’t call me Sophie,” the girl protested plainly as she walked ahead of us.

I sighed, doing the best I could not to roll my eyes. “Of course.” I finally said, under the impression that he liked the way I fixed coffee more than he liked me. I didn’t mind, so long as he would invite me back. I needed to get closer to him. I needed to get closer to Gaia’s greatest mystery: Magic.

Once we got to the break room, I went straight to the coffee machine. The other two went straight for the vending machine. I made his coffee in the same way I did at home: with cinnamon and a pinch of vanilla creamer. It was the same way I made it last time. He was eager to drink it. He smiled as he took the cup. “You make the best coffee out of anyone I have ever met.”

Sophie looked at me. “It’s a test of character,” she explained, taking a bite out of the nutrition bar her father bought for her.

I had no words on the subject of testing someone’s character through coffee. I still don’t, although I suppose it worked out for me in the long run. As long as he kept me coming back, I didn’t care how he judged my character. “Thank you?” I said, looking from father to daughter. Neither said anything. They only ate and drank silently.

“I suppose I will be on my way,” I finally said, in hopes of getting a reaction. For further effect, I slowly worked my way towards the break room door, hoping that someone would stop me.

And by some miracle of a higher power, it worked. Doctor Sommers looked at me while holding his coffee cup. “You will come back tomorrow, won’t you?” My heart started pounding, renewed with high hopes. But before I could answer, he started laughing. “Oh wait, of course you won’t.” I felt my heart sink to the bottom of my stomach in a sick sort of ache. I felt fooled and extremely awkward. “Tomorrow is Saturday. Come back Monday, then?”

Seeing as my heart had just done two back flips nearly in a row, I couldn’t speak. I simply nodded and tried to force a smile. “I’ll be there. Same time?” He nodded, more interested in his coffee than anything else. Sophia nodded as well, though not looking as enthusiastic about her nutrition bar. I imagine he bought it for her against her will.

I did not bother to wish them a nice day. I didn’t think it was necessary. Call me cold. Call me cruel. However, you must remember that there is a reason and rhyme for everything that we do.

At Mercy’s End

My transmitter’s recording device was empty when I got home. I don’t know what I was expecting. I pulled out the tape with Roxanne’s recording on it, just to make sure it was there. I may have listened to it again; I don’t really remember. My memories are sometimes hazy, but my notes a perfectly accurate, I assure you. Everything I tell you here is true.

I was sitting in my apartment watching some televised report when the transmitter began to buzz. I slowly meandered towards it, not completely interested in who was on the other end. Even if it was another recording from Roxanne, there was no rush. After all, the message had already traveled such a long way to get to my apartment. What was a few extra minutes going to do to it?

However, when I turned the transistor on, there was no message on the other end. Instead it was a live person. It was my boss, Sylvia Johannesburg, to be exact. “Mister MacNeil, you haven’t been by the office to pick up your assignment after you sent in your last story.”

I froze. It was true. I had put on hold to chase after a pipe dream. However, I was planning to go over there, I think. So I made a point to tell her so. “Mrs. Johannesburg, I am so sorry. However, I am on the verge of making a breakthrough,” I assured her, not wanting to give away too much.

“I’m listening,” she said tightly. I could tell through the phone that her lips were pinched together, as she did when she was stressed.

“The man I used as contact into the Center? He is heading up the Magic System project. I was hoping to use the contact to get closer into finding the source of the new energy system. It will be huge. No one has covered it yet.”

She said nothing for a long time. I was holding my breath the entire time. It is no easy task to get me excited about something. My family had always said that it roots from fear of disappointment. However, when it came to writing my idea of the perfect newspaper article, my heart was nothing stronger than an eggshell.

“I need the article by Thursday. Is this understood?” she finally said to me through the transmitter. If it was due Thursday, it was going to be printed into the Friday paper. I was personally hoping for Sunday, but the weekend was the weekend. I couldn’t be too picky, see as I was trying to find my way.

“I will get it to you in record time Ma’am,” I assured her, not believing what was coming out of my own mouth. I wasn’t sure if I could get the story at all, let alone in “record time”. Mrs. Johannesburg hung up and I turned off my transmitter. I stared at it for a while, marveling at the mess I had created for myself. My old partner would have been so proud.

And like magic, at the mere thought of my old partner, the transmitter began to pick up a recorded transmission. Roxanne’s voice crackled through the sound waves:

“This is my second message to you. Well, you would know that, obviously. I’ve been recording copious amounts of notes from Earth to send. This will be a front-page story. I can smell it. Don’t worry Ryan. Your time to write a winner will come too. You’re still young.”

I grumbled, knowing that I could easily have my “winner” of a story out before her notes even reached Gaia. Since she could not hear me, my doubt naturally did not deter her from describing Earth thus far:

“We found an old city today. We were trying to escape from the smell of decay. Ironically, the air is clearer here in the deteriorated city. There is hardly anything left of it now. I have a hard time believing that there were ever skyscrapers and bridges here. I can’t picture any cars rushing through these grounds. For now the only things that ever rush around are rodents and insects. We still have not found many animals. I like to think that the humans took all of them with them when they first left. Like Noah’s Arc, two by two. Don’t you think that would be ironic and lovely? The first time, God created the destruction that made us find a new life. This time, we have caused it. We’re playing God. We’ve always been playing God.”

Roxanne liked the bible. I can’t ever say if she was religious or not. That was none of my business. But she did love to read and talk about the bible. She said it was because everyone knew its story. It was a universal knowledge we all carried. She lied. Again.

“We’ve set up camp up here, for it feels safer. So we accomplished the mission of the day. I heard the leaders of our little crew talking about the thicker forests. We may head out there in a few days. I am happy I packed my tougher clothes. However, I wish I packed a mask of some sort. The smell is overwhelming towards the forests. Oh well, wish me the best of luck and I shall speak to you later. Be well Ryan.”

I took a few moments to write down the last of what she was saying in my notebook. After I had finished documenting the words by hand, I recorded it onto another tape and put it with the first one. I was wondering how large my collection was going to get before she realized that all I was doing was saving them for my personal records. I can’t imagine that she would have thought that her reports would be used in a pamphlet like this. However, with a girl like Roxanne, I suppose you can never be sure.

I had no social life. Friday nights were not date nights. They were nights dedicated to my video viewer and me. My collection of movies was impressive, no doubt. I popped in the newest addition to the collection at the time and made some popcorn. This was the world that I lived in: soft, cushy, and nearly dependant on the Magic energy source. Every move I made was connected to the Magic somehow, from the video player to the lighting over my head. I took note of all of these little things that night. I wrote them down. And then I resolved to find out how they all worked, starting with the very basics.

Saturday Morning Means Losing my Mind

I usually spend Saturdays at the office. That day was no exception. I thought going to my little cubicle in the newspaper office might have jarred me out of the habit of thinking about my time at the Center. I wanted to stop trying to piece together things that weren’t there. My life seemed to be spinning in slow motion then. It just a slow moving of clock hands, waiting for something to happen that would make life worth it. I didn’t like feeling as though I were chasing wild geese.

I spun in my office chair, pivoting the seat in circles over and over again. I was half-distracted with my daydreams and thoughts about the Center and the Magic System. I was also trying to see how hard it would be to write a small article on biologically advanced kittens while dizzy. I always got the science-related articles. I suppose it was because I minored it biology at the university. However, I sometimes think that my mind just thinks in scientific methods. I don’t jump in to things; I prefer to hypothesize and test.

However, it didn’t matter how much I liked science; I didn’t care about biologically advanced kittens. I didn’t care if they could scoop their own litter box or meow “Row, Row, Row your Boat” in a round. I just wanted to finish my article so I could get home and stare at my clock, waiting for Monday to come.

I finished the article with ease, despite my attempts to create a challenge with my office chair. I turned the article into the editing department and went home. I didn’t write this down in my notes, so I can’t be sure, but I am fairly certain that I took a detour past the building for the Center for Science in the Global Interest. I just looked at it from my car. I felt obsession sink into my skin through the pores. My mind was wrapped a single track.

But I ignored the symptoms of my disease and I just kept driving. My mind never left he thoughts of the Doctor and the Magic system. I even thought about Sophia and the tapes from Earth. I felt like a detective. I felt as though everything was a clue to unlocking what I wanted. I had a problem, but I couldn’t diagnose it at the time. I just kept telling myself that there is a reason and a rhyme for everything we do.

Those were my words to live on. They still are.

The Next Lie She Told Me

I did not stare at the clock when I got home. Instead, I cleaned my apartment to pass the time, which was something I did more often than you’d expect. I loved that apartment. I put a lot of work into making it look how I wanted. One of the first articles I ever wrote for the Investigator was about tips on keeping a tidy home. The main advice I gave was to love the way your home looks. You are more likely to want to keep it looking clean if you love how it looks when clean. I stand by these convictions.

I’m sorry; I’m getting off topic. I was cleaning my collection of framed articles when the transmitter device clicked on. I dropped onto my couch and pulled out my notebook, fully prepared to take notes. It took a while for Roxanne to begin speaking. It felt like I was listening to white noise for at least five minutes before she finally said:

“I hate the woods. You wouldn’t expect me to say this, I know. Little Roxanne loves the outdoors, that’s what you are thinking right now.”

I wasn’t thinking that at all.

“However, there is something wrong here. The trees are long and dark and looming. They are staring at me Ryan.” She sounded panicked, not to mention crazy. I pictured her wearing a purple fleece robe while walking through a forest. I always picture crazy people wearing robes. I’m not sure why. “I can’t put my finger on it, but I want to go back to camp more badly than I’ve ever wanted to before. All of the others in the group feel the same way; you can tell by the expressions on their faces. I’ve been taking pictures, but none of them due the place any justice. You just can’t feel the way the trees are tracking your steps. You can’t smell the juices of decay and metal. It smells like metal here, did I mention that?”

I don’t know why, but these last few words made me almost sorry for the young woman. I felt as though there really was some dire happening on Earth. Then again, why wouldn’t there be? We already had destroyed it. What made us think that things would get better if we just left it alone?

“Oh God Ryan,” she then muttered, letting me know that she had taken the transmitter with her. She was speaking as she was walking along, not just recording after the fact. This gave it a feeling of rawness. This made it feel real. This made it more than just a story being spun from her mind.

That’s when she told me: “There are bodies. Lots of bodies. The scientists are hovering around them, feeling their skin, and probing at them. I can only stare in horror. They look like humans. They are just like us. These aren’t animals we left behind when we went to Gaia. These are people just like you and me. I think there were still humans on Earth when we left. Do you think something happened to kill them?”

That didn’t make sense. Earth had been left alone for a thousand years. I didn’t care if there were very few decomposers or not. No human body would still be anything but a skeleton after a thousand years. I could hear voices in the background, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I leaned in as close as I could get to the speaker, but I still couldn’t tell. I heard a few voices mutter words that I will not repeat here due to sensitive readers. All I can say is that something was going on, but I could not for the life of me figure out what that was. The next thing I heard her say was: “What’s this?”

Those are classic famous last words if I’ve ever heard them. I held my breath, waiting for more.

Then, the white noise returned and the recording was finished. I stared at the transmitter for a long time before putting it onto to a tape, hoping there was more. I suppose I must have hoped for some kind of “hidden track”, buried deep beneath the silence. But there was nothing there. Only more silence. So I put the recording onto the tape and put the tape into my drawer where the others were being kept.

I had heard nothing from Roxanne on Sunday. A part of me told me that this was because she was always fond of the bible, and was therefore observing the day of rest. However, I promised you that everything you read here is true. And the simple truth of the matter was that whatever Roxanne had told me about happened weeks, maybe even a month, ago. I was helpless. To her, I was witness from a distant future.

Another truth of the matter is that I was left guessing for that Sunday. I was trying to piece together clues. I thought of the bodies. They lead me to the conversation I had in the Artifact Room. The doctor said that the previous expeditions to Earth didn’t work. That people didn’t make it back alive. He said there were malfunctions in the equipment; that they burned up in the atmosphere.

But then something happened. What was it? I sat on my couch. I racked my brain until I remember the small girl who shook her head. Something told me at that moment to talk to Sophia, that she would know. Maybe that something was just my imagination. But a imagination is also a kind of truth. Just a different kind, one we have to find in ourselves.

The Third Day

I knew the moment that I walked through the door that I had to find the girl. I knew she was more willing to talk about things than the doctor ever was. I was hanging a lot on a little girl. Hell, I was even hoping to squeeze the blueprints for the Magic system out of her mouth. It was laughable.

However, when I met with the doctor, the girl was nowhere to be found. Figures. I did not ask, because on any other day I did not care. So I just shook his hand and greeted the man with the thin smile that I always had on for these moments.

“Well, I suppose I shall show you something a bit different than space exploration today. Come this way.” Doctor Sommers began to walk down the hallways. He seemed rather off that day. He seemed like he was tripping over his own thoughts, as insane as that sounds. I followed him anyway.

He seemed so off, in fact, that I had enough gall to ask, “Is Sophia in the nursery today?” I straightened up and picked up my pace. That way, I was walking more beside him than directly behind him.

He nodded. “She protested. But following me around all the time is no way for a girl to learn to be independent. Besides, she has been rather sick lately. She’s best if she is somewhere she can rest.”

I am not one to tell people how to run their lives, for I don’t care. However, I did think putting a girl in a nursery everyday was a good either. I didn’t say I word. I know when things aren’t my business.

I followed him through a series of doors until we came to one with a large control room inside. There were glittering lights and patterns and buttons and levers all across a big panel. There was a huge glass screen sitting in front of it. The man sat at the panel and pressed a few buttons. I leaned forward, trying to read the labels off of the buttons, but could not make out a single word.

Suddenly, images of people, or digital simulations of people flashed onto the screen. “We all contain a strong energy, Mister MacNeil. We emit it from out bodies uncontrollably. Some people call it an Aura, which you may have heard of.” I frowned at this, but wrote it down anyway. I was going to say something, but he continued. “Palm readers use this energy all of the time to make predictions about the future. Of course, this poppycock, for nothing will ever tell you the future. However, it can’t be denied that our body emits a heat and movement that is powerful and lovely. It keeps us going in the darkest of times. All animals have it, of course. And for a long while, it worked in mysterious ways.”

I wrote all of it down, but I was frowning all of the while. That’s when numbers and symbols flashed on the screen, pointing to parts of the human. He started explaining energy points as though he were talking from those old books on Zen Buddhism, a trend started in Earth and carried to Gaia. The way he talked spoke to the scientist in me, all the same. He spoke of targeting energy points using statistics and physics. I was fascinated, though thoroughly confused. Finally:

“Why this? Why are you showing me this?” I asked, not knowing why I had spoken so out-of-character and out of turn. I felt stiff and odd. He stared at me, also wondering why I had bothered to wonder now.

“I suspected you were tired of hearing about Earth.” He said simply. Well I was, until recently. “Do you know what happens to this energy when the animal dies?”

I stared at the screen blankly. If I really wanted to throw my disbelief into the wind, I would have said, “it’s reincarnated into another life”. That just sounded like what the hip kids at my college who worshiped all things Earthen would have said. However, I’m not a hip kid. I never will be. So instead I just said, “It disappears?”

“Precisely!” He said, avoiding the awkwardness of me being wrong. “However, it doesn’t have to disappear. When someone is dying, the heat and the energy surges through them in a way no one could imagine. With enough of it harnessed and sped into extreme acceleration, one could power buildings with it. It’s wonderful Mister MacNeil!” He was returning to his old self, I could tell. “It’s almost like…”

“Magic,” I finished. I stared blankly at the screen some more until he turned it off and looked at me. He was looking at me as though he hadn’t practically told me from his own mouth. Yet he had. I was a reporter who wrote about space exploration crap that everyone and their uncle knew. Sometimes I even wrote about extra-special cats; but I wasn’t stupid. “You harness the power from dead things. From dying things.”

That’s when I noticed a door to the right of the panel. It wasn’t the door we had entered through. It was cracked open, and I caught a glimpse of little Sophia, climbing onto a large bed, the kind you would see in a doctor’s office.

I looked at the doctor and pretended not to see a thing. “How did you come up with this idea exactly? How did you notice this energy?”

I already knew the answer. But he told me anyway. “I saw someone die. Two people.” His lips were curled into a thin smile. “It was a car accident. I was holding her. I noticed how strong she was before she went limp. And then when the other was losing it on the hospital bed I wanted to fill her with the same kind of strength.”

I opened the door to the right all the way. Sophia was now lying on the bed and a scientist was poking a needle into her arm. The same numbers and symbols from the doctor’s little film were on a screen. “Did you? Fill her with the same strength?” I asked, looking at the girl as the man closed the door before my eyes. He nodded.

“I need a little caffeine, don’t you?” He finally said. I followed him out, putting my notebook into my pocket. I had won. And yet…

We did not speak as I made him his coffee. He did not get anything from the vending machine. Finally as the coffee maker had finished, he said, “She’ll be fine, you know. It was just a routine test.”

I took the spices out of the cabinet and didn’t say a word, although a million questions ran through my mind. I spoke up, after long hard though over my words of choice: “Gaia was not a large planet. Not as large as Earth, anyway. Yet we still needed plenty of Magic to survive through a regular day. I couldn’t even make his coffee without it. Things couldn’t really die that often. You can’t always be there to harness their energy as they die.”

“There are pipes in the cities that help.” He said, watching me carefully as I mixed in the ingredients. I made sure he couldn’t see. I wanted to come back later. I needed to give him a reason to invite me back; although I was certain that it wouldn’t work. “I can give you the name,” he paused as I put the cup in front of him. “Of the engineer, if you would like.”

I didn’t get his name, although I probably should have. “I’ll just show myself out.” My head was so full of thoughts. It was so swimming with questions. If I tried to ask one, I knew that they would all pour out. It became so absurd that I thought I might choke on them. So I swallowed it all down.

I needed to go home. I needed to sleep. What I didn’t think I needed was his permission to come back. I knew I already had it.

The Lies Roxanne Told

There was a transmission waiting for me when I got home. The beeping the transmitter made was a victory march for me. I had the truth of magic, though many questions loomed. I almost didn’t listen to the message. I almost went to sleep and didn’t bother with whatever my little Earthen reporter had to say. It couldn’t be as nearly as important as what I had discovered.

It couldn’t nearly be as shattering as discovering that our life was based around death. Roxanne would have loved to hear it. She would have gone on for hours about how profound that was. I’m no good with profound things.

I played the message anyway. If only to gloat that I would have the front-page before her, even if she couldn’t hear me.

“We found machines Ryan.” She was rushed, her voice hushed low and in a panic. “We found machines with the logo for the Center on them. You know, the Center for Science in the Global Interest? They were the ones who authorized this mission and, well Ryan… I know you never believe me. I know that you say I’m a liar and a storyteller and maybe I am. But I don’t like this. They have hooked the machines to everything that is remotely dead here. Even the bodies.”

She was crying. My Roxanne, my partner who was usually strong enough to not bat an eyelash at a challenge was crying. But she continued on. “The human bodies. There are these machines and pipes underground. We found them with metal detectors and I think the Center is doing something here. I don’t what it is, but there isn’t something right here.”

Suddenly, things fell into place. I didn’t need my imagination to fill in the pieces. I didn’t need the lies Roxanne told, although they helped me along the way. I had no time to celebrate a triumph.

I knew the next part of the story. I knew the headline that would read in a few weeks, maybe sooner. There would be another malfunction. They would burn in the atmosphere. Sophia would shake her head. So would I. I was a helpless witness.

I saved the tape and put it in the drawer. I closed the drawer and hung my head. I stood up straight, though my head was still low and staring at the floor. I somehow once again found a truth inside of myself and I bought something that I had never bought before. It was against my better judgment. But at that moment, my mind stopped working. I had figured out every mystery that was slicing at me. I was a victor. Nothing could grab me.

The Last Day

Sophia was with him that day. She looked about as stoic as ever, so I assume the tests turned out all right. I shook his hand. I even offered to shake her hand, but she wouldn’t take it. She shook her head frantically and stared with big eyes. Her father laughed. “Well Mister MacNeil, what do wish to see today?”

“The break room, actually. I didn’t have my breakfast. So let’s start there before we begin, can we?” I asked. I was rather hungry, though eating out of a vending machine did not sound remotely appetizing to me at all.

He nodded and took Sophia by the hand, “Come on now, and let’s go get food. I trust you will make me some that famous coffee, won’t you?” I nodded and Sophia pulled her hand away from his as the three of us walked harmlessly towards the room.

I turned on the coffee pot and went over to the row and machines. I picked out the only thing looking the least like a breakfast food. It was a pastry of some sort. I forgot to right the name done in my books. No big loss; it wasn’t very good. Sophia got another nutrition bar. Maybe zombies can only eat nutrition bars. I pondered this more than I should have. The light on the coffee maker went off.

“That’s your cue.” The doctor smiled as I swallowed the rest of my pastry. I stood up and began to pour a cup.

“So Doctor, what do your scientists get rid of the small colonies that go down to Earth? They do kill them, right?” I asked as I pulled spices down from the cabinet. “Or do they just wait for the hostile environment to get them. I have a source that says the trees there are highly suspicious.”

“Mister MacNeil…” he started, looking at me with wide eyes. “What you are talking a bout isn’t really my department. But I can give you a name, if you’d like and you could talk to them instead.”

I put the cup down in front of the man and sighed. “I’m sorry. I suppose you are right.” He took a drink. “However, you did create the system. Perhaps I’m shooting the messenger here in saying that this was all your fault.”

Sophia only stared as her father began to gasp. Her eyes were wider than his. Perhaps I had gone mad. But all I could say was, “It’s cinnamon. I put in cinnamon, vanilla creamer and a hint of nutmeg. That’s makes the coffee so delightful. Oh. And rat poison. But that was just the special blend of the day.”

Sophia began to scream. I began to cover my mouth, unsure of the words rushing out. I was taken over, perhaps by my own energy that I emitted. Perhaps I had kept it hidden and this whole time I was sleeping, obsessed with promotion and pipe dreams. Now I’m unleashing my power. “I think I’ll show myself out.” I said, knowing I wouldn’t get very far.

And I didn’t.

Afterword

There is a reason and rhyme to everything we do.

I came to you as Ryan MacNeil, the person slated as a cold-blooded killer by the newspapers, even the one he himself worked for. I leave you with the truth about what Magic really is. This isn’t a cry for help, but a word of caution. If you feel you must act, than act. If you want to burn this pamphlet, then let it go in flames.

For from this cell, all I have are my words. I am a helpless witness to a world I thought was in control. So I am decided to do the one thing I know how to do: I told the truth.

Everything I told you here is true.