current

This is a Smile

by Edward Cowan

minus 15 and counting

     “But dammit,” Sergei bleats from across the table, “there’s so much left to be done.”

     He’s not feeling well right now. Sergei isn’t usually the first to complain in any given situation, but he is apt to moan over things he can’t control. He scours us with a plaintive stare. Arvell and Blake ignore him outright, glaring at the cards in their hands. I glance away as soon as his eyes find mine to avoid being conscripted as The One To Explain Things As They Stand.

     Marty shifts in his chair. Sergei swings his stare and seat around--so now Arvell can see his cards. He whistles quietly and cocks an eyebrow at Blake. Blake grimaces. Not good.

     I’ve absorbed the flaccid body blows of Sergei’s stare--more irritating than painful. Marty pounds it flat and returns it for a few seconds before shifting his attention to me.

     Marty accompanied me the first time I saw the ship. We paced its milky contours--every one concave, everything looking, ha ha, melted--silently, me in awe, Marty idling as he cooked something up.

     When we spilled back under that pounding Florida sunshine he said: “We’ll be like sperm jammed into the tip of a giant condom.”

     He nods at me and says, “Do you believe in miracles, Joe?”

     I realize it’s been at least two minutes since anyone has anted the same instant Blake throws in a pair of white chips.

     “You gonna see that or fold?” he challenges Sergei.

     Sergei swivels in his seat and frosts us with a cool stare --well, close; it’s tough to give anyone a cool stare with a steady line of sweat dribbling from your chin to your lap. He throws in his two, his hands quivering.

     Arvell immediately pushes in two whites and two reds, smiling in that sadistic way of his--like he’s the leader of some death march lost to the annals of history. “See that, gents.”

     All eyes go to me, then. I fold. Marty’s watching me expectantly and I realize I can’t remember what he said.

     “How much time?” I ask him. That gets everyone’s attention: Sergei approaches the verge of a violent fit, Blake goes slightly pale, there’s a sudden tightness to Arvell’s eyes. They glance back at me in turn as we wait for Marty to raise his arm and glance at his watch--at its hands sweeping away those last, sweet minutes. They need me to treat that question as an idle inquiry, just checking to see how long until the cake’s ready, till the wife’s coming home. I signed onto this mission as co-pilot, wound up as Attention-Diversion Controller.

     “Fourteen fifty-eight,” Marty intones. He is--was--our Top Geek. Blake swallows hard. He and Sergei are scientists. Arvell mumbles to himself. He was the pilot, back when there was something to steer.

     “Shit,” I mutter, hoping no one hears. Marty does--or rather, he reads my lips. I don’t worry about him; he’s the only one I don’t have to keep calm.

     “I’ll see your reds,” Blake says, every jovial syllable an exercise in denial. “And . . .” his finger flits to his last remaining blue chip, seeming reluctant to push it forward.

     “. . . I’ll raise you this baby.” I can see it clicking in his mind, shooting down the neural pathways: in a little while, it won’t matter anyway. It’s not like he’ll have to pay up.

     Marty’s still watching me; Sergei folds. Arvell throws in a blue.

     “I’ll see that and call.”

minus 14 and counting

     When all is said and done, Blake’s three treys beat Arvell’s eights and nines.

     “Why’d you fold, dumbass?” Arvell gives Sergei’s cards a savage flip. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten of diamonds. “You had a small straight.”

     “Yeah,” Blake chimes in, more amused than angry, probably just thinking it was a damn good thing Sergei did fold. “What’s wrong with you?”

     Sergei stares at his hands, splayed out on the table, the damning cards arranged in a wide, sleepy grin between them.

     “I didn’t want to lose all my chips,” he growls. Arvell and Blake both scowl. I understand, almost; he’s got few enough left as it is and we still have, oh, fourteen or so minutes left. Plenty of time to play two or three good hands.

     Arvell gathers up the cards, begins aligning them. “You always were chickenshit.”

     The tension, folks, is rising.

     Enter Blake: “Hey, it’s my turn to deal, arse-hole.”

     Arvell’s eyes narrow balefully. He tosses the deck across the table. Blake just barely catches them before they spill over the edge. He sneers at Arvell. Arvell sneers back. Sergei is still simmering; I try to think of some way to calm him. Nothing occurs to me, so I decide to let him cook. If he’s going to boil, at least let him do it quietly. Marty’s still staring at me. And I still honestly can’t remember what he asked me.

     “You gonna deal or just play with those all day?” Arvell snaps at Blake. We pick up our cards; as I look at mine, what Marty asked suddenly hits me.

     “Miracles?” I arrange my hand--it reeks--and shrug. “Sure I believe in miracles.”

minus 13 and counting

     “Christianity,” Blake says, perusing his hand, “is all wrong.”

Sergei snorts. Arvell’s eyes alight. “How so?”

          “Think about it,” Blake replies, laying down three cards. His face assumes a wounded expression as he regards their replacements, which means nothing. If they were actually that bad, his right cheek would have ticced. It doesn’t; I figure he has a pair of faces.

     “I’m thinking,” Arvell says. Sergei, thankfully, has quieted down since being called chickenshit. He throws in a white. Arvell beckons with his free hand. “C’mon, tell me. Challenge my mind.” Everyone sneers; that was our mission, to challenge the world’s minds.

     Blake raises his right index finger, sending his tower of whites tumbling. He doesn’t notice them or the stack of reds his elbow is grinding into the tabletop. Marty rocks in his chair, staring at his monitor. He checks his watch, checks it with the timer, nods slightly and shifts his gaze to his bruised knuckles. He hasn’t yet been able to get the oily stench off them.

     “Okay, think about it. Heaven and hell . . .” Blake trails off, staring out at something invisible above Arvell’s head, then leans back in his chair, shaking his head. “It just doesn’t make sense.” The sarcasm in Arvell’s nod is enough to pull him forward again. “What I mean . . . what I mean, is--”

     “Don’t point your finger at me.”

     “--What I mean is, the concept of heaven and hell . . . just doesn’t make sense.”

     “I heard you. What I’m asking you is, why don’t they make sense?”

     “Think about the Ten Commandments. Say you’re married. You don’t like your wife, she doesn’t like you, you’re not happy together. You both die and go to hell.”

     “Okay.”

     “Now, hell, that’s easy. You both just spend an eternity burning. Simple enough. But heaven--?”

     “Heaven--?”

     “Heaven,” Blake says gravely, “just doesn’t make any sense.”

     “Explain.”

     “All right.” He shifts in his seat to take us all in, preparing to lay it on the world. Or what’s left of it for us. “Say you’re in the same situation, you both die, and you both go to heaven. Or only you do. It doesn’t matter.”

     “Doesn’t matter.”

     “Nah, it doesn’t matter. So you go to heaven . . . what exactly do      you do there?”

     “Heaven is paradise,” Marty says. “You do whatever you want to.”

     “That”--Blake crows, triumphant--“is where I’ve got you. What if paradise for me is nailing the most beautiful girl I can find?”

     “Then you do it.”

     “Uh-uh. You don’t, because whatzisface on the mountain--”

     “Moses.”

     “--Moses had to go up and get those Ten Commandments. ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery?’ You remember that from Bible School? I do. Do the Ten Commandments not apply after you die?”

     “Why,” Marty asks, “you worried about something?”

     “Now would be a good time to start worrying,” I murmur.

     “No, no,” Arvell breaks in. “You see, someone whose paradise would be committing adultery wouldn’t go to heaven. He’d go”--he jams a finger into the tabletop--“down there.”

     “What”--Blake recoils as if he’s being attacked from all sides--“What, so now thinking about adultery is a sin? I can’t even think about screwing a supermodel without being condemned to hell? Everyone thinks about stuff like that. Everyone. Even the Pope, for Christsakes.”

     “So that’s why heaven doesn’t make sense.”

     “Exactly. What, is heaven like some giant, eternal orgasm? Can you or can you not do what you want to do?”

     “Most of the things we want to do are forbidden by religion,” Marty chimes in.

     “Ex-act-ly! So do you not do anything in heaven? Just walk around in God’s holy light?”

     “So what you’re saying, Blake, is that the reason hell makes more sense than heaven is because what happens there has been so lovingly documented.”

     “Exactly, exactly. Why is heaven such a closed book?” Blake leans forward in his seat till his chin almost touches his discard pile. “Maybe because it doesn’t really exist.”

     “So hell makes more sense than heaven--” Marty begins.

     “--and therefore is more likely to exist,” I finish for him.

     Blake nods breathlessly.

     “There’s a comforting thought,” Sergei grouses.

minus 12 and counting

     “T minus twelve minutes, guys,” Marty says.

     “Rummy?” Arvell asks. He and Blake traded cards about fifteen seconds ago; apparently neither Sergei nor I is fit to shuffle a deck.

     Marty starts humming something from the Twentieth. “Rainy Day Women.” Then he goes into a medley of different oldies but goodies, singing some of the choruses under his breath, probably figuring no one wants to hear him. No one does. Sergei, Arvell, Blake, all three roll their eyes Marty’s way and scowl.

     Sergei tugs at his collar. “Getting steamy.”

     Blake rakes his hands through his sodden hair. “C’mon, deal.” Arvell fumbles the cards, his hands slick with sweat.

     I almost don’t pick up my hand. Don’t really want to play, but the three of them--even Marty--are eyeing me and waiting, waiting. But it’s not me they’re waiting for. It’s that big bad ball none of us has taken a look at in the last half hour, getting closer. Marty swivels back to his monitor.

     Something snaps.

     “System’s out,” he says. His voice doesn’t sound all that different--Marty’s never changes much, feast or famine, do or damn--but something’s gone out of it. Maybe I’m the only one who notices. Ha. The other guys are staring at their cards too intently, gripping them too tightly, to believe that.

     Marty looks at his watch, shakes it. Why I don’t know. In its dull viridescence--the brightest thing in the dim starlight a day ago, now just the memory of the inky void that had become our home--his face looks sick and shriveled, the sweat glistening on his cheeks like an oily residue.

     “Still works.” He shakes it again, listens to it, God knows why, held up to his ear. Looks at it again. “Eleven minutes now.”

     “Will you shut up?” Arvell barks. Marty shrugs and returns to staring at the monitor, blank as the day it rolled off the assembly line.

     A nine-year mission--

     There’s a Star Trek pin in Blake’s bunk, only thing in there out of place. A few centerfolds in Marty’s, a book of Nietzsche’s, Thus Spake Zarathustra, in Arvell’s. Sergei keeps a stack of letters from his childhood sweetheart at the head of his bunk. I just brought the deck of cards. Two of them, in fact. The other grinds against my hip from its nest in my pocket. Doesn’t bother me. Too hot for much to bother me. Or any of the others. Even Sergei can’t bother us much anymore.

     Star Trek, centerfolds, and Nietzsche--the mindless chant reverberates through my skull. Not out loud. Can’t let any of the others hear. They might crack. Of course I won’t. Lions and tigers and bears.

     Oh my!

     “I am the walrus,” Marty sings.

     “GOO GOO GOO JOOB,” I answer. Something crosses his face, maybe the heat’s making waves, I could almost swear it’s a smile. Couldn’t be. Not under these circumstances.

     No one does anything for two good, hot minutes. Sergei doesn’t bother complaining, doesn’t want to waste the breath, probably. The world is a red fog. Like blood over your sunshield.

     “Ten minutes yet?” I ask Marty. My voice sloshes through the sodden air.

     “Close enough.”

     I get up--no small feat, heat beating down on my back the way it is--and say, “Air’s getting thin, boys.” But no. Not thin--thick. Thick, sticky, lapping up our fluids fast as we can spurt them out. “Better go suit up.”

     They rise as slowly as I did, looking as tired as I must, rounding the pool of sweat beneath the table. Be a shame to slip and break your damn neck now.

     Blake hobbles up to me with arthritic steps. “Joe?”

     “Yeah?”

     “Think it’ll make any difference?”

I don’t answer, don’t even look at him. He peers at my sweat-scarred face, then lumbers past.

minus 10 and counting

          Sharon,

     I knew what happened when the ship lurched the way it did. No, not so much what happened. What was going to happen. The pull’s too great, we’re being sucked in too fast for Marty to fix it. You know Marty, sweetheart--if he can’t fix it, it can’t be fixed.

     You’ll never read this. A hot and angry sun is about to swallow us. Furious at this insect buzzing its face. Blake, ha, he’s worried about heaven. I think Arvell and Sergei are, too. God knows what Marty’s worried about. All I can think about, stupid as it sounds, is the beach, hottest day of the year, the sound of the waves pounding in my ears like a million billion drums because I’m hallucinating from the heat, ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha--

     That’s all I have the energy to write. Besides, the pencil’s slipping out of my hand. And it was getting melodramatic anyway.

minus 7 and counting

     “Heaven,” Blake says. “Heh heh heh.” His laugh an eerie grate through the helmet cocooning his head. His face shadowed under the protective layer of Polytech (patent pending) sunshield.

     It’s like looking at someone lying in a coffin.

     I was the last one back, and when I got here all of them had assumed the exact same positions. Our breaths rasp through the ventilators, the conditioning units on our backs in overdrive and failing. And now I can’t get at my face to wipe off the sweat.

     Arvell silently offers to deal me in. I shake my head and plop the other deck of cards on the table in front of me.

     I open the pack and try to shuffle. Mostly I mix the cards up in great big globs. Even that’s nearly impossible from inside my suit. I lay the cards out for a hand of pyramid solitaire. Can’t remember the last time I won.

     Marty looks at his arm--takes him a moment to realize he can’t see his watch through his suit. When he does, he sighs, lets his arm drop and stares off into space. Plenty of that, at least.

     Silence. Then Blake again:

     “Suppose God is a giant, eternal orgasm?” But he doesn’t sound so worried anymore. And no one answers.

minus 5 and counting

     I laid out a pyramid, okay, and now I’m staring at it. Doing nothing, just staring. None of the others have moved for at least a minute. I’m afraid to look up, afraid to see Sergei’s or Arvell’s or Blake’s or Marty’s faces staring lifelessly out into the endless nowhere, their suits holding them erect.

     One of the Jacks--oh you one-eyed bastard--stares back at me, smiling. The wax coating the cards is starting to melt. The ace of spades at the top of the pyramid is already shriveling into a viscid mass. The pyramid points toward the sun. Nobody breathes.

minus 4

     Finally I stand up--even harder this time, have to put all my strength into it, now--and push myself off toward the cockpit. When I get there I stare out at the thing gleefully killing us. I want to reach out and touch the vaunted Polytech surface of this window to God or some vengeful approximation thereof. Can’t lift my arm.

3-2-1-

     I nearly scream, so surprised am I when someone sidles up to me. Ha, thought you were all dead. Too tired to scream, though. Too hot besides.

     It’s Marty. He drags his booted feet next to mine and plants them on the floor. No, not on. In--floor’s beginning to boil. Getting hard to see through my sunshield. It’s like standing under a giant glassblower. Polytech’s latest miracle is starting to bubble.

     I twist my right eye--doesn’t want to twist, wants to keep gazing upon the thing consuming it--and notice something in Marty’s hand. Looks like a poster. A centerfold. Has to be Miss July. Or maybe Miss August.

     “What’s that?” I barely rasp.

     He tries to hold it up but he can’t move his arm. The paper flakes off at the edges. Its glossy finish sticks to his palms like gum you kept in your pocket for hours on hot days as a kid.

     “Think . . . she’ll be . . . in heaven?” He tries to smile, can’t.

     We turn our attention to the sun. Finally Marty works up enough energy, enough moisture in his mouth, to speak again. His tongue probably bleeding from the effort.

     “Should have . . . fixed it,” he says in what emerges as a lazy, sunny drawl. “Should have fixed thrusters.” He laughs. “Blake . . . worried . . . God, heaven . . . too bad he couldn’t see this,” he finishes in a rush.

     So they are all gone, notes some dispassionate corner of my brain.

     “Sick . . . joke,” he manages, nodding toward the sun. “Giver of life. Think this . . . classifies . . . as ironi--”

     His tongue stills. He shudders within his suit. All I can think about is those hot summer days, waves pounding in my ears, hallucinating from the heat.

     And then I experience the maybe one-in-a-trillion feeling of being utterly, beatifically, cosmically alone. I am the last one, the only one, to face infinity--and smile. At least I think I’m smiling. Now I’m Zoroaster on a tower of silence.

     Something itches my cheek. Can’t reach it. Don’t care. Can’t tell if it’s sweat or tears or my skin melting. Sharon.

     It was too brilliant to look at the first time we saw it up close. Not now. Not when it fills the cockpit with such turgid luminescence, not when it’s the sky and everything else. Not when it’s all you can see. Can’t blink. Wouldn’t if I could. You wouldn’t either, Sharon. All these thoughts of the wife--Mission Control would love it. Option it right out for the feature film.

     I want to lie down and let that be my epitaph, let my body collapse on the floor and die. But the suit’s joints are melted, fused. Won’t let me move. So I’m forced to stand there and watch as the sun approaches.

ze r o

     Worst part of dying I think is when you realize nothing really changes when you’re gone. But you die with dignity anyway, don’t you?

     We all smiled for the PR photographs. Lips are boiling, Sharon. Love you to death.

Edward Cowan’s stories have been published in The First Line and Thieves Jargon. He is preparing to unleash his novel My Life as the Source of All Evil, a black comedy appraising our everything/all the time culture, on an unsuspecting world. To contact Edward, please visit thenationalevil.wordpress.com.

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