From Outer Space - A sad story by Phil

From Outer Space

Alberto rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and stared back at the screen. He switched to the physical representation view, rather than the stream of digits, and watched specks swarm the screen like snowflakes driving at the windscreen at night. There didn’t look to be anything out of the ordinary, but only a savant could see any pattern in the anarchic movements of the asteroids on the monitor before him. As it goes, though, Alberto was a savant, with a gift that was quite unique. He could see forms invisible to others, sense trends in the orbits long before the computer could predict their next move. In other words, he could spot order in chaos.

Alberto flipped a lever and tilted back on the unfriendly swivel chair. He rested his moist, meaty hands, fingers interlinked, on his ample gut. He was wearing a black AC/DC T-shirt and jeans. This was all he ever wore, apart from on his wedding day and the day in court when the restraining order was handed down. He had neat, dark hair, carefully Bryl-creamed into an old-fashioned side parting. His eyes were small and a little close together, and his nose leant over a downturned mouth. A scrubby goatee did little to conceal his double chin. He was the only person in the small room, stuffed with computers and printers and piles of paper. It was dark and unpleasant, but Alberto valued the privacy to concentrate. His job was to spot Earth-bound meteors and meteorites, and provide an early warning for the potential destruction of life on our planet.

Just a few weeks after the strike in the Urals, the UN had established an international early-warning meteor watch centre. It would receive data from the Hubble Space Telescope and other major arrays, such as Mauna Kea, and analyse it to identify approaching rocks. Naturally, the key focus was the asteroid belt, from which a perilous rock can bounce at any time, ballooning out of the normal orbit like a tennis shot clouted with the frame. For Alberto, this was the perfect opportunity to escape his colleagues at the provincial English university where he sloped through banal research and even more risible seminars. Thinking back from the solitude of his Brussels office, Alberto’s insides twisted when he considered those colourless, odourless undergraduates, sitting around on plastic chairs. Some would pontificate on dark matter, as though they knew more than anyone else; others would announce that Fred Hoyle was right, with his now preposterous steady state theory of constant matter creation. Still others would sit motionless, perfect hair and perfect disengagement. Alberto was also glad to put miles between himself and the women who tormented him. He thought of them as two women, although one was but seven years old: his daughter Ruth.

Ruth was opinionated, selfish and mischievous. She had long, dark hair with a fringe; dewy eyes, and a scar on her upper lip that gave her a slight pout. The scar was from Alberto snapping down the lid on a biscuit tin, aiming to get a laugh from his wife, as Ruth peered inside. Instead, he got fury from his wife and blood on the biscuits. Ruth had found that she could play tricks on her father that drove him crazy. For instance, Ruth would switch the salt in the shaker for sugar, or put a toy spider under his bedclothes. Most people would find this behaviour adorable, signifying a lovely, playful sense of humour. Alberto, however, didn’t see it this way. He took it as a personal affront. He thought it was a clear indication that his daughter hated him. He didn’t understand that there could be a sense of fun behind the little acts of monkey business. He sulked afterwards. The deteriorating relationship between Alberto and Ruth didn’t help shorten the gap between him and the second woman: his wife, Millie. Naturally, Millie defended Ruth to her husband, but the truth was she couldn’t see him changing. He’d never been able to take a joke, other than the simplest slapstick.

People said: “They married too young.” “She’s too good for him.” “I like her, but he’s always rather… aloof/antisocial/rude” (depending on how frank the speaker was). Whatever other people thought, it rubbed off on Millie. Somehow she hadn’t quite recognised, or had ignored, his lack of social graces when first getting to know Alberto. Millie had, perhaps, been dazzled by his intellect and passion for astrophysics. She was intelligent, but impulsive. She began to look at him as though he was from outer space. As the years went on, and Ruth grew up and away from her father, Millie’s patience became thread-thin. And so, they were divorced, a bewildering experience for Alberto.

He never understood why; he thought the pair was as happy as could be. Alberto considered their union very successful; they were financially secure and companionable. Ruth could be difficult, but they just needed to teach her how to behave. Millie didn’t get angry with him during proceedings; she just shook her head sadly. She only got angry when he kept on coming by on his way home from work. In the end, she couldn’t take it and reported him to the police. A police counsellor recommended to Alberto that he move away, convincing him that it would be better for his ex-wife and daughter. That was how the counsellor always referred to Millie – ‘your ex-wife.’

The pixels of light moved about the screen, some sauntering, some racing. Each pinprick represented one asteroid; generally, it was one pixel for one asteroid, unless it was a really huge one. Slight tonal variation showed depth. To any other eyes, the monitor likely looked like a detuned TV. Yet Alberto could see stories. He could see which rocks would collide and shatter; which would career off at a tangent; indeed, which ones would miss each other. Crucially, Alberto could see where large chunks spun out of the typical orbit with an Earth-bound trajectory. So far, there had been close-run-things, but no direct hits. One incident had given Alberto particular kudos. Some months ago, he saw a double-pixel rock deflect towards him on the screen. It looked concerning, but as he watched he could see, or rather instinctively feel, that it was not on course for Earth. A few hours later, when the computer spotted it, there was uproar in the observatory. Acrimonious accusations flew, people questioned Alberto’s role in the organisation if he couldn’t identify threats faster than the computer could. Although he was confused and distressed by the hostility, Alberto didn’t let it show. He just quietly insisted: “It will be a glancing strike.” What he meant by this was that the meteor would bounce inoffensively off the upper atmosphere. However, there was no trust in his intuitive sense of the rock’s path, and the threat level went to orange. Concerned phone calls from heads of state came through day and night. Alberto was the only one in the team insisting, “It will be a glancing strike.” As the meteor’s trajectory was mapped with greater and greater precision, it became gradually clearer that it was not on track for a direct hit. Hans, the team leader, started jovially saying things like, “Oh, but we can’t be too careful” to Alberto, who remained silent. He couldn’t quite comprehend why they wouldn’t trust him on this; after all, it was his job to do exactly what he was doing. Happily, for the human race and for the red-faced Hans, the strike was indeed glancing, and Alberto was lauded (quietly) as a genius.

As Alberto watched, two pixels collided. They recoiled, as usual, but one of the two instantly struck another and came away at an unusual angle. He hit a button that allowed him to watch that pixel alone, on a black screen, other than the fine grey gridlines. He didn’t know how he knew, but Alberto knew this was right on course for Earth. It was only one pixel, but that didn’t help much, since the rock could be up to eight hundred metres across.

Alberto watched intently a while longer, allowing the appalling knowledge to sink in, set down roots in his brain. He then swapped back to the orbit path view on the monitor. This was a seemingly incomprehensible string of constantly changing numbers, where each sequence of three represented the orbit of one asteroid. Alberto could instantly see the odd one out, and the figures confirmed his suspicions. Assuming the rock continued on this path, it would hit Earth in a few days. He ran some calculations to see if the gravity of the moon would affect it, but the meteor was resolutely on course.

He lifted the phone to contact the agency head, Maria, who was one step above Hans. Alberto checked himself and replaced the receiver. He thought about Millie, he thought about Ruth. Without really taking the time to ponder his decision, as though on a kind of autopilot, Alberto acted. The computer was set up to allow Alberto to remove lines of irrelevant data that could distract him from the real issues, such as the data picking up the International Space Station. He switched back to the pixel storm on his computer, selected the spot for the lump of rock heading to Earth and deleted it. He sneaked from the office and caught a cab to the airport.

He was landing back in the UK before the computer in Brussels noticed anything untoward. All the technicians were rushing about, trying to get some confirmation of the worst. Alberto’s mobile rang thirteen times before he switched it off. He was unreachable.

Soon Alberto was back in his familiar position on Millie’s doorstep. He rang the bell and saw the net curtains twitching in response. The misunderstandings, involving him coming by uninvited, were recent enough for Millie to still be very cautious. Alberto went to the window and pressed his face to it. He couldn’t see anything, but called out nonetheless:

“Millie, I need to see you and Ruth! Life on Earth will soon be wiped out!”

Inside, Millie thought: he’s lost his mind. She peered at him, hangdog and bedraggled on the threshold of her house. The pity for Alberto she’d felt straight after their divorce came back in a rush, but she suppressed it as soon as it arrived. Stepping into the kitchen, she phoned the police. Ruth walked downstairs and asked, “Who’s that?” Millie told her it was her father but she wasn’t to see him. Ruth made a face and went back upstairs to steal a look from the bedroom at the front. The police took the breach of a restraining order seriously, and arrived quickly.

Millie and Ruth watched from the bedroom window as Alberto was pulled away by two police officers, shouting all the while. Ruth looked at her mother, who had a curious, glassy-eyed gaze. Many thousands of miles above them, an unfeeling chunk of rock headed for them all, a terrible emblem of the lack of reason in the universe. Rationalising the thing was impossible. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that the meteor would hit the Earth, just as it wasn’t anyone’s fault that Alberto tried to hide it. In the back of the police car, Alberto squeezed his eyes tight shut, clenched his fists and rocked gently back and forth.