THE LAST MAN ON EARTH - Space Oddity (corrected)

by G0shD4rnG3nius

Picks up right after the events of the FIRST season of the Will Forte FOX TV show. Phil gets a message from his brother on the ISS and the crew from the cul-de-sac have to find a way to get him back to Earth. Also, offers an origin story for the virus. Hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading.

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH – Space Oddity

PART ONE: The Great Sibling in the Sky

Phil put his seat belt on as Carol drove them back to the cul-de-sac. She hinted that the trip back was going to be a long one (he was only conscious for part of the trip out so he didn't have a very good grasp on how far out the other Phil had taken him) and she told him that she wanted to know everything about him, so since he had started to talk about his brother, he continued with that. "As I was saying. He was a doctor …"

"A doctor!" Carol exclaimed, interrupting. Carol was bad for that, interrupting. Already, Phil was a little less thrilled that she chose him over the other Phil. Carol made such a big deal out of everything. What's the big friggin' deal? he thought. So? He's a doctor. What's so special about that? Then Phil thought about it for a minute. Carol was excited, and for once it wasn't about something that the other Phil, or Todd, or anybody else from the cul-de-sac had done. It wasn't about anything Phil had done either, but, it was about someone in his family. And that was a start. Maybe if Phil could get Carol excited about the Miller family, some of that excitement would eventually rub off on him. So, he decided to play up the story of his brother, but, in keeping with his pledge to be an honest man, not lie about him, just punch up the highlights.

"Uh, a specialist, actually," he continued, but not for long. Carol's eyes popped and her grin widened. She interrupted again.

"Of what was he a specialist?" That was another one of Phil's pet peeves, the way Carol phrased her sentences, never allowing one to end in a preposition. She continued her line of questioning, trying to guess Phil's brother's specialty. "Tonsillectomies? Was he a tonsillectomist, Phil?" She wasn't sure that was actually a word, but it sounded good so in her enthusiasm, she let it slide. Phil was pretty sure it wasn't a word and he didn't let it slide. He took the opportunity to get in a light-hearted jab.

"No, Carol, he wasn't a tonsillectomist," he said, teasing her a bit. "He was a vi-rol-o-gist." He stumbled over the last word trying not to come right back with a wrong word of his own. Once he was sure he had it right, he continued with his brother's impressive story. "In fact, he was workin' on a cure for cancer, Carol.

Carol sighed a long "Wow" but she was starting to think Phil was trumping up his brother's feats to try and impress her. If only he could understand that she was most impressed when he wasn't trying to impress her and instead was just being his regular, uninflated self.

It may have sounded like a bogus claim, but in fact it was true. Phil's brother was one of the nation's leading virologists and he was working on finding a cure for cancer, which is less impressive when you consider that many doctors specializing in virology do so to study and hopefully cure one type of cancer or another. None the less, as spectacular as Phil was trying to make it, he was being completely honest. It was the next detail, also true, that elected Carol mayor of Nonbelieverville. "And, he was an astronaut!"

Carol's grin faded. She was disappointed that it took less than ten minutes for Phil to go back to his old lying ways. "Oh come on, Phil," she admonished, "a doctor and an astronaut?"

Maybe Phil had gone a little too far with the story, but only a little. He back pedalled a bit. "Okay, maybe not an astronaut," Phil conceded, which made Carol scowl, "but he did go to space," Phil quickly corrected, "which sort of makes him an astronaut, right?" Phil waited and looked for some sort of acknowledgement to his claim but he could see from her expression that Carol was still skeptical. He launched into clarification, stumbling over his words as he spit out the details. "He..he..he was, uh, up on the space station, studying how, uh, how viruses, uh, reproduce. Yeah, and in low gravity or something, it slowed 'em down and my brother could get a better look at all the, uh, mechanics involved .. so he could, uh, figure out .. how to, uh .. stop …" Phil stopped his story. His frantic delivery and lack of certainty of the details of his brother's work made it sound like one of the stories he used to make up on the fly in an attempt to cover up a lie. Carol was very serious now, concentrating hard on her driving and looking straight ahead at the road, trying not to notice Phil looking at her. Phil was a little disappointed too, at how quickly Carol had given up on him, and it made him defensive. "You don't believe me?" he asked. He was hurt, genuinely hurt this time. "Well that's just great. That's just frikkin' great, Carol!"

Carol had heard this tone before, and she wasn't buying it. "No Phil, I don't believe the story of your brother, the cancer-curing space doctor! What's next? Did he find a cure, Phil? Did he find a cure for the virus and save us all? Are we all really alive and you and I just don't know it? Did he do that too, Phil? Did he…" This time, it was Phil's turn to interrupt. And he did it loudly.

"NO! BECAUSE HE DIED! He died up there on that space station! And my parents died! And everybody we ever knew died!" Phil's face was tight as he stared at Carol, his chest heaving with every hard breath he took. Carol looked like a four year old who'd just been scolded. Maybe Phil was telling the truth, she thought. In case there was a shred of doubt left, Phil asked her, his voice still loud, "Do you want to know the truth?" She turned slowly to him, her eyes slightly swollen as she tried to hold back the emotion she felt from recalling the fact that all of her loved ones were gone, and nodded silently before turning back to the road. Her sadness broke Phil. He upset Carol. He didn't mean to. He was just trying too hard to reverse his reputation as a liar. He realized the story he was telling sounded too awesome to be true, but it was true, and the only reason Carol didn't believe it was because he was telling it. It was his fault she wasn't believing it, not hers. All of his anger was gone in an instant, and replaced with his own sadness and regret. It made him very uncomfortable to be vulnerable in front of her but each time he was forced to do it, it was easier and he opened up a little more. So he continued his story.

"My brother was a great man," he said, with a hard swallow, "who did great things. And I hated it." Phil paused. That was the first time he told anyone that. Just saying it opened a flood of similar feelings. "I hated that he got all the attention, and all the advantages, and all the praise. Just because he was older; just because he was born first. What if I'd been born first?" He turned to Carol and asked again, "What if I'd been born first, huh?" Carol didn't know what to say. She looked at him briefly, pursing her lips and shrugging her shoulders. Luckily, she was let off the hook as Phil began to spell it out for her. "I'll tell you what would have happened. I'd have got the money for school. I'd have been the doctor. I was smart enough. I know the circumference of a circle." Carol didn't know what he meant by that last statement but knew better than to interrupt this time. She said she wanted to know everything about Phil and in hearing him tell this story, she was getting insight into what really made him tick. She was learning more about Phil than she would ever learn about his brother. She didn't always make sense of it but she listened carefully as he continued to rant. "I'd have got the house. And the wife. And the kids. And the awards. I'd have been the one invited by NASA to go to the International Friggin' Space Station to do experiments .. to find a cure for cancer … and be a hero. It would be me." Phil was getting misty-eyed and he paused to run a hand under his nose which was starting to run a bit. He didn't turn to her but spoke just to the glove compartment of Carol's car. "It would be me, Carol."

Phil sat there a moment. He could feel his eyes welling with tears and his vision started to blur. He looked down at his feet, and then around at other parts of the car, and at anything but Carol. He didn't want her to see him this emotional. He tried to think of something to distract him so he could regain his composure. Carol knew what he was doing but pretended to ignore it. Finally, Phil noticed Gary. Gary wasn't a person. Gary was a white volleyball that Phil had drawn a face on and named Gary. When Phil thought he was alone, he had drawn on several sports balls and gave them all names. He talked to them. They kept him company. Gary was the first, and Phil's favorite. He stared up at Phil with his big toothy grin. For a moment Phil imagined Gary was mocking him for being such a sissy. What are you looking at? Phil thought. And he almost said it too. He almost slipped back into his behavior from before – before there were people. But there are people. There's Carol, and Todd, and Melissa, and all the other survivor's back at the cul-de-sac. Phil wasn't alone anymore. He didn't have to talk to sports balls anymore. He didn't have to act all weird to keep himself from totally losing his mind. It was a long, bad habit he had got himself into. And it was going to be a long trip back to normalcy; a long trip he could take with Carol because she chose to stay with him; to help him make the trip. Then he noticed something, the smudge on Gary's face. It was a hoof-shaped smudge, and he remembered how it got there, and he realized something.

"You blew him up," he said quietly, still trying to choke back tears. Carol wasn't sure she heard him right. It sounded to her like he was accusing her of blowing someone up, but that didn't make sense. She didn't know what he was talking about.

"What?" she asked.

"You blew Gary up," he explained. "The cow had stepped on him, and pushed all the air out." Phil looked up at Carol. "You put his air back in." He let a tear trickle down his cheek. Carol smiled, glad that he had noticed. She turned to him, but only briefly. She saw the trail the tear had left down his dusty cheek and turned back to the road, not wanting to embarrass him.

She continued to smile. "Yeah. He didn't want to see you looking the way he did." She liked being part of Phil's old world. It was like they were building a history together, one that even preceded their meeting. Her grin broadened.

Phil didn't care that Carol had seen him cry. He was glad that she accepted his ball friends and played along. It meant that the trip back to being a part of normal society wasn't going to be as difficult as he feared. In a way, Carol bringing Gary back to his normal self was like how she was trying to bring Phil back to his normal self, and Phil realized that the move was probably intentional. For Carol, a lot of what she did was a metaphor for something else, and for the first time, Phil appreciated that. His eyes cleared and he smiled. Still looking at the ball, he said, "Typical Gary."

Carol sensed that Phil's mood had improved so she thought, since there was still quite a lot of time left in their trip, that she might try to learn more about Phil and his brother. "What was his name?" she asked.

"What?" he asked, losing track of the thread of the conversation. He thought she was still talking about the ball. He had already mentioned Gary by name. Wasn't she listening?

"What was your brother's name?" she clarified. Phil had temporarily forgotten his sadness. Now it was back, but this time it wasn't as upsetting. Knowing Carol cared about his past helped.

"Robert," he said, then, with a little more flare, "Robert Cronyn Miller." Phil began to realize that all he had told Carol before was how jealous he was of Robert. He wanted to take some of that back, let Carol know that life with his big brother wasn't all bad. "We got along," he began, "as kids." Phil tried to paint a picture of typical family life. "I mean, he was my big brother and he picked on me and stuff, but I got my jabs in," he said as he made some shadow boxing moves in the car. Phil thought back to the days when a skinny, acne-faced teen Robert had an even skinnier superhero-pyjama-clad pre-teen Phil in a headlock and was beating him with a pillow. Carol figured he was stretching the truth a bit but she let him have that one. The rest of the way back, Phil told Carol tales of his upbringing in Tucson, most of them involving his big brother his some way.

Phil talked about the year he was in high school, the one year when he and Robert shared at that school. They had both entered the science fair. Robert, a senior, had a demonstration of how the immune system learns to fight disease, and Phil, a freshman, had a demonstration of how he had learned the best combination of moves to beat anyone at Mortal Combat. "So, you know, sorta similar," he concluded. "And my booth had the most visitors. I took all comers. And I beat 'em all!" He had, actually. "I even beat Mr. Jenkins, the Gym teacher. And all I got was a Participant's ribbon. Robert got first place." Phil got a little dejected remembering that, but not angry, more, reflective. "That's when it all began," he continued, a little quieter. "Robert got some scholarship money from the fair. Mom and dad chipped in the rest. Robert moved off to California to go to med school. My parents didn't have enough money for both of us to go to college so I stayed in Tucson, and got a job at the bowling alley. I got to be a pretty good bowler too." Phil remembered his time at the alley, a young man in his early twenties, as one of spraying bowling shoes with disinfectant antifungal spray, cleaning up after kids' birthday parties and, at the end of the night, getting time to bowl a few frames just before the lights went out. "I had an average in the high 200s. I coulda gone pro too. But the money wasn't any good. And there was a lot of travelling." Phil let that story just trail off. Carol could tell he was embellishing again but she just nodded along with his excuses for why he didn't make more of his life. Soon, he went back to telling the story of his brother. He wanted Carol to think well of him by knowing there was success in his family, and the story of the failed bowling career probably wasn't cutting it.

"But Robert," he continued, "he graduated with honors and got a research grant. He stayed at UCLA and did his research. That's where he met Emily, his wife." Phil's head started to bob up and down as he told the story of his brother's successes. "Yeah, he got married, had two kids, a nice house. Emily was real smart too. She was a rocket scientist, worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, you know, the JPL, up there in Pasadena. That's how Robert got involved with NASA. He had won some award from the National Science Foundation and he parlayed that into a chance to do his research on how gravity affected the reproduction of viruses. I stopped in to visit him just before he went up to the space station, you know, to lend a hand; to make sure everything was tip top before blast off." Phil's telling of those events may have varied slightly from the way he actually recalled that visit. The bowling alley had closed and he went to see if Robert could lend him some money to tide him over until he could develop his skill at iPad games into some real tournament winnings. Robert suggested that he just get another job and forget all the gaming fantasies. Robert suggested joining a temp agency, offering that maybe they could try him in a number of fields until one really clicked for him. In his spite, Phil tampered with some of the experiments Robert had prepared for the mission while his brother was out of the lab. Phil had emptied the contents of one nostril into one test tube containing a viral culture, coughed on a few Petri dishes and even was bold enough to undo his pants and rub his penis on some slides. In hindsight, exposing his genitals to an experimental viral strain was probably a bad idea but, luckily, Phil suffered no ill effects from the gamble. Carol didn't buy Phil's story of his contributions to science any more than she had the other stories he was telling about his past with his brother and she was hoping he would wrap it up and start talking about himself, the real Phil Miller, the now Phil Miller.

"It sounds like your brother was quite a guy, and it sounds like the two of you did some very interesting things together. I'm sorry for your loss." she said, hoping to bring closure to that line of Phil's history. Phil managed a couple of silent nods, trying to agree, but the truth was that Phil regretted his attempts to undermine his brother's success. He knew what Carol was hinting at, that she wanted him to talk more about himself, just himself. The truth was, there was nothing extraordinary about him. He took his brother's advice. He registered with a temp agency. And they found him several menial, and ultimately unfulfilling jobs, none of which he was remotely successful at. And maybe it was time Carol knew that. He was grateful she had chosen him, and he didn't want to beef that. But maybe it was in the spirit of wanting to be a more honest man (and God knows that he hadn't been completely honest on the ride back so far), or maybe it was because Carol had brought Gary, and all the other sports balls for that matter, along to pick him up. Or maybe, deep down inside, he knew that all Carol wanted from him, all Carol needed from him, was just to be himself. Whatever the reason, Phil thought he could trust Carol not to leave him if she knew the truth. They were approaching Tucson now and instead of heading for the cul-de-sac, Phil asked Carol to make a little detour.

"At the next corner, make a left."

"But the cul-de-sac is…" she began. Phil interrupted.

"I just want to show you something." He knew she would want to get back home before the others worried so he promised, "It won't take long." Phil directed her to an older part of the city and eventually to a modest apartment complex. The lettering on the building read, Tucson Knolls. "I didn't always live on the cul-de-sac you know," he confessed. Carol knew.

"Yeah, I kinda figured you didn't change your name." This comment caused Phil to furrow his brow. He was confused.

"Change it?" he asked.

"From Christopher Lord," she explained. "I found the ownership in the truck the day you crashed it into Melissa's car. Christopher Lord, the original owner of the truck, and the house." Phil felt a little deflated, and a little insulted. He got a bit defensive.

"Yeah, well it's not like you never stole a car in your life. I bet this one doesn't even belong to…" Phil let the words trail off as he opened the glove compartment and looked at the ownership of the car belonging to Carol Pilbasian. Carol smiled smugly, but only for a moment. Phil shot back with, "Well, the house you're living in doesn't belong to you either!" Then after a moment, realized that Carol had been holding Phil to a double standard. "For that matter, why do you make such a big deal about me taking all those paintings when you took an entire house that doesn't belong to you?" Carol didn't have an answer. She just stared at Phil for what seemed like a long moment, unable to believe that he caught her up on a question of morals. Just as it seemed like he was starting to realize that, but before he had a chance to enjoy it, she tried changing the subject.

"Okay, but what does that have to do with the Tucson Knolls?" she asked. It worked. Phil took a few quick looks back and forth between Carol and the building trying to decide which conversation he wanted to have before finally deciding.

"Well, you wanted to know about Phil Miller. That's why I brought you here. Welcome to Chez Phil, the real Chez Phil. This is where I used to live before the cul-de-sac." Phil gestured toward the building inviting Carol to get out of the car and have a look.

"I can see why you wanted to move. This place is a hole!" Carol chided. She was only teasing but Phil was a little hurt.

"Well, thank you for that," he said. Carol couldn't tell if he was playing up how much he was insulted or not. It was possible Phil was trying to have a genuine moment of vulnerability here so she decided to be a little more considerate.

"I'm sure it's much nicer inside. Let's take a look." The two made their way to the unit Phil rented. It wasn't as messy as the home on the cul-de-sac had been when Carol first met Phil, but it wasn't tidy either. And there was a selection, though a smaller one, of magazines featuring what Carol called "molested girls" that Phil had used for his masturbatory pleasure. It was the humble abode belonging to a middle-aged, single man. And that was the most important aspect of the place. It was humble. It, of course, lacked the presence of historic artifacts that filled (or should I say "Philled") the other home but that was just it; this home was not Philled. This place did not wreak of the man Phil had become; it was a snapshot of the man Phil was, the pre apocalyptic Phil, normal Phil. Though it reflected some of the same tastes as the Phil she knew, Carol liked this place; she was more comfortable here. As Carol wandered around the apartment, Phil tidied up a little. The last time he was here, Phil had just returned from his nationwide tour, trying to find other people and painting his "Alive in Tucson" billboards. In his disgust with his lack of success, he had decided that the world was his to do with as he saw fit, so he quickly packed up a few things and moved to the nicer digs of the home on the cul-de-sac in Bonita Estates. In his haste, he did leave his old place in a bit of a shambles. He threw dirty clothes into a laundry pile and dirty magazines, after a brief moment of contemplation, into the trash. It was under one of the magazines that he found it.

"Look what we have here," Phil announced. "My old iPad. Man, I logged some serious game time on this baby." At last, something that Phil was proud of that he thought Carol would find impressive. "There was hardly a game out there that I wasn't the master of."

"Of which I was not the master," Carol corrected. Phil ignored her.

"I wonder if it still works," he said as he pressed the power button. The logo lit on the screen, followed shortly thereafter by the low battery warning. "Battery's low but it still works," he called to Carol, who was snooping in the bedroom trying not to look too offended by some of the odors in there.

"Bring it back to the cul-de-sac," she called back, "maybe you can charge it up with one of the generators." Then her eyes widened as she remembered that Phil, the other Phil, was working on hooking up enough solar panels together to get electricity back on at the cul-de-sac. "Or maybe, by the time we get back, Phil will have the power working again." Carol was expecting a reaction but Phil was too excited about his discovery to pay much attention to what Carol was saying. She came out of the bedroom to see what he was doing. It was late and the sun was starting to set. In the dim light of the room, the device illuminated Phil's smiling face as he saw some of these familiar icons for the first time in a long time. One of the icons had a little red number one on it, the mail icon.

"Hmph. I have an email. It must be from before the internet stopped working. I wonder who sent me the very last email I'll ever get." He tapped on the icon and the message popped open. Then Phil went from curious and amused to stunned.

"What is it?" Carol asked, concerned. "Who's it from?"

Phil looked up at Carol, and with a voice that was a jumble of emotions, announced, "It's from my brother. He wrote it from the space station." Phil tilted his head back down to see what his brother's last words were when the screen blacked out. The battery was dead.

PART TWO: The Message

"Noooooo! Damn it!" Phil yelled.

"What is it?" Carol asked, rushing over to him. "What's the matter?" She looked over his shoulder at the black screen.

"The battery's dead," he announced, despondent.

"It's not the end of the world," Carol reassured him. "Let's just bring it home and recharge it." Phil noticed Carol had used the word "Let's". It showed that she was invested, once again, in a life together with Phil. He was glad of that. What he wasn't sure of, was her use of the word "home". Did she mean the cul-de-sac? Did she mean his home on it? Was her intention to move back in with him? If that was the case, he wasn't sure he was ready for that much normalcy quite yet. But for now, he was just glad she wanted to help. And more so, he was excited and curious about the message from his brother so he gave a quick nod and the two hurried out to the car.

On the way home, Carol became curious about the message, specifically, its point of origin. "I didn't know the astronauts were allowed to send emails from the space station," she said.

"Yeah, well, at first they were only allowed to email, like, NASA and other scientists and stuff," Phil explained, trying, despite his colloquial delivery, to sound authoritative. "But President Clinton changed it so they could email their family and friends too," he added. "She was a big fan of email." Phil wasn't completely sure of his facts but he knew that his brother went up during the second President Clinton's term in office and that she had some association with email accessibility so he made what he thought was a sound assumption. Carol nodded along without disputing it so Phil figured he must be right. He grinned at the thought of being the authority on this matter.

Phil and Carol made their way back to the cul-de-sac. As the car pulled up, they could see the other residents settling into their evening routine of gathering in the circle and sitting by the fire pit. "Look who I found!" Carol announced, presenting Phil. Even though he was dusty and dirty, and tear-stained, and his expulsion from the cul-de-sac just the night before was under strained circumstances, everyone seemed relieved to have him back, most smiling or nodding their welcome. The one exception was Phil, the other Phil Miller, the new Phil, the one who had attacked the old Phil and had left him in the desert. Old Phil had admitted to wanting to kill new Phil and Todd, both out of jealousy for getting women that old Phil wanted (Todd had Melissa and new Phil had been with Carol). When the new Phil learned of this, he, as the newly elected President of the United States (replacing old Phil in that role, which he had acquired when he and Carol were thought to be the only two people left in the country), felt it was his duty to dole out the justice as he saw fit, and he saw no place for the old Phil in this community of the seven survivors. But Carol had brought him back and new Phil liked Carol and respected her decision though he didn't agree with it. He simply remained stone faced when old Phil walked into the circle. Carol eyed the situation for a moment, and then turned to old Phil and gently placed a hand on his chest. "Why don't you go inside and wash up," she suggested quietly. "I'm going to have a few words with the other Phil for a moment." Phil could see in her eyes that she was going to have to explain her choice to him. Phil felt his virility swell with his victory over the bigger, stronger, younger and more handsome Phil Miller and he couldn't help but let a little of his old self come out for a moment.

"Try to break it to him gently," he advised her, before turning to go into the house. His shoulders swayed as he swaggered his way back. Carol waited until he was completely inside before approaching the other Phil. She walked toward him and caught his eye. Then she gave her head a quick tip toward her own home as she passed him. Getting the message, the new Phil got up and nonchalantly followed her. Todd and Melissa saw what transpired and gave each other a suspicious look. Erica and Gail did the same. Then the four of them shared inquisitive looks.

Carol and new Phil went into Carol's house and she shut the door behind them. As soon as the door clicked shut, Phil broke into a giddy grin and crouched down to Carol and said in a quiet voice, as if telling some sort of secret, "Well, how did it go?"

Carol also grinned widely and her chest swelled with pride as she revealed, "Well, that was perhaps the biggest Pilbasian Nudge I ever pulled off!" Carol was referring to a tactic she used to trick people into doing her bidding which usually involved an elaborate scheme. Her scheme to get Phil back into her life was the most elaborate of them all. But, she couldn't take all the credit. She gave Phil a lighthearted congratulatory punch to the chest. "You are quite an actor, Phil Miller! And so athletic too, the way you tackled Tandy to the ground! How did you do it without getting either of you hurt? Carol referred to old Phil as Tandy, the name the rest of the survivors had tagged him with to relieve confusion between him and the new Phil. Both men were named Phil Miller and so, to differentiate them, it was decided that they would go by their middle names. Since new Phil has no middle name, he got to keep the name Phil and old Phil would be known by his middle name, Tandy.

Phil wasn't trying to be boastful with his reply. He simply presented the facts. "Well, I played a little football in college, and in football, it's important not to let go of the ball so I wrapped him up in my arms like a little football, gave my body a twist and let my shoulder take most of the fall. Tore my shirt a little but it was worth it to help the two of you get back together. Just one question though." Carol nodded in anticipation. "Why him?" Phil asked, becoming a little more serious, almost to the point of lecturing. "After all he's done. I mean, he planned the deaths of both Todd and myself. He's been deceitful to everyone. He has schemed ways of getting every woman on this cul-de-sac to sleep with him, even going so far as trying to change his "Alive in Tucson" signs so no new men come this way. I don't get it Carol. What do you see in this guy?"

Carol shrugged off the inquisition and grinned a little as if she understood the world in a way that no one else did. She shared some of her secrets in her explanation. "Tandy's not so bad. Maybe you don't see it, but there's something worth saving there. You just don't know him the way I know him. He is the one who painted those "Alive in Tucson" signs in the first place. Without them, we wouldn't be here all together like this." She turned Phil to the window next to the door and showed him the four others enjoying each other's company in the circle, laughing, singing, and sharing a bottle of wine. "I know it seems like we had to force him into it, but he cleaned the toilet pool. He stepped up when it was just the two of us. He took on the role of President of the United States for gosh sakes! You of all people should be able to appreciate what a responsibility that is." Carol's tone had become a bit harsh. She softened a bit and continued with a smile. "He doesn't know plumbing like you, but he rigged a solution to his toilet by bringing in the Porta Potty and he worked out a way to irrigate my tomatoes." Phil reacted a little to the way she pronounced tomatoes like to-MAW-toes. Carol blushed a little as she told Phil this last detail. "And he wrote me a song."

Phil was still a little skeptical but he relented. "Well, I hope he was worth it."

"It may not seem like it, but he will be. I just know it," Carol confessed.

"I dunno. It was a lot of effort. I didn't mind fixing your door, but the loud sex noises? And how did you know he would find the empty condom wrapper?" he asked.

"Like I said," she explained, "you don't know him like I do." Then, she led Phil back toward the door. "Now let's go back out there before the others think we're up to no good. Tandy will be back soon."

Phil stopped her before they stepped out. "But how are we gonna handle each other, I mean Tandy and me?"

"Don't you worry about that," she said slyly, "I'm working on that too. For now, just stay away from Tandy for a while," she began, "and play along with whatever I say."

As the two made their way back to the circle, old Phil emerged from his home, washed and in clean clothes. Carol pointed and indicated that new Phil should join the others as she turned to meet old Phil at his door. "Well, did you tell him that the new Phil in your life is the old Phil that used to be in your life?" Phil crinkled his nose. That sounded wrong but he thought it was right. Carol apparently understood.

"Yes," she said playfully, but quickly got more serious when she informed, "but it has been decided, that for the time being, new Phil will stay at least ten yards away from you at all times." Carol said that last part loud enough for everyone in the circle to hear. On cue, new Phil moved to the farthest part of the circle from Tandy.

As if wanting to mark his territory in a non-endearing, old Phil way, he added, "If he knows what's good for him." New Phil bristled a bit but otherwise did not react to the comment. Melissa, on the other hand, did not leave it alone.

"Oh baloney, Tandy. You're lucky Carol went and got you. You would have died out there. And as for Phil, he knows exactly what's good for all of us." She shot a little smile at Phil, to Todd's dismay. "He even finished the solar panel grid and starting tomorrow, all our outlets will work and we'll have real electricity again." Everyone gave a little cheer to the good news. The news was especially good to Carol; as it played right into her plan to get the two Phils back together.

"Isn't that great news, Tandy?" she asked. "Because of Phil, you'll be able to charge up your iPad and read your brother's email." Carol could tell from their expressions that the others had the wrong impression so she tried to explain. "Tandy's not trying to read email belonging to his brother, he's trying to read one from his brother." Now it looked like they thought that Tandy's brother was still alive and had tried to contact him by email. Carol further clarified, stumbling over her words as she did. "His dead brother…who died on the International Space Station…but from which he had written one last email." The group was still a little confused. Carol tried to start over. "Did I mention that Tandy's brother was an astronaut? And a doctor? And was researching a cure for cancer up there on the gol darn International Space Station?" Now they thought she had swallowed too much of one of Tandy's tall tales so she tried to convince them. "No really, I saw pictures of him and everything." Now Tandy looked confused. Carol explained, "I saw pictures of him on the dresser in your bedroom." Tandy had forgotten about the family photos he had on his dresser. He wished he had remembered to bring them back with him. Maybe, he thought, he would go back tomorrow and get those. But first, he would read that email. He looked out at everyone in the circle. They all had looks of genuine compassion for the story Carol had presented, and he thought he should capitalize on their sympathies.

"They were the last words I'm ever gonna get from my brother," he said with the most convincing fake sniffle he could muster. His voice broke as he added, "My brother, the hero." Tandy lowered his head in mock sadness. "Now, if you don't mind, the desert took a lot out of me today," he said, giving Phil a glare despite Carol's efforts to put a shine on Phil's success with the electricity, "so I think I'll turn in." He slumped his shoulders and slowly made his way back toward his home. He paused just for a moment, and turned back to add, "It's good to be back though." Tandy could see the faces of the others lit by the fire. They were all genuinely touched by the story of his brother and the email. Boom, still got it! he thought.

Old Phil went inside and laid on his bed. As he did so, he spoke, as he did occasionally, to God. "God, please make this message from my brother a good one. I could really use the break."

The next day, Tandy woke to the sound of Carol's voice calling from downstairs. He came down to see what it was she was eager to bother him about. "Come on, sleepy head!" she called. "The sun's been up for hours. Phil says there should be enough power in the grid for the outlets to work. Let's get that iPad charged up." Tandy's eyes widened as he remembered the message. He ran up, retrieved the device and the charger. He plugged the charger into the iPad, then into the wall. Nothing happened. He tried pressing the Home button. Nothing. He tried pressing and holding the Power button. Still nothing.

Phil let out a long wail. "Nooooooooooooooo!" He crumpled over the device in despair.

"Maybe it takes a minute for the batteries to charge enough to turn on," Carol suggested. As if on cue, the iPad pinged, indicating that it was beginning to take a charge. Excitedly, Tandy hit the Home button again. Again, nothing happened. The screen just showed the charging battery icon and 0%. Tandy hit the Home button franticly and repeatedly. It did not respond. Carol put her hand on his. "Phil," she said. She didn't call him Tandy. When it was just the two of them, she promised herself, she would always call him Phil. "Just give it a bit of time. Sometimes things just need a bit of time." Phil knew she wasn't just talking about the iPad this time. He knew this was another one of her metaphors for life. He understood, and agreed. He rested the machine on the coffee table next to the outlet. "Come on," she said, taking his hand and leading him to the kitchen, "I'll make us some breakfast."

Over breakfast, Phil told Carol the story of how his brother came to be marooned on the International Space Station. "Robert's experiments were supposed to take 4 months to complete. But he was only up there 62 days when all the astronauts got really sick and they had to evacuate the space station. Remember? It was all over the news. Mainly because Robert decided to stay up there. He was the only one that wasn't sick and he said he was on the verge of a major breakthrough that might lead to a cure for some of your more common cancers. He also wanted to study whatever it was that made the other guys sick and what it was about him that kept him from getting it. So they left him up there. NASA promised to send a replacement crew right away …" Phil paused for a moment, remembering why it didn't happen. Then, quietly, he continued. "But that's when everyone down here started getting sick. Every time they got a crew together, one of them would get the virus and the mission would get scrubbed. They did get an unmanned supply ship up there once but no actual people. Before long there wasn't enough people left on the ground to run a rescue mission."

"Weren't," Carol corrected, interrupting. "There weren't enough people to run a rescue mission. People is plural. You wouldn't say, "There was people," you would say, "There were people." Therefore, the correct usage is, there weren't enough people to run a rescue mission." Phil was outraged at how insensitive he felt Carol was being during this heartfelt moment of his.

"For God sakes, Carol! I don't care about your stupid grammar rules! I was trying to tell a story here!" Phil was agitated and as he continued his sentences became short and choppy, each one less loud and more sad than the one before. "About how my brother died! Up there in space. All alone." Phil stopped talking and turned away from Carol. Was this what it was going to be like? he thought. Is she just going to nitpick me to death? I thought she wanted me to be normal? To stop being crazy. Well, she's driving me crazy with this grammar police thing she does. Unfortunately for Phil, Carol's way of dealing with a world gone mad was to cling to the social conventions and communication practices of the world before it went mad. Phil's story brought back all the madness that had ensued during the outbreak of the virus and correcting his grammatical error was her key to locking that madness back up again. Phil didn't realize it but this was the way Carol snapped under pressure. Carol felt she had to rationalize her attack.

"I'm just saying," she began, "it's like the stop sign and parking spot all over again." Before she got a chance to say too much, Phil interrupted with a barrage of other examples.

"And the seat belt!" he yelled as he turned to face her again. "And the friggin' front door! And the to-MAW-toes! It's to-MAY-toes, Carol! Just. Say. To-MAY-toes." Phil was calming down and he knew where Carol was coming from and he was realizing why she was the way she was but he had to find a way for her to find some middle ground with him. He thought quickly and finally, calmly, he spoke to her. "Look, Carol, I just don't tick the same way you do. You just gotta understand that. I mean, if you and I are gonna be you and I again, then we just gotta find a way to communicate that won't drive us both crazy. Okay?"

Carol liked the idea of Phil being on board for trying to make it work out for them. So she simply, silently nodded in agreement. Then she eked out a barely audible, "Okay." She watched Phil for a moment. He seemed to accept that there would be an attempted truce between them, and when his body became a little less stiff, she offered a distraction. "I wonder if your iPad has enough charge in it to let you read your brother's message yet," she said in a quiet voice. Phil smiled. Then, before leaving the breakfast table, he wiped his mouth with a napkin to show he still had some manners and would, at least occasionally, do things the way Carol liked them. As he turned to leave for the living room, Carol smiled back at him and got up to follow him but quickly doubled back to the table to wipe her own mouth before scurrying off to catch up with him.

Phil picked up the iPad and checked the charge. Twenty-four percent. Close enough he thought. He pressed the Home button and the device lit up without hesitation. It displayed the screen he had last seen, the mail page with the new message from his brother. He tapped on the message and began reading it to himself.

"Read it out loud," Carol requested, ignoring the fact that it was a personal note between brothers. Phil, unafraid of what personal demons might be exposed, obliged.

"Phil. I know you check your iPad everyday so I am hoping you will get this message soon. I think there must be a malfunction in my communications equipment up here on the ISS because I haven't been able to reach anyone in weeks. I have a very important message for the head of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. I am also desperate to reach anyone at Mission Control in Houston. I have made a discovery up here that is a matter of life and death. I have enough supplies here for a long stay but I need to return immediately or things could get very bad for the astronauts who returned and, I fear, for many others. Please Phil, I know it is a big favor to ask, but please go to Houston and get in touch with Commander Ralph (that's his last name) at Mission Control. Tell him that the crew that returned is infected with a very deadly viral strain that could spread quickly and could kill thousands if it is not contained. Tell him I have developed a small amount of vaccine but I need to get back to the ground in order to reproduce or synthesize it. If you do this for me Phil, I will give you the money you wanted. Any amount. You will be my hero, Phil. Just get me home. Godspeed. Robert."

After a very long pause, Phil slowly lifted his head to meet Carol gap-mouthed gaze. Phil was the first to speak. "They must have had the virus," he said in horror. By the way he stressed the last two words, Carol knew that Phil was referring to the virus that didn't just kill thousands as Robert had feared, but that killed nearly everyone on Earth. "And Robert had the cure," Phil went on. "He really did find a cure for the virus. He really could have saved us all." Phil's voice gave out a bit and his eyes filled with tears. And he screamed at the sky, "BUT HE COULDN'T GET OFF THAT GOD DAMNED SPACE STATION IN TIME TO DO IT! INSTEAD HE JUST DIED UP THERE WITH THE ANSWER IN HIS HANDS!" Phil slumped into a chair and wept.

Carol stood there, still dumbfounded but still able to reason a little. As she thought things through, she asked, "Or did he?"

Phil couldn't believe that she would doubt his brother's word. "Of course he did, Carol!" Phil yelled through his tears. "He had a vaccine! He says so right here." Phil held the iPad out to Carol to read for herself. She lightly pushed it back a little.

"No, think about it. How many people were on the space station with your brother?" Carol was trying to do some math and she needed to fill in some of the blanks.

All Phil could do was whine, "I dunno."

"SNAP OUT OF IT, MAN!" Carol yelled. "Think! How many other crew members were on board the International Space Station when your brother was up there? It was a big crew if I remember. Right?" Phil looked up at her wiping away tears. "Come on!" she pleaded.

Phil sat up at attention and started to list them off. "Okay, okay," he began. "There was the commander. He was an American. The pilot was a Russian astronaut," he continued.

"Cosmonaut," Carol corrected.

"Cosmonaut, right cosmonaut," Phil repeated, throwing in a Russian "Da!" for good measure. "There were two ladies, one was Italian and one was Japanese," he added. Carol was a little dismayed that Phil referred to them as ladies, as opposed to astronauts, or scientists, or doctors, or whatever their titles were. It was something she was going to have to have him work on, but at a later time. Phil continued making the list as Carol held out a finger for each one he listed. "Oh, there was a black guy! Or, I should say African-American. He was like the first astronaut from Africa or something like that. Which I guess makes him an African-African," Phil reasoned. He brought his hand to his head trying to remember if that was all of them. Then he remembered, "Oh yeah, there was this Chinese scientist, Wong or Fong or something," he rambled, as he tried to remember the fellow's name. Names were not important to Carol. She wanted numbers.

"Was that all of them?" she prodded. Phil was tapping his left thumb to his left fingers as if counting in his head.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure," Phil thought out loud. Carol made an impatient gesture. "Yes. That's it," he concluded. Carol looked down at her fingers and did a quick count.

"Including your brother, that makes seven," Carol reported. Then, she let Phil in on what she was thinking. There were supplies on that station for a crew of seven. How often did they receive supplies?" she asked, but Phil was at a loss for an answer.

"I-I-I don't know. About every two or three months I suppose," Phil guessed. Then, he backed that up with some sound logic. "There was one supply ship that came while my brother was up there. I remember seeing the videos of him trying to unload it on YouTube."

"And there was the one that arrived after he was abandoned," Carol remembered from Phil's breakfast story.

"Yeah, yeah, the unmanned one." Phil was starting to see where Carol was going with this but Carol wrapped it up for him.

"So, potentially, your brother may have had as much as four months of supplies for a crew of seven that he had all to himself. And a four month supply for seven is a 28-month supply for one! Phil, how old is that message?" After his last birthday, Phil had given up hope that there were other survivors and also had stopped keeping track of the days but that was at least six months ago and this message was from a year and a half before that.

"I dunno, about two years old I guess," was all Phil could surmise.

"Phil, do you realize?" Carol figured, "Your brother may still be alive!" Phil didn't bother with hope. He went straight to conviction.

"My brother's alive!" he yelled. With that, he ran out to share the great news with the others.

"Phil, wait!" Carol called after him. Admittedly, Carol wasn't as invested in this conclusion as Phil was, but his brother's survival was still just a possibility, and, there was still the undeniable fact that if he was alive, he was still on the International Space Station and they were down here on Earth. "Phil! Hold on!" she called as she ran out after him.

The first home he reached was Todd and Melissa's. He pounded furiously on their door, yelling, "My brother's alive! My brother's alive!" Before he could raise them, he rushed down the street to where Erica and Gail were staying. He didn't get a chance to pound on their door. They had heard the commotion and were already making their way out of the front door as he approached.

"What in tarnation is all the hollerin' about, Tandy?" Gail asked in her most affected southern accent.

"My brother's alive!" he yelled back as he headed over to knock on the other Phil's door. Then he stopped in the middle of the street when he realized that the other Phil had been living with him and presumably moved out between the time he attacked Tandy and the time Tandy returned. Now the old Phil wasn't sure where the new Phil was living. The answer came quickly though as he spied his namesake exiting the ladies' home wrapping one of their silk robes around himself as he did. In as much as Tandy despised the new Phil, he couldn't help thinking, You dawg!

The survivor's gathered in the street to see what had Tandy all excited. Presumably, this had something to do with the much anticipated message from his brother given the number of times they had heard him yell something about his brother just now. "My brother," Tandy began again, "is alive!"

"Possibly," Carol injected.

"Carol, why do you have to be such a wet blanket about this. Robert is a Miller, and Millers are survivors," Phil declared.

You were sure he was dead until just a few minutes ago," Carol argued. "I had to convince you that he might not be." Carol explained to the rest, "There is a slight possibility that he had enough supplies up there to last this long."

"And those supplies have got to be running out by now," Tandy added, in a voice that was tense with urgency, "so I say we all go to Houston and figure out a way to bring him back down here. It'll be just like that scene in the movie, Apollo 13"

"Now that one did have Tom Hanks in it," Melissa said, wryly, chiding Tandy about his earlier confusion with the movie, The Shawshank Redemption. Melissa was not on board with this crazy plot that Tandy was cooking up. Even if Robert is alive, how could this group ever figure out a way to bring him back from space? she thought. For that matter, the rest of the group wasn't sure why they all had to go along with Tandy's implausible rescue mission or why he thought he had any authority to make decisions for the group. After all, he wasn't the President any more, new Phil was. Most of them turned to him to see how he weighed in on the situation.

On one hand, the group looked to new Phil as the leader, the innovator of ideas, and the project manager. To their knowledge, he saw no merit to what Tandy had to contribute most of the time and possessed no trust and no liking of the man. On the other hand, most of what the group believed was an act perpetrated as part of a highly orchestrated Pilbasian Nudge to get Tandy back into Carol's life for reasons Phil couldn't quite understand. Given that he was in for the penny, Phil decided he may as well be in for the pound and so, because it would make strides toward getting on Tandy's good side (something Carol was hoping would happen sooner rather than later), Phil decided that the mission was one at least worth discussing. So he decreed, "If it means even the possibility of ensuring the survival of one more person, it is certainly something that would be worth discussing."

Tandy couldn't believe his ears. Why were they waffling on this decision? He thought. "What's there to discuss?" he pleaded. "My brother has the cure to the virus! We have to bring him back!" This new claim was hard for Phil to believe. He looked to Carol for verification. She provided it in the form of a quick, silent nod. This put a whole new spin on things. Suddenly, this unlikely quest could spell the survival of the whole human race. As a former military man, Phil felt compelled to at least try. Now, he had to convince the rest of the group. He felt that the male ego would get the biggest boost from an against-all-odds adventure and he knew Tandy was already in, so he turned to Todd for support. Todd knew he wouldn't want to be a part of this without Melissa by his side so he turned to her for permission. Melissa was hoping the ladies would be the voice of reason. She knew where Carol's allegiances laid so she turned to Gail and Erica to throw some support her way but feeling the weight of what was fast becoming the majority opinion, all they could muster was a shrug of the shoulders and a nod of compliance.

Gail spoke for the pair. "I guess we're in."

Melissa slumped, and defeated announced, "Well, then I guess I'm going along for the ride."

Todd smiled and puffed out his chest. He turned to Phil and was proud to report, "It's a go, Mr. President."

Phil was happy with the consensus. He looked at his rival. "Well Tandy," he said with a broad smile, "it looks like we're going to Houston."

PART THREE: The Mission

Plans for the trip began immediately. A list of the equipment they would need was quickly assembled and a caravan of the survivors' vehicles was loaded. After a quick lunch, the group was on its way to Houston and the Johnson Space Center. Leading the way, in his truck, was old Phil, followed by Carol in her car. Todd and Melissa rode together in the Volkswagen Beetle with Gail and Erica close behind in their SUV. New Phil brought up the rear in his pickup.

A stop for a bathroom break, a quick bite and some fuel in El Paso allowed the group time to discuss an ETA in Houston. Tandy wanted to push through to Houston but the rest of the group thought it wiser to camp in San Antonio for the night and make the last leg fresh in the morning. Though he never let on, Tandy, who was bleary-eyed by the time they made San Antonio at two in the morning, was glad that they had decided to stop.

In the morning, Carol made a fire and Gail prepared the group a fine camp breakfast of flapjacks and coffee. Phil and Erica discussed a plan of attack on what was sure to be a fortified building in Mission Control. Tandy had been kept awake the night before by Todd and Melissa's lovemaking and loud rendition of the song, She Drives Me Crazy. As a result, both he and the recently reunited couple were late rising.

Groggy but eager, Tandy pushed for an early start and the crew headed out right after their meal. They reached Houston before noon. A quick check of a local map provided a route to the Space Center. Now old Phil, who was still leading, found it hard to contain himself and he sped ahead of the others, ignoring traffic signs as he did. Carol, who was still second, did not, and that caused a lag for the others who were all behind her. Once Phil arrived at Johnson, it took him a few moments to find the building housing Mission Control. This allowed Carol, who had paid better attention to the map, time to catch up with him. Once he got there though, Phil rushed out of the truck and toward the building, not thinking to bring any of the equipment he had packed with him. Carol rushed after him. The two were just reaching the entrance as the rest of the group arrived. Not surprisingly, the front doors of the facility were locked when Phil tried them. But given that they were glass doors, the solution for getting inside seemed obvious. "I've got this," Phil declared, as he reached into the back of his pants for the one thing he always carried with him on road trips, his handgun. He fired a couple of shots into the glass, smashing it enough for him to reach in and push the release bar, opening the door.

In the front lobby there was a guard's station and a reception area with many displays of space paraphernalia marked with infographics explaining their significance and marking their place in the timeline of American space travel. On the wall hung many pictures of the pioneers and heroes who had dedicated their lives to the exploration of space. On one side of the room, there was a large tourist's map of the facility marking the location of various important areas in the building, including Mission Control. Just as the two of them got a fix on its location in relation to where they were, the rest of their group were lumbering in, each of them weighed down with packs of electrical equipment or slinging belts of tool over their shoulders and around their waists. Exasperated that they were taking so long, Tandy called to them, "Come on you guys. Time's a-wastin'. It's this way. Follow me." With that, he rushed off toward a stairway and sprinted up. Melissa shot a look to both Todd and Phil indicating that she knew this was the way Tandy was going to act. Tandy reached the door he thought was the one he was looking for. It was simply marked Control Room. He tried the door. It too was locked. He thought briefly about shooting at the handle but chickened out. He was afraid of being hit by the ricochet. Now he wished he had brought some of those tools he packed with him.

"I've got this one," came a voice from behind him. Tandy turned to catch Phil approaching quickly, wielding a heavy sledgehammer over his head. Tandy cleared out of the way just in time. Phil brought the head of the tool down with great force, knocking the handle clean off of the door. With a shoulder, Phil forced the door open. Tandy was so close behind Phil as he stumbled into the room that it would have been hard to tell who was completely inside first. Once inside, the two Phils were met by a sight they had only ever scene in newscasts and science fiction movies. Everything was inactive but it was all there; the large view screens, the banks of computer monitors and headsets. But nothing was lit, and with the lack of even a single window, the room was very dark. Mission Control was dead.

New Phil grabbed his flashlight and flicked it on. The others slowly filed into the room. Melissa and Erica also had flashlights and turned them on. President Miller sized up the situation quickly and started issuing commands. "The first thing we have to do is get power to this room. Todd and Melissa, see if you can find out if this building has a generator and if it does, see if you can get it working. Erica, start getting those battery packs cabled. Tandy, Carol, find the main communications board and give Erica a hand wiring the batteries to it. I'm gonna go back to the truck and start setting up a couple of the solar panels I brought. Gail, I'm gonna need you to run line from the panels to these battery packs. Okay, look alive people! With any luck we'll have power to this radio equipment before sundown." Then, in an attempt to dissolve the bad blood between them, Phil put a reassuring hand on Tandy's shoulder and for the first time since their split, called him by his first name. "Don't worry Phil. We'll be talking to your brother soon." Tandy didn't know how to react. Carol grabbed him by the other arm and gave it a light squeeze. She grinned widely at Tandy as if to say, See? Phil's not such a bad guy. Tandy could see her expression in the beam of the flashlight and smiled faintly back at her. Then Phil patted him on the shoulder and headed off with Gail.

Todd and Melissa meandered their way through the halls of the Johnson Space Center, the flashlights casting an eerie glow on things as they passed. Melissa got a bit of a chill up her spine. The way things had developed with the world over the last few years had hardened her and she wasn't easily frightened but she did not like being in abandoned government buildings. They brought to light for her just how quickly the virus had swept through the world; it was so fast and deadly that every government on Earth was powerless to even slow it down. It was amazing that anyone survived. But she did. And Todd did. And it was incredible that they found each other. In spite of the insecurities about their relationship that Todd might hold, Melissa really did love Todd. He was brave and smart. He was caring and held an optimism for the world that had not diminished with all of the tragedy. He had maintained his childhood innocence and wonder and Melissa envied that. She saw the world for what it was and he saw it for what it could be. For him, the new world was a place where he could drive sports cars as fast as he wants, fall in love with beautiful women, be a farmer one day and go on a thrilling rescue mission with the President of the United States the next day. For her, it was a big, lonely place lacking in physical affection where even the last bastion of hope for a solution to a plague sweeping the world fell without so much as a shot fired. Or at least it was that way. Now she had Todd. She took his arm and squeezed it.

Todd totally misread the gesture. He was very excited to be on this mission, especially because it involved the Johnson Space Center. "I know," he said, extending his free arm around her waist, "it's exciting isn't it? I used to come here as a kid. I dreamed of flying the Space Shuttle. I wanted to go to Mars. I have to confess, I was a bit of a space nerd." Given everything Melissa already knew about Todd, it wasn't much of a confession but she appreciated the idea that he thought it was. But it was her turn to confess.

"No, it's not that. I hate being here." She clarified. "It's not the Space Center, or you. It's just that," she hesitated a moment, "this is a government facility. And the government couldn't stop it." Todd knew she was referring to the virus. "We counted on them … and they didn't have a clue. They didn't even know where to begin. It just came in and took everybody, all the people, all the animals. And we didn't even know who to blame." Melissa paused a moment again. "And now we're here, in this place, and they're all gone, nowhere to be found. And I don't like it. It's one of the reasons I didn't want to come on this mission. This place reminds me that nothing could stop it from killing us all." She stopped him in the hallway and looked him in the face. "How did we even survive, Todd? What made us so special?"

Todd thought about it a moment. Without the virus, he wouldn't be on this mission with the woman of his dreams. He smiled a big, toothy smile and tried to soften the mood. "Just lucky I guess." He could see it wasn't working so he tried changing the subject by getting back to the task at hand. "So, where do you suppose the backup generator might be?"

For the moment, Todd's tactic worked. Melissa was glad to be distracted. "I dunno. I suppose the best place to look would be the basement. They usually keep these things on the lower levels, don't they?" It sounded like as good a place as any so the two headed off to find the next stairwell down. They took the stairs down until they couldn't go down anymore, deciding to start at the bottom and work their way up until they found what they were looking for or end up on the roof trying. The hallways on the bottom floor were more utilitarian and not as well finished as the ones above. The stark grey steel doors were unpainted and labels were only stencilled on. In Melissa's mind, the look read very military. Success came sooner rather than later as one of the first doors they came to was marked, Electrical. Todd tried the door. It was unlocked. He opened the door. The room was small and filled with equipment. And it smelled bad, like a combination of diesel fuel and something neither of them could put their finger on right away.

"Diesel fuel. The generators here probably run on diesel fuel. I thinks we've found it." Todd was very optimistic and proceeded in, Melissa followed more cautiously. Todd quickly found a generator that had barrels of diesel rolled up to it. One of the barrels had a hand pump mounted on top that had a hose feeding into the tank on the generator. "I think this is the one they were using," he said. He gave the pump a few cranks. Soon he heard the sound of the fuel running into the tank. "Good, there's still fuel in the barrel. Let's get this tank filled and see if it will fire up." Todd put down his flashlight and started pumping with two hands. Melissa picked up the light and moved to the other side of the tank to be out of the way but still provide light. On the way, she tripped over something and fell on top of it. Todd stopped pumping and picked up a flashlight with one hand, offering the other to Melissa to help her up. Once she was clear of what it was she fell on, Todd shone a light on the obstruction. It was a body. The two were stunned for a moment. That was the other smell, Melissa concluded. It had been many months since either had had to deal with a body but the instincts for doing so soon kicked back in. Todd flipped the body over to grab it by the arms. He wanted to move it out of the way for now and intended to give it a proper disposal later. Decomposition made it impossible for either of them to tell but the name tag on the jacket told them this person was a man. But he wasn't just any man. This was Commander Ralph. "Poor bastard," Todd said solemnly, "he kept things going right to the end." Todd grabbed the body by the jacket shoulders and dragged him to one end of the room. Then the two continued their work in silence. Once the tank was filled, Todd pulled the starter cord. The engine turned over but did not start. "There may be old fuel left in the lines. I'll see if I can clear it." He pulled the cord again. Still nothing. The third time was the charm. The engine chugged and puffed foul smoke into the air, but after about twenty seconds of rough running, it smoothed out. The generator was running, but there were no lights. Todd looked around for the switch that would send the power the motor was generating to the rest of the building. Melissa found it first. She hit the switch. About a second later, they saw light from the emergency lights in the hall shine through the doorway. Todd couldn't contain his excitement. He let out a victory cheer and kissed Melissa hard on the cheek. He started making his way out to the hallway to see prettiest lights he'd seen since the fireworks that brought him to Tucson, and Melissa. Melissa, on the other hand, was not as excited, for she noticed the smear her hand left on the switch. She shone the light on her hand to see where the smear came from. Some of the fingers on her right hand her dirty. It didn't take long for her to realize that she had some of Commander Ralph on her hand. In all the time since the outbreak, she had never come in direct contact with any of the victims. She became frantic. She rushed out after Todd.

"TODD! TODD!" she screamed. Todd turned quickly, thinking she was hurt. She held her hand up in the light. "I got Ralph on me! I gotta wash this off! I gotta wash this off NOW!"

"Okay, okay," Todd began, trying to be soothing. He extended his water bottle to her. You can use my water."

"NO! Don't you understand? I need soap! I need to get this off!" she repeated. "I've never touched a victim before! It's why I never got sick!" she concluded. Todd had never seen Melissa like this. She was nearly out of her mind with fear. He rushed her down the hall.

"Okay, we'll find a bathroom … or a kitchen, or a cafeteria or something. We'll find you some soap and clean you up. Don't worry." The two ran down the hallway in search of soap. They did not find a washroom but they did find a maintenance closet. Inside they found just what they were looking for, large bottles of soap with hand pump tops. Melissa pumped soap on her right hand until it was overflowing. She grabbed some paper towel off of one of the rolls and scrubbed the hand until it was covered in a white lather. Then she used Todd's water to rinse it. She dried and checked the hand, including the finger nails and repeated the procedure. She was out of water after the third go around and was still not convinced. She stood there heaving with every breath. Then she turned to face Todd who had just stood and watched the spectacle the whole time. Then she lunged into his arms in a fit of tears. "It'll be all right. There's nothing to worry about," he said, stroking her hair. She was not convinced, but his strength and conviction gave her hope, and she put her faith in it.

She wiped her tears with her arm and in a frail, frightened whisper, she looked up at him and said, "He better have the cure."

By the time they got near the Control Room, they could hear the others still celebrating their success. When they walked in, they were greeted with cheers and congratulations. Carol could see that Melissa was still upset and went to see what the matter was. Todd ran interference. He blocked Carol's path and offered a quick explanation. "There was an incident near the generator." Carol's look of concern turned to one that was more inquisitive. "Commander Ralph was down there," Todd explained.

"Was he?" Carol began to ask, but suspecting he was dead.

"Yes," Todd answered, "but it's over now." He didn't want Melissa to have to rehash the whole thing so he redirected Carol's attention. "How is everything going with the communications equipment?"

"Well, Phil and Erica figure that the radio will still be set to the frequency for the ISS since that that is probably the last place they were trying to contact. I mean, who else were they gonna talk to, right? Little green men?" Carol snorted a little as she chuckled at her suggestion. It's just a matter of time before Phil gets power to the…"

"I think I just got it," Phil announced, as the board at the communications table lit up. There were more cheers as the others gathered around. Phil was about to take a seat at the panel but Tandy beat him to it.

"Okay, I'm ready to send the message," he said as he pushed his way into the seat. "Just show me what button to press." Tandy quickly put on one of the headsets the way a child might if trying to establish command over it.

Phil cleared his throat and proceeded to check settings from his position stooped over the control panel as Tandy fidgeted in the chair. He checked a small control module on the headset. There were a number of ways it could be set and Phil decided it must still be set for proper communication and left it the way it was. The monitor was still scrolling through the power up checks. Once it was ready, Phil didn't take long to determine which command selections would lead to contact with the space station. Erica helped with suggestions. Each suggestion Erica made was quickly followed by the same suggestion from Tandy who tried to make it seem he was having the same idea at the same time. No one was fooled.

Finally, the ISS Communications board was lit and the green light indicated the connection was ready to use. "Okay, Tandy," Phil indicated, "the show is all yours." Tandy grinned uncontrollably as all eyes turned to him. In his lowest radio voice, he began.

"International Space Station, this is Houston. Do you copy?" Tandy only heard a light hiss in his earpiece. He looked up at Phil, pointing to his ear as if to ask why he didn't hear anything. Phil pressed the Speaker button so everyone could hear. Still, there was silence. Tandy decided to try different wording. "ISS, this is Houston. Are you there? Over." There was still silence. Tandy was a little embarrassed that his actions were not producing results with everyone watching. He was also a little scared that his brother might not be there; that he might no longer be with us. "Robert, it's me, Phil. I'm in Houston. I got your message. I'm here. Can you hear me?" This time Tandy had let go of the radio voice and let the fear be heard. Carol looked over at new Phil who responded with a slight shoulder shrug. There were a million reasons why Tandy might not be getting his brother. Maybe something wasn't set right at the panel or on the headset. Maybe it was the wrong headset. Maybe the equipment was not aligned properly. Maybe the Space Station was dark. It was possible they were too late. There were just too many factors. It would take days and days to check them all and even then it might be for nothing.

"Try that first thing you said," Carol suggested. Tandy looked up at her and nodded. He tried to sound as professional and clear as possible.

"International Space Station. This is Houston. Do you copy?" Tandy began repeating this, not knowing how long it might take to reach his brother or if it was still even possible.

Meanwhile, on board the ISS, Robert was tethered in his bunk and sleeping, his circadian rhythm long out of sync with any place on Earth. His routine now consisted of frequent long naps with periods of exercise and attempts to contact Earth in between. With his rations running low, this process was his best way to conserve food. As he floated there sleeping, the messages from his brother were getting through but they hadn't yet distinguished themselves from the white noise of the station enough to wake him. Robert was dreaming. In his dream, he was watching television with his brother. The younger Miller was in his pyjamas (it seemed he was always in his pyjamas) and doing his best Bart Simpson impression while the older Miller mocked him from the sofa by repeating everything his brother was saying. Finally, in exasperation, dream Phil began whining, "Why are you copying me? Why are you copying me?" That became so annoying, it woke Robert up. He laid there and recalled the dream for a moment. He smiled to himself. He hadn't dreamed about his brother in a very long time. He began to untether himself for a much needed bladder voiding when he chuckled to himself again. He could still hear his brother whining. He blinked and rubbed his eyes trying to wake himself up more but the voice was still there. He feared for a moment he was beginning to lose his mind, having spent so much time alone in space. Then he realized what the voice was actually saying. "International Space Station. This is Houston. Do you copy?" It was his brother's voice, but it was not in his head. It was coming from the radio!

Robert fumbled as he finished releasing himself from bed. Then, with a push, floated over to the radio. He stabilized himself with one hand while pressing the contact button with the other. Then he spoke into the mic. "Phil, it that you? I'm so glad you made it to Houston. What took you so long?"

The response caused an eruption of celebratory cheers in the control room back in Houston. Tandy couldn't stop smiling. He looked around the room to thank all of the people who made this electronic reunion possible; Todd and Melissa for restoring power, Erica and Gail for wiring the equipment, a long pause at Carol whose own cheeky, toothy smile shone back at him, and finally, an even longer pause on Phil, who engineered and, as much as Tandy didn't want to admit it, led the rescue effort. Tandy wanted Phil to know that he recognized the contribution. Phil knew, and he silently gave Tandy a nod in acknowledgement. But their work was not done. Against all odds, Robert was still alive and the survivors were able to make contact with him. Now came the equally impossible task of figuring out how to get him back. In an effort to both get the task back on track and to hand the reigns of this mission back to its rightful leader, Phil spoke up. "Well, Tandy, don't keep your brother waiting. Talk to the man!"

Tandy chuckled a bit and turned his attention back to the headset. "Yes, Robert, it's me. How have you been keeping? Are you all right? I mean, are you still healthy?" Tandy didn't want to have to break the news of the virus to his brother right away if he didn't need to but he wanted to know that his brother was not sick.

"Yes, I am okay," Robert responded, but was more curious about what was going on back on Earth. "But what's going on down there? I haven't heard from Houston in over a year. I haven't heard from Emily and the kids either. Is everything all right. Are the kids okay? I need to get home, Phil. I think I have made some real breakthroughs up here and I gotta get back. I think the other astronauts may be sick with a real bad virus and I may have come up with a vaccine but I gotta get to a lab where I can make more in case this turns into an outbreak, or worse." There was a pause, then Robert continued. "Phil, I need to talk to Commander Ralph. Is he there? Can you put him on for a minute?" Todd and Melissa looked at each other and Melissa nervously wiped her hand on her shirt. Tandy looked up at the group trying to get a read on how much he should tell his brother. In the end, he stuck with his idea not to worry Robert with the fates of Ralph, Emily and his children.

"No, he's not here," Tandy reported, then, referring to his group, "It's just a skeleton crew here right now." Then, in an effort to distract Robert, offered, "But we're working right now on a plan to get you back down here. Hang tight, bro."

Tandy's efforts backfired. Now Robert was reminded of the several times that missions to send replacement crews were scrubbed. "Yeah, what happened to the astronauts they said were coming?"

Tandy didn't know what to tell his brother so he said the first thing that came to mind that sounded plausible. "Ummm, budget cuts. Yeah, Congress really brought the hammer down hard on the whole space program. Looks like we're gonna have to talk you down. Hey, did those other guys leave you the keys to the space station? We're gonna have to get you to start it up and just bring her on in."

Phil rolled his eyes. He couldn't believe Tandy was trying sell this story to Robert. "Yo, Tandy. I think it might be time to tell him." Tandy gnashed his teeth and put his hand over the mic. It was too late. Robert heard.

"Tell me what? What's going on? What happened, Phil? Better yet, let me talk to someone at Mission Control. I don't care who. Just let me talk to whoever is in charge." Tandy sat there silent for a moment. His shoulders slumped. He couldn't avoid this anymore. He was the leader of this mission and so he figured that made him the one in charge that Robert needed to talk to. It was now his unenviable duty to fill his brother in on the events of the last two years.

"Well, bro, that would be me. I'm in charge." Robert interrupted.

"What are you talkin' about? No, really, quit kiddin' around Phil. Put Commander Ralph on. This is important. I'm runnin' outta time up here. I don't have any patience for one of your games right now, Phil. Look, I appreciate that you got my message and made the trip to Houston, even if you did take your sweet time, and I mean it, I owe you one, and when I get back, I'll lend you the money, any amount that you need. Hell, I'll give you the money. Just put Ralph on!"

Tandy pursed his lips. He was a little embarrassed that his brother mentioned the whole money thing in front of his friends but moreover, he knew he had to get it through to his brother that he wasn't kidding. "Look, you were right. There was a virus, and it spread fast. And Ralph, and Emily, and the kids, mom and dad, everybody, they're all gone, Robbie." His brother always went by Robert but their parents would change it to Robbie to get his attention when they were serious. Tandy hoped he could garner the same attention. "They got sick, and now they're all gone. In fact, the virus spread so fast, it got just about everyone on Earth. We couldn't even bury them fast enough. We just started burning them. In big piles." Tandy tore off the headset and walked away from the desk for a moment to compose himself. The others couldn't believe Tandy had the composure to get through the story. He was stronger than they thought.

There was a long silence from the speaker. Then, Robert came back from what the others presumed was his own moment of recomposure and he spoke in a low, quiet voice. "Sometimes, when I looked down at the night side of Earth, I could see the fires. I was wondering where the city lights had gone. I thought there had finally been a massive green movement. I should have known better. My God. I had no idea." There was another pause, then, as his scientific curiosity took over, he asked, "Did they find the cure? Are there many survivors?" The answers were grim.

"No," Tandy reported, sitting back down and returning to his headset. "There are only a handful of us, just the people in this room." Then, after a quick count, "Just the seven of us." Tandy was impressed with how the numbers had grown since discovering he was not alone. He hadn't really thought about it much. Then he realized, "And it'll be eight as soon as you get back." Tandy had new resolve and the goal of getting his brother back was more important than ever. That didn't mean that he had thought it through very well though. "So, come on, let's say you fire that big ol' space station up and get 'er down here."

It looked like Robert had to teach his little brother a thing or two about science yet again. "I'm afraid it just doesn't work that way. The ISS isn't designed for re-entry. As soon as it hits the atmosphere, it'll just start tumbling, and breaking up, and most of it will just burn up in the atmosphere." Robert bristled at the thought of dying that way. Then he remembered that his family had had it much worse.

Tandy was always quick to jump to conclusions and let his emotions take over just as quickly. Right now he was letting panic set in. "Well, how are we gonna get you down then? Doesn't that thing have, like, an escape pod or something?"

Robert's response was calm, partly because that was the way he delivered information of a scientific nature and partly in an effort to calm his brother down. "There are usually one or two Soyuz capsules attached to the station at any time to shuttle personnel back to Earth if necessary but when the crew got sick, it took both capsules to get them all back at once."

"Then why didn't you come back with them?" Tandy asked.

"Well," Robert tried to explain, "because the strain they had was contagious and I wasn't sick and wanted to stay that way. Plus, I had samples of their infection to study and possibly find a remedy for that I could report to the medical staff at Mission Control. And, of course, my work up here with cancer was only partly done. They were very costly experiments that there wasn't going to be money to repeat for some time. I wanted to finish my work, Phil. And besides, NASA assured me a replacement crew would be up here in a matter of weeks. I had lots of supplies. I thought I was gonna be okay."

Tandy had calmed down again and was in full commander-without-a-plan mode again. "Well, don't worry bro. Phil Miller is on the case. Just gotta put the old thinkin' cap on and we'll have you back here before you know it."

"Actually," Todd injected, "I think I have a suggestion. It's something I came up with on the way down to Houston."

Tandy was filled with hope for this idea and, given he had no concrete suggestions of his own, got up to discuss the one Todd had. "Hold on a moment, bro. I've gotta confer with one of my colleagues on a plan to get you back." With that, he took the headset off and held it out in Carol's direction. "Take over for a bit, Care Bear." Carol hopped over and grabbed the headset and put it on. She sat down at the console as Tandy went over to hear what Todd had in mind.

"Go for Carol!" she said, with all of the exuberance of a real Mission Commander.

"Hello, uhhh, Carol is it?" Robert asked, sounding a bit confused.

"Carol Pilbasian, First Lady of the United States!" she announced. "Well, former First Lady," she corrected. "Though I did sleep with the current President," she added, but after, in a whisper and with her mouth covered so the others couldn't hear, "No, not really."

Robert didn't know what to make of all this exposition but he had no reason to think Carol was lying so he tried to give her her due respect. "Oh, um, okay, wow, uhh, it's very nice to meet you Mrs. Pilbasian."

"Oh, I'm not married anymore," Carol corrected. "But when I was married, I was Mrs. Pilbasian-Miller."

"M-Miller?" Robert repeated.

"Yeah, Phil's wife. Your sister-in-law," she explained but then quickly corrected again with "ex-sister-in-law." Carol paused a moment, then, deciding there was no reason it should be a secret, added, "But we're giving it another try. So, you know, fingers crossed."

As Carol explained the convoluted family tree and White House succession to her former brother-in-law, Tandy and Todd discussed the idea Todd had come up with. "Speak to me, Toddster."

Todd was very excited that he might have the answer to bringing Robert back and was eager to share the idea. "Well, I thought it might be possible for Robert to comeback inside a MOOSE," he began, but Tandy dismissed the idea right away.

"I hardly think there are any moose on the space station, Todd. And even if there was, don't you think Robert would have eaten it by now. I mean, when you're livin' on space rations, after a year or so, even a moose steak would look pretty good." The others who had gathered to hear Todd's plan began shaking their heads at how thick Tandy could be at times. Todd didn't let it bother him. He just took it in stride and continued.

"No, not the animal," Todd explained, "a MOOSE, Manned Orbital Operations Safety Equipment. Back in the 60's, it was a proposed escape plan for the early space missions. Basically, all Robert would need is a rigid container that he could fit inside of, a space suit, a few foam extinguishers, a parachute, and some sort of ablative material to wrap the container in."

"Ablative material?" Gail asked. She wasn't the only one who didn't know what that was but she was the first to ask.

Todd continued his lesson. "Well, when a rocket, or a meteor or something enters the atmosphere, it's usually going very fast, several thousand miles an hour. At that speed, the air can't get out the way fast enough and instead of cutting through the air, the spacecraft just ploughs the air much the same way a snowplough ploughs the snow. As the air in front of the craft builds up, it gets super-hot and changes from a gas to a plasma. The space craft either has to have a heat shield that can resist the heat from the plasma or an ablative surface that can dissipate the heat in a controlled burn-off."

Erica asked the obvious next question. "But what if there isn't enough of this material on the container?"

Todd was hesitant to break the news but he continued. "That's the tricky part. In the original design, it was suggested that about a quarter inch of material would be needed. If Robert can't find enough, then that's where the foam extinguishers come in. He has to be able to partly fill the container with the foam, climb in and then fill the rest of the space with foam. The idea is that the foam will either resist the heat or burn off, protecting the man inside. Once the atmosphere slows him down enough, the heat will be gone and he'll get to pull the chute. The space suit provides protection too but mainly he's wearing it because it will be his source of oxygen." There were looks of worry on the faces of his friends. He tried to alleviate their fears. "Come on, skydiving pioneers like Kittinger and Baumgartner proved that jumps like this are doable, guys!"

"If he doesn't burn up," Tandy said, starkly.

Todd was blunt with his response. "Yeah, if he doesn't burn up. Or pass out from the G forces and doesn't open the chute." Tandy slumped a bit. "I mean, it's just an idea," Todd said. "You can go with something else." Tandy stood there and considered the plan. He stared into space blankly as he did so. After a minute, he crushed his lips together and looked up at the others. There obviously were no other suggestions. He looked at Todd with eyes that asked if this plan could be trusted. Todd looked to have faith.

"Let's get my brother to build a MOOSE!" he announced. Todd breathed deeply and followed Tandy back to the communications console. Carol saw the group coming and excused herself from the conversation as she removed the headset and returned it to Tandy. "Robert, I've got a plan," he informed his brother. Melissa rolled her eyes at Todd in response to Tandy taking credit for his idea. Todd didn't seem to mind. "I'm gonna put my friend Todd on now to give you all the instructions." Todd shot a look back to Melissa letting her know how proud he was to be sitting at the communications console of a real space mission no matter how much recognition he was getting for it. Melissa couldn't help but be happy for him and stood behind him as he took the seat.

As Todd ran through the concept and mapped out the details, Tandy paced a few feet away. Carol came to console him. "Your brother's gonna make it. It sounds like a real good plan." Tandy hoped so. At the end of his discussion with Todd, Robert was able to confirm that he did have a container that was large enough. It had formerly contained supplies. He also had enough fire extinguishers to fill the container. He had access to space suits and knew where to get a parachute. He wasn't sure what he was going to use as an ablative covering but was going to see if he could scrounge up some protective foil. Todd agreed that that might work, but didn't know enough to be sure. It was worth a try.

When the two were done with the planning, Tandy got back on the headset. It would take Robert a couple of days to get the container ready and set in the station where he could launch it from a hatch. Robert thanked his brother for coming to his rescue but had to admit that with so few people left, he wasn't sure if there could be any chance that he could land somewhere where someone could help him out of his escape pod or tend to his wounds if the landing is rough, or even to readjust to Earth gravity if everything went perfect and he didn't land in the middle of the ocean or something like that. "Where do you want to land?" Tandy asked him.

"Well, if I had my druthers, I'd like to land right back in good ol' Tucson," Robert said with a bit of a chuckle. "But it would take a miracle…"

"No, it wouldn't," Tandy interrupted. "It would take a calculator." He looked up at the rest of the group. "Does anyone have a calculator? See if you can find a calculator somewhere. There's gotta be one. This is friggin' NASA after all!" Carol stepped over and reached into her purse and produced Tandy's iPad.

"Just in case you needed it," she said, smiling.

Tandy smiled broadly at her and took the device. He turned it on, activated the calculator app and started tapping the screen. "How fast is the station going?" he asked aloud.

"About 17,000 miles per hour," Robert answered.

"17,150 miles per hour," Todd corrected.

"And how high is it?" Tandy asked.

"250 miles," Todd answered.

"Robert, does the orbit ever take you over Arizona?" Tandy now had a map of the earth on his screen.

"Yeah, I pass over the north west corner I suppose. I don't know, for sure. There aren't really lines drawn on the ground, you know," was his response. Tandy was glad his brother still had enough spirit to tease him and it made him smile. On the space station, Robert was smiling too as he realized what was starting to happen. It was what he always hoped for his brother. Phil was starting to put his command of mathematics to work.

Tandy continued his line of questioning. "And what do you see about half an hour before Arizona?"

Robert started shaking his head. He was thinking, and remembering, but he didn't think it would help. "I'm over the Pacific."

Tandy wasn't licked. "Okay, what's the land mass you see just before that." He suspected he knew the answer.

Robert had to think. "Ummm. New Zealand," he remembered.

"Bingo! I can work with that. That's about 40 minutes before you get home. Do you have something you can use as a timer?" Tandy was flicking between apps now finally ending back at the calculator.

"I wear a watch. It still works. I can use it." Robert was impressed with his brother's thinking right now. He was never much of a student and didn't do well in school but he had sort of a natural relationship with numbers and how objects moved through space. It made him a pretty decent bowler if he recalled correctly.

"Okay. I got it," Tandy announced. "Here's what you're gonna do." Tandy went on to tell Robert how many minutes after passing New Zealand he would have to launch the container and what direction he'd have to launch it to have any hope of landing close enough to Tucson for the group to collect him. He finished his instructions to his brother with, "and with any luck, you should come down near 'The Finger'." "The Finger" was how the boys referred to the observatory at the end of Tumamoc Hill Road near where they grew up, so named because they felt the observatory looked like a white-gloved middle finger to the sky. It is where he told his brother they'd be waiting for him. He closed with, "Good luck, Robert. I'll see you in a couple of days. If you hit the target, we'll be even, so don't screw this up!"

PART FOUR: The Man Who Fell To Earth

It was late and the cul-de-sac crew was tired from the excitement of the day and decided to camp out at the Space Center before heading out early the next day. The boys buried Commander Ralph in the grassy area behind the command building. Tandy said a few words, mainly thanking him for his service and for keeping his brother company before the end came. Gail had again made a nice meal for them to enjoy and had brought a bottle of wine in hopes of a successful mission which she was glad to be able to bring out for the celebration. Melissa opted out of wine reporting that she was particularly tired and could feel a headache coming on. She turned in early but asked that the group have hers for her and enjoy the evening.

The next day, Melissa still had her headache but joined the group for coffee in the morning. She declined breakfast though. Todd became concerned but she dismissed his fears telling him she was simply too excited for the return trip and had no appetite.

On the way back to Tucson, the group made a game of taking turns passing the rest of the convoy on the highway. And when they passed through the cities, no one observed the stop signs. Even Carol did not seem to mind. As they entered Arizona, they saw one of Phil's "Alive in Tucson" signs and it warmed their hearts to know that soon there would be one more of them that would be alive in Tucson.

Meanwhile, on the International Space Station, Robert was putting in longer days than he had been used to. Dealing with zero gravity as he worked was taxing but he worked with fervor. He cleaned out the biggest supplies container he could find and moved it to the hatch. There was duct tape on board and he used it to attach as much material as possible to the outside of the container; used filters from the air scrubber, aluminum clipboards, his other clothes, cut pieces from the space suits he wasn't going to use, blankets, operations manuals, and anything else that was thin and that might offer him the slightest protection from the heat of the plasma. When he was finished, he covered the whole thing with protective foil that was normally used on the outer equipment to keep sensitive electronics from being too adversely affected by the sun's radiation. In the end, the contraption reminded the doctor of a big, silver suppository.

Inside the container, Robert spent the contents of three extinguishers. Into the layer of foam, he pressed a shape with his glove that was roughly humanlike. That's where he would lay once the container was outside of the station. Robert considered his handiwork with pride but still had a great deal of trepidation about having to risk his life in this thing. But he realized that while the MOOSE offered him little hope, the station offered him none. With his escape vehicle as finished as it was going to be, he still had a few hours before his rendezvous with New Zealand so he decided to try and get some rest. He set the alarm on his watch and tethered himself to his bare bunk.

On the day of Robert's expected return, the survivors met for breakfast at Tandy's home. There were tales of the young Miller boys and there was laughter. There was a constant eye on the time as excitement grew for the arrival. There was some nervous tension as worries were occasionally voiced concerning whether the final leg would come off as planned. And there was something else.

"Melissa's not feeling well, guys." Todd's news was delivered grimly. Melissa had been at breakfast. She was wearing sunglasses, saying that the light was bothering her eyes but her appetite seemed to be normal. She ate, she laughed. "She threw up after breakfast," Todd reported. He held back a moment but then added, "And there was blood." Silence fell over the group. There were suspicions of what this might mean but it seemed so far removed from what they'd known for over a year now. But Gail had to ask.

"Is she," she started, not wanting to finish the question, but finally saying, "hot?" Todd only nodded his confirmation. Gail wanted to deny it. "But none of us have been…" She didn't get a chance to finish. Todd had the answer.

"At the Space Center," he began, "she tripped on Commander Ralph … and fell on him. Her hand, it went into him." His eyes began to swell and tear. "She tried to wash it off." He hung his head. "I didn't think it could last that long. I didn't think it was going to be a problem. I didn't know." Todd stopped talking. He was too choked up. Gail offered him a hug. He let her hug him a moment then broke off. "I can't go with you guys today. I gotta stay with her. I gotta take care of her." Of course, everyone understood.

Tandy blinked hard as he tried to think of a way to help. Suddenly, he offered, "My brother! My brother said he had a vaccine. I'll just go back and tell him to bring it with him. I can do it!" The others looked at him with disbelief. He couldn't see the flaw in his thinking. Phil was the voice of reason.

"It's too late. You'd never make it before your brother leaves the station. We'll just have to hope he can recreate it in time." Todd looked worried. "Go back to Melissa, Todd," Phil told him. "We got this." Todd nodded and left. Once he was gone, Phil turned to the rest. "This had better work," he said, half hoping, half willing it to be so.

When Robert's alarm went off, it did not wake him. He had not slept. He had spent the whole time floating there, his mind racing. He spent the time thinking about what his brother had told him about the state of the world and what it meant to him personally. He took a few minutes to weep for his family but only a few minutes. He had to keep his head clear for what lay ahead.

He untethered himself from the bunk and brought the tethers with him to the dock hatch. There he had a space suit waiting. The oxygen reserve was low and he recharged it from the tank at the air scrubber. He checked to make sure there were no problems. Everything was go. He started the timer on his watch, climbed into the suit and locked it shut. He turned on his air and took a few test breaths. He hadn't been in one since his initial launch more than two years earlier. There was only two hours' worth of oxygen in the suit. Hopefully, he would only need about 40 minutes.

Next he had to open the hatch. He'd never performed a spacewalk for real (he ran a simulation in the water tank at NASA – once) so he didn't really know what to expect when he opened the door. He'd seen a few movies and was expecting a violent whoosh resulting in the contents of the station being sucked into space. He braced himself with one arm as he unlocked the hatch with the other. The door opened easily and there was the sensation similar to being swayed by a wave in the pool. There was no audible whoosh. In fact the only thing he could hear was his own breathing. It served to remind him to breathe slower for fear of using his oxygen too quickly. The suit was bulky and harder to move in than he remembered but he carried on the best that he could. He had to get the MOOSE out into space. He had made loops on the end of it with the duct tape and attached the tethers to it. He attached the other end of the tether to his suit. He lifted the MOOSE and guided it through the hatch. With the extra thickness, it just barely made it through. He followed the container out. His heart pounded and he began sweating as he exited the craft. He could see New Zealand racing by below. It was daybreak on an early summer day at the eastern end of the country. Toward the end that was still in night, Robert could see a small bush fire burning. Then he thought again. It was that, or survivors burning the dead. Robert was torn over whether he wanted there to be survivors and therefore dead to burn, or no survivors at all. The thought left him empty. He chose to believe it was just a bush fire. As New Zealand began to disappear over the horizon, he realized he was running late. He looked at his watch. Eight minutes and fifty seconds. His breathing became heavy again. He had to climb into the MOOSE. But first he had to let go of the space station. He was paralyzed with fear. He knew that as soon as he let go, it could mean the last few minutes of his life and the thought of it scared him to his very core. "Let go, Robert," he told himself. He didn't. He looked at his watch again. Nine thirteen. He had to blast away from the station at ten minutes or risk missing the rendezvous with Phil and the survivors. Phil. What did Phil tell him? he thought. "Robbie! Don't screw this up!" he yelled. With that, he let go of the station and pushed off. He floated beside the station, travelling with it. For all intents and purposes, he and the container were their own ship travelling 17,000 miles per hour beside the International Space Station. He marvelled at that thought for a few seconds. Once the gravity of his mission (no pun intended) returned, he got back to work. Nine fifty-nine. He literally had no time to waste. He positioned the container so the back faced Earth and climbed inside. Remembering what Phil had told him, he calculated the rough angle he would have to fly at to leave the station and head toward Tucson. He held out two extinguishers, one in each hand, in a large V shape at the proper angle. He had crushed down the nozzles to create maximum thrust. He squeezed the triggers on them and the space station raced away from him as he decelerated and changed directions. When the extinguishers were empty, he tossed them away, a slight pang of guilt as he did so. He had never been a litterer. He was on his way. He just didn't know if he was going the right way. He closed the hatch and bolted it shut. He used the last two extinguishers to fill the rest of the compartment with foam, the area at his feet first, then around his head and chest the best he could before the foam restricted his movement in a paint-yourself-into-a-corner sort of way. He hoped he had slowed himself down enough to prevent burning up in the atmosphere. He would know soon. A few minutes later the container started to shake as it buffeted against the outer edge of the atmosphere. He tried to close his eyes and say a prayer but he was too frightened. Instead, he wet himself.

On the ground, the five survivors who made up the greeting party had arrived at Tumamoc Hill and had taken a position on the southwest side of "The Finger" and began watching in that direction as it was the one Robert would be approaching from. It was nearly one o'clock, the time Tandy had calculated Robert would be overhead. The sky was bright and clear. The sun was a little in their eyes as they watched and the group had to squint and hold a hand to their brows to see. The vigil was tense. Everyone had so many questions as they watched the sky. Did Robert make it off the station all right? Did he get off at the right time? Is he heading in the right direction? Would they even be able to see him? Would he survive? If he did, would he be able to save Melissa? If she has The Virus (the disease wasn't even given an official name), did she get it from Commander Ralph? If so, would the boys get it too? The questions and resultant fears were almost too much to take. The tension had to be broken.

Carol thought she might have the answer. She began to sing, quietly at first, and it was the only song that seemed appropriate. "Ground Control to Major Tom," she sang. It was David Bowie's classic, Space Oddity. From the corner of her eye she looked toward the others as she repeated, "Ground Control to Major Tom."

Tandy was the first to join in. "Take your protein pills and put your helmet on," he continued.

Gail was next. "Ground Control to Major Tom." Erika joined her on the next line. "Commencing countdown, engines on."

Then Tandy cut in early with, "This is Ground Control to.."

"NO!" the others yelled, interrupting him.

Phil corrected him with, "Check ignition and may God's love be with you."

Tandy waited a few extra beats before he thought it was alright to come in. The group nodded him in and they all sang together. "This is Ground Control to Major Tom. You've really made the grade and the papers want to know whose shirts you wear. Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare. This is Major Tom to Ground Control. I'm stepping through the door and I'm floating in a most peculiar way and the stars look very different today. For here am I sitting in a tin can far above the world. Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do." Carol started playing air guitar and dancing around when the bridge came in and it was a several seconds before she realized that the moment had passed and the others had moved on to something more serious. Phil was checking the time.

President Miller spoke to Tandy. "It's ten after one, Phil. How long should we wait? This is your mission. We'll do what you want. Just remember, Melissa is back home and she needs us." For Phil, Gail and Erica, the questions were starting to creep back, the earlier ones and new ones. They were starting to doubt that Tandy could even do the math that brought them here. And yes, there was Melissa. Should they help her? If she had The Virus, would they catch it from her if they tried to help her? Or should they all go their separate ways as a means to saving themselves? Gail and Erica gave each other a glance. They had already discussed this. If the Robert mission had failed, and with Melissa sick, they had planned to strike out on their own again. Phil looked at Tandy who was trying to decide what to do. He knew he had done the math right and he resented the others for starting to doubt that. He also trusted his brother to carry out his instructions. But what went wrong? He didn't know. Perhaps there were just too many variables. He just didn't have a way to calculate in every contingency. It was like trying to figure out how much wax there was on a bowling lane without rolling a ball on it. Sometimes you just have to guess and give it your most reliable roll. That's what he did. He gave it his best guess. But if the timing was off by a few seconds or his trajectory was off by a few degrees, his brother could have come down a few hundred miles away or, as Todd suggested, just burned up in the atmosphere. It was too much to think about but he needed to make a decision. Carol was still watching the sky, mostly because she wasn't ready to give up (she felt she had to believe in Tandy, especially when others weren't) and partly because she was embarrassed about the whole air guitar thing and it was easier than making eye contact with the others. But it was a good thing that she was. Far down the southwest sky there was a bright streak heading there way.

Seconds earlier, the MOOSE had reached the thicker part of the atmosphere and, as predicted, started pushing through the air faster than the air could get out of its way. Super-hot plasma started building up in front of the craft. But the container was not designed to be a re-entry vehicle and the turbulence it created as it broke through the outer layers of the atmosphere caused it to start to tumble. On one hand this was good in that it meant that no one side was exposed to the heat for very long, giving it a better chance for the ablative layer to do its job. On the other hand, it meant that inside the container, Robert was being jostled at supersonic speeds and the G forces he was experiencing were causing him to lose consciousness. Correction, they had caused him to lose consciousness. Robert had passed out.

On the ground, Carol was pointing and screaming, "I SEE IT! I SEE THE MOOSE!"

The others turned back to the sky to see if they could find what Carol was pointing at. Tandy let out an, "I knew it!" as he did so. They shaded their eyes and looked up, Carol yelling and pointing the whole time. The fireball only lasted a few seconds longer. About the time it reached 45 degrees high in the sky, the light disappeared. A few seconds later, a despondent Tandy asked, "Where is it? Where did it go?" The group began scanning the part of the sky where the trajectory would have continued, but all they could see was the "shadow" of the fireball in their eyes. It would take a few seconds for their eyes to adjust but some of them couldn't help thinking that the worst had happened.

The ablative layer of the MOOSE had mostly burned off and the exposed aluminum surface of the container got quite hot but the foam inside had protected Robert and he survived. Once it had entered the atmosphere and slowed to subsonic speeds, the thickness of the air was enough to considerably slow its spin as well. This allowed for Roberts blood to start flowing more normally and for him to regain consciousness. The first thing he became aware of was the oscillating brightness inside the container as the seams and boltholes rotated through facing the sky and facing the earth below. He soon realized he was spinning and began a battle with his inner ear for control of his gag reflex. He didn't know how close to the ground he was but he wanted to pull his chute as soon as possible. He reached for the latch bolt, but he couldn't touch it. He had foamed in the space between him and the bolt. Now knowing how much time he had left, he frantically began digging at the foam.

Phil was the first to spot the container as it flashed the reflected sun around. It was still high in the sky but it was spinning. He knew that was not good for the man inside. The others soon caught sight of it as well. They watched for several seconds. Concern grew. "He should have pulled the chute by now. He's still coming in too hot," Phil said, solemnly.

"Come on Robert. Pull you chute," Tandy pleaded. "Pull your chute!" he yelled. Then the others chimed in, taking turns shouting, "Pull your chute!"

Robert finally cleared the foam and started turning out the bolt. He couldn't believe how difficult it was to turn. It seemed much easier when he was spinning it in but the combined effects of the spin, his fatigue and nausea and the heat that the container experienced made the task much more difficult. Robert persevered and the bolt came out. He tried to kick open the door but again the foam hampered his movement. He punched it open instead. The door flew open. This had two effects. Robert was able to see the sky for the first time and the door acted like a kite tail and stabilized the decent, holding what was left of the MOOSE sideways. Robert could see the horizon and it was coming up fast. He had to open the chute. He pulled the chord, the pack opened and the parachute popped out, hanging up on the door and flapping against it. Robert was still falling, fast. He swore, loudly. As if in response, the rushing air caught the chute and opened it, forcefully pulling Robert free of the container which fell down below him. Robert could see that it was still smouldering. Once he got stable, he looked around. There, a few miles away, Tumamoc Hill was giving him The Finger. "He did it! God dammit, he did it!" Robert yelled.

The ground crew watched and chanted as the MOOSE streaked past, overshooting the target. They ran around to the other side of The Finger to see if the chute would deploy. As they rounded the observatory, they got the show they came to see. He was low and still falling fast but Robert was now under a parachute. Phil and Tandy ran to their trucks to give chase with the ladies not far behind. With no regard to the wellbeing of their vehicles, especially their suspensions, the boys got the trucks down the hill as quickly as they could, trying to keep the parachute in sight for as long as possible. It looked like Robert might come down somewhere in or near El Rio Golf Course. Tandy knew the best way to get there and raced ahead of Phil who followed closely behind. Carol, Erica and Gail in the SUV were falling behind but knew the general direction to go.

At El Rio, Tandy crashed his truck through the perimeter fence and raced it over the course's rough terrain of hazards, bunkers and sand traps, keeping an eye to both sides of the trail he blazed, looking for signs of Robert. About three quarters of the way across the course, Tandy spotted him. He had managed to hit one of the course's larger sand traps. Tandy veered the truck in his direction. When he got there, he could see that Robert's crumpled body was not moving. The younger Miller stopped the truck and ran over to where his brother was. Phil arrived a few seconds later and was bounding toward them as Tandy reached Robert. He gently turned his body over. Tandy and Phil could see that the face mask on the helmet had a small spiderlike crack in it and it was heavily fogged inside. "Help me get this off of him," Tandy pleaded, trying to twist off the damaged helmet. Phil found the release and the two turned the helmet and lifted it off. Under it, they could see that Robert was gaunt and thin. He had a rough beard and he was pale. His eyes were shut and he looked lifeless. Tandy could not believe that Robert could have beaten all odds and made his way this far not to survive the fall. "Robert!" he shouted, "Can you hear me? Are you okay?" Robert remained motionless. Tandy tried again. "Robert!" Weakly, Robert raised his arm and gave a thumbs up. Then, through squinting eyes, looked at Tandy.

"Boom," he said, in typical Miller fashion, "gotcha." Then, as if the last bit of energy in his body had been spent, he collapsed.

"Help me get him up," Tandy told Phil.

"I don't know," Phil started, "do you think we should move him? He might be injured."

Tandy patted Roberts's cheeks with the backs of his fingers. "Robert, Robert," he said, trying to rouse his brother, "how do you feel? Do you think you can walk?" Robert slowly opened his eyes again and looked at Tandy.

"Who are you?" he asked, groggily. Tandy wasn't sure if he was serious but responded anyway.

"It's Phil. Phil Miller, your brother, Phil." Robert seemed to respond. "We want to get you up. Do you think you're okay to walk?" Robert nodded. Tandy gave Phil a nod and the two of them lifted Robert, holding him, one on each side, by the arms.

Robert's legs were very weak. He hadn't used them much in the last two years and his body in all of Earth's gravity felt like it weighed a ton. His knees buckled uncontrollably at first but soon, with the help of the other two he was able to hobble along. Once he was able to get going, he turned his head to his brother and asked, "Were you really the President?"

Tandy was struggling with keeping his brother upright but managed to respond with, "Yeah, that's me."

For some reason, Phil felt the need to correct the record. "But he's not the President anymore, I am."

Robert turned his head to Phil and asked, "And who are you?"

"Me?" Phil responded, "My name is Phil Miller."

Robert looked at his brother, then back at Phil. He was a little confused. "And you're the President now?"

"Yup," Phil confirmed.

Robert had trouble processing how two men named Phil Miller could be President of the United States in just the two years while he was in space. He turned back to his brother for clarification. "Is there some kind of new rule now?" he asked. All Tandy could do was chuckle.

"It's good to have you back, bro," he said through his smile.

By this time the women had found the trucks at the golf course and had got out of the SUV to look for the guys. They didn't get far before they could see the three of them coming over one of the golf course's small hills. Because of their difficulty with Robert's walking, it appeared to the girls that the boys were walking in slow motion. And with Robert in a space suit, it reminded Carol of a scene from The Right Stuff. A few heartbeats later, they ran to greet the hero. They took turns hugging Robert as Tandy and Phil held him up. When Carol came in for hers, she got a whiff of the strong, dark urine that soaked the inside of the space suit. "Ew," she reacted. "Did you pee yourself?" She gave Tandy a curious look, wondering if incontinence was a Miller trait.

"No, don't be ridic…" Robert began. Then, feeling that his underwear, and in fact his pants right down to his knees and shirt up to his chest were clinging to him, exclaimed, "Oh my God, I'm soaked!" Then, realizing how embarrassing it was that an adult should lose control of his bladder, tried to explain it away. "Oh yes, I remember now," he said, trying to think of a reasonable explanation for the wetness, "I, uhhh, did that on purpose as, um, a fire retardant measure to, uhh, protect me from the heat of re-entry." He looked over at his brother to get a read on how believable that story sounded. Tandy kept tight-lipped and gave his brother a 'good one, bro' type of nod. Carol, of course, did not buy it.

"Okay, well, we'll get you washed up once we get back to the cul-de-sac," she told him. Mentioning their home back at the cul-de-sac reminded Gail of what awaited them there.

"Oh my, we forgot about Melissa!" she exclaimed.

Tandy stopped the group and grabbed his brother with both hands and spoke firmly to him. "Robert, we've got a friend at home. We think she might be sick with The Virus. Can you help her?" Robert began patting at his midsection like a man checking his pockets for a wallet he just realized he had forgotten.

"Get me out of this suit," he said, franticly. The others began turning and twisting him looking for a zipper or some other way out. "It joins at the waist. There should be a release." Phil found it and pulled it. The suit came apart at the waist and they pulled off the top half. Now they all could smell the urine but they ignored it. They laid Robert on the ground and pulled him out of the bottom and helped him back to his feet. As they did so he ripped at a duct tape belt wrapped around him at the top of the urine stain. He tore away the tape to reveal a Styrofoam block with a seam through the middle. He split open the halves to reveal three glass vials that Robert was relieved to see were still intact. They were marked V1, V2 and A. He held up the one marked with an A. "A is for antidote!" he announced, exuberantly. Robert handed the foam block with the other two vials to Carol. "Get that into refrigeration as soon as possible. They're the only ingredients I have for more vaccine." Carol closed the block and put it in her purse. Robert held the third vial tightly in his grip as the rest of the group hurried his pace back to the trucks.

"Put him in my truck," Tandy instructed. "I'll get him back home."

"For God sake," Phil pleaded, "drive carefully."

"Hey," Tandy said, trying to sound reassuring, "it's me!" They loaded Robert into the passenger seat of Tandy's truck as Tandy got in on the driver's side. He started the truck and put it into reverse to turn around. He backed up, and bumped the tree behind him. He grimaced, and called out the window as he pulled away, "I got this! Don't worry, I got this!" Then he tore away, spraying golf course divots behind him as he did so.

PART FIVE: Some Positive News

Over the course of the trip back to the cul-de-sac, Robert and his brother Phil pieced together the events that led to the largest mass extinction the Earth had seen since the disappearance of the dinosaurs. "So the crew that evacuated the ISS must have been source of The Virus," Robert concluded. "They were from all parts of the world. And while they would have died in hospital, their families would have carried it home before doctors knew what they were dealing with. By then, it was too late. It was a global pandemic."

Phil asked the obvious question. "Yeah, but how did they get it?"

Robert had the answer, but he didn't like the conclusion it led to. "My experiments. I had brought several strains of deadly virus with me, many of them carcinogenic. I thought I had handled them safely. But there was one thing I wasn't counting on I guess, the ambient radiation in the space station. You see, on board the ISS, we didn't have a magnetosphere and atmosphere to protect us from the sun's radiation like you do on Earth. We got blasted pretty hard up there. The radiation must have been enough to mutate one of the strains. It must have a pretty high regeneration rate. By the time I isolated it, it had morphed into something I didn't recognize, something totally new. If I didn't know better, I would have thought that it came from something I hadn't even brought with me, like a stowaway. Somehow, it must have got out of containment." Robert paused as he realized the consequences brought on by this sequence of events. "I can't help thinking that, by being on that mission and conducting those experiments, experiments I thought would lead to a cure for cancer, I caused the death of my family and almost everyone else on Earth." He turned to his brother. "It's my fault, Phil."

Phil didn't respond. His eyes were wide and his breathing was shallow. Something Robert said, that thing about the stowaway, made Phil remember the visit he paid to Robert as he was preparing to leave for the space station, and the things he did to Robert's samples to try and mess with the experiments. Phil thought about his penis and what might be growing down there and wondered if one of his "contributions to science" was actually the stowaway to which Robert was referring. He was afraid that he might be the cause, the true source of The Virus. His mind raced through all of his personal indiscretions against the other survivors over the last few weeks. All of them paled in comparison to killing every creature on Earth. They were coming up to the cul-de-sac by now and Phil just couldn't think about that right now. He didn't realize it, but he even said it out loud. "You can't think about that right now," he said, trying to get it out of his mind. Robert thought his brother had directed the comment to him.

"Thanks, Phil," Robert said, snapping Phil out of his gaze. "You're a good brother. And you're right. We have to save the ones we can. I only hope it's not too late for your friend. Which house is hers? Phil gave a trancelike nod in the direction of the house that Todd and Melissa were in. Robert opened the truck door and stepped out, but his legs were still weak and they buckled under his weight. Robert fell to his knees, almost dropping the vial in the process. That snapped Phil completely to attention and he sprang out to help his brother.

The other Phil arrived at the cul-de-sac around this time and helped Tandy get Robert inside. Tandy looked past Phil to the street. He needed to tell someone about his horrible discovery and Carol was the only one he trusted. "Where's Carol? Where are the girls?" he asked.

Phil looked back briefly as they got up to the door. "I dunno," he answered, "they were right behind me. Should be here soon."

Todd heard them pull up and had come down to meet them. "Doctor Miller," Todd said, as he shook Robert's hand vigorously, "I'm so glad you made it back. My girlfriend is very sick. I'm hoping you can help."

"He's actually got the vaccine with him," new Phil announced.

"Yes," Robert confirmed. "All I need is a hypodermic needle to administer it." Phil looked at Todd. Todd shook his head. He was sure there were no needles at his house. They looked to Tandy for assistance.

Tandy shook his head too. "No, I don't have any…"

"I thought you might need these," came a voice from behind them. It was Carol. She was holding out a strip of hypodermic needles.

Gail and Erica entered right behind but did not venture too far into the room. "Sorry we're late," Gail explained, "but she made us stop at the drug store on the way here."

"We thought she was crazy," Erica commented, "but it turns out she knew what she was doin'."

Carol leaned toward Tandy and whispered, "Actually, I had to get some feminine supplies. I saw those on the way out."

While the group was busy attending to Melissa, Tandy thought it a good time to take Carol aside. "Uh, Carol, I have to talk to you about something."

"Not now, Phil," she said, pointing to the inside of her purse, "I gotta take care of some bid-ness." Carol grinned at her attempt to make her chore sound cool, then she turned and skipped her way to the bathroom.

Robert sat with Melissa and felt her head, then took her pulse. He then tore a needle from the strip and removed it. He turned the vial upside down and slipped the needle into it, siphoning most of its contents. He took Melissa's arm and injected the medicine. Afterwards, he stood and told Todd, "She needs rest. We'll keep an eye on her for signs of improvement." Then he leaned into the big man and said in a lower voice. "I only hope her immune system is strong enough to still fight this." Todd nodded his understanding and thanked Robert.

"Now, let's get you cleaned up," said Phil.

"And fed," said Gail.

"We should have some sort of celebration," Erica suggested, "a Welcome Home party!"

Tandy had been waiting outside the bathroom to talk to Carol but she had been so long that now Robert was also waiting to use it to clean up. When Carol came out, she was startled by the crowd standing there. As Robert tried to enter the bathroom, Carol blocked his way. Robert gave her a curious look. Carol tried to cover up her suspicious behavior by waving a hand under nose. "Whooo!" she hooted. "You don't want to go in there. I just took the Browns to the Super Bowl, you know what I mean?" Everyone knew what she meant but she felt the need to underline her claim anyway. She leaned toward Robert and put the edge of her hand to her mouth as if letting him in on a secret. "Left behind a lot of cave paintings." Then, in more of a warning tone, repeated, "A lot of 'em." Thoroughly dissuaded, Robert backed away.

"Come on," Phil offered, "I'll let you use the shower at my place." The two of them made their way down the stairs and out.

"Did someone say party?" Carol asked, trying to draw attention away from her bid-ness.

"We're gonna have a Welcome Home party for Robert," Erica told her.

"You didn't tell us how handsome your brother is," Gail purred with every ounce of her southern accent. "I haven't seen a doctor in a long time," she declared, coyly. "Maybe I need an injection too."

Carol couldn't believe how callous Gail was being, given Melissa's state. But, if a celebration was being had, then Carol felt she should contribute something. "Maybe I can make some raisin balls!"

"No!" Tandy said, a little too loud. Then, toning it back a bit, continued, "No, I don't think we need to, uhh, subject Robert's delicate system to such, umm, solid food. You know, with all that astronaut food he's been eating, he's probably not used to anything that can't, you know, come out of a tube or something."

Carol could see what Tandy was doing. He was insulting her cooking and trying to cover it up with this cockamamie tube food excuse. She decided to challenge his thinking. She got in his face a bit. "So what do you propose we serve him? Huh? Frosting? Toothpaste?"

Tandy remembered the day before he was banished to the desert, when he was holed up in his house trying to live off of toilet paper and toothpaste. "You know, it's not so bad. Kinda minty, but you get used to it."

"Don't be ridiculous, Phil! Besides, I know that they eat solid food in space so don't try any of your baloney on me!" Carol pushed past him and headed downstairs.

Phil almost forgot that he wanted to talk to Carol. He chased after her. "Carol! Wait!" He followed her out to the street. Once there, he caught her by the arm and stopped her. "Carol, I've been trying to tell you something." Carol softened.

"Actually, I have something to tell you too," she told him, innocently grinning as she did.

"Let me do mine first, then, if you still feel like talking to me, you can go." Tandy had a serious look that concerned her. Her grin faded.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Well, on our way here, Robert and I were talking about how The Virus might have got its start. And Robert was telling me how one of the strains he brought up to space with him might have mutated into The Virus that killed everybody. And Robert thinks it's his fault that the astronauts got sick and came back and spread the disease. But it's not. Robert's smarter than that. He's more careful than that. It's me. It's my fault." Tandy was starting to become hysterical and his voice was becoming high and loud. Carol tried to calm him down and reason with him. She put a hand on his arm and spoke gently to him.

"It's not your fault. You weren't up there. There was nothing you could do to stop this." Phil was looking away. Carol took his chin and turn him to her to meet his gaze. He was holding back tears.

"Yes. There was," he confessed. "Before Robert went up, I saw him at his lab. I was mad. I was jealous. I was tired of all the attention and the praise he was getting from everybody. I messed with the experiments he brought up. Robert said it was like there was something foreign in his samples, in the ones that got the astronauts sick. It was me. I put stuff in there." Phil was reluctant to tell Carol that the stuff was his penis given their intimate past. "You should have just left me in the desert, Carol. I'm no good." Carol just stood there, speechless, while she put together all of the ramifications of what Phil had just told her. Without a response, Phil was going to leave, just walk away. As he was about to turn, Carol spoke.

"Oh my, Phil," was all she said at first. As she weighed all of her loss from The Virus, she found it harder and harder not to let out what she was feeling. "You're right. I should never have come for you. Through all of the things you did, I stood by you, supported you. When everyone else was blaming you, I defended you! I lost my mom! And Glen from work! And now Melissa is up there, fighting to stay alive! And for what? Mindless, petty jealousy! How could you?" Carol started to cry, and it broke Phil's heart. "How could you do it, Phil? When we met, I thought it was part of some big plan for us to repopulate." She turned to the sky and yelled. "Well some plan! HA HA HA! I guess the joke was on me!" Phil hated to see Carol this way and was sad to see her losing faith.

"Carol, don't be that way," he began.

Carol jutted a finger in his face. "No! You don't have the right! You don't have the right to lecture me. You don't have the right to talk to me. You don't have the right to look at me! GO AWAY!" Carol stared him down until he turned and left. Then, she went to her house, flopped onto her bed and cried until she fell asleep.

She awoke a couple of hours later to the sound of knocking at her door. She got up, composed herself and went to the door. It was Phil, President Phil. "Come on, Carol. We're all gathering at Gail and Erica's for the party." He peered past her and into the house. "Is Tandy coming? I tried his place but he wasn't there. I thought he was over here with you."

"No," she said, still pulling herself together, "I don't know where he is."

"Probably planning some grandiose stunt for his brother," Phil suggested. "Boy, he really came through with the math he used to get his brother back, huh? Didn't know he had it in him."

"Yeah," was all Carol managed at first. Then, resigning to the fact there was nothing she could do to change her situation, decided to make the best of it. If these were the raisins God was giving her now, she thought she might as well make raisin balls. "I'll be right over, Phil. I just want to whip something up first. Don't want to come to the party empty handed."

"Okay, I'll see you there." With that, Phil headed in the direction of Gail and Erica's.

Gail had prepared quite a spread in just the couple hours she had. Robert hadn't had so many food choices in years, even with the lack of meat available in the world. Carol arrived with wine and vegetables, mainly tomatoes, from her garden. It was the best she could do at the last minute. Robert looked, and smelled, much better. He was weak, of course, but now able to walk around on his own. He was answering questions about his life, his work and his time in space. When he saw Carol, he greeted her with a hug, then asked, "And where's Phil? I thought you might be together." Before Carol had a chance to respond, the front door opened. The gathering turned, expecting it to be Tandy. It wasn't. It was Todd.

"Guess who's up and about?" he called as he entered. He wore a huge smile as he stepped aside to reveal Melissa who walked gingerly through the door wearing a smile of her own but not as big as her boyfriend's. "No appetite yet, but the fever's broken and her energy is coming back," Todd reported.

"Glad you made it," Carol said, not just referring to the party.

"Well, I owe it all to the doc," Melissa said, weakly.

"It was the least I could do," Robert confessed.

"What do you mean? You did it all!" Todd told him.

"No, no," Robert corrected. "I think I owe quite a lot to you fine people," he said to them, then turning to Todd specifically, "and all of your ingenuity." Todd smiled his appreciation for the recognition. Then Robert went on with his explanation. "But what I mean when I say it was the least I could do is that I must say, I feel somewhat responsible for your state, Melissa, and the state of the world, really. If I hadn't been up there on that space station, the organisms that mutated into The Virus wouldn't have been there either, and we wouldn't be in the mess we all are in right now."

Phil tried to relieve him of his guilt. "Yes, but doctor, those organisms might have mutated here on Earth anyway, right?"

"That's true," Robert admitted, somewhat humbled. "But I would here been here to stop them," he concluded, somewhat less humbly. Everyone chuckled a bit at the doctor braggadocio. Everyone but Carol, that is. She was tired of the blame game they were playing and she wanted to set the record straight.

"But they weren't your organisms up there," she claimed. "Phil told me he visited you before you left and he contaminated your experiments." There was shock in the crowd. At various speeds, the people at the party arrived at the same conclusion, that it was Tandy's viruses that mutated into the strain that nearly wiped out all life on Earth. All of the people at the party except Robert, that is. He was working things through in his head. He furrowed his brow and squinted his eyes as he thought. Finally, he spoke.

"But when Phil came to visit me that day, the samples I had out were the control samples. It was the test samples that became The Virus. When I was the only one who didn't get sick on board the ISS, I checked the control samples, some of which I had personally supplied. I was able to create the vaccine from them. That was the vaccine I gave to you, Melissa. I had assumed there was something from my own immunology that had suppressed the virus, but everything I tested from my own biome after that failed and I couldn't figure out why." Robert's face relaxed and he raised his eyebrows as he achieved the "Eureka!" moment. He turned to Carol and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Where did you say my brother was?"

"I don't know. He was so sad about killing everyone, he took off," Carol explained, her voice shaking.

"We have to find Phil!" Robert exclaimed.

The party broke up and the partygoers went out looking for Tandy. Phil went back to Tandy's house to look there. Gail and Erica cruised the neighbourhood in the SUV, calling for him from the windows. Melissa was not well enough to join the hunt so Todd stayed with her at Carol's in case he came back there. Carol and Robert went to O'Rozco's Bar and Grill, Phil's hangout. Inside, there was no sign of Phil but the sports balls were there. After a brief explanation to Robert why there were eighteen pieces of sports equipment, all with faces drawn on them, lined up in the bar, Carol stood in front of them and contemplated for a moment before asking, "Do you guys know where he went?" She knew it was crazy but she was hoping to get a vibe. She turned to Phil's favorite, the white volleyball. "Gary? Any ideas?" She tried the basketball. "Jimmy? Nothing?" She tried another. "Jerry, you're a football. It's football season. Heck, it's playoff time. Why didn't he bring you along?" She grilled several of the others. "Anton? Bryce? Terrence? Trent? Darby?"

"Terrence Trent Darby," Robert snickered to himself, as he watched the madness unfold.

Carol caught the eye of Kevin, the yellow tennis ball with the scorch mark from his close encounter with a certain flame thrower that shall go unnamed. Kevin had a certain look on his face. Maybe it was the way his blue eyes were outlined in red that made it look like he was staring but Carol couldn't help thinking he was looking at a clue. She followed his gaze, walking in its direction until at one point she found herself in the path of the gaze of every ball in the place. She couldn't help feeling a little flattered by all the attention. "He was here," she concluded. Then she looked about her general vicinity and soon noticed that she was standing right next to a pillar where Phil had hung a framed picture of his family. On it, he had written, "There's no place like home." Carol read the inscription and thought about it a while. Then she looked over to Robert and told him, "I think I know where he is."

Carol and Robert got back into her little, yellow Chevy and headed off. Carol wasn't exactly sure where she was going but she had a general idea. She got them close when Robert realized where she was headed. "Turn left up here," he instructed her. She nodded her recognition and made the turn. Before long they had pulled up in front of the Tucson Knolls, Phil's old apartment building. A few minutes later, she was knocking on his door. There was no answer. She tried the knob. It was unlocked. She opened the door and called for Phil. The place smelled dank, different from the last time she was here. It also smelled of alcohol.

"He's here, alright," she told Robert. "Phil!" she called again. She passed through the living room to the bedroom. There he was, lying on the floor, passed out in a small pool of empty aluminum beer cans, with the pictures of his family from his dresser standing all around him. Carol crouched down and shook him. "Phil!"

Phil stirred. He rolled onto his back, clanking several cans in the process. The noise roused him and he forced his eyes open a bit. Through the haze, he thought he saw Carol. He rubbed his eyes, then opened them fully. It was Carol. "You came for me," he groaned. "Again."

Carol didn't know whether to be disgusted with him or just glad he was alive. She decided to be a little of both. "Get up, ya dumb donkey. Your brother is here. He has something to tell you."

Phil looked past Carol and saw Robert there. The older Miller cleared away a few cans and knelt down next to his brother. "Phil, you didn't tamper with the test virus samples I brought into space."

Phil was confused. "I didn't? But you said those were the samples you were preparing for your experiments on the space station."

"Yes, they were the control samples," Robert explained. "The cure I found didn't come from my samples, they came from you. You didn't cause The Virus, you're the cure, brother, you're the cure!"

"I am?" Phil, bleary-eyed and teary-eyed, asked his brother, "I'm the cure?" Robert nodded. Phil turned to Carol and repeated, "I'm the cure!"

"It's a Christmas miracle!" Carol exclaimed. Both Phil and Robert gave her a funny look.

"A what?" Phil asked, trying to make his way out of the alcoholic fog.

"A Christmas miracle," Carol repeated. "Yeah, I never stopped keeping track. Today is December 25, 2021. Merry Christmas!" Robert thought back to the marks he made on the ceiling back at the ISS, then counted to himself a moment and concluded that she was right. He smiled and chuckled at the coincidence. Phil smiled too, but only for a moment. Soon, his smile turned to a frown.

"Aww, but I didn't get you anything," he said to Carol.

"Yes you did," she corrected him. "I got this at the drug store today to confirm it." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a little plastic strip and showed it to Phil. It had a plus sign on it. "I'm pregnant," she announced.

Phil couldn't speak. He just let a goofy grin spread across his face. He looked at Carol, feeling a little light-headed from the afternoon's activities. He turned to Robert for his reaction to the news. Robert said the only thing a Miller would find appropriate.

"Boom."

And with that, Phil passed out.

THE END