The Devil Comes Back to Retroville

by Gary D. Snyder

Part 11:

"Jimmy?"

The word seeped through layers of ebon fog, like the mournful call of a distant seabird. The word was significant somehow, a link to a forgotten yet vitally important existence. Sluggishly he moved towards the sound, knowing only that he had to reach the source without fully understanding why.

"Can you hear me?"

The sound was growing clearer and sounded familiar and something inside him identified it as a voice. But whose voice? A voice had to belong to someone and he felt faint pride at having reasoned this out. He was vaguely aware that certain parts of him that had been dormant for an indeterminate amount of time were slowly awakening again.

"Would you like some pie, son?"

"Pi," he murmured. "Transcendental number without resolution….equal to…three…point…one…four…one…five…nine...two…six…five…three…five…eight…nine…"

"He sounds normal," said the voice that had called him 'son'.

He was suddenly aware that he had eyes and hesitantly opened them. A shiny metallic face came into view and he had to think for a second before he could place it. "Goddard?"

Goddard barked happily and a second face appeared next to his. "Jimmy?"

"Cindy?" Jimmy made a Herculean effort and sat up. "What happened? Where am I?" Next to Cindy and Goddard was his father, who was holding a half-eaten slab of pie and looking concerned.

"Well," replied Cindy, dropping a broad hint, "as I told your dad here you must have skipped breakfast, felt a little light-headed, and fainted."

As groggy as he felt Jimmy caught the hint. "Oh. Right. With all the showers I must have forgotten to eat. I guess it's nothing. Sorry to worry you all."

Hugh looked relieved and took another bite of pie. "Well, I suppose you can't get hurt if nothing's there," he commented. "Although I guess in this case having nothing for breakfast did. Did you want some pie to tide you over until lunch? It's walnut caramel."

"No thanks, Dad. I'm okay now."

"Well, okay, then. I'll see you later." Satisfied that all was well, Hugh walked towards the kitchen, calling, "Oh, Pumpkin Pants! Do we have any ice cream? Preferably French vanilla, although I suppose regular vanilla would be all right. It's just that it's so…vanilla."

Once his father was gone Jimmy looked at Cindy. "Are you okay?"

"I was going to ask you the same," Cindy replied, looking apprehensive. "I heard you cry out and when I turned around you'd already collapsed. What happened?"

"I…I don't know," Jimmy admitted. "It's like there were suddenly a million thoughts and ideas in my head that I couldn't keep up with. I must have blacked out. I remember something was wrong and that you were leaving…that I couldn't let you go...some terrible danger…"

"Yes," Cindy admitted. "I don't want to go. But with the meteor…and your brain not working…I'm afraid that –" She broke off and looked curiously at Jimmy. "Wait a minute. Did you just give the value of pi to twelve decimal places?"

"I suppose I did," he answered, thinking back.

"Are those all that you memorized? Or can you remember any more of the digits?"

Jimmy laughed scornfully. "Why memorize? For irrational numbers it's so much more convenient to memorize the appropriate infinite series expansion and evaluate it to the desired degree of precision."

"Jimmy! I think…I think you're back again!" Cindy leaped forward joyfully, catching Jimmy in an exuberant embrace. "This is wonderful!"

Jimmy shifted uncomfortably, painfully aware that he was not certain how to react. "Uh…yeah. I guess."

Cindy was too excited to notice his discomfort. "Do you remember about the meteor?"

"The meteor? Yes…you said something about a piece of dark matter heading towards Retroville and that there was only about twelve hours left before impact."

"That's right. Can you stop it?"

"There's only one way to find out." Jimmy headed to towards the back door. "Let's get to the lab and see what we're up against." Cindy followed him, a great sense of relief settling over her. Now that Jimmy was back she was certain that he would find some way to avert the catastrophe. Already he was showing the signs of confident determination, bordering on cockiness, which she had become accustomed to. Once in the lab Jimmy activated his deep space sensors and began systematically checking the current trajectories of various bodies against their predicted and cataloged orbits.

"Well?" asked Cindy last. The suspense was killing her.

"Patience," Jimmy replied absently. Based upon the orbital and rotational position of the Earth in twelve hours and a predicted impact point of Retroville the meteor should be coming in from the region somewhere near the Coal Sack. But so far…" He stopped and looked more closely at the screen. "Aha! There it is!"

Cindy stared at the confusion of lines and celestial points. "Where?"

"Well, not it, exactly," Jimmy confessed. "But look here." He pointed with his finger at a string of ever-widening traces. "These lines are the predicted paths of various asteroids, deep space probes, and some of the smaller debris beyond the orbit of the moon. And these lines are the actual paths. You can see that there's a difference because something has altered them slightly. As we go further out…" He moved his finger to demonstrate. "…you can see that the deviations increase. That's because the disturbance happened earlier, giving the trajectories more time to spread out."

"Like the wake behind a boat," Cindy commented. "Or the contrail of a plane."

"Exactly!" said Jimmy. "Lou was telling the truth. Something is coming in and pretty fast. And now that we have the trail, we can use it to extrapolate its heading and find out where it is and just how serious it is."

"Lou said it was about half the size of the Washington monument," Cindy offered helpfully.

"In size, maybe," Jimmy replied as he manipulated various controls. "But that doesn't tell us anything about the density or mass. If it was made of cotton candy there'd be no problem. But he said it was dark matter which means that it's going to be pretty scary stuff." He tapped a few final keys on his keyboard. "Okay. By using some of the COMSAT and NAVSAT channels I should have the sensors targeted on the meteor. Let's see what we've got."

"But it's dark matter. How can you see it?"

"Fortunately the sky has a fairly steady stream of background noise coming in – ultraviolet light, 21 centimeter electromagnetic radiation, and so forth. The meteor will block that, kind of like someone in a dark room stepping in front of a brightly-lit window. We won't get any details, but we should see be able to see the silhouette and get a good idea of just what's coming in." He touched a button and looked up at the monitor.

Cindy looked up also and saw a ghostly image materializing on the screen, wavering and shaking for a moment before stabilizing. Once locked in the monitor revealed a faint violet expanse with a single jet-black object tumbling lazily in silence before it. Although the image appeared fairly small Cindy sensed that it was very large, inconceivably massive, and travelling far faster than any earthly vehicle.

While Cindy gazed at the ominous shape on the monitor Jimmy was occupied with taking readings, issuing quiet orders to Vox, and running calculations and checks on the calculations. When he was done he leaned back with a low whistle. The whistle drew Cindy's attention away from the screen and back to Jimmy and his expression cause her heart to sink. "Well?" she asked, clinging to a faint ray of hope.

"It's definitely going to hit Retroville in…" He glanced at the monitor where a timer was counting down. "…eleven hours and twenty-three minutes. But it's a lot more massive than I thought. Even a near miss would rip away enough of the atmosphere to devastate most of the Earth's surface." He looked bleakly up at Cindy.

Cindy closed her eyes, as though hoping that doing so would block her hearing as well as her vision, but Jimmy's quiet voice sounded like a judge pronouncing her death sentence.

"I can't stop it."

End of Part 11