Parallelogram : Day Two : Chapter 30
Five Days, Seventeen Hours
Parker slowly pushed open the airlock door – a massive hunk of pure steel – and stepped into the chamber.
The room was a tremendous vault that stretched as far as his eyes could see. It was scented lightly with an aroma of flowers – he couldn't imagine why – and felt damp, dewy. Perhaps Larnord – the alien – preferred the flora of Earth. He didn't know. He could only guess.
Turning, he used all of his might – now free of the clumsy CDC pressure suit and clothed only in his boxers, athletic socks, and a white t- shirt – and he closed the door behind him, hearing the metal tumblers click nastily back into their grooves, closing him off entirely from the world outside.
He was alone. Inside a Pentagon subchamber.
... with an alien.
... and he didn't exactly have a good track record at dealing with aliens.
Larnord's chamber was lined with an odd assortment of equipment. Walking slowly, he admired some of it – electron microscopes, laboratory tables, video monitors – but then he was aghast at some of what he found. There, next to a bank of television screens all showing various entry points and internal corridors throughout the Pentagon, was a stack of ...
... compact discs?
"You've got to kidding me?"
Crouching, the man glanced across the hundreds of title of the discs to get an understanding of what an alien – this Larnord – could possibly find of interest for his music library. To his surprise, Parker found selections from every conceivable music group from every conceivable genre: Third Eye Blind, Bond, Selena, Tito Puente, Streisand, Manilow ...
"Manilow?" he asked aloud.
Then, he heard it. The song – "Looks Like We Made It" – was played softly from an unseen stereo system nearby.
"You've got to be kidding me," he muttered.
Rising, he noticed the walls were lined with bookshelves, and, upon them, there were hundreds upon hundreds of books, magazines, encyclopedia volumes, dictionaries ... if it had a name, Parker saw it there.
"Hello, Frank Parker."
Whirling, he glanced in the direction of the voice, down near the floor, under a table lined with chemicals stored in various test tubes and globes. Beneath the table, stretched out on the cold marble floor was ... Larnord. The alien sat, cross-legged, with a magazine open in front of ... him? Her? It?
Parker was afraid to guess.
"Hello," the chrononaut replied.
Larnord lifted his tiny head – it was the size of a small child's – and Parker stared into his black oval eyes. He had seen them before – on the alien he had found in the BackStep facilities long ago – but the facial features were different. For one, Larnord's skin was almost ... human. It had a similar pinkish, peach hue. His cheeks were dotted with what looked like freckles, small circles of deep amber. His nose had slits for nostrils, and his mouth was broad, open, showing humanlike teeth in an impish smile. Larnord had no ears, no hair ... but he did have a mass of flowing tentacles that circled his head Medusa-like and stretched downward, wrapping around his small body.
Uncertain of what to say to such a grand visitor from another world, from perhaps another time, Parker tried, "Er ... whatcha reading?"
Still smiling, Larnord held up the magazine and showed the cover to the man.
"Cosmo?"
"Yes."
"You do know ... you do know that's not about science, right?"
Suddenly, Larnord slipped out from under the long table and stood, closing the magazine and setting it on top of the unit. "I find your species fascinating. I always have. That is why I volunteered for this post."
"Well," Parker tried, confused, "what does that have to do with you reading a fashion magazine?"
The alien stood just under three feet tall. Those tentacles stretched all of the way to the floor, draping around him like a cape.
"Your species places an incredible emphasis on relationships," it said, inclining his head back at the open magazine. "However, you fail to grasp the relationship – and the responsibility – that you, as a people, have to the galactic community."
Parker shrugged. He didn't know what to make of the observation. "Ever seen 'The Day The Earth Stood Still'?" he finally asked.
"I have." Larnord held up a single finger. "I believe I have it around here on DVD."
"Yeah, well," the man said, "that's pretty much what the film was about."
Nervously, Parker leaned on the electron microscope behind him.
"You're not what I expected," the alien observed.
"You never are."
"Your people," it stated, "are far too linear in your thinking."
The chrononaut shrugged again. "What can I say, Larry? It's the nature of our existence."
"Existence is far more than linear, Frank Parker."
"You're preaching to the choir ... in a sense." The man shifted his weight from one side to the next. An electron microscope didn't exactly offer one the most comfortable seating possible. "Look, why don't you stop calling me by my full name, okay, pal? You can call me Frank, and I'll call you Larry."
"Hello, Frank," the alien agreed.
"Hello, Larry."
"That's why I wanted to meet you."
"What? My charm?"
"No," Larnord replied. "But ... it is acceptable."
"There are others who don't think so."
In a surprisingly human gesture, Larnord sniffed. "What do they know?"
The chrononaut held up his hands. "I don't know, Larry. I suppose – much like myself – they don't know much. They're just going about their lives – living them out in that linear fashion you mentioned – reading Cosmopolitan and listening to Barry Manilow."
"You don't like my tastes?"
Parker scoffed at the idea. "To each his own." He nodded in the direction of the CD selection. "Do you have any Johnny Cash in there?"
"I do."
"Then ... you can't be all bad."
The two beings stood silent for several long seconds, studying one another.
"I am not what you expected," Larnord said.
"Aliens rarely are," Parker admitted. "But I guess that's something that we Earthlings have come to accept."
"You have met many?"
"A few," he confessed. "I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on interplanetary relations. I leave that to the big boys here in Washington."
"They are far from experts, Frank."
"Again, you're not telling me anything I don't already know, Larry."
Suddenly, the alien moved, his legs perfectly still. It hovered closer, rising a few feet in the air, reaching eye level with the chrononaut. Parker drew in a few measured breaths, trying to slow his throbbing heart, hoping that the alien wasn't studying the whites of his eyes. He didn't want to appear uneven or unsettled, but he figured he was losing in the public relations effort. Larnord, after all, had the advantage: he had lived here, on this Earth, daily being cared for by several hundred assistants. Parker, on the other hand, only happened across aliens once or twice.
"There is no need to feel yourself inferior," Larry tried.
'The little bastard read my mind!'
Cocking an eyebrow at him, Parker asked, "You read my mind?"
"Aren't all aliens mind-readers, Frank?"
'He read that, too!'
Trying to cleanse his mind of anything offensive or abrupt, Parker thought about ... about ... about ... Olga.
"Yes," Larnord replied. "I've seen pictures of her, Frank. She's very lovely."
'This is getting embarrassing,' Parker thought.
"Don't give it another thought," the alien said.
"Look, Larry," the man interrupted, "don't take this the wrong way. I have no problem with you – personally – but if the sole purpose of asking me here was for you to spend the better part of our visit crawling around inside of my head, I'm going to give you one warning: I have far better things to do."
"I don't doubt it, Frank."
"In case you haven't been brought up to speed, we have a major terrorist figure running around out there," Parker snapped.
"I'm aware of that."
"If that's the case, then you can understand why I might ask you to hurry up on the speech, get out whatever it is you wanted to say, and let me get the hell out of here." Suddenly, Parker hoisted himself off the equipment, and he stuck in his very close to the alien. "I'm not here to scare you any more than it looks like you're here to scare me, but I have a job to do ... and you have some Cosmo to read ... so why don't we call it even, and I'll be on my way?"
Reflexively, a single tentacle raced up from Larnord's side and wrapped loosely around the chrononaut's neck. Parker reached up, prepared to fight off the little beast, but before he could wrap his fingers around the hunk of flesh, he heard:
"You have to understand one simple idea, Frank. No matter what you do, this world ... dies."
END of Chapter 30
Five Days, Seventeen Hours
Parker slowly pushed open the airlock door – a massive hunk of pure steel – and stepped into the chamber.
The room was a tremendous vault that stretched as far as his eyes could see. It was scented lightly with an aroma of flowers – he couldn't imagine why – and felt damp, dewy. Perhaps Larnord – the alien – preferred the flora of Earth. He didn't know. He could only guess.
Turning, he used all of his might – now free of the clumsy CDC pressure suit and clothed only in his boxers, athletic socks, and a white t- shirt – and he closed the door behind him, hearing the metal tumblers click nastily back into their grooves, closing him off entirely from the world outside.
He was alone. Inside a Pentagon subchamber.
... with an alien.
... and he didn't exactly have a good track record at dealing with aliens.
Larnord's chamber was lined with an odd assortment of equipment. Walking slowly, he admired some of it – electron microscopes, laboratory tables, video monitors – but then he was aghast at some of what he found. There, next to a bank of television screens all showing various entry points and internal corridors throughout the Pentagon, was a stack of ...
... compact discs?
"You've got to kidding me?"
Crouching, the man glanced across the hundreds of title of the discs to get an understanding of what an alien – this Larnord – could possibly find of interest for his music library. To his surprise, Parker found selections from every conceivable music group from every conceivable genre: Third Eye Blind, Bond, Selena, Tito Puente, Streisand, Manilow ...
"Manilow?" he asked aloud.
Then, he heard it. The song – "Looks Like We Made It" – was played softly from an unseen stereo system nearby.
"You've got to be kidding me," he muttered.
Rising, he noticed the walls were lined with bookshelves, and, upon them, there were hundreds upon hundreds of books, magazines, encyclopedia volumes, dictionaries ... if it had a name, Parker saw it there.
"Hello, Frank Parker."
Whirling, he glanced in the direction of the voice, down near the floor, under a table lined with chemicals stored in various test tubes and globes. Beneath the table, stretched out on the cold marble floor was ... Larnord. The alien sat, cross-legged, with a magazine open in front of ... him? Her? It?
Parker was afraid to guess.
"Hello," the chrononaut replied.
Larnord lifted his tiny head – it was the size of a small child's – and Parker stared into his black oval eyes. He had seen them before – on the alien he had found in the BackStep facilities long ago – but the facial features were different. For one, Larnord's skin was almost ... human. It had a similar pinkish, peach hue. His cheeks were dotted with what looked like freckles, small circles of deep amber. His nose had slits for nostrils, and his mouth was broad, open, showing humanlike teeth in an impish smile. Larnord had no ears, no hair ... but he did have a mass of flowing tentacles that circled his head Medusa-like and stretched downward, wrapping around his small body.
Uncertain of what to say to such a grand visitor from another world, from perhaps another time, Parker tried, "Er ... whatcha reading?"
Still smiling, Larnord held up the magazine and showed the cover to the man.
"Cosmo?"
"Yes."
"You do know ... you do know that's not about science, right?"
Suddenly, Larnord slipped out from under the long table and stood, closing the magazine and setting it on top of the unit. "I find your species fascinating. I always have. That is why I volunteered for this post."
"Well," Parker tried, confused, "what does that have to do with you reading a fashion magazine?"
The alien stood just under three feet tall. Those tentacles stretched all of the way to the floor, draping around him like a cape.
"Your species places an incredible emphasis on relationships," it said, inclining his head back at the open magazine. "However, you fail to grasp the relationship – and the responsibility – that you, as a people, have to the galactic community."
Parker shrugged. He didn't know what to make of the observation. "Ever seen 'The Day The Earth Stood Still'?" he finally asked.
"I have." Larnord held up a single finger. "I believe I have it around here on DVD."
"Yeah, well," the man said, "that's pretty much what the film was about."
Nervously, Parker leaned on the electron microscope behind him.
"You're not what I expected," the alien observed.
"You never are."
"Your people," it stated, "are far too linear in your thinking."
The chrononaut shrugged again. "What can I say, Larry? It's the nature of our existence."
"Existence is far more than linear, Frank Parker."
"You're preaching to the choir ... in a sense." The man shifted his weight from one side to the next. An electron microscope didn't exactly offer one the most comfortable seating possible. "Look, why don't you stop calling me by my full name, okay, pal? You can call me Frank, and I'll call you Larry."
"Hello, Frank," the alien agreed.
"Hello, Larry."
"That's why I wanted to meet you."
"What? My charm?"
"No," Larnord replied. "But ... it is acceptable."
"There are others who don't think so."
In a surprisingly human gesture, Larnord sniffed. "What do they know?"
The chrononaut held up his hands. "I don't know, Larry. I suppose – much like myself – they don't know much. They're just going about their lives – living them out in that linear fashion you mentioned – reading Cosmopolitan and listening to Barry Manilow."
"You don't like my tastes?"
Parker scoffed at the idea. "To each his own." He nodded in the direction of the CD selection. "Do you have any Johnny Cash in there?"
"I do."
"Then ... you can't be all bad."
The two beings stood silent for several long seconds, studying one another.
"I am not what you expected," Larnord said.
"Aliens rarely are," Parker admitted. "But I guess that's something that we Earthlings have come to accept."
"You have met many?"
"A few," he confessed. "I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on interplanetary relations. I leave that to the big boys here in Washington."
"They are far from experts, Frank."
"Again, you're not telling me anything I don't already know, Larry."
Suddenly, the alien moved, his legs perfectly still. It hovered closer, rising a few feet in the air, reaching eye level with the chrononaut. Parker drew in a few measured breaths, trying to slow his throbbing heart, hoping that the alien wasn't studying the whites of his eyes. He didn't want to appear uneven or unsettled, but he figured he was losing in the public relations effort. Larnord, after all, had the advantage: he had lived here, on this Earth, daily being cared for by several hundred assistants. Parker, on the other hand, only happened across aliens once or twice.
"There is no need to feel yourself inferior," Larry tried.
'The little bastard read my mind!'
Cocking an eyebrow at him, Parker asked, "You read my mind?"
"Aren't all aliens mind-readers, Frank?"
'He read that, too!'
Trying to cleanse his mind of anything offensive or abrupt, Parker thought about ... about ... about ... Olga.
"Yes," Larnord replied. "I've seen pictures of her, Frank. She's very lovely."
'This is getting embarrassing,' Parker thought.
"Don't give it another thought," the alien said.
"Look, Larry," the man interrupted, "don't take this the wrong way. I have no problem with you – personally – but if the sole purpose of asking me here was for you to spend the better part of our visit crawling around inside of my head, I'm going to give you one warning: I have far better things to do."
"I don't doubt it, Frank."
"In case you haven't been brought up to speed, we have a major terrorist figure running around out there," Parker snapped.
"I'm aware of that."
"If that's the case, then you can understand why I might ask you to hurry up on the speech, get out whatever it is you wanted to say, and let me get the hell out of here." Suddenly, Parker hoisted himself off the equipment, and he stuck in his very close to the alien. "I'm not here to scare you any more than it looks like you're here to scare me, but I have a job to do ... and you have some Cosmo to read ... so why don't we call it even, and I'll be on my way?"
Reflexively, a single tentacle raced up from Larnord's side and wrapped loosely around the chrononaut's neck. Parker reached up, prepared to fight off the little beast, but before he could wrap his fingers around the hunk of flesh, he heard:
"You have to understand one simple idea, Frank. No matter what you do, this world ... dies."
END of Chapter 30
