Chapter 12: Disappointment

T-118 days, 4 hours, 48 minutes and 16 seconds (February 14, 8:11 PM EST).

A few minutes later, a woman wearing a yellow raincoat over powder blue overalls swiftly made her way from her parked car into the main entrance of the Walter Mitty Army Mental Sanitarium, as the rain fell in buckets around her. After hanging up her coat to dry and signing in with a young Army clerk, she quickly made her way back to the office of Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, the head psychologist, her waterlogged shoes making a high-pitched pocketa-pocketa-pocketa sound on the linoleum floor.

"Good evening, Mrs. Nulton," Dr. Pritchard-Mitford greeted her. "Please have a seat. I was expecting you a little earlier; you were informed of your husband's release well before lunch."

Francine Nulton bristled from her seat. "That would have required me to miss work, Doctor," she said, and dared him with her stare to question her priorities. She glanced down at the desk to see a set of release forms and a pen waiting for her. Seeing that he had not answered her she continued. "I understand that he has recovered?"

"Well..." the psychologist hemmed, sitting down behind his desk, "Mr. Nulton is still a rather nervous individual, and prone to a variety of neuroses..."

"My husband has always been like that," Francine stated, rolling her eyes. "What I need to know before I sign these and take him home is, have the panic attacks stopped? Does he still blame himself for the invasion? Is he a danger to himself?"

"...or others?" Pritchard-Mitford added.

"Norris Nulton a danger to anyone other than himself?" Francine asked ruefully. "Now that would be a dramatic change."

The doctor cleared his throat in disapproval. "Yes, yes, he's over all of that. We gave him a radio that could only pick up the news channel, and he's finally come to accept that there wasn't anything anybody could have done to prevent the invasion, including himself." He produced a long manila envelope out of a drawer of the desk and placed it on top of the forms in front of Francine. "If you have any doubts you are free to review his file."

Francine looked down coldly at the file. "Allowing me to review my husband's private medical file is a bit irregular, is it not? Especially since according to you, he's a sane man and my power of attorney over him should no longer apply."

The doctor looked at her imploringly.

Francine glowered. "The Army doesn't want to pay for him anymore, and his presence here will inevitably remind a reporter some day that it was the government's money that paid for my husband's failure," she accused.

The head psychologist wilted. "Yes," he admitted in a low voice.

Francine proceeded to sign the release papers. "That's all I wanted," she told him sweetly as she was doing this, "a little truth will always make things easier. Now where can I retrieve him?"


A little balding man sat on a hard wooden bench in the middle of an endless antiseptic hallway. The bench was so high and the man's legs so short that his plain brown shoes did not touch the ground, and he was idly kicking them back and forth. Above the shoes were brown slacks, and above that a brown sports jacket over a yellowing buttoned shirt and a fat brown bowtie. A miniscule brown porkpie hat in the center of his mostly-bald head completed the ensemble. The hair he did have, a handlebar mustache and a fringe around the back of his head, was red and fluffy in appearance. A large pair of spectacles sat on his bulbous red nose. He was looking down and twiddling his thumbs. Next to him on the bench were a brown suitcase and a book with a brown cover. The book was a well-worn biography of Thomas Edison.

"Norris." The voice came from the end of the hallway. It was a harsh voice, and always carried the subtext that the person addressed was in trouble, yet to Norris it was the sound of violins and oboes, his muse and his salvation. "Coming, Francine," he replied, eagerly, as his picked up the suitcase and book and waddled down the hall in the direction of the voice.

"What were you doing down there?" Francine asked her husband when he had caught up with her and removed his hat. "You were supposed to wait for me at the entrance."

"Ah...the attendant said to wait in B wing and...wait. Was it B or D?"

Francine signed. "Come on. I'm not fond of driving in the rain as it is, and now it's dark as well." She started leading the way to the exit, with Norris following her.

"It's good to see you again, Dear," Norris told her back. "I've missed you terribly." Francine cast a warning glance over her shoulder at him, and he did not say another word until they were in the car, with Francine in the driver's seat.

After turning over the engine a few times, the old car sputtered to life and the radio turned on. It was an after-market unit, practically brand new. Many of the men who had built the car had died of old age before the men who had built the radio had even been born. The first words out of the radio were, "...and here is the news out of Detroit."

Norris groaned. "Do we have to listen to the news station?" he pleaded. "I've been desperate for music the entire time I was in there." He reached for the dial.

Francine looked from the radio to Norris' hand in panic. "No, you fool, don't touch it!"

But it was too late. As soon as Norris' fingers touched the knob, the unit gave off a loud spark and a puff of black smoke and died. Norris pulled back his hand quickly, casting a fearful look at his wife like he expected her to strike him.

Instead she sighed and turned the ignition off. "That was my fault, Norris. I had a new radio put in while you were away, and I forgot to switch it back on the way here. If we're lucky, all that was damaged was the radio itself. You just sit here while I disconnect it." She pulled her raincoat back on and pulled a lever to release the hood of the car. Norris sat in the driver's seat, trying to be as small as possible and desperately trying not to cough from the smoke.


The trip home was mostly devoid of interest. In between the dozens of long-abandoned buildings were the usual roadside ads to trade in your gasoline-powered car for one of the cheaper nuclear-powered models. One of the ads had been torn off in the wind, revealing an older public-service ad showing a photograph of a man wearing a purple costume with two M's on the chest, domino mask, broad-brimmed Panama hat and cape, posing heroically. A wind machine had obviously been employed during the photo shoot for dramatic effect. The hand of young girl could be glimpsed holding one corner of the cape in frame. "There's No Need to Fear, Good Citizen," the ad proclaimed, "The Masked Marvel is Here!" Francine chuckled when she saw it. Her reaction was a bit stronger to another ad, located at a traffic stop. This ad showed a lush carpet being vacuumed by a gleaming chrome machine, wielded by a happy couple that looked like they belonged to a bygone era much happier than the present day. The couple was identified as Dinah and Harold Largess. Dinah's eyes sparkled as she admired her shapely Parisian dress, while Harold gave the viewer a crafty smile, his pencil mustache underlining a powerful beak of a nose. At the top of the ad were the words "Orlac's Machines: Solving all of life's little problems." Francine stared enraged at the ad, attempting to crush the steering wheel of the car into dust with her grip, until Norris informed her for the third time that the light had changed. Then she shook it off and continued driving.

It was about nine o'clock when the Plymouth pulled into a cul-de-sac in a somewhat suburban corner of Hartford, Connecticut. Unusually for neighborhoods in this area, a full half of the homes were occupied. The car drove past a young man and a teenage girl, both of them looking up into a tree, to pull into the garage of the house at the back of the court. While Francine got to work giving the car's wiring another examination and preparing to swap out the burned-out radio for the factory original unit sitting on a bench, Norris wordlessly brought his luggage as well as an empty cooler belonging to Francine into the house.

"I'll make you supper," he called out from the kitchen.

"Mac and cheese again," she muttered to herself before replying to him. "Very well."


"Herbert," Alice Wentworth said, "we need to talk." The girl was about thirteen years old, her long black hair neatly done up in dozens of braids, and wearing a purple dress.

"I think she was just startled by the exhaust," said Herbert d'Foote, looking up in the tree and not paying attention to the girl. "I suspect the Nultons may have the only internal combustion car left in Hartford." The young man looked to be about eighteen years of age, a bit on the short side, with short blond hair and every accoutrement associated with a stereotypical nerd, starting with the Coo-Coo Cola bottle spectacles. He was wearing black jeans and an open tan jacket that revealed a black tee-shirt, on which was silk-screened an image of a anthropomorphic mouse in a purple jumpsuit catching a falling star in her hands. It was his favorite piece of fan-art for the Rescue Rangers television show, the work that inspired him to become the fan artist known as "Honker".

"Herbert," repeated the girl more firmly, "I'm leaving the fandom."

This caught his attention. "Leaving? But Alice, this was only your first time on the forum!"

"My first and my last. Did you read what they said about me?"

"Look, the Rescue Ranger fandom is the nicest, most well-behaved fandom I've ever encountered. This was just a fluke. You posted in the afternoon, when only the young hotheads are on. And you touched on a controversial subject."

"I politely expressed my opinion of who belonged together in my welcome post, and I got the Spanish Inquisition! I want you to take this back." She opened up the backpack she was wearing and removed a blue tee-shirt, onto which had been silk-screened an anthropomorphic chipmunk in a Hawaiian shirt lying at the feet of the same mouse from Herbert's shirt. The mouse seemed so absorbed in a technical explanation that she didn't even notice the chipmunk. The fan-art was signed "Honker".

Herbert accepted it with a heavy heart. She then reached in to remove a stack of four videotapes held together by rubber bands. "No," he said. "Keep those. Regardless of what you think of us, the show is more important. Don't let what happened today poison what you think of that. Leave the fandom if you must, but please, remain a fan."

Alice continued to hold out the tapes.

"At least watch them again before giving them back. Can you at least do that for me?"

Alice closed her eyes and lowered her arm. "Not today," she pleaded. "I couldn't possibly..."

"Take as long as you need. We're still friends, aren't we?"

Alice nodded, then turned and walked back to her house, which was located on the opposite side of Herbert's house from the Nultons' house.


After a few minutes of work, Francine put away her tools and cleaned her hands very thoroughly with a rag, a satisfied grin on her face for a job well done. Then, remembering the two people she saw on the way in, she stepped out of the garage door.

The young man was still there, standing in the front yard of the next house over. He looked to have something stuffed inside his zipped-up tan jacket. In one hand he was holding one end of a long leash; his nervous attention was focused on the other end, which was up a tree.

Francine grinned wickedly, and strolled over to stand beside the teenage boy, her hands clasped behind her back. "Good evening, Herbert, Jr.," she greeted him, a catlike grin on her face.

Herbert, Jr. jumped, causing a blue shirt to drop to the ground. "Uh, good evening Mrs. Nulton," he replied, trying to hide the leash behind his back.

"Pet problems?" she asked.

"What? No, no. This is a dog leash."

"I've noticed," Francine replied smoothly, "and Pudgy doesn't climb trees that well. Have you gotten another pet?"

"No, no," Herbert repeated. "I, uh, I was playing with the leash and it got stuck."

"Perhaps I can help you pull it free, then?" she offered.

"No! Ah, no thanks, Mrs. Nulton. I...I wouldn't want to damage it."

"As you wish, Herbert," she answered. "You dropped this..." She picked up the shirt and got a good look at it, then scowled. "Where did you get this?"

"I...uh, found it at a flea market. It must have been a tie-in product."

"You know as well as I do that nothing this good was ever associated with that show, and the studio would never sign off on a design like this. You drew this, didn't you?"

Herbert said nothing.

"Herbert, you're better than this! Why are you wasting your time doodling for a dead cartoon?" She held up the shirt. "It's obvious you have real talent-use it on something with merit! It could be commercial or pure art, just do something with your abilities. And I saw Alice here earlier-were you trying to suck her into your little cult as well?"

"Look, Alice can be a fan if she wants to. Why do you have to be so critical of us all the time?"

"Can't you see what you're doing? It's a show, it's just a show. I should know-I used to clean Rockwell Studios, and I had plenty of opportunity to observe the man who created your idols. Take my word for it: all E. Thaddeus Rockwell wanted was to inundate children with advertisements and rip them-and their parents-off with cheap merchandise. He didn't want to make the world a better place or provide positive role models. Rescue Rangers was a TV show, a cartoon for children, which had no higher purpose than to keep the little brats quiet for a half hour so their parents could get some relief. That is all, no more! Undeserving of art, undeserving of fiction, undeserving of discussion! And most certainly undeserving of that!" The "that" in question was the end of Herbert's leash. She turned to walk back to her house, looking over her shoulder to add, "it's a good thing there isn't an animal at the end of that leash, Herbert. Like for example a certain endangered bat that by law belongs in a zoo. Because if there was, I'd be obligated to do something about it." She looked back to see him shake his head back and forth, his head white as a sheet. "A very good thing, indeed," she repeated, chuckling to herself, as she returned to the garage and from there into the house.


The macaroni and cheese was awful. You wouldn't think it was possible to screw that up, but Norris had a bit of a knack in that department. Afterwards Norris sat in a chair in the living room and read his book while Francis vacuumed. She was using an Orlac machine, but this one was made of yellowed plastic and had not required a major repair for decades, while the one in the billboard ad (which Francine had still not forgotten) had been all looks, had weak suction, and could not be expected to last one month after its 90-day warranty had expired.

After the vacuuming came the dusting and polishing. The room, and indeed the whole house, was not really in need of dusting, as it had just been dusted the day before, the windows were never opened, the air conditioning and heating filters were regularly replaced, and the doors were all well sealed. Nevertheless, Francine dusted, and the act made her feel as if she were fighting back the forces of chaos in the universe, keeping the house her own small bastion of order in a world long-since gone mad and quickly crumbling into dust.

At the left end of the wall were the photographs dedicated to Francine's life before she met Norris, all of them in black in white. The first, labeled "Orlac's Machines, Bristol, CT, 1970," depicted Roger Orlac, his family and his employees, standing in front of a factory. Roger's eyes were on the trophy wife at his side, a good twenty years younger than him, and his arms gestured outwards to his employees and the world beyond that he dreamed of dominating. The two daughters standing in front of him were completely ignored, for Roger Orlac's plans had no room for children. The girls, aged 10 and 8, reached back with their arms to cling desperately at his legs, as if this gesture was enough to keep him from going away again. At Roger Orlac's other side stood an elderly man with the company's balance sheets tucked absent-mindedly under one arm. Beside him stood his grandson, a serious boy of 12 trying to catch the attention of the elder girl.

The second photograph, "Orlac Funeral, Athens, Greece, 1977," showed the two sisters wearing black and standing before the caskets of their parents and their accountant. The elder sister was grief-stricken, while the younger appeared to be flirting with the photographer. The guests behind the two sisters seemed to be milling about in a state of shock, none more so than a young man standing behind the older sister-this was the boy from the earlier picture.

The third photograph was labeled "Dinah's Wedding, Bear Mountain, CT, 1982." The center of the original panorama photograph had apparently been Dinah and her husband, but they and most of the wedding guests had been cropped off of the photo that was mounted. What was left was the older sister, a shy and confused woman in her early twenties, looking with longing and relief into the eyes of the confident young man from before. She looked like she was scared of life and relieved to have somebody beside her to stand up to its terrors, while he looked very tired, but very much in love. Francine got past this one rather quickly, not wanting to dwell on the memories it summoned. The young man did not show up in any other photographs on the wall, and the next decade of Francine's life was not represented, either.

Another section of the wall was dedicated to Norris, also in black and white. There were photographs of him receiving academic awards, both as a young boy and as a college student. Neither of these photos included his parents. Instead, there were photographs of Norris presenting strange devices he had built for the camera, with Norris acting as the parent and the device acting as the child. Next, some covers from science fiction magazines from the early 1970's had been framed and mounted beside the other photographs. Each depicted a scene where the center of attention was a strange invention, and all of them were signed "NN". There was a photograph of Norris in his twenties, with a full set of long hair, sitting behind a table at a science fiction convention and signing one of those covers. The centerpiece of this section was a framed fold-out spread from Analog magazine dated March, 1973, that depicted Norris' vision of a permanent base on the Moon. Below it was a newspaper clipping dated September 2nd, 1984, showing a cleaned-up and somewhat older Norris shaking a man's hand beside a scale model of the same base, the headline reading "Moonbase Alpha Begins Construction." There appears to have been a shift in career around this point, for this was followed by numerous framed plans of inventions done in a cartoon style. Each drawing was stamped "Property of Rockwell Studio." One labeled "Ratcatcher" showed a plane in the shape of a duck's bill and another labeled "Rangermobile" showed a skateboard with a car battery powering a hairdryer for propulsion.

The final short section of wall, the only part in color, included photographs of Francine and Norris. The first of these was an interesting contrast with the "Dinah's Wedding" photograph, taken surreptitiously at the Rockwell animation studio late one night when the two of them were supposed to be working: Norris the concept artist was the one who was both confused and in love, while Francine the cleaning woman was grumpy and at the same time satisfied that she had found someone so completely dependent on her. After that there were a few dating photos, followed by the wedding photo (a full spread to highlight the fact that the event had been snubbed by Dinah and Harold Largess) , followed by photos showing life in the years that followed. Norris was always enraptured in those photographs, and Francine at best looked like she had something better to do. They were both middle-aged, both recognizably the same people who had walked in that door a few hours earlier. Unlike her parents, Francine had few servants. The most prominent of them was a woman in her mid-thirties with blond hair and a permanently vacant expression in her eyes; in half of the photos she found her reflection in a nearby mirror more fascinating than the camera.

This was the entire set of photographs that Francine had sent herself to dust; there practically wasn't any wall visible between them. When she reached the Moonbase magazine spread she paused, looking at one corner of the diagram that depicted the device that had failed to detect the invasion. She considered removing the magazine spread and the photograph below it after her husband had gone to bed, but eventually decided that their absence would probably have a worse effect on him than their presence, and so continued.


The dusting that night was never completed, because Francine was interrupted by a knock at the door. She answered it to see her next-door neighbors, the d'Footes: Herbert, Sr. and his wife Elizabeth. Herbert, Sr. was a wide, jovial man in a loud Hawaiian shirt and shorts, even in miserable weather like this, while Elizabeth wore her blue dress and a string of too-obvious pearls, her blond hair up in a beehive. Francine was not fond of either of them, the husband because he was loud and always happy, and Elizabeth because she reminded her of her sister. For once, Elizabeth looked worried.

"Hiya, neighbor!" proclaimed Herbert, Sr. happily before his expression changed to mirror his wife's. "Sorry it couldn't be under happier circumstances, though."

"Have you heard?" asked Elizabeth.

"Heard what?" asked Francine.

"The Danaans are coming!" Herbert, Sr. informed her. "Hartford is being evacuated! We're the last families left in the court."

Francine calmly leaned out to look around. The only car left in the cul-de-sac was a brown and white station wagon in front of the house next door, decades newer than the Nulton's car. The station wagon contained two passengers in the back seats, Herbert, Jr. and a mountain of a young man in his early twenties. At that moment, the older man punched the younger Herbert in the arm. Herbert mouthed the words "quit it" and tried to rub the feeling back into the assaulted arm. Francine noticed that although there was a large dog roaming freely back and forth in the car, there was also a cat-sized animal carrier in Herbert's lap. Francine's eyes returned to meet those of Elizabeth. "It appears you are right," she observed.

"I've got family in Canada. You can come with us if you have no place else to go," Elizabeth offered.

Francine managed to suppress a look of horror at the thought of spending weeks with Elizabeth's relatives. Instead she thought for a moment. "No," she finally replied, "I think we'll be alright. You better go now, before the traffic backs up too much."

"Are you sure?" Elizabeth asked anxiously.

"Quite sure," Francine replied.

"Well, if you insist," said Herbert, Sr. "Good luck!"

"Thank you," Francine replied. Then she closed the door. A few seconds later, she heard the station wagon driving away.

"What was that about?" Norris looked up from his book when Francine returned.

Francine's response was to turn on the ancient Zenith color television in the corner of the living room (the TV was old enough that "COLOR" was printed on the cabinet with very large type, each letter in a different color). It took a few minutes for the tubes to warm up, but there was no need to change channels to discover the explanation Francine was looking for.

The image depicted a stream of enormous flying machines cloaked in vapor making their way in a wide double column. As they passed, the ground between them was rendered utterly devoid of all life, down to the microscopic level. A large logo in the corner identified the image as "LIVE" and the voice of a reporter eagerly described details that a baby could see with the sound turned down. What eventually could be discerned was that the column was headed east out of Detroit, and that their target appeared to be New England.

Norris jumped up in alarm. "They're coming for me!" he shrieked, pointing at the television. "They know I tried to stop them and they're coming for their revenge!"

Francine turned off the television with an annoyed flick of the wrist. "Don't be ridiculous," she retorted. "It's obvious that they are coming to Connecticut to topple the insurance industry. You have nothing to do with the matter."

"You really think so?" he asked, relieved.

"Of course," she replied. "That doesn't mean we don't need to evacuate, though."

"Yes, of course!" he realized. "Where will we go?"

"I think the family mansion at Bear Mountain is likely to be overlooked," Francine said. "At least for a day or two. I'll inform Miss Weir to pick us up. We have a much better chance of getting out of here alive in a helicopter than in the car."

"I'll start packing," Norris offered.

"Yes, you do that," she said, walking over to a telephone in the kitchen and starting to dial. "The Danaans won't reach Hartford until tomorrow morning. I'll instruct Miss Weir to delay her arrival by four hours-that should be enough time for a nap."

"How could you sleep at a time like this?"

Francine gave Norris another warning stare, and he obediently shut up.