Inearthia Read online

  Moonstone Rain and Disco Balls

  Perhaps the Most Tedious Human-Machine Interaction in History

  Pretty Much Whatever

  And Another One Bites

  Tamagotchi and Irreconcilable Differences

  WALLE

  To someone who had faith in me once, anyway.

  I’m a self-absorbed brat.

  You are brilliant.

  Love you.

  (Oh, she would hate this one.)

  MOONSTONE RAIN AND DISCO BALLS

  Technically, the world ended on June 8, 2019, at five-thirty a.m. PDT, with just seventeen minutes left until sunrise in San Francisco. The planet burst apart like a coconut dropped from a height of a few hundred feet, spurting out juice and all. Shards of continents went hurtling through the atmosphere in each direction, the oceans ridged and burgeoned into sleek black mountain ranges aiming for the Moon. . . . It all hung there for the duration of a human heartbeat, as if struck by second thoughts and considering a U-turn—then there was a fizzy pop like a soda can pull tab, there were some festive-looking sparks chased by billows of fire, and then there was nothing.

  #

  As far as Evan Martins was concerned, the world had been very much over five minutes previously, when Emily Brace said, “I THINK we’re going to need to take a break.”

  It was his blasted birthday.

  It was Evan’s seventeenth blasted birthday, to be more specific. He and Emily, young enough to eschew the relative comfort of the inside of their homes in favor of over-romanticized teen-catnip settings (but old enough to be allowed to), could be found cuddling against the chill and fog of June Gloom on the roof of Evan’s mother’s house. This particular teen-catnip setting also featured a tartan blanket underneath them, Evan’s shabby acoustic guitar, and carton wine. They were both still (only a little bit) high from the party. Sunrise was still twenty-three minutes away.

  They were talking about things. That is, Evan was, mostly. Things like the rapidly evolving, incredible new technologies.

  “Bleeping robots, man,” Evan was saying with a whole lot of grim passion. “It’s like it’s all snowballing, right? I had this stupid Tamagotchi when I was little—you ‘member those stupid Tamagotchis?—and now look at them, they’ve got shark robots. I saw this YouTube video the other day, right: shark robots, water snake robots, spider robots, you name it. Spider robots! I mean, what, right? Give it five years, I bet you robots are going to do everything for us. Mom’s going to lose her job again, and we won’t get ourselves any jobs either.”

  Because it was, after all, Evan’s birthday, or maybe because she already knew she was about to ditch him, Emily refrained from making any awful screeching noises in an impersonation of some distressed animal, as she normally did whenever Evan began to get himself worked up over yet another hypothetical doomsday scenario.

  “But you make music, Evan,” she said instead. “In five years, you’re going to make music for a living, real music—no robot can ever take that job away from you, especially not some freaky loser spider robot.”

  (Somewhere in the world, one abnormally ambitious spider robot became abnormally upset and threw in the web.)

  Sometimes, Evan felt creepily jealous of his own (“objectively trashy”) songs for being able to hold Emily’s attention for longer than a minute and for never prompting her to channel a queasy seagull just to make it stop. He had long suspected that Emily was only putting up with him because she dug his music but couldn’t have it without the insecure, forever anxious moron the riffs and vocals came complete with.

  At this juncture, Evan had to remind himself that he was more than willing to take that, though, for the simple reason that he was Evan Martins—someone who spent no less than two (2) hours a day passively staring at stuff such as wall cracks while actively doubting stuff like himself, other people’s sanity, his own right to exist, and the reality of reality. He was Evan Martins, someone who couldn’t be content if he wanted to, which he honestly didn’t, sympathetic as he was to the views of a robot psychotherapist who kept assuring Evan in his dreams that “the overwhelming feelings of heartbreak and defeat in the face of the enormity of life’s complex nuances, and time, and entropy” constituted “the single most natural human disposition” and there was nothing to be done about that. . .while Emily, Emily was someone who was hot.

  Not that Evan was a thorough douchebag—he did recognize Emily had other merits as well, but they all somehow led back to her being hot in the end. He appreciated, for instance, that if Emily had any notion of what it was like to feel awkward or embarrassed, it was from unluckier people’s accounts only. She’d never exhibited much concern for what was or wasn’t appropriate to say (or shout, or screech) in social situations. That made her hot. Despite that, when it mattered most, she always seemed to know the exact right thing to say (or shout, or screech) to cheer someone up. And that, too, made her hot. She spoke some Spanish, and some French, which made her really, really hot. She was also just hot in general. Emily was someone who was hot—so as long as she stuck around, Evan reminded himself at this juncture, it didn’t matter much why.

  “Robots,” said Evan, because he still wasn’t quite over that, “are going to screw us over in five years, you’ll see.”

  Evan was, of course, deeply mistaken. Robots were going to screw them over in about five minutes.

  #

  The thing (of which neither Evan nor Emily, nor, for that matter, some seven point seven more billion humans had any idea) was that four years earlier, a geologist from South America had become pretty worked up over this hypothetical doomsday scenario that something shifty was cooking inside the earth. If her calculations were correct, the planet was this close to exploding for seemingly no proper reason whatsoever, other than that it had rather had it with us. At that point in time, the geologist was neither seventeen nor still slightly high, so she managed to get other people worked up over the scenario, too. Those people were decent with numbers, being professors and doctors and all, but even they couldn’t be sure if her calculations were indeed somewhat correct.

  Being professors and doctors and all, they designed a computer to do some math for them. The computer wasn’t too confident of the calculations’ validity either, but it suggested the doctors get him a couple of cooler computers to set up a math club with. Then a couple more, just to be certain. The professors had other professor things to attend to; they bummed a few robots off their fellow smart people from another department, so the robots could build whatever else the head computer required in order to kindly save earthlings, and went about their business. By the time they’d come by to check on the progress, the professors were too obtuse in comparison to even begin to comprehend what exactly the computers were computing anymore. (A thirteen-year-old Russian hacker claimed to get the new-paradigm math, but the earth carried no other person who would be able to confirm that or prove otherwise.)

  The fact that the robots had been busy replicating and upgrading themselves to churn out lots of spaceships, however, gave the professors some clues and encouraged all kinds of politicians, investors, and other valuable persons privy to the goings-on to start frantically, if furtively, packing.

  #

  “In five years,” said Evan, who still wasn’t quite over that, “I’m telling you, those bastard robots—”

  “I THINK,” shouted Emily, before proceeding in a more casual tone, “we’re going to need to take a break.”

  Evan felt as though a triple-decker piano had just dropped out of the sky and crushed him with a discordant bunch of notes.

  He wished it had.

  It hadn’t, regrettably, so after he’d mentally climbed out from under the inexplicably undamaged piano, Evan sat up and peered down at Emily’s face,
searching it for signs she might be messing with him. There were no such signs.

  Evan frowned, unconvinced. “Are you really breaking up with me right now?”

  “Before you ask: No, it is not your fault.”

  “Emily? What the hell? It’s literally my goddamn birthday?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Emily, who genuinely looked it. “I didn’t want to rain on your party, but I had to bring this up at some point.”

  Evan couldn’t quite process that, and he genuinely looked it, too.

  “But. . . I mean, we were good, right? Everything’s—is it, my fault?”

  Emily shifted her gaze to the sky to avoid meeting his. Her eyes widened, then narrowed. She pointed. “What’s that?”

  “Are you kidding?” Evan refused to lose sight of her, scandalized she had resorted to such a cheap trick. “Is this where I glance up and meanwhile you sneak away just so you won’t have to have this conversation with me like a mature adul—teenager?”

  It was Emily’s turn to frown in disbelief. “Are those spaceships?” she said, tilting her head to the side like an intrigued dog and ignoring Evan entirely.

  “Em, do you have to always act like such a—”

  “Just this once, Evan,” said Emily, “will you get over yourself for a second and look the eff up, please?” And without rising, she reached out and wrapped her cold hands around his neck and made him look the eff up.

  Evan let out a choking sound brought about by both his being slightly strangled and his being highly astonished. “What the—are those spaceships?”

  Those were obviously spaceships, great, colorful mirrored spheres suspended in the colorful dawn sky—hundreds of them, it appeared.

  Evan and Emily eyed the monstrous disco balls for a good half a minute, too stunned to offer any more comments or even blink, until it started to rain. The rain was somehow brighter than usual, and as the drops made their way toward the ground, they seemed to illuminate the air.

  At last Emily half sat up, too, let go of Evan’s neck, and held out her hand. The raindrop she caught gleamed in the center of her palm, weird, jelly-like, sort of pearly. It was still for a moment, then spread across Emily’s hand the way an ordinary, uncongealed raindrop would, except it made Emily’s palm look like the lining of one of those seashells that would sometimes wash up on Stinson Beach after a storm. And then it spread some more. And more. And more. . . .

  “Evan?”

  Emily’s hand was decked out in a pearlescent, skintight glove, and even as she and Evan watched, transfixed, the strange gel went on to claim her wrist and forearm above the rolled-up sleeve, as if its cells kept growing and dividing like a pretty, otherworldly cancer. It crawled on farther, underneath her jacket, and though Evan couldn’t see that, the nacreous film was sure to have enveloped Emily’s whole arm by now.

  “I can’t move it,” whispered Emily, as though worried that a louder sound might spur the jelly into doing something even more bizarre.

  Evan ventured to touch her weird, sort-of-pearly hand. It felt smooth, polished to the point of being slippery and in that respect reminded him of his grandmother’s fancy teapot.

  “It’s like my grandma’s fancy teapot,” said Evan, trying to make that sound supportive.

  More shiny raindrops fell noiselessly around them, but rather than engulf Evan’s guitar, the tartan blanket, or the roof itself, they seemed to melt into the surfaces and vanish.

  “Think you could reconsider dumping me, in light of current events?” said Evan.

  Emily looked him in the eye and opened her mouth to say (or shout, or screech) something when another drop caught her on the lower lip, and her lips became moonstone-like, too—her entire face became moonstone-like, too.

  The substance was advancing down her neck now, and Evan felt himself become petrified as a raindrop brushed against his own cheek. He watched Emily, for as long as he could, taking a picture of her with his eyes: Emily, frozen in that pose, reaching out for a raindrop, propping herself on one arm behind her, one leg bent and the other extended, her iridescent eyes wide, her mouth open as if to speak to him.

  Then the funny stuff reached Evan’s pupils, and he found himself in the dark.

  So, naturally, he didn’t see it when, a mere minute later, after every living creature on the planet had been successfully moonstonified (or pearlescent-whatever-ized), the disco-ball spacecraft beat it, and shortly afterward, Earth burst apart. Pieces of the continents took to flying around, the oceans deformed and went through the roof; there was a great deal of fire. From that great deal of fire out into a great deal of cosmos drifted billions of oddly shaped statues, some with their eyes still closed, some with their mouths already wide open. And among them, floating farther and farther away from each other, there was a pearly girl holding her hand out, and a pearly boy whose eyes still seemed as if they were trying to take something beautiful in for the last time.

  PERHAPS THE MOST TEDIOUS HUMAN-MACHINE INTERACTION IN HISTORY

  Evan peered hard into the darkness. He had already suffered through what felt like five (5) full minutes of being stuck inside his mind all by himself. That wasn’t an excellent idea on any of his birthdays, especially those he was discarded by his girlfriend only to be possibly abducted (or killed?) by possibly aliens some moments later. He was in an annoyingly non-physical place lacking any sensory stimuli, which is to say he couldn’t see or hear anything or, more to the point, take a relaxing scroll through something random on his phone. If this was what death was like a lot of the time, thought Evan, dead people with ADHD were screwed. He knew he was bound to go nuts before long unless the voice inside his head soon found a drag that wasn’t this uncomfortable nothingness to fret about, so he was straining his vision in an effort to catch a glimpse of something else. A wall crack, a tunnel with some light at the end of it, a tee-heeing Satan with an insulting airport pick-up sign—Evan would welcome any change of scenery.

  “It would greatly help if you opened your eyes, you know,” said a familiar voice coming from outside Evan’s head, or so it seemed.

  Evan tried that. It did help.

  His feet felt suddenly quite physically in contact with the floor of his school counselor’s office—the cutesy, stifling kind, all corny inspirational letter boards, stoned-looking stuffed creatures, a wealth of lurid pinks and yellows. At once the voice inside Evan’s head demanded that he crab back into the dark as anything was less unsettling than his school counselor’s office, even nothing.

  “Trust-inspiring environment,” explained the other familiar voice. “Safe place.”

  Evan was in the process of rolling his eyes at this when his gaze snagged on a magenta T. rex chilling on one of the bookshelves. The thing was cross-eyed, had its long green tongue out, and among its fellow stuffed oddities seemed to be particularly enjoying its moderate existence.

  “Safe place?” repeated Evan, still keeping a nasty side-eye on the T. rex. “This? What, not a bunker, then? Or Canada? A medieval fortress on a private island?”

  The thing about Evan was he had a very hazy idea of what other countries there were, but of the few he was aware of, Canada seemed like the safest.

  “Didn’t you use to practically live here as a freshman?”

  “Not because it was a trust-inspiring environment, you dumbo. I mean, have you seen Miss Perkins’s”—Evan coughed, unhooking his repulsed stare from the T. rex—“which, Emily, if you’re hearing this, that was before the cable car, so—”

  “Oh.”

  Evan finally deigned to face the source of the familiar voice, which, he wasn’t in the least surprised or excited to see, turned out to be a muscly humanoid robot that appeared as though all it had ever wanted was to embark on a crusade and conquer back some holy land. Encased in a full suit of steel plate armor, it could be rusting away in a historical museum somewhere around the Mediterranean, if it weren’t for the distinctly futuristic blades of neon red light streaming from its barrel helm’s eye slits.
(And the steel was stainless, anyway.) The robot’s impressive bulk was clearly designed for greater things, like shooting and blowing things up for the government, yet here it was, sitting at Miss Perkins’s Barbie-pink desk, with its massive gauntlet-like hands clasped patiently in front of its bucket-like mug.

  “Well, hello there,” drawled Evan, not allowing the minutest vestige of friendliness to blemish the greeting. “My one and only RoboShrink.”

  “Trust-inspiring embodiment,” explained the robot in its familiar voice, which was, by the way, kind of boomy, as one might expect from someone talking out of a bucket.

  “Huh?” said Evan.

  “Confidante,” said the robot. And then, as Evan never stopped gawking at it, “An established buddy?”

  “What, not the ex-president, then? Or Emily?”

  “She was the obvious first choice, but since, as you have noticed, I am not quite Emily, I take it you must be upset with her.”

  “Upset?” said Evan, looking more indignant by the second, which made him look dumber by the second as well—such was the composition of his face. “What kind of person dumps people on their birthday and then goes on to get abducted by aliens right in front of them? Which, Emily, if you’re hearing this, don’t think that that whole being abducted by aliens thick was your cop-out. That’s no excuse, we’re still going to have a chat about how you—”

  “I’M AFRAID that Emily cannot hear you, but I can, and it’s super tiring, even for a robot,” said the robot in its boomy robot voice, which, by the way, sounded super tired.

  “No, no, that’s not how this works. Hold on a moment.” Evan glanced around him again. “Ugh, I could really use The Couch.”

  “No problem,” said the robot. “Behind you.”

  There was for some reason a (pink-and-golden) chaise longue by the back wall of the office, which Evan hadn’t registered before but still took rather for granted. He said, “Oh, sweet,” lugged himself over there, and flopped down on it.