Attack of the Blue
The acrid blue liquid oozed under the crack in the door like toxic maple syrup on a mission. “Oh crap - it’s coming inside!” Harry yelled looking back at Stephanie, he was growing more panicked by the second.
At nineteen Stephanie knew she didn’t have her life figured out quite yet, but she also knew that she wasn’t going to let herself become another victim. Wearing grey yoga pants and a tight black shirt she leapt up, long bleached-blonde hair taking flight with her.
“Quick - let’s flip over the coffee table and press it against the door, that should stop more from coming in.”
Harry, much older and wiser at the ripe age of twenty was tall and lanky with shaggy brown hair, he was wearing faded brown corduroy pants and a green flannel shirt. Still clearly in a state of shock, Stephanie’s quick-on-her-feet thinking threw him off as he stood there like a statue.
“Coffee, table, help, grab!” Stephanie yelled, motioning back towards the small wooden table. They each grabbed an end and pushed it up against the door.
“Okay, that should hold it for at least a couple minutes, and uh, I guess this is the end of life in the burbs.” She said to Harry who had relocated himself to where his coffee table was just a few seconds ago. He was staring at the wall playing with his left ear, seemingly mesmerized by – the wall?
“I guess this day was bound to come,” he said scratching his head, still completely dazed by everything that had just transpired.
“That coffee table won’t hold it forever - let’s just grab whatever you want to keep and get outta here,” Stephanie said a little too nonchalantly, as if leaving his house behind was just another thing people do on a Tuesday.
Harry, still staring forward, ear in hand, didn’t react. Stephanie was getting irritated, in an attempt to speed things along she snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Hello McFly, your house, gone - the stuff you want - needs to go with us,” she paused as he drifted back to reality.
Harry started walking upstairs like a zombie, not nearly as spritely as Stephanie had hoped, but given that he was a human lamp post just a minute ago, it was a step in the right direction. They quickly found themselves in the middle of a messy bedroom, walls plastered with 90’s alternative band posters, most in mediocre shape at best – “Nirvana Smells like Teen Spirit” was the largest, followed by “Green Day Dookie.”
Besides a lot of dirty clothes on the ground there really wasn’t much for Harry to take.
“Uh, dude - you really don’t have much stuff, do you?” Stephanie said panning the room, eyes wide in subdued disbelief.
“I guess not,” Harry said, a defeated tone to his voice. Double disappointment was running through his head – his house was a gonner, and he never really had much, so not much to lose - is that sad?
Walking towards his desk, Harry picked up a baseball trophy, the metallic gold emblem at the bottom read, “Most Improved – Two Years in a Row.” Holding it up for a moment he re-read the inscription, looked down in quiet shame, then placed the trophy back on his desk and made his way over to the bookshelf. A smile started to form across his face as he reached for a small blue book titled “Caves of Steel,” he turned to Stephanie - “this baby is signed, so you can’t say I don’t have anything valuable.” He was beaming with pride as he gripped the book carefully in his right hand.
“What? That old sci-fi book you have is actually worth something?” Stephanie said, clearly not buying it.
“Oh yeah, my dad gave it to me, told me to take really good care of it. He met the author when he was a kid, it was an experience that really seemed to mean something to my old man.”
“Oookay, so what else are you grabbing? Clock’s a ticking...” Stephanie motioned down at her wrist tapping an imaginary watch.
Harry looked around the room, scanning for something, anything, but came up with, nada. “Uh, that’s it – I don’t think I really care about any of this stuff.”
They left the bedroom and started making their way down the stairs, then the smell hit them, it was pungent, like crazy, ridiculously, slap you in the face strong.
“Whoa!” Stephanie exclaimed, struggling to pull her shirt up over her nose but failing miserably. Her eyes suddenly grew wide - she pointed towards the door. The coffee table was almost completely gone, it has succumbed to the ooze, now just a single leg perched crooked along the floor, slowly bubbling into nothingness.
The floor was now completely covered in a viscous blue liquid, it was too late to leave the house in any kind of normal way. They pivoted and walked back upstairs.
“I guess we’ll need to get down from the second floor,” Stephanie said looking through the window at the pitched roof. “Maybe that tree can be our friend?”
Harry slowly climbed out of the window, clutching his prized possession close to his chest. “Yeah, that should work, follow me.”
The two made their way out of the window onto the roof, slowly inching towards an outstretched branch that looked like it might be able to support a human, emphasis on might - this was hardly a branch to bet on.
“I’ll go first, to test it out,” Harry said reaching his right hand out while his left hand held the book in a protective death grip. It became clear pretty quickly that this was going to be a two-handed operation. Staring back at his book, a concerned look formed on Harry’s face, he turned back to Stephanie - “can you hold this and pass it down to me once I’m on the ground?”
Stephanie reached her hand out and grabbed the book, but the way she grabbed it didn’t feel gentle enough to Harry, who shot her a disapproving look.
“It’s just a book, it’ll be okay,” she said.
“Just be careful with it,” he stressed, making his way back down to the edge of the roof. With two hands mission impossible had become very much possible now. He wiggled his body onto the branch, and, like a snake, slithered his way to the trunk and then very precariously down to the ground.
Feeling the dirt beneath his feet Harry took a moment to look around, “Uh, Steph - it’s worse than we thought, you’ll need to come down…quickly!” as he spoke his eyes panned across the landscape, the expression on his face made it clear, things had gone from bad to worse.
“Weird, from up here it doesn’t look too bad. Ready for me to throw down your silly book?”
“Yes, and remember, please, carefully.”
Harry looked tense, he knew this was likely the riskiest moment in his book’s long and epic journey, a voyage that started almost a century ago. And yes, now, his most valuable possession was in the hands of someone who thought of it as just a “silly book.”
“Try to drop it straight down, don’t toss it, just drop it,” he said moving a few inches to the left in an attempt to stand directly below where Stephanie’s hand now dangled the book. “Okay on three - one, two, three!”
The book fell fast, and directly into Harry’s hands, he caught it gracefully as if catching a baby, moving down with the book to dampen the force. A look of bountiful satisfaction quickly formed on Harry’s face; his whole demeanor calmed - maybe the worst was over?
“Um, hello? Me!” Stephanie said with one hand raised, the other balanced precariously on the branch. “Remember! Human…book, human more important.”
Harry looked concerned, quickly realizing that if he had to catch Stephanie with the book in his hand, his hopes of keeping it untarnished could be jeopardized. He looked around for somewhere to put it, no luck - everything was either dissolving into the ether or too dirty to rest his most precious worldly possession.
“Just don’t fall, okay?” he said, voice trembling as he realized how ridiculous that probably came across.
“Oh okay, thanks a lot,” Stephanie said as she wiggled her body out onto the branch.
“You’re doing great, just make your way over to the trunk” Harry said, staring back at the book in his right hand as if to confirm it was still safe. Stephanie squirmed, little by little until suddenly a loud cracking sound broke the silence - the branch snapped, and Stephanie came tumbling down towards Harry.
In a moment of clarity, Harry thought quickly, and protecting Caves of Steel at all costs won the coin toss as he leapt to the side. Stephanie’s body hit the ground hard with a thud, a second later the branch fell on top of her.
“Aaaahhh,” she screamed in pain. Harry realized his eyes had closed the moment she hit the ground, as they reopened, he could see that she was injured, badly. Her left leg was clearly broken, and her right shoulder looked equally battered.
“Oh God, I’m hurt Harry, really hurt, my leg!” She writhed in pain as Harry walked towards her broken body, the branch pinning her against the ground. Still clutching the book in his left hand, he reached with his right hand to move the branch – it was too heavy, he would need two hands.
“Are you still holding that damn book?!?!? You jerk!” Stephanie screamed, a look of intense anger on her beet-red face.
Harry carefully balanced the book on a smaller branch towards the base of the tree, and with two hands free pulled the branch off of Stephanie who seemed to be getting worse by the second.
“I can’t walk Harry, aaaahh, it hurts. Ohhhh no - look, it’s coming right towards us, pick me up, pick me up!” She was completely panicked, so was Harry, but his panic was a bit different from hers. All he could think about is how he could possibly carry Stephanie while keeping the book safe, this was going to be the challenge of a lifetime he thought.
“Okay, don’t worry, I’ll carry you - but I need you to hold the book, uh, very carefully.” Those last two words were hard to say, but they needed to be said.
“Oh, I’ll take care of your precious book you blockhead,” she said in a voice that made Harry instantly think - crap, she’s going to sabotage my book. And that’s when it hit him - Stephanie wasn’t really that close of a friend, I mean sure, they had a good time hanging out to together, but he had only known her for a couple of years. And while they had “technically” hooked up, they were never officially a couple.
Panicked, Harry looked down at the book, its pristine cover still rigid against the pages of Asimov’s glorious tale, a masterpiece and foundational core of a pre-robotic society’s literature. Looking up at Stephanie - there was, well, a very average person, born into a world full of robots and never appreciating the magic behind the machines. And she was injured, so there was that too.
Stephanie could almost see the thoughts racing through Harry’s head at the very moment he made the decision. “You better not be thinking what I think you’re thinking right now Harry – seriously!?!?”
She was right. Harry had made a decision - the exact decision that seemed impossible all but ten seconds ago, but was now abundantly clear to him. The last look Harry gave Stephanie really was something else – at first, he looked sad, almost regretful, but that quickly transformed into, well, Harry running top speed down the street.
“No, no, no – Harry what are you doing!?!?” Stephanie yelled as Harry accelerated into an all-out sprint, Caves of Steel safely clutched under his right arm.
Harry ran like he was trying out for the Olympics, like a Cheetah, he developed a swift gate and easily ran five blocks before stopping, bending over wheezing breathlessly once he did.
“What did I just do?” He thought, looking back, the house was now just a dot in the distance and Stephanie, well she didn’t really exist anymore did she?
“I’m definitely going to hell,” Harry said under his breath. Before he could devolve deeper into self-loathing, he heard the sound he had been dreading - a battle bot. At that moment a robot that resembled a Segway but with a giant cylindrical head decked out with rockets for eyes turned the corner.
“Jehoshaphat” Harry said to himself, taking in a deep breath as he prepared to run again. Back up to full speed Harry turned the next corner just in time. A loud screeching sound rang out as one of the missiles took flight, then boom - the car in front of the house on the corner had just been obliterated.
With a few extra seconds to think, Harry had to put his strategy together. He was out of juice, there’s no way he could outrun a battle bot, so hiding had to be the move. But where?
Whatever he chose, Harry needed to decide immediately. Both sides of the street looked the same – visually identical houses, each a perfect three-bedroom two-bath house, white picket fence, suburbia. So, the choice should be arbitrary - let’s go with the closest, he thought, dashing towards the house on his right.
Harry paused for a moment at the front door - should he just walk in? Knock? No time to think - get in the damn house! The door was unlocked and within seconds, Harry was inside, the smell of – Pizza - gloriously slapped him in the face.
Dazed by delicious sensory overload, Harry melted, how good would it feel to eat a fresh slice of pizza? That moment faded fast as he spotted an angry man, a big angry man, headed in his direction, rolling pin in hand.
“Who the hell are you!” he yelled as he approached, the rolling pin now raised above his head.
“I can explain!” Harry shrieked hoping that offering to provide some kind of explanation would allow him to avoid getting whacked in the head with a flour-covered rolling pin.
It worked; he was not instantly clubbed. But an explanation was clearly expected, as the man stood towering over him, rolling pin still firmly held overhead.
“The blue, it’s here - my house was destroyed, I think it also got my friend.”
“Well damn!” The man said, lowering the rolling pin to his side, a look of disappointment on his face. “Already? And here I was thinking it was going to be a nice wholesome pepperoni pizza kind of night.” He shrugged, seeming to move from disappointment to acceptance rather quickly.
“Honey!” He yelled, turning his head to face the kitchen. “We’ll have to eat quickly, and we have a guest.”
A few minutes later Harry found himself seated around a small circular wooden table with a family of four. Five was definitely a crowd, so Harry was seated on a kitchen stool, the top of the table just about chin height. A small child, maybe four years old sat beside him, a slightly older child was next to him.
“My wife Jessie, and our sons Bentley and Julius.” The man motioned to each as he introduced them. “And I’m Isaac,” he said giving a contracted half-wave.
“It’s uh, very nice to meet all of you, and very generous of you to let me join you for dinner.” Thinking more about their generosity Harry thought to himself – “should I mention the battle bot?” Too soon, he decided as he bit into a big, warm slice of pizza.
The family was mostly silent during the meal, clearly savoring every bite, looking at the dwindling pie frequently, mourning its loss as they devoured it. Harry decided it was time to break the silence, there was information he could likely gather from this group, information that could help him in the not-too-distant future.
“So where do you think you’ll go?” He said as casually as possible, still chewing his last bite as he asked the question.
Isaac and Jessie, mouths full of pizza, gave each other a quick glance, as if to say with their eyes, “tell him nothing,” then looked back at Harry. “No plan yet,” said Isaac, a big gulp of pizza going down the hatch as he finished his response.
It was clear there was nothing Harry was going to learn here, which meant he had to get going. By now the battle bot would have moved onto other targets, he hoped. Thanking his hosts and giving the book he had stuffed down the front of his pants a reassuring tap, he made his way towards the door.
The family remained at the table, pizza party still very much in action, they waved to Harry as he opened the front door and headed back outside. Closing the door behind him Harry carefully pulled the book out from under his pants and examined it. Phew - no noticeable damage, he had been very careful, especially when he sat down, and that caution had paid off.
Harry gazed at the cover of his prized possession longingly for a moment, then tucked it back under his arm and walked down to the white picket fence. No battle bot in sight, that was good. Left it is, he thought, opening the gate and transitioning to a fast walk the moment his feet hit the pavement.
Scanning a few blocks ahead Harry saw a group of people, each carrying more than they could likely balance for long, blue ooze at their heels.
“Jehoshaphat” Harry said under his breath looking back the other way. His options were getting increasingly limited, pivoting on one foot he started to slow jog back in the direction he had been walking, then turned left heading North at his first juncture.
Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder, he turned in shock to see a very tall man, who looked strikingly like a human version of big bird. The man’s slender features were complimented by a head full of big frizzy hair, he was wearing black skinny jeans and a black button-down shirt, it looked a bit like he had just walked off the set of a John Varvatos photo shoot.
“Uh, you don’t want to go up that way man, battle bots galore,” the man said in a distinct voice, one that Harry swore he had heard before. Where did this guy come from? Was he just standing on the sidewalk waiting for someone to walk by?
“Thanks,” said Harry, not quite sure what to say next.
“The name’s Howard - looks like we’re in a similar boat,” he held up a pristine copy of Arthur C Clarke’s “Rendezvous with Rama” a proud look forming across his long wrinkly face.
“Oh wow, that’s one of my all-time favorites,” Harry paused thinking for a moment, and then continued with a quote, “Much had been lost during the centuries, for men seldom bother to preserve the commonplace articles of everyday life.”
“Right on - you know your Clarke!” Howard said, clearly impressed.
“So, what’s your plan?” Harry asked.
Howard looked left, then right, as if to ensure what he was about to say wasn’t going to make its way beyond the two of them. Then he bent down, now level with Harry’s right ear and whispered, “North is the way.”
As Howard’s head perched back up Harry couldn’t help but see a human version of Big Bird now standing before him. North - it could be a good suggestion, or a clever ploy to get Harry to go the wrong way.
But was there really a right way? For a moment he thought about asking Howard to join him, they were clearly kindred spirits, why go it alone? Looking up at Howard, it seemed like he just might be making the same consideration himself.
Then as if telepathically connected in some way they both turned to each other, decision made - “well see ya’ later,” said Howard. He gave a small wave then dashed off.
Harry watched him run ahead, and as he was starting to become too small to see a loud “pphheewwwp” pierced his ears. Poof - a battle bot had just vaporized Howard. “Rendezvous with Rama” fell to the ground amidst a cloud of smoke, and Howard was no more.
“So not North,” Harry said to himself. He made a 180 and upon reaching the corner peered around the side - no battle bots, safe for now. But he forgot to look down and before he could take more than a few steps he smelled it, that acrid toxic steamy blue ooze - it had taken over everything in the direction he now faced.
Looking back towards the house he had not too long ago participated in a glorious pizza party, he spotted the family - they were floating down the street on the very same kitchen table, now turned upside down. They waved at Harry from a distance as they floated away, he waved back knowing there was nothing he could do to save them.
That’s when he saw it - up the street to the left, and like Howard had surmised, North. Giant, towering golden gates, they were just as impressive as he imagined they would be.
Breathing a sigh of relief, followed by a small upward motion of his left fist, like Mario punching a question mark block he said, “yes!” Not too loud, but loud enough to bask in his own glory. He started to move from a walk to a jog, and then into an all-out sprint heading towards the gate. He was getting close, maybe only two more blocks to go - the smile on Harry’s face was getting wider with each step.
And then - whooooooop! A baseball bat appeared out of nowhere smashing him across the face, instantly breaking his nose and knocking him out. Holding the bat – Stephanie, covered in dirt, a makeshift bandage affixed to her leg.
“Take that you freakin’ jerk!” she said spitefully. Harry was barely breathing, completely unconscious, blood leaked from his nose at a steady pace and began to saturate the sidewalk around his head. Stephanie bent down and picked up the book before any blood could reach it.
Dropping the bat beside Harry’s lifeless body she started limping towards the golden gates. There was nobody else around, no battle bots in sight. With a final heave, as if using up her last ounce of strength, she crossed under the golden gates.
On the other side Stephanie gazed in awe at the futuristic mega city, a stark contrast from the suburban sprawl she had just escaped. Towering skyscrapers stretched out before her, connected by moving walkways crisscrossing in every direction, flying cars whizzing by overhead. Stephanie bent over trying to catch her breath as a loud “DING” sound rang out.
“STEPHANIE MARCUS - CONGRATULATIONS” a robotic female voice boomed overhead.
“YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE CHALLENGES.”
Smiling, Stephanie knew there was more. Still trying to stay upright she raised the book over her head saying somewhat strained between breaths, “I have a bonus relic!”
This time two “DING” sounds.
“BONUS RELIC IDENTIFIED - RARITY – PRICELESS”
Suddenly, alarms started going off, like a thousand sirens all at once, and a man wearing a perfectly fitted tuxedo seemed to materialize out of thin air.
“Stephanie Marcus - I would like to formally congratulate you, this signed copy of Isaac Asimov’s Cave of Steel is this year’s Priceless Relic. You’ve done it – never again will you have to return to the suburbs to face The Challenges.”
Stephanie looked back at the towering golden gates, the space between them was pitch black, she would never see a suburban sprawl again. Smiling she said to herself, “I couldn’t have done it without you Harry.”