• 1996



    WORMWOOD


    “Have you ever heard of Wormwood?”
    “The star that falls from the heavens in the Bible?”
    “Sort of. Scientists have discovered a star that is so far away it burned out before its light even reached the earth, and they named it Wormwood.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah. They had no idea how it would be possible for Wormwood to fall to earth since it was not even in existence when they discovered the light from it. But we know better now of course.”
    “We do?”
    “Yeah. Wormwood has fallen in a manner of speaking.”
    “How could that be?”
    “I’ll show you,” he said and turned on the light in the lab to reveal a most curious apparatus. “This is a machine that, simply put, can reproduce matter from light, providing the matter was reduced to light by an explosion or some other massive phenomenon like an exploding star.”
    He reached out and flipped a switch and the machine began making a humming noise. I did not know what to expect but what happened next completely blew me away. For in the center of the lab there was a black pad and on the pad appeared a man. He was in his mid-twenties and very well built but his dress was something other than I had ever seen. It looked more like he had been painted with body paint than it looked like he was wearing clothes.
    “This is the first person from Wormwood we have been able to isolate. We can reproduce him but we cannot yet make that reproduction last more than a few seconds.”
    The man in the center of the room disappeared.
    “It does not alter the fact, however. We will one day be able to bring these light travelers aboard. Imagine that! Aliens! Right here in the lab.”
    “Do you . . .” I began and then changed my mind since it was obvious that Dr. Davis either didn’t care if it was wise to reproduce the people from Wormwood, or that he didn’t see any harm in it.
    “Do I what?”
    “Nothing.”
    “If you have a concern, please, share it.”
    “Do you have any idea what they are like? I mean they could as easily be monsters as friends.”
    “Liberated individuals more likely. You see they have been bound by physics to travel the universe in the form of light since Wormwood exploded. The likelihood they will be anything but a boon to the people of the planet earth is quite remote.”
    “I hope you know what you are doing,” I said and turned to leave.
    “I have to ask you, Mr. Stein, not to write about what you have seen here. We do not want to raise the public’s expectations. We don’t even know if we will be able to perfect the reproduction process. And in all likelihood, the people from Wormwood will only be liberated for a matter of days, perhaps a month or two at best. And even that is a most optimistic view of what we might accomplish. The hope is that during our liberations we will learn how to do it more permanently with the aid of the light captives.”
    “I understand,” I said and walked out of the lab alone.
    I had heard of Project Liberator years before, but I must admit I was stunned to actually find out what they were up to. It had taken years of interaction with the Special Task Force to win their trust to the point I could be trusted to see what they were up to. Now I was not at all sure I wanted to know what I knew. It made me very uncomfortable to think of our scientists manufacturing an alien race out of the light from a star so distant it could only have existed before the dawn of the creation. What would they be like? Would they be grateful as George had said, or would they be something new to our experience, an intelligent life form with a culture so varied from our own that we had no way to know what to expect from them? Would they know of us? Would they even want to be “liberated” as the good doctor suggested? It all seemed far too dangerous.
    “Honey,” I said to my wife. “If I told you it was possible to manufacture aliens from the light that used to be given off by their planet, what would you think?”
    “I would think you were about to talk shop again,” she said and laughed as she looked up from her computer. “What do you want for supper tonight? It’s so hard to choose when you can have anything you want, like this. What ever happened to the old days when you went to the store and bought real food and prepared it yourself? You choose tonight, Dear. I can’t decide.”
    “It doesn’t matter to me. The computer will make sure its precisely proper for us. Just pick random selection like the rest of the people in America. Why do you always do things the hard way? The computer is programmed to give us a varied diet you know.”
    “I know. But it just doesn’t seem right to give up even the power of choice to a silly machine.”
    “Silly machine! Where would we be without all this modern technology? Take self-cleaning apparels for example. Have you forgotten what a drag it was doing the laundry all the time?”
    “I know, Dear. But do you really think it is good for us? We’re like kids lost in a candy store. We can have anything we want and its all supposed to be good for us.”
    “Candy is good for you nowadays, Dear. It’s not like the old days when they actually used sugar to make it. We are far too advanced for that.”
    “I know. But you see my point. You just don’t want to admit it.”
    I did see her point. But what she didn’t know was that I thought a lot about how man was never intended to live like this. Science had gone too far already, and it was only promising to go even farther. Take thought travel for example. One day soon it would be possible to go to anywhere on the planet by simply thinking you were there. Where was it all going to end? Or worse, what if it had no end?
    “Fish,” I said. Let’s have some fish and potatoes salad for supper.”
    “Good idea,” she said and began pounding the keyboard. “We haven’t had fish in a long time. But what kind of fish? Did you know there are over a thousand varieties of fish to choose from? We could eat fish every day for years and never even eat the same kind.”
    “Catfish,” I said. “Something American. How about salmon steaks? You like fresh broiled salmon. So do I? I mean if we are going to have a food simulator we might as well enjoy it.”
    “Done.”
    Salmon steaks it was, with all the trimmings. But of course it was actually a pile of chemicals that looked and tasted exactly like salmon steaks, and something inside me yearned to see what real salmon actually tasted like. However, I would be the first one to tell you that with pollution being the way it was there was no way you would actually catch me eating the real thing, good or not.
    “Mr. Stein,” my communicator suddenly shouted. “Are you alone?”
    “No,” I said. “My wife is with me.”
    “This is a top secret message. Please turn the control on your communicator until it reads thought reproduction only.”
    “Done,” I said, smiling at my wife and continuing my meal.
    Suddenly I was aware there was trouble at the lab. The liberating machine had malfunctioned and an alien had been reproduced dead on arrival. They were at a loss as to what to do, or whether there would be repercussions from the public should such an event become known. They wanted me to come to the lab immediately. The feeling I got was that it was very urgent. But why me? I was puzzled.
    It took seconds before I appeared in the lab. Dr. Davis was examining an alien on the pad.
    “What the hell happened, George?”
    “I don’t know. This is the third one. They’re all dying! Dying, you hear? And I can’t stop it. The machine just keeps reproducing them, and they are all being reproduced dead.”
    “Settle down, George. Let’s just stop and figure out what is happening.”
    “Look at that one,” he said. “It looks just like you!”
    To my surprise one look to my left was enough to make me believe I had seen my own corpse.
    “And this one,” he said, putting his foot in the side of another corpse and turning it over so I could see it.
    “My God! It’s you, George.”
    “It looks like the machine is making replicas of everyone involved with the project. But what the hell does it mean?”
    “Weird,” I said preoccupied with the replica of myself lying there on the floor.
    “Is it possible the aliens have had something to do with this?”
    “Anything is possible.”
    Another man was being reproduced on the pad.
    “Good news! It looks like this one is going to be alive when he arrives, anyway, George.”
    “It’s Richards!”
    “It does rather look like him. Doesn’t it?”
    The replica of Richards was complete.
    “My name is of little consequence. The people of the planet that once orbited the star you call Wormwood, would like to thank you, George Oliver Davis. We have suffered for millions of years in the form of light. Now thanks to you Dr. Davis we can at last cease being. G.O.D. is a name we affectionately call you. Please dispose of our bodies. Thank you, so much.”
    Then he too crumpled on the pad and it was clear he too had died.
    “G.O.D.! They call me God! Oh my good God! What have I done?”
    “They probably don’t know what God means to you,” I said, trying to reassure him. “And it is your initials.”
    “More than likely they’re bitter. They are trying to punish me for making them live so long. It is as if I had condemned them to a prison in light traveling endlessly in space for millennia. They are blaming God, Who they have mistaken me for. Such bitterness! I have never felt anything like it. It is taking me over. I can only become bitter. Wormwood has fallen!”
    “George!” I said. “Get a hold of yourself! You’re not making sense.”
    “Not to you. But in here,” he said and pointed at his head, “in here it all makes sense.”
    He walked over and picked up a disintegrator and I thought he was going to destroy his replica when he suddenly turned it on himself. In a moment he was gone, and so was the disintegrator.
    “George!” I shouted. “What the hell?”
    Another alien arrived dead on the pad and then another.
    “This is ridiculous!” I said, picking up a disintegrator and after destroying all of the bodies in the lab I sat the automatic feature for 30 minutes, aimed it at the pad and left. “If all you guys want to do is die, why should I care?” I said and walked out of the lab, saddened by the death of my friend.
    “What did they want?” my wife asked when I returned home and began eating my meal again in silence.
    “It’s not worth thinking about,” I assured her, wondering how many from Wormwood would come and how many would die.
    “After supper lets go out.”
    “Where? You know I don’t like using that virtual reality machine to go out.”
    “No. I mean. Lets go out for real.”
    “Where to? You know there are no restaurants left, and . . .”
    “No. I mean, outdoors.”
    “You mean without the traveler!”
    “Come on. I know it’s polluted but who cares? I just can’t live like this anymore.”
    “That would be plain suicide! Are you insane?”
    “Maybe. It’s just that I feel like I’m a prisoner living this way. I can’t take it any longer!”
    I knew how she felt, but I figured that if the people of Wormwood could stand it for millions of years I could stand it for the few hundred I was likely to live.
    “I’m going out,” she said calmly and with a finality that made it clear to me there was no use in arguing with her. “You coming or not?”
    I shook my head and finished my salmon steak. I did not see her walk to the escape hatch. I did not see her step into the exit room I had seen countless maintenance men enter. I did not even hear it as it replaced the good air from inside with the toxic air from outdoors. But I knew she was gone, gasping for air somewhere out there in the hot atmosphere, or burning her flesh in the extreme ultraviolet radiation of the sun. And I was not surprised. For the last two-hundred years she had threatened to do it. In a way it was a relief it was over, but I was saddened to lose both my wife and my best friend in the same day. What would happen tomorrow?


    THE END