The girl in the sky

Oti lost his footing and crashed down the stairs below the telescope. The fat on his back painfully scraped the last few steps, his rump whacked on the tiled floor. He remained sitting, hands shaking, sweating profusely.

Muffled sounds came from the door. As he stared open mouthed, the door swung open and a young woman burst in, waving a large Glock gun. She was dressed like a man, in a tidy black suit, black homburg hat and dark glasses. Holding a weapon down against her thigh, she moved several steps aside and stood there, alert and staring at Oti.

A man came in after. He was older, a grandpa from the neighbourhood, smiling, eyes kind, a shabby pale raincoat. He closed the door carefully.

“Good evening respected Professor Gazer,” said the man, his voice like warm evening milk. “We are sorry to disturb you at this time of night. You were working, I suppose.” He nodded at the telescope which loomed like a dinosaur above Oti.

“I, uh, me…,” said Oti stretching legs before him and leaning aganst the stairs, the aluminum squeaking under his weight. “ Yes, I was just, er… Sirius, you know…” He waved a hand feebly signifying that all is cool and that most usually he does this Sirius thing by sitting on the floor below the towering contraption, trembling and sweating.

“Ah, Sirius,” said the man. “We really should itroduce ourselves. My faithful partner and right hand here is captain Blue and my insignificant self is major Green. Please stay sitting, captain is slightly tense and she would prefer that you do not make sudden moves.”

Oti’s bulging eyes skipped from one to the other and then to Glock, sweat pouring down his forehead.

“Green? Blue? Who… what are you? What do you want from me?”

“Please do not worry. We are a sort of, humm, security service. What you would popularly call “Men in Black.” You know of the legend, I am sure.”

“M… Men in Black? Like aliens and such things?”

“Correct, Professor, right on the mark. Bravo. Just like that.”

“I am delusional,” wheezed Oti, starting to get up. “I need a doctor.”

“Stay down!” yelled captain Blue in a ridiculous high voice.

But her glasses were black and the muzzle of her Glock pointed at Oti.

He flopped back.

“There is no need for alarm, we need to talk to you,” purred the major.

“But you are not in black!” blurted Oti. Captain Blue cast a look at major, in a sort of “I told you so” way.

“You are right, of course,” said the major. “The truth is, I am retiring soon, so I thought I could be forgiven for this one time. I smeared my jacket, you see, and have not cleaned it yet, and I really have never before… A zmyrghokkl’s blood, very difficult to clean, very difficult. I am sorry, I meant no disrespect.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Well it depends. First you must explain to us what are you doing here, at this ancient telescope. A professor of your distinguished rank surely has access to the big electronic one on the hill, with computers and all.”

“I, I, it’s more romantic here. Atmosphere of history and such. Romantics, yes. Galilei and things.”

Major Greene clasped his hands.

“Professor, please, please. We are not idiots. You have spent past two weeks every night here.”

“Why is that important? I will not answer. This is an abuse.”

Major exchanged glances with captain.

“Professor, we came here with a task. A routine task. We do not like it and we’d like to avoid it. Please help us.”

“What task?”

“We came to kill you.”

“Kill me?” squeaked Oti jumping on his butt. “Kill me? I haven’t done anything! You can’t just kill me!”

Green raised his hands: “Please, please. If all is right, we will not. But you must tell us the truth. What are you doing here?”

Captain Blue clasped her gun with both hands, feet spread, muzzle pointed at Oti’s round head.

“You look ridiculous with that hat,” muttered Oti.

She fired. The gun made a cracking sound and the bullet ricocheted somewhere in the scaffolding behind Oti.

He squealed and covered his face.

A few quiet seconds passed.

“Professor Gazer?” said the major.

“All right,” sighed Oti. “You already know a lot about me, yes? Your lot, you do a researh and gather all the information first, correct?

“That is… of course,” said the major, hesitatingly. He received another look from the captain.

“I am… I have been a loner all my life, I’m sure you know. The nerd extreme. And I was proud of that – it gave me all the time of the world for my love, my astronomy, the only thing that means something on this filthy world.”

His eyes glazed over with memories, then he snapped back.

“A few nights ago – you say it’s two weeks already? - I came here with a group of students. As I adjusted the telescope at the Sirius part of sky… a thing happened.”

He goggled at them as if expecting that they know what it was.

“Do go on, please,” said the major.

“The girl appeared.”

“The girl?”

Oti blinked. “Women never liked me. I have always been repulsive for them, and they let me know. A lot. So I turned to my real love, astronomy. The stars were my girls, cold as the ones on Earth, but not as insulting. No. Not nearly so insulting.”

He looked at Blue, who relaxed her stance a little.

“That night, when I looked at the eyepiece of the telescope, there was a girl there. The most beautiful girl I have ever… The dream girl herself.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“And she beckoned to me.”

“Beckoned?”

“Yes, beckoned. Like this.” He hooked his fat finger with eaten nails.

“And?”

“Well, I concluded I am finally going mad, and decided to hide it from students. I made them do their exercises, and, of course, nobody saw any girls. It was all in my crazy head.”

He sighed. “I went home and pretended for a few days that nothing had happened. But it was too late. She was my dream girl, and she called me. Madness or no madness, that was the chance of my life, so I took it, such as it is. Since then, I am here every night. That is all.”

“And she is here now?”

“Yes.”

“And I can not see her?”

“NO! She is MY girl!”

“Er... what is she doing now? Or previous nights?”

“Oh,” smiled Oti, eyes running off to the shadowy dome of the observatory, “it depends. Some nights she can be quite lascive, you can imagine. Tonight, not so much. She is sitting and watching, like TV or something, I can’t see, but she is dressed in tight provocative shirt and tights, and she makes those moves…”

“Moves?”

“Yes, like rubbing her legs, or stretching…” A dreamy smile misted the full face.

“Maybe somebody is playing with you? Students, maybe? Some trick with the telescope?”

Oti huffed and pushed his chest out: “Sir, I am professor Otislav Gazer, nobody can play tricks with me when telescopes are in question! I play tricks with others. Nobody knows these things like Otislav Gazer!”

“I am sorry,” said major Green softly, “I ment no insult. So where do you think this… girl is?”

Oti slumped. “Well, I did some tests. She can not be anywhere close. She is out there somwhere… Among the stars.”

“Out there? Are you sure?”

“Yes, no doubt about it. That creates a little problem…”

“Tell us, please.”

“She is quite big. A few hundreds of light years, perharps.”

“Hundreds of light years? But that is… quite big?”

“Yes, that means that… we can never be, you know, an item.”

Everybody was quiet for a while. If a woman dressed in man’s clothes with man’s hat and black glasses could look sad, the captain did.

“Professor,” said the major, “we owe you an explanation.”

“Major Green!” snapped captain Blue.

“Captain, please. I am retiring tomorrow. I must… be a human. He deserves to know.”

She groaned.

“Professor, you are not mad, and the woman that you talk about exists. At least… How long did the light travel from her to you, what do you estimate?”

Oti’s voice was hushed. “Oh, fifty thousand years, maybe.”

“Exactly. A long time ago, one of many, many wars took place in this part of universe. One of the sides established a machine, somewhere in the area where you looked. Sirius sector.” He glanced at the captain. “The machine’s purpose was to attract clever and capable people of space faring nations and implant in their mind hidden programs.”

Now it was Oti’s turn to echo: “Programs?”

“Yes. You, Professor, are being programmed to destroy Earth. Poison, climate, atomic, biologic. Any kind of destruction. The genius of it is that only smart people look into space, and they have the most chances to know how to do great damage.”

Oti stared.

“But, why hadn’t it happened before?”

“It had. Our service has been patrolling the Earth for thousands of years. We had to burn Mr. Bruno, for instance.”

“Why, why didn’t you go out there and destroy that thing? I mean you know of it for so long?”

“We have tried, and we are still trying. But they did a good job. The thing is moving and hiding. The space is so big.”

“We are a wicked species,” squealed the captain.

“We?” asked Oti.

“Yes, unfortunately,” said the major. “The species that set this up. It’s us. Our ancestors set this monster up.”

Oti leaned back on hands, head bowed.

“Then you have to kill me, I suppose.”

“I am afraid so,” said the major.

Oti was pressed against the hot rock, desert Sun burning his baldness. He tried frantically to move his hand and raise a gun but was paralized. About him in the sand his men lay dead, burned and torn apart. Between him and the ruins of Megalopolis, a line of soldiers slowly approached, dragging their boots through the dust, weapons alert and aimed at him. The figure in the middle was a woman.

The line stopped twenty feet from him, but she came forward until she almost touched him.

“Captain Blue,” hissed Oti.

“For many years I am thinking of what shall I say when I get you. I could not think of anything. “I hate you” is too weak,” said captain Blue.

“Why hate me?” said Oti. “For destroying your precious Earth?”

“No, not really. For killing major Green. He was a good man.”

“Green did not do… his job. If he did, he would have known Professor Gazer was a champion shooter.”

He coughed, trying to laugh. “A champion, yes. Am sorry I did not get you too.”

“You did. It took me eighteen months to recover.”

“Ah. Good.”

Captain Blue fired the gun.