Farmboy - The Novel is a Dream Machine Site The Dream Machine --- The Imagination of the World Wide Web

His breath tasted a bit foul.

"Brush the teeth." he thought aloud. It was his only way of reminding himself to perform the unpleasant task. His dentist had reminded him at his last visit that age inevitably brought length to the teeth and that brushing was the only real way to delay the receding gum line.

He had never gotten into the habit, even though he always kept a toothbrush and toothpaste next to the sink in the bathroom to impress no one in particular. Or maybe that nagging voice that someone, somewhere had once implanted deep in his mind carping, "Brush them well. Brush them up and down. Brush them every day. Blah, blah, blah."

His front teeth, cracked in a long forgotten football scrimmage, showed the brown traces of years of smoking. Cigarettes and pot. That was in his youth. He had long since given up drugs, at least the kind that don't pour from a bottle. Too expensive and hard to get in the country. Still, he couldn't bring himself to regularly brush those damned teeth!

"Maybe, tomorrow." he told himself as he made his way to the kitchen. "Yeah, tomorrow for sure..."

He walked unsteadily down the stairs. He was hanging on to the railing a bit more tightly than the early hour warranted. Here he was, a hundred and fifty miles from anywhere and he had a fucking hangover! Lately, in order to get to sleep more easily, he had been pouring himself a few shots of Jack Daniels every night. Then he would read the newspaper, delivered earlier in the day but left unread until evening. Eventually he would find his eyelids growing heavy and would stumble off to bed. He told himself he didn't really need the drink. He did enough physical work during the day to be plenty tired at night. But it helped with...other things.

The tiniest echo of a headache tried to make its way to the front of his mind, trying to slip in around his morning thoughts. Before it could grab him, he heated some leftover coffee in the microwave, gulped it down and pushed it back where it came from.

He carefully emptied yesterday's grounds into the garbage pail. The pigs would be very disappointed if they didn't get their daily caffeine fix. As he picked it up, he noticed absent mindedly that there really wasn't very much waste in the pail. "One person sure doesn't generate much pig food." he thought. "Used to be a lot more..." and that the thought trailed off into a blank sadness.

As he walked across the barnyard toward the pig pen, the geese and ducks squawked and quacked noisily around him. The chickens held back with all the chicken dignity they could muster. They knew they would be getting theirs soon enough and seemed to disdain the clamor of the more raucous waterfowl.

Pausing at the feed bin, Michael added a few scoops of corn, oats and wheat to the sticky mess in the pail before tossing the whole mishmash unceremoniously to the eagerly awaiting porcine mob. With just as little ceremony, the pigs pushed aside the nutritious stuff as each fought for his or her fair share of the coffee grounds. Michael never got over his amazement at how thoroughly addicted they were. It made him feel somehow more righteous that these animals were as strung out on the South American drug as he was. He had read somewhere that caffeine was more addicting than cocaine. You sure couldn't prove otherwise by him or his pigs! His favorite, a young boar named Joe, got the most of it and oinked a pig greeting at Michael as he left the shed.

"Live it up, Joe." Michael answered. "Soon enough you're going to be pork chops, roasts and barbecued ribs." Joe was going to go under the knife soon. He had knocked up the sow and if Michael didn't butcher him soon, his meat would take on too much of the foul macho odor that hung around all sexually active males. As if in response to that thought, Michael took a whiff of his own armpits and muttered "Time for a shower..."

Next, he returned to the feed bin and parcelled out enough grain to keep the birds going for another day. He knew they rounded out their diets with the insects and grubs they scavenged in the barn yard, so he didn't budget very much for them. He had to save the most of it for his two steers. They had fattened up about as much as they were going to on hay and alfalfa. It was time to "finish" them off. Still, the fowl made a hell of a gabble as he wandered in their midst, tossing grain here and there, idly watching them fight for this or that tiny morsel.

"So it goes..." he thought aloud "...among all God's creatures."

He was remembering the news of the day before. Food riots were erupting throughout South America. Several governments had fired into the mobs with live ammunition and there was a clamp down on reporting the true casualty figures. Some sources estimated the number of deaths in the thousands. Other sources said that estimate was low. All that information came to him via the evening T.V. news.

More ominously, the local farmers were rumoring that some city people, growing tired of food rationing, were hitting the countryside looking for more stable supplies. Soon, it was said, they would be prowling his area. With all the ammunition they could scrape together for their deer rifles. Just enough gas left in their cars for a one way trip to his front door.

"Shit!" he exclaimed aloud, "am I really going to have to arm myself against those assholes?" Then he remembered that, not long ago, he had been one of those assholes.

He didn't want to believe it. He had heard it all before. But, something, deep in his darkest reaches, told him that this time it was serious. His small farm, in southwestern Wisconsin was about as far as you can get from big cities in the Midwest. About equally distant from Des Moines, Milwaukee and the Twin cities of Minneapolis-Saint Paul. But then, there was Madison...and Chicago! And he thought again of all those crazy bastards with their thirty-ought-sixes.

"Fortunately, most of them aren't really good shots, though." He caught this thought and quickly shook it away. "God, what am I thinking about? There's millions of 'em!"

Nevertheless, he had recently purchased a rifle. A friend and neighbor, Randy Carlson, had sold him an old Army M-1 and a bunch of cartridges cheap. Michael had only fired a rifle a few times in his life, but Randy assured him it was easy and that, someday, he would show him how. Randy knew how to use it from his military days. Michael didn't hunt, but there were a lot of deer around lately and he thought of possibly taking one of the "King's" deer for the winter. It was common in this area to poach deer. They ate the grain and, since not too many hunters got out this far during the season, their was an abundance of the critters.

But, all these black meditations burned away as the sun rose higher in the sky. It was going to be hot today, but not too hot. Maybe eighty, eighty five, in late afternoon. The crops could use the sunshine after all the rain they had that spring.

"All in all," he thought, "a good day...maybe even a great day. Might as well enjoy it."

And he set off to finish his day's chores. There were the steers to feed, eggs and stovewood to gather, work in the garden and a couple of tools to fix. Plenty enough to keep his mind busy and his soul warm. So he returned to the house to make himself breakfast and a couple of more cups of coffee, this time fresh, before getting to work. He fried three rashers of bacon, smoked just last spring in a dugout next to his house. He poached one egg, retrieved from the hen house only minutes before. Finally, he added a couple of slices of toast, carved before toasting from yesterday's freshly baked loaf of bread. Always the same. Bacon, one egg and toast. And coffee. He needed that coffee. He only baked bread now every three or four days. "Not like before..." came another unfinished thought, unbidden and unwanted.

The sun was high in the sky before Michael's thoughts strolled from the Zen-like focus that farm work gave him. It had always been like that. He had felt it ever since the first time he had run behind the hay wagon in his father's fields as a young man. The rhythm of the bales discharging from the rear of the baler hypnotized him. He was the shit picker, catching the big square turds the noisy beast contraption was laying on the fields. Pick up and toss, pick up and toss, the hired hand catching and stacking them as they came. A mindless but completely satisfying feeling of well being always filled him when he was in the fields. A oneness with the universe. Total enlightenment.

"Bullshit!" he thought suddenly. He stopped weeding the cabbage plants, sat up and took a sweeping panoramic look around the farm. From the garden, which perched atop a small rise, he could see the house, the corn fields, the alfalfa, the wheat, the oats and most of the animals, quiet now under the midday heat. There were only about 90 acres, but it seemed he was using ever square inch of it. It looked great, but something was definitely wrong. Not with the farm. With him.

The pictures he had seen on the news last night of the new leadership in what was left of the Soviet Union, had sent chills down his spine. He remembered them now.

"These are bad dudes." he had remarked to himself at the time.

Unlike the sweetness and light of the Gorbachev years, these guys were talking and acting tough. They were reviewing troops about to suppress rising unrest among the populace of Ukraine. Having lost the Baltics and most of their Asian republics, the rulers of the new commonwealth were drawing the line. Endless ranks of armored personnel carriers paraded through Red Square. Faceless soldiers, hidden within the bowels of these ominous war machines, passed in review.

"I wonder if they're getting enough to eat?" he found himself musing.

When Gorby introduced Glasnost and Perestroika to the Soviet Union, he didn't realize that he was grasping at capitalism to save the economy of his country at the very moment that capitalism was losing its heart, its soul and its mind. The craziness of the late nineties, with the Great Collapse of the money markets left the stranded remnants of the socialist countries with nowhere to turn. They had been certain that all they had to do was give up Stalinism and the capitalists would overrun them with investments, good will and material plenty. Fat chance!

Instead, the disintegration of the world system of finance capital left the Common Market united in name only, neveer quite making the changes they had promised to the curency and trade rules. Japan, lacking any real wealth, slumped into near chaotic poverty. The great "Shoku," they called it. Canada broke into four parts. Two, the far West and East, associated quickly with the U.S.. Mexico became a gnawing danger at the U.S.'s southern border and the "Taco Wall" of defenses was erected along that long border. Asia and Africa lapsed into the poverty that they had been its lot for so most of modern history. The U.N. was reduced once again to a powerless debating society.

And everyone decided, "Well, let's just keep our weapons."

Nobody talked much about war or weapons any more. One result of the retreat behind national borders of the nineties, was that tremendous stockpiles of armaments were within easy reach of the citizens of almost everywhere. The mere existence of so many weapons in the hands of so many people dampened the urge to international warfare. Then there was the One Day War. It was all just too damned risky! It seemed like every small country had chemical or biological or nuclear weapons. How long this uneasy standoff would continue was anybody's guess. One thing was for sure. There were not too many optimists left in the world.

So went Michael's ruminations as he sat there in his garden, that hot Monday afternoon. After a while, he would return to his work and his no-mind meditations. In the evening, he would return to the house, make a small fire in his wood stove and cook himself a small supper. That night, he had Polish sausages, homemade sauerkraut and boiled new potatoes. After supper, he watched the evening news, washed the dishes and then spaced out on the Monday Night Movie (some Rambo retread). During the movie, he slurped up a few ounces of Jack Daniels. Finally, it was time for bed. Monday night, he lay there only briefly, thinking once again of his departed wife, Miranda, before falling into a deep dreamless sleep.

The overcast in the sky was not entirely due to clouds. The pollution from far away power plants was doing its thing as well. New coal fired power plants in the Dakotas were the main cause. When Canada fell apart, environmentalists lost some of their loudest voices opposing acid rain. The new eastern states, which were made up of the old Canadian Maritime Provinces, were so happy to be part of the U.S. that they simply shut their mouths about deforestation.

Meanwhile, demand for electric power kept right on growing. The new electric cars didn't directly pollute the city air. But the power had to come from somewhere. That somewhere was the Missouri river basin for most of the Eastern U.S..

After feeding the animals, Michael returned to his computer room. It was conveniently located between the kitchen and living room. In there he could assume his electronic alter ego with a minimum of effort or strain. Once settled in at his console, he turned on the printer and the fax message deposited itself in the bin. He was surprised to find that it was from an old friend in Minneapolis, Bob Carlyle. Bob was wondering whether Michael still welcomed visitors during the summer months. He said that he and the family...Bob and his wife, Joan, had two children in their early teens...that he and they were thinking of visiting the country during their annual vacation, coming up soon. Although the message seemed unremarkable, the fact that Bob wanted to "come to the country", combined with the current rumors, left Michael feeling slightly uneasy. And why hadn't Bob just called or emailed him on the Net? He and Michael had worked together for many years. Furthermore, Bob and Joan had been as close to Michael and Miranda as anyone. Maybe Bob knew something that he didn't. He wasn't sure he wanted to know, whatever it was.

As long as he was in the computer room, he decided to do some of the maintenance chores he had been putting off. In the spring, while the weather was so stunning, it was hard to put in any time at all at the magic box. He had spent most of the long dark winter hours glued to the keyboard, hacking out systems' subroutines. He sold some of them to software houses in Minneapolis, adding just about enough money to his meager farm income to be able to afford to have the equipment around. This closed loop didn't bother Michael in the least. If he couldn't have afforded to buy the stuff, he probably would have stolen it. Before, when Miranda was still alive, she used to tease him about it endlessly. She said he was more addicted to the computer than any down-and-dirty junkie ever was to his needles and dope.

He would never forget what happened when he got his very first "micro computer." From the minute it came through the front door and was plugged into an electrical outlet, he had stayed put at his desk, pounding on the keyboard, fifteen, maybe twenty hours a day. After about a week of this, Miranda asked him cautiously when he was "going to let up a little?".

When he half jokingly responded, "Never fear, it will pass within a year or two.", he thought her jaw would hit the floor. It took him several hours to convince her that he was "only kidding". But he came close, that time, to losing her completely. Only to lose her, later, to a much more pointless and brutal twist of fate.

The afternoon sun beckoned him back out into the fields. If anything, the day was even more pleasant than Monday. The haze overhead provided just enough cover from the sun to keep the temperature perfect. When he gazed off into the distance, he felt as if he were on a far off planet, with a different kind of atmosphere. The three quarter moon rising late in the afternoon aided that illusion. It was a deep orange as it crept over the horizon. He could almost imagine that it was a second sun, perhaps a red giant.

Hunger finally drew him back to the house about seven o'clock. He arrived just in time to catch the beginning of the news hour. Tonight they were again talking about the South American food riots as well as some disturbances in the Eastern United States. The troops hadn't arrived in Ukraine yet, but the Commonwealth of Independent States' leadership was warning western powers to keep out of it. As always, "internal business" was the reason, the standard defense, the alibi. Still, Michael found himself wishing aloud that the U.S. leaders paid heed.

The only upbeat story concerned peace negotiations in the Middle East. The One Day War of 2005 had finally brought all the crazies together at the bargaining table. First, Israeli right wing fanatics launched a preemptive nuclear strike against Baghdad. It was "only" an atomic bomb. Not much larger than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the first nuclear war. The Iraqis retaliated almost immediately with a massive nerve gas attack against Tel Aviv from bases hidden in the desert. Tens of thousands of people died, on both sides, within minutes. The whole world stood back gasping for a brief moment, then everyone...everyone...put on the brakes. Overnight, militant Arabs and Jews became moderates. Almost everyone else had long since tired of the eternal warfare in that region. The U.S. Jewish community decided that it could no longer unconditionally support massive economic aid to a country that killed innocent civilians. Despite his own Jewish ancestry, Michael sympathized with this point of view. Israel had started the war by nuking the Iraqi capitol, effectively beheading the government. But, they had taken quite a few civilians along for the ride with the grim reaper. The fact that it was a relatively small faction within the Israeli hierarchy that had carried out the attack made little difference. Israel, as it was fond of reminding the Arab world, was a practicing democracy. No citizen of Israel could escape responsibility for the attack on Baghdad any more than the Germans of the forties could evade blame for the Holocaust.

Meanwhile, the former Soviet Union had long since ceased all aid to the Arab regimes. Iran wisely kept completely out of the melee, choosing to remain uncharacteristically silent. So, it was only a matter of time before some kind of peace plan was worked out or, rather, imposed upon the region. Today, Tuesday, had been the day, at long last, when everyone signed on the dotted line.

Also mentioned on the news was an unknown object, spotted by the Hubble space telescope, which was moving in the Earth's direction at a very high speed. It was too small to cause any problems, even if it hit the planet squarely. Only its great velocity caused any interest at all. It was still out well beyond the orbit of Mars, but would be within the vicinity of the Earth in a couple of days.

The news closed with a note about the extremely high pollution index in the Twin Cities. The very old and very young were advised to stay indoors for the next few days. "Tell me about it!", thought Michael, recalling the haze of the day.

That evening Michael got a call from Martha. Among the locals, she was known as his lover, his "main squeeze", even though they managed to get together no more than once a week. He found that his sex drive was much reduced since he had moved to the farm. Maybe it was the country. Maybe his work. Maybe he was holding on to his memories of Miranda too tightly.

At any rate, he tried to put her off this Tuesday evening. He knew she was pushing, ever so gently, for an invitation to spend the night. He refused to acknowledge it, to her or to himself. When she wouldn't relent, he made a date to meet her at a local tavern for a late evening drink. He could talk with her long enough to make a plausible retreat about eleven. He had to get up with the sun and so did she.

Later, when he saw her at Sam's Drinkery, he almost relented. Her gleaming red hair looked truly magnificent as the blinking neon signs brought out first one, then another highlight. He had to admit that she was handsome indeed. Stunning, with the rounded curves of a woman who has known childbirth, she glowed this evening with all the fires of spring. As they chatted about the day's events, both here and afar, he felt himself squirming in his chair.

"What in hell is wrong with me?", his thoughts demanded. "Here sits a beautiful woman who wants to fuck me and I'm making excuses and running away!"

It wasn't that he didn't like and respect her. She was over ten years younger than he, but she had raised a daughter to teen age as a single parent. She was certainly mature and wise enough for him. Her conversation, though not exactly scintillating, was way above average for rural Wisconsin. She was a fair to middling artist and could converse intelligently, if not brilliantly, about science, religion and philosophy.

Plus, she was a fabulous lover. Each time she lured him between the sheets, he found himself marveling at how well she made him feel. Like a god. Or at least a superman. But still he resisted, avoided, abstained.

"Damn my soul!" he muttered to himself as Martha excused herself to the ladies' room. "Damn! Damn! Damn!" But, the country western music on the juke box drowned out both his voice and his thoughts. It was "Play Another Somebody Done Me Wrong Song." An oldie, but a goodie. It hit the nail right on the head.

A couple more drinks and a bit more idle chatter damped down the fire in both of them. By the time eleven o'clock rolled around, they were both heavy lidded and ready for sleep. As he bade her good night, he found himself yawning while getting into his pickup truck. By the time he got home, he was more than ready to turn in.

He thought of Martha, then Bob and his fax message, then the news and finally, once again, of Miranda. But not for long. His concerns of the day had vanished completely by the time his lights went out for the night.

"Fuck the pigs!", he whispered, as if they could hear and understand him if he spoke too loudly.

"You too, Bird-Brain!, he murmured louder, for some silly reason caring less what the rooster thought of him than the pigs.

But he could hear the sounds of the restless fowl in between the rooster's toneless outbursts and knew he couldn't remain in bed much longer. He knew the sun was already well into the sky, even though its face was not visible. All the beasts were going to be upset. He could already hear half angry bellows arising from the general direction of the steer's pen. The pigs would occasionally squeal, blaming one another for their insatiable appetites.

"All right, all right!", he said aloud as he stumbled from bed, fumbled into his pants and clumped down the stairs. Microwaved the coffee. Slurped up a hot cup full. Fed the pigs. Fed the ducks and the geese and the chickens. Then the steers. His mood got blacker and blacker until a nostalgic recollection from his distant past burst into his consciousness.

"You fuck with the bull, you get the horn!", were the words. The picture was of this little fat polka dotted demon grinning a Satanic grin. He laughed out loud. More than a little. Maybe this day wouldn't be so bad after all.

He had gotten the expression from a comic book of the sixties called Zap Comix. He used to smuggle copies of it to his bedroom for late night reading when he was a teenager. Later, he said it to his kids when they came to him with whining complaints about one other. It kept him from worrying too much about them killing one another. But it really irritated them. They would always mutter and bitch after he sprang it on them.

He wondered how they were doing. He and Miranda had raised all three of them to adulthood and then cut them loose. This is how both of their families had done it. This is how they did it. The theory was that it is a parent's responsibility to get the children to the age of eighteen alive. If, in addition, they turned out to be healthy and reasonably well educated, so much the better. Thereafter, their fate lay in their own hands and in the winds of destiny.

Actually, both Michael and Miranda had stepped in more often with the eldest, Sylvia. As young parents, they had much more faith in their ability to influence the outcome of their children's lives than they...he...now entertained. Sylvia had the best schools, special lessons in this and that, good grooming, good manners, good clothes. The result was that she dropped out of college at the age of nineteen and got married. She promptly had three children and just as promptly got divorced. Remarried and divorced once again, her adult life, what with the alimony and the lawyers and the courtrooms, played like a daytime soap opera. When she hit thirty, she started to settle down. She went back to school, got a business degree and was now doing quite well. At least, that is what Michael hoped. The last time he had seen her was at Miranda's funeral. At that time, they hadn't talked much about Sylvia's affairs.

John's upbringing was much more detached from parental involvement. Both guardians guarded him less and parented him on an on-call basis. Consequently, he grew up much more self confident and self aware. By the time he was thirteen, he had settled on the honorable and remunerative profession of automobile repair. He stuck to it and by the time he finished high school, he had his future all mapped out. Currently, as far as Michael knew, he was happily married and had two young children. Michael had also seen him and his family at Miranda's wake, but couldn't even remember what they talked about. It hadn't been a good time for reminiscing.

The youngest, Madelaine...or, Pogo, as everyone called her, much to her mother's chagrin...was pampered as only the baby of the family can be. This worked wonders with her. She did very well in school, avoiding most of the pitfalls that lay in wait for modern teenagers. Graduating from high school with honors and younger than most, she went on to college, got a degree in computer science and was now in graduate school at M.I.T.. She had done it all completely on her own, earning scholarships and a teaching assistantship along the way. Michael was really glad of that. After Miranda died, he didn't much feel like working his butt off to put her through school. He didn't have to. She cheerfully informed him that she didn't need him. Needless to say, this gave rise to very mixed feelings. He wondered just exactly what part of computer science she was involved with, but didn't feel comfortable in asking.

All in all, though, Michael was quite satisfied with the results of his parenting. Things hadn't worked out as he had expected when he first married, but then, do they ever? He loved his children very much. When he did see them, seldom as it was, it always filled him with pride and joy, bringing back cascades of happy memories. Except, of course, that last time.

On the other hand, since they had been raised just like he had been, their attention was now focused on their own children. Again, he thought, just as it should be. There were people in this area who saw their children every day, even though the children were approaching middle age. Michael knew that this was all right. Just a different way of relating to the notion of "family". Still, he thought he would go stark raving mad if he had to spend that much time around his own children. So it went.

He had become quite lost in these reveries. Only a cloud of dust appearing on the road leading up to the house broke him out of it. He recognized the pickup as that of his nearest neighbor, Randy, the same man who had sold him the gun. He began to walk slowly back to the barnyard.

By the time he had got there, Randy had helped himself to a beer. Michael kept it for the occasional visit of one of his neighbors. Most of them were beer drinkers in the time honored tradition of Wisconsin. He himself had consumed quite a lot of brew in his youth, but found it too fattening, now that he was firmly entrenched in middle age and fighting a spare tire. Still, Randy had opened one for him and he accepted it without comment.

"Thought I'd stop by and see if you wanted to do a little shooting." said Randy before Michael had a chance to say anything. "Might need to use that sucker one of these days the way things are going."

"What do you mean?", asked Michael.

"Some folks about ten coolees over had some unwelcome visitors a couple of days back.", said Randy. "Coulee" was the term used in this part of Wisconsin for the very small valleys carved by the last of the great glaciers. Everyone measured distance in coulees rather than miles. "They caught some guys from Chicago, niggers I think, stealing food from their fields. Turned them over to the county sheriff, but it seems that some of them were carrying weapons. Handguns and knives."

Michael winced at the use of the term "nigger". There were no people of color other than white living in the area and most of those folks had been born and raised here. It was hard for any outsider to make a go of it here. Michael had enough troubles of his own when he first arrived. Only his advanced education and skill with computers had got him by. Often he helped the locals deal with their small machines. This endeared him to enough people to pass muster. Plus, he looked like he could have been raised here and knew something about farming. If he had been someone of a different race besides coming from the city, he thought it would have been just too strange to be dealt with. At least, dealt with in other than stereotypes.

Randy was going on. "...so, anyway, I thought you might like to go over to Spencer's coulee with me. A bunch of the guys are sighting in their rifles. It will give you a chance to try out that weapon I sold you. Besides, I promised you I'd show you how to use it."

Michael decided he might as well go along. If you turned down too many friendly invitations to take part in local activities it played badly on the gossip circuit. He had been avoiding too many offers, of late, as it was. If he didn't stop putting Martha off, the word would get out that he was gay or something! Besides, the day was still gray and he didn't much feel like weeding the garden . So, he went to the house, grabbed the M-1 and a couple of boxes of shells and climbed into Randy's truck.

On the way over to Spencer's coulee, Randy continued to give his theories on what was happening in the cities. Since he had never lived in one, his opinions were pretty bizarre and Michael didn't pay much attention. Instead, he nodded and grunted now and then. Just enough to let Randy know he was still there and think that he was listening. A long time ago, he had learned that it was always easy to recall the very last sentence that someone said, even if you weren't paying attention. This meant he could and would occasionally make some neutral comment about the last thing that had been said. Miranda would catch him at it, but most people were taken in.

As they neared Spencer's place, the sounds of gunfire became loud and clear. As they drove up to the shooting range Spencer had set up beside his barnyard, Michael was surprised at the number of men who were already there. It also seemed to Michael that they were exceptionally serious. Usually, a gathering of this size would include a couple of cases of beer and a lot of laughing and shouting. Today, all that could be heard was the sharp reports of deer rifles and the low sounds of earnest talk.

Most of the conversation was about the men who were caught stealing the day before. The locals were alarmed that the intruders had been armed and that they had been black. They felt that if they had not been completely surprised by the farmers, someone would have got badly hurt or worse. There was talk of organizing, although nobody quite knew what exactly that would mean. Most of the men were too young to have fought in any of America's wars. A couple of them, who were Michael's age, had been to Viet Nam, but that war had been fought with automatic weapons and helicopters, not deer rifles. Besides, Michael suspected, despite the standard bullshit, most of them had been rear guard, not front line, soldiers.

Michael himself had been a draft "evader", his computer schooling and early marriage exempting him from the military. He hadn't participated in any of the antiwar actions either, preferring to think of himself as apolitical. But, still, he felt like he had avoided an experience that he shouldn't have. And, now, with all the talk of "defending our homes and families", he felt like a definite tenderfoot. He quickly got with the program.

The M-1 turned out to be as easy to shoot as Randy had said. It still had a sling attached to it and Randy showed him how to get into a couple of military positions which made it simple to aim and fire. The positions were designed so that sling was wrapped tightly around his arm and the rifle butt was jammed firmly into his shoulder. Randy showed him how to adjust the sights for distance as well as how to estimate how far away the targets were.

Michael turned out to be a surprisingly accurate shot. Despite his lack of experience, he took to firing a gun quickly and was amazingly accurate. He found that it gave him a sense of power he had never felt before. The fact that you could pull the trigger here, and a hole would appear in a target way over there, was intoxicating. By the end of the afternoon, as the light was getting dim, Michael found that he had not only shot off all his ammunition, but a couple of boxes he had borrowed from a neighbor as well. His rifle barrel was hot in his hands as Randy showed him how to clean and oil it. Taking it apart and putting it back together was a piece of cake for somebody who had been disassembling and reassembling computers for two decades.

When Randy dropped him off back at the farm, he found that he was exhausted. He made himself a small supper of leftovers and fell asleep watching a sitcom on television. When he awakened and dragged himself off to bed at three a.m., he realized that he hadn't touched a drop of whiskey all day. The single beer he had with Randy in the afternoon was his only drink.

"I should probably cut down, anyway..." were his last thoughts as he fell once again into a dreamless sleep.

That wordless melody echoed around his mind while he did his morning chores. He was returning to the house for breakfast when something made him stop. A slight motion had caught the corner of his eye. He swept the fields with his gaze, trying to locate the elusive movement.

"Probably just a deer.", he thought. Then, reconsidering, it occurred to him that this might be just the time to test his new found prowess with a rifle. A deer in his freezer would make good eating next winter and would also boost his prestige with the local men.

So he went into the house to fetch and load the M-1. He put only a single cartridge into the weapon, knowing that if he missed the first shot, the deer would easily get away. As he was about to go back out into the barn yard, he saw something a lot more serious than a deer eating his corn. Two men were creeping up the fence line along the garden toward the house.

"Shit!", said Michael to himself. The men were black, which definitely placed them as outsiders. Also, it was clear they had seen him and knew he was in the house. He went back to get some more ammunition and then considered.

"If those men are armed and are sneaking up on me, I'm in big trouble.", he thought. He ran around inside the house, peering out each of the other windows to see if there were others, perhaps surrounding the house. He didn't see any, but knew that didn't mean there weren't others. He thought of calling his neighbors, but knew they would get here long after the intruders had reached the house. Sweat was forming on his upper lip and his hands began to shake.

"Get control of yourself!", his thoughts begged. "You've got to handle this yourself."

Finally, he moved. Without really thinking, his gun pointed at the ground, he walked into the barnyard in full view of the advancing men.

"Don't shoot! Don't shoot!", they shouted. "We don't mean you no harm." They raised their arms above their heads and continued, "We just looking for something to eat. We drove all day from Chicago and ran out of gas and we ain't got no money."

Michael kept his gun pointed downward, but motioned for them to come closer. Their straightforward approach had eased his tension a bit, but he remained wary.

"Just the two of you?", he asked. As an afterthought he added, "You aren't carrying weapons, are you."

"No, sir! No, sir! The shit's really coming down in Chicago and we just split as fast as we could. Didn't have no time to take nothing.", one of the men blurted out in a tone so plaintive that Michael knew he was telling the truth. These guys were actually more frightened than he was! He made a quick decision.

"Come on in. I'll make you something to eat and you can tell me about it.", he said, beckoning them to come up to the house. "And put your arms down. I'm not going to hurt you.", he added. They were still holding their arms over their heads like prisoners.

As soon as they got into the house, he put the gun back in its hiding place in the computer room and joined them in the kitchen. He told them to take a seat and proceeded to make a big lunch from the copious leftovers he had in his refrigerator. He gave them a couple of beers and all of them started to relax. Within fifteen minutes they had eaten and began to tell their story.

Their names were Charles and Mookie and they were cousins. The stores in their neighborhood had run out of food on Monday. They lived in a working middle class neighborhood on the south side of Chicago that was completely black. At first, people had remained calm, since they had grown used to shortages of food and other supplies this past year. Until Wednesday, everyone had made do on stockpiles and the few bags of food that came in from friends and family in other parts of Chicago. But then someone reported that police were setting up barricades at the boundaries of the neighborhood and weren't allowing anyone in or out.

All hell broke loose. People gathered in the streets and began to make bonfires. Those who had guns were bringing them out, shooting them in the air and talking trouble. Some organized squads of armed men to try to break through the blockades. This is how Charles and Mookie got out. They "borrowed" their uncle's car, which had nearly a full tank of gas. Driving without lights, they followed one of the armed bands to a barrier and when the group engaged the police in a gunfight, they slipped out around a smaller barricade on a side street that was unguarded.

Once out of the neighborhood, it was relatively easy to escape Chicago. They had a couple more harrowing episodes with nervous cops, but their drivers licences were clean and they were allowed to continue on at each checkpoint. When confronted at the Wisconsin border, they managed to convince the police that they were going to visit relatives in Racine. Mookie actually had some distant relatives there, but he didn't know where they lived or how to get in touch with them. So they stayed on country roads and just headed north and west. They ended up, out of gas, just outside Michael's farm. They were sneaking through his fields looking for food. Unfortunately, being city born and raised, they didn't know what was edible and what wasn't. They were trying to get close enough to steal a chicken and maybe some gas. They had spent what money they had at a restaurant somewhere between here and Chicago and were scared out of their wits. They hadn't seen any people of color for the last hundred miles. The white people they had spoken with didn't strike them as particularly friendly. They said they felt lucky that they ended up at Michael's place. To himself, Michael noted how right they were!

Neither stranger could shed much light on the big picture of what was going on. Mookie started to give his opinion about how white people were about to sell all the colored people in the world down the river. After a nervous glance from Charles, he thought better of it and changed the subject.

By then, they had eaten, finished a bottle of beer each and told their story. Then they seemed to become more aware of just where they were and became visibly nervous. Michael saw this and asked them where they intended to go. Charles said that they hoped to get to Denver, where they had friends. Michael offered them some gasoline, which they gratefully accepted.

He drove them to their car with a ten gallon can of gas in the back of his pickup truck. The car, out of everything but fumes refused to start at first. A little gas in the carburetor cured that problem. Soon, they were on their way once again. Despite feelings of guilt, Michael had to admit to himself that he was glad to see them go. Their panic, barely concealed, had been infectious. He wondered how long it would be until the troubles in the city boiled over into the country. The next invaders might not be so friendly, or so scared.

This thought stayed with him for the rest of the afternoon. Since the sun was still shining, he worked the until early evening in the garden. He found himself, glancing up and scanning the horizon every few minutes, despite the fact that he never saw much of anything. A bird here, a grasshopper there.

By the time he ate supper and settled down to watch the evening news, his tension was palpable. The headache he didn't get because of his moderation the day before was replaced by a version brought on by his tension. Nor did the news help out.

Some pictures of CIS troops cracking heads in Kiev were shown at the top, but the voice over announced that Western corespondents had been ordered out of Ukraine for "security reasons."

Next, reports from South America took up a few minutes. Pollution alerts to the West dominated the weather report. Noticeably absent was any mention of unrest in the United States itself. Michael couldn't remember a single word about Chicago on the news all week. Unless Charles and Mookie had been handing him an elaborate snow job, something very spooky was going on. And what about the incident with the armed intruders earlier that week? They too had come from Chicago. He found that this lack of news was even more troubling than the bad news they were reporting.

He was no longer paying much attention to the TV when the phone interrupted his thoughts. It was Martha wondering what he was doing that evening. To her surprise, he quickly told her he wasn't doing anything and invited her over. He felt like he didn't want to be alone. Maybe Martha could mellow him out.

After she arrived, he quickly filled her in on his encounter earlier in the day. Martha thought he had been very foolhardy to invite the strangers in without checking them out further. She wondered aloud if he had some kind of death wish. Michael attributed these comments to Martha's "natural" prejudice against black people. She had, like Randy, been born and raised in this area.

"At least you didn't refer to them as 'niggers'", he growled without thinking.

"What's that supposed to mean?", she snapped back.

Remembering why he had invited her over, Michael quickly got control of himself and apologized. "I'm sorry, the incident left me a little tense." he offered. "Besides, Randy Carlson's bigotry got to me the other day."

Martha was an old friend of Randy's. They had gone to grade school and high school together. "What does that mean?", she asked with her voice rising. There was a definite accent on the word "that".

Michael tried to explain about the events of Wednesday, but the more he said, the deeper the hole got that he was digging himself into. By the time he had gotten around to explaining about the firing range at Spencer's farm, her forehead had a deep frown.

"It seems to me, Michael, that Randy and the others were just being a little more careful and sensible than you. After all, those men weren't planning on having a picnic!", she said.

"Oh, shit,", thought Michael, "how am I going to get out of this?!" Aloud, he nodded and said he supposed she was right and excused himself to pour them a couple of drinks. When she came over to his house she usually drank Jack Daniels neat with him. Tonight she asked for a beer chaser. And so it went.

They finally had sex. Or, at least, they tried to after calming down with a few drinks, but it was terrible. Everything that could go wrong, did. Martha, more than a little tipsy, stumbled on the stairs on the way to the bedroom and twisted her ankle. Michael scratched her back unhooking her bra strap. Then he caught his leg in his underwear as he was removing his trousers and kicked her in her sore ankle.

He had a hard time getting and maintaining an erection. The two of them fumbled around for a half an hour but finally gave up. Both of them were extremely unsatisfied, but neither wanted to beat the dead horse of their passion. Michael fixed yet another drink for them. It was more of an anesthetic than a euphoric and finally they fell asleep.

During the night, Michael dreamed he was lost in a deep forest. The leaves on the trees were a vivid purple color and were shaped more like alien animal limbs than leaves. He was calling out for someone who he felt was with him. But no name entered the dream and no one ever answered his calls. The dream seemed to go on forever.

"What the hell have I done?", he asked himself angrily.

Forgetting about coffee, he took the top off the whiskey bottle and took a big gulp. He knew that only the hair of the dog was going to help him this morning. The damage he had done to his body and mind was far too advanced to be touched by mere caffeine. When the liquor hit his stomach he was nearly overwhelmed by a wave of nausea before it settled in and began to cure his hangover. Michael remembered reading somewhere that all drugs cure their own hangovers. This is part of their addictive lure. Still, he found himself wishing he had some morphine instead of booze or at least some codeine.

Finally the pain began to subside and he began to make plans for an elaborate apology he was going to extend to Martha. A loud bellow from the barn reminded him he had other things to do as well. He got up slowly and made his way out of the house. Despite the effect of the liquor, his head thumped and rumbled as he moved. But, he pulled himself together as he had so many days before and got to work.

His chores behind him, he decided to skip breakfast and try to make up to Martha instead. His first call, to her house, brought no answer. The second, to her job, got him no further. She hadn't been in this morning and they either couldn't or wouldn't tell him where she was. Finally, he called her mother. There he discovered that she had come home early in the morning, packed her bags and driven to St. Paul. Her mother didn't seem too happy with this turn of events and asked Michael if he knew what was going on.

Michael lied and told her he was in the dark about it. But he knew damned well what was going on. Martha was fed up with him and had moved to the city. She had been threatening him teasingly about it for months. He never really thought she would do it, what with all the turmoil in the cities. He himself had run away to the country mostly to get away from it. And to run away from his memories.

It was those damned memories that were hard to escape! He poured himself a large glass of whiskey and settled down to do some serious drinking. The drunker he got, the more he thought about Miranda. How well they had gotten along. How much they had suited one another.

If only he hadn't spent so much time working. He would have been home that night. He didn't ask himself just exactly what he thought he could have done. Miranda gone out to the store about one o'clock in the morning. It was a hot night and she probably couldn't sleep. For some reason, Michael never did find out why, she decided to take a walk to the corner store. It was open all night. Maybe she was going to buy some milk or something. While crossing the street, she was run down in the crosswalk by a car. It was driven by a man who drunk far too much to walk, much less drive a car. He didn't even know he had hit her until he saw the blood on his front bumper and grill the next morning. He called the police and was arrested for leaving the scene of the accident. He had several prior drunk driving convictions. So he was sentenced to thirty days in the county jail. Miranda died on the way to the hospital.

Michael knew deep down, that there was nothing he could have done about it. Still, the visions in his mind of her terror in that last moment and what he imagined it would feel like to get smacked with a 2000 pound vehicle...these horrible thoughts kept returning to haunt him. Meanwhile, he had been at company lab running meaningless computer simulations. He didn't even know what had happened until he got home about three in the morning and found Madelaine crying in the living room. She was the only one in the family the police could locate at that late hour.

For a while, Michael dreamt about it nearly every night. He would wake up in a cold sweat and lay there for hours running through all the what-ifs and maybes. His friends had offered what seemed to be endless concern and comfort. Nothing worked to relieve his guilt. In fact, the more they tried to console him, the guiltier he felt. He had even tried therapy. "Nothing works but this!", he said aloud, as he downed what was left in his glass. On the way to the cupboard to refill his tumbler, he stumbled heavily and fell on to the couch. He tried to lift himself, but thought better of it and passed out.

When he awoke, it was already dark outside. The inside of his head and mouth felt like an herd of bison had trampled on through, leaving their droppings behind them. When he stood up, he was immediately conquered by nausea. He barely made it to the bathroom before noisily losing what little remained in his stomach.

"Jesus H. Christ!", he swore through the pain of the dry heaves. "I thought I learned this lesson years ago!" Although he drank nearly every day, he hadn't been this drunk since the day he buried Miranda. It reminded him of his college days, the drinking contests at the fraternities. In those days he had felt invulnerable. Now he only felt shitty.

After what seemed like an eternity, the nausea retreated. When it had subsided enough, he gulped down three aspirins with a large glass of water. Then, he walked unsteadily back to the couch, turning on the television as he passed it on the way. The TV commentators were in the middle of what seemed to be a special program.

"...so, Martin, what you are saying is, that this object, whatever it is, struck the Earth at high speed earlier today, somewhere in Southern Wisconsin. Didn't it make an explosion or something like that when it hit?", were the first words Michael was conscious of. The words "Southern Wisconsin" had caught his attention.

"That's what has the scientists so puzzled, Jim.", replied the other announcer. "They are saying that even a small object travelling at such high speed should have made some kind of impact. But there have been no reports from anywhere in the area of explosions, or craters or even loud noises."

"You keep calling it an object.", the first announcer broke in. "Is there any chance that this thing, whatever it is, is not a meteor?"

"You're guess is as good as anyone's. At this moment no one is saying anything definitive about it. The Air Force and the governor's office have refused to comment. A spokesman for the state police said that they expected more information to come to light in the morning, when search parties can be dispatched."

"Well, that about raps it up. Now, back to...", and Michael was lost in his own thoughts.

He spent the next several hours flicking the remote control from channel to channel, trying to get more information on the mysterious object. There was plenty of coverage. Almost every channel had something to report. What he found out is that the unknown object, which had been first detected as it passed the orbit of Mars, had hit the Earth's atmosphere at an extremely high velocity. Lighting up the early evening sky over southwestern Wisconsin, it had attracted an enormous amount of attention. Early reports from radar stations stated that it had seemed to maneuver somewhat after entering the atmosphere, but had disappeared from the screens so rapidly that they couldn't be sure. The motion of the object was like that of a flat stone skipping across the water. No aircraft had passed within ten miles of it, so there were no close up sightings. At least none that anyone in official position would acknowledge.

"Just what we need on top of everything else," thought Michael, "flying saucers." Still, since the incident had occurred so close to where he lived, he couldn't help but be interested. From the sound of the news reports, he probably would have seen it himself, if he hadn't been out like a light. He decided to call a few of his neighbors, to find out if they had seen anything.

Indeed they had! Everyone he called had either seen it or knew somebody who had. It had been the brightest meteor that anyone could ever remember seeing. It streaked across the northern sky for at least ten seconds. Glowing bright green and trailing a cloud of flames, it impressed the hell out of everyone who had beheld it. The story was that it must have hit somewhere nearby, but nobody saw it hit and nobody heard a thing.

When he called Randy, he found out that a group of men had decided to get a couple of cases of beer and go out looking in the coulees. Most of his neighbors were sure that it had hit, or landed, very close by. The possibility that it was something more than a meteor had stirred their collective imagination. Michael was no exception. Randy suggested he come along since he was the closest thing to a scientist in the area. But the mention of alcohol made his stomach churn. He begged off, pleading illness, which was certainly true. He tried to get something to eat instead. It was almost nine o'clock and he hadn't eaten all day.

He fixed himself a breakfast. It was the only thing he could think of that sounded good. "Better late than never." That trite thought came to mind despite his effort to avoid it. "Like trying to not think of a pink elephant..." he imagined, "...or Miranda."

Once again, he was overwhelmed by thought of her. Now, however, he no longer thought of Miranda's sad death, but her life. The excitement he had felt at his neighbor's accounts of the evening's events had revived and excited him. He remembered all the evenings he had sat up late with Miranda, after the children were in bed, talking about the stars, the universe and the meaning of life.

Miranda had always been more romantic and imaginative than Michael in those discussions. He had been raised without much ado about religion and philosophy. His father had been a successful farmer and his mother a traditional farm housewife. They had raised their children with a calm but sure certainty that as long as the kids made it to adulthood alive and well, they had done their jobs and all was right with the universe. Neither of them ever talked about God or religion or anything other than the practicalities of life. Farm life keeps your mind trained on the essentials.

Consequently, Michael grew up thinking of himself as an atheist. As a young adult he modified this view slightly. He realized that a non-belief in God was almost a religious belief in its own right. Mostly, he realized that you didn't really have any control over what you believed. You either believed something or you didn't. Or, sometimes you were simply unsure. He began to think of himself as an agnostic, one who wasn't sure. He was sure that God wasn't an old white man with a beard, as so often depicted by Hollywood. That image struck him as being particularly Jewish, echoing the Old Testament vision of God the Grouchy. On the other hand, he couldn't quite shake the belief that there had to be someone...something more, somewhere.

Miranda, on the other hand, had been raised in a family that used to talk about such things at the dinner table each evening. She had been confirmed in the Methodist church. It was the Northern rather than the more fundamentalist Southern variety. Her family didn't go to church every Sunday, but made it for all the important holidays. Every once in a while her father would suggest that the whole family go to church together, but Miranda could never quite figure out what the motive was for those events. She concluded tentatively that it was something her mother and father decided in private, but it was always a surprise when she was told they were all going to church the next day. It was a sign of the integration of her family life that it never occurred to her to object.

The whole family frequently talked about the purpose of life. Each of them was certain that some higher being was responsible for all of it. They also wondered at the marvels of the world, at each new scientific or artistic advance. It was as though each new discovery merely confirmed what they already believed. Michael often found himself envious of Miranda's background. He told her that often that he felt he had missed something really important.

Miranda always assured him that he was the one who had it good. Living on a farm, so close to nature, he and his family were naturally casual about the many marvels of the world. What she and her family found so wonderful, were commonplace to him and his family. Birth, death, the beauty of nature, even scientific discoveries were commonplace on a farm. Now, at last, as he sat there recalling the past, Michael felt she might have been right.

These thoughts brought him around to a general feeling of well being. By the time he turned in, the illness and pain of the day had receded into the background. He drifted easily into sleep, but once again he dreamed.

This night the dream seemed to take off where the one the night before had left off. He was in the same alien forest searching for someone or something, but tonight, as he peered behind each strange tree or shrub, he was sure that which he sought would appear at any moment. It never did.

He used to keep the radio on softly by his bed as he fell to sleep. At first it was just because, like all teenagers, he wanted to keep up with the latest pop hits. But then he discovered that the fact that the radio was playing both when he fell asleep and when he awoke, made his dreams continue, like a movie serial, from one day to the next. That is, when he fell asleep, he would immediately return more or less to the point he had left off in the dream the morning before. Often the dreams would diverge quite rapidly from the one of the night before, but it would always start out the same. This discovery pleased Michael no end. It made him feel that he was living two lives. One was his relatively boring waking life in high school, while the other had all the excitement and variation that only dreams can deliver.

After reminiscing for a while, Michael finally got up, did his chores and ate breakfast. After eating, he decided he wouldn't try to plan the day. Maybe he would end up doing something worthwhile and productive. However, the events of the last week made him feel like he deserved...maybe even required...some slack time to just take it easy. So, he decided to take a walk around the farm.

The farm wasn't very large, but 90 acres is enough room to conceal quite a few hidden places. This was true especially because ordinarily Michael stayed on that part of the farm he was working. On the hillier sections grew trees and shrubs that sheltered all manner of critters and plants. Every so often, he liked to go exploring, just to see what he could find. Sometimes he would see a scurrying gopher or mole. Other times, his wanderings would disclose fabulously beautiful flowers. City folk called them weeds, but it was hard to think of a brilliant purple cluster of delicate blossoms, hidden behind a bush, as anything but treasure. Occasionally he would be rewarded by a deer staring at him with big brown eyes before it bounded away.

This day Michael found himself wandering rather aimlessly. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was heading for some kind of a showdown. The dream kept returning to his mind. Today, he just couldn't keep his thoughts focused on the hunt for Nature's bounty.

"Maybe," it occurred to him, "everybody is feeling this way these days." The events of the past week surely made such feelings appropriate.

Suddenly, all these daydreams came to a halt. As he started down one of the steeper hillocks toward the rear of the farm he was confronted with a truly remarkable vision. Standing in front of him, looking right at him, was a man dressed in what appeared to be formal dress.

At least, he thought it was a man. Something about the figure was subtly wrong. At first, Michael couldn't quite put his finger on what exactly was out of place. Then he began to notice little oddities. The man's hair was entirely too even colored and neat. Sort of like it had been greased down, but it wasn't shiny. His skin as well was very evenly colored, more like a cloth covering than skin. His eyes, which were riveted on Michael, were very steady. Too steady, like a gunslinger in a Western movie.

What Michael had first seen to be formal suit, was actually an ultramodern suit. He was also wearing a tie, but the tie had a strange shape. Not quite straight and not quite triangular. And it had a pattern unlike anything Michael had never seen before. The clothing seemed quite stylish for the city, say, but given the setting, on a farm hillside surrounded by weeds, it could only be described as a costume. Nobody dressed like that in this area. Ever.

Michael didn't know quite what to do or say. He thought of saying "Howdy", but decided that would be too cornball. Before he could make up his mind, the stranger took the decision out of his hands.

"I am your companion." he said in a well modulated voice, very clearly, with no discernable accent.

"What?" answered Michael, not quite believing his ears. He was almost certain he had heard correctly, but what in hell did that mean?

"I am your companion." repeated the stranger. "I have come from the stars. You and I are going to attempt to rescue your planet. Do not be alarmed. I will not harm you."

"What?" said Michael once again. The words were being heard, but they just wouldn't scan right. "What?"

The man, if that's what he was, didn't make any attempt to approach Michael as he spoke. He simply said what he had to say with devilish clarity. He stood there, unblinking, apparently just waiting for Michael to respond with something other than another "What?".

Finally, Michael pulled himself together. His mouth was hanging open idiotically. When spit started to run over his lips, he closed it self consciously. Then he tried to say something, thought better of it and closed his mouth hard again. Finally, he said slowly and carefully, "Please repeat what you just said to me."

The stranger repeated what he had just said. Exactly. Word for word. Just like a recording except his lips moved again as he spoke.

"You are my companion and you have come from the stars so that you and I can save the world. Did I get that right?" asked Michael.

"That is not verbatim, but it is essentially correct." said the stranger.

"Who or what the hell are you?" asked Michael.

"I am what you would call a robot."

"You don't look like a robot." Michael said. He immediately felt foolish for having said this, but his thoughts were beginning to spin out. Was this the person...thing...he was seeking in his dreams? Did this creature come on the flying saucer of the day before. It was all so damned plausible and yet completely incredible. Was he still dreaming?

"I am quite a bit more advanced than any robot you have ever encountered." answered the companion quite reasonably. All this time, neither Michael nor the creature moved a muscle...or whatever it used for locomotion. Michael because he couldn't, the stranger for who-knows-what reason.

"Let us move to some location more enclosed.", the robot-creature continued. "There are a group of your fellow beings looking for me and they are not far away."

"How do you know that?"

"I can hear them and...feel them." The last words seemed to come out hesitantly, as if they weren't quite right.

"Of course he can 'feel' them", thought Michael a little crazily, "I have run across a galactic Clark Kent and he is using his x-ray vision to track the humans hounds on his trail. Why doesn't he just use his super powers get rid of them?" This last question made Michael more than a little uneasy. The thought that this thing really could have some kind of super powers had occurred to him. Aloud, he said, "Let's move on back to the house." He half turned and beckoned for the robot to follow him. He was beginning to tentatively accept the thing at face value.

Together they moved rapidly across the fields and back to the house. Michael wanted to get inside as soon as possible, because he knew anybody or anything dressed like the stranger would draw one shit-load of attention.

On the way there, the robot moved closer to him. Michael could see that his first impressions had been correct. The creature's skin was perfectly smooth and even toned. It was almost, but not quite, the color of a Caucasian human being. Similarly, the hair did not look quite real. More like a very good wig. And the clothes were very strange indeed. What had looked like a suit had no buttons or any other kind of visible fastener. Yet it held together and flowed smoothly as the robot "walked" to the house with him. The tie looked like one of those clip-ons, but, again, not quite. Everything about this creature was just a little bit strange. The overall impression was more like a Ken doll...of the Barbie and Ken dolls...than anything else Michael could think of.

The motions as it walked...Michael had already transposed its sex from "he" to "it"...were smooth but not quite human. As they moved across the fields, Michael was having an easier and easier time believing what he was seeing and hearing a creature "from the stars".

By the time they entered the house, the full impact of what was happening hit him. A creature, a robot from the stars was here, on his farm and was talking about saving the goddamned world! As soon as they were through the door, Michael began to burst with questions.

"Did you come on the flying saucer, the meteorite or whatever it is that everybody saw yesterday? Do you know who I am and did you really come to see me? How are we going to save the world? What did you mean you are my companion?"

"Yes. You are Michael Malinoski. Yes. I will explain in detail later how we will save your planet. To do so, I must stay with you and assist you and thus I am and will remain your companion." answered the robot. It took Michael a moment to realize that it had answered all of his questions in a strict logical sequence.

"Well, I am not a robot. You have to speak to me...more... normally." suggested Michael, choosing his words with care.

"I am speaking perfectly clearly, am I not?"

"Yes, I guess you are. What if I don't agree to this plan of yours?"

"You will agree." The creature said this with such certainty that Michael was absolutely sure it was true. At least, he saw no future in arguing with a creature from the stars!

There was so much he wanted to know that Michael didn't know where to begin. He settled on asking if the stranger had a name.

"I have no name in the sense that you name yourselves, but you can call me 'Companion'. This is the closest equivalent in your language to my designation on my source planet."

"That's a little awkward. Do you mind if I give you a name?"

"You wish to give me an arbitrary designation to which I will respond when it is uttered by you?"

"Yeah, that's about it." said Michael, chuckling at the creature's verbal compositions.

"As you please."

"Then, from now on, you are 'Bozo'." said Michael with a broad smile. Something about naming this thing after a clown took some of the sting out of talking to a machine. Not that Michael had never talked to machines before. It was just that they never responded like they were equals!

"'Bozo' is just fine." said the robot without expression.

The two of then sat and talked for many hours. Michael asked question after question. Each one was answered patiently by Bozo, although he seldom had time to finish one statement before Michael had asked yet another question. Gradually, a picture emerged.

Bozo had come from a star system that was about 300 light years away. Michael was no expert in astronomy but he knew that this was relatively close by in astronomical terms. The meteor of the previous evening had in fact been its spacecraft. After landing, the spacecraft had been hidden at the bottom of a deep nearby lake. Bozo was certain that it would not be discovered.

The creatures or other robots of Bozo's "source" planet...Michael couldn't quite determine what exactly they were...had somehow determined that the Earth was about to self destruct. Rather, the human race was about to destroy it. We had been observed from off-planet robot spies which monitored human activity. They had been doing so for quite some time, but Michael was not to find out until later just exactly how long.

In fact, many details were passed over in the first rush to find out what was happening. Bozo stated that Michael had been chosen because of his profession as a computer expert and because he was solitary. He had been chosen to "assist in saving the planet". Presumedly, Bozo was somehow going to provide the expertise. Michael had long since given up hope of ever finding the Holy Grail that would somehow save the human race from itself. Bozo did mention that population pressure and environmental destruction were the main problems, with the possibility of global warfare a close competitor. This, of course, was news to almost no one in the early twenty first century, certainly not to Michael. Again, the details were to be revealed later.

Bozo was a robot only in a very broad sense of the term. When Michael asked if he could see his circuits, Bozo first acted like he didn't know what Michael meant. Finally, Bozo explained that he didn't have circuits in the sense of Earthly computers. In fact, his component parts were tiny even when compared to the sub-cellular structures of living things. The strongest electron microscopes on Earth would not begin to reveal the atomic structure of Bozo. No, Michael could definitely not see Bozo's circuits.

Nor did touching Bozo reveal anything. His temperature seemed about right. His outer covering was quite smooth, but did not feel like plastic. Except for its incredibly even coloring, it could have been the skin of a living creature. Bozo's muscles, if that is what they were, were hard, but not so hard as to suggest metal or ceramics. Again, it could have been the tissue of a living being.

"Are you alive?", asked Michael, at one point.

"Not the way you usually use that term." answered Bozo.

This answer was not at all satisfying given the fact that Michael was sitting there conversing with Bozo at a very high level. But it was all he could get out of it-him. Michael was oscillating between thinking of Bozo as an it and as a he.

And so it went, long into the night.

"Do you eat?" he asked Bozo.

"Not in the sense you usually use that term?" came the not unexpected answer.

"What do you run on? What powers you?" Michael continued, not satisfied with what he was beginning to think were put-offs.

"In here," said Bozo, pointing to his midsection, "is what you would call a nuclear reactor. Fusion, cold fusion, is the most recent term your race has used for how it works."

"You run on cold fusion?" asked Michael in astonishment. He wasn't a nuclear physicist, but knew that this was indeed one of the Holy Grail's sought by Earth's scientific community. "Now there is something that will truly help to save the planet."

"Precisely." said Bozo with precision.

In the discussion that followed, it became clear that passing on the secret of the cold fusion reactor to Michael was one of the ways the star-creature intended to help him save the world. Michael became more and more excited as he listened to the details which unfolded.

Bozo would give him a list of materials to obtain in the city. Then , together, they would fabricate a prototype reactor. Most of the items on the list were readily obtainable through scientific supply houses, although some were going to be expensive. When Michael mentioned this point, Bozo produced a small ingot of what appeared to be solid gold. Hefting it in his palm, Michael estimated its weight at about a kilogram. This told him that selling it would net enough funds to purchase the required supplies.

Michael also worried that buying all this equipment would leave a suspicious trail. Bozo assured him that the trail would merely establish the "proof" that he was the inventor of the device they were going to build. This fact was essential to the plan which was gradually being revealed to him. The sale of the rights to the reactor would assure that Michael became very, very wealthy. This wealth would, in turn, be used to generate still other wondrous "inventions".

"Before we are through," said Bozo, "you will undoubtedly be the most famous being in the history of your world. This will help us to succeed, as your fellow beings will come to expect you to give them more and more secrets of the universe. You will, I assure you, be able to comply."

The cold fusion reactor itself was quite simple. It would run on deuterium, also called "heavy water". This is water composed of oxygen, like normal water, and an isotope of hydrogen which contains a neutron as well as a proton. The machine also required two rare earth metals, molybdenum and thallium, in a very small measured quantities. The machine so based was actually quite primitive compared to the one which powered him, Bozo insinuated, but it would suffice for Earth's backward society.

The reaction produced only trace amounts of radioactivity and these could be trapped by ordinary stainless steel containers. The only waste product was a small amount of helium gas. The heat generated could be used to boil ordinary water like a steam engine, or in the case of flying vehicles, it could be used to heat water as a jet propellant. Of course, the heat itself was a waste product and would, in large enough quantities, cause its own kind of pollution. But, compared to the hydrocarbon fuels currently used to power the civilization of the Earth, its effect was minuscule.

Bozo would show Michael how to produce engines small enough to power individual vehicles, like cars. He also had plans for machines large enough to run electric power plants, airplanes and space vehicles. Once human technology turned itself to producing these, which wouldn't be long, given that Bozo was turning over proven technology to him, fossil fuel use would almost vanish. The small remaining oil supply could and would be used in fertilizers and plastics.

It seemed to Michael that this single creation would go a long way toward curing the ills of humanity, but there was more, much more. Bozo informed him that one of the principal problems facing any primitive society is the cheapness of life. Michael was not to discover until much later how the star-creature had come by this knowledge. For now, it was sufficient to grasp the simple meaning of what he was being told. Living, reproducing creatures can both create and destroy large numbers of themselves in a very short time. Especially if they possess the knowledge of building weapons of mass destruction.

To illustrate this, Bozo asked Michael to imagine an Earth where total warfare had wiped out all but a few thousand of the many billions of human animals. How long would it take, he asked, before the human race had repopulated to its current numbers? A thousand years? Ten thousand? Michael grasped immediately that this amount of time was a mere eye blink in geological time spans. And it was becoming clear that Bozo thought in just such terms.

The problem was in keeping the human species from wiping itself out in its entirety. This required a motive. The easiest way would be to raise the price of every single human life. If a way could be found to both lengthen the normal life span, while at the same time drastically lowering the normal birth rate, the required conditions would be provided. Fortunately, on Bozo's home planet, exactly the right stimulus was available.

It existed in the form of a virus-like substance that, when introduced into animal bodies, tricked their systems into behaving like perpetual juveniles. That is, some of the animal's systems, like the immune system, were drastically shored up and improved. Resistance to disease and tumor production, as in cancers, was enormously expanded. At the same time, some of the subsystems responsible for healing and growth which normally function only during the adolescence of the organism, were turned back on.

The substance had been engineered so as to not stimulate perpetual growth, or all creatures would become elephantine. Only aged or damaged tissue was replaced. This created a form of perpetual youth. But, it was not perfect. Nothing was, assured Bozo. But it would increase the life span of most animals on the planet by ten to twenty fold. It only worked on animals. Plants would be totally unaffected by it.

Michael was both astonished and appalled by this news. The Earth was already bursting with life, clearly overpopulated with people. How could increasing the life span of animals that much, especially of human beings, possibly help things?

The answer was simple. The micro-organism also virtually shut down the reproductive system of every being that it invaded. The probability of reproduction would be lowered by five or six orders of magnitude.

"Why that's on the order of a million to one!" exclaimed Michael.

"Precisely." said Bozo, once more with cold precision.

Now Michael began to worry about the other side of the coin. He saw immediately that reproductive rates this low were far too slow to maintain any species of animal for very long, measured in centuries, much less geological time spans.

As if anticipating this objection, Bozo interjected, "Don't worry that your species will die out. Reproducing will become much more difficult but not impossible. Earth scientists should be able to guarantee the survival of most animal species within a few hundred years. Many species will become extinct, but that would have happened in any event, given the rate at which you are destroying the environment of this planet."

"How is this organism or virus or whatever it is going to be introduced to the Earth?" asked Michael.

"It has already been accomplished." said Bozo simply. "As I made my way to your domicile from my spacecraft, I infected many of the creatures I came upon. Including you."

This last bit of information nearly floored Michael. If what this strange being said was true, he was going to live a thousand years. What if something happened? What if he, like Miranda, got hit by a car?

Once again, the robot seemed to be one step ahead of him. "You will, of course, not be protected from ordinary trauma. However, if you can be kept alive after serious damage, your body will heal. Your mate who is dead, for example, would most probably have survived had she been infected before her accident."

"How did you know about that?" asked Michael quickly, feeling more than a little spooked by this robot speaking to him of Miranda. Just as quickly he was hit by a jolt of regret that Bozo had not showed up a couple of years sooner.

Once again seeming to read his mind, Bozo said, "You would never have encountered me at all, were you not unencumbered by entangling alliances. It is important that I be your only companion during what is about to occur. All that I know about you was learned from the robot drones that were placed on and around your planet many centuries ago."

"How come none of these robots has ever been discovered?" wondered Michael.

"Most of them are in space, several hundred miles from the surface. Those which are required to collect detailed information are microscopic in size and are programmed to self destruct if examined by advanced instrumentation. In addition, since there is no way your species could have surmised their existence, you were certainly not looking for them."

"What do you mean, you must be my only companion." asked Michael. The thought of being married to this robot struck Michael as funny. Despite himself and his feelings about Miranda, a smile crossed his face.

"It is crucially important that the fact of my existence remain a secret. If your species discovered that they were being manipulated by an alien being, especially a being they regard as a machine, it is likely they would self destruct within a few years. It will be many millennia before your race will be able to absorb the facts about the universe."

Michael found this requirement extremely patronizing, but decided not to pursue the subject until he had thought about it more. The current situation of the world didn't give him much material with which to easily refute the argument. Still, the fact, if it was a fact, that human beings couldn't face the truth bothered him profoundly. Would he be able to face the truth? Would Bozo reveal it? What was missing?

It wasn't long after that this interchange that he was overcome with a deep drowsiness. It was late Sunday evening and he hadn't slept since Saturday morning. He informed Bozo that he, not being a robot, was required to sleep. He was so tired that he just lay down on the couch. Through the haze of impending sleep, he heard Bozo explaining, "I also need to sleep. Not as often nor as long as you, but it is necessary for all sentient beings to sleep and to dream."

As Michael passed into unconsciousness, the thought of robot's dreaming filled his mind. Once again he dreamt of alien forests. Only he was no longer seeking anyone or anything. He was home.

"The first day in the rest of my life, Bozo!" he corrected. Then added, "Damn, I feel terrible. It feels like I've been asleep for a week!"

"That is very nearly correct." said Bozo. "You have actually been unconscious for six days, nine hours, forty two min..."

"What! What are you talking about? Six days? Am I sick? What in hell is going on?" Suddenly, Michael was wide awake, but he was still terribly disoriented from the long fever he had just endured. "What just happened to me?" he asked when he regained some of his composure.

Bozo said, "I was not completely forthcoming with you when I described the virus with which you have been infected. The probability was only about point one that you would survive the first course of the infection. I did not wish to unduly upset you..."

"Unduly upset me! You put me through a rigmarole where I had a nine out of ten chance of dying and you didn't want to unduly upset me? Are you out of your fucking mind?!" exclaimed Michael, now yelling at the top of his lungs. Suddenly, he realized that he had just asked a machine if it was crazy or not. This struck him somehow as amusing, but the actual joke escaped him.

Bozo: "I apologize for whatever discomfort this knowledge causes you. I must inform you however, that there will be much more information which may cause you similar uneasiness."

"You said that I had a one in ten chance of surviving. Does that mean that I am different, or is that the probability for all humans?" asked Michael, beginning to understand what Bozo meant.

Bozo: "You would be correct in stating that the base survival rate for humans is approximately point one."

"You are telling me that ninety percent of the human race is going to die from this virus?" asked Michael quietly, terrified of the probable answer.

Bozo: "Yes, that is correct."

Michael's head fell back on his pillow. He was suddenly weak all over and possessed with the deepest melancholy he had ever felt. Even Miranda's death had not affected him this way. "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, what have I done..." was his last thought before he lapsed back into a coma.

Unknown to Michael, the virus was already spreading throughout the area. Many had already died from the high fever caused by the invading organism by the time he first awoke from his fever. By the time he woke for the second time, two days later, most of the people he had known in this small farm area were dead. Meanwhile, the first cases of infection were beginning to turn up in Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota, Madison and Milwaukee in Wisconsin, Des Moines in Iowa and all the countryside in between. Within a month, the living were barely able to bury the dead. Food riots, war, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves. All paled beside this new plague. Never in history had such a large proportion of living people been so swiftly destroyed. Nor did anyone escape. Since the virus was infecting and being transmitted by all animal life, birds, fish, even insects were carrying it to ever corner of the globe, however remote or isolated.

Michael's last thought had been wrong in one respect. No one was then or ever directly infected from him. Since Bozo was caring for him, he didn't come into contact with any other people until long after his infectious stage had passed. Furthermore, since he had not volunteered for the job, he could hardly have been held responsible for the epidemic in any case. But, just as everyone feels guilty at the death by accident or suicide of a friend or acquaintance, it was very, very hard for Michael not to feel guilty about the what had happened.

The second and last stage of the infection was a rebuilding phase, where the body not only repaired any damage done by the long fever, but also began to replace any tissue damaged caused by age or any other reason. Michael would emerge from this phase hungry and weak, but healthier than he had ever been in his entire life.

His dreams during his recovery, however, were inhabited by the ghosts of millions of human beings. Nor did these dreams vanish quickly afterward...

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When it struck a victim who would eventually survive, that person would lapse into a feverish coma for a few days. Then, like Michael, he or she would awake momentarily, then fall into unconsciousness again for another couple of days. Nothing much could be done for the patients during this time. Whether each survived depended upon factors that the human race would not understand for many centuries. Most who would die, died within the first few hours, a day at most.

Bozo had directly innoculated Michael, so he came down with the fever within hours. Those who picked it up from other animals, took a week or two to get to this phase. Furthermore, because of the nature of the virus, children were most often spared its effects. Often, it was children that saw adults through the first stages of the illness. Of course, many people who might have survived, died when they were unable to receive adequate assistance. All in all, somewhat over ninety two percent of all living human beings died from the virus. The survivors, half of them children, slowly began to repair civilization.

This sounds like it would be nearly impossible, but eight percent of the world's population was almost a half billion people, larger than the entire population of the world at the start of the industrial revolution. So, while reconstruction was painful and difficult, it was not impossible. The plague destroyed no human knowledge nor any real property. The victims either died quickly and were buried, at first one at a time by survivors, later by the hundreds and thousands, bulldozed into giant pits.

At first, people concentrated on forming some sort of organizing entity, a government of sorts, at the local level. Someone had to decide what had to be done and try to organize people to do it. First, surviving neighbors got together and, after disposing of the dead, began to button down empty houses to prevent fires. The utilities, electricity, gas and water, were mostly still working, partly because these facilities had long ago been mostly automated, and because surviving utility workers, mainly in order to stave off depression at what was going on, hung around the plants and kept things going as best they could. Of course, the remaining people were close to despair and madness, but the mere fact that not everyone had succumbed and that there were so many children alive, kept hope alive and kept them going.

Of course, there were many fires and very few firemen left to put them out. Whole neighborhoods, unable to control the blazes, simply burned to the ground. The sky was clouded with smoke and ash for several months after the disaster began, but eventually the fires subsided. What was going to burn, had burned. Yet there remained sufficient shelter to adequately house everyone alive, and the continuing disasters brought those people together like never before in human history.

At first only minimal survival was practiced. Food was an issue, but there were many warehouses filled with food and when that supply was depleted, there were also many vehicles available and gasoline in storage tanks to fuel them, to allow forays into the countryside to garner food from abandonned farms and fields, or cooperating farmers.

Money wasn't of much use, as it quickly became apparent that it had no real value, but barter quickly supplanted it as the major means of commerce. Looting, if that word can describe the taking of deserted goods and property, was widespread. The seized materials were either quickly used, or traded for other more necessary items.

Within an amazingly short period of time, most cities were running again. Telephone service was restored. Along with the telephone, the Internet began to function again. It took many months for a significant portion of the world to be back online, but people could almost immediately communicate with people in their own city. A whole generation of teenagers and young adults had cut their teeth on the Net, and they helped enormously to get it functioning again. Next, a few radio and TV stations came back on line. City, then state and finally national emergency governments were constituted. This was all possible because it was easiest for people to just do whatever they had been doing before the catastrophe. Those that occupied niches that were no longer essential, like insrance agents or banking employees were quickly pressed into service carrying out more useful work.

Soon the survivors began to notice changes. The first to notice were the elderly. As their bodies became younger and sdtronger, they couldn't help but notice the change. Used to seeing ever more wrinkles and sagging in the mirror, they were suddenly noticing that wrinkles were disappearing, breasts and pot bellies were firming up, hair was growing back. This too softened the blow of so much death and destruction.

Those who had AIDS or cancer, but who survived the plague, quickly became aware that their illnesses had vanished. If this weren't miraculous enough, paraplegics and quadraplegics began to grow new spinal cord tissue and began to recover the use of their limbs. Scars disappeared and new skin replaced them. Nor would it be long before health workers discovered that the surviving human beings had gained many more capabilities, like the ability to regrow arms, legs and missing organs, that no animals above the level of salamanders had ever had before.

Most people regarded these events as miracles from God visited upon them in return for the terrible grief and suffering they had endured during the plague. It was not until some semblence of national communications was restored before scientists and laymen alike began to understand the scope of what had happened. Gradually the whole story was pieced together, but some of it, for example the drastically lowered birth rate, took many months to discover. It seems that sex and reproduction were not particularly high on anyone's list of priorities.

When Michael finally awoke from his coma, he was unable to bring himself to talk to Bozo for several days. The thought of what must be going on in the rest of the world appalled him, causing his stomach to churn uncontrollably during every waking moment. His phone line was out and the electricity was off. When he turned on the emergency generator, which he kept in case of storms, he could find nothing but static on his radio or TV. Bozo, as if he understood what Michael was going through, did not speak to him nor in any way interact with him, spending most of the time somewhere outside the house doing things that Michael could only imagine. When he did reenter the house, he stayed standing in the kitchen completely motionless, his robotic "patience" without limit.

Michael kept trying the radio and after a week or so, a few stations appeared on the dial for portions of the day. Not much except emergency bulletins were being aired. The Upper Midwest, being the first to be infected, was also the first to recover. As Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin struggled back into some semblance of normalcy, the rest of the world was exploding into turmoil. Some places endured much greater hardship than the United States, some much less, but it soon became clear that nowhere had been spared. Reports of the disaster were sketchy at best. But Michael, armed with the special knowledge provided him earlier by Bozo had probably the best idea of anyone on Earth of what exactly was happening. The hardest thing for him to endure, the thought that he tried not to entertain but which would not go away, was the certainty that almost everyone he had ever known was probably dead. This included his children, his few friends and acquaintences and, most likely, Martha. Michael was not as cold and calculating as Bozo, but he understood probabilities. Nine out of ten losers is lousy odds.

Michael decided to remain on the farm. There was no point taking part in the turmoil that was undoubtedly taking place in the cities and he needed time to think. He had enough food and supplies on hand to last him many months. Food harvested from his farm would extend the moment of truth a little longer. Having decided all this, he finally spoke to Bozo. "I have decided to stay on the farm." he announced matter of factly.

Bozo responded as if they had just stopped conversing a few moments ago. "This is probably a good idea. We need to make some plans." he said, equally matter of factly.

"What do we do next?" asked Michael.

"Nothing for about a year." said Bozo. "How do you feel?"

"How do I feel? How do you think I feel? Terrible!" Michael blurted, losing his temper despite himself. He knew it was pointless to be perturbed with this creature, but he just couldn't control his anger.

"Your health has not improved?" asked Bozo.

"Oh, sure. That way I feel just fine." answered Michael. In fact, he realized that he had never felt better. Despite his depression, his mind was clear, he felt strong and healthy.

"What then feels...terrible?" asked Bozo, hesitating slightly on the last word.

"My feelings, my emotions, my mental health." Michael answered a little too quickly thinking to himself, "How could I expect a fucking robot to understand how I feel?"

"These things are difficult for me to grasp." said Bozo. "As a machine, I do not have what you call feelings, emotions, mental health. I calculate and communicate."

Changing the subject abruptly, Michael asked, "What do you mean that we should do nothing for a year? I thought we were going to 'invent' cold fusion to save the world."

The irony of saving a world where nine tenths of the population had just died a horrible death completely escaped Bozo. Instead, he merely responded, "The Earth will not be ready for new inventions for about one year." That was that.

So Michael resigned himself to dealing with his own mental problems by dealing with the details of surviving for a year without any outside help. He did an inventory of both his food supplies and the sundry incidentals. His gasoline supply was adequate to power the emergency generator for quite a while if he didn't drive around too much. What was the point of driving around, anyway? He knew what he would find. The lights on the horizon at night told him that fires were burning all around him, mostly in the distance. He did wonder which if any of his near neighbors had survived, but figured they would find him just as easily as he them.

For a month he spent his days tending the farm as he had always done. At night, he would sit and do some yoga exercises he hadn't practiced since he was a young man. He found they gave his mind some peace. He also read and re-read every book in the place, some as often as three or four times. Anything to keep from pondering what must be happening to the world.

He avoided talking with Bozo, something he was to wonder about later when he realized just how much knowledge this creature possessed. But, he just couldn't bring himself to exchange "pleasantries" with Bozo. He understood intellectually that Bozo was no more responsible for what he had happened to the Earth than the generator was for what was being said on the radio. But, emotionally, he could not but regard Bozo as one of the worst mass murderers in history. Their conversation consisted almost entirely of questions and answers about the details of running the farm. Bozo could and did help repair machinery, could feed the animals, could and did drive the tractor, tilling the fields. Michael would ask him to do something, he would comply.

There were many questions that he knew Bozo could answer. Where had he come from? How did his sapcecraft work? How was he constructed? But, Michael could not bring himself to care. For now, he just wanted to be whole again.

He found he was no longer interested in drinking at night. There was still some Jack Daniels left in the last bottle he had purchased, but he hadn't touched it since his awakening from the plague induced coma. Michael's sleep was curiously dreamless, or at least he recalled no dreams. He took this as a sign of mental "illness." His body, on the other hand, was quite a different story. When he looked in the mirror, he saw that his gray hair had disappeared, his pot belly had shrunk, his features had softened. He looked and felt like a teen ager. No, much better than he had felt at fifteen or at any time in his life. He was so ALIVE...but he just didn't care!

Each day the radio was also coming more alive with information. The world, civilization, was pulling itself back together. The human race had been dealt a terrible blow, but it was recovering. Had he cared, he would have found comfort in the rapid comeback of humanity. But, he simply stored the information as it came out of the radio like he, rather than Bozo, was the robot.

Finally, one day the phone service was restored. Michael had gotten into the habit of picking up the receiver each morning we he arose and checking for a dial tone. One morning there was one. He immediately began to call every number in his phone book. His children, Martha, even Randy the rifleman. There were no answers.

A bubble popped in his head. The apathy that had overcome him these many weeks vanished as though it had never been there. Suddenly he found himself consumed with curiosity. One question after another sprang into his mind, a torrent of inquisitiveness broke over him like the dam bursting. He called out for Bozo, who quickly appeared, as though he had doing nothing but awaiting Michael's summons.

"We have to talk" said Michael.

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