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I looked around. Actually, this wasn’t really my home. Granted, I had clothes here and all, but I had never really felt at home here. I had no sense of still being on the ship. This alien stuff was really amazing. Or my hallucination was very detailed and felt real.
“ Devon?”
“Right with you, buddy,” he said, his voice coming from my right and slightly above me. “Just let me know when you want to get out of there.”
“Only a moment.”
I headed for the bedroom where Tammie would be sleeping. I couldn’t really feel my feet touch the carpet, but the memory of walking without gravity boots made me think I was feeling it. Weird, really weird.
I tried to push open the half-closed door, but my hand went right through it, so I closed my eyes and just stepped forward and into the bedroom.
I was sure I was dead; now I was acting like a ghost. What more evidence did I need?
The pink morning light was gently filling the room through the closed blinds. Our big master bed filled the far wall under bookshelves loaded with Tammie’s favorite reading.
I moved about two steps toward the bed before I realized that Tammie wasn’t alone. A man, a young man, was curled up against her back, like he belonged there, like he had been there a very long time.
I had already been stu
This sight just left me cold. I wanted to care, but for some reason, I just couldn’t.
I stared at my wife for a long minute, wondering why I didn’t care.
I should care. I should be angry.
But the image of my five friends’ deaths haunted me. Their deaths made me angry. Not this.
I couldn’t care because it really didn’t matter. My shipmates, my friends were dead. I was officially dead, but getting a second chance to move on to interesting challenges that I would love.
I couldn’t bring her anyway.
I stood and just stared at her. One thing was clear. She looked happy, contented in sleep.
I cared that she was happy. After being married to a man who had spent most of the last twenty years either in space or preparing for it, she deserved happiness in any way she could find it.
“How long have you known?” I asked my friend. I had a hunch that he was seeing what I was seeing with the fancy alien technology.
“A couple of years,” Devon said. “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s not a surprise,” I said. “As much as I was gone, how can I blame her?”
I moved over beside her, ignoring the guy behind her, and stared at her beautiful hair spread out over the pillow, at her cheek, at her slightly open mouth. I had been lucky to have the time I had with her, and all the support she had given me. I would miss that.
I would miss her.
But I couldn’t be angry at her.
I bent over and brushed my lips against her cheek. I didn’t feel anything, but her eyes fluttered a little and she sighed and then went back to sleep.
“Be happy,” I said to my beautiful wife. “You deserve it.”
Then I turned away.
“Get me out of here.” I stepped toward the door. “I got some new ships to fly.”
A moment later I was back in space.
Back where I belonged.
THE STINK OF REALITY by Irene Radford
Dr. Wallace Beebee, PhD, associate professor of biophysics at Vasco da Gama U, swept the paraphernalia atop his wife Evelyn’s dresser into a shoebox. Deodorant, perfume, hairspray, cosmetics, anything with a fragrance. When the box was full he moved into the adjacent bathroom and collected shampoos, soaps, his own shaving cream and aftershave, the candle on the toilet tank. When a second box was full he slapped the lid on it, secured it with a rubber band, and took them both to the laundry room at the opposite end of their ranch-style rental home on the campus fringes.
“The Explorers of VDGU? A bunch of bullshit. Haven’t had an original idea in fifty years,” Wallace grumbled. He’d been on faculty three years, always being promised tenure the next semester, then the next, and the next, always denied because his ideas were just a little too revolutionary. Grants controlled by the university went to projects that kept corporate America happy and conservative, not to strange new inventions worthy of science fiction novels.
Every research grant Wallace applied for ended up in the hands of a more senior faculty member.
How could he and Evelyn ever hope to afford children living on the pittance the university paid untenured-and therefore disposable-professors?
Into another box, he loaded all of the cleaning supplies beneath the bathroom sink. “I’ll show them something that will keep corporate America happy!”
Max, the family corgi, followed his every step, sniffing each item with extreme interest. But then the dog lived through his nose.
That’s what had given Wallace the idea. The dog’s nose ruled his impulses. If it didn’t have a smell, the dog wasn’t interested.
Wallace now knew how to give the world every smell they ever dreamed of. That meant it had to come out of the television. TV ruled America ’s desires. Corporate America ruled Americans through their TV advertising, creating “needful” things where no need existed.
Wallace needed tenure. Only creating the next needful thing would get him that.
People forgot that memory was more closely tied to scent than any other of the five senses. Long before he was through with corporate America, they’d know his name and remember it.
Finally, he ejected the dog from the bedroom too. He closed the door firmly against intrusion. Then he showered with an unscented soap and do
Later, when he knew it worked, he’d verify everything in a sterilized lab. Until then, the invention was his and his alone, carefully pieced together from a discarded and outdated mass spectrometer and a sniffer he’d purchased with his own money from the state crime lab, again outdated. He had to come up with a better name for that device.
His next generation of Beebevision would be smaller and more sensitive. When he had grant money and grad students to collect data.
Finally, all was ready. Cautiously, he made the last co
Holding his breath, he fed the special DVD into the player, turned everything on, and sat in his favorite recliner-carefully vacuumed earlier.
A deep organ note played and a lily of the valley logo blossomed on the screen. He’d borrowed the lily from a design on Evelyn’s favorite perfume, changing it just enough to keep from violating copyright. He’d also added radiating lines indicating the flower’s fragrance.
“Welcome to Fully Sensory Theatery. A Wallace Beebee Production,” intoned a husky alto voice, Evelyn, of course.
Her PhD was in medieval history. Physics didn’t interest her. Nothing interested her except her own discipline. He’d make history come alive for her as it never had before: through her nose.
The scene on the TV shifted to a meadow filled with spring wildflowers. A delicate floral scent wafted to Wallace from the mesh face of the black cube.
He smiled. “It’s working,” he whispered.
Then the scene changed again; a hot desert wind that smelled of dust, sage, and mint accompanied the pictures of Smith Rock in central Oregon. Next, another scene, a beautiful woman (Evelyn) dancing lightly in the moonlight. Her phenomenal perfume made his heart beat faster and his hormones soar.