Teamwork Saves the Elements by Wayne Fowler Sci Fi or Fantasy Writing Contest contest entry |
This one is not for everyone – much Ohmie-speak and Ohmie-isms, and very much science, some real, some perhaps not so much. 1 “Just going out back for a little while,” May told her mother who watched suspiciously. Being the middle of the afternoon, the wary mother couldn’t think of a reason to deny her roguish daughter time out-of-doors; although she felt she should. It was the way May startled alert – jumping from doldrums to action, veritably leaping to the sliding door to the back patio, jerking at the locked door before unlatching it, and then anxiously fumbling with the broom handle that served as a back-up lock that signaled the alarm. While May had been effectively contained, stopped from her night-time antics, nothing allayed Mom’s constant anxiety regarding the child’s aberrant behavior. She was especially guarded whenever she felt her daughter’s doings might relate to the boy, Ohmie. Ohmie, though only a child himself, scared her with his, his … She couldn’t identify her distress. That explained her inability to convince her daughter to forget about him, the boy that had nearly blown himself up some months past. 2 Neither a fly, nor a mosquito. A boxer might’ve described May’s vision as seeing stars. A cataract surgery veteran might use a description more like darting fleas. Whatever it was, May sensed, more than saw, whatever microscopic phenomenon it might have been. She knew it was small – and strange … irregular. She even allowed herself the image of something not right, wrong for her world order. It was a familiar intuit. She had experienced it several times in the past. Against her better judgment, the mother refrained from interfering when May perched herself atop the chimney part of a brick-built grilling station. While this was extremely unsafe, the mother cautioned herself against over-controlling her daughter. “After all,” she surmised, “May had been right at every turn. It was just that it was so … unsettling, un-nerving. Why couldn’t some other Mother’s daughter have this gift, or curse? And why couldn’t that Ohmie boy attract some other girl?” 3 Ohmie saw the writing on the wall, heard the screaming in his ear, so-to-speak. He’d been doodling with a Sudoku chart, playing with the possibility of a grid for puzzling letters of the alphabet in place of the traditional nine numeric digits, maybe even expanding the twenty-six letters to include keyboard symbols, as well. Symbols and designs not of his own making appeared on his paper. Dumping, brushing, and blowing them off finally stopped the miniscule, faint apparitions. Then he saw the tracing of elemental symbols begin to take form on the wall in front of him. It was almost like a marching band, the individuals morphing from one character to another. Ohmie took notes, recalling his initial intuitions and recollections of what he’d seen. Carbon, zinc, magnesium, iodine, chromium, manganese … In no particular sequence, the signs continued to appear on the wall until they finally began to assemble in shapes far too small and obscure to decipher. Scrambling crazily, Ohmie dug his microscope from an upper shelf of his Dennis the Menace, jam-packed closet, cascading science projects to the hinterland. He set up the microscope on his desk after making room for it, and then stepped back a few moments before slowly edging to the viewing lens. This made no sense whatsoever, even to him. What he saw were the base elements, at least some of them, that were indicated on his wall. The symbols and graphics they made were mysteries. Most of what was happening was movement within the space above the glass slide, making focus nearly impossible. The wisping fly noise and visual buzz-bombing in his eyes and ears didn’t help anything. He nearly knocked himself out trying to shoo it. Though it made no actual noise, and he couldn’t see it, something was certainly there, pestering his eye lashes and ear follicles. Finally, running from the room was his only escape. 4 “I have to see Ohmie! I just have to!” May cried, nearly distraught. She was well old enough to control her tantrums; but she was nearly inconsolable. By the time her mother decided she’d have to call her husband, May had taken to running the yard’s perimeter the same way a long-legged, yard-bound dog might, rutting the manicured lawn to a dirt path several inches below sod level. “At least let me call him,” she yelled as she made a turn near the house. “I’m afraid she might leap the fence,” the mother told May’s father over the phone. “I know it’s ten feet tall, but you should see her. I think she could do it ... Uh, oh. I was right. She just bounded over! She’s gone. Oh, there she goes … she just jumped the Scott’s backyard fence. She’s headed for LeBrant Street. You’d better get over to Ohmie’s. That’s where she’s gonna be.” May’s mother hung up the phone and went to the backyard to trace May’s route around the perimeter, her arms tightly wrapping her chest. Half frantic, she couldn’t chase after May and leave her infant baby behind. May’s father arrived too late. His daughter had borrowed a neighbor’s pickup truck, the one she knew to have a broken key stuck in the old fashion ignition, and was just exiting Ohmie’s front door, waving at him as if he was simply returning home from work. Reluctantly, he agreed to let her drive the stolen vehicle back to its owner. On his cell phone, he ordered concertina wire for their backyard. 5 “Ohmie!” she’d said casually, as if they’d spoken on a daily basis. “There’s aliens flying around. They’ve found you, but can’t communicate, or something. I saw them, or felt them rather. They’re really small. That’s all I know.” “Well, that makes sense,” Ohmie said. “I’ve been seeing them all right. And they’ve been trying to communicate, but I had no idea they were aliens. I just thought they were weird elements from somebody’s periodic table. Like they escaped from his box, or something.” “You’re gonna have to figure out how to contact me,” May said. “’Cause after this, I’m going to be on complete lockdown. But try, because I think they might try to talk to you through me.” Ohmie agreed as he escorted May to the front door just as her father approached. 6 Ohmie set the microscope with a double slide, a space large enough for a pea sized object to fit between them, calculating he could easily focus within that distance. Sure enough, he was able to detect an object, though far too small to ferret. He knew what to do. His biology microscope was way too small for the job. It would need some boosting. After strapping on a dome-shaped, crystal paper weight below the microscope’s focusing lens, he ran to get his father’s hundred-foot, ten-gauge power cord. After first ensuring that the outlet he was going to use from the other end of the house drew from the opposite breaker box pole, he was ready to convert the microscope to 220 volts. With two double mounted construction style halogen lamps in place, anticipating the immediate blow of the scope’s own tiny, two-amp bulb, he was ready to take a look at the inter-terrestrial visitors. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt, pufffffffff, pop, Ohmie sat with the remains of his microscope dripping from his hands. But not before having glimpsed the tiniest of spaceships, formed by elements of atomic size, single atoms thick, tall, or long, however their construction methods. He also smelled the rotten eggs, and experienced a certain light-headedness just before the meltdown and the power went out of the entire house. 7 May had visitors within the moment of Ohmie’s microscopic disaster, unhappy visitors. She sensed more than felt the bidden guests darting up one nostril, exiting the other, weaving through her hair, buzzing her ear drums noiselessly. She pulled her pony tail in front of her face, just above her nose. Unseen, but perched nonetheless, she ascertained the visitors between split ends much like lice nits. Concentrating, she tuned into the aliens’ wavelength. Her mother thought she’d lost her mind, and would have to be placed in a home for the mentally infirm. She even began an internet search for one as far from Ohmie as possible, starting with oceans away from their own continent, wondering whether there might be one on the moon. Just before her father was due to return home from work the next day, May finally broke the code enough to understand, at least somewhat, on the most simplistic level. The aliens needed help. Of that, she was certain. She could feel that much. Unsuccessfully attempting to communicate with the world’s leading scientists, they resorted to the one they should have approached from the very beginning – the universally acclaimed giant who’d effectively rebuffed the marauding Electrons from Eullala, the fourth planet from Obedia, a solar system at the very tail of the Milky Way. Ohmie-of-Earth was galactically famous. They found May first, before they could locate Ohmie. Having narrowed their search to the spacial coordinates of the hemispherical region of the homogenous plate, May’s effervescent, primordial ponderments regarding Ohmie pervaded the aura, confusing the visitors. Their perception was of having actually found Ohmie, not May, Girl Who Loved Ohmie. No matter, she was able to enigmatically re-direct them toward Ohmie. 8 Ohmie produced a periodic table of elements. With the house electricity restored, a trip to a few craft supply stores, and another microscope, he was ready to determine what he was dealing with. The microscope came from a Salvation Army store. It was missing the light bulb, but made of metal and had a much stronger power lens than his old plastic one. The craft and hobby stores provided him many samples of the more common elements. Along with those readily available in any garage, and especially one with the caliber of Ohmie’s project lab, he had dozens of elements of the solid nature. It proved easy to identify most of the visitors’ elements. Suspending the periodic chart from the ceiling, the aliens kamikazeed squares within the chart until Ohmie had spoken the element, written it down, and peered through the microscope at a cluster of the particular element. Unseen by Ohmie, the atoms would re-assemble to buzz-bomb another charted square. Gases proved more difficult. Though they pierced holes in the paper chart, Ohmie could see nothing through magnification. But he was able to list them. The elements continually stabbed the perimeter of three gasses until he’d listed them separately. Ohmie determined those to be elements they were missing, and that they were necessary. What Ohmie could not figure was where the spaceship was, or who commanded it. He needed to be able to speak with them. He tried block letter writing, first large print, then extremely small. Backing up to the more basic, he wrote the abbreviated symbol of one of the elements that he had purchased on a piece of paper. He sensed that the matching aliens collected on the paper couldn’t take his directed sound waves. “Go-o-o-o-o ba-a-a-a-ack to-o-o-o the gir-r-r-r-rl,” was the best he could do aside from pointing to the southwest. While he waited, Ohmie pulled a milk crate from the wall to turn over for a perch, his favorite thinking position with no rock handy. The aliens decided to go back to May, who they were somehow able to comprehend. Ohmie trekked to May’s house, as well, knowing that he would have to sneak in to see her. 9 Every substance emits a resonant signature, silver’s signature resonance is a melodic medial, midrange tone, tin is an eccentric, tight reverberance and eerier. Lead, on the other hand, has a resonance barely perceptible, nearly a straight line on the oscilloscope. Ohmie transmitted in steroidal stachotomy. His aura and vibes were rushes of busy signals that could be best described as every radio and television station transmitting on the same wavelength, and all aimed at you. Ohmie was not confused, quite to the contrary, he was absolutely focused … in a million different simultaneous directions at once. The elements could discern one from another, but couldn’t decipher which resonating influence required their strictest attention. From his orchestra, they needed to hear a single instrument, a single note, in order to understand his message. 10 One element after another basked in the resonating music of May’s soft, melancholy trilling. She knew they were about. And also knew, somehow, their need to communicate. She started with hummed lullabies, progressing to the alphabet song. On her computer, she sounded out each typed letter and the two-hundred-and-fifty-seven varieties of derivative and combination sounds. Unknown to her, the aliens, one-atom at a time, entered her computer hard drive and monitor, quickly catching on to the ones and zeros of the eight-bit binary code. By alternating their own positive and negative influentials, they could easily emulify Ohmie’s thousand-and-eighty-bit monitor. They could speak to him on any screen or monitor, and understand him by his typing. May, though, was far easier; they could easily filter out the extraneous. While the elements and combined molecules of herself all emitted chaotically, the deepest transmissions of her singularity of thought pervaded clearly, like bullets fired through a hurricane. The blasting hurricane affected the trajectory somewhat, but couldn’t alter the constitutional pattern. Her thoughts were crystalline. Inbound wasn’t as uncomplicated. May’s receptors were not as adaptable as their own simple, one-atom elementarianistic aptitudes. She couldn’t perceive beyond the base conceptual configurisms of general moodishments. Beyond hello, we are friendly, that’s the right track, and we have a great need, May was deaf. Until May agreed to sit for a one-atom-wide trillium strand to enter her brain to assist some of her neurotransmitters whose connecting routes avoided the direct, most simple paths, in lieu of her natural detouring through her emotionululucus lobe. Once in place, May was a veritable calculabus. She was way smarter than them. Ohmie would not have endured this procedure even had it been as simple a project as with May. The complicators within his mind would have required more trillium than were among them. 11 The elements returned to Ohmie, finally communicating through his monitor. Rudimental conversation was possible, but without the vowels that escaped the alien elements, effective speech was not happening. They needed May. But May was grounded. One thought was to dissemble her, reduce her to an elemental ten-mile-long rope. And re-assemble her in Ohmie’s closet. Earth-bound experience taught the newcomers that the gaseous segments were too easily broken. Parts of May would not survive the trip. Instead, they resolved to connect her with Ohmie by way of molecularity. Employing earth’s natural particules, the aliens of conducivaity enlisted atomic engagement, creating an unseen, but unbreakable connection from May’s computer microphone/speaker to Ohmie’s. All they needed was for every thousandth or so atom to be one of themselves in order to keep order among the participants. The wire coursed just beneath the surface, weaving between atoms, both naturally placed, such as ground soil and pavement or concrete. Though weakened to one-atom width where it was safe to do so, there were barely enough of them to make the connection, that is, after they were able to advise Ohmie to move his computer to the southwest corner of his room. 12 “They are the aliens,” May explained to Ohmie. “They are the spaceship. They form, deform, and reform like birds and fish behave in swarms. No one is in charge. They have no leader. And they can travel by leaning their electron circumnavigability – whatever that is.” “What do they want? Why did they come here? What do they want me to do?” Ohmie asked May to translate, even though he typed the words and the aliens could respond primitively. “They’ve been here for decades. That explosion in your microscope was the last of their fluorine being lost into our atmosphere. It was contained within the molecules of tenantentenium but your two-twenty blew them apart. Those atoms must have bonded to something else because they haven’t returned. They need more in order to escape our gravity, but we haven’t invented it yet.” “Discovered,” Ohmie corrected, immediately sorry that he had. May’s following silence reminded him of how much she didn’t care for trivial, inconsequential corrections. “Can I talk to ‘em?” Ohmie asked. “They said okay, but talk slowly and try to concentrate on one thing at a time. They’re having trouble filtering out all your natural noise.” “Noise?” “Yeah, and believe me, they’re right. I can hear it, too. They’re also going to use my translation, so go easy on the vowels.” Ohmie smiled. “I heard that!” May chided. 13 The alien elements were on a terrestrial search for phosphorus and selenium, elements in extreme short supply. Without them, their planet would stop rotating, the dark side would super-cool and the light side would overheat. Molecular binding and de-bonding will be totally out of control. The planet could even lose its orbit and transform to a super-meteor, destroying other planets in the system, maybe even causing the entire Milky Way to implode, domino-ing through the galaxy. The aliens had minimal successes since their arrival, but with the death of scientist Doctor Zcheviargo last year, they’d been dead in the water. Many scientists could hear their suggestions, or sense their leading, but were powerless to help. Silicon micro-chips, fiber-optics, and all the basic memory systems were theirs, as were all the more recent discoveries regarding the table of elements. Ununquadium, ununoctium, ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium, and ununhexium were all handed to the scientists who feigned discovery, actually believing they’d come to the conclusions and results on their own. The aliens were at their wits’ end, the end of their ropes, when Copper recalled what Ohmie’d done with Jimmy Buffett in the Arctic with the Aurora Borealis, saving the earth from the Eullalians. That had been an extremely close call for humanity. They were certain that Ohmie’s fame would soon be broadcast throughout the universe. And they just knew that the great Ohmie could help them get home. The elements were prepared to trade. They brought no extra elements of any sort. But they could easily locate within the earth, or any other planet they might search, any element whatsoever. Most times, they could coax the elements from their bondage, drawing them from any location, even de-bonding them. “How do you do that without extreme heat, or complicated bombardment processes?” Ohmie wanted to know. The aliens were anxious to get about their business, but understood Ohmie’s complexities, the greatest of which was his insatiable curiosity. “We are naturally independent,” Mercury responded. “We bond, we un-bond – just like you humans.” “Well, there’s nothing I want,” Ohmie replied. “An’ all that fame stuff the least of all.” “We could get you all the gold on the planet,” Silver said. “You humans seem to have a distinct preference for my soft cousin.” “Not interested.” “Just a little tritium would make you extremely wealthy here on Earth,” Californium said. “Not interested,” Ohmie repeated. “Make you famous,” Helium repeated the offer already rejected. Ohmie glared in the direction he felt the offer to originate. “Well, what can we do for you, then?” asked Iridium. “All I want is May … close enough to touch.” Americium bounced in hilarity off Rutherfordium like a paddleball. 14 Elements consist of neutrons, protons, and electrons. Experts knew by simple observation that if known elements were circumnavigated by two, three, four, five, six, and seven electrons, and they knew of nothing that was orbited by eight, but they did know of the elements that carried, nine, ten, eleven, and so on, then there must be an unknown element with eight electrons. Then sure enough, it was discovered. Therefore, the blanks in the periodic table must be waiting to be discovered. Many things could be surmised about the missing links by extrapolation. Discovery, though, was another matter. Similarly, proton and neuron counts corresponded. The missing elements were blaring in their absence. Commenatium and samelliotium were among the missing. 15 Lithium offered itself in sacrifice. “No, you can’t,” Calcium decried. “We can’t replace you with Earth elements. They’re way too dense … stupid, I mean. Remember when we tried to recruit iron atoms for the continuity? Why those Earth atoms couldn’t stay positive long enough to … stay red.” “They were dumb, all right,” Lithium agreed. “Just like every other Earth element we’ve ever dealt with,” Geranium added. “We’re going to have to hold Earth fluorine’s hands until we get back home to Lynnia, every single atom of it just to keep them from some idiotic bonding, snatching somebody’s electrons.” “Okay, then,” Lithium amended. “I’ll get some Earth lithium. Get it into May’s parents, and they’ll agree to whatever she suggests.” “Then why are you still here?” Astatine asked. 16 May was at Ohmie’s side within the hour, reaching to hold the hand that flittered in her direction, asking to touch, to be held. 17 “So, where do we find your elements?” Ohmie asked. “The ones you need.” “Well …” Nickel began. “That’s just it,” Strontium interrupted. “You ate it all,” Zinc lamented. “Every bit,” said Lead. “Then burned it,” Krypton added, nearly crying. “You can’t … retrieve it, purify it?” Ohmie asked. “Tainted,” Sulfur said. “Ruint forever.” “Well, then?” Ohmie shrugged his shoulders as if dismissing the elements’ plight. “Couldn’t we catapult you into orbit, or something?” May asked. “You’re pretty light.” “Couldn’t get outta orbit, out of your solar system,” Platinum replied sadly. “But you couldn’t get us through your stratosphere anyway. Without velocity, those buggering CFC’s grab our exogenicity. Our sister ship tried that. Those elements are probably in the Marianas Trench by now, bound up by Naughtilcus. Nobody escapes from that.” “Well then?” May echoed Ohmie, even his shoulder shrug. “We’re pretty sure neon and fluorine are on the moon,” Limburgminium said. Ohmie’s eyes brightened. Holding his hands up as if a road guard signaling a stop, he sat on his milk carton. May’s scalp massaging intensified as Ohmie leaned into each caress. After several moments, the elements read “patience” from May. Soon Ohmie’s eyes popped bright. “How much carbon are you?” he asked. 18 “Carbon’s your one usable attribute,” Carbon replied. “Only half dumb, but double plentiful. We can cull the stupidest out.” “Can you activate it?” Ohmie asked. “Huh?” Carbon answered. “Swiss-Cheese it. We need super-micro-porosity.” “Oh, yeah, I suppose so,” Carbon said, figuring he could get it reckoned out soon enough. “If I get you through the stratosphere, that’s only about thirty miles up … “Between the troposphere and mesosphere,” Hydrogen said. “Starts at about six miles up and is about twenty-five miles thick.” “That’s a lot of CFC’s to skirt,” Oxygen said eerily. “Every one of ‘em layin’ in ambush, all wanting to bond us up.” “Can you get to the moon from there?” Ohmie finished his question. “Get us into the mesosphere and I can get a strand to the moon with only a human being’s worth of carbon.” “How about a big diamond?” May asked, her expression reflecting concern over their option. “I’ll bet you could put the Hope Diamond to far better use,” she encouraged. Carbon’s response caused May to smile, sensing their glee over the idea of releasing the Hope diamond from its bondage. They would convert to a single atom-wide strand, penetrate the Hope diamond’s impenetrable box in Washington’s Smithsonian Museum, reduce the Hope to a similar single-atom wide strand of carbon, and drag it back into the world behind them. 19 Ohmie and May knuckled down to serious discourse with the elements. Final plans had to be made. It would take everyone’s help. Some sacrifices would be required. Not all would survive. “I’ll do it,” May volunteered. “I can propel them to the moon.” Ohmie wouldn’t hear of it. “I’ll need you to pull me out,” Ohmie said, piercing her eyes and soul. “I don’t want anyone else to … touch me,” he stammered. “Once they get me down, I’ll need you to help recompose me. They might reconstruct Sponge Bob Ohmie.” May smiled her prettiest. 20 Ohmie called Jimmy Buffett. By the afternoon of the next day an activated carbon spire would rise from Jimmy Buffett’s front lawn, which was outside the city limits, requiring no permit. The deed would be done before federal aviation authorities registered their objections. Buffett did advise the local airports of the aerial obstacle that would only be there the one day. He also called the television station, not being one to pass on an opportunity for a little free promoting. May had the horse trough in place, standing by with a warmed towel and fleecy robe. Ohmie was going to high dive into the horse trough from thirty-one miles height. That would explain the tower. Above that, the elements were on their own. A bubble of breathable oxygen and nitrogen around Ohmie was circumferized by an atom-wide layer of iron, which was more concentrated on his skull. Surrounding the iron were layers of cobalt, selenium, calcium, and berkelium. The aliens used the same elements, but the stupid earth ones for Ohmie’s spacesuit. The exterior layers would burn away during the fall. Some would dissipate, or otherwise be destroyed by the particles within the stratosphere, particularly by the dreaded CFC’s by the time Ohmie neared the trough, which was filled with regular water up to the half-full mark, and then layers of zinc, gold, and rubidium. The rim of the tank was iron. The iron atoms cued off one another. Beginning at five-hundred-and-seventy-seven feet, the iron atoms selectively reversed their polarity, slowing Ohmie’s fall by creating a buffer zone much as two magnets with similar poles abutting. Iron continued the complicated process both guiding, and slowing Ohmie to a dive as though dropped from inches above. By the time of entry, he was down to his Spandex, and the activated carbon was drawing itself up to the moon, drawn by the alien elements that by then were ready for their trip home. Ohmie had slung his microscopic friends into low earth orbit with his wrist-mounted, inertia-propulsion slingshot, from where they could self-propel. 21 And that was how Ohmie and May teamed up to save the earth once more in that the elements, on their way home, re-routed a small meteor of fairly pure tritium, aiming it at the Potomac River where it would cause a small inland tidal wave, but be easily retrieved for use in cold fusion, thus eliminating earth’s dependence on fossil fuels. Jimmy Buffett oversaw the transformation in exchange for a tiny percentage of the gross. Margaritaville was very happy.
|
| ©
Copyright 2024.
Wayne Fowler
All rights reserved. Wayne Fowler has granted FanStory.com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work. |