It was the beginning of the end and he
was the one who first noticed it, the bright red dot on the green
screen that went “BLIP” with a regular pace, slow and powerful,
like a giant's heart, before it disappeared and the heart stopped
beating.
He was a slight man, hunched and
balding with a mustache that held dark brown hairs with gray strands
running at crooked angles between the remaining youthful hairs. His
teeth were crooked, but not so much that it became a character trait,
just enough to not redeem the rest of his looks. He wore suspenders
to work. It would have been unstylish at another job, but here no
one cared. Other men wore them too. They all dressed the same
despite there being little official dress code. It was just
understood that dark trousers and dark shoes and dark socks would be
topped with a light shirt and a dark tie and dark suspenders.
Patterns were acceptable if they were inconspicuous. They would have
been fine outfits to be buried in had anyone been left to bury the
dead.
This man, this slight, hunched,
balding, mustached, graying, poorly dressed, unstylish man, had a
first name, but that wasn't used. He was just Michaels because that
was his last name and there wasn't another man with the same last
name in the office. If there was, there might have been some way to
tell them apart or refer to one and not the other, but the sad truth
is that it might have annoyed the commanders enough to simply have
one of them transferred out of the department to avoid confusion.
There was a legendary problem with men named Smith finding a
department they could stay with.
Michaels played back the recording of
the “BLIP” on his radar to confirm to himself that it actually
happened. His job for three years had been to stare at this monitor
that never registered a single bit of activity. Three years of
questioning his career and wondering exactly what he was supposed to
be looking for. There had never been anything, not even a
malfunction with the machine, though he wondered if he would ever
know if it was broken, given the absence of data to show it was
working. He questioned it functionality at first, but was assured
that when he went home, it was checked every night. What kind of
machine is checked every night, he wondered.
After he confirmed that his eyes
weren't playing tricks on him, he watched the screen for a few more
minutes. He looked around to see if someone was watching him,
waiting for his reaction. He looked down his line of monitors at the
other men in the office, each scribbling down notes and registering
data from their screens. Little lights on poles went up over their
desks when they had something to turn in and a messenger would run
down from the commander's office, snatch it up and run back up to his
over-hanging office that watched over all of them. Rows and rows of
computers, each manned and busy, except for his, until today.
He reached over for the switch to his
light and hesitated. He had never had to turn on his light, but his
official protocol was to notify the commander of any activity on his
station. He flipped the switch and the light turned on. He sat and
waited, holding the memory stick with the recording in his hands,
twirling it and looking around. He looked back to his side and was
surprised to find a messenger already at his desk with a stern look
on his face and his hand extended.
Michaels gave him the memory stick and
the messenger left. Michaels turned off his light and went back to
watching his screen. A few minutes later, he heard murmuring and
whispering behind and turned to look. The commander himself, with
four aids and the messenger that had come to Micheals were walking
down the aisle. The commander came up to Michaels and extended his
hand.
“Commander Niles Davoy,” he said,
shaking Michaels hand.
“Ensign Nathan Michaels,” Michaels
said, then adding, “Sir.”
“I want to confirm that this memory
stick came from you. That it came from this desk and this monitor
and that you actually saw that “BLIP” with your own two eyes.”
“Yes, sir. That's what happened.”
“Thank you, Michaels. As you were,”
the commander said. Then he turned on his heels and walked through
his aids, who followed the commander back up to his loft, leaving the
messenger and Michaels.
“What was that about?” asked the
messenger.
“I have no idea,” said Michaels.
A few other government officials
learned about the “BLIP” but that was as public as it was made.
Michaels never knew what it was and sat at his desk, looking for
another one until the world was destroyed a few minutes later.
