Forgotten Songs...Inclusive

"Liz Bullitt," the girl said as she held out her hand. "I doubt you remember me..."

"Of course I do. You started us down this road, if I remember correctly..."

"Well, not exactly. He did," she said, pointing at the tall stranger.

Sherman turned to the man and held out his hand. "Gene Sherman," he said warmly.

"Callahan. Harry Callahan. You the priest?"

"I am."

"Yeah? So...what's with the hooker?"

"Costume party," Dana said. "You know, Halloween?"

"Right," Callahan sighed. "Nice tits, kid. Think you can keep 'em out of our way tonight?"

"I'll do my best."

"Who's the other broad?"

"Debra Sorensen," Eisenstadt said, moving to hug her step-daughter.

Which Callahan ignored. "You related to Sorensen in LA? The movie guy?"

"I am. He's my father."

Callahan turned and walked away -- and Liz chased after him.

"You ready to go?" Sherman asked Eisenstadt.

"No, but I..."

Everyone outside that night instinctively flinched and ducked as something impossibly bright illuminated the sky, and Sherman looked straight up into the night sky, towards the zenith, and to where the star Polaris should have been.

The light dimmed and Polaris reappeared -- but then, moments later the light exploded anew across the night sky again...

...but Sherman stood tall, started timing the bursts...

...and seven seconds later the light faded again...

...then, seven seconds later, the star signaled again...

And there were seven such signals before Polaris returned to its normal state.

"Did you count seven?" Eisenstadt sighed.

"Yes," Sherman answered, "and the duration of each burst was seven seconds, and there was a seven second gap between when one burst faded-out completely and when the next began."

"Well, if anyone doubted the evidence of intelligence out there," Eisenstadt muttered.

"That wasn't the signal, was it?" Callahan snarled.

"No," Sherman said. "Wrong position in the sky, and not quite the correct time, either."

"I'd say that was just like dimming the lights before the main performance is set to begin," Liz Bullitt added.

"Let's go," Dana said, bringing everyone back to the present, and Sherman nodded.

The team of astronomers working the main telescope at Lick was gathered around a bank of widescreen monitors, so they hadn't really seen the Polaris Event, but they had seen the night sky turn bright white...

"Sherman? What happened out there?"

"Polaris flashed seven times," he replied.

"Flashed?"

"Almost looked like flares from a nova, but it's still there," he added.

"So, the laser cannon again?" one of the other astronomers said.

Sherman nodded. "That'd be my guess."

"What show offs," Eisenstadt chuckled. "The first signal was half a sky away in Sagittarius and Polaris is only, what, 430 light years distant?"

"433," another astronomer chided, "versus ten thousand light years. So, they're telling they move around a lot."

"Is the scope centered?" Sherman asked.

"Yes, centered on 52 Cygni, right along the edge of the Western Veil Nebula, as per the signal."

"Same, oh, but -- what...is...that?" the senior astronomer present said as he peered at the monitor.

"That looks like a White Dwarf, Gene. And...is that a planet?"

Then an email came in from Palomar, and then another from the McDonald Observatory in West Texas. They'd both observed two large ringed gas giants, both with large moons, and both just on their threshold of observation. Then the Subaru Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii sent out an alert on the Planetary Society's Flash Network, alerting all observatories worldwide to begin observations of the new system. A general announcement from the International Astronomical Union followed, listing the system's coordinates and what was currently known, and Gene Sherman pulled up this email on his phone and read through it twice...

A white dwarf star, which was, essentially, a dying star. Two gas giants. At least eleven minor planets with an unknown number of moons. A possible asteroid belt between the two gas giants.

Sherman looked at the system on the screen and shook his head, because something just wasn't adding up. He was missing something. Something important.

An unknown civilization has signaled us, in effect warning us of this new system's existence.

"Why?"

"Why what?" Harry Callahan said.

"The pulses in Sagittarius twenty two years ago gave us the date and time when these objects would appear, as well as the coordinates..."

"You mean," Callahan grumbled as he pointed at the sky, "someone out there sent us a message? About this?"

"Precisely. Yes," Deborah Eisenstadt said, "and so we finally know the answer to that question. We are not alone."

Callahan crossed his arms over his chest, then he turned and looked at Sherman. "If the message was sent as a warning then those planets pose a direct threat to us," Callahan said, his eyes boring into Sherman's. "Can you figure out the if the system is moving or not, and if it is, where to?"

"We'll need to observe the system for days, possibly weeks, but yes, in the end we'll be able to."

Dana Goodman stepped close to Sherman and cleared her throat: "The system will significantly alter the orbits of every planet in this solar system," she said. "The white dwarf star will pass between Jupiter and Mars; Mars and her moons will be torn from their orbits and sent into deep space. Earth and the planet Venus will be torn from their respective orbits, both will be captured by the blue gas giant, while the atmospheres of both will be stripped away during capture."

"What?" Erskine Davis, the director of the observatory said. "How could you possibly know all this?"

Dana ignored the question: "You have noticed the large red gas giant in this new system. This body will collide with Jupiter, and a massive stellar ignition will result, in effect sterilizing all planets in this new system. Over the course of the next five million years a new atmosphere will form on Earth, and over the next ten million years the process of life will begin again."

"When will this new system begin to interfere with the orbital dynamics of our current solar system?" Gene Sherman asked.

"In forty three years. Life on this planet will cease completely in fifty two years."

There were a handful of astronomers in the observatory, but no one spoke now. What this woman was saying was too preposterous to believe, yet her statements were so credibly delivered it was almost impossible not to believe them, yet just then a blue sphere not quite seven meters in diameter descended through the observatory's metal dome and settled just above the concrete floor. Dana Goodman walked to the sphere and turned to face Debra Sorensen.

"It was nice to finally meet you, Mother," Dana said to Debra, and then she stepped inside the sphere and she seemed to dissolve from view.

"Well, that's not something you see everyday," Harry Callahan said, scratching his chin. "Is it just me, or does anyone else around here feel like a cheeseburger and fries? Maybe a beer?"

Sherman walked over to the monitor and looked at these new, unknown planets arrayed on the screen, then he turned and looked at Debra Sorensen, then Harry Callahan. "A beer sounds good," the astronomer-priest sighed.

The two peg-legged men walked out of the observatory and into the night, yet neither spoke. Neither looked up into the fading remnants of the night sky.

"Why did I get the impression," Callahan said -- to no one in particular, "that the hooker isn't done with you?"

Sherman looked away, but he whispered one word: "Procreate."

"Oh yeah?" Harry added. "Sounds like wishful thinking, if you ask me?"

Sherman stopped walking and closed his eyes for a moment...then he smiled.

Outside of Copenhagen, Denmark, near the village of Glostrup 1943

Saul Rosenthal found Aaron Schwarzwald's body dumped in a field two days after his friend's murder. When he found the body a single black raven was perched on Aaron's shoulder, and the bird seemed to be waiting for something to happen.

Saul buried his friend within a small glade between stands of towering birch trees, and the grass around them danced on seaborne breezes as he said the prayer for the dead. Then he watched as the bird flew away, almost without a care in the world.

And so here ends Forgotten Songs From An Imaginary Life. This work © 2021-22 adrian leverkühn | abw | all rights reserved, and as usual this was a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's (twisted) imagination or coincidentally referenced entities are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. In other words, this is just a little bit of fiction, pure and simple.