Not Enough Stars In The Night

It was 03:00am and chilly for October, but nobody by the shores of the lake seemed to mind what the temperature was. The weather report for once had been accurate, and the night sky was crisp and clear, the stars so bright it almost hurt to stare at them.

Ken Fletcher sat on a point of land that jutted out into the calm lake waters, sitting with the others who were fortunate enough to live here, listening to their laughs and whispers, waiting with them, waiting for them. A warbling cry from a loon out on the far shores made Fletcher shiver, and he pulled a blanket over his lap.

"Look!" came the voice of a young girl. "I saw one, right there!"

Fletcher tilted his head back, looked at the wide expanse of stars, and then…

"Right there!"

"Did you see it?"

"My God, it was like fireworks!"

Fletcher held his hands together, checked his illuminated watch. Right on time, and he sat with the group of people as the Leonid meteor showers kicked in, supposedly the best in a hundred years. Fletcher shifted his weight on the quilt he was sitting on, as the people around him stirred and laughed and pointed out the meteors streaking over head. One young boy – Jason, was that his name? – sat next to him and said, "Mister Fletcher?"

"Yes?"

"What's the difference between a meteor and a meteorite?"

"Well, Jason, a meteor is what you see when it burns through the Earth's atmosphere. A meteorite is when it doesn't burn all the way up and it lands on the ground."

"Oh. Thanks." And another voice in the darkness, "See, I told you he'd know. I told you."

More ooohs and aaaahs. He tilted his head back again, watched the streaks of the meteor trails overhead. Other meteors he had seen before, when he was younger, they were such a quicksilver flash, a blink of an eye and you were never sure if you had actually seen it. But the meteors churning their way through the atmosphere at this early hour, they were leaving thick, bright tails that dazzled the eyes.

He took a breath, smelled the lake water and the pine forests about them. There was no sound of traffic, no drone of overhead aircraft, no dome of orange light on the horizon that marked a mall or highway strip or housing stretch. Just the laughs and exclamations from the small collection of happy neighbours, watching the overhead sky show.

It looked perfect up there, the Milky Way stretching overhead, the gauzy wispiness making it look like some thin curtain of light had been stretched overhead. No aircraft, no satellites, no searchlights advertising God-knows-what.

There was movement about him, and somebody laughed. "Tucker! Sit down!"

An English springer spaniel dog dropped next to him, carrying a tennis ball in its mouth. The dog rolled over and Fletcher reached over and rubbed its belly. There was nothing there, just for a split second, and then the wiry sensation of the dog hair, the firmness of its skin. He scratched at its belly and there was another shriek from one of the children.

"There! Did you see that? Did you?"

A woman's voice, behind him. "Is Tucker bothering you?"

He turned and even in the dim light, could make out her long hair, stretching out over a down vest, worn over a cotton nightgown. Marie, he thought. That was her name.

"No, Marie, not at all," he said.

"Can I sit next to you?"

"Of course," he said.

Marie moved in next to him, and he lifted up the quilt so she could slide her long legs underneath. She shifted her weight so she was close to him, and he could smell her scent. A bit of vanilla in it, it seemed.

"Beautiful night," she said.

"God, you're right."

"Enjoying it?"

"Yes, yes, of course."

The children's voices were as excited as before, pointing out the streaks of lights. A few were so bright they reflected in the still waters of the lake. Marie leaned in. "I'm so glad you moved in this past summer. The people who lived in your place before… ugh."

He managed to smile. "Ugh?"

"Too many parties, too much noise at night, too much of everything. Nobody over there wanted to relax and blend in and enjoy the surroundings. Until you came along. Somebody who appreciated what it's like, living by a lake."

Cautiously he moved his right hand over to her, grazing her wrist, and then he travelled down and he touched the back of her hand. It was smooth and warm. It felt nice. He curled his fingers around and squeezed and she squeezed back, and she said nothing, just leaned into him, a wind coming up and some of her fine hair tickling his nose.

He breathed in her scent some more and then spotted something off to the west. A bright band of light, rectangular, just above the wooded horizon.

He looked at it and wondered if anyone else could see it, but everyone about him were still amazed at the light show overhead. He stared at the rectangular shape, stared and stared at it, and it didn't move, it didn't vary in intensity, it was just there. Damn it.

He took a breath and raised his voice: "Tango Charlie Charlie, end program twelve. End program twelve."

It all shifted. The laughter and the call of the loons and the scent of Marie's hair and the faint breeze from the lake and the stars and the trees and the reflection of the meteor trails on the water and the touch of Marie's hand in his… And faded out.

He took a breath.

The room he was in was small, the size of a one-person dome tent back when he had camped for a while, enjoying the solitude while growing up in a part of Montana that hadn't yet been subdivided. He blinked his eyes again as the tears rushed in, as they always did, when it felt for a moment as if he were a youngster, dreaming he'd won a million dollars, right up to the point when the alarm clock chimed in and shattered everything, just as you had the million dollars in your hand.

Behind him he could sense the noise and the lights and the chatter of the voices as the hatch slid open with a click, and Emerson leaned in and said, "You okay in there, traveller?"

"Yeah, give me a sec," he said, wiping at his eyes. The dream gone. Just like that. He moved around and started out. Hands reached to him, to lift him, and he tossed them off and blinked again in the harsh light of the testing room.

Workbenches, terminals, monitors, lots of chairs, a table for eating and drinking and dozing underneath. A large white board taking up an entire wall, filled with scribbles and diagrams. People looked at him, short-termers and full-timers, a couple of them with handhelds, pointing at him and sucking everything in, so he gave his quickie debrief, as good as he could: "Better but not quite there yet."

"Why the termination?" Emerson, a tall, lanky guy who was the group leader and still looked like a high school kid, trying to clear up his complexion and grow a beard.

"You were losing clarity on the western horizon. Looked like a damn window was opening up. Quite distracting."

"You could have kept on with the program," somebody said.

"Yeah, but why screw with it?" he said, irritation growing in his voice. "Everything starts chattering and falling apart. And there were two precursors that the program was collapsing. There was about a half-second delay in touching the dog's belly before I could feel anything. And there was something wrong with the woman's scent. The request was for cinnamon. I got vanilla."

"You sure?"

He walked over to one of the easy chairs, set up in the corner, which was his and his alone. He sat down and let his legs stretch out. "Yeah, I know the difference between vanilla and cinnamon. Jesus, leave me alone, will you?"

Somebody passed over a bottle of spring water, and he greedily drank. More comments were coming in from the crew, cascading over one another, as he sat there and decompressed and tried to take everything in. It was always like this after a test session. Always. And even though he felt dehydrated and irritable and everything seemed too bright and too noisy, he knew he was one of the better testers, one of the more calm testers.

There were rumors on the Net about suicides and test facility shoot-ups from other testers, other competitors, who couldn't handle the quickie decompression from virtual reality to real reality, but the CorpNews uploaders always managed to squelch those stories. Most times.

He kept his eyes closed, as the chatter continued:

"…told you we needed another processor for that part of the horizon…"

"…it was a kludgy fix and you know it. Care to write the specs for something so confusing? Man, if you knew…"

"…I dunno, this scenario still seems too white bread for me…"

"…why a dog? I'd rather use my cat, he's better behaved…"

He opened his eyes, took in the test room. Off to the right was the sim module that he had just emerged from, with cables and output jackets coming off the top like some damn Medusa hair scare. A door leading to the rest of the building was off to the left, locked shut and tight, and with a sign pasted in the middle:

WHAT YOU SEE HERE…

WHAT YOU HEAR HERE…

WHAT YOU DO HERE…

WHEN YOU LEAVE HERE…