Part 1: Eugene’s Photonic Ranch.
Under the scorching summer sun, blistering sands grated against cacti and pushed tumbleweeds over the bones of long dead horses and bison. Not a cloud in the sky as the radiant solar beams pounded down into the lonely Mojave desert, but if one'd listened closely, the sharp pangs of an untuned banjo could be heard carried along the wind. Somewhere along the faded maplines between Kingman and Barstow, a rusted sign hung derelict over the cracked asphalt road. “Eugene’s Photonic Ranch!” it read in chipped paint. Its frame, pitifully dotted in shattered light bulbs that had given up glowing years ago. About thirty feet behind the sign sat a wide perimeter chain link fence topped with barbed wire, and at its gate, a double wide home of rusted aluminum siding and taped together windows. As for Eugene himself, today he could be found beneath a tall plume of grey smoke that shot straight for the crystalline blue sky.
His six foot tall frame stood shirtless beneath a stained canvas apron, baring his deeply scarred back to the sun as he turned a spit with one hand and grasped firmly at a cold beer with the other. Occasionally, he’d release his hand from the spit to wave it across the yard towards a banjo that he’d perched into a plastic lawn chair about twenty feet away. He’d wave his hand, and a discordant note would ring out.
He grunted to himself. Eventually he’d figure this thing out. He moved the can of beer to his mouth and clenched the lip of it between his teeth in order to free his other hand to turn the spit. Waving again at the banjo he got another two notes, and with an almost graceful decrescendo movement of his hand, a soft chord finally sang from the instrument. “Fucking finally!” He yelled through his clenched teeth. It had taken almost an hour of fiddling with the settings to get his hand fine tuned enough to pluck the strings of his banjo from twenty feet away. The first attempt had been an absolute failure. One wave of his hand and he’d toppled a stack of tractor tires on the other side of the yard, but Eugene loved to find the silver linings. Only an hour of practice and he’d finally irked out a respectable, harmonious chord. Eugene counted it as an ineffable victory.
Not that he didn’t know how to use the cybernetic in his hand, he’d had it for about a month. He’d mostly used it for light jobs though, building sculptures for the yard, moving tires, or on this particular morning, impaling a hog on a spit and placing it over a firepit. He’d been told that the controls could be almost limitless so long as he practiced with it, but he’d also been explicitly told that it wasn’t a toy, and, well here he was plucking banjo strings half-drunk in the sun.
He turned his eyes back to the revolving pig, slowly dripping fat into the fire as its skin crackled and crispened over the heat. Eugene grabbed the can and slung his head back to guzzle down the last gulp of beer in the can. He felt the familiar haptic vibration in his right temple. Something had passed the boundary line of his front yard. He waited by the spit, one hand resting on the handle of the spit, and one eye half-winked in anticipation for the second haptic buzz, a notification that the something was now on his porch. Once he felt it, he twirled his index finger towards the spit causing it to automatically rotate on its own, mistakenly sending the banjo sailing forty feet into the air at the same time. He wrenched his face at the pained mix of notes and wreckage as the banjo crashed somewhere on the opposite end of the yard. “Damn it to hell.” He muttered as he walked towards the gate.
He cast his apron off onto a rusted wagon wheel that’d been leaned against the fence, picking up an old muscle shirt to replace it. He passed through the gate and rounded the corner towards the porch, bounding up the steps as he went, laying eyes on a young woman, late twenties as by his guess. She wore a worried look, pursed lips and drawn in brows tucked tastefully beneath a bundle of short curly hair.
“Well hiya there missy! Welcome to Eugene’s Photonic Ranch!” He jutted a hand out in greeting as he continued, his voice taking on that of a game show prize announcer. “We’ve got sculptures, and illusions an-”
“Do you have any gas?” She interrupted, stopping Eugene right in his tracks. “My car is out of fuel. Please I’ve already walked I don’t know how many miles, and I’m dehydrated and my feet are killing me and-”
“Gas?” Answered Eugene, his eyes darting back and forth in his skull as he searched his mind desperately for the nicest words. “Tell you what, come in and let me get you some lemonade or something and, uh, well we’ll go from there.
Eugene led her through the screen door of his double wide. “Ignore the mess please. The outside bit there is really the attraction. This part’s just my house.” He chuckled. “Behind the scenes for you I guess. Come in, come in, it’s safe I promise. Probably the safest place on route sixty-six if I'm totally honest with you.” His voice faded away, still a mumbling sound somewhere in the house as she crinkled her nose at stacks of old mildewed newspapers resting on the counters, and the moth eaten corners of what was clearly a reclaimed seventies era sofa. Her mind railed against the idea completely, yet she sat herself onto the garish cushions peppered with the faded stitching of bright flamboyant flowers. She held her purse in her lap, her hands white knuckling around the strap as she stared at the stacks of dirty dishes on the coffee table. “Which I mean, now that I think of it, probably isn’t the best thing to say if you’re trying to put a nervous lady at ease, am I right?” He said as reappeared in the room, a serving tray in his hand with three chilled glasses.
“Um, thank you.” She forced out as he approached. She had only begun to raise her hands to take the tray from him when he swung his leg through the air and kicked the dishes to the floor. The lady was so taken aback by the action that it took her a moment to realize that her hands were still hanging idly in the air as he set the tray down.
“Now, I know what you’re thinking.” Started Eugene. “This place is a total trainwreck right?” He exclaimed, flourishing his hands out as he spoke. As he waved them a muffled crash could be heard from the back yard. He grimaced his face for a moment before placing his hands on his hips. “What kind of a lowdown trashperson lives like this?” He continued, stretching his mouth into a dramatic gasp. “Well, I’ll let you know, it’s all tactical. Generally, I like to keep my place clean as a whi-”
“Gas. Sir. Please.”
He huffed a breath through his nose. “Right. Are you familiar with the idea of a dead zone?” He asked. “Dry land? No-service area?” He looked into her wide empty eyes, her mouth creeping open as if some snarky retort would miraculously appear on her tongue while he sat in a patchwork recliner on the opposite side of the table. “Well,” he snapped, rubbing his knuckles on his left wrist. “That’s where you are. The closest destination for gas is about a hundred and fifty miles back the way you came, or about a hundred and fifty miles farther down the blacktop thataway.” He said motioning his left hand behind him, pausing to listen through the window for any further movement from the yard. He gave himself a slight nod of confirmation when he hadn’t heard anything.
“Well, do you have a phone I can use? I tried calling my roadside assistance people from the car but there isn’t any service out here.”
“There sure isn’t.” Eugene nodded. “And there definitely isn’t any in here.”
“Wh-what do you mean there-”
“Ah shit! Sorry, again, not the thing to say to a nervous stranger!” He said, bopping himself on the head. “What I mean to say is no. I do not have a phone.”
“Well, can you, I don’t know, give me some fuel maybe? Or a ride into town to get some?” By Eugene’s ear, her situation had not at all hampered her ability to sustain a sense of attitude.
“No and no.” He shot back. “One, I don’t have any, and two, you want me, a total stranger, to take you one hundred and fifty miles and back through the desert to hope you’ve got enough money to buy enough fuel to restart your car?” He dropped his hands onto his knees to make a clapping sound. “Ain’t happening. At least not tonight.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do then?” She fired off.
“Well Cindy, can I call you Cindy? What I reckon we’ll have to do is-”
“My name is Lucy.” She asserted.
“Lucy?”
“That’s right,”
“Like the ball?”
“What?”
“Nothing. What I reckon we do, Lucy, is you stay here for the night. I’ve got some things I’ve got to take care of, but in the morning I’ll have some gas for you to get to your car.”
“What the fuck? Stay here?” She shot up from her seat in disgust. “You are out of your hick fucking mind if you think that I’m gonna stay here.” She marched back towards the door, preparing to give it hard thrust open.
“You’re welcome to take your chances with the sun.” Eugene called after her. “And the rattlesnakes, and gila monsters to boot.” She stopped at the door. “I know it isn’t ideal for you, either of us really, but I honestly don’t see that you’ve got any choice.”
She gazed down in defeat before turning from the door. “At least the eating will be good right? I smelled something roasting as I walked up.”
“Out of the question.” Eugene fired back in dismissal.
“Wh-what?” Gasped Lucy. “You’re really going to eat all of that by yourself?” Her voice nearly rising to a yell as she stepped back towards him.
“Also out of the question.” Eugene answered.
“So what the fuck?” She barked.
“Don’t worry about it Cin-, uh, Lucy. That’s my business.” He stood now from the recliner. “Whats say you get a drink and I’ll sort you a room and some food. I got water, coke, and lemonade there for you.” She looked at the glasses, finally seeming to accept her circumstance as she picked up the sweating glass of cola.
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Lucy laid back onto the dusty pull-out couch. The pitch black of the room was hardly any comfort to her. Everything smelled of dust and age as if she’d died and been sentenced to live on a nursing home bookshelf as punishment. She replayed his affirmations again and again in her mind. He would get her fuel first thing in the morning, but he added rules once he’d shown her to her room. “Lights out at ten.” He’d informed her, his tone more of a command than a request. Even for the short time that she had known Eugene, seemed out of character for him. “Once your lights go out, they don’t come back on and you most definitely do not leave this room until you see sunlight come through those blinds. You got it?” She remembered wanting to bite back at him, to tell him that she wasn’t his prisoner, but his tone had an urgency to it, an edge of danger even she wasn’t going to fight back on, not tonight.
It all raced through her mind on a loop as she twisted and turned on the hard spring mattress. She’d punched her pillow about a dozen times trying to get it to even a half comfortable feel. At last she found the magic position, the right amount of cover, the right spot over the jutting springs and the pillow placed just right under her head. She slowly began to drift away into sleep, feeling her limbs finally relax into the cushion when the entire house seemed to shake.
It was one sudden jolt to the house itself followed by a persistent vibration. Lucy’s eyes shot open in what was quickly boiling into a rage, but she ceased all movement when she noticed a stream of green light piercing through the blinds. The light faded and brightened cyclically before finally resting at a set brightness. The vibration persisted. She heard the screech of the front door open followed by Eugene’s muffled voice seeping through the walls. Lucy shot a hand to cover her mouth as she heard another voice answer, much louder than Eugene. It sounded manufactured, computed almost with a buzzing sound that underlined each phrase. Lucy slowly crept down from the bed, softly guiding her body over hands, then her knees to the floor as she silently crawled towards the door.
“Now I know I’ve made several attempts.” She heard Eugene say. “But I’m thinking this’ll be the one.”
“We shall be the judge of that contact Eugene.” The voice droned. Lucy heard a crunching sound along with a horrendous slurping noise.
“Mhmm, what d’ya think of that?” Eugene sang out.
“Hmmm.” The voice hummed in reply.
“What the fuck?” Lucy mouthed to herself quietly. The floor shuddered as a loud slam could be heard from the other room. Lucy stifled her own shriek of surprise at the sound.
“It is unsatisfactory contact Eugene.” The voice rumbled.
“Aw what-what do you mean unsatisfactory?” Eugene cried out. “I spent all day turning that thing on the spit for you. Tending the coals just right, basting it with a mop, and you’re saying it still isn’t right?”
“As we have said before Eugene. It is not the same as a Knervevryn.”
“Ok, ok.” Eugene’s voice sounded deflated and worn. “I know what I’ll have to do now. It’ll be right next time. You can bet on it.”
“It had better be, Eugene. Remember that the fate of your planet rests in our hands. It would be wise to not test our patience.”
“Oh calm down. You know I’ll get it right next time.”
“Do you have the data?”
“Oh yeah!” Eugene cheered. “Come out here with me.” Lucy could hear each of their footsteps across the floor out of the house. Eugene’s were quick and light, while the others were heavy and slow trodding. She laid by the door for what felt like an hour before the vibrations began to kick up again, a thumping bass noise pulsated through the air making her hair stand on end. The green lights flickered a moment before flashing brightly, illuminating her entire room before disappearing and sending the room back into stark darkness. Lucy laid in shock at what she’d just overheard. Her mind swam as she tried to figure out what any of it even meant? Was that an alien? On route sixty six? And did Eugene roast them a fucking pig? And what data?
“Lucy?” Her entire body convulsed as she shot across the floor at the sound of Eugene calling her from the other side of the door.
“Uh, wh-what is it Eugene?” She called, her words shaking as she spoke.
“Please go to sleep.” He replied.
