Chapter 39

Ruth and Phil sat on a bench in the entrance to the walking path across from Joshua Enterprises. It was a mild, sunny day. It had something of the feel of a field trip day at school. They were there, they were still on the job, but there was nothing really serious to do.

Ruth looked down at the tablet in her hand.

“Should we give it to Gordon?” she asked.

“I don’t know – since he has gone all Howard Hughes on us. It might set him off in some odd way.”

“George finished this just days before he died.”

Phil nodded. They had half expected to see Joshua at the funeral. After being released from the hospital, Joshua had just simply and thoroughly disappeared. Sometimes he had got away without Phil knowing, for a week or so, but Joshua was such a family man, he would always be back home soon, walking between his office and his home. Now nothing, no indications, and yet no alarms coming out from the family.

The company continued. They still worked on all the different variations and subtle uses of the zone grass, but they had expanded out, water plants that made formerly deadly ponds into fresh and clean drinking water and something to do with grown homes, variants of trees that grew into walls. Some people used them for little getaway huts in the woods and for playhouses, but a few communities of grown homes were starting to be – grown. Phil grimaced.

“What?” Ruth asked.

“Nothing,” he said and reached over and briefly touched her knee.

A sudden breeze swept through the area. It swirled their hair around. Ruth had cut hers’ quite short. Phil was getting a little shaggy and was growing a beard. He looked like an aging hippy, with gray in his beard. Following the style of the times, which as it came to it, he really liked, his cloths were a simple cotton shirt over durable and comfortable pants made from some new plant fiber, he wasn’t sure which. Ruth’s cloths were similar, except that hers’, he noticed, showed something of the contours of her body. He wore simple cloth shoes with soles woven from some kind of plant material and held together with some kind of tree sap. They were extremely durable and light. Ruth wore sandals with similar soles. One of her legs was crossed over the other and the sandal was dangling from her foot as she moved it around. He noticed her toes.

She looked over at him.

“When I started out in SETI, I had this unstated feeling that if we ever found evidence of other intelligent life, it would be an event of earth shaking consequences. Somehow it would complete my life and would bring meaning to the world.”

“Sounds kind of mystical.”

“Yes, I think even with the hard-nosed SETI researchers there was an element of that. The aliens would be great and superior and set us all straight. Wars would cease. There would be a flowering of technology and culture.”

“Well, the wars are still there, all those small ones over – what?”

“The last gasps of scarcity economics.”

“Not you too,” he grimaced.

She smiled. “Oh, well.”

“A lot has changed. It wasn’t a sudden transformation though.”

“I think people looking back fifty years from now will see it all as fundamental. Now we just see a different kind of computer technology or more direct and quick plant breeding.”

“No channeled messages from aliens that sound like ascended masters?”

“You used to read those books?”

“When I was a teenager.”

She chuckled and touched one of his arms.

“No one has deciphered the original signal yet?”

“No, but it’s now universally accepted as evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization. SETI research has shown its promise, so the funding presentations say. I don’t think there will be a problem keeping SETI going.” She looked down at her tablet. “But I wish I could get access to that galactic network Joshua so casually mentioned.”

A grim look came over Phil’s face. “You know I have very good evidence that Gordon gave my Joshua presentation to the preservationists. It is all out there in the public memesphere now.”

She nodded. “I figured it must have been him.”

“One good thing is that they don’t seem to have any interest in Janna or the kids. They are within the fold of the genome apparently. But they are still hot for Joshua.”

“In a way it seems like the human race has a right to know. I wonder about putting George’s notes out there. Joshua’s confession.” She smirked.

“He doesn’t confess to much that can be pinned down. His form of an alien invasion is more like kudzu into Georgia than War of the Worlds.”

She laughed. “Good analogy.”

“If we put out everything we have, what harm would it do?”

“Well, I fear for Janna’s privacy and maybe even her safety – her and the kids.”

He looked over to the office. The parking lot over there was smaller now. Many of the employees lived close by and walked or biked in. Others came in a company bus. Where much of the former lot was, there was now a large patch of daylilies, the variety that was optimized for food. He even added some flowers to his salad from time to time and he liked the tubers. Damn, those permaculture greenies were getting him now, too. But Janna. He really had a lot of sympathy for her. What good would it do? Finally he nodded slowly, and turned toward Ruth, still nodding.

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“Well, George is gone, Gordon is in hiding, Joshua has disappeared. What is our mandate now?”

“The bills are still being paid. Our salaries are still coming in. We should do something.”

Ruth stood up. She walked over to her car. They had driven there together. She opened the trunk and got out a small backpack and a quilt.

“Let’s go for a walk.” She smiled and handed him the quilt.

With the keen senses of the human male, Phil had a feeling that things were just about to change between them.