As Seen From Above
A Science Fiction Short Story
Another plane roared out and cast its shadow over Innkeeper Street. Henry Charles watched the 737 ascend to the sky and felt the roof of his house rattle from the noise. Sometimes you got so used to it, you didn't even notice; other times, it made so much furniture shudder you wished you lived somewhere quiet, like next to train tracks. But Henry still happened to like airplanes, and on quiet Sunday mornings like this, he liked to come up here to watch the takeoffs and landings.
Henry checked his phone. That last takeoff would have been Flight 34 to Charleston, and the marker on the map on his phone showed it beginning to turn roughly southeastward. At the same time, a Flight 3221 was coming in for a landing from Tulsa. According to the app, it had taken off at 5:30 AM—factoring in time zones, about the same time as Neil's flight out this morning.
He was just about to check on that flight when his phone rang. And it was in fact his friend Neil Weissmueller. "Hey," Henry said, "you finally land?"
"Just now. We're still taxiing in, but I'm now officially in Miami."
"Don't let the gators getcha."
"Careful or I'll get you the worst crocs ever as a souvenir. Hey, listen, I gotta tell you something. I saw your street from the plane."
"Yeah, I know. I've seen it, too. I would have come out to wave at you, but I was up super late last night." Henry just had to defeat Omega Weapon, no matter how long it took to grind.
"That's not what I mean. You know that garden next to the church around the corner from your place?"
He meant the community garden at the Russian Orthodox church. Henry's mom sometimes picked their tomatoes and shopped at the farmers' market they hosted on Saturdays. "What about it?"
"I saw somebody burying something in that garden. Some kinda box."
"Maybe it was the priest?"
"I can't really be sure, but I'm thinking no."
"Then maybe it's a groundskeeper or someone who helps with the garden. What's the big deal?"
"But why would they bury a box there? And why would it be glowing?"
Henry turned toward the church. The cross atop the dome poked out from behind the trees. "Glowing?"
"Yeah, bright blue. Couldn't miss it."
"It wasn't one of those torch lights, was it? Maybe with LEDs?
"No, it was a cardboard box, he was putting it in the hole, and the light was coming from inside. Besides, the sun was already coming up. I could see it right from my window. He didn't need a flashlight that badly."
Flight 3221 dropped down from the clouds toward the airport. "What do you want me to do about it?"
"I dunno, I guess go check on it? Maybe ask that priest. It's Sunday, so he's bound to be there."
Henry began to skitter himself down to the ladder. "I'll see what I can do."
"No rush. I just wanted to make sure you knew before, I dunno, an EMP went off."
"Thanks. Have fun in Miami!"
"Will do!"
Henry climbed down as another flight took off, causing the ladder to rattle just as he touched down. The services at that church would be starting right about now, so he'd give it an hour or so before checking over there.
When he did go out, people were starting to trickle out of the church, across the parking lot to the parish hall, and he went in along with them. Hopefully nobody would mind him showing up without actually attending the service. He thought about grabbing coffee, but maybe that was just for parishioners.
The priest was easy enough to spot—the guy with the black cassock and the gray beard putting the Oreos and mixed fruits on his plate. Henry waited for a parishioner to finish talking to the priest, then approached him. "Excuse me, Mr… um… Sir?"
"You can call me Father Graham. Is this your first time at an Orthodox church, son?"
Father Graham smiled, but Henry could still feel his insides lock up. He and his family had never been much for church, and part of him worried this priest could tell just by looking at him. One slight misstep might mean getting chased out with torches and pitchforks. "Y-yeah, my name's Henry Charles, and I live here in the neighborhood. I wanted to ask you about something."
"Go right ahead."
"Well, let's see, how do I put this… Do you have somebody who works on your garden?"
"Usually just some volunteers coming in on Saturdays. My wife Paula over there's the one in charge of that."
"Saturdays, huh? So I guess there's no chance they'd be here this morning at six-thirty?"
Father Graham shook his head. "Not today. Paula and I are usually the first people here, and not until about eight. Why do you ask?"
Might as well state it plain and see what the man thought. "So I have a friend, Neil, and he just flew out to Miami this morning. And when his plane took off, he says he saw somebody in the garden burying a weird box."
"A 'weird' box?" He started stroking his beard. Henry had thought the priest would think he was crazy, but he seemed to be taking it pretty seriously.
Father Graham waved at one of the parishioners. A white-haired woman with thick glasses came up. "Paula, have you checked on the garden this morning? This young man says there may have been a trespasser burying something suspicious there."
"No, not this morning, Father," Paula said. "You think it might be dangerous?"
"Can't be sure yet, but if someone's messing with the garden, it's worth looking into."
Paula nodded, then called toward a nearby table, "Lucia!"
A teenage girl about Henry's age got up from one of the tables. "Yes, Gran?" Her dark hair flowed down to her shoulders, and her eyes glittered like jewels in a mosaic. Henry couldn't take his eyes off her.
"I just wanted to let you know, Father and I need to check on the garden, make sure it's all right. We'll be back shortly."
"Can I come with you? I want to make sure my tomatoes are okay."
On the way out they introduced her to Henry. "Nice to meet you," Lucia said. "So you live close by?"
"Y-yeah, down on Innkeeper Street," Henry said. "Never would have thought there were so many Russians in town."
"Actually," she said with a chuckle, "the dirty little secret is, only a few of us are Russians. Most of the people here are converts. Gran here was in an evangelical group that converted in the 80's."
"Uh huh." Henry stopped talking so his insides could settle. For a second he thought he'd made a terrible assumption. At least she took it with good humor.
The four of them arrived at the garden. Lucia went to some stakes posted in one corner. "The tomatoes seem okay." Some small bulbs had started to grow on the vines, some green, some red, but not big enough to pick yet.
"They're your tomatoes?” Henry said. “My mom picks them. They taste great."
"Well, they're my tomatoes this year, but sure, I appreciate it."
A plane took off a few blocks away. Without checking his app, Henry had no way to know for sure which flight it was. All he could tell was that it was Delta, based on its markings.
"Now, Henry," Father Graham said, "where in the garden was the box?"
"Oh geez, I dunno. I didn't ask." The garden was about as big as a swimming pool, with rows and rows of sprouts, seedlings, and greens, all set apart in their own beds. The dirt was all so fresh and soft, it was nearly impossible to tell where anyone might have gone digging. Sure, there were footprints, but anybody could have left those. "Let me call Neil, see if he remembers."
"Hang on a second," Paula said. "If I were to bury something secretly in a garden…" She paced through the middle, scanning the crops. "I couldn't use a spot where something was obviously growing. It'd kill the plants and arouse suspicion. Therefore, it has to be either here or here." She pointed at two beds at the northwest corner and grinned at the priest. "And you say I read too many mysteries."
"Not the eggplants!" Lucia said. "We just planted those last week! And that's where we're supposed to put the kale!"
"It's all right, they can be replanted," Father Graham said. "The important thing is this strange box."
He went back inside and came back out with a shovel and without his cassock, wearing just an ordinary plaid shirt and a pair of black pants. He started digging in one bed, and when that came up empty, he tried the second one.
A beam of light shot up out of the ground.
"Oh right," Henry said. "I forgot to mention. Neil said it was glowing."
Father Graham cleared away more dirt, expanding the beam more and more. It glowed with a fierce blue through a twelve-inch-wide cardboard box, the kind one might use to serve a cake.
"Oh wow," Lucia said. "It's real. I wonder what it is?"
"You don't think it's radioactive, do you?" Paula said.
"Let's hope it isn't," Father Graham said. "If it is, it may have already dosed every single parishioner here. Henry, thanks for warning us about this. And tell your friend the same goes for him, too. He was lucky to see this from all the way up in the sky."
"But what is it?" Henry said. "Can you open it?"
"I'm not sure that's a good idea," Lucia said. "If it is toxic, it could hurt us even more."
"Not with that kind of cardboard," Paula said. "It might as well be wide open already."
"Hm, still." Instead of reaching down to touch it himself, Father Graham worked the shovel into the lid, tearing the box a little, and pulled it open.
"WHAT IN GOD'S NAME ARE YOU DOING?"
The shout came from down on Rigdon Avenue, from a youngish man in a tan suit making a mad dash toward the garden. He'd left his green Mazda on the curb.
"You have to leave that in the ground!" he told Father Graham. "Look, I'm sorry I dug up your garden, but I had to get rid of that thing. This was the best place I could think to hide it. I swear it won't hurt the plants! Just please, bury it, put it out of my misery!"
"All right, all right, all right." Father Graham patted the man on his shoulders. "First of all, who are you?"
"Right. Right." The man's face was slick with sweat. "My name's Richard Stryker. I live a few blocks away. I come to your farmer's market every week."
"And what is this?"
"That," Richard Stryker said, "is something I invented about a month ago. See, I do some tinkering here and there in my off time, compete in robot battles, things like that. And one night I was experimenting with some equipment, and I'm still not sure how, but I wound up with a device that I can only describe as giving me full mental control over electronics."
The priest tilted his head and crooked his brow. "How does that work?"
"I'm not sure I can explain it, but… Here." Richard Stryker handed Father Graham his smartphone. "Watch the screen." He took the box from the hole and removed the glowing object inside. It was a small box with a bright dome on one side and a couple of buttons and dials beside it. Richard touched one of the buttons.
Henry and Paula and Lucia huddled close to Father Graham.
The phone woke itself, entered its own password, and opened up the email app. Richard Stryker had an ad from Publix and a notification about his bank account.
"You see what I mean?" Richard let go of the button. "This thing is too dangerous. I can take over any electronics with it, even a regular CRT TV. It's basically an instant telepathic hacking device. I tried it on my PC, and was able to get on the internet and watch Belgian toy commercials." He plucked his phone out of Father Graham's hand. "Sure, it sounds harmless enough, but it's also long-range."
A plane roared overhead. This time Henry did check his phone, and found that it was bound for Washington, D.C.
Richard pointed up at it. "Like that. If I wanted, I could get into that plane's onboard computer with this thing and bring it all down in flames. If I wanted. Now imagine this technology in the wrong hands. You could bring down all the infrastructure holding up modern civilization!"
"I think I can imagine," Father Graham said.
"But sir," Lucia said, "why bury it here? The eggplants were going to sprout any day now. We prepared the soil, planted the seeds, and it was all for nothing."
"And why bury it?" Paula said. "Why not destroy it altogether? Take a sledgehammer to it, or something?"
"I mean…" Richard raised the device. "Look at the way it's glowing. Even I don't fully understand what's going on. None of the parts I installed are supposed to do this. If I did bust it open, who knows what it might do? I might take out a whole block."
Henry wasn't sure how much he bought the excuse, and judging by the looks on their faces, it looked like Paula and Lucia didn't, either. It sounded like the sort of thing Richard had only thought of just now, because burying it had been a heat-of-the-moment decision in the first place.
"So why not toss it in a river?" Paula said. "That's what I'd do."
"Or at least bury it in your backyard," Lucia said. "And leave our garden alone."
"Are you kidding?" Richard said. "I live in a rental. I don't think my landlord would be happy with that."
"Look," Father Graham said, "I understand if you regret making it. It's kind of my job to understand people's regrets. But I'm also concerned about the safety of these plants and my parishioners. You're simply going to have to find somewhere else to put it."
"All right, fine. I'm sorry. I didn't think I was doing that much harm. Oops." The device slipped from his hand and bounced on the grass.
Everyone froze, then when it became clear they hadn't been vaporized, they relaxed.
"I got it." Henry snatched it up, and as soon as he touched it, felt a gentle hum through his fingers. "Ooh."
Richard hesitantly reached forward. "Careful with that."
"Can I just—" Henry touched the button that Richard had pressed.
Right away his thumb locked up, and everything went dark around him. Instead of the priest and his wife and granddaughter, Henry saw a network of strings, endless channels and paths and tubes spreading all over the world, starting from his smartphone. He just had to think it, and he could go into his Instagram without even touching anything. He went from there through the cloud onto an invisible high-speed rail, heading down south, to a node in Miami, Florida.
From there he checked phones until he found what seemed like the right one. He heard Neil's voice through it. He looked out through the camera.
Neil was in a luxury hotel suite bedroom, wearing swim trunks and an oversized t-shirt, dancing and singing along with an old *NSync song that was playing on his phone, which was propped up on a desk or table. With his cracking voice, he definitely sounded more "boy" than "boy band."
Henry switched it to Imagine Dragons.
"What the hell?" Neil said, and picked up the phone.
"I didn't say stop," Henry said. "Show off those moves!"
Neil yelped, flinging the phone up in the air. It landed on the bed, and Henry could only see straight up toward the ceiling.
"Henry?" Neil said. "How did you—"
"Henry!" It was Lucia's voice now.
"Henry, let go!" Father Graham said. "Don't listen to it!"
"I could've sworn I heard Henry," Neil said, from hundreds of miles away.
Henry felt a tug, and the device left his hand. He found himself back on his own two feet, in the community garden at the Orthodox church around the corner from his house on Innkeeper Street. Father Graham had grabbed him by the shoulders. Paula looked at him with worry, and Lucia with bewilderment. Richard had taken the device.
"That's the other problem," Richard said. "It's such a powerful high, it's almost impossible to let go. The first time I tried it, I didn't get out until a day later when I realized I was starving."
"Are you all right?" Lucia touched Henry's shoulder.
"I… I think so? I saw my friend in Miami. That was awesome."
"Now just imagine if he'd found the dark web," Richard said. "This device is just too dangerous to exist."
"So you are going to find another place to dispose of it?" Father Graham said.
"Guess I have no choice. Sorry to bother all of you. I hope I'm still welcome at the farmer's market."
Lucia crinkled her nose, but her grandmother said, "Don't worry too much about it."
Richard Stryker took the box and put the device in, then after a sheepish nod to the priest, ran back to his car.
Now everyone gathered around Henry. "Are you really all right, son?" Father Graham said.
"Yeah, fine. Didn't hurt at all. And I found out my friend likes 90's boy bands."
"I still can't believe you actually pushed the button," Lucia said, shaking her head. "After everything that man said. What in the world possessed you to do such a dumb thing like that?"
Hearing her talk like that was like getting punched in the gut while still groggy in the morning. All chances with such a gorgeous girl shattered before he even had a chance! "What can I say?" he muttered. "I got curious."
"So did Adam and Eve," Father Graham said. "At any rate, we appreciate your help getting all this taken care of. I just want you to know you're welcome to visit again any time."
"Uh, sure," Henry said. "Nice meeting you. Bye."
On his way through the parking lot, Henry's phone began to quake in his pocket. He'd started receiving text after text from Neil, insisting he'd heard Henry's voice coming from his phone. Henry wrote back that he didn't know what he meant, but still, for a quick laugh, signed off with "Bye bye bye."
The crosswalk in front of the church happened to be right next to the sign in their front lawn. The Divine Liturgy started at 10 AM, it said. If Lucia was the priest's granddaughter and had plants growing in the garden, she'd surely be coming here often. And Henry lived close by and usually had nothing better to do on Sundays. Maybe he could come back, try to get to know her better, show her he wasn't as dumb as she might think. She just got a bad first impression, that's all.
There were worse reasons to going to church, right?
Flight 28 from Little Rock came in for a landing. As far as he could tell, the only people controlling it were the ones inside the cockpit.
This story also appears in the collection More Word Associations.
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