The Souvenir
A Science Fiction Short Story
The train squealed on the tracks and slowed to a stop. Outside the windows on either side were fields of thick snow marked with scorches, divots, and smoldering debris. Police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances were wailing up the road adjacent to the track. They themselves had to swerve around some of the scrap metal.
Nelson Reed took out his phone and started snapping pictures.
"What on earth happened?" a woman in a navy blue facemask said a few seats ahead.
In the booth behind, two small boys were pressing their faces against the glass. "I think something exploded," the bigger one said. "Went boom," the smaller one said.
"Is everything okay?" the man across from Nelson said. "Are we going to be all right?"
"I hope so," Nelson said. "Something must have caused some serious damage to the tracks."
"Like what? A car bomb? Dammit, I have to be in Philly tomorrow! I am not losing my job because of a train delay!"
"If something did damage the tracks, though, it's a good thing the train stopped in time." Nelson put his phone away, but kept his eyes out the window, on the twisted metal that had fallen near the tracks. Nelson had helped out at his dad's mechanic shop in college, and knew the components of a car well enough, but even as mangled as these scraps were, they didn't look like anything from any make or model he recognized.
"Look!" one of the boys yelled. "One of 'em moved!"
Nelson flicked his eyes over the snow. None of the pieces were moving that he could see, but as he turned toward the back, one of them suddenly dropped into the snow, yet seemed to already have a thin trail behind it.
"Stop that," the boys' mother said. "This is no time to start making things up."
"But Mom, it really moved! I saw it!" "I saw it too!"
Nelson said nothing. Something told him the mother wouldn't believe him, either.
Before long, an announcement came from the conductor. "I'm afraid that due to unexpected damage to the track ahead, we will not be able to continue on our present route. The train has not suffered any damage. Since repairs aren't expected to be completed today, some buses are on their way to take all passengers either to the next station, where you can continue on your route, or to what I'm told is a nice La Quinta Inn. If you need any assistance, please speak with one of our attendants. We appreciate your patience, and we thank you for using AmTrak."
The man across from Nelson clasped his hands around his head. "Uggghhh… Guess I can kiss the Walton account goodbye. I knew I should've just rented a car."
The train attendants guided the passengers outside. They had set up boards as ramps to help people to the ground. As Nelson took his first steps on the snow and let his suitcase sit upright, the two boys came running up to the woman in the facemask behind him.
"Excuse me," the older one said, "but my brother and I have a question. Are you Marla Winston?"
The smaller one yelled, "You were on Sesame Street!"
The woman chuckled a little, then took off her mask. She was, in fact, a face Nelson had seen countless times all over TV. "You got me," Marla Winston said. She dangled the mask from her finger. "So much for staying hidden."
"Oh my gosh," the mother said. "I loved you in Waking Xavier. Can I take my picture with you?"
"Sure, sure, but then I'd like to put my mask back on," Marla said. "I'm just coming down to visit family, get away from Hollywood for a week. And yes, I was on Sesame Street, little guy. I got to meet Big Bird!" She let the mother and kids grab her and take a selfie, then immediately threw the straps of her mask back behind her ears. "I swear," she muttered to Nelson, almost as if entirely because he happened to be there, "some places I can show my face and nobody will ever recognize me, others I wear a mask and people spot me just from the eyes. I wonder how Clark Kent does it."
"At any rate," Nelson said, nervously fussing over his gloves, "you got robbed last year for Best Actress." It was all he could think of to say. Until now, the most famous person he'd ever met was a voice actor from American Dad at a convention.
"Yeah, no, if I'm going to lose to anybody, it might as well be Glenn Close." Marla gazed toward the front of the train. "Geez, it's really smoking. You think it was a bomb after all?"
The fire trucks had converged just ahead of the engine, and were firing their hoses into a column of black smoke.
"If it was," Nelson said, "it's a heck of a lot of debris. There doesn't seem to be a crossing up there, so I'm not sure that's the most logical place for a car bomb. On the other hand, I think the freight lines use the same tracks, so I suppose if you wanted to mess with the supply chain, this would be a way to do it."
"But trains get delayed all the time. Tracks get damaged all the time. My mom once had a train delayed because of some flooding after a hurricane. They'd have been better off hitting a factory or a harbor… and I need to stop thinking like a terrorist right now. You moving on from here, or staying at the motel?"
"Motel," Nelson said. "I'm not in the biggest hurry, plus it's getting late anyway. After all this, I'd rather get some sleep and breakfast before I get back on a train."
"My thoughts exactly," Marla said. "Maybe we'll run into each other again. I didn't catch your name."
"Nelson, Ms. Winston."
"You can call me Marla."
Dragging his suitcase behind him, Nelson began roaming around the trench between the train and the road. Even up close, most of the debris looked like formless scraps of metal.
Nearby, he heard the mother yelling at the two boys. "Put that down! It doesn't belong to you!"
The boys were admiring a scrap the older one had picked up, about the size of a saucer, but he dropped it when their mother yelled. The mother grabbed the smaller one's hand and pulled him up the embankment toward the road, with the older one following close behind.
Nelson squatted down for a closer look at the disc the boys had dropped. A large chunk had been ripped off of it, but there was also a discernable inscription on one side, a set of strange symbols. If the disc did come from a car, he would have expected Japanese or Korean or German, but not shapes like these. Nelson picked it up, and only felt a mild warmth. It must have cooled very quickly.
The first bus rolled up and opened the door to take passengers, and the driver came out to help people load up their luggage. Nelson stashed the scrap in his coat pocket before grabbing his suitcase and going up the embankment. It was just one of probably thousands of tiny scraps all over the tracks. The authorities were down at ground zero, still busy with the fire. It was one less piece for them to worry about.
Nelson wound up sharing the bus with the same passengers as on his train car. Now the mother was two seats ahead of him, the man was way out in the back, and Marla Winston was in the middle. Nelson sat across from her.
She nodded at him. "I noticed you taking that little souvenir."
Nelson took it out. "I wasn't even really thinking about it. Just seemed interesting."
She held out her hand, and Nelson passed it over, and she turned it over and around. "What does it say?"
"That's a good question," Nelson said. "I'm thinking I'll check online when I get to the hotel, see if I can at least figure out what those symbols mean. Then maybe I'll figure out what the thing is."
Marla handed the scrap back. "Good luck with that."
The bus filled out with more and more passengers, with an elderly man sitting next to Marla and a middle-aged woman taking the seat next to Nelson. The man nodded politely to his new neighbor, not suspecting she was an Academy Award-nominated movie star. The driver shut the doors, and the bus started moving, and soon passed by the wreckage in front of the train. By now the column of smoke had thinned out.
"Whoa!" One of the two boys stood up in his seat and pointed out the window. "Would ya look at that!"
Though it was partially concealed by all the rescue vehicles, Nelson could still see some of what was going on at the blast site. A pile of debris had formed, and scraps were moving toward it under their own power, skittering over snow, gravel, asphalt, even on the tracks. Everyone turned their heads to look as if this was part of a tour.
Then wires shot out from the pile and began snatching pieces off the ground. A collective gasp swept through the bus. The pile didn't even limit itself to the scraps. As the bus passed, one of these wires even ripped the lights off a police car.
"What in the world is going on over there?" said the woman next to Nelson.
Nelson felt a rumble in his pocket. He reached in, expecting it to be an incoming call—with his luck, some scammer. But it wasn't his phone at all.
The scrap he'd picked up didn't stop vibrating until the bus gained some distance from the blast site.
Maybe he'd been a little too impulsive in picking it up.
The bus drove into a small hillside town that seemed to consist mostly of a main square, some fast-food restaurants, and a freeway exit. The train station was a few blocks from city hall. The passengers who intended to keep going let out here—including the mother and two boys—then the bus took everyone else to the La Quinta. Nelson got his key, went to his room, dropped onto the bed, and turned on the TV.
After flipping past the movies on basic cable and the game shows on the broadcast channels, he ran across a live shot of the very train he had been riding. In front of it was still a pile of scorched metal, though the fire had died out and the smoke was just a thin mist. The pile had collected more debris and had built itself higher and higher, to a sort of small tower. The rescue vehicles had all pulled away, and military trucks and Jeeps had swarmed in to replace them.
The scrap he'd picked up vibrated again. He set it on the bedside table. It stopped after about thirty seconds, and this time, Nelson thought he noticed a soft glow from the inscription. The scrap still wasn't hot to the touch, but he didn't like to take his eye off it. Scrap metal moving on its own, reassembling itself… Nothing on Earth could do this that he knew of. Even the deepest, darkest research secrets of the U.S. Military seemed out of the question.
Which left one possibility…
Suppose a small ship from outside the solar system passes by Earth. Then suppose it loses control and crashes. It pulverizes a section of railroad track and scatters debris all around it. But also suppose there's something built into the metal, something humans are far from inventing any time this century. Embedded in each piece—maybe multiple pieces—is some mechanism that draws them back together, to build something new.
But to build what? By now, the pile had added tires, hoods, even pieces of the track, and plates peeled off the train engine. The tower was even starting to branch out like a tree. It clearly had some purpose, but Nelson couldn't tell what it was.
The scrap vibrated again.
Nelson didn't even bother looking up the symbols online. He knew he'd never find them.
After a while, he felt like a snack, and there was a candy machine in the lobby, so he turned off the TV, taking the scrap with him. It might try something while he wasn't looking.
He found Marla sitting in one of the chairs, watching the same coverage on the TV mounted to the wall. "Evening," she said. "Have you been watching this?"
"I have," Nelson said. "You're not wearing your mask."
"Why bother hiding? Hardly anybody's here." She pointed to the screen. "You think this has something to do with the doodad you picked up?"
"I think so." Nelson took it out of his pocket. "It's been shaking all night. I'm not sure, but I'm starting to think it wants to be part of that pile. But without knowing what it's trying to build, I have no way to tell what I should do."
"If you ask me," Marla said, "I think it's building some kind of transmitter. Doesn't it look a little like a cell tower made of junk?"
The tower reached out and grabbed a Jeep. The soldier driving it went into reverse, but couldn't break it away. He had to jump out.
"Not that I've ever seen a cell tower do that," she said.
"Still, you might be right." Nelson ran his thumb over the alien inscriptions. "I was already thinking this might be a piece of a wrecked spaceship. That would mean the ship is probably putting itself back together to send a distress signal. But then…"
"What happens when home base gets the message?"
"Who knows? Either they come to pick everything up and leave us alone, or they attack. If this gets back to the tower, it could mean the end of humanity."
She scoffed. "As if you could get in there. The news said the whole area's blocked off for about a mile."
"It figures," Nelson said. "But what if taking this scrap is exactly what's causing this mess? It's trying to find all the missing pieces, but since it can't, it's just pulling in what it can find? And it's just going to keep eating machinery until it consumes everything."
"So if you don't return it," Marla said, "humanity could be doomed anyway."
He held the scrap flat in the palm of his hand. "I just had to get curious, didn't I? But like you said, it's not like I can just walk in and hand it back. Besides, what if we're wrong? That tower could settle down on its—YEEOW!"
Sharp, rusty pain shot up his arm, radiating from his palm. It was so intense he could hardly feel his hand. His finger's couldn't move. The scrap stayed in his hand.
"Nelson! What's wrong?"
Something buzzed up his spine. "Agh… My hand. It's in my hand." He dropped to his knees. His mind became a storm of noise, of thoughts, of sounds, of sights, that he couldn't untangle. "We… have to… give it back."
Marla knelt down, grabbed his hand and the scrap, tried to pull them apart.
It felt like driving nails in. "Stop! Stop!"
A motel clerk with the name Dennis on his name tag ran up to him, asking if he needed an ambulance. "No doctor!" Nelson cried. "Have to get to… crash site!" It was definitely a crash site. He knew now. The scrap had told him.
"Okay!" Marla said. "I'll take you. I just… How? I need to think of something…"
"Going there?" Dennis said, pointing at the TV. "You're crazy."
"I'm not crazy, this is crazy," she said, motioning toward Nelson. Then she snapped her fingers and jumped to her feet. "I have an idea. Nelson, can you hold on for just a minute?"
"I think so," Nelson said, finally able to move his fingers again. "The pain's dying down. I think it heard you." He forced himself to look at his hand. The scrap had fused with the skin on his palm. The inscription was glowing again. "Not that it's gone."
"Oh dear God." Marla turned her eyes away. "I guess if the tower's picking off anything it can find, the scrap's doing the same thing. Just wait there. I'll be right back."
She took out her cell phone and ran straight out.
Dennis crouched beside Nelson. "Are you sure you don't need a doctor?"
"I'm sure," Nelson said. "This doesn't look like the sort of thing a doctor can handle."
"All right. I'm not dreaming, am I? That was Marla Winston, right? This is actually happening?"
"Believe me, I would love for all of this to be your dream. But yes, that is her."
The two of them sat together for a moment, watching the tower on TV as it devoured more and more military and police hardware.
A glowing tube began to emerge just under the skin of Nelson's forearm.
Marla came back in. "Okay, I've figured out how we can get in there. When I was in Speed Run II, we had this Army colonel as a consultant. I just called George, and it turns out that colonel is now a general, and he happens to owe George a favor. So come on. I called an Uber. As long as I'm with you, they'll let you in."
"George Franks?" Dennis said. "The director?"
"Well, of course."
"And you're seriously going in there?"
"I don't think we have much choice."
"In that case." He whipped out his keys and held them out to her. "Don't make an Uber driver do this. Trust me, I've been one before, and they don't make enough go through a military blockade. Take my car."
"What? No, I couldn't."
"I'll be fine. This guy's the one who needs help. Take it. It's the light blue Acura out in the parking lot."
Marla accepted the keys. "Thank you—" She looked down at his tag— "Dennis. Come on, Nelson. Let's go."
By the time they made it on the road, more tubes and some wiring and circuitry had grown on Nelson's arm. The pain had reduced to a constant ache, but it was still there, and it still made it difficult for Nelson to sit straight in the front seat of the Acura.
"Don't worry," she said. "It's not that far."
She ran a red light and made a right turn. Almost immediately she came upon a set of barriers guarded by armed soldiers. The spotlights cast sunlight under the night sky. Marla stopped the Acura, and one of the soldiers knocked on the window. She rolled it down.
"I'm sorry, Ma'am, this road is strictly off-limits. Haven't you been watching the news?"
"Of course." She took her driver's license out of her purse. "Listen, my name is Marla Winston, and I believe I should have authorization from General MacTeague to enter the perimeter."
He took her ID. "Marla Winston, the actress? Look, I loved you in the first Speed Run, but I'm under orders."
The pain in Nelson's arm flared up. "You have to let us through!" The alien letters were glowing red hot, and his veins were starting to glow just like the tubing in his arm. "Please! It's urgent!"
"Holy—What's wrong with that guy?"
"He took something he shouldn't have. Look, check with your C.O. Maybe the orders haven't come all the way down yet. But I have to get this man to the tower."
Still holding her ID, the soldier crept back to his station and made a call. He returned a moment later and gave the license back. "Sorry for the hassle, Ma'am, you're free to enter. But I still can't let you bring that car in. That tower's eating machinery left and right."
"That's fine." She put the Acura into Park and unbuckled. "I'm borrowing it anyway."
Once they were out of the car, they jogged past the barrier, footsteps crunching into snow, winter wind searing their faces, through patches of darkness untouched by the spotlights. Crowds of police and military officers were milling about, waiting for their next order. An armored truck covered the train tracks. From there Nelson could see the tower rising above the trees. The pain in his arm had ebbed slightly. It would be over soon.
The vehicles became more and more crowded as they ran along the tracks. A tank had rolled up, so far at a safe distance from the tower. If anyone found a reason to use it, it could bring this situation to hell in an instant. All the more reason to get to the tower.
Men in body armor stood in their path. "Stop! Stop right there!" One of them said, "Who let these civilians in here!"
"General MacTeague!" Marla yelled. "Check with him! It's an emergency—this man needs help!"
The pain raged so hot that Nelson's arm felt like it was being wrenched out at the socket and dipped in hot lava all at once. He couldn't wait for authorization. He kept running.
"Wait! Stop!"
"Don't hurt him!" Marla cried.
Nelson didn't listen, didn't slow down. The tower had to be completed. The pain had to stop.
Someone opened fire from up ahead. Someone else who didn't get the memo. The gravel in the tracks burst. Nelson didn't feel anything, so he supposed nothing hit him. He could hear Marla screaming.
He held his hand out.
The tower of wreckage and consumed parts stood in front of him, branching out at the top more like a tree than an antenna. A branch grew out of the trunk and slithered through the air toward him. A thick cable whipped out of the tip and snared his hand, wrapping it completely.
The pain in his arm faded. It soon died. Relief washed through him. Only along with that came an ache he hadn't noticed in his side. He pressed his free hand to it, and found blood pouring out of his abdomen. "Oh, hell," he said.
But soon that pain was gone, too. He couldn't feel the gunshot wound, or his arm, at all. The cable must have anesthetized him. He could see, but not feel, the wires and tubing sinking back into the skin.
His knees buckled. The cable released him. He fell onto his back.
The scrap was gone, leaving only red gashes on his palm and marks where the wires and tubes had been.
The tower began to glow.
Marla and some field medics ran up to him, ready to treat the wound.
The branches at the top began to oscillate with bright light.
The medics loaded him onto a gurney and carried him off while debris—the human-made debris, that is—began to drop from the trunk of the tower. The junk crashed to the tracks in a deafening cacophony. Before long all that was left was a shining core tower, a tree of alien technology reaching for the sky. It was finally complete, and it was sending its signal.
"You're going to be all right, Nelson," Marla said, tears in her eyes. "Everything's going to be just fine!"
"Yeah," Nelson said, feeling like he hadn't slept in days. "Yeah, it will."
Then the flying saucers showed up.
Very fitting post what with the news.