AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m Caucasian, I’m male, and I speak English. Let’s play the odds. “J–John?”
“Incorrect. Attempt number three: What’s your name?”
I pull the IV out of my arm. “Bite me.”
“Incorrect.” The robot arms reach for me. I roll off the bed, which is a mistake. The other tubes are still connected.
The butt tube comes right out. Doesn’t even hurt. The still-inflated catheter yanks right out of my penis. And thatdoeshurt. It’s like peeing a golf ball.
I scream and writhe on the floor.
“Physical distress,” says the computer. The arms give chase. I crawl along the floor to escape. I get under one of the other beds. The arms stop short, but they don’t give up. They wait. They’re run by a computer. It’s not like they’ll run out of patience.
I let my head fall back and gasp for breath. After a while, the pain subsides and I wipe tears from my eyes.
I have no idea what’s going on here.
“Hey!” I call out. “One of you, wake up!”
“What’s your name?” the computer asks.
“One of youhumans,wake up, please.”
“Incorrect,” the computer says.
My crotch hurts so bad I have to laugh. It’s just so absurd. Plus, the endorphins are kicking in and making me giddy. I look back at the catheter by my bunk. I shake my head in awe. That thing went through my urethra. Wow.
And it did some damage on the way out. A little streak of blood sits on the ground. It’s just a thin red line of—
—
I sipped my coffee, popped the last fragment of toast into my mouth, and signaled the waitress for my check. I could have saved money by eating breakfast at home instead of going to a diner every morning. Probably would have been a good idea, considering my meager salary. But I hate cooking and I love eggs and bacon.
The waitress nodded and walked over to the cash register to ring me up. But another customer came in to be seated right that moment.
I checked my watch. Just past sevena.m.No rush. I liked to get in to work by seven-twenty so I could have time to prep for the day. But I didn’t actually need to be there until eight.
I pulled out my phone and checked my email.
TO: Astronomy Curiosities [email protected]
FROM: (Irina Petrova, PhD) [email protected]
SUBJECT: The Thin Red Line
I frowned at the screen. I thought I’d unsubscribed from that list. I left that life a long time ago. It didn’t get a lot of volume, and what it did get, if memory served, was usually pretty interesting. Just a bunch of astronomers, astrophysicists, and other domain experts chatting about anything that struck them as odd.
I glanced at the waitress—the customers had a bunch of questions about the menu. Probably asking if Sally’s Diner served gluten-free vegan grass clippings or something. The good people of San Francisco could be trying at times.
With nothing better to do, I read the email.
Hello, professionals. My name is Doctor Irina Petrova and I work at the Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg, Russia.
I am writing to you to ask for help.
For the past two years, I have been working on a theory related to infrared emissions from nebulae. As a result, I have made detailed observations in a few specific IR bands of light. And I have found something odd—not in any nebula, but here in our own solar system.
There is a very faint, but detectable line in the solar system that emits infrared light at the 25.984 micron wavelength. It seems to be solely that wavelength with no variance.
