At the Submarine Races
by Keith P. Graham © 2008
"Are you going to the submarine races after the prom?" Mercedes asked with a kittenish smile on her face. Mercedes thought that Lainey did not have a date to the Junior Prom, but Lainey, succumbing to the whole teenage angst thing, had to answer Mercedes with an equally kittenish expression on her face.
"I guess. His brother said he could use his van for the night. We might stop by to watch the races."
Submarine races were a local euphemism for necking at a lookout point overlooking the Hudson River. The view was spectacular with the lights of the Tappan Zee Bridge crossing the three-mile wide river like a string of cyan pearls.
Mercedes Drummond and her clone Marcia Suarez snapped their heads towards Lainey so quickly that you could hear the ringing of their earrings echoing through the study hall. Four feral eyes with pastel liner and metallic shadow, focused on Lainey. Marcia was the first to look away and inspected her long lavender nails.
"Who are you going with?" she asked.
Lainey had not really wanted to get into this conversation, but the social clones chose to sit next to her with the sole purpose of discussing their own prom dates to make her feel bad. Lainey felt forced by their feline predations to let it slip that she had indeed been asked.
"Gary asked me last night." She mumbled. The girls leaned forward, sharp tongues licking their glossy lips.
"Gary…" one of the girls started. Lainey was looking at her open trigonometry book, so she could not tell which. Both girls came to the same conclusion and squealed "Sackenstein!" at the same time with immeasurable pleasure.
"You are going to the prom with The Sack?" Mercedes asked.
"Any port in a storm, I guess." answered Marcia.
"Is he going to wear his Star Trek Pajamas?" asked Mercedes, referring to the time that Gary had worn a star trek uniform to class back in Junior High.
"I would have thought it likely that he would ask an alien to the prom."
Mercedes whispered to Marcia in a tone obviously intended to be overheard, "I think he did."
Both girls started a stream of irritating giggles that were loud enough to catch hall monitor's ire. For the rest of the period they were forced to keep their heads down and secretly send text message to each other and all the other clone girls in the school. Lainey concentrated on her trig homework and tried not to listen to the muffled laughter coming from across the table.
It was true that Gary "the Sack" Sackenstein was geek, but Lainey had liked him since elementary school. He was going to be her geek if she had her way. She thought that he had plenty of potential and she could clean him up a little with time. In any case he was safe and easy to manipulate. He had even thought that asking her to the prom was his idea.
The prom proved to be the hell that Lainey had anticipated. Gary Sackenstein danced with her once and then found another geek friend and hid in a corner discussing some conspiracy theory for most of the night. Lainey stood at the edge of the dance floor and swayed to the music, but no one asked her to dance. Lainey's prom dress could not match the expensive, strapless, designer styles that predominated. Her wire-rim glasses and straight hair contrasted with the expensive hairdos and elaborate makeup of the other girls. Lainey felt very out of place, but she still had not wanted to miss the prom. She decided that it must be some kind of evil social programming. She did not want to be there. She felt out of place and uncomfortable, but she was also glad to know that she had manipulated Gary into asking her.
When the prom was over, (Lainey was not elected queen, but neither were Mercedes or Marcia), Gary started driving in his brother's van, but not towards her house in the village of South Nyack as she had expected, but up the hill to Tweed Boulevard and the wide space in the road where kids watched the submarine races.
A little thrill went through her body. She was not ready to kiss Gary Sackenstein. He was not her first choice for a first kiss. He was a geek and a nerd and had acne, but there was the chance that Mercedes or Marcia would look out of their foggy windows long enough to see Gary's brother's van with the sign on the side that said Sackenstein Roofing, Inc., and know that Lainey could swap spit and be groped along with the best of the clones. Lainey realized that it was just peer pressure, but at least Gary was nice in his way, although entirely too safe. Lainey would have preferred a little danger.
The van pulled into a place on the lookout between two cars. The windows of the SUV on Lainey's side were so fogged that all she could see was the dim outline of something moving in the dark. She tried to remember who Mercedes' date was, but she wasn't sure and did not keep up on who was driving what the way that the clone girls did.
The Hudson was beautiful. The Tappan Zee Bridge had to be one of the most graceful structures in the world making a smooth spline curve across the river. The mercury lights glowed pale blue in the night air. The lights of the cars on the bridge cast twirling shadows on the low cloud ceiling that roiled all the way to Connecticut. The river was a mirror. She imagined yellow submarines racing up and down under the smooth surface from Dobb's Ferry to Peekskill as she watched.
Lainey took off her seat belt and leaned back. She tried to relax. She wondered if Gary knew how to get her bra off, would he even try, or would she have to prompt him. She closed her eyes and waited for the first kiss. She tried to picture Cary Grant as he looked in Bringing up Baby. He was a nerd in that movie. Lainey was not exactly Katherine Hepburn, but she had to get Gary's face out of her mind.
She heard the door open and sat up. Gary was getting out of the Van.
"Wait a second, I'll get the stuff." He said.
Lainey's mouth formed a perfect letter O, but she could not think of the right question to ask. In a second, Gary returned from the back of the van, his arms loaded with pots and pans. He tossed a pile of stuff onto the front seat with a clatter of shaped aluminum.
"Here" he said, handing her a duct taped pot and colander wrapped in a large amount of silver duct tape.
"What the …" she started to say, but Gary took an aluminum pot and put it on his head. It had a dozen forks taped around the edge of it so that he looked like the prince of Spaghetti Land.
"Put yours on." He directed. "No, not that one. That's the communicator. Put this one on your head."
He handed Lainey another pot with forks taped to it. Laney was relieved and yet a little disappointed. She couldn't imagine Katherine Hepburn wearing one of these hats, even if could help her find a lost intercostal clavicle. At the same time, it meant that she would not have to worry about being groped by a pimply nerd. Then a terrible though occurred to her. Maybe the aluminum hats had something to do with sex. Lainey was well read, but being well read only meant that you had a better understanding about how deviant the world could be.
"Not like that," Gary said, "the big fork goes in the front."
Lainey adjusted her fork hat and tried to keep an open mind. After all, the clones would know if she ran out of the van screaming.
"Now here's the communicator." Gary said indicating the colander. "Hold it like this."
The colander had a cheap two way radio taped to a hole in the bottom of it, the kind of walky-talky that little kids find under the Christmas tree and grow tired of when they realize that its maximum range is about 10 feet. Gary aimed the colander at the clouds as though it was a parabolic wave-guide.
"Do you have a cell phone with a camera?" he asked.
Lainey found her cell phone and tried to hand it to him.
"Keep it ready. We may need it to prove we had contact. Now," he said, "we'll signal the Hive Queen."
"The Hive Queen?" Lainey asked before she could help herself. She knew that the answer was something that she didn't want to hear.
"I read about it on the internet. Tonight is the night that she comes to earth as a proxy for the Übermind. With luck we'll make contact and be invited to be representatives of Earth at the High Council of Planets."
"Suppose I don't want to meet the Hive Queen?"
Gary gave her a don't-be-silly look and continued explaining.
"Here," he said handing her a piece of paper. "I've written out all of the prime numbers from 2 to 37. Everyone knows that the best way to signal an alien is to use a well-known mathematical sequence. I had considered the binary digits of pi or the Fibonacci series, but I think that prime numbers are the obvious choice."
"What?" began Lainey meaning to ask him if he was crazy. She knew what primes are. She had better grades than Sack.
"Prime numbers are the numbers that you can't make by multiplying other whole numbers together. Two times three is six, so six is not a prime number. Seven, though doesn't have any numbers that you can multiply together to make it so it is prime."
"What about one times seven? That equals seven."
"No that's an exception. One doesn't count."
"It doesn't seem fair to the number one." Lainey said petulantly.
"Just do what I do." He said, not catching her sardonic humor. "We'll start with two blinks. Next three, then five until we hit 37. Aim at the clouds - that is where the Hive Queen's mother ship is hiding."
Gary leaned back and put on his seat belt. He aimed at the clouds above the bridge.
"Ready?" he asked.
Lainey sighed and pointed her colander at the same clouds that Gary did. She glanced at the list of prime numbers and immediately saw that Gary had included 15 and forgotten 17. What a dork!
"Roger, Wilco!" answered Lainey.
Together they counted off the primes clicking the talk button on the walky-talkies in unison. When they reached 15, Lainey surreptitiously added two extra clicks. By the time they hit 37 her fingers ached from pressing the talk button.
"Well, so far so good." Gary said. He reached behind him and pulled out a can of Jolt, handed it to Lainey and then reached for another. "We can do another round in a minute or two.
The SUV outside Lainey's window began to bounce on its heavy-duty springs and Lainey could hear a female clone groaning in time with the movement. She was mildly jealous. She looked at Gary, but he had a Jolt mustache and looked ridiculous in his fork hat. Lainey crossed her arms, sighed and looked for the tracks of periscopes on the smooth surface of the Hudson River.
"Ready to try again?" asked Gary, tossing the empty Jolt can out the open window.
"Gary, I've got to tell you. I'm not 100 percent onboard with this."
Gary put his arm around her and looked deeply into her eyes. For a moment, Lainey thought that he was smarter than he thought. She licked her lips and tried to give him her best doe-eyed look.
"What could be more important than communicating with the Hive Queen? I thought that you, at least would understand."
Lainey moved her head towards him, took careful aim, and kissed him full on the lips. He started to say something, but teenage hormones proved stronger than 16 years of continuously viewing Star Wars movies. He put his hand on her shoulder and returned her kiss enthusiastically.
As creepy as it was being kissed by a boy wearing a hat made out of a pot, duct tape, and a dozen forks, Lainey felt her body getting with the program and let her tongue slide into Gary's slightly open mouth.
Gary pulled away, leaving her tongue to grope thin air. "Wait," he said huskily, "there's be plenty of time for this once we get aboard the Hive Queen's mother ship. We've got to start signaling again."
Gary turned and focused his communicator on the clouds over the river. "Once more on my count." He said and they started signaling the mother ship.
Lainey's fingers started to ache, but she remembered to use the correct sequence of primes. She wondered how long Gary would keep up this stupidity and if he would give up and make out with her when he got tired.
She leaned back and enjoyed the beautiful view.
Suddenly the clouds over the bridge began to swirl as though a giant egg beater where churning them. Then like a thick soup stirred very fast in an aluminum pot they began to open up. Down from the clouds, blinking in a million red and blue lights drifted the mother ship.
"We did it!" screamed Gary. "They're coming for us." He grabbed at Lainey and hugged her hard. She put her head up and he kissed her hard on the mouth without any prompting.
"Soon, baby." He crooned.
The ship was huge. From the level of the lookout, it was directly in front of them, a mile or more out over the Hudson. It settled down, titled up a little and the giant saucer shape moved majestically towards them.
Gary and Lainey were not the only ones to see it coming. A dozen car engines started at once. A Lexus screeched as someone backed up his mother's car at full speed backwards into Tweed Boulevard. It bounced off the van with a crunch, rocking Gary and Lainey, and then it speed off down the road. A red ray shot out from the mother ship freezing the car and occupants.
A car door slammed and Mercedes ran out into the night air. She was wearing nothing but a black lace thong and she was trying to put on her shoes as she half ran, half hopped down the road. Another red ray caught her and she was frozen like a nude statue of a running Greek woman. One by one, the ray passed over the parked cars, petrifying them and their passengers, all except the van with Sackenstein Roofing, Inc. painted on the side.
Gary picked up his colander communicator, straightened the fork hat on his head and pressed the talk button in an hysterical series of random numbers. Lainey sat rigid in her seat, the taste of Jolt flavored kiss still on her lips.
The mother ship moved slowly towards them. Waves of glowing blue miasma licked out. They curved around the van forming a swirling halo. Lainey watched as a finger of light pressed against the windshield, passed through and touched her face. Like fingers, the strands of light walked up her forehead to the aluminum pan and attached itself to the forks. One by one, fingers of glowing mist pushed through the windshield and found a tine of one of the forks to grab.
Lainey felt the thoughts of the Hive Queen probing her mind, testing her worthiness. All her thoughts, memories and feelings were exposed and she saw chunks of herself passing up the thin tendrils of light like rats through the guts of snake, bulging in different colors as they sped up towards the mother ship. Everything she ever was or ever would be was examined, noted, and replicated up the line. Lainey knew that a complete and perfect image of her was being built on the mother ship.
Lainey heard Gary say "Holy Mackerel!" and then the probing stopped. One by one, the tentacles of unearthly pure light removed themselves from her soul and detached themselves from her fork hat.
For a moment, Lainey was in two places at once. She sat in the car looking at the mother ship. Another part of her floated high above the Hudson River. This part of her looked back and saw Gary, still looking stupid in his fork hat with a look of amazement on his face. She blew him a kiss and turned to face the ship, the Hive Queen, and the Übermind. Her replicated self felt confident of an eternity between the stars representing the Earth at the High Council of Planets. Their connection was broken and Lainey found herself sitting in a van next to a boy with an aluminum pot on his head.
Lainey watched as the hive ship disappeared into the clouds. There were pops as the frozen cars suddenly started to move. Mercedes Drummond staggered into the middle of the road, still wearing only a thong. She smiled and ran back to the SUV, which did a quick K turn and headed off towards the village of Nyack at top speed.
Lainey and Gary were alone at wide place in Tweed Boulevard overlooking the submarine races. They got out of the car and walked to the edge of the road. The village spread out below them and the bridge was still as beautiful as ever. The low clouds were breaking up and a star or two was twinkling in the sky. Gary took off his fork hat and tossed it into the air. It made aluminum pot noises as it bounced down the hillside.
Gary looked straight up at a star lit sky and let out a long low sigh.
Walking back to the van, they saw the crumpled rear quarter panel. "Damn," Gary said, "My brother is going to kill me."
Lainey walked sadly back to the driver's side door, turned to look at the sky over the Hudson one more time and then down at the river. A V shape wave moved in the water, the wave a racing submarine's periscope might make. She felt loneliness and the dying taste of a kiss on her lips. She got in the van.
"That was awesome." Gary said in a deep voice that echoed of a frustrated desire to visit far universes. "No one will ever believe us, though."
Lainey showed Gary her cell phone. "Don't worry. I have pictures." She said.
"You got pictures of the Mother Ship? That's fantastic!"
"No, I have pictures of something better." Lainey said, smiling. She flipped open the phone and pressed the review button showing the picture to Gary. "I have pictures of Mercedes Drummond's boobs."
"No way!" yelled Gary. He put his arm around her and kissed her hard. Lainey let her whole body go limp and savored every moment. This time The Sack didn't pull away.
There was a chance that prom night was not going to be a total loss.