Distance to Galactic Center

Gus Visco is a Bronx-based writer. He is currently working on a historical fiction novel about the Soviet Union’s failed attempts to control the arctic psychics of Novaya Zemlya. In this issue, Gus has two stories that lie somewhere between science fiction and satire.

Story Read by: A nice British Lady

With the arrival of the Well-Dressed Man, many people had questions. Many more had requests. Most people asked about his home world, Cephei Altory. Infatuated females sometimes asked about his true, nonhuman form. In public forums, military and political officials asked divisive questions intended to corner him into revealing insights into Cepheian technology. The parents of sick children requested miracles. The parents of dead children requested resurrections. Zealots requested both miracles and resurrections, and sometimes demanded. Talk-show hosts and magazine editors requested interviews—opportunities for more questions. Through it all, the Well-Dressed Man nodded, smiled, and politely refused to answer, denying all requests.

“Attention, please,” he said, facing the cameras in a packed convention hall. “I’m here by order of the Cepheian Leader-State to protect your world from external threats. I am forbidden to interfere, on any level, in the internal affairs of your world. Additional information is available on the website listed below.” He pointed at his midsection, trusting the control-room operators to display the website address on cue. “That’s ‘the Well-Dressed Man,’ all one word, ‘dot Cepheian Academy dot org.’”

Internet traffic to thewelldressedman.cepheianacademy.org directs to a satellite manufactured by Cepheian Technology and personally installed in Earth orbit by the Well-Dressed Man upon arrival. The website contains very little content: a couple of headshots of the Well-Dressed Man, links to several Earth-based suicide-prevention programs, and a list of answers to frequently asked questions, including:

Is the Well-Dressed Man a god?

No, he is not a god. He is a mortal, like you, sent from a civilization of technological and spiritual superiority. The Well-Dressed Man is under orders to dismantle all temples built in his honor and idols created in his likeness. Do not attempt to worship the Well-Dressed Man.

Can the Well-Dressed Man bring my loved ones back from the dead?

No.

What should I know about Cephei Altory?

Cephei Altory is an artificially constructed world in the Cepheian planetary system, located in the Mammatus spur of NGC 4192—the Apparition Galaxy—approximately sixty million light-years from Earth. It is a legendary world of countless marvels but is perhaps best known as the home of the Cepheian Academy, the source of the most distinguished superheroes in the known universe.

Is Earth once again a safe place to raise a family?

Yes. The Well-Dressed Man is sufficiently trained to combat any external forces threatening your world. Monogamous, heterogeneous human couples are encouraged to procreate.

Where is the Gold Man now? Are there others like it?

The Well-Dressed Man has permanently dismantled the machine known as the Gold Man. Its remains are secured at an undisclosed location. Subsequent scans of the Earth’s interior conducted by the Well-Dressed Man revealed no similar threats. However, to date, the origins of the Gold Man remain unknown.

A decade earlier, a desert mining project in southern Algeria unearthed an object roughly conforming to the proportions of a human, with limbs and a torso, but larger in scale, with a gold exterior. Half-exposed in excavation, the Gold Man, as it came to be known, began to shake and hum from within. It released a burst of radiation. Lights blinked. Compartments opened and closed. Then it stood up.

The days that followed saw destruction on a scale unprecedented in human history.

The Gold Man killed with chemical agents released on the winds, wiping out nations. From orbit it killed with a laser, millions at a time. From the ocean floor it created tsunamis and earthquakes, obliterating coastal cities. It targeted industry, infrastructure, and everything man-made. At times it appeared to malfunction, like a machine past its service life. Then, finally, and for reasons unknown, it shut down.

The Gold Man cut Earth’s human population in half. One in every two humans: dead.

A global delegation of Earth scientists tasked with the study of the Gold Man determined it had been buried for more than forty-five million years, give or take, and was not of Earth origin, and that was all they could discern without getting too close. They didn’t know why it switched on when it was first discovered, they had no testable theories as to why it switched off again, and they were afraid they might trigger it back to life if they approached it, so they left it alone, quarantined, dead on the bank of the river where it finally came to a stop.

A decade later the Well-Dressed Man arrived. He too examined the Gold Man and drew a similar conclusion: forty-five million years old and not originating on Earth.

“It’s ancient,” he reported back to his masters on Cephei Altory. “But the technology is relatively unsophisticated. It was built for war, unmistakably. Much of this galaxy remains unexplored. I suggest in my place sending a team equipped to investigate.”

He pushed the transmit button and watched the green light blink. Three green lights flashed twice, acknowledging his message received. He waited for a response. Two red lights flashed three times. The connection was terminated. No response. He pushed the connect button to reestablish the link.

“I have dismantled the machine,” he continued. “It no longer poses a threat to the humans. I suggest you order my return. Earth has no need of a superhero.”

He pushed the transmit button and watched the green light blink. Three green lights flashed twice, acknowledging his message received. He waited for a response. Two red lights flashed three times. The connection was terminated. No response.

The Well-Dressed Man was not under orders to establish an embassy, so he didn’t. Instead he took up residence in the dilapidated remains of a prefabricated trailer home in a forest outside Provo, Utah, not far from the riverbank where the Gold Man came to a stop, but isolated enough, he hoped, that humans were unlikely to discover where he spent his nights.

He heaped the dismantled pieces of the Gold Man into a pile behind the trailer and covered them with a tarp.

“Fuck it,” said the Well-Dressed Man. “Good enough.”

He flew into Provo and had lunch at a Sizzler.

“You look stupid,” said a little boy in the booth next to him. “You’re too tall.”

“I’m nine feet tall, to be exact, and appropriately tall for a superhero,” he said.

The boy spit on the Well-Dressed Man’s grilled salmon.

“Please discipline your son,” said the Well-Dressed Man to the boy’s parents.

The parents stared at the Well-Dressed Man with dead eyes. The Well-Dressed Man stared back with an expression that demanded a response. The parents said nothing. The Well-Dressed Man folded his napkin and walked away.

At the hostess counter, the girl working the register gawked in disbelief.

“You’re that guy,” she said. She was skinny and pale. Every line in her face twisted into a frown.

“I’m the Well-Dressed Man,” he said. He read the name tag pinned to her apron.

My Name Is…

, then it was blank.

“My parents are dead,” she said. “They got killed by the Gold Man. Everyone I knew got killed by the Gold Man.”

“My condolences,” said the Well-Dressed Man. He handed her an American fifty.

“I was from Seattle, before,” she said.

The Well-Dressed Man nodded with sympathy. Seattle no longer exists.

“The guy that owns this place bought me cheap,” she said. “He bought me and brung me here. I live in the back.”

“Then consider yourself lucky,” said the Well-Dressed Man. Despite her small, malnourished appearance, he guessed her age at fifteen, which would have made her five at the time of the Gold Man’s holocaust. “Ten years ago a third of this planet’s human population consisted of orphans just like you. Most of them were not as lucky. They didn’t survive.”

“Can you help me?” she asked.

“Help you how? I don’t know what you expect me to do.”

“You can bring my parents back from the dead. I know you know how ’cause I heard on the radio you do it all the time.”

The Well-Dressed Man’s attention drifted to the picture hanging on the wall over the register: a fat man in a cheap suit—this restaurant’s owner, guessed the Well-Dressed Man, and therefore also the owner of this orphaned child—shaking hands with another fat man in a body-armored policing uniform.

The Well-Dressed Man imagined these two fat men traveling to Fort Seattle, just east of the hole in the ground that was once Seattle, as part of a militia convoy to purchase orphaned children. He imagined designated Fort Seattle officials trading their abundance of orphaned children for badly needed supplies. He imagined the girl’s first night in her new bed on the kitchen floor of this restaurant, crying herself to sleep. He imagined the fat man forcing himself on the girl, at night, when no one else was around. The emotions that should have accompanied these images were missing.

“I cannot bring people back to life once they’ve expired,” said the Well-Dressed Man. He leaned in close to her face, as close as a nine-foot-tall person can lean into the face of a five-foot-tall person. “You should also know, assuming your parents were worth saving, I wouldn’t have been able to help them anyway. That’s how it works with me. I’m always too late to save the things worth saving.”

He exited the restaurant without the change from his fifty.

In the parking lot the afternoon clouds hung gray and close to the ground. He scanned the horizon. The Sizzler sat detached from the rest of a strip mall, which had been gutted by fire. He heard gunshots in the distance but saw no humans in any direction. By the road he saw two dogs attacking a third dog. The third dog was pinned to the ground by its throat. The Well-Dressed Man picked up a rock to stop the attack but hesitated to throw it. Instead he watched, silently, until the third dog stopped struggling, then he flew away.

The Well-Dressed Man spent the night reassembling the Gold Man on a blanket in front of his trailer. He removed the Gold Man’s primitive gravimetric propulsion core so he couldn’t fly. He removed all of the Gold Man’s major reflex cylinders, and most of his minor reflex pistons, leaving him as weak as a newborn human. He placed these items into a steel drum he found rusting in the forest. He removed any components resembling an analyzer or synthesizer and placed them in the drum. Unable to detach the symmetry resonator from the Gold Man’s component torso, he scratched the surface of its primary lens, permanently disabling the source of the Gold Man’s color force laser. He removed the armor from the upper portions of the Gold Man’s arms and legs to expose poles wrapped in wires and insulation. He placed the armor in the drum. He then reinstalled the secondary fuel membrane at 5 percent capacity.

Alive, the Gold Man walked directly to the steel drum filled with his missing components. He moved slowly, wobbling like an intoxicated human. The Well-Dressed Man laughed.

“You don’t give up,” said the Well-Dressed Man. He lifted the drum and leaped onto the flat roof of the trailer. He set the drum down near the edge, where the Gold Man could see but not reach.

The Gold Man circled the trailer looking for access to the roof. With each uncertain step he tested the stability of the ground in front of him. The Well-Dressed Man floated down from the roof to join him.

“We’re the same height, you and I,” he said to the Gold Man. “And I’ll bet that’s not all we have in common. Maybe if we were friends—maybe if you showed me I could trust you—we could reinstall a few of your pieces, just to make walking a little less precarious.”

The Gold Man did not respond.

“You’re never going to get at that drum. Not unless I allow it. Why don’t you try talking to me instead?”

The Gold Man continued his search for access to the roof.

“I know you can hear me,” said the Well-Dressed Man. “And I know, if you wanted to, you could respond.”

The Gold Man did not respond.

The Well-Dressed Man noticed that the armored plate covering the Gold Man’s face—where his face would be if he were human and had a face—had minor protrusions and indentations that created the illusion of two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. “We’re the same, you and I,” said the Well-Dressed Man.

The Gold Man turned and stumbled past him, still searching for access to the roof. The Well-Dressed Man’s expression turned sour.

“You disgust me,” said the Well-Dressed Man. He put his hand over the Gold Man’s face and pushed. The Gold Man collapsed in the dirt.

“Sad and pathetic,” said the Well-Dressed Man. He jumped onto the roof of the trailer and lifted the drum over his head in a threatening manner.

“I should smash your motherboard,” he said. “That would be the end of you, robot.”

The Well-Dressed Man watched the Gold Man struggling face down in the dirt, too weak to get up. He decided not to smash the Gold Man’s motherboard.

“Wait here,” he said to the Gold Man.

He flew the drum to the moon and set it down on an open plain. When he returned thirty minutes later, the Gold Man was still struggling on the ground.

“Good luck getting at it now, shit head,” said the Well-Dressed Man. He entered his trailer and switched off the yard light.

“Need a pillow out there?” he called to the Gold Man. “Too bad. I hope you die in the night.”

The Well-Dressed Man climbed into bed. He drifted into a meditation to the gentle outside hum of the Gold Man’s joint motors struggling to put the Gold Man upright.

The Well-Dressed Man found himself back in the parking lot of the Sizzler.

“Why am I here?” he asked himself. “What value could this vision possibly hold?”

He saw the dogs near the road. They were on the attack. He moved toward them, but his steps were slow and unbalanced.

“Get away from her,” he said, losing his voice, but the dogs continued to linger over their victim. He threw a rock. The dogs retreated and he could now see it was not a third dog they were attacking. It was a puddle of red. In the puddle he saw the reflection of the Matsijs Minor, a world that no longer exists.

“There’s no significance to this vision,” he said. “Why show me these things when it’s too late for me to do anything about it?”

The puddle began to boil.

“I was ordered to a rendezvous at a world near galactic center. I was seventy thousand light-years away. There was nothing I could do.”

The dogs returned. They circled and barked.

“Get out of here. I have to follow orders. There was nothing I could do.”

He lifted the puddle into his arms but instead found himself holding the Gold Man, only the Gold Man was now made of flesh and blood, and not machinery, and he had been split in half at the waist and had started to decay.

“I’m dying,” said the Gold Man in the Well-Dressed Man’s arms, his eyes wide with terror.

“It looks to me as if you died a long time ago,” said the Well-Dressed Man.

“Dear God, help me,” said the Gold Man. He coughed blood on the Well-Dressed Man’s lapel.

“We just need to get you to that salad bar and you’ll be fine,” said the Well-Dressed Man. “Just hold on. You’re going to be fine.”

The Well-Dressed Man carried the Gold Man toward the Sizzler.

“We need to get there before they start packing up that salad bar,” said the Well-Dressed Man.

The dogs followed at a fixed distance, barking ferociously.

“Would you fucking dogs shut up?” said the Well-Dressed Man. He walked faster but moved slower. He was lost in the reality of his meditation. He experienced the stress of the situation on high.

“I’m not going to make it,” said the Gold Man.

“You are going to make,” said the Well-Dressed Man. He looked into the Gold Man’s face. He had decayed further. His eye sockets were empty and his lips were gone. He was wet with gore. The Well-Dressed Man was losing his grip.

“We’re almost there,” said the Well-Dressed Man. He looked up. The Sizzler was now behind him. It was farther away than a moment ago. All the lights were off. It was closed.

The Well-Dressed Man was suddenly pulled back into a normal, waking state of consciousness. His meditation was interrupted. It was the Gold Man, who had finally managed to get to his feet and was now climbing into bed next to the Well-Dressed Man with all the mannerisms of a frightened child.

The Well-Dressed Man noted the Gold Man’s mechanical lack of flesh and facial features. His vision had been so vivid. He decided to ignore the Gold Man’s intrusion. He knew he had rendered the Gold Man harmless, and he knew that if he didn’t wait he could quickly return to the unusual state of meditative consciousness from which he had just been pulled.

There will be time later, thought the Well-Dressed Man, to puzzle over the strange behavior of this antiquated war machine.

He closed his eyes and his meditation-induced vision resumed.

The Well-Dressed was in bed next to the Gold Man, who was flesh again, but this time in one piece, without a trace of decay.

“I had a bad dream,” said the Gold Man. His face was full and healthy. His toothy grin stretched the full width of his broad face.

“I don’t want to hear about your bad dream,” said the Well-Dressed Man. He climbed out of bed and walked to the window. There was a crowd of humans in the yard.

“I don’t believe it,” said the Well-Dressed Man. “They found me already.”

“Don’t worry,” said the Gold Man. “Those aren’t real people. Those people are dead.”

“They look alive to me,” said the Well-Dressed Man. He studied the faces in the crowd. They were typical of any group of humans. They were malnourished and grotesque. Some were crying, others had death in their eyes, but they all appeared to be breathing.

“Trust me, those are dead people,” said the Gold Man.

The Well-Dressed Man looked again. He recognized the expressions on their faces—pain and sadness, madness and despair—but he failed to connect them to emotions in himself. He only felt disgust.

“Why are they here?” asked the Well-Dressed Man.

“You’re their superhero,” said the Gold Man. “They want you to save them.”

The Well-Dressed Man looked again at the crowd of humans in the yard—disgust.

“I’m no one’s superhero,” he said. “Everyone worth saving is already dead. Everything worth defending has already been destroyed. These people get nothing.”

“It makes no difference to me,” said the Gold Man. He rolled over in bed to show his back.

“I’m no one’s superhero,” said the Well-Dressed Man. “These people get nothing.”