Into a Drifting Dark

By Rekha Valliappan

'The bee bores to the belly of the grape, the fly gets old and fat and blue, . . .
creeps heavily to death on sill and ceiling, the sun goes down in blood . . . '

--Thomas Wolfe

What happened in the small town of Mystic along the ice-logged coast of Kraaa remains a mystery till today. Some call it cosmological disaster, impacted when a small asteroid Ecklor that had once struck Earth’s western hemisphere, carried away farmlands, highlands, forests, blobs of earth, imposing a curious unrelenting darkness. Others relive swarm invasions, believing those to be the isolating impact quantum. Kraaa changed. The dark plunged many living their everyday lives into a fast-moving blackened cauldron.

Today

There is a darkness that goes alone. It serenades the countryside of the mind-- transmitting a death-like winter trance quality, garrulous, excitable, a little mad maybe. It is a solitary darkness soaring into cloudland unless pulled earthwards. In the asteroid- Ecklor swarms would be ions, like flies on earth. Thick flying scintillations of stabbing pins. Hellish dust tornadoes of gorging locusts riding the ether—eddying, whirling. One midday you look up at the sky and what do you see? Black blots. Nothing but darkish range. A darkness so enveloping, so real, you believe a colossal eye, its violet iris dimmed to extinction has replaced the sun. Yet, the roundabout of certainty permeates all of science Dr. Kopek theorizes. In fact the more unshakeable a science the easier it is to resolve. As a mathematician this was pure logical truth for the calculation of eternity in time. So how did a gold sun in the galaxy of Thyme Lake turn blue and the planet dark? A lesson in contra-indication as survivors would learn when Mystic's future lay in a sandbox to fester and gel with the black swarms while 'sciencing' being scaled locked.

Three Months Ago

Ina Kopek ran into the garden, exultantly holding aloft a little blue glass bottle in which flies buzzed. "Look!" she yelled in glee her reedy voice trilling through the warm summer air. The cork stopper effectively held the shining blue insects in. They fluttered, but could not escape. She had caught eight--all by herself. She did not think she could. It was a feat deserving of praise. She had no doubt Daddy would. He was distant of late. She looked about at the bed of dahlias, the devil’s ivy creeping in the breeze. The orchestra of birds and insects filled the fields with summery eloquence. But there was none nearby to lavish her with praise. Once long ago there was mother. But she had left to a faraway kingdom. To a sun. Her father said the sun housed many treasures. And as a very important scientist he always spoke the ‘truth.’ There is the blue sun and the yellow sun--her father explained. Two wayward suns. They came and went at will. One for her father, one for her mother, she concluded, nodding her head wisely.

She watched her flies squirm, fluttering in vain against the smooth sides of the bottle, then drop helplessly to the bottom, struggle again. "Look! Drak!" she called to the shrub roses and pink begonias, flattening the black-eyed susans as she sped through the flower beds of Waterstone Farms nestling somberly in the valleys of Mystic.

Last summer when her brother Drak had determined that their holiday sport would be catching yellow butterflies to pin on his mounting board, scouring the extensive flower patches, she had howled in pain. He did not care to know of the impending gold and blue suns or what it portended. "Spare me the details!" was his parting shout to Dad. He was given the unabbreviated version. Ina's screams and cries had lasted all summer. Mrs. Bline the housekeeper was helpless. As for Daddy he did not know what had triggered his daughter's outbursts, too tied up with interactive maps and calculations at the hi-tech park, documenting the obtrusive movements at Thyme Lake to analyze.

When the screams turned unbearable Mrs. Bline brought in a vet from three farms away. He would have to do. A real children's doctor within the vicinity of Mystic was impossible to contemplate besides being severely overworked. The vet, reluctant to diagnose non-animal behaviors in an Ecklor child had somberly revealed she suffered from an extreme form of brain signals. According to his expert opinion the behavior was particularly noticeable in pigs when they squealed. There was no cure. It was not contagious. He recommended she be forthwith permitted to kill a toaf or two; better yet to practice or assist in beaver decapitation exercises whenever the household engaged in one. The vet knew the family well. They were long time residents of Mystic—a small community of farmers and hunters. He had known Ina's grandfather well--a keen horse- whisperer in the old days. The vet also knew that other than Drak there was no one in the Kopek household prepared to dabble in damselfly mutilations.

This summer season Drak had been expressly forbidden from catching butterflies. All flies were strictly off-limits--blue, green or any color. Schools had been off for several weeks. Drak was increasingly bored doing all wild stuff, the heaviness in the warm air taking its toll. In any case as it turned out there were no butterflies to catch. Only dragonflies flitting in the aviary, bower to tree, absorbing the scents, their transparent wings gleaming like rainbows. Ina knew she had not long to wait. Drak would appear. He would know what to make of her wondrous catch. Eight blue-nosed fruit flies!

Two weeks ago

Blue had replaced gold--the deep iris blue of a certain nocturnal violet shade--like an old Monet painting. The sun was dappering. Unusual for this time of year. Ecklor- Earth had been heading for a brutal winter caused by the blueness--but not this early. The gold eye of Helios should have been pouring molten magma over the sandy stretches of limitless deserts on the underside. Instead it had reverted to the uneven blue of rising oceans. Not typical. The land was in danger of being drowned by its own sun. A suicide of sun. The Goldstars, a quantum physics climate Board set up to inspect the entangled power had concluded that twenty obbo parts water vaporing in the ether was too high a concentration to measure the silica content in the sun's uneven magma. Both the blue and gold had their place. But the ratios were unwieldy, skipping, that summer in Mystic.

As the farthest known star in the galaxy cluster under a billion years old the normal red dot was suddenly displaying a variance such that the rest of the sunspots forming the arc in the foreground and background of Thyme Lake would cause E-Ecklor to spin clean out of orbit with no elliptical path to obey. Gravitational lensing which should have been micro-calculating and amplifying the falling distance between E-Ecklor and the sun based on space-time as recorded by the Goldstar observatories was serving to further distort the view. The scientists could not have been further from the truth.

Dr. Provindze Kopek was having a difficult time, trapped into convincing the Goldstars Board to deliver an adequate response to the unfolding scenario--the diminishing radiance of sun magma, which was not in reality diminishing but in quantum state was simultaneously representing multiple states which could best be described as "dappering." If they could only convince those arrogant poppinjays who ran Bluesuns, E-Ecklor would be saved. At worst the impending blackness would be minimized. As it is the compounded night-falls was speeding up the onset of a long dark winter in Mystic. He could strangle the Bluesuns with his bare hands, every one of them.

Worse, Ina's health was deteriorating. Recurring nightly nightmares. He had left Larda to cope. Poor girl, so new! Too young for the task. He should never have hired her. How could she handle a hallucinating nine year old? He should not have left so precipitately. New nightmares since summer surrounding flies. Flies! His mind spun.

For the past three months he had been spending less time at the house. He felt sick to his stomach, the neglect. But he was needed here--for E-Ecklor. There was too much at stake, too much going on both at Goldstars and Bluesuns. He had done all he could to destroy those flies—flying fiends, beelzebubs in the making, every last one of them. Then what was the guilt he was experiencing? The unraveling--each time he thought of Mrs. Bline. Poor woman! What a horrible way to die! Things were not normal at Waterstone.

New precautions were in force. His house and garden had been insect deadened. Corrosive powder burrowed into bedrock and soil to prevent further larvae and maggots from forming. The fumigators had given his house a clean bill of health. No more flies. But Ina's screams had not abated. Mrs. Bline, the old housekeeper at wit's end had threatened to quit--worsened by Drak's hyper imagistic attitude. He should have let her go. She would be alive. But his desperation had made him hold on grimly.

"Dr. Kopek, Dr. Kopek is there some data you haven't encoded that you should?" It was the Head of Goldstars--a giant of an E-Eklorean with a half-head as haloed as a distant star. His sights were on the vast coastal plains south of Willimantic tech park.

Dr. Kopek woke from his reverie with an ill-concealed grunt. "My complete report was submitted two weeks ago. It's as I've said. We're plunging headlong into a thirty month night cycle. The same that occurred three light years ago when E-Ecklor broke loose from Thyme Lake forming a separate asteroid-planet. Us. Only in this case the darkness could foreshadow a deadly thirty months. E-Eckloreans must have time to prepare. Our small town must. It is this I'm trying to warn us of--the brutal downside."

"We understand. All preparations are met. We've followed all required protocols. The vapor catheters have modified their readings. They're incrementally working at capacity to minimize the blue. Only West of the Mystic Seaport Farm is a deadly haze."

"We can't minimize the blue. What the Goldstars have to prepare is the long term. The uncertainty with Bluesuns is too strong to ignore, to ensure our future, Mystic’s future and the rest of the parallels. A darkness over thirty months will only signify the blue has swallowed the gold. Certain death for our entire life system if the 'dappering' is not contained. Besides, there are those who will survive the darkness. The mutants. Those flies?! People have to be warned. They need to shelter adequately."

"You know all too well how the commandants function." The Bluesuns were the command-control weather Board with wings. Goldstars’ rivals. While they recognized the dark conversion to flies as imminent, they did not accept that the crisis had anything to do with their sun. Of this they were not convinced. They believed it had everything to do with flies. Flies so real, so numerous they brought blackness and mutations in waves.

Apollo rode the heavens each day in full glory as far as Bluesuns' could see. The sundial chronometers in their two space laboratories minutely recorded the movement of the multi-suns and all celestial bodies accurately. Time could not be recorded with more precision than their two colossal sundials were indicating--one permanently planted on the outer fringes of Thyme Lake, where the ghost galaxy met the gigantic ocean, the other in E-Ecklor on dead earth. They did not believe in bargaining, not with the Goldstars filled with conspiracy theories. Of flies. Of black swarms flooding Mystic.

A mounting situation, hopeless all around! There were not many choices left. With no one to endorse the reality, the Goldstars would have to issue the ultimatum. Or be forever drifting. Dr. Kopek over-stressed beyond control was showing signs of a meltdown. He wanted to go home. On the track they were presently headed there would not be any place to call home. He had to return to his children. To Waterstone. To Ina. She needed him. Where was Drak? He hoped both were safe. With communication lines downed under ice rocks falling like meteor showers and dead-weight tree limbs landing like stone avalanches, transmission connection to his home was sketchy. A week had gone by and no word from either of his children. Or Larda!

One Month ago

Winter arrived early that year without warning. There had been warning but since the Bluesuns decided there was no real cause for alarm there was no known warning. One day it was the season of ripeness and mellow fruitfulness, carpets of apples, pumpkins decaying in fields and suddenly all abundance disappeared. They left no trace.

Heavy blizzards descended. It lasted days leaving the countryside pock-marked in deep snow. It choked the fields, bringing country lanes and highways to a standstill. This snow was not going anywhere. It was as Dr. Kopek had foreseen and predicted, but failed to convince the Goldstars from delivering timely ultimatum to folks at Mystic; nor the Bluesuns too absorbed in their own blackout stew to comprehend.

E-Ecklor had plunged into drifting months of permanent blackness without even knowing it. Taking Mystic on the icy Kraaa fringes with it. They were too late.

Drak was tobogganing alone on a nearby hillock to while away the dark times and gloom. With so much snow there was little else by way of sport for an active fifteen-year -old. He listened to no one. It was unlikely he would hear Larda. Or Ina. After their spat over the eight blue fruit flies in the glass bottle and the return of his sister’s recurring nightmares, he had grown more sullen and wild, while she languished. He did not think Ina could bear his presence any more. First his butterflies, now her fruit flies had destroyed the siblings bond if at all it once existed. When their little blue heads had broken rolling in the smear, the ties that bound them had irrevocably snapped.

Ina, who was forbidden from going out of doors without supervision, could not follow Drak. She knew he was out in the snow somewhere and longed to follow. Mrs. Bline had her orders--mainly to keep the child quiet. Being elderly and arthritic she lacked the energy to accompany Ina in the deep snow. So she quietly drew the heavy chintz curtains in the little girl's bedroom and bustled downstairs to finish up cooking.

Desolate at being abandoned, Ina quietly stole room to room gazing wistfully out of every window pane at the bleak surfaces outside. She started on the ground floor, the expansive living room, the study where she lingered the longest catching Daddy's presence, then forlornly into the dining room, the kitchen, the laundry with its tiny window. At last she crept upstairs, her footfalls heavy with defeat. No Drak. Not a sign.

"Ina," the housekeeper called, "dinner is ready. I'll be serving in ten minutes. Please be punctual child. Your father insists."

"Ina!" the housekeeper called louder, ten minutes later, "dinner is served." When no Ina appeared, Mrs. Bline, used to the vagaries of her young charge, took weary limbs upstairs three floors to the attic where she knew the little girl habitually closeted herself when she felt peevish. The attic overlooked parts of the valley down to the sea.

No Ina. The attic was empty. Grumbling and cussing under her breath at the long climb and painful effort she was about to reach the study below, another of Ina's favorite hideouts, when she thought she heard an odd noise. It sounded like a buzz. A rather loud buzz. It seemed to be coming from one of the bedrooms on the first floor. Of course! She turned towards Ina's bedroom at the far end of the landing.

She knocked, gently at first, then louder. Her knuckles hurt. The white painted door stayed firmly shut. She banged harder to alarm the occupant inside that she meant business. She thought she could hear Ina's voice. Faint. The child appeared to be crooning. Well, Ina did have a high-pitched reedy voice. But she heard something else. Another reedy voice? It could have been a whistle. Whose?

"Ina! Didn't you hear me call?" Mrs. Bline burst into the room. The garbled scream upon scream she elicited could be heard for miles, as flies, thousands of little winged monsters, eyes bulging, filled her vision, engulfing her, buzzing, whistling, encircling, crawling into her mouth, her eyes as she blindly thrashed, fleeing in panic.

The funeral was poorly attended on account of the ice-fall, which made the town's main inter-connecting roads impassable. Mrs. Bline was well loved in the tight-knit Mystic community. Death was ruled an accident. She had slipped and fallen down the main stairs--taken a bad tumble. Her neck was broken. The last words she was heard to utter were "Flies! Flies!" This was Mrs. Blanket's sworn testimony at the inquest.

The Blankets had speedily arrived through the snowdrifts mounted on a pair of sturdy farm horses as soon as they had heard the screams, which had traveled. They were the nearest neighbors. They had thought the distressful noise to be Ina's. They did not see a single fly. Nor could any traces of flies be found. The coroner, a former Bluesuns veteran, dealt closely with the examination on flies. The animal vet who had examined Ina in a medical capacity for her nightmares was also summoned, although he lived three farms away. He was closely questioned especially in relation to flies' eating habits and preferences for dwelling places. The vet patiently explained that his area of expertise was farm animals. Four-legged kind. Not insects. But if he could be persuaded to treat Ina, who was two-legged, then he could darn well reasonably answer few questions on flies, which walked on six, antennae excluding, but not in official capacity. The coroner was most thorough. Autopsy would later reveal pincer-like needle marks in puncture openings on Mrs. Bline's brain and the periphery of her neck, where it had split in two.

Ina, contrary to expectation, stayed remarkably subdued and calm as an E-Ecklor child throughout the inquest. Dr. Kopek, too numb to fathom what happened, hesitated to probe deeper, fearing the consequences. All that mattered was his Ina. She was safe. What if it had been she who was bit, had tripped down the stairs? Heaven forbid! Ina did not appear traumatized in the least which was a relief. It was not his call to trigger her nightmares. He felt sorry for Mrs. Bline. Meanwhile he had another imminent worry--a replacement housekeeper to find. At short notice he was left with few choices.

Drak had disappeared. He had grown so disagreeable he could not be counted on or found anywhere, not even at his favorite space parlors, or at the Blankets where he sometimes whiled away the hours lured by the farm horses. Oddly enough he did not show up at the funeral. Baby-sitting Ina was not an option. How would Dr. Kopek ever pull through this rut. It took a week out of his urgent work schedule at the Goldstars.

Five Days Ago

"Dr. Kopek! Dr. Kopek, do you hear me?"

"Hello! Hello! Yes, this is he, Dr. Kopek!"

"Dr. Kopek! You must return home at once."

"What is it? Larda? Yes, this is he Dr. Kopek. Can you speak louder?"

"I can't manage any longer, Dr. Kopek. Ina's doing . . . and the flies . . . "

"Hello! Hello! --Ina?"

"Dr. Kopek! Really, I must go home--"

"Home?"

"My home. Essex!"

"My home?? Hello! Hello! I don't hear you. Larda?"

"Dr. Kopek! --leaving tonight, sooner if possible--"

"Hello! Larda? What's --matter? --am leaving right away."

"--no one with Ina. I'm sorry."

"--hang on, couple more days. Hello! Larda?"

"--been trying --five days . . . the flies . . ."

"No! Don't leave . . . Don't . . . "

"I'm so sorry Dr. Kopek. Hanging up. Really I can't."

"Couple more days--all I ask . . . roads impassable, how's Ina. . . more flies?"

"I'm sorry. Ina--"

"Put Ina on . . . "

"The flies . . . they're . . . "

Click.

Three Months ago

"Look!" said Ina jubilantly, dangling the little blue glass bottle under her brother's nose. She had found him at last after traipsing through the entire garden to the meadows. Drak was pairing a branch to a sharp point with his penknife. Wood shavings were flying with systematic regularity as he put his mind to the task. After many attempts at choosing the right twig he had finally settled on one stout sturdy larch twitch which would do. He had plans for the heat of the afternoon, down by the creek a little away from the house. He frequented it often during summer, now that he was older and taller. It was no longer out of bounds as it was for Ina. First he would take a long cool swim in the burbling waters. Then after he'd cooled off he would harpoon a fish or two with this here twig he had made after a fashion especially for the big catch. He had never harpooned one before but he knew it could be done. Some large trout were spotted in those waters. He had no time for Ina's childish antics. He had had enough with the butterflies incident the previous year. He knew when to stay clear. "Go away!" was his surly response. He hoped he sounded nasty enough to deter her.

"But look what I have!" rejoined Ina excitedly--unfazed. She knew her brother.

"Can't you see I'm busy?"

"Yes, Drak. I see. Why are you sharpening that stick?"

"Not any of your business. Now leave me alone!"

"But do look what I have, just this once."

"If I look will you leave me alone?"

"Oh yes, Drak. I most certainly will!"

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Cross my heart and hope to die?"

"Cross your heart and hope to die!"

"There, I looked! Satisfied?"

"No, you didn't!"

"Yes, I did, too! Now go away! I can't help it if you're a blind cat!"

"But, you didn't. You're lyin'. You're lyin'! "

"Leave me alone. You promised. Now go away!"

"Wait till Daddy hears. I know you're going down to the river."

"Snitch!"

"It's out of bounds."

"Not for me, short cat! I'm a grown man."

"Will you look?"

"No! NO! Now see what you've done! You made me break my harpoon. You little--"

Drak gave her long braid a sharp yank shoving her roughly into the grass.

"Bwaaaahhhh! Daddy! Daddy!"

"Crybaby! Here, give me that!" He grabbed the blue glass bottle containing the buzzing blue-nosed fruit flies. With a long sweep of his arm he lofted it high into the air and threw it far and wide. The bottle zig-zagged arching into the blue sunlight to smash into smithereens on the wooden turnstile where it came to rest in chips of broken glass.

"Bwaaaaahhhh! It's mine! You killed them! Stop! Bwaaaahhhhhhhhhh!"

Three Weeks Ago

The replacement baby-sitter who had mysteriously appeared one day through the pelting snow, stayed. It was a miracle. No one had a clue how she arrived. It was surmised a vehicle had dropped her off at a snowfield near Blankets from where she had walked. Although how that could have been managed through the unplowed roads was another mystery. Dr. Kopek had been growing more desperate with each passing day, hopes of ever finding one diminishing rapidly. He was ready to grasp at straws, although helmed in by a nine-year-old who clearly needed special care was producing few results.

Ina's fiendish nightmares had returned with redoubled energy. His presence at the Goldstars offices was far too pressing to be ignored. Baby-sitting his daughter was entrapping him in his own home. Neither would she let him sleep nights nor could anyone else in the household get any much-needed rest. Drak could not be relied on. He disappeared frequently for days on end, then reappeared looking scraggly and sick. He had grown so morose he hardly spoke at all. He had no friends. A sickening stench hundred times worse than rotting fish came from him, drenching the house in odd odors. With the worsening increase in icefalls schools had closed indefinitely. E-Eckloreans were being required to home-school their children to make up for missed classes.

In the interim the ultimatum had been issued. The Bluesuns had not taken kindly to the intrusion of qubit readings out of unreliable quantum data sources into their comprehension of the current situation regarding why Thyme Lake's sun which fed light to Ecklor was 'dappering'. Or why Mystic was shifting. The answer clearly lay in the mutant flies. Flies would fly away. Their version! But Goldstars won the round, since flies were spotted everywhere. In homes, in fields, on trees, in bands of dark patches over the snow. On clouds. If not swarming in masses through the ether flies were filtering through the chimneys, the drains, gutters, cracks, every orifice a house contained. It would seem they just flew through metal and glass--light as thistle or windblown dandelions.

Just as Dr. Povindze Kopek was fast losing all hope on how to handle a deteriorating household, Larda mysteriously appeared on his doorstep disheveled and muddied, desperately in need of shelter, and carrying a pair of banged-up suitcases.

Dr. Kopek was reading aloud a dragon tale for the fifth time that morning to a disinterested Ina. At last he had succeeded in tucking her to bed and tiptoed into his study for some restful peace and quiet and to catch up on his overdue paperwork, when he thought he heard the sound of an approaching vehicle crunching over the ice crystals in his driveway. Not now was his initial reaction, but he turned nevertheless to his wide windows to peer outside. Visitors were rare and never when uninvited or snowed-in. The car or whatever it was had turned the corner, hidden from view. A whistle sounded.

He ambled over to the window to get a better look. It was then he caught sight of what he had hoped never to see, and never in winter--a fly. A live little flying monster with the movement of a drone--buzzing at the window pane. Where had it come from? Within moments it was joined by several others. Immediately several more! Within mere seconds the windows, walls, his desk, the papers, the ceiling, the floor were quickly covered by a thick black moving mass, fluttering, flying, smelly soft winged shapes.

Dr. Kopek thrashed wildly, dusting off thousands which had settled on his head, stomping and crushing them with his heavy boots, while millions more worked their way through his hair, face, work suit, crawling in droves under his trouser legs, covering his eyes and hands and nose too congested to breathe. Those that lay dead under his feet piled two feet deep like a glossy black shag carpet. The smell of decay was over- powering. The fire in the hearth where he had earlier thrown several logs was on the verge of extinguishing, snuffed out by the vast moving body of flies which had worked their way to the fireplace. A bright roaring flame looked lost. He would have to rekindle that fire. It was his only hope. Fire would singe everyone of these fiends into extinction.

Moving in the slow motion of a spacewalk on the moon he stumbled towards the fireplace groping his way as he blindly crashed into his sturdy desk and overturned two armchairs in his painful progress. They landed heavily on the floor, tangled by the communication system he was working on. All the while his arms flailed maddeningly, helplessly, slapping hard at the flies crawling into his nose and mouth. Using everything at his disposal within reach - books, charts, heavy wooden book-ends lining the walls, whatever he could lay his hands on, he flapped and tore into the army of flies. But the more he beat at them, the more emerged to take the place of the dead and fallen ones floating like gossamer, lighter than snowflakes, aerial in the rapid death they sought.

Just as he was tiring with his futile endeavors to rid the room of millions of tiny flying projectiles two new sounds smote his ears red and raw with the scratches and blows he had pummeled them. Ina? Oh no, please dear God, it can't be! The doorbell? Of course, the caller in the car, or was it, but the window was no longer transparent, only a dark moving blur where the window panes should be. And that whistle wouldn’t stop!

"Help! Over here!" he called out hoarsely hoping it was the Blankets from next door farms. A fistful of flies flew into his open mouth. He gagged spitting them out, choking, swallowing, chewing vengefully at the rest.

"Daddeeee! Daddeee!" It was Ina. She sounded near.

"Ina, stay where you are!" he yelled in panic, unmindful of the flying bodies buzzing against his tongue and teeth. He sneezed aloud, ejecting several.

Rrrnnnggg! Rrruuunnnnggg! Drat! The doorbell!

"Drakeee! Drakeee!"

Drak?? Good Grief!! "Don't come into the study! Not NOW!"

Rrrruunnnggg! Rrrruuunnnnggggg!

"Where are you Daddy? I can't see . . . "

"Come in, whoever you are at the door. Help! Door's open! Flies!"

"Drakee . . . Daddeee . . . "

"Coming, baby . . . "

In moments while his head was bursting with the sounds of his daughter's high- pitched screams, the strident ring of the doorbell continuously whining, the loud whistle buzzing, the incessant crackling of flies filling the room like a cloud of smoke from a house on fire, his own voice yelling above the din to make himself heard, the study door burst open. There stood Larda stylishly scarfed, coated, hatted, gloved all in black from head to toe, her hand on the doorknob, an expression of vague curiosity mixed with a certain distrust on her calm countenance. She looked so cool and collected despite her ordeal a heavily disheveled Dr. Kopek felt distraught and drained beyond repair.

All the noises penetrating his senses a few seconds ago came to a dead stop. Ina's cries dissipated. The house rocked to pin drop silence--still and watchful. The fireplace crackled warmly, feverishly. Of the swarms of flies there was hardly a trace. Not one.

He hastily fell to tamping down his dislodged hair, smoothening his suit and tie, unsure how he must appear in the presence of a fine intruder filling his vision with the same sooty darkness that the flies had. His mouth that had dropped open shut with a visible snap. Who could she be? Perhaps someone lost in the snow, in these parts.

"Err . . . if this is not a good time, I could come back later," the woman dressed in black intoned in musical, measured tones.

"No--no, pray be seated, not that one--here!" He picked up the fallen chair dusting it diligently although it looked in fair condition. He turned it this way and that looking for flies. Where could those varmints be? He muttered something indistinct under his breath hoping it sounded welcoming. When he realized how foolish he must look with his room in disarray he stopped thrashing about awkwardly and straightened up.

"Err, flies. Ms-- . . . devilish little monsters undoubtedly . . . "

"You may call me Larda--" Her air of puzzlement returned.

"Pay no attention to them."

"If you say so! I see no flies. Are you quite sure you're all right?"

"Of course I'm all right!" he snapped, his patience at an end, "Do I look ill--"

"Well, yes, uh--no, oh no. If you must know, I'm here for the interview, for a little girl, I have the address, but if you're not up to it, I really could come back."

"Not up to it?? Why Ms--, Ms-- sit down, please. Ah yes--the interview, and what did you say your name was again? Sorry, I'm not always this gauche."

One Day Ago

The replacement baby-sitter Larda had been more than a housekeeper. She was governess too, dutifully fulfilling many uncalled for tasks as she familiarized herself with her workload. The care of Ina was her sole responsibility. School lessons were held each day in the study. That she could cope was a matter of trial and error and sometimes experimentation. She was told not to hold out hope for Drak. But she did!

It had taken Dr. Kopek three days to trek home through the snow and ice and numbing cold in the semi-darkness surrounding Mystic. Part of the way he had traveled by space-rotor, a ten-wheel device shaped like a fly which had coughed its last when it ran into a snowdrift. Then he had snow-mobiled like a skimming lammergeier over open terrain till that contraption found abandoned also collapsed when its handlebars broke. The rest of the way he trekked on foot, braving the blinding blizzard conditions, snow drifts and paralyzing hypothermia. By the time he was conscious enough to make it home he was so severely frostbitten he could hardly feel his hands and feet, or stand.

Recovery would be slow. Some unsettled questions remained--those concerning Ina whose hallucinations grew so wild he could only conclude in growing panic that the photoreceptors in her retina had started to display the large angle view of a fly to her new compound eyes. It was not wholly unexpected. She was mutating at a faster rate into the very viscous substance she feared the most, a fly, the revelation nothing new. Her nightmares grew normal, multiplied. She would seek to explain objects she could see in multiple triangle images. Like a blue-nosed fly trapped in overripe fruit. In time her manifestation would complete same as every E-Ecklorean child in the town of Mystic.

Larda, plainly unable to handle the transformation, nauseated by Ina's instantaneous compound eye abilities playing in each ommatidium alternatively, erupting with steady tedious repetition, mesmerized yet helpless to do more, left, just as suddenly as she had come. She took nothing with her, not even her two worn suitcases she had arrived with. Her precipitate departure without another word except for that last barely audible urgent call to the Goldstar Labs’ scientist allowed Dr. Kopek to hold out a faint glimmer of hope that she would one day return. Just as suddenly! He hoped she would.

As for Drak he was never seen again. Mystic township declared him a runaway, like the pool of Mystic teenagers who periodically disappeared each year never to return. Only this time things were different. This time with the great darkness spreading many warnings had ultimately leaked into E-Ecklor. People were somewhat prepared for the inevitable endangerments by fly mutations to their children. In Drak's case none knew the outcome. The possibilities of what could have occurred to him were endless, which was not for the better good. No other plausible explanation seemed possible, although Dr. Kopek never gave up hope, never stopped looking through the intense darkness covering Waterstone Farms, Mystic and the entire sea coast of Kraaa.

If Ina in her nightmarish reality was to be believed, then Drak in his rapid departure from Waterstone had turned king of the flies, growing gauze like wings, compound eyes, and flying away into the distance with swarms of yearly invasions. He was an E-Ecklor child after all. What could be further from survival or the truth? In time stories would emerge by instinct around the small quiet beach towns of Kraaa of him steering insect instrumentation, his mind’s eye two big black blobs of liquid gel focusing on the bleak landscape around with crystalline clarity. But as it turned out in E-Ecklor with so much desperation to contend with, no one paid too much attention to the ranting of a child, much less a child mutation . . . and a crazed one at that.

Dr. Kopek, too ill to know or care in the initial week or two that he was recuperating, was forced to deal with horrific apparitions of his own--dappling suns shining blue turning gold, billions of black flies blotting out the two suns, an unimaginable darkness so severe it would plunge E-Ecklor in permanent jeopardy; a planet without light gobbled into a pronounced lengthy winter which few would survive. Would their farm of Waterstone ever be the few who remained within Mystic?

The final warnings issued by the Bluesuns had come too late. Incredulously thanks to Dr. Kopek's timely albedo readings at the Goldstars observatories before his sudden forced departure some lives were saved, some towns, some communities. It remained to be seen how many and whose.

Today

They come in immense darkening clouds literally blotting out the sky--vast balloons of animated specks glittering against the sun. You look up and what do you think you see? Blackness. Dust. Nothing but darkness. At first the nightfall looks like a dense approaching snowstorm. Then you see the small moving bodies. Flies! They come in waves. They settle on the ice and snow. On the sea fringes. In small towns like Mystic. On the wind. The wind blowing south over E-Ecklor. Not a single leaf or plant in sight. Not a bare twig or tree. The out-fields and low lying grasslands are gone. Once rich trails, valleys, highlands are devastated, ravaged, gone. E-Ecklor is flattened. Only the darkness remains.

The flies are too numerous--myriads of winged swarms that over sweep the atmosphere, blot the sky, the wide open spaces laid bare as an arctic winter. Here and there stray patches of amaranth, a few jagged stalks of milkweed can be seen to alleviate the eyesight, to relieve the monotony. It is futile. No light remains. Even the livestock cannot be saved except those harnessed into underground tunnels or caves of which Waterstone Farms and its sea-locked neighborhood surroundings has none.

Faced with the long wait in the drifting dark . . .

Nothing to do but wait . . .

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