I updated this story in the book of the same name. I actually updated the ending a while back, but have yet (as of today: 12/2/23) to change it in the actual book. I guess I should get on the ball. Someone just ordered this book the other day. I deserve a good beating for not actually updating things in a timely fashion.
This story is a bit odd. The ending has always bugged me. From the time I wrote it I’ve puzzled over what the proper ending should be. An image of Rohmer simply floating around in space, half dead and dreaming . . . or perhaps his subconscious is merely playing tricks on him. Or, could it be that he has died and this is his idea of heaven. In any event, he is an astronaut from a distant past.
So, anyway, I sat down and wrote a new ending. I still wasn’t completely sure of things. I guess that’s why I had yet to pull the trigger on the editing of the actual book. Or was it a case of me just getting lazy. There are still edits and corrections to be done. Reading things over, I found an error in “Playroom 3.0”; a minor error, but an error all the same.
I really need to give the book a good going over. I try to catch things on the first go round, but am not always successful.
Most of the other stories are pretty good, I thought at the time I wrote them–though I am a bit biased. My favorite story might be “Incentive Corps”, though “On the Cutting Edge” is pretty good, too. And “It’s Something Like Russian Roulette” was somewhat awesome in the sense that the story just kept expanding and growing. I had to cut ISLRR short to fit it into the book. The main character, Laura, was certainly not finished dueling it out with Jack. She’ll have to go back into the alternate universe and play the whole game out. I did start on that, feeling as though I’ll have to let it play out into a future novella.
For now, however, here is the updated version of Rohmer . . .
I hope the person who bought the book sees this, as I believe the new ending improves the story.
My name’s Rohmer, as you might have guessed. C. Rohmer. Cornelius, if you must know, is my first name. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it like that—the ‘if you must know’ part. I really don’t have a problem telling you. It’s just that my name is a minor detail. Well, except for my last name. You could substitute an ‘a’ for the ‘h’ and you would have what I do. I roam. That’s part of it, anyway. I roam up and down the rows of the garden. It is strange to call it that, a garden, I mean. But that’s how I think of it. And that’s truly what it is.
This ‘garden,’ if you will, is set amidst chaos. The chaos is what is also known as the imagination. And this imagination is the whole of the universe, or multi-verse, perhaps. Just picture it like this: A man (that man would be me), tending a garden, somewhere in outer space. All around is darkness, in all directions. Picture me sitting at one end of this garden, at the end of the rows. Before me lies many rows of plants. There is a glow. The glow is given off by the plants themselves, each tiny glow emanating from each individual plant, each bulb. And here I sit.
So, I’m sitting in an overstuffed, very beat-up and faded chair. I presume it came from earth at some point. The chair is sort of a faded orange, almost a peach color now; buttons are missing from the back cushion which sports the faint yellow outline of what resembles a fleur de lis; and there are holes where small tufts of stuffing peek out and meet the darkness. Occasionally, I’ll take a gloved finger and poke at the tufts, trying to push the fluffiness back into the chair. All of this is usually of no consequence; and most often I’m totally unsuccessful in my attempts, as my gloved fingers are really too large. But I try. I don’t really know why. The chair is in such disrepair. There is no salvaging it. Something to do while I wait between my strolls up and down the rows, I guess. You might consider me something of a night watchman. Only it is perpetually night, all around, all the time. You can picture me in an antiquated space suit, helmet and all. I suppose I could raise a gloved hand and give you a wave, if I really thought you could see me. Okay, there, I did it. Just for fun, I suppose. That’s all it amounts to.
So, how did I get here? To be honest, I don’t know. There is a spaceship, a crashed space vehicle about a kilometer away, somewhere behind me. I won’t kid myself that you can actually see that. At one time, I would guess that there had been about five of us. I don’t know what happened to the others. I am, in fact, only guessing about the others having existed. I am guessing this due to the number of sleeping “beds” or pods on the ship. Five units, total. And then again, who is to say that the space ship in the distance was even mine? Or that it was at full occupancy as it traveled here?
I can’t say how I arrived. I can only say that there is a vague remembrance of my tiredly staggering to this chair. The chair being here . . . well, that is odd, of course. How could an overstuffed arm chair have arrived on this planet in the first place. This chair isn’t the kind of thing that would be, or ever have could have been on a space vehicle of any kind. Perhaps my memory is a false one. Perhaps I only imagine my having staggered to the chair. And maybe the chair is just within the realm of my imagination. And yet here I sit.
The next question might be as to how long I have been here. That is another question that I have no answer to, another variable in the equation. I might have been here months or perhaps years. I tried to keep track early on, but there is no way to do so. The instruments aboard the ship are all useless, dead things, broken. Sometimes, however, when I do venture aboard the ship, which isn’t often, there is a faint glimmer of a ghost, a presence. Not a human presence, more like a wavering essence of what had once perhaps been top of the line A.I. . . . But this is no more than a useless, faint shimmer, more of a feeling than any sort of visual presence.
And where is here? What planet is this?
I don’t know. We could call it Mars, but I’m sure it isn’t. Or we could call it the moon, but I’m more than certain it is not that either. For, after all, if it were the moon, wouldn’t I have a window seat to the earth, or the sun? Unless I’m on the dark side. Or perhaps, more likely, both of those planets have died. Or they are dead to me at least, or might as well be. Seems I vaguely remember having passed those planets early on. I believe I am light years from either of those planets. The terrain seems similar to the moon, however, and less similar to mars. Barren all the same.
So how do I breathe? How do I maintain my sustenance, my life?
It all has to do with the garden. I’m not sure of the exact connection. All I know is that one day(?) I awoke in the chair (with a vague remembrance of having staggered to it—which might or might not be a real memory). And when I awoke, I began wandering up and down the rows of the garden to explore things. It was something to do and, well, even though it felt odd—odd but comforting in a strange way, I felt the need to do it. I felt the urge to wander, to explore. The plants seemed familiar somehow. I felt as though I was meant to be here. However I came to be here made no real difference. I could try and puzzle it all out; and in fact, I have tried to do just that, all to no avail. And so I stopped. I sat. I watched. And then I simply started tending the garden.
Let me say that, at first I was ignorant of things. I knew for certain that I was going to die. There was no way around that, so I just started exploring the garden for a time. Just to pass the time, until I died. Which meant that I would have this period of time, initially, until my air expired. I was moving along slowly at first, sluggishly. There was no hope. Each time I stood up and wandered the rows, I only had the thought of leaving myself enough oxygen to make it back to the chair, whereupon I would die peacefully. If one could call dying like that peaceful . . . I’ve seen suits malfunction and the occupants die. Not pretty or peaceful. Anyway, it didn’t happen. That was quite a while back. A year? Two, three? Who knows? Time seems irrelevant now. That isn’t to say I’ll go on forever. I’ll never be brave enough to make such a bold statement. Until the end, however, I’ll tend the garden, my garden. At least I’ve come to think of it as my garden anyway. No one else was here. I’m not quite sure why I am suddenly thinking of Voltaire, the story of Candide. Did Professor Pangloss perhaps make a statement about a man tending a garden? He would have been speaking of such to Candide, of course. And his ideas would have originated with Leibnitz, or was it Kant?
And I seem to have gotten sidetracked. At times I get confused. So where was I? Oh, yes, oxygen levels . . . I began to notice that the more I wandered the garden, the higher my oxygen levels got. It took a little while to figure this out, the association to the garden. But, yes, it soon became apparent that roaming the garden triggered the increase in my oxygen levels. And also, my sustenance levels, my energy. I didn’t need to take any sort of nutrient pill, or food pellet, or eat any rations of any kind. All I needed to do was wander a bit in the garden; after which I would feel full, satisfied, as though I had eaten. It seemed any sort of alimentary needs that I had previously had had become sated with the roaming, with my moving about the garden.
And what type of plants, you might query, are in this garden?
Well, that was a bit of a task, figuring that part out. That part was a mystery, at first. It took me a long, long while to make any sense of that part. And still, I have trouble believing what it appears to be. I’m quite sure I won’t really be able to explain it to you, at least not in any way that will be satisfactory. I’m not even totally sure where to begin.
Let’s see, I guess I should tell you what I do know. I know that when I sense something about a plant—and don’t laugh when I say it is more than a sensing, it is a “glowing.” That’s right, the plant glows. There is a certain something about each plant, a signal, letting me know, or making me aware that it is time. Picture it this way: As a child, you’re sitting on a porch on a dark summer night and a lightening bug lights up, and then another one glows momentarily, off in another direction. It’s similar to that, with the plants, I mean. Only the plants aren’t tiny bugs. And the plants, as they grow, form bulbs that turn into spherical globules, translucent in form. This outer globe-like sphere has a membrane similar to a—well, let me take you back to childhood again—a bubble. Remember blowing bubbles? The outer membrane of the globe is similar. And each plant glows with a different intensity at varying stages of growth, each with a different color. One plant might glow with a purplish hue, and another might have a more orange tint, almost neon like. And then the one that had the orange glow might change to a purple, and then perhaps to a yellow, or a green. It is odd, yes, and I haven’t figured out the sequence, or significance—if there is a sequence, even, or any sort of significance. I’m not at all sure, at least at first. There is a significance, however. I’m sure of it. There has to be.
I used to sit and ponder, studying the lights, looking for a pattern, searching. I have yet to figure it out. I am a person who has synesthesia, the disorder, or ability (depending on your perspective) to associate colors with numbers. Let me be clear, I don’t try to do it. It isn’t a conscious thing. The number 3, for instance, automatically triggers the color green. The number 7 is blue, 9 purple, 2 yellow, etc. And so I would sit, for hours, looking at the process in reverse. When a plant flashed a color, I would log the number. Just in my mind, of course. I was hoping a pattern would emerge. After hours of this, this sitting and watching, none did. That’s not to say that there is no pattern; it’s merely that I haven’t figured the pattern out if there is one. I’m of the opinion that nothing in the universe, or this multi-verse, is totally random. Even amidst chaos there is a structure. Going back to childhood once again, one could observe even a snowflake, at least momentarily, and see a pattern, a structure. That structure, however fragile, was visible. And so it is with the plants. It has to be
And so, early on, at the end of this hours-long (or days upon days long) observation, I fell into a kind of stupor, a sort of twilight state. And in this state, I was able to observe something. No, no, that isn’t correct. It wasn’t an observation; it was a feeling. It didn’t matter what the color of the plant was, each one might give off a different color, a different light; but I would sense that the plant was ready. Ready for what? I wondered. But with a strong sense, or feeling, I would be drawn to a particular plant. At some point, I hesitantly reached out and touched the globe, and the globe lifted up and drifted away into space. Of course, there were a couple of occasions when I misjudged things and grasped a globe before it was quite ready. And of course, the thing burst into nothing. And that’s when a sound came up. This sound was in my mind, of course, since there is no medium for sound to travel in space, no air waves to push. But, in my head there was a tone, a tone that rose. A particular voice, so to speak, of that plant. And the sound was painful in pitch. And the second time this happened there was a different sound, an individual voice, the second was of a lower tone. Eventually, I came to realize that a simple touch with a gloved finger was enough of a release, sort of like tapping someone on the shoulder. One slight tap, or nudge, was enough. The colored, translucent globe rose and lifted up, hanging above its stalk momentarily and then drifting off and away. This was how it happened. And, of course, the stalk would wither away; and another stalk would, within only a few days, start to grow from beneath the semi-hard, mushy gray surface.
How big do the stalks grow, how tall? At the most, three feet or so. Some only hit two feet, or somewhere between. These plants are individual to some degree. And each, I found, has a personality. It is hard to describe. I don’t mean personality, so much, as . . . well, an idea. That’s what I would say. And not just an idea, but a story. Perhaps the idea is there in the seed, and then the story develops.
And to be honest, I know you are going to ask, but I don’t know. I have no idea where the seeds come from, or who plants them. Perhaps during the time when I do sleep. For some reason, I still need periods of rest, or sleep. Perhaps when I am asleep is when some being, or unseen hand comes and plants each seed. And then a plant grows. And then I know, somehow, after a period of time, that it is time for that particular plant to release its globe, or story, into space. Just as each human has, or had rather, as I am not around humans any longer, a story, so too does each plant.
There was an incident, a terrifying incident, that happened a while back. At some point I began to notice a misty cloud in space. It was a good way off, initially, and I wasn’t much worried about it. But then this cloud came closer, grew larger. I then realized that this cloud was a dust cloud, or storm, made up of tiny particles of debris. This cloud was, in any event, heading directly toward my planet, our planet—mine and the plant’s. I sensed a definite nervousness, a vibration or hum among the plants. As the storm got close, the plants all formed into the same color, or they all gave off the same color, I should say, and the hum or vibration became a similar tone for all. When the storm got extremely close, the globes all rose in unison and came toward me. This, my friend, was extremely frightening. I didn’t know what was going on. I started to run, but realized that such a thing would be futile. I tried to calm myself. I stood and waited. I then realized that the plants, or the globes at least, meant me no harm.
I stood still as they all gathered round me. Each and every one landed on my body, all the way around. I’m not quite sure whether they were attempting to protect me, or whether I was to protect each and every one of them. In any event, I found myself being propelled along, walking as best I could, with all of these globules attached to me, moving in the direction of the space ship. Each one of the globes had receded to about the diameter of an orange. And all affixed, or clung tightly to my suit. And so we went. I can imagine myself as a man appearing to have wrapped himself in glowing Christmas tree lights, moving along in the darkness of space, walking across a gray and desolate planet . . .
And we made it safely, amazingly enough. I think now, how lucky I was, how lucky we all were, that I didn’t trip and fall. Would they have held me up? Would they have, as a unit, lifted me had I lost my balance? And another thought, would I have crushed the sensitive globes had I fallen? Would they have become angry and attacked me? I sensed not. These things, these globes, and their corresponding stands, or plant stalks seem peaceful enough. They did, however, with a certain amount of force and pressure, propel me along and toward the spaceship. Once inside the ship, with the hatch closed, we waited.
Eventually, after what I sensed to be a couple of hours, the storm passed. And then once again, I was propelled out and along, across the open expanse, back to the garden. Some of the stalks had fallen and lay in disarray upon the ground. But once each of the globes left my body, and returned to hovering over the individual stalks, the stalks rose and straightened, each globe then reattaching itself properly and gently. Each globe also grew and shrank to its individually proper proportion. They no longer acted in unison. It was all, needless to say, very strange, and unnerving. Scary. And yet special. And in the end, all worked out. The incident gave me an even greater sensitivity toward the plants. I feel them even more strongly now than I did before. Often times I can sense the colors about to change just before they do. I still haven’t figured out the pattern, or sequence.
And more and more now, I think of each globe as an individual idea, or story. I get the sense that if I look close at a globe I can see tiny forms taking shape within it. I sort of think of each as a crystal ball, each having a story to tell. I imagine peering in and seeing a city form, with tiny beings going about their busy lives, enacting exotic tales that I can only dream about. I am sure this is all just my imagination playing tricks. But all the same . . . I’m starting to think I am not only a caretaker of plants in a garden, but also perhaps a cosmic librarian of sorts. Each globe, as I mentioned, tells a story. Over here is a Jules Verne tale, and over there is Poe. Or perhaps a dozen stories are progressing, all clustered within a particular globe. Each globe is perhaps a composite repository of information, ideas, stories, or even entities, consisting of future and past. Oh look, I want to say, pointing each globe out, “here is Dickens, and over here—Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn, and Chekhov, and Dostoevski and Turgenev, Lermentov and Pushkin . . . and how are they all grouped? Are these lumped all together? And then the American authors: Bradbury, Burroughs, Wells, Asimov . . . And what about philosophers and other great thinkers—those who shaped the Western world? Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Kant, and those of the east, . . . Confucius, Buddha, etc.; and the dramatists—Shakespeare, Moliere, Racine . . . and others, (jumping back to literature) Dante, Milton . . . And then too, what of the inventors, the creators, the great artists? Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael . . . And what about the singular ideas, or thoughts themselves, or bits of thought? What about all of the ones and zeroes and bits of information that make up the universe, or again, multi-verse? And what of beauty, and passion, and love? And are evil thoughts and actions all stored here also? What if I could spot an evil thought in some small section of one of the globes? What if there is a thought that will become a spark of some future child’s thought? Suppose I could learn to spot some evil deed that has yet to be enacted by some future being . . . If I were able to spot it, could that be considered a weed in the garden, my garden? Would I be then justified in smashing that particular globe? There might be other thoughts or ideas swirling around within the same globe that might be harmless, or good, even; all swirling round like some misty cloud.
My thoughts went then to the storm that came that day; the day we all trudged along together, like some strange and confused man wrapped in Christmas tree lights, moving through the darkness on a dark and distant planet.
And so these are my thoughts as I sit here and ponder over the garden, my garden, Rohmer’s Garden. Yes, yes, I’m convinced of it—this is some sort of cosmic library. All thoughts and ideas are stored here. But where do they go, these ideas, when I release these globes? Where do they float off to? Where do they land? Do they ever land? Do some merely drift eternally through space, never attaching to anything or any creature or being?
And so I must concentrate, study. I watch the lights, the various colors flashing, or glowing steadily in the darkness. I try again matching and converting, without any great effort, the colors into numbers. There has got to be a pattern. Nothing is random. Nothing. I empty my mind now. Now I search for feeling. Nothing yet.
And another thought hits me, who tended the garden before I came to be here? Who tended my garden then? Who was the caretaker of Rohmer’s garden before it in fact became Rohmer’s garden?
Never mind about that . . . that matters not. All that matters is that I am the caretaker now, for however long this might be, for however long I am allowed the privilege.
I sense something, a flickering light, a globe calling. Time for send-off. I rise from my chair, the chair that stayed outside and weathered the storm; the chair that didn’t make the journey with the crazy, lighted man into the spaceship. The chair somehow withstood the storm. And how long has the chair been here? Is the chair some profound entity also? Or is all of space simply toying with me, mocking me, playing with my imagination?
Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I have risen from the chair. I move toward the plants, into the garden, down the rows . . . I find the proper plant, the faintly pulsing globe. I tap it. The globe lifts and hovers. I cup my hands gently beneath the transparent membrane, the properly formed sphere. I lift it a little, gently pushing it up and off into the darkness. The rising sphere is so beautiful I gasp. I feel as though all oxygen is being expelled from my suit. Never mind. That can’t be. I am simply awestruck at the beauty. I feel as though I am floating, endlessly but not aimlessly. I am tending my garden, such a beautiful garden.
***
Newly added section/ending to story.
Radio Static: shchsh
“What’s that?” Burton asks. He is sitting on the quarterdeck of the starship Amber Star.
More static . . . then a voice—“someth–”
“Chang, is that you?”
More static . . . then, “Yes. It’s me. Who else? You copy?”
“What’s up?”
“Patch me through to the captain.”
“What’s up?”
“There is something—something out here, coming toward the ship. It’s – It’s odd.”
“Like what? What is it?”
“Burton, just get the captain on the line. I don’t want to have to repeat myself.”
“Sure, sure . . . don’t get your panties in a wad.”
“Shut up, dickhead. Just do as I ask.”
“Aye, aye, sir—I mean ma’am.” Lt. Julie Chang has seniority and outranks Victor Burton. He knows just how far he can push, yet he often steps over the line.
After a couple of minutes, Captain Lassiter comes on the line. “Julie, what’s happening? Are you ok?”
Static comes through for a few seconds and then “Fine, sir. I’m fine. The bit of debris that scraped the ship did no real damage. I was just returning to the docking bay and saw something unusual. It’s moving toward the ship, sir.”
Captain Lassiter responds. “Can you give any sort of description?”
“Appears to be another ship, sir.”
“Another ship? Can’t be. That’s – well, it’s impossible. Or at least highly improbable.
“I know, sir. I agree. But it’s –”
“Julie, are you at the hatch now?”
“Yes sir. Just outside of it.”
“Get inside. Do it now. Don’t waste any time.”
“Right, sir. On it.”
There is radio silence for a couple of minutes.
“Burton, get eyes on that door. Can you see her?”
“Aye, sir, she’s coming in now. She just entered the outer hatch. She’s shutting it now behind her and locking it up tight. Herring is starting to open the inner hatch, but . . .wait. She’s waving him off. She’s hovering by the porthole window.” Burton shifts the visual he has to the main screen of the quarterdeck. Lt. Chang is staring out at something.
“Can we see what she’s looking at?”
“I’ll try, sir.”
“Julie, what’s out there?”
“Lights, sir. It is nothing but multicolored lights. The thing, whatever it is, is flashing multi-colored lights as though it is trying to signal us.”
“How close is this thing? Is it a ship of some sort?”
“If so, it is fairly small. Tiny. I’d say it is about twenty meters out, but closing fast.”
The view of what Chang sees is now showing on the screen.
“Is the thing showing any signs of aggression?”
“Negative, sir, other than moving in at a fast clip. It’s close enough now that it is – “
“It’s what?”
“It’s coming apart, sir. I mean . . . what I mean to say is that the small pieces, the lights, appear to be separating. They appear to be globes of some kind. And—”
“Oh my God,” says Burton.
“It’s a human, sir. A man. The lights are parting from around his face and I can see his helmet. The glass is cracked sir. He can’t possibly still be alive. But—”
“We can see, Lt. Chang. We have eyes on.”
“So, what should I do? I mean, he can’t be—he can’t be alive, can he? It could be some sort of a trap. The body might be infested with a virus, or some alien life form . . .”
“Like a Trojan horse,” said Burton.
“Something like that, yeah,” responded Julie Chang.
“You’re there, Chang. What is your sense of the lights? Or whatever it is?”
“Not threatening. At least not as far as I can tell. They just flash, sir. As though signaling something.”
“S. O. S.” Burton is staring at the monitor.
“What?” The captain looks at him.
“Yes sir. See. First in one color, then another, the same signal over and over.”
“That’s insane.”
“I agree, sir. It is. But that’s what the lights are saying.”
The lights stop flashing all at once. Everyone waits. In unison, the lights flash. And as they do so, with each flash, there is a thud on the outer bay door of the ship. Julie jumps at the sound. So do the others. All stare. The lights flash again, all together, as though they need to work together to have energy enough to pound on the door of the ship.
Julie Chang has backed away from the window now, but still watching. The lights separate some more, dispersing slowly, revealing the spaceman, the passenger, the cargo they have transported to the ship. All can see that it is a man. A human is exposed to them. A human in a spacesuit. The suit is worn and dirty, from another time, another place, another ship, apparently. From earth. Most of the lights move away now. Julie goes to the window, to the outer door. She turns the handles to the hatch. A short platform extends outward from beneath the door. The spaceman floats gently as the lights move away. The lights disperse, but come back within range of each other as they get farther away from the ship. Lt. Chang opens the hatch and pulls the man into the outer chamber. She is still suited, protected. She closes the hatch and kneels beside the man. She sees the worn patches on the suit. She sees the flag on the shoulder, and the name tag on the spacesuit, the left side of the man’s chest. She reads the name: Rohmer. She stares at the man’s cracked face mask. The man appears dead, but she can’t quite tell. The crack is jagged and the mask is dirty. A small cloud of moisture appears on the inner side of the mask.
“I think—I think he’s alive,” she says. Her voice quavers with her sense of incredulity. “Breathing. I think he is breathing.” Why is this man not dead? Chang ponders this question, staring at the cracked face shield. If he has been floating around in space . . . and God knows for how long . . .
Burton and Captain Lassiter stare at the monitor. They are far too stunned to speak.