Songs of Love and Death

The trouble was, of course, that she’d been right. Martin was fond of Barry—if he thought about it, he’d have to say that Barry had been his closest friend since childhood, given a very limited experience with close friends. But he had few illusions about his cousin’s probity or loyalty: even in the first flush of his infatuation with the new computer, he’d known that nothing Barry told him about it was likely to be true. The brand was completely unfamiliar, the keyboard had too many function keys beyond the usual twelve, and there were other keys and markings with strange symbols that Barry never even tried to explain to him. “It’s one of a kind, absolutely unique, same as you. I feel like I’m in Shakespeare, bringing two great lovers together.”

Directions had not been included, but Jaroslav, the amiable graduate student two doors down the hall, who actually did know quite a lot about computers, came over to set up Martin’s laptop for him. It took considerably longer than expected, due in part to Jaroslav’s unfamiliarity with the operating system, and in equal measure to his fascination with the computer’s programs and connections. “No, that cannot be it, that makes no sense. Well, I suppose that would work, it seems to work, but I cannot understand… yes, that works, but why… ?” He made no more sense out of the keyboard than Barry had, and was clearly only half-joking when he muttered, “With this thing, I am lucky to know to set the clock, where to plug in the mouse.” By the time he was done his Iron Man T-shirt was sweated through, and he was talking to himself in Serb. Afterward, Martin noticed—on the occasional times they passed in the lobby or hall, or outside the building’s laundry room—that Jaroslav avoided meeting his eyes.

Despite Martin’s vast ignorance of the workings of his new computer, however, it functioned better than any machine he had ever owned since a beloved bathtub motorboat that ran up a flag and fired pellets at his rubber ducks. Lorraine had once commented that electronic devices seemed to commit suicide in Martin’s presence, and it was a hard point to argue. Yet the strange laptop never misbehaved: never froze, never crashed, never devoured work he had forgotten to back up—never, in short, treated him with the kind of spitefulness that had always been his lot from anything involving electrons and wires. He realized that he was actually grateful, and from time to time found himself thinking of it not as a machine, but as a quiet and singular friend.

Often now, when he came home in the evening from the large chain grocery where he was the produce manager, he would sit at his worktable (dinner having long since evolved into a solitary pursuit for both Lorraine and himself), and let the computer talk to him, either on-screen or through the excellent earphones that Barry had grandly thrown into the deal. The computer had a sound system, with built-in speakers, but Lorraine complained about the noise, and Martin liked the earphones better anyway. They gave him a curious private peacefulness that made him feel as though he were at the bottom of the ocean in an old-fashioned diving suit, talking with a companion he could not see. Not that he had ever worn any sort of diving suit, or actually been in water deeper than his high school swimming pool. Martin had not been to very many places in his life.

He did no store work on the new computer; there was an intimidating, unforgiving desktop model in his backroom cubicle for that. The laptop was for telling him stories at the swirl of a mouse: it was for bringing him news, delivering such e-mail as he ever received—while most considerately eliminating all junk and spam—and for showing him not only the old films noir and television episodes of his youth, but a wider, richer world, a world he had resigned himself early in life to seeing in snippets at best, but never to know in all its sprawling, vulgar magnificence. The laptop seemed genuinely to care for him: him, Martin Gelber, forty-one years old, balding and lonely, spending his days with fruits and vegetables, and his nights with a wife long since a stranger. Absurdly—and he knew bitterly well just how absurd it was—Martin began to feel cherished.

He was also aware that he had no more than scratched the surface of the laptop’s talents and capacities. There were keys he carefully avoided touching, software settings he never once changed from how Jaroslav had left them, areas of the screen where he never let the mouse wander. Now and then he was tempted to click on some mysterious button—just to see—but Martin had the sad virtue of understanding his own capacity for disaster, and the allure of adventure always faded quickly. He was more than happy with the computer the way it was, and the way they were together.

Except for the One Key.

Martin called it that, having seen The Lord of the Rings, and read Tolkien’s books as well. The One Key lived alone on the upper right corner of the keyboard, well past Print Screen and Scroll Lock and Pause/Break… past the tiny blue lights indicating that Num Lock or Caps Lock or Scroll Lock again were engaged… an ordinary key, no different from any other, except for being without a letter, a number, or—as far as Martin could discern—any obvious purpose. It was simply the One Key: it was just there, like a wisdom tooth, and it drew him from the first as the little closet had drawn Bluebeard’s seventh wife, or the chest full of plagues had enticed Pandora. Martin, being Martin, and aware that he was Martin, left it strictly alone.

And left it alone.

And went on leaving it alone, until the afternoon of his day off, when there was nothing on TV—not that he ever watched television much anymore—and Lorraine was away with this or that shopping friend… and the One Key was now somehow looking as big as the lordly Backspace or Enter. Martin stared at it for quite a while, and then said, suddenly, loudly, and defiantly, “What the hell!” and pushed it.

Nothing happened.

Martin had, of course, no idea what he had expected to happen. He had a reasonable assumption that there wouldn’t be an explosion—that the computer wouldn’t either levitate or fall completely to pieces—and that a cuckoo wouldn’t pop out of the screen with a message from something eternal in its beak. But he had rather anticipated that a deep-toned bell would ring somewhere, surely, and that it would be answered. Every key has a function, he told himself, a programmed reason for existing: there would be a response. Martin waited.

A green spark appeared in the center of the computer screen, slowly swelling and swirling, taking on the aspect of a sparkling pinwheel galaxy as it filled the screen. Martin clapped the earphones on his head, hearing a staticky crackle that was not at all like static, but fell into rhythmic, distinctly repetitive patterns that seemed to be trying to form words. The green galaxy revolved dizzyingly before his eyes.

“I don’t understand,” Martin said aloud, startled to hear himself speak. Suddenly frightened, he considered turning off the laptop. But he didn’t, and the vision continued to dazzle his eyes and sizzle in his ears. On an impulse, he moved to the keyboard and typed the same words: I don’t understand.

This time, the response was immediate. The sparkling scene vanished, to be replaced by the image of a face. It was not a human face. Martin knew that immediately, for while it provided the usual allotment of features, they were arranged in a configuration that could only be described as shockingly, impossibly beautiful—Martin actually lurched back, as though hit in the stomach, and made a softer version of the sound that one makes on such occasions.

Words formed under the face. Martin recognized them as words: they were the equivalent in pixels of the sputtering that had been shaping itself into language in his earphones. To him, dazed as he certainly was, it seemed the speech of space, the common dialect of planets and comets alike. All he could think to do was to type his own words over once again, staring at the lovely, terrifying, utterly perfect alien face as he did so. I don’t understand.

Nothing changed on the screen for some time. Martin occupied himself primarily in praying that Lorraine would not return just then; but also in marveling that a face so beautiful could simultaneously reveal itself as obviously unhuman, yet lose none of its appeal. Nor could he pinpoint the exact reason he knew what he knew—but he knew, and he went on waiting for an answer.

The laptop screen changed again. The face vanished—Martin found himself reaching helplessly toward where it had been—and the screen filled once more with the characters of that otherworldly language. Martin groaned… but in almost the same moment, the words dissolved and reformed themselves into something approximating English. He leaned close to the computer, squinting to read them.Me whatYouHel who loloMe me

First Contact! Martin had seen enough science-fiction movies to know about first contact. The ludicrousness of a computer—a laptop, at that—connecting a suburban produce manager with another world and another life form was not lost on him, as stunned and overwhelmed as he was. “Why me?” he demanded aloud. “Why not a scientist, an astronomer, whatever? Come on, for goodness’ sake!” But all the same, he typed into the screen Where are you? What is your name?