Prologue


October 13.

I'll never forget the date that it all started because it was her birthday. The first one that I'd spent without her in five years.

I was sitting in my dark living room, the shades drawn, a bottle of Jack clutched in my fist, the TV playing an infomercial for some kind of kitchen gadget that made salad tossing a thing of the past. I watched the plastic green gadget spin and spin and spin, like my head felt like it was doing as I lost track of time and reality, drowning my sorrows beneath the alcohol.

When the door bell rang, I almost didn't answer it at all.

I stumbled to the door, almost spilling the Jack onto the floor. I pulled open the door, expecting to find Kevin, checking up on me again. "I'm fine, I've told you this a thousand times if I've told you once," I growled as the sunlight streamed into the room - sunlight which I hadn't looked at for about a week, blinding white, searing my retinas. "I don't need you to worry about ---" my eyes had adjusted and they focused slowly, "-- me," I finished lamely, the anger melted from me as my stomach dropped out of me, as my heart stopped beating, as my breath escaped my lungs. I stared, dumbfounded.

She was standing there, plain as day, wearing that red and yellow polka-dotted dress. Her hair hung down past her shoulders, past her breasts, touching her mid-waist. She had the clearest, crispest blue eyes.

"Nick Carter."

Her voice was even, tone flat. She stared at me, and if it had not been for a slightly cocked eyebrow I wouldn't have known that she'd been asking a question.

"Of course I am," I whispered, "You know that."

She stepped forward quickly into the foyer of my house, pushing me aside. "Quickly," she said, her voice rising in panic, "Enable your defensive protective shields," she said. She slammed the door and spun the lock. "Now."

"My what?" I blinked. I looked at the bottle of Jack.

I made a mental note to ask AJ about vivid hallucinations as a side effect of alcoholism.

"Your defensive protective force fields? Your shields?" she said, voice climbing in irritation.

"I don't have defensive protective whoosey-whatties," I said, "What are you talking about?"

She was peering through a window to the right of the door, nervously twitching as she looked out. "Your ship is in trouble," she said, "They're coming for you. You need to put up your defensive protective force fields," she said, "And arm every man, woman, and child on your planet to prepare for war," she added.

"War? What?"

She turned around, met me straight in the eyes. "I came here to warn you."

"But -- you're dead," I argued.

She shook her head. "No. You only thought so."

Chapter One


I met her at a Halloween party in 2008.

I was late getting to the party, having stopped to pick up my costume on the way there. It was a last minute choice to go - I'd only decided to show up at all because there was this girl I was actively trying to prove I was over and the guy throwing the party had told my friend Chris that she was gonna be there. But twenty minutes after I arrived, dressed as Indiana Jones, I'd done my rounds of the floor and discovered that she hadn't shown up and I was stuck in that awkward obligatory time you have to spend at a party before you can leave without looking like a tool. So I was standing by the refreshments table, watching people take punch and get wasted because it was spiked, waiting for enough time to pass that I could ditch the party and go to a club or something.

A girl that was dressed like a cow stepped up to the table and ladled some punch into a cup. As she looked down, concentrating on what she was doing, being careful not to spill, she was biting the very tip of her tongue. She had a small spattering of freckles on her nose, though not very many. I watched her. Suddenly, she dropped the cup and the punch hit the table and sprayed - miraculously not getting on her cow costume somehow. She started cleaning up the table with a napkin. I grabbed a handful of other napkins from down the table and handed them to her. "You probably didn't want that anyways," I confessed to her as she started spreading the paper towels around on the table. "It's spiked. Everyone who's been drinking it is dancing terribly but thinking they're old pros just moments after they drink it."

She laughed, "Thanks. But I think they were doing that before they drank the punch, too."

She grabbed up the napkins and turned, shoving the gooey, spiked-punch-soaked mass into a trash bin under the table. I pointed. "Nice udders," I said. She turned back to me, her hands slipping over her chest. She looked down at the costume, then back up at me. "Whichever ones you'd find less offensive," I laughed, answering the question in her eyes.

She flushed, "Thanks. They're too big."

"Not from my vantage point," I said.

"Try driving in them."

"Oh so you're talking about the costume now. Got it."

"Well I could be driving like this..." she hunched over and stuck her chest out and held onto an imaginary wheel. "You can't imagine the chaffing I get." She shook her head.

"So if the udders are too big, why did you stick with coming as a cow?" I asked, laughing. We stepped away from the table, until we were leaning against a hallway wall. Music and noise were going on all around us.

"Because I'm More Cowbell," she answered.

I looked her over, "You don't even have a bell on."

"Yeah but my name is Belle," she explained. "You have to know me to get the joke, I guess."

"So you must always leave everyone beggin' for more then," I guessed.

"Always." She looked me over. "And you didn't feel like dressing up?"

I pulled the whip I'd bought on the way over out of my pocket. "I'm Indiana Jones," I answered.

She smirked at the whip. "Or you're just looking to have a good time." She winked.

I laughed. "Exactly."

Belle studied me a moment, "So Indiana, I have a feeling I know your real name but I'm gonna ask to be polite and also just in case I'm mistaken so I don't look like an asshole."

"My name is Nick."

"Carter, right?" I nodded. "Of the Backstreet Boys." I nodded again. "Hey that's pretty cool," she said, "What're you doing slumming it with us lowly folk?"

I shrugged, "Friend of mine is friends with the party-thrower," I said. I didn't feel like telling her I was there primarily to show an ex-girlfriend that I was over her.

She smirked, "I heard your ex was supposed to be here," she said. She glanced around.

"She's not here," I said too quickly. Belle's smirk grew deeper. "Not that I looked or anything. I didn't even know she was supposed to be here 'til I got here. Just a coincidence."

"Coincidence my udders," she laughed.

I flushed. "Well I ain't here for her now at any rate," I said.

"Stuck in the obligatory period, are you?" she asked.

"Yep, pretty much," I answered.

"Me, too." She looked around, then leaned closer, "You know, there's an exception to get us out of the obligatory period if you're interested...."

"Whats that?"

"Leaving with a one night stand you picked up at the party," she said.

"Yeah?"

"You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Of course we don't really do the one-night-stand part..."

"That was my favorite part of the plan," I joked.

Belle pointed at the whip that I was holding now at my side. "I'm not into that type stuff, Indiana."

I laughed.

"So... You wanna get away?"

I did.

And that's how I ended up in my car, the top down, driving along the California coastline at two thirty in the morning with CowBelle standing on the passenger side, arms above her head, shrieking as the wind blew back her costume hood, her sandy blonde hair flying back behind her. The sunlight illuminated her in a bath of blue and we had my 80s rock iPod mix blaring; at the moment, Bruce Springsteen was Dancing in the Dark.

Suddenly she lowered herself, "Oh my God, stop up here for a second!"

I pulled aside and she leaped out of the car excitedly, beckoning me over, "I wanna show you something!"

I parked and climbed out and walked over to the ledge of the street where the ground ended sharply, diving down into the ocean. I glanced down at the jetty of rocks below, the ocean tide breaking against them.

"This is gonna be good. The atmosphere is so dense in the city you can never see this stuff... See that star right there?"

I looked over. She'd turned back-to the ocean and had pulled out a green laser pointer from God knows where. I followed the beam of light into the sky and nodded, "I see it."

"That is the star Bellatrix."

"As in Lestrange?" I joked.

"Yeah, J K Rowling named the character for the Latin, which means Female Warrior. Not particularly after the star, though. I, however, was named after the star." She smiled.

"Really?"

"Yup. Belle is short for Bellatrix. I used to go by Bella -- then, you know, Twilight happened."

"Right."

"It's pretty," I said, looking up at the sky.

Belle nodded. "She's almost eight and a half times bigger than the sun. She's part of the constellation Orion, but she's not really in any group, there isn't any other bodies that share a proper motion with her. She's just out there, floating around the galaxy." She stared up into the sky at the star. After a long pause she said, "I fucking love space stuff."

"I do, too," I said.

"Yeah?"

"Yep. I ain't really smart enough to know it all, but I like looking up and thinking about it, you know?" I said.

Belle nodded. "So you like Harry Potter?"

"Sure," I answered.

"Okay then... check this out. See this star here...?" she moved a little ways down toward the ground from Bellatrix. "That really bright one."

"Yeah."

"That's Sirius."

"Black."

"Right." She smiled. "The ancients named it Sirius because in Greek that means glowing or scorcher. It's the brightest star in the night sky from Earth's point of view because it's the closest, other than the sun. He's one of the stars in the constellation Canis Major... You can't really see the whole of the constellation, it's not over the horizon yet this time of year here." She chewed her lip.

"Incredible," I muttered.

"You know the phrase 'dog days of summer'?"

"Yeah."

"That originates from ancient Egypt when they used the Canis Major constellation - which is in the shape of a dog - to tell them when the Nile was going to flood. They used Sirius to tell them when to prepare. That's where the phrase comes from."

"Damn," I whispered. I looked over at her. "Are you like an astrologist or something?"

"Astronomer," she corrected. "And yeah, but I'm not practicing. Technically."

"Why not?"

"I'm teaching at an art college for the time being while I work on a personal project."

"Your students must love your class."

Belle laughed, "Uhhh -- yeah, no, not really. Half the time they show up stoned or fall asleep. My class is one of the most commonly failed courses at the school. I get lots of thumbs down on RateMyProfessor.com."

"Why would they take it if they aren't interested in it?"

"A science is required and most people mistakenly believe Astronomy will be an easy one to pass, like it's just naming the planets or something. There's a lot of math and philosophy and logic that goes into it all that they don't even think about." She stared off at the stars again. She shook her head, "And there's so much out there that they don't think about... There's more out there than I could ever teach them about."

"There's a lot of space out there," I agreed.

"Hold up your pinky finger. Like this." She held her arm up, her baby finger extended. I did the same. We were staring up at the sky, our fingers aloft. "See the amount of space your baby finger covers up?" I nodded. "That's how much we've seen of the known universe. And the known universe isn't even that big compared to the universe itself. There's no measurement. It never ends. It just goes on and on and on full of Bellatrixes and Siriuses and Suns and Earths and moons and stars..." she shook her head. "We're crazy to think we're all alone in all that."

"I've thought that for years," I muttered.

Chapter Two


The longer I was with CowBelle, the more I believed in things. Things like aliens and conspiracy theories and the afterlife and evolution and love. You know, the unprovable things. The things that science could evaluate and guess about but never find completely undeniable proof to. There was just so much possibility and so little impossibility with CowBelle. The world was there, it was all full of questions and maybes. She showed me that there was just too much space for everything to be revolving around our one lonely little planet in the far off reaching corners of a galaxy that was just one in a million galaxies in the universe. There had to be more to life, and she was so hungry for it, so enthusiastic, it was wildly contagious.

Six months into our relationship was when Project Whitenoise first got it's first break through. Whitenoise was the side project that Belle had been working on that kept her from being a "practicing" astronomer. The project was a plan that she had to further mankind's attempts at contacting extraterrestrial life. The big break was a thick envelope mailed to her house from SETI - the organization in charge of the search for extra-terrestrials - asking her to write a formal proposal and submit it to them for presentation to some donors that were interested in funding a project similar to what she had written to them about.

"We've done stuff like Whitenoise before," Belle was explaining in a speedy, hyper-from-excitement voice the morning she received the envelope. We were in her kitchen, I was frying bacon that I'd dug out of her fridge and she was sitting at the table wearing thick rimmed glasses shuffling through a mess of papers and notes scribbled on napkins, trying to collect what she needed for the formal proposal. She was wearing a bathrobe with stars all over it, which I knew for a fact had nothing under it. "The other projects were just different in that they weren't as large or as continuous. Continuity is the key. I need to stress continuity..." she scribbled a note onto a paper towel that I'd laid on the table beside her for her toast.

I ripped a new paper towel off the roll. "What exactly is Whitenoise?" I asked.

"Well... okay. So... Radio Transmission. It's like this..." CowBelle paused and lowered her glasses down her nose, to look over the rims at me. "Radio waves are really scarce in space so to encounter them there is so rare that any kind of a pattern in radio waves, we assume, would be intercepted and interpreted as a transmission of some sort... so when we try to send messages to extra-terrestrial life - and I don't mean like little green men, you know that right?"

I nodded.

"So when we're trying to send messages we send out radio waves so that they'll be hopefully intercepted. We've sent messages out - digital time capsules, basically, describing human nature, like depictions of our DNA strands and alphanumeric figures, et cetera - but they're just one-shot transmissions. We send them out into space in the direction of some arbitrary star and hope that someone will be cruising through and intercept the transmissions before they reach their destination sometime in the future. Like the soonest one to reach its destination will be in 2036."

I whistled low, "Talk about long distance."

"Several thousand light years."

I picked up a piece of bacon from the pan and munched on it. "So how is Whitenoise different?"

"Well," she said, "Whitenoise is different because where those are one-shot capsules of transmissions, Whitenoise in effect creates a continuous rhythm of a message. It just sends and sends and sends until someone responds. 'Cos like... the messages we've sent out are great and stuff but the odds of someone just happening to fly by in time to intercept the message as it goes past isn't very likely. A million and two opportunities could be missed on it's way because of simple lack of collision, you know? Where as if we continuously stream something there's a much higher collision possibility rate. Does that make sense?"

I nodded.

"So my idea is that we broadcast sound, something repetitive, like a song maybe, into deep space and just let it run until someone answers. It doesn't matter what the sound is, if they're searching for us as hard as we're searching for them they'll investigate and we can share human history with them then. We're just looking for a response."

"It sounds brilliant to me," I said.

CowBelle smiled, "You think everything is brilliant."

"Not everything. Just everything you say," I corrected.

She laughed. "Well hopefully SETI agrees with you and my proposal gets some funding."

And they did.

She got the proposal sent out to them within a month and they accepted it, loved it, and launched it into the next phase of trying to garner some funding to make it a possibility, as well as locate radio telescopes that would be willing to allow CowBelle access to their sites to monitor the transmission signals freely whenever she wanted. Most places were hesitant to tie up their satellites and telescopes in such a way, though, because many were hesitant to accept any kind of responsibility for such an incredibly expensive project that wasn't guaranteed to garner any results.

We moved in together a year later, and SETI was still working on getting the proposal funded.

In September of 2010, CowBelle received the news that the Vanderbilt-Dyer Observatory in Nashville was willing to house her project if she could come up with the funding for it, and SETI announced that they'd been given a partial grant from a donor of considerable means and only needed a couple hundred grand to build a radio satellite at the Dyer. I decided to invest in the project and sold the house in Los Angeles to fund the satellite and buy a small house for Belle and I to move to that was closer to the Observatory.

They built the satellite radio transmitter on the property of the majestic old building in Brentwood, Tennessee - just sound of Nashville - where famous astronomers from over many years of study had visited. Belle's eyes were wide with amazement as we walked around the small observatory and she stared into cases of meteorites and stared up at a one-fifth scale dummy of the Hubble telescope on hung on the ceiling of the library there.

It was the night of our third anniversary that we were gathered on the roof top by the satellite with Belle's research assistant, Fabritz, awaiting the moment that transmission would begin. We were holding cups of hot apple cider spiked with rum, standing on the roof as Fabritz checked and rechecked all the wires for the transmission hardware, making sure everything was ready to go for our 8:30 PM go time.

CowBelle looked up at me, jittery with excitement. "Are you excited?" she asked.

"Immensely," I replied. The week before, Belle had come to me and requested for me to get the fellas together for the five of us to sign a contract allowing her to use a recording of I Want It That Way for the transmission. We'd agreed of course. And it blew my mind as we stood there on the roof top that my voice was soon going to be traveling light years away from us, further than any human voice had ever traveled before in the entire history of mankind. It was a huge honor. And to think that when/if the transmission did reach alien ears for the first time, I would be one of the first five human voices they would ever hear.

Fabritz looked up from the hardware, "Eight twenty-five," he said. "Everything looks solid."

"Awesome." Belle grinned. She rubbed her hands together eagerly - probably also to keep warm as the autumn air was chilling off the nights by the end of October in Nashville. She danced to the control panel and started playing with switches and gears started grinding and a computer hummed to life. The go-ahead was given, it was time for Project Whitenoise to commence. She took a deep breath, "Okay," she said, "We'll know that the transmission is working when the Hubble Telescope does it's fly-by at 8:35, and the transmission should momentarily be redirected back at us. We'll hear the transmission for approximately twenty-seven seconds before the telescope passes by completely and the transmission will be on its way to deep space."

We all gathered eagerly around the computer.

"To connection," CowBelle said, holding up her rum cider glass.

"To communication," Fabritz agreed.

"To continuity," I added, grinning.

Belle hit the begin transmission button and the computer made a whirring sound, but other than that nothing much else changed. We stood there, breathlessly waiting.

Fabritz pointed to the sky. "There's Hubble."

I looked up where he was pointing, and saw a faintly blinking dot moving across the sky. The telescope moved across the horizon, breaking through clouds here and there. I followed its movement until it was within range, then all three of us turned to a single speaker set up in the corner. We held our breaths. Then...

...we are two worlds apart
Can't reach to your heart
When you say that I want it that way
Tell me why, ain't nothin' but a heart ache
Tell me why, ain't nothin' but a mistake
Tell me why
I never wanna hear you say
I want it that way
Am I your fire
Your one desire
Yes I know......

And then it faded out.

"OH MY GOD!" Belle screamed, and the next thing I knew the three of us were leaping and crowing with excitement. The transmission was successful, and Project Whitenoise was broadcasting into deep space.

It would be another three years before any response would come.

Chapter Three


On the SETI website there's an entire page dedicated to information about Project Whitenoise and CowBelle's research. It links to a bunch of videos that she'd uploaded, many online interviews an long nights doing video updates of what was happening with the project. Among them is one that she filmed of the Transit of Venus in June of last year. And it is the Transit of Venus video that is my absolute favorite...

I made the decision the December before, at the tail end of 2011, but I wanted something special to commemorate the night with, and that's why I waited for six and a half months.

We had set up an air mattress, a telescope, sleeping bags, and a cooler with snacks and drinks on the roof of the observatory where CowBelle could film the passage of the second planet for the site. She was ecstatic, like a little kid at Christmas time watching the skies with an energy that easily excited anyone around her.

She had the camera filming, though looking back I don't think she realized it was going already. "This is going to be amazing," she was gushing. In the United States, the Transit was to be visible at sunset. We were planning to spend the rest of the night star gazing. "You realize the last time this happened was literally centuries ago? And that the next time isn't until 2136?"
"That's crazy," I replied, my voice disembodied from somewhere off camera.

"The Transit of Venus means that Venus's orbit passes directly between us and the sun.

The camera moved into the sky, focusing on the sunlight, blinding white filled the screen until Belle had slid a lens cap over and the exposure backed down and soon we could see the black dot that was Venus in the center of the sun, the video catching all of our laughter and banter along the way.

"It's smaller than I expected," I said at one point, "Venus is."

"Not that small."

"Smaller than the moon."

"It only looks like that because the moon is so much farther away than Venus is," she said. "In reality, Venus is like three times bigger than the moon."

When the Transit was nearly over, CowBelle's voice broke a mostly silent video. "The Mayans called Venus Noh Ek," she said suddenly. "They thought it was a star."

"Do you believe in the Mayan Calendar thing?" I asked her, still off camera. "Like that the world's gonna end and all that?"

The black dot was nearly completely across the horizon. "Nawh," Belle replied to my question. "It's impossible. If the world was gonna end on the day the Mayans predicted we'd be at the end already. They didn't account for leap year, so it really would've happened last month if they were right."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. It won't end. I promise."

"Good. I didn't really want it to end now that I've found you," I said.

CowBelle laughed, "You're full of crap."

"No I'm not. I'm being honest," I laughed.

"Well, the Mayans were wrong at any rate. We'll all be here still on December 22nd the same as we will be on the 21st. Mark my words," she said. We were both quiet for a spell. Then, as Venus was slipping away from the edge of the sun, Belle said quietly, "It's beautiful... isn't it?"

"Yes," my voice came without hesitation. Off screen, I'd been looking at her, not the sun. The last dying rays of light had reached across the sky and landed softly against her face and blonde hair, glinting off her glasses, and making her freckles nearly blend into the softly tanned skin of her face.

She'd looked over then, caught me staring at her, and laughed. "I love you, Nick."

It was always there that I stopped the playback of the video from continuing, clicked back a few frames, hit play again. I love you, Nick. I love you, Nick. I love you, Nick.

The night of the Transit of Venus, after the I love you, Nick... After the sun sank below the horizon and the Transit, for us, was complete, and the film was transferred from the camera to the computer and we were in our sleeping bags on the air mattress, looking up at the sky... After we were laying in the dark, staring up and listening to the hum of the satellite sending out CowBelle's signal...

I pulled her close to me in the dark and breathed her in. "You smell so pretty," I commented.

She laughed, "It's a new shampoo," she said. "Roses and tea leaves."

"I meant the you-smell, your skin or whatever. That smell that's yours. The one shampoo doesn't change."

"My body odor?"

"Yeah, sure."

Belle laughed. "You're so messed up," she said.

I kissed her head. "That's why you love me."

"Yeah I guess so," she replied, but I could hear the smile in her voice that said yes.

"You should marry me," I whispered.

"What?" she asked. CowBelle tilted her head back to look up at me, and I pulled away just enough to look into her eyes and pull the ring that I'd been hiding out of my pocket and hand it to her. "Oh my God," she whispered.

I'd had it specially made: a blue diamond, cut into a star shape, set beside a couple other clear and canary diamonds that gave it the effect of being a shooting star, set into platinum - a metal only found in space.

"You're the brightest star in my sky, Bellatrix," I whispered, "You put the Sun and Sirius and every other star in the sky to shame."

Tears filled her eyes as she slipped the ring onto her finger and stared at it. She sniffled and stared and then looked up at me after a long pause, "Oh Jesus Nick, you must've practiced that line in the mirror for ages," she choked.

I laughed, "I've been thinking it up since January."

"It was just so damn perfect," she whispered.

I laughed, "Was it?"

"Absolutely," she said. She turned her head and stared at the ring again. After a moment, she turned back to me again. "And yes, by the way."

If only going back in time were as easily as remembering something, if only conjuring thoughts of a person or a place could bring them back. If only I could climb through the TV screen and sink back into before.

See, in all the time that I knew CowBelle, she was always, always right. She knew everything. And even times when we fought and I argued like there was no tomorrow, I still knew deep down that I was fighting a losing battle because she'd eventually come up with proof that she was right and I was wrong. Unfortunately the one thing she was wrong about was the Mayan Calendar. Because my world did in fact end on December 21, 2012.

It ended with a single phone call.

It wasn't a particularly cold December for Tennessee or anything, in fact it'd been seventy degrees the day before, but on the evening of December 21st, 2012, there'd been a little bit of rain that had frozen on the roadway. At least that's what I'm told. I hadn't gone to the observatory that night, I was at home watching TV specials about the Mayans and drinking a beer, a carton of Chinese food on the coffee table in front of me. But CowBelle had gone to the observatory to make some tweaks to the signal's course.

I was still watching the History channel special, eating my pork fried rice and drinking my beer when the phone rang. I thought it was going to be her apologizing for being so late and explaining some really cool thing she'd gotten sucked into watching on the telescope. Instead, it was her father, who had received a phone call from the doctor at Vanderbilt requiring that he get down to the hospital immediately.

"You should probably come, too," he said. I could hear his car engine starting in the background of the call. I even could hear the wiper blades squeegeeing the windshield. "It sounds like it might be serious."

The Dyer Observatory is located on one of the highest points in the area surrounding Nashville. It sits on top of a tall hill with a narrow road that wraps around it like a corkscrew, jutting up from the land below it sharply. There only protection along the side of the road are tiny yellow reflector lights and the promise that you can drive on the wrong side of the road on the way down since residences don't go as high up the mountain as the Dyer does.

Nobody really knows what happened. Nobody was there except Fabritz, and he was driving ahead of her on the way down. He said he suddenly saw her headlights shift and he looked in his rearview mirror in time to see her car disappear over the ledge.

Chapter Four


When I got to the hospital, I parked haphazardly and ran across the parking lot, carrying my jacket and a pillow shaped like the planet Earth that was CowBelle's favorite. I clutched the pillow by a fistful of cotton as the automatic doors to the emergency room parted and I rushed, breathless, my sneakers squeaking on the tile floor. I felt like I was going to vomit. My chest hit the receptionists' desk, my fingers clutching the counter, and I burst out, "I'm here to see CowBelle. I mean Bellatrix Watson -- that's her name, my fiance," I choked.

The receptionist very calmly typed Belle's name into the computer, waited while results for her search were collected, read them, then looked up at me, lowering her reading glasses so she could see me. "It looks like she's currently in our intensive care unit," she said in a sticky-sweet-girlish voice. "Would you like me to have someone escort you to the ICU waiting area?"

"Yes, yes," I gasped.

A few moments later a frazzled looking nurse with short grey hair and pale green scrubs led me to an elevator, through several long twisting hallways, through a cardiac wing where a crew of doctors pushed by us with a cart of those paddles and stuff, around an atrium, and finally into a wing labelled Intensive Care Unit where everything smelled sterilized and I was made to wash my hands no less than three times. The nurse finally showed me into a small waiting area where everyone was ashen-faced except two little kids that were blissfully mindless when it came to emergencies. "Wait here and I'll let the family know you're here," she said, and she disappeared.

I looked around the room for an empty seat and finally picked my way through the toys the two little kids had scattered around the room, and lowered myself into the empty chair, running sweating palms across my knees.

When Ralph - CowBelle's father - came into the room, I knew immediately it was terrible news. The lines in his face couldn't have been more shadowed, his eyes sad, his shirt frumpled. He stood in the doorway, nose flared with emotion. Several people glanced around, nervous for everyone else in the room, worried who he belonged to, who was getting the news that he had to share. I got up as Ralph's voice shook, "Nick," and he motioned for me to go with him. Looks of relief fell over faces now that he'd declared who was getting the news as I stepped over the kids' toys again.

In the hallway, Ralph leaned against the wall, his bald spot touching the plaster. He closed his eyes, ran his hands over his face, let out a stream of a sigh into his palms. "Oh Jesus, Mary and Joe," he groaned into his hands. "I never thought I'd see the day."

"Is she okay?" I asked because frankly that was all I wanted to know. That is all that I cared about. Hearing that yes, she was okay.

But Ralph shook his head.

"Is she gonna be okay?" I tried, desperate for an answer I wanted to hear.

Ralph's fingers dragged across his face and he peered at me from behind them, "No," he choked, "She isn't."

I stood, petrified, unable to process what he'd just said to me.

"She's gone, Nick," he muttered. "She's as good as gone already."

I stared at him. I could feel tears forming in my eyes, the burning, prickling sensation of them coming on. My throat swelled up twice or maybe three times its size.

"Her car flipped three times they're guessing," Ralph's voice floated around the air between us, "Went down nearly thirty feet over that ledge almost straight down. It's a miracle her heart was beating when they found her at the bottom. They did everything, but it's her brain, see, her mind. It's gone. She's gone." Ralph shook his head. "She's just gone... Just like that. Just like that." He clicked his fingers, staring blankly at the wall beyond me.

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

"You're welcome to come in to say goodbye, before they turn off the ventilator." Ralph looked up at me.

I nodded numbly.

Ralph led me through the hallways, through a maze of rooms and desks and gurneys and chests of warm blankets. We washed our hands twice more before we reached her room where Anita, her mother, sat in a chair, holding her hand. I saw CowBelle's engagement ring sparkling under the fluorescent lights. A tissue was clutched in Anita's free hand. Ralph stepped up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders.

CowBelle lay motionless in the bed, her eyes were open, but she was staring into the corner of the ceiling, her mouth open around a thick tube that wrapped around the side of her face, drool starting to form at the corners of her mouth. A bandage was wrapped around her head, and another around her chest. Her hair was gone, her skin pale. Monitors beeped and some machine made a loud Darth-Vadar-breathing sound.

I reached up and wiped the drool from her mouth, but her eyes didn't shift even a little at my touch.

"We'll leave you alone," Ralph whispered, and Anita reluctantly laid Belle's hand on the bed and got up and the two of them left the room.

I listened as the door closed behind them and I moved to the side of the bed that Anita had been on. From this angle, it was almost possible to believe Belle was looking at me instead of past me. I grabbed her hand, my fingers spinning the engagement ring. I stared down at it. I didn't know what to say or if she could even hear me. So I didn't speak. I just sat. And I hoped my feelings would transmit through our skin cells, that she'd feel me and her eyes would focus and we'd laugh this off and she'd come out to tell Ralph and Anita the good news with me.

But she didn't move.

I pressed her hand to my forehead, leaning forward until my face was almost against the bed, my stomach twisting into a nasty ball of helplessness.

"You said the Mayans were wrong," I whispered. "You said they were wrong."

I didn't stay to see them remove the ventilators. Instead when Ralph and Anita returned fifteen minutes later, I got up and left, unable to take anymore. I went home and I lay in the dark staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars that CowBelle had put across our bedroom ceiling, meticulously keeping with the details of the universe as best she could with plastic stars. When my phone rang I knew it was probably Ralph calling to tell me it was over and I didn't answer because I didn't want to hear it.

Instead I closed my eyes and tried to convince myself that she was beside me in the dark.

Chapter Five


"Nick."

I shook my head into my pillow.

"You gotta get up."

I shook my head again.

"Nick I've been here for two days and I still don't think you know I'm here at all."

I didn't move.

Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light. The window shades had been opened. I squeezed my eyes shut and smashed my face into the pillow, trying to block out the nasty sunlight. I grabbed the blankets and tried to pull them over me, but before I could, they were pulled away. Promptly followed by my pillow.

I rolled onto my back and stared up at Kevin standing over me, looking down at me with an expression of worry. "You need to get up," he said.

"I don't want to get up," I answered.

Kevin frowned in a way that I think was supposed to be understanding and sympathetic but I just wanted to kick him and make him go away so it seemed more annoying to me than anything. "I know it's hard, Nick, but you gotta keep living and --"

"I do not, I do not," I argued, shaking my head, "I do not need to keep living. She didn't keep living, why should I?" I reached my hand for my pillow, planning to rip it back out of his hands, but like a matador he moved it just before I got it and took a couple steps back.

"Because you are alive," he replied. "You are here, and that's what she would want you to do if she could tell you what to do right now."

I shook my head stubbornly, "I don't care what she'd tell me to do. She left. I'm not listening to her. Or to you. I don't need a fucking pillow." I rolled over and curled myself into a ball. "I'm fine with just the mattress," I muttered. "It ain't like you can take that away."

Kevin sighed heavily. I heard the pillow drop to the floor and a moment later the far side of the bed shifted under his weight as he sat down. I wasn't entirely sure I was comfortable with it, but he laid down and he was stretched out behind my back on the mattress. I curled tighter, hugging my knees to my chest. "Then I'll sit shiva."

I wanted to ask what that meant, but I didn't wanna talk to him.

I fell asleep at some point and Kevin must've got bored of sitting shiva because when I woke up he was gone and the late afternoon sun was coming through the window instead of that God-awful morning stuff that had been there before. I got up because I had to go to the bathroom and when I came back out, Kevin was just setting a tray of food down on the night stand, a TV tray table folded under one arm. He looked over as I waddled across the room and crawled back onto the mattress. He'd put the pillow and blanket back on the bed. I punched the pillow into submission and flopped back down into it face first.

"Here; eat before you go back to sleep," Kevin said, and I heard him put the tray on the TV table and move it all over near the side of the bed.

"Not hungry," I muttered around the pillow.

"Nick you need to eat."

"Not hungry," I repeated.

"Don't make me take the pillow and blanket again, man," he threatened.

I sighed and rolled over and stared at the tray. Soup with a handful of oyster crackers and a glass of cranberry juice. It looked so incredibly unappetizing. And the cranberry juice was CowBelle's. It was low tart because she hated the supposed after taste of regular cranberry juice. I stared at it, remembering going shopping with her and how she'd been so excited that Ocean Spray had low tart cranberry juice now and that it was on sale. Like we couldn't have afforded it if it wasn't on sale. She liked sales, even though we had plenty of money, she cherished a bargin. She liked shopping in thrift stores for things we could get brand new.

Kevin stared at me, waiting for me to eat.

I picked up the spoon, it felt like it weighed a hundred thousand pounds. I ate slowly, methodically, in a pattern. Two sips of soup, sip of juice. Nibble an oyster cracker. Two sips of soup, sip of juice. Nibble an oyster cracker. I did that until Kevin looked satisfied and I dropped the spoon into the bowl with a clang and rolled back over. "There, I ate, you happy?" I asked.

"As a clam," Kevin replied. He took the tray and left the room.

I rolled until I was staring out the huge picture window. The sun was setting, the stars were coming out. I felt my throat swell with frustration as they became brighter and brighter in the deep midnight velvet sky. I found Sirius and followed the path up to Bellatrix and watched her shine, my throat constricting.

When Kevin returned, he went back to sitting shiva, but this time he sat in the chair in the corner, his iPad glowing from his knees, one side of his ear buds in, a blanket over his legs and a travel pillow behind his head. I hugged my pillow under my head.

It was probably an hour of silence like that when I finally whispered, "I'm never going to recover from this."

I heard him remove the one side of the ear buds and fold up his iPad. "You will," he said, "It'll just take a really long time."

"I've never loved anyone like that," I said quietly.

Kevin said, "She was one of a kind. A beautiful soul. Beautiful."

"I can't look at the stars without seeing her," I said.

He got up and I heard him walk around the end of the bed and he sat down on the floor near me, leaning against the mattress. He stared up at the stars through the window with me for a long moment.

"See the bright one?" I asked. "That really really bright one?" I wished I had CowBelle's laser pointer. I didn't even know where it was. Probably in her pocket, wherever her body was.

"I see it," Kevin said.

"Look just above it, a little to the right... see that next bright star?"

"Yes."

"That's her," I whispered. "That's Belle."

Sitting shiva, it turns out, is a Jewish custom where someone helps to take care of a mourner until they're healed. Traditionally, shiva lasts seven days. Apparently the word even means seven in Hebrew. For me, shiva lasted seven months. And for the most part Kevin stayed with me through it. He went home for a couple days a week, but he always came back.

I only got up and moved around when he was there at first, then in February I woke up one morning that he was gone and I felt hungry so I dragged myself downstairs and made a bowl of cereal, which I clutched to my chest and ate standing up in front of the sink, staring out at the dead grass of our backyard, thinking how we'd had big plans for kids to one day play back there. I left the half eaten bowl of cheerios in the sink and three days later when Kevin returned it was still there, mostly congealed.

At the end of February, I got a padded envelope from Ralph and Anita. Inside was Belle's engagement ring, a cut out from the newspaper with her obituary, and a note asking me to get in touch with them at some point. I taped the obituary and the note to the fridge and carried the ring upstairs where I put it on the night stand on her side like she always left it at night and pretended she was just in the bathroom, that she'd be right back.

I went grocery shopping by myself the first time on March 3rd. Kevin wasn't there for a whole week because Mason had some stuff going on and I was hungry and there was no food left in the house so I went for a ride to the Kroger and bought nothing but frozen stuff that I could make quick. Kevin came back to a stack of Dejorno frozen pizza boxes littering my kitchen counter.

He got me to go for a walk toward the end of March when there was a beautiful Spring day in the low seventies. He dragged me to Radnor State Park where we walked the two-mile long loop around the lake and squirrels crossed our path regularly. He smiled as we moved along the shady path. "Isn't this nice, being outside?" he asked, "Fresh air will do you good."

And from that point on he got on a fresh air kick so that every morning he was in opening the bedroom window at the crack of dawn and the sliding door that led to the patio was almost always open wide, sunshine coming in from every available window. "Get all that stagnent air out," he said, "Get this place smelling fresh..."

"It smells like her right now," I said.

Kevin didn't reply, but he didn't stop opening windows, either.

He started dusting, too, and cleaning. He went through the cupboards, threw away expired stuff and wiped the counters and the shelves. One day he cleaned the bathroom and the next time I went in there I found all the lip stick tubes and tampons and mascara wands and the rose-and-mint scented shampoos were all gone. I had a slight panic attack over that because I'd started sniffing the shampoo bottles every now and then to try to remember how her hair smelled a little, and now they were just gone. "You're not gonna get over her with her stuff hanging around like that," Kevin said.

In May, I was seeing less and less of her name on the mail that came.

In June, I was watching TV. It was some old movie I'd never seen before and this classically handsome guy was talking to this blonde bombshell of a girl and their conversation was funny and I laughed. Kevin looked up from the chair as I laughed, and that made me laugh, too, and the more I laughed the funnier it became until I couldn't stop laughing and tears were pouring down my cheeks and suddenly it wasn't funny, it was sad, and I started bawling and Kevin just watched as I fell apart, but for the first time the stuff I was feeling inside was finally, finally coming out of me as the tears poured down my cheeks.

When I was done, completely drained, sitting on the couch with soaked cheeks and blurry vision, Kevin sitting beside me, his hand on my back, he said, "Now you can start getting better."

Chapter Six


I dunno when it happened exactly, but sometime between July and September it developed that, come Labor Day, Kevin was nothing but overbearing. He was always there and I realized how much we didn't get along when I was my usual self, and how much that not-getting-along was compounded when we were alone, without Brian or Howie there to mediate or AJ there to distract him.

"You should put the milk away," he said when I was sitting on the couch eating cereal, the milk on the coffee table as I watched a special on the History Channel - reruns of this miniseries called Life After Humans that I was addicted to. "It's gonna go sour if you keep leaving it out like that."

"So I'll buy new milk," I said. On the screen, a simulated, desolate New York City was being overrun by wild animals and the ocean levels were rising, and the Statue of Liberty was being swallowed whole by the tide.

"That's wasteful. It'll take you thirty seconds to put the milk away," Kevin commented.

"So you put it away then."

"I didn't take it out," he said pointedly.

I didn't even look up from the show. "I dunno what you're bitching about, it's my milk not yours." Kevin was dusting the thick drapes. He pushed them open. Sunlight came in. It reflected off the screen of the TV. "Hey, close those," I said, "I can't see the TV."

Kevin didn't close them.

I looked over at him, "Seriously, close the fucking shades," I said.

"They look better open and I can actually see the dust," Kevin said. He turned away from the shades and sprayed Pinesol all over the table. "If you don't like it you can get up and close them yourself," he said, "And while you're at it you can put the milk away."

"Stop cleaning," I whined. "Thats all you do. I never know where anything is anymore, you move it or you throw it away. You realize I spent like a century trying to find the damn extra toilet paper last night?"

"I'm only putting things where they belong, if you looked where they belonged you would find them," he retorted, "And if you don't like the fact that I'm cleaning your house, then maybe you should get off your ass and do that yourself too," he suggested.

I ignored him. I turned the TV up.

I don't think Kevin had a clue how much I sincerely appreciated my alone time. It was the only moments I felt like I could maybe be my old self again. I'd actively try to move on during those periods when I was alone, where as when Kevin was around I felt more like a wounded animal that was being tended to and I was apt to try less or feel worse. I didn't know how to tell him that so instead of explaining myself, I just acted like a tool and hoped he'd go away.

For the record, the milk did indeed go a little sour. But I'm so stubborn that I drank it anyway.

I also closed the shades and refused to open them again.

By mid-September Kevin had finally caught on that I was okay by myself and instead of coming and spending entire weeks with me, he showed up once a week for a couple hours before driving back to Kentucky where he was living with Kristin and Mason. Once a week without fail Kevin showed up on my door step to check-in that I was eating, exercising, and cleaning the house to at least an acceptable level.

And for the most part I was.

I mean I still wasn't particularly leaving the house and I still hated the sunlight - I preferred to go out to the 24-hour Kroger in the middle of the night for my grocery needs and look at the stars as I jogged, but I was indeed getting out.

But on October 13th, I was laying in bed, face down on the pillow, just like I'd done for most of January, my body moving in retrograde. I'd woke up after having a dream - an amazing dream, where CowBelle was still alive, still smiling, laughing, talking. I'd gotten her a birthday cake and balloons and we were talling jokes and happy and she ran her hand over her stomach to tell me she was pregnant and I was just about to react to the news when I woke up and realized there was no baby, there was no cake or balloons or, for that matter, CowBelle. But it was her birthday.

It was the first time in five years that I wouldn't be celebrating it with her.

I tried not to think about it - about what the day was. I tried to go about my everyday routine but it seemed like reminders that CowBelle wasn't there kept popping up in the weirdest ways. Like I was standing in the bathroom brushing my teeth and something caught my eye and it was an earring that we'd once torn the bedroom apart looking for...and there it was, just laying on the bathroom floor under the sink. Then I was in the kitchen and the phone rang and it was a telemarketer calling, looking for her. A birthday card in the mail from her auto mechanic offering her $10 off an oil change to celebrate. And finally an article in the paper about the Dyer Observatory.

Apparently the observatory had been overrun the night before during their open house hour by people who were big fans of Project Whitenoise holding a candlelight vigil for CowBelle.

My heart ached and I cut the article out of the paper and hung it on the fridge next to the clipping of the obituary and the notecard from her parents that I'd received months before. I stared at the phone number. I really should call them, I thought, but it was past an even remotely appropriate time. I was embarassed by the way I'd acted now, just walking off and disappearing, never calling them back. I just couldn't handle losing her.

I still couldn't.

I suddenly felt extremely... profoundly... alone. And I almost wished Kevin would show up, while at the same time hoping he didn't. What I really wanted was CowBelle to show up, but I knew that wasn't gonna happen. She was gone. Gone. The word echoed in my head and I closed my eyes, the finality of the statement rocking me.

I couldn't do this, not today.

I pushed the basement door open and crept down the stairs. I hated the basement. It was creepy. We used it as storage space when we moved for all the stuff our huge house in LA had been capable of holding that our Nashville place just couldn't contain. Sometimes, CowBelle had come down here and gone through stuff and switched things out to freshen rooms up. But it was mostly just a giant collection of random furniture and crap that we never used and therefore had grown a profound amount of dust.

And in one of the drawers of a particular desk was our stash. I located the desk and pulled the drawer open and inside lay three full bottles of Jack Daniels. I grabbed all three and headed back upstairs.

I had her on the mind. Now I was gonna drink myself out of it.

When I got back upstairs with my loot, turned on the TV, and sat down on the couch to drink it all away.

"An incredible machine, Annie, look at it go. You'll never need to get your fingers dirty making a salad again."

"Absolutely not, Jack. The Saladmatic does all the hard work for you... You just put your precut produce into the bowl, add your dressing into the dressing cup, close the lid and with the press of a button...... the Saladmatic mixes a beautiful salad for you in no time."

"Amazing, absoutely amazing. Look at that puppy go. Folks, you're really gonna want to get in on this one. Act quickly and we'll send you this beautiful serving fork with your paid order."

When there came a knock at the door I assumed it was gonna be Kevin. He had to know what October 13th was. I could picture him telling Kris why he had to drive down to Nashville. "It's her birthday, Kris," he'd say in that ridiculously slow voice of his. I made my way to the door and pulled it open, fully expecting it to be Kevin.

"I'm fine, I've told you this a thousand times if I've told you once," I growled. Somewhere deep down I was somewhat thankful he'd finally gotten there, too. Glad I'd be able to admit defeat finally and stop trying to make it through today. The sunlight streamed through the door, I squinted it back. It'd been awhile. I felt like a mole. "I don't need you to worry about..." my eyes adjusted to the light, slowly picked out the shape of her, little bits at a time. "...me." I stared at her.

My CowBelle.

Standing on the porch like nothing had happened, her freckles as bright as ever, her eyes piercing, hauntingly green. I closed my eyes, shook my head, opened them again and still. There she was.

"Nick Carter." She said it like a question, her eyebrow cocked.

I felt stupid even answering her. "Of course I am," I whispered, "You know that."

She stepped quickly into the foyer, pushing by me, and her voice rose in a panic, "Enable your defensive shields. She pulled me inside and slammed the door, spun the lock. "Now."

I had to be hallucinating. This had to be a cruel joke of my eyes, of my mind.

"Your defensive, protective force fields? Your shields?" she said.

I shook my head, "I don't have defensive whoosey- whatties," I replied. I watched her move, watched her walk, pace even. She grabbed the curtain beside the door, peered out, then let go of the curtain and spun to face me. Every move she made seemed turbo charged. No, I reminded myself, She doesn't seem turbo charged...she doesn't exist. This is your mind.

"Your ship is in trouble, they're coming for you. You need to put up your defensive, protective force fields and arm every man, woman, and child on your planet to prepare for war," she declared, her voice fierce.

"War? What?"

"I came here to warn you."

"But -- you're dead."

"No," CowBelle shook her head, "You only thought so."

"What I think is that something serious got added to this Jack," I said, waving the bottle. "My head is getting fucked up by whatever it is..."

CowBelle took the bottle and sniffed the neck of it. She looked up at me. "Alcohol. Your sobriety is impaired. No wonder." She shoved the bottle back into my hands and rushed through the door of the foyer, headed to the living room. "Where is the control room?" she demanded.

I followed after her, "There is no control room..."

She moved from room to room to room, pushing open doors, flipping light switches on and off. She paused at the TV, then muttered, "Appars to be solely recreational entertainment..."

"The TV?"

"Where is your control room?" she demanded again.

"I don't have a control room. You know we don't have a control room, you live here, too." I shook my head, "Of course you don't really because you aren't real, I'm just losing my mind."

CowBelle pushed by me again and moved to the stairs. She thundered up them. I heard doors opening and closing, the sound of them slamming echoing down the steps. I closed my eyes and shook my head again. This was one helluva vivid hallucination. What the crap happened to that Jack Daniels? Seriously. I hadn't drank that much of it...

"Aha!" she shouted.

I looked up the stairs. "Aha what?" I asked.

"...thinking I wouldn't find the panel... inferior..."

"What?"

I heard some noises, but no response came, so I jogged up the stairs two at a time and found the light to my in-house studio glowing into the hallway. I stepped inside and found CowBelle sitting at the soundboard. She'd switched the power on and the sliders glowed red in the mostly dark room, the Mac up to the starscape desktop that came standard, and she was touching the screen, tapping various points on it.

"Your navigational system seems to be faulty," she said.

"It isn't a touch screen," I replied.

She moved a bunch of sliders arbitrarily. A speaker in the corner hummed as she increased the bass. "There. Your force fields are up. We're safe."

"I don't have force fields."

She turned around quickly, stared me right in the eyes. "How much did you drink?" she demanded.

I held up the bottle.

She looked at it. "Great. Great... just perfect. You know you're wasting precious time? Every moment that we spend not cooperating on this effort is a moment closer they come." CowBelle shook her head.

"Who is they?" I asked.

"My people," she answered evenly. "They're coming to stop the whitenoise."

Chapter Seven


Man, this hallucination I was having was really fucked-right-the-fuck up.

"Your people?" I repeated.

CowBelle ignored me. She was busy hitting the Mac's screen. "How long has your ship been out of order?" she demanded. She turned and fiddled with the soundboard again. The hum of the speakers and squeal of microphone feedback went in and out as she moved the buttons. She was starting to get frustrated, her face was turning red.

"It's a soundboard," I said, "And it worked just fine before you started messing with it."

She turned around in the swivel seat, a look of disapproval on her face. "You could be a little nicer to me, considering I'm saving your life and all," she said hotly.

I blinked at her. I literally didn't know what else to do.

Finally she turned back around, "You're an ass."

"And you're not real," I snapped back.

I wondered if I was actually seeing things, or if this was some vivid dream and I was gonna wake up on the couch downstairs in a couple minutes completely discombobulated. I wondered how to wake myself up. I tried pinching myself. It hurt. I looked at her as she bobbled back and forth from one panel to the next, her hair swishing, her legs bent back under the seat like she always sat in swivel chairs.

Hallucination.

I was going crazy. I was seeing things. I had finally, finally lost my marbles, just like the guys had sworn up and down that I was doing every time they spent more than an hour or two with me. Nick, they'd say, You're insane, man. Well guess what guys? Now I really am.

Well, if I was crazy, I might as well go out with a bang, right?

I walked closer to CowBelle, my heart racing. It was my opportunity, my chance to smell her, to feel her again. I could touch her hair, hold her close, taste her kiss. I held out a shaking hand, laid it on the chair behind her, pulled her toward me, pressed my face into her hair and breathed in.

She leaped up, her head smashing my nose pretty solidly, and I jumped back, clutching my face as she struck an almost kung-fu-like pose about five feet away from me. She glared at me. "What are you doing?" she snapped.

"Sorry, I just --"

"Were you smelling me?"

"I'm sorry," I said, "I just -- God damn it, Belle, I miss you." My voice came out strangled. I stared at her, lowered my hands. My nose was bleeding. I had blood on my palms. It dripped onto my shirt. I stared at her.

My CowBelle - the CowBelle I remembered and loved and adored - she would've dropped the stance, would rushed over, would've tended my wound. She would've held me until it was better. But this phantom CowBelle... she just stared at me, her eyes focused on the drips of red dropping onto my shirt, a fascination in her eyes. "Your face... is leaking." She looked into my eyes. "Why?"

"Because you all but broke my damn nose?" I asked hotly.

It struck me how odd it was that after almost a year of desiring nothing but to see her again, it'd taken this phantom less than an hour to rile me up. Typical CowBelle, actually. I remember spending long tours laying in hotel rooms dreaming of being back in LA or Nashville, wherever she was, and then I'd finally get there after months of waiting and hoping and day dreaming of the moment and we'd be riled up and yapping at each other within a day or two. That's just how we communicated, I guess. We argued a lot, but it was never mean arguing. Half the time we were playing around - arguing passionately about like who would win Spiderman or Batman or something like that.

She tilted her head. "How does it stop?" she asked.

"I need tissues," I answered. I pushed through the doorway of the studio into the hall. I didn't care if she followed as she was a hallucination anyways, and I made my way to the bathroom where I unraveled a couple sheets of the toilet paper and shoved it into my nostril, tilting my head up. She was hovering in the door way.

"How do you --" she paused, furrowed her brow, "miss me?" she asked.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. I felt tears come into my eyes. "I've missed you every single day," I whispered. I sounde like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

"But I just got here."

"You've been gone since December, though, haven't you?"

She thought for a long moment. "This... December? Was it long ago?" she asked.

I stared at her out of the corner of my eyes as I pinched my nose. "Ten months," I finally said.

"Approximately 305 rotations around the sun," she murmured.

"Excuse me?"

"A month is approximately 30 rotations of the Earth on it's axis, a day, as it rotates in a much larger circle around the star that you call the sun," she replied, "You call that a year. Correct?"

I nodded.

"So ten months would be approximately 305 rotations on your axis before the sun. 305 days. Almost one full rotation around the sun"

"Okay."

"This is not relevant," she said. "Is it?"

"Not really."

We were silent for some time, and I lowered my face, released the pinch, checked the tissues. I seemed to have stopped bleeding. I threw the toilet paper away and washed my hands. She watched everything I did closely, her eyes wide with interest. "Such...strange...customs," she muttered.

I looked at her. "Why are you here?" I asked. "Am I really losing my mind?"

She looked annoyed. "I told you; I came to warn you - and to stop the whitenoise."

I sighed.

"Do you not believe me?" she asked.

I shrugged, "I don't know. I don't know what to think. You died, you were all but dead the last time I saw you. You were in that hospital bed and --" I shook my head, conjuring images was not a good idea. I could feel the wind being sucked out of my chest even as I spoke the words I'd already said. I looked at her, "It doesn't make sense that you're here at all. Much less what you're saying or whether I believe what you're saying."

"I left many, many rotations ago from my home to come here to warn Earth and to stop the whitenoise," she repeated.

"You are home, right now, right here."

"You are mistaking me for my human form."

I didn't even know what to say. I couldn't think of a single thing. I wasn't sure I understood what she was saying. I just stared at her.

"In my natural form, a human would not know how to comprehend me, so when I am in the presence of humans I take a human form. I took the form of the human that sent the whitenoise. Bellatrix Watson."

I still didn't know how to respond.

"You are Nick Carter. Your voice is in the whitenoise. I recognize it." She paused. "But I am not Bellatrix Watson. She is merely the form which I took so that I could communicate effectively with humans. Do you understand?"

I didn't. This hallucination was incredible. You'd think since it came out of my head that the things I was hallucinating about would at least be -- you know, understandable to me.

I said the only thing I could think of to say.

"So who the hell are you then?"

She chewed her lip. "I'm not sure how you would say my name as a human."

"As a human?" I laughed, "Okay. So my next question is what the hell are you?"

"I'm a Kepler," she replied in a matter-of-a-fact voice.

"Oh. A Kepler." I said. I nodded. "Of course."

"You've heard of us?"

"Uh... no."

"Well... now you have."

Chapter Eight


I stared at her. I didn't know what else to do. I mean, what else is there to do when you find yourself standing in your bathroom with the woman you loved who died who is now talking like she's not human, calling herself a kepler, whatever the hell that is? What do you do? I put down the bottle of Jack, for starters. That certainly wasn't helping. The bottle clinked as the bottom of it rested on the counter top by my tooth brush and mouthwash.

CowBelle stared back at me.

"We were warned that most of your species was unaware of us," she said, "But I thought surely at least those connected to the whitenoise would know about us." She shook her head.

I blinked. My mind raced, trying to wrap around what she was saying, trying to wrap around anything that was happening.

"Bellatrix Watson didn't tell you about Kepler?" she asked.

"You are Bellatrix Watson," I said, my voice constricted. I lowered myself onto the closed toilet seat.

"I'm not Bellatrix, I'm a Kepler," she said. "I only look like Bellatrix to you."

I closed my eyes.

"I am Gliese," she said, her mouth bending the word funny. "I guess that's as close to saying my name in your language as it will come."

I squeezed my eyes tighter shut. I wanted to wake up. I wanted her to go away.

"I'm from Kepler-62e, as your people call it," she said, "My planets and my people are 1,200 light years away. The whitenoise came to us about one year of your Earth-time ago and we have travelled here to stop it at the orders of our queen, Lyra." I heard her shift. A moment later, I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Nick Carter?" she asked. I opened my eyes. She was half-knelt before me, staring into my face. "She has commanded us to destroy the planet to stop the whitenoise if we must, and some of the crew do not have the patience to talk to humans to make it stop in a non-hostile manner. I'm here to warn you so that, together, we can stop the whitenoise and save your planet."

"So you're an alien," I said.

"Yes," she answered.

My heart beat wildly. I knew it was irrational, I knew it was impossible. I knew it was mental to even consider believing her. And yet... I swallowed. "Gliese, you said?"

She nodded.

I shook my head, "I don't know how to stop the whitenoise," I confessed. "I'm hardly to be considered a part of the project."

"But it's your voice that is broadcast in the whitenoise," she argued, "Your song, your music."

I nodded, "But that's all. I mean I helped pay for the project, but it was all CowBelle that did it, she was the one with the idea and she wrote the proposal and did the math and --" I shook my head, "She's the one that operated the thing, that knew where to point it."

"CowBelle," Gliese said, "This is Bellatrix Watson, yes?"

I nodded.

"There must be some way, some way to stop it," she said. "Some other human to contact that works with the transmission or else it would have stopped by now already."

"Well Fabritz worked with CowBelle but only God knows where he is at now," I answered, "He disappeared after the accident..."

Gliese-the-Phantom-CowBelle tilted her head. "Accident?"

"The one that killed CowBelle," I said thickly.

She stared at me blankly.

"Car accident."

Gliese's eyes seemed sad for a moment, then she unfocused and looked away, her eyes skimming over the sink, over the mirror, the messy towels clustered in the corner of the room where I'd left them after my last shower. "We will find this Fabritz," she said, "But we must be quick before Lyra orders the attack."

"Why does Lyra want the whitenoise stopped so bad?" I asked.

"The whitenoise is aimed at our host star," Gliese answered. "Our star acts like a satellite, intercepting the whitenoise, then projecting it outward again like a mirror and the sound fills our solar system, fills our air. As we walk and talk and live and breathe everyday the whitenoise is everywhere. Some people are driven mad by it, others enjoy it. Some cannot even hear it now it has been so long. But Lyra... the queen... she cannot stand it. We've sat quietly aware of your planet for many years, we've been preoccupied with our move from Planet E to Planet F due to an uncomfortable warming of our planet's climate in recent years. But this is too much. Lyra sent us to stop the whitenoise transmission, to bring silence back to the Keplers."

"There's two planets?"

She nodded. "Our climate has changed and the protective chemicals in our atmosphere on Planet E have burned away after years of misuse. We discovered Planet F about seventy earth-years ago and have been working to move our civilization to Planet F to save ourselves. Lyra was hoping that the signal would not reach Planet F as it is further from our host star but the signal reaches even clearer on Planet F, only because it is further from Planet D, which is very large and apparently blocked portions of the signal from Planet E."

"That sounds like a big deal," I said.

"It is."

"If you knew we were here, why haven't you Keplers reached out to us? You know we've been going nuts trying to reach you... If you had the knowledge and the capability, why didn't you answer us?"

"We weren't sure if you were intelligent, if you were safe." She shrugged. "You're still using light and radio waves as your primary outreach sources," she smirked.

"What do you use?"

"I don't know that you'd understand it."

"Try me."

"Quantum Waves," she replied, "Though they are beginning to become largely antiquiated, they were how we started the process of reaching out. We decided as a people that if a race is not intelligent enough to be using Quantum Waves that we didn't want to interact with their inferior intelligence."

"So basically you think we're stupid."

"Basically."

"Well, that's nice."

"Would you try to reach out to an inferior race?" she asked hotly, defensively. I blinked in surprise, "Some race that upon observing it you saw they were playing with things they didn't understand, things that could be harmful to your own race if they used them inappropriately? If we contacted you and you decided to try to defend yourselves you'd go nuclear. You'd end up killing yourselves and polluting your galaxy, and believe it or not your galaxy is actually quite important to our own. Your star is much older than ours and we study your star to learn the coming changes in our own so that we can adapt to them accordingly." Gliese shook her head. "You've sent out information about yourselves that, luckily for you, were intercepted by my people - people with respect for your people. The information you sent was highly sensitive. In the wrong hands, it could've been the end of your species."

"What information?"

"Your DNA make-up," she said, "That's how we are able to take your shape. We studied the message sent with your DNA make-up."

"This is insane," I muttered.

"You're just lucky we are a peaceful race."

"But you said you're here to stop them from destroying us," I argued. "That ain't peaceful."

"Well most of us are peaceful. Lyra did not intend for you to be destroyed, only if we had to destroy you... Our commander, Borucki, he's blood-thirsty. He didn't really want to try at all. I had to sneak away to warn you."

I took a deep breath. I was about to ask her if she was for real when there came a knock on the door downstairs. A panicked look came over her face. I started to go to answer it, but she caught me by my elbow and pulle me back. She slammed the bathroom door and blocked it with her body. She stared up at me. I heard the door being knocked on again downstairs. "You can't go down there. It could be one of Borucki's henchmen."

"It's probably the mailman or something," I answered.

"You can't trust anyone," she said, "It is too easy for DNA to be borrowed, for someone to be here in disguise to lure you into a false sense of security. There is no level too low for Borucki to stoop to..."

"But --"

"As soon as they find out that I am not on the ship they will come for me, they'll try any way to get you to hand me over, to reveal my location. They'll come in forms that you would expect to be able to trust. Parental units, best friends... you name it, they'll try it. They are not above deception." Gliese words were rushed, thick with fear, "If they find me, Nick, they'll destroy everything."

I heard the door bang open downstairs.

"NICK?" Kevin's voice rang through the house. "NICK ARE YOU HERE?"

I stared into Gliese's eyes burning green, just as I remembered CowBelle's. So deep I could fall into them it seemed...

"Please," she said, her voice thick, "I don't want to go back there."

Chapter Nine


"NICK!"

Kevin's voice was rising.

I looked at Gliese. "He's gonna keep looking 'til he finds us, and he's gonna get more and more worried. I gotta go down there before he thinks I offed myself or something..." I could hear him banging through rooms downstairs.

Gliese's eyes were shining. "Just... don't trust him. Don't tell him I'm here. Get him to leave as quickly as possible." Her voice was pleading, "Protect me."

"I will... I won't tell him you're here, he'd just think I was mental anyways," I answered. Gliese moved away from the door and I opened it and slid out into the hallway. I turned and looked back at her as I was closing the door. She lowered herself onto the closed toilet lid where I'd been sitting before Kevin got there. I stared at her, afraid if I closed the door she'd be gone, yet almost hoping it, too. I took a deep breath, "It's nice seeing you," I said thickly.

She looked up. "Hurry," she whispered.

I nodded and pulled the door closed. A part of me wanted to check to see if she was gone. I was about to reach for the door knob again when Kevin thundered up the steps. His face was pale, his chest heaving as he gasped oxygen into his lungs. His eyes landed on me and he gasped out a cry of relief and bent forward, hands on his knees, and stared down at the carpet. "Oh Christ Nick," he gasped.

"Hey Kev," I said.

"You scared me to fucking death man," he said.

"I'm sorry," I answered. "I just... I didn't hear you."

"I was yelling like a banshee..."

"Sorry."

Kevin looked me over, his eyes flittered across my nose with concern. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"Oh..." I'd forgotten about my nose in all the conversation about Keplers and planets and aliens and DNA and crazy shit. I brought my hand up to my face, "Yeah. That. I just... I was in my studio and I hit my face by accident."

"On what?" Kevin stepped forward and studied my crusty-with-dried-blood nose.

"The soundboard. I dropped a pen. Hit my face."

"You're such a damn klutz," he muttered. He reached for the door knob of the bathroom. "Let's get you cleaned up," he suggested.

I swatted his hand away from the knob, "Let's use the one downstairs."

"What's wrong with this one?" he asked.

"Nothing. Just. I -- I -- I don't like this one as much."

"But that's the one with all your stuff? Isn't the one downstairs a guest bathroom?"

"It's cleaner," I tried.

Kevin raised an eyebrow, "How messy is this one? Have you been keeping up with the chores around here?" He pushed around me, reached for the knob and shoved the door open. I held my breath, waited for a reaction from him about seeing CowBelle or Gliese or whatever. But he just stepped inside. There was a long pause. Then he turned and looked at me, holding up the bottle of Jack. "Are you drinking?"

I looked around him. She was gone.

Kevin shook the bottle at me.

"I was..." I confessed.

"Is that how you hit your face?" Kevin asked.

"I -- maybe," I stammered. My mind was more fixed on where the hell Gliese had gone, if she had been simply a vision-slash-hallucination, or if maybe Keplers had some crazy power to disappear. Maybe she could make herself invisible.

Kevin unscrewed the cap from the Jack and poured it down the sink basin, running the water. Then he grabbed a wash cloth and wet it with warm water, which he turned and carefully wiped the blood off my face with. He stared at me as he did it. "Are you okay today?" he asked gently, more gently than he'd asked anything else.

I nodded. Warm dots of water were hitting my chest. I stared at the rings of the shower curtain as he carefully washed my face. "Yeah I'm fine," I replied.

Kevin stopped and ran the water again, re-wetting the wash cloth. "I thought you might be a little lonely today, with it being... her birthday... and all." He turned back to me, holding the cloth in his hand. His eyes were sad. "I know it was hard the first year after my dad died, when his birthday rolled around."

"I've been keepin busy," I answered.

Kevin wiped my face again.

I felt like a little kid.

"I know you don't like it when I'm checking on you and you think I'm worrying about you too much," Kevin said, "But it's only because I care. I don't want you being alone when you really don't want to be."

Then the first couple rings of the shower curtain moved as he was speaking. I shifted my eyes and saw her peeking around the edge of it, her eyes wide. Hurry she mouthed at me, Time is running out, we need to stop the white noise. Hurry.

"I'm good," I said quickly. "Really." I reached for Kevin's wrist and stopped him from wiping my face anymore. "Seriously, man, I'm really.. really.. really good. I'm not that lonely, in fact, I kinda like the quiet, you know?"

Kevin looked at me funny and dropped the wash cloth on the counter. "You say that, but I know how stubborn your pride is and everything... God forbid you admit you need someone..."

"I really don't right now."

Kevin sighed.

"Really."

"Is that why you were hiding in a bathroom with a bottle of Jack?"

"I told you I was in the studio," I answered. "I was working on some new songs. I'm in a creative mood." Gliese was still peeking around the shower curtain. I backed into the hallway, and Kevin followed and I quickly pulled the bathroom door shut as he stepped out. "I'm doing good," I added.

Kevin sighed again. "Okay," he said.

"Okay," I said back.

"Look, I'll let you be for now, but I'm gonna stay in town --"

"You don't have to."

"-- at the Marriott by the airport. If you need me for anything - anything, even if you just wanna go get a bite or something - you just call me and I'll come. Okay?"

I nodded.

Kevin put his hands on my shoulders. "I'm here for you, man," he said.

"Thanks," I answered.

He nodded, smiled, and I followed him to the doorway. He stepped outside and walked across the lot to the car he'd driven over and I watched as he drove away. I took a deep breath of air before closing the door again and leaning against it. I closed my eyes. After a moment of regrouping, I went back up the stairs and slowly opened the bathroom door. "He's gone," I said.

The shower curtain pulled back and there she stood.

"We need to hurry," she said.

Chapter Ten


Part of me wished that Kevin had seen her. If he had, I'd know at least that I wasn't completely making it all up. But if he'd looked and hadn't been able to see her... I wasn't sure I was willing to admit I'd lost my mind and I was seeing things. I wasn't sure I wanted Gliese-slash-Phantom-CowBelle to be a hallucination. And if she was -- well, I'd rather that remain a secret rather than me being taken away to fly over the cuckoo's nest, if you know what I mean.

"Where do we even start?" I asked her as she climbed out of the bath tub.

"First we need to try to contact Fabritz, see if he still has access to the signal. If he does, he needs to cease and desist immediately." Gliese looked around, "Do you have a means of teleportation?"

"I have a telephone."

"Let's go."

I led her down the stairs to the kitchen and gestured at the wireless phone sitting on its cable, charging. She stared at it. "How does it work?" she reached for the receiver and studied it. "Do you type in coordinates?" Her fingers pressed the buttons.

"You talk into it," I said, taking the phone from her before she accidentally placed a fifty-dollar-a-minute call to Taiwan or something. I put it down on it's cradle again.

"That's not teleporting," she said in disgust.

"It's telephoning," I replied. "Humans don't have teleportation devices installed in suburban homes," I said.

"Where do they have them?" she questioned eagerly.

"On the USS Enterprise with Mr. Spock," I answered.

"And where is this USS Enterprise?" she asked.

"It's not real," I answered. She was really not good with the sarcasm thing. "We don't have teleportation. Nobody's invented it yet."

She shook her head, "Inferior," she muttered.

I picked up an old address book CowBelle kept in the drawer and shook it at her. "We can call him though. His number's probably in here," I said, "All our contacts are in here..." I stared down at the cover of the book and took a deep breath. I didn't even know where to start. "I don't even know Fabritz's last name," I confessed, opening the cover. I took a deep breath and flipped a couple pages through the personal information - all filled out in CowBelle's crisp handwriting.

Gliese reached over and flipped the book's pages purposefully.

Fabritzio Contoso.

"How did you --"

"I've done my research on the topic of the Whitenoise Project," Gliese answered. She stared up at me as I stared down at the little cross bar on CowBelle's Z in Fabritzio, nostalgia or something like it stormed over me. "Telephone him, then, if that's what this device does," she said.

I shook my head, trying to clear away the emotions that were pouring through my veins as I stared down at CowBelle's handwriting. "And say what exactly?"

"That he needs to stop the Whitenoise before my people destroys your planet," she answered in a tone that signified this should've been the obvious message to relay.

"You do know how insane that sounds," I said.

"What's insane about it?" she demanded.

"I dunno now that you mention it it's completely normal for a guy to call up another guy and tell him that his dead fiance is now an alien who wants him to abort the last project she ever did..." I said sarcastically. Even though sarcasm was a complete waste.

"So what's insane about it then?" she asked, staring at me with a persistent air about her.

"I'm gonna go with everything," I answered.

Gliese shook her head, "Just call him. Tell him. Tell him to come and see."

"Come and see what exactly?" I asked, "It's not like you're proving yourself very well. I ain't seen any lasers or nothin' yet."

She raised an eyebrow. "If I'm not an alien, explain my physical form." I looked at her, all CowBelle-y and pretty. I took a deep breath. There was no explanation I could think of otherwise. "Humans have a very narrow scope of understanding and assumptions about extraterrestrial lifeforms," she said. "Lasers. Please. We're just like you. We're not green, we don't have big eyes and suction cups on our fingers. We don't fly around zapping people with lasers." She shook her head.

"So why do you have to impersonate humans if you're just like us and you don't look funny?" I asked. "Why bother altering your DNA?"

"You're famous," she said, "When you go to Hollywood Boulevard, do you wear sunglasses to disguise yourself?"

"Yeah, sometimes I go in cognito."

She waved her arms at herself. "I am in cognito."

I nodded slowly. "Still. If I call Fabritz and just tell him there's an alien here wanting him to turn off the Whitenoise signal, he's going to think I'm fucking mental... I think I'm fucking mental."

"You work together on a project aimed to make contact with aliens. Why would he think you're mental? It should be cause for celebration -- your project was successful." She furrowed her eyebrows.

"Yeah, but I don't think even as we did it that any of us ever believed we'd actually hear back from an alien race," I replied.

"I don't understand. Why try contacting something you don't believe in?" she questioned.

I rubbed the back of my neck. "Because we wanted to believe," I replied. "Maybe we just didn't wanna be alone in the universe anymore." I shrugged.

"Well you got your wish, didn't you?" she asked. "You aren't alone. And neither am I. We have each other." Gliese's eyes flickered with something - some kind of emotion. "You know, we didn't always believe in you, either, back home. Some people still don't. Some people believe you're a hoax created by the government, that Lyra is using the fables and myths to control the Keplars." She took a deep breath. She looked down at her toes, then looked back up at me, her eyes burning. "I have always believed in you."

My heart pounded. Something about the words - the way she said them, the way her eyes looked - it seared me. And for a split moment I felt like I was looking at CowBelle as she'd been. My CowBelle. I felt a lump rise up in my throat.

"I never once questioned if you existed," she said thickly.

"I question a lot of things," I choked.

"Like what?"

"Like my purpose now that you -- she -- Bella -- is gone," I replied.

"Maybe this is your purpose," she said. "Saving us both. Saving everyone. The world. Stopping the Whitenoise."

"Maybe."

She nodded at the phone. "Call him."

I licked my lips and lifted the phone off it's cradle, waited for a dial tone, then thumbed in Fabritz's number and waited as it rang...

"....hello?" he said thickly on the fifth ring.

"Fabritz," I said, "It's me... Nick Carter... Bellatrix Watson's fiance..."

"Yes," he said thickly. He was quiet a long moment. "I was wondering if you'd call today," he said.

Chapter Eleven


Fabritz had been a student at Vanderbilt in the Astronomy major when he'd been given the chance to work with CowBelle for study of his senior thesis. She'd been supposed to treat him as a student, but instead she'd treated him as her colleague and when he'd passed in his thesis, she'd hired him on full time. Fabritz had spent many a night up at the Dyer on the roof with CowBelle going over seemingly endless numbers and mathematical calculations. They'd spent long dinner conversations debating over the search for extra-terrestrials and the signals and how physics worked. They made jokes about string theory and atoms and all kinds of shit that I didn't understand.

Once, I'd been jealous about Fabritz and asked CowBelle if there was anything going on, if I needed to be worried. She'd laughed in my face and that was the night I learned that Fabritz was gay. "He's more likely interested in you than me," CowBelle had scoffed. Then she'd gotten pissed I'd questioned her loyalty to me.

Fabritz had ended up being CowBelle's best friend.

And I hadn't had the heart to talk to him since the night he'd seen her car veer off the cliff.

"I was wondering if you would call today," he said.

I took a deep breath. "I gotta talk to you about somethin'," I said. I looked at Gliese, and she was mouthing the words she'd told me to tell him, but I knew that right now wasn't the time. I ran a hand over the back of my neck. "Can we meet up somewhere? Maybe downtown? I'll buy you lunch?"

"I'm not located in Nashville anymore," he confessed.

"You aren't?" I asked, surprised. I waved off Gliese, who was frantically trying to make me say the words she wanted me to say. I turned away from her, covering my free hand and hunching to listen.

"I left Tennessee a couple months ago," Fabritz said, "I was offered a better position than Vanderbilt could provide -- so..."

"What about Project Whitenoise?" I asked.

"Had it relocated," he answered. "We have a dedicated satellite here."

"Where are you?"

He paused. "I work with some guys at the Aricebo Satellite site," he said.

"Where the fuck is Aricebo?" I asked. The name sounded familiar. "Is that near LA?"

"Aricebo is the name of the satellite," Fabritz replied. "It's in Puerto Rico."

I fell silent. Gliese was tugging on my arm, trying to get me to turn around, to pay attention to her. I ignored her tugging. I remembered where I'd heard the name before now - a long time ago, back when CowBelle was waiting on SETI to finalize plans and get everything put together to begin the project, when she'd been assigned the Dyer, she said, "Well it's not Aricebo, but it's a satellite location." Aricebo, apparently, was a big mother fucker of a satellite. The largest of its kind, the most coveted satellite the US government had control over, I guess, or something. So this was impressive, Fabritz being moved to Aricebo. Whitenoise being controlled at Aricebo.

I turned and looked at Gliese, who was flapping frantically for attention. She was mouthing the words she wanted me to say still.

"Look... I really need to see you," I said, "About Project Whitenoise."

"There's not a lot I can tell you any longer about it," Fabritz said, "Honestly without Bellatrix involved you're not really a part of the project any longer."

"But I'm a shareholder," I argued, "I paid for the satellite."

"Yeah, the satellite we're not using anymore," Fabritz said. "It's government-run now, Nick. I can't really talk about it."

I stared at Gliese for a long moment, took a deep breath, and said - reading her lips, "It needs to be stopped now... they're coming to stop it."

"Excuse me?"

"What do you know about Keplars?" I asked.

Fabritz was quiet. So quiet I thought he might've hung up.

"Fabritz?"

"What do you know about Keplars?" he asked.

I hesitated.

"I have one standing in front of me," I replied.

It was Fabritz's turn to hesitate. "I'm sorry... what?"

"I need to see you," I replied. It suddenly occurred to me that if Fabritz was working for the government at Aricebo, if Project Whitenoise was government-run, then a conversation about it on the telephone would be most interesting. Perhaps we were being tapped, maybe the government was listening in. Maybe we were being watched. Suddenly I felt paranoid as this thought began to sink in more and more.

Fabritz's voice was low, "Can you come to Puerto Rico?"

"Yes," I replied.

When I'd hung up after getting information for where to meet him once we got there, I turned to Gliese.

"Well?" she asked.

"We gotta go to Puerto Rico."

"Puerto Rico?" she asked, surprised.

"Yes," I answered. "Project Whitenoise got relocated there. If we're gonna talk to Fabritz about the project, it's gotta be in person. Anyone could be listening over the phone wires," I added darkly.

Gliese nodded.

I led the way back upstairs to my studio and sat down in front of the Mac Gliese had been assaulting earlier. I shook the mouse and the stars disappeared, Gliese looked surprised. "So this is your control panel," she said triumphantly.

"It's just a computer," I replied. I navigated onto the internet and pulled up the airline site, looked for the flights to Puerto Rico and discovered one leaving the next morning. I booked a couple seats for a steep price, but it was worth it. We had to move quick if Gliese was telling the truth, if her people if --- what was his name? Borucki? -- was as blood thirsty as she made him sound.... And Fabritz had heard of Keplars, I reminded myself. This was becoming more and more real. And the idea that Project Whitenoise was now government run... well, that just meant that they now saw potential in the project. Once upon a time, CowBelle had fought for SETI to even believe in the project.

Something must've made the government take notice.

Maybe, just maybe, they'd discovered the Keplars, too.

I was printing off our boarding passes when it occurred to me... I swiveled in my seat and looked at her. "We have a problem," I said.

"What problem?" she asked.

"Well to go to Puerto Rico, you're gonna need identification and a passport," I said. "Which, unless you can materialize paperwork, we don't have."

She stared at me. I took her worried expression to mean she couldn't materialize papers.

"I don't even have CowBelle's anymore..." I said.

"Who does?"

"Probably her parents..." At these words, Gliese made an expression I wasn't sure I could read. "What?" I asked.

"Her father is definitely a Keplar in disguise searching for me to take me back to the ship," she explained. "I had a run-in with him trying to get to you to warn you about the attack. He is... particularly aggressive in his mission," she added. "He's one of Borucki's henchmen."

"Her father is?"

Glise nodded.

"So how do we get the papers?" I asked.

She looked deep in thought. "It is impossible to get on this --- you called it a plane? --- without the papers?"

"Yes, impossible," I said, nodding, thinking of the heightened security at all the airlines.

Gliese took a deep breath. "We'll have to chance it."

"Chance what? Getting on the plane without the papers?" I asked, incredulous. "Maaaan, I'm telling you, we can't do that. We'll end up arrested and shit will fly. You don't wanna fuck with the security at the airport. Seriously."

"I meant retrieving the papers," she said, shaking her head.

"Retrieving the papers?"

She nodded. "Do you know how to get to Bellatrix's father's home?"

"Yeah but --"

"We must go, get the papers, and get out."

"But I don't have any idea where they'd keep that stuff..."

"I feel like this knowledge is a part of the DNA that I have assumed," she answered. "I can find them quickly." She patted her chest by her heart. "I feel like I know it here..." Gliese paused. "I feel like I'm beginning to feel a lot of things she knew and felt here," she added. She stared at me, "You make her memories awaken. Like you are a part of Bellatrix's DNA."

I felt a lump rise in my throat.

"Let's go," Gliese said.

I glanced at the window, at the sunlight streaming in. "Maybe we should wait until it's dark out," I said, "So that we have the cover of night."

Gliese nodded. "Okay."

"Okay."

Chapter Twelve


It seemed like days - not hours - ago that I'd been so depressed I'd raided the booze stash in the basement.

I stood in the kitchen, rooting through the cupboard for something to eat, and Gliese was sitting on the counter top, watching me dig. I glanced over at her a couple times, the way her ankles crossed and wondered at the fact that DNA could control so much about a person. CowBelle used to sit on that very spot of the counter, with her ankles crossed that very way, and I would go over and kiss her and put my hands on her hips and she'd wrap her legs around my waist and cling to me and we'd fall into the couch and have sex and she'd taste so good and the world would spin and alternate going in and out of focus until we lay there exhausted at the end...

I looked away from Gliese and the ankles and wiped the thoughts from my mind.

This phantom only looked like CowBelle, I reminded myself, only bore similarities to her. It wasn't really her, it was really someone else, from somewhere else, somewhere far, far away... a Keplar.

Whatever that meant.

I cleared my throat. "So, tell me more about your people. Like what do y'all do for fun?"

Gliese shrugged, "Oh you know, nothing extraordinary really. We're not that much different from you, really. We have films and music and art..." She leaned back and looked up at the ceiling lamp. "My grandparents still live on Planet E in our galaxy, and my mum and dad were among the first to uproot to Planet F... so we'd take weekend trips in the winter to Planet E. It's so warm on Planet E now, with the climate change and all, and my sisters and I would sunbathe and we'd go swimming in the Dying Lakes."

"Dying Lakes?"

"They're big lakes. I suppose they're like your oceans here, but not quite that large..." she mused. "They used to be called something else, a long time ago, but they're drying up because of the sun coming closer and the beaches are almost a mile wide now, you know, because of it receeding, and they're called the Dying Lakes."

"You're lucky there is another planet y'all can move to once that one dries up," I commented.

"We learned our lesson too late," she answered, shrugging, "We were destructive to our ecosystem too long and too hard before we did too little to prevent it's death."

"Go green," I said, employing the slogan of the tree huggers -- like Kevin.

Gliese gave me a funny look.

"It's a saying. For being earth-friendly," I tried to explain.

"Oh."

I pulled out a box of pop tarts, finally deciding that I'd relied on take-out for too long to actually scrape together a real meal. I ripped open the silver foil and held out one of the pop tarts to Gliese. She took it and turned it over. "What is this?"

"A pop tart," I said. "Wildberry."

She stared at it. "It's blue."

"It's supposed to be. It's wild berry."

Gliese slowly lifted the poptart to her mouth and took a bite. She chewed slowly, processing the flavors thoughtfully. Finally, she said, "Well, it isn't bad. This is earth food, huh?"

I shrugged, "It's not really a delicacy or anything, but it'll do for now." I sat down at the table and broke my own poptart in half. I hate the crust. I started folding the edges off mine as she nibbled hers like a rabbit. I looked up at her. "Tell me more about your planets, about things like the Dying Lakes. You work for Lyra, you must be like, in the military or something, right? So you must've seen a lot of your planets."

She chewed the pop tart. "I am in the military, yes," she nodded. "I'm a high ranking official." She was copying me, snapping the pop tart into four squares, one mostly eaten already, though. She watched as I threw away my crust. "Keplar is less...organized, I guess is the word...than Earth is. I mean we have the Dying Lakes, like your Oceans, but we don't have such large masses of land spread out so far apart. The land is smaller, but spread out around more. The Dying Lakes are everywhere all over the planet between the land masses. In the primitive days before hover craft were used people got around our planet in boats. You can go around the entire planet in a small water craft because land is so near at all times."

"That sounds really cool," I said. "I'd do that if I lived there."

"It takes forever because you have to weave your way, of course, but it's possible. I know a guy who did it once."

"Really?"

"Yeah. He was bored one day so he set off on this great adventure and nobody knew where he was until one day a really long time after we'd all assumed he'd died or something, he showed back up and all the while he'd just been navigating up and down and all around our planet." Gliese smiled, "I'd never have the patience for such an endeavor."

"No?"

"No... I've never been on a boat. They seem too... slow."

"Boating is fun," I said. "It's relaxing."

"Do you boat?"

"Yeah, I used to when I lived in Florida."

"Is Florida far from here?"

I shrugged. "It's about a thousand miles, I guess. It's not that far. I just... I don't go really anymore. I mean I've lived here for five years and I used to live in California before that... I haven't gone in awhile. I was busy."

"Busy?"

"Yeah."

"With what?"

"With falling in love and stuff," I answered, shrugging. I picked the frosting off a piece of my poptart and ate it. I could feel her eyes on me. I looked up at her. "The stuff I used to be interested in and put above everything else suddenly didn't matter anymore when I met Belle," I said. "The only thing that mattered was her and her happiness. The only thing that mattered was her smile." I looked back down at the pop tart.

Gliese was silent. "I am sorry for your loss," she said after a long moment.

"I am too," I said.

Gliese chewed the inside of her cheek. "If I could alter my DNA so that I was not a reminder for you every moment I would," she said.

"It's okay," I answered. "It's nice sort-of having her back in the room..." I took a deep breath.

"We should probably talk about strategy," Gliese said, suddenly changing the subject in an almost awkward way. She jumped down from the counter, landing on her feet and swooping into the seat opposite me at the table. She tossed a piece of Poptart into her mouth and stared up into my eyes. "How do we get the paperwork without alerting Borucki's croney?"

I chewed thoughtfully on my own Poptart. "I have no fucking idea," I admitted.

Chapter Thirteen


Ralph and Anita lived outside of Nashville a little ways in a town called Murfreesboro, in a little house tucked behind thick trees that blocked them from the road. They were lucky they didn't live in a snowy region 'cos their driveway would've been a bitch to shovel. I cut my car lights before we turned off the street and inched my way up the winding driveway, parking just before we fully cleared the trees. The house was dark except for the ice-blue-and-pale-yellow flickering of the television in the living room window. The TV cast the viewers' silhouettes against the blue curtains that lined their huge picture window.

Being there felt dangerous and insane.

I looked over at Gilese. "They're watching TV. Are you sure they're really Keplars and not just Ralph and Anita?" I asked.

"Beyond a doubt," she whispered.

"Why would bloodthirsty aliens watch TV?"

"We like TV, too, you know," she said, raising her eyebrows. "Keplars don't just run around eating human heads or something."

It was clear I'd offended her. "Sorry," I said. I paused and looked back at the window. "What happens if they catch you?"

"They'll probably kill me," she replied shortly.

We stared at their silhouettes for a few more moments. Finally I turned to her again, "You're sure you know what you're doing?" I demanded.

"Yes." She replied. She paused. "If I don't come out alive you'll need to continue on with the plan and go to Aricebo without me. For the sake of the human race." Her eyes were serious.

I nodded.

"Okay." She reached for the black skull cap I'd given her. She was clad head to foot in black clothing. She rolled the cap onto her head, covering the blonde pig tails that she'd pulled CowBelle's hair up into. She looked at me. "How do I look?"

"Like a cat burgler," I replied. Gilese reached for the car door handle. "Hey," I said. She paused and looked at me. "Be careful, okay? Please?"

"I will," she nodded. Then she pushed the door open and climbed out.

I watched with baited breath as she scampered up the remaining length of the driveway, her eyes on the window, on the silhouettes, as she pranced about through the dark. Soon, all I could see of her was the pig tails, like they were stars in a constellation in the night sky. I waited.

This was, after all, my entire purpose in the plan - I was to wait until she came back out, like the driver of a getaway car in a bank heist. I took a deep breath. I hated waiting. I've never been good at just waiting.

Christ. She was taking forever.

Nervously, I ran my fingers over the wheel, my palms were sweating, they left long trails of persperation across the rubbery wheel. My hand slipped. I hit the horn.

HOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!

"Fuck!" I muttered. My heart beat up through my throat.

The silhouettes in the window shifted. One of them got up and moved toward the window, the shadow darkening until the window was open and a slice of light escaped out onto the dark-soaked lawn. Ralph's face peered out across the grass, and, beyond a doubt, he saw my car. I felt sick as he dropped the curtain and disappeared from the window.

"Fuck-fuckety-fuck-fuck-fuck," I muttered.

I barely knew what a Keplar was, not to mention how to deal with a blood thirsty one.

I looked around the car for something to defend myself with.

The front door of the house opened and the light spilled out across the porch and Ralph's thick frame moved down the porch steps, across the walk to the driveway, and he started walking towards me, quickly. I rubbed my hand across my knees. "Oh fuck," I muttered.

It wasn't until he was a couple feet away that I really got a good look at Ralph, but the first thing I noticed was how much older he looked now than he'd looked the last time I'd seen him. I wondered if this was because he wasn't really Ralph, if the Keplar that had taken posession of his DNA had screwed up somehow. Ralph was ex-military and he was really strict with his exercise regimine but this verion of him was slightly overweight in the stomach, like he'd been drinking too much, and he had red eyes like he'd been crying.

"Nick?" he yelled through the window as he came closer, "Is that you?"

I cracked the window open hesitantly. Gilese was sure that he was a Keplar, I reminded myself. She was certain. She'd said that he'd say whatever it took to make me lower my guard, to believe she wasn't really a Keplar, to believe that he wasn't one. "He'll tell you anything it takes," she'd said, "Anything."

"Hello sir," I answered. My throat felt parched with nerves.

"What are you doing here?" he asked thickly. He bent low and peered through my window at the empty passenger seat.

"I - I dunno," I stammered.

He drew a deep breath. "You're thinking about Bella," he said.

"Yeah," I said.

"Been a long time," he muttered, his eyes sad, "A long time. What uh - what made you - think - of her?" he asked. His voice was nervous.

"It's her birthday," I answered, shrugging. Where in hell is Gilese? I wondered, my eyes darting toward the house then back to Ralph.

"Yes," he said, nodding, "I remember." He paused. "You, uh... you been... you been okay? Everything in your life going - you know, smooth?"

"Yeah, sure," I answered. I nodded.

We stared at each other awkwardly. He shoved his fists into his pockets. I clutched the wheel, praying for Gilese to come out of the house.

"Nick, look, I need to tell you something - something important," Ralph said, "About Bellatrix."

"What's that?" I asked.

Ralph went to open his mouth, but before he could get the words out, the still-open door was filled with a new silhouette. Gilese. She was running pell-mell toward the car, her fists clutched around a manilla envelope. Anita was hot on her tail. Gilese's eyes were wide, terrified.

"COME BACK!" shrieked Anita.

Ralph looked up and instantly ran for Gilese.

"START THE CAR!" Gilese screamed. I turned the key without even second guessing her command. She dodged around Ralph, who'd tried to tackle her, and only just barely slipped between his fingers. She flung herself into the passanger seat. "GO! GO! GO!" she cried as I slammed the car into reverse.

"STOP! WAIT!" Ralph shouted. "BELLA, WAIT!"

Gilese locked the door as he threw himself forward, clutching her door handle, trying to pull the door open and I backed up. He ran until he couldn't keep up with the speed of the car, and then we broke onto the main road, leaving him behind.

My hands shook on the wheel as the car tires squealed against the tar.

"Oh Jesus," I gasped, my heart racing. I couldn't imagine what hers was doing if mine was pounding as hard as it was. I looked over at her, "That was close."

Gilese nodded. "Now we gotta get to Aricebo before he can get a message back to Barucki. If Barucki finds out that I've contacted you and we have a plan to stop the whitenoise he's going to pitch a fit." She took a deep breath, "And trust me, it's never good to pitch a fit when you're a guy armed with enough firepower to destroy an entire planet."

"You can say that again," I muttered.

Gilese looked at me funny, then shrugged and said, "It's never good to pitch a it when you're a guy armed with enough ---"

"It's a figure of speech," I said, interrupting her "You don't literally gotta say it a second time."

Gilese shook her head. "Humans are weird as hell."

Chapter Fourteen


After the close call at CowBelle's parents' house, we were both too paranoid to go home. What if the Keplars came for us, what if they got us before we could stop the whitenoise? I felt like we were being watched or followed or maybe even both, and Gliese said nothing to keep this feeling at bay. So we drove around the city all night. The beauty of the city of Nashville is everything goes in circles around the city, so we just kept switching between highways, doing loop after loop, until it was time to go to the airport.

I parked the car in long term parking and we carried the two duffle bags that we'd shoved together back at the house the night before and ran to the shuttle that carried us off to the terminals. It was while we were running across the lot that Gliese grabbed hold of my hand and squeezed her fingers into my palm and didn't let go. We sat on the shuttle bus, our fingers entwined, and neither of us said a word about it. I stared at our hands, at the geometry of it, at how natural and good it felt, and I tried not to think about the fact that she wasn't really CowBelle.

Not for the first time in the last twenty-four hours, I was amazed by what DNA described about a person. Like the size of her hands, like the little dents and curves that I'd come to know so well over the years. The way our fingers fit together. I studied the way her fingers wove through mine. When I glanced up, it was to find Gliese studying them, too.

Our eyes met.

The shuttle came to a stop, rolling us slightly and we stood up, though I was careful not to break our bonded hands as I led her off the bus, the duffle bags weighing down my shoulder as we made our way through the check-in process and into the line for the security check points.

"You waken her in me you know," Gliese said after a few moments of standing in the narrow hall that led to the security check.

"I do?"

Gliese nodded. "It's been such a long time since I've felt this way."

"A long time?"

"Yes."

"How long have you been using her DNA?" I asked, confused.

Gliese was about to answer when I was motioned forward by the TSA attendant and I handed him my passport and boaring pass. Then I tugged off my shoes and tossed them into one of the bins. I watched them roll down the conveyer belt, followed by the two duffle bags. Gliese came up behind me once TSA had looked at CowBelle's passport. "Why are you taking off your shoes?" she hissed.

"Security requirement," I answered.

It took a few moments for me to explain to her why and she went second so I could demonstrate how the metal detector thingy worked and she came through a moment after me, shaking her head at the absurdity of it all. "Such primitive machines..." she muttered as we tugged our shoes back onto our feet.

When we arrived at our plane's gate, we sat on a bench by the window and watched for our plane to arrive, our fingers entwined again. I watched the ant-like airport employees rushing around with the checked bags and the gasoline hoses out on the tarmac.

"Tell me about her," Gliese said suddenly.

I turned to look at her. "What?"

"Tell me about Bellatrix," she pleaded.

I took a deep breath. "I dunno what to tell you," I said quietly. "She was... incredible. She was breathtaking." I shrugged. I stared down at our knuckles, specifically at a small scar on the middle knuckle on her hand that was from dismantling a telescope that needed repairing years ago. "She was headstrong, with a great laugh, and when we watched sad movies she'd cry. Like this one With Honors. She bawled over that every time we ever watched it. Like a baby."

Gliese was quiet, listening.

"She used to put sugar on her Apple Jacks cereal," I laughed.

"She loved you," Gliese said thickly. "I can tell. I can feel that about her."

My throat ached. "I loved her too," I answered.

"We are now boarding flight 1092 to Puerto Rico..."

I stood up, breaking apart our hands, my stomach rolling. I shouldered one of the duffle bags and headed to the gate to board. I could feel Gliese staring at my back, but I didn't turn around because I felt like if I looked at her - if I saw CowBelle's face - that I'd fall apart. When she came up beside me, I ushered her ahead of me. The airline employee held out his hand for Gliese's boarding pass and she stepped forward and I pulled my own pass out of my pocket.

Suddenly --

"Nick?"

I looked up and around and my eyes landed on Kevin, crossing the waiting area, a confused expression on his face. "What in hell are you doing here?" he asked, coming to a stop a couple feet way. He glanced around. "Puerto Rico?" he asked, his huge brows furrowing, "What's in Puerto Rico?"

"I gotta go Kev, I'll call you," I replied.

"Next," called the airline employee.

Kevin looked confused, "But -- Nick -- what's --"

"Nick?" Gliese asked, turning, too.

Kevin's eyebrows almost shot off his face in surprise. "What the --"

"Kev, I gotta go." I turned quickly back to the airline employee, holding out my boarding pass.

Gliese rushed to the other side of me.

"Bellatrix?" Kevin's voice was pinched, "Bella? Is that you?"

"Nick," Gliese's voice was scared.

"Kev we gotta go."

The airline employee looked between the three of us.

"Nick hurry," Gliese begged.

I turned to the boarding hall, "I gotta go."

"Nick wait. How did you -- how is she -- she's ---" Kevin stammered.

"I'll call you," I promised, and Gliese pulled me down the hall toward the plane hurriedly, her fist wrapped around my wrist.

"BUT I THOUGHT SHE WAS DEAD?" Kevin yelled from the waiting area.

A couple people in the hall looked around at us with nervous looks on their faces.

I gnawed my lip.

Gliese yanked me onto the plane, fear in her eyes, and pulled me into a seat in the far back of the plane, our backs almost against the flight attendants work space. CowBelle had always preferred the far back of planes, too, and I wondered fleetingly if things like preferences were encoded in peoples' DNAs as well.

"Keplar," she hissed.

"What?"

"That man. That man in the waiting area. He was Keplar."

"No he wasn't, that was Kevin," I said.

"He was Keplar," she insisted. "He's probably reporting to Barucki right now that we're on our way to Puerto Rico." Her eyes were bright with worry. "We need to hurry, we need to move quick or this is all going to be too late."

"But --"

"Nick, I swear to you, I saw it in his eyes, in the way he looked at me."

"He was just surprised is all, Gliese," I said, "Kevin knew CowBelle. He's been takin' care of me since she... since she -- died... He was just surprised to see you in her DNA, that's all. He doesn't know about Keplars so he doesn't have an explanation for what he saw."

She shook her head.

"Doesn't CowBelle remember Kevin inside her somewhere?" I asked.

Gliese continued shaking her head.

I took a deep breath and I leaned back into the seat. "He wasn't Keplar," I said quietly.

"What are the odds of him running into us at the airport?" Gliese persisted. "Was he supposed to be at the airport? They'll use people that you won't expect. People that you'll know, that you'll trust..." She stared up at me.

Come to think of it, it was weird that Kevin was at the airport. He was supposed to be heading back to the house to check on me, not leaving town.

"I know how to settle this," I decided, "I'll call the real Kevin on my cell phone and we'll see where he's at..." I said, digging out my phone. But at that precise moment the flight attendant came over the radio announcing that we were all boarded and about to prepare for take-off. "I'll call him later," I said, and I shoved my phone into my pocket.

Chapter Fifteen


I tried calling Kevin in Miami when we landed for the connection to Puerto Rico - but he didn't answer. Despite my persistence that he hadn't been Keplar in the airport in Nashville, I was beginning to wonder. At one point during the sixty minute layover I almost had worked up the guts to ask Gliese if Keplars could only use the DNA of dead people and what the Kevin Keplar meant about the real Kevin but I didn't think I could stomach the answer if it wasn't what I wanted. So I channeled my anxiety into calling Kevin over and over and over again, desperate for him to pick up and confirm that it'd been him.

When we landed in Puerto Rico, my cell reception was kinda crappy. I muttered to my phone the entire time we were waiting in line for a rental car and connected it to the cigarette lighter immediately to charge with the ringer turned all the way up. There was no way in hell I was gonna miss the call when Kevin answered all the myriad of voice mails I'd left him. No way in hell.

"I'm just saying that if your friend in the airport was Keplar, then we only have a short time at best to cease the Whitenoise signal," Gliese was saying, her voice nervous. "If Barucki finds out we're taking away his opportunity to detonate, he's gonna be pissed."

"I'm getting us there as fast as I could," I replied, navigating the car along the GPS-dictated route to the place that Fabritz had requested we meet him. Gliese shifted nervously in her seat, her palms pressed together, picking at her fingernails with her teeth.

Finally, we arrived in the little town that he'd described that was a short three-mile ride from the Aricebo satellite, and we parked in front of the bar he'd described. Gliese climbed out of the car, her eyes scanning the brilliantly blue skies. The entire area smelled like tequila and cigars. "I can't believe we're here," she said in awe.

"I can't either," I muttered, stepping over some trash onto the crumbing old sidewalk that ran along side the graffiti covered bar front.

Seedy wasn't even the word for this place.

We went inside and my naustrils were assaulted with the stench of a hundred mens' body odor. "Christ..." I muttered, covering my nose. I glanced around the room. It was dark. "Could he have picked a shittier place? If he tried I don't think he could've."

"There he is," Gliese said, pointing.

I turned and sure enough, she was right. Fabritz was sitting in a corner booth, his eyes turned down on some paperwork before him, a serious expression of concentration in his eyes. I cleared my throat, and walked toward him, my hand instinctively reaching for Gliese's and squeezing, holding her hand protectively, tucking her behind me.

Fabritz looked up as we approached. He saw me first, tucked his papers into his messanger bag and stood up to greet me. His eyes landed on Gliese. His jaw dropped.

"Hey," I said, stepping up. "We need to talk."

He stared at her, "We certainly do," he agreed. He grabbed his bag, downed the last gulp of the tequila in his glass, and waved toward the door, wiping his mouth, "C'mon. Here, even the walls have ears," he muttered. He led the way back out onto the street.

Gliese stayed close to me, her fingers tight around mine. Fabritz led the way past our rental car to a large white and blue van with the NASA logo on the doors. "We'll go to my ofice," he suggested, and he held open the passanger door for us. I helped Gliese into the door and followed after myself.

He didn't speak a word until we were off the main road by the seedy bar, the van's wheels thumping over exposed roots on a dirt road. Finally, he said, "How is this possible?"

"I only appear to be your colleague," Gliese offered up. "I've assumed Bellatrix's DNA, but I am not in fact Bellatrix."

Fabritz was squinting between the road and us, his knuckles white on the wheel.

"I'm a Keplar."

"But --"

"And I'm here on the orders of Queen Lyra to request that you cease and desist the Whitenoise Signal," Gliese added.

Fabritz's eyebrows went up. "Keplar... As in Keplar 62-E."

"Yes," Gliese answered, "Exactly." She looked at me, "It's about time there's a human that knows what Keplar 62-E is," she said haughtily.

"Of course I know what it is," Fabritz replied, "We discovered it. Well I discovered it and you - Bellatrix - you decided to aim the signal there. Last December. Just before ---" he paused, shook his head, then said. "Gliese, right?"

She looked at him in surprise, then her eyebrows, which had been furrowed, relaxed and a look of calm understanding took over. "Not you, too," she whispered.

I glanced at Fabritz, then at Gliese, "What?"

"Keplar," hissed Gliese.

Fabritz raised his eyebrow, "Excuse me?"

"He's Keplar," Gliese said, her eyes desperate, "In disguise. He's probably reporting directly to ---"

"Borucki?" Fabritz ventured.

Gliese turned to look at him.

"Yeah that's right, sweetheart, I talked to your dad," Fabritz said. "He told me all about it."

"All about what?" I asked.

Gliese turned to me, "He is going to LIE to you. He'll say anything to get you on his side, Nick. Anything."

"That's not true, Bellatrix," Fabritz said pointedly, "Only the truth." He was navigating the car through a series of security gates, slowing down for electronic sensors to read an ID box that he put up on the dashboard. "Ralph called me," he said, his eyes shifting to meet mine, "Bellatrix didn't die that night, after the accident. She was permanently brain damaged, but she didn't die. This -- this is the remains of her mind at work, Nick. She didn't die, she just went insane."

"THAT'S A LIE!" she yelled.

"But --"

"The story she's spouting? There's only just enough truth to it to make an uninformed person believe she's telling the truth. Keplar 62 is a star approximately 1,200 lightyears away, and around that star rotates a series of planets - the fifth and sixth, E and F - are of make up similar to Earth. We were among the scientists who contributed to the galaxy's discovery with the Whitenoise Project and we retrained the signal to attempt a communication impact within the next 1,200 years. The signal hasn't even reached the Keplar galaxy yet."

"LYING!" shrieked Gliese.

"Keplar is in the constellation Lyra," Fabritz continued, "Which is why she's named her so-called queen Lyra in her mind --"

"How dare you disrespect the queen!"

"Even her supposed name, even Gliese is connected: It's the name of another star which contributed to the discovery of Keplar 62, another planetary system that once was believed to contain inhabitable planets..."

"LET ME OUT OF THIS VEHICLE!" shrieked Gliese.

"And this Borucki?" Fabritz laughed, "As in William J. Borucki, was the lead scientist on the Keplar project. We reported directly to him the night of the accident." He waved his hand at my phone, "A quick Google search will confirm any of the information I've just given you."

"LET ME OUT OF HERE! NOW!" she screamed.

Fabritz parked in a space near an extremely large building. "By all means," he replied, and the doors unlocked.

Gliese launched herself over me, and threw the door open, her feet hitting the pavement beside the van with a thwack sound and her eyes rimmed with the threat of tears. "I am not a crazy person," she shouted, "I am a Keplar."

Fabritz shrugged.

"Why didn't I know about this," I asked, "If it was true?"

Fabritz looked at me with sadness in his eyes, "Because... you didn't stick around to find out."

Chapter Sixteen


I felt like I'd been hit with a ton of bricks or something. Had I really missed a year of CowBelle's life because I'd pulled away? Had I really believed she was dead for a year when she was really alive and only right across town? Had I really believed the wild stories of a crazy person claiming they were from outer space when they were not true?

All these questions fogged my mind for a long moment as I sat there in the passanger seat of Fabritz's van staring up at the building before us. Gliese -- or CowBelle or whover the hell she was -- grabbed my hand and pulled, "Nick! Don't listen to him, don't listen to him, he's lying, he's trying to slow us down, to stop us from stopping the Whitenoise!"

"I --" I glanced at her then at him, and I felt... torn. I wanted to believe Fabritz, to believe that CowBelle was alive... but I didn't want to believe this was what had become of her. I didn't want to believe that this was permanent. Better to believe her dead forever than to believe she'd lost everything that had made her...her.

"What proof do you have that you are Keplar?" Fabritz asked, tauntingly, "What proof have you shown him? You show up in someone else's assumed DNA with their looks, their voice, their mannerisms. Sure you spout some cool spacey sounding factoids that he doesn't know enough to question... but what proof do you actually have?" he asked.

Gliese spat the words, "You're an arrogant little bitch aren't you?"

"Hot headed on Keplar, are we?"

"Don't tease her," I snapped, turning to him. I glowered at him. "Why didn't you call me? Why didn't anyone call me? Why did everyone let me walk away?" I asked, the questions overflowing from my guts. "Why didn't you try harder to tell me?"

"You didn't want to hear it, Nick," Fabritz replied.

I shook my head. "No... no, something about this doesn't make sense..."

"The fact that she's claiming she's a freaking alien might have something to do with it," he suggested.

"If we wait much longer to shut down the Whitenoise signal, then you'll have all the proof you need. You'll have an entire army of Keplar soldiers descend on this planet like nothing even your wildest sci-fi stories have depicted..." Gliese looked at me, desperation in her eyes and face, "Don't let him lie to you, don't let him poison you against me. Nick, I need you right now... Please. Don't stop believing in me now."

My mouth went dry.

"Please," she repeated thickly. "Don't leave my side now."

"I'm not going anywhere," I replied.

"You've got to be kidding me," Fabritz said from inside the van.

I turned to look at him, "Look, what can it hurt... If she's crazy, all we did was play with a couple switches for a minute. If she's not then we save humanity." I shrugged. "Either way, we owe it to Bella, don't we?"

Fabritz took a deep breath. "Nick... she needs to go home, she needs to be medicated, to be taken care of by her parents, not paraded around NASA headquarters, at the mecca of astronomers, for all of her once colleagues to see what she's become. She deserves to be respected, to be remembered with dignity... not... like this." Fabritz's eyes looked tired, defeated.

Gliese's jaw was set.

"Why would CowBelle -- even if she's suffered trauma -- want to stop the Whitenoise Signal?" I asked him, "That project was her life. It meant everything to her. She's not gonna get a bump to the head and suddenly want to destroy everything she worked so hard for. Why would she come back with such a determination to kill the signal? Explain that to me."

Fabritz took a deep breath, "She wanted to stop it the night she died," he said quietly.

"What? Why?"

"She wanted to cancel the project because of the money we were using. Even if Keplar was inhabited by life it would take 1200 years for our message to reach them. She thought the money for the Whitenoise Project would be better redirected another way. Like for funding promising young astronomers' education." Fabritz looked at Gliese, then back at me.

"Bellatrix believed in her project," Gliese said, shaking her head, "She never would've wanted to dismantle it... Never."

The passion in Gliese's voice was exactly the sort of passionate response CowBelle would've had to such an accusation. Which made it even mor confusing to me. Was the passion there because she was CowBelle or was she right that CowBelle would never want to dismantle the project? Either way, something didn't make sense. "Look... both stories... are impossible," I said, "Whether Bella's alive or Gliese is a Keplar, neither story sounds entirely true to me."

Gliese turned to me. "Nick... please. He's trying to change your mind, he's trying to stop us. I warned you back at our house, back in Tennessee. I warned you they'd try to change your mind."

"Fabritz," I said, "What would it take to stop the signal?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, "Something just shy of a miracle."

I looked at Gliese, "And we'll have proof when we finish ceasing the signal?"

She nodded, "Absolutely."

"Okay," I said, "Then let's kill the signal."