text: You sit for a minute without speaking, then you slowly say, "How would that even be possible?"
  
  Andrea takes another drag on her cigarette, smiles slowly, exhaling smoke from her nostrils. "I know you and John got off to a rocky start..."
  
  "To say the least."
  
  Andrea chuckles dryly and shakes her head. "He's a bit of a screwball in some respects. I think what he went through made him that way. Not the part about serving in the Martian Wars, but --"
  
  "Not to interrupt, Andrea, but he doesn't look that old. I know my history well enough to know the Martian Wars ended in 1982."
  
  "They did. And he fought in them."
  
  "What, are you saying he's managed to keep himself well-preserved for over thirty years?"
  
  "No, that's not what I'm saying. He came here to Venus after he was discharged from the U.S. Space Navy. He had wanted to see about prospecting on this world. Before your father's company, Vulcan Minerals, cornered the market in copper mining on this planet, there were young men (and even a few women) who thought they could find lucrative mineral veins. John had been trying that and had decided that no one had checked the islands of the archipelago here. He didn't have the money for a rocket or a helicopter back then, so he just bought a boat and started touring the islands."
  
  "And he found a vein?"
  
  "No, he was attacked by a leviathan while at sea."
  
  You look to Esmeralda with open mouth. "That's what happened to us!" You look back to Andrea. "We were attacked be a leviathan, too. That creature almost killed us."
  
  "Well, you still fared better than John. He was dragged down underwater by the leviathan. He told me that he spent what seemed like an eternity in this weird Limbo dream state. Apparently, the creature was trying to communicate with him. He was eventually able to reason with it and convinced it to let him go. But when he washed up here on Straus's Island, it was 2004."
  
  "That was ten years ago. Did he tell anybody other than you?"
  
  "He told anyone who would listen to him. Absolutely no one believed him. But the leviathan had changed him. Mentally and physically. His hair had been stripped of all its pigment and was stark white, and his mind..."
  
  "He lost all impulse control? That would certainly explain his horrid behavior today."
  
  Andrea's face contorts into a look of annoyance. "He'd been drinking today. No, there was something else that happened to him. When he was being held by the leviathan, he became aware of the creature's mind, that it was connected...I guess you'd say by telepathy...with the minds of all the other leviathans swimming in the Venusian seas. They seem to form a kind of over-mind... I don't know if 'hive mind ' would be the correct term...Anyway, it shook him to his core. It was like having a thousand people crammed into his skull. That's why he drinks a lot now. His brain got frazzled and he has trouble thinking clearly."
  
  "And he came back to life?"
  
  "That's what he believes. He thinks the leviathan must have killed him, which is why his hair was white. It brought him back to life, though. Now he's trying to find out how it resurrected him. He thinks he's found a clue. He thinks maybe the leviathans were put in the oceans of Venus by other beings."
  
  You shake your head and look down. "I-I don't know what to think of all this, Andrea. You're asking me to believe that maybe your boyfriend has found a way to bring my parents back from the dead using sea monsters." You look to Esmeralda. "Esse, what do you think?"
  
  Esmeralda regards you with glowing ruby eyes. "There's really not much that we know about leviathans, Sandra. They navigate with sound like whales or bats. It's always been assumed that that's how they communicate. I don't know that there's anything to indicate that they're telepathic, but then scientists have only been able to study them in any detail since the early 80's."
  
  "Well, what about resurrecting the dead?"
  
  "Only some story from a few years ago about a man... Andrea, was John the man the newspapers were talking about?"
  
  Andrea smiles sadly. "I'm afraid so. Every story I've ever found implied that he was not in his right mind. John told me that he'd been stripped of his cloths by the leviathan, so he had no identification whatsoever when he washed up. There was zero way he could prove his own identity. There were records of a John Szymanski having disappeared in the early 80's, but there was no way John could prove that he was that missing man. Eventually, he did find a space jockey he'd served with in the Martian Wars and was able to convince the guy, but that just ensured John could be hired onto a rocket crew here."
  
  You place your head in your hands and slowly sigh. "This is a lot to take in, Andrea. I want to believe what you're saying is true...that there's some way to bring my parents back. But it just seems so far-fetched...I want to find the man who lead the expedition to Lozano's Island. If I can find out the ship he came on, I might be able to track him down."
  
  Andrea frowns and her eyes regard you with pity. "Sandra, I can imagine what you're feeling right now. I felt the same way about Janice. But all you seem to want now is revenge. What happens if you get it? Then what? Where do you go from there?"
  
  "I...I don't know."
  
  Andrea stands up and scrunches out her cigarette in the ashtray beside her chair. "I was going to get something for lunch. I could go out and bring it back and we can talk about all this later. In the meantime, why don't you get some rest?"
  
  You suddenly realize you're very worn out from last nights debacle in the cold water and agree to lie down on the futon while Andrea goes out to get lunch. You quickly drift off and are awakened by Esmeralda.
  
  "There's been an accident," she says as you rub the sleep out of your eyes. "It seems a rocket ship has collided with the Port Authority Building. I heard the crashing and was able to learn from Andrea's neighbors what apparently had transpired. I'm afraid we may need to rethink our plans now."
  
  "I don't know what else we can do. We're broke and no longer have a boat."
  
  "I suggest we contact the authorities and report your parents' murders. What else is there now?"
  
  > see About Contacting the Authorities and Let Them Handle This
  "We need to find someplace with a radio," you say. "I guess we couldn't try to contact the proper authorities through the Port Authority...not now, we can't."
  
  "Let us see if Andrea has a radio," replies Esmeralda, stepping through the doorway leading to the back rooms of the apartment."
  
  "We can't do that! Andrea's not here for us to ask her if it's okay." You get up from the couch and follow Esmeralda as she goes down the hall.
  
  Esmeralda steps through a portal doorway into a small room with a cot buried under a pile of spreads, sheets, blankets and pillows. On the lamp table beside it is a small, boxy radio. "Here," she says. "I don't think Andrea would mind. She even advised you report what happened on Lozano's Island." She takes a claw and unhooks the long silver microphone from its cradle on the side of the radio and hands it to you. "I can adjust the dials to the right band for the Marshall's office." She begins turning knobs on the radio.
  
  You step to the side of the radio and stare down at your boots. The static sea rumbling from the speaker grill makes your heart race.
  
  "Ask if you have the Marshall's Office," prompts Esmeralda.
  
  You squeeze your eyes shut and feel warm tears spill out from their sides. "Hello, am I...am I speaking to the Marshall's office? Over."
  
  You hear a man's voice say: "This is the Marshall's Office. Can I help you? Over."
  
  A cold metal claw brushes your hand and you look to Esmeralda. "Would you like me to explain everything?" she asks.
  
  "No," you reply, "it's about time I faced up to this."
  
  "Excuse me?" asks the man's voice. "What was that again? Over."
  
  "Uh, yes. I-I need...to report a murder. No, several murders... Over."
  
  There's a cold burning under your skin and it pours through as sweat. This feels like the end of the world, but then you remember the world already ended. Now is the day you finally must bury your parents and put this all behind you.
  
  "Yes," says the man, "I'm listening. Over."
  
  The End