text: Walter Goodman’s wife brought us both a glass of lemonade. He took a sip, and let it shatter on the brick porch. He apologized to his wife, who cleaned it up, and then to me. “Sorry Mr. Alvarez,” said Walter. “Fernando, I’m not big on formalities.” “Sorry, Fernando.” “Don’t be, you’re not the first astronaut I’ve interviewed.” “You spend so much time up there you forget gravity exists. Interview a lot of Astronauts do you?” “A few. Remind me what you saw.” “Well, I was on the ISS doing my usual, when I see this meteor.” “See a lot of meteors up there?” “No! That’s the thing you can’t see a meteor, not in space, not till it starts breaking up in the atmosphere. This one had a tail in the cold dead of space.” he shuddered. “It- it was a purple tail, a sort of purple beyond purple, the most purple anything’s ever been. I know that doesn’t sound terrifying but I nearly shat myself Fernando, and that was before it *looked* at me.” Walter Goodman had inched his way to the edge of his seat. He sank back into his chair. “What do you mean it ‘looked’ at you?” “Just that. It looked at me. The meteor looked me dead in the eyes and stared into my soul.” “It had eyes?” “No, it was a rock, like any other rock, but I felt it looking at me. Like the entire meteor was one big eye.” His story tracked with what I’d been reading. I keep up with that sort of thing. Usually it's nothing, this time it was something. I finished up my interview with Walter. He confirmed the landing zone, more or less, of the meteor. The ISS had been flying over Southeast Asia, where Walter said he saw the meteor land in the dark zones of Wallacea. It was a smattering of islands in Indonesia. ‘Lotta water there. You had to be aiming for land to not hit the ocean. After collecting what I could, I thanked Walter for his time, and made to leave. “Wait, Fernando,” he called, “are you going after the meteor?” I nodded. “Take me with you.” I thought about it. There weren’t any rules to what I was doing. Walter had stared into the eye of something and came out sane. He was also an astronaut with a military background. What the hell. “There might be monsters,” I said, but he didn’t look perturbed, “there might be nazis.” “Nazis?” that always got em. I explained to Walter on the way to Wallacea. Nazis were like maggots on a corpse to the supernatural. You could use them like forensic scientists used maggots too. An advanced nazi presence could indicate time of discovery, or length of conspiracy. It was all about context. We arrived in Indonesia by boat, making port in the city of Makassar. From there we traced a lead obtained from an acid dealer. The dealer was handing out tabs of acid with the reichsadler on them, the nazi eagle. I pressed him about it, and he gave me the details on his supplier, as well the details for a party they were throwing for some trust fund kiddies. The party was being thrown on a neighboring island in North Maluku, the same place they made the acid. “For the record,” I said to Walter, “it’s not *always* nazis. I’m just not surprised when it is.” “But it is nazis this time.” I shrugged. “Yeah. You got your iron ready?” he tapped the side of his torso where his gun was holstered. “Good. Eyes peeled and wits about you. It could get ugly.” We were on a boat with the rest of the trust fund brats heading to their party, some of them were already slapping more of the reichsadler tabs on their tongues. They tried to peer pressure anyone who wanted to stay clean. This big guy especially was making the rounds to get people to take the tabs. He was huge, well over six feet tall, with the biggest muscles money could buy. The big guy never made it to me and Walter though. He got stuck the rest of the ride trying to get this particularly cute local girl to imbibe. We landed at just about sunset. The boat stayed docked in case of emergencies. There were tiki style torches, and a Hawaiian style bar. Cute. I told Walter to not take anything he didn’t see poured out of a branded bottle, and to stay conspicuous, but my words were lost on him. He was immediately swarmed by a horde of bikini wearing local girls, and spray tanned rich brats. Some folks just really loved their white boys. I left him to suffer his pleasure, and noticed some third reich looking mothers dipping in and out of the nearby jungle. Go time. Following the blonde and blue eyed terminators led me to a small, but well built compound, with working electricity. At this point the rock had been on earth for less than a week. The advanced nature of this place confirmed one of my earlier suspicions. The rock had a mind of its own, and the nazis knew they should “meet” it here. I still didn’t know how the acid and rich brats figured into it, but it couldn’t be good. Rich brat or no, those were some potentially influential people they had getting high out there. I waited for one of the guards to be alone, and took him out from behind. I put on his pink Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts, and strolled into the compound casual like. I was stopped immediately. “Wohin gehst du, Soldat?” said a grumpy looking man in matching Hawaiian attire. “Lass mich in Ruhe, ich muss scheißen,” I replied. I didn’t actually know what I was saying, but I’d heard nazi guards say this a lot when leaving their posts unexpectedly. It has saved my ass more times than I care to admit. The older man scowled but left me alone. I scanned the small compound. They had watchtowers, but in an effort to stay hidden they chose the worst of both worlds. The lights of the watchtowers provided little visibility in the dense jungle, and especially in the shadows of night. The lights probably blinded their guards more than anything. That was good for me. The compound had one main building with sterile white lights coming out the windows, as well as a sickening ultra-purple. Bingo. Inside, the rock and its unsettling purple glow were being held in a strange looking device. It looked like a reverently built hydraulic press. The ultra-purple waves were dancing off the rock like light at the bottom of a pool. It was unsettling. I could feel it looking at me, it bore into my soul, filling my head with holy purple light. I suddenly felt ashamed, like I shouldn’t be here, interfering with such cosmic radiance. I tried to steel my will against it, and failed. Luck was still on my side though, and the whining of factory grade machinery snapped me out of it. A gauge on the machine told me it was applying tons of pressure on the rock. The ultra-purple waned and died completely, and a thick purple substance like blood oozed out of the cracks and deep grooves of the rock. The substance pooled at the bottom, soaking into a sheet of paper which was cut up and stamped with the reichsadler. “Motherfucker.” “Wer bist du, who are you?” said a voice from behind me. It was a properly old man, the kind with liver spots and little wisps of hair that looked like strands of stray cotton. He was wearing a white lab coat. “I’m your worst nightmare pal, and I’m liberating this rock, but first you’re going to tell me exactly what it is you’re doing here.” “The color..., “ said the old man, “It should be spread. Shared with the world.” there was a glint of something in his eyes. Something purple. Beyond purple. I started sweating. There was a part of me that started to think he was right. The purple glint in his eye. I could carry that wondrous light beyond light in my own mind. That’s probably what the acid tabs were for. I whipped out my iron and planted a couple shots into the old man, freeing myself from the grip of his ultra-purple eyes. I took a second to breathe, but didn’t dare waste any more time. This place would be swarming with nazis any moment. I grabbed the rock from the strange looking device and started to leave, but the entrance was blocked off by nazi guards. It might have been the end of me, but the old man's corpse sprang to life on the ground. The top of his head popped open and sprouted flailing tentacles. It was distraction enough to leap out of a nearby window. I ran as fast as I could from the compound. No one chased me, but I did hear screaming. I ran from one cacophony of screaming to another. When I made it back to the party I found complete hysteria. “Just try it!” screamed a rich brat in a skimpy bikini. “You’ll see real color. Like you’ve never seen before!” The rich brat was screaming at Walter who was also being held down by more bikini clad women. They were trying to force feed him the acid. Morbidly, I had to stifle a laugh because I could guarantee this was someone’s fantasy. I started shooting. “Fernando!” gasped Walter. He got up and cleaned trust fund viscera off himself. “You killed them, and you changed your clothes!” “They were already dead.” I double tapped the bodies on the ground. I didn’t want to risk them getting back up with tentacled heads. “It’s the acid tabs. Those nazi bastards squeezed something out of the rock and fed it to these rich assholes. Probably in an effort to take over the world, starting from the top, real typical stuff honestly.” Walter flinched when he finally noticed the rock in my hand. “Typical?” He asked, but I wouldn’t be able to elaborate. We were being surrounded by the zombified upper class. Walter got with the program quickly. I told him to aim for the head, and double tap when he missed. The beach was covered in rich kid gore by the end. We thought we were home free, but the big guy from earlier on the boat ride came hulking out of the shadows. I aimed to dome him but my gun just clicked empty. “Walter?” “I’m out too.” “Shit.” The big guy grabbed me and slammed me to the ground. “Try it bro,” he said. “You’ll see more than you’ve ever seen before.” “Walter!” I yelled, and started to fight back but my feeble punches were thudding on hard meat and muscles. The big guy started trying to open my mouth, and when I started resisting harder because of it, he began to choke me out. The world was fading to black. Soon it would be lit in shades of ultra-purple. Then Walter came to my rescue, and knocked the lug over. Their struggle tipped them over to the other side of the Hawaiian bar. I choked on air, trying to catch my breath. The edges of darkness started to clear from my vision. I could hear Walter being overwhelmed by the big guy on the other side of the bar. The moment I could breathe again I sprang to his rescue. I rounded the bar, and jumped on the big guy’s back, hanging from his neck with all my weight to try and choke him. To no avail. He turned his weight on me, and started to crush me again. This was it. It was lights out. Walter wouldn’t be able to recover in time and we’d be turned into purple loving zombies for the new world order. I prayed to every god I could think of, then my face was splashed by liquor. The cute local girl from earlier had smashed a bottle over the big guy’s head. She stabbed him in the neck with the sharpened remains. “Creep,” she said. “Thank god,” I said. The lug fell on top of me, and I rolled him over. “You’re an Angel,” I said to the girl. I passed her and checked on Walter. “You alive?” “I think so.” “Good. Let’s get out of here, quickly. You too, pretty girl.” “It’s Rizka,” she said. “We can get familiar on the boat, let's go.” We stepped onto the boat, which was devoid of crew at that point. Walter knew how to drive it though, so that ended up not being a problem. We left port immediately. On the shore, the tiki torches started to burn out. The tentacled head of the big guy rose up just as the light died, and from the jungle tree line there could be made out ultra-purple eyes. I shuddered, and stared at the glowing rock in my hand. I could feel it boring a hateful gaze into me. “Well, that’s that,” I said. “Far as I’m concerned anyways. I doubt they’ll be able to continue their conspiracy without this thing.” “Really,” said Walter, “What are you going to do with it?” “Turn it in, get paid.” “Turn it in to whom? What even are you exactly?” “I used to style myself an archeologist, and then an anthropologist, then a xenothropologist. Now I just call myself an errand boy. The rock is gonna end up in a sort of private collection. Don’t worry, it’ll be safe.” Walter seemed satisfied with the answer. At the very least it didn’t seem like he thought it was a good idea to know any more than he needed to. Walter went back to his life as an astronaut with a lemonade serving housewife soon after. I stuck around Indonesia while I tracked my next job, and waited to hear about the dropoff for this one. Rizka turned out to be a pretty good tour guide, and showed me around Makassar, the fun seedy parts anyways. She made a fine breakfast too.