All That Remains
6:00am
Grosse Pointe, Michigan
A pleasant early morning breeze blew off Lake St. Claire onto the lawns and into the windows of the mansions along Lakeshore Drive. Into the kitchen, across the foyer, up the spiral stairs and along the hall it blew, back to the third door on the left and into the master bedroom where Katya Aleksandrovich lay sprawled upon a king-sized bed in the throes of her customary Saturday morning hangover.
Katya Aleksandrovich, young trophy wife of Sergey Aleksandrovich, and stepmother to failed human being Steve Aleksandrovich was rich and miserable. Sergey was an entrepreneur who had made his fortune renting dumpsters to homes and businesses, and later bought tech stock in the early 2000s. He was out for a walk somewhere along the lake, nervously checking his phone and shouting at his broker in Russian.
Adult son Steve was probably out partying on the boat dad got for him. He rarely came to see his poor stepmom anymore, save for when he needed something.
Katya was a joke among her peers and wealthy neighbors. They were friendly to her face, but jeered behind her back. The other Lakeshore Ladies secretly called her Klebb after the female Bond villain. They made fun of her thick accent, her ridiculous clothes, and that absolutely garish sense of style she had. They made their mean comments and told their Katya stories over glasses of prosecco and charcuterie. There was so much to laugh at and ridicule.
But the the thing they made fun of most were Klebb’s ginormous fake breasts, installed by one of Grosse Pointe’s finest plastic surgeons.
In spite of her double D’s looking fabulous, or perhaps because of that, she became the target of much gossip and ridicule. The Lakeshore Ladies were clearly jealous, if they were able to be honest with themselves, but nevertheless Katya had become the de facto laughingstock of their upper-class neighborhood.
This Saturday morning though, the Lakeshore Ladies would seriously regret their means words, for Katya Aleksandrovich laying upon her king-sized bed was one hundred percent, fully dead. Her medications, her wine, and her sleeping pills, had interacted in an unexpected manner to steal her soul away in the middle of the night.
Photo by Kindel Media from Pexels
The year 2891
Planet Ofmp 2
The question of whether there was life on other planets had long since been answered, but earthlings were fortunate enough to have killed each other long before their planet was discovered by the Loltons.
The Loltons followed a well-worn blueprint for discovery: enter a galaxy, ascertain lifeforms, learn their language and customs, then force them to assemble wizets and wadgets for 16 hours a day in the AstroFactories.
In this regard, Professor Ofmp was strange for a Lolton, he seemed to care and be genuinely curious about the planets and people they were discovering and conquering. As a career archaeologist, the Professor had been mostly unsuccessful. But he recently discovered evidence of a settlement on a red planet he’d been studying. Though a minor find, the red planet was named after him – Ofmp 1. The results of this discovery were written about in the somewhat obscure peer reviewed quarterly Journal of Outer Limits Minutiae.
The article had gotten a little traction, been passed around the Departments of Ancient History at several Loltonian Universities. This led to a small grant, which Ofmp planned to use exploring the nearby blue and green planet – the third from the sun in this solar system, Ofmp 2, also named after him.
Ofmp 2 was mostly covered in water and had several large continents. Surely at one time there must have been a large, ancient, and wise civilization that resided in this land. Viewing the planet from afar using his satellite rented from the university Ofmp searched for the perfect place to perform an archaeological dig.
He finally chose a mitten shape land mass, flat and formed by glaciers that was surrounded by five large bodies of water. “Surely this place was once capable of supporting life, glorious life!” Ofmp thought. And he booked his school sponsored flight to Ofmp 2 for the second week after returning from his yearly conference on Theribbean 7.
His small team of graduate students selected an area alongside a lake to begin their excavation and surprisingly found materials right away. There was a buzz about the camp as they uncovered the remains of what was clearly a semi advanced primitive civilization. Homes on the north side of the lake were large and spacious, most likely the residences of this people’s nobility. Those dwellings towards the south end of the lake were small and tightly packed together, obviously where the peasantry had lived. Despite this class separation, the team discovered each home regardless of size had an area in the largest room for a flat, rectangular shaped box on the wall. Omfp could only assume this was set aside as an altar for the savages to worship their local gods.
All of this and more was written up in a manuscript submitted to the journal Advances in Primitive Cultures, but the paper received a prompt and polite rejection letter.
No one in the scientific community, if you could call historians of ancient cultures “scientists”, really cared about Ofmp’s discovery or what it could all mean.
A planet far away that could support life, once did support life, and for no clear external reason did not support life any longer: these were things best pondered by eccentric old professors surrounded by books in their departmental offices. Loltonians engaged in the business of real life had too much else going on – progress, exploration, and productivity.
So Omfp was discouraged, but not fully defeated. Despite no one around him seeming to grasp the implications of his discovery, he still arranged for a second visit to the empty blue planet. They would continue to dig.
He had no idea how life would be changed by that second fateful trip. For while he was now too old to expect greatness in life, he still dreamed about it from time to time.
They were digging up the dwelling of a Lakeside nobleman, sifting through the fully decomposed remains of the house. Whilst in a slightly larger room, third from the left on the second floor, a student made a startling discovery: lying buried in the dust and the dirt were two beautifully rounded, expertly formed, and fully intact silicone packets nestled side by side.
***
Dr. Ofmp immediately grasped the significance of this finding. The silicone packets were placed in a sealed container and shipped express back to Lolton for lab analysis.
“This will be my turning point”, he said to himself. Smug and happy feelings flooded his mind, as he thought of all the journals that had passed his papers over and for years shown no interest in his research. Their editors would surely be calling with congratulations, kissing up to him, hoping to receive some scrap of Ofmp’s data to be published in their journals as secondary analysis.
While the Professor and his students did their best to keep information about the silicone under wraps, there was no keeping such a gigantic secret for long. Despite near constant check up calls from Loltonian military and government staff, it somehow got leaked to the press.
By the end of the week, Ofmp’s face was all over the twenty-four hour news cycle, right alongside a photo of the two melon-shaped silicone bags. The lighthearted morning shows had given cute names to the rounded bags – Marlene and Darlene, the twins from the marble colored planet. It was a splashy, feel good story.
But deeper, more serious questions remained about the twins, questions that needed serious answers. An emergency Loltonian leadership session was called, where galaxy presidents, orbital representatives and interstellar generals sat around a large oval shaped table discussing the twins. Detailed photos of them from different angles were projected onto a big screen on the wall.
What does it all mean? What were they used for? And mostly importantly: are there more of them out there?
An intricate plan was developed, a large delegation of specialized engineers, scientists, and elite military units would be sent to Ofmp 2. Their mission – scour the planet, leave no stone unturned, expend every last effort in a never-ending search for more silicone.
Aerial view of the planet Ofmp 2, 9th rotation of Kinangon
Polydimethylsiloxane, that is, medical grade silicone was the coal that fired the furnace of continuous Loltonian expansion and success. They called it ‘pup’ for short. More precious than silver and gold, pup was made into a high-grade fuel that was used in everything from interstellar craft to recharging the assembly lines of the AstroFactories.
But it was also well known (though largely ignored) that their galaxy-wide reserves of pup were running dangerously low, through so-called “overuse” and “unsustainable practices”. That’s why a whole battalion of personnel was tearing up a line along the lakeshore. Scanner drones spread out over the surface of the globe in search of more pockets of the substance.
It was baffling.
How could such a primitive civilization as the ancient Ofmpinians have known about pup?
How did they use it? Where were their large stockpiles of the stuff?
The Loltonians explored that planet for years afterwards. Professor Ofmp was catapulted to the highest ranks of academia, his discovery deemed one of the most important in the lifetime of most Loltonians.
But as the years went by a frustrating pattern began to emerge – another house, another pair, another house, another pair. Most houses had no pairs, though a large concentration of pup twins was found in an area on the southwest end of the continent.
Towards the end of his career criticism began to build against “Ofmp’s Folly”. He heard the voices and attacked them with all his inherited power. The professor went into full blown legacy defense mode.
Yet the undeniable fact was that no large mine of pup was ever found on the blue planet. All that remained of the treasure trove of polydimethylsiloxane once so abundant in the primitive paradise of Ofmp 2 were these peached sized pairs.
Photo by Francesco Ungaro from Pexels
9:00am
Grosse Pointe, Michigan
On such a gorgeous summer morning, one could give forgive the authorities for acting without haste to move the body. However, word traveled fast about what had happened.
When Sergey found out his wife was dead, he inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. That heartless Russian fox planned to be remarried and sharing his immense wealth with another woman by the end of the year.
Steve, acted as anyone would have expected Steve to act. Though he hated his stepmom through and through, he reveled in the attention and sympathy he was receiving. His lengthy, histrionic livestream speeches let any and all who would listen know that he was in the pit of despair.
Oh, and how devastated the Lakeshore Ladies were when they found out about Katya Aleksandrovich’s untimely demise. (At least they convinced themselves they were). There were stories posted online, outpourings of grief and fond memories. They overstated how close they were to Katya, deluded themselves about how much the relationship really mattered.
On and on it went, in such a predictable, fake, and tired fashion. Right up until the early afternoon when everything ended.