The grass rustled and wind whispered, and the dinner bell rang and children yelled. But sitting by the old desk under the rotting window, six-year-old Orion heard none of it. Only a deep rumble came to his ears; the sky was clear yet he heard thunder.

All day he heard thunder. He heard it settling down into the wobbly chair and opening his dusty book in the shafts of mid-morning. 'No good will come from this thunder...but try enduring it a little.' The thought came to him spontaneously as he sat down. 'But didn't the Tiximista-Shal warriors of Mars say the only true thought was reflexive?' He imagined his spontaneous thought must be a sort of missive, worth following and so he did. When midday Orion rose to stretch and rub his eyes, silent, idle musings while eating a packed lunch at the desk, he still heard thunder. 'And it's very strange I hear nothing else. Have I damaged my ears?' Tidying up lunch, Orion fell back into his book with a mental bookmark to ask somebody about his hearing. 'Would I even be able to hear the response?' He mused. One might have thought Orion a little laid-back on the matter.

Where the sun set that unnatural thunder persisted still. 'A little more...' he thought as the library house fell asleep, almost angrily grasping for letters in the dark. But the light had given out and the world died away. Not only irritable, Orion was exhausted from his reading and found himself apt to close the book. His mind, so dexterous earlier, now watched incomplete thoughts falling away. Only a pang of regret saw them off and Orion bluntly shut the library door behind him.

Outside tatters of the day sent greetings by way of rush of cool air and rich blues stealing away into black. Alas, the thunder in his head–a plague after all these hours–only roared louder. So although he was gladdened to be outside, Orion shuddered and held head in hands. 'I'll never hear again!' He miserably told himself, at last giving serious consideration to this phenomenon–or perhaps mentally surrendering to it. 'Maybe reading makes you lose your hearing?' With such speculation he worried himself, making over the hill towards home.

Leaving the hill behind but home still somewhat ahead, Orion stopped by the path's side and sat down to sigh–it was a belabored journey for a belabored mind. 'It'd be a sad affair to lose my hearing at six. Symptomatic of brain disease? ...It's still unclear how serious this will turn out to be. Might still be only a passing spell...How sad the unblossomed flower now, a turgid bud broken by the cruel wind.' Orion told himself these sorts of things, rocking back and forth on the grass with thunder ever in his ears.

After some time he drifted off, perhaps lulled by his own rocking, and in the deep nocturnal world he recalled the book he had been reading. Springing, visions of peoples and technologies of history guided him through a short slumber, then saw him off into the waking world. See how it was two thousand years ago? Watch as we speak to each other, the strange things we do: but above all else, behold the dream in our eyes and souls. When he woke, phantasmagoric gene soldiers were still talking through data models, nanomachines blown up ten thousand times crawled about. The Venusian Arlisarhis grinned, counseling him as she faded away.

Ah, what is waking but moving from fantasy to waking fantasy? Orion arose, slowly going toward his home in much better spirits. And wait, did he still hear the thunder? On sleepy feet in the brocaded night, suddenly, finally, he was struck by a thought like lightning.

A muffled knock came, not very loud and rather low on the door, yet the old man within was sitting nearby and came. Ears now clear, and besides that sharper than yours, a grinning Orion stood outside waiting.

"Ach boy, it's late. What do you want?"

"Ach, ach, my back aches! Come on old man, let me in to chat." Grinning, Orion treated his elder with extreme respect, perhaps too much even for imposing at such a late hour.

"A pleasant partner no doubt...good night." The old man pushed the door forward and Orion pushed back.

"Eder (that's your name, right? You're always so distant), oh please let me in! I didn't mean to offend you–I'll explain if you like." Orion wasn't stupid but he was inexperienced. "No, I have something you need to know. It's urgent, and I shouldn't have made light of my errand. Five minutes, and it'll be well worth it." The grin was gone, solemn consternation in its place.

The old man frowned, not because he was upset but because seldom these days did he hear children speaking as this one did. Nonetheless he grumbled, "even if you didn't mean offense, surely you meant to be rude. Come back when you're a little less bratty!"

Orion simmered down to a whisper, his bravado boiled off and only the persistent core remaining. "Eder, sir, please excuse me. It's rather late and I'm an idiot. Yet think how you acted at six–better, no doubt, but how much better? Please forgive me my rudeness and let me in. I've not bothered you before–now I do because there is true occasion."

"Your begging is an embarrassment. True occasion would hardly see you the messenger, hm? Yet pride does not befit the needy, does it? Very well Orion, spare not the old." The old man waved him in and Orion scampered through the door. "Now I'll be back with drinks in a minute, so sit by the table and collect your thoughts." The old man faded into the shadows and Orion walked towards the table, a single candle illuminating dark gloom all around. If there were shutters they were closed tight–the room was stuffy and Orion thought it in want of a little moonlight. Not wanting to sit waiting (having sat all day), even if he must be in the nauseating dark, Orion instead found himself tracing the walls, jumping past doorways to circle the room and orbit the candle. His finger made a soft plunk as he moved; he was delighted to have his hearing back.

The old man returned to find him staring at the door but Orion quickly realized, seated them both and was therefore relieved of greeting a snide remark. Turning his eye to the refreshments before them: the tea was steaming and snacks looked welcoming. 'Ah, I should call on old people more often' he idly thought. It was not the hour for such observations. "Thank you kindly sir, I'll speak succinctly and not keep you from bed I hope."

"Good, that's as it should be. Drink a little and tell me what you've come to tell." The old man said and not unkindly. He was rather amused, and in old age cherished the rare company of children. Particularly one as famous as Orion.

"Well sir," Orion was quite worried the old man would take him poorly, realizing his motive was not quite as he had construed. He ended up speaking long and sloppily. "Earlier today I was reading about the U.R.M. technarchy, and after the book covered the Shichyuujin incursions which were achieved by the geo-space conflict programs and the Terratic wars–sorry, I shouldn't summarize, I don't know enough to–the book took a sort of socio-anthropological look at the fallout, particularly the exchange of peoples in the aftermath and their subsequent integration. Anyhow, sir, it got me thinking and I can't shake this–I'm sure of it:

"You're always quite distant." Orion rushed through things on the tip of his mind. "You interact only enough to maintain an under-the-radar relationship with the community. If we measure contact by frequency, I think you come out only below average, but by what you tell us you're rock-bottom. I know you don't talk about the past unless cued, and you always use the suppositions of others to explain yourself." Orion had read a bit about sociodynamics and felt it corroborated with the social analysis of the Shichyuujin fallout.

"You purposefully maintain what you see as an optimal distance, alone but never isolated. Moreover, you've lived far longer than ordinary and yet consistently work slightly-generous-but-not-alarming hours despite your extraordinary age. How old by now? Fifty-five? Sixty?" The old man started in but Orion pushed through to his climax. "No sir, I believe you're a Martian."

The old man had seen the accusation coming for at least a paragraph and had readied a response, but at the sight of a six-year-old so grim and accusatory he couldn't help but laugh in the candlelight. "We Earthlings can naturally live longer than fifty-five, you know." The old man informed him. And in his mind, 'this is the Orion they talk of. A shame I'd never engaged him.' Then, "tell me boy, what is this urgent errand you come on? What is it I need to know?"

"W-well sir," the boy was all but sweating and the old man watched him quietly, "with all due respect Martians don't need sleep, nor do your bodies age–on that account I got ahead of myself at the door (your back doesn't ache, sorry)–but if I acted falsely it was only to greet pretense in kind. The late hour isn't a bother to you and also, even though my generation may be able to live a natural lifespan, the gened cannot, and I know you're not a genetic success, sir, nor are you in your sixties. You're several hundred years old, a relic from the post-Shichyuujin U.R.M. diaspora." Orion grimaced even as he spoke, 'I'm scrambling all over myself! Cover doesn't falter at mere accusation. I'll need to do better than this. At least I haven't touched the snacks yet. Remember why you're so certain!'

The old man shook his head, took a slurp of tea. He looked away into the darkness and his profile was wrinkled and weary. For a moment he left the table for some time long past. "Orion, Orion. I've lived sixty three long years on Earth alone, laboring all my life in a humble, muddy way. Now you tell me I am an alien, that my genes which will help you live long and strong, are lies? Our history is long and dark indeed but, child of the radiant generation, do not call me alien."

"Martians are humans."

"Who knows? But this is a strong accusation." He sighed. "I can see you're not to be convinced. Here, if you must, look on my face and take my hand. Is this the face and hand of an artificial Martian? Witness the elegiac work of cells so like your own; you'll find no nanomachines here." Orion took the old man's with both his six-year-old hands, poring over the deep details. 'So this is what a Martian hand looks like,' he contemplated without doubt, surveying the wrinkled skin, blue veins and particularly the fingernails, scouring for giveaways–even though he didn't know what to look for. How about biting to draw blood? No, that wouldn't work. Orion regretted not thinking this through. The hand appeared very human and in any case Orion only had a vague idea of what nanomachines could emulate. 'Perhaps he is...human? I'm too tired to remember what I was on about earlier. What an embarrassment. Think! You need to think!'

Orion appeared rhapsodized by the hand (so certainly alien), but the old man was not to be hypnotized by the hand he saw every day. After a more than accommodating wait he cleared his throat and pulled what was his back. "It's late now. I've entertained your questions, so why don't we head home?" After further discussion, though it would be tiresome to repeat all that was said here, the old man walked Orion home and ensured the boy's return next day, "so you can entertain my questions." He was greatly amused by Orion.

Orion fell asleep a second time that night, this time in bed and dreaming of many different things. And while Orion had been settling into bed, not asleep yet, the old man was assuring Orion's assuredly laid-back parents. "No, I stay up late these days; he was no bother at all. You've raised a good child."

At length, while Orion was sinking into slumber, the parents confided their suspicion in this kindly old man, acquaintance apparent to their son. "He's a strange child, he doesn't act his age. Sometimes we wonder what our repairs may have brought back. Ironic, isn't it?" It was a naïve fear, but commonly held in those latter days.

The old man, for his part, disagreed with the assessment but used it nevertheless to inquire a notable item. "Orion told me he could hear nothing but the sound of thunder all day today until he took a nap in the evening. Strangely, the sound stopped after that. No doubt the complete genes have strange things in store for us–it makes me suspect, do you think this is part of that too?"

The parents quickly dismissed the notion. "Oh no, not at all! That is just a silly game he plays. These past few months he's taken to pretending not to hear, or sometimes see, we think he does it whenever he's trying to think hard 'bout something. He enjoys doing it, but a good shout startles him even when he's playing deaf." They laughed, recounting strange circumstances this eccentricity had brought about. "In any case, please don't worry about him on that account!"

'An original child,' old man Eder thought, intrigued and amused. He was all but out the door when the mother added, "Sometimes I think he believes it himself. That's why we're all convinced by it." At the time Orion's habit of picking up disabilities was becoming well-known in the village, and all witnesses found it quite persuasive. One might have assumed old man Eder would have heard stories of it by now–but Orion's parents and the rest of the village understood such a supremely old man could not be expected to keep up with the chatter.

Nonetheless the mother ventured. "You should come to village meetings once in a while...seeing you here I forget your age because you seem so healthy. Perhaps you'll feel up to it someday soon. We'd all be terribly glad to see you. Oh, but I don't mean to pressure you! Please take care of your health first. And let us know if we can help in any way. Still, it would be such a joy. Us parents particularly, we really feel we owe you a debt."

"Ach, nobody owes me anything of the sort! We knew someone was bound to win the dice-toss, that's all it was–celebrate not the gambler's luck...Still, your kindness touches my heart and Orion has stirred my bones. Joints allowing, I'll gladly come by sometime soon." Bidding the pleasant pair good night, he returned to his abode where the table candle set out earlier for Orion was burning much shorter. 'Ach, waste of a good candle. I need to be better with these things.' He promptly blew it out, not wishing to waste the candle completely, and tidied up in the pitch dark. Then old man Eder went to bed muttering and dreamed of a shadow, Venusian ships alighting on Earth's stratosphere.

'They don't sleep? What kind of books are people writing?' He groused as he drifted off, long-ago wars welling up around him.

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This is a side chapter, written neither today nor in a single day like the rest of the dream: no, Twilight Years reaches back, written across a period of four days this September, before the Mars Chronicle chapter and before that welling, rusted dream burst into mind.

It was the story of a stiff author who had not written for a long time, if nothing else. Turgid roots and fragmentary life.

Written 10/9/20-14/9/20, below drawn today.