Here Comes the Sun

by Jeff Baker

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the March 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were for a Paranormal Story, involving a set of Stereo Speakers set in the Australian Outback. This is what I came up with.

Kenny Briscoe had been a few odd places since he’d fallen in love with an alien sorcerer. But the Australian Outback in the pre-dawn hours beat zipping to the convenience store at two A. M. for a sweet roll. He stared up at the brightening sky and the stars.

“Hey, look!” Kenny said. “I think that’s Alpha Centauri!”

“Been there, not impressed,” Hank said.

Hank Jones, Kenny’s husband was fiddling with a gadget that looked like a TV remote and pacing back and forth. And swearing in at least a couple of alien languages. The gadget would occasionally make a peeping noise and flash a light or two.

“C’mon! Deccha take you, you miserable…C’mon!” Hank muttered.

Kenny smiled. It reminded him for all the world of Dean Stockwell in a scene from the old “Quantum Leap” show. But his tanned, tall, slightly overweight husband looked a lot better to him than any actor.

Hank had explained it again to Kenny as they had flown around the world from Wichita in a conjured “sphere of transport.” (“Invisible to just about everything, including radar!” Hank had said.)

It sounded simple to hear Hank say it as they had soared through the sky:

“You know how there’s the North Pole, the True North Pole that points at Polaris? And then there’s the Magnetic North Pole, where the Magnetic Field of Earth is centered? Well, there’s a mystical pole too, and this is it. The Uluru Rock has been sacred to the native people in the Outback and they have no idea why. It centers a bunch of ambient mystical energy that swirls around Earth. And it has to be checked and maybe calibrated every now and then.” Hank said.

“Every couple of hundred years or so?” Kenny said, casually dropping the fact that Hank was at least three-hundred-and-something years old.

“About every eight months,” Hank said, “basically whenever the rotation of the Earth aligns with…well, I have a gadget to check it with.” Hank looked at Kenny with a broad grin. “Remind me to tell you about our class field trip to Polaris sometime!”

They had soared invisibly over the night side of the Earth with daylight behind them and the ocean below. Kenny thought he could pick out a few lights in the darkness.

“And if we’re lucky that’ll be all I need to do.” Hank said.

“And if we’re not lucky?” Kenny had asked.

“Then a bunch of us will have to come out here and work a calibration field ritual and that would be…”

“Ah! Got it!” Hank said, snapping Kenny’s attention back to the present.

“Got it? All done?” Kenny asked.

“No, but I just had to set this for the right frequency. Give me a few minutes and we’ll be all done.”

“Hey, can’t you handle all that with a spell or two?” Kenny asked.

“Would take too long and there are too many tourists,” Hank said. “Besides, this jury rigged revulator is a lot more efficient and it has a little display screen. Okay. Here we go.”

Hank held the device at arm’s length and walked along the stone side of Uluru which was imposing even in the deep shadows of night.

“Uh, you don’t have to walk around that all the way do you?” Kenny said, wondering if he should say anything aloud.

“Nope,” Hank said, looking at the little screen as he walked. “Y’know, tourists are always mailing little chunks of Uluru they pick up back here saying it brings them bad luck. They have no idea it’s all the focalized mystical energy that they’ve…aha! Okay, bring that thing over here.”

Kenny picked up the big cloth shopping bag with the MP3 player and large speakers.

“Push the speakers right up against the rock. I need to measure a sonic vibration and then we’re done.”

“What sound do you need?” Kenny said, pushing the speakers up to Uluru.

Hank looked up, the sky was getting lighter. He grinned. “How about ‘Here Comes the Sun?’”

Kenny nodded and keyed it up from his playlist. In a moment, the muffled strains of the Fab Four were heard over that small section of desert.

“Annnnnd…yessss! Perfect!” Hank said looking up from the screen. “Good for another few months.”

“Want me to turn this off?” Kenny asked, pointing at the speakers.

“Naaa. Let it play out. Let’s just stand here and watch the dawn on Uluru.” Hank said, stuffing the gadget in his back pocket.

The two men stood arm in arm as the massive rock was tinted with the light of the sunrise.

“Hey,” Kenny said. “You’ve been around on Earth a few years, right?”

“A few hundred, yeah.” Hank said.

“The stuff that’s going on right now. Back home, I mean.” Kenny said. “You think we…the country will make it through it okay?”

“Depends,” Hank said, staring at the rock. “If people sit around and do nothing, no. If they lose interest after a couple of weeks or get discouraged because of time or roadblocks in the way nothing will change. But one person can make a difference by speaking out or even posting online, writing a letter to the editor…One person’s effort could be seen by one other person who it changes. Then they go and affect someone else.” Hank looked over at Kenny.

“One person matters.” Hank said.

They kissed for a few moments standing there in the desert.

—end—

NOTE: The photo is of Uluru. Another of Hank and Kenny’s adventures appeared here: https://rommanticreads.wordpress.com/2023/06/17/jeff-baker-make-me-immortal-with-a-kiss/