He remembered the blue, for what it once was.
No shade covered this spot, no trees or bushes to block the occasional bout of dust kicking up over the plateau as he sat down on the boulder. It was just a moderately sized, nearly flat rock on a slight rise. It was a high point in the dry, cracked flatlands that spread out into the distance. He called it his, “Old Sitting Spot.”
The blue stone sat in the distance, a comforting reminder of what was, and a barb of what could no longer be.
He settled in, with a flurry of pops and cracks and odd squeaks from his old body. He closed his eyes, the dusty plain now a blue world reborn.
The bright blue flowers, gently waving to and fro in the soft breeze at the shoreline. The solitary fish, a shimmery fin reflecting dabbled light as it skimmed the surface. The exquisite blue in the sky above, balanced with the tip of the blue stone he’d placed there decades ago, an iceberg in the cool waters below. The ripples still emanated over and over through the water, reaching him in the warm sun. He squeezed his eyes harder, and held on tight to that great blue stone, holding it in his mind as the universe rippled through him. As the last gentle ripple faded, he opened his eyes to the warmth of the world.
The stone was no longer surrounded by hope, and by dream, and by the life he reached for. It sat alone, a shimmery drop in a sandy ocean of desolation. It sat precisely where he’d put it so many years ago, for her, a testament to youth now laid to rest by age, folly, and indifference.
He sat staring at the rock until the heat started to abate, the sun having long since set. There was still plenty of light yet, the real dark wouldn’t set in for at least another hour. He was already going to get an earful from Sussanah about coming here. Best not make it worse than usual.
He stood slowly, letting the squeaks, cracks, and pops settle their differences. He waited a few breaths, looked over at the blue stone one more time, and turned towards home.
————–
The ranger sat on the edge of the cliff, basking in the sun’s rays and absorbing energy through its tentacles while it could. Its headset detected the old man eleven kilometers away about half an hour ago. Nothing else, threat or otherwise. There never was. Mostly it considered itself a BoredRangerAlien, waiting for anything at all to happen.
The old man didn’t count, he hadn’t dropped dead in the sand from the heat during his now 134 walks to the old reservoir. There were a few small creatures near the dry lake’s bays, nothing requiring the ranger’s interest.
He could always walk or fly over there and introduce himself to the old man. But that seemed just as boring.
Not having anything better to do, and not feeling frisky enough to disobey orders again today, the ranger loaded up an old game through his headset. The name of the game was lost to history, and to the rising coastal waters drowning computer systems a century ago. Which was somewhat ironic, he thought, considering the desert he was in.
In the program, he put the box with the numeral two on top of the box with the “A” symbol. The ranger played on, keeping a couple of sensors on the old man and the rest of his core systems looking for the elusive three.
————-
Morning light fell on his bedcovers, a quiet alarm every time the season came around. He could have slept on the other side of the bed to avoid it. He could never quite do it, leaving his spot of the last couple of decades would be too much to bear. Even after all these years without her.
A rumble, followed by a short silence exploding into curses, told him Sussanah was up. A second voice, almost as loud, told him Almicia was right next to her. He thought that them being married for twenty-odd years would’ve kept these curses to a minimum. At least they weren’t terribly serious about it.
“It’s a shit engine and you know it.”
Sussanah pointed this out once a week, and as he walked out on the kitchen patio it almost gave him comfort. It was more likely the smell of coffee that comforted him, but the smirk on Almicia’s patient face certainly helped.
“You shouldn’t curse with Marnie out here,” Almicia said. “It sets an example.”
Marnie clearly cared enough about this discussion to keep on kicking her legs back and forth in the tall chair. Writing about dinosaurs and lasers took precedence anyway over her parents and their banter.
“Besides, it’s not a shit engine,” Almicia said with an eye roll. “It’s just that it hates to see you happy and prefers some fucking intrigue.”
Sussanah gave a sour look, tossed a half-eaten peach slice at Almicia, and started to say something when Almicia lunged for her. They went rolling out into the yard, covered in dust, leftover breakfast, and a poor couple of beetles just looking for a rest.
As the giggles and even less appropriate curses rolled away from the women, he shook his head and started pouring his coffee. He chuckled quietly, adding, “You two best stop the wrestling. Can’t you get an old man some food?”
Sussanah stood partially up, the slightly smaller Almicia still hanging on to her back. “I’ll make you breakfast,” she grunted happily, trying to throw off Almicia. “But not another lunch for your dumb walk.”
All of them stopped. He kept looking down, pulling up the edge of the carafe just before his mug overflowed. “It’s not dumb.”
Sussanah slowly let Almicia down, rising from her stoop. “Dad, I…”
“Never mind,” he said. He left his coffee mug next to the carafe, grabbed an extra roll from the counter, and walked into the waiting darkness of the house. Sussanah and Almicia heard the scrape of the door and a gentle click as he left again for his long walk.
——————-
The ranger stood at the edge of the once mighty reservoir. Into the far distance were only cliffs, dust, and the great cracked earth spread before the morning haze.
He didn’t get it.
Why was that old man drawn to this place? He couldn’t sense anything out of the ordinary, or really anything at all. It was just over eleven kilometers to the old man’s village, with little between here and there. Never mind here and there, there wasn’t anything here either.
The old man was approaching, now just a matter of a half a kilometer. Enough time for the ranger to quietly move away. But he was still bored, and if anything at least he would have some good conversation.
“You, Active-Ranger!”
Or it would be an insulting conversation.
He watched the old man get closer, trying his best not to sulk. He spoke before man could say anything else.
“Sir,” he patiently said, “Active-Rangers were bad candy-coated marketing. I am just a simple local ranger.”
The old man looked the ranger up and down, staring for an uncomfortable minute. The ranger was about to ask a very rude question when the old man relented.
“My apologies, friend ranger,” he said. “I guess you don’t seem as marketable up close.”
The ranger’s biological headset integration meant he was a marvel of superfast artificial intelligence and remarkable engineering. He could balance thousands of processes per second and keep multiple people safe between blinks of a human eye, all while juggling with his tentacles and playing showtunes. Just not at this moment. He was at a loss how to respond to what may or may not have been an insult.
The old man stepped around the ranger, settling in for the day on his boulder. He shifted his small bag around, off his shoulder and on to the lower rock shelf. It wasn’t hot enough yet that his mealpack needed the shade, and he didn’t bother pushing it back further.
The first twelve things that came into the ranger’s core processor were rude, so instead he chose curiosity. “Why do you walk all the way out here every day, ELDER man?”
He turned to scowl at the ranger. “Is that how you talk to your betters, ranger? Aren’t you supposed to have some control over that?”
“Perhaps I am unwilling to let it control me,” he responded. “I choose to react how I am reacted too. It is why I am not as marketable.”
The man turned back around, ignoring whatever else this rude ranger-alien-thing said. If he could ignore Sussanah and the rest, he could surely avoid thinking about this overly fancy alien with a weird device on its head.
The impasse lasted only a few minutes. “Dear gentleman of another time,” the ranger said, “why is it that you choose to come here every day. Walking no less, not even telemetting.”
He didn’t look up when he tersely answered. “I hate those things. They tear you apart and rebuild something that’s not even you. Better I walk than be destroyed for a clone.”
“No, that is a common misconception,” the ranger told him. It was the seventy-third time he had explained this to a human just in the last three months. “Telemetting is not reconstructive like teleportation. Telemetting creates a quantum bridge nearby. If it is determined safe, you can move through it.”
“I can move here fine on my two legs, no bridge needed.”
“It does not explain why you walk out here every day.” The ranger decided to push more, turning off the warning from his sensitivity algorithm and moving the detection notice to the sidebar. “This has not been a lake in a century, so you must have some reason.”
“I don’t have to explain anything to you,” he said. “Go watch over some other valley.”
“This is one of my valleys. It is just the least boring one at the moment.”
“Rangers don’t get bored. Now just go away.”
“As I am sure you are aware,” the ranger said, “our biomechnical intelligence has been sentient longer than this lake has been dry. It means we not only get bored, that boredom leads to helping out random elders.”
“I don’t need your help,” he said. “I don’t need your eval subroutine, or your helping hand with my lunchbag, not your call back home for supplies. Just let me be.”
The ranger considered that exact thing. Let him sit here and sulk another day, sitting out here all alone in the dust and heat. He noticed the sensitivity warning still had something to say, but he was more interested in the proximity notification.
“If you will not let me help you,” the ranger said, “let us see if she can.”
He turned angrily around, rage instantly deflated by seeing the approaching silhouette.
Marnie.
“What—you can’t be out here in—it’s not safe—”
“I’m perfectly safe, grandpops,” Marnie said with a smirk. She came up alongside the ranger, giving him a short pat on his lower left arm. “Otto is here watching. Otto with an ‘O’ of course.”
“You’re only nine, you can’t just walk all the way out here! You’ll get hurt!”
“First,” she said as her smirk dropped slightly, “I’m not a little nine. The BIG ten.” She let that hang in the air an extra moment. Otto was just about to reply when she added, “second, I’m not silly enough to walk here. It’s why we have telemetting, everyone knows that.”
“It doesn’t mean it is safe.” He tried to slow down his breathing, regaining his composure. He took a step forward, pausing so he wouldn’t seem aggressive. “Even with a ranger, honey, a lot of things can happen.”
“You come out here all the time and come back fine. Why do you get to and I don’t?” She stepped forward slowly, stopping to give him a forced look of frustration she didn’t really feel.
The ranger stood still. Between shuffling through his message requests, monitoring the output of the sketchy filtration system three miles away in the old harbor, and still not finding a three, he opted to let Marnie do this alone.
“Now listen, I’m old enough to—”
“Don’t give me the old enough line again,” she said. “I’ve heard it and heard it and wah wah wah. You’re avoiding the question.”
“Your moms are right to say you’re—”
“Stop avoiding it and tell me why I can’t be here.”
“You don’t talk to your elders that way, Marnie, not th—”
“Answer it.”
“Marnie, I think—”
“GRANDPOPS!”
“Because she died out here and I couldn’t do a damn thing!”
He turned away, settling down on one knee. The silence of the plateau was broken only by the swirls of dust in the wind.
Sobbing, bringing his hands up to cover his face, they could barely hear him when he spoke again.
“She fell out there, racing around the blue rock. My rock. Her rock. That stupid rock!”
He let the other knee fall, hunching over as he wept. Tears ran quietly down his face, drying in smudges where his palms moved across his jaw.
Marnie didn’t know if she should say anything. She didn’t know if she should telemet back, or stay for her grandfather. She wasn’t sure if she should ask the ranger what to do.
The ranger’s eval subroutine popped up with a joyous notification and a list of helpful options. He ignored those. Let the girl and her grandfather work this one out.
With a quiet shuffle, she went over to her grandfather. She laid a hand on the back of his head, letting her fingers sway in his hair. They stayed that way for a few minutes, until he slowly raised his head.
She looked into his eyes, only slightly beneath hers in his kneeling stance. She was going to stay silent, but courage took hold. “You used to do that to the back of my head when I was angry, or sick. I miss it. I miss you.”
They both burst into tears and grabbed one another. A mix of dust, dirt, and tears formed around them in the heat. They slowly let go.
He stood up, not bothering to brush away all the dust just yet. “Maybe it’s too hot out here to hug for long. And thank you for being here. Even if there’s a ranger.”
She wiped at her tears, succeeding only in spreading the muddy dirt across to the clean areas of her face. “Now will you tell me? Please.”
“Come,” he said as he took her hand, “let’s go sit on the boulder. I’ll tell you about your grandmother.”
—————–
The ranger left them there, heading for his solitary outpost. The humans hadn’t needed anything else. After assuring them, mostly Marnie, that he would still be around, he slowly walked back toward the cliffs. Once out of sight, he gathered in his tentacles and took to the skies, scanning for anomalies, any other humans around, and the oddly missing threes.
He flew along the former shoreline of the lake, following the ins and outs of the old coves. The leftover silt from the area’s lake-infested past made it easy to separate nature from man’s folly.
As he came to rest on the high mark of the line of cliffs, he pulled in his emjets. His integrated headset scanned all directions, and, finding nothing of interest, he settled down facing west. The old man and the girl were still settled on the boulder. He decided if one old story was going to be told, he might as well tune his receiver to that proximity and listen in on how this dried up lake came to be.
Starting with why anyone thought flooding water into a giant evaporative tub in the desert was a sound idea.
———————
The man began quietly, with the easy parts. How he met Persephone not far from here. He was working as a surveyor’s helper with a company charting the lake. Back then, there was just talk of inefficiencies and droughts. It hadn’t been a catastrophe yet.
She looked at him with a face full of doubt and curiosity. “Grandpops, I thought this lake dried up a hundred years ago? You’re not that old.”
“I am one hundred and nineteen, my dear young Marnie,” he said with a wink and a smile. “I was barely in college at the time. My, how far our medicine has come, but that’s for another day.”
Before she could ask about aging in the modern era, he quickly went on. “I was holding the rod that the laser measured distance with. My friend was making adjustments to the laser itself a kilometer away, and as I watched him and waited for his signal, an extraordinarily attractive woman drove up near him.”
“Ew,” Marnie said, sticking out her tongue flatly.
“There’s nothing wrong with appreciating someone lovely.”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Ugh. I see that enough with my parents. They are always kissyface and touching and giggling.”
“Your parents are in love, that’s wonderful and don’t forget it. Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?”
Her hard stare and dramatic shoulder drop told him she was.
“I couldn’t hear the discussion, of course, but it seemed heated. I decided to go listen in.”
“When I made it there, she was already flustered. She was a hydraulics engineer, and demanded to know why we were surveying an area that was never going to see water again.”
He stopped for a moment, grabbing his flask and taking a drink. He offered Marnie one, and after her polite refusal and his stern look she took one herself.
“My friend didn’t have an answer for her. We were just the interns, and didn’t have anything to say. She kept on scolding, and after a few minutes stopped and just stared at us. Honestly I hadn’t heard much of it, I just liked listening to her. She finally said, ‘well?’ quite angrily. I simply said, ‘your eyes are so blue’ and stared back at her.”
Marnie shook her head. “Wow, grandpops, even I know that was dumb.”
“Yet here you are! My daughter is your happy mom, and I was married for almost ninety-seven years to the greatest person in the world.”
She laughed loudly, and leaned over to hug him. “Tell me about this place.”
He took a moment to himself. Turning his hands over and over. Thinking about how to start, and end, this tale.
“It’s the blue stone in the distance that drew us.”
He gently leaned her up, and then stood. He helped her off the boulder, and they walked over the cracked lake bed to the blue stone.
They stared down at it. It was no larger than his head, bright blue in spots and muted blue-gray in others.
“It’s not supposed to be quite that bright of a blue,” he said. “We painted it late one night when we camped out here. On our third date.”
She didn’t ask anything. She looked down, lost in thought.
“Your grandmother made me remember the name of it. Andesite, she would tell me every trip out here. ‘Do you remember it’s andesite?’ she’d say, or ‘don’t forget that it’s andesite.’ ‘That rock there, it’s andesite.’”
“Sounds like she had your ticket punched,” Marnie said with a laugh. She looked up at his face, with his slight smirk and raised eyebrow. “I hear MomAlm say that sometimes. Though, she can’t explain what it really means either.”
“It’s from long before me even,” he said. “When you’d take a loud train to a far off place, they’d give you a piece of paper proving you could be there.”
“MomAlm told me all about trains, and wasting trees and paper too. I don’t get that either.”
“People weren’t always good about reusing things as they are now,” he said. “Actually, we reused this very rock.”
“You did?”
“We moved it from where we first saw it, way over there near the start of the ridge,” he said as he pointed into the distance past the boulder. “We used it as a marker for the edge of the water, with an added bright coat of paint on it of course.”
Marnie looked up at him, confused. “Water?”
He turned to his right, flattening his palms up and spreading his arms wide in front of him. “As far as the eye could see. The Great Western Lake.”
As far as her eyes could see was only a cracked and dry plain under a dusty sky.
He looked over at her triumphantly, until he saw her odd look. He shook his hands upward again, spreading his arms even more. She remained baffled.
He sighed, and let his arms slowly drop. “I guess it’s not as blue as it once was. But just close your eyes for a moment and imagine it.”
Still skeptical, she closed her eyes anyway.
He leaned down, and closer to her ear said, “think of the blue sky above us at home.”
“Okay.”
“Now, imagine the whole world upside down,” he said. “The water back then spread across the plain like the sky does in your head. On and on, so far it looked like the stars met the water at night.”
“I can see it!”
He leaned up straight again, his back popping loudly in a few spots. “Ooof. It didn’t sound like that when I’d dance with her.”
Marnie opened her eyes. “You danced with her? Here? In the desert? Didn’t you fall on the cracks?”
He let out a small laugh. “There weren’t any cracks back then, before it got too hot. This was the shoreline, dirt and sand behind us, and only water in front of us. So we danced, all around this rock, in and out of the water.”
She looked up at him. “It was the andesite dance.”
“Ha! I suppose it was,” he said. “Round and round, everyone join us for the andesite dance!”
They laughed, Marnie leaning in to hug him from the side. They watched the dust devils in the distance, and held each other.
He sighed heavily, gently leaning Marnie away from him. “You would have loved your grandmother, Marnie. She was all about traditions like… the andesite dance.”
Marnie grabbed his hand slowly, and started leading him back to the boulder. As they reached it, he took a long look at the blue stone. As they sat, he said, “and that’s what the blue stone, and this place, mean to me. The last tradition. The last of her.”
“The last time we were here together was twelve years ago,” he said. He took in a deep breath, letting the warm air reach him. “We were dancing and singing. Then… Old age caught up with us sooner than we would have liked, Marnie.”
They quietly watched the dust of the plains drift along. The only sound was the soft rustling of the sand as it moved around the rock. She felt something on her hand. It was a tear, fallen from the old man and flowing away off her skin down to the ground.
She laid her hand on his, giving it a soft squeeze. He held his head low, a small smile escaping him.
Suddenly she stood up. She stepped away from him, turning toward the distant cliffs. “Otto! We need you!”
For a moment, nothing happened. Confused, he looked up at her. “Marnie?”
She scanned the cliffs. She saw the ranger, a sinuous, rising path of dust and small rocks and furious flames traced across the sky, getting larger and larger. He landed near the bottom of the rise with a huge thump of dust, shaking the ground beneath her.
“I am here, Marnie, what is the problem,” he said. He scanned with all of his systems at once, looking for friend, foe, and anything in between.
The old man had slid off the rock when the ranger landed. Marnie had only turned her head slightly to avoid the dust, and now turned back triumphantly to the ranger.
Pushing himself back up, the old man started dusting himself off angrily. “What in the hell was that for?”
“I’m sorry!” yelled Marnie. “I just wanted Otto to come here!”
The ranger stood up out of his defensive position, trying to relax all his parts. “My apologies as well, to both of you. Usually when someone yells for me out here it is for the worst.”
“That was the worst!” the old man barked.
“Again,” the ranger said, “I apologize for my entrance. Do you need assistance?”
Marnie started to answer when the old man yelled, “No, I’m damned fine!”
They stood awkwardly for a few moments. No one decided the next step or what to say. Marnie finally took a step forward. “Otto, please telemet us to Powella.”
She walked over to her grandfather, taking his hand. “Would you trust me with something, grandpops?”
He looked down at her. He had seen that look before, and he knew it meant confident trouble. He thought about scolding her. He thought about telling the ranger to take her back home. He thought about his blue stone and his boulder and how the spot was so crowded now.
In the end, he was tired.
“Of course I trust you, little one.”
“Then I want to pick up the stone. Or, um, have Otto pick up the stone,” she said. “I might be the big ten already, but I’m small still.”
His confusion gave way to terror. He was sure he was about to lose his spot and the stone and his love’s dancing and have to telemet into a billion bits and—
“Grandpops,” she said quietly, “it’s okay. I love you, and even if I never met her I love her too. We’ll keep the stone safe together.”
His eyes watered, and he brought his free hand up to his mouth to stop it quivering. He whispered to her, barely enough for her to hear. “Okay.”
———————–
The ranger hadn’t balanced two humans, their gear, an odd rock, and a bunch of dust telemetting before. There was always something new in the desert.
They stood on the edge of the Powella Project. With its long, drafty greenwall and its mix of living and dead plants, it was hard to miss.
The entrance arched high above, a grand palisade woven through with plant and pipe alike. The desert side of the wall rose to muted heights, with hints of green here and there behind the weaving. As they walked inside, the interior was dark, with more humidity than they’d felt outside. From low to high, the inside walls were lush green, with smaller white flowers sparkling throughout. Bright green piping weaved in and out of the vines, the algae inside flowing both around and through the plants.
“Marnie,” he said, “I’ve been here before. Your grandmother did all this.”
She smiled as they walked further in. “I know, grandpops. It doesn’t mean you’ve seen everything yet.”
They walked among the lush greenways and dripping vines. They shuffled across small bridges over tiny creekbeds, water lazily flowing toward larger waterways in the distance. They passed more bright green pipes, and great round pools with slowly turning paddles throughout.
As they came around a final corner, the brightness startled them. They had left the green area, back to desert and the black plain before them.
They stopped a number of steps from the edge of the black plain. Before them in the bright sun were millions of matte black balls, each one gathering energy from the sun and floating on the surface of the lake. He knew they protected the water from evaporating. He knew they generated the energy that ran even that infernal engine back home. He also knew there was no beauty here. A technological wasteland in what had been a natural paradise.
“We’re here,” she said. “It’s time to trust me. Otto.”
Otto walked slowly toward the edge of the panels, rearing back as he looked left and right for the best spot.
“No!” the old man cried, releasing Marnie’s hand and almost jumping into the panels. But Otto was fast enough to grab his shirt, enough to keep him from jumping in.
“I apologize, elder man,” the ranger said. “I did not mean to seem like I was going to throw it.”
Otto walked a few paces out into the water. The automatic sensors pushed the solar panels away from one another and the ranger, creating a large gap between them on the shoreline. Otto held out the stone, above a spot just near the edge of the water.
Marnie walked over to the rock, stepping into the water on the far side of the ranger. She let the lukewarm water flow into her shoes. After a moment, she raised her hand to her lips, kissed it, and placed it on the stone.
“That one’s for you, grandmoms. Grandpops?”
He stood staring at her. He didn’t know what to do. Otto and Marnie bent slowly, each with a hand on the stone that they laid gently at the meridian of lapping waves and dry sand. They stood back up, Marnie giving a short nod. The ranger stepped back on shore, and walked past the old man. He turned around, and sat down on the ground out of the way.
“Grandpops, will you dance with me?”
He was almost near tears again. He started to speak, and found he couldn’t.
She watched him closely. “Can we make our own new tradition,” she said, “for her?”
His resolve broke. As his tears fell he joined her near the stone. “Yes,” he said. “I think we can.”
They hugged each other, tears falling freely to the water below. After a few minutes, they separated, joined hands, and started to dance in and out of the water. The ranger added subtle music from his archive. Around and around they splashed and sang and laughed and danced until long after the moon shone high above.
==========
The Dance of the Great Blue Stone
by Russell Dickerson
© Copyright 2026 Russell Dickerson, All rights reserved.
No AI Training allowed.
No AI or artificial intelligence of any kind was used by the author.