Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences Read online

The scouts’ assessments of the species is accurate, but surprisingly, a few of them can hear if we create a link. This will add to overall product value. We have lost more of them than anticipated in the process of learning how to avoid harming them. Those who cannot hear are quite fragile in the way of some primitives, and we’ve often killed when we meant only to punish. However, due to their size, I believe they will make excellent slaves on planets in need of physical labor. I should prepare you and the girls for that. They are extremely ugly. Not only are they grossly large, but they have no green or blue in their skin. Also they have tiny, beady eyes, strangely shaped small heads, and, I’m sorry to say, hair. Nevertheless, the world itself is quite beautiful. Green everywhere. The sky is often astonishingly blue.

  I am eagerly anticipating your arrival and the arrival of the girls and, of course, the colonists. I have a house. Although I’m sure you will find much lacking, it will, I think, suffice until materials to build a real home arrive.

  In the morning the aliens wake us with an obnoxious Wake, product followed by a faint shock. I actually miss being woken by my mom. She had a morning person’s enthusiasm that was as irritating as a pep squad, but I miss it now.

  They order us to gather by the big pool. I get there early, and only one other person is there; a pretty girl. She has pale skin and long, curly black hair and wears glasses that don’t hide her dark eyes or the fact that tears are coming out of them.

  “Are you okay?” I realize it’s a dumb question right after I ask it. Who’s okay?

  “No,” she says.

  I try to be more specific. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just saw them kill a girl. She lost it — started screaming. One of them told her to stop, and when she didn’t, the alien turned her off. That’s what it was like. It was like the alien flipped a switch, and the girl dropped to the floor dead.”

  She’s looking at me like she hopes I can say something that will make things less terrible. I’ve got nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” I say finally, just to break the silence because it feels like it’s trying to break us.

  She shivers. “We aren’t anything. They’re right, in a way. They can do whatever they want to us, kill us even, and we can’t do a thing about it.”

  “Don’t say we aren’t anything.”

  I know how she feels. They’re so strong and we’re so weak. Sometimes I’ve felt so weak I think I’ll solve the problem of my weakness by not existing at all. Three people used that solution during the short time I worked on the crew downtown.

  I look into those pretty dark eyes. I feel her sadness and my own like something trying to pull us under, and I get mad. They’ve taken everything, but they won’t take this. I won’t let them. “We matter.”

  “Why? Why do we matter?”

  “We’re the last people,” I say.

  Then she does something surprising. She leans over and kisses me on the cheek. Her lips are soft. Her hair brushes against the side of my face. The kiss itself lasts about a second, but I feel it long after.

  Others are around us by then. A few stragglers are still coming out of the house. The aliens order us to form lines. They give us assignments. I’m outside. The girl is in. She smiles at me before she goes into the house. It’s a sad smile but a smile just the same.

  To Senator & High Lord Vertenomous:

  Our scouts were largely correct in their assessment of this planet. They are as primitive as we thought, although it seems that several thousand are capable of hearing. The extent of machine use was underestimated, which I think you might include in your own reports to the president and High Council.

  We have destroyed more product than I’d hoped. They are a willful species, and this has made them difficult to categorize, assign, and control. They will learn.

  The colony is secure for development. There are remote regions where some product may still remain loose (we have initiated sweeps, so I am certain most of the free product has been exterminated). However, those that remain are not a threat.

  My report, of course, goes into great detail on all these subjects as well as on plans for development. Right now our biggest challenge is destroying the machines and removing some of the product’s primitive structures. This will take time, but I expect more design and reconstruction crews to arrive before one more revolution of their moon. Given the quantity of product and the quality of the environment, I am certain the company will have no trouble attracting settlers. This will be a desirable and profitable colony. Congratulations.

  ATTACHED NOTE TO THE OFFICIAL CORRESPONDENCE:

  Dear Father,

  If you could expedite my wife and daughters’ arrival, I would be very grateful. This is an excellent planet, but it is difficult to be so far away from civilization and my family. There is something in the primary species here that troubles me — some melancholy aspect maybe. Sometimes their minds become shadowy and difficult to read, and at other times there are disturbing spikes of raw power that must be some kind of feedback from our minds. It would be a great comfort to have my family here as I build this colony.

  I hope all goes well on Sanginia.

  There are probably about sixty of us living at Lord Vert’s, but sometimes they bus in workers who can’t “hear.” We at Lord Vert’s are all hearing product. That’s what they call those of us with enough telepathic ability that they can speak to us in our minds. Because of this talent (or is it a curse?), they sometimes bus us to other work sites to use us as translators for nonhearing slaves. This allows the aliens to avoid talking, which they hate to do. Their voices creak like rusty door hinges. I think it actually hurts them to talk.

  This morning, there isn’t a cloud in the sky. We walk across the lawn, still damp with dew. The Sans have us building four separate dorms, so they break us up into four crews. Michael and I are on the same crew. We’re assigned to the dorm that is closest to being finished.

  “Do you think they think we all look alike?” I ask him as we enter the dorm.

  “Shut up,” he says.

  He says this to me pretty often. I don’t take offense because I’ve gotten used to it. In fact I’ve come to view it as a sign of affection, though I keep this observation to myself.

  “I’m just saying, they all sort of look alike to me,” I say.

  “They’re all the same color,” he says.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So, we aren’t.”

  “Maybe they don’t notice.”

  “Shut up,” he says.

  A Handler orders us to paint the main room. We slip into jumpsuits that I think are supposed to be for mechanics. Before we arrived, the aliens had filled a room with clothes for us. It looked like a mix of Gap, Old Navy, and stuff from expensive stores. We got the jumpsuits the day we started painting.

  We paint with this guy in his thirties named Jerome. He’s a black guy, thin and ropy and talkative. Well, more than talkative. His mouth does not stop moving; it’s kind of hard to figure out how he breathes with all those words tumbling out all the time. He’s got a GAY PRIDE button on his shirt. It’s strange. How can it matter now? Somehow it does to Jerome, though, and I like that it does. Michael doesn’t. He doesn’t like anything about Jerome.

  Jerome’s painting ability isn’t even close to his talking ability. He’s messy and slow. He spends probably an hour on the subject of his coming out of the closet and how it took him so long to come out because he was repressed by his father, a homophobic Florida redneck.

  “Finally, last month I proclaimed myself gay and what happens? Alien invasion. Can you believe it?”

  “Sometimes yes and sometimes no,” I say.

  He nods enthusiastically. He points at me with his little-used paintbrush. “Yeah, you one of them deep thinkers, ain’t you?”

  Michael makes a totally uncalled-for snort. Then he adds, “Jesus,” in case we somehow missed the totally unsubtle meaning of that snort.

  The room we’re painting is big. We’re paintin
g it green. The Sans love green. It’s like some alien obsession. The whole world will be green if they have their way, and I guess they will.

  Michael is keeping his back to Jerome as much as possible, and finally Jerome says, “Brother don’t like gays.”

  “I don’t like people who never shut up,” Michael says.

  “Just might be I got something you want to hear, sweets.”

  “Don’t call me that.” He stops painting. His back isn’t to Jerome now.

  “Oh, Lord. We’ve been invaded. We’ve lost everything. We’re slaves, for God’s sake, and the brother is worried about being called sweets. Unbelievable.”

  “Didn’t say I was worried. Just said don’t call me that.”

  Jerome is taller than Michael, and something about the way he stands makes me think that he knows things about fighting. Then it’s more than just a thought. I feel like I’m not entirely myself. I’m in a bar and some guy calls me a queer and I whisper to the guy that he’s queer too but doesn’t know it. The guy’s like a bear. Huge. I think I’m about to get killed. The guy takes a swing and I step back. Then I realize it’s not me. It’s Jerome. We knee the guy in the groin, and then when he doubles over, we knee him twice to the chin and down the guy goes. We step back and roundhouse-kick the guy in the head. That’s it. I’m back to myself. I’m confused. It takes me a few seconds to work it out. I saw a memory, Jerome’s memory.

  Besides the fact that I now know Jerome could kick Michael’s ass, any fighting draws the aliens’ attention. They tend to punish us quickly and severely for behavior they don’t like.

  I say, “What do you want to tell us, Jerome?”

  Jerome turns to look at me. It could go either way. He’s mad; Michael’s mad. He shakes his head. “Looks like you’re the only one’s got any sense here. I seen someone looks like our man Michael. Older gentleman but got the same looks.”

  “Not like me,” Michael says.

  “What’s your last name?”

  Michael starts painting. He acts like he doesn’t hear him.

  “White,” I say.

  Michael glares at me.

  “Whitey,” Jerome says. “They called the guy Whitey. Little rough around the edges.”

  “I don’t have nothin’ to do with that man,” Michael says, and he sets his brush on a paint can and turns to Jerome, body tight as a bowstring.

  The fight looks inevitable now. An alien overseer, passing by, gives us a hard stare. I turn to Jerome, but he isn’t in fighting posture anymore. In fact, he looks kind of — I don’t know — sad. He shakes his head. “Sorry, man. Really. I got me a daddy just like that. Wouldn’t have brought it up if I’d known.”

  It’s like something breaks in Michael then. He backs up against the wall and slides down to the floor, where he sits with his legs sprawled out. He turns away from us. Jerome and I sit down, too. It’s like we’re all suddenly exhausted.

  “My mom was a diabetic,” Michael says.

  We all know what this means. Anyone with any kind of physical illness was killed in the first attack.

  “She was a wonderful woman and she’s dead, and that cockroach survives. All the good people are dead.”

  I don’t agree, but this isn’t a time to argue. We sit quietly, even Jerome. After a while we start painting again. When a bad thing happens, a terrible thing, you feel it all the time, but you don’t have a choice after a while. You go on anyway. I never would have understood that before. It’s something I would have been happy to live my whole life without understanding.

  The aliens have set up tables and a cafeteria line in what used to be a fancy dining room. It has big doors out onto a patio, big stained wood cabinets, and a gigantic chandelier that hangs at the center of the room.

  I see the girl who kissed me that morning sitting at a table. I tell Michael to follow me.

  “That the kissing girl?” Michael says as we pass between the tables.

  I nod. “On the cheek.”

  “Not bad, Tex.”

  “It wasn’t that way.”

  “What way was it?”

  I don’t have an answer. We sit across from her. I’m a little shy for some reason. Michael grins. He’s enjoying my embarrassment, the illegitimate son. He introduces himself and me. Her name is Lauren DeVille.

  Lauren seems shy, too, but she gets over it quickly, which puts me at ease. She tells us about her job in the kitchen. She preps food and works lunch. She tells us about an alien named Addyen who she works for. She says Addyen actually talks to her like she isn’t an animal, like she isn’t a stupid cow or something. She’s one alien who isn’t so bad, according to Lauren.

  “They’re all bad,” Michael says.

  “But the food is good,” I say. True. The aliens can cook.

  “Who’s that?” Michael says. He’s looking at the girl I noticed the other day, the one who looks a little like Paris Hilton: same long legs, thin body, and long blond hair.

  “Lindsey,” Lauren says. “She’s supposed to be some model or something. Was a model. Total narcissist.”

  “What?” Michael says, watching the girl walk to a seat. She does know how to walk.

  “Someone in love with themselves,” I say.

  “I knew that,” he says with his mouth full. He looks down at his empty plate. “The food is pretty good, but there’s not enough of it.”

  “They believe they give us an amount sufficient for our dietary needs,” Lauren says, which is the way they talk. “At least everyone gets something,” she adds. “At least now a fourth of the world’s population isn’t starving or underfed. In a weird way, it’s more fair.”

  “Most people are dead,” Michael points out.

  To me that kind of says it all. Not to Lauren.

  “Of course that’s terrible,” she says, like he’s stating the obvious but missing her point. “I’m just saying no one has so much food they let half of it go to waste while other people are starving. This house is an example of how one person took up the resources of thousands. It’s obscene.”

  “It’s an awesome house,” Michael says.

  She frowns and tells us she read an article about the original owner of this house. He was into strip mining and oil drilling and even the stolen diamond trade in Africa. He would do anything to make his millions.

  Listening to her depresses me even more. This guy was like the poster child for the ways humans are unworthy of survival.

  “Well,” Michael says, standing, “it’s been enlightening.”

  As in not, of course.

  “I’m sorry,” she says to me as Michael leaves. “It was his calling this place awesome that set me off. I can get sort of militant about certain issues.”

  “I understand,” I say.

  We take our trays up to the line. Lauren gets Michael’s, which he left. When we part, there’s a slight hesitation.

  “I’ll see you around,” I say. She smiles. The smile reminds me a little of that sad smile from the morning, a fainter version. Then she’s gone.

  I have a hard time sleeping that night. I keep hearing crying. A soft, smothered sound that I decide is coming from a girl. The strange thing is that the sound isn’t coming from outside me. I hear it in my head. I get a little freaked. I mean, sure, I can hear the Handlers when they send me a message. But the crying isn’t coming from a Handler, and I can still hear it. I think back to earlier, when I saw that image of Jerome fighting in a bar. What is happening to me?

  I know something else somehow. The girl is alone in a room, which is odd because no humans sleep alone in this place.

  I hear Michael stir. Then he starts snoring softly. After a while the girl stops crying, or I stop being able to hear her.

  It’s crazy that I could hear a girl crying in my mind, but I’m in Crazy World now. It’s hard to know what anything means.

  I wish for about the thousandth time that I could talk to my dad. It’s not like I don’t want to see my mom, too, but it’s my dad’s advice I nee
d. I’d ask him, “When the world has gone crazy, how do you keep yourself from following it?”

  Since all I hear is silence, I have to imagine what he’d say.

  “The world has always been crazy, Grasshopper.”

  My dad was a big fan of any TV show or movie that had martial arts in it. That included this ridiculous show from the seventies called Kung Fu. Kwai Chang Caine is the main character, who grew up in a monastery in China, and his master, when he gave advice, always called him Grasshopper. My dad adopted the name for me when he gave me advice. Sometimes it was funny. Most of the time it was irritating.

  “Yeah,” I say to Dad, “but invasion-by-little-green-telepathic-aliens crazy?”

  “You’ve got a point.”

  “How can I hear a girl crying in my head?”

  “You could be crazy,” he admits.

  He could be right.

  “I wish you were here,” I say, and that wish feels like something cold inside me, something so cold it hurts.

  “Me too.”

  “You’d know what to do.”

  “No,” he says. “I’d be just like you. I’d be trying to figure it out. The goal is to stay alive and keep trying to figure it out.”

  He’s right. I say, “I think I hear the girl because she’s here in this house somewhere. Maybe it’s crazy, but that’s what I think.”

  “Smart boy,” he says.

  And he’s gone. And I’m alone.

  To Senator & High Lord Vertenomous:

  Congratulations on having the colony named in your honor. I am confident Vertenomousland will be a great success. The nonhearing species will make excellent labor slaves because of their size. They could be exported to farming or industrial colonies. The hearing will, of course, bring higher prices, and since we didn’t expect this level of hearing, our profits will be higher than originally thought. I did not mean to sound concerned about the hearing product. They are primitive. They only hear when we send them direct, amplified messages through links. I believe we can expect great things from this colony over time.