We're Not from Here

by Geoff Rodkey

  So when the videoconference began and the lone Zhuri’s insect-like head appeared on the communal screens, we all did our best to look pitiful, helpless, and friendly all at once. It was a tough combination to pull off.

  “Greetings,” said the Zhuri. Our translator apps gave her the voice signature of a squeaky-sounding little girl, which would’ve been funny if the situation weren’t so serious. “My name is Leeni. I am a senior official in the Immigration Division of the Unified Government of Choom. On behalf of our people, I apologize that you are no longer welcome.”

  Mom had been given the job of speaking for all of us. “Greetings to you, Leeni,” she said as her translator turned her words into the yeeeehheee whine that the Zhuri could understand. “My name is Amora Persaud. I am a member of the Governing Council of the human race. We humbly ask that you reconsider your decision.”

  Mom waved her hand to indicate the thousand of us who stood behind her. “As you can see,” she explained, “we are a weak, helpless, and desperate group. If you admit us to Choom, we promise to cause no violence and do no harm. If we break this promise, we will leave immediately. We wish only to live in peace, with your mercy and help.”

  The Zhuri took so long to answer that I started to wonder if the data connection was broken. Finally she spoke again.

  “Everyone here agrees,” she said, “that it is best if the human does not come to Choom.”

  “With all respect,” Mom replied, “we are only here because you invited us. And we have nowhere else to go.”

  “That invitation was a long time ago,” the Zhuri said. “Since then, there have been many changes in the Unified Government. Those who invited you are no longer our leaders. Now everyone agrees that for your own safety as well as ours, you should not come here.”

  “We have nowhere else to go,” Mom repeated in a firm voice. “There is very little food and even less fuel on this ship. We used nearly all we had in order to come to you—as you requested. If you do not let us land, we will die.”

  There were gasps and whimpers all around me. I knew the situation was bad, but hearing Mom say that out loud made my whole body turn weak with fear.

  Mom’s voice somehow stayed calm. “You say you love peace,” she told the Zhuri. “If so, how can you allow this to happen?”

  It was impossible to tell what the Zhuri was thinking. Her compound eyes and her tube-shaped mouth never moved. But the pause before she answered was even longer than before.

  “We will call you back,” she finally said.

  Then the screen went dark.

  * * *

  —

  THE NEXT DAY, Naya and I were sitting on my pod, playing Monopoly on her screen. Ila was next to us, lying on her own pod and watching TV, when Mom and Dad practically sprinted across the room to us. They’d been in the control room, and it was obvious from their faces that something big had just happened.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Choom’s government agreed to open the planet to one ‘human reproductive unit,’ ” Mom told us, grinning from ear to ear as she made air quotes around “human reproductive unit.”

  “They’re letting in one family as a test case,” Dad explained. “If it works out, we think they’ll let in everybody else.”

  My sister’s eyes widened. “The family’s not going to be us, is it?”

  It was us.

  “MY BUTT DOESN’T fit in this seat,” Ila complained.

  The government of Choom had sent an empty shuttle on autopilot to take the four of us down to the planet. It had thirty-two bucket seats in eight rows, all made for rail-skinny Zhuri and half as wide as normal human seats. Somehow we had to figure out how to sit in them to strap ourselves down for the entry into Choom’s atmosphere.

  “Nobody’s butt fits, honey,” Dad told Ila. “Let’s just make the best of it.”

  I tried to straddle the dividing ridge between two seats, but it was too high and sharp. Then I tried to sit cockeyed, with half of my butt riding up on one side of the seat, but that made my back hurt. And balancing myself across two of the dividers hurt even more.

  The rest of my family was having the same problem. Dad finally solved it by having us fill the seat buckets with our extra clothing to raise them up to the level of the dividers.

  An extra set of clothing was my biggest perk as a member of the First Human Family to Go to Choom. I don’t know how many owners the light blue cotton shirt and navy pants with rolled-up cuffs had been through before me, but I was grateful none of them had spilled anything nasty enough to leave a stain.

  After I filled my bucket seat with a folded pile of my ragged khakis and grimy Giants jersey, I managed to strap myself in. Once I clicked the harness fastener, some kind of auto-tightener kicked in, squeezing me against the seat so hard I could barely breathe.

  “This thing’s strangling me,” Ila whined from the row behind me. “How long is this trip going to take?”

  “I don’t know, Ila. I’ve never made it before,” Mom replied, almost but not quite keeping the irritation out of her voice.

  Ila’s attitude had gone through some major swings since we’d found out we’d been picked to go to Choom. At first she didn’t want to go at all. Then Mom explained that Ila was a big part of why the GC had chosen our family.

  “We need your voice,” Mom told her. “When we were negotiating with them before we left Mars, the Zhuri seemed very excited about our art forms. Especially music. Having a human down there who can perform live could be huge in winning them over.”

  “But I don’t have a guitar!”

  “We figured you could sing a cappella,” Dad said.

  “Ugh!” Ila screwed up her face. “How many times have I told you I can’t—”

  “Ila. Think about the situation we’re in.”

  Mom didn’t come right out and say The fate of the human race could depend on your singing. She didn’t have to. Ila was difficult, but she wasn’t stupid.

  “I guess I could sing ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ ” she said after she’d thought about it for a while.

  “That’s perfect!” Mom and Dad looked at each other. “And maybe,” Mom said in a gentle voice, “you could rehearse a little up here before we leave—”

  “No.” Ila shook her head. “I don’t need to rehearse.”

  “Ila,” Dad told her, “you have to rehearse.”

  She never did, and I could tell it made my parents nervous. The plan was for Ila to sing “Home, Sweet Home” right after Mom gave a welcome speech when we landed on Choom, and even though my sister swore her voice would be fine, nobody could really be sure without having heard her sing in twenty years. But Mom and Dad didn’t push her. I think they were just glad to see her quit watching TV and get out of bed. In the day and a half before we left for Choom, Ila seemed more energetic and talkative than she had been since Earth. She even managed to make small talk with people, which she hadn’t done in forever.

  At one point, I saw a chatty friend of Mom’s put an excited hand on Ila’s arm and crow, “They’re just going to love you down there! Once they hear that voice of yours? You’ll be a bigger star than you were on Earth!”

  My sister’s eyes lit up like fireworks at the idea. “I don’t know about that,” Ila replied, but the way she said it sounded more like Ohmygosh that would be amazing and now I have a reason for living again!

  It seemed like Ila wasn’t half as excited about helping save the human race as she was about being the center of everybody’s attention. I knew that sounded horrible, so I kept it to myself. But she did make me wish I had something useful to contribute instead of just being along for the ride.

  “So if Mom’s going to give a speech, and Ila’s going to sing, what are our jobs?” I asked Dad.

  “We just have to smile a lot,” he told me. “Our jobs are to be the h
appiest, friendliest, most fun-to-be-around species of all time.”

  “So, basically, we should act like human golden retrievers?”

  Dad grinned. “Exactly like that.”

  I thought it was funny enough to tell Naya, but she didn’t react like I thought she would.

  “It just makes me think about how there aren’t any more golden retrievers,” she said.

  “Oh geez. I’m sorry.”

  We dropped the subject, but when the empty shuttle from Choom showed up and it was time to say goodbye, she hugged me and said, “Be a really good doggie for the aliens, okay?”

  “I will. Ruff, ruff.”

  “Seriously. I really want to get off this ship.”

  “I know. I’ll be awesome. I’ll be so amazing, they’ll all want to adopt me and give me treats. And maybe put a bandanna around my neck.”

  She hugged me again. “Good luck. Ruff, ruff.”

  Then I got on the shuttle in a hurry, because I was scared out of my mind, and I didn’t want Naya to notice. The four of us fixed the too-skinny seat problem, then watched as the last human from maintenance left the shuttle and sealed the air lock behind him with a hiss.

  “How’s everybody feeling?” Dad asked from his seat next to Ila in the row behind me and Mom.

  “Terrified,” I said. We hadn’t even started moving, and my stomach already felt like it was permanently stuck on the first big drop of a giant roller coaster.

  Mom reached out and took my hand. “It’s okay to be scared. We can be scared and brave at the same time.”

  “Why don’t we all pray?” Dad suggested, and we did.

  It helped a little.

  A moment later, the shuttle detached, and we watched the transport disappear from the right-hand windows. I was strapped in too tight to move, but once we were free of the transport’s manufactured gravity, I could feel my hair start to float up.

  “We’re going to do great,” Mom said. “We’re going to be our best selves, and they’re all going to realize how awesome humans are.”

  Nobody said anything for a minute after that. Then I heard Dad ask Ila:

  “Do you want to rehearse your song?”

  “No.”

  “You sure? Just once?”

  “No! It’ll be fine.”

  * * *

  —

  WE DIDN’T SPEND long in zero gravity. Ten minutes later, we were roaring down through the upper atmosphere, the whole ship shuddering like it might fly apart. The g-forces were so bad that I thought my chest was going to crumple like a soda can.

  Then the g-forces weakened, the ride smoothed out, and a cloudy sky appeared through the small side windows.

  “It’s green,” Ila said. “The sky is green.”

  “It sure is,” Dad agreed.

  “But we can breathe the air, right?”

  “It’s twenty-five percent oxygen. Not only can we breathe it—we’re going to feel fantastic. Although the gravity will be a little heavier than we’re used to.”

  “Can I unstrap my harness and look out the window?” I asked.

  “Wait until we land,” Mom told me. “It’s too dangerous now.”

  I stayed put and tried to crane my neck to get a better look out the side windows. We kept descending, and pretty soon we were low enough to see the ground. It was a single color of beige all the way to the horizon, rumpled with hundreds of perfectly shaped, six-sided hills of varying heights.

  It took a moment for me to realize those weren’t hills. It was an endless city of buildings all made in the exact same shape, with just a few scattered hexes of red to break up the dreary beige color. It was like looking at a planet-sized beehive.

  “You know what they could use?” Dad asked. “Architecture.”

  “That’s good for us,” said Mom. “We can give them architecture.”

  We came to a brief stop in midair, about fifty yards up. I could hear a whine like a busted air conditioner from somewhere below us. Then the shuttle began to descend.

  Halfway to the ground, there was a sudden BZZZZZT! as loud as a thunderclap. Blue light flashed through the windows as all the hairs on my body stood on end.

  It felt like we’d been hit by lightning. “What was that?” Ila yelled.

  Before anybody could answer, the ship touched down. The blue light kept flashing outside, accompanied by the same crackling BZZZZT!, and the broken-air-conditioner whine was much louder.

  I looked out the left-hand window. We were on the tarmac of some kind of spaceport. A hundred yards away, where the tarmac met the first row of low beige buildings, there was a massive greenish-brown cloud rising from the ground about twenty yards high.

  The air-conditioner noise was coming from the giant cloud. The crackling buzz erupted again, and the cloud shimmered as a giant sheet of blue electricity appeared for an instant right in front of it.

  Ila ran to one of the left-side windows, peering out as the sheet of blue electricity lit up again.

  “Ohmygosh!” she yelled. “Those are aliens!”

  I got out of my harness and joined her at the windows. She was right. The cloud was a living swarm of thousands of giant-mosquito Zhuri, flitting in midair and whining in their yeeeeeeheee language.

  Dad looked out the window beside Ila. “They’re not aliens,” he said. “They live here. From now on, we’re the aliens.”

  I stared at the swarm of Zhuri on the other side of the crackling, on-and-off sheet of electricity. They were buzzing back and forth, jostling each other in a frenzy. When the sheet of electricity lit up again, I saw one of them shoot backward like they’d been electrocuted.

  “Must be an electric fence,” Dad said. “See how it lights up when they touch it?”

  “What are they yelling?” Ila asked.

  We were turning on our translators when Mom called to us from the other side of the ship.

  “Come over here! There’s a welcoming party.”

  We went over to the right side of the ship and looked out. About thirty yards from us, there was a stage set up on the tarmac. Standing on it were three stick-skinny Zhuri, a giant-marshmallow Ororo, and a little-green-werewolf Krik. They looked like they were waiting to begin our welcoming ceremony.

  A cluster of about twenty more Zhuri and a few Krik were in front of the stage, all of them turned to face us.

  On either side of the small audience, standing in two lines that ran from the stage all the way to our shuttle, were a couple dozen Zhuri holding yard-long metal sticks with two prongs on one end.

  The way they held those pronged sticks reminded me of soldiers carrying weapons. But I knew the Zhuri were peaceful, so I figured they couldn’t actually be weapons.

  My translator was on, but the swarm of Zhuri behind us was too far away for the app to pick up whatever they were yelling. A moment later, though, the shuttle’s speakers came to life with a “YEEHEEEEE…” that the translator quickly converted:

  “PLEASE EXIT THE SHIP.”

  The frame of the cabin door lit up in a glowing invitation. As we walked toward it, I tried to take a couple of deep breaths to calm myself down.

  “Are we ready?” Dad asked.

  “Just remember,” Mom told us, “we’re the kindest, friendliest, most peaceful species in the history of the universe.”

  The handle on the door was blinking. Dad twisted it to open the air lock, and we took our first steps onto Planet Choom.

  It was warm and humid, with a heavy smell of gasoline in the air. As I looked up at the green sky, I heard the electric crackle again, and when the blue light flashed, I realized it wasn’t just a straight fence—it formed a giant dome that covered the whole tarmac, thirty yards high and a couple hundred yards across.

  The electric dome vanished for half a second, then lit up again with another
BZZZZZZT!

  The double rows of Zhuri holding their metal prongs were just a few feet away on either side, staring at us with their blank compound eyes. As the four of us started to walk toward the stage, each Zhuri shifted their metal prong in their hands, pointing at us as we passed.

  If they weren’t soldiers training weapons on us, they were doing a really good imitation of soldiers training weapons on us.

  I hoped nobody could tell I was practically shaking with fear.

  The swarm was behind us, a hundred yards away on the other side of the dome. Now that we were outside, the yells were distinct enough that my translator started to pick up a few stray words:

  “HUMANS…”

  “HOME…”

  “PLANET…”

  “HUMANS…”

  Up ahead, one of the Zhuri on the stage took a bendy-legged step forward and spoke into a small, hovering sphere that must’ve been a microphone, because his voice boomed out across the tarmac. “EEEEEYEEEEHEEE…”

  “THE UNIFIED GOVERNMENT OF CHOOM WELCOMES THE HUMAN TO OUR PLANET—”

  That was as far as he got, because as soon as he started to talk, the swarm’s yells turned into screams, there was a BZZZZT! that didn’t stop, and the dome lit up—only this time, it stayed lit.

  For a long, frightening second, the blue light shining on us from every direction nearly blinded me as the BZZZZZT! drowned out everything else.

  Then the dome vanished, and the noise stopped. The whole electrical field had shut down.

  There was a split second of quiet. Everyone who was facing us—all the Zhuri, the handful of Krik, and the lone Ororo—looked up, then drew their heads back in surprise.

  The two dozen soldier-like Zhuri with the long metal prongs all took to the air, flying past us over our heads.

  As they did, the whole crowd in front of us turned and ran—or flew—away. I was staring at them in shock, wondering how the big blobby-looking Ororo could run so fast, when Mom grabbed my arm.

  “GET BACK IN THE SHIP!” she screamed.