Alienation

by S E Anderson

  I was relieved my duffel bag had arrived in one piece. I knelt and rifled through it while waiting for someone to answer me, feeling odd and out of place and not sure when it was polite to repeat myself, like when I was a kid and invited to a friend's house for the first time. I pretended to focus on my bag to stifle the awkwardness.

  Still, it was awkward.

  “Not quite sure yet,” Blayde said excitedly, slipping down from her perch. “The reason we have so little light is because there's a huge billboard blocking most of the window. That isn’t sunlight in here: It's artificial UV, pumped in to make this place seem more natural in exchange for stealing their view. Great for the owner, sucks for us. We're going to have to go out.”

  “Hold on, what?” I jumped to my feet, wide-eyed.

  “Which part has got your head in a twist?” Blayde made the sweetest, most patronizing smile a face could make. “Was it the UV light thing? Or the problem of being a real estate owner in a universe where anyone can pop into your home?”

  “Go back to the part where you don't know where the hell we are.”

  “Oh, yeah, that.” She shrugged. “Zander didn't tell you? Universal lottery. We jump and see where the solar winds blow us. Destination: anywhere.”

  “So we could be anywhere in the … entire universe?”

  “Yup.”

  “So the air out there might be poisonous and destroy our lungs and burn off our faces.”

  “It could.” She shrugged again. “But it won't. Back me up here, Zander.”

  “Jumping may be random, but we never arrive anywhere where the atmosphere hates us. That would be awful.”

  “Okay, great,” I said. “Coming from people who can't die … totally reassuring.”

  “Blayde and I can survive pretty much anything, but it doesn’t mean we like breathing sulfuric acid.”

  This was, after all, the deal I had struck to see a different corner of the universe. We can jump somewhere at random, then back to the starting point, but further than that and we can never go back. Dangerous, but it wasn't every day I got to leave the planet, and it wasn't as if Zander hadn't explained the situation before.

  Well, two whole years ago.

  “Not to mention, I'm a fantastic driver,” Zander said, running a hand through his hair. Blayde let out a loud snort.

  “Oh please,” she said. “Until ten minutes ago, you thought I was the one doing the steering. We arrived safely through wishing and praying. A whole lot of praying. Thankfully that hasn't done any of us in yet.”

  “It’s a good thing I remember how to get back to Earth, then.”

  She turned her attention to the wall, drawing her hands over it like she were caressing a body. Her hands were gentle and delicate, running over cracks and crevasses, searching for something. Her eyes were focused, determined.

  Zander watched her, somewhat excitedly, as if wanting to join her, and with a start, I realized I was holding him back.

  “So, um,” I said, trying to break the silence. I was determined not to be the third wheel on this interstellar trip. “How do we get out of here? I don’t see a door.”

  “It’s probably hiding,” Zander replied. “It’s what happens when you max-up your privacy settings.”

  “So how do we … where can we find it? Can we find it?”

  “You have to coax it out,” Blayde grunted, but it was invitation enough. We joined her by the wall. I ran my hands over the stone-like interior, trying to find anything out of place, though not sure exactly what I was looking for.

  I wondered again what the walls were made of; it felt like stone but was wrong, somehow, like it was artificial. My mind shouted Alien Tech on repeat. I took a long sniff, taking in the scent of damp stone. It smelled like the musty cellar of an old English home.

  There were no drafts to follow for a clue to the door's whereabouts, but the noise—or rather, the loud buzz—coming from the outside seemed louder at one end of the room. Blayde paused and inspected that side more intently.

  Her strange methods of searching for an exit had to be the culmination of years of experience in finding herself in tight spots. Her fingers tapped the walls as if she were playing the piano; her right foot came down more forcefully on the floor than her left, leaving a slight pause for her to listen.

  My eyes caught the tarp again. I left Blayde to her search and snuck over to it, determined to peek. I lifted a corner to see the fender of a bright red sports car. At least, it looked like a sports car. I was disappointed. I had expected something a little more futuristic.

  I jumped when someone touched my elbow. Zander crouched beside me, taking the tarp from my hand and letting it fall back in place. “We're trespassing, remember?”

  I nodded, feeling like I had been lectured by a teacher. A bit embarrassing, but Zander was still smiling; no hard feelings.

  “I barfed in the corner.”

  “We should probably clean that up.”

  “Ah, here,” Blayde said from across the room. She ran her hand along the wall, and an arch lit up in the dust. A bright blue light glowed from inside the stone itself. Within seconds, a door materialized as if it had been there all along.

  “What the …?” I stammered, and Blayde smirked.

  “They don't have this on your backwater planet, do they?” She sniggered. Zander rolled his eyes.

  “Security. The door only exists when you need it,” he explained, “and Blayde, calm down, will you? Be polite. We're all—”

  “Yeah, yeah, rainbows and sunshine,” she muttered. “Anyway, ready?”

  I wondered if giant bees inhabited the world outside. Maybe we'd get stung to death by killer bees in a strange twist of fate. Part of me wanted the door to stay safely shut forever.

  But the rest of me wanted to see the world beyond. That's why I had come along, after all; I wanted to see the universe, if only for one short day. To quench my astrolust. A brief trip with my best friend, who happened to be a space-hopping alien.

  Life had stopped making sense the second I hit him with my car.

  Blayde and Zander were ecstatic, their faces radiant with joy and excitement, though they did not voice this aloud. After a long look shared with her brother, Blayde ceremoniously took out her laser pointer, adjusted a small dial on its short handle, and pointed the tip at the crack between the door and its frame. She severed the lock with surgical precision, a motion she had obviously performed many times before.

  She threw the door open, and my heart skipped as I prepared to lay eyes on my very first alien planet.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A Whole New World. A Whole Fantastically Unsettling View

  Here’s a list of things I expected to see outside the door: a city from the future, full of squid-like beings; an alien hillside, grass growing red from soil that had never been stepped on by humankind. Maybe an apocalyptic wasteland, who knew?

  What I didn’t expect was somebody’s living room.

  It looked like any old living room, with warm, orange sofas and odd-brown wallpaper. It was lit, however, by fluorescent lights, basking the space in an air of office dullness. The smell of old shoes turned my nose.

  What I expected to see even less of were five bald men—if they even were men—in black suits, waiting in a row, glaring at us. Not tailored suits, but tight body suits like what a diver would wear. The men bore almost identical expressions of pure concentration.

  Oh, and they were pointing guns at us.

  I should have mentioned that first.

  “Oh, sorry.” I said it like I had waltzed into the wrong room in a house and not just jumped across the galaxy to land in their living room. Not quite sure where that reflex came from, but it was a terrible idea.

  They responded with gunfire.

  The sound was like being inside a continuous clap of thunder. The blasts, loud and all at once, made my ears burst with pain. I was ripped backward, my feet coming out from under me as something red hot whizzed by my ear.

 
Great, first futuristic thing I lay eyes on, and it’s a laser bullet-thing trying to kill me.

  Zander shielded me as Blayde slammed the door shut with a flash of her hand against the wall. All that was left was the stone wall—at least, I thought it was stone.

  The wall of fire continued for a few seconds—bam bam bam bam bam—then slowly subsided. I doubted it was because they were out of ammo.

  “There’s no escape!” said a voice, booming through our small garage. It was a strange accent, but it was clear and in audible English.

  I balked. None of it was English; it couldn’t be. Whatever translator Zander had given me, back when he and I were saving Earth from the not-so-passive-after-all Killians, still worked. And it was really pulling its weight.

  “Come out with your hands or other appendages high in the air or away from any garment of clothing, if you are a garment-wearing being!”

  “You okay?” Zander glanced me over from top to bottom. I brushed him off, breathing heavily. No, panting. I had gone from calm to panic in a half-second flat, but that was the least of my worries.

  I hadn’t been hit, thank goodness, but Blayde had collapsed to the floor. Not the best way to start our trip to an alien world.

  “Is she …” I asked, but I already knew the answer. The bloody hole smack dab in the middle of her forehead confirmed my fears.

  “Dead, yeah.” Zander prodded her limp shoulder with his index finger. “Don’t worry, she won’t be for long. They used condensed plasma instead of metal bullets, so it’s a quick fix.”

  “Yeah, okay, not worrying.” I wanted to throw up again, but the contents of my stomach were already sitting on the other side of the garage.

  “You are surrounded. Surrender now, and your deaths will be quick!”

  “Zander, what the hell is going on?”

  “I have to be totally honest here.” He leaned against the space that had once been a door, placing his ear against the fake stone. “I have only the slightest of ideas.”

  I wanted to roll my eyes, but my energy went into de-escalating my racing heart, preventing this panic from growing into a full-blown attack. I’d had quite a few of them in the years since my brother’s accident and then during the incident at the plant, but no way was I going to have one now. I had my pills with me. My mood was stable, but none of that took the dead body at my feet, or the confused alien at my side, into account.

  I took deep breaths and focused on counting beats, all the while incapable of taking my eyes off Blayde’s. The last time I had seen them so empty and devoid of life had been on Earth. The day the plant blew up and Matt died and Zander and Blayde had left me behind.

  It was an accident; everything was an accident. I forced myself to look away. She’ll always be okay.

  “Well, what is it?” I asked between terrified breaths.

  “What is what?”

  “Your idea.”

  “Oh, that.” He nodded slowly, keeping one ear pressed against the wall. “I don’t think they like us trespassing.”

  “Well, I gathered that much,” I stammered. “What else? Come on, man, deduce something here!”

  “You deduce!”

  “I don’t even know where we are. Were those guys aliens?”

  “Probably?”

  “Why do they look human?”

  Zander lifted his eyebrows and gave me a knowing look. I inhaled sharply. “Fine, I guess people can be both.”

  “Exactly.” He smiled, the nicest human-looking alien I knew, then went back to listening to the wall.

  “So, are they immortal space jumpers too?” I asked.

  “Now isn’t really the best of times for alien genealogy, Sally.”

  “But can they jump in here?”

  “I doubt it. I have yet to meet anyone other than Blayde and I who can do that.”

  “Oh.” A breath. “Oh! Are you saying you’re the only ones in the entire universe who are—”

  “If you do not turn yourselves over this instant, we will be forced to take drastic measures.”

  “Sally, not the time. We’ll have this conversation when we’re not in imminent danger.”

  “Your deaths could take longer than anticipated, and your families will be stuck filling out the forms for the rest of their lives.”

  “You’re not really in any danger, though, are you?”

  “Sally!”

  “And then their children will waste their lives filling out those death forms. You would not want that, we suppose.”

  Zander’s sentence was punctuated by a sharp inhale—not mine, surprisingly. Blayde’s eyes brightened, and she sprang to her feet, wiping the blood from her forehead in one fluid motion. She looked as if she had returned from a bathroom break and was ready to get back to the game.

  “Why are you yelling at the Terran?” asked Blayde. “I thought you said that wasn’t allowed?”

  Zander glared at her with murder in his gaze. He begrudgingly stepped aside to let her have access to the door, though it was evident he wanted to kill her himself.

  It astounded me how quickly someone like her could recover from … well, death. One minute she was on the floor, a hole through her noggin, and now she was brushing it off like it was nothing more than a minor setback. Like a mosquito bite, more annoying than deadly.

  “If you two stop squabbling for one minute, we’d be a lot further along,” she said. “Maybe we should call this place quits and head back to Earth.”

  “No!” Zander and I shouted.

  Blayde lifted her eyebrows, setting her eyes on her brother. “Oh, come on,” she said. “It’s not safe for Sally here. You realize that, right?”

  “When have armed security guards ever stopped us from doing anything? I mean, anything? They’re nothing. An inconvenience.”

  “I’m more worried about who they work for,” she said. “What if they recognized us? Huh? What then?”

  “No one would believe them.”

  “Well, I’d rather go somewhere else, if that’s okay with you. If you still insist on your silly little date night with Sally, you can pick a better planet to have it on.”

  “It’s not a date, sis. It’s a thank you for helping us save her entire planet. Or don’t you remember that?”

  “You’d think her planet not being incinerated by angry Killians looking for their lost kin would be enough thanks,” she grumbled. Zander ignored her, pointing at the door instead.

  “That buzzing we heard earlier, it’s a silent alarm. I think we’re in some rich guy’s safe room. His car’s probably a rare valuable he wants to keep safe from thieves.”

  “The car Sally threw up on?”

  “Next to it, Blayde, next to it!” I stammered, finally able to get a word in. My heart was calming down, the attack averted. But the physical threat from the men outside was far from over.

  “Semantics,” she scoffed. “Right. Well, if you must insist on staying, we should get out of here. Now. Before they …” She sniffed the air, and her shoulders dropped with annoyance. “Before they try and gas us out. Great. Zander, hold your breath. Sally … try not to die.”

  “What?” I sniffed the air and smelled nothing out of the ordinary then stopped myself. That would probably kill me quicker.

  “Out the window, hurry!” She punched her hand against the wall where the door commands had been, sending sparks of blue light scattering across the stone. “That should give us some time.”

  “Did you just lock us in a room with deadly gas?” asked Zander.

  “Yes, and I’m dying to make a fart joke.” She shrugged. “Come on, no way we were getting past them with Sally in tow.”

  With that, she flickered out of existence, making herself useful on the windowsill. It was too high for me to climb, but then again, I didn’t have their helpful gifts.

  Zander clutched my hand. “You trust me?”

  “I still do,” I said, taking it. “Well, I think.”

  A blink and we were on the windowsill.
Jumping short distances, where Zander had a visual reference for our destination, didn’t seem to affect me the way that one, awful interstellar trip had. I shuddered at the thought, and Zander picked up my hair, possibly thinking I would be sick again.

  “I’m all right,” I said quickly.

  “Yeah, you don’t have to keep reminding us,” Blayde said, not taking her eyes off the window where she fiddled with a lock. Zander dropped my hair, brushing it gently off my shoulder. The feeling of his fingers on my skin sent prickles of electricity up my spine, leaving the path he had touched etched on the surface.

  Even if the hand he had been holding was now clammy with sweat.

  “Careful out here,” she said and threw the window open a notch.

  The smell of burnt fuel hit my nose like a literal punch to the face. The runway stench was magnified a few hundred times, singeing my nostrils and making my nose hair curl. I stumbled back from the window, reeling.

  My knees gave out as a coughing fit overwhelmed me. My breath was short, the air coming in small gasps. For a split-second, I was convinced the planet had no air and I had run through the small amount I had brought with me.

  “Smog,” said Blayde, sniffing. “Probably not good for your health, Sal gal, but better than deadly gas.”

  “Sal gal?” I coughed, and Zander ripped the window wide open.

  “We have to try,” he said. I nodded slowly.

  Blayde stepped onto the windowsill and took a left into the odd yellow haze. There must have been a ledge. I followed her out, Zander taking the lead. The air was hazy, thick with smog, and I threw my arm over my nose to block out the horrible, overwhelming stench. Blayde’s form was barely visible in the haze but was surrounded by a halo of light.

  I stepped toward her, and just like that, my breath was gone. Light blinded me from all around—above, below—overwhelming my already saturated senses. It was as if I had stepped out of a cave and into the brightest, hottest day of the year. What I thought was a wall was indeed a billboard, hiding the secret window from view. And I was perched on a ledge, miles above ground.

  Now if there’s anything you know about me by this point, it’s that I’m absolutely terrified of heights. I hate them with a vengeance. I would hunt down and murder heights if I ever got the chance. But this was an alien planet, and I forced myself not to flee in terror. A room where I died of poisoned gas would be much better than facing those dreaded, hated heights.