The scene cut away from the convention center. The four-sided display in the Committee meeting chamber showed the interior of a surgical theater from a high camera angle above a steel table circled by multiple machines and computers. On the table lay Lindsey Sheldon's dead alien.
“We extracted the rest of this footage from a military base's network,” the Grey said to the Committee. The rest sat in silence and watched.
Green-gowned humans leaned in over the corpse.
The shortest of them said, “We have what we will describe as a classic Grey. Bipedal, bilateral orientation of face and external features. No nose. Sex unknown. Hair: none.”
He lifted an eyelid with a plastic gloved hand.
“Eye color: milky white, with no visible division of iris and pupil or any of the rest of a human eye structure. We'll examine this more closely in a moment. Creature's age is uncertain. Length 122cm, weight 38.4 kilos. No birthmarks or identifying features. Pronounced rib structure shows through the skin. Head tapers from a pronounced cranial lobe down to a small jaw with fourteen teeth. Below the head on the neck are what appear to be gills. Three on each side.”
He took a scalpel from a tray of other tools.
“The first incision will be below what we will call its sternum.”
He cut. The grey flesh parted under the scalpel, revealing a tumble of purple guts. He put the scalpel down. With his fingers, he parted the guts and peered between the ropy, purple entrails. He then scooped the guts out of the body cavity. An assistant brought over a steel basin and the surgeon plopped his load therein. The intestines hung in strands between the body on the table and the basin, dripping clear liquid. He picked up the scalpel again, and, with a flurry, the intestines were cut free. The assistant took the basin away, where another man in green scrubs helped dump the contents into a clear baggy, which was promptly zipped closed and labeled with a black marker.
“Underneath the intestines is one of the things we found interesting in our initial scans,” the lead surgeon said. His hands went into the cavity and there was more cutting. The dead Grey's body rocked gently as the surgeon cut. The surgeon picked up a longer blade with serrations on one side. He began to saw with quick motions. Other observers leaned in close, but moved back again when the surgeon was ready for his next step. He put the saw down and picked up toothed forceps. He removed a piece of meat the size of an onion from the Grey, this organ also dripping with the clear body juices. The onion organ went into another basin.
“What that part is, we don't know. It's not stomach nor heart.”
He pushed a finger into the onion.
“It seems to release a scent. Perhaps a musk sac? Let me now move on to the head.”
The surgeon picked up a skull saw with a small, diamond-bladed cutting wheel.
The view on the display changed to a group of eight military men in a dimly lit room that overlooked the surgical theater. The men looked on, a few whispered, and even more shook hands and slapped backs. One produced a flask, took a sip, and passed it along.
Back at the committee table, the Trin chaircreature said, “They're celebrating.”
“I edited this,” Oliop said with a smile.
The Trin glared at him. She bared twin rows of tiny, pointy teeth. Oliop shrank into his seat.
The Grey paused the video and waited for the Committee to absorb what it had just seen. The Trin gave the Grey a nod. The video began to play again. Back again at the operating table, the surgeon cut at the dead alien's skull, his tool whining and sending up a small cloud of white bone dust. The Grey muted the sound, but the footage continued.
“We acknowledge that when facing the unknown,” the Grey said, “that many creatures react badly out of fear and panic. Some of us here went through a period of barbarity before joining the Galactic Commons. That is why the probability projections have been so successful. We know when to wait and when to extend an invitation. By their virtual models, our scientists have been able to anticipate antisocial behavior.”
The surgeon onscreen removed the top of the skull like it was a cap. He went to work scooping out the brain into a steel bowl.
“I submit that all probability projections concerning the humans are unreliable,” the Grey said.
The committee watched as the surgical theater grew bright. The humans around the surgeon applauded, and the surgeon acknowledged this with a demure nod. Eventually, the theater emptied but for a lone orderly in protective gear. He wrapped the final bits of the Grey corpse with thin plastic and began to clean up.
“End projection,” the Grey said.
The image of carnage winked out.
“But what does that mean?” asked a blue sphere with a big eye and many, many smaller ones. “This has been our procedure for every species inducted into the Commons for generations.”
“It means the entirety of outcomes for the humans is not known,” the Grey said. “There is a variable which allows for the events which we have experienced.”
“Bad luck,” Oliop said.
The Trin chaircreature growled at him. “Silence, technician,” she said.
“'Luck' is just perceived probability,” the Grey said. “What we are seeing is a fundamental error in judgment of human potential, a gross miscalculation. The perception that humans are advanced enough to rise above their inherit flaws is a mistake.”
“Perhaps it's only the nation where Jeff Miller resides,” the Trin said, “Judging by the scanned body of media, no one likes them very much.”
The Grey coughed. It released a stench like burnt popcorn and shook its head.
“No,” the Grey said. “We have decades of records and reports of unlicensed contacts with Earth's citizens from many of their other nations and from all of their inhabited continents. When possible, they reacted like any lower civilization. They stab and shoot and hunt anything foreign. Mostly stab. That behavior hasn't changed.”
“So do we conclude that the humans are malicious, like the Bunnie?” the Trin asked.
A muttering broke out at the table. Oliop eeped. No one ever mentioned the Bunnie at polite gatherings, let alone angry dressing-downs or official rebuke parties, but there it was. The Committee looked at the Trin as if she were the one emitting the odor and not the Grey.
“It must be considered,” the Trin said defensively. She nodded to Oliop. “Image: Bunnie.”
Oliop turned on the projector again and tapped a few keys. A creature appeared above the committee table with sixteen thin, long legs sticking out of a jointed thorax, eight legs on the ground and eight up and out as if offering rude gestures all around. The thing was covered in deep brown hair and had two sets of multiple eyes set above four mandibles. Its abdomen was big and round. The Bunnie looked like two earth spiders copulating like a pair of mammals.
There was a collective gasp. Most at the table hadn't seen an image of the Bunnie in quite some time. Oliop's ears folded back, and his dull brownish fur flattened.
“The Happy Alien Welcome Committee's greatest failure,” the Trin said. “An invitation extended. As we all know, the Bunnie proved to be savages and had somehow deceived us during the early part of the assessment process. They would have destroyed the Galactic Commons for the sheer joy of it. We rejected them and took away their access to our transportation system.
“The Bunnie have been left to their own devices on their home world. Their limited nuclear fusion tech will keep them contained to their local system. We may have to assign the same fate to the humans.”
The Grey gave a solemn nod.
“All in favor of suspending further contact with the humans?” the Trin asked.
They all raised hands and appendages in favor. Except Oliop.
“Can't we just try one more time?” Oliop asked. He avoided eye contact with everyone.
The Grey shushed him.
“Committee members only, technician,” the Trin chaircreature said. “The motion carries. Unanimously.”
CHAPTER 7
THE MIWOK ROAD SCHOOL in Ross County, California, did not fire Jeff Abel after his first week. He wasn't particularly surprised but felt as if something was a touch different, like how residents near Niagara Falls would feel if the falls stopped running one day. Just too quiet, too calm. He couldn't put a finger on the sensation.
It was day nine of his employment, and he had a wallet with more than twenty dollars in it. He knocked yellow dust from his jeans and tan work shirt. The shirt still smelled clean from a recent wash.
The bed in the caretaker's lodge proved comfortable. The cottage was a cozy one-bedroom granny unit with all the basic amenities and not a storehouse for chicken coops, a rickety fifth wheel, or a shed with delusions of habitability like some of his previous dwellings. A large oak tree near the empty horse barn provided a shady spot to park his truck. The vehicle had gas in the tank and had actually started without any fuss since his arrival here. Grasshoppers hummed and buzzed in the wild grasses. The air felt warm, but like the rest of the past week, rather than getting warmer it would cool as the evening fog rolled in. Jeff had slept well the night before and had eaten two scrambled egg sandwiches slathered in salsa that morning, so he wouldn't be hungry until supper. The coffee pot worked, as did the microwave and toaster. The breaker only tripped once when he tried working all of them at the same time. He had replaced the bad breaker yesterday. He liked this place. This was the happiest he had been since the breakup with his wife, leaving home, and zeroing out his identity. So what was it that made him feel off?
The odd sense lodged itself between his head and gut, akin to the feeling that he had left the stove on, which he hadn't. Maybe the salsa from breakfast was exacting revenge.
He checked his job assignment list. It covered groundskeeping, painting, and general handyman tasks for the twenty-acre facility. It was midsummer, so no students were on campus, nor faculty, nor anyone else.
He pushed a black wheelbarrow to a pile of large gravel, picked up a shovel, and began to load up. Each shovelful of gravel raised a grey puff of dust as he dropped it into the wheelbarrow.
A silver Mercedes, an older four door with a squared back and white-walled tires, rolled up and parked next to Jeff's truck. An older Asian man, once tall but now bent, clambered from the car and hobbled over to Jeff. He wore a sleeveless white undershirt tucked into grey wool slacks and a blue and gold CAL baseball cap.
“Morning Mr. Kim,” Jeff said.
Mr. Kim gave a wave. He put hands on his hips and looked at the gravel, at the wheelbarrow, and at the rut besides a long, grape vine-covered pergola where the fresh gravel was going.
“Got to this already, did you?” Mr. Kim said.
Jeff nodded, wiping sweat from his face with a napkin from his back pocket.
Mr. Kim laughed. “Don't worry about running out of things to do. I'll have more for you! You work too fast.” He examined the gravel pile. “You know, if you put running the new cable line from the office to the caretaker's lodge on your to-do list, you could have TV and internet. Take any of the TVs from the offices. No one is using them now.”
“That's okay, Mr. Kim. I'll get to that when you want me to do it, but I like the peace and quiet without it.”
Mr. Kim shook his head. “Suit yourself. It can be too quiet out here. Too quiet for me.” He laughed again.
***
Mr Kim left after hobbling around a few of the school's buildings, adding a few things to Jeff's list, and noting the things no longer on it.
Jeff weed whacked thistles, grass, and clovers from the edges of the barn. Of the clovers, Jeff noticed an abnormal number of them had more than three leaves. He mowed them down with the rest of it, luck be damned. Jeff rehung a stall door on a fresh pair of hinges that he had screwed to a new jamb. He scraped pebbles and brown, matted hay out of the barn with an iron rake. No one kept horses in the stalls anymore, but if more horses ever came, the barn was ready.
He took his staple gun out of his truck. Gave it a click. Empty. From the school's tool shed, he loaded his staple gun and got a pack of plastic "No Trespassing" signs. He walked the edge of the property along the wooden fence line and took down the old, faded signs to replace them with the new. When he got to the back of the property, he took a break and sat on a lichen-covered rock next to a pond.
A big, white heron stood motionless at the edge of the pond. A small bluegill was about to swim into the heron's striking range, but the water around it rippled as it turned back and returned to the center of the pond. The bird gave Jeff a disapproving look and took off, its big wings awkwardly striking the air with the first beats of flight. Jeff watched it go.
“Sorry, pal,” he said.
A lone coyote loped towards the pond. It stared at Jeff impassively. It lifted a leg, marked a spot, and trotted away without a second look.
The insects in the grass buzzed and clicked. Then they, too, begged off and were silent. Things got eerily quiet. And then, less so.
A deep thrum rattled Jeff's teeth. There was a pop from just behind some of the larger rocks. A flash of white made Jeff hit the dirt, momentarily blinding him. The skull-rattling sound stopped as quickly as it had begun. Jeff's eyes adjusted, the afterimage of the flash fading. He got up, clutched his staple gun, and brushed off the dirt.
He rounded the rocks and saw a cube shaped object about the size of a compact car, its surface bathed in light. The light formed a pattern of sorts, sets of lines that ran and turned on the cube's surface like illuminated circuitry. These lines grew dim. They faded and went out. One side of the cube was open, revealing the well-lit interior. Lights and buttons glowed and flashed from within. Several blinked an angry red.
Jeff got closer. He looked inside the cube and saw someone clad in blue coveralls fussing over a control panel. The person was tall, lanky, and very hairy, with brownish grey hair from the collar up covering his entire face. He wore a large mustache and had big oval ears that stood up like a bat's might. Jeff was about to say something when the stranger's tail appeared, wrapped around a pair of pliers that the stranger exchanged for some sort of screwdriver.
The stranger's mustache twitched. He grunted, hit a control. Some lights stopped flashing while others began. He muttered to himself in sing-song frustration and continued to fuss with the panel.
Jeff did a shoulder check, looked for any tells of a hidden camera crew, a previously unseen duck blind with a college humor troupe, or perhaps a zombie Allen Funt with a new gig, but he saw none of that. He moved his tongue around his mouth. Slightly dry. Was there some hallucinogen in the aerated weeds he had whacked, or was his breakfast treating him to a lucid dream? Or was this exactly what it looked like, smelled like, and felt like as he touched the cube? An alien with a conveyance of some sort had just appeared spontaneously, and the hairy creature's ride had just broken down.
“Uh, hello?” Jeff said.
The pilot jumped, screamed, and scrambled back into the limited space of the cube. He dropped his tools. He shielded his face with his hairy arms. Jeff leaned into the cube and looked around.
“Hi,” Jeff said. “I'm not going to hurt you.”
The pilot's two ears jerked up in surprise. He shrieked something and waved his arms. The pilot sounded to Jeff like an aggressive chimpanzee about to attack his face.
Jeff jumped back and threw up his hands to protect himself. His staple gun went flying. The hairy alien sounded angry, but besides a series of expansive gestures, he didn't move from his spot by the cube's control panel. Jeff relaxed a bit, moved back to the cube's portal. The alien continued his angry noise. Or was it speech? Maybe this was some advanced civilization's version of Laika, the Soviet Union's space dog, the first animal to orbit the Earth. But this Laika knew how to use tools, and it had opposable thumbs. Finally, the alien stopped screaming. He tentatively went back to work and tinkered some more, with an eye on Jeff the entire time. The cube hummed to life for a moment, lit up, and went dark again.
Jeff wasn't normall
y one to state the obvious but he couldn't help himself.
“Something's wrong with your spaceship,” he said.
The alien picked up the screwdriver and made an adjustment. Tried with another tool provided by his tail.
Jeff leaned inside again, careful not to spook the stranger. The alien still could be someone in makeup. Or maybe a Muppet. But the cube was here, hadn't been before, and was unlike anything in Jeff's experience.
“This is the craziest thing I've ever seen.”
The pilot smacked the console on its side. Besides a satisfying thump, nothing happened. He hit it again. His brow furrowed as he considered the machine before him.
“Can I help?” Jeff asked.
The pilot touched three buttons on the face of the controls simultaneously. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nada.
Jeff looked around at the rest of the ship's interior, trying make sense of the lights and wires, but their purpose escaped him. The pilot kept an eye on him. With a third attempt at the controls, the system rebooted. The control panel got dark, and then the entire cube lit up. Jeff flinched at the sudden burst of light. Then he grinned as he watched the inside of the vessel come to life. It was hypnotic. Psychedelic patterns of color swirled about. A deep hum began from under the floor of the cube that reached into Jeff's bones. It made his skull hurt.
Transfixed, he didn't notice as the pilot approached him. He gave Jeff a firm but gentle shove out the cube's portal. Jeff stumbled back, surprised. The light show continued on the outer surfaces of the cube, the patterns receding inwardly as if the cube were an abyss, drawing the colors inside and away, only to recycle them over and over again. There was no heat. Jeff raised a hand tentatively as to touch the cube's surface, but he hesitated.
A Beginner's Guide to Invading Earth Page 4
