A Beginner's Guide to Invading Earth

by Gerhard Gehrke

  “You have access to the Commons elevator system,” Not-Kim said. “Explain.”

  “I hacked the system,” Oliop said. His voice croaked and he coughed. “I faked clearance. The first time I took one of the Happy Alien Welcome Committee's elevators. And this time, I used an out-of-service cargo elevator and tied it into the transportation network. The Head Grey must have severed the link, so the elevator reset back to the Commons.”

  “You're clever,” Not-Kim said.

  “I am,” Oliop said with a tentative smile.

  “But you don't have an elevator remote or a key to summon one,” Not-Kim said.

  Oliop frowned, shook his head.

  “So you have no communication with the Grey or any way back to the Commons.” Not Kim paced a few multi-legged steps back and forth as he pondered, a side-to-side scuttle in the small stall's space. “So you're marooned here. Thus of no use to us.” The pacing stopped.

  “Now hold on there,” Jeff said. “We don't know the whole picture. The Grey wants me for a reason. We don't know what yet. He's bound to come after us, if you're looking to meet up with him.”

  “You propose we use you as bait,” Not-Kim said, a statement more than a question.

  Jeff nodded. Oliop gulped.

  “We already have bait,” Not-Kim said.

  “Jordan?” Jeff said. “You have her?”

  “Yes, we do,” Not-Kim said. The Bunnie considered them for a moment. “Maybe we can use you yet. You'll come with us then. Serve as extra bait. We'll see if the Grey shows. But I'll only warn you once. Behave.”

  CHAPTER 24

  NIGHTFALL CAME. Jeff and Oliop had spent the rest of the day in the barn guarded by the two Bunnie in dark suits and human skins. When Not-Kim returned, he loaded the prisoners into the back of a van with no windows in the rear and nothing but hard metal as a floor. The male guard got into the driver's seat. The van drove for a few minutes over gravel roads and stopped, probably still somewhere on the periphery of the school's property. The driver cut the engine. Then deep hums shook the van, a sub-bass thrumming that vibrated Jeff's teeth and made his head hurt. The van shifted, and Jeff felt like they were going up, as if the van had driven into an elevator. Then the sensation of movement ceased, but the vibrations continued, settling into his gut. Any faint light coming from the front of the van went dark.

  “What's happening?” Jeff asked.

  “We're moving,” Oliop said. “Flying. We drove into a ship of some sort.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  “Quiet,” the driver said from the darkness.

  Jeff felt the van shake and shift. Then, after several minutes, even the humming stopped. Jeff tried the back door, slowly lifting the handle, but it was locked. He sat next to Oliop and waited. After about thirty minutes, the sensation of vertical movement returned, this time slowly downward. Shadows moved around the silhouette of the driver, so Jeff guessed they were outside once again. If there was a ship involved, it had dropped them off. Then the driver started the engine, and they drove maybe a hundred yards before the driver stopped, got out, and opened the back of the van.

  Jeff and Oliop emerged into a poorly lit airplane hangar. The driver pushed them into an office in the back of the building where Jordan sat at a desk, twirling a pencil in one hand. She dropped the pencil and ran to Jeff. She smelled like beer. The driver closed the door on his way out, leaving the three alone in the office.

  “What happened?” Jordan asked. “Why are you here?” She got a look at Oliop. “Oh!”

  “I'm Oliop,” Oliop said. He offered a hand.

  Jordan took a moment to look over the hairy, lanky alien. She shook his hand. “I'm Jordan.”

  “Watch out for her,” Jeff said. “She's the one who called the Grey to come snatch me.”

  “I didn't,” Jordan said. “I mean, I did, kind of. I thought they'd pick us both up, that we would go with them as guests, you know. Together. I didn't think the little d-bag would leave me behind.”

  “That's not what happened,” Jeff said. “And I was no guest.”

  Jordan placed a hand on Jeff's arm. He shook it off and moved past her. She had played him once to get in nice with her aliens. It wasn't going to happen a second time. He looked around. The cramped office didn't allow for much pacing space.

  “Tell me what happened,” Jordan said.

  “You tell me first,” Jeff said. “Are you working for these people?”

  “They're Bunnie,” Oliop said.

  “Indeed,” Jeff said. “The giant sixteen-legged spiders in stretched-out people suits? Are you with them?”

  “No,” Jordan said. “I don't know anything about them, not even what to call them. They captured me right after the Grey took you. They took me here. They asked me a lot of questions about the Greys and the Head Grey and how I was first contacted.”

  “I think you owe me an explanation,” Jeff said. “Who are you, really?”

  “I'm who I say I am,” Jordan said. “There's nothing to add, really. What I told you about me is true, except for the part where I've been contacted before.”

  “By the Greys?” Jeff asked.

  Jordan nodded. “Just one Grey. I never saw any others.”

  As they spoke, Oliop walked casually over to the desk. He checked the phone receiver. No dial tone. He broke the phone down into its component parts, considered them for a moment, and moved on to the desk drawers and their contents.

  “So you made friends with this Grey?” Jeff asked. “Enough to be willing to do its bidding?”

  “Look, it wasn't exactly a job interview,” Jordan said. “When an alien ship scoops you up and an extraterrestrial offers you a job, it's kind of flattering considering how many other candidates there are out there. He picked me out of everyone else on the planet to act as his agent. An ambassador to the rest of the galaxy.”

  “He's an 'it',” Oliop said. Jeff gave him a look. “Just saying.”

  “So when it,” Jordan said with an emphasis on the neuter pronoun, “told me to find you and contact you, I obeyed. It told me to not say anything. I obeyed that order, too.”

  Jeff walked the length of the room. It was full of dusty boxes overflowing with papers. He examined one yellowing invoice. It was a bill for something called a B-Check. The date at the top of the paper read “3/11/52.” Several old filing cabinets lined the walls. Another door in the back of the office was locked as was the door out to the hangar. He studied what looked like thick, sticky spider webs along the rear wall. He almost touched the stuff but thought better of it. No sounds came from the hangar. If their captors were up to something, it was being done quietly.

  “So what's up with the Bunnie?” Jeff asked.

  “Is that what they are?” Jordan said. “Why Bunnie? Because underneath their disguise...” She trailed off.

  “I've seen,” Jeff said. He examined Oliop's meager findings spread out over the desk. A hole punch. A stapler remover. Some pennies. His new alien friend took the greatest interest in useless junk.

  “Because that's what they call themselves,” Oliop said. “That's how their name gets translated.”

  Jeff pondered. “Jordan, ask me something in Spanish.”

  “Donde esta el bańo, por favor,” Jordan said. “It means-”

  “Where's the can?” Jeff said. “I already know that one. Ask me something a tourist wouldn't know.”

  “Why?” She shrugged.

  “Humor me.”

  She furrowed her brow and said, “Pater noster qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum.”

  “That wasn't Spanish,” Jeff said. “But I understood it. Lord's prayer in Latin, isn't it.”

  Jordan nodded. “Lots of Catholics know that, you know. Or people that read.”

  “True enough,” Jeff said. “Oliop, say something to Jordan.”

  “Hi Jordan,” Oliop said. “I like your hair.”

  Jordan smiled, touched one of her rebellious purple t
ufts. “Thanks. But what's the point?”

  “I'm not sure if it's important but it might be. When Oliop first showed up, I couldn't make out what he was saying. Since being scooped up by the Grey, I haven't missed a single thing anyone or anything says. I'm guessing the same goes for you.”

  “Translator device,” Oliop said. “The Grey must have given them to both of you. The process is almost instant and quite painless, placed in null-space containers attached near the central nervous system, close to the brain if possible.”

  “Could have fooled me,” Jeff said. “It was neither instant or painless.”

  “You were smuggled in by the Grey,” Oliop said. “Installing a translator was a curious choice. I wonder why it did that?”

  “So I have one of these things inside of me?” Jordan said. “Cool.”

  “No, not cool,” Jeff said. He reached around and tugged at the back of his jumpsuit. “Can we take them out?”

  “Why would you want to?” Jordan said.

  “Because I don't want anything plugged into me, that's why,” he said, with a note of panic in his voice. He was having trouble getting the jumpsuit top off.

  “Okay, chill, just relax,” Jordan said.

  “Easy to take out,” Oliop said. He demonstrated by reaching into the invisible pouch behind his own collar and producing a small, black cube. He put it back and showed his empty hands. “See? Easy.”

  Jordan checked the back of her neck. With a bit of fiddling, she produced her own black cube. She touched it, felt its edges, replaced it.

  “This is too weird,” she said. “But it's amazing. You know, I could go to Russia or Japan or Canada and people would understand me.”

  “At least you would understand them,” Jeff said. “I don't think it works the other way around unless they also have one.” He gave up trying to get his suit off. He took a deep breath, calmed himself, and reached back behind his head and felt around. The tips of his fingers found a small spot at the back of his neck that tingled, like brushing his fingers across slightly electrified velvet. Not painful, just odd. But the thought of something, anything plugged into his brain made him feel nauseated.

  “Whatever,” Jordan said. “I guess I never noticed that after the Grey first contacted me that there wasn't anything that I didn't understand.”

  Jeff touched the pouch and pushed his fingers inside. He felt something small and hard floating inside. He pulled his hand away, decided to leave it alone for now. “What I find disconcerting is the container.” He reached back in, expecting to feel his fingers on his back, but didn't.

  “You get used to it,” Oliop said. “Can remove it if you want.”

  “But if the Grey has it out for you,” Jordan said, “why bother giving you something like this?”

  Jeff got his hand out of the null-space pouch and shrugged. “Oliop, did you find anything back there in my apartment?”

  “Oh, yes!” Oliop said. “Lots of the particles that Fizz was looking for. I scanned your sleeping chamber and the sheets on the bed.”

  “Why are you just telling me?”

  “I forgot. It's been so exciting.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jordan asked.

  Jeff hesitated. Was this some trick? Did she really not know anything about what the Grey was up to? Jeff said, “There's another thing the Grey did to me. Some mysterious particle that one of Oliop's friends thinks could be part of why so many aliens are now angry with me.”

  Jordan said, “So besides the translator and the invisible pocket behind my head, I might also have some kind of, what, infection? ”

  “I don't think so,” Jeff said. “It's not like a bug or virus, but then again, I'm not sure. It got into a staple gun I had used, and Oliop says it's in my stuff back home, but it either left me on its own or the Grey took it out of me when he grabbed me.”

  Jordan checked her arms and looked closely at her skin. “You know, I think I want another shower.”

  “All this means is that we have confirmation that the Grey is up to something, and infested me with some mystery particle. Not only that, but that means that somewhere along the line, I've been contacted by the Grey before.”

  “Insertion, extraction,” Oliop said, mostly to himself. He pondered and nodded. “All without a sentient being's consent. Definite violation of Galactic Commons principles.”

  “Tell me who to complain to,” Jeff said, “and I'll file the forms.”

  CHAPTER 25

  A BLINKING BOARD flashed the message, “Crime Scene Ahead. Authorized Personnel Only Past This Point.” A few maintenance workers stood about, trying to look past the destroyed door to Oliop's warehouse deep in the recesses of the hangar district. Inside, several black-clad Galactic Commons security personnel probed, sniffed, and examined the scene. Most were bots with two arms and a pair of treads for mobility, all squat, neckless machines the size of a sidewalk trashcan. The centerpiece of the scene was an open barrel of dark, viscous waste liquids stuffed with three Frizzin, heads down in the bucket and limp rat tails pointing up to the ceiling.

  The security captain, a sentient mold colony grown around a robotic endoskeleton, stood at the barrel, taking in the sight and waiting for someone or somebot to give him a report. Two techs moved about collecting samples of anything organic found on the floor and other surfaces. A tentacle-faced detective recorded everything with a pen-sized gadget with a bright light on its tip. But the captain remained motionless, the other security personnel moving around him as they worked.

  “Captain Flemming,” the tentacle-faced detective named Ceph said. “Are you awake?”

  “Of course I am,” Flemming said. He still didn't move. Injecting gestures to make other creatures more comfortable with his presence was a waste of energy. “Just observing and thinking. A very deliberate act, this. All three Frizzin drowned in that vat simultaneously.”

  “Everyone dies alone,” Ceph said.

  “Not these three,” Flemming said. “Cause of death?”

  Ceph put away his recorder and checked a datapad. “Initial report, one drowned, the other two died of heart failure within half a second. Conduction fluid in all their lungs. With Frizzin dying together like this, it was a race to see which one died of drowning and which would perish out of sympathy a moment later. Like drowned rats without a sinking ship.”

  “Stop that,” Flemming said, but Ceph wouldn't or couldn't. His species thought and spoke in idioms.

  “Bruises under the fur,” Ceph said. “They were scooped up and dunked in the vat without putting up much of a struggle.”

  “Most beings could handle a trio of Frizzin,” Flemming said.

  “Most wouldn't, though,” Ceph said. “As a rule of thumb.”

  Flemming gave a nod to one of the techs, who removed the bodies from the barrel and placed them on a levitating gurney. The dead Frizzin dripped with the brown fluid, which now ran over feet, treads, and floor.

  “Where's their com device?” Flemming asked.

  One of the techs checked the Frizzin, checked the barrel, and shook her head.

  “Like sweets from an infant. Stolen,” Ceph said.

  “Hush,” Flemming said. “Access their com logs and find out who called them last, who they talked to, and anything else that tells us why they might have been here. Be careful about sovereignty protocols.”

  “While the iron is hot,” Ceph said. “Will do.”

  The techs moved with purpose. Flemming called Ceph to the side out of earshot of the others.

  “I know you're doing your best,” Flemming said. “But if you don't have anything of substance to add, please stay silent.”

  “Because silence is golden,” Ceph said, his face tentacles waving in happy agreement.

  “That's what I mean. Think that but don't say anything. It makes it hard for me to concentrate on the job at hand. Keep this up and you'll be the only sentient left working security, with nothing but a bunch of bots to keep you company. Do I make myself cle
ar?”

  “Like crystallized carbon,” Ceph said. “I'll jump on that bandwagon.” One of Ceph's tentacles went to a neural communication unit attached to the side of his head. The unit would project data to his eye implant. “Techs have surveillance records. Uploading now.”

  Flemming tapped his own implant.

  The two watched the recovered feed as it was transmitted to them by the Commons security computer. The footage was taken from a camera just outside the wrecked door. They saw a human and a gangly, hairy mechanic entering the garage. After a brief fast forward, the three Frizzin followed. No one came after that and no one left the garage. There was no view of the interior. The feed ended.

  “It's the human,” Ceph said. “Smoking gun all in one basket.”

  “We can't begin to speculate what happened yet,” Flemming said. “There are too many unknowns. What happened to the entire surveillance record? Why was only this part of it kept for us to find? And what happened to the door?”

  The door to the garage was unlocked and halfway open, where it stood with its center torn out, curled ribbons of metal preventing it from opening any further.

  “Could have been like that for some time,” Ceph said.

  “Maybe,” Flemming said. “Maybe not. Maintenance bots would find damage like this after a few days, if not sooner, and would fix it. We don't know for sure if it's connected, but it is suspicious. Takes a strong set of hands to tear a metal door like this.”

  “So maybe it's not the human or the technician. But they are our only real lead at the moment, Captain.”

  Flemming nodded and considered his subordinate. When mold colonies get excited, they reproduce and shed off dying cells at an accelerated rate. This produces heat. Flemming felt parched, and he took off his coat. He checked his chron implant. He would be security captain for another ten minutes before the system rotated the captaincy to another race, as per the one-day cycle mandated by Commons law. Ceph was up next and would be the lead in this investigation if he accepted the promotion. If he didn't, the offer of captaincy would go down the line to every Commons member race with a volunteer candidate willing to take the position. Flemming almost smiled at the thought of Ceph or another race taking the helm but decided to save his energy.