Portals

by Ann Christy

  We’ve thought up lots of different kinds of aliens. We’ve thought up even more ways those aliens might invade us. You've got your parasites, your insects, your robots. We've even dreamt up aliens so ill-suited to our environment that they really should have preferred Mars and skipped harassing Earth altogether. If it’s scary, improbable, weird, or even remotely interesting, then we’ve probably thought of it and told the story to each other in some form or another.

  The one thing we haven't thought of is the thing that’s happening. What’s more, we can’t even be sure that what we’re seeing and experiencing is really what’s going on. The Portal Invasion is a total head-trip. If this were a movie, I’d love the originality. It would be a hit, an honest-to-dollars hit. Unfortunately, it’s not a story and I’m living it. We’re all living it. Originality is not good when the real thing comes to your planet in a blaze of beautiful light.

  We’ve learned a lot since that first newscast at the traffic accident. We now know the portals appear in hundreds of locations at the exact same moment. We’re still not sure how many come each time. The world is a very big place, and no one is watching most of it. We here in the surveillance society of the first world are learning just how much of the planet is unmonitored.

  Even calling those things portals is a stretch, because there’s no way to know their exact nature with any certainty. Most people think they’re portals to another world, another universe maybe. Lots of people believe the portals are cosmic incinerators, or maybe just a way to blink that original person out of existence. If the government knows which of those possibilities is true, they aren’t sharing. What we do know is that they come every thirteen minutes. As in, exactly thirteen minutes. It’s so precisely timed, we could use those appearances as a time standard instead of the atomic clock if we wanted to.

  I think it was a simple mistake that they created a portal in the middle of a busy intersection during that first round of abductions. Then again, no one is sure that was their first round. The uncertainty makes trust difficult, because no one can ever be sure another person is still who they seem to be.

  I used to think we modern humans had major trust issues, but our simple suspicions of before pale in comparison to the level of mistrust we carry for each other now. They could have gone on taking us for an incredibly long time had they sent portals to bedrooms or bathrooms or couches where people spent their evenings in superficial online communication. Those public displays let us in on the game they were playing.

  They learned from that mistake though. They—whoever they are—learn from all their mistakes. Portals don’t show up on streets anymore, or inside movie theaters, or busy conference rooms. It must be difficult to snatch humans simply because we’re so darn social. Our herd mentality is a stumbling block.

  Panic has been replaced by a constant state of mistrust and fear. It’s not fun. It’s also confusing, because there’s no logic to any of it. Why take a dentist? A factory worker? A sous chef?

  Even more baffling is the question of why the snatchers are sending back exact duplicates to keep living the life of the original. If they want our planet, why put the humans back? I keep hearing the same phrase I heard on that first day; stupidest invasion ever.

  It’s as if we’ve been invaded so often, we’ve become good judges of what a decent invasion looks like. Who knows, maybe we have. I think it’s much more than an invasion, and I’m not convinced we’re capable of understanding the motives of whoever is doing this. I also don’t think we can stop it.

  And that’s what makes it the best invasion ever.

  Three

  The dead sous chef, the guy in line at the bank, and the man in the tan coat provided three of the early subjects our government used to figure out exactly what the replacements are. I’m sure other countries had their own versions of those same people. And that’s what we’re calling them now; replacements. It’s taken four months, but the various governments of the world have at least gotten the terminology agreed upon. They’ve not managed much more than that.

  The people who pop out of the portals are, without a doubt, people. Just standard humans. With so many people in the DNA databanks, or having paternity tests, or tracing their genetic ancestry, it wasn’t hard to get comparison DNA for reported replacements.

  Even if DNA matched, something would have to be different, right? How could a replacement remember a life they didn’t live? Memory testing became a huge thing. People started using code words and memories that only they would share as ways to ensure their friends and family were still their friends and family.

  Of course, that didn’t work.

  The memories are the same. The brain scans are identical. Their DNA has no variation from the original. They don’t remember coming out of the portal and many simply don’t believe they’re portal people at all. Those portal people are unequivocally us. To my mind, that’s another reason to look at this with some fresh perspective. It’s the most unlikely of invasions. If the whole point is to take over the planet, why take it over with more of us? I’m not even going to think about some of the crazy conspiracy theories out there. More of those show up online every day.

  So, where exactly does that leave me four months after the first portal opened on Earth? After four months of portals opening every thirteen minutes to extract another thousand or so humans?

  If I’m precise—and precision seems called for—then I’m currently handcuffed to my mother, making a tight fist while she chops vegetables for dinner. She’s fast, ridiculously so, and her knife moves up and down on the carrots like she’s a machine. She jerks my arm as she reaches for another carrot every few seconds.

  The only positive is that I no longer worry about AP Calculus. I should be starting my senior year in about two months, but school is not a priority anymore. I’m not the only one who gets their education sporadically from a computer with my parent attached to my wrist, or not at all. The general philosophy seems to be that we’ll catch up once we figure out how to stop the portals.

  “Mom, that’s enough carrots!” I exclaim as she reaches for the ninth one.

  She pauses, knife in the air, then looks at the bowl of sliced carrots. “Oh, yeah, I suppose it is.” She smiles brightly. “You like carrots, Lysa, so that’s good.”

  “I do, but if you’re making stew, it should have more than carrots in it.”

  She nods, then jerks me along as she heads for the fridge. She pushes a bag of potatoes and a huge onion at me, then rummages for whatever else she needs in the deep recesses where we have a dozen half-empty obscure condiments. I’m generally scared of all those sauces and pastes. Most of them are hot enough to make snot run out of my nose.

  “We’re almost out of chicken demi-glace. Make sure we order some.”

  “Sure thing,” I respond, but I know I’ll forget by the time she brings me anywhere near the shopping list.

  I turn away while she chops the onion—another downside to being attached at the wrist—and watch the TV on the wall by the table. We have it almost always set to news. One channel that used to be general news is now entirely devoted to the Portal Invasion.

  Today, the big news is that the first member of Congress has been confirmed replaced. He seems as surprised as everyone else. At the press conference, he looks like he’s still waiting for someone to tell him it’s a big joke. Like every other replacement, he has no memory of tossing the original version of himself into the portal, but the screaming assistant and the neatly cut handcuff chain gave him away.

  “Do you think it really matters that’s he’s a replacement?” I ask.

  My mom wipes onion tears from her eyes and tugs my handcuff in the process. “Of course, it matters! They aren’t us, even if they think they are. I mean, what happens to us, the real us?”

  I shrug, because I’m in the dark like everyone else. Some people have tried to toss cameras through portals—after killing their doppelgangers, of course—but nothin
g sticks. The cameras pop back out. So do chairs, punching bags, and random dead bodies. Everything that isn’t a living person pops back out. I’ve even heard of dogs getting tossed in, but they always come back out too, a little dazed, but none the worse for wear. The portal only accepts a living human. Period.

  Believe it or not, we’ve had several murder investigations after people tossed a spouse into the portal when their own replacement came through. You have to wonder what they were thinking to plan to get rid of their one-time soulmate in such a bizarre way.

  Even weirder, sometimes the authorities don’t press charges. No evidence and no body. Go figure.

  There’s the opposite camp too. It’s not all bullets and bayonets. There have been some replacements who found themselves alone when they woke up from whatever fugue they’re in when they first come through to our world. Whole families link up and jump through if a portal comes. And it works. As long as they’re touching and close together, they go through. But where?

  As to what happens beyond the portals, we’ve got nothing. No camera images, no returnees, no nothing. There are rumors that the government has sent soldiers through, but I’m not sure I believe that. No one knows where the next round of portals will appear, and no one would miss it if there were soldiers stationed every twenty feet around a city to catch one opening. If we have sent a soldier over, then it’s by luck or chance.

  Or because they were replaced.

  So, my mom’s question about what happens to the original version is completely unanswerable. Still, we ask each other all the time. Everyone does. I know I wonder about it almost constantly.

  I’m not sure it’s anything bad at all. It could be something amazing. I keep those thoughts to myself. My mom would flip out, and everyone I know would immediately view me with suspicion. More than likely, I’d be reported as a possible replacement and hauled away to wherever they take known or suspected replacements. And just like all the people who went through portals, suspected replacements taken by the government never return either.

  “It can’t be an invasion,” I say. This situation has been going on for months, which means millions of those replacements are wandering around our world. Some have been caught, yes, but that’s really a drop in the bucket. Everyone replaced while out of sight of another person is still out there.

  Mostly, anyway. There are a growing number of people like my mom, and they’re cutting down on the number of replacements that survive. They take readiness to a whole new level.

  Even the government encourages this kind of readiness. Treat the replacements as an imminent threat. That’s the guidance from the government and people are following it, a first when it comes to governmental edicts regarding what we citizens should and shouldn’t do.

  There are signs, brochures, and web pages devoted to the best way to dispatch your replacement if your time comes. Gun sales are brisk…to say the least. At first, people wondered why those being replaced didn’t fight to the death, even with their fists. It turns out we don’t have that option. Once a replacement gets close, the original freezes, unable to do more than lift a finger in their own defense. If you’re going to fight, you have to do it within a few seconds of the portal opening.

  That’s a very short window for defense, so people take it seriously. Including my mom.

  My mom starts in on the potatoes like they’re portal potatoes that simply must die. She hates it when I say this stuff. Between chops, she says, “It is an invasion. It has to be. There’s no excuse or explanation for it other than an invasion.”

  “It will take almost two hundred years to replace us at this rate! It’s stupid! There must be another reason. And they’re just people. Why invade us to replace exact duplicates?”

  My mom’s hand pauses and she gives me a sharp look. “You sound like those religious people. Is there something we should discuss?”

  I’m almost tempted to say I’ve had some form of religious revelation. She’d be more likely to understand that. As it stands now, she can’t find any logical reason for my views. It’s not like such a belief would be unique. Big parts of the population—whether members of established religion or not—have decided that the portals are being sent by their deity of choice. Some think it’s the rapture, with the portals coming for those who will ascend to heaven.

  Technically, we’re Hindu, though my mom isn’t big on formal observances. She’s left me to figure out what I believe without pressure. She says faith is very personal and all people will find their way to their own hearts if given the space to do so. So, she’s given me space. She might be regretting that now, given my views on portals.

  While I don’t want to make any blanket statements, I’ve searched online and it turns out that many Hindus are in the camp of the non-fighters when it comes to portals. They aren’t the rapture people, but they don’t fight being replaced either. I think my mom is worried I’m letting that influence me, but my views are based purely on logic.

  “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m not about to take holy orders on you. I just don’t want to assume this is a bad thing. We have no way of knowing, so why assume it’s bad?”

  The knife in my mom’s hand slams down and she rounds on me, her face red. “No more! No more talk of that—”

  The strident beeping from my mom’s phone makes both of us freeze in place. One minute till the next portal. We do this every thirteen minutes. At night, we take shifts. One of us wears earbuds with the alarm on high volume, while the other sleeps. It’s been hard on both of us, but harder on her. She doesn’t truly trust me not to fall asleep, so she takes more shifts. With a jerk that makes the cloth around the handcuff chafe at my wrist, she grabs one of the two guns off the table and shoves it into my free hand. Then she grabs the other.

  “Safety,” she says.

  “Check. Safety is off.”

  She nods and presses me against the wall, squeezing next to me as tightly as she can. No matter how many times I run the numbers for her—yeah, yeah, go ahead and tell me that my AP Calculus was good for me—she acts like she received a telegram saying I’m next with every thirteen-minute window.

  “You remember, Lysa, you shoot the moment a portal opens and anyone walks out. You got it? You shoot. I don’t care what they look like.” Her hand is tight on the fully-loaded semi-automatic weapon in her hands.

  She gets the big gun that needs two hands, while I get the pistol. We have to make concessions, what with the handcuffs and all. It helps that my mom used to be in the military, so unlike most Americans who’ve bought guns recently, she actually knows what she’s doing.

  She gave up the excitement of her beloved Navy career when I was little and starting school. With a brand-new divorce decree and her parents too far away to help provide stability when she deployed, she chose the life of a Pentagon paper-shuffler over the career she loved. Even so, she’s still military at heart. The way she readies her weapon gives that away.

  Even if she’s serious and ready, I’m very tired of this. The odds are so slim. We’re wasting our lives defending against something that will probably never happen. I roll my eyes, because what else can I do? “I know, Mom. If I see any purple glow, I’ll murder it in a hail of bullets.”

  Her fingers dig into my dangling hand and she hisses, “It’s not murder. I don’t care if it looks just like you or me, it’s not us, and it’s not here for any nice reason. You eliminate it. That’s all. Don’t pay attention to anything it says or does.”

  I’ve pushed her buttons too far. Her face is sweaty and red, her breathing too shallow and fast. She dreads this as much as I do. We’ve learned from the experiences of others that it’s incredibly hard to shoot yourself, which is essentially what we’ll be forced to do.

  It’s even harder to kill someone you love, like a daughter. The person that comes through will be one of us, no differences at all. I think that’s why my mom sweats and shakes like this. She fears it will be me. And to stay here on Earth
, we will have to shoot it. She would have to shoot her daughter and I would have to shoot my mom. That’s a tough situation to contemplate.

  The alarm sounds on the phone. Thirteen minutes. Both of us suck in a deep breath and hold it, searching the open floor plan of our house for any hint of a white or purple glow. After a few seconds, there’s no sound of footsteps or anything else.

  The aliens—or whatever they are—are always on time. We’re safe. For this thirteen minutes, we’re safe.

  My mom wipes her forehead and upper lip, her pent-up breath coming out in a rush. With a shaky hand she lowers her gun, then tugs me along to put it on the table.

  “Another one down,” she says, patting the gun I place next to hers. Our nice table is now covered in scratches from putting our guns down like this every thirteen minutes over the course of so many months. Given how often my mom scolded me for leaving sweating glasses that might create rings on the polished surface, it surprises me to see how battered it is at least a few times a day.

  Yeah, another one down. The rest of my life means a whole lot more of these events. What’s going to happen when I finally meet someone I want to date? That’s assuming she ever lets me go anywhere to meet someone. Will she tag along with a rifle and stand us back to back every thirteen minutes?

  “Mom, I need to go to the bathroom.”

  She glances at the clock and slips the key from her neck. “Okay, but you’ve got ten minutes and no more. Hurry.”

  “Jeez,” I answer, embarrassed. She knows way too much about my private stuff now that we’re locked together.

  It feels good to have my hand free, even if only temporarily. My wrist is chafed and sore, the skin red and thin for a good three inches centered on my wrist bones. Even with the cloth padding, it’s tearing me away layer by layer, leaving a delicately painful ring of nearly transparent skin where my wrist used to be. I know it’s doing the same to her, but she never complains, so I try not to either. I don’t see the point of the handcuffs anyway.