by Barlow,M
First, she deciphered the language which took longer than she expected. Once she learned the language, things became easier. The hologram responded to the motion of her hand. Mara swiped to change web pages as soon as she had absorbed the information in them. She learned about the city where she landed, the country, and the world. About geography, military, culture, and history. Impressive how humans packed so much information into their network for anyone with a computer to access.
Smoke came out of the box under the desk—she must have overused it. Oh, well. Mara lowered her palm, facing the box, and clenched her fingers into a fist. A small power wave turned the computer into a small ball of plastic and scrap metal.
As she hovered out of the building, Mara noticed something odd was happening. Drops of fluffy, frozen water fell down from the sky. On the buildings. On the parked vehicles. Everything it touched turned white. The small flakes covered her armor, her hair, her face. It was cold and soft—as soft as the feathers of baby Korks after they’d hatched. She shivered.
As the flakes melted, her anger dissipated. She felt peaceful. Mara stretched her arms—her palms facing the sky—to catch the falling snow. That’s what humans called it. Water dripped from her hair and her armor. Time to seek shelter.
The main road was nearby, and it had well-lit buildings where Mara could meet humans and explore the city. Under the falling snow, she hovered to the main road. When she approached it, she landed on the ground and walked on her feet the same way humans did. She walked to a small, brown, crowded building across the road.
*****
Nick arrived at the little pub on Virginia Street near the university around nine in the evening to meet with his friends. The place was a popular spot for students after cheap drinks in a laid-back atmosphere.
Light snow fell. Nick zipped his jacket and pulled the hood to cover his head. This time in December, Reno should be covered in snow, but this year was dry. The chances of a good skiing season were slim. Lake Tahoe had only received a foot of snow. Frigging global warming.
Although some years, heavy snow kicked in as late as January. The tide could turn in the next two weeks or several months. He was shivering too much now, so he spun around to enter the pub. Nick wasn’t the only one who thought cold weather and beer went well together. A line of people queued outside. The bouncer mentioned something about fire emergency rules and maximum occupancy. At least the waiting area was covered.
When Nick saw the woman, and in the blink of an eye, his frustrations melted. He forgot about scarce snow, fire rules, his friends, and global warming. Tiny as she was, she was gorgeous. Tan with long, green hair, covered in snow. She had big, bright, green eyes, and a slim body.
The girl had to be dressed for a fantasy costume party. She’d painted her face with a light shade of green. She wore a tight, black armor suit that hugged her frame and a black cape. Whoever she was meant to be, she nailed it.
Nick recalled those sexual harassment seminars he had attended when he joined the university. He tried not to stare. But every man had a breaking point, and Nick reached his when she walked past him and the queue. She ignored the bouncer who must have made a mental exception to let her in. Her fire-emergency-defying-butt was as round as two bowling balls. Nick’s body tightened as her smoking figure overwhelmed the usual cold weather response. Before things escalated, she disappeared into the crowd. He waited outside both relieved and disappointed.
Once he got in, Nick walked around the place until he found her. She leaned against the bar. Without wasting time, he walked up to her. Nick had never walked up to a girl in a bar to ask her out before—except that semester abroad in Brazil. The green-eyed girl was gorgeous, but that wasn’t what drew him to her. Something was different about her. Something he couldn’t shake.
He tapped her shoulder and resisted the urge to walk away before she turned around. His roommate—a self-proclaimed philosopher—used to say, ‘beautiful from far, far from beautiful’ when a girl looked good from a distance, but not up close. This one was mesmerizing even up close.
Nick cleared his throat and zoned out for a moment. When he came to his senses, he was staring at the wooden floor. He looked up. Her bright, focused eyes met his, and he froze. Then all the times he saw someone he liked and said nothing manifested in a moment of bravery.
“Hey, I’m Nick.”
“I’m Mara,” she said. Her voice was feminine, yet strong.
She was foreign. Her English was good, but she spoke with a mild accent. Just when he thought she couldn’t get hotter.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
She examined him for a moment then nodded.
The bar was packed. Nick pushed the kid next to him to squeeze in. Then he did everything he could—short of dancing naked—to grab the bartender’s attention. A minute later, he spun around with a full pitcher of beer in one hand, two glasses in the other, and a wide smile on his face.
He looked for a table, but every student at the university was inside the small pub. He led her to a covered area attached to the place. He sat on one of the wooden benches across from her. She looked at him as if he was the first boy she’d ever seen.
Mara pointed to the pitcher. “What is it?”
“PBR,” Nick said.
Her eyes narrowed. She was confused.
Ok, she was foreign. Americans knew what PBR was. “Pabst Blue Ribbon, the official beer of the poor,” he said.
Mara smiled for the first time.
Nick filled their glasses, and they drank the ice-cold beer. She downed hers in one go. Being Irish and German, Nick tried to keep up, but he struggled. Mara drank beer like it was water. In minutes, the pitcher vanished. He bought another, which they finished as fast.
After the third pitcher, his vision became blurry, and the room spun around him. The noise faded, but people were still talking around him. He had enough. What the third pitcher took away in motor function, it gave back in courage. “You wanna hang out at my place? I live nearby.”
Mara finished her beer. “Sure.”
They exited the pub into the cold and the snow. He stopped a cab, and before he opened the door for her, she let herself into the backseat. He opened the other door and got in, thinking how good tonight had been.
First, he’d talked to a girl without running away or calling himself stupid. Then he held his own in drinking and in conversation. Then he sealed the deal and asked her to go home with him. He’d show her around the house, get her comfortable. He hoped his roommate left the house clean this time.
*****
A short, stocky man in the front drove the vehicle on the main road toward the city. Although the ride was slow, it was comfortable and entertaining. Mara waited for takeoff, but the wheels never left the paved ground. When she gave up on the car flying, she looked out the window.
Through the open window, the cool wind and small snowflakes blasted her cheeks. She struggled to keep her eyes open. On her side, there were many buildings. Some were university buildings and others were student accommodations. After a few blocks, they entered the casino area before the car turned into a smaller street. Little buildings that housed a few people lined up on both sides of the road. Different colors, different sizes, different designs. Maybe that’s how they could tell them apart. Humans didn’t have the sensory drive Korrans had.
When the car stopped, she exited, and so did Nick. He led her into the building—a small, old home with yellow walls and a red roof.
“This is my house,” Nick said. “I live with a roommate. Sometimes, my friend Keith stays with us. Don’t worry, he’s visiting his girlfriend in San Francisco.”
Mara nodded.
“The living area is upstairs.”
She followed him into the house when a closed, brown door on her right caught her attention. Mara pointed at the closed door. “What’s in there?”
“Oh, it’s the garage,” Nick said. “It’s small, so we park the cars in the street and use it for the
bike and the guns.”
If he owned a car, why did he pay for one to drive them back? And what sort of bike? And what sort of guns? Mara flashed a beaming smile that would get her whatever she wanted, according to four web pages she’d just looked at. “Can you show me?”
Nick rushed down and opened the door. The garage was dark, but at least it was warm. Her skin stopped shaking. He switched on the light and pointed toward his ‘gun collection’. Mara couldn’t believe she wasted a cute smile on this bunch of primitive weapons that wouldn’t leave a scratch on her armor.
“Can you kill anything with these?”
Nick planted his feet apart in the ground and put his hands on either side of his waist, a challenging pose. “You can kill anything if you have the right ammo.”
Mara shrugged and spun around to see the bike in the middle of the garage. Before she reached it, Nick darted ahead and removed the cloth cover.
She smiled at the sight of the shiny, elegant, blue bike. “I love it.”
“Yeah, that baby can go fast. Last weekend, I rode it to Carson City in twenty minutes.”
Mara looked at the bike and her eyes narrowed. Carson City was fifty kilometers away. “It’s faster to walk.”
Nick scowled for a moment, then he exploded, laughing. “You’re wasted, aren’t you? C’mon, let’s head upstairs.”
The living area had two seats and two couches that crowded the small space. One couch faced a window, and another faced a box on a small, wooden table with black cubes on either side. Shara would’ve dissected the boxes to discover what they did.
Mara took off her cape, sat down on the couch across the window, and grabbed one of the soft, cloth-covered cushions. In the dim light, she could see a part of the next building.
“Are you hungry?” Nick asked.
Mara nodded and picked up a small tablet that looked like it had seen better days, or at least, Mara hoped it did. “You mind if I use this?” She asked.
“Not at all,” Nick said, but didn’t stop. “It’s my roommate’s crappy tablet, a two-year-old slate with a ten-inch hologram.”
Mara put the tablet on the cushion, and in less than a minute, she figured out how to use it. This time, she would give the poor thing short breaks, or it would burst into flames faster than the university computer.
“I hope you like mac & cheese because it’s the only thing I know how to make.”
“Yes.”
Judging by the level of noise he made in the kitchen, he wasn’t a great cook. Mara glanced at him before she started ‘swiping’ web pages. Moments later, she was lost in the expansive digital world on the hologram.
A loud sound accompanied by human voices drowned out the noise he was making in the kitchen. He picked up a small device and put it to his ear. Mara’s curiosity was overwhelming. She listened. But to be on the safe side, she sank into the couch and buried her face behind the cushion to cover her bright eyes.
“Hey!” Nick said, his voice as loud as the noise in the kitchen.
“We’re here. Where are you, dude?” The voice on the communication device asked.
“Yeah, sorry. I met someone, and we’re at my place,” Nick whispered to his phone, his free hand surrounded his mouth and the device.
This time, Mara heard laughter. She smiled.
“I gotta go,” Nick said.
“C’mon,” the voice said, struggling to control his laughter, and so was Mara.
“Later, dude,” Nick said and hung up. His face was red.
She stopped eavesdropping before Nick noticed her.
“Mac & cheese coming up,” he said, and another minute or two of noise followed.
He put two plates of hot, gooey, chunky, yellow food on the table. He grabbed a fork and attacked his plate. Mara liked the smell. She put aside the tablet and glanced at him to mimic how he ate. To her surprise, the food was tasty.
“Do you go to school here?” Nick asked.
She swallowed the food in her mouth. “No.”
“Just visiting, then?”
“Yes.”
A flood of question would no doubt follow. Mara dropped her fork, leaned back in the couch, and removed her gloves to show her hand, a hand like his but not the same. Hers had a small palm and only four fingers.
Nick stopped eating at the sight of her hands. He shot to his feet and waved the fork in her face. An image that took Mara back three millennia in Ancient Egypt where warriors demonstrated their weapon skills before the Queen.
“What the hell!”
Mara smiled. “I’m visiting Earth.”
“You’re an alien?” He asked, even though she had provided the answer.
“Yes.”
“Where do you come from?”
“What does it matter? Do you know anything about space?”
Nick stared at her for a while before he sat down on the edge of the couch. “I saw a documentary once.”
Mara chuckled. “Let me show you.” She moved closer to him on the couch to touch his head with her palm, but he jerked back.
“I thought you meant on the tablet,” he said.
“Ok, based on the phone conversation, you shouldn’t run when a girl tries to touch you. And I doubt your scientists detected my world.” Mara raised her hand and touched his cold forehead.
*****
The green light in Mara’s eyes blinded him. Nick closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the light, Mara, and the living room had disappeared.
Nick was in a small, round sphere, made of silver metal with a clear part in the front. The ship blazed down a bright tunnel for a minute without making a sound before it reached an open space like the solar system. This system had a large planet with at least five moons, circling it at different speeds. The planet and its moons orbited the white star.
The ship flew past the largest moon, close enough for Nick to see the dark-gray metal that made up the soil. Rivers of burning, green lava zigzagged between high mountains, covering the surface. Although the moon was as big as Earth, it was barren.
A thick ring of green gasses surrounded the giant planet and reduced vision. The ship penetrated the gas layer. Rivers of green water flowed through an enormous, rocky continent that occupied a third of the planet’s surface. A vast, light-green ocean covered the rest.
As the ship neared the surface of the planet, cities emerged. They built their cities on top of the gray mountains and in the valleys between them. Forests and deserts separated them. The ship flew to a large city in the center of the planet. It had buildings made of the same metal as Mara’s armor. The buildings dwarfed the tallest skyscraper on Earth. They were well-designed and packed with residents. The city had no houses, suburbs, or small buildings. People in the city looked like Mara but dressed in different fashions, green dresses, business-like suits, or armor like Mara’s, but without the cape.
Nick counted a dozen large cities that must have housed billions of aliens who populated every corner of the continent. Between the cities, there were many military bases with large, disk-shaped spaceships and cannon-looking military towers on the ground.
Near the edge of the continent, a thick belt of dense forest separated the land and the ocean. The ship flew straight into the forest where ancient, green trees provided shelter to countless species of animals and birds. Nick gasped. The dense forest was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. No jungle or forest on Earth compared to its serenity.
A dinosaur-sized lizard fired a ball of energy, the color of the grass, toward a humanoid reptile. The explosion induced shock in the reptile’s body before the lizard consumed it. A giant, whale-like animal with ten feet roamed the forest and fed on low-hanging tree branches. Large packs of flying creatures flew toward the ship—each was the size of an elephant with long, colorful wings and bright, green eyes. Pythons, three meters in diameter and a hundred-meter-long, crawled between the trees. What wouldn’t he give to camp in this forest for a week!
The ship reached the edge of t
he continent and dropped to sink in the ocean. An impressive world of marine life unfolded under the surface. Thousands and thousands of fish. Different sizes, colors, and shapes. The ship went through a hole in the middle of a tube-like fish and sped up to avoid an angry fish that chased it and followed the contours of an enormous, blob-like monster—the size of a mountain—at the bottom of the ocean.
The ocean and the ship vanished.
Nick opened his eyes to find himself on his couch. He was panting, covered in sweat. Nick was disappointed to be back in his house on Earth. A place he now hated. He knew the trip wasn’t real, but it felt real. After seeing this amazing world, he was as depressed as when he went back to school after a summer vacation in Hawaii. Overseas travel to see Earth wonders was now pointless.
Nick ambled to the kitchen, grabbed a glass of water, and returned to the couch. He drank half the glass. “Is that your world?”
Mara was quiet. Her eyes were dim, and she tucked both her hands in her lap beneath the cushion. She missed her world. “Yes, we call it Korr,” Mara said, her tone soft.
“It’s awesome.”
“Thank you.”
Well, only one thing helped him when he was down. Nick picked up two cold Corona bottles from the fridge. He opened both and handed her one.
“I didn’t see beer on Korr.”
Mara smiled and picked up the bottle. “No.”
“C’mon, I’ll show you how to chug.”
Her eyes lit up again, and her lips curved with a thin smile. “You mean the way I did earlier?”
He chuckled. “Touché, alien lady!”
*****
Washington D.C.
The CIA Director, Jack Davies, arrived at the White House at midnight. He joined a meeting of an elite security council including the President, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense.
Jack tried to mask his excitement, but he knew it’d seep from his words. “We received credible information from Australia. They detected an alien landing.”
They scene froze as if he tossed a grenade in the room. The looks on their faces were that of shock, surprise, and disbelief. Two of them reached for their water.
