by Ruby Ryan
Oh God. The paperwork for this sort of thing was going to be monstrous.
I groaned and turned on the TV to drown out the other sounds, but then quickly turned it back off. Even if it were only a false alarm, it wouldn't do for rumors to spread that the Base Commander watched Gilmore Girls while braver men and women risked their lives.
Instead, I began fantasizing about what I would do to the drunk Airmen who'd caused all of this. Colonel Elliot would have had their asses for breakfast if he were here, and as a woman I couldn't appear softer than that. My XO would have an idea as to a proper punishment, and whatever that was I'd tack on a few extra days or weeks or months. And honestly, sitting there in the middle of the night being treated like a damsel in distress in her own goddamn base, I was looking forward to being the bad guy.
The people appeared out of thin air.
One moment I was alone in the living room, and then atoms were coalescing together like foreign mist, clumps that became solid and formed legs and torsos and arms and heads. The one on the left ended up being a middle-aged woman in jeans and a red plaid shirt. The shape on the right formed into a handsome man, chiseled with muscle from head to toe, which I got a good look at before his clothes appeared and covered him.
I blinked several times. Like watching an optical illusion, my brain struggled to process what I'd seen.
And then the people were more than simply cardboard cutouts; the woman shook her head as if dizzy, while the man stood perfectly still, his head the only thing that moved, twisting to face me.
A lot went through my brain in that moment, the possibilities I considered. That this was some new technology from Russia or China. That I was having a seizure. That some impossible trick was being played on me by the other officers on the base. But regardless of the root cause, I had guards only 20 feet away that could help within seconds.
I opened my mouth to shout for help, but the man spoke into my head.
Please do not be afraid.
I couldn't explain how I knew, but it was the man speaking. The calmness in his eyes, and the words themselves, made me close my jaw.
""We're here peacefully," the woman said quietly. She extended her hand. "I'm Joanna, but you can call me Jo, on account of everyone else does. And this is Arix, with an X. Not Eric with a C." She smiled as if that were a private joke.
I looked between them and said, "How..."
"Have you heard of Elijah, Wyoming?" Jo asked. "Place with all the UFO weirdos?"
"Uhh," I said, glancing toward the door. The guards were just on the other side, and all I had to do was yell...
"I am going to do something," Arix--what kind of a name was that?--said, then nodded to himself.
He returned to my head, and this time he came bearing gifts.
I was suddenly bombarded with images, or memories. It was like that moment after you'd woken from a dream, when it was still fresh in your head but fuzzy at the same time. They also came rapid-fire, and even though I absorbed most of them my attention only caught glimpses of a few:
Arix showed me a craft approaching earth, then smashing into something resembling a giant tin can with antenna and solar panels attached to the side. The craft, a spacecraft, trailed fire and debris as it crashed through the atmosphere, breaking apart and landing in a snowy forest. A beam of light emerged from the wreckage.
And then the beam of light was a man, the same Arix form I saw now, being taken care of on a human couch in a human cabin.
And then there was a stand-off in the snowy woods with two men, and as Arix approached the men they pointed an object at him and he exploded into particles of light.
A shootout ensued, at a different cabin, and the men surrendered but a woman was shot, the same woman in front of me now, Joanna who insisted I call her Jo, and her gunshot wound suddenly repaired as though putty were being spread by an artist.
And another beam of light came, and spoke with them, and eventually took off into the sky with incredible speed.
All of this and more I saw in the blink of an eye, in a thousandth of a blink of an eye, in the time it took for a radio wave to pass from one antenna to another.
The weight of the memories made me dizzy, and I leaned forward to cradle my head in my hands. When I looked back up, both of them were still standing there.
"What the fuck," I said.
"Yeah," Jo said. She reached forward to touch my shoulder, but I flinched and hopped up.
"I need a minute."
Aliens. They existed. Fuck that, they were right in front of me, in my house on my base. And they'd just appeared out of nowhere, because apparently they could do that.
Shit: what if one of them had had a weapon? Maybe my XO's insistence as to my safety wasn't so crazy after all.
Or maybe I was the crazy one, hallucinating all of this.
But the memories were fresh in my mind, and I probed them like an eight year old poking the spot where a tooth had just fallen out. I felt the truth of the memories as if I'd experienced them myself. Like I'd been there.
I paced back and forth while the two of them watched, and all the while the sirens continued blaring outside.
"Putting aside the impossibility that there are aliens, and that two of them are standing right in front of me..."
"Actually, I'm human!" Jo said cheerfully.
"...why are you here? And not here, as in earth. Here here, in my house. On this base."
Jo grimaced like she was going to impart news I didn't want to hear. "Maybe we should sit down?"
"I'm fine standing, thank you."
Jo looked at Arix, and he nodded.
"My people are called the Karak," he explained. "As I've shown you, my visit to the surface was entirely accidental. An unintended crash landing. But two of my fellow Karak are coming to earth. Tomorrow. And they wish to speak with a human with military experience."
"Yeah, but why me?" I asked, although I knew the answer: because I was in charge of the base.
But that's not the answer they gave.
"Arix touched the minds of every human on this base," Jo said gently. "None were suitable."
"Suitable for what?"
Arix answered with shocking bluntness. "For the majority of men and women at this location, the probability of insanity upon receiving the memories I have shared with you was nearly 100%."
"So does that make me more or less crazy for accepting it?"
Arix smiled, showing white teeth. "Your probability of insanity was only calculated to be 61%."
"Thanks for taking that risk without warning me first," I muttered. "And to think my mom said science fiction books were a waste of time."
"So that's the gist of things," Jo said. "Make sense?"
"No, not at all. What do they want me for? The two... Karak." The word tasted strange in my mouth.
"Hell if we know. We just got the communication a few hours ago, and rushed over here from our cabin. All we're supposed to do is take you to the meeting place."
Arix stared past me, and put his hand on Jo's arm. "It is time for us to leave."
She smiled apologetically at me. "Nice meeting ya! Get some sleep. Tomorrow's gunna be a big day."
"Wait!" I blurted, sticking out a hand as if that could stop them. "You didn't even ask if I would do it."
Arix stared at me. I mean really stared at me, with more than his eyes: he knew me more than I knew myself, my intimacies and secrets and everything in between.
"You will," he finally said. "See you on your morning jog."
And then their bodies were falling apart like leaves from a tree, particles of multicolored light that shifted and changed and then disappeared entirely, leaving me staring at the TV on the other side of where they had been.
There was a soft knock on my door, and then it opened.
"Sir..."
I whirled. "Yes?"
The guard frowned. "Everything alright, sir?"
I collected myself and said, "Yes. Why wouldn't it be?"
>
He stared a heartbeat longer. "The base is clear. Looks like it was a false alarm after all. Thank you for your understanding--you can get some sleep now."
"I'll do that."
But I spent the night sitting on my couch, staring at the place on the floor where the two strangers had appeared and disappeared, and wondered if I really had gone insane.
3
BRANDI
I didn't get shit for sleep.
I mean, I hadn't expected to. Not after what had happened. Instead I spent all night replaying the entire interaction, and then sorting through the new memories that had been copied-and-pasted into my brain like clip-art.
Alien spacecraft. Aliens literally among us. Every fucking conspiracy theory idiot on the planet was right.
Shit, what if people I knew were aliens? These Karak could be anyone, right? Hell, what if my XO was one?
But the memories made that seem impossible: Arix and another scout--Jerix, I think?--were the only ones to visit the planet.
Until today.
I crawled out of bed five minutes before my alarm and got dressed methodically. Blue running shorts with grey stripes on the side, and the Air Force logo on the left leg. A plain grey shirt over top my sports bra. It felt like dressing for a funeral: an event I hadn't emotionally accepted yet.
But somewhere, deep down, a trickle of excitement was beginning to bloom. They needed a military representative. For what?
Regardless, this was a hell of a lot better than paperwork.
Before heading out the door, I grabbed my cell phone and shot my XO a text message: Going for a longer run this morning. Might be late. As the acting Base Commander I could decide when to arrive at the office. I never took such liberties, but today seemed like a good day to start.
The same Airman as yesterday waved from the tower at the south fence. I returned the gesture, feeling wooden and stiff.
"Gunna hit that PR today, sir?" he called.
"Today's a longer run, so nope." Then I added, "Probably gunna take the trail that curves around to the east, so don't raise any alarms if I don't come back through this gate."
The Airman laughed. "After last night, sir, the last thing I wanna do is raise a false alarm!"
False alarm. Sure. I smiled to share in the joke.
"Hey," I hesitated. "You ever heard of Elijah, Wyoming?"
He blinked down at me. "No sir, Can't say I have. Why? You gunna try to run that far?" He chuckled.
"No reason. Have a great day, Airman."
"Always do, sir!"
I started jogging when I reached the trail, which curved down toward the Snake River. Even though nobody could see me out here in the middle of nowhere, I tried to appear casual as I looked around, scanning the sky and the ground along the river. It all felt like a silly dream. I was certain I would jog alone on the trail, and nobody would come, and then I'd return to base feeling confused.
Ten minutes went by, and my mind began to drift. I'd need to do something with the two guards who raised the alarm last night. If they had been drinking then I had a convenient excuse to explain everything, as guilty as that may make me feel. But if they were sober... what then? They would probably need to be recommended for a psych evaluation. That kind of thing would stay on their record the rest of their careers.
And all for doing the right thing.
That made me angry. Good men and women shouldn't be punished for doing what they were supposed to do. But what other choice did I have? If I was soft on them, it would reflect poorly on me.
I was weighing those two options when the spacecraft appeared.
One second there was only blue sky before me, and the next there was a vaguely disc-shaped spacecraft blocking out a small portion of it. It appeared like a billion tiny mirrors were rotating along its surface, and then it flew directly at me without making any noise or leaving a trail of exhaust.
I slowed to a stop and watched it land next to the river.
Come, Arix said into my brain. It was like he was standing next to me, whispering directly into my ear. My feet moved on their own down the hill toward the clearing.
It was about the size of an A-10 Warthog if you accounted for the wingspan, though this thing had no wings. It wasn't precisely shiny, but it wasn't dull, either. A door opened on the back, sliding downward into a ramp.
I hesitated, then strode inside.
I was in an empty room with painfully bright lights. The floor felt like steel, and the rubber of my shoes gripped it nicely. And then the wall across from me opened into a doorway, and Arix stood there waving me in with a human hand.
"You are a pilot?" he asked by way of greeting.
I stopped in the cockpit--because that's clearly what it was, with the glass wall and two chairs and lights flickering like a foreign instrument panel. "How'd you know?"
"Your mind. When I touched you yesterday." He blinked. "And because you were in Mountain Home Air Force Base."
"Oh. Yeah."
He gestured around. "This is a Karak scout craft. As a pilot, I suspect you will enjoy this."
I lowered myself into the seat next to his, which was shockingly human. My body fit into it perfectly. "Enjoy what?"
The craft rose from the ground, a sensation that would have been completely imperceptible if not for the view outside the glass changing. Arix didn't move, but I got the impression he was piloting it with his mind as he twisted the craft around and aimed it toward the mountains.
It accelerated like a magnetic-launch roller coaster, throwing me back into the chair. There was no noise, no hint of any engine. The ground zoomed by incredibly fast, and the craft stayed low as we passed over the river and rose into the Sawtooth foothills. For several moments I was a little girl again, cardboard wings taped to my bike as I zoomed down the hill recklessly.
"The base. They'll see us on radar!" I blurted out.
"No," Arix said simply. "They will not."
The aircraft tilted higher to avoid the mountain peaks, and then we were above and past them and looking down into the valley beyond, green with trees along the tilted terrain.
"What's the source of thrust?" I asked.
"A microwave engine for short-range travel, and a cross-galaxy drive for long distance." He spread his hands in apology. "I'm afraid I don't know much beyond that. I was a scout, not an engineer."
A thousand other questions popped into my head and fought for control, and there were so many of them that nothing came across my lips. I'd always been impressed by the engineers who could build the beautiful aircraft and jets I flew, but this was a different type of wonder altogether.
The craft turned and followed a long gash of valley that had been destroyed by the forest fires last year. The trees that still stood were ghosts of their former selves, ashen and sad, a cemetery of a forest. The aircraft slowed, then lowered itself into a part of the forest where salvage logging had cleared away a wide space. It landed without any hint of touching the ground; only the still trees outside the cockpit told me we were no longer moving.
"Why do I feel like I'm being kidnapped?" I said out of nervousness.
Arix smiled at me, then rose and walked away. I followed him into the back room and down the ramp into the forest.
"This is the place," he said, pointing at a specific spot on the ground that looked the same as everything else. "I've sent the two Karak images of human forms to use, which should make your meeting more comfortable than if you were speaking to us in our light forms."
"Light forms?" I asked, but Arix extended his hand. I shook it.
"Good luck." He turned away.
"Wait! You're leaving me here by myself?"
Arix grimaced. "My personal standing among my fellow Karak is... complicated."
Now I really felt like I was being kidnapped, abandoned in the middle of the forest like some sick German folk tale. The panic rose up in my chest like a hot spring. "What if they don't come? What will I do then?"
But Arix was al
ready inside his ship, and the ramp was receding into the exterior. The alien spacecraft rose gracefully, turned above the trees, and then soared out of sight.
The dead woods held an ominous silence as I stood there.
I stared at the sky and waited for the other Karak to immediately appear, but when they didn't I sat down on a nearby stump.
The human brain was really stupid. I'd just flown here in a spacecraft, completely conscious and aware of what was happening the entire time, yet a large part of my brain still refused to accept the whole thing. It kept trying to think of explanations for all of this, a logical framework to wrap around it all to get it to make sense. But this wasn't an elaborate prank by my fellow officers, and I wasn't dreaming, and I wasn't hallucinating. At least, I was fairly certain the latter wasn't true. Crazy people never really knew they were crazy, right?
My cell phone worked, but only had one bar of service. Worst case scenario, I could walk to a road and call someone to pick me up. I had a general idea as to where I was. That would be a weird phone call to the base. "Hey there, it's Base Commander Brandi Forbes. I know I just jogged out the south gate half an hour ago, but I seem to have suddenly teleported twenty miles away and could use a ride, please and thank you."
Yeah, calling an Uber from Boise would be a better idea. If it came to that point.
I would never have noticed the aircraft if I hadn't been looking. It appeared above the trees to the right, sliding into view as silent as a stalking cat. It was larger than Arix's scout aircraft, and different in a way I couldn't explain. It bulged more, maybe. I watched with wide eyes as it drifted toward the clearing, hovered in place for a few perilous seconds, and then landed.
I rose and brushed myself off. I wished was wearing my uniform instead of these running clothes.
Fear crawled up the back of my neck again. All of my training had been around human enemies: dots on the ground that needed to be bombed or strafed with machine gun fire, or buildings to blow up. This scenario was one for which I was completely, and utterly, unprepared.
