by Moody, David
The documentary was dragging now, bogged down with trivialities such as the aliens’ predisposition towards eating overly sweet foods – something to do with their metabolism, he understood. Like most TV, the programme was padded out unnecessarily with clips and sound-bites he’d seen countless times before. These final scenes were intercut with talking head interviews with some of the key aliens. They all looked the same to Tom. They sounded the same too. And yet, despite being so unintentionally dismissive, he had to admit that he found them fascinating. There were subtle expressions they pulled, unexpected noises they made, unnatural (to him) movements and ticks... watching them made him feel like he was witnessing a bizarre collision between something inescapably ordinary and something completely unknown. The differences were striking, the similarities even more so.
‘Shame about that, isn’t it?’ Siobhan said.
‘Shame about what?’ Tom had only been half-listening.
‘The acidity in our air’s different,’ she replied. ‘They might have to take medication while they’re here.’
‘Oh, right,’ he said.
‘It’s nothing too serious,’ she continued. ‘Just a precaution, I think. If they were staying any longer then they’d probably have to do something about it.’
‘Aren’t they staying long enough?’
She dug him in the ribs. Siobhan shuffled, her naked body pressed up against his, legs entwined. He struggled to concentrate on the programme and not lose himself in semi-erotic daydreams. He hoped the hand she had resting on his chest would soon slide further down his body, but he knew there was no chance of that happening before the documentary ended. She was transfixed.
‘I like this one,’ she said when a particular alien appeared on screen. ‘He’s my favourite.’
‘Your favourite? Why?’
‘There’s just something about the way he talks... the things he says. If you listen to him, he talks nothing but sense. And the way he speaks is really sweet.’
‘Sweet? Bloody hell, just listen to yourself. He’s travelled millions of miles to get here, he’s probably more intelligent than you and me put together, and you’re calling him sweet?’
She ignored him and explained. ‘He’s got a family. I heard him talking about them earlier. The way he speaks about them is lovely. You can tell he really cares, you know. You can see that he’s devastated he’s so far away from them, but there’s no malice in his voice, no anger.’
‘I should think not. I expect they’re more relieved than anything. Imagine if they hadn’t found us. I bet they would have just ended up drifting forever.’
‘That’s exactly what would have happened, I heard another one talking about it earlier. She said we’re the first intelligent life-forms they’ve come across. This is as big a deal for them as it is for us, I reckon. They’re probably sat on their home-world right now, watching documentaries about us like we’re watching them.’
‘You really think so? Jesus.’
‘Why not?’
Tom gestured at images of the alien home-world on the screen. It looked like an idyllic place. ‘We get to see this, they get footage of Thatcham in return. Grey sea, grey sky.’
‘Beautiful though, isn’t it?’ Siobhan said as the camera swooped low over a pink-tinged ocean.
‘It’s not what I was expecting. When I heard they were on a mining mission, I just presumed they’d sucked the soul out of their planet and used up all their resources same as us. I thought they’d finished with their place and were moving on to trash somewhere new.’
‘You’ve watched too many movies.’
‘I know. Part of me still thinks they’re just here for our water or because they’re going to start harvesting humans as slaves.’
‘That’s just stupid,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to stop talking like that, Tom. It won’t do anyone any good.’
The documentary was finally drawing to a close, bringing the aliens’ story up to date. Tom had seen teaser clips of the footage now being shown, but this was the premier of the scene in its entirety. He watched with genuine interest as an alien speaker addressed the United Nations. Would they be afforded member status, he wondered? Nothing was beyond the realms of possibility anymore.
There was something undeniably monumental about seeing the alien, dignified and proud, wearing some kind of dress uniform, standing alongside the UN Secretary General, both of them all smiles and handshakes and positive body language. Negotiations between the aliens and world leaders had been on-going since their arrival. The Secretary General seemed to take genuine pleasure in detailing the agreements which had been reached.
‘Isn’t it great that this is all so open,’ Siobhan said. ‘Suppose they don’t have any choice really. If you don’t tell people the truth, they’ll make things up. That’s not going to do any of us any good.’
‘Since when have these people told us the truth?’
Siobhan thumped his chest and told him to shut up so she could hear. The unique double-act on the screen had begun to detail the formal relationship which had been established between the two peoples. Peoples, Tom thought... yes, that sounds about right. He’d been struggling with labels. Species, breeds, races, sides... it was difficult to think of an appropriate term which didn’t sound borderline offensive. Switching his attention back to the screen, he listened to how the key principles, strategies and objectives of an on-going relationship had been identified, agreed upon, and then formalised. There was even talk of humans eventually heading off-world. It sounded like an extreme version of the foreign-exchange trips he remembered from school. He’d spent a really dodgy couple of weeks living in La Rochelle with a nerdy French kid back in the day...
‘See,’ Siobhan said, ‘that’s what I’m talking about. This is a really positive thing, Tom. You need to stop with the anti-alien jokes and focus on the positives. Maybe having them here will help us sort ourselves out. Stop us blowing each other up, you know?’
Tom didn’t say anything. Tired of waiting for her to make a move, he slid down under the bed-sheets, human-alien relationships the very last thing on his mind.
11
‘We should go out,’ Rob called from the living room. Tom groaned and looked up at the kitchen ceiling.
‘I don’t want to go anywhere.’
‘Well you should.’
‘Why? I’m happy staying home.’
‘No you’re not. You’re not happy anywhere at the moment. You’ve been a miserable bastard recently and you’re spending far too much time shut away in this house on your own. Christ, the universe is opening up out there, but your world’s getting smaller.’
‘Maybe that’s the way I like it.’
‘Well I’m going,’ Rob said, and he turned up the TV volume. Tom wasn’t even sure what it was he was watching. He walked through to the other room and saw that it was just the local news. He immediately recognised the place on screen as being Drayton, although it looked much busier than normal – more like a busy weekday than a Sunday afternoon. He also recognised the reporter. He didn’t like her. Too false. She smiled too much for his liking. Sometimes it seemed that the worse the news, the broader her sneer. He imagined her rubbing her hands together with glee when particularly bad things happened, constantly looking for the scoop which might get her promoted from the locals to national reporting. Her usual reports covered all manner of subjects from potholes in the road to pensioners dying in poorly maintained care-homes, all delivered with the same deadpan seriousness and a wholly unconvincing intent.
‘I don’t like her,’ he said.
‘I know. You tell me that every time you see her.’
‘What’s she on about anyway? Looks busy.’
‘It was kind of a given that something like this was going to happen sooner or later,’ Rob said. ‘Couldn’t be avoided, really.’
‘What couldn’t?’
‘It’s the aliens. First public appearances and all that. Looks like there’s a few of them out and ab
out in Drayton, and everyone wants to be the first person to shake their hand.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Okay,’ he sighed, ‘everyone but you.’
Tom’s reaction was instinctive, said more for effect than for any other reason. He sat next to Rob and watched the TV, genuinely interested but trying not to let it show. The reporter he disliked was still talking to camera – some pretentious bollocks about the dawning of a new age which he paid little attention to – but what was happening behind her was far more interesting: Overmill Park, a large, popular and well-tended public space in the middle of Drayton, was filled with people. And there, right in the centre of it all, he could see several aliens. For a few seconds his mind was occupied with needless trivialities: what was the correct name for a group of aliens? A tribe? A herd? A gaggle, pride, pod or clutch? But then he regained his focus, and the importance of what he was seeing began to sink in. Beings from another world were mixing freely with the local population, and everything appeared to be relaxed and good-natured. The broadcast cut to footage taken earlier in the day – the same aliens surrounded by different people in a different part of town, mingling with the locals. Some even stood and posed for pictures. Then the image changed again and an alien’s face filled the screen, the strangest regional news talking head Tom had ever seen.
‘It’s an honour and a privilege to be here in Drayton,’ the alien said. ‘The people have been so quick to accept us, so gracious.’
Gracious, thought Tom. In his experience the people of Drayton were lots of things, but gracious was most definitely not one of them.
‘Amazing, eh?’ Rob grinned.
‘Everyone here has made us feel so welcome,’ another alien continued, his otherworldly inflexion and strangely laboured breathing occasionally audible. ‘Much as we’d all like to be home, we’re looking forward to our time here. We couldn’t have picked a better place to be stranded.’
‘Was that sarcasm?’ Tom asked.
They seemed confident, not at all fazed at having a camera shoved in their faces by a local TV news crew on a world millions of miles away from home. The alien still talking sounded relaxed and spontaneous, making a genuine effort to engage. It was only when the reporter asked him what he was most looking forward to doing during his stay in Drayton that he paused. Tom was quick to seize on his hesitation: ‘He can’t answer ‘cause there’s fuck all to do there.’
Rob got up and left the room, reappearing moments later, pulling on a jacket.
‘You coming?’
‘Where? I told you I didn’t want to go out.’
‘And I said you need to get out more. Come on, mate, let’s go find ourselves some aliens!’
✽✽✽
There were three hundred and sixty-eight alien visitors in total. Many of them had been dispatched elsewhere – the diplomats, spokespeople, chief scientists and the like. Others elected to travel the globe, keen to see as much of the world as they could while they were stranded here. Some decided to stay put and, somewhat surprisingly, a relatively large contingent remained in the area around Thatcham. It seemed they’d developed a strange affinity for the place. Perhaps, bizarrely, it had begun to feel like a home away from home. They were under strict instructions to integrate, not separate. The last thing anyone wanted was an isolated alien community springing up. Barriers were to be broken down and overcome. Less District 9, more Alien Nation, was how Rob had described the policy.
There were at least twenty of them in Drayton, Rob had heard. He was desperate to see just one. Watching them on TV was one thing, and witnessing the alien ship’s unexpected arrival and premature departure had been something he knew would stay with him until his dying day, but since the visitors had first come to Earth he, like everyone else, had harboured a burning desire to see one of them with his own eyes. It felt like a kind of holy grail, a badge of honour, almost. He wanted to be the first so he could brag to his colleagues at the university next week.
The small town was packed, the traffic heaving. It was six o’clock on Sunday evening, but there seemed to be more motorists trying to get in and out of the place than there normally would have been first thing on a typical Monday morning. Tom couldn’t stand being stuck in queues like this. He’d always had a short temper in traffic jams, but since divorcing himself from the rest of the world, he’d grown to hate delays with a vengeance. Strange how the less he had to be late for, the more it bothered him. ‘Bloody stupid idea, this,’ he grumbled. ‘We’ll never get parked.’
‘Give it time. Just be patient.’
‘I don’t want to be patient, I want to go home. Don’t know why I agreed to this.’
‘Because you want to see an alien close-up, same as me.’
Tom had no argument. His brother was right. Tom was feeling increasingly out of kilter with everyone else and he hoped seeing one of them would help him make the same kind of connection with the visitors that everyone else seemed to have.
‘Your problem,’ Rob said, ‘is you’re too cynical.’
‘And your problem,’ Tom quickly replied, ‘is that you never shut up. Anyway, what are you on about? I don’t have a problem.’
‘Yes you do. You need to lighten up. You need to stop standing still and go with the flow. You’re going to get left behind if you don’t. The world’s changing, Tom, and you have to change with it. Embrace it!’
‘I don’t have to change. I don’t want to change.’
‘Well maybe you should. This isn’t science-fiction, you know. These aliens, they’re just people like you and me.’
‘Well, sort of.’
‘They’ve been dealt a bad hand, that’s all.’
‘We can both identify with that, can’t we.’
Rob shook his head sadly. ‘It’s not a competition, mate. You don’t get a medal because you’ve been hardest done by. I know we lost Mum and Dad, but look at all the stuff we still have. You’ve got Siobhan and you’ve got the kind of lifestyle half the population would kill for. Look at the aliens. They’re millions of miles from home and it’s going to take them years to get back, that’s if they ever get back at all. Their losses might prove to be a thousand times worse than yours and mine.’
The sudden seriousness in Rob’s voice took Tom by surprise. Tired of driving, he was relieved when he spotted a car reversing out of a gap in a small gravel car park a short distance ahead. Fortunately, no one else seemed to have noticed. Tom drove the wrong way up a one way street, then pulled into the space the moment it was vacant.
The two brothers walked aimlessly towards the centre of town. ‘So where do we go?’ Tom asked.
‘I don’t know. Just follow the crowds, I guess.’
‘It’s all crowds.’
‘You’re a real ray of sunshine, aren’t you.’
‘Sorry, I just think we might be wasting our time. It’s getting dark. They might have gone back to wherever it is they’re keeping them. Where is that, by the way?’
‘I don’t know. Jesus, Tom, have a little respect. These are intelligent beings we’re talking about here. You make it sound like they’re animals in the zoo.’
Tom ignored his brother and turned left into a long alleyway which ran between two buildings then emerged out onto the main pedestrianised shopping area, perhaps two-thirds of the way down the high street. Most of the shops had closed up for the night, but a huge number of people remained. That damn TV reporter was still here, Tom noticed. She was standing on a corner with her crew, scanning the scene vulture-like for her next potential story angle.
‘I need something to eat,’ Rob said. ‘Did you bring any money with you?’
‘I’ve got a few quid. Forget your wallet again, did you? Funny how that keeps happening.’
‘Sorry. Honest, mate, I didn’t mean to. I was so made up with the thought of coming out here and seeing the aliens, I didn’t even think to pick it up.’
Tom tugged Rob’s arm and pulled him across the road towards a burger bar. ‘This is
my limit,’ he said.
It hadn’t seemed particularly dark on their way into Drayton, but the bright lights of the fast-food joint made the rest of the world look unexpectedly dull in comparison. They joined the end of a snaking queue which led halfway back to the entrance door.
‘Busy in here,’ Rob said.
‘Busy everywhere,’ Tom grumbled.
It took far longer than it should have to reach the counter, and when they got there they wondered whether it had been worth the effort. The few remaining members of staff on duty were run ragged, and half the items on the menu were unavailable. They left with a little food – a couple of plain burgers, some fries, and Rob’s third and Tom’s second choice drinks – then found themselves a place to sit on a low wall outside, every seat inside the restaurant already taken.
‘You enjoying yourself?’ Tom asked, wiping his greasy hands on his trousers as they’d both forgotten to pick up napkins.
‘Yep,’ Rob quickly replied. ‘You?’
‘Marvellous.’
‘Can’t get over how busy it still is.’
‘Well that’s because every bloody idiot is here trying to do the same as us. I tell you, if the aliens stood on a podium in the middle of town and let us all walk past and pay our respects, we could get this over and done with in half the time.’
‘Give it a rest. Seriously, quit moaning and try and enjoy it, you miserable shit. There’s a really good atmosphere here.’
Tom reluctantly had to agree. Despite the crowds, he’d seen no indication of there being any trouble, no hostility. It was rapidly becoming an over-used cliché, but it felt like carnival day had come around again. He glanced back over his shoulder at the main road in the distance; four solid lines of traffic clogging up the main route into town. Not much of a parade, he thought.
‘So, do you think we’re going to see one?’ Rob asked.
