Alienated

by Jeff Norton

  Suddenly the entire Eggcraft pulsed red.

  “They’re firing on us!” Sonya shouted.

  “Can’t say they didn’t warn us,” Houston said.

  I put us into a controlled spiral as a missile slammed into the rock wall above. Chunks of America’s greatest natural wonder rained down on the Eggcraft, but the organic shell held up well.

  “Aren’t you glad I checked the hull before take-off?” quipped Houston.

  I was.

  “Bongo!” shouted Sonya.

  “I don’t think this is the time for music,” I said, banking into a tight curve.

  “No, bongo! I’ve done it, I’ve fixed the cloaker,” she said, coming up from under the dashboard and taking the seat beside me.

  “You mean bingo?”

  “If you say so,” she said. “But either way, we’re invisible now. Let’s get our patients back to base.”

  “Need the cream,” called Octo again. “It’s in my truck! Oh, sweet, soothing cream.”

  “I’ll get you there as fast as I can,” I said.

  I swung us up out of the canyon, the F-18s still zooming through the dark crevices below, searching for a target that had just disappeared from their radar. I wondered how they were going to explain our disappearance to their superiors. Maybe we’d add to the UFO conspiracy theory? I liked the idea of being the only human in the canon of alien sightings.

  I hung a left and flew us as fast as possible back to base, following Houston’s GPS projection.

  We zipped across southern Nevada to Groom Lake. The night was clear and, above the desert, a million stars sparkled in the sky. It was an amazing view, and for just a moment, I thought of Mom. I’d programed her rocket to release her ashes once the rocket hit sixty thousand feet. I knew it wasn’t actually her, but I smiled to myself in the knowledge that little specks of her DNA were orbiting Earth, between the planet and those brilliant stars.

  My wandering mind had drifted the Eggcraft skyward, and I refocused to regain control. Within minutes I had lowered the Eggcraft back down in the scrapyard, to the exact spot we’d departed from.

  “That was mighty good flying, co-pilot,” said Sonya.

  “Thanks,” I said. “It felt good.”

  And it did.

  As I loosened my grip on the steering column, I let out a big sigh. It wasn’t just relief, but something more: satisfaction. I only wished Dad could have seen how well I’d flown. I’d never wanted to follow in his footsteps as a pilot but, still, I was pretty impressed with myself.

  “Ooooooh,” purred Octo from outside, having raced to his truck the second we’d touched down. NED had come to when we’d landed then stumbled off looking dizzy, with no word of thanks for the trip.

  I squeezed out of the cockpit and spotted his phone wedged into the cushions of his seat. I pocketed it, making a mental note to give it back to him tomorrow. I stepped down the Eggcraft’s gangplank behind Houston, and found Octo scooping up purple cream from a barrel in his truck, lathering it all over his injured tentacle.

  “Feeling better?”

  “Much,” he said, taking another scoop and rubbing it in. “Ooh, yeah, that tingling sensation means it’s working!”

  “Sorry about not getting that fire out faster,” I said.

  “Flames ain’t fun, but water’s worse,” he said. “I’m allergic to it.”

  “That must be inconvenient,” I said. “On a planet seventy per cent covered in the stuff.”

  “Thirty per cent dry land is more than enough for me. Can you check – have I missed a spot?”

  I shook my head. “You’re good.”

  “Then let’s see those holo-photos, Metal Man!”

  As Sonya used the remote keyring to lock the Eggcraft, Octo led us into an empty hangar next to the office buildings where Houston could project the images he had taken of the volcano. Yes, we’d had an eventful night, but we still had a Planetology presentation to prepare for.

  I marveled at how real the images looked as Houston flashed them onto a giant white metal wall.

  Brrrr. Brrrr. Brrrr.

  My pocket was vibrating.

  “I think NED’s got a text,” I said, grabbing the phone from my pocket and reading the message aloud:

  GR8 WORK, NED! YUM, YUM! EXTRACTION IN

  8 WKS. DAD.

  P.S. YOU’VE EARNED YOURSELF A PAIRING.

  CHOOSE A HOTTIE!

  Houston shuddered and the volcanic images vanished. “Did you say Extraction?” he asked.

  “Yeah – what does it mean?”

  We all leaned in to hear the answer.

  “The end of the world,” said Houston.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  NEDageddon

  I suddenly remembered NED’s phonecall blabberings about magma being delicious and there being plenty of it. I started to get a very, very bad feeling.

  “What do you mean, the end of the world?” I asked.

  Houston’s eyes lit up, literally. On the corrugated metal walls of the hangar, he projected images of green countryside, endless blue sky, oceans and shimmering silver cityscapes.

  “Not the National Geographic Channel,” complained Octo. “See if there’s any boxing on?”

  “It’s stunning,” I said.

  “I haven’t shown anybody these until now,” Houston said, “but I think you need to know. This is … was … my world.”

  At first I thought they were images of Earth. But then trains started floating over tracks and airplanes with six wings flew across the sky. And then the people. They weren’t people at all. They were humanoid – one head, two arms and two legs – but they were stick- skinny, with pulsing skin in hues of rose, purple and green. I wondered if this was what Houston looked like underneath the metal.

  “This is the visual archive of the planet Yaarian. My home.”

  The walls flickered with thousands more images. In silence, we watched these beings live, work, love and play; generation after generation. It was a breathtakingly beautiful and peaceful world, full of happy creatures with families, hopes and dreams.

  “It’s … perfect,” Sonya said.

  “It was,” replied Houston, “until a giant ship arrived and drilled into our planet. We were given no warning, no time to evacuate. It efficiently sucked out Yaarian’s magma core. When our leaders tried to negotiate with the ship, to plead with it to stop, all they got was a prerecorded announcement: We apologize for the inconvenience to your life, but the extraction process will be over soon.

  “There was nothing we could do to stop the ship draining every drop of magma from our planet’s core. They called it extraction, but we called it extinction.”

  We were silent with sympathy, not knowing what to say – and then Houston continued.

  “My parents knew the end was near and wanted to save my … me. And so they digitized me. I gave up my organic body and woke up in this ecto-shell, a kind of robotic lifeboat. Just seconds before my world collapsed in on itself, they launched me to a faraway world called Earth. I was the only survivor.”

  We watched as images of a burning, collapsed world flashed onto the walls, the terror and suffering of the beings clear. Then the images faded, and Houston hung his head.

  “I’m so sorry, Houston,” said Sonya, wiping back a tear. “I had no idea.”

  Octo gave Houston a tentacle hug.

  “It must’ve been the NEDs and I think they’re going to do it again,” whispered Houston from within Octo’s embrace. “To Earth.”

  And then NED’s phone rang.

  “Hello?” I said, pressing the button I guessed was speakerphone.

  “Sher-man?” said NED. “You are about to seriously regret stealing my phone.”

  “Listen, NED, we’re not going to let you—”

  Sonya slapped the phone from my palm. It skidded across the dusty floor, crackled like a sparkler and exploded. Pieces sizzled, just like our planet was going to do.

  “We have to warn everyone!” I sa
id.

  “But NED just destroyed the evidence,” said Sonya, pointing to the pieces of phone.

  “I’ll talk to my dad,” I said. “He can warn the authorities, the Air Force, the entire military!”

  “When the extraction starts,” said Houston, “there’s nothing your Earth authorities can do to stop it.”

  I’d had a lot of bad first days of school, but this took the cosmic cake. I’d stumbled upon a plot to destroy the world. My head spun as the text message flickered in my memory: EXTRACTION IN 8 WKS.

  And Houston’s words haunted me.

  They called it extraction. We called it extinction.

  * * *

  I found Jess in the kitchen finishing her English homework, a short essay on the ethnocentric bias of author H.G. Wells. I asked her where Dad was.

  “Everyone on the base got called in,” she said. “He said something about a UFO sighting.”

  “And what, they need more envelopes?”

  “I don’t know, Sherman, but he’d just sat down to watch football when this siren-thing blasted out and suddenly Dad and all the other grown-ups had to go into work. Didn’t you hear it?”

  “Um, yeah,” I lied. “But we were pretty focused on the Planetology stuff.”

  Jessica returned to her essay and I waited up for Dad in the living room, surfing the off-world channels on satellite. I flicked through xenophile soap operas (everybody was totally cheating on everybody), AJABot crime capers (some pretty graphic robot dismemberment) and a Yazzerbeast reality show called Eat It or Feed It? (to which I must admit the safest answer is neither).

  I must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing I knew Dad was stirring me awake on the sofa. I had a lingering sense that I may have been dreaming about doing the balcony scene with Juliet. Naked.

  “Come on, kiddo,” he said. “Off to bed.”

  “Dad, Jess said there was a UFO tonight,” I began.

  “That’s classified, Sherman,” he said. “But yes, something appeared in our airspace and then just … disappeared. Around here I’ve learned that unidentified means paperwork, and paperwork means more work for the Stationery Officer.”

  I sat up on the Air-Force-issue beige sofa and tried to convince him that I was a bona fide prophet of Armageddon.

  “Dad, it’s more than that. There’s an alien invasion coming, and it’s going to destroy the world.”

  “You were probably dreaming,” he said. “You were mumbling about killing an envious moon.”

  “I wasn’t,” I said, not being entirely truthful. There was no way I’d tell Dad about the naked balcony scene. “I, I can’t tell you how I know, but I know. It’s the NEDs. They’re going to suck the magma out of the Earth’s core, and it’ll destroy the planet!”

  “Sherman, is this a cry for help?”

  “No,” I said, “well, yes, I guess. Yes, I need your help. To stop it.”

  “Son, the Bureau has extensive peace treaties with all of the aliens here, including the NEDs. It’s a delicate diplomatic puzzle of alien relations, and the last thing we need is to be making serious accusations about a peaceful ally. Because if there’s one thing aside from rockets that you should avoid, it’s causing a diplomatic incident.”

  “But, Dad, they’re not peaceful! NED’s a bully and a jerk and he—”

  “Are you being bullied at school, Sherman?”

  How was I supposed to answer that one?

  I’d been suspended over a garbage can by a teenage yeti and endured the scowls and slurs of a plastic low- ranking deity, but I didn’t want to distract Dad from the big issue.

  “No, Dad, but you have to listen. The invasion is coming and we only have—”

  “When I was your age,” he said, “my parents sent me to military school and it was the best thing that happened to me. Taught me discipline, moral fortitude, and kept me grounded in reality.”

  “This is real, Dad,” I pleaded. “The NEDs are going to suck out the Earth’s core just like they did to Houston’s planet. NED tasted the volcano tonight and he—”

  “Did you just say volcano?”

  “Maybe. Why?” I realized I’d said too much.

  “We had reports about the same UFO hovering over a volcano in Costa Rica. The Bureau’s fending off every agency in the government tonight.” He rhymed them off like a jumbled-up alphabet. “INS. CDC. ATF. FBI. CIA. IRS. Even the UN weapons inspectors want a look-in! All because a suspicious UFO turned up in Costa Rica. Costa Rica, Sherman. As in, a very long way away. As in, so far away that if any students were there tonight in an unauthorized departure from this base, it would lead to more than a serious grounding. Now, you don’t know anything about that, do you?”

  “Um, no,” I said.

  “Good answer. Now off to bed, leave the poor moon alone and try to stay grounded in reality.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Pastry High

  Over the following week, I tried again and again to alert the adults to the impending doomsday, but Dad just wouldn’t hear it.

  It was hard to concentrate on school when I was certain the world was going to end, but the one highlight was rehearsing with Juliet. I was glad I could spend the last days of Planet Earth with her. She was magical. And it wasn’t just her glow. Her smart, sweet and knowing presence was so incredible to be around that those terrible memories of life on Old MacDonald’s Farm started to slip away. I was crushing on her in a serious way.

  At school, I pretended everything was normal. But between classes and homework, I tried to conjure up a plan to save the world. We’d all tried to warn our parents. Sonya’s folks refused to listen to her “blasphemous” talk And Octo’s attempts to alert his folks fell on deaf ears, or at least whatever passed for ears in ventitent biology. “The NEDs are so regal and sophisticated,” his mom had said.

  “And generous,” added his father. “They always send us that gift box just stuffed with chocolate-covered shrimp for the holidays.”

  With no parents of his own, Houston warned Principal Meltzer, only to receive a lecture about the dangers of spreading rumors. Nobody on base wanted to take us seriously. So, we would have to take matters into our own hands … and tentacles.

  One day, right after Home Economics class, I had a revelation.

  We were baking Rilperdough, a sentient pastry that acts like your favorite pet – rubbing itself up against you, begging for treats – but it looks, smells and feels like Play-Doh, bent into half-moons. It’s one of the weirdest things I’ve seen at this school so far – and these space- faring croissants babble constantly in a language that sounds like high-pitched Italian in reverse.

  But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in Home Ec, it’s not to sweat the baked stuff.

  You just knead them and place them on a greaseproof tray, and put the whole gang in the oven at 350 degrees for twenty minutes.

  Because translated, the reverse-Italian means one thing:

  “Bake us!”

  That’s what our teacher, Mr Zvisst (who looked like wobbly cherry Jello and could divide himself into however many chefs a kitchen – or classroom – required) told us over and over as we kneaded our Rilperdough and sharpened our knives. “Rilperdough,” he said, “heads for ovens the way salmon head upstream.”

  It’s a lifecycle thing.

  So once I knew we were helping the little guys out, kneading them into shape was pretty soothing. At least it gave me some time to think. If the adults of Groom Lake weren’t going to save the world, maybe there was something Sherman Capote could do.

  The bleep bleep bleep of my oven timer snapped me out of my daydream, so I grabbed my floral oven mitts and pulled open the oven door.

  The smell was incredible.

  Marzipan, cookie dough, a little cinnamon, but also hints of pine needle and something I couldn’t quite place … Crazy Glue maybe.

  We all clattered our trays onto our counters. The little baked aliens glowed. But it wasn’t heat. It was something more ethereal.


  Mr Zvisst had split himself into twelve smaller versions of himself, patrolling every counter, handing out plastic containers and reeling off instructions in perfect, tranquil unison.

  “The Rilperdough are ready,” Mr Zvisst cooed.

  “So each cook’s duty …”

  “ … is to ensure their desserts are consumed …”

  “ … within five minutes from now …”

  “ … before their glow fades …”

  “ … one consumer per Rilperdough …”

  “ … no second helpings …”

  “ … no second thoughts!”

  I gently filled my plastic container, grabbed my stuff and joined the crowd squeezing through the sliding silver doors into the hallway, feeling a little anxious about the approaching rush to honor the freshly baked.

  Not a great time to find myself side-by-side with NED (and side-by-shaggy-thigh with Graz). But then again, when is?

  “I hear you’ve been saying things about me,” he said, fixing me with a dark glare.

  “I know what you’re up to, NED, and I’m going to stop you.”

  “Oh, Sher-man, those are big words for a little man who can’t even stop his hair from frizzing,” he laughed, gliding away down the hall.

  I ran my hand over my head – he was right. My hair was practically on end. I tried to slap it down.

  As I shimmied through a troop of bleeping AJABots and dodged an earthy-smelling gaggle of Fungi, I bumped into Jessica.

  She was striding along the hallway in a black lace dress over ripped jeans. And she was talking a lot, pointing this way and that. Five Martians – the little gray guys in the jumpsuits with the big eyes – were following her, taking down her every word on transparent digital notepads.

  “And seriously,” she said, “if I see one balloon in these corridors, I’ll flip. I’ll flip dramatically, and I’ll flip dangerously. Ribbons, not balloons. In school colors of course, and—”

  “Jessica,” I said, grabbing her and forcing the plastic container of Rilperdough into her hands. “You have to eat one of these.”

  “If you made this, Sherman,” she said, “I’m not putting it in my mouth.”