We're Not from Here

by Geoff Rodkey

  “Trust us, honey,” Mom told Ila. “You want to play the hit.”

  “It’s good, right?” I asked. “It’s a good video?”

  “It’s better than good,” Mom said. “We just have to get it in front of people without the government censoring it. But there’s nothing we can do until morning. Let’s get some sleep.”

  As stirred up as I was, it had been an exhausting day, and the auto-massaging mattress worked its magic. Within minutes, I was dead asleep.

  An hour before dawn, I woke up to the screams of Zhuri soldiers pointing electrified prongs at my face.

  “YEEEHHHHEEEE!”

  “REEEEHHHEEEEE!”

  “HEEREEYEEEHEEE!”

  They were shrieking at the top of their lungs, but I couldn’t understand a word. My earpiece and screen were lying next to the bed. When I reached for them, one of the soldiers stuck his prong so close to my ear that I felt the hair on the side of my head rise up.

  “Sorry!” I raised my hands in the air.

  They gestured with their prongs. Get out of bed.

  I did. They screamed at me again.

  “I don’t understand you! Can I please just—” My hand trembling with fear, I motioned toward my screen a second time. This time, all three of them stuck their prongs in my face.

  “Please! It’s to talk! To understand you!”

  They either didn’t get it or didn’t care. Instead they motioned for me to leave the room. I did as I was told.

  The rest of my family was already in the living room, getting shrieked at by more soldiers. There were a dozen of them, all pointing their pronged weapons at us. One was clearly in charge, because whenever he started yelling, the others stopped.

  Mom was trying to reason with them. Dad had his arm around Ila, trying to comfort her. I just tried to stand still and hope nobody electrocuted me.

  The leader assigned one soldier to guard each of us, then sent the others to search our rooms. As we heard them yanking open drawers, the leader focused his yelling on Mom.

  She kept shaking her head. “Please. I don’t understand….I need my screen….Please.”

  The leader eventually figured out that if he wanted any information, he’d have to let Mom use her translator. Once he did, we were able to follow her half of the conversation.

  “Please tell us how we can help you.” Even when she was getting threatened with electrocution, Mom didn’t drop her see how peace-loving and reasonable I am? tone. “We wish to be of service….Yes….We did not know that was illegal….Of course we will cooperate.”

  She turned to Ila, who’d only just managed to stop crying. “Sweetheart, they want the guitar.”

  Ila let out a wail. The leader shrieked at her.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Mom said. “They know it’s here. They’ve seen the video you recorded for Marf yesterday.”

  While Ila cried on the couch, Dad went to her room and showed the soldiers where the guitar was. One of them carried it past us and out the door to a waiting pod.

  After that, things got a little more calm, but no less scary. The soldiers brought all of our screens to the dining table and started poking at them, presumably looking for videos even though they couldn’t make heads or tails of our human-language interfaces. Meanwhile, the leader kept questioning Mom.

  “We didn’t know it was wrong,” she said. “We are so sorry….We are so very sorry. We didn’t know….She is a school friend of my youngest child….She took the screen without permission. When she returned it, we did not know she had copied anything….They gave us food and medicine….We never would have done it, but no one told us it was wrong….It is not frowned upon on our planet….No. We never took it out of the house….”

  It sounded to me like the interrogation was going okay, but I was wrong. After a while, two of the soldiers stepped out of the house and returned with four sets of the toaster oven–sized handcuffs I’d seen them use on Dad after the venom attack. They trussed our hands up in them, gathered all our screens, and led us outside, where three pods were waiting.

  The whole time, we’d been hearing the chants of protestors in the distance. But until we walked onto the lawn, I hadn’t realized just how many of them there were. When we appeared, a swarm of thousands rose up at the edge of the subdivision and spread across the electric fence almost the whole distance to our house. The air stank of gasoline anger, and the protestors were so riled up that the fence buzzed constantly as they slammed into it and got zapped.

  We were halfway to the pod that would take us who knows where when the swarm suddenly scattered as the protestors flew out of the way of an incoming pod. It passed through the fence with an electric thunderclap and landed just a few feet away, heat billowing from its engine.

  A stream of armed Zhuri spilled through its door, shrieking as they ran toward us with their prong weapons extended.

  I shut my eyes and prayed it wouldn’t hurt too much.

  But they weren’t coming for us. Their targets were the Zhuri soldiers who’d arrested us. The two groups faced off, a dozen on each side, shrieking at each other and whipping their wings every which way as the buzzing blue flicker of the fence lit them up and the swarm screamed overhead. A strong undercurrent of sour-milk fear began to mix with the gasoline anger.

  The whole situation was as confusing as it was terrifying—and when I realized the person in charge of the soldiers who’d shown up to help us was Leeni, I got even more confused.

  “What’s happening?” I yelled at Dad, who was closest to me.

  “I don’t know!” he yelled back.

  Mom was too far away to hear me over the noise, and I was worried if I took a step without permission, I’d get zapped. So I just stood there, helpless in my toaster-oven handcuffs, watching the tennis match of shrieking. It went on until it must have occurred to the Zhuri that it’d be much easier to argue inside, where there wasn’t a swarm of protestors screaming over their heads.

  They marched us back into the house, and the argument quickly narrowed down to just Leeni and the leader of the group that was trying to haul us away.

  As they bickered back and forth, and all two-dozen-plus Zhuri rubbed their wings together in agony over the disagreement, Mom—who was still the only one of us with a translator—explained what was happening.

  “The soldiers who want to take us away are from the Executive Division,” she said. “They’re the ones who’ve been guarding our house and escorting us around the whole time. The new soldiers—the ones who just showed up with Leeni—are from the Immigration Division. Leeni’s claiming the Executive soldiers don’t have the right to arrest us. He says that as long as we’re inside the house, only Immigration has that authority.”

  Eventually Leeni and the Immigration soldiers won the argument. The Executive soldiers took our handcuffs off and gave us back our screens, but they took the spare screens and Ila’s guitar with them when they left.

  “What happened?” I asked when I finally got my earpiece back in and could understand what Leeni was saying.

  “The Ororo student has been selling your Earth videos illegally,” Leeni explained. “The ones that show Ila making sound with the machine have caused great emotion.”

  Even though we’d already guessed that was what Marf had been up to, we all pretended to look shocked. “Is it a bad thing to cause such emotion?” Dad asked.

  Leeni stared at him for a long moment. “Everyone agrees that emotions cause problems. But some people think not all emotions do so. Some people even think…”

  Then he stopped talking, just like the principal had done.

  “What do some people think?” Mom prompted him.

  Leeni rubbed his wings together. “Some people think there are positive emotions. And those should be encouraged.”

  “Does music cause positive emotions?�
��

  “Some people think so.”

  “What about laughter?” I asked.

  Leeni looked at me. “Some people think that is also positive.” He rubbed his wings again. “But everyone agrees the Executive Division does not think this way. The Executive believes these videos with music are a threat to the planet’s peace. Their security forces are trying to find the Ororo younger and stop her from spreading the videos. They came here tonight looking for evidence. They also wished to take you to the spaceport for immediate removal from the planet.”

  My stomach dropped.

  “Can they do that?” Mom asked.

  “Everyone agrees now that they do not have this authority. But they have gone to request an order from the chief servant that would allow them to remove you. I believe they will return with this order in a short time.”

  “What about the meeting this morning? The one to discuss our case?”

  “It will likely be canceled,” said Leeni, “because it no longer matters. The chief servant will almost certainly order your removal. You will be placed on a shuttle and returned to the human ship immediately.”

  “Leeni.” Mom walked over to stand in front of him. “If they send us back to the ship, the human species will perish.”

  “I understand this,” said Leeni. “There are some who wish it was not the case.”

  “Those who wish for us to survive—what do they suggest we do?”

  Leeni rubbed his wings together. “It is difficult. In order for you to stay, everyone would have to agree that you should. But at the moment, everyone agrees the opposite.”

  “If the Zhuri people could see the videos—the ones that cause positive emotions—would they be more likely to agree the human should stay?” Mom asked.

  “Some people think so,” said Leeni. “This is why the Executive Division has moved so quickly to stop the musical videos from spreading.”

  “How can we help to spread them?”

  The question was too much for Leeni. His head snapped back like he’d been smacked, and his fear smell filled the room.

  “I am a senior official of the Unified Government,” he said. “I cannot encourage activities that are illegal. If I knew of such videos, I would have to destroy them.”

  For a long time, nobody said anything.

  Then I had an idea. “What if the videos were educational?”

  Leeni turned his head to me. “Everyone agrees that if something is educational, it is appropriate. But the place for education is school.”

  I looked out the window. The sky was beginning to turn the blue-green color of a Choom dawn. “Can I go to school today?” I asked.

  “The Executive Division is responsible for escorting human youngers to school,” Leeni said. “I am sure they will no longer do so. When they return, they will take all four of you to the spaceport for immediate removal.”

  My shoulders slumped, and I heard Mom let out a frustrated sigh.

  Leeni lowered his head and rubbed his wings together slowly, like he was agonizing over something. Finally he spoke.

  “But if you wish to go to school early,” he said, “I could escort you now.”

  WHATEVER WEIRD LEGAL loophole Leeni was using to take Ila and me to school, it didn’t apply to Mom and Dad. They hugged us goodbye just inside the front door.

  “I should stay with you guys,” said Ila.

  “No, you shouldn’t,” Mom told her. “Stick with Lan. Don’t let each other out of your sight. Message us if anything happens. We’ll do the same.”

  “What are you and Dad going to do?” I asked.

  “We’ll stay here for the moment. And try to think of ways we can be helpful.” Mom gave Ila and me each another hug. “Now get out of here while you still can.”

  “Don’t leave without us,” I said. I was trying to make a joke, but Mom and Dad didn’t take it that way.

  “Do everything you can to stay on the planet,” Dad said. “Don’t worry about us.”

  “Be peaceful and kind, but don’t go quietly,” Mom added. “This isn’t just about us. If we leave Choom, they’ll never let another human back in.”

  There were still half a dozen Executive Division soldiers outside, but there were twice as many from the Immigration Division. The ones from Immigration escorted us to Leeni’s pod as the Executives screamed in anger along with the crowd of protestors swarming the fence over our heads.

  We got in the pod with Leeni and a pair of Immigration soldiers. Within seconds we were in the air. When we crossed the fence, the protestors scattered out of our way. After we passed, a few dozen of them regrouped and tried to follow us. Fortunately, that was about as effective as humans trying to run down a car on the highway, and they quickly dropped out of sight.

  For the rest of the trip, the city below us was quiet and empty. Only a few scattered pods dotted the early morning sky.

  “Is our school open this early?” I asked Leeni.

  “Ordinarily, it is not,” he answered. “But I have contacted the chief educator and asked him to meet you there.”

  “Do you know the chief educator?” I asked.

  “It is better if we do not discuss our relationship,” Leeni said.

  Ila switched off her translator. “Do you understand what’s up with Leeni?” she asked me.

  I switched mine off too. “I think so. He’s trying to help us. But he can’t help us too much, or he’ll get in trouble.”

  “So, what? He’s going to claim he ‘accidentally’ flew us to school?” Ila shook her head. “Good luck with that.”

  It was so early when we landed at the academy that there weren’t any protestors out front. Nobody else was around either. When Leeni walked us up to the front door and pressed an entry button, it took a few minutes for a Krik custodian to open the door and poke his head out.

  “School’s closed!” he growled.

  “The humans have an early meeting with the chief educator,” said Leeni.

  He looked us up and down, then shrugged. “You can wait in the hallway. Don’t smudge the floor! It’s clean.”

  Leeni left us at the door, and we went inside to sit against the wall in front of the principal’s office. Other than an occasional custodian pushing a cleaning machine past us, the building was empty. Its high-ceilinged lobby felt much bigger without crowds of Zhuri and Krik students moving through it.

  “I’m starving,” Ila said. Even at a near whisper, her voice echoed to the ceiling. “Aren’t you?”

  “I wasn’t until you mentioned it.”

  We sat there for what must’ve been an hour until the principal showed up.

  “I was surprised to hear you were coming,” he told us. “When I saw the news reports, I did not expect the government to allow you to return to school.”

  “The news reports aren’t telling the truth about us,” I said.

  “They do not seem to be telling the truth about me either. Come into my office.”

  * * *

  —

  HE SAT ON the stool behind his desk-sized screen. We parked ourselves on a bench across from him. It was made for Zhuri adults, and so high that our legs dangled off the floor.

  “The official from the Immigration Division said you had educational material you wished to share with me. What kind of material is it?”

  “It’s a video,” I said. “Do you want to watch it?”

  “Of course. I am an educator.”

  Marf’s transmitter worked on the principal’s screen the same way it worked on our TV back at the house. I cast Meet the Human! onto his screen. The video began with a close-up of my face, smiling into the camera. I could barely hear my original words under the yeeheeeeheeee of the Zhuri translation that played over them:

  “Hi! I’m Lan Mifune, and I’d like to clear up some misunders
tandings about the human species. We’re not violent! But we are clumsy. Very, very clumsy…”

  The first minute of the video was a compilation of humans tripping over things, falling down stairs, and getting conked on the head. As the principal watched it, I took deep breaths in through my nose, hoping to smell a reaction from him. There was nothing, and I started to worry the video wasn’t as funny as I’d thought it was.

  But then we got to the barfing scene from Ed and Fred.

  “Humans don’t spit venom on each other,” my voiceover explained, “but sometimes we do get a little sick to our stomachs….”

  Ed and Fred was one of the funniest shows of all time, and the barfing scene was the best moment in the whole series. Ed discovered a new soft drink that he thought was delicious, but it made his stomach upset. Even so, he loved the taste so much that he couldn’t stop drinking it. He bought a whole case, downed it in one sitting, and then barfed it all out on Fred while they were stuck in the back of a moving car.

  What made the scene so funny was that the barf just kept going, and going, and going…It went on forever, way past the point where you’d think This can’t possibly last any longer. The first time I saw the episode, it made me laugh so hard that my face hurt. Even rewatching it for the twentieth time, I couldn’t help giggling.

  It worked on the principal too. The doughnut odor wafted over to us. Ila turned to me with a big grin on her face. I smiled back at her.

  Then the barf scene ended, and the music segment began.

  “And when humans are feeling down, there’s nothing that picks us up like the sound of music….”

  Ila appeared, spotlit on the Pop Singer stage as she strummed the opening chords of “Under a Blue Sky.”

  Well, the nights have been black

  And the days have been gray

  I can’t find what I lost

  When my hope went away

  This time, I saw the principal react before I smelled him. He sat up straight on his stool, his head swaying to the right…and then to the left…and then back again, all in time with the music. When the scent hit me, it was sweet and sharp at the same time, like honeysuckle mixed with mint.