by Gini Koch
Okay, heading into creepy time. “How did you know I was in marketing?” I hadn’t had any clear idea of what to major in when we were in high school and had changed my mind three times before I had to declare a major. I finally settled on Business because that’s what Chuckie was going for, and that way we’d have a lot of classes together. I’d fallen into marketing as a career, based more on what company had hired me right out of college as opposed to burning desire, so it wasn’t as though it had been a lifelong dream.
“I still talk to Sheila.” One of my two best girlfriends in high school. Married with three kids and living on the East Coast. We were down to the holiday newsletter on her end and the occasional postcard on mine, along with some semi-regular text messaging that had dribbled down to almost nothing in the past five months—I liked lying to Sheila only a little more than I liked lying to Chuckie. But she’d certainly known what I was doing for a living, at least, six months ago.
“Oh.” I had nothing much to add to the conversation, other than shock. “Um, well, before we reminisce, we’re here to check on you.”
“Why? I mean, why you? I can guess the guys with you are here officially.”
I was in jeans and a concert T-shirt. I couldn’t have looked less official if I were wearing a tutu. “I’m with them.”
“They’re here to do a marketing campaign?”
“No, I’m Michael’s brother.” Thank God, Gower was taking an active part.
“Oh.” Brian looked at all of the men again. “You’re all . . . from Michael’s part of town?”
“Brian? I’m with them. As in with-with.” I didn’t remember him being this dim. Then again, I didn’t remember him being smart enough to be an astronaut. I was having trouble coming up with what I did remember.
“Ah. Do you do their marketing or something?” He was really hooked onto the marketing.
“No. Brian, we need to ask you about the flight, okay?”
“Sure. I’m sorry. I’m just . . . well, shocked to see you here. I’ve been thinking about you a lot recently.”
“If we could get on with it,” Martini snapped.
“Sure, sorry. What did you guys want to know?”
While Gower did the questioning, I ran over what I could manage to remember about Brian. Funny, I couldn’t remember a lot. We’d dated for over a year. He’d been a great dancer. Had a wicked sense of humor. Was really proud of being Black Irish. We were on the track team together, though he was a distance runner. That was how we’d met, because I sucked at distance and was always getting left behind in the desert. He stayed with me, every time, so I wouldn’t be out there alone.
I’d thought I was in love with him, and I probably was at sixteen. He’d been gentle in bed—getting my virginity hadn’t been a conquest for him, it had been an honor. My parents had really liked him. And he hadn’t wanted to break up with me.
I couldn’t remember why we’d broken up. All I could scrape up was the memory that I’d been the one who made the decision and he hadn’t liked it. But we’d remained friendly through graduation. On grad night, he’d told me something, but damned if I could remember what it was.
Brian’s answers were the same as the other astronauts, though. Something hit the ship, his worry was mechanical failure, and then they landed. Memory of landing fuzzy at best, a parade of people had come by who hadn’t spoken to him or the others.
“Kitty, can you get us out of here? None of us are sick, and we’re all tired of being on display.”
“I’ll do my best.” I had no idea if they were all having a mass hallucination or if there was a worse breach in Kennedy security than we’d already discovered.
“You have to get them to let me out in time for the reunion.” He grinned. “I actually want to go. It’s nice to have accomplished something in ten years.”
“You’re going to the reunion? Gosh, so are we.” Martini put his hand on my shoulder. “See you there.” Then he dragged me off.
“Jeff, why did you do that?” I heard Gower making some kind of general promise to try to get them out of quarantine as we passed the other two astronauts, both of whom looked bored and desperate for us to stay.
“Your boyfriend was bugging me.”
“Jeff, he’s not my boyfriend, you are.” I stopped dead. “Oh, wow.”
“What?”
I pulled out of his hand and ran back to Brian’s cell. “Bri? Do you have an office here?”
“Yeah, sort of. Why?”
“By any chance, do you have a picture of me up in it?”
He looked sheepish. “Yeah, I do.” He looked down. “I just haven’t. . . . ” He looked back at me. “I haven’t found anyone I cared about like you. So I keep your picture up, sort of as a reminder of what I’m looking for.”
Sweet. On the stalker side of the house, but still sweet. Considering Martini had essentially proposed to me within thirty minutes of knowing me, also not a reason to go “ick.” Maybe I just attracted the overly committed, stalker types.
“Have you mentioned the reunion to anyone?”
“A few people, sure. I didn’t have the nerve to check to see if you were going, but I was hoping you were. Who is that guy?”
“My boyfriend.”
“Oh. Not engaged?”
“No.” Not yet. Not ever, if the A-C elders had their way.
“You know he’s . . . ”
“An alien?” Brian nodded. “Yeah, the double heartbeats gave it away early on. Look, Brian, someone’s threatened to kill me if I don’t leave Florida. Do you have someone, male or female, who’s crushing on you a bit more than would be normal?” I managed not to make a comparison to how Brian was apparently crushing on me, but it took effort.
He seemed to give this some thought. “Not really. I mean, I haven’t dated anyone I work with.”
“Have you dated anyone in the Space Center?”
“Sure, a few gals. But, they didn’t work out.”
“Who dumped who?”
He laughed. “Most of them dumped me. I think they didn’t like my doing Kitty comparisons.”
“Wow, who could see that one coming? Did you dump any of them?”
“Sure, but the ones I did are all in relationships now.”
“How about someone you wouldn’t think of dating but who might like you?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I just want out of this cell. You’re sure someone threatened to kill you?”
“Yeah, me and my boyfriend.”
“He looks like he could handle a fight.”
“He can. But I don’t think they’re threatening him. I think they’re threatening you.”
CHAPTER 31
BRIAN’S JAW DROPPED. “But ... I’m not your boyfriend. Anymore.” I heard the regret but chose to ignore it.
“Right, but, you know, people who threaten other people’s lives are not always the most stable Weeble in the playhouse. It’s not like there’s no precedent for it, either.”
“True.” He closed his eyes. “I just want to get out of here.” He opened his eyes, and I saw them widen. “Look behind you.”
I did. Nothing. “Nothing.” I looked down the hall—Gower, Christopher, and Martini were still there, all looking various stages of annoyed through to furious.
“They’re here again,” Brian said in a low voice. “Can’t you see all the people?”
I looked around again and tossed what I hoped was an emotional clue to Martini. Considering he was next to me before I could blink, I figured he’d caught it. “What’s wrong?” He put his arm around me and pulled me close to him. Brian’s eyes narrowed. Great, now wasn’t the time for the stag fight.
“Brian sees the people. Can you see if Daniel and Michael do, too?”
Martini looked around. “Sure.” He moved off, and I heard him talking to the others. Gower and Christopher joined him.
“There’s no one here that we can see,” I explained to Brian. “Maybe whatever hit the capsule is giving you hallucinations
.”
He shook his head. “They’re real. I can see them. Get away from her!” he shouted at something.
Martini was back next to me in an instant. “The other astronauts see them, none of us do. What’re you panicking about?” he asked Brian.
“They’re trying to get Kitty!” Brian sounded close to hysterical.
It was unlikely to work, and I had no idea if there were any invisible beings there anyway, but since I’d had success using this method with other evil beings from space, I figured what the hell. I dug into my purse, pulled out my hairspray, and sent a stream of it around me and Martini, making sure to not get it in his face.
Martini coughed. “Why?”
“Just in case.”
“It worked,” Brian said, voice filled with relief. “They backed off.”
“Extra hold gets them every time.” I flipped the bottle around before I put it back into my purse.
“Nice shootin’, Tex,” Martini said. “But does that mean we have invisible superbeings or that your boy here’s insane and just thinks you scared the ghosts away?”
Another thought niggled. “Brian, do you recognize any of these people?”
He looked intently at what still looked like nothing to me. “Not really . . . but they seem familiar.”
Christopher had come over and heard this exchange. He went back to check with the other astronauts. He returned looking thoughtful. “Chee’s the oldest of the three of them, and he says he recognizes some people walking by. However, he thinks he’s wrong about it.”
“Why so?”
“Because everyone who looks familiar to him is dead.”
After finding out aliens and superbeings existed, the presence of ghosts seemed normal. “So, does that mean whatever hit the Valiant is causing the astronauts to see dead people, or is it really bringing the dead people here?”
“Let’s ask Chee.” Martini nodded to Brian. “Be right back. Shout if any more ghosts are trying to get my girl.”
Brian gave Martini a dirty look. “I’ll be sure to.”
“Jeff, why are you being such a jerk to him?” I asked as we moved to Chee’s holding cell.
He snorted. “Can’t imagine.”
Chee was at his window. “I recognize at least a dozen people.”
“Did you know them?”
He shook his head. “Not personally. But the ones I know were all astronauts who’ve died.”
“In space?”
“No, on the ground, so to speak. Either in a crash, in an accident on the ground or just due to natural causes. Not everyone dies from an exploding rocket, you know.”
I let this one pass. “So they’re haunting the building?”
“I don’t think so.” Chee, like Brian, was staring at nothing. “They’re really attracted to you.” I pulled out my hairspray. “No, wait. I don’t think they want to hurt you.”
“What do they want?”
“I . . . can’t tell.”
I sprayed. “Better safe than sorry.”
Christopher, Martini, and Gower all coughed. “We’re sorry,” Christopher said. “Does that count?”
“I want to talk to Michael. Be right back,” I said to Chee.
He shrugged. “I’m not going anywhere.”
We reached Michael’s cell. He seemed agitated. “Why are they out and we’re not?”
“What are they doing?”
“Staring at us. At you in particular.” He grinned. “Can’t blame them.”
“Are they all men?”
“No, several women, too.” He rubbed his forehead. “Look, all three of us aren’t crazy at the same time.”
“No, but you could all be affected by something at the same time,” Gower said. “None of us can see anything, and Daniel says he recognizes some of the people you’re seeing. The ones he recognizes are dead.”
“Do you know Karl Smith?”
“Not well, but yeah.” Michael looked at the group. “I don’t see him here, though.”
“How about an older, heavyset Cuban cleaning lady?”
He looked. “Nope.”
“This gets weirder by the minute.” I closed my eyes. I could feel something kicking in my brain. “Michael, all of you thought something bad had happened to the Valiant, but you all thought it was a different thing. And none of you remember doing the landing the way it really happened—you all remember it like it was in a simulator.”
“Right. So?”
“So . . . I’m wondering if every person you’re seeing was in space at some time. Not just the ones Daniel recognizes, but all of them.” I looked at Gower. “Any way we can get some sort of information down here for them to go through, pictures, preferably?”
He shrugged. “Kennedy has pretty good archives, and they have video in these cells.” He pulled his phone out and made a call.
While he was talking, I wandered back to Chee. “Daniel, the people you don’t recognize, what are the odds they were all in space at one time?”
He studied them again. “It’s possible. But . . . people are missing. The Challenger crew, for example, they’re not here. I didn’t know any of them, but I know what they looked like, and I don’t see them. So, it’s not everyone who was in space.” He heaved a sigh. “Something’s wrong with us, right?”
“Well, you’re seeing dead people and Bruce Willis is nowhere in sight, so I think, yes, Houston, we have a problem.”
He rubbed his forehead. “I just want to get out of here.”
“All three of you do.” It could be natural, or it could be whatever was wrong with them trying to get out. I had a hard time believing it was our run-of-the-mill parasitic superbeing, though, since they looked normal and weren’t destroying things. However, there was a sure way to tell.
I went back to Christopher and Martini. “Can either one of you feel Michael through the glass? I mean, the way you did when you discovered Robot Kitty during Operation Fugly?” They’d done a two-man “go team” move on some video footage and determined that the bad guys had created a fake me to take out my mother. My introduction to the A-C crew had been exciting in a lot of really icky ways. I wondered how icky this latest adventure was going to get, then shoved the worry aside. I’d find out soon enough, one way or the other.
Christopher gave me a pained look for the “Operation Fugly” comment and shook his head. “I can’t, that’s not an image, that’s Michael.”
“I can. Put your hand to the glass,” Martini told him. Michael did as asked, and Martini put his hand opposite. He concentrated, eyes closed, then he pulled away slowly. “No parasite that we’re used to is in there.”
That we’re used to. “What is in there, Jeff?”
“I don’t know,” he said, as he pulled me into his arms. “But it wants out.”
CHAPTER 32
I HAD TO FORCE MARTINI to do the same test with Chee and Brian. He confirmed that whatever was in Michael was in the other two as well.
“You need to stay far away from them.” He sounded freaked out.
“Why me? I mean, why me more than anyone else?”
“No idea, but I can feel it, and it wants you.” He was clutching me to him and I got the impression he was ready to hyperspeed us out of not only the quarantine area but the entire Space Center.
“Jeff, it’s okay,” Christopher said. “She’s not going in, and they’re not coming out, at least, not right now.”
We were standing in front of Chee’s cell, and he was paying attention. “If we have some entity within us, we need to get it out.”
Martini shook his head. “I don’t know what it is. It’s . . . odd.”
“Odd how?” I could feel his hearts—they were pounding.
“I think they’re here to . . . do something. But either I can’t tell what it is, or they’re confused.”
“I can understand something confused gravitating to Kitty,” Christopher said.
“The entities must have done the landing, or helped the astronauts to
land.” I was trying to come up with something that made sense before Martini lost it and decided getting out of Dodge was more important than helping out.
“Yes, we have to assume that now,” Gower said. “Jeff, do you get an evil feeling?”
He shook his head. “It’s nothing like a superbeing. Only . . . it is, in a way.” Martini looked at Christopher. “Put your palm against mine.”
Christopher raised his eyebrow, but he did as asked. “Do we say something alienlike now?”
Martini was concentrating. “No. But . . . you feel . . . similar to whatever’s inside the others.” He did the same with Gower. “You, too.”
“So, whatever it is comes from Alpha Centauri?”
Martini shook his head again. “Not . . . quite. Similar, but not the same.”
Something knocked in my brain. “Jeff, you said there were a lot of inhabited planets in your system, right?”
He nodded. “And, to guess where you’re going with it, there are only a few similarities between planetary species.”
“How many are humanoid?”
Gower answered. “Out of the ten planets that had intelligent life when our people came to Earth, only about half were humanoid. The others would, for human understanding, be more avian and reptilian, versus mammalian. Of the humanoids, most were more mammalian than human.”
“Hairy gorillas instead of naked ones?”
Martini laughed, which was a relief to hear. “More like walking cats and dogs. The apes were on our planet. And some others, but not all by any means.”
“They aren’t cats or dogs, like you’d think of them,” Christopher added. “And they had no interests in mingling with us.”
“No interspecies mating,” Gower clarified. “Frankly, we mate normally with humans, but not with the other races in our solar system.”
“That’s weird.” I thought about it. “I wonder how much the Ancients had to do with that.”
“Potentially? Possibly a lot. Likely? When your father finishes his latest revision of the Ancients’ text, we might know,” Gower sighed. “Until then, just speculation.”
Operation Fugly had identified a lack in the A-Cs’ translations of the texts the original alien visitors, the Ancients, had brought with them. My father had done an initial revision five months ago, but he wasn’t happy with it and so was redoing from scratch. The A-Cs saw this as impressive dedication and attention to detail. I saw it as him having a ton of fun.