Rick prayed for the aliens to come back.
He wished they’d take him away again.
THE WAR BEGINS
The flight from Atlanta, Georgia to Washington D.C. was just over an hour. If everything went right, William Canha could write his article and email it to the Post before the plane even started its descent.
Only things weren’t going right.
“It’s so darned expensive to get internet access. They charge for everything. It’s ridiculous,” the woman next to William said. “I swear I don’t know what my ticket pays for anymore. Half a cup of ice and a tenth of a soda can?”
William always flew business class. He felt silly sitting up in first class. The upgrade wasn’t worth the money, and he’d always enjoyed observing people. There was nowhere more interesting than an airplane or a bus. He could tell the people who were new to it all from those seasoned vets, to the confident passenger who rode a plane once in the last decade and was coaching a rookie through how things are. There was noise and the distraction of the drink cart, but William had learned long ago not to drink anything. His bladder was not a friend of the great blue yonder.
William gave no response to the woman, so she said, “You must fly a lot, or be very busy.”
“I fly a lot,” he said.
“Oh, business?”
“Everything. I don’t like cars.”
“Don’t like cars?”
“I don’t like people,” William said. “Most people don’t deserve the rights they are handed.”
“Well, aren’t you a pleasant box of chocolates?”
“Back off, lady, someone has to report the news.”
“You’re a reporter?”
“Yes. And I’m writing an article on conversations on a plane,” William lied.
“That so? Did you want my picture for your article?”
“No. I want you to mind your own business.”
“What paper you write for?” she asked.
“I’m positive you don’t read it.”
“Well, if it’s written by a snotty twit like you, I’d like to stop.”
“Associated Press. I’m free-lance. I write for every paper in the world.”
“That’s probably because you’re a jack ass and no one wants to work with you.”
“That’s because I’m the best journalist in America.”
“Journal-ass!”
“Clever,” William said. “I see what you did there. Very high-brow.”
The woman scrunched up into a child’s silence. She flipped the in-air magazine as loudly as possible, and shifted her body weight towards the window.
The truth was, William wrote better when he was irritated. He needed this. All his thoughts were escalating to turn a number on that woman. But he had to reel them in and convert them to the task at hand.
William was about to break a story—a story he only got wind of because he used to date a girl named Melinda Coleman. Since the crash, Melinda had disappeared. That’s when one of her former partners got real interested in keeping contact with William. He knew William was a free-lance writer, and he knew William liked mysteries. There was something up, something that her partner couldn’t really allude to, but every story he pointed William towards felt like another piece to the puzzle. Whatever that was he was sure that Melinda Coleman’s disappearance had everything to do with the arrival of aliens.
So much about the world didn’t change when the alien race, known as the Geyrn, crash-landed on Earth almost three months ago. There were bigots and religious outbursts—even suicides. A couple of cults rose up and either disbanded or disappeared. TV movie and book deals were made and quickly oversaturated the public’s limits. Most just went on with their lives.
Yes, the arrival of the aliens had so far been treated with about as much excitement as a new smartphone.
The Geyrn were here on accident. They genuinely wanted to repair their ship and move on and they had made that clear. They’d also cowered, begged, worked hard to prove they meant well enough.
Those large ugly looking creatures—things of nightmares—they were afraid of what humankind would do to them.
William wrote: We are the monsters.
The woman next to him grunted.
William tapped away on his keyboard. He knew what it was like to be hated and feared for his appearance. His face resembled something Lon Chaney made rather than a benevolent God. His picture never accompanied his articles, and that’s the way he liked it. It was his subconscious that made him hide behind the printed word. 99% of all readers would never know what William Canha looked like. People like Rick Coleman would’ve read his articles and never had a racist twitch in their thoughts. But today, it would all come out. He would tell the world he was fed up.
Turbulence.
William’s fingers tripped over the keyboard. Random letters found their way into earlier sentences.
“Come on!”
William wasn’t alone in his outrage. This turbulence was a bit different than any he’d experienced before. He thought of dying just as he finished his most important article. They would find it in the wreckage. It would live on without him.
Then William realized where their plane must be.
So did just about every passenger. A choir sang out against the Geyrn. “It’s the aliens!”
They had no reason to fear the Geyrn. No reason at all.
They didn’t know what William knew.
They didn’t know that a human had gone deep into their crash site and killed one of the Geyrn in cold blood.
Maybe this was the aliens retaliating.
Or maybe it was just turbulence. Their plane should’ve gone around the crash site. That was law.
“He grabbed my breast!” the woman next to William screamed.
It wasn’t true. He had the typos across his screen to prove it.
The plane steadied and the silence that followed became more awkward for the woman who shouted.
“No, he didn’t.” the flight attendant said. “You must’ve just brushed it up against something as the plane shook.”
“No… um… before,” she said.
But the passengers were not buying William’s accuser. A writer could’ve just used the known facts of the occurrence and William would’ve seemed guilty, but to anyone who saw that woman and the way she went about accusing him, it was clear she was just a piece of crap.
“Would you like a new seat?”
“I’d like a word with your captain!”
The flight attendant kept her poise. She was stronger than most people in the situation. She didn’t laugh or get angry. She handled the woman with the poise of a professional negotiator.
“I have an open seat, we will move you there until the Captain can call you up to the cabin. Come with me.”
William watched eyes dip down below the seat backs. If there were whispers they were silenced as the flight attendant led the woman away. A few moments later the flight attendant returned with the drink cart.
The threat of turbulence ended.
“Can I get you anything? On the house,” she said. William read the woman’s nametag. He had every intention of having an intention to write a kind word to her employers. But he wouldn’t. He’d never remember her. And not with a name like Jennifer. A whole generation was named Jennifer, Sarah (with and without the ‘h’), and Jessica. He’d known so many in his life that he couldn’t tell one from the other.
“Any top shelf?”
Jennifer nodded. “What’s your poison?”
“Macallan.”
Her hands disappeared beneath the cart. She poured a glass out of sight. And before it reached William’s hand he already knew the woman had done her best to appease him. They didn’t have any Macallan. But he appreciated the ruse, and right now a drink was a drink when one has a sensitive bladder. He’d just have one sip to thank her. Anymore would ruin him. He feigned a smile. “It’s as if I am overlooking the River Spey.”
“It’s not even that, my dear.”
“She said you were a journalist.”
William set the plastic cup on his departed neighbor’s tray table. “I am.”
“She said you were writing nasty things about her,” Jennifer said.
“About everyone, actually.” He turned the monitor so that she could read the opening line: We are the monsters.
“You write for the newspapers? Or are you just some blogger.”
“I have no problem selling my stories. I don’t blog or tweet or whatever it is people who should be working other jobs are doing to call themselves a writer.”
“That is impressive,” she said with a smile. “I have a friend who started a blog about being a stewardess. There’s only ever like two comments. It’s either ones telling her she’s hot, or asking if airlines have a code for personnel when an unidentified aircraft is spotted?”
William tried to stop her from continuing. “Of course they do.”
It was like he gave the lawn mower one more tug. When he was a boy he used to convince his mother the push mower wouldn’t start so that he could continue playing outside rather than mow their hilly four acres. It’s why he lived in the city, surrounded by sidewalks and asphalt.
“It happens more times than one would think. We joke about it constantly. Just you watch us next time you fly, when the pilot reports a slight bit of turbulence. If there was something suspicious in the air, then there is an addition to that statement that signals the flight attendants to be prepared for something out of the ordinary. Usually it is just a flock of birds being erratic or a bunch of birthday balloons on their final voyage.”
“Of course until an actual alien ship plummeted from the heavens.”
“There was another time. Before that. I guess it doesn’t matter now that we all know aliens exist.”
The flight attendant recounted the tale:
“We’re coming up on a rough patch here,” the co-pilot Bruce Henderson said into the loud speaker. I’d heard it so many times that when he followed it up with, “Skies look clear right now. And will be on the other side.” I almost laughed when I saw Jenny’s face. She went cross-eyed and even hummed what I assumed was the X-Files theme song.
We had a laugh.
It’s what we did in the meetings where it was brought up. We were almost certain that Bruce was messing with us. He was such a tease.
No, no, it was oh so serious. It wasn’t about aliens. It could be referring to hostile aircraft, enemy aircraft, or again just a flock of birds.
“Birds, I’ll bet you five bucks right now.” Jenny said.
I wouldn’t take that bet. Not if I was going to get those implants. Jenny had enjoyed the big breasts God had granted her with, but me? I was the stewardess only the nerdy fat men felt comfortable hitting on. Some days I even felt like I was only kept onboard for the pleasure of the dikes that preferred their women flat and boyish looking like K.D. Lang or Orlando Bloom.
But we were supposed to go out and reassure the passengers it was nothing and ask them if they needed anything other than a faster Wi-Fi connection so they could continue updating their Twitter accounts.
But there was no chance in that.
Everyone could see it coming.
If I had to describe it, it wasn’t lights. It was more like how a mirror shines in daylight. It illuminated the cabin to the point of blindness.
It felt like the plane shook so hard that it stopped sounding like it was shaking and for that moment all the atoms that made us and the plane were moving in perfect harmony. Replicating that same feeling one has when the plane is stopped on the runway. But only because our atoms were vibrating at a rate that was so fast it seemed still, we couldn’t move. Couldn’t blink. Couldn’t hear.
It was as if time froze.
We could still think.
The shake must’ve fired up every synapse in our brains and all I could do was think and remember and experience. I had become aware of all the atoms around me—all the atoms that made me. It almost seemed like I knew what each one’s purpose was.
Not just how the atom served my body, but why it even wanted to serve my body. I could feel the communication that mankind must’ve long taken for granted.
Then the vibrating stopped and we all threw up.
Everywhere.
Thankfully, as a flight attendant, picking up trash is where we draw the line.
We were given permission to land based on risk of a biohazard. You probably read about that in the papers. Maybe you even wrote the article. It was an issue with the airflow compounded with cabin pressure is what they said. Everybody got motion sickness all at once.
It was easy for us to accept that. All the passengers had no problem assuming that’s what they experienced; sudden mass nausea.
William interjected. “I don’t write speculative fiction, ma’am.”
“Yeah, it probably ended up on one of those grocery store rags. The only reason I doubt it is because I knew what the code phrase was. They didn’t make us sign anything saying we saw a weather balloon. They just didn’t acknowledge that we had seen anything out of the ordinary. It was like talking to a wall. The one thing I learned real well was to keep quiet. I know exactly how to do it. I even know why I should do it. But who would believe me? Or course you can’t believe anything I’ve said. That’s what they told me when I asked. All because I want to get breast enhancement surgery. Shame on me. I’m an unreliable witness.”
“Every human on this planet is unreliable.”
“You must’ve met my ex-husband,” she said.
“All I ever meet are excuses.”
“Well, he was a sad one of those,” she said. “What’s your name? I’d like to see what you write?”
“William Canha.”
“I’m Jennifer Johnston, by the way. And I have a layover when we reach D.C.”
“I don’t,” William said. “I have a deadline.”
“Oh. What are you writing about?”
“The war of the worlds.”
VOGT OF CONFIDENCE
Derek Vogt sighed.
He felt as if he’d farted or made a racist comment. All eyes turned on him, scanned him from forehead to belt and then turned back to their previous conversation. Derek hated parties. He hated that he didn’t know anyone, and he hated standing alone trying to pretend he wasn’t lonely.
In his mind, he knew this was the way it had always been.
When Derek was a little boy he hugged his father or mother’s leg. He tucked in beneath their buttocks and battled their incessant prods to get him to move forward, to tell strangers “hello” or “thank you.”
Perhaps if they had prodded harder, Derek would not be the man that he became. Perhaps he would be more outgoing, seeing as strangers could not actually hurt him once they became friends.
Poor Derek.
He could be so much more if it weren’t for this early programming.
“You want to go?” Jeanie asked. Jeanie barely knew Derek, but she found him attractive. She on the other hand could use a good acne cleanser, an orthodontist’s magic wand, and more volume to her flat dark brown hair, which she always pulled tightly into a ponytail. Even on an occasion like this.
“We can stay if you’re having fun. I forgot to breathe for a second,” he said.
“Okay. Well, I want to talk to my friend Josh for a little bit. After…”
“Go ahead. Have a good time. I can always call a cab if I get too bored. I’m a grown man, don’t you know?”
Jeanie laughed. She laughed at most of what Derek said. Did she think he was telling jokes?
Jeanie left him alone by the food table.
Derek unintentionally blocked the salsa, and when a man around Derek’s age came, he was forced to sidestep.
“What do you do for a living?” the man asked. The man stuck his finger in his mouth, and sucked off some salsa that had dribbled down th
e spoon when he lifted it.
“I work for the government,” Derek said. “Analysis. Real boring stuff.” That’s how Derek had always shied away from the exact nature of his boredom. Though Derek never understood why he didn’t just tell people about how the government had employed the notorious Moneyball tactics of small market Major League baseball teams to assess foreign countries as threats. It was a bit of a reverse ‘building’ process. Rather than increasing other countries abilities to prosper and defend themselves, the government used statistical analysis to eliminate key parts of any political machine, while not creating martyrs or headlines.
Perhaps, eliminate was an unfortunate word. The United States Government were actually not assassins, but people desperate to construct peace, while holding the upper hand. But as far as Derek knew they never killed anyone, merely ‘displaced’ them. In theory, if all the bad guys are together then none of the good guys get hurt. Either way, their fates were not part of Derek’s department, only analysis.
The man nodded as if the conversation was just on pause. Derek did not get a good idea of how much time passed as he debated offering the true nature of his employment. He nodded back.
“You look familiar,” the man said. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Same as you said.”
The man’s face scrunched, then unraveled. “I see what you did there. I’m Kent. Kent Jett.”
“Derek Vogt.”
“You play baseball as a kid?”
The memory struck Derek He had called upon it the last time the sport of baseball was brought up.
His coach had told him to swing away. He just wanted Derek to put the ball in play. Nothing fancy. Derek fouled the first pitch. It rolled past his mother and father down the first base line. Derek should’ve pulled a bit more. Even if it had gone straight to the first baseman it only would’ve been the second out. There was no shame in that. It wasn’t the dreaded third out that the team always heaped all the blame on.
No.
Derek had to get on base.
Freddie Johnston was on deck, and he had the pitcher’s number the entire game. If Derek was on base, he would score the run to take the lead.
Invasive Species Part 06 Page 2