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It is the year 3048 and you still hate your job. In the past eight hours since landing on this wasteland planet, you fended off two rogue mechas, hacked the building’s access code, and decapitated a droid.
“What do you mean, ‘no?’” I said. “We have a deal. I kept my end, now you have to keep yours.” She showed me the face of a willful child. “I’m not doing it.” Then she turned her back and summoned the royal guards.
We have seen you come before. We have always resisted. We will always resist. The first aliens came as conquerors, ready to crush us, ready to destroy us. We went to ground, we hid. We fought. We picked away at them, bit by bit.
We drove out to Joshua Tree for the star party—a gathering of amateur astronomers under a clear, dark sky. It was Holly’s idea, an impromptu adventure on a Friday after work: “Hey, Lou, do you want to go look at the moon tonight?”
Buddy and I abandoned our hydrogen nomad at the edge of the wastelands before trudging around the rusted chain-link perimeter of the abandoned fairgrounds, waiting for the blast of steam and guttural earthly moan to escape.
At first, it was the not-quite-hidden things. Worms suspended from sticky silk, tree-trapping the unwary. Glassine jointed lines, half-helical, hardly seen vitreous shadows. Diamonds caught in fallen leaves.
Next war, the angel decided, he was going to sit out. Before the dust settled, before hosts rose and fell depending on their actions and inclinations, he fled. Cowardice, maybe. More like pragmatism, he rationalized.
It was close to midnight on the second day of Diwali when we got the message. From deep space—far out past the Kuiper Belt and Pluto, which is not a planet anymore and probably pissed about it—a radio signal penetrated the atmosphere and reached our big-ass dishes in the desert made for this type of thing. Props to NASA, they only took four hours to decode the encryption algorithm.
Here’s a list of items/materials you need for this journey. Please note that these items vary from the purpose of your meeting. Below is a breakdown. — If you have suffered hurt from a miscreant, plunderer, been swindled in trade, or assaulted in any manner, this section is for you. Buy either a three-month-old native brown broiler or a seven-year-old he-goat.
The simulation blossomed around Nadja Gavrić like a hypercube unpacking itself into three dimensions. The plain metal floors of the Roses’ cargo bay turned the shiny white of faux marble. The walls closed in, became a circular chamber. Display cases sprang up around the perimeter. Nadja stumbled backward when her right arm suddenly joined an exhibit of Cometborne funerary instruments.
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