Close Encounters of the Bus Kind

[26]

“Wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up…” Nadia pleaded with herself.

The older woman chuckled. “Denial is the most consistent human reaction. You’ve been through so many things, yet you find this the most unbelievable?”

Nadia clenched her teeth and strained against the invisible force holding her in place. “Not denial. Refusal. I’m not leaving my little sister alone.”

The strange woman frowned and sipped her tea. “Would it help if I informed you that only a few seconds have passed for anyone else? Although the more you delay the topic of our discussion, the more those seconds slip away. Your choice. Rage, fight, and fury or listen to what I have to say.”

After one more tensing against those unseen bonds, Nadia heaved a sigh and nodded. “Then talk. Why am I here?”

The flames in the fireplace shifted and shuddered. The older woman gently set her cup down.

“You are here out of concern. For you, for those you care about, and for your wider world. Less than a day ago, your life barely mattered more than a single ant picking up a grain of dirt. Things have changed.”

Nadia took a deep breath. “Aliens.”

“The Amashasama. Endearing species. Invertebrates who distinguish one another by the faintest of odors and stray hairs on their carapaces. Explorers. You encountered them by pure happenstance. And blew their minds with how different a species and its individuals can be. You most of all. They feared you were some sort of deformity compared to everyone else on that bus, so they did you a kindness and tried to make you normal, as they saw it. And, as a bonus, they patched up everyone they could find. Naïve, but still an endearing crab-like species. Be glad you didn’t run into one of the asparagus-shaped creatures. It wouldn’t have ended well.”

The alien name that spilled out of her mouth, along with that dense stream of information, slapped Nadia in the face and she did her best to process it all. “They… didn’t give us powers?”

“Glad to see you aren’t just a pretty face. No, that wasn’t what they intended. They were just fixing damage to your genetic structure. Making you better than when you were born. Their kind renew themselves constantly. It was no more serious to them than giving you a quick bath. Lengthen your telomeres and remove the free radical damage before sending you on your way. They did also take some tissue samples, but you won’t miss them.”

This was so much information for Nadia to properly process and she didn’t trust the current state of her mind to save everything. No details about the room had recently shifted or been lost, but it still constantly felt like something was sneaking by when she wasn’t looking. “So, it was a mistake? How did we wind up like this?“

“Unintended consequences. And this…IS you. Well, compared with everyone else, there are some notable differences. For physical appearance, they were working with an average of the entire group. So, in a way, you’re like the daughter of the team. But powers? Those were all you and all them. Potential never fully translated until now. Hiding in your DNA. Now awakened. And that’s where we have a problem.”

The current of information waterlogged Nadia’s perceptions. It was aliens, and they were a bunch of naïve explorers who tidied them up and thought Paul was a mistake to patch, using the other girls as references, and activated everyone’s inherent supernatural abilities. And Beyond didn’t like that.

“Trying to keep humanity down?” For emphasis, Nadia strained to move her limbs.

“Alive. Existing. Thriving, ideally. Now people with certain surprising abilities emerge from time to time. Some of them even work for us. Even a sudden outbreak is manageable. Evangeline is a bit problematic, especially if she ever runs into the wrong someone. And we intend to keep an eye on Gina as well. Fortunately, most of your group doesn’t concern us. Except for you and Erin.”

Nadia bent forward as much as she could and strained against the invisible, intangible barrier holding her in place. “Did you grab her too? Are you hurting her?!”

“Relax.”

The force around her focused on pressing her back in place and pushing her against the seat. Nadia resisted and found she could wiggle her left foot. Some tingling passed to her right but nothing more.

The old woman puffed a long breath. “We suspected that chatting with you would be more productive. Erin is fine. She’s feeding Bubsy right now. Want to see?”

As much as seeing Erin again would delight her, Nadia knew that this person or entity, or whatever they were would only use that emotion to get what they wanted. She shook her head and questioned, “Productive? What do you want out of me?”

“You make things worse for every one of them that you’re around. Her, worst of all. Think of… an accelerant on a fire. They’re going to get burned. Your ability changes things, no matter what you may intend. Imagine Gina endlessly outputting clones until the entire surface of the earth is covered. Imagine Evangeline sharing horrifying powers with every living being on the planet. Imagine how much further Erin could go than just stopping projectiles. And that is how everything ends.”

Nadia listened and finally eased back against the restraining force. Her ability made the abilities of others stronger? Weirdly, that fit with her personality. Paul always wanted to lend his own strength to help and improve others, even to his own detriment. And the language thing was just an offshoot of his hopes for clear communication. If she believed this strange woman at her word.

“So, what do I do? What would you have me do about that?”

The old woman straightened in her seat, set her hands in her lap, and focused her full attention on Nadia. “You can choose to do nothing. Just let it all play out. None of us can actually stop you. We’re just here to give you a nudge in the right direction. As for what we would have you do… Let her go. Avoid the volleyball team. We aren’t certain what the cooldown time would be but the more time you spend apart, the better.”

Nadia couldn’t believe this. Some old woman with Christmas decorations over the fireplace was telling her to dump her new girlfriend and avoid all her friends to basically save the world. Go back to the way things were. Go back to that loneliness.

The old woman added, “You kids have your electronic devices and the Internet and all that, you can easily still keep in touch at a distance. And visiting the volleyball games would be fine, so long as you remain in the crowd. And your classes can be easily modified. But you absolutely cannot continue things with Erin. I’m sorry to say that, if you do, then she or both of you will die.”

Slowly, it was like the air was leaking out of Nadia. The way that she phrased that, and the emphasis she put, made Nadia want to question and rebel and do all sorts of teenage things against those words. But her intuition and her suspicions fluttered beneath the surface. If there existed entities that could whisk her off in dreams like this, then surely it had to be a serious matter.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Was there any independent proof that her learned ability, as Leslie seemed to allude to, made the powers of others stronger? She hadn’t really seen any telekinesis from Erin earlier aside from maybe the lamp falling over in her apartment and some other things she referred to. What if she made the monster-seeing ability stronger? The responsibility for all her recent suffering, for all the group’s suffering, would’ve been completely on her.

Gina didn’t manifest any copies until she was hanging around Nadia. And similar things for the others. But that wasn’t proof or even an argument in one direction or the other. She felt a sudden swell of vertigo as her head wobbled. The old woman brushed her hands off and cleared her throat.

“And that is all we need to discuss for now. The ball is in your court, as they say. Make your choices and face your consequences. Time may work differently here, but we all still have a schedule to keep. And it’s time for you to wake up.”

Nadia stretched out a hand from the couch, momentarily surprised that she was able to free it without any effort. The old woman appeared concerned.

“Wait!” Nadia cried out. “I still have questions. Are you responsible for Luna?”

The older lady cocked her head, scrunched her brow, and asked in return, “What are you talking about?…Who or what is Luna?”

Nadia‘s expression suddenly dropped, like a kite losing the wind. The woman’s expression of confusion was severe, intense, and earnest. Privately, Nadia considered that perhaps she should’ve kept that question to herself. She was never good at lying, so instead of trying to confabulate some spiraling story about how Luna was the big black dog that Erin saw last night, she just shook her head and shrugged.

The old woman paused with the invitation for Nadia to say more, but simple silence passed except for the crackling fire and a far-off hum that Nadia couldn’t quite place.

It wasn’t long before Nadia discovered she could free her right hand as well. The old woman raised herself up in her seat and declared, “We’ll be in touch…”

The next moment, Nadia found herself back in the car with a quick, unsettling hypnagogic jerk, as though she had just nodded off for a split second of a micro nap and was back. Luna was at her side and looked up at her with concern. Goosebumps covered what frail, silvery hairs she had on her arms. She took a deep breath and looked out the windows.

Dusk settled deep in all directions, heightened by the lingering clouds against the horizon. The southwest desert felt different since last night, as though the weather has been transformed too amidst all the other changes. Luna squeezed tighter, urgently. She glanced over at the girl and put on a quick smile, responding and sniffling, “I’m fine. I just nodded off for a sec.”

Eva leaned forward from the back and checked on her while Gina turned to look as well. She knew that she should’ve said something to the group, with all the little details she learned. But what really had she learned?

Everything in the dream felt unsettlingly real while shifting and changing from moment to moment. She let the imagery drift in her mind, testing whether it would diminish and become nebulous as time passed in waking. But the detail of the overwhelming chair, along with the soup and tea she was served, the taste sensations, and every word out of the mouth of that strange old woman along with the Beyond sign on the wall remained rooted in her awareness.

Beyond, place or person, told her it was aliens. The Amashasama… she somehow remembered the name. They gave her the average genetics of the other girls and awakened their innate abilities. Hers was supposedly dangerous because they turned up others' abilities to eleven. If she didn’t stay away, Erin could die. But they didn’t know about Luna. Whatever that meant.

She felt exhausted just assembling all that in her mind. Why did it have to be this way? Why couldn’t it just be that aliens turned her into a teenage girl because they had a fetish, rather than they had no idea what sex and gender were? No monsters, no oddities, no strange powers, just figuring out a quiet life with the girl she had a crush on all those years ago. Why couldn’t it just be simple?

Mrs. Ferris pulled into their housing tract and Nadia shoved all those tangled thoughts aside. She gathered up her things and put on a face to tell the others that everything was fine, even though it desperately wasn’t. She wasn’t listening to what Gina‘s mom said when they pulled to the curb and the door opened, but she figured it was something nice, so she politely thanked her and waved to the other girls.

It didn’t really feel like her body was moving when she walked up the driveway to the front door. It had to be someone else’s. The door was unlocked, and it was easy to slip inside. Nadia’s mom greeted her, ruffled Luna‘s hair, and asked a few questions that simply passed over her. She noticed the state of their clothes and wondered what they had been doing. The best explanation that Nadia could come up with was crawling over store floors to find certain things on low shelves. Her mother asked several follow-up questions only answered with shrugs. The Luna method.

That sufficed for most things until her mother noticed the necklace. She had neglected to hide it.

“What is this?”

It took Nadia several moments to realize what her mother meant. She didn’t think the necklace was strange or suspicious, but she had also spent precious little time as a member of this family.

“This? It was a gift.” Her brain struggled from the wide swath of directions everything was tearing it in.

“From who?” Despite the reserved tone in which her mother asked that question, Nadia could sense the sharp seriousness. Her father wasn’t present, probably back at the restaurant. None of her other family members were nearby, except for Luna clinging to her leg. She had such fond feelings and hope for the Baris family, but could she truly know them in so short of time? They were loving parents, but even the sweetest family has things they hope for, things they worry about, and things they fear.

“Erin,” Nadia answered, knowing that she should’ve lied but also realizing it probably wouldn’t have helped. “A friend.”

“Why does it say ‘GIRLFRIENDS FOREVER’ and have lesbian symbols? What does that mean?”

Before Nadia could say anything else, her mother stretched and undid the necklace from around her neck. She squeezed it into one fist, as though she could bury it that way. She gazed at her daughter with an intense expression between anger and disappointment.

“Go to your room. We will talk about this later. I am glad you both made it home safe.”