“Oh, jeez, this is heavy,” I grunt, as we crab walk into Jim’s front door. I’m holding the flat, silver platform on one side and he’s on the other. My arm, although healed enough to function, screams at me in pain.

“No, turn it that way. No—yes,” I say, tilting this way and that, desperately trying to keep it from slipping from our collective grasp.

Jim walks backwards into the living room and makes for the basement, but halts.

“There’s no way we can get it downstairs,” he says. “Let’s just drop it here and I’ll bring stuff up.”

“Fine by me,” I say, squatting down.

Jim follows my lead and we drop the platform on the old shag carpet. He gets to his knees and examines the surfaces carefully. It’s very shiny, but this is the first time I realize that despite that metallic gleam, there’s no reflection. Of anything. It’s weird that way.

Jim’s phone goes off and he looks at it. I can see a picture of Doctor Shen smiling, sitting on a swing.

“They missing you at work?” I say.

“It’s … It’s nothing,” he says, and puts it back in his pocket.

Then he puts his hand over the platform and closes his eyes.

“Oh, more Jedi tricks?” I say.

Jim inhales, then begins to make big wide movements with his hands. The motion feels … holistic and mystical, like I walked into an enthusiastic fortune teller's tent at the fair.

I raise an eyebrow. “Please tell me you’re not going to start predicting my fu—whoa, what is that?”

Jim pulls his hands back and something, I’m not sure what, emits out over the platform in a dome. Dots. Clusters of dots. They shine like holographics floating pin pricks in the air. The entire display slowly rotates clockwise about a meter above the surface.

Jim stands up, and so do I.

“Okay, I’m convinced you at least know a little bit about alien tech now,” I say. “How did you—”

“Hold on,” he says, then runs to his basement door. As he does, I hear his phone ring again, which he promptly ignores. I wait in the living room, examining the display. It’s beautiful. I tilt my head this way and that trying to make sense of it. Are they … symbols of some kind? It looks like 3D braille, which makes absolutely no sense.

“Wait a minute,” I say, squinting down a particularly dense cluster of dots. “They’re stars.”

It only takes Jim a few more moments to return. I hear him stomping up the stairs. He reappears holding three objects, each the size of a lunchbox. Two of them have metal casings around crystals, which are mounted to springs inside. The third looks like a car battery, but … fancier. All three have tendrils of wires that extend out to small nodes at the end of them.

He begins to attach the nodes to the thin outer layer of the platform, moving through the illuminated display as if it’s not even there, until the entire circumference is covered. I offer to help but he just waves me off. I try to crack a joke about car batteries and aliens—it’s not a very good joke—but he’s too focused on his craft to even acknowledge it.

“Alright then,” I say, “Let me know when you’re done. Maybe I’ll just go and drink some more expired milk or something.” Instead, I sit down on the living room couch, and glance over at my shotgun leaned up against the wall.

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“Okay,” he says, after a million hours, slapping his thighs and standing up. “I think it’s ready.”

“One,” I say, “I would ask you what you’re doing, but you’ll probably just be all condescending and say it’s too complicated for me to understand, and two, I’m going to ask anyway. What are you doing?”

“Something probably really stupid,” he says, pulling a remote device from his pocket. “Are you ready?”

“For what?” I say, with a desperate chuckle, instinctively covering my crotch.

“Brace yourself,” he says, and pushes a button on the device.

I squint, and look away. At first, nothing happens, then I hear a low hum. The crystals in the metal casings start glowing, and the holographic dome of stars vanishes. A few sparks emit from the third box, the one that looks like a car battery, and then all the lights in the house go out.

“Was that supposed to happen?” I say.

Another set of sparks fly out of the battery thing in response. It makes me jump, but Jim is quiet. We both just look around, expectantly.

Then I feel something I haven't felt in a long time. Something … in my hand. I look at my palm. The lights are out but there’s plenty of sunlight to let me see the lips moving on my palm.

“Xeno?” I say, standing up. “You there?”

Jim comes over to investigate. His eyes go wide at the site of my scar undulating and taking odd shapes.

“It looks like it’s trying to form words,” says Jim.

There’s a soft squeak from Xeno’s lips. Then another sound, like a deep, low vowel. Then indeterminate sounds start coming through. “Ja … wind … loo … tur.”

“What’s it trying to say?” says Jim.

“I don’t know. Did you know this would happen?”

“No,” he says. “I’ve worked with devices like this platform before, so I wasn’t sure if I—” his phone rings again and he lets out a sharp curse. He holds up a finger to me, answers it, and puts it to his ear.

“Hey, honey, I’m in the middle of something, can I call you ba—” Jim suddenly looks up at me sharply, eyes wide.

“Jack!” says Xeno. “Oh, thank the progenitors, I can speak again.”

“Buddy!” I say, “Glad to have you back, it’s been a—”

“Shut up and listen, you stupid idiot.”

“Well that’s no way to—”

“I could sense her the whole time,” he says. “She’s been outside, looking in for the past ten minutes.”

“Who?” I say.

“The Asian Chick,” says Xeno. “Doctor Shen. Gah!”

I stumbled over to the living room window, tripping over the leg of a coffee table.

“Well, she’s not here anymore,” says Xeno. “She left a few minutes ago and … oh no.”

I don’t have to ask what oh no means, because I can see the problem coming down the cul-de-sac.

“Jim,” I say, and turn.

He’s in the kitchen, back facing me. He’s yelling on the phone in a hushed tone, too quiet for me to hear. He keeps running a hand through his hair.

“Hey,” I yell. “Jim, we have a problem.”

I look back out the window as three, no four … make that five cars pull up to Jim’s home.

“She ratted us out,” says Xeno.

Jim pockets his phone, shakes his head, then turns to face me.

“Well don’t just stand there,” says Xeno.

“Back door,” I say, running through the living room and into the kitchen where the backdoor was. Jim’s backyard was a wide open field, filled with thick maple Trees. I’m about to pull the door open when I see a group of men approaching through the yard towards us.

“Do you have any other way out?” I say.

Jim sighs. “Jack, it’s …” he looks away. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I’m not going back down there,” I say. “No way, not again.”

“Neither am I,” says Xeno.

Jim looks momentarily wide-eyed at my hand. Then he looks up at me as if to say “it’s talking now!”

“Well, I doubt we’re going to be able to talk our way out of this,” I say. “Which leaves us with one unfortunate option.”

“Time for a little Aubergine,” says Xeno.

“What’s Aubergine,” says Jim. “Like an eggplant?”

I nod, and sigh. “Okay, here’s the plan.”