“Lots of lessons learned” George the overweight, overworked and overtly stressed manager said. “Yeah sure, we could have done things better, but as far as humans go we did all right” he slurred a bit on the last word.

“Okay, thanks for that info George, umm so to reiterate” Cathy from H.R interrupted. “so we are planning on this being a temporary interruption in workplace activities a lot of our clients and vendors are on a temporary hiatus due to recent global event developments.” She kept a smile throughout all of her spiel.

Jon closed his laptop before she finished talking. “Normally this would be devastating news Sam, being placed on leave for the foreseeable future” Jon stood up while he talked and walked over to the IT closet.

“but honestly as far as bad news goes, its not even in my top 3 for this last week” he opened the locked cage with his badge and started to load up several laptops onto the cart in the cage.

“yeah I mean first thing that happens is the Announcement, that was fucked for everyone” he moved over to the monitors and started loading those.

“next, the three offers we had on our house pulled out due to uncertainty in the marked” he grabbed about eight cell phones skipping the older generation ones.

“but you know what the real bad news this last week was…” he pulled a flask from his back pocked and took a large swig “my wife, she realized that life was too short to be living a lie and she said she wanted a divorce” another swig came “said shes going to try and see whats out there in the world before these Alky fuckers come and ruin it” he put the clearly empty flask back into his pocked.

“So I guess what Im saying Sam is this…” he smiled “do you know anyone who wants to buy a laptop?”.

Sam looked Jon in the eye and smiled “good luck Jon” he put his arm on Jons shoulder “I know shit sucks right now, but hey at least you have time to mourn your marriage now that your unemployed” they both paused for a few seconds and then started laughing. It was probably the most genuine interaction they have had since they started working together a year ago; either way Sam wasn’t going to even attempt to stop Jon, he knew how to spot a man with nothing to lose and besides that, employee theft was probably the mildest crime he would witness that day. Society was holding on by a thread since the announcement, 4 days had passed since Paul was freaked out at dinner and looking back the man seemed like the only sane one. Sam still had not seen or heard from Paul despite reaching out to him several times on text and any messaging app he had. Sam wanted to invite Paul to the arrival meeting, there were about 80 people who confirmed they would be there, this was one of the smaller local Arrival meetups, Dallas had one with 15 thousand people all gathering at a stadium.

He watched as Jon slowly loaded all the equipment into the back of his small truck. Sam shot an email to HR right after letting them know what Jon had done, he figured that they either didn’t give a crap and it wouldn’t matter that he emailed but if all this Arrival stuff blew over in a week or so, then they were going to find out anyway so he might as well cover his tracks.

Sams phone rang a few seconds after walking out of the building, it was his mom. He figured he would answer it since it was twelfth call of the day, maybe this one will have some pertinent information.

As soon as he said hi his mother started going a mile a minute “Sam, why didn’t you answer my calls I need to make sure all of you kids are doing okay at all times” he tried to interject.

“Ma, I” Sams mom ignored him. “Ma nothing, have you seen the news, everyone is going crazy, you need to be very very careful right now and I need to know that you and the girls are okay, you sisters are going to be spending this remaining week at home and we already got the air mattress ready for you”

Sams eyes widened “Ma, Im not going to”

“Oh yes you are staying with us, right now everyone needs to be with their family because God only knows what is coming” another call came in just at that moment which was the best signt that there was a God for Sam.

“Ma, I got another call coming, I love you I will call you back” he hung up and answered the call before his mom could interrupt another time.

“this is Sam” he said.

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“hey…” one word is all it took for Sam to recognize and remember who it was. It had been soo long since he spoke to her that he was positive he had forgotten her voice, but clearly he had not.

“hey, I uh” Sam took a big gulp as he started to feel his throat swell. “I didn’t expect you to call”

“I needed to talk to, you didn’t return my text”

He didn’t know how to respond to that, at first he didn’t want to respond to her message and then he wanted to, but didn’t know what to say.

“yeah, I know. I wasn’t sure if I was going to respond” he figured he would tell her a half truth.

“Sam, I wanted to talk to you because I wanted to clear things up between us before its too late.”

Sam felt a twinge of resentment start to build up, it seemed like she sounded like he did in the last few weeks of their relationship. He was the one reaching out during that time and wanting to make things right, and make things how they used to be. The twinge left as soon as it arrived though. I guess time really did heal those wounds.

“Things seem clear to me Josephine” he sat outside on the steps of the building. “its over between us and its been a few years already so there is no reason to talk about whats in the past although I …” he wasn’t sure if he should bring it up.

“I did unblock you last year, I wanted to call when I heard your mother passed, I’m sorry she was a really sweet woman to me and I could tell that she loved you dearly.” He was glad that he told her that, Sam always felt a bit guilty that he didn’t call when it happened.

“thanks she really did like you too, she gave me a lot of crap when things ended between us, look Im not trying to call to stir things up Samuel, I just… I just wanted to tell you that I am getting married.” Sams eyes widened a bit.

“Oh, okay Congratulations” that news would have probably killed Sam two or even three years ago at this moment he felt relief for some reason. “What did you need to clear up between us.”

“Well, when things got really crazy for everyone last week, my fiancé and I decided we wanted to get married asap. We don’t want to wait to see what happens on Thursday. Half the people I talk to think its some fake news conspiracy and the other half are busy building bunkers.” Jo started to speed up her talking, Sam knew her well enough to see that she was starting to get distracted.

“So where do I come in?” Sam asked.

“Believe it or not Sam, but I still care about you dearly, you were the first real relationship I had and we were together for five years, that’s a big chunk of my life, things ended real raw for you and me, I was messed up for awhile.” Jo paused for a second, she took a second to compose herself.

“and it pains me that we are nothing to each other anymore, we started out as friends and then grew very close together before just becoming strangers.” Sam could here Jo holding back tears.

He could relate to Jo, even though it had been years since he spoke to her, when her mom passed Sam just wanted to call and make her feel better. He felt like a coward because he knew that if the roles were reversed and Sam had lost his mom Jo would have called or even showed up to be there for him.

“well, I just wanted to tell you that Sam. Because I didn’t know if I would get a chance to after this week” Josephine became silent.

“thanks Jo, honestly I haven’t had a chance to process all this shit going on, but you always were ahead of me on that sort of stuff. You process your emotions better than I can, heck I even wish you were around sometimes when I go off the lid in some not very intense situation. I remember you would always bring my energy down to a natural non-crazy level.” Josephine laughed.

“Your right, theres no reason for us to be strangers just because it didn’t work out”

Sam stood up and decided to be honest with Jo.

“This Arrival is starting to get to me too, the stress and uncertainty has been weighing down on me and when you texted me I didn’t know whether it was a good or a bad thing I just knew that I wanted to reach back out to you but didn’t know how.” Jo stayed silent.

“Well, Im glad you answered my call” Sam didn’t have the heart to tell her that he answered without knowing who it was, maybe he would tell her if they were still friends 10 years from now.

“Im glad I did too” he replied.

“Well, I wont take up more of your day, just please keep in touch. I would like it and these days we can all use as many friends as we can get”

“Take care and I hope your wedding goes well” Sam replied.

“You are invited by the way” Sam couldn’t tell if that was a sincere invitation or just her being awkwardly nice.

“Umm, thanks but I think I might have to miss this one.. but still friends okay” Sam awkwardly laughed and then exchanged one last goodbye with Jo. He wasn’t sure if that would be that last time he spoke to her but he was happy that this conversation went way better than their previous last conversation ever.

He took a deep breath after a minute and felt like a weight had been lifted. It was funny that since the presidents announcement, several things in life had changed in ways that would have seemed pretty horrible a year ago. If last year someone told Sam that he would be jobless, back at home with his mom and sisters while his ex was getting married he would have drowned himself in gallon of rocky road ice cream, but right now in this moment he felt relieved.

Something about the unprecedented potentially catastrophic global event really put things into perspective for Sam. ‘I guess alien invasions do have a bright side’ he thought to himself.