The aliens definitely looked like they were carrying probes.
There were three of them. Grey. Hobbit sized but with big, bald heads and wide, inky black eyes. They clicked when they talked. Fast and sharp. Like snapping fingers, though you’d need a team of beatniks in black turtlenecks all working together to match even one of them. They glanced at each other and then goggled at me.
I don’t think they knew what to do.
Neither did I!
Did I mention the probes?
They reminded me of cattle prods but had something like robot octopuses —octopi?— flailing away at their tips instead of sparks or whatever.
Guess movies lie
When you get abducted, tractor beamed out of a car and up into a flying saucer, you’re supposed to fall into like a trance or something and sort of float around until they send you home. Like the driver from my rideshare. Mike was his name, I think. Lucky guy, no therapy bills for Mike! He was definitely asleep and feathering through the air. Carried by a bunch of colored light beams, a rock show without the band, along with this swirl of all the stuff Sarah said I had to take with me when she kicked me out.
Funny how “ours” becomes “hers” when she’s doing the packing.
Oh right, back to the probes.
I did not like the look of those probes.
I reached out and tried to grab a golf club but ended up just barely snagging the edge of a big, potted cactus before everything slipped past my reach. Sarah named him you know. Brad. Not sure why. C comes right after B so if she had just squeezed a bit more effort he could have been Cary or Corey Cactus instead of Brad. Brad! Maybe, since she already had me, a Charlie, she didn’t want to deal with any more C names. Speaking of C names… Nah, don’t go there, dude.
I thought she liked him, not much watering or anything, but he was next to the stack of boxes in front of a door with changed locks, holding down the note, when I got home.
So, it was me and Brad versus three aliens.
And their probes.
I needed two hands to hold him. Brad’s pretty hefty for a souvenir from a trip to the Grand Canyon. It’s really big by the way. Not as large as you imagine before you get there but not a disappointment either. I’m looking at you, Mt. Rushmore.
I poked Brad at the aliens and they flinched back. It’s hard to say with clicking but I think their “tone” changed from surprised and uncertain to kind of pissed off once I started brandishing —Bradishing?— my cactus at them.
Mike and all my stuff fluttered into a corridor. Exiting… I guess, the UFO’s landing bay? It was wide and empty, everything smooth and gleaming silver with doors on the far wall large enough to fly a helicopter through and they opened right to space. I could see the sun and the moon and Earth, blue and white and brown, all floating in the velvety sky. But there must have been some kind of force field since the atmosphere wasn’t leaking out. At least, I didn’t feel any wind tugging at me so I’m guessing air wasn’t getting sucked into the vacuum beyond.
I spotted, out of the corner of my eye as I was facing down the aliens, Mike’s scuffed sneakers just before the last bit of him, and a comet tail of the crap Sarah didn’t want, disappeared through a hatch.
“Five stars!” I promised, feeling a little guilty. Not sure why. I mean, he was the one actually getting abducted, maybe the aliens had come for him and just grabbed me too by mistake. That, at least, would explain why I wasn’t out cold.
But it didn’t seem like they were going to leave me alone or send me back to Mike’s car to wait for them to finish whatever they wanted to do to him. And I wasn’t sold on them probing Mike either. Human solidarity, you know?
So, it was me, and a cactus named Brad, in a flying saucer’s big, open landing bay, facing down three aliens half my size, all of them waving probes in our general direction while frantically clicking at each other so fast it almost sounded like hail stones pounding on a window.
That’s when things got a little strange.
Because and then the sun went out.
It was like someone puffed on a candle. Everything went dark. And quiet. I couldn’t even hear my own breathing or the pounding of my heart. Come to think of it, I couldn’t feel anything either. Not even Brad’s weight or the solidity of his pot.
Some blue text appeared right in front of my face. I acted on instinct. Without even taking a moment to think it through I tried to reach up and swipe at it but nothing happened. I don’t mean my fingers passed through it. Or I still couldn’t see anything so wasn’t sure if I made contact. I mean, at that moment, I don’t think I had a body. Let alone a hand.
System Initializing.
Five. Four. Three. Two.
One.
Congratulations! Your planet has been inducted into the System.
All sentient native lifeforms awarded one greater mote. All dormant motes activated.
Call up your constellations to learn your new capabilities.
Spacial/temporal dilation in effect for 60 seconds.
Use it wisely.
No tutorial provided.
And then it started counting down. I think, if I had a body at the moment, I would have gaped. Definitely would have gasped and probably even gulped. Not sure why this was what put me over the edge. Maybe it’s because my Health plan from work sucks so, rather than pay out of pocket for therapy, I just get the cheap meds. And, I’ll admit, I swallowed a few extra while sitting on the stairs with Brad on my lap and the rest of my stuff in boxes around my feet, trying to find some way to pass the time between reading Sarah’s letter telling me why we were done and waiting for my rideshare, almost certain the app did say his name was Mike, to arrive.
Fifty-five. Fifty-four.
Something about those blue numbers steadily dropping away told me I needed to pull myself together. And I guess that was enough of a prompt because suddenly two stars, each with five points, shaped like the sort of thing you’d put on top of a Christmas tree but blazing with the brightest, most vivid energy you could imagine, suddenly appeared.
One seethed with pulses of red, yellow and white light that erupted from a dim central core and crackled outwards until they reached the very tips of the five points and vanished. The blue text appeared again.
Nova Constellation. Aura point not slotted. Essence point not slotted. Spirit point not slotted. Tech point not slotted. Will point not slotted. Slot all five points with motes to activate your Nova nexus.
Then I looked at the other star. This one seemed slower, or maybe calmer, with sparkles of blue, purple and white energy, beginning at each of the five points, dribbling towards another muted central core. Two of them seemed a little brighter than the rest. And then my new best friend, that blue text appeared yet again.
Nebula Constellation. Grace point not slotted. Health point not slotted. Resistance point slotted with greater mote (Second Thoughts) Rank 0 (speck). Strength point slotted with greater mote (Jet Pack) Rank 0 (speck). Vitality point not slotted. Slot all five points with motes to activate your Nebula nexus.
Greater mote (Second Thought) Rank 0 (speck): Passive power: Duologue. Active power: Two paths, one destination; cool down 10 minutes (5 minutes). Reactive power: And then there was one; cool down 1 hour (4 hours).
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Greater mote (Jet Pack) Rank 0 (speck); Passive power: Vault. Active power: Fire and flight; cool down 1 minute (10 minutes). Reactive power Safe landing; cool down 30 seconds (5 minutes).
I stared at the blue message. Trying to figure out what all this meant.
Thirty. Twenty-nine.
Nothing.
“No tutorial provided.” I muttered to myself.
The countdown reached 0 and the sun flicked back on. Reality flicked back on. I had a body again. Brad suddenly felt a lot lighter though. His pot was still too bulky for just one hand to grip and not risk dropping him but, if I had to, I didn’t think I’d have much trouble balancing it on my palm.
A sixty second countdown and the aliens hadn’t move an inch. They were still facing me in as close to a semi-circle as three people half my size waving probes can manage. It was as if no time had passed for them.
Huh, I thought, Spacial/temporal dilation in effect.
Then I heard a voice in my head.
I froze. And something about my body language must have translated into Clickese because it seemed like one of the aliens sensed my hesitation and lunged forward. He jabbed his probe at me and I didn’t think, I just swung Brad at him like I was some kind of sword fighter trying to parry.
Did I mention how much lighter Brad had gotten all of a sudden? It took me by surprise and I kind of lost my grip. Brad flew over and past the probe and bullseyed the alien right in the head.
The alien dropped. Brad clunked onto the floor. Some sand fell out but at least he landed right side up.
“Brad!” I shouted.
I heard the voice again.
I didn’t really have a better plan so this time I took two steps forward and booted the alien.
Fun fact. Grey aliens are sort of rubbery.
His body made a slight echoey sound. Kind of like when you kick a soccer ball? Or, I suppose, if you live in most of the world, a football. It was like I’d hit him with a truck. Or at least a subcompact. Well, he was kind of small so maybe just a dirt bike. He bounced off the ceiling. Slammed into the floor. Bounced again. And then flew through the still open landing doors into space. There was a flicker of energy when he passed through but whatever was holding in the air wasn’t strong enough to keep him inside.
Not so fun fact. Grey aliens need oxygen.
He wiggled for a few seconds and then just stopped. It was like cutting a puppet’s strings. My kick still had some momentum left so he just kept going. Drifting off into the empty void until I lost sight of him.
I heard the voice in my head again.
I bent down to pick up Brad. I wanted to scoop some of the sand back into his pot but I noticed the other two aliens were edging farther away from me. The probes were gone but now they both had… well… I’d have to call them ray guns.
And they were pointing them at me.
Remember how I said Brad had gotten lighter all of a sudden? Well, so had I. I lifted off the floor and cannonballed towards the ceiling. But all of a sudden I had some acrobat in me because I pivoted in midair and landed, feet first, on the ceiling. I cradled Brad. Awkwardly trying to keep even more sand from spilling out of his pot. And then, relying on instinct, launched myself towards the hatch through which Mike, I’m almost certain that was his name, and my stuff had disappeared.
Somehow, I managed to spin around in the air again and land on my feet right next to the hatch. I heard a zapping sound and turned to see two sizzling dark patches on the floor where I’d been standing right before I jumped. The aliens were both in cop show firing stances, feet planted, double grip on their ray guns, and staring at me in shock from the other side of the landing bay.
I didn’t want to give them time to aim a second shot so I slipped through the hatch and started running down the corridor beyond. As I ran I passed what I thought were a few more hatches or doors but they were closed and I couldn’t see any way to open them.
“Who are you?” I asked the voice. For a second I almost thought he was going to tell me he was Brad. It had been that kind of day. But then remembered he had called Brad, “the cactus” so probably not.
I kept pounding my feet down the hall. It was made from the same silvery material as the landing bay and I was really hoping to reach the turn ahead before the aliens reached the threshold of the hatch and got another chance to start blasting at me. “That could get confusing. How about Chuck, instead?”
“So, Chuck. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
I pivoted around a corner and kept running. Two more bolts of energy collided with the wall behind me.
“That’s a no then?”
I was still jogging along hoping to find yet another turn. Up to this point, my longer stride and the infrequent turns in the corridor were probably the only things that had kept me from getting zapped by the aliens chasing me and I knew my luck couldn’t last. But Chuck’s comment almost made me pause.
“What do you mean?”
That… Was a good question. Worrying. But a good question.
I finally came to a fork in the corridor instead of just another turn. I could hear angry clicking behind me.
I needed to make a choice. Left or right.
“I don’t know which way to go!” I groaned wishing that I could run down both just long enough to see which was the better route to take.
And then, somehow, I did.
There were two of me. Well, still only one mind but twin bodies sharing the same thoughts and experiences. Or maybe two possibilities? Two outcomes? Each running down a different hallway. I couldn’t see, but sort of… felt, another countdown in my head and got the impression that I’d be back in one body pretty quickly.
And I was carrying two Brads. One for each me. For a moment, I wondered if he had his own countdown.
The me on the left quickly skidded in front of an open doorway. There was another alien inside the room beyond. His back to the entrance he was huddled over some sort of control panel pushing buttons and flipping switches. A second alien writhed in a column of white energy cascading up from a round disk on the floor right in front of the control panel. I knew I still had some time before the countdown reached zero so thought maybe I should just spy for a bit.
But then the me on the right, who had been running down an empty corridor, ran into the robot…
It looked sort of like a walking lawnmover. The big ones you ride instead of push? But it had two piston legs and whirling, bladed arms. I skidded to a halt. Looked over my shoulder trying to figure out if I could back away from it. Then it dashed towards me, a lot faster than it looked, and I saw one of those sharpened, fanbladed arms coming towards my face.
And there was only one me again. Standing in front of open doorway with an alien fussing over control panel.
Some more blue text appeared.
Greater mote (Second Thought) active power; Two paths, one destination, used. Cool down 10 minutes. Passive power; Duologue, disabled for 5 minutes. Reactive power; And then there was one, still available.
“That was close, Chuck.” I breathed. But he didn’t reply.
“Chuck?” I asked. And then a little louder and more insistent. “Chuck!”
That’s when the alien spun around and gawked at me.