Earth

2018

9 Months Later

The knock on Rory's front door sounded so much like it had when she'd lived for seven weeks in that room at the base. The only difference was that it echoed slightly in the hallway of her house. Before opening the door, Rory hesitated for a moment, and pretended that they were back in those days before the interview had happened. Because as awful as that time seemed, everything was so much harder now.

Rory opened the door to see Theo grinning with a bright blue sky wide open over the Nevada desert behind him.

"I have something new for you to try," Theo said with no introduction. "My buddy and his wife make their own kimchi."

"Kimchi." Rory thought for a moment as she welcomed him in. "Never heard of it."

"It's a staple in Korean cuisine. Of course, I couldn't just bring Kimchi so…" He lugged a big bag into the kitchen, opened it, and started to pull out at least a dozen containers of various sizes. "These little ones are the sides. Mostly vegetable dishes. They call it banchan, and every meal is served with a variety of them."

Rory wasn't sure what she enjoyed the most, trying the new food Theo brought her, getting his free history lesson on the cuisine–though she didn't think he realized he did this–or just having time with him when things felt normal. Actually, that wasn't something she needed to think about. After the year she'd had, having a friend who she could be herself with was more precious than anything, even her security. Strangely, she'd learned that danger wasn't the worst thing a person could face. It was losing themselves entirely.

Carefully, he arranged the food on the table with the utensils, rice bowls, and plates his friend had sent.

"They really set us up." Rory poured water for Theo and herself before sitting down. "I'll have to find a way to thank them."

"I already know what you can do. Mention how much you love home-cooked Korean food on one of your streams. They'll get a kick out of that. They know you can't leave the house and wanted you to be able to experience a piece of their culture. So they were very happy to do it and represent their heritage."

She smiled and looked up at him after picking up the chopsticks that he'd taught her to use several months ago. "That's really touching. Please tell them how much I love it. Or can I find them online? Are they okay with that?"

"You're a celebrity now, Rory. Most people want to talk to you."

"Most. Not all."

A distinct kind of tension momentarily weighed down their conversation, one that came from sorrow, unfairness, and also fear and guilt. It was the kind of deep pressure of the ocean, far beneath the surface, with the weight of it pressing in every inch of her surface. The pressure of countless emergencies over the past year, horrible decisions that had to be made, an impossible burden that no one could bear. All that pressed down upon her, the dinner table, her world, and because of that, her dear friend.

But they waded through the deep and heavy waters of pressure as they filled their plates. They laughed and smiled and talked as if it wasn't there. Because they had learned how to handle it, when to acknowledge it, and when to let it rest quietly upon them.

Theo came to her house a few times a week, though she still often saw him at the base where the testing was conducted. Usually, he stayed for a movie, or a board game, or just to talk while they drank coffee. Tonight, he'd started packing his things up early.

"I know you have plans with that group tonight," he said. "I'll get out of here soon."

"You sure you don't want to stay?" Rory asked. "They don't mind when you're there. Everyone thinks you're funny."

"I'm working on that paper. I really need to make some progress. You have fun. I know you like that group. General Price wants you talking with them as much as you can, anyway."

Not long ago that would have been enough to completely sour the experience for Rory. It wasn't that she didn't want to help normalize her existence and show the world that she was safe. She did and she'd dedicated what little bit of a life she had to doing that. That was what drove her to do countless interviews even though she hated it and to let those obnoxious consultants help her plan out every aspect of her life, whether it was what she wore, or how she spoke. But the few friendships she had being watered down to PR made her feel dirty, like nothing she had could be her own. It all had to be manufactured.

"I'm sorry–"

"Don't." She touched his arm briefly. "You don't ever have to do that. I know how you feel."

"I didn't mean anything."

"I know. Thank you for the incredible meal. I'm definitely going to talk about it tonight, so let your friends know."

He smiled and gave her a quick hug before gathering his things to leave.

It was always hard for her to say goodbye, much harder for her than it was for him. Though Rory did sometimes leave the base, it was such an ordeal with so much security and planning that it felt like moving from one prison to the next. And she wasn't permitted to go past the fence in her backyard without authorization from General Price. He always cited security concerns, but it was more than that. So when Theo left, Rory was really alone. As alone as Earth once thought it was.

Even the internet was not totally open to her. Everything she did online was highly monitored. There was always someone watching. Well, not someone, but an entire team with the best tools at their disposal.

Despite how small her world was, she had managed to make it surprisingly vibrant. Rory had taken up painting and already managed to line her study with dozens of completed works, and many more half-finished ones. While often her time online was spent doing work trying to help the world come to terms with her existence, there were people she considered friends. And it was never work with them.

A few nights a week, Rory got on her computer to play one of several first-person shooters with three of her favorite streamers. Of course, games were new to her, and she found controllers easier than a keyboard, but no one even teased her for using one. Sometimes when she was lost in the game she managed to feel free. She managed to forget that she'd turned the world upside down and she still didn't have her memories back.

Tonight, Rory enjoyed the first hour playing with them with nothing of particular significance coming up in the conversation. It was inevitable that the news would come up, though, when it had been such a bad week. There were three types of people when it came to how the public saw Rory. Most people fell into a spectrum in the middle, where they may or may not support her, but certainly saw her humanity, even if they considered her to be a threat. But there were thin margins on either end, and the line between those margins and the rest of the people could be fuzzy. It shifted. One dangerously bled into the next as rhetoric and ideas crossed over from the extreme into normal conversations.

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The extreme that hated Rory had been active recently. One group that believed she was a government plant had tried setting off a car bomb near the capital of some small city she had never even heard of, like the people there had any power in the situation. Apparently, their local representative had made statements supporting that Rory, despite being an unknown species of human, was entitled to all the rights that others were.

Rory already addressed the attempted terrorist attack in a public statement and continued her media run on morning shows and evening news segments. It wasn't something that she needed to discuss tonight, but it was coming up in the chat often enough that she knew it was unavoidable. Eventually, it was the feed for her stream that forced her to discuss it.

"I'm not ignoring you," Rory said in response to several people in the public chat who had accused her of doing so. "I just think that giving all of my attention to violent men gives them more power. I've talked about them enough this week. If we're going to talk, let's focus on the people who have been hurt. Or the people sitting at home scared because they don't feel safe anymore."

"Rory doesn't owe every second of her life to you people anyway," Stella said. Her real name was Sara, but the woman who was a few years Rory's senior said she'd always hated the name. "She's a person. She is not your property. She can have a night to shoot Nazis with her friends online like every other person in the universe without talking about the fate of mankind."

Rory smiled and met the light green eyes of the woman over the screen for a moment. "I accept the responsibility, though. I didn't ask to come to Earth. I didn't ask for any of this to happen. It did, though. And I'm not going to run from it. So we can talk, but let's give our attention to the people who deserve it for once."

The message had been enough to send the chat online in a different direction, as if the chaos of so many strangers coming together in one group was a creature that could be steered with carefully chosen words.

But the conversation never swayed entirely from the most significant thing to have happened in the lives of everyone alive today. The first three months after Rory's interview had been the most disruptive. While some immediately believed her, there were many skeptics. In a certain sense, the world was able to continue as normal while an unofficial trial played out in the court of public opinion and while the world investigated her. There were hearings in Congress, international conventions, even court cases to determine whether the United States had the right to continue holding Rory, or whether any country should. As fiery as some of these processes could be, they were nothing compared to the protests and riots that broke out. While much of the world did continue living their normal lives, some quit their jobs, certain that the alien invasion was about to begin.

The world did continue, but it was changed–no, changing. Everything was in flux. As scientists continued to study Rory and politicians continued to bicker over what would and would not be made public, the people of the world watched and waited to see what would happen. And because the waiting was taking so long, they were also living. Living in an unnatural state of normalcy.

"It's surreal is all I'm saying." Corey, the youngest streamer, had a habit of sniffing and wrinkling his nose dramatically when he was highly focused in the game. "The world's changed forever–like it will never be the way it was before, dynamic change–but we don't even remember how it used to be. It's just normal now. We buy shit at the store, drink too late into the night, complain about our bosses. Same fucking life, except that if you let yourself stop for one second–one second–you see that that your old world and your old life is gone. Just gone. Like for all we know aliens are coming to harvest us all and the world is over. Either way, our old world is never coming back."

Stella shook her head. "It's human nature. No one is going to walk around thinking about how different everything is all the time. You adjust. You live. Occasionally, you stop to think about how fucked it all is and then you go on. Meanwhile, you secretly are thinking about it all the time, just not in the part of your mind that you hear. Right? It's all beneath the surface. The chaos and dysfunction is making you lash out at everyone all the time, or eat constantly, or whatever your vice is. But you don't even know it's happening unless you look for it. And you don't, because you've learned that good little capitalist citizens buy and eat and fuck without asking questions."

"Come on, man," Corey said. "Capitalism is not to blame. You're obsessed with your edgey anti-capitalism bullshit.

"It is to blame." Stella smashed her keys harder. "Money is our god and we don't get a say in whether we worship it. At the very least, I should get to complain about it."

Rory sighed when a sniper she never saw coming shot her in the head in the game. "Ah, fuck."

"Fuck indeed, ma'am," Corey said. "Fuck indeed. We're all fucked. That's what I'm saying."

When she respawned, she immediately rushed into enemy territory out of frustration and unloaded her ammo until she was promptly and decisively destroyed.

"Anarchist." Stella whistled. "Look at Rory. She plays by no rules."

"And gets herself killed because of it," Rory mumbled.

The streamer she'd spent the most time playing with, Oliver–who went by the ridiculous name of Vortex out of some sense of irony she didn't get–glanced over at her on the screen. "You guys are assholes," he said. "Talk about something else."

"I don't care what you talk about," Rory said. "It's weirder not to talk about it. How do you not mention that you're streaming with an alien who likes first-person shooters?"

"Right?" Stella giggled.

"Did I tell you that I am sure my people don't have games?" Rory lowered her controller for a moment. Any kind of online gaming appealed to her because she was so isolated from the world, but she wondered if the old her, whoever she was before losing her memory, would have felt the same pull.

"You remember that?" Oliver asked.

"No. I always do this thing where I feel if something seems familiar or not. Games didn't seem familiar."

"You had me fooled," Oliver said with more than a touch of self-deprecation, because he kept it no secret that he wasn't the best at gaming. He often laughed about how he wasn't particularly good at anything and wasn't sure how he had amassed such a huge following, or why anyone cared to watch him get killed by people who were much better than he was. It made sense to Rory, though. He was funny and genuine. A good person. And he worked his ass off with his content.

Stella and Corey were different stories. They were competing at a professional level.

And like countless influencers and content creators, these three had been more than happy to have Rory on their shows, or even co-host with her. While she made her rounds online just like she did with everyone else, whether it was reporters or politicians or late night show hosts, this group was one of the few she actually enjoyed spending time with. They respected her for who she was. They didn't try to ignore the fact that she was an alien like some people did out of some false sense that it was polite, and they didn't scheme at how they could best exploit it for their gain.

The chat at the bottom of the screen caught Rory's eye. She glanced down as she played. "Do my armpits stink like everyone else's?" Rory leaned back in her chair to draw her knees up. "Alright. So for hundreds of thousands of years humans have asked themselves whether they're alone in the universe, and for the first time in the history of Earth, you have the answer to that question. You get to ask whatever you want. And this is what you want to know?"

The others laughed and made their comments, but Rory had to give the live feed of the chat another glance.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, that's all he says. No other comment. Well, beefylord0065, the answer is my armpits don't stink. I wash and use deodorant. If yours stink, I suggest you not be a child and do the same."

Stella howled with laughter and laid her head back against her headrest.

Rory read Beefy's next comment out loud. "FML. I just got burned by an alien…" She snorted once. Their conversation managed to veer mercifully into things of insignificance.

Her mind did not move on, though. It never did.

Because what she couldn't tell anyone except for Theo was that things were much worse than they seemed. Business had not continued as usual for those who actually had power in the situation. And the threats that the public heard about were only the tip of the iceberg. While her friends said that they could live their lives without thinking about it, Rory could not. It was all she thought about.

In three days, Rory would be interviewed by the independent counsel who had been selected to investigate the military's handling of her and her situation. Tomorrow she had to sit in on a briefing with the military about cyber security threats and how she could help to keep her data safe. And she knew that the fallout of the near bombing had just begun. Week after week, it was like this.

Stella had just started to asked Rory a question when suddenly her screen and all the lights in the house went black.

An eerie quiet settled in the house with the way for her to reach a community was cut off.

The base never lost power.

Something had happened.

While she expected fear and shock as she rose from her seat to quietly and slowly edge against the window, peering out, Rory felt only total calm come over her. The thoughts in her mind silenced as she instinctively scanned the environment for signs of anything amiss and then glanced about the room for a weapon.