SPIN
I stared at Caz, unsure of what to do. She was pacing the room frantically but not saying anything. I had not expected my news to have any effect on her at all beyond distracting her from our situation for a little while. I had not seen any aliens as of yet, nor heard of any talk beyond the usual rumours and hillbilly UFO sightings, so I assumed that there had been no intelligent life found anywhere else. I had figured it would be an interesting intellectual exercise.
“We have to go,” she kept saying, over and over again. She was limping slightly on her artificial leg.
“Go where?” I asked warily, standing with my back against the door. I think I was unconsciously guarding it, keeping her from rushing off and doing something stupid.
“Out there, to the mines.” She stopped suddenly and whirled around to stare at me. “We have to stop them.”
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. “You mean you want us to go out to the mines. In space. And stop the aliens? The aliens that might not even exist?”
I think laughing was the wrong response. She shot across the room like she had been fired from a rail gun, pinning me against the door. Even though I was almost a foot taller than her, I was helpless to stop her. She was a ball of fury and it was all focussed on me at the moment. “We have to go out there. I have to know!” was all she said. She pushed me aside and opened the door.
I coughed a few times, rubbing my throat where she had grabbed it. Hurrying after her, I tried to appeal to her reason. “We can’t just go off half-cocked,” I croaked. “We don’t know anything about what’s going on.” She ignored me and kept walking. “There are no such things as aliens!” I said.
That stopped her. She turned around and faced me. “Then how did my father die?” she asked angrily.
All I could do was shrug. “I don’t know,” I said helplessly. She had never told me, but I was sensing a connection. “Was he a miner?”
She nodded.
“Maybe it was just an accident. Mining always seems to be a dangerous operation, no matter when people are doing it.”
She shook her head. “There was always something about his death that bothered me.” The fury had gone from her demeanour, and she just looked tired. “I can’t shake the feeling that there was something sinister about his ‘accident’.”
“Yeah, but aliens? Has anyone ever seen an alien? Does anyone really believe they exist?”
With a sigh, she shook her head.
“Well then, maybe we should see what we can find here first before we head off into space.”
An odd expression crossed her face. “We? Don’t you want to go home?”
I shrugged. “Sure, at some point. But I can’t imagine how that is going to happen now. The time machine is either destroyed or in the hands of the M.E.R.C.s, which is much the same thing. I may as well help you until we can figure something out. I’m just not going to assume it is aliens.”
We walked in silence for a while until we reached a hidden door. A quick peek through the spy hole showed it to be at the end of a dark alleyway, so we snuck out, carefully marking its position in case we needed to hide again.
Reaching the end of the alley, we stepped out of the shadow into the bright sunshine. A large screen on the side of a nearby building was showing a live news report.
“And the government has released this footage along with the following statement: ‘For the first time in humanities history, we are seeing evidence of extraterrestrial life.’” The video showed a strange spaceship flying in to frame at a high speed and landing roughly. A pair of strange beings leapt out of the ship and lowered weapons, firing them indiscriminately into a crowd of terrified miners. A few moments later, the aliens and the ship were gone. The newscaster’s face appeared again, a freeze frame of one of the aliens face floating above his left shoulder. “‘We do not condone these attacks,’ the statement continues, ‘and we will be responding swiftly to defend ourselves.’
“The military has issued a call to all reservists and cancelled all leave. Troops and ships will begin shipping out soon.” He continued to drone in the background, but we stopped listening. We stepped back into the alley. Caz looked at me pointedly.
I looked back at her, and all I could think to say was “huh. Answers one question anyway.”
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