ELBIES (Part 1)
A 250 Word Project
by
Robert A. Taylor
Copyright © 2013 by Robert A. Taylor
Published by
Taylor-Made Publishing
September 2013
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes written in connection with reviews written specifically for a magazine or newspaper.
There's plenty of room in Los Angeles these days. Of course, that's true everywhere, I suppose. Ever since they fixed all of our problems for us.
Back then, I was living in Washington D.C. I'd scored a job in the Justice Department's IT division, and I was on top of the world. I wasn't really a cop; all I did was check computers that were brought in as evidence and crack the security on them. There usually wasn't any, so the job was pretty easy most of the time. Occasionally I got in a PC that somebody with a clue had owned, but the full resources of the U.S. government provided all the tools necessary to crack whatever encryption a civilian might be able to come up with. I was 25, making good money, and loving life.
People in the government really did find out things before your average Joe Citizen. I heard about the objects being tracked in the fall of 23 – the official announcement didn't come until after they couldn't shut up the amateur astronomers anymore. One of those amateurs started contacting every reporter on the planet, and the White House decided it needed to get out front on the issue.
Since there was no real information, even in the classified channels, the press conference consisted mainly of saying that the objects might or might not hit the earth, we had plans in the works for deflecting them if needed, blah, blah, blah. I'd checked some of the servers I wasn't supposed to have access to, and it was true – they didn't know whether or not the things were going to hit the planet. But they did have some better close ups, and the things weren't natural.
That made most of the people I shared the information with either completely petrified or oddly calm. I have to confess that I was one of the ones in the calm camp – I didn't think aliens would be hostile. There's plenty of room in space, and plenty more resources in the rest of the solar system that they could get at without having to kill the natives first. But I could completely understand my petrified friends, too. I had grown up on alien invasion movies, after all.
Emotions got more manageable after the announcement, at least among the general population. Those of us with a little more access remained high-strung, but we had non-disclosure contracts to keep us in check. I violated mine, but only with people I trusted, and I never shared files with anybody who wasn't also cleared to see them. Anyway, I was more excited than scared; it was cool to think that we were finally going to see aliens.
Once the ships hit orbit and were close enough to be seen with hand-held telescopes, the pretenses dropped and the U.N. started demanding access to all of the information that America, Russia and China had gathered on them. It was quite a bit, and China had even attempted opening preliminary talks with the ship's occupants. Nothing had been transmitted back to them, though, as far as the people listening in from America and Russia could tell; and they were listening hard, lemme tell ya.
There was surprisingly little worry in the streets. I'd half-expected riots and governmental overthrows, as did most of the intelligence community, but people seemed to be taking the arrival of a couple dozen alien spaceships in stride. I think we took it as a matter of pride. "Alien armada in orbit? Ain't no big deal."
The U.N. acquired the frequency that China had been transmitting on, and sent their own message of welcome. Secretary-General Aguilar promised a peaceful reception and the first return message crackled through to her. "We shall land a small shuttle in the harbor next to the statue of the human female. That shall be our base of operations while we negotiate diplomatic relations with your people. We require a meeting with your general assembly within twelve hours of our landfall. We look forward to cultural exchanges with humans and other residents of the Earth. We are excited to meet you."
The initial message was in Spanish, Aguilar's native language, and it was repeated in the language of every U.N. member nation. It was a flat, robotic voice with no emotion or inflection, and alien-watching forums exploded with speculation that the aliens themselves would turn out to be robots, something that made a lot of sense to anybody watching NASA's missions for the last few decades. The forums figured that the aliens were robots; that whatever fleshbags created them were long gone and the next stage of evolution was a brain in a tin can.
They were really wrong.
Permission was granted, but every missile in the world was trained on New York Harbor as that shuttle came down. It was a perfect sphere, nearly a mile across, and it settled down next to Lady Liberty as gently as a soap bubble. A smaller vessel just sort of blooped out of it after they had landed, and it floated over to the U.N. building, parking itself in front, under all the flags.
It must have been nice to have been a crook in New York on that day, because all the cops were parked around the alien ship, along with every news organization that could operate a camera. There were specific orders not to draw on the things coming out of the ship – nobody wanted to replay The Day The Earth Stood Still – but you could see every one of those guys reach for their holster when the hatch opened and the first of those things slithered out.
I’m not saying that you could hear the gasp of every single human on the planet, but I could definitely hear everybody in my vicinity become short of breath when that image hit our retinas. If H.P. Lovecraft were alive that day, he would have proclaimed his vision had been given form. I nearly didn't make my SAN check. There was just something primally awful about the aliens that made us all think we were about to become the main subject in a To Serve Man cookbook.
About twenty of them slimed their way into the U.N. and occupied the area in front of the podium in the general assembly. The minute the news feeds went there, you could feel every representative edging as far away as they could without looking like they were, and everybody watching completely understood.
One of them inched its way up to the podium, where Secretary-General Aguilar was watching it in undisguised disgust. When it came within a few feet of her, she backed away, and it took to the podium. It pulled some kind of doohickey from someplace I don't want to think about, and every security guard's hand went immediately to a firearm. It plopped the object on the lectern, fiddled with it for a minute, and then that robotic voice from the spaceship said, "Can everyone understand me?" There was about thirty seconds of stunned silence, followed by a low affirmative murmur. "Thank you," it went on. "To the people of earth, greetings from your fellow beings of the Coalition of Intelligent Lifeforms. After close observance of your species for the customary seventy-three local solar cycles, we are privileged to make contact with you on this day of," and here it made a sound that was a cross between someone clearing their throat and vomiting, "in the time sector of," this one was like warm honey burping as it boiled in a pot. "C.O.I.L. believes that as new members you will make valuable cultural contributions to our society; we are particularly interested in shijing and blues music, as well as the games of White Wolf and Feder and Schwert. For our part of the cultural exchange, we will provide certain helpful technologies to be specified later, as well as cultural structures of our own that humans may find appealing." It looked over at its compatriots, spoke in their own sloopy-goopy language for a minute, then finished off with, "Thank you for your attention. We shall schedule further negotiations with Secretary-General Aguilar, and of course you are all invited to a social event we are
conducting aboard our main shuttle in the harbor at local sunset. Human refreshments will be provided." And with that, it took its translator off of the podium and slimed its way over to Aguilar, who accompanied it down to the main group to talk for a few more minutes.
The assembly erupted into life as every member tried to shove his or her way down to the floor where the aliens were still talking to the secretary-general. The ultimate chance to advance your political career is superb motivation to overcome physical revulsion. All the talking head types butted into the broadcasts, too, giving their views on what had just happened, even though there really wasn't much to talk about yet. I was going to join a UFO hangout on Google, but their servers crashed because everybody in the freakin' world was trying to join in at the same time. I found out later that the stock market value of White Wolf and Feder & Schwert skyrocketed past Apple before the day was done.
Once the aliens were done with Secretary-General Aguilar, they didn't mess much with the other representatives. I saw a couple linger around, but not for very long. They scooted back to the shuttle and returned to the harbor, which had become ground zero for an invasion of our