by Dana Cormorant

        What are you doing, are you investigating?

Yeah, it’s- I’m in a weird situation. I’m traveling with my coworker and his advisors’ kid to DC right now. The advisors are linguists and they’re both among the missing persons. Since I couldn’t reach the DNS from where I was, I thought it was my duty to do what I could to help.

        You’re gunning for reinstatement.

I’m trying to do the right thing.

Well, if you’re in these parts, you and your motley crew are welcome to visit us. If you do, I can show you some research I’ve been doing on the red things. I think it’ll interest you.

That’d be amazing, thank you for the invite. I’ll add you to the itinerary. Same address?

        You know the place.

CW: depictions of anxiety and panic attacks, infrequent depictions of fantasy violence and gore, mild/infrequent mentions of suicide, mild/infrequent mentions of sexual violence

The small but previously close-knit exoarchaeology community, popularly mischaracterized as “UFO scientists,” was rocked by the premature retirement of Jack Bradley, forefather of the still-minuscule field, after a sudden and swiftly conclusive investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct made by a number of his current and former female graduate students. As the other exoarchaeology PhD candidates bled away from the university in search of relevant advisors, its leadership, bent on salvaging the compact but prominent department, offered a substantial scholarship and a promise of tenure-track employment to the student who had been slowest to find out what was going on. His pocketbook entreated him to accept. So it was that Gabriel Eguía found himself finishing his PhD primarily under the guidance of the speculative linguists Dr. and Dr. Pyeong and a slightly diminished committee, none of whom were properly exoarchaeologists.

It was around the same time that the trailblazing partnership famous to a select audience in the euphemistically named Department of New Science was split up following a freak accident involving the panic attack to end all panic attacks and multiple severed limbs. Agents Moseley and Lusk, still at the beginning of promising careers, went their separate ways, each feeling the other had gotten the better end of the deal. Moseley made the best of it and got a wife and a promotion. Lusk was reassigned under the contrived title of “civilian liaison” to a university in New Mexico, where she did to people’s lives what a velcro snag does to a wool shirt, having a few half-hearted flings in her hotel room and losing herself in the dread intrigue of whatever burned down from the sky into the desert without putting much effort into sharing what she’d learned with anyone else. Eventually the university asked to be rid of her, and she was mildly reprimanded by her superiors (though really what did anyone expect after the incident) and given a nominally higher-priority assignment to a university in SoCal, where she found herself knocking on the door of the resident exoarchaeologist.

Gabriel Eguía found this government agent, who had announced they’d be working closely for the duration and not left his lab since, terribly improbable. Marissa Lusk was small and rosy, apparently as young as he, with a glowing heart-shaped face, long eyelashes, and a cloud of caramel-colored hair that curved organically in and out of her face with unvarying precision. After her first day at the lab attracted a noticeable gaper’s delay outside their open door, she forwent her uniform in favor of an apparently vast wardrobe of blazers, pencil skirts, and subtly patterned button-downs of various colors. She moved gracefully. She spoke confidently and little. In fact, she made no personal conversation whatsoever. Within a week, she had taken apart and put back together half the alien debris in his collection — some of it now apparently functioning for the first time — and turned his records inside out. Within a month, Gabriel felt he’d learned more from her than he had in his entire education. She began receiving shipments in the mail and presenting them to him for identification: “Would you judge this object to be extraterrestrial in origin?” She reacted identically to each of his answers, with a pert nod, thoughtful frown, and delicately arched eyebrows. She called him Professor, and he called her Agent Lusk. They saved each other’s contact information and did not use it.

Around the same time, the Pyeongs suddenly seemed to have conspired to make him part of their family. They started inviting him over to dinner and pressing him to attend department functions. Their daughter, Shelley, a chubby eleven-year-old with a large vocabulary and a voracious appetite for long chapter books, ribbed him like she was his younger sister. She was an awkward kid, her father confided at someone’s retirement party, over small plates of cheese and crackers. Shy and unpopular at school. Gabriel had a hard time believing it. With adults, the kid was gregarious, regularly dispensing fun facts and bits of sage advice — never put more than three rocks in your pocket or it might disintegrate, she told Gabriel once, winking.

They all frightened him. The Pyeong professors with their papery, birdlike bodies, Lusk with her glorious hair and piercing blue eyes, Shelley with her mysterious asocial alter ego… they made him feel enormous and clumsy, they were all so breakable. He had once asked Lusk, haltingly, during the winter when the darkness crept into the late afternoon, whether she felt safe walking back to the hotel alone at night. She’d raised an eyebrow at him and replied, “I’m better equipped than you might expect, Professor.” He’d stammered out an apology and buried his head back in his computer. They passed the rest of the workday in their usual silence, but as Lusk swung her purse over her shoulder that evening, she’d added, “But thank you for your concern.” He couldn’t get used to her voice, low and melodic, precisely enunciated, all round vowels and soft consonants. Who talks like that, anyway? She spoke to him so infrequently he forgot what she sounded like and was newly surprised each time.

He found it challenging to haul his sorry ass to the lab (formerly the lab of Jack Bradley) and sit in the bland white office and think about the conversations that had happened there. So he had stopped going. In fact, he’d met Lusk for the first time after she showed up to his ARCHEO 30 lecture, sitting in the back row. She’d informed him somewhat tersely that he hadn’t been in his office any of the times she had stopped by. There had also been an email from the Department of New Science which he didn’t read until after Lusk told him about it — he’d assumed it was spam. “You’ve been assigned a civilian liaison agent from the Department of New Science!” read the email, which was otherwise uninformative. Really, it wasn’t very clear to him what Lusk was supposed to be doing. The two of them had both gravitated toward the graduate bullpen, he because 1) he had worked in there for years, 2) the office (formerly the office of Jack Bradley) nauseated him, and 3) there was really no one else around, so he appreciated the company, odd as it may be. There were no graduate students currently in the program. For a quarter or so, he did take on an undergraduate volunteer, a solemn international student from Germany, but couldn’t think of much for him to do other than catalogue the inventory. Lusk was cagey around the student, even more reticent to discuss what she was doing when he was in earshot. Eventually the kid moved on, likely having learned little and feeling generally unfulfilled.

From time to time, one or the other of the Pyeongs would drop in, Stuart usually armed with a Tupperware of cookies he’d made imperfectly from some complicated recipe, Minji with a cheerful recommendation of a museum exhibit or new restaurant the family had enjoyed. Lusk did not participate in or remotely acknowledge these interactions, appearing lost in the glow of her computer screen, typing either furiously or not at all. It did not cross his mind to ask her what she was doing; it was probably classified anyway.

Their catalogue included: inscrutable sheets of metal ranging in size from 6 cm to just over a meter, sixteen fried motherboards and one that lit up when connected to a battery, six of what looked like children’s blue plastic walkie talkies but for the fact that they had writing from no known language on the back (two that lit up, four nonfunctional), and two gadgets of slightly assorted design which looked concerningly like laser guns out of a movie set. Lusk had attempted to repair one of these, but reported with tense professionalism that her request to the DNS for a safe facility in which to test it had been denied. Gabriel, with great surprise, ruled out “weapons engineer” from his mental list of what Lusk’s job could be. The leading contender, at that moment, was “spy.” Lusk took apart the… whatever it was… and did not put it back together.

Once, she woke him at 4 AM with a phone call: “There’s been a crash. I’m waiting outside your building to pick you up.”

It wasn’t until they were speeding down the empty freeway that he thought to ask her how she’d known where he lived. She grinned at him askance and bore down harder on the gas pedal. “It’ll be a forty minute drive,” she said. “You can put on music if you want.”

Being awake at this hour, there was nothing for it but Joni Mitchell’s Blue; he put it on through the car’s wireless audio system. Lusk nodded absently, without indication of recognition or interest.

“We got unbelievably lucky,” she said as they exited the freeway about half an hour later. “Something hit the beach and of course it’s just when everyone is leaving for the fall. Anyone who’s still there has received orders to stay inside. We have her all to ourselves.” She was practically purring.

Gabriel was too sleepy to respond. He felt immovable, like his body was still asleep. He could see the black ocean forming a high horizon in the distance, opaque against the greenish light-polluted sky. They slowed, driving past an industrial facility and approaching the beach. The ocean took up more of the sky. Then there was a weird flash of violet light on the horizon, which gave way to an orange glow.

Lusk swore, and Joni lamented. She floored the gas and careened in the direction of the light, but by the time they came into view of the fire, it was too late. It was a precise, roaring red fire that shot far up into the sky, its center vividly white and violet. Lusk slammed on the brakes.

“Look at that,” she said. “It’s not spreading.”

It was true; the blaze was essentially cylindrical, maintaining tight borders. At this distance, it was hard to tell, but there didn’t even seem to be sparks shooting off from the tongues of the flames.

“I’m calling 911,” said Eguia after a moment.

Lusk pinched the bridge of her nose. “Fucking hell.”

They watched in silence as the firefighters did their work. The sun was just peeking over the horizon when they stepped back, scratching their heads, and Lusk got out of the car and marched over to greet them. Gabriel trudged after her. In full DNS uniform and carrying her badge, she cut an imposing figure and received no argument when she told them the fire was classified and they lacked the clearance to spend any more time loitering. Gabriel thanked them for their service to the community. They retreated to their truck, but did not leave the scene entirely. The area was still giving off heat in waves, which made Gabriel uneasy, but he still trailed after Lusk to the edge of the debris. It had been leveled, leaving nothing but a thick layer of shiny black dust on top of the sand. Lusk pulled some small plastic containers out of her bag and spooned some of the dust into them, then fastened the lids on securely and stuck them back in her bag. She walked around the edge of the wreck, snapping photos with her smartphone camera. Then, standing apart from Gabriel, she made a grim-faced phone call. He followed her back to the car.

“I called the DNS for cleanup,” she explained once the doors were shut. “That’s above my pay grade. But we have to wait until they get here.”

“Are you disappointed?” he asked after a moment.

Lusk didn’t reply.

Outside, the sunrise painted the sky red and gold. It glinted off the leveled wreckage, like an ironic wink from the heavens. He felt weightless and found he couldn’t move his feet, nor did he want to. He was moving backwards, was floating, and the sky was all gold.

The next thing he knew, they were on the freeway and Lusk was talking quietly into her smartphone, which she had wedged between her cheek and her shoulder.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me anymore,” she was saying. “Let it be the past.”

A pause.

“Well, I wish you would stop,” said Lusk. “You have better things to worry about now.”

A longer pause. Gabriel sat up and shifted in his seat to let her know he was awake. She glanced at him and raised her voice, clearly interrupting whoever was on the other end.

“Listen, listen, listen, I have to go now.”

A male voice squawking unintelligibly through the phone.

“We’re done. We’re done now,” said Lusk. “Say hi to Vicky for me, okay?”

A deep sigh on the other end.

“Bye now,” said Lusk. “Don’t call me.” She hung up and dropped her phone into the open purse at her feet.

Gabriel almost knew better than to ask if everything was okay. Lusk only sighed and kept driving, looking suddenly very tired.

She dropped him off at his apartment and he went back to bed. And hours before he woke up, the machine of time had already marched past the point of no return – the story had already begun, and he had no choice but to accept it and move forward.

Good afternoon. Have I reached Gabriel Egwiah?

Um, yeah. It’s, it’s Eguia, but yeah. Who is this?

This is the front office at Valleymead Elementary. We have you on file as the emergency contact for Michelle Pyeong?

        Uh. Sorry, you do? 

Sir, did you… just wake up?

        .

I had a work thing.

Uh-huh. Well I have Michelle Pyeong here in the office with me and she’s very upset because her parents have not picked her up from school today. I imagine you haven’t seen the news?

        What? No, I- I’m turning it on right now.

        .

        .

        .

        Oh my god.

Can you give me an estimate of when you’ll be able to pick up Michelle?

 Uh, I um, you said it’s called Sunnymead Elementary?

Valleymead Elementary.

        I’ll be there in, uh, fifteen minutes.

I trust you’re in a position to be responsible for Michelle until her family can be located?

        Yes, of course. I, of course. I’m on my way.

…

        .

        .

Hi. You’ve reached Agent Marissa Lusk with the DNS. I’m not available right now. Please leave a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you when I can. Thanks. Bye.

Lusk, it’s Eguia. I assume you’ve seen the news? Can you call me back? I would really like to know what’s going on. I’m picking up the Pyeongs’ kid from school right now. Please call me. Talk to you soon.

…

.

.

Hi. You’ve reached Agent Marissa Lusk with the DNS. I’m not available right now. Please leave a-

        …

        .

Hi. You’ve reached Agent Marissa Lusk with the DNS. I’m not avai-

        …

Hi. You’ve reached-

        …

Oh my god Eguia, what??

        Have you seen the news?

Yes, for the love of god, I’ve seen the news. Why are you calling me?

        I want to know what’s going on-

                Well, wouldn’t we all!

I’m picking up the Pyeongs’ kid from school right now because they fucking vanished. You’re sure you haven’t heard anything about what’s going on?

DC is dead silent, like it says on the news. I do not know any more than you, and I promise, I am even more unhappy about it than you are.

        What do we do?

I’m on my way to the airport; I managed to book an emergency flight for cheap since everyone else is frantically canceling their tickets right now.

        You’re just leaving??

                They need me in DC, Eguia. I’m just doing my duty.

        But what am I supposed to do?

Oh my god, take a deep breath. Just try to stay put I guess. Go to the Pyeong house and get some spare clothes for the kid or something. Buy cereal, whatever kids eat. Look, I’m driving, I need to hang up now, ok?

.

Bye, Eguia. Good luck with everything.

.

.

.

…

“The office lady was exaggerating when she said I was very upset,” said Shelley.

“That’s good to hear,” said Gabriel. “But it would be understandable if you were upset.”

“No, I’m okay. Thank you for picking me up.”

“Sorry you had to wait so long,” said Gabriel.

“Well, it was kind of long,” Shelley conceded.

They went by the Pyeong house, but of course all the doors were locked and Shelley couldn’t remember where the spare key was hidden. They looked under every rock and doormat just to be sure, but found nothing. On the freeway on the way to the nearest superstore, there had been a terrible accident on the shoulder, people standing around outside their cars, both of them totaled. The store was practically empty, ghostly. He let Shelley pick out a week’s worth of clothing and a box of cereal. He went to the self checkout to avoid interacting with the only cashier, a grim-faced teenager with dark circles under her eyes. There, he found that Shelley was also holding a set of mini gel pens and a rainbow leopard-print journal with a rainbow leopard on it. He scanned them and put them in the bag.

They got boba and a pizza and went back to the apartment, which he ran around cleaning while Shelley dutifully did her homework, the news on in the background. The internet was fluctuating, and the crackle of static periodically overwhelmed the distorted voices of the reporters as they rehashed the same nothing over and over again: 237 linguists had been reported missing in the past 8 hours, no one from any other profession had been reported missing in any statistically significant deviation from the norm, inexplicable internet disruptions appeared to be obstructing communications particularly in and out of Washington DC, no sign of struggle at anyone’s home or office, no lead on the identity of the culprit(s), no reason for non-linguists to fear for their safety, here’s another frantic citizen on the air whose statement will be overwhelmed by static. Eventually Gabriel turned it off and sat at the table across from Shelley.

“I’ve got to ask,” he said. “Has anything unusual been going on with your parents the past few days?”

“Like what?” asked Shelley.

“I don’t know. Something they found out at work? Someone you didn’t know talking to them on the phone or at the house? Did they seem worried?”

Shelley shook her head. “I don’t think so. Do you think they’re okay?”

Gabriel sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Right now there’s no way to know.”

Shelley picked a scab on her elbow.

“Do you have… other family in the country?” he asked.

“Not really,” said Shelley. “My grandma used to live with us, but she died last year. I have cousins in Korea.”

“Okay,” said Gabriel. “I’m sorry about your grandma.”

“Thanks.” Shelley picked up her book and opened it in front of her face. Gabriel took a piece of lukewarm pizza and ate it without really tasting it. Shelley turned a page.

Gabriel’s phone rang the intro to “All I Want” and he was shocked to see that it was Marissa Lusk calling. He almost didn’t pick up, but if she wanted him in the loop, he guessed it was better late than never. Maybe she’d found out something about the Pyeongs.

“Eguia,” he said into the phone.

“Hi. I… um…” Lusk’s voice was strange. Distant, shaky. He could hear her breathing. “I think I missed my flight,” she managed.

Gabriel glanced at his watch. “It’s 8 PM,” he said.

Lusk burst into tears.

“Hey, woah, it’s okay. Flights are rebookable.” He didn’t know what to do. “Are you okay? Why did you call me?”

Lusk took an audible breath in and out. “I think… whatever happened that shut down the government… happened to me.” He realized she was hyperventilating.

Shelley had put down her book and was staring at him blankly, like a stray cat. His head spun; he didn’t know what to do.

“Listen, Lusk, I’m going to come pick you up,” he said.

“You don’t have to do that,” said Lusk. “I can- I can rent another car. They probably still have the same car I’ve been renting.”

“No no, I’m already coming,” said Gabriel, standing up. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” Shelley bugged her eyes at him from across the table. He gestured, and she ran to the door, sat, and pulled on her shoes without tying them. Gabriel grabbed a coat, a water bottle, and his keys. On the other end, Lusk hadn’t responded, but he could hear her breathing.

“What happened?” he asked.

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Lusk, please.”

Shelley trundled down the stairs, Gabriel close behind.

“I really don’t know how to explain. I can’t explain. I don’t know. I-”

“Okay,” he interrupted. “It’s okay. Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Just… I don’t know, just sit down or something.”

There was a rustle on the other end of the line. Gabriel's mind toggled between the limited set of disasters he could imagine might happen to a woman traveling alone at the end of the world. He unlocked the car and flung open the backseat door for Shelley. He stopped.

“Shelley, do you need a carseat?”

She stared at him blankly. “I’m eleven.”

“That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Shelley got in the car. Gabriel got in the driver’s seat. He put his phone on speaker and chucked it on the passenger seat, not bothering to connect it to the car’s phone projection system.

“Okay, Lusk, we’re on our way,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said weakly.

“Where in the airport are you?”

“Um…” A pause. “Sorry, I, uh. I’m at baggage claim.”

“Okay,” said Gabriel. “You sound disoriented.”

“I guess so.”

“Do you want me to stay on the line?” He was pulling out of the parking lot.

“Uh. Sure.”

“Okay. Hey, Lusk.”

“Yes?”

“Can you do me a favor and describe the baggage claim?”

Breathing on the other end. “What?”

“Like, what colors do you see?”

“Uh… the chairs are blue… the counter is orange…”

He coaxed out of her as much information as he could think to ask about the appearance of the baggage claim. He’d read that in an emergency, you’re supposed to give the most distressed bystander a simple task that seems to them like it’s helping you. He’d also read that if you’re panicking you’re supposed to ground yourself by counting and naming colors you can see. Probably. He couldn’t tell whether it was working.

He careened into the airport drop off circle, which was eerily empty, and left the engine running.

“Wait here,” he told Shelley. “If anyone bothers you, tell them I’m coming back any second.”

He didn’t wait for a response.

Lusk was sitting in a blue chair in the baggage claim. She saw him and put her phone in her purse, rising unsteadily to her feet. Her face was blotchy, and her eyes were a little unfocused, like she was working to understand what she was seeing. Her hair was still perfect.

“You okay?” he asked stupidly, finding himself scanning her for injury.

She reached out and grabbed him, buried her face in his coat. Her fingernails dug into his back. He was too stunned to respond. Then it was over. She took her suitcase; he beat her to her briefcase. They went to the car, Lusk trailing him slightly.

An airport attendant was standing at the car when they walked up. Shelley had rolled down the passenger seat window and had apparently been making lively conversation with the attendant, who stopped laughing and arranged her pointy features into a stern glare as Gabriel and Lusk approached.

“Sir, you can’t just leave your child in a running, unlocked vehicle.”

“Good thing you were here,” he said, tossing Lusk’s baggage in the trunk.

“Yeah, I could have been kidnapped!” said Shelley.

 “Are these… your parents?” asked the attendant, apparently noticing that no one here was the same ethnicity.

“Yup,” said Shelley without hesitation. “I’m adopted.”

“Shelley,” Gabriel chided. “She’s a family friend,” he told the attendant as he opened the passenger seat door for Lusk, who dazedly slipped inside.

“All right,” said the attendant.

“Thanks so much for keeping an eye on her,” said Gabriel, swinging into the driver’s seat. And before she could say anything else, they were gone.

Gabriel glanced at Lusk, who was massaging her wrists. He looked at Shelley in the rearview mirror, and she raised her eyebrows at him.

“Uh, Shelley, this is Agent Lusk,” he said. “My colleague. She’s a cognitive scientist. Agent Lusk, this is Shelley Pyeong. You’ve met the Pyeongs. Shelley will be staying with me for a little while.”

“Hi, Agent Lusk,” said Shelley.

“Hi, Shelley,” said Lusk, in a fair approximation of a talking-to-a-kid voice.

“Lusk, do you… do you need a doctor or the police or something?” asked Gabriel.

“What?” Lusk blinked at him. “Oh. Oh my god, you think- no, it wasn’t–” she glanced at Shelley “–I actually, really, am not hurt.”

“Okay,” said Gabriel. “Okay. That’s good to hear. The hotel then?”

“I checked out already.”

“Well, we’ll check you back in.”

Lusk put her hands over her face. “I have to get back to DC.”

Gabriel sighed. “Lusk, you were going to leave without telling me. Then you call me, and you won’t even tell me what happened…” He was angry and trying not to show it.

“I really, I really don’t know how,” she said between her hands. “I see why you- but it was so much weirder than that. I don’t know what happened.”

“I think you should sleep on it and try again in the morning,” he told her.

“I have to get back,” she whispered.

“We can deal with that in the morning,” said Gabriel firmly.

“Okay.”

The mood in the car gradually subdued. Out the window, the city was odd. There were empty cars pulled over in strange places, dark buildings and boarded-up store fronts. More than one shop had been looted, windows shattered and alarms blaring uselessly into the night. Equally surreal was the fact that Lusk’s hotel seemed to be operating completely normally. Even the lobby televisions were working, though they were still playing the same news channels, now rebroadcasting their earlier unhelpful reporting. Lusk had pulled herself together enough to check herself back in, but Gabriel and Shelley walked her to her room regardless. Then they went back to the car.

And suddenly Shelley was full of questions.

“So Agent Lusk is a brain scientist, huh?”

“More or less.”

“I’ll bet she’s super smart, right?”

“She is.”

“Has she ever dissected a brain?” asked Shelley.

“I don’t know,” says Gabriel. “You’ll have to ask her yourself.”

“She’s like really pretty.”

Gabriel did not reply to that.

“So is she your crush?”

“What? No. What makes you think that?”

“You picked her up from the airport,” said Shelley with great significance.

“What?”

“And I saw her hug you.”

Gabriel’s face heated up. “She just went through something,” he said. “She’s my colleague. Everything between us is strictly professional.”

Shelley shrugs. “I’m just saying, I’ve seen a lot of sitcoms,” she says. “I know all the signs.”

Lusk turned up at the apartment the following morning around ten, bright and rosy-cheeked in her usual blazer and pencil skirt and a floral patterned shirt Gabriel hadn’t seen before, her hair bending into her face like spun caramel.

“Good morning, Professor Eguia,” she said primly, and he stepped back, dumbfounded, to allow her into the apartment.

Lusk set her briefcase down delicately by the table and sat next to Shelley, who was eating a bowl of the aforementioned cereal.

“Hello, Miss Pyeong,” said Lusk. “Pleasure to see you again.” She presented a manicured hand, and Shelley shook it, looking delighted.

“Have you ever dissected a brain?” asked Shelley.

“Yes, I have,” said Lusk. “A few human brains, and a lot of rat brains.”

“Were they slimy?”

“A little bit, but I wore gloves.”

Gabriel had joined them at the table.

“I’ll bet Professor Eguia hasn’t dissected any brains,” said Shelley, then added, “but only because that’s not his field.”

“It’s true,” said Gabriel. “I haven’t.”

“My parents’ field is speculative linguistics,” said Shelley.

Gabriel caught Lusk’s eye.

“Do they teach you a lot about their research?” she asked.

“A little,” said Shelley. “Mostly silly stuff. Like did you know that the word ‘galaxy’ comes from the Greek and Latin for ‘milk’? So the Milky Way Galaxy is like the Milky Milk.”

“I didn’t!” said Lusk. “Thanks for the fun fact.”

“You’re welcome,” said Shelley, then blushed and left the table.

Lusk turned her attention to Gabriel. “Airports are shut down,” she said. “Seems like the only people still kicking out there are the journalists, and they’re getting pretty scared.”

“I tried to take Shelley to school earlier this morning, but no one was there,” said Gabriel. “Total ghost town. I guess they didn’t manage to call me because I’m just the emergency contact. Shelley and I figured out the email of the front desk lady and she told me the school is closed indefinitely due to ‘disruptions.’”

“Disruptions.” Lusk snorted. “I wonder who got spooked.”

“So you’re not flying back to DC today,” said Gabriel.

“It would seem that way.”

“How are you?” he asked, in a low voice so she would know he was serious.

“I’m fine,” she replied in the same tone. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “A little embarrassed, actually. I made a real fool of myself yesterday.”

“Have you… found the words to describe what happened?”

Lusk sighed. “I think I’ve decided it’s not any of your business. Unless for some reason it becomes relevant to our investigation.”

“Our investigation?”

“I’d hoped we’d be able to continue working together. I think it’s not a coincidence that this…” she gestured at the world in general, “happened at the same time the study of extraterrestrial artifacts became a concern of the government. The day after that vessel crashed on the beach. This is right up our alley. And I think we have a responsibility to combine our expertise to figure out what is going on here. But I can’t promise anything in return, other than possibly satisfying your curiosity.”

Only now did she look up at him, and he thought that her eyes were more grey than blue.

“You think we have a responsibility,” he repeats. “Where was this yesterday when you left?”

“The situation has evolved since then.”

“In what way?”

Lusk sighed. “It’s these visions people claim to be experiencing. It’s outside my comfort zone. You know me - I find a piece of tech, I take it apart, I put it back together, I figure out how it works, I think about what type of mind might have built it. I’m not good at doing research with people.”

“Lusk, look who you’re talking to!”

“You lecture for three hours a week. You have four hours of office hours a week-”

“No one even shows up!” he objected.

Lusk was undeterred. “Your job is to talk to people. You’ll figure it out,” she said. “Besides, I need an outside perspective. Someone unbiased.”

Gabriel massaged his forehead. “What do you propose we do?”

“Drive to DC,” said Lusk. “Investigate on the way.”

“Lusk, that’s insane. I have to be responsible for Shelley.”

Shelley shifted her position on the couch.

Lusk shrugged. “I think we have a better shot than most people at locating her parents. Shelley, do you want to help us look for your parents?”

“Yeah!” said Shelley.

“I’m not going to encourage vigilanteism, Lusk,” said Gabriel, rising. He picked up the dishes and plunked them into the sink. “Conducting research at the university, sure. But going on a road trip to look for the missing linguists? That’s a job for the authorities.”

“Eguia, listen to yourself,” said Lusk. “I am the authorities. The authorities are asking you to help them with their investigation.” She approached him, arms folded. “Besides, all we have at the university is old evidence. Studying the same shit again is not going to answer any questions about what’s going on now.” She took his shoulder, a bit roughly. “This could be first contact. I think the Pyeongs will understand.”  

First contact. The magic words.

A giddy thrill of hope and excitement ran through him. He took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “I’m in.”

        They’d been driving for about two and a half hours when over the horizon, way on the left, appeared a purplish smudge, like a bruise on the sky.

“See that?” said Lusk.

“The smoke?”

“Ever seen smoke like that before?”

As they got closer, its base congealed into a thick pillar, almost black.

“Never,” said Gabriel.

“Good,” said Lusk. “You’re in for a treat.” She cast a quick glance back at the empty road and swerved off it, onto a trail that pointed generally in the direction of the smoke. She floored the gas and the wheels spun, making a horrible grinding noise against the sand.

“Agent Lusk, this is not an off-road vehicle,” said Gabriel, heart racing.

“Great, yes, let’s drive towards the ominous plume of smoke,” put in Shelley from the backseat.

“It won’t be smoking for long,” said Lusk.  

And sure enough, the inky smudge was rapidly lightening, the pillar tapering off into a lavender wisp. Lusk cut the engine, popped the trunk, and hopped out of the car. Gabriel took the keys out of the cup holder and followed her, pissed at himself for asking her to take the wheel. She had put on a pair of pink hiking boots and was now chucking her heels into the trunk of the car. Shelley watched doubtfully.

“Let’s go,” said Lusk, and marched off into the desert.

Gabriel and Shelley puffed after her, and not five minutes out from the car, they came upon a huge crater in the sand, filled with the charred skeleton of what had clearly quite recently been a spacecraft. The road, remotely visible off to the right, was crowded with pulled-over vehicles and families standing cautiously within sight, watching the crater. One brave soul, a woman with a thick white braid and an inelegant floppy sunhat, was poking at the debris with a long stick.

“I wouldn’t recommend touching that, ma’am,” said Lusk, tromping up to the woman’s side. Gabriel followed closely.

“It just came down out of the sky!” the woman said huskily, undeterred with her stick. “Never seen anything like it.”

“When was that?” asked Lusk.

Gabriel glanced back at Shelley, who was putting a rock in her pocket.

“Well last night, I saw this light streaking across the sky,” said the woman. “I live out at the base of that foothill.” She pointed. “Lived here forty years and I’ve never seen anything like it. I took the ATV out this morning but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Then about twenty minutes ago it started smoking. Never seen anything like it.”

“Has the government been here?” asked Lusk.

“Well not that I know of!” The woman with the stick scrutinized the two of them with her white-blue eyes.

“Have you seen anyone out of the ordinary in the area today?” asked Lusk. “Or maybe some unusual footprints?”

“Well no!” The woman’s eyes popped. “But I can’t say I was looking! Should I have been?”

Lusk huffed and picked her way into the debris.

“Not to worry, ma’am,” said Gabriel, watching Lusk apprehensively.

“Do you think we’re in any danger?” asked the woman with the stick.

“I’m not sure,” Gabriel said honestly. “It’s probably a good idea to stay home, and, uh, not touch the wreckage.”

Lusk had produced a pair of latex gloves and was now holding a smooth hunk of metal with a flickering blue light up to the sun.

“Agent Lusk?” he called.

“Check this out,” she said.

“Hey Shelley, stay where you are, okay?” said Gabriel. “Keep an eye on her, would you?” he asked the stick woman, who nodded, still gawking.

He moved cautiously into the crater and stood beside Lusk.

“We think these are personal computers of some kind,” she told him, sotto voce.

It was a shattered flatscreen oval about the size and shape of one of those boxy cellphones from the nineties.  

“How many have you seen?” he asked.

“Personally? This is my second. But rumor has it there’s a stash of them somewhere.”

“They don’t tell you?”

“I’m a civilian liaison,” said Lusk derisively. “They don’t let me keep very many secrets. Get a pair of gloves out of my purse and take this, will you?”

Gabriel obeyed and followed her deeper into the wreckage.

“Watch your step,” she said without looking back.

There was a fragment of metal about the size of his face whose black-singed pattern struck him as morbidly beautiful. He picked it up and stuck it in his bag, then hurried to catch up with Lusk.

“What are you looking for?”

She glanced at him darkly. “The body.”

He felt dizzy. “Have you… have you ever seen one?”

“Look at this.”

He stopped at her side. There was something glowing red under a sheet of charred metal. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Let’s take a look.” Gabriel reached for the metal sheet.

“Do not touch that!!” Lusk was gripping his wrist with surprising force. Gabriel could feel her finger bones through his sleeve. He felt his cheeks warm, and he gently extracted himself from her grasp. She glared up at him, flushed. “You do not just touch whatever you want to at a crash site. See this?” She shook a gloved finger at the metal sheet. “This is part of the hull. Sometimes the shields are still partially functional.” Lusk took a piece of paper out of her purse, wadded it up, and tossed it at the metal sheet. Before it hit, there was a crackle and it shriveled into a tiny black flake which drifted away on the light wind, leaving behind it an ominous smell of fire.

“Holy shit,” said Gabriel.

“That’s right,” said Lusk. “Don’t touch anything unless I say so."

She bent over and peered under the hull at the steady red glow. It was then that Gabriel noted the lack of smell present at the crash site up until that point. The thick black smoke had been odorless.

“The smoke,” he said. “It was a signal. That’s why you’re looking for a body. Because the smoke signal gets sent up when a manned vessel crashes.”

“That’s the theory,” said Lusk, sounding disappointingly unimpressed with him. “Data’s incomplete because we can’t always be sure whether a vessel was manned or whether we missed a smoke signal or whether we missed a crash entirely. Some of your data, we’d never seen before. I don’t think I can get a better look at this red light.” She was crouched close to the ground, craning her neck in an attempt to see under the hull sheet.

“Can you tell anything about it?”

“Just a solid red light.” Lusk accepted his offer of a hand up, stumbling slightly on the debris. She scowled at the world in general, shaking a golden wisp of hair out of her face. “I can’t do anything about this. We just don’t have the equipment. Normally I would call D.C., but no one fucking seems to be there.”

“We’ll take what we can and study it later,” said Gabriel, trying to be reassuring.

“And the rest of it will get picked over by randoms for a month before anyone else gets out here,” said Lusk bitterly. “This is an incredible site. It should have been my big break.”

“Yeah yeah, and then you wouldn’t have to be the civilian liaison anymore,” said Gabriel, annoyed. “Let’s go.”

She brushed by him and marched out of the crater, and he trailed after her.

Shelley was waiting with the stick woman, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Did you guys find anything good?” she asked.

Lusk ignored her, admonished the stick woman once again not to go inside or touch anything, and headed off in the direction of the car.

“Look at this,” said Gabriel to Shelley, showing her the personal computer.

“Wow. Can I touch it? Does it turn on?”

“It doesn’t turn on right now, but you can touch it if you get gloves from Agent Lusk,” said Gabriel.

Shelley frowned and looked down at her feet. “Is she mad at me?”

Gabriel sighed. “Why would she be mad at you, Shelley?”

“I dunno.”

How could he answer this question without pissing off Lusk even further? “I think,” he began, “that Agent Lusk is just having a rough week.”

“Ever since the airport?”

“You don’t need to worry about that, kiddo,” said Gabriel. “Our job is to look after you, not the other way around.”

Marissa was fine with being in denial. She thought denial was an underrated coping mechanism. What had happened was in the past, and she was fine. She was completely fine. What lay ahead was a much bigger problem and would undoubtedly require all her faculties, meaning she had no faculties to spare. The immediate future would involve finding some place to stay the night. Already the horizon in the rearview mirror was bloodied with the first stains of sunset.

“How long will you drive?” she asked Eguia.

“Are you offering to switch?”

“I would be happy to,” said Marissa, “but I meant to say, when would you like to stop for the night?”

He blew out a sigh, his heavy eyes fixed on the road. “Dinner in an hour, drive for another two?” he suggested. “Shelley, are you hungry yet?”

“My butt hurts,” said Shelley.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how long an hour is.” Shelley turned a page loudly.

“Better stop sooner,” said Eguia to Marissa. Bizarre.

“I can take over after we eat,” she said, “but I want to determine in advance where we’re going to spend the night.”

“You happen to know anyone in this area?” asked Eguia.

“I don’t think so,” said Marissa. “Do you?”

“Nope,” he said, and changed lanes. “Motel, then.”

Marissa dug out her phone and searched her GPS software for motels. “Four and a half stars, four hours away,” she suggested, hoping to get more miles behind them.

“Oof,” said Eguia. “That’d put us at… ten thirty? Eleven?”

“I would drive,” Marissa reminded him.

“Shelley, you up for four more hours in the car?”

“I don’t know how much an hour is,” said Shelley.

“Okay,” said Eguia, exiting the freeway. He was remarkably calm. “We can figure it out after dinner, okay?”

Shelley turned a page.

They parked in front of a dull corporate burger joint a block away from the freeway. A wave of vertigo hit Marissa like a truck as she stood, and she stumbled back against the side of the car. Just as quickly, it passed, and she straightened, stretched her arms, hoping to play it off as normal. Eguia didn’t seem to have noticed, but Shelley, emerging from the backseat, was watching her uncomfortably closely.

“What are you reading, Miss Pyeong?” asked Marissa, remembering that Shelley had been pleased by her over-formality earlier that day.

“It’s about a girl with telekinesis,” said Shelley. “Do you know what telekinesis is?”

“Isn’t that when people move things with their mind?”

“Yeah,” said Shelley, “but she can only do it sometimes, otherwise it’s too strenuous for her.”

God forbid a girl have a superpower, thought Marissa.

She took Shelley to the bathroom and then to a sticky grey table more or less in silence. Shelley continued reading while Marissa and Eguia haggled over motel quality and driving distance. They landed on three more hours in the car and Marissa lost hold of the conversation as soon as the food came. She fell into a reverie, lost. Out the window the road was flat. It stretched forever. A man in tattered clothing pushed a bicycle across the road, so, so slowly. His limbs were thin as the bones inside them, and his gait was unsteady enough that he didn’t quite manage a straight path, and lingered in the middle of the road. His eyes glittered, full of painful human wetness. The cars slowed. Marissa’s heart slowed. Her joints ached. The grease in her mouth was intensely nauseating. That man is going to die. He’ll be run over and killed. Marissa’s vision spun. She put her head in her hands, trying not to pass out. Eguia was saying something she couldn’t hear over the drumming throb of blood in her ears. She sucked in air through her nose, trying to fill her lungs slowly.

“Agent Lusk? What’s happening?” Eguia was saying.

She managed to lift her head and saw the man with the bicycle safely ambling in the dust on the near side of the road, his eyes small in his leathery red face. The rush of relief was dizzying. Vasovagal syncope, she thought to herself, is the answer to Eguia’s question. But why?

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m fine now.” She stared resolutely out the window until her eyes dried up, then turned to smile at Eguia to show how fine she was.

His expression was a gut punch, his thick eyebrows knit with concern and his dark eyes dancing intensely. Marissa’s stomach turned, and she dropped her hamburger onto her tray.

“I think I got food poisoning at lunch,” she managed, and ran to the bathroom to throw up.

He refused to let her drive. She didn’t protest much, which needled Gabriel slightly, but he had already decided to be a gentleman about the whole ordeal, so here he was, back behind the wheel, driving to Lusk’s precious three-hours-away motel.

Lusk, for her part, fell asleep the second they were back on the highway. He stole glances at her at plausible intervals, in case Shelley was watching and felt like being weird about it. Lusk really did look waxy, her new pallor detectable primarily because her skin no longer matched her shade of rouge, which stood out on her cheek bones like she was a child’s drawing. But Gabriel knew a panic attack when he saw one – he’d gone to the ER during his first, insisting he couldn’t breathe or feel his limbs and there was something wrong with his heart – and he guessed that a cognitive scientist would know, too. His fury at her unwillingness to answer anything he asked of her had finally directed inward. What is it about me that makes me so untrustworthy? He pulled apart their every interaction, something that was possible to do because they were arranged so discretely in his memory, hours if not days between each. He concluded nothing.

By the end of hour two, Shelley had also fallen asleep, and snored lightly in the backseat. Gabriel began singing songs in his head. He got the idea of mentally running through some album he liked, to see if he could do it in order, but he kept jumping around from one idea to another without being able to commit. He had just mentally discarded “Case of You” on account of forgetting the order of the verses when he saw it on the side of the road. A flat red rectangle, improbably vibrant given the darkness, as if it had been painted onto the air. The word “nondiegetic” popped into his head. It was, as far as he could tell, two-dimensional, much taller than it was wide, unmoving.

“Agent Lusk,” he whispered. They were getting closer. Despairing, he shook her shoulder and she whimpered slightly. “Agent Lusk,” he tried again. “Look out the window.”

Briefly, the rectangle filled the side window, and then it receded into the distance. The hair on the back of Gabriel’s neck stood on end.

“You saw it,” Lusk breathed. He glanced at her, startled by her sudden sleepy intensity.

“So did you,” he whispered back.

She twisted around in her seat.

“Is it still there?” he asked.

“Too far off to tell.”

“Is Shelley still asleep?”

“Zonked.”

He chuckled. There was no way to process what he’d seen.

“Are we close to the motel?” asked Lusk.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“So-so.”

“You wanna tell me what really happened?”

Lusk sighed. “It was the same thing that people have been calling into the news about,” she said at last. “Some kind of vision. It’s something I would usually dismiss as sort of a social contagion, if it hadn’t happened to me. I know all that reveals is my own bias, but there it is.”

Gabriel nodded, thinking. “What was the vision?”

Lusk looked down. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “Maybe later.”  

“Yeah,” muttered Gabriel.

The exterior of the motel was discouraging; half the lights in the big plastic sign were out, and several of the lamps in the parking lot were greenish and flickering. He delegated Shelley and the luggage to Lusk so he could go check in, but regretted it the instant they were out of his sight. His heart was in his mouth until the two of them trudged into the lobby, Shelley scrubbing at her eye with one hand and clutching the hem of Lusk’s blazer with the other.

There was only one room available but blessedly it had two queen beds and a pullout couch. Shelley collapsed on the nearest bed while Gabriel and Lusk wrestled with the sofa. He sat down on the other bed when they were finished, his entire body leaden with the physical and emotional weight of the day. Behind him, Lusk was trying a new tactic with Shelley.

“Okay, big girl, time to brush teeth.”

“Too sleepy,” Shelley mumbled.

“You’ll be so much happier in the morning if you do,” said Lusk brightly, with a tinge of desperation.

“Dubious,” said Shelley.

With much moaning, she was pulled to her feet, where she stood unmoving.

“Come on,” said Gabriel, “I don’t want to brush my teeth either, but Agent Lusk is right, I don’t want them to be all fuzzy and gross in the morning. We’ll go together.”

“Okay.”

He’d meant to wait up for Lusk, but sleep overtook him the moment he was lying in bed. For a few minutes, he was distantly aware of her clinking around in the bathroom, before he plunged into deep, dreamless unconsciousness.

Marissa brushed her teeth in front of the mirror, Eguia’s beloved Joni Mitchell and her guitar jangling in the back of her mind. She contemplated the yawning abyss that stretched before her. The six white walls of the bathroom enclosed her and her alone, and the bathroom was one box inside the motel, and the motel clung precariously to the surface of the earth, and the walls of the bathroom were boundless planes that stretched in every direction forever and Marissa was the only one left inside.

She sat on the ground. She was involuntarily holding her mouth in sort of a pout because it was full of toothpaste. She shut her eyes and focused on the toothpaste, not the room, not the abyss.

Using the counter to help her, she hauled herself to her feet, reached over, and nudged the bathroom door open. The darkness and the sound of sleep-heavy breathing drifted in from the bedroom. Marissa stood in the doorframe, hanging onto the wall, watching the darkness and contemplating the fragile human bodies inside it, and she realized she was shaking with genuine terror – of what? Their mortality? Her own? The dark?

She went over to the sink and spat, head spinning with disgust at the texture of her saliva, the metallic taste in her mouth, the hair rasping against her neck and the skin against her clothes and the blood prickling under her skin and the heart contracting in her chest and what was happening to her? She sobbed semivoluntarily, half-hoping someone would wake and come to help her, that if they could only see her right now they would understand how much she was suffering, could tell her why, could reattach her to the gravity of the Earth…

What- her colleague and his advisors’ eleven-year-old daughter? Now she was hissing out a laugh under her breath, wiping snot off her face, stupid. She straightened and looked at herself in the mirror. Shadows obscured her features. Is this the face of someone who is suffering? Surely not, Marissa decided. She could not quite remember why she had been crying. She’d really hugged Eguia at the airport, hadn’t she? She must really try to get a grip on herself; the whole thing was terribly unprofessional. She sniffled, washed her hands, and turned out the bathroom light. She was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow, a cold white sleep that left her fuzzy in the head for many hours after she woke up the following morning.  

Okay, Mr. Garcia. We’re recording now. Do you give your consent for this interview to be recorded and used for research purposes?

Yes, I do.

Okay, thank you. This is just a reminder that you don’t have to answer any questions you don’t want to, and you can ask us to stop recording at any time.

Gotcha.

Great. Let’s get started. So tell me about your experience with… well, what would you call it?

I’ve been calling it the pillar.

        The pillar, okay. When did you see it?

I was driving home from work – I manage one of the grocery stores here – and I saw this thing following me on the freeway.

        What did you do?

I pulled over, thought I was hallucinating. It flew right up to me and swallowed up the car before I could do anything about it.  

        Then what happened?

Well, then I was somewhere else, I guess. It was all white, like a room that went off in every direction. Totally empty. Then I saw… well, I saw someone. I don’t really remember what he looked like. Like I couldn’t look quite at him. But I had this sense, that it was my brother.

        Your brother?

Been a long time since I’ve seen my brother. Evaristo. We lost him about, oh, thirty years ago now.

        Can I ask how he died?

Leukemia. Real ugly way to go.

        I’m sorry.

It was a long time ago.

        But you saw him… inside the pillar?

Well, I don’t know if it was inside the pillar or if we were somewhere else entirely. Or if it was all in my head. Could’ve been anything. And I didn’t really see him either, just knew he was there. He took me somewhere new, we were in our childhood backyard, actually, but the grass just stretched forever, and the house, well I couldn’t find the house but you know, I knew it was there. Just behind me.

        Then what happened?

It’s hard to explain. I felt, just, a profound sense of connectedness. Love and connectedness. It was like… it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Like being in a cathedral and you see the light coming through the stained glass, or you know when you go in the forest and you’re surrounded by trees and it just hits you, that they’re all alive. It was this… ancient… vastness.

        In what way was it ancient?

.

Like trees are.

        .

        Then what happened?

Well, then I was back in my car.

.

                How did you feel, sir?

That’s interesting that you ask. It was also strange. I was… incredibly lonely. It was like losing my brother all over again. I called my wife and we talked about it all the way home.

                And now? Have you noticed any lingering effects?

Ah, let’s see. I would say so. It affected me emotionally. I felt closer to my brother than I had in years.

        How do you make sense of what’s happened? How would you explain it?

I see it as a sign from God. God sent me an angel to remind me that my brother is waiting for me still after all these years. It was incredible. It was the closest I’ve been to him in years, and it’s not for lack of trying, I assure you! You know of course that Día de Muertos is coming up. I was thinking of painting that endless backyard for the altar this year.

        What a good idea.

I think so.

        Before we stop the recording, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?

I just wanted to say I think it’s great what you two are doing. You know, I haven’t been able to understand anything anyone has been saying on the news about this, the internet is so terrible this week. I don’t know why they bother. But I hope you make more recordings and share them someday soon. I want to know what other people have experienced with these pillars.

        We will.

        …

        …

        -now.

.

Would you please state your name for us?

Sasha Singh.

Okay, Ms. Singh. Do you give your consent for this interview to be recorded and used for research purposes?

Yes.

Okay, and just to remind you again, you don’t have to answer any questions you don’t want to, and you can ask us to stop recording anytime.

I understand.

        What would you call the… thing you’ve been encountering?

A portal.

        A portal. When did you see it for the first time?

Ugh. Time is weird, but… by the calendar I guess it was two days ago, on my way to work in the morning.

        What did you think when you saw it?

I was like, am I high? *laughing* Like, I’d remember if I was high, right?

        *laughing*

But yeah I was just staring at it out the bus window and I realized it was following the bus. And when I got off at my stop, it went right toward me.

        What did you do?

I started running! I did not want that thing anywhere near me.

        Then what happened?

Well, you already know. It caught me. And I was like, lost. Lost lost.

        Where were you?

In a sense it was like I hadn’t moved at all – I started running away from the salon and then it caught me and I was still running in the same parking lot, but all the cars were gone. And I turned around and the buildings were all completely… featureless.

                Featureless how? Like a liminal space?

Kind of? But not really. It wasn’t like I was looking at a liminal space that’s like, you know, blank walls and solid colors, or where everything is distorted. It’s more like when you’re reading a book and you have kind of a limited picture of the setting where everything is taking place. Like, you’re picturing “buildings” in the most conceptual sense but you’re not really seeing buildings. Do you do that?

I guess I always substituted whatever the general setting was for a specific one I knew. Like right now I’m picturing the strip mall I sometimes visit because it has a salon but I know it’s not the same salon where you work.

Okay, so our brains work differently then. It made sense to me.

.

I guess a better way of describing it would be that I wasn’t really seeing the buildings. The experience wasn’t visual. Is that an insane thing to say?

                No, it’s like Nagel.

Nagel?

        “What is it like to be a bat”?

Exactly! It’s a classic article in cognitive science. It sounds to me like you experienced a mode of perception that humans can’t usually access. It’s hard to put it into language because the two of us essentially lack the sense you were using while… inside? the portal.

*laughing* You’re making me sound much smarter than I am. I guess so! That’s pretty cool I guess.

Hey, give yourself a little credit!

I guess so!

Anyway, what happened next? You were in a less specific version of the parking lot outside your salon?

Yeah. I turned around and I saw the salon and then… I couldn’t move.

.

It was like, I don’t know how else to describe it. Like I couldn’t move.

        How long were you like that?

Apparently not very long… I wasn’t even late to work but holy shit, it felt like, I don’t know, like hours. Days. I was like *laughing* like this is why religious people are afraid of going to hell, like oh my god *laughing*.

        How did it end?

It just, I dunno it just ended. The portal was gone. I like, had to sit down on the ground for a while. I would’ve thought I’d gone insane if everyone in the salon hadn’t seen it happen! Like holy shit.

        And the whole time, did the, I guess, dreamscape you were in ever change?

No. There was no motion. But I could still feel the time passing.

        And this wasn’t your only experience with the portal?

It’s following me. Didn’t you see it outside the apartment building? *laughing*

                No, we didn’t.

Well it’s been waiting for me every time I leave. I called in all my vacation days at work and then some. Eventually I’ll have to face it, but I’m… definitely putting it off. *laughing* I mean have you seen what people are posting on the internet at all? These portals are killing people. People are getting hit by cars and stuff. And, you know, they’ve already fished a teenager out of a lake. Drowned himself. Apparently he couldn’t live with whatever he saw.

        God, that’s… that’s terrible.

I mean, it’s the internet. You can’t put too much stock in it… sorry, I’m a mess.

        It’s okay. Do you want to stop?

Yeah, I think- I think that’s enough.

        …

On the second night of the trip, they stayed at the home of Gabriel’s friend from undergraduate, Cooper, who’d ended up in New Mexico running a small consulting firm. He’d responded with humbling generosity when Gabriel called him out of the blue from the road, and when they arrived they found Cooper in the middle of making chili, bedding in the dryer. The dinner conversation oscillated between fond reminiscence, wild speculation about the current world situation, and solicitous inquiries after Shelley’s school performance and overall wellbeing. Lusk was quiet.

After dinner, Shelley was installed at the coffee table in the living room with a stack of coloring pages printed from the internet and Gabriel and Lusk took over the dining room table with their bagful of debris. Gabriel added the scrap metal he’d stowed in his own backpack to the array, and Lusk froze, fixing him with a terrible stare.

“I told you not to touch anything,” she said.

“Sorry,” said Gabriel. “I grabbed this before you showed me the shield thing. I thought these markings-”

“I’m not ready to move on from this,” said Lusk. “You can’t pick up an object of possibly extraterrestrial origin and put it in your backpack and not even tell me for an entire day.”

Gabriel crossed his arms. “How is that different from what you did?”

“This bag is DNS-issued,” said Lusk, in a controlled rage. “It’s designed to limit exposure to potentially hazardous materials and emissions from unknown substances.”

“That- that doesn’t make any sense,” said Gabriel. “How can it protect you from substances that are unknown? How do they know how to make the bag? And if it’s so dangerous, why are we putting it on my friend’s dining room table?”

Lusk took a deep breath, flushed. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

“Okay,” said Gabriel. “I’ll be more careful next time.”

“I should hope so.”

The rustling of paper in the next room.

“Can we look at these now?” asked Gabriel.

“Yes.”

They had: the oval-shaped personal computer, nonfunctional; the two walkie-talkie devices from the lab that lit up; Lusk’s favorite two sheets of scrap metal from the lab, which were different in chemical composition; and Gabriel’s apparently illicit black-singed metal sheet from the most recent crash. They immediately adopted their parallel play approach to investigation, Lusk engrossed in the personal computer with her tiny screwdriver, both walkie-talkies open at the seams around her, while Gabriel pored over his new artifact. Other than the black smudges spiraling over its surface, it was indistinguishable from the other two, impossible to identify as being the same as one or the other. He studied its edges: blackened to the point of being blue, fading to red and orange then back to blueish silver towards the center, wrecked with ashy black patches which were covered in small rough nubbins of ruined metal, in contrast to the still-smooth surface of the blue, red, and silver patches. Why had the vessel crashed? Was this damage from when the ship burned up in the atmosphere? Or something else? Gabriel ran his finger over one of these sweeping paths. And why had certain parts of the metal reacted so differently? The effect was almost an aesthetic one. He wondered, not for the first time, whether this could be language: the name of the ship, printed on the side?

Meanwhile, Marissa was growing increasingly convinced that this ovoid computer device had been built by someone completely different from the people behind the communicators. There were broken wires on the inside of the computer, but they resisted replacement with the functional wires from the communicators, apparently not conducting. When she removed another panel to see what was going on with the layer underneath, she was stunned to see how tiny everything was: it must have been put together under a powerful magnifying glass, if not a microscope. She rubbed the bridge of her nose. It would be premature to jump to the conclusion that these devices were built by different species. At most, different cultures; at minimum, different companies. But the smoke signals: she was convinced that not every crash site released one, including crashes with secondary indications of life aboard, such as the communicators. She was ready to conclude, at minimum, that there were different factions up there in the stars. All signs suggested there were.

Eguia’s friend Cooper ambled into the room, eating an apple. “That’s quite the haul,” he said meaninglessly.

“We’ve been busy,” said Eguia meaninglessly.

“So this is what Jack Bradley has you up to?”

“No,” said Eguía forcefully. “That’s not- that’s not the situation at all.” A pause; then he elaborated. “We’re doing our own research. At the moment, we’re really not reporting to anyone. We’ve kind of gone rogue.”

“Wow, that sounds exciting,” said Cooper. He took a loud bite of his apple. “But how is Jack Bradley? You did get him as your advisor after all, didn’t you?”

“No, my advisor was Stuart Pyeong.”

“Really?” asked Cooper. “I thought for sure it was Jack Bradley — he’s the one person whose papers I actually remember reading in that anthro class… you were so excited you wouldn’t shut up about it…!”

Eguía let out such a withering sigh that Marissa looked up, despite herself. He put his head in his hands. “Bradley…” a meaningful nod towards the living room to remind that Shelley was in earshot “…wasn’t the man I thought he was. I don’t want to be associated with him.”

“Oh really,” said Cooper in a low voice. “He—?”

“You know the kind of information that comes out sometimes,” said Eguía very quietly. “He was fired.”

“Oh, damn,” muttered Cooper. “What a loss.”

“A loss? What, to the field?”

“Yeah, I mean,” said Cooper, “he was at the peak of his career, right?”

Eguía stood, his chair clattering against the floor.

“Not that he didn’t do it to himself, and deserve what he got, and all,” Cooper went on hurriedly.

Eguía went off to the other room, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Cooper made eye contact with Marissa and cocked his head quizzically. Marissa shrugged. Her face was hot. She pulled her laptop out of her briefcase and propped it open in front of her, trying to look like she was working on official government science stuff.

But Cooper was not to be deterred. “Were you familiar with Jack Bradley, Agent Lusk?”

“I know his work,” she said.

“Did you know about…?”

“Not the specifics. Not from Eguia.”

Cooper shook his head. “Gabe idolized him,” he said. “Found his calling our first year of undergrad and he’d read half of Bradley’s papers within the month.”

Marissa sighed and looked up at him.

“How long have you two been working together?” asked Cooper.

“Almost a year now,” said Marissa.

Cooper nodded, looking lost in himself. “Is he, you know, doing okay?”

Marissa had no idea. She rubbed the side of her eyelid with one finger. “I don’t think I know him well enough to say,” she said.

Cooper nodded to the living room, where Shelley could be seen with her back to them. “Is Stuart Pyeong her dad?” asked Cooper.

“He is,” said Marissa.

“Right.”

Marissa went into the guest room to stow the artifacts and found Eguia sitting on the bed, turning his precious piece of space junk over and over in his hands. He looked absurdly dejected. Marissa sat on the other edge of the bed.

“Have you come to any conclusions?” she asked.

“This marking,” he said, holding the scrap of metal up to her and pointing, “looks deliberate.”

She took it from him and squinted at the place he had indicated. There was a dark, twisting mark coming out from the singed edge. “Linguistic?” she asked.

“Hard to say,” said Eguia.

Marissa gave the scrap back to him, and he dropped it on the bed next to him.

“Sorry I left you to talk to Cooper by yourself,” he said.

Marissa crossed her arms. She was finding it difficult to read this new mood of his and annoyed that reading his moods was now one of her professional responsibilities. They’d spent two straight days in the car together, and this was their second night at the same lodgings. She’d never worked in such close proximity with anyone, not even Moseley. “You’re an anxious person,” she hypothesized aloud.

Eguia snorted. “Is that right?”

The sarcasm grated. “Well, you tell me!”

“Look.” He put his face in his hand. “It’s not your problem, Lusk. You don’t have to do that.”

Marissa crossed and uncrossed her ankles. “The edges of the debris burned in the atmosphere pretty typically, but the rest of the damage is unlike anything I’ve seen before,” she said. “At minimum, we can posit a relatively high-speed drop from a point close to Earth’s atmosphere. The question is what caused it.”

“You think someone could be in orbit,” said Eguia.

“Possibly. Or something.”

“A probe? A drone?”

“It’s premature to rule out any possibility,” said Marissa.

“Including terrestrial origin, I’d say,” said Eguia.

“That’s true, but I’d be surprised if anyone on Earth is launching something like this, or blowing up something like this, without the government’s knowledge.”

Eguia looked at her for a moment, and she picked up what he meant: just because she didn’t know didn’t mean no one in the government did. All he said was, “We need a lab.”

Marissa’s vision blurred. She felt an intense understanding of the word “need,” like all her internal organs had been scooped out with a net of stinging nettles. Then it was over. Oblivious, Eguia said, “We should get an early start tomorrow.”

“I agree,” said Marissa, a little huskily. Eguia looked at her, and she cleared her throat. “I’ll try to convince the preteen to get ready for bed.”

“Thanks, Lusk.”

She hesitated in the doorway; he looked so small, hunched over on the edge of the bed, this unhurt man with his debilitating compassion.

“It doesn’t reflect on you, you know,” she said.

He looked up at her. “Haven’t you ever trusted the wrong person?”

Marissa hesitated, aware she had no idea what was playing across her face. “I can’t say I’ve thought about it,” she said finally.

Eguia snorted. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Forget I asked. Did you learn anything?”

“I want to be cautious about what I conclude,” said Marissa. “But I think it’s safe to say that there are two factions active, and it’s likely both are extraterrestrial. The communicators and the personal computer are completely incompatible technologies.”

Eguia ran his hands through his hair, visible delight overcoming his dark expression. “That’s incredible,” he said, then again, “That’s incredible.”

She couldn’t bring herself to react. Let him have his win.

A scream woke Gabriel in the middle of the night, making him fall off the couch and knock something over on the coffee table. He stumbled towards the guest bedroom and knocked – “It’s Gabriel,” he thought he said, but he was still mostly asleep.

“Come in,” called Lusk, and he opened the door.

He blinked in the warm lamplight.

Shelley was curled up sideways, arms wrapped around Lusk’s waist, crying quietly. Lusk looked world-weary. “Can you get her a glass of water?” she asked.

Gabriel nodded and made his way to the kitchen, slowly swimming into the waking world. He put water in a joke mug with a pickle on it that said “I’m kind of a big dill” and brought it back to the guest bedroom.

“Okay, sit up,” said Lusk, and Shelley obeyed. Gabriel handed her the mug. She took a cautious sip. “You can’t cry and drink water at the same time,” said Lusk. “See?”

Shelley nodded.

“What happened?” asked Gabriel, sitting on the bottom edge of the bed.

“I had a nightmare,” said Shelley, dejected.

“Must’ve been some nightmare,” said Gabriel, trying to sound impressed.

“Yeah,” said Shelley. She looked at the pickle mug and furrowed her brow.

“Would you like to tell us about it?” asked Lusk.

Shelley turned to look at her adoringly. “But I don’t want to give you the nightmare.”

“I don’t get nightmares,” said Lusk.

“Wow,” said Shelley. “That’s so strong. But what about Professor Eguia?”

“I can handle it,” said Gabriel.

“Okay,” said Shelley. She took a deep breath. “Everything was pitch black. And freezing cold. Then there was an explosion and I felt like- like I was on a roller coaster, but I couldn’t breathe and my skin hurt and I could feel my spit, like, boiling and it scared me so much I woke up. And when I woke up I realized that in the dream, all my friends were dead. And it took me a while to remember that it was just a dream and everyone is actually fine probably.”

“I’m sure everyone is fine,” said Gabriel.

Lusk raised her eyebrows at him, and said to Shelley, “Sounds to me like you just got blown into space.”

“Really?”

“What you described is more or less what would happen to the human body if it was exposed to the vacuum of space, which is why it’s really important that astronauts’ space suits work correctly,” Lusk explained.

“Really??”

“You probably read about it somewhere and your brain decided tonight would be a good time to remind you,” said Lusk.

Shelley took a sip of water. “That’s super weird. You guys are sure you won’t get the nightmare? Because I don’t recommend it.”

“We’re sure,” said Gabriel.

“Do you think you can go back to sleep now?” asked Lusk.

“Yeah,” said Shelley. “Can we leave the lamp on?”

Lusk shrugged. “Might as well.”

“Thank you for the water, Professor Eguia,” said Shelley.

“No problem,” said Gabriel. “Sleep well, you two.”

“Night,” said Lusk, and put the sheet over her face.

Gabriel retreated to the living room and lay awake staring at the ceiling for a time before he drifted off again.

…

Oh, so now she wants to talk to me. Why am I not surprised?

Yeah, yeah, Moseley, I’m just glad I could get ahold of you. I’ve been completely unsuccessful reaching the DNS. Are you and Vicky both okay?

We’re fine.

Look, I’m sorry to bother you after the other day, but-

Are you? Are you really sorry? Or are you just saying you’re sorry because you want information?

Jesus Christ, Moseley, I said I was sorry.

        .

Oh, whatever. I can’t stay mad at you, Missy.

Okay, thanks then.

        So what do you want to know?

I want to know what the hell is happening, but barring that, literally anything.

        Well, if it’s a boy, we’re thinking of naming him David.

Great.

Hahahahaha. I do actually know a few things that might interest you.

Such as?

Well, I have reasonable grounds to assume that the US government is behind the internet shutdowns.

Is there evidence? Or is this one of your, shall we say, unconventional contacts?

God, they’re going nuts. Bruno Dempsey apparently had an encounter with one of these red things and he’s been posting drawings of platonic solids three times a day ever since.

He was already doing that; it’s his special interest.

        You follow Bruno Dempsey on social media?

Sometimes he mails me space junk. I was always his favorite.

        *sigh*

To answer your question, no, I have a cybersecurity friend that I was able to reach by email. She says that if the government believed we were at risk from a massive unknown cyber attack, they would put up guardrails that could cause widespread unpredictable disruptions. She thinks that’s what this looks like.

That’s great, Moseley, thank you.

        What are you doing, are you investigating?

Yeah, it’s- I’m in a weird situation. I’m traveling with my coworker and his advisors’ kid to DC right now. The advisors are linguists and they’re both among the missing persons. Since I couldn’t reach the DNS from where I was, I thought it was my duty to do what I could to help.

        You’re gunning for reinstatement.

I’m trying to do the right thing.

Well, if you’re in these parts, you and your motley crew are welcome to visit us. If you do, I can show you some research I’ve been doing on the red things. I think it’ll interest you.

That’d be amazing, thank you for the invite. I’ll add you to the itinerary. Same address?

        You know the place.

Should be in my GPS. Got anything else for me?

        Not at the moment. Do you have anything for me?

Nothing conclusive. We can talk in a few days when we see each other. Tell Vicky I said hi.

        Sure thing.

Thanks, Chip.

…

Marissa, too, was haunted by strange dreams, but hers were concerned with glowing red pillars and skies blinding with dying stars. She woke before dawn in a cold sweat, and when she stepped hazily out of the shower she realized she’d lost the memory of whatever she’d been thinking about while inside. A trickle of blood ran paintlike and painless down her shin. She held toilet paper against the shaving cut, a bent-over wet animal, all gooseflesh. The scab would be a hard, dark bead, small enough that no one would notice. It is a terrible thing to bleed on someone else’s bathmat, so Marissa did not do it. Even now, she had this control over herself.

Shelley came into the bathroom and leaned against the counter, watching in the mirror, as Marissa went through the motions of blow-drying and styling her hair. The child was certainly the complicating factor. By herself, Marissa wasn’t above the more reckless methods of investigating unexplained phenomena: running headlong into one of the pillars, driving a car into it, luring it into a lab and throwing every test at it that would stick. Well, she liked to get a big head and make such claims about herself, but maybe it was more accurate to say that that’s what she would be doing if Chip was with her. By herself, Marissa wasn’t above crawling into bed and waiting it out. The experience had taken something out of her. Her scalp hurt. Her arms and legs felt like lead. Under Shelley’s scrutiny, it was worth the herculean effort to carry on placidly, with her full face of makeup, her daily blowout, her stalwart professionalism, and her share of the driving. Well, Shelley, and then there was Eguia, to whose more discerning eye she must continually put forth a facade not only of capability, but also sanity. This is not gothic horror, Marissa reminded herself sternly. One does not simply go mad, for the hell of it.  

But though not madness, there was certainly something. For the first time in her memory, Marissa had found herself falling asleep without trying, in the passenger seat of the car, waking up dizzy finding that hours had passed. And the nightmares, increasingly, had returned, but not the same nightmares; these were new and confusing and fuzzy and endlessly varied, easy to forget but as soon as she slipped out of consciousness she felt she remembered all of them:

(

swimming

in the fluid foamy air of

the purple bowling alley

       &

the crushing embrace

of

?

       &

                             it’s loud

                      loud

                loud

        & she

             is

            so

          tired

           she

         could

   just

   die

     )        

“Hey,” said Eguia, and punched her lightly in the arm. “Wake up. You think you can take over in like ten minutes?”

“Yeah.” Marissa scrubbed at her face. It was so bright in the car. She became aware of her seatbelt, her shoes, and her tights, in that order. “Could I have fifteen?” she managed.

“Sure,” said Eguia. “Everything okay?”

“Just… a weird dream,” said Marissa in response. Her joints ached. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

Eguia murmured assent to this. In the backseat, Shelley turned a page.

A dream? It felt so like a memory. But Marissa hadn’t been bowling in her adulthood, certainly not while sick, not while sheltering in place with bombs outside-

Then it hit her.

Everyone was dead.

Everyone was already dead.

Her heart started hammering out of her chest. Now she was very much awake. She sat at attention, head turned resolutely out the window, seeing nothing, squeezing her hands and clenching her legs together to keep from shaking.

It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t. But what could Eguia possibly think if she told him?

“This is the place, I remember it,” said Lusk, pulling up to a beaten down little house which was mostly chain link fence and a big wide-leaf tree. They were in the far outskirts of Tulsa, in a neighborhood where the grass grew into the cracked, faded pavement of the road and all the houses were different shades of sun-blasted beige bricks with dusty cars in the driveways. “This is the home of Sid Anderson. He’s wacky, but harmless. Radio nut. We used to fly out here back in the day because he would pick up what he claimed were extraterrestrial transmissions.”

“And were they?” asked Gabriel.

“Well the first time it was clearly just people speaking Russian,” said Lusk, turning off the car. “But the second time…” She raised her eyebrows at him. “Hindi. Like I said, he’s a harmless radio nut.”

“And why are we visiting him?”

“He’s been a decent source of space junk in the past, actually,” said Lusk. “He started messaging me and, um, my former partner yesterday saying he has something we should see.”

“Can I wait in the car?” asked Shelley, not looking up from her book. “I’m at the climax.”

“Do you think we’ll be long?” Gabriel asked Lusk.

She shook her head. “I’m not inclined to stay longer than necessary.”

It was probably better to insulate Shelley from some man Lusk considered “wacky,” anyway. “We’ll lock you in,” said Gabriel, “and leave on the AC, ok?”

“Mm-hm.” Shelley turned a page.

They went up to the front porch and Lusk rang the doorbell. The man who answered it was stooped and scraggly, hair and beard sticking out in all directions.

“Missy!!”

“Hello, Sid, how are you.” Lusk offered her hand and Sid shook it vigorously, beaming. His teeth, surprisingly, were pearly white. Then he turned to Gabriel and his face fell.

“You didn’t bring Chip!!”

“No, Chip and I aren’t working together anymore.” Lusk’s smile was very strained. “This is Professor Gabriel Eguia. He’s an exoarchaeologist.”

“Well gracious me,” said Sid, “I never thought I’d see Missy Lusk in academia! Come in, come in. Can I get you anything? Soda?”

“No, thank you,” said Lusk. “You’ll have to excuse us; we’re in a bit of a hurry.”

Gabriel followed her inside. The house was dim and a bit musty, and absolutely filled with mangled furniture.

“I like to drive around the neighborhood, pick up what people leave out on the street,” Sid called to Gabriel as they picked their way after him.  

“No, you didn’t get all this from the neighborhood, did you?” asked Lusk, scolding. “You’ve been visiting the dump again.”

“It’s amazing – amazing – what people throw away!” In the next room, about twelve mismatched armchairs were arranged in a circle around a big potted plant. “Besides,” Sid went on, “that dump is absolutely appalling for the environment. Appalling.”

“Trash doesn’t belong in your home, either,” said Lusk.

“It’s a conversation pit!” said Sid, climbing into the circle and flopping down in one of the chairs. “Sit down, sit down, make yourselves at home.”

Lusk shot Gabriel a look, but obeyed, squeezing between two of the chairs and sitting gingerly down opposite Sid. Gabriel followed suit.

“So what are you up to these days, Missy?” asked Sid, propping his chin up on his hands and leaning forward eagerly.

“Classified work for the DNS.”

Sid laughed gleefully.

“Didn’t you say you had something to show us?”

“I was saving it for Chip,” said Sid. “Isn’t he coming?”

“No, he’s not able to come this time. We’re not working together-”

“I know, I know, you’re not working together anymore, okay.” Sid turned to Gabriel, eyes twinkling. “Have you met Chip?”

“No, I’ve never met him,” said Gabriel.

Sid grinned and gestured with both hands open, starlike. “He’s a good man.”

Lusk pinched the bridge of her nose. “Mr. Anderson, we’re in a big hurry,” she said. “Can’t you please show us what you have? Is it more space junk?”

Sid shook a finger at her, still grinning. “Oh, so now I’m Mister Anderson, which makes you Miss Missy!”

“Agent Lusk,” said Lusk.

“Oh, okay, I’ll go get it,” said Sid. “It’s a good one!”

He tottered off into the next room. Gabriel studied Lusk, who was sitting up perfectly straight, eyes closed, lips pursed. Before he could say anything, Sid returned, holding a cassette player and a tape. He sat down between Gabriel and Lusk and put the tape in the cassette player.

…

*static* %&*$&#* $&*#$&*#( $&* ade $$$ ##*(#&%#&%&#&.

!!!U$*&*%#*$**$^$$%$%$^(^*)%&*$( *static* #*&%&#&(#&$ ade on $(#&$*(#&$*(#&

?? <><($ ep #%#*/*/%*#(@)#_%*(#@*) ?? N ?? @  

)@*%& *static* )@(%@()$@%*(@)*$ hyu-men $&*$&*#(_@#_$ ?? TY #*&@# !

@ *(#*( !! hyu-men ?? (@$$&*@^$*&@ ??? O !!! !! !!!

        *explosion*

*static*

        ?? 2#&*@&@288 ????? ?? !

        …

“Well?” asked Sid. “What language is it this time?”

Lusk was staring at Gabriel, eyes wide. “Do you- do you recognize it?”

“I don’t, but I’m no linguist.”

Lusk propped her forehead on her hand, squinting. “Play it again.”

Sid nodded proudly and pressed play on the tape again. They listened. The hair stood up on Gabriel’s neck.

“They’re saying ‘human’ in English,” said Lusk, pained. “But it’s not- I don’t think-” She shook her head. “I’ve never heard anything like this before.”

“How did you pick up this frequency?” asked Gabriel.

“I have a lot of big antennae out back,” said Sid. “I like to mess with ‘em, see what sticks.”

“When was this?” asked Lusk.

“I texted you right away,” Sid crowed. “Yesterday, 5:17 AM.”

Lusk stood up, suddenly vibrating with nervous energy. “Can we have this recording, please, Sid? You can make a copy for yourself if you want to keep it.”

“I already made lots of copies,” said Sid. “You can have this one.”

Lusk made eye contact with Gabriel. “It would be really helpful,” Gabriel said, “if we could have the original one, Mr. Anderson. Our colleagues might have an easier time figuring out what language this is if the quality is slightly better.”

“Well…” Sid looked off to the side, sheepish. “I was sort of saving the original in case Chip wanted it.”

“I will show the original to Chip when I see him next,” said Lusk tightly. “I really don’t think he’s going to be available to come visit, Sid.”

“When are you going to visit?”

“In a few days.”

“Well… okay. I’ll go get it.” Sid got up and shuffled off into the next room again.

“Charles fucking Moseley,” muttered Lusk under her breath. “No one can get enough of him.”

“He was your… partner?” asked Gabriel.

“In every sense of the word,” said Lusk grimly. “The man is a menace. He cannot stop getting promoted. Drives me insane.”

 There was a crash and some mild swearing in the next room, and Sid came back out, holding a different tape. “Here she is! Took some digging.”

Lusk was all smiles again. “Thank you so much, Sid. It’s very generous of you to be willing to share this with us.” She took the tape and slipped it in her purse.

“Well, I’m just happy you guys take an interest in me,” said Sid. “You know I don’t get out much, or have people over…”

“I hope you’ll consider seeing that therapist, Sid,” said Lusk, walking toward the door. Gabriel followed.

“Oh, no, I like the house right now,” said Sid. “I’ll wait til it gets bad again, you know? Then I can part with some things.”

“All right then,” said Lusk.

“You’re sure you can’t stay any longer?” asked Sid.

“Sorry,” said Gabriel. “We really are on a tight schedule.”

“I hope it all works out,” said Sid.

Lusk was out of the house as soon as she could be, but Gabriel hung in the doorway for a moment. “I almost forgot to ask, Mr. Anderson- have you seen any of the big, glowing, red… rectangles in your neighborhood?”

Sid cackled. “The what now?”

“People have been talking about it on the news,” said Gabriel, feeling suddenly ridiculous. “We’re trying to figure out what they are.”

Sid clapped his hands. “And she says I should see a therapist!” He let out a hoot. “Good luck with that, son!”

“Thanks anyway,” said Gabriel, and smiled as Sid closed the door, still giggling.

“Gabriel?”

He turned around to find Lusk still standing outside the car, looking stricken.

“What is it?” he asked. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head. “Shelley’s gone.”

To be continued…