Part the second

Here's part two of the story that's going to the moon. If you missed part, one, click here.

Six hours later, we land in Denver. I’m not sure why Rogers convinced Eddie to send me. But I still have my mace. And a credit card. A single girl’s two best friends.

When we get to his car, I hold out my hand. “I’ll drive.”

He looks at me, and any arguments die. I grab the keys, and we get in. Following the signs, I exit the airport and head toward Colorado Springs.

“It’s after work hours.” I say. “Let’s start at Alt’s apartment.”

“Uh, sure. Okay.” Rogers says.

We drive in silence for a long time, but curiosity finally gets the better of me. “Why is this data so important? Is it really proof of alien life? What would happen if, say, the Chinese government got it?”

Rogers glances at me, then looks out the window again. He’s been staring out the entire drive. “It wouldn’t matter too much.”

“What? Then why all this trouble?” I turn the car into Alt’s apartment complex. The parking lot lights have come on, illuminating the pavement and sidewalks. I’ve been here several times—most recently last Christmas—so I know where to park.

He shrugs. “It’s not the Chinese we’re worried about.”

“So, who? The Russians? The North Koreans?” I park in Alt’s empty spot and glance at the clock. “It’s after seven. He should be home by now.” I text him for the ten-millionth time as I hurry to his apartment.

Rogers grabs my arm, yanking me to a stop.

I fumble for my mace. “What?”

He gestures. “You almost ran into that light pole, and I didn't have my camera ready.” He grins his crooked grin.

I roll my eyes, step around the light pole and sprint up the stairs, pulling Alt’s spare key out of my pocket. When I open the apartment door, it’s obvious Alt is not there. His beloved plants are wilting, so he hasn’t been here in a few days. I hand Rogers a watering can. “Take care of the plants while I check the bedroom.”

“Maybe he’s just at work,” Rogers suggests as he waters a violet. “Is anything missing?”

 “I don’t think so, but it’s been a while since I was here.” I exit the bedroom. “Aside from the plants, the place looks normal. Let’s go to Artcor. Do you know where it is?”

As we walk back to the car, I pull up my social media apps, and sift through Alt’s posts, looking for clues. I’m so distracted by the time we get to the car, I let Rogers drive. At least, I think that’s why I let him drive. Besides, if he’s gone to this much trouble to abduct me, I don’t have much chance, do I? We park in the back of a Target parking lot.

“What are we doing here?” I ask as Rogers slides out of the car.

“Stealth.” He pulls on a dark hoodie and tosses one at me.

“I am not breaking into Artcor!” My voice ratchets up and a couple people near the store look our direction.

“Hush!” Rogers says. “We aren’t going to break in.” He gestures to his chest where I can just make out a Mountain View Janitorial Services logo. I am starting to believe this is a very elaborate prank. Maybe some new reality TV show that shows how stupid people can be? Exhibit A: me.

I slide my hands into the pockets and find a badge. It has MVJS and a picture of a complete stranger. With a shrug, I clip it to the front of the sweatshirt and follow Rogers across the street. If we get arrested, I am demanding a huge raise from Eddie. If it weren’t for him, I’d be safe at home, binging Netflix.

We enter through the back of the building and the guy at the security desk barely glances up. He buzzes us into the service elevator and I tromp in behind Rogers.

“Shouldn’t we have cleaning gear?” I ask as the elevator begins to rise.

Rogers shakes his head. “Cleaning carts are down in the basement. Cleaning staff go down to get them first then head upstairs.”

“You sure know a lot about this building.”

Rogers shrugs. “I worked here a couple years ago.”

We get out on the seventh floor and Rogers turns right without hesitation. He leads the way through a set of double doors. The dingy linoleum-lined hall gives way to a slightly brighter linoleum-lined hall. Numbered white doors line both sides of the hall. “Do you know where Alt’s office is? I’ve never been here before.”

Rogers nods and continues down the hall. He opens door 742 and steps aside, gesturing for me to enter. I guess we’re not worried about stealth anymore. I walk in and stop, barely noticing as Rogers closes and locks the door behind us.

“Rina! What are you doing here?” Alt leaps up from his chair, knocking a torn popcorn bag off the desk. Fluffy white kernels fly everywhere.

“Why aren’t you answering my texts?” I demand, hands on hips.

“They won’t let me,” he whispers. His eyes dart around the room and he looks deranged. His brown hair is greasy and lank. The dark circles under his eyes and pasty skin give him a zombie apocalypse survivor vibe.

“Who won’t let you? Artcor?” I look around the room, but there’s no evidence of anyone else.

“No, them.” He jerks his chin at Rogers.

I spin around. “What is he talking about? You said you couldn’t find him.” Which, now that I think about it, is pretty suspicious. He didn’t have any trouble finding him tonight. I whip out my mace. “Spill it, Mr. Neighborhood.”

Rogers gives me a confused look. “Mr. Neighborhood? Oh, the kids’ show. Funny.” He laughs, too hard, and stops abruptly. “That mace isn’t going to do you any good, so you might as well put it away. It doesn’t hurt me.” He steps forward, his hand outstretched.

I shoot him with the mace.

Rogers smiles and sucks in a deep breath through his nose. “See, no effect.” He licks his lips. “Delicious.”

“He’s an alien,” Alt says.

I blink at Rogers, the overspray from the mace stinging my eyes.

“Right,” I finally say, turning to Alt. “And he’s locked you up here to keep you from reporting his data signal to SETI.”

“Well, it’s not my signal,” Rogers says. “It’s the mothership’s signal to me. But, close enough.”

I sit down, hard. And miss the chair, banging my head against the seat and my butt against the floor. “Ouch!”

Rogers reached out a hand, but Alt lunges forward, batting it away. “Keep your tentacles off her!” My brother pulls me up and into the chair.

Holding up his hands, Rogers back away. “Hands, not tentacles. But, fair enough. I won’t touch either of you. Beverage?” He turns to a stack of soda cases along the wall and picks out a can.

“No, I don’t want a beverage! I want to know what the frak is going on here! Why is my brother locked in a break room? And why did you bring me here?” I rub the back of my head. “Come to think of it, how did you get me here? I’m not usually this compliant.”

The alien shrugs, popping open a can of ginger ale. “We have minor powers of suggestion. As to why, I need the two of you keep my existence a secret.” He drops into a chair and chugs half the can. “I’m here on a scouting mission for the—” he makes some ear-splitting noises.

Alt and I clap our hands over our ears.

“Sorry. Let’s just call it the Galactic Research Corporation.” He swings the chair back and forth as he talks. “We investigate planets whose dominant life form is nearing the—” He breaks off and starts again. “Basically, the human race is close to reaching what you might call ‘pre-school age’ and we’re checking to see if it’s time to enroll you in galactic education.”

“You’re doing a galaxy-ready assessment on the planet?” I ask.

“That’s a much better way to phrase it.” He nods enthusiastically. “There’s a whole team of us here, and that signal you found was basically the pick-up reminder from our Uber.”

“So, if we report that signal to SETI—” Alt leaves the statement hanging.

“They’d know we are watching, media frenzy, martial law, planet-wide panic.” Rogers hangs his head. “Plus, I’d lose my job. I have three wives and a dozen larvae to feed.”

“Ew.” My stomach churns.

“Just kidding. No tentacles, no larvae. No wives.” He smiles winningly.

“So, what do you look like?” Alt cuts me off to ask. “You look human. Is that some kind of disguise or costume?”

“No, humanoids are pretty common in the galaxy. We look just like you. Well, except for the extra digits.” He clasps his hands in his lap.

“Extra digits?” Alt asks.

Rogers fiddles with his fingers, and I hear a soft pop. He holds up what appears to be a plastic pinky in his right hand. “We only have three fingers and a thumb.” He waves his weirdly truncated left hand and shrugs. Then he snaps the finger back on. “It’s not like you use your pinky for anything. Except drinking tea.”

“And pinky swearing,” Alt says, holding up his own pinky.

“Can we get back to the SETI thing?” I demand. The fake finger is kind of freaking me out. “You were talking about martial law and panic.” “

“Yeah, we’ve seen it happen. And I would lose my job. Look, GRC has been doing planetary assessments for millennia. We’ve been here four times in the last century. Once a planet is deemed ready, there’s a carefully orchestrated launch process that introduces the planet to the existence of other intelligent life forms with minimal civil unrest. We’ve screwed it up enough times to get the process down to a science.” He chuckles, shaking his head. “Ceti Alpha Six was a nightmare. Took decades to calm them down.”

“And locking anyone who discovers you into a break room to subsist on ginger ale and popcorn is part of this process?” I gesture to the overflowing trash can and the mess on the table.

“That was a bit of an ad-lib. I’m not good at improvising.” He smiles. “Why don’t we go have a nice dinner, and forget all about this ET stuff?”

“Your Jedi mind tricks aren’t going to work on me anymore,” I say, fighting off the urge to drive him to Applebee’s. “But maybe we can just agree to ignore the data, and you can go home?” I raise my eyebrows at Alt, who nods emphatically.

* * *

After cleaning up the popcorn and bagging the trash, we troop down to the car. “Are you guys hungry?” Rogers asks. “We can stop for takeout, then I need to get out to the pickup site.”

“You mean your ride is coming right now?” Alt asks. “But I have so many questions! I want to know more about your planet.”

Rogers shakes his head. “I can’t tell you any of that. And, no, I can’t take you with me.”

We both shake our heads. “You’ve seen too many movies. We weren’t going to ask.” I say. “But can you tell us if we passed the assessment?”

Rogers starts the car and drives out of the parking lot. “It’s not my call, but based on my findings, you need another twenty to twenty-five years.”

“Well, at least I’ll still be alive when you come back,” Alt says. “Look me up when you get here.”

After a stop at Applebee’s, we head east. I fall asleep after we get onto I-70.

* * *

The transition from smooth highway to gravel road wakes me. I lay in the dark on the back seat, listening to Alt and Rogers talking about television.

“We wrote that one,” Rogers is saying.

“What? You mean Roddenberry was one of you?” Alt sounds star struck.

“I can neither confirm nor deny his planet of origin,” Rogers says, “but I can tell you a friendly introduction to the idea of peaceful, space-faring civilizations is one of the key components of our program. Of course, the Prime Directive is pure fiction. We step in to influence development as soon as a species shows begins to industrialize. But the widespread popularity of science fiction is an excellent indication of galactic readiness.”

I stare up through the back window, marveling at the blanket of stars that covers the night sky. A shooting star streaks across space. I stretch and sit up, twisting around to stare back the way we came. In the dim moonlight, I can see rocks and not a lot more. A brief flicker of light illuminates a boulder. “Is someone following us?” I ask.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Rogers glance over his shoulder. “I hope not, but it’s possible.”

“Turn off the headlights, and don’t use the brakes,” Alt says as we speed down a hill.

“Maybe not the best idea,” I start to say, but the headlights go out and we pick up speed. “I’d like to survive this trip, if you don’t mind!”

“Alt, you drive,” Rogers says.

“What?!” I screech, scrabbling for my seatbelt.

Alton leans across the center console and grabs the wheel. From my place behind him, I can see that Rogers has closed his eyes.

“What are you doing?!” I cry. It takes me three tries to yank the seatbelt across my lap and click it into place.

“Sssh!” Alt says, twisting around to look at me. “I think he’s doing his Jedi mind thing on the driver behind us.” Our car veers to the right.

“Watch the road!” I scream.

“Not going to work,” Rogers grabs the wheel and yanks the car back onto the road. “That’s one of us back there. Probably from—” he stops and glances at us. “Let’s call them TOG—The Other Guys. They’re GRC’s competition.”

“You mean the Earth is in the middle of some kind of corporate war?” Alt asks.

“Exactly. They’re trying to prevent us from bringing your planet into the galactic economy. They have another planet with similar resources. Whichever company gets their planet approved first will have the advantage, economically. That’s kind of simplified, but close enough.”

“How can they stop you?” I ask, watching out the back for another glimpse of our pursuers.

“If they blow our cover, then GRC gets blamed for the negative publicity, and we’ll be banned from continuing the project. Of course, we’re probably doing the same thing on their planet.” He shrugs. “It’s a bug-eat-bug universe out there. Kidding. We aren’t bugs. That is one of the weirdest things about this planet—your conviction that aliens are bug-like.”

“We don’t think that,” Alt protests. “That’s just old sixties sci-fi. Oh, and Men in Black. There are a lot of non-bug aliens, like the Thermians and Superman. He’s technically an alien. And the Ewoks. They’re cute and cuddly.”

“Who do you think invented Ewoks?”

Click here for part three!