Aliens

by elveloy

I saw my first alien when I was five years old. Of course, I didn't realise it was an alien back then, he was just someone who looked different.

I was with my mother at the time, on our way out of the local deli with the carton of milk and loaf of bread we had just purchased, and he held the door open for us.

"Why is your head so big?" I asked him, innocently curious. Too young then to have learned to keep my mouth shut. My mother yanked my arm, hard.

"Gabriella!" she hissed. I looked up, bewildered. She was hurting me. Her face was red with embarrassment. "I'm so sorry," she apologised to the strange looking man. "Say you are sorry immediately!" she told me.

"But-"

She shook my arm again. "Now!"

"I'm sorry," I muttered, not really understanding what I was apologizing for. It wasn't my fault he had a big head. His eyes were huge too, and he had a tiny mouth but I guessed I shouldn't say anything about that, either.

The stranger smiled politely but his eyes were staring at me, as if he was trying to see inside my head.

Suddenly shy, I hid behind my mother.

"Thank you," she murmured to the stranger, who was still holding the door open.

"I'm so sorry," she said again, filling the awkward silence. She pulled me around to her other side, away from the stranger, and we left the shop and walked very fast down the street. I had to half-run to keep up.

"That was very rude, Gabriella," she continued in a low voice. "You should know better than to make personal remarks, you're not a baby any more. And I don't know what you meant, either, his head was no bigger than anyone else's. No television for you tonight, young lady."

I turned once, to see the stranger still staring after us.

That was the first time I saw an alien, but it wasn't the last.

~~~

It wasn't as if they were limited to a racial type or even a gender. They were scattered throughout the population of Adelaide, in all walks of life, apparently going about their business just like ordinary people. But where I saw a grey being with a large head, huge eyes and a small mouth, everyone else saw a Vietnamese waiter, a Sikh taxi driver or a white woman behind the shop counter. There was one odd thing though, I never saw any aliens disguised as children.

Looking back, I'm surprised at how long it took me to realise that I was the only person who could see them.

I tried to report them to the authorities, honestly I did, but no-one would listen. My own parents didn't believe me, nor did the busy policewoman at the Port Adelaide Police Station. My whispered call to the National Security hotline, resulted in an irate call back to my father about me being a public nuisance, and no internet access for a month.

When I turned sixteen, I gave up trying to tell anyone else about them. I was sick of counsellors and psychologists. The last psychiatrist I saw, put me on medication that made me feel like I was fighting my way through thick fog every day. This couldn't go on, I thought, rubbing my aching head ‒ I needed a new strategy.

So I stopped talking about aliens. I stopped talking about grey beings disguised as humans. I agreed with feigned reluctance that I had been pretending, that it had all been a game to attract attention. I apologised to my parents and the psychiatrist. I had a feeling Dr Ford wasn't convinced, but to my immense relief, my parents were so grateful to have an apparently rational explanation for my behaviour, they overrode him and put an end to the therapy sessions.

All I could do now was to watch them, to try and discover what they were doing here on Earth. Why were they here? What were they doing? How long had they been here? It dawned on me with chilling certainty, that if I was the only person who could see them, then I was the only person who knew they were here, that Earth had been invaded.

I stopped talking about aliens, but I started making notes instead ‒ recording as many details as I could about when and where I saw an alien and what it was doing. Maybe the notes would come in useful some time in the future, or even if they didn't, I felt I had to make an effort to do something! I had no idea what extra powers the aliens had, if any, but I knew enough about human hacking to be wary of putting anything on my computer. I wrote everything down in an old-fashioned paper notebook and kept it in my underwear drawer.

Even though I knew they were all around us, I still got a shock the first time I saw one on the television screen. He ‒ it ‒ was talking at a climate change conference in Bonn, Germany. I don't know how he appeared to everyone else, but to me he was a small grey alien in a dark grey suit. When I stared at the screen, I could see that he wasn't the only alien in attendance. I realised then that this was the first time I had seen one as a public figure. All those I had noticed up until now had been in very ordinary jobs.

A smokescreen? Was this their plan, then? To manipulate humanity through occupying key positions?

Rather frantically, I called up all the important people I could think of on my computer screen, our Prime Minister, the US President, even the Queen, but they all looked human to me.

What about Hitler?

The thought popped into my head. What if aliens had been controlling us for years, causing wars and massacres? I searched back through historical records to find an actual live photo of Hitler, not an actor, but no ‒ he looked human, too. Gripped by this new theory, I searched back through records of other key events in history. I found the occasional alien caught up in a crowd scene but never again one as an active figure. I sought the oldest film of a crowd I could find, it was taken in 1897 at the opening of the San Francisco baths, and sure enough, I spotted an alien in the background.

How long had they been here? If they had been here a hundred years ago, why not more? I imagined them appearing on the planet millenniums ago, when humans were still huddling in their caves.

I sat back in my chair. Although I had learned a lot that day, I still had no idea what they were doing here, and more importantly, what sort of threat they posed to our species.

~~~

I kept up my observations and rigorous note taking for almost a year, before ‒ well to be honest, I grew bored. Nothing unusual happened the entire time, nothing to distinguish the aliens from any of the humans they mimicked. I finally took the plunge and started a thread on Twitter "Have you ever seen an alien?" Boy, did it bring some weirdos out of the woodwork, but nothing that rang true to me. I even grew complacent enough to post a short story on wattpad, an amateur writer's site, about how I could see the aliens that nobody else could.

I turned eighteen.

Then came New Year's Day, 2016, and everything changed forever.

~~~

Washington was hit first. Then London, Moscow and Beijing. All in a matter of minutes, with no warning. Massive explosions, leaving nothing but clouds of dust where proud cities had once stood. Nuclear weapons shot to red alert around the globe, but no-one knew who to aim them at. No-one claimed responsibility for the attacks, except for a few crackpots from the lunatic fringe who were quickly rounded up and locked away, just in case.

We were still in a state of shock, when huge green-black spaceships appeared in the skies over each continent, like sharks moving in for the kill. The destruction of Earth's major cities was only the first wave. Long silver threads descended from the ships and we waited and watched fearfully to see what would happen next. Was this some sort of poison? A virus? People and buildings began to disappear, apparently without cause.

Fighter jets attacked the spaceships, but with no evident impact. They were handicapped by the ships' proximity to the cities beneath. No military commander was willing to fire nuclear weapons at a spaceship and annihilate their city as well. No doubt there would be top secret discussions about 'collateral damage' but no-one was prepared to take that final step. Yet.

Soldiers swarmed through the streets, weapons ready, but uncertain what to fire at. I, and millions like me, watched transfixed as the images scrolled across our computer screens. I spared a moment to wonder why the invaders hadn't knocked out the internet, but perhaps they wanted us to stay terrified, glued to our monitors.

The news camera switched from a flashback of the ruins of Washington, to live coverage of the streets of New York. The nearly hysterical news reader was shrill-voiced as he tried to describe the scene before him. Something was cutting a swathe through the city, demolishing buildings in its path, like an old sci-fi horror movie.

Anxiously, I swapped news channels. Where was the local news? Australia had been lucky so far. Evidently Canberra was not considered important enough to wipe out like all too many other capital cities, but a space ship was hovering above Sydney, holding it hostage. Was the same thing happening there? All I could find was overseas coverage. Did that mean Australia was still safe? Or were the aliens simply controlling the broadcasts, focussing on possibly the most well-known city in the world?

With cold hands, I turned back to the pictures from New York. I could hear gun-fire now. Smoke and dust swirled through the streets. For a moment, I thought I caught a glimpse of a tall figure moving through the haze. I bent closer, peering at the screen. Had it been my imagination? I was just about to give up and try a different channel when ‒ there it was again!

A tall shape, moving purposefully through the haze. It must have been about three stories high. As I watched, it extended a limb and touched the building in front of it. I swallowed as the building disappeared. Gun fire sounded again. I watched a group of soldiers fire their automatic weapons in a fanning motion across the area where the building had been but the creature appeared to ignore them. Why didn't they fire directly at it instead of wasting all those bullets in a sweep?

Now that I had spotted one, I could see others in the distance, dispersing outwards from the point beneath the spaceship, through the city. I knew then, the purpose of those silver threads. Not poison or a plague. The aliens had launched their ground troops.

Two weeks later humanity was still under attack, but fighting back. Trial and error showed that while bullets had no effect, it was possible to destroy an alien if it was hit at close range with a rocket launcher. For some reason, the broadcasts only showed the aliens being attacked after they had demolished a building. I didn't know why they didn't shoot them on sight, before they could do any more damage. Perhaps they did, but the broadcasters thought battles made more suspenseful footage.

The first successful hit was shown around the globe, going viral in minutes. The alien corpse was about twenty metres long, with a large head, a small body and two long, tentacle-like legs. When dead, the alien turned dark grey, many shades darker than the pale wispy colour they displayed while alive. I use the terms 'dead' and 'alive' because that's what the media used. They certainly bore no resemblance to any life on Earth. Nor, curiously enough, did they resemble the aliens that were already living among us, apart from their colour.

At first, I had leapt to the obvious conclusion, that this attack was the culmination of their long-term plan to take over the Earth. My hand hovered reluctantly over my phone, wondering if I dared call National Security again, or maybe the Army, this time. But as I hesitated, and watched the broadcasts more closely, I began to wonder. I saw more than one small alien wearing a uniform, clearly fighting the new-comers alongside us. It seemed they had thrown in their lot with humanity.

I watched the broadcasts more closely than most people for the first week, trying to confirm my theory.

Was it possible there were two alien species invading us?

~~~

A month later, although the armed forces had some successes, we were still losing the war.

I was cooking tea in my pyjamas, after finally managing to tear myself away from the screen for a few moments, when a huge figure dressed in riot gear kicked in the kitchen door. I froze in shock. Another smashed the window and came through it in a roll. I screamed, and tried to run. The first one grabbed me, ignoring my beating fists and kicking feet. Bare feet didn't have much impact on hard leather boots.

"Help!" I shrieked. "Let me go!"

Then I felt a sharp pinprick in my neck and everything went black.

I woke up to find myself in a white room. A woman dressed all in white was standing beside me, her fingers on my pulse. Had I been sick? Was I in hospital? For a moment I couldn't remember what had happened.

But before I could do more than clear my throat, a man wearing a military uniform of some sort, came into view and stared down at me.

"Gabriella Apperlin?" he asked.

"Yes?" I answered, still confused.

"I need you to get up and come with me," he said in a no-nonsense voice.

"Hold on, Colonel. You'll have to wait until I give her the all-clear," interrupted the nurse with a frown. "She's been out for twelve hours."

"We've wasted too much time already," he grumbled. "I'll give you five minutes. Oh - and can you get her to change into something more suitable?" he spoke over my head to the nurse. "I'll be back in five minutes," he repeated as he left the room.

I looked down and saw I was still wearing my pyjamas.

The nurse checked my pulse again with impersonal fingers, then my blood pressure, before gesturing to a pile of clothes on a nearby chair. "You're fine. There should be something in there that fits you," she said. "Better get a move on, the Colonel doesn't like to be kept waiting."

"Where am I? What am I doing here?" I blurted.

The nurse shrugged infinitesimally. "You'll have to ask the Colonel."

I stood up, feeling a bit dizzy, and looked at the pile of clothes. They weren't mine, but they were my size. A pair of jeans, a tee-shirt and pair of sneakers later, I felt better. It was amazing how vulnerable, bare feet and pyjamas could make you feel.

The Colonel knocked once on the door before opening it and putting his head inside. "Ready? Let's go."

I folded my arms and tried to look determined. "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's happening!"

He frowned. "We haven't got time for this."

"Then make time. I think I deserve an explanation. Why did you grab me like that? Why on Earth didn't you knock at my door like a normal person? And who's going to fix my kitchen?" I added, suddenly remembering my smashed door.

He grunted, and cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Sorry about that. There was a little misunderstanding with the instructions to bring you in. And there's no need to worry about your kitchen, it'll be fixed today."

"Hmph," I said, not totally convinced. "I still don't know why you wanted me here in the first place."

"I hear you can see aliens."

"How-?"

"That twitter feed."

"But why me? What-"

He interrupted again. "It's not just you, you aren't the first civilian we've brought here to test. But someone thinks you're different. We'll soon find out," he added with grim determination.

I wondered who thought I was 'different.' My brain buzzed furiously as I followed the Colonel down a long corridor. He had answered a question I hadn't actually been going to ask. The question I had been on the verge of asking was, what use was my ability to see aliens now? What did my aliens, the Third Kind, have to do with the current crisis? As far as I could tell, they had nothing to do with the latest, huge, attacking ones. (I had privately started calling them the Third Kind, because they reminded me so much of the aliens in that old sci-fi movie.)

One thing I was absolutely certain about, I needed to keep my mouth shut until I found out more.

The Colonel opened a door into a room filled with men and women sitting at computer terminals. Except ‒ at least half of them were not men or women. They were grey, with large heads, huge eyes and small mouths ‒ they were my aliens of the Third Kind.

I froze for a moment in shock. What the hell was going on? I looked across at the Colonel but he seemed oblivious. His eyes had gone straight to a huge screen which occupied one entire wall. It was showing what appeared to be a live, aerial view of central Sydney. I saw three tall aliens moving down George Street, in the direction of the Opera House. The camera kept panning up and down ‒ operated by someone in a helicopter, judging by the accompanying noise.

"Well, can you see any aliens, then?" asked the Colonel in a flat tone.

I turned to him in confusion. I was almost certain he didn't know he was surrounded by them. Evidently the Third Kind were still successfully maintaining their camouflage ‒ hardly surprising in the circumstances ‒ now was hardly the best time to reveal their existence! Was I going to turn them in? It was true they seemed harmless enough ‒ in all my years of watching, I had never seen one of them make an aggressive move, until they fought back against the invaders, that is. They appeared to have adapted themselves to our world.

I couldn't help my eyes flicking over those hunched at their desks. One of them turned and smiled. Then it winked, I swear.

I cleared my throat. "Just those three, there," I answered, pointing to the screen, uncertain exactly what sort of a test this was.

He frowned and pursed his lips. "Bring the grid up," he directed one of his staff, a human as it happened.

Seconds later a graph-like grid appeared, superimposed on the screen.

"Give me the co-ordinates." This time he was speaking to me. I saw then that there were letters across the top and numbers down the sides, rather like a game of 'Battleships.'

"C12, C13 and C14." I replied. "They are moving up towards the top right of the picture," I added. Was this some sort of trick? As we both watched the screen, the Colonel gave a brief order to the computer operator next to him. A few seconds later, the three aliens collapsed in flames.

I swear the Colonel's jaw dropped open in surprised disbelief. I realised then that he hadn't believed me. Hadn't believed I could really see them.

"Thank god!" he breathed. "Now we have a fighting chance!"

I blame the knockout drugs for why I was so slow to catch on. My brain was still fuzzy, but I realised then that I had made the right decision. If I had accused those who looked like people to everyone else, no-one would have listened to me, any more than they had before. I would have been bundled out of the room immediately, without a chance to help fight the invaders.

Evidently, I was still the only human who could see aliens.