Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 40274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 201(@200wpm)___ 161(@250wpm)___ 134(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 201(@200wpm)___ 161(@250wpm)___ 134(@300wpm)
“It will stop in the nearest safe space for you and others.”
“That’s a lot of thinking for a machine to have to do. Shouldn’t I just be able to fly it myself, put it where I want it?”
“No,” he says. “Absolutely not.”
“Self-driving never really caught on down there,” I say, as Arlo sends the shuttle toward Earth. At first it’s just a beautiful journey down toward the blue and green pearl on which I, and every other human was birthed. I feel serene and one with the universe. I am a space traveler. I am a… We slip through some barrier that I couldn’t pinpoint precisely as a certain height or whatever, but suddenly my perception changes from being one of traveling to one of just straight up falling.
“ARGGGHGHGHGHGHH!” I scream, because that’s what my brain tells the rest of me to do. I also reach out with all my limbs to try to brace myself against the walls of the shuttle which makes absolutely no difference to the sensation of just fucking tumbling toward Earth.
“What’s wrong?” Arlo addresses the question quite calmly.
“Oh. I’m just freaking out. Don’t worry. It’s a human thing. We freak out sometimes.”
“Maybe try closing your eyes,” Arlo suggests.
I try that. It doesn’t make it any better, but it also doesn’t make it any worse. I keep my eyes closed until we stop moving, which doesn’t take long because we were moving with significant speed.
“We’re here,” he says.
I open my eyes to find that we have parked behind a pickup on a suburban street. Could be almost any suburban street anywhere in the world, well, anywhere in the world they have suburban streets. Something tells me that we have landed in a small town in what I’m going to call the Midwest.
“Really? This is where Cir wants us to get his coffee from?”
Arlo points to a chalk-written sign in a fly-specked window. “Best Coffee in the WORLD,” it says in old-fashioned script. “Best coffee in the world,” he repeats. “Let’s go.”
I reach out and touch his arm. “You’re just going to get out here? I thought you were all still hiding yourselves from humanity? The soldiers in New York were fully armored so we couldn’t see what you looked like.”
“We’re not hiding. We show ourselves in places like these, small places where people are simple and uncomplicated.”
Small places where the whole town gathers when a spaceship lands outside the local coffee shop. Such a crowd has already formed around us. We get out. Nobody looks at me. Everybody looks at Arlo, for obvious reasons.
“Hello, people,” Arlo says cheerfully.
They don’t say hello back, which in human terms is a very bad sign. Arlo doesn’t seem to notice that. He proceeds to walk through the crowd and enter the coffee shop. I follow in his wake. It does not look like the shop has been doing a roaring trade, but it does look like it has been here for a very long time, like the entire town sprang up around this coffee shop. They also have cakes and milkshakes, which do look very good. There’s a lot of piping and cream and frills. My stomach starts to growl. I wonder if I can get some cake while we’re here. We’ll say it’s for Cir.
“Hello,” Arlo says to the little old lady behind the counter. “I would like to buy some coffee to go, please.”
“And three slices of chocolate cake,” I add from behind him.
I don’t know if that order gets added or not. Arlo doesn’t have time to acknowledge it because one of the patrons already inside has decided to pick a bone with him.
A woman wearing a t-shirt with a very big smiley face on it approaches Arlo. She has a determined expression on her face, one very absent of anything resembling a smile.
“You one of those sex aliens?”
Arlo smiles and responds with a very kind demeanor. “I am one of the Cupid, yes.”
“Thought so,” the lady says. She proceeds to throw the contents of her drink over Arlo’s shirt. He’s immediately covered in pink sludge, a sort of high fructose slurry. He looks down at it, confused, and I can just tell he’s wondering if this is some kind of greeting custom down here on Earth.
He decides that it is, plucks a shake out of the hand of the kid with the woman, and throws it down her shirt. Her shriek of outrage makes me nearly wet myself laughing. Her kid starts crying, because now the alien has stolen his milkshake. It’s an interstellar diplomatic crisis in a coffee shop and I am here for it.
The locals are looking. They were looking already, but now they’re looking with an intensity that makes me feel like I’ve walked into a wild animal enclosure.
“I’m sorry, is that not the correct greeting? I’m still learning many of your customs,” Arlo says, blissfully unaware. He is the most beautiful bastard completely out of place here. You’d think people would be awed by him. I am awed by him, but they’re not. They’re doing the math of our ancestors and coming to the conclusion that there’s one of him and a lot of them.