Asimov's Science Fiction: July 2013 (19 page)

David J. Schwartz is the author of the Nebula-nominated novel
Superpowers
and the ongoing e-serial
Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic.
His short fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including
The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet
and the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology
Paper Cities.
David lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. His first story for
Asimov's
poignantly explores life after an alien invasion and asks whether it will ever be safe to trust...

Silent engines and generators are one thing; what gets me are the birds. When the Grays first got here they couldn't leave the birds alone; they were always reaching into their tiny brains, winding them up so tight that all they could do was sing their songs. Sometimes the birds' hearts would stop before they could even let out a chirp. Now the birds stay well away from the cities, and the streets are always quiet.

The day it happened was a workday; I was on my way to the off ice. I filed out of the building and lined up on the platform with my neighbors, a pace from the person on either side. It was too quiet, and I couldn't keep still. I took out my iBerry and started some e-correspondence—not exactly meditative, I know, but it's not like I'm the only one who does it. Before the Grays, I used to start conversations with people on the train, people I didn't know and would never see again. My mother used to say that my brain didn't work unless my mouth was moving; nowadays a keyboard is the next best thing.

I typed out quick responses, just acknowledgements, most of them, nothing effusive. Then there was an email from my boss asking me to bring him up to speed on the Negative Space project, and that was something I couldn't sum up in a couple of sentences. Negative Space was going to be our biggest contract in years, a habitat for the Grays, something completely of my own design. It was what got me up in the mornings. My thumbs started twiddling over the keys, and after a minute I noticed that the woman standing next to me was staring.

"Mornings Are for Meditation" and all that, so I didn't look back, but I could feel her; eyes like drills into my skull. I've got the silent iBerry—everybody does, these days—so I didn't think I could be bothering her that much. Probably she just hadn't had her coffee yet. But the longer it went on, the more pissed off I got. I couldn't enjoy my email with her staring at me like that. So I cut it short, sent it, and slipped the iBerry back into its holster. When I turned to glare at her I realized two things simultaneously: one, a few spaces beyond her was a Gray, staring at me over the heads of the other commuters; and two, I'd been humming the entire time.

I stopped immediately, and the train whispered onto the platform a few seconds later. I scurried on board and took a seat at the end of the car, hoping everyone would forget my face and I'd just be a whispered anecdote at their workplaces. But the Gray got on the same car, and after everyone was seated and the train started to move, it stood and began the ritual of approach—a series of gangly bows and boneless waves. I really didn't have any choice but to stand, lift my arms up over my head like I was signaling a field goal, and bow welcome.

When a Gray talks you don't hear anything—you see the messages in your mind. In my case—and as I understand it, this is true of most people who work with computers—I saw a blue screen with block text on it.

TODAY'S FRIEND WISHES TO KNOW WHAT IS YOUR SONG? it read. It was gone almost before I saw it. The question froze me. I didn't know the song, not really. It was a pop tune, pre-Landing (obviously), and I couldn't remember most of the lyrics, let alone the title. My brain was like an engine that wouldn't catch.

TODAY'S FRIEND ASKED YOU A QUESTION.

None of them have names. They are all pale, hairless, big-eyed; you can't even tell them apart except by height. It's always "Today's Friend" when they talk to anyone. This one could have been their Supreme Emperor, for all I knew.

Nobody on the train made a sound. I didn't know if the Gray was broadcasting to them—probably not, considering that all it wanted was a song—but none of them looked at us. I wouldn't have, in their place. I wonder if we do that because of them, or because of us.

I shook my head. I couldn't remember the damn song. I shut my eyes, because I knew what came next.

TODAY'S FRIEND WILL HELP YOU REMEMBER.

Invisible fingers touched my brain, casting about for memories. My eyes burned with the smell of smoke; the roof of my mouth tickled; I broke into a sweat. I was wading in sense-memories, as if they had been piled up on the other side of a locked door and the Gray had just broken it down. Since then the door sometimes swings open of its own accord, and suddenly I'm tasting a chocolate chip cookie, burned black on the bottom; scratching a cat's belly until it calmly bites the fleshy webbing between my thumb and foref inger; watching from my off ice window as saucers descend out of the clouds.

The Gray's fingers found the memories they wanted, attached a few invisible strings, and pulled.

There's a long list of things that the Grays don't like, but for some reason music isn't one of them. I don't think they
like
it, exactly; but they are fascinated by it. I saw a busker once, in the early days, perform "Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay" fourteen times in a row, and not by choice—there were half a dozen Grays lined up in front of him, taking turns pulling his strings. You don't see buskers anymore. Like the birds, musicians have learned to stay off the streets.

The mercy of what happened next was that I was barely there for it. I was remembering a movie that used the song in its soundtrack; I was driving to Racine, hearing a snippet of it on the radio; but mostly I was at my sister's place, watching the Super Bowl halftime show, seeing the pop starlet whose name I still don't remember lip-synching across the stage. I was only dimly aware of my voice matching hers, my falsetto almost tuneful. Some images, some sensations, slipped through: the burn of my calves as I danced up and down the car. Running my hand, fingers splayed, over the cheek of a man about my age. He'd missed a spot shaving, and he reeked of cologne. My hands were sticky from crawling along the f loor of the train. The man's eyes were shut, and he looked like he wanted to scream.

When I came out of it I was crouched on the f loor, hands in front, back arched, one
I did the performance three times before the Gray let me out at my stop. About a dozen people got off with me. None of them looked at me; none of them laughed. One woman was crying. Someone must have texted emergency services, though, because the paramedics were waiting for me at street level.

My memories were still scrambled, and I kept sliding back in time to things that had happened years before. I remember sitting in the ambulance being pissed off that they wouldn't tell me whether my car was totaled. I was back on that trip to Racine. I was feeling cold fingers in my brain.

When I woke up I was strapped to a bed in a white room. Whatever they had sedated me with was still working; I wasn't all that concerned about the fact that I couldn't move, or about anything, really. After a while a doctor came in and sat next to the bed.

"We can talk in here," she said. "The room is soundproofed."

Her eyes were small and blue; her scalp was shaved, but shaded with stubble. I was fascinated by this small act of nonconformity. When I didn't say anything, she cleared her throat.

She glanced at her clipboard. "I understand you're an architect." "I am?"

"Do you know where you are?" At my expression she frowned. "Let me ask you something else. What day is it?"

"It's Super Bowl Sunday."

"And how did you end up here?"

"A car pulled out in front of me, and I swerved."

She stared at me like she was waiting for me to realize something; then she turned to her clipboard and wrote something down.

"Where were you headed?"

"To my sister's house."

"Had the game started yet?"

"No."

"What was the score?"

"Fourteen to three."

She gave me that look again. "I'm going to tell you a story," she said.

"Can you take off these restraints?" I asked.

"Not yet."

"I just thought I'd ask."

"Your condition is not uncommon," she said. "We're so alien to the Grays that they don't really think of us as intelligent, so they have no qualms about reaching into our brains like they do. The experience tends to produce a temporary disorientation, but we find that story therapy can help to clarify things for the patient."

"I'm not disoriented."

"That's fine," she said. "Do you mind listening to a story anyway?"

"I guess not."

The doctor didn't speak right away. I think now that she was making the decision to go off script. I'm sure the clinic had sanctioned stories for the sort of therapy she was about to perform, stories carefully written and edited by committees of psychologists. What she ended up telling me was something more personal.

"Six months ago," the doctor told me, "the director of this clinic disappeared. He went out for a lunch meeting and just never came back. He was an extrovert—most
people are—and it had been tough for him since the Grays landed. We had staff workshops, to try and help each other adjust to the new social norms, but Bill had more trouble than the rest of us. Being gregarious wasn't something he did, it was something he
was.
He used to announce himself when he entered a room, by talking loudly to someone he was with, shouting hello to someone else, even sneezing.

"Maybe he sounds obnoxious to you, but he was well liked. In fact I have to confess that Bill and I had an affair. At least, for him it was an affair; he was married, and I wasn't. At the time I couldn't explain why I was doing it, even to myself, and I ended up breaking it off nearly a year ago. Now I think that it was a very basic, almost animal impulse; Bill hadn't changed, hadn't stif led himself. The rest of us, once we realized that the Grays could and would dismantle our brains as easily as they did our weapons, we put our heads down and kept our mouths shut. Bill didn't do that. If a Gray asked him to repeat something or show him something, Bill just did it. Once a group of us was out to dinner and Bill did a little shuffle-step when our table was ready. When a Gray asked him about it, he did a full tap routine that he remembered from college. I remember I wanted to applaud, but I didn't dare to. No one did.

"The day that Bill disappeared we know he went to his lunch. We know he was lively there, but there were no Grays so there were no real problems. Then he left to walk back to the off ice, but he never arrived. Everyone assumed that he'd had a few drinks and decided to call it a half-day.

"That night I had a dream about Bill. He was in a Gray hive, having his voicebox replaced with a thought-caster. He wasn't in any pain, but he was crying. The next day, one of my colleagues conf ided to me that he'd had the same nightmare. I didn't tell him about mine. But no one has seen Bill since then. Maybe they took him; I used to think those stories were just paranoia, but I'm less sure of that now. On the other hand, maybe he was depressed and threw himself in the river. Either way, he's gone.

"About a week after that happened I went home and found a Gray in my apartment. It was standing at the big picture window, looking out. It didn't turn around when I came in, so after my initial shock I quietly changed my clothes and started dinner, hoping it might leave. It just stood by the window while I ate in front of the TV. Mostly I watched the Gray, trying to catch some movement, some sign of a pulse or breath, but it was like a statue, bathed in the albedo of light from downtown.

"After the news I turned off the TV and realized that the Gray had turned to face me. It began the ritual of approach. I'd been dreading this, but what could I do? Fight it? Reason with it? I used to own a gun, but after Wichita I turned it in.

"I had never had a personal encounter with a Gray before, but we all know the protocol, don't we? So I stood and put my arms up and waited with my heart pounding.

"Bill used to say that all Grays walk like they're just learning how to dance, like they're questioning every step they take. I thought of that as the Gray stepped toward me, thought of Bill, and all at once I was overtaken by missing him. I laughed, and almost immediately my laugh turned into hiccups and crying. If the Gray had put out its arms I would have hugged it. Bill used to give such good hugs."

The doctor paused to wipe her eyes and blow her nose.

"What did the Gray do?" I asked.

"It just watched me melt down for a while," she said. "I had my... my nose was running, and I had mucous everywhere. I was wailing. It just stood there and stared at me. After a while I started to calm down, and I went into the kitchen to make some tea. When I looked again the Gray was gone."

"It's like they want to watch us suffer," I said.

"I don't think that's it," she said. "I think they really are trying to understand. I don't think any of them has ever felt alone."

"I hate them," I said.

The next day I was released from the clinic. They gave me a prescription for something, but I threw it away with my iBerry, emptied my account from an ATM, and took a train to O'Hare. There I caught a bus to Madison, where I managed to find a ride as far as Baraboo.

There's a sandwich place there where the truckers stop. It used to have a dining area, but it's closed off now. They have a drive-in on one side, walk-up service on the other. I picked out one of the rigs parked outside and waited next to it for the driver to bring his lunch back to the cab. He was older, tall, and looked Asian. Gray stubble covered the top of his head, but his face was hairless.

"Hi, I'm Berto," I said. "I was wondering if you were headed west."

"Taking on hitchers is against company policy," he said.

"Does that mean you won't do it?" I showed him some money. "I can pay."

"Let's talk inside," he said, and unlocked the cab.

I had an uncle who drove a truck, and I rode with him a couple of times, but that was a long time ago. Before the Grays. I remembered the square cab and the noise of the engine. The new rigs had curves like sports cars and never made a sound.