Alien Nativity

Torque has always figured that the only way he's ever going to find love is with an alien. But now that he's found her, he's got to kill her.

Alien Nativity

Dad never normally joins them for breakfast. Doesn’t Dad always grab a coffee and something gooey on the way to the university? Should they be suspicious?

No, the Merry Few (as he calls them) welcome him with their usual festive smiles, pats and deference, however, exchanging glances he interprets as conspiratorial even without catching Son’s wink, Daughter’s thrice-flared nostrils and Mom’s raised forefinger that shushes the dogs. They know Dad doesn’t like greetings or animals or even smiles, for that matter, and certainly not any of the foods they eat or topics they consider fun or funny. They know he suspects them of continuing to joke and chat telepathically in defiance of what he dislikes. The dogs and cats stay put yet watchful in their various nooks and laps, having all learned to ignore Dad if possible and to avoid his foot at all costs. They trust Mom to protect them.

Son Chad glances out the window while making toast and sees men lining up in the backyard as if for a goal line stand. Chad comments on same, but Daughter Psyche takes this as more merciless teasing about her non-existent boyfriends and bangs forehead on tabletop three times. After gently taking a gray field mouse off her shoulder and placing it in her lap for stroking, Mom pleads, “Chad, honey, someday you’ll wish you’d been kinder to your sister.”

The door chimes ring. Chad, toast in hand dripping butter, follows Mom and the dogs towards the foyer but then swerves into the living room and looks out a front window. Several cars are lined up on the street, and more men are spreading out around the house. They are dressed in FBI regalia, and Chad realizes his pretty sister might not be their object. Munching toast, Chad thinks this kind of thing is a cordon, but he isn’t sure that’s the right word. The cats are headed upstairs to their various hiding places. The dogs are barking with delight easily mistaken for alarm. Mom meanwhile has not so much invited their guests in as accepted that several men in suits and buzz cuts are going to enter whether she likes it or not if she is indeed Mary Tippet Smith. Knowing his mom, however, Chad assumes that someone flashed identification she isn’t going to argue with yet. Mom may seem all give and sweetness, but she can turn feisty and then takes no guff from anyone, especially men.

Since all the men and, on closer inspection, women, are looking to him for orders, the obvious Maximum Man says to Mom: “Could we please pen the dogs and gather the family in the living room? Without a court warrant, we wouldn’t be here, Ma’am.”

Dad and Daughter do not need summoned. They enter, terrified Dad using Psyche as a shield. Psyche has never before had to face such a tidal wave of cologne, after shave and breath fresheners, but she is her mother’s daughter and always game. Dad has never had to face Mom when she’ll know she’s been betrayed again. But Mom is busy shepherding her dogs to the basement.

Rocket-straight, Maximum Man speaks. “Now folks…” Seeming uncomfortable out of uniform, he explains that a leave of absence has been arranged for Mary Tippet Smith and offspring, each of them. “Chad and Psyche will have tutors, the baby…”

Since the man is looking at her, Psyche says, “Mom gave the baby to the parents.”

“We need to know the baby’s location as well as the location of any other offspring.”

Psyche looks horrified. “Mom would never…”

Mom breaks in, but without taking her eviscerating gaze off Dad: “Over my dead body.”

Psyche wonders whether she will be as ferocious as her mom in protecting her cubs.

“I’m sorry,” the man in charge responds. “How to put this?” A woman who is obviously a flunky whispers into his ear. “Ah, yes! You’re being drafted into the U.S. Reserve by Presidential order including all offspring.”

Mom says she’s phoning her lawyer and picks up the phone. Her expression takes a sickish turn. “The phone is dead.”

“Sorry! No phone calls. Your cell phone contracts have also been suspended.”

“We’re being abducted by aliens,” Chad quips.

Psyche gets a protective arm around her mother. They are much stronger together than either apart. Psyche believes she provides the toughness and pragmatism her mother lacks.

Chad thinks things are beginning to get a little interesting for a change.

Psyche asks: “When do we have to go?”

The flunky turns to Maximum Man and speaks up. “Now would be a good time, don’t you think, Sir?”

“Now. Yes! There’s no time like now!”

“Our dogs and cats are family,” Mom declares.

“No pets, Ma’am. They’ll be seen to.”

Psyche knows her mother is reconciled to the inevitable when she asks, “We’ll be back soon, won’t we?”

“This is not a secure environment or I would be happy to answer all your questions.”

Mom is gone, and all the feds are looking around behind as if she might be sneaking up on them. Two women take off towards the kitchen and two up the stairs. Psyche takes it upon herself to explain her mom to the uninitiated: “She’s gone to free her snakes and some of the other animals and maybe put out food for the dogs and cats.”

Psyche realizes that while Mom is thinking about her dear ones, her daughter should be thinking about what they might need if they’re headed for some kind of detention. She turns to an African-American man she feels is sympathetic and tells him she needs to gather some essentials. “You’re welcome to watch and make sure I don’t pack anything white people can’t.”

African-American Man looks to Maximum Man, gets a nod, and they go upstairs. Psyche enters first her mom’s room and starts throwing things into a large duffel bag - underwear, nightgowns, shoes, athletic wear; the tights, tops and casual dresses her mom likes; her pillow; the makeup, shampoo and toiletries she actually uses. She asks the man, “Will we need toilet paper?”

“No, but I’d take a few more dresses and her favorite heels, if I were you.”

Then Psyche goes to her own room and grabs essentially the same things for her own bag but in the bright colors and huggy fabrics she prefers. Since the man objects to nothing, she concludes they won’t be going to an actual jail. When she asks about her cell phone, however, he shakes his head. “I’m sorry. No phones, electronics or drugs unless maybe if they’re prescription.”

She notices he’s looking at the posters on her wall. “My name’s Psyche.”

“You have good taste, Psyche. What’s your favorite Tupac?”

“Dear Mama and Keep Ya Head Up. Yours?”

“Trapped and Changes.”

“What did your homeys call you?”

He hesitates before saying, “Torque or DT. What’s your favorite Kendrick?”

They both say “To Pimp a Butterfly” at the same time and laugh.

When she asks if they need coats, he shakes his head again.

“We like to read the Bible every night.”

“Put it in, and we’ll see if it makes it through. Other books for sure won’t.”

“Is there a reason?” Psyche knows she’s pushing her luck but is curious how he’ll respond.

“Books are sometimes used for codes. They’re also impossible to search.”

They go back downstairs, the man once known as Torque or DT carrying one of the duffel bags. In front of Maximum Man, Psyche thanks him for being so helpful.

When their mother returns, Psyche and Chad look to her for the right attitude to take. Her forefinger goes to her throat where the mole used to be and stays there. Glancing back and forth between them, she flashes her conspiratorial smile, her forefinger still where the mole bothered her.

As they’re led to the waiting motorcade of black SUVs, Mom observes silently that none of their neighbors have come out of their big nice houses to see what’s going on, but she senses their eyes peeking from cracks in their drawn drapes and Italian blinds. After giving a short laugh, Psyche asks her mom why she cares about the neighbors. “They’ve always pretended we don’t exist, Mom.”

“In the South Berkeley neighborhood I grew up in, everyone would have been in the street demanding to know what was going on and ready to protest any unjust treatment of a neighbor. I just think there’s something right about poor people that’s wrong about the rich.” Mom then insists the kids are riding with her and gets in between Chad and Psyche before anyone can stop her.

“Now I know a little how illegal immigrants feel,” Psyche remarks and gets a hug.

Mom takes a mouse from her pocket and starts playing attack-the-finger with it in her lap.

Psyche watches her father get into a different black SUV. He doesn’t know he will never see them again, she realizes. The thought slips out of her private recess before she can stop it: Mom, he knew they were coming.

Yes.

Why the treachery?

He’s very angry at me. You know that.

But you’re always sweet to him.

He must not want sweet. Maybe I should have punished him for his philandering - thrown him out - raged and carried on. I’m not sure. Men are such complicated creatures. “But he doesn’t know what he’s done, so I’m going to go right on loving him and hope you both will keep loving him, too.” It kills me that he knows too much yet too little for these people to see him as more asset than liability.

Chad perks up. “Love who? Dad? What’s he done now?”

***

Chad knows Coach Taylor will be hopping mad he isn’t at football practice. Saturday’s game against Westbrook is big. His girlfriend, Taylor, will be even madder. She gets jealous and possessive when she doesn’t know exactly where he is and with whom. Otherwise he’s fine with missing school and giving his knee some time to heal from the wrench it got in the last game - so long as it doesn’t mean his teachers can get him declared ineligible. Chad feels weird but knows he can’t be sick since the physical world is just an illusion. Maybe it’s the extreme dryness of the air. Not that getting sacked or tackled on the football field is an illusion… But when he and Psyche go for a run with their mom or work out with her, they get what she means after their bodies are exhausted and she still manages to laugh and say, “What’s real is the spiritual, kids,” and then get going again. No matter how much his father disdains his mother’s religious beliefs and tries to win them over to Scientology, Chad and Psyche find some way to believe anything she says even though she’s the high school dropout, their father the know-it-all professor educated to the point of stupefaction. As Chad explains to the woman in the white coat interviewing him, his mom is the one who taught them to swim and to play football, soccer, basketball, baseball, you-name-it. You don’t gotta strut your smarts when you can play the game.

“Your mom taught you to play football?” The woman seems not so much astonished as creeped out. But she might just be playing dumb to encourage him to talk. Her name is Sidney and she sounds New York from her accent, but he isn’t sure he can trust her. Her mask covers too much of her face.

“Yeah, she’s way athletic. Her hands aren’t big enough to throw a regulation football, but we started out with a kiddie-sized one, and she was all Deshawn Watson - on the move, too. The footwork’s the key thing anyway, and my mom’s got great feet in any sport. Psyche’s pretty good, too. They oughtta let her play. She’d make a great wide receiver. Nobody can run with my sister except my mom.” He’s tempted to add that Psyche is smart like his mom, too, but she’d know and kill him. She hates being talked about and thinks she’s got to hide her smarts and being a bookworm to be popular.

“How would you describe your mother as a mom?”

How do you do justice to the world’s greatest mom? All the guys envy him having a mom who can fake, dribble, drive and shoot on the move. Is Sidney truly interested in his mom or just softening him up so she can trick him?

While she keeps him talking about his mom, two big guys dressed in masks and protective clothing and gloves enter the room, one going somewhere behind the chair he’s sitting in. “Enough about your mom,” Sidney says “I need to draw blood for some tests.”

Although alarmed, he tries to stay polite and explains he’s a Christian Scientist. “We don’t believe in medicine, just God and prayer. Sorry, but I have to refuse on account of my religion.”

“I’m sorry, too, but having your blood drawn isn’t optional.”

While Sidney is speaking, the big guy behind throws his arms around Chad’s chest and locks his hands at around the level of his diaphragm, pinning his upper arms against his body, while the other guy grabs his arm and holds it in position for the blood draw. Chad could kick and make things difficult, but he’s learned from his mom to bide his time and use his mind. Be patient, stay in the pocket, see the whole field before you throw even though you know you’re gonna get hit. Life is consciousness; God is mind. The spiritual wins eventually, if you’ve got heart.

Sidney fills at least five tubes. She then gives him an injection in his upper arm. A moment or two passes and his consciousness vanishes. Over the next couple of days he sometimes has a moment of clarity, almost kind of awake in various machines that seem to have swallowed him whole. But mostly days pass as troubled dreams. The aliens have him in their clutches and are going to tear out all his secrets.

***

Feeling lost and alone in a locked room is just an illusion. In trying to make sense of her predicament, Psyche starts with what she doesn’t know, such as where she is and why she’s been brought here and separated from her mother and brother. What have they done wrong? As Americans, don’t they have any rights? Aren’t there universal human rights?

She doesn’t know the answer to any of these questions. The extreme dryness of the air suggests she’s in the desert. They were transported by air and might not even still be in the United States. She relies on her mom to answer questions and then adjusts her mom’s answers to fit reality. She cannot truly hold fast to her mom’s conviction that the spiritual is the only reality. But she can give her assent to faith, hope and love as the great moral obligations. She also sometimes feels God is everywhere. If only her mom were, too.

So what else does she know? Her parents are at odds and have been for as long as she can remember. Her dad started it and keeps the fire roaring, but her mom make no secret of matching him with a new baby for every one of his babes, usually Berkeley students. Psyche basically supports her mother’s strategy, which aims at helping Dad to recognize a woman is not just sex but a mother who needs hope her faith in her husband is justified before his love means anything. Dad is not just tearing his wife’s heart out and trampling it but subverting the divine order. As if it wasn’t already clear whose side God is on, Dad is suffering from her mother’s come-hither version of scorn and looking older and more discouraged every day while her mother has never looked more vibrant, young and pretty. Psyche has noticed that the positive side of revenge or babies is the instant makeover it provides a woman. Babies energize her mom the same way exhaustion from workouts do. You’d think breastfeeding would get boring, but she never stops loving it. Maybe I won’t either…

In interviews Psyche reluctantly admits her family is a little different but insists their kinks and eccentricities are of the normal, off-beat sort all Americans favor. Her parents are both health nuts, for example, but in opposite ways. Dad is a faux vegan enamored of yoga, communing with the still point and maniacally clearing engrams he probably would be wiser to shrug off. Mom eats whatever a Neolithic woman might, provided it’s organic and non-GMO. Loving animals doesn’t mean pretending humans aren’t omnivorous animals. Dad has never voluntarily exercised or played a sport in his life and seems to enjoy being unhappy, paunchy and cynical. Mom loves sports and exercising the same way she loves animals, children, the outdoors and just in general love, joy, life and praising God, as if they were all sacramental. While not vain about her illusory body, she is proud of monetizing her looks with modeling jobs. Her mom is not without flaws, but vanity is not prominent among them. The biggest flaw, Psyche has come to realize, is her low self esteem. Mom loves lavishly elsewhere but in her own skin finds a woman to be ashamed of. Her father’s philandering with her best friend struck at her most vulnerable point. She couldn’t even keep her man or her best friend, and why indeed should they respect or love someone so clearly undeserving, uneducated and inferior? It must be her fault they betrayed her. When Psyche does something mean or careless, it’s characteristic of her mother to ask for forgiveness before Psyche can. It really annoys her that her mother wants the blame for everything, usually on the grounds she should have warned her or taught her right when Psyche knew perfectly well she was doing wrong. The world is not just about you, Mom. You have a lot of gall trying to take my share of the blame and guilt!

Psyche is astonished when she is asked whether her mom ever “breaks things - I mean breaks things from a distance as if with her thoughts.”

“My mom break things? My mom is totally sweet. In my whole life she’s never hit or spanked me or even shouted at me. Not Chad either. I wish for once she’d just put me over her knee and give me the spanking I deserve, but she never does. She’s one of these cream-puff moms who kills with kindness and retaliates to my nastiness with sweetness.”

“Your father told me …”

“Is my father here? I never saw him on the plane.”

“I’m the one asking questions, Psyche. I’d appreciate your cooperation. Your father thought your mother once broke a glass he was holding at a cocktail party because he was talking with someone she didn’t think he should be talking to. We suspect her of breaking some of our machines here - very expensive machines - breaking them with her thoughts or some mental power. Have you ever noticed her doing anything like that?”

“Of course not! God can do things like that, and maybe we pray for God to help someone get better or be able to walk again or something like that. But it’s silly to think she can stop a car from hitting a dog. Either the driver braked in time or God stopped the car. If my father is telling you she can stop cars or stopped Nellie Peter’s brain tumor, you need to remember my father thinks he’s an immortal Thetan. He thinks she can do all kinds of weird stuff. She thinks she can’t do anything right. I try to listen to both of them with a little healthy skepticism.”

“You can’t ever remember anything like a glass breaking or lights turning on or off?”

Psyche can remember lots of pseudo-miracles. They pray together, and sometimes, provided it isn’t a selfish prayer, the pseudo-miraculous happens. But all of her mom’s supposed cures are almost certainly the placebo effect of attention, love and suggestion. Pray with most people and they’re going to get better. When there isn’t time for prayer, sometimes miracles still happen. But it’s obviously God’s doing, not theirs. Her mother every day bewails her helplessness in a world of trouble. Need is almost everywhere but how to help not obvious or she would.

“It’s silly of my father to pretend like my mom’s a witch who makes him cut himself shaving or curses him with insomnia. If God ever gives my mother special powers, she’d only use them for good. She can’t bear to hurt anyone or not try to help a creature who’s suffering, even my father.”

“Your father thinks you take after your mother and can break things too.”

“My father lives in a fantasy world.”

“So you can’t read my mind?”

“That’s ridiculous!” Why would I even want to? Most minds are either icky and disgusting or boring.

Her father must be full of resentment towards her and her mother. Psyche can’t understand what drives his darker feelings, though she feels them. It would be complete hypocrisy to explore further since she has long tried to persuade her mother that everyone has a right to privacy in their own minds. Unless she gets unbearably curious, mostly with her mom, Psyche permits herself nothing beyond empathy.

“Your father told me that when you were four or five he tested you in various ways. You could always tell him what he was thinking. If you didn’t know the word, you could still draw a picture of it - a picture of a duck riding a unicycle, for example. Do you remember that?”

“No.” Well - maybe.

“When he drew a card from a deck at random and asked which card it was, over and over again you could correctly name the card and its suit. Do you remember that?”

“No.” I was just guessing. I can’t believe I actually got any right with the odds more than fifty to one. But it wouldn’t surprise me if Dad cheated. He gets off on cheating.

“Your father thinks your mother told you to keep your powers secret. Is that true?”

“No. My father claims to be a scientist yet thinks he’s a Thetan. Has he explained to you some of things he believes? I don’t mean to belittle him. Everyone takes some things on faith and believes some very bizarre stuff. I’m sure he would like to believe his daughter is special and as the daughter of a Thetan has unusual powers. But I’m not special - no powers - just an ordinary spoiled girl who needs to get off her butt and make something of herself.”

As if she were a hostile witness, the interviewer continues trying to trap her into admitting she is straight out of a Hollywood superhero movie. Since most girls he’s known would love to believe they have special powers, he’s very suspicious of one who adamantly declares she has none, especially given some of Dad’s tales.

It’s always been her choice to take after her mom, a choice to love and live with joy. Her mom is more thrilled with life than anyone Psyche has ever met. Sometimes she feels sorry for her father, who just isn’t someone you want to be like. She ought to be angry with him for ratting to these doctors, but what’s more pathetic than his fantasies about having paranormal children or a wife with witch-like powers? No wise person wants that kind of power and the responsibility that goes with it. She certainly doesn’t. His talking such nonsense may have put them all in real danger. Her mother is just special enough in her looks and magnetic personality that credulous people might take his fantasies seriously.

The interviewer keeps badgering her. Psyche tries to knock down some absurd charges her father has leveled against her mom. She explains again that her father is a Thetan who is always going for an audit to clear some more engrams, which is about the limit of her knowledge of Scientology. His claims about her mother’s powers strike her as too silly to take seriously. Surely any mother knows when the phone rings whether it’s her son, daughter or someone else. Animals do what she wants because they know she loves them. Birds only come without her issuing a command because they see her and want to come and get fed the goodies in her pockets. Critters do things without her speaking because they understand her hand movements when she wants them to come, stop, be silent, bark or whatever. Her babies hardly ever cry because they don’t have to in order to get the breast. She looks younger than when she married because she keeps fit, eats in moderation, gets plenty of sleep and takes care of her skin.

Finally Psyche loses her patience. “You want to believe she has powers. Otherwise you’d be wasting your time, right? That’s a deduction. I’m not reading your mind.”

“Your father says you delivered her last baby.”

“Helped a little - hardly at all. I wanted to know what giving birth is like, and now I know what a beautiful experience it can be despite the pain. My mom can actually give birth without any help, but she likes to have at least one parent there to begin bonding.”

“She always has babies for gay couples, your father said. You wouldn’t know the names of any parents, would you?”

“I wouldn’t tell you if I did. And my father doesn’t know any either. My mother is very careful to protect their identities, and now I understand why.”

Question follows question about her mother’s mole. Psyche can’t help pondering the reason for the interviewer’s interest. The mole was an issue of no interest to her father or brother. But she and her mom discussed it a great deal. It was the principle. Physical reality is simply an illusion, so what does a mole suddenly erupting on a woman’s throat matter? But to a woman, beauty is also a spiritual ideal and a mole not only defaces a vain woman but also arouses evil thoughts that might cause harm to others. We wash off dirt and try not to spread disease. Isn’t a mole therefore subject to removal out of consideration for others?

Her mother had never been to a doctor in her life - never even been vaccinated against anything. Her babies had all been home births including the ones she had for other couples. In fact she had at least three times that Psyche knew of acted as a surrogate for childless families since her father’s roaming became known. Her mother reveled in childbirth as the most painful ecstasy life offered a woman and looked forward to having at least one more for some dear friends.

But the mole bothered her. The mirror told her it did not become her. And it might be cancerous. Since she took pride in her mother’s beauty, Psyche understood. She’d asked, “Isn’t beauty spiritual, Mom?” Her mother embraced her and almost gushed, “You’re right, darling. It’s really a matter of aesthetics and no different than getting a facial or removing unwanted body hair. Dermatologists aren’t really doctors at all. I’ll get it removed.”

After it was removed, however, the dermatologist’s nurse phoned and wanted her mom to see another kind of doctor and was sending a referral. Yes, the nurse admitted, the referral was to an oncologist, but that didn’t mean the mole was cancerous, just that his opinion would be a good thing to have. Her mother, of course, refused to see any more doctors. And then the squad of strange men arrived and took them away. The mole and the men might be entirely unrelated, of course. If she had learned nothing else from her father, Psyche had learned that correlation is not causation. The fact two football teams went at it on a field for four quarters, beating each other to pulps of aching muscles and bruises did not mean the physical world was real, only that her brother and his teammates were capable of mental error best treated with prayer.

Psyche realized full well her mother’s version of Christian Science was likely heretical. There were no Christian Science churches in Berkeley or Oakland, and her mother might not have attended one if there were. Her mother simply accepted from her own sweet but psychotic mother a few simple propositions - the only reality is spiritual, for example - and then combined them with her favorite portions of the gospels to help her pray to a God she wanted her children to know intimately, not philosophically or theologically. Her religion boiled down to I Corinthians 13 and faith, hope and love, the no jive hardcore of morality, she liked to say. Her mom felt God had saved her many times, and she wanted her children to know where to turn when they needed rescued.

***

Derek Thompson knows a thirty-five-year-old scientist does not fall in love with a teenager he’s studying. He knows that, but he’s too far gone to care. She’s his lifelong fantasy come true: an alien he can love. Experience taught him early he was just too weird for an earthling to love. He felt the thrill of connection from the first moment and knew she felt it, too, when she chose him to help her pack. And she’s black, much too black to be the offspring of creepy Dr. Smith. She’s the impossible woman he’s saved all his love for, the woman he’d given up hoping to find and knows he’ll never find again. Weeping and bewailing his fate will get him nowhere. It’s break and repair the universe to accommodate his love or … what?

It’s hopeless.

He decides to see Psyche, kidding himself he’s not trying to find a way to save a deteriorating situation so much as indulging his need for a valediction. Until now he’s watched things unfold from behind one-way mirrors or via cameras that catch everything in every room and hallway. But because he had to inform them, people above his pay grade have learned one of his colleagues tried to contact the American Civil Liberties Union to urge the filing of a writ of habeas corpus that would result in the detention of the Smiths becoming public. Given the potential fallout from publicity, his superiors want things shut down before there’s a mess. He cannot risk talking again with the mother, who has already proven she can turn a respected, long-serving government scientist into a tool that will do her bidding. Talking to the daughter can do no good except to his feelings, but he wants to know … what?

It’s hopeless.

He feels torn between his identity as a scientist and his job as a security officer charged with defending against the incidental appearance and replication of alien forms of life outside a secure Defense Department laboratory. At first he dismissed the Smith case as a bad joke. Millions of life forms exist that are not yet discovered and cataloged. The sort of people who make the leap from an anomalous growth on a woman’s throat to suspicion the woman is of alien extraction are the sort of people who believe that Bigfoot and the Tooth Fairy are conspiring to take over the world. But people above his pay grade insisted he take the case seriously. Nevertheless, he quickly cut short his first interview with the woman’s husband. Hearing a crackpot out only encourages him. The man either didn’t understand or didn’t care that he was endangering his wife and children by voicing his loony suspicions. It came as a complete surprise to Derrick that the wife and children were black. But it made sense: they were guilty of being black, and therefore it made perfect sense they were aliens. No one would ever think to suspect a white woman and her children of being aliens.

He knocks before unlocking her door. Getting no response, he peeks in and sees her in the small courtyard pumping dumbbells while walking on a steeply-angled treadmill. She doesn’t see him until he’s slid the door to the outside open, when she hops off the treadmill, puts down the dumbbells and turns the machine off.

Her smile warms him. Her eyes seem glad to take him in.

“Too tired for a walk? I know the path pretty well and brought a flashlight for the way back as it gets dark.”

He watches her throw on a sweatshirt, grab a bottle of water and declare she’s ready.

The corridors are deserted, the lights turning on as they enter each. Her silence tells him she knows security monitors everything from a remote location. Finally he flashes his badge in front of a sensor on the wall and pushes through a heavy door that opens to the outside.

“Over the wall would have been so much faster and a lot more fun,” she teases. “Where’s ya gangsta lean, brutha?”

“Never had one.”

“You know, if I get out of here, I’m going to stop fantasizing and turn gangsta-b***h. My mother’s big mistakes in life have been trusting white people to do the right thing - her first real boyfriend and then her best friend and my father and now the government.”

“A gangsta is a criminal, Psyche.”

“A gangsta refuses to accept white power and authority and sometimes behaves like a criminal, but more often it’s just that whites have defined almost everything a black person does as criminal. We can try to be white all we want, but by definition can’t be. My father’s white, but the cops still see me as a gangsta-b***h.”

As they walk and the dusk deepens, he watches her taking in the clear, moonless sky filling with a riot of stars. He wants her to see the forbidding desert landscape, which is for the most part devoid of vegetation except for the occasional Joshua tree or creosote bush. Mountains alone loom in the distance without lights or signs of other habitations. The complex sits in a low-lying salt pan between mountain ranges. There’s a landing strip on the other side of the complex, but the runway lights only go on when a plane is landing or taking off. There is no escape.

Finally he speaks. “So you don’t think you can love a man who isn’t a gangsta because he can’t love himself the way white people have defined him. And you don’t want the love of any man who can’t love the gangsta-b***h in you.”

“I knew you’d understand.”

“I’m usually behind a one-way mirror observing. I was observing when your mother once offered to cooperate and was disappointed that her offer wasn’t enthusiastically accepted. But then I gradually realized her offer was insincere.”

“My mother’s never insincere. Have you two been having an affair?”

“What are you talking about?” He knows he sounds angry, but it’s really his guilt and defensiveness talking. He almost succumbed to the mother’s power but got himself out of the room just in time. She didn’t succeed in seducing him, only in making him wish she was her daughter. Never again would he allow a situation that put him alone with her. He’d warned his colleagues, even the females, to be careful.

“You’re not a fool for loving her. Every man does.”

It takes him a moment to grasp her meaning fully, and then he wonders how she can get him completely wrong as to the woman he actually desires yet have any mind-reading ability.

“I don’t love her. I try to have nothing to do with her. If anything, I’m afraid of her.”

“Oh. That’s strange. You ought to get to know her. I’m sure you’d be in love with each other in no time. Then the mess could get messier, curiouser, and funnier instead of deadly.”

“That isn’t the insincerity I meant.”

“My mother’s never insincere unless she’s protecting someone. Does someone need protected?”

“I’m talking about one of my colleagues and what your mother did to her.”

“My mother didn’t do anything to her.”

“She took control of my colleague’s mind.”

Psyche stops and turns towards him. “Surely you don’t believe that?”

“I believe it because it’s true. None of my colleagues would betray their trust and risk their careers of their own volition.”

“None of your colleagues has a conscience?”

“All have enough conscience not to betray their country.”

“Let’s see if we can agree on something besides Tupac and Kendrick. I think it’s not American to imprison and torture a woman because someone with a grievance says she’s a witch and then take her refusal to confess to such a ridiculous charge as evidence of her guilt and justification for ratcheting up the torture. If she confesses she’s guilty, she’s burned at the stake. If she maintains her innocence, she’s tortured until she’s half dead and mostly mad. Then she’s bound and tossed in deep water. If she drowns, she’s innocent; if she floats she’s a witch to be burned at the stake. Do we agree that’s barbaric and more than a little evil?”

“Of course.”

“Isn’t my family being treated the same way? If we confess we’re aliens, you’ll kill us. If we don’t confess, you’ll still kill us because you don’t want to admit your mistake and fear that if the news of suspected aliens gets out, there might be a panic anyway. What person with a conscience can stand by and see us treated this way?”

“You’re twisting things.”

“No, Torque, you are. It was not my mom’s idea to contact the ACLU. It was mine. Because Naomi has a conscience, she tried to think of a way to save us and couldn’t.” Psyche stops to kick sand at him. “This base is way out in barren desert, I guess to safeguard precious military secrets about invading aliens. Escaping through the perimeter fences is impossible without sophisticated tools and in any event gets us innocent fugitives nowhere we can’t easily be recaptured or left to die of thirst and heatstroke. The gates have impenetrable security. Flying out is a non-starter. The only thing I could think of was to make it worth your while to admit you goofed and let us go. Naomi weighed betraying the trust placed in her and ruining her career against the innocent lives that would otherwise be lost. Hooray for Naomi!”

“I can’t believe any normal high school girl could hatch such a plan.”

“Why not? It failed. I never dreamed you could intercept cell phone calls. Doesn’t it tell you something that the government would almost certainly have let us go rather than argue publicly we’re a special kind of alien that endangers the planet? Next gangsta-b***h question: let’s assume I’m born of a mother descended from aliens.”

“Done.”

“Why would you assume my mom is a recent arrival?”

“I shouldn’t. Perhaps I have because she isn’t normal, but I shouldn’t.”

“Then why assume the alien ancestor arrived in the last 2000 years?”

“I shouldn’t.”

“Now you’re trapped by high school biology. As soon as you go back 500 or 600 years, most Western Europeans are all cousins, and the same is probably true of Africans. Go back a ways and we’re all cousins. But at the same time, because of simple math and the fifty-fifty odds of getting mom’s gene or dad’s each generation, I may not have any genes left from my great-great-grandparents. We’re cousins to a huge number of people in the present, but through time we may have no genes from just a few generations before - unless we’re talking about women and the descent of our mitochondrial DNA from Eve. My point is that my mom and I may be no more closely related to aliens than anybody else. It could simply be that some usually silent genes got expressed in my mother. But she’s as human as you are and entitled to the same human rights.”

“You should be a lawyer.”

“But I’m not going to get the chance, am I? After you kill my body, I have to go looking for a brain-dead black girl whose brain I can pop into and wake up as the gangsta-b***h I should have become already.”

“Can’t you think of anything better to be?”

“If you had my powers you’d want to be white, wouldn’t you.”

It’s an accusation, not a question.

She makes a futile attempt to withdraw the knife from his heart: “Don’t answer that. It’s a rude, nasty question I shouldn’t have asked. I’m just pissed off that my life is over already. All the sins I haven’t tried but could learn from!” Her tone turns mocking: “Be afraid of me! Be very afraid!” As they begin walking again, she asks, “Why are you afraid of me?”

“I think you can read my mind, so I can’t lie or hide my feelings from you. Surely you know we’re all terrified of your mother.”

Psyche bursts out laughing. “I think Stephen Hawking was flat wrong that any alien life form coming here is likely to be hostile. Aliens of the hostile or aggressive sort would almost certainly destroy themselves before they evolved to the point they could visit other worlds. Wouldn’t they most likely be harmless tourists or refugees or immigrants driven by necessity? You must know something about my mom I don’t or you wouldn’t be afraid.”

“She remarked to Naomi that you told her if an alien race wanted to come here, they would have to overcome the barrier represented by their different biochemistry.”

“I like science fiction and I’m taking chemistry, and that gets me thinking about stuff like that. It just seems obvious, doesn’t it?”

“That’s my field of study, and I’ve rarely met anyone capable of understanding what seems obvious to you.”

“But it is obvious, isn’t it? When my mom was a kid, they wanted to give her crazy mother an EEG but didn’t want to sedate her because it could screw up the results. So they let my mom come along to keep Gloria calm and cooperative. The technician explained what she was doing and what the waves on the graph paper represented. That really impressed her. We’re all broadcasting electromagnetic waves loaded with information. Our brains aren’t just a bunch of neurons firing in patterns from different physical locations. She was just speculating, but it seems to me, too, that the cloud of brain waves is our real consciousness or mind, just like the sound waves are the music when they’re composed by someone and not just random. A flat EEG means the death of who we really are even if the body lives on. So apply that to alien life. There’s no reason to assume there’s only life on earth-like planets. Evolution is happening everywhere. If a life form evolves with a different biochemistry, visiting Earth either means a clunky space suit that makes the alien stick out and can be very limiting or else finding a way to finesse the differences between the biochemistries. Mind strikes me as the simplest way to do that.”

There isn’t enough light to see whether her expression is amused or hostile.

“You’re not convinced my mom is human even though she mates with humans? My school textbook says that’s how we define a species.”

“I should consider it an open question. But my gut tells me she’s a simulation or copy that in just too many ways is better than the original. The medical doctors say her body is too good to be true. Her telomeres are as long as yours. She’s too healthy, too young for her age, especially considering the anomalies.”

“Couldn’t that be fetal stem cells rejuvenating her body every few years?”

“I hope not. If women hear that having babies can keep them young, we’ll have a population explosion and the planet will run out of resources.”

“Look, let’s take it for granted that my mom and I are dead women walking. My brother is a normal young man. No powers. We may have been here a long time, DT. If there’s anything unusual being passed down from Eve or Lilith, it would be in my mitochondrial DNA. There’s no reason to fear my brother. He’s sweet and dumb.”

“Psyche, I have no influence over his fate or yours. I wish I did.”

“Was my mom’s EEG normal?”

“In some respects, but the analogy the neurologist used is that people normally are like a local radio station in terms of the strength of the electromagnetic waves they’re broadcasting, whereas she’s like the 10,000 watt superstation that reaches a thousand miles.”

“You’re hiding something. Why? What are the anomalies in her biochemistry?”

“What do you think we might find?”

“If there’s any alien in me, I’d guess my ancestors evolved on a gas giant and have a biochemistry based on ammonia rather than water.”

“Why?”

“Silly reasons. I’ve always loved the smell of ammonia and found it comforting. As a child, I longed to be able to drink and breathe ammonia but discovered sipping some wasn’t so wonderful and breathing too much of the fumes wasn’t either. Any cleaning when I was a kid had to be done by me, and I looked forward to doing it because I could use ammonia for windows, vinyl flooring, the bathroom - most things. I liked the room to smell of it. I think we’ve always been such carnivores because protein is broken down into ammonia. My blood ammonia levels are probably high, too, right?”

“No, your blood chemistry is normal.”

“I know I’m ignorant and probably talking like someone who should just shut up, but, if aliens did have a different biochemistry, I think Haldane was right when he proposed ammonia as a more likely candidate than silicon or the others. It would explain the colors in my dreams. Metals dissolve in ammonia as if they were salt. So that would explain the golden ocean under white clouds. It would explain why my mom or alien ancestor came as a mind. You can’t take a body with a biochemistry based on ammonia and transfer it to a world based on the biochemistry of carbon and water. Any memories the immigrant had would remain behind stored in the old biochemistry unless they were active and expressed at that moment in electromagnetic waves she was thinking about.”

“You realize you’re convincing me you’re too smart?”

“Never underrate the products of the American public school system. The question of other forms of life is fascinating. My friends talk about it all the time. Everyone thinks about it. I envy you being able to study such things.”

“And how do you think you could send a mind across vast distances?”

“We already send information over vast distances with a laser. But then how would you get a mind up and running in a human body? I don’t know. Maybe you could fine-tune a mind from a distance with something like a laser. Our minds transmit brain waves. Can’t a transmitter be turned into a receiver? Isn’t that what ESP is? Some animals sense the earth’s magnetic field, so they must have receivers in their brains and if they do, we probably do too, even if most of us don’t use them much. A mother knows when something has happened to her child. She must be tuned to electromagnetic waves from the child.”

Having reached a fence, they stop. It’s a formidably high fence topped with razor wire.

“I wanted you to see the fence. Parts of it are electrified. Sensors go off if it’s cut. Cameras are watching us. There’s another fence beyond this one. There are patrols. I want you to see that there’s no way for anyone to escape - either of us.”

“You asked how a mind could be sent over vast distances. I’m a Christian, so I actually favor a much simpler way. What if God were doing the moving - moving creatures from a precarious situation to Earth as a blessing to those beloved creatures but also as a blessing to us - the way God brought the Israelites out of Egypt and then from the desert to the promised land? Why is the alien always an enemy? Even though God is an alien, we’re commanded to love God and accept God’s love.”

“A scientist stays away from that kind of thinking.”

“DT, most religions including mine teach we’re all from elsewhere bound for glory after a brief stop at way station Earth. If you really think I’m an alien, you know very well I didn’t arrive in a space ship. Yet we’re going to be killed.”

He doesn’t respond right away. Turning away from the fence, he starts walking back slowly. “No real scientist or thinking human being could want that. You strike me as a treasure, not a threat.”

“But the military types…”

“Today’s military is different. They’re professionals and often highly educated. It’s the political types who don’t want to see stories appearing about aliens reproducing among us - the chain of command hangs from them. Some people, maybe a lot of people, would panic, especially if the aliens looked indistinguishable from humans. The fear of panic is pushing the political types towards ordering something no one really wants.”

“Since you won’t ask what I want you to do, I’ll just tell you. The people above you make the decision, and they only see the risk. If my mom has the powers you think, you can’t keep us here, so it’s a question of eliminating the risk while you can. I hope you’ll kill us as humanely as you can. You know you won’t have a choice. And if you find a mouse with big ears in my courtyard or another, I’ll bless you from beyond if you set it free in the desert. I don’t think a mouse can climb a sheer 12-foot wall.”

“Then I’m dying with you.”

“No, Derek. Live. If you love me, trust me. Kill me.”

***

Derek enters Psyche’s room after her body has been removed for an autopsy. The walls, floor and ceiling have already been disinfected and then treated with ultraviolet radiation. The furniture has been removed for disposal. He walks quickly to the sliding glass door, opens it and steps out into the small courtyard. Beyond the concrete patio is a narrow planted area up against the high wall in which some desert plants and a sorry cactus are growing.

What if I’ve killed her? That’s all he can think except: Then I’m dead, too.

He gets down on his knees and waits, hoping. He knows mice are nocturnal, and this mouse might have died when the room was gassed and already been disposed of. He doesn’t have to wait long before a mouse appears. As mice go, it’s quite small and strange looking, with a naked tail longer than its body, disproportionately large and hairless ears and pinkish hind feet with naked soles. It looks like the big-eared one she was holding when he was watching her. The naked hind feet weren’t something he remembered noticing, but this must be the one.

Only one mouse is he putting out in the desert. It might be her. He hopes it is. Probably not, but it might be. He’s okay with that. There’s no harm in her. He’s sure of that. He knows the fear everybody else was feeling, but it was the mother he was afraid of, not the girl. The mother was scary, but not the girl…

On second thought, he puts the mouse in the pocket of his jacket. He’ll take it to his quarters. He has an absurd thought: Perhaps it’s possible to find a woman who’s brain-dead…yes, a young woman…but I’ll have any mice in the other courtyards exterminated…

No! The force of the negation reverberates as if his skull has been acoustically re-engineered to keep her voice alive.

He takes the mouse from his pocket, looks her in the eyes and thinks: Yes!

They bat the issue back and forth: Yes! An ever more adamant No!

You really are a gangsta-b***h, he can’t help thinking. But at least she’s negotiating, allowing him to disagree rather than taking over his mind by force she no doubt possesses. All right, I’ll release the other mice in the desert. But you’re mine, right?

To love and cherish with a gangsta lean, yes.

Author's Note

I value criticism and love anything I write getting ripped to shreds.