More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
I understand your frustration having so little to work with. If we had any means of getting you more or a better sampling of their language, we would give it to you. But in forty years of watching, waiting, and recording, that ninety-seven seconds is all you have to work with. Sorry.
The woods surrounded it, creeping in from all sides, tree branches carelessly draped over the roof. The lawn, such as it was, was a brown, dead bramble covered in twigs. This was a fire marshal’s nightmare.
“But I am hoping she will tell me things—namely, what’s happened to my niece, nephew, and sister-in-law.” “Technically, she’s not your sister-in-law anymore,” said Bard. Despite her already-low expectations, Cora was stunned that he would exhibit a display of such useless, unnecessary pedantry at a time like this. He
I’ll say it one more time. An alien pushed me down onto the ground. And injected something into my neck.” “I understand that, but I cannot share anything with you—”
“So you’re saying the aliens you’ve encountered are not the sort that telekinetically force people to the ground before injecting their necks with mysterious substances?”
“They’re in the basement,” he said. “Speak: How does one travel to the basement?” Peanut. She tried to say only one word that was hers. Peanut, peanut, peanut! “How does one travel to the peanut?” Now Cora felt adrenaline begin to bubble in her blood. Success. She was breaking out of the spell. “I’m sorry?” he said. “How does one travel to the basement?”
Frightened though she was that the device it had put in her ear contained some kind of self-destruct mechanism, it clearly didn’t know enough about human culture to pull off whatever kind of infiltration it was attempting.
“So at present, you are the third person to walk in today, looking all dazed and confused and disoriented, with the apparent intention of breaking into our private servers to steal encrypted information about where the government is hiding aliens.”
She had no idea what to do with the alien in the back when or if it did wake up. At one point, she pulled over, intending to dump it and run,
She’d never been here before, but she had a pretty good guess as to why the place was called “Donner Lake.” She’d had no idea it was now a popular resort destination with ski slopes and golf courses, and she wondered what the lake’s namesakes would think of that.
She was so terrified, she’d already made it several steps before she noticed the police lights she was running toward. She skidded to a stop, heaving deep, ugly breaths, not quite halfway between the murdervan and a state trooper.
“Consume.” Cora slowly lowered herself into a crouch next to the bag and reached out to examine its contents. In it she saw a sixteen-ounce bottle of canola oil, a box of brownie mix, a jar of black olives, a jar of Cheez Whiz, a jar of pimentos, and a can of corn. “Consume.”
“Why?” “Why, what?” “Why did you remove my person from the Google campus?” She felt the blood drain from her face, and her mind went completely blank. “I … I don’t know.” “Why did you remove my person from the Google campus?” the voice in her ear repeated. “Where were you taking me?” “I needed the van.” “Where were you taking me?” “I don’t know! I didn’t have a plan. I was just trying to get as far away from there as possible. You were in the van. I needed the van to get away.” The creature remained still, impartial, impossible to read. “You could have removed my person from the van.”
“Were it my choice, for that reason alone, I would have sought another planet. I do not know why they chose to seek asylum on a war-torn planet populated by seven billion flesh-eaters.”
“I am alone on an alien planet. I have neither resources nor means to communicate with those who summoned me here. I am being hunted by militarists from the Superorganism, and I have no allies. And the dominant species on the planet is billions of aggressive, violent flesh-eaters.”
“I see,” she lied and decided not to push lest she reveal her ignorance any further—after all, to a human, the difference between a six-hundred-year-old alien and a nine-hundred-year-old alien was nominal.
LONG: If you could say anything to your children right now, what would you say? ORTEGA: That I hope we can have a relationship one day. That I hope you can forgive me for the pain and difficulty I’ve caused. That whatever you want to do with your life, you’ll accept my help and support, and you’ll let me be a part of it. LONG: So if you had it to do over, would you do it differently? ORTEGA: No. I wouldn’t.
“Čefo is the first dead body they have at ROSA. Esperas—he’s the other one besides Čefo we assume to be higher in the hierarchy than the others—incinerated all the other dead bodies.” “I suppose not letting you look at the bodies is a form of communication.” Luciana cracked a tiny smile. “That it is.
Ampersand had backed himself up on the opposite bed next to the wall, standing on it in a crouch with his back almost parallel to the floor, his hands up and open like bear traps, hovering on his haunches like he was about to pounce. Not a good look for deescalating tension. Cora approached him. “Hey, buddy, let’s put our hands down. Can you maybe sit down on the bed? Then we can all sit down.”
“You kept them as captives.” “He still thinks they’re being held against their will.” “Well, they might be,” said Luciana. “They might be staying compliant out of fear. We don’t know what their will is. They won’t respond to our bids for communication.
“Familia Ortega. You’re like the Kennedys with aliens.”
If he labeled anyone a “militarist,” he wouldn’t answer them at all.
“No, I want to know why they’re still here. If the plan is to leave, why wait? Why hang around for a few days? If they’re all so put off by the filthy hu-man, and if there really are ‘Similars’ on this very planet who are here to kill them, why take the risk?”
She had taken for granted that the task of alien interpreter was one she was completely unqualified for,
“Oh.” She stole a glance at him. “I guess I got the Catholic on me.” Once again, tense silence, the only noise in the room the song of the humming light bulbs. “So why’s he call it The Broken Seal?” asked Sol. “Is that, like, a Bible thing, too?” “Huh?” Where the hell did that come from? “I don’t know; he’s got the Catholic on him, too. Why don’t you ask him?” “Because he won’t return my phone calls!” His tone was bordering on playful. Cora didn’t know what to make of it. “You clearly know more about this than I do.” “No, I don’t. I got the Jewish on me.”
‘The human fascination with intelligent exoterran species focuses on their similarity to humans. Humanity is not prepared for any cultural, biological, or ideological disparities it may encounter. No species is. “‘One species is only comprehensible to another species as it understands itself. But with all species, there are attributes one possesses that the other does not share. Where attributes are not shared, inevitably both parties will try to shape the other into a form they can understand.’”
“After the sterilization, the Autocrat solicited ‘studies’ to determine what it was about the dissenting Oligarchs, and indeed, the segment of the population at large, that so opposed the idea of genocide. The studies concluded that this segment of the population that we label ‘Fremdan’ has an inherent biological defect owing to their breeding.” “Opposing genocide is a defect?”
“Do you like this game?” “No,” he said. She chuckled, still tense from the conversation. “Why?” “Because it offers little opportunity to strategize. It is mostly a game of chance.” “The same could be said about life,” offered Cora. “Yes,” he said. “That is why I don’t like it.”
[We/Stelo/Krias believe it is immoral to breed new Fremda; they will have no superorganism and will lead short, miserable lives, if they survive at all.]
An axiom developed that planets that support life are so competitive and dangerous that advanced civilizations can never evolve, and advancements such as ours are unlikely to the point of impossibility.
“And we still know next to nothing,” said Sol. “Knowing their civilization might, hypothetically maybe want to destroy us in a few hundred years is probably worse than knowing nothing.”
And all she could think was that she would never see him again. She would spend the rest of her life wondering what had happened to him.
“He says he doesn’t want anything to do with the religious nuts, but he’s drumming up their panic and has them marching lockstep behind him.
