Light Years from Home

by Mike Chen

“Everyone needs a table. Even aliens,” Evie said, completely serious.

This was what she would have advised a client to do—in cases where anxiety trapped thoughts in a loop, the best thing to do was switch gears until they released and sleep was feasible again.

Given everything you know about Jakob, what’s more likely: he’s the only space soldier who can win an intergalactic war, or all the drugs he’s done have finally caught up to him?

She did feel for Evie, though. Regardless of their issues, no one deserved to be unrecognized by their own mother.

The Shao family had become a textbook case study in trauma. But with aliens.

The mood in the car wasn’t exactly cheery over the next twenty or thirty minutes—it was hard to be chipper when discussing the strange way the world had devolved before, during, and after 2020—but it provided a conduit for conversation between the Shao family. Even Jakob asked questions, and no matter how much he’d seen in space-fighting aliens, he kept repeating, “I can’t believe that.”

But the real world had found a way to course-correct, to heal, scars and all, to return patchworked and duct-taped back together.

“You still made those choices. You chose to steal from Mom. You chose to use us. So even if you have a noble quest, we’re still the collateral damage. And you know what? That sucks. There’s no better way to put it. It sucks.”

“Oh, shit,” Kass said. “I’m textbook codependent. How did I miss that until now?” “Kassie, it’s okay to ask for help,” Mom said. “Especially now.”