Liam Hogan
I don’t have getting shot by a man from Mars on my FML bingo card, but that’s what happens as I close up the cafe-diner gone nine. It’s already been a long day. The cook lit out an hour back, leaving the clean-up to me. I’m tired, not paying as much attention as I should as I fumble with my car keys, wondering where the glow from the only working streetlamp has got to.
He’s not strictly a man. An alien, from outer space. Maybe Mars, maybe somewhere just as dry and bleak. Somewhere that makes empty parking lots look attractive. And the thing he shoots is nothing like what I try and plug it with; the glove-box Glock my good-for-nothing ex gave me last Christmas, a heart-wrenching reminder of the cold-hearted bastard whenever I feel threatened, or angry, or just lonely. The alien’s weapon spews blue light like out of the rapture that freezes me in my tracks, and I might as well be dead, ‘cos the next thing? My body is looking darn silly stranded there on the tarmac as my head is plunged into warm, thick goo; bubbles tickling the nose I can’t scratch, the low whine of a pump, flickering lights from something spidery that might be electrics, but would’ve made me shudder if I still had anything to shudder with.
A thankfully short time later, I’m plugged into the alien spaceship, and my mind is blown in a way that drugs fumbled sweaty-palmed in nightclubs could never manage. I know everything.
The alien isn’t evil, or cruel; just curious. Harvesting brains is the quickest way to understand us. It knows humans will be terrified by its monstrous form (especially a lone woman in a parking lot with a trembling handgun…), which is why it collects specimens after dark, in remote places.
I tell it, I tell it straight: you’re doin’ it all wrong.
It was lucky, I say, picking me. Grabbing loners, at night, means it’s getting a pretty ropy sample of mankind. And selecting drivers of better quality cars than my beat-up Honda, isn’t enough to fix that.
I tell the alien it can speed things up by harvesting a building full of humans. That I know a place out of town, where, late Friday with the house-band in full swing, no-one will see us coming.
But drat it; wouldn’t you just know my luck? My ex isn’t at the Red Wagon that night.
It takes a while for the alien to plug the new brains in, seventy-three in all, adding to the half-dozen parking-lot losers, and me, the first, and, dare I say it, the best.
When their dive-bar knowledge comes on line, I wade through a haze of alcohol-fueled memories and identify our next target. The alien, itself a slave to the ship’s hive-mind AI, is tempted to call it a day. I tell it: taking all your specimens from one site (even if that is exactly what I said it should do less than a week ago) ain’t scientific. That it can fill its remaining sample slots with one more raid, and I know just the place.
Because I’ve discovered, and it should have been obvious, there’s another woman. My ex is moving in her circles, frequenting bars other than the ones he and I were once regulars at, that I’ve been avoiding for no reason.
And so the very next night, there the slime-ball is, on the dance floor at Kennedys, with her; a slimmer, blonder, younger version of me.
But it’s almost worth the hurt, the self-doubt, for the look on their stupid faces when they snap out of their clinch as a freakin’ alien rips the tin-roof from the bar, tentacle arms grabbing everyone as they flee, gun blue-flash-freezing them in place until the heads can be neatly removed.
I tell the alien, I tell it–you don’t have room for them all. You’ll have to be selective. Leave the ex, frozen forever in place, and grab Blondie. Sweet revenge!
Only, that doesn’t work out too well. The brazen hussy is smart. Until then, it’s been me ruling the roost, the loudest voice in the collective brain. But not, it turns out, the sharpest. With her in the mix, there’s a keener, more decisive mind, one who is mightily pissed about what I’ve done.
Almost before we blast out of Earth orbit, the tables are turned. The bitch locks me out, suggesting to the alien brain that I’m defective, and that they should run fiendish experiments, never-ending simulations of moral dilemmas, to work out exactly what is wrong with me.
If I have to face another bloody trolley problem I think I’m gonna explode. And I will, damn it all to hell, because our journey to the alien’s home planet is taking frickin’ forever.
February 23rd, 2024
Liam Hogan is an award-winning short story writer, with stories in Best of British Science Fiction and in Best of British Fantasy (NewCon Press). He’s been published by Analog, Daily Science Fiction, and Flame Tree Press, among others. He helps host live literary event Liars’ League, volunteers at the creative writing charity Ministry of Stories, and lives and avoids work in London. More details at http://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk
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Wyldblood 14
Wyldblood 14 is available now
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Nine great new short stories and two drabbles in a fine new collection from Wyldblood. #14 is packed with science fiction and fantasy from imagined worlds to gritty reality a clutch of adventurous, thought provoking and sometimes sligtly unsettling tales which should give you plenty to read though the long winter nights. Available in print and digital formats.
From the Depths
Our latest anthology is packed with tales of the murky deep. We’ve got fifteen stories stuffed with selkies and sea monsters, pirates and meremaids, intrigue, adventure and more. Available in print and digitally.
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