The Mother-Supreme was staring into space, looking thoughtful. “There are layers to this, I’m certain,” she said after a moment. She shook her head. “For the moment you should both go home and rest. Find peace among the cubs. I will summon Officer Regaari to take you home.”
She turned to leave, but hesitated at the door, turning back to look at Xiù. “I wish you had fur, Shoo. Because you’d make an excellent Mother.” Then she was gone, her attendants scurrying along behind her.
Xiù followed Ayma to the landing pad as if sleepwalking, and during the shuttle ride back to the commune she didn’t bother asking about the patterns in the landscape. When they arrived it was just before the midday meal, and the cubs were getting out their morning lessons. Myun had obviously seen the shuttle approaching, so she’d dashed straight from her lessons to the landing pad, waiting at the edge as they touched down. She began to dart forward as Xiù stepped out, but hesitated at the look on human’s face.
“Myun?” The furry little alien girl blinked at her. “I think I could use a hug.”
“What you’re asking for is difficult.”
“Oh, really? Don’t tell me you’re so easily defeated by planetbound primitives.”
“There’s no reason to be insulting. Unlike most of my brethren, I am capable of respect, and these `primitives’ you mention are worthy of it… their networks are well-built and defended. Most likely due to their adversarial nature… it’s like they launch network attacks against each other for the fun of it.”
“I’m not asking you to cause damage or exfiltrate any data. I just need you to deliver a message.”
“And you want that message to be targeted rather than widecast… which is the problem. I need to isolate the appropriate node, and that requires persistent intrusion and reconnaissance.”
“So you can’t do it?”
“What did I just say about insulting me? I swear it’s like talking to a wall, except the wall sounds more intelligent.”
“There’s the Corti I came to see.”
Wei Chang, “Yes_Wei” online, sat staring at his computer screen. Beside him a warm summer breeze blew in through his open window, carrying with it the noise and smells of the nighttime Vancouver suburbs.
It was late… he was supposed to be in bed. Summer vacation was almost over, and school would be starting soon. Grade twelve: his last year of high school. His mother made noises about getting to bed at the proper time, but the fire was lacking in it. A year before she would have marched into his room and ripped the power bar from the wall – whether he was in a match or not – and refused to return it until the next morning, cursing at him in Mandarin the whole time. Now all she would do is poke her head in through his door, remind him it was time for bed in a flat voice, and then go sit in the living room, where she would watch the news without really seeing it.
Xiù had been missing for nine months. She’d gone to a late class and never returned, and none of her friends had heard a word from her. They’d filed the missing person report almost immediately, but it was difficult to get the police to take it seriously: Yes, we’re sure she left the class. No, she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Yes, we’ve called all her friends. Wei had scoured the university campus for her while his frantic father drove around in their car and his mother fretted by the telephone at home.
No one in the family slept that night, and the next day the police took the matter more seriously. He remembered the cops talking quietly where they thought he couldn’t hear… speculating on what could have happened to an attractive young woman walking home at night, and his stomach tied itself into knots at the possibilities offered.
By the second day, Xiù’s face was on the news, and the Chang family could do nothing but wait… but his father was always out, always searching. Days turned to weeks turned to months, and hope died bit by bit… but his father was always out, always searching.
Dad eventually had to return to work, because like it or not the bills had to get paid, and he couldn’t neglect what remained of his family. Every night, however, he would drive around Vancouver for an hour, searching against hope. Wei’s mother never yelled anymore… not even when he’d deliberately do things to piss her off, wanting her to snap and rage at him. She never did; deep inside her the idea that Xiù had run away to escape her nagging and control was taking root and festering.
Wei had no comforting words to offer. He knew his sister wasn’t the type to run away, but he really, really wished she had, because the other explanations were so much worse.
Then came the day the Rogers Arena was attacked by aliens, and Xiù Chang was completely forgotten, no matter how much his mother shrieked at the RCMP officers. And as much as Wei wanted to get angry, he couldn’t blame them. The Earth being attacked by aliens was big thing.
If it could be called an attack, and not a joke. Wei didn’t know what to make of it – aliens were supposed to be strong and tough and take an army lead by Will Smith or Sigourney Weaver to take down… not get their heads caved in by a bunch of guys with hockey sticks lead by Henrik Sedin. If there hadn’t been so many witnesses who’d personally seen – and often gotten hit by – the energy weapons, it could have been passed off as a lame publicity stunt.
He was as interested as anyone else, but not just because he fought digital aliens three hours a day or because – hey – energy guns are awesome, but because he was sure those aliens were connected somehow to Xiù’s disappearance. He felt it in his gut.
The first thing he’d done after seeing the news was hop on the internet. It was rough going… any website that even mentioned aliens was getting bombed by the curious and the panicked. But eventually he managed to find what he was looking for… a site that listed UFO sightings across the world. Fringe sites. Not the kind of sites the RCMP would even think of when investigating missing persons.
From those sites, he learned that there had been UFO sightings in Vancouver the night Xiù had gone missing. Multiple sightings.
Wei realized that up until that moment, even he had given up hope. An alien attack had given him hope. Now he had to figure out what to do with it.
Had the aliens kidnapped some humans to try and figure out how tough they were before attacking? (If so they needed to fire their scientist-guy, because he really dropped the ball…) The aliens had landed in some kind of pods, which didn’t seem suited for interstellar use, no matter how fast they might travel. So had they been launched from some kind of mothership? If so, was Xiù trapped on that ship right now?
Wei was terrified that his sister was locked in a cage, being experimented on… or worse. The one thing that helped keep some of the nightmares at bay was the pathetic performance of the aliens during the attack. Xiù was a shrimp but she was in good shape and took her gung-fu pretty seriously… she could hit pretty hard, not that he’d ever admit that to her face.
But if she was on an alien ship, what could he do? NATO had taken everything associated with the aliens and everyone knew it… the media were making as much of a nuisance of themselves that they could, and one Canadian teenager couldn’t add much. Wei haunted online forums as much as he could, trying to contact people who claimed to have been abducted before… people who suddenly had a lot more credibility. But even they – assuming he was talking to the real deal and not more kooks – had little they could offer him.
Now the new focus of the world was the “darkening”… astronomers everywhere had noticed that every object in the sky beyond Uranus – every object – had dimmed, just a little bit. Every object, all at once. Wars and rivalries across the entire planet had come to a screeching halt as humanity realized that, somewhere up above them, alien assholes were doing something… and humans probably weren’t going to like whatever it was.
Wei followed the discussions on the forums with interest. Even the people who seemed to be the Real Deal when it came to knowing about aliens had no idea what was going on.
His screen was sitting on one of those forums when it happened: a window popped open on his computer. He growled, thinking an ad had somehow dodged his popup-blocker… fringe websites had to use some pretty shady ad networks. He’d almost closed it before the content of the grey box sunk in, and his jaw dropped as he read the words:
Your sister is safe. She was taken, but not by the creatures that attacked your city. She was taken, but she escaped, and is among friends.
Xiù is safe.
Below was a picture of his sister, wearing some kind of weird red clothing, like overalls crossed with robes. The picture was from an upward angle, and her head was turned to the side, and she was speaking and gesturing angrily. But she was unhurt and gloriously alive.
Wei stared at the screen for long seconds. Then he jumped to his feet, not giving a damn that his legs hit the desk and sent his mouse flying. “Mom! Mom! Kuài lái!”