UnEarthing Toroid

Part 9

Declan took Tuanhai all the way up to his room, where his laptop sat on the desk. As if he would use the family computer to look up a bunch of stuff about aliens. He didn't need his mom thinking he'd gone crazy again.

Besides, he already had more than a few pages saved with information and chat forums about aliens, so maybe that would be a good place to start. Maybe someone else, somewhere, had heard about these 'Toroid' aliens and their whole deal. Maybe someone else knew how to rescue them.

He opened his computer and pulled up a few different tabs, while Tuanhai sat on the bed behind him, looking over Declan's shoulder as if anything would even be readable to his alien eyes.

Declan started with the very first forum he picked. He did a search for the word 'Toroid', but nothing came up, so he left a message on a Q&A page asking if anyone had ever heard of such a planet, or anyone coming from it. Then he left it open—in case he got a response—and went to the next tab.

Same thing. No luck there. And not in the one after that, or the one after that. And the next choice he wasn't very hopeful about. It was a forum about aliens, sure, but it was pretty public. It was for the hobbyists and general citizens, not any of these deep-dive secretive websites that Declan trusted, where real cover-ups were exposed by professionals. He didn't think he would find anything on a page like this—the kind that you would get on the first page of google. But he searched up his aliens anyway.

And got a result.

It was a question, posted to one of the public parts of the forum, by someone called 'NatKat.' It said:

NatKat: Hey, anyone on this site know anything about like, aliens from a place called Toroid? Is that a thing?

And someone—multiple people—had responded to it. It was a whole conversation.

HazelR: Are you for real? I have people saying they're from that place. I didn't think they were being legit.

NatKat: They seem pretty legit to me. Do you like, know anything about that planet?

HazelR: I only know what they tell me. I could ask them stuff.

NatKat: I dunno anything either. Mine just like, showed up at my house last night.

HazelR: Mine too.

Lilypond: You guys too?? That's exactly what happened to me! And mine are claiming to be from Toroid also.

Lilypond: I didn't think it was...something real.

NatKat: I don't think they're making it up.

Declan knew then. This was the conversation he was looking for. This website had the answer, of all places.

So his aliens weren't the only ones to cross over last night. There must have been some kind of space anomaly. He wondered if these people lived near him, or if they were scattered out all over the world.

Well...now was the time to ask.

He logged on as one of his many aliases (of course he wasn't going to use his real name to admit he had aliens!) and then joined the conversation.

Richard Sawyer: They're not making it up. It's a real place. I got a group of them last night myself.

NatKat: Jeez. I wonder how many of them are here now.

HazelR: I have 3.

Lilypond: I only have 2.

Richard Sawyer: I have 3 also.