UnEarthing Toroid

Part 10.1

Hazel pushed back from the computer desk, glancing back towards the living room, where she could hear the aliens faintly chattering and laughing. If it wasn't obvious already, she had been the user 'HazelR' talking on the site about aliens. She had logged on with her real name because she hadn't thought they were real aliens. But now...she knew they were.

And that made her head spin.

It wasn't as if her whole world had been turned upside down. She hadn't not believed in aliens, she just knew that there hadn't been any confirmed to exist yet, but the possibility of alien life out there somewhere still seemed feasible. But. It was one thing to suspect that, and another to have it actually confirmed.

That's freaky. That means...How many other alien nations are out there? How many of them would harvest our organs if they found us? How many of them could?

Hazel shuddered. At least these aliens didn't seem like they were from that kind of civilization. And judging by the way they interacted with the objects in Hazel's house—and didn't talk about how primitive it all was—maybe they weren't too much more advanced than Earth anyway.

She was relieved, in a way. That online search had been much more helpful than she'd ever anticipated. It made sense that she wasn't the only one to get aliens mysteriously dropped near her house, but it was also extremely odd that they all showed up at once. Some kind of space-time anomaly, maybe?

At least now she knew what to do with them. And that was good on two counts: now she was certain to get rid of them eventually, and they wouldn't have to awkwardly move into her house for the rest of their lives. And she also had permission to keep them staying at her house, without having to look creepy or desperate by asking. It was kind of the ideal situation.

If they did get rescued, that was.

When she walked into the living room, all three aliens stopped talking and looked at her.

"Did you figure anything out?" Nico gazed up at her with hopeful, nervous eyes.

"Yeah." Hazel replied. Then she paused for a moment, reveling in the irony of finally knowing something that they didn't. "I found out other people got a bunch of aliens from your planet dumped on them last night too, and apparently your 'prince' or whatever is with them, and someone's going to come rescue him, so all you really have to do is wait for that." She dumped it all in one flat-toned moment, knowing they wouldn't absorb it all at once and would have to pepper her with questions, but she did it anyway.

"Wait, what?!" Nico jumped over the back of the couch in his haste to get over to Hazel. "There are other people from our planet here!?"

"See, I told you!" Talisi grinned from her seat. "I told you someone would be around to rescue us, no problem."

"Our prince is here?" Jierro straightened up a little, his brow furrowing in shock and confusion.

"Apparently, about 8 other people from your planet also showed up at other random people's houses last night." Hazel explained slower this time. "And one of these people is a prince, named...Shingshen or something like that." That doesn't sound right. That can't be right. How did the person online spell it?

"Prince Xingshen?" Talisi's eyes bugged out of her skull. She blinked once. "Oh boy. That's not going to go over well back home."

"Shit. You mean the prince." Nico gaped. "I thought you meant, like, the prince of one country, not the prince of all of them."

"How did the prince end up here, of all people?" Jierro wondered out loud.

Hazel shrugged. "They all talked like it was some accident. So I guess you guys were right all along: it was an accident, and all you have to do is wait for someone to rescue you."