Welcome to Alien Inn

Chapter 16

"You've figured it out, haven't you?" asked Bart.

"Figured out what?" Matt faked a dreamy smile so Bart would think he was under the Plyomiths' power.

"Don't try to kid me!" Bart said, and sneered. "Let me see your hands."

Matt backed away, but he wasn't fast enough. Bart reached out and tore the blue bandage off the back of Matt's right hand.

"Aha! See! Just as I suspected. You lied. You haven't been to the back room yet! Brwwgke hasn't done you, after all."

"Who's Brw-w-ke?" Matt stumbled over the strange-sounding word. "Or whoever you said."

"Brwwgke," replied Bart, rolling his eyes to show his disgust. "You're so inferior you can't even pronounce a simple Plyomith word like Brwwgke."

:Who cares!" Matt shouted angrily. "I was too in the back room. The little cuts on my hands have just healed, that's all."

"You never had cuts on your hands," said Bart. "They can't heal. They're little flaps of skin where the sensors were inserted to drain your memories. And you also don't have shaved patches for attaching electrodes to the sides of your head. The Blemowac says you haven't been done yet."

"The Blemowac? What's that?" asked Matt.

"You're really stupid, aren't you?" Bart said with a snort. "In your Earthling language the Blemowac is a computer. But it's not like any computer you poor, inferior creatures ever imagined. Watch this!"

Suddenly Bart wasn't Bart anymore, or even a clone of Matt. His form got blurry as he expanded, growing bigger and bigger until he had turned into a hideous Plyomith warrior.

"Let's see you do that," challenged the monster. His voice had changed, too. Now it was the high-pitched sound of the younger Plyomith that Matt had heard in the control room.

"You can't, can you?" The alien let out a sinister laugh. "Besides guiding the spaceship throughout the universe, the Blemowac allows us to create hologram images around our bodies so we can take on whatever appearances we want. But those aren't the only holograms we want. Our spaceship landed here during a snowstorm, so we turned it into a hologram of a ski lodge, which we appropriately named Snowed Inn." He paused, chuckling at the joke. "Then we made sure the storm continued once you and your family were inside, so we made a hologram of that, too."

"So that was it!" Matt shouted. Now more things were making sense. "And when I found a way out of the storm, you had to do something to keep me in. That's when you put down the invisible wall! But why do you want to look like us? And why are you keeping us here?"

"We could have made ourselves look like you and your family the instant you came here if we had wanted to. But we needed your cooperation until we had time to test you and find out all there is to know about you—which isn't much," the alien monster said with a snicker. "We are so superior to you Earthlings."

"But you still haven't answered my question. Why do you want to do this to us? We never did anything to you or your planet," insisted Matt.

The Plyomith warrior threw back his head and laughed. His voice echoed off the ceiling. "Of course you haven't done anything to planet M42, as you Earthlings call it. Your race is too weak, puny one. Planet M42 is twenty million light-years away. You could never have traveled so far. Not in your biggest and best spaceship."

He paused and looked at Dotti. "At first we thought that thing might be the superior race on this planet," he said, sniffing in disdain. "It would have been good for us if it were. Our sensors tell us it is incapable of fighting back. It would have made things so much easier for us."

"Leave Dotti alone," pleaded Matt. "And please just let us go."

"We plan to do just that as soon as we're finished with you," said the alien, a red light flaring in his evil eyes. "Which won't make you very happy either, I'm afraid. When the time comes, we're going to take the useless shells of your bodies up into space and jettison them into a black hole."

Matt gulped. His heart felt like a pile driver inside his chest. "What have you done to my mother and father? What are you doing to my sisters?"

"Okay, let me spell it out for you," said the Plyomith. "All the resources on our planet have been used up. It's worn out. It can no longer support our race, and many are dead. We need another home."

"We learned much about Earth from the occasional radio and television transmissions that reached us in deep space. That is how we knew about the famous Simpson family and Mr. Rogers. I've assumed their identities because you Earthlings admire them so much. But the few transmissions we got were not enough. There was not enough information in them for us to learn enough to survive on Earth. We had to learn more. We had to fill in the blanks—as you Earthlings say."

He paused as if to let the horrible reality sink into Matt's mind.

"You mean...like finding out what a mall is? And a beach?" Matt asked in a faltering voice.

The Plyomith nodded. "We had another problem, also. There are many of you and few of us. If all our people tried to come at once and overpower you, there would be a war. Although we have superior brains and superior weapons, some of us could get killed, no matter how puny you are.

"So instead, we're coming a few at a time. We're changing ourselves to look, act, and talk like you, one by one. And then we'll take over your lives. We'll move into your houses. We'll go to your jobs and your schools. And the beauty of it is, no one will ever suspect that we aren't you!"

The alien's eyes gleamed. "Your family is the first to be done because you wandered into our trap. When we are in place in our new identities, we'll set up more traps. Then we'll signal for the rest of the surviving Plyomiths to begin coming. They are only waiting for our signal."

Matt stared at the alien. This was real. It wasn't just a bad dream. He wasn't going to wake up and find himself in his own bed at home. The hideous Plyomith would!

A cold sweat of fear came over Matt. "My mom and dad? My sisters? They're going to be this way forever?"

The monster gave him a defiant look. "Of course. The only possible way they could be changed back is if the Blemowac were to be turned off. Then all the information gathered from their brains and stored in the Blemowac would reverse and flow back out and into their bodies again. But don't get any ideas. There's no way that can happen. The Blemowac has an eternal power source built inside, and there are no switches to turn it on and off. Do you want to watch your sisters being done for the final time while you're waiting your turn? You may find it as amusing as I do."

Matt felt as if he were going to throw up. His hands were clammy and his head throbbed. He had to destroy the Blemowac. But he couldn't. There was absolutely nothing he could do!

But his sisters! He suddenly knew he had to see them one more time before...before the aliens did him. He had to say good-bye and tell them he was sorry he couldn't save them—even if they couldn't hear him. It was the only thing left to do.

With a deep sigh, he followed the Plyomith down the hall with Dotti slinking at his heels.