Displaced

Chevelle - Eight

I caved and ended up having a half a sandwich and two bowls of tomato soup. Timber could cook, which surprised me a lot. Hello, the guy was famous? Did the rich and powerful cook for themselves? Even more impressive was that he didn't just open up a can soup and stick it in a pot on the stove. He took the time to add spices and herbs and whatever else one puts into soup to make it fan-freaking-tastic. The sandwiches had three different kinds of cheese, tomato, and spinach. Maybe we'd all actually died and this was some bizarre version of heaven?

Besides cooking, what else could Timber do? As I glanced at him from across the table, I realized just how little I knew about him and how much of my knowledge was based simply on assumption. About the only thing I was certain of was that he was twenty-one years old. The only reason I knew that much was because of a tabloid from a couple months ago displaying pictures of him drunk as all get out with some kind of big headline broadcasting the news. I couldn't imagine living life like that. People turned twenty-one all the time, so what made him so special that everyone needed to know it? Nothing bad or newsworthy had even happened at the party.

The other thing I knew about him was that he was in a fairly serious relationship with a musician. Okay, not just any musician, but one who was probably more famous than him. Talia Anderson, ex-front woman of the band Qoil, and well-known for her angry chick rock once she went solo. She also had a reputation of writing about everything from her personal experiences. I'd heard the couple referred to as T-squared. They'd always seemed like an odd pairing to me. Even now, he was so goodie-goodie compared to her. Of course, I also only saw whatever the media wanted me to see. Last I checked, the two were still together and coming up on a year. Impressive for Hollywood.

Beyond that and what he looked like with his shirt off, I didn't know anything else. Again, I could assume a lot, but he'd already broken so many of those in the first five minutes we'd been alone.

"Okay, I feel better," he said after he'd wiped his mouth with a napkin.

I nodded. "I do too, and like I can think a little clearer."

"Yeah, that's for sure. I'm still trying to process all of this."

"Same."

"I mean, preserve the human species? That's so random, don't you think? Our planet is in crappy shape, but we're not completely screwed yet. We could turn things around." He shrugged. "Plus, I'm having a hard time believing our government is going to just let these aliens take us away."

I sighed. "I kind of wish we hadn't scared Paul off for the night. I'd like to have some more answers."

He exhaled slowly. "For sure. Hopefully tomorrow he'll tell us more. Like why they think we even need saving to begin with. Something isn't adding up for me. Then again, this whole situation is messed up on so many levels. I keep wondering when I'm going to wake up."

"Ditto!"

"And I'm not sure what we should do. Keep complying seems like the safest option, but at the same time..."

"You don't really want to?" I finished.

He nodded. "Exactly. We cooperated to begin with because we didn't want to get hurt, but there's nothing okay with what they're doing. I don't get how this Paul guy can expect us to be happy about any of this. Giving us a shiny new pad isn't going to make things better. People can't be bought."

"Nope." I didn't want to break it to him that some people could be easily swayed with material things like a nice apartment. The place was a lot nicer than my house, that's for sure. Maybe it didn't attract Timber's attention because he had some kind of million dollar mansion back in California, but the average person could be wooed by such luxury.

I picked up my dirty dishes and brought them over to the sink. "So we go along with things for now is what you're suggesting?"

"Right, because knowledge is power. Isn't that how the saying goes? The last thing either of us should be doing is reacting on a whim. Revolting today will probably only get us in a jail cell, or tortured, or experimented on, or who knows what else. These Achlivans are aliens, right? They don't play by the same rules as us."

"You sure know a lot about this stuff," I mused as I rinsed the dishes off in the sink.

He laughed. "I've read my fair share of sci-fi novels, seen the movies. It doesn't take rocket science, just time to step back and think."

Thinking wasn't all too easy for me, or at least not thinking clearly. My mind was running a mile a minute trying to figure out if I agreed with him. On the one hand, cooperating meant we got to live for another day. There was no contesting that. It gave us time to watch and observe our new surroundings and devise a plan to escape. On the other, however, doing nothing felt an awful lot like quitting and giving in. Besides, who's to say that if we waited for too long it wouldn't be too late? If the spaceship left Earth's orbit, there was no way we'd be able to ever make it back again.

One thing was certain, I was not convinced the Achlivans were simply coming to Earth on a peaceful mission.