Chapter Text
A long, scorching day had given way to a pleasant evening, warm enough to sit outside in shorts and t-shirt and yet cool enough to do so without a sweat, except for where Mister Smith stood beside the swelteringly hot grill, flipping over one of the sausages upon it, watching his family causing trouble on his lawn. Vidcund was showing Buck his cheap mobile telescope, talking him through the constellations and different planets that could be seen as the skies darkened overhead and the stars came out once more. Pascal and Jenny were sat at the bench, watching and applauding as Tank showed off his newest dance move, and keeping up a quiet conversation when he wasn’t watching. And lastly, Ripp and Lazlo were sat on the decking, Ripp showing his uncle his guitar while Lazlo encouraged him heartily. Mister Smith glanced between them all before grinning into his newly flipped burger.
Who knew his perfect little family could be found here, with three insane brothers-in-law, three talented adopted sons, and the most beautiful woman in the universe? Out of all the planets he had visited, truly this one was the best. Where else would he have found this much happiness, this much joy? Life was perfect.
“Dad, how long until tea is ready?” Ripp asked, and Mister Smitch tutted his tongue.
“Now Ripp, you cannot rush a perfect barbeque,” Mister Smith insisted, and heard Vidcund snort.
“He’s not rushing a perfect barbeque, he’s rushing yours,” Vidcund called out, to Jenny’s verbal dismay. “What? How many sausages and burgers have you dropped into the fire already?”
“None!” Mister Smith declared proudly. “And I don’t plan on doing any eith- oh no.” As he’d spoken, his tongs had hit one of the sausages and dropped it into the charcoal below, lost to the embers. A chorus of laughter rang through the garden, and Mister Smith felt his cheeks burn. “Well, there goes Vidcund’s sausage, and there is simply not enough time to cook him another.”
“What? No, come on, I was only joking,” Vidcund insisted. Mister Smith wasn’t insulted really, he knew it was all in jest, but seeing his brother in law get flustered and annoyed was rewarding after such a scathing insult of his cooking skills.
“No, there is simply no time,” Mister Smith insisted. “If you wish to have a sausage now, you will simply have to cook it yourself.” It got a chorus of laughter and jeers aimed at Vidcund, who flopped down in his seat next to Buck, muttering to himself in annoyance. When they’d first married, Jenny’s brothers had been far too into the idea of having an alien in the family to really appreciate having a brother-in-law at all, but now, they were teasing each other, insulting each other, winding each other up. It was a sure sign of how much he was being accepted by his family, his community.
Yes. He belonged here, in Strangetown, in his family. Here, he was happy.
He started to hum as he continued to cook the food, feeling the familiar buzz start within his mind. It happened every now and then, and he was never sure when it would happen, but he knew what it had to mean. A spaceship was passing nearby, maybe about ten miles away, carrying on it more aliens. Maybe it was a pollination ship like he had worked on, he could never tell. Especially not at this distance. All he could feel was the buzz of a connection, the tell-tale sign of the alien hivemind coming into close contact once more, and he tried to hum his own goodwill down the connection. ‘Welcome to Earth’, he told them. ‘Welcome to my planet. Is it not wonderful?’
It had been one thing he hadn’t expected, when he retired, how lonely a quiet mind could be. After twenty five years on Sixam, constantly buzzed by the thoughts and feelings of those around him, and thirty years on a pollination ship, with the constant thoughts of his crewmates following him at all times, the relative silence of the Sim world had been daunting at first, even a little agoraphobic, but it was familiar now, and the occasional buzz that told him someone else was nearby had become less feared, less of a reminder of how lonely he felt, and more of a thing to be enjoyed, to be celebrated. If only he could be more subtle about it.
“Is there a ship nearby?” Tank asked as Mister Smith winced, seeing all three of his brother-in-laws perk up at the mention. Tank rushed over to join him by the grill. “What’s it doing?”
Tank was perceptive, he had to give him that, but Mister Smith waved him away. “Keep away Tank, I do not want you getting hurt on the grill,” he insisted. Vidcund had already chased Buck away from the telescope while Lazlo abandoned Ripp on the decking to go join him. Pascal turned to Tank instead.
“How do you know that?”
“It’s Dad, he can hear them when they get nearby, and he gets all smiley and happy. It’s really funny when you notice it,” Tank said proudly, and Pascal looked surprised.
“You never told us you could do that,” Pascal stated, and Mister Smith rubbed at his head. “It would be really useful for our research, you know.”
“Yes, but I cannot control it. It could just be a blip. Passing through and not stopping,” Mister Smith explained. “Besides, if I told you three, you would never leave my house.”
“Don’t you like having us around?” Pascal asked, and Mister Smith hummed non-commitantly.
“You’re good cheap childcare at least,” Jenny offered instead, to Pascal’s dismay.
The buzz wasn’t getting that much closer, almost as if it was passing around in the far edges of range, a song of thoughts travelling to Mister Smith as he continued to grill, Jenny’s brothers now crowded around the telescope trying to find the ship while he waved off their questions as to the direction, while Buck had joined Ripp on the decking, urging Ripp to play a song. His guitar needed tuning, even Mister Smith could hear that.
And then the buzzing changed.
Mister Smith froze as he felt it, the familiar migraine-like feeling that it brought thrumming through his head, turning at last to the direction it was coming from, his eyes knowing the direction as being near the military base, far far too near. Most ships knew to keep far clear of that place, knew that passing anywhere near it was a death sentence, but this ship… the buzzing wasn’t familiar anymore. It wasn’t a passing hail as it flew by, but panicked, like every mind on the ship was crying out in horror, in fear, in pain.
It was a distress call.
“There it is!” Vidcund yelled, pointing out in the sky as Mister Smith clenched the tongs tight in his fist. “Look at it go!”
“Yeah, look at it go. What’s it doing?” Lazlo asked. “They don’t usually fly like that. Do aliens get drunk?”
“Dad?” Tank asked, stepping near as Mister Smith turned to him, trying to swallow back the horror he felt rising up in him, amplified by the thoughts travelling to him from the ship. “What’s wrong?”
“That’s a good question, maybe we should ask them,” Pascal noted, scribbling it down in a notebook. “Gosh, it’s getting closer.”
“Tank, go sit with your brothers,” Jenny insisted, pushing Tank gently away from Mister Smith, taking his place. “Paul, what’s wrong?”
“They are not drunk,” Mister Smith said quietly. “Jenny, they are crashing. They are crashing.”
“Shit, he’s right,” Vidcund muttered. “Look at it, its teetering. It’s getting closer. It’s… not going to hit here, is it?”
“Paul?” Jenny asked, gently reaching out for him, and he shook his head, raising one hand to clench it, so she dropped her hand.
“There is nothing I can do,” He whispered back. The ship was going to crash, if the military had shot it down, it was going to come down. The military would claim the bodies. He couldn’t help steer it away from where he stood, couldn’t stop the military from dissecting his dead kin, or killing any survivors that crawled out of the wreck. All he could do was stand there powerless as he heard the screams of his people getting closer, and closer, clearer, and clearer.
“Here it comes!” Lazlo cheered out, and Mister Smith screwed his eyes closed, wishing he could drown out the thoughts, but knowing he couldn’t. This close, he could hear the thoughts, as clear as his own, feel them thrumming through his skull like a horrific headache.
~*Pull up, pull up, we’re losing too much altitude!*~
~*The thrusters are destroyed, there’s nothing we can do. There’s nothing… This is the end*~
Discordant screams followed the thoughts and Mister Smith grabbed Jenny’s hand as the ship flew directly overhead to the surprised gasps of their sons and the ecstatic cheers of her brothers, and with it, came one last, horrifying thought.
~*Get the children buckled in, maybe some of them will survive*~
Children? Mister Smith thought with horror, his legs moving of their own accord after the ship as it teetered and struggled to maintain altitude. Children… they didn’t carry children on the ships. That couldn’t be a pollination ship, and transfer ships only carried babies, not children. Before he even knew he was moving, he was at the fence at the far end of his garden, eyes locked on the ship, starting to climb over it.
“Paul? What’s going on?” Jenny asked as he finally cleared it, his heart racing in his ears, the screams still ringing loud in his mind.
“There are children on that ship!” He said, before turning and running after it. He knew it was a fools errand before he even started, trying to run through the desert after a crashing space ship, but every instinct within him, as a father and a Sixam, screamed at him to at least try, Jenny’s shouts after him quickly drowned out by the loud, but increasingly distant screams still coming from the ship, and he wasn’t sure how long he’d been running before he heard a car rushing up beside him, the passenger door flinging open as Lazlo leaned out.
“Get in, Mister Smith. We’ll get there faster,” Lazlo instructed, and Mister Smith did so, pointing them in the direction of the crashing craft. The off-road vehicle plowed through the untracked desert faster than he could run it, but it wasn’t fast enough. Each second seemed to stretch out painfully into an eternity, the screams were getting louder, louder, as they got nearer and nearer, until, all at once, they cut out.
Every single thought from that crashing ship, ending all at once. And in the distance, a loud crash could be heard.
“That wasn’t far,” Pascal assured them, but Mister Smith shook his head. It was too late. He could hear the silence, knew there was nothing to be done. No bodies to pull from the wreckage. Everyone on that ship was dead. Every single one. There was nothing. Nothing…
The car pulled to a stop as Mister Smith buried his face in his hands, his in-laws emptying out of the car with sounds of awe and amazement, as if they couldn’t comprehend his mourning, or maybe just didn’t care. They didn’t see a graveyard, but a crashed spectacle, something to be admired, not feared. Something to be investigated, not grieved. The door beside him opened, and Mister Smith turned to see Lazlo.
“Come on, Mister Smith, you should at least come see it,” Lazlo suggested. “Before the feds get here. There’s no bodies.”
“I do not care about the bodies,” Mister Smith insisted, but he still unbuckled himself, slowly making his way out of the car. The ship was smoking, no doubt the collision had tripped something in the computers, destroyed some vital life-support machinery and chemicals, which was now spilling out in a cloud into the sky. Pascal was taking photos, and Vidcund making notes, while Mister Smith felt like collapsing to the ground. Children… they had said there was children on the ship. Why? For what purpose? And now, they were all dead. Now, there were no survivors…
“Just look at it!” Pascal exclaimed. “I wonder how you get inside?”
“There’s got to be a hidden hatch somewhere,” Vidcund suggested. “Could you show us, Paul?”
“Leave him be,” Lazlo insisted. “This has to be, like, the alien equivalent of a multi-car pile up, right?”
More like seeing the aftermath of a disaster, one that disproportionately killed the young and feeble, but how could he explain that to them? This was all just science to them, just interest, not a horror story. His mind had never felt so empty, so lonely, as it had staring upon a smoking ship, filled with the dead, filled with people who had died for no reason but for the military’s fear. They were all dead…
And then, a quiet buzz started up in his mind again.
It was weak, quiet, small, but it was like a light being switched on in a pitch black room. It didn’t matter if the light was too soft to see anything, it was on, and with that, he could find it. Mister Smith lurched forward to Lazlo’s surprise. Someone was alive in that ship. Someone was alive and thinking and reaching out. He had to answer. He had to help. He stepped forward.
“Mister Smith,” Lazlo insisted, grabbing at his arm. “I don’t think-“
“Get off me,” he barked, pulling his arm out of his grasp and moving towards the ship at speed. “Someone is alive in there. Someone needs help!”
This close the smoke was starting to catch in his nose, but he couldn’t stop now, couldn’t stop here, and he made his way over to the entrance hatch of the ship, hidden among the sleek metal. He grasped for the entry hatch, wincing as he felt the familiar cut on his hand as it gathered a sample of his DNA. It didn’t care if he was alien or human, only if he was a frequent visitor to alien technology. Frequent visitors were often most open to pollination, and the data of who was best to seek out had been vital in his work.
The door opened, and with it a wave of heat emanated from within the ship, carrying with it the familiar, sterile smell of the spacecraft. Mister Smith ventured in, but the crashed ship had landed at an angle, and he was struggling to stay upright, struggling to avoid sliding on the clean, polished floors. He reached out towards the quiet buzzing of another living soul, desperately seeking the only other thoughts that were circling this ship. ~*Where are you?*~ he asked, wishing maybe someone would answer him, but no answer came, just the nearly silent buzz that told him there was someone here, someone alive, someone connected to the hive mind still, and he had to find them. He had to find them…
He pushed onwards, the sterile entry corridor quickly giving away to the control deck, where the crew lay dead, too busy trying to keep the ship from crashing into the earth to try and prevent their own deaths, their blue blood pooling around their bodies, and he pushed past them, trying not to look too closely at his dead kin, pushing ever deeper, pushing towards where that buzz might be coming from. Through corridors and empty rooms, until finally he reached it, like the passenger part of an airplane, rows upon rows of seats filled with crumpled bodies pouring blood from wounds across their bodies, and only one, quiet buzzing telling him that somewhere, within this room, one person was alive.
All the bodies were children.
There were babies through the pre-teens, most no older than his own sons, basic seat belts having no hope at keeping them safe as the ship had nose dived into the desert, great bleeding wounds visible on their heads and faces from where they’d hit on collision, bodies had fallen out of the seats, and Mister Smith had to step over too many to count, too many to be comfortable. He felt like throwing up, the visage, the smell, the deep-seated loss he felt as he saw each face he passed by as still as the desert sand, and he knew it wasn’t just the chemicals that made his eyes water. How many children had been on board here? Why? Why weren’t they at home, with their parents? What had happened on Sixam for such a movement of children? Why risk all these innocent lives…?
He continued to follow the buzzing to the final row of seats, where it grew louder, but not stronger. There was no sign of life back here, just more dead bodies, except… except…
There, on the end, he could just about see it. A young boy, no older than Tank, with familiar green skin and blood-stained blonde hair. He looked as motionless as the rest, except… except, if you watched closely enough, he was breathing. He was breathing. The boy was alive!
Mister Smith made his way over to him as quickly as he could, placing a hand against the boy’s neck, feeling for the pulse, and his own heart skipped a beat as he felt it. There was no mistaking it. The crash had a survivor, injured and unconscious, but alive. Mister Smith placed his hand on the boys arm and started to try and unbuckle the seat belt. They had to get this child to the hospital, and fast. Who knew how much time the boy had?
Mister Smith made to scoop him up, and the child at last stirred, a whimper escaping from his lips as he tried to free himself from whatever had grabbed him, getting louder as he realised every movement hurt, and Mister Smith stopped, taking the boy’s hand in his own. ~*Do not panic, I am here to help*~ Mister Smith urged, and the child seemed to freeze, stuck between the world of consciousness and unconsciousness, trying to follow the voiced thoughts as Mister Smith had followed the buzzing. ~*You are injured, but I will get you to safety, I promise. You must trust me*~
The child’s whimpering quietened slightly, as he opened his eyes to look at Mister Smith, and he had to fight his own instinct to jump back in surprise. Those weren’t alien eyes staring back at him, but human eyes, emerald green and dull with pain, staring back at Mister Smith with a look of quiet desperation. This child… he had to be half alien, at least. Were the other children on the ship the same? What was going on here?
“M… My sister…” The boy whimpered in slurred Sixam, glancing over to his right. “Is… is she okay?”
Mister Smith felt his blood run cold, but he had to check for the boy, even though he knew he couldn’t feel the thoughts of the girl buzzing in his mind, knew it couldn’t be good. But… he wasn’t even sure if half aliens could always connect with the hivemind, he’d never thought to ask. So he followed the child’s eyes further along the row, to where a small girl, no older than Buck was, was laid unmoving in her own seat. She didn’t look alien at all, almost as if she’d been plucked straight out of a human nursery and placed in the seat, she could easily be as human as his wife was. He crawled over to her, placing a hand over her neck, and instantly felt shocked as he felt the pulse on her too. The children weren’t dead. They were alive. They were alive!
He turned from the young girl and glanced around the other children scattered across the rows. How many were still alive, but just not connected with the hive mind? He paused for a moment, trying to look for more breathing, until the agonised sobs of the boy snapped him back to the present. He had to get these children help. Here and now, with the ship steadily filling with noxious chemicals, he had to get the boy and his sister out. He could figure out the rest later.
Mister Smith unbuckled the girl and carried her over to her brother’s side, before trying to pick them both up in one fell swoop. The boy was heavy, not as much as Tank, heavier than Ripp, but he’d never tried to carry them and Buck together, and the positioning was awkward, the weight painful to lift, but he wasn’t going to back out now. He couldn’t leave them here another moment, not when he knew for certain they were alive. He had to get them out, had to drag Jenny’s brothers back in to help him with the rest, or at least get them to call for help. The girl was still unconscious, but the boy was sobbing quietly, his pain emanating through to Mister Smith’s conscious thoughts.
~*It is fine*~ He assured them as he made his way back through the corridors towards the entry hatch, trying his hardest not to slip on the floors, the children he was carrying were too precious to allow any further harm to come to them. ~*You are safe now. I will keep you safe. I will get you help.*~
The floors felt ever more impassable as the chemical smell grew stronger and stronger, and Mister Smith tried his hardest to hold his breath, not knowing how safe the leaking coolants and fuels were, but the strain was almost too much, and he couldn’t stop himself from dragging the chemicals into his lungs, each breath feeling more difficult than the last. When at last he found himself back by the entrance hatch, his feet slipped against the steep incline back to the open doorway, and he fought to not cough and lose his balance, each step hard fought for, but eventually he made it, made it outside, made it back out where the night sky was visible above him.
And the torch light shone at him from every angle.
“Stop there!” Came a yell, and Mister Smith froze, spluttering out a breath and trying to drag fresh air into his lungs. The bright lights were dazzling him, he could barely see anything at all. “Don’t move! Identify yourself!”
As his eyes adjusted, he spotted who was yelling at him, and his blood ran cold. They were surrounded on every side by army men, their guns trained on Mister Smith, and he was struggling not to sway with exhaustion as he held the children. The girl shifted in his arms, and the boy’s hands balled up in his shirt. Could they even speak simlish? Did they know what was going on?
“Please,” Mister Smith begged. “There are children on that ship. They need help…”
“Identify yourself!” The man yelled again, emphasising his gun, and Mister Smith winced. They weren’t just pointing that gun at him, but the two children too. Surely they wouldn’t shoot? Surely?
“You have to help them,” Mister Smith insisted. “They will die in there-“
“Identify yourself, alien! I won’t ask another time!” The man shouted, cocking his gun as Mister Smith dragged air through his teeth.
“Designation Pollination Technician number 9. Mister Smith on this planet. Please, the children-“
“Your spaceship passed through the protected airways above Division 47 Military and Science base, this is considered an act of war. You will stand down, drop all weapons and be brought to the base for questioning. Do you understand?”
A shiver ran up Mister Smith’s spine as he held the children tighter, a quiet whimper escaping from the girl, while the boy clutched him ever tighter, his breathy sobs trying to ground Mister Smith as the thought of military arrest threatened to overwhelm him. He couldn’t lose it here. Not here, not now.
“I am a resident of this planet,” Mister Smith insisted, “I am trying to help the crash survivors of that ship. Please, there may be children still alive. These children,” Mister Smith indicated the children he was holding, “Need urgent medical care. You must help them!”
“You will hand those bodies over and be brought in for questioning, do I make myself clear?” The man insisted.
“They are still alive! You have to help them!” Mister Smith insisted. Somewhere, a gun went off, loud, flying past Mister Smith yet close enough to make him gasp out in shock, clutching the children tighter to their pained protests.
“You will not receive another warning,” the man commanded, as military men in dark clothes swooped in, their own guns aimed at Mister Smith, and he fought to not back off in fright, to not give them a reason to shoot again. “You will obey, or you will be terminated, alien. What will you choose?”
Someone was shaking his arm as the dudes in black closed in, while Mister Smith struggled to not panic, to not freak out, to not fall once more into the blinding terror that was threatening to overwhelm him, but the shaking only got stronger until, at last, he heard his name being called, and followed his name and the shaking back into the waking world.
“Paul,” Jenny’s voice called out, sleepy and exhausted, and Mister Smith reached out for her, taking a hold of her arms, trying to steady his breathing as he let go of her and wrapped her up in a hug. “Are you alright?”
It had been a nightmare. One he’d had recurrently in the years since it had happened, but just a nightmare nonetheless. There weren’t soldiers pointing their guns at him, nor were there half alien children dying in his arms. Just Jenny, her half-asleep face filled with worry for him as she snuggled back into him.
“I am fine,” he lied, and knew she’d know it too. His heart was pounding in his chest, and where she lay, she’d hear it clear as day, if he wasn’t glowing in his panic too. He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I had a nightmare, but it is fine. You are all safe, and I am safe, and the nightmare was not real.”
It had been real at some point, but it repeating out loud that it was not actively happening right this second had always helped to calm him before, and he buried his face in Jenny’s hair, smelling her shampoo, clutching that sensation too to keep himself grounded. He was at home, in his bed, with his wife. His sons, his three wonderful sons, were asleep upstairs. He was safe. Everyone was safe.
He tentatively reached out to the hivemind, to that quiet little flame the boy’s own thoughts had lit years before, and that was still there too. Quiet, as always, but present. At the very least, the boy was still alive. He could take comfort in that too. The military hadn’t killed him.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Jenny asked, but the exhaustion in her voice told him that, despite what she might say, she didn’t really want to talk now, but just fall back asleep. He knew if he asked, she’d wake up properly and talk it over with him, but really, he didn’t want to. He wanted to hold her close, to smell her hair and listen to her breathing, and just remember that he was here.
“Maybe in the morning,” Mister Smith suggested, and Jenny nodded, snuggling into him more as he tightened his hold against her. Yes, he was safe, and they could talk in the morning, over breakfast, with the sunlight glowing off her beautiful face, and the world wouldn’t look quite so bad then. But now, in the pitch black bedroom, he didn’t want to relive it again. He’d relived it too many times already.