Alien Artifacts Read online

  The board room door hissed open.

  “Sir...”

  Drayson stared at his scotch glass, now on its side. Melting ice dripped off the table. “What the fuck is it, Milo?”

  “They’re here, sir.” Milodrag’s voice quivered. “Human Resources is here.”

  “Yes. We are.” Three figures in dark suits, silhouetted by the hallway lights, walked into the board room. All held tablets. Their vest pockets brimmed with pen-like tubes. One by one, they surrounded Drayson.

  “I’m Mr. Johnson, and I’ll be heading this impromptu performance review.” He withdrew one of the tubes. “Oh, and for the record: No, we do not like that type of language.”

  A thin needle popped from the end of the HR evaluator’s injector. It glimmered in the light above Drayson’s eye.

  “Now, shall we begin?”

  WEIRD IS THE NEW NORMAL

  Jacey Bedford

  Only two more nights at home. It was my last leave before shipping out for Russia. That’s probably why I felt the need to tidy the loose threads of my life before the big day; displacement activity to calm my nerves.

  I snuggled into bed, laptop balanced on my knee, and began archiving some long-forgotten photo scans to the cloud. Delving through the layers, I found a folder labelled “Glasto” that I’d not opened for the longest time. There was only one item in it, a picture of me and Jude at Glastonbury Festival fifteen years ago. A snapshot in time. I enlarged it on the screen. So young. We’d just finished exams. School was out for good and we were about to go our separate ways to different universities.

  It was the mud-baby year at Glasto. Yes, I know there have been several mud-baby years, but this was mine. You’d think all that mud would have made it miserable, but somehow it didn’t. The photo captured it perfectly.

  Jude and I stood grinning at the camera. Bin-bag chic in the rain. I wore mismatched blues: waterproof trousers and jacket with the hood pulled right down to my eyebrows. My feet were in cartoon-sized boots. Jude wore a black plastic bin-bag skirt over canvas crop pants and wellies, topped with an orange jacket that she’d borrowed from Beano.

  To our left a crew-cut kid in Day-Glo over-trousers was striding out towards the music with a grin on his face. To his left was a guy who looked like he was not from this planet—not unusual for Glasto, where weird was the new normal.

  Something clicked in my brain like a door opening. A shiver ran down my spine. Memory stirred. A series of images flashed through my head like pages from a flip-book. And in all of them: a small shard of glass.

  I still had it. I was sure I still had it—or did I?

  Surely I hadn’t thrown it out.

  I shoved the laptop to one side and swung my legs off the bed, opening the top drawer of my dresser. Everyone has a top drawer, don’t they? A repository for those things that you can’t throw out, but that don’t fit anywhere else. I rummaged amongst eyelash curlers, half-used lipsticks, a giant plastic paperclip, a monogrammed man’s handkerchief. Who even used handkerchiefs these days? And…there, right at the back, a slim piece of broken mirror on a chain.

  The tremor that had gripped my spine now extended upwards and made my scalp tingle. I ran a hand through my hair, cropped short to fit under a helmet.

  I reached for the shard. How had I forgotten it for so long? Why had I remembered now? Was what happened back then real? It might have been nothing more than a weird dream. I didn’t have any proof, not that would make sense to anyone.

  I touched the mirror, smooth as polished metal, warm as flesh, and remembered.

  You see, I was—still am—an alien abductee.

  * * *

  Glastonbury Festival: Thursday evening

  We lug stuff from the car to the festival camp. It’s been bucketing down for days. The ground is slippery with mud. We all pitch our tents together on a relatively firm patch of grass: mine, which I’m sharing with Jude, Beano’s little one, and Robert’s posh frame tent that he’s sharing with Mikey and Chris. Beano plants our home-made flag to mark our camp and help us remember where we parked in the ocean of brightly colored canvas.

  Friday evening.

  I’m jammed in the crowd about fifty feet back from the crash barrier in front of the big stage and there’s chest-heaving, heart-pounding drum and bass washing over me. I suddenly realize that I’m five-one and everyone else around me is massively tall, even Jude’s five-six. I can’t see out of the crowd. If I slip in the mud I’ll be under their feet, and I’m so small they won’t even know I’m there.

  I can’t breathe. Everything’s wobbly. I’m hot and cold all over, and I’ve got to get out. Now. So I squeeze Jude’s hand because I can’t make myself heard, and I try to worm my way to the edge of the crowd. Then everything starts to go black and my knees fold.

  The next thing I know I’m being lifted up bodily and passed hand to hand over people’s heads. It’s like flying with added grope. A burly bouncer grabs me at the edge and steadies me. He looks like a scary biker, but he’s kindness itself. I let him shepherd me to the first aid station and sit me down, shivering. Miracle of miracles, he’s got a dry blanket.

  Saturday daytime

  I sleep late and wake feeling groggy. The camp-ground looks like a refugee village after a typhoon. Jude is stoic in the rain. Beano is a bit too jolly. Robert has a hangover. Mikey is still drunk from last night. Chris is moaning that his hair has frizzed. It has, but it doesn’t really matter.

  We go on a shopping expedition around the traders’ village. In the far corner of a walk-in stall I spot a hanger full of shiny pendants, no two alike. I keep coming back to one that looks like a shard. It’s a mirror, but for some reason it distorts the image. I can see the canvas shell of the stall, festooned with pretty things, but it resolutely refuses to show me my own face.

  “Try it on,” the stallholder encourages me. He’s tall and dark brown with blond dreadlocks and amber eyes. A startling combination, not quite right somehow. When he smiles I instantly forget that.

  “Through there.” He points. “The light’s better.”

  I slip behind the draped Indian bedspread in the far corner. He’s right, the light is better. There’s white canvas above my head and a full length mirror.

  I open my coat and slip the pendant over my head. It nestles just above the low cut neck of my T-shirt and—despite its sharp, shard-like appearance—feels comfortable and looks great.

  There’s a triple flash from above. The shard catches it, bounces it to the full length mirror and back again. Lightning. It seems so close I expect thunder and start counting to see how far away the storm is. I glance up and back down again. In my peripheral vision I catch a reflection of me being taken by the hand and led away. That’s bonkers. I’m still here.

  I blink and everything is normal again.

  I emerge from behind the curtain to where Jude is waiting. The boys have gone on ahead.

  “Yes, please, I’ll take it,” I say to the stallholder, reaching for my purse.

  “Let me wrap it for you.”

  Reluctantly I take off the pendant and hand it to Mr. Amber-eyes with a five pound note. I’m not quite sure why I don’t want to let it go.

  He turns away to the cluttered counter, then turns back and hands me a small paper bag and my change. I thank him, clutch the bag to my chest, and follow Jude out of the tent. Despite the lightning flash, there’s no rain. And then I realize I never heard the thunder either.

  I tear open the bag, intending to put on the pendant, but it’s not the right one. It’s similar, but it’s not mine.

  I whirl around and dive back into the stall. I catch him just as he’s hanging up all the pendants again. “Hey, you gave me the wrong one.” I dangle the pendant he’s given me in one hand and rifle through the hanging pendants with the other. “Here’s mine.” Quickly I swap the pendants. “No, don’t waste another bag, I’ll wear it,” I say, and drop my pendant over my head, giving him no chance to protest. “Thanks.” I half-wave at
him as I depart into the Glastonbury afternoon.

  Saturday evening

  The rain is still sloshing down and everyone decides to head for the Pyramid Stage to see Sting and Radiohead.

  “You go,” I say to Jude. She offers to stay with me, but that’s not fair. She’s not come to Glasto to nursemaid a wimp. “I’ll be fine. I’m going to the traders’ village again. See you back at the camp after.”

  I watch her go, trailing after Beano who reaches a hand back for her and confirms my suspicions about them. That’s nice.

  “You are not going to the concert?”

  The words are very correctly spoken, but there’s an odd inflection to them. I turn. It’s the stallholder who sold me the pendant. He’s cute, if a little odd.

  “I can hear everything from the back of the field,” I say. “The crowd’s a bit—”

  “Too much like a crowd?”

  “Yeah.” I smile at him. “I had this thing yesterday night. Panic attack. Had to get rescued from the crush. I don’t want a repeat performance.”

  “I don’t blame you.” He smiles. “I’m John Doe.”

  “No.” I laugh.

  He looks puzzled.

  “No one’s ever called John Doe,” I say.

  He looks even more puzzled. I decide to skip over my obvious social blunder. “Ginny Hardcastle.”

  He still looks a bit puzzled.

  “That’s me,” I say. “Ginny Hardcastle.”

  “Oh!” He recovers quickly, but I briefly wonder if he’s on something. Then he reaches forward, picks up my left hand from my side with his left hand, shakes it twice then lets it go. What’s that all about?

  I guess I frown because he looks crestfallen.

  “Sorry.”

  He reaches forward with his right hand to my right and shakes again. There’s a moment of stunned silence and then I crack out laughing. So does he. His laugh is open and genuine, and I find myself liking him a lot.

  “Can I buy you a coffee,” he asks. “Or something stronger?”

  If he’s dealing, I’m not buying, but I don’t think that’s what he’s offering.

  “I’d love a hot chocolate.”

  “Hot chocolate.”

  He says it as if he’s not quite familiar with the term. There’s no sense of disappointment that I didn’t take him up on the offer of something stronger.

  “Mmmm. With whipped cream on top.”

  He turns and looks at the array of food stalls in mock bewilderment. At least I think it’s mock.

  “That one,” I say, and point him towards the hot drinks stand.

  He buys two identical drinks and hands one to me. The cream is mounded up over the side of the cup so the raindrops start to spatter on the top. I hold my hand over it to shelter it. He does the same. I take a cautious sip to see how hot it is. It’s hot, but not too hot.

  He follows my example, then puts his hand to his mouth as if surprised by the trickle of hot liquid through cold cream. He laughs, delighted, like a child experiencing something for the first time.

  We stand, sharing the comfort of the chocolate. I can’t feel the rain now, though other people are still scrunched under hooded jackets. I take the sheltering hand away from my chocolate and there is no more plink-plink of raindrops in my cream.

  “I think the rain’s stopping,” I say.

  “Rain?” He looks up and that’s when I realize what’s so odd about his appearance. It’s not just the blond dreads and weird eye color against Jamaica-dark skin. He’s completely dry. Not only dry, but mud-spatter-free like he and mud have fallen out with each other.

  “Have you been here before?” he asks.

  “Once.” I grimace at the sky. “It wasn’t wet like this.”

  “Wet?” he asks, as if he hadn’t noticed.

  I thrust out my arm and hold my hand palm upwards. Only the tips of my fingers get wet. Huh? Funny. I pull back my hand and look at it, puzzled. I take a tentative step forward. Rain drops plop into my chocolate. I step back. It’s raining where my hand is, but not where my body is. Not where John Doe is.

  “Well that’s the—”

  I’m going to say: Well that’s the strangest thing, but as I’m speaking I turn towards him and he’s gone. Just gone. I look around but I can’t see him walking away. How can someone so distinctive vanish so quickly? My foot catches on something and I look down to see his cup on the ground, the rapidly dissolving blob of cream being pounded by raindrops.

  Weird? You betcha! But this is Glasto, so I’m not going to lose sleep over it. I head towards the traders’ village, thinking to get out of the rain. I hear a band start up on the Pyramid Stage, but I’m not sure which one. I really want to see Radiohead and Sting so I plan to stand on the edge of the crowd later. I’ll be careful not to get hemmed in.

  There’s a very pretty skirt in the first stall I come to. I ask if I can try it on and the girl at the counter points me to a changing space behind another Indian bedspread. It’s gloomy and the mirror is speckled with age.

  “You want a light in there?” The girl asks, and an overhead bulb flares into life. My pendant catches the light, reflects in the mirror and suddenly I’m jostled from behind by someone. I turn and—it’s me—mismatched blues, outsize boots and everything.

  We stare at each other. “You’re me,” we say in unison, eyes goggling. Our hands reach for the pendant at our breasts except, mine is there, but hers isn’t.

  “You’ve got my pendant,” she says.

  “No, I’ve got my pendant. I bought it this afternoon.”

  “So did I.”

  “One person at a time in the changing room,” the assistant’s voice floats through. “Oh,” she says as she pokes her head round the curtain. “I didn’t realize you were twins. Neat trick. One of you comes out without the garment and starts chatting while the other slips out wearing it. Out, both of you, before I call site security.”

  I start to protest, but this is weird enough already. I hand her the skirt I’d been going to buy. My twin does the same. Now the girl has two identical skirts where before she only had one. Neat trick.

  My twin and I clasp hands and march out of her stall, heads high, neither of us happy about being called a potential shoplifter. We don’t look back to see if she’s noticed the skirts.

  “What’s this all about?” Again we say it together.

  I hold up my hand. “You first. What’s your name?”

  “Ginny Hardcastle.”

  “No,” I said. “What’s your name. Mine’s Ginny Hardcastle.”

  “That’s my name.”

  “Okay. Address?”

  “121, Fairfield Drive, Nottingham, NG4 5ST.”

  My address. Shit! What’s happening? We run through all the obvious things: phone number, school, parents’ names, best friends—our answers are identical. The only thing that isn’t identical is the shard pendant.

  “This afternoon,” I say, “when I was trying on the pendant...”

  “There was a triple flash of lightning,” she says.

  “And afterwards I thought I saw...”

  “Someone being led away who looked a lot like me.”

  “We need to see that amber-eyed weirdo,” we both say together.

  I go in first.

  John Doe is still open for business, sitting on a stool at the side of the counter. He leaps to his feet and smiles.

  “Ginny Hard Castle, I’m sorry for leaving so abruptly.”

  “Who are you and what did you put in my drink?” I ask. “Now that duplicate me is out of sight I’m beginning to wonder if I dreamt her up.”

  He looks puzzled. “Was the whipped cream not correct?”

  Other Ginny steps into the stall. I read shock in every line on his face.

  “It seems I have even more to apologize for,” he says. “Please, will you let me explain.”

  “Explain, then.”

  He drops the curtain across the front of the stall. I’d be worried, but there are
two of us now—at least I think there are.

  He leads the way out of the back of the stall where there is a kind of caravan. I say kind of because it’s more like a pod than a caravan. I don’t think it even has wheels. It’s shiny and—well—space-age.

  “I’m not from here,” he says.

  That much is obvious, more from his accent than from his color. He steps into the pod. I look at my twin. She nods and we follow him. Inside there’s a protrusion from one wall at chair height. As we enter, two more grow seamlessly.

  “Sit, please,” he says.

  We sit.

  He continues. “I’m from a place far, far away.”

  “Jamaica? Africa?” I guess.

  “Birmingham?” my twin asks.

  “Further than you can imagine.”

  “I can imagine pretty far.” We both say that together. We seem attuned to each other.

  “To know where I came from you would have to train in astronomy.” He looks up as though he can see through the roof. “Though, as yet, my homeworld is not even a speck on your strongest telescope.”

  “Yeah, right!”

  My spirits plunge. He’s a nutter and I’ve just been taken in by a pleasant smile and amber eyes. His hair’s obviously bleached. I wonder if the eye color is real. He might be wearing contacts.

  “You don’t believe me? Look up.”

  The light changes. The ceiling above us turns transparent, and it’s dry despite the rain. Behind broken clouds there’s a dark mass shaped like a long arrowhead. It’s simply hanging there, motionless, though the clouds are scudding along in a smart breeze.

  Err...

  I feel lightheaded. Colors ripple along the underside of the Thing, and then more clouds roll back to cover it. I look at him, wanting to see his face again for verification.

  My twin is doing exactly the same.