Arrival Read Online Free Page B

working, but it was just this lame ‘Welcome to Phoenix’ movie playing on a loop. The camera followed a way-too-perfect-looking man and woman around the town as they smiled and waved and gushed about how amazing and wonderful and environmentally friendly everything was.
    I watched the rest of the video, then waited for the next loop and watched the whole thing through again. Apart from the overly enthusiastic hosts (seriously, no-one is that excited about water filtration), there was no sign of anything weird going on in the town.
    Of course not. The whole point of this movie was to show that Phoenix was normal. Better than normal.
    There was a game console sitting on top of the TV cabinet. I thought again about doing some homework, but decided to go easy on myself. First day of school and all that. So I sat on my bed playing video games until about 7.30 p.m., when Mum finally got home.
    â€˜Luke! Dinner!’
    I went downstairs and found her walking into the lounge room with a stack of papers in one hand and a pizza box in the other.
    â€˜Sorry I’m so late,’ she said, putting them down on the coffee table and collapsing onto a couch. ‘Wall-to-wall orientation meetings all day. It was four-thirty before they even showed me to my office.’
    Mum’s a human resources manager. Basically, her work involves getting paid through the nose by some huge company or other to figure out how they can get the most out of their employees for the least amount of money.
    â€˜No worries,’ I said, barely hearing her. Mum’s been apologising for staying back late at work for as long as I can remember.
    â€˜I’ll shop tomorrow,’ Mum yawned. ‘At least enough to cook you a proper dinner.’
    â€˜Right,’ I said, knowing she wouldn’t. Dad had always been in charge of the cooking at home, and there’d been a pretty disgusting drop in the amount of real food we ate since he moved out.
    â€˜How was school?’
    â€˜All right,’ I said, grabbing a slice of pizza and sitting down on one of the other couches, still feeling like a stranger in my own house. My mind flashed to the USB sitting upstairs on my desk, but I didn’t really see any point in telling Mum about it. ‘The phones are still down,’ I added.
    Mum nodded. ‘It’s the same all over town. I spoke to my boss about it. Apparently they’ve been offline for almost a month now.’
    â€˜Huh?’ I looked up from my pizza. ‘Seriously?
    What’s taking so long?’
    â€˜She didn’t say,’ Mum said with a shrug. ‘But Phoenix is a small town, and fairly isolated. And don’t forget, this whole place was built from the ground up less than a year ago. There were bound to be a few hiccups along the way.’
    â€˜A month with no phones? You call that a hiccup?’
    â€˜What do you want me to call it? Obviously it’s not ideal, but they’ll sort it all out soon enough. And in the meantime, the intranet is still up and running. So, really, it’s not such a huge problem.’
    Of course not. Unless your father is hundreds of kilometres away and completely unreachable.
    I didn’t say it out loud, but I must have pulled a face because Mum shot me a concerned look and said, ‘What’s wrong?’
    â€˜Nothing,’ I muttered, not at all interested in getting into another conversation about her and Dad.
    I went straight back upstairs after dinner, made a vague attempt at getting onto my homework again, and then decided to go to bed instead.
    I was just on the brink of sleep when I heard something beeping from across the room. I staggered over to my laptop, still sitting open on the desk. A white envelope was blinking in the corner of the screen. A reply to my email.
    I clicked on the envelope and the message popped up on my screen.
    sorry mate no idea what this is – the file looks like it’s been corrupted
    the only J.B.