Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments Read Online Free

Are those the choices?
    If I remember right, the humans in the Matrix movies hide in caves to escape the machines, but their city is annihilated and they are nearly wiped out. That’s an ending I want to avoid. Okay, it’s just a movie, but hiding seems wrong to me.
    My friends and I thought the aliens were too strong and we had no choice but to be slaves in order to survive. But then Betty walked up to one of the aliens and slapped him.
Crack!
Right across the face. A beautiful sound. He killed her, but for a second she blocked him — actually blocked him. And that’s when we knew: the aliens aren’t invincible. Awesomely powerful, yes. Invincible, no. It’s the kind of difference that makes fighting possible.
    They’re not too strong to fight.
    At first I think someone else says this, but then I realize it’s me. Mindspeak. It just slips out. A couple hundred eyes turn toward me. I probably have that deer-caught-in-headlights look, but I know I have to say something.
    “My friends and I fought them. We escaped from them. They’re not all-powerful. They can be defeated.” I try to hide my doubt. I don’t think I’m all that successful.
    But I know more. A secret. Something that a friendly Sanginian — there is such a thing, if you can believe that — told me and Catlin and Lauren. Something that not even Running Bird or Doc could know. More aliens are coming. Settlers out there in ships are on their way to Earth right now. And if we’re huddled in caves waiting to get strong enough to fight aliens, we’ll most likely never be strong enough because they will fill the planet. I almost say this. Almost. But I stop myself because it feels overwhelming, like telling this crowd about the aliens will be like telling them to give up. Might as well hide in caves and live out the rest of our miserable lives and give up Earth. I can’t accept that. I won’t.
    “This meeting isn’t about staying or running,” Doc says. He lets his eyes rest on Dylan a second before going on. “There will be time for that. This meeting is about understanding we’re a new country, all of us. We are New America.”
    “Every meeting is about staying or running,” Dylan says.
    Father and son glare at each other, the resemblance clearer than ever. Then an image appears in my mind. It’s Dylan and his father in a tent lit by a lamp. Dylan is looking down at his father, who’s on a cot or something. And Dylan is trying to look sad, but he doesn’t
feel
sad. He feels almost . . . happy. He does feel happy.
    The image disappears but leaves me feeling confused and a little freaked. It’s like that vision of me fighting the alien in Taos. It feels like more than just my admittedly overactive imagination. It feels real. But it can’t be. I’m so tired. I need to sleep. Maybe I just need sleep.
    “We will vote on the creation of New America,” Doc says, ignoring his son.
    Some people want more discussion, though, and so they go around and around again for another fifteen or twenty minutes.
    At last they vote. New America wins by a narrow majority. I wonder if it was this way when old America, those struggling colonies, decided they were a country. Here in the rebel camp, people celebrate. A few people slap me and Lauren and Catlin on the back, welcoming us into New America. The truth is, I don’t feel so much happy as relieved. We don’t have to leave.
    I’m about to head back to camp with Lauren, Catlin, and the other newbies, Zack and Zelda. But before I manage to work my way out of the crowd, Doc summons me with mindspeak. Now what?
    “You guys go on,” I say to my friends.
    Catlin looks at me funny, like she’s worried about me. For just a second I wonder if she saw what I saw, the daydream or whatever it was of Doc and Dylan. But I know she didn’t. Lauren just shrugs, says, “See you back at camp,” and leads Zelda and Zack back down the trail. Catlin is the last to go.
    I head back over to the platform, where Doc,