Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments Read Online Free Page A

Running Bird, and another man are waiting for me.
    It turns out my shield wasn’t quite as effective as I’d hoped, because Doc heard me thinking about what the Sanginian smuggler told us back in Austin.
    “How many settlers?” Doc asks.
    I don’t bother pretending I’m confused by the question. “He said thirty million would be here soon.”
    “Thirty million,” Running Bird says like he’s cursing.
    “Then all is lost,” the third man says. He’s fair skinned, but he gets even paler. “We can’t fight thirty million.”
    “He told me — the smuggler,” I say when I see their questioning expressions. “This alien smuggler. He said it wasn’t, you know, inevitable. The aliens might not settle here if they had a reason not to.”
    There isn’t any big sigh of relief over this minute possibility from Doc, Running Bird, or the third man. No one says, “Well, that changes things, doesn’t it?” The third man, who Doc introduces as Robert Penderson, says, “I don’t understand. They’re already here. What would keep more from coming?”
    “I don’t know,” I admit.
    “The Chosen One is right,” Running Bird says. “We cannot fight thirty million, but maybe we can fight however many thousands are here and keep the thirty million from coming. Maybe we can do that. The spirit in the boy speaks from the depths of the prophecy.”
    Depths of the prophecy? Does anyone ever say stuff like that? Running Bird does, I guess.
    “It came from the mouth of an alien, not from the depths of any prophecy,” I say.
    “But it isn’t the alien who delivers this message to us. It is you,” Running Bird insists.
    “Catlin or Lauren could have told you the same thing,” I point out.
    “But
you
told us.”
    “Because Doc called me back.”
    “It is written, and what is written will be.”
    “What’s that even mean? Written where? By who?” I know I sound angry and confused, but that’s because I’m, well, angry and confused.
    “It means everything is written down in the Big Book. All that has happened, is happening, and will happen is already written.”
    “In the Big Book,” I say. “What big book?”
    “
The
Big Book.”
    “That clears things up. Thanks.”
    “We have existed, exist, will exist. It’s just an illusion that moments come and go, that there is a past separate from the present separate from the future. That people are born, then live, then die. All of that is going on all the time — past, present, and future. We just can’t see it. Clearer?”
    Doc and Robert Penderson look like this is not the first time they’ve heard Running Bird talk like this, but that they wish maybe it was. I wonder what my mother would have said to him. I wish she were here. I wish that a lot.
    “Why don’t you just take a look in the Big Book, then?” I say. “You’ll see I’m not this Chosen One.”
    “Doesn’t work that way. Only the Creator can look at the Big Book. We mortals sometimes, if we’re very, very lucky, get glimpses. Even other gods, like the Warrior, don’t get much of a look. The Creator is stingy that way.”
    “Wait,” I say, trying to smile dismissively. “Are you saying you think I might be infected with the spirit of a
god
?”
    “Not infected,” Running Bird says, sounding offended. “Blessed.”
    I’m saved from having to discuss my infection/blessing further by Robert Penderson, who starts muttering, “Thirty million. Thirty million coming.”
    “We’ll find a way, Robert,” Doc says, placing a hand on the guy’s shoulder.
    “Meanwhile,” Doc says to me, “keep this to yourself, Jesse. People are already panicked enough. We don’t want to make them worse.”
    “Lauren and Catlin know,” I remind him.
    “Tell them to tell no one.”
    As I walk up toward our campsite through the thick, dark woods, I think,
All of it is right here and right now — the past, the present, and the future.
All of it? How can that be? My mother would give a clear grammatical