The aliens understood the greatest threat to humanity was itself. Intercepted transmissions from Earth, every sick, twisted thing we’d ever done to each other beamed in full HD, made it easy for them to turn us against each other.
My shoes squeak on the polished white floor. In fact, everything is white, clean, medical. The way nothing on Earth is anymore. My damp, ill-fitting Old Navy hand-me-downs scrounged off a corpse don’t goosebump my skin as the temperature is perfect, adapted to my needs. Or their needs for me.
Guards march to a room I know well. Inside sit Ceasar, the kid from Guadalajara, and John, the Canadian who played the concertina till they took it from him. He hummed the melodies for a time but has since fallen silent. The other humans are a mystery. Maybe I’ve seen them around camp, maybe not.
Two of their kind stand in front bordered by a massive mirror reflecting the white table where the humans sit—unchanged. The presenters, as they dub themselves, appear human, but they’re not. The eyes are too far apart, and when the mouths open enough, they reveal razor-sharp teeth like a miniaturized great white shark. Every feature is smoothed, rounded, aliened.
They seat me in the same chair as every other time. I blur my eyes a little and believe, for a moment, things are normal.
“Welcome,” says one dressed in an ill-fitting suit with a skinny tie. Strange. “We appreciate your cooperation in today’s focus group.” Cooperation is a strong word.
The other one, who presents female, affects a skinemax librarian aesthetic seen through scrambled lines on late-night basic cable. Memories of a bygone era. She sets a jar of pickles on the table; it gleams in the ambient light. My stomach jumps, the hunger ravenous as each day it grows stronger while my muscles decay. Skinny fingers find their way to the screw under my chair.
The female lets the razor teeth show. “We will show you a series of pictures. Please indicate on the pads how these make you feel. We will compare your answers to the neural sensor outputs from your implants, so answer with the truth.” My fingers twist the screw.
The first image on the alien iPad is a dinner plate. It’s a plate I grew up with. I can’t stop my mind from flashing to the sunlit kitchen. Our boxer puppy pawing the squeaky sliding glass door open. Mom is cooking dinner at the stove I burned my hand on when I was three. Dad…my brain stops the image. Reclaims the minute partition of my mind.
I click neutral; unaware of what the implant says. A twist of the screw.
The pictures continue: an ice cream popsicle, a mountain, a baby crying, and then a rusting Volvo in a redwood forest. My mind flickers to Dad in spattered sunlight in the coastal redwoods. I’m thirteen and pissed to be pulled away from the phone he made me leave home. Uncomfortable sweat moistens a shirt pulled tight over my pudgy belly. What I wouldn’t give to be overfed again. My eyes flick to the jar of pickles for the millionth time.
I click neutral and twist the screw.
A ballet dancer in front of the Taj Mahal, cowboy boots stuck in gum, red sunglasses, a painter’s pallet, barbwire subsumed by tree bark. All I see is the barbwire of the camp. The guards herding my mother and sister away, separating the men and women. My father’s desperate hands keeping us together. The dwindling campers, taken one by one to the white rooms, leaving behind others to fight over crumbs.
We taught the aliens too well. And when they gained access to the server farms, the massive treasure trove of every inner secret stolen by silicone valley and mined by their IT department. That’s when the numbers really dropped. And yet, for how much they learned about us, they still don’t get how weird it is to offer pickles. Like the way they look human but aren’t.
The picture changes, and Cesar groans. Each focus group helps them separate those still willing to fight from those who have given up. I can see it in my fellow camper’s eyes and broken shoulders. How their humanity has dwindled. Wiped clean; the way they want it.
A picture of my dad. But not my dad. The emaciated ghost of the man he became. Does the neural implant show sadness? Can they read a subtle spike in blood pressure? All I want is to be angry. However, the place where my anger was has been strip-mined by each visit to the white room. My stomach claws at my insides. I’m so hungry.
The picture switches to a concertina. John whimpers, not even a full-throated cry but a depressed murmur lacking emotion. His chair rolls back, and he staggers to the front of the room. A vacuum seal pops, and he ravages the pickle like he’s never eaten before. Shoving it into his mouth as tears stream down his face. The librarian embraces him, elongated fingers wrapping around his neck.
“Eyes on the screen,” says the suited man. A twist of the screw.
It takes less than a minute. John’s gone. The body’s the same, but not. It’s the eyes and those teeth; he’s one of them. Whispered rumors around the camp of nitrogen atmospheres. Science I don’t understand other than to know they need our bodies.
One by one, the people eat pickles till only Ceasar, and I remain. My stomach lurches, cries, begs. Just eat the pickle. End it. There’s nothing left. A final twist and the screw loosens into my fingers. Relief floods in. Please don’t let them see it on the implant readout.
Tense minutes.
Finally, the guards lead us back to camp. They assume they can break me. But they don’t know about the screw clutched tight in my fist. I’d rather die human than live alien.
