It's Probing Time

Flash Fiction #27

I was sitting at my desk on the forty-second floor of the National Insurance Company, staring at my screen when it happened. I know what you’re thinking: Taxes. I have to pay them, too.

A government emergency broadcast to seek shelter flashed on my useless phone. Great. No time to get anywhere. At thirty-three, this is how it ends, or worse, get abducted and probed? No insurance will cover that.

The streets were empty. Everything was quiet except for a constant, ear-ringing, pulsating whine from above, the sign of their arrival. Fido snored. Pugs – they’ll sleep through anything. I stared at the image. It was Roswell all over again. Only this time, there was no cover-up, no conspiracy, no Hangar 18. This was it. The great unifier. Courtesy of our very own Voyager.

They called it the clip that broke the world. Ten seconds of a blurry saucer turning a skyscraper into a concrete flesh ragout to the tune of the Brandenburg Concerto. Was it confirmed? Was it real? Everyone believed. What happened next won’t surprise you. The whole internet backbone, all communication lines went down, crashed by petabytes of our stupidity; total blackout.

DEFCON 1, locked and loaded, commands sent through HAM radios, plans as effective as a flea trying to scratch an imaginary itch on another flea’s butt. The top brass scampered off to their vaults, hiding behind beeping buttons and consoles, finger on the trigger. It’s our planet. Those bug-eyed eggheads can pry it from our cold, dead hands.

I peered into the grey morning sky at a big white cloud shaped like a spaceship looming above us, unmoving… Nope. It’s just a stupid cloud. There are no UFOs – excuse me – UAPs. I should’ve stayed in bed, called in sick, played some Fallout.

The building moaned and rumbled. Fido opened his eyes, huffed, got up, jumped on my lap and barked.

“It’s OK, buddy. Just a little tremor.”

The whine grew louder, blinds rattled, ceiling panels wobbled, and sparks flew. I dove under the desk with Fido. Cups, pens and keyboards clattered, neon lights shattered, and then it stopped. The whine was gone. In my panic, I had pictured the floor crumbling, as in the video, falling to my death, tumbling through the air, one of countless little specks, arms flailing, vacuumed up like candy by the beam of a silver saucer playing Bach.

The elevator door opened with a ding. I held my breath and crouched lower. They spoke in hushed voices. I couldn’t make out what they were saying or who they were. Were they even human? I didn’t dare to look. They came down the aisle, their footsteps crunching on the broken glass. Each crunch nearer than the last. I closed my eyes. If it’s them, please, let it be quick. Please… no probing, please.

“Caleb?” asked a woman.

I opened my eyes and exhaled.

“Alice? Ben?”

Fido snorted and bared his teeth.

Alice, my boss, looked at me with blue eyes from behind her designer glasses, standing tall in her diamond black Prada suit and matching shoes, her long auburn hair tied to a top knot, held in place by two crimson sticks that were pointier than they needed to be.

Next to her stood Ben from Accounting in his checkered maroon tweed jacket, elbow patches, beige corduroy trousers and cheap brown leather shoes, his baby blue shirt strained against his frame, and a bright striped mustard tie – a sartorial sin, a crime against humanity.

“Hey, Fido,” said Ben. He held a bento box, which struck me as odd, considering the whole world ending business, stuffing his freckled face with mayo maki rolls, grinning, rice dangling from his pouty lips, licking his sausage fingers clean.

Fido grunted what sounded like a “Sup” in reply.

“What are you doing? Why didn’t you evacuate?” asked Alice, glaring at Fido.

“Bet he was sleeping,” said Ben.

Fido grunted more gibberish.

I looked from Fido to maki-munching Ben to Alice when I heard a rhythmic, sucking sound coming from outside. Ben blinked. Alice said something, but all I could hear was that moist slurp. Moist – moist – moist, it went.

“We need to leave,” Alice repeated.

I turned towards the window, searching for the unearthly originator.

“Last one,” sighed Ben, popping a maki roll into his red-bearded mouth.

A soft thud. The windowpane shook.

“Did you hear that?”

Fido growled. That’s when I saw it, a reflection in her glasses. Something was moving outside the window, or more like the buildings seemed to move ever so slightly – a bit like the Predator, a gigantic, moist Predator tadpole. Ridiculous. Where did that come from?

“There!” I croaked, pointing at the camouflaged extraterrestrial vermin.

It was sliding along the pane. A second wriggling worm pressed itself against the glass with a wet smack. The air was crackling with static. Within seconds, the place would be swarming with slithering, slimy Predator Parasites.

“We’re trapped!”

It tends to impair one’s judgment for a little minute, holding on to our sorry butts, imagining imminent probing time. I didn’t notice Ben’s dilated pupils or the weird smell. Besides, he always smelled weird. Alice smelled like Alice, her blue eyes bluer than ever, blazing blue, or maybe I was imagining things. My mind was doing somersaults, trying to remove my ass from the probing equation.

Fido barked, Alice shouted, Ben threw his box, and the window burst. With a howl, Fido jumped into the fray, a blur of fur, ripping invisible PPs twice his size to shreds. Alice and Ben did their thing, too, but my brain couldn’t process what exactly, and with a flash, it was all over.

The video had been fake, created by PP-People, manipulative bastards. These Predator Parasites, a plague on both our planets, had hitched a ride back in 47 and spread ever since, a mistake Alice and Ben and their kind sought to correct, one that nearly got them and all of us killed.

They had come in peace.

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