Thursday, December 20, 2012

Quiir


July 31st, 2023
Just some random thoughts…
            Before the B’quiiri came, everyone talked about alien invasion like it was a plague. Movies and TV shows were made about all different kinds of aliens, each kind with their own purpose (like that old show Doctor Who), but all of whom were bent on either enslaving or destroying Earth. I don’t know where the stereotype came from, since we hadn’t previously had contact with any extraterrestrial civilization. But the B’quiiri shattered our preconceived notions about aliens and made us wonder why we’d endorsed those scary movies in the first place.
            Maybe one reason they weren’t as intimidating as we had been prepared for was the fact that they were no more “advanced” a civilization than we were (they too had just made the upgrade from cell phones to telecoms, although they used different names). Both of our races had been exploring space for some time, searching for “other life.” They just happened to stumble across us before we found them.
            It was a pretty big deal, that first contact at the edge of the solar system. NASA’s people had been on their way back from another fruitless expedition to Neptune when suddenly this other vehicle appeared on their sensors. Since the voyage had been streaming live to every viewer with a TV or access to the internet, there was no covering it up or pretending that other ship wasn’t there. Of course, the world basically went into panic—unnecessarily, we found out later. Although, I think the panic would have been greater had they not been humanoid. Sure they have blue skin and weird noses, but other than that they look pretty normal, at least from what I’ve seen in the news.
            Anyway, I guess the reason this stuff is on my mind is that today’s headline was “MERRITT ISLAND BREAKS GROUND ON SPACEPORT.” I guess it’s actually happening. Washington D.C. and NASA have been talking for awhile about building a spaceport that would facilitate visits from the B’quiiri (and maybe even allow us to visit them! civilians, I mean…obviously NASA’s already sent people there). This is so exciting! Something tells me I’m going to see a lot of change in my lifetime. Who knows…maybe by the time I’m a grandma I’ll have even travelled to Quiir myself!

            I turned off my grandma’s old tablet and smiled at the irony. She hadn’t been there yet, but she was only 62…plenty young enough for an interstellar journey if she didn’t wait too much longer. She was right about one thing: she had seen an enormous amount of change since writing this. I think the spaceport opened in 2026 (long before I was born), and my mom got a job there as an intern when she was only 16, which was 2044. By that time the B’quiiri were making regular visits as tourists, and some of them liked it so much they decided to stay. I was born four years later, and since my jerk of a dad had left my mom when she got pregnant, I basically grew up in the spaceport, surrounded by the pale blue, cat-nosed people.
            When I was 16 I made a B’quiiri friend. His name was Eyqre (“Acre”), and he and his parents had come for a week-long vacation, just to see what the fuss was about. By this time I had the same internship my mom had when she was my age, and I relished showing new arrivals around (and trying not to laugh at their confusion). Technically, I wasn’t supposed to give the tours, but my mom was in management and she knew I could handle myself. After all, I had practically been raised in the place.
            After Eyqre and his parents had been fitted with aud-loquits to eliminate the language barrier, I took them to the screening room. Film screening, I should say, not medical. They joined the 20-some other B’quiiri waiting to see the 15-minute “Earth orientation” documentary. I went to the control panel and started the film. “Welcome to Earth,” the soothing female voice began. I walked to the back of the darkened room and leaned against the wall. I usually tuned out during the movie…I think I could have recited it word-for-word.
            You’d think we would have a medical screening for visitors to the planet, but that was one thing the Quiir government had insisted on—no scientific testing of any kind. They did let NASA run one B’quiir through a couple harmless machines back in the 20s, just to prove that they weren’t carrying any terrible diseases or anything. They passed to NASA’s satisfaction, but the scientific community was kind of miffed that they couldn’t properly examine this new species.
            Years later, when the two planets were in talks about allowing civilian visits, a bunch of scientists somehow convinced the government that humans and B’quiiri mingling would be dangerous since we hadn’t studied them thoroughly. And so, with some arm-pulling (and rumors of politicians being paid off), the “No-Contact” statute was issued. No human was allowed to have any direct physical contact with a B’quiir, and vice versa. Some conspiracy theorists were convinced that the scientific community had suggested the statute because they were sure it couldn’t be kept, and when a B’quiir slipped up they’d be ready with handcuffs and needles. Whatever the actual reason, the statute turned out to be a good idea, as we’d learned over time from a few accidents that touching them set off our soma-scanners. I guess since the devices came with standard programming that predated the B’quiiri’s first visit, even skin-to-skin contact with something so foreign set them beeping. A low alert, but still annoying. The B’quiiri had since taken to wearing long gloves whenever they visited Earth, and I swear sometimes I saw them rolling their eyes as they pulled them over their six-fingered hands.
            I absentmindedly tapped a rhythm on my soma-scanner, embedded in the back of my left hand. Click ca-lick click click ca-lick click click. The familiar “Thank you, and enjoy your visit here” roused me from my musings. I gave the rest of the tour and ended at the door that led outside. With their silver eyes wide, the visitors filed out quietly. Before his family got to the door, Eyqre—although I didn’t know his name then—detached himself from the crowd and approached me.
            “Hello.” He said it slowly, still adjusting to the mental influence of the aud-loquit.
            “Hi,” I said cheerfully. “Did you enjoy the tour?”
            “Very much,” he said, smiling. “Are there really almost 8 billion people on this planet?”
            “Yep, and that number just increased by about–” I looked around him at the dissipating group, “30.”
            He chuckled. “Well, I hope the Earth likes me.”
            “You seem polite,” I replied. “What’s not to like?”
            He smiled, and then his mother called him. “Goodbye Miss–” he looked at my nametag, “Miriam.”
            “Bye,” I said, waving as they went out the door.
            A few days later, Eyqre came back to the spaceport and introduced himself properly. He told me that his parents were having a blast, but that they weren’t paying him much attention and that he was lonely. He apologized for being upfront about it, but told me that I was the friendliest human he’d met thus far and that his favorite experience on the planet had been my tour. If he had been human, I would’ve called it flirting, but he was too new to the planet and awkward to flirt. Turns out he just needed a friend. On my lunch break we took a train to Orlando and I gave him a proper tour. We enjoyed ourselves so much that we decided to do it again, and for the rest of the week I spent my lunch breaks with him. We went to the Wildlife Refuge and the Space Center—ironic, I know, but he wanted to see the human perspective on space—and on our last day before he and his family departed, we stayed at the spaceport, eating PB&J (which he couldn’t get enough of) and talking about our different races and how oddly similar we really were.
            I missed him after he left, but then they came again about a month later. After a third and fourth visit his parents liked it so much that they decided to move to Earth, and Eyqre enrolled in my high school. They weren’t the first B’quiiri family to move to Earth, but Eyqre was the first at my school. Eventually he learned to ignore the stares, but on more than one occasion he assured me that he would never have survived if not for me. That always made me smile.
            I helped him acclimate to the culture as best as I could, and we always did our homework together. Come to think of it, we did just about everything together. We became inseparable, and I’m sure everyone at school thought we were dating. We knew better, though, and sort of laughed at everyone else for not realizing that we simply enjoyed each other’s company. Ok I’ll admit, maybe there was a deeper attraction between us, but it was mutually understood that nothing could ever come of it.
            But then one day, he kissed me.
            It happened the spring I was 17, 10 months after they had moved to Earth. We were at a park near my house, sitting in the grass with our backs against a wide tree, pouring over our Algebra 2. He had just explained to me for the umpteenth time what a logarithm was (culture was my area of expertise, math and science not so much), and then we were silent for a few seconds. Then he looked at me with a non-math-related spark in his silver eyes.
            “Miriam?”
            “Yeah?”
            “Do you ever think­–” he trailed off.
            “Yeah?”
            “I wish…” And then he just leaned over and kissed me. Just like that. He took me by surprise, but I didn’t pull away.
            Then my scanner started screaming. I jerked my head away and swore, wishing there were a way to silence it. I examined the device. ‘ALERT LEVEL 5: FOREIGN CONTAMINANT’ was blinking at me in angry yellow lights as the thing continued to blare its alarm.
            “Crap,” I said. “Now the nearest hospital is going to think I’m dying or something.” I turned to Eyqre, and saw his face had gone pale. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I’m sure it's fine. This thing just doesn’t recognize B’quiiri DNA.”
            “Miriam,” he said fearfully. “The statute.”
            I blinked. I had entirely failed to realize that he had just committed a serious crime. “Oh crap,” I repeated. The scanner had finally gone silent, and we just stared at each other for a second, thinking through the implications of what had just occurred.
            “What if we just pretend this never happened?” I asked. “I won’t tell anyone.”
            “But that thing sends a signal to a hospital, right? Someone nearby knows something’s wrong.”
            I bit my lip. “Uh, ok. I’ll, uh, go home and gargle something really strong and then when the paramedics show up I can just claim this thing malfunctioned.”
            “Do you think that’ll work?”
            “Got any other ideas?”
            He shrugged.
            “Then it has to work. We might as well try. If you end up in prison who’ll help me with math?”
            That got a small smile out of him.
            But it wasn’t the paramedics that showed up at my door. It was two men in black suits. They questioned me about being in contact with a B’quiir, and I lied through the whole conversation. When they found out I worked at the spaceport they relaxed a little, but I still felt like they were just waiting for me to slip up and give Eyqre away. They questioned my mom, too, who appeared completely oblivious, but I had a funny feeling she had worked out what had happened. As soon as they left I ran up to my room, trying to hold in the tears. Eyqre wasn’t safe. Even though the men were gone, I knew they wouldn’t be content until they dug deeper.
            I called him on his telecom. He knew my voice well enough to hear the tears in it.
            “Miriam? What’s wrong? Did the paramedics come?”
            I told him about the men in suits and that I was sure they would find out which B’quiir I kept company with. I’m sure they could find out where I went to school, and anyone there would tell them what they wanted to know.
            He was silent for a minute. Then he sighed. “Miriam, I’m so sorry.”
            “Sorry?” I sniffed. “What for? It–” I took a shaky breath. “It wasn’t your fault.”
            “Not my fault?” He actually chuckled. “I’m the one that broke the statute.”
            “Well…” I couldn’t come up with a satisfactory reply. “I’m still not going to let them do anything to you.”
            “How do you plan to stop them?” he asked. I could hear the smile in his voice.
            “How are you so calm?” I said rather angrily, avoiding his question.
            He drew a long breath. “I’m not. I’m scared stiff. But smiling makes everything seem like it’ll be ok.”
            I shook my head. I couldn’t decide whether his approach was genius or stupid. After a moment I said, “You know they’ll probably be at your door by tomorrow morning. Evening at the latest. We have to do something before then.”
            “Like what?”
            “Like…” I took a deep breath and said the first thing that popped into my head. “Like run away.”
            “What??”
            “I don’t know…it’s the only thing I can think of. Do you have a better idea?”
            He sighed again. “What if…” he paused, and I knew I wouldn’t like whatever he was going to say. “What if I just own up and pay for my crime?”
            “No,” I said. The thought of Eyqre locked up for who knows how long threatened to bring back the tears. “No.” I knew a lot of scientists had been itching to get their hands on a B’quiir to really study for years. This might be just the excuse they needed to make some wild claim like he belonged to the government as a criminal against Earth or something. Maybe the conspiracy theorists were right. I’m not sure if our two races had set boundaries for any kind of diplomatic immunity yet.
            I wasn’t about to reveal the extent of my paranoia to Eyqre, but I had to convince him not to turn himself in. “Eyqre, I’m not sure they would just put you in prison. They might find an excuse to make it even worse for you. Not everyone in the world is as keen on your race as we are.”
            He was silent for a minute. “You really think running away would be better?”
            I had him on my side. “What other choice do we have?”
            Silence again. Then, “Well, I guess you’re the expert. I trust you.”
            I smiled.
            That night we left our homes, with one bag each and no destination in mind other than the west coast, where quite a few B’quiiri families had chosen to settle, and where—we hoped—no one would think to look for us. I left a note for my mom, with a postscript asking her to burn it. Writing it was hard. But Eyqre needed me, and Mom didn’t. I shut my mom out of my mind so I wouldn’t cry, but I also tried not to think about what my school friends would think, or when I would see the spaceport again, or how the heck two teens on the run would survive for long. We would figure out all that stuff later. For now we just had to leave. Eyqre left a note for his parents too, telling them that some people might come around asking questions, assuring them that he was all right, and apologizing over and over. We left our telecoms behind, figuring they could be used to track us. A few days into our journey, I began to suspect that my scanner might send out information to more places than hospitals, so Eyqre, as gently as he could, cut it out with his pocketknife. It hurt like anything, but his presence was calming, and he bandaged my bloody hand afterwards.
            When he kissed me again, I told myself the pain had been worth it. 

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