Making the Galaxy Great

Grace’s office, inside the hive of fabric cubicle panels surrounding the altar, was furnished with a motley collection of secondhand furniture: a metal desk, one tall file cabinet and two side chairs, as well as Grace’s desk chair. The latter looked as though it had come from a 1930s-era factory — from one of those offices that overlooked the factory floor.

Jason sat in one of the side chairs, next to D’roya. The receptionist, Tina, stood next to Grace.

“Okay,” Grace began. “Here’s the deal. I don’t know if you’re working with those assholes at Area 69 or not, but you have to swear that you won’t breathe a word of this to them.”

“Or?” asked Jason.

Tina reached into one of the file cabinets behind Grace’s desk and pulled out an item that appeared to be a small flashlight wrapped in aluminum foil and pointed it at him. There was no trigger, but there seemed to be a button on the grip.

Jason sat up straight. “What, you’re going to shoot me? Is that one of those pulser guns?”

Tina glared at Jason. “The needs of the many outweigh–”

“The needs of the few, or the one,” Jason interjected impatiently. “I saw the movie, too.”

“We love your movies and TV,” said Tina. “Especially science fiction.”

“We?”

“Tina is Yrrean also,” said Grace.

“What? But she looks—”

“She’s had some surgery,” Grace admitted.

Jason’s head was about to explode with all the world-changing information that had bombarded his brain in the last few days. He stared at his feet for a moment, trying to regain his composure, and some sense of perspective.

“And by the way,” said Tina, “this is not a pulser. It’s called a rinjot, which means, approximately, stop action. It just paralyzes you for a few minutes. Like setting a phaser on stun.”

“Wow, big Star Trek fan, are you?” Jason muttered. He clamped his hands on his head as if trying to hold it together. “I’m totally confused. What are two Yrreans doing in a women’s shelter?”

“There are seven of us here,” said Tina. “We’re refugees.”

“And many more of us on Earth,” offered D’roya. “Hundreds.”

Jason saw both Grace and Tina flinch when D’roya dropped this info-bomb.

“Hundreds? What are you talking about? Refugees from what? And how come you sound like an alien and she — or they, whatever pronoun you liked — doesn’t?”

“Vocal implant,” Tina said. “And we don’t have pronouns in our language, so take your pick. And try to focus your brain, on the actual topic, dickhead.” For an alien, she had an impressive command of English profanity.

Grace sighed, clearly impatient with both Jason and Tina. “To answer your question, Mr. Fleming, these refugees have come from Dalus because they are literally starving to death back on their home world.”

She paused to let that sink in.

“There are only two livable areas on Dalus,” Tina elaborated. “Both are small, both are overpopulated. But ours is even smaller than the Haku’s. In between there’s a bigass desert. There are the oceans; but we don’t have many edible aquatic animals.”

Jason took a deep breath while his brain caught up. “Okay, so you’re running out of land as well as food. Our government knows this, right? So why don’t you talk to them, make a deal — land for technology? Unless . . . you’re trying to secretly take over Earth?”

“No!” said Tina and D’roya in unison.

“You have so much space here,” said D’roya. “So much food. We just want . . . a little. We have technology that could increase your crop yields. Maybe triple them. And we could show you how to use far fewer resources to grow your food. We have learned to live on less and less land over the centuries.”

Jason shook his head. “Well, that sounds great. So again: why not just talk to our government?”

“Are you shitting me?” said Tina. “Your government, and the other governments that know about us, have big fat poles up their asses about keeping us a secret. And our technology, too. They think you people aren’t ready for immigrants from other planets. And I gotta say, I’ve seen how you get your undies in a bunch about human beings trying to move from one country to another, so maybe they’re right.”

“You have a point there,” Jason admitted. “But since you have all sorts of cool tech, and you could help us feed more people. . . Maybe I could talk to somebody at Area 69. You know, on the down low.” He realized he only knew three people at Area 69 and the only one who seemed approachable was Michael, who probably had no influence whatsoever.

“Absolutely not,” said Grace. “If you do, I’ll find a real gun and shoot you myself. If those fascists knew about Tina and D’roya and the others, they’d round them up like cattle. They’ve been guarding their secrets for decades and they’re not going to stop because you ask them. Unless you’re a Cabinet member or something.”

“So what exactly are you wanting me to do?” said Jason. He wanted to know all about the Yrreans, but he also wanted to know if he was going to walk out of the Oasis Mission in one piece.

“Nothing.” said Grace cooly. “Just keep quiet. Don’t say or do anything.”

“Telling, not asking,” added Tina, fingering the rinjot. Jason winced. He’d already been shot once this week; he wasn’t eager to be ‘temporarily paralyzed’ by another type of alien weapon.

Grace tossed an irritated frown Tina’s way. “At some point, the truth will have to come out, obviously. But until then, we’re just trying to get as many refugees safely placed as we can.”

Safely placed?

“So, they’re still coming? More of you?”

Grace and Tina exchanged worried glances. Then Grace lowered her voice. “Every few days, Yrrean cargo vessels arrive at Area 69 and a few other facilities to load up with food and offload whatever they’re currently trading. But before the cargo ships coming here drop out of orbit, shuttles slip down and drop off groups of refugees.”

“Just here? Just the U.S.?”

“You have the most room and the most food,” said Tina. “Plus, we have a network of shelters and safe houses all over the midwest and our people meet them and take them there safely.”

“Like the underground railroad,” muttered Jason. “Except it’s coming from way above ground.” He was almost numb with amazement. It wasn’t enough that aliens really existed, or that they had been consorting with humans for decades. Now it turned out they wanted to move in next door.

“How can you hide that many, um, aliens? I mean, you can’t wear hoodies all the time.”

“We have some help with that, at least in this location. One of our refugees here is an Yrrean surgeon—”

“The one who worked on you?” Jason asked, glancing toward Tina.

Grace nodded. “Most don’t go as far as Tina. Just some hair and a little work around the eyes. D’roya is going in on Tuesday.”

For a couple of minutes, or perhaps longer, Jason sat with his hands in his lap, simply trying to process and catalog all of the flotsam and jetsam of the new reality that was lapping through his brain. Grace and her alien friends waited expectantly.

Finally, Jason stood up. “All right. I’m just going to pretend I never saw anything unusual here and never had this conversation. And I’m going to go home and drink heavily.”