She decided to slip it in the mail before she went to sleep, despite the fact that it had started raining. As she put up the mail flag and slammed the little aluminum door shut, she caught a flash of something out of the corner of her eye. She looked over into a yard across the street, a house that had been uninhabited for months, adorned with brush and bramble that made the property look feral. She thought she saw something move behind the house, as though the light of the moon had flashed off a bright, reflective surface, and then it ducked behind the unkempt brush in that house’s yard.
She gasped, eyes on the dark yard of the empty house, her fingers starting to go numb from the rain and the cool, damp air. It had been such a long, strange day that Cora was prepared to believe anything. She edged toward the brush, beginning to shiver.
“Hello?” she breathed, stopping in the middle of the street.
Nothing.
She gasped as a pair of headlights abruptly rounded the corner, driving far too fast for any residential neighborhood, and she hopped back onto the sidewalk as it zoomed past. Her eyes were now burned from the bright lights, hardly able to see in the darkness. By the time her eyes started to adjust again, she could detect no movement near the house, just light from the streetlamps reflecting off the rain droplets.
She stepped away from the brush, not willing to entertain the ideas that were sprouting in her mind. Whatever she had seen, it was only her subconscious reacting to an unusually stressful day. A big white cat or something. There couldn’t be any meteor-related beings in the suburbs, snooping around here looking for Nils, because there was no way her luck was that bad. Right?
There was.
Hello, Friends and Strangers,
With regard to the “meteor” event that occurred on September 20 at 1:13 PDT, I wish I had more for you—the document below reveals little more than what we already knew, plus more code names. “Meteor” event number two they are code-naming Obelus. At least they’re keeping it in theme.
Denial is always the first response to upheaval, to any collective trauma, and if these leaks eventually reveal themselves to be legitimate, the revelation of First Contact will be traumatic. Proof positive that we are not alone. Proof positive that authorities do not trust us with this knowledge. Proof positive that authorities cannot be trusted.
I need to impress that this goes beyond injustice, that the biggest cover-up in human history is a crime against all of us. Truth is not freely given in our society; it must be taken. Where walls are built, tear them down. Where borders are drawn, erase the line. Where you see wax, break the seal.
Truth is a human right.
Ortega, Nils. “Obelus.” The Broken Seal. September 21, 2007.
4
The scuffling in the computer room didn’t wake her up; she’d been awake for hours. She’d been trying to clear her mind and get to sleep but always came back to Nils’s letter, how it ripped open wounds she’d deluded herself into thinking had healed years ago. She didn’t know why she had kept it for the last two months; it was too uncomfortable to merit introspection. She wondered what he wanted, what he really, honestly expected her to do. Those thoughts led her to replaying the act of putting the letter in the mailbox. The thought that the letter was still there, just sitting there. That the U.S. Postal Service, a branch of the U.S. government, was going to ferry that letter, and that they might not deliver it to Germany, but to Sol Kaplan. Going back and forth over what she’d seen in the yard across the street.
This cycle continued until she looked over to her digital alarm and saw that it was nearly 4:00 A.M. She rolled onto her back and threw off her sheet, now coated in a thin layer of sweat. The dorms at Irvine had air-conditioning; this house did not. She still wasn’t tired. Not that it mattered—she didn’t exactly have to be ready for work soon.
Then she heard something, a clink of a dropped object, as if there were some nocturnal animal going through the kitchen trash can. After a few seconds of stillness, she heard the scuffle again, and an intense dread bloomed, the dread that accompanies the suspicion that your house is in the process of being robbed.
Or that the flash of white in the neighbor’s yard she’d seen earlier had followed her inside.
She shook her head, tried to shake it off, reminded herself that that was absurd. She opened her eyes and saw Monster Truck attentive, facing toward the bedroom door. Cora heard it again, and Monster Truck heard it, too, signaling alertness with a tiny bork. Cora sat up, and shook her head, trying to push away the thought that opening her bedroom door would reveal a gunman or a government agent (or perhaps some combination of the two).
Or an alien.
The sound was definitely too large to be a mouse. A rat, perhaps? A rat named Felix? Felix knew he wasn’t supposed to be playing games this late—and he’d used the barely operational desktop for his illicit gaming needs before.
Cora fell out of bed, opened her door, and peeked down the hall toward the living room and kitchen area. There did indeed seem to be a light emanating from the computer room that had not been emanating when she went to bed. She stilled for a few breaths, waiting to see if she could hear anything else. The family desktop was nestled in a small pseudo-room next to the living room that was too small to be considered a bedroom. When she didn’t hear anything, she shuffled the few feet from her bedroom door to the computer room.
“Felix,” she whispered, hoping to God he was the culprit. “Felix? You know you’re not supposed to be in there, you little pervert.”
No answer.
“Felix?” she whispered again, placing a hand on the doorframe to the computer room, then looking inside. The monitor to the computer was on, a dull blank light emanating from it, but the computer itself seemed to have been dismantled. It was up and running, but its shell had been removed, and was now on the floor.
Not Felix.
She tried to contain the well of fear that was springing up. She again recalled the thing she’d imagined in the neighbor’s yard, beginning to entertain the idea that she might not have imagined it. She backed away from the computer room, into the living room, and against the sliding door that led to the backyard—not only was it unlocked, it was slightly ajar.
“Cora?” It was Felix. Now he was out of his room, looking alternately at her and at the computer. “Did you do that?”
Not wanting to cause a panic, Cora answered, “Felix? How about you go into Mom’s room?”
“Why?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
“Because … I asked you to.” She looked at Felix. He caught her intensity and started backing toward Demi’s room.
The exchange brought Olive out of her room. She didn’t speak, instead looking at Cora expectantly. Cora shut the door to the backyard and approached the computer room, standing in the doorframe as if there were a land mine somewhere under the floor right in front of her.
“Go with Felix,” whispered Cora.
“What’s going on?” demanded Felix.
“You’re bowing to my will is what’s going on,” whispered Cora, unable to come up with a reason less panic-inducing than I think someone, or something, broke into the house. “Please go into Mom’s room for a second while I check on this.”