Peter Cawdron - Xenophobia

“Out of hand,” cried Elvis. “Has he taken a look out the goddamn window?”

Elvis gestured ahead of the truck, his fingers pointing at the parachute-like descent of hundreds of resin pods drifting on the breeze. Rather than one per square mile, they were coming down no more than ten to twenty feet apart, catching in bushes and trees, landing on the road among the refugees.

One of the pods drifted in front of the truck and Bower got a good look at it. The seed, if it could be called that, was oblong and somewhat transparent. Like thick glass, there was a smokey, golden color to the resin, and it seemed hollow, but with the sun setting behind them she couldn’t be sure.

“FUCK.”

Elvis swore as he pulled hard to one side on the steering wheel, causing the truck to swerve out of a sandy rut in the track and onto the hard shoulder.

The first thing that ran through Bower’s mind was the possibility they’d hit someone. As the truck bounced up over the rocks she had a mental picture of someone being crushed beneath the wheels. Bower was already thinking about what she could and couldn’t do medically on the roadside as Elvis slammed on the brakes.

Jameson braced as the truck came shuddering to a stop.

Ahead of them, the Hummer pulled to one side as well.

“What the—” Jameson cried.

“Bosco ran over one of those bloody things,” Elvis said, pulling on the handbrake. And Bower found her heart ease a little. She could see the crushed seed in the tire tracks of the Hummer. An amber liquid oozed out onto the sand.

Elvis and Jameson dropped down out of the truck and onto the ground. Bower followed a little less gracefully.

“Smithy,” Jameson called out. “Keep your eyes peeled.”

Smithy hadn’t looked back from where she was perched in the gun-turret of the Hummer. She turned slightly, scanning out in front of them with the machine gun mounted on the vehicle.

Jameson was more concerned with the Hummer than he was the crushed alien pod. He was looking at the tires, trying to see if there had been any damage to them.

“Damn,” Elvis said, crouching down and looking at the crushed amber pod. He had a stick and was poking at the torn umbrella-shaped parachute attached to the pod. The webbing within the chute was no more than a foot in diameter. It disintegrated as he poked at it, with fine flecks trailing into the air like ash.

“Leave that alone, you dumb fuck,” cried Bosco.

“Nice driving,” Elvis replied, dropping the stick as he stood up. “So, were you stupid enough to aim for this thing on purpose, or were you asleep at the wheel again.”

Bosco laughed. “I was too busy trying not to leave your sorry-ass behind.”

Bower ignored them. She crouched down and looked at the viscous fluid seeping out of the shattered resin casing.

“What are you thinking?” Jameson asked her. “Ever seen anything like this before?”

“No.”

“So, is it a seed?” Elvis asked. “Are they planting alien marijuana on Earth or something?”

Bower wasn’t sure if Elvis was trying to be funny or just showing off, but his joke fell flat.

“I have no more idea than you,” she replied. “It’s certainly not a machine, at least not as we would understand one. There’s no moving parts, no sections, no joints, screws or pins. To understand what this is, you’d probably have to look at it under a microscope, and a scanning electron microscope at that.”

Bower picked up the stick Elvis had been holding. Carefully, she positioned the stick so it slid inside the shattered remains of the resin pod.

“Oh, man,” cried Bosco. “Don’t touch that shit. Haven’t you ever seen one of these movies?”

Bower looked up at him without saying anything.

“This is what always happens,” he continued. “People go sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong instead of leaving well enough alone. It always starts out all innocent and like, but then some badass alien invades the movie theatre or climbs out of the sea and there’s running and screaming.”

“Give it a rest,” Jameson said. Bower appreciated his level head.

Slowly, Bower used the stick to pick up the broken, hollow seed, if that’s what it was, and looked closely at the construction.

“I’m telling you,” Bosco said. “This can only end badly.”

“I hate to tell you this,” Bower replied. “But if this thing contains a pathogen then we’re already exposed.”

“Oh great,” Bosco replied. “That’s just fucking great.”

“You shouldn’t have run over it, you dumb shit,” cried Elvis, slapping Bosco on the chest.

“Hey, cut it out,” Jameson said, finishing their banter. “What do you make of it, Doc?”

Although it looked like a glass cylinder at first, on inspection Bower could see it was either an elongated hexagon or an octagon. Pointing at it, she began counting the different faces. There were six sides, making it an elongated, hexagonal cylinder similar to the inside of a honeycomb cell.

In the back of her mind, Bower vaguely remembered something from her university biology lectures. Bees and wasps used hexagonal shapes incidentally and not by deliberate design, they were an emergent property, a byproduct of maximizing every possible space. Pack regular cylinders together and there was a massive amount of wasted space between them. Flex the walls of the cylinders a little and they naturally formed a hexagon, filling up all the available room. Hexagons were nature’s little space savers.

Bower went to say something, but in the quiet of the moment she kept that observation to herself. She didn’t want to sound stupid, or worse, seem to be babbling about something inconsequential. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have worried what others thought of her, but there was something about the hierarchy within the troop that made her feel like she had to maintain a sense of dignity. They looked up to her as a qualified doctor, at least she thought they did. Or perhaps she was sensing their deference to her as a woman. Either way, she figured she’d only speak up if she had something concrete to contribute.

“It’s disintegrating,” she said, noting that the alien pod was coming apart, and not just because it had been run over.

The light from the setting sun caught the smoky, glassy resin, reminding her of the old dark brown medical bottles. Those had been tinted to prevent light from breaking down the complex chemical molecules within the medicine and she wondered if the same was true here. She doubted any of the attributes she’d noticed were purely coincidental. There was an alien intelligence at work here, but on a biological not a mechanical level.

Goo dripped from the resin casing, running down the stick before dropping to the dusty ground. Sections of the casing slid with the viscous fluid. Both the texture and consistency reminded Bower of honey and treacle.

Someone was tapping her on the shoulder.

Suddenly, Bower was aware they’d been tapping her shoulder for quite some time, but she was too absorbed by what she was looking at and the sensation had only just registered. It was annoying. If they wanted her for something, why didn’t they just say so, why did they have to touch her. Touch was personal. Touch was privileged. She pulled away, deliberately ignoring them, hoping they’d get the message. The hand followed her as she shifted sideways and lay the broken resin casing on the ground.

“What?” she said rather impatiently, wondering what could be so important.

A shadow passed over her, blotting out the setting sun. As she turned she could see all heads facing in one direction. The refugees stood still, their eyes cast up. The soldiers stood silently facing the same way. As she stood, she got her first glimpse of a floater hundreds if not thousands of feet in the air.