Eric Brown - The Serene Invasion

He wanted to laugh out loud but was unable to do so.

Seconds later he saw a bright light directly above him, dazzling. Silhouetted in the light was the outline of a human form, leaning over him. He felt only peace, as if he were in the presence of someone who, he knew, wanted only the best for him. The head-and-shoulders shape was dark, shadowy, there for a second and then gone.

He felt something ice cold on his chest, frozen pin-pricks dancing up his sternum towards his head. His instinct to cry out in alarm was stilled by the strange conviction that all was well, that he had no cause to panic.

Even when he saw what was dancing up the length of his body, climbing over his chin, then his lips and nose, and progressing to his forehead, he did not attempt to cry out. He felt no dread or horror, even though what might have been a flashing, silver-limbed mechanical spider was squatting above his forehead and lowering an ovipositor towards his skin.

Later he would describe what followed as being like the sensation of a dentist’s drill, accompanied by a high-pitched sound, felt rather than heard, a droning conducted through the bone which the ovipositor was presumably boring. Oddly he felt no pain.

A second later he experienced a blinding mental flash — which he could only describe, later, as feeling as if all his synapses had fired at once.

Then the spider, its job done, was dancing back down his face and body. He saw the human shape again, dark but benign, lean over him as if in inspection.

He was washed with a sensation of ineffable peace.

He blacked out, and an instant later was back in his seat on the plane.

He sat very still, sweating, and gripped the arm-rests. The engine was droning, the plane vibrating slightly. A glance through the window assured him they were in motion once again, the wing shaking, the desert passing by below. He glanced across the aisle: the woman was chewing the sweet that just seconds ago she had conveyed towards her mouth, and her neighbour was flipping through the magazine. The smiling air hostess approached, eyes flicking professionally over her charges.

She registered something in his expression and leaned towards him, her smile expanding in query. “Can I help?”

Before he could stop himself, he said, “Is everything okay? I mean… the plane…?”

She must have dealt with a thousand air-phobics in her time. She said reassuringly, “Everything is fine; no need to worry. We’ve lost on-line capability, but it should be up and running shortly. We will be arriving at Entebbe in a little over three hours.”

“I thought…” He shook his head. “No, I must have been dreaming.”

She smiled again. “If I can get you anything?”

“No. No, I’m fine. I’m sorry.”

“Not at all,” she said, laid a perfectly manicured set of crimson-glossed nails on his hand, then moved off down the aisle.

The aftermath left him feeling both embarrassed and frightened. What he had experienced was as real as everything else that had happened over the course of the past few hours: the plastic meals he’d consumed, his chat with Cleveland…

The plane had stopped dead in its flight, along with everyone aboard… except him. Then he’d found himself floating naked in a grey space, with a spider drilling into…

He gave a small involuntary gasp and reached up to touch his brow, expecting to feel the messy evidence of an incision there.

All he felt was a coating of clammy sweat.

He recalled the peace he’d experienced, the reassuring words in his head, exhorting him not to fear. The odd thing was that he had felt no fear then, while undergoing whatever had been happening to him, but now, looking back at the episode, he was overcome by a wave of retrospective dread.

Could some form of dream be held accountable? He thought not. Epilepsy, then? A brain seizure resulting in a hypnagogic hallucination? But the experience had seemed so damned real. He had seen his fellow passengers freeze… and yet they had experienced nothing.

He stood and walked down the aisle, scanning the seats for the ex-MP. He found the old man reading a Kindle. Cleveland looked up and smiled.

Allen said, “This might sound strange…” He paused, licked his lips, and was aware of Cleveland, and the elderly lady beside him, looking up at him expectantly. He went on, “You didn’t happen to notice anything… odd , a few minutes ago?”

“Odd, dear boy?”

He wished he’d never asked the question. “I mean… did the plane seem to… No, I’m sorry… I must have been hallucinating. I must have dropped off… a nightmare.”

Cleveland reached out, solicitous at Allen’s agitated state. “Are you sure you’re okay, Geoffrey?”

Allen smiled. “Absolutely. A dream, that’s all. I’m sorry…”

Cleveland smiled his reassurance that it was no bother at all, and Allen returned to his seat.

He stared down at the distant desert and attempted to regain some measure of the sense of peace he had experienced during the hallucination.

ENTEBBE RUSHED HIM with its usual sensory overload of chaotic, over-populated, frenetic activity he should have been accustomed to by now — from his many visits to cities in Africa and Asia — but which always struck him anew.

The press of importuning humanity and the accompanying noise was a shocking assault. Crowds surged in the streets outside the airport, a morass of brightly coloured humanity seething even now, a little after midnight, under the glare of halogen floodlights. The constant babble of voices, blaring music, and traffic noise only confused the visual chaos — and, as if this were not enough, the stench of Africa, diesel, dung and cooking food, overlay everything. Even the humidity, he thought, was an unwelcome sensory burden.

Clutching his holdall, he pushed his way through the crowd towards the Hertz car rental office. A military convoy raced along the road, a phalanx of black faces staring at him impassively from the back of a troop-carrier. There seemed to be increased military and police activity in the streets around the airport, an atmosphere of tension in the air. There had been an attempted coup here just six months ago, and the situation was still pretty tense.

He made it to the office, presented his softscreen to the harassed woman at reception, and waited a minute for the transaction to be processed.

The women smiled at him and said, “And where are you heading, Mr Allen?”

“North. Karamoja,” he replied, wondering at the question.

She beamed at him. “Travel north is not recommended, Mr Allen.”

He immediately assumed she was referring to terrorist activity and felt a stab of alarm when he thought about Sally. “What’s wrong?”

“The Chinese,” she said.

He pulled a face. “The Chinese?”

She passed him his softscreen and the car key. “They are dropping domes on our cities, Mr Allen. Dropping them from the air. They started in the north and they are heading south. Soon Kampala and Entebbe will be covered.” The pronouncement, imparted with the brazen confidence of the reliably informed, took him aback.

She glanced over his shoulder at the next customer in line, effectively dismissing him before he could question her further.

Bemused, he pushed through the press, exited the office and found his Volvo in the vast parking lot. He bought a bottle of chilled water from a vendor and sat in the driver’s seat, took a drink of water and tried to work out what the woman had meant.

The domes he’d seen in the northern Sahara… He’d assumed them to be the work of the Chinese, but the idea that they were actively dropping them from the air, starting in the north and heading south, was absurd.

She had obviously got hold of a rumour, some anti-Chinese scare-mongering in the area.