Peter Cawdron - Alien Space Tentacle Porn

“Low tech,” the officer says. “But effective against the likes of you.”

Oh, he’s brought the lie hook, line, and sinker.

The soldier thumps the hammer with a vengeance, nailing four boards in place and slowly blocking the view outside. They’re going to leave me in here. This is good. Time is the only ally I have, and I wonder about Mark and Sharon. I wonder where they are, hoping they’re planning a rescue.

Rescue? Me?

I’m expendable.

If Sharon and her extraterrestrial buddies won’t intervene in a goddamn world war, what hope is there for me? I’m fucked.

“If you tell us why you’re here, perhaps I can help you,” the officer says.

“Actually, we’re here to help you,” I say. It’s the truth, but once again, the truth doesn’t appear to do much for me these days.

“Why are you really here?”

“We’re really here to help you.”

At least, I think that’s the truth. There is the possibility Mark and Sharon have played me for a fool, but I don’t think so. Sharon is genuine. I’m convinced of that. After our conversation in the cemetery, I trust her wholeheartedly.

The soldier returns to the hut, and snow again swirls inside, settling on the musty carpet. Cold air rushes into the room, chilling my exposed face. The soldier whispers in the officer’s ear before stepping back next to the door. I get the feeling there’s not that many of them out there.

“President Harding will be here in the morning,” he says. “Until then, consider yourself our guest.”

President fucking Harding?

I must look shellshocked as the officer says, “You have to understand. The President’s schedule is tightly controlled. We can’t just bring him here without the media gaggle getting suspicious. We have to coordinate with the Secret Service and the NSA, while offering the media a plausible explanation for the departure from his schedule. I apologize for the delay.”

“You apologize?” I say, feeling somewhat incredulous. “You kidnap me in broad daylight, drug me, drag me god-knows-where, blast my ears with heavy metal music, imprison me, strap me to a chair, and you’re worried about the inconvenience of a slight fucking delay?”

“We took the steps we felt were necessary in light of national security. We had to make sure we could control contact.”

Typical fucking military. Why push a thumbtack into a wall when you’ve got a perfectly good sledgehammer at hand?

I shake my head. What was once an act is now real. I’m incensed that this is the way my government, no, my people, humanity, Homo sapiens , react to the prospect of alien contact. I have to be careful to speak in the first person, not the third, as I don’t want to give anything away, but I’m glad to be siding with Sharon and Mark. I don’t care where they come from or what they look like, they’re a helluva lot more civil than we are–alien space tentacles be damned

“National security?” I say, speaking with slow deliberation. “Well, you can take your national security and shove it up your—”

“You have to understand,” the officer says, cutting me off. “There’s no precedent for this. We have to ensure security. We have a right to protect ourselves—our country, our people, our planet.”

With a stern voice, I say, “You need to be very careful adopting a position that speaks for the entire human race. VERY. CAREFUL.”

I’m deadly serious. What if they had taken Mark alive, or Sharon? What would Joe and the others have done? Dipshits like this could get us all vaporized. In some ways, I’m glad it’s me in this seat and not Sharon. I don’t know how long I can keep up this charade, and I have no idea what I’m going to say to the President of the United States of America, but it’s clear there’s a state of enmity, if not war, between us and the aliens. Perhaps cold war would be a better description, but war nonetheless. I have no idea how long they’ve been hunting Mark and Sharon, but they’ve clearly figured out they’re not from around here, and Uncle Sam is nothing if not heavy handed with illegal aliens—different country, different planet, what’s the difference?

“How long have you been watching us?” I ask, not expecting a reply.

“Long enough.”

“Ah,” I say, nodding and putting on a fake smile. “So not that long at all.”

It’s bluff, counter-bluff, and counter-counter-bluff.

As they’ve confused me for one of the aliens, I doubt they’ve been watching Sharon and Mark for more than a week. Perhaps they had an inkling. Perhaps someone slowly pieced together the clues, but they’ve only just begun any real surveillance, of that I’m sure, or they wouldn’t have been fooled by me. I wonder if the shooting was a snatch-and-grab gone wrong. I guess they didn’t expect Mark to be packing heat. Once one bullet was fired, everyone got jumpy. That’s what happens when you go in with your finger on the trigger.

“You’re spies,” he says, trying to justify his position. “Initially, we thought you were working for the Russians.”

Well, that explains why they were so heavy handed and clumsy with Mark.

“We’re tourists,” I say, trying to hose down any notion of hostility and wanting to represent Sharon as best I can in a non-threatening manner.

“So you just came here for the sights?”

“Yep,” I reply. “You’d be surprised how popular the Statue of Liberty is in Andromeda.”

I did it. I remembered a star. Well, I remembered around four hundred billion stars, as in retrospect, I’m pretty sure Andromeda is an entire galaxy like the Milky Way. I wonder if aliens take offense to us naming our particular galaxy after the secretions of mammals?

“Who the hell are you?” he asks.

“Who are you?” I ask in return. I don’t have any answers other than those I’m making up on the spot, so I turn the question back on him to get some breathing space.

The officer is silent, so I clarify, “I don’t mean personally. I’m not asking for your name. I’d like to know who you represent.”

“DARPA,” he says. "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”

“Oh,” I say. That explains a lot, but I don’t tell him that.

“We’re going to leave you in here for the night,” the officer says, apparently not wanting to answer any more of my questions. “There’s a toilet in the corner. I’ll have a guard posted outside—for your protection.”

“For my protection? Oh, that’s sweet, but you really don’t have to.”

“I insist,” he says with a smile.

They’re leaving me in here alone? Are they nuts? Hell, if I was one of these guards, I wouldn’t so much as blink, let alone take my eyes off ET. Haven’t these guys seen The Thing or Alien? You never leave a xenomorph alone. Never. Bad things happen. I could be an alien shapeshifter. I’m not, but they don’t know that. They could walk back in here in the morning and I could have transformed into a coat rack, or a suitcase, hiding in plain sight. Now, that would be cool.

I’m left wondering about the scope of this covert action. It reaches the President. That’s impressive. But it’s an absurdly small team. I make four of them—the three in here and whoever told the guard about the delay. Maybe there are more soldiers in the other hut, but I doubt it if there’s only going to be a single guard outside. Perhaps they’ve got reinforcements ‘en route,’ as the military is so fond of saying. More than likely, they’re trying to balance numbers against the threat of exposure. Loose lips sink planets.

If these guys are from DARPA, there’s a good chance no one else knows about this. That would explain the absence of the broader military muscle. For some reason, Sharon and Mark appeared on DARPA’s radar, probably quite literally, and even though it’s a fringe possibility, DARPA took the idea of First Contact seriously and investigated. Perhaps they took it a little too seriously. Initially, they thought they’d stumbled across a Russian spy ring, but at some point they realized Sharon comes from slightly further afield, and they nabbed me by accident.