questions at Reese each time she went in or out. On Tuesday, the police set up barricades and forced most of the demonstrators across the street, where they lined the edge of Dolores Park with their signs. On Wednesday after school, Reese could see them through the library window, several dozen protesters and press crowded together behind waist-high metal railings. She was supposed to be doing her Principles of Democracy homework while she waited for David to finish soccer practice, but she kept glancing up to take stock of the signage. There were a lot of STOP COLONIZATION signs today.
She turned back to her laptop. Alex Hernandez had assigned the class what he termed a “fun” project; he wanted them to write five-hundred-word essays on the First Amendment, discussing how it was being used in the demonstrations across the street. In the past hour, Reese hadn’t gotten very far. She felt as though Hernandez was mocking her and David with the assignment. The protesters outside might be able to vocalize their beliefs, but she wasn’t allowed to tell the truth about what had happened to her. She scowled at her keyboard and typed, “The First Amendment should apply to all United States citizens, but in reality, it can be easily revoked by the government when it wants to hide the truth from the public.”
She started when someone dropped a backpack onto the table across from her. She looked up to see David wearing an old KENNEDY SOCCER T-shirt, the letters faded from too many washings. “Hey,” he said, bending over to kiss her lightly. A warm pulse went through her, and she pulled back self-consciously.
“Hi,” she said. A couple of sophomores at the table nearby were watching them.
His hair was still damp from his post-practice shower. “What are you working on?” he asked.
“That stupid essay for Hernandez.” He leaned over her shoulder to read the first line she had written, and she smelled something tangy and sharp, a scent she was beginning to identify with him. She scooted a little closer, her hair brushing against his cheek.
He laughed. “You’re starting off with that?”
She blew out her breath in frustration. “No. I just can’t figure out what to say.” She began to delete the sentence. “So you’re finished with practice? You’re ready to go?”
“Yep.”
“Cool.” She closed her laptop and grabbed her backpack so that she could put her things away. Her parents had insisted on picking her up from school every day, making her feel like a little kid, but today they had agreed that she could go over to David’s house for dinner. He had even driven to school so they wouldn’t have to deal with the Muni and the paparazzi, which seemed to come out in full force when they were together.
“I’m parked up on Twentieth Street,” David said. “We’re going to have to walk past the reporters.”
“I’m sure we’ll have our little MIB escorts to protect us.”
Outside, the late afternoon sun slanted brightly down from the west, crowning the green lawn of Dolores Park in a wash of gold light. They were forced to cross the street toward the protesters and photographers, and as they stepped into the crosswalk, David reached for her hand. The tide of the crowd’s mental assault lessened as she focused on David at her fingertips. She knew that photos of the two of them hand in hand would be splashed all over the Hub within minutes, but for once she didn’t care. She hadn’t been without adult supervision since her date with David on Friday night, and she felt a little reckless now, walking free and unchaperoned across the pockmarked grass of Dolores Park.
When she and David reached the broad meadow below the children’s playground, she thought:
Reese and David spread their books and laptops open across the blue shag carpet. They were downstairs in what used to be an in-law unit; it had been converted to a large open space with a comfortable rug and slouchy sofa, a boxy old television on a stand in the corner. Reese lay on her stomach on the floor, surfing for news about the protesters on her computer and still trying to find an angle on her essay for Principles of Democracy, while David worked through a calculus problem set.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to write yet?” she asked him, clicking through photos from the ferry protest.
“No. I’ll do it tomorrow. This is due first.”
David sat with his back against the couch, math book propped open beside him as he scribbled numbers and symbols onto a pad of paper. He seemed fairly engrossed in his homework so Reese turned back to the Internet. She was beginning to recognize the various theories behind the signs. The STOP COLONIZATION protesters believed that the Imria were here to take over Earth via the adaptation procedure, which would turn all humans into Imrian slaves. Signs such as ABDUCTEES FOR DISCLOSURE came from groups of people who believed they had been abducted by aliens in the past. Some of these individuals claimed they recognized the Imria from their abduction experiments, while others merely wanted recognition of their traumatic experiences—along with financial remuneration. Lastly, there was a pro-Imria faction that was so enamored of the extraterrestrials that they held signs proclaiming I VOLUNTEER, in reference to the Imrian plan to seek out test subjects for the adaptation procedure. Reese wondered if Julian was going to show up at one of the demonstrations carrying a sign like that.
Thinking about their fight made her uncomfortable. He had been distant from her at school since Monday, and their friends had noticed. When they asked her what was wrong, she brushed it off as nothing important, but she was worried. Maybe she should call him, try to work things out. His last words kept ringing in her memory:
She closed the window showing the pro-Imria protesters as if that would erase the guilty feelings simmering inside her. The window beneath it was open to a general news site, and the top headline read
LONDON—In a speech at the Royal Society for Anthropology and Archaeology, Oxford University anthropologist Daniel Green theorized that the Imria’s humanlike appearance is due to calculation, not accident, as Imrian ambassador Akiya Deyir suggested earlier this month.
“Statistically speaking, it is close to impossible that life could have arisen on a different planet and produced an intelligent species that looks exactly like us,” Dr. Green said. “Because they are such an advanced civilization, however, it is possible that they have changed themselves—either through plastic surgery or other means—to resemble us.”
When asked to theorize why the Imria might have done this, Dr. Green said, “I’m speculating here, but if you were an advanced civilization making contact with a much less advanced one—and we’re the less advanced civilization here—wouldn’t you make every effort to present yourself in a way that made the less advanced people comfortable?”
“Hey, what are you reading?” David asked, nudging her leg with his foot.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “This anthropologist thinks the Imria are changing themselves to look like us.”
He put down his math homework and lay on his stomach beside her, reading over her shoulder. He wasn’t touching her, but she felt the warmth from his body all along her side.
“I guess that’s a possibility,” he said skeptically.
She remembered what Amber had told her when they talked after the tour of the spaceship. She wasn’t sure if she should mention Amber at all, but what she had said now seemed important. “Amber told me the Imria purposely dress like human men and women.”
A muscle in David’s jaw twitched. “When did she tell you that?”
“When we walked down to the cove together after the press conference.” Reese looked at him, but his face was unreadable. “We were talking about Eres Tilhar, because I didn’t know if Eres was male or female. Amber said Eres is a teacher, and gender is irrelevant for them. Then she said that the Imria dress like men or women here on Earth, because they fit in better that way.”
“Interesting. What’s this at the bottom?” He pointed to a link that read
