"Alright, you're a big boy. We'll go together."
At the side of the highway, the sign I'd been waiting for showed itself. Morell Lake Campground. It was the closest piece of "civilization" where we could stop before walking to the outpost. Of course, it was totally closed. What kind of crazy person goes camping in Northern Saskatchewan in the dead of winter?
I pulled off the highway into the campground's entrance. The truck crunched through the heaped up, dirty snow and onto the road behind it. I could only tell where the entrance road was by the fact that the ditch was on either side, and the snow level was slightly lower.
With great care, I maneuvered the truck behind a stand of trees into what I thought was probably the campground's parking lot. With snow blanketing everything, including the signs, it was impossible to tell. Where we were, people passing by on the highway wouldn't be able to see the truck. That was just the way I wanted it. I didn't want to be answering any questions from curious cops about why we were here.
I put the truck in park and turned off the lights, but left the engine running. There was still a decent amount of fuel in the tank, and we had fifty more gallons in the bed. Marty would need the heater to be running, even if I didn't. It was twenty-two degrees below zero out there.
"Now we wait for sunrise," I said.
Marty nodded silently, and chewed slowly on a piece of chocolate he'd fished out of the bag of sweets between us.
"Marty, let me ask you something. Why are you here?"
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Don't get me wrong, man. I'm glad you are. It's nice to have company. And I'm not sure I would have made it over the border without you introducing me to Theo. But seriously, why are you helping me?"
"That's a really dumb question. Aren't you supposed to be super smart with all your upgrades?"
"Well, yeah, I guess."
"Then you should know. It's obvious. You show up, and you're living evidence that we're not alone. Not only that, we've got to get our shit together as a species and fight off an invasion. I'm being totally serious here when I say that I don't know many people that wouldn't want to be involved. Hell, even my uncle would help us, I think. He's a bit of a stickler for the law, chain of command, and all that, but if you explained everything to him and showed him proof? He'd help. I'd bet my ass on it."
"We'll need his help," I said. "We'll need everybody. Theo was right, we're going to have to tell the world."
"Hell yeah. There's a ton of good science fiction about this. It's the best thing that could have happened to us Earthlings."
"What? Being invaded by the things that wiped out almost all of the rest of galactic civilization is a good thing? What have you been smoking, Marty?"
"No, seriously. If there's anything that's going to get us to unite, it's an outside threat. It's not going to be the United States and NATO or whatever against the aliens, it's going to be Humanity against the aliens. Haven't you read Watchmen?"
"No. I get it. You might be right. Humanity, though, about that..."
"What?"
I grinned as I repeated to him what Metra had told me about our species. We were just one of many variants of bipedal apes. Earth wasn't the birthplace of the Humans, not even close. We were yet another Humanity-branch species.
"Wait, that means... space babes."
"What?"
"You know, like Star Trek. Kirk was always banging a new hottie every week. Sometimes they'd be green or they'd have bumps on their forehead or whatever, but space babes."
"The bumps were next-gen," I said.
"Hah! I knew you had some nerd in you, Jake. What's Metra like?"
Marty's enthusiasm dimmed a bit when I gave him an accurate description of Metra.
"Okay, so Metra's not one of the space babes. But they've got to exist. Can we ask Brick? He's the station computer, right? Doesn't he know everything?"
I knew from experience that Brick didn't have a lot of information about the surviving species in the Union. I'd gotten more information from the general overview Metra had given me than from Brick.
"He's not that kind of computer. He's a station administrator, and it's not like there's a galactic Internet or something. At least, I don't think there is. Maybe there was before the gate nodes went down, but there isn't one now."
"Damn," Marty said.
"Tell you what, once you get Inducted you can bug Brick or Metra about it. Hopefully, that will be tomorrow."
"I am happy to answer now, Jake," Brick said, his voice tinny and muffled coming from my phone's speaker.
"Damn, Brick, have you been listening all this time?" I asked, pulling the phone out of my pocket.
"You gave me permission to access the device hosting the microgate, and the connection has remained open on station power. This device's microphone is quite sensitive."
"That's because it doubles as a listening device for the spy agencies," Marty said.
I knew that was true, since I had removed all of the software and firmware that used to do that from mine.
"Fine. Brick, can you answer Marty's questions?"
"Certainly. What would you like to know about space babes, Marty?" Brick asked, his tone deadpan.
I laughed, surprised. If that had been the old Brick, the one I'd met when I'd first stumbled through the gate, it would have been a straight question. Now I was—mostly—sure he was joking.
Marty didn't seem to get the joke, and looked at me strangely.
"Hi, Brick. What can you tell me about the other branches of Humanity? Are we all biologically compatible?"
"For the most part. They generally share a common DNA base with you and Jake, with some minor modifications. Or in the case of species like the Horgrim, major ones. It is, however, unclear that any of the other branches have survived."
"That would be a real bummer, if we were the last branch
