I refocused on Sal, who seemed hell-bent on making me drag the details out of him. “This existence. You mean this planet? You’re trying to help us? What, like with climate change and world peace?”
“Do you have money?” My blank look encouraged him to elaborate. “For shelter? You and your daughter need to be secured before the storm nears the coastline.”
“I’m pretty sure every hotel and motel from here to Raleigh is booked . . . ”
“No. There is a small town just outside of Wilmington. It is far enough, but most evacuees will have thought it too close and bypassed it.”
“I should call ahead to make sure.”
“No!”
“Mom. He said they were ‘monitoring us’.” Amazingly, she managed to encapsulate her derision of both my forgetfulness and Sal’s monotone enunciation within one statement.
“Right. No calls. Fine.” Stay focused. “Yes, I have cash. Explain monitoring. What have we done that your . . . people . . . think is wrong? I’m assuming we’ve done something wrong? Monitoring doesn’t sound like a good thing.”
“It is neither good nor bad. We record everything, but we only analyze the data for certain individuals and situations as needed.”
“What do you mean by ‘everything’ and ‘as needed’?”
He frowned as if I was missing something obvious. Am I? Possibly. I glanced at Eileen, and could just make out that she was squinting at the back of Sal’s head. I wished she could see inside it and tell me what the hell was going on.
“Alright, so how about: what are your goals? As a species, I mean. All of this monitoring and servants talk. Are you . . . is this some sort of . . . invasion?” I tried to sound casual, but my heart skipped a couple of beats while I waited for him to answer.
“No.”
“Thank you, God,” I muttered at the same time Eileen exhaled.
“You believe in gods?”
“Sure. Just the one, although I think that ancient . . . wait. Why?” Suddenly I was excited. He might have answers!
“I was merely curious.”
“You can’t bring that up and then just drop it! You’re alien! Technologically advanced enough to travel through the stars! What do you know about Life, the Universe—”
“Forty-two.”
“Excuse me?”
“The answer is forty-two.” His teeth flashed before he pressed his lips together again.
“Oh, right. And I don’t know the correct question? So you’re a fan of stupid horror movies, old TV shows, and Douglas Adams?”
Eileen must’ve done something, because Sal frowned at the mirror. “It was research,” he countered. “It made me laugh.”
He’d traveled who knows how many light years to a richly diverse planet with billions of people and thousands of species and he was entertained with stupid humor? Of course, he had good taste. Hitchhikers was a classic. My own dog-eared copy was on the top shelf . . .
“How’d you know I’d get that?”
“I—”
“Nevermind. Über-vision. I get it.”
“What are you talking about?” Eileen leaned forward to get a better look at Sal. “Can you see through walls and stuff?”
“Are these really the best questions you have?”
“I want to know, too. Tell us how you’re different from humans.”
His silence surprised me a bit. For all of his ‘better than a human’ nonsense, he apparently didn’t like to tout his gifts. That, or he wasn’t supposed to share info with lowly humans. I hadn’t yet considered Sal’s role in all . . . this. His team . . . these servants . . . was he going to get in trouble for helping us? And how exactly was he helping us? And why?
I pretended to be interested in the view from the side window. Maybe I knew the answer to that one, thanks to my over-observant daughter, but why did we need his help? That I didn’t know.
“Tell us!” Eileen demanded. “Do you have x-ray vision? What else can you do? What she said about you not aging . . . is that true?”
Sal’s hands shifted on the wheel, and I realized he was waiting for my permission. Were the answers too much for a child?
“Go on, Sal . . . tell us a little about y’all. We can go into detail later.” His nod was barely perceptible, but I thought he understood. I just hoped I could contain my imagination and not hyperventilate my way into a panic attack as I tried to guess at the unedited version.
We were crossing the overpass now, on the main highway out of town, about to merge onto I-40. Even though it was almost eleven and no one in their right mind should be driving in these rain bands, common sense apparently hadn’t stopped a few hundred cars ahead of us. Then again, I had no idea what the latest updates were warning, and these people would have no idea that the odds were in their favor if they stayed. Per the alien beside me.
Yeah, Lila. Let’s not be picking on normal people.
Watery red taillights lit the westbound lane, a slick bumper-to-bumper trail through the night. I wasn’t so sure we were going to find a vacancy between here and the state line, but Sal seemed confident—and hey, he was better than a human, so what did I know?
“Is something wrong, Lila?”
There’s a stupid question.
“Your expression. I do not always recognize human emotions . . . ” His right hand raised as if to touch my cheek, but Eileen stretched forward and swatted it.
“Leeni!”
“So’re you gonna tell us how you’re so much better than humans, or what?”
“I really did not mean to offend you, young one. It is merely a fact. We have similar evolutionary roots, but my genetic profile has been perfected. My species is superior to humans.”
“Sure. Whatever you say. So . . . if we’re Homo sapiens, you’d be . . . what?”
“Not applicable. We are not of Earth as you are.”
“Duh. But you said you have similar evolu—”
“What do you mean perfected?” Clearly, he meant more than his sculpted pecs. “Perfected how?”
“Once we successfully cataloged our species’ genetic sequences, parents had the option of selecting the traits that they preferred in their offspring. It
