First

First. “I’d get out of here if I were you,” said the man standing in front of Renee Moria. He seemed sincerely worried about something. Renee, too, was sincerely worried. She had been at the Arizona Mental Institute for the past two hours and had yet to find any of the employees. Renee did not like the idea of being in a mental institute. Although she felt that some of her ex boyfriends might qualify, Renee had never met a truly crazy person, and was not at all in the mood to do so. All she wanted to do was to visit her childhood friend, Kelsie Rimbase, who had started working there last month. She had eventually given up searching for Kelsie or any of her co-workers, and had asked this tame-looking man now standing in front of her. He seemed to know his way around, and didn’t look too terribly deranged, so she figured there was no harm in asking. She was a bit shocked by his fatalistic warning, and a feeling of discomfort washed over her as she connected his words to the strange emptiness of the place. Visions of doom bounced around in her head before she quickly shook her mind back in place and decided that jumping to such histrionic conclusions was a rather dumb and melodramatic idea. She definitely needed to cut back on the television. “What do you mean?” she asked, simply. “They’re here.” he responded, simply. “Who?” He certainly couldn’t mean the employees, she thought, irritably. “Them. The locusts.” Renee raised an eyebrow at him. She had to remind herself that she was in an asylum. There were bound to be some crazy people here. She had just figured that maybe they’d be locked up. “Could you please just tell me where I can find Kelsie Rimbase?” She asked, her patience edging slowly out the door. The sooner she could get away from him, the better. It was the man’s turn to stare with curiosity. “You aren’t a tourist, are you?” he asked, as though he was surprised that she wasn’t. Renee looked at him with complete bewilderment. ”No…” she said, tentatively. He gave her a short, calculative look, turned away, and sighed. He thought for a moment, turned back to her, looked as though he were going to say something, stopped, resumed thinking, and sighed again. This went on for quite some time. It appeared to Renee that he was undergoing some moral battle. She started to edge slowly away from him. He was far too wrapped up in his inner struggle to notice her,

so she began to move more quickly. Before she could get more than a few steps from him, he caught her arm with a firm grip. ”LET ME GO!!” she screamed, frightened. “SECUR…” “SHH!” He hissed, a note of urgency in his voice, clapping his hand over her mouth. She was doing her best to bite him, but it was no use. He had a ridiculous pain tolerance. “Look, I’m not crazy. I know you don’t believe that, and had I realized you weren’t a tourist, I would have approached you much differently. However, we have very little time. If you kindly come with me, I’ll explain what I mean.” he said, pulling her a bit. She resisted. He stopped, sighed, and looked at her, his eyes burning into hers with desperate urgency. “Please? I need you…” Renee tried very hard to get away at these words. This man was reminding her rather strongly of her ex boyfriend, and she didn’t like how things were going at all. Just as she swung her foot at his shin, she felt a sharp sting on her upper arm followed by a sudden rush of contented tiredness. She heard the tinkling of china and her grandmother’s laugh. She could smell pumpkin pie. Slowly, smiling, she was floating on the smells. Cranberry sauce. Green bean casserole. Sweet potatoes with slightly burnt marshmallows on top. As she drifted downwards, it all began to fade. “No, I’ve had enough stuffing. Thank you, Mama,” she mumbled. ♦◊♦◊♦◊♦◊♦ When she awoke, she was lying in a bed. The rough hospital sheets rubbed against her skin. She heard pacing. She stretched her arms and yawned. The pacing stopped. “You awake?” a voice said. She heard a sigh. “Good… good,” it mumbled to itself. A hand appeared in her line of vision. She took it, and sat up. When she saw who the hand belonged to, she tried to scream, but no sound came out. She clutched at her throat and panicked. The crazy man let out an apologetically nervous laugh. “Please, don’t hurt yourself. Just listen to me. I promise I’m not going to cause you any harm.” Renee gave him a skeptical look, and tried to retort, but remembered she couldn’t speak. “Listen. I promise my actions will make sense in time.” She was too weak to struggle, so she relaxed. Her mind was trying it’s hardest not to think about the full extent of the current situation. It was trying instead to convince her that the little bit of sky outside the window was not blue, but rather a faint greenish color. This odd new point of view distracted her sufficiently, and the fact that she was trapped in a room with a highly distressed crazy man seemed to slowly trickle from her mind.

“This is all going to be very strange to you. In fact, I know you won’t believe me,” the man said, after a long pause. Renee fell back into reality with an unpleasant thunk. “Your race is ridiculously closed minded.” She opened her mouth to say, “Well, If I’m not going to believe you, than I suppose I shan’t waste your time,” but, of course, no sound came out, aside from a small burp. He smiled, noticing her reaction. “Yes, your race. Human beings. The most…” he searched for a word. “significant inhabitants of the Earth.” He sighed, once more, and continued on with his speech. “Since the time when the first human looked up into the sky and saw the great vastness of the universe, you’ve contemplated life on other planets. It’s always been one of the great questions of your race. Well, I’ll set the record straight. The universe is teeming with life. No, there’s no life in your little solar system. In fact, the Earth is fairly isolated. You’re rather in the middle of nowhere. That’s why you get very few visitors, aside from the occasional Planetary Tour group.” Renee’s tried to look bored and uninterested, but she was an avid sci-fi reader, and this was actually a fairly good story. Her mind, in its never ending quest to ignore any and all danger or threats she now faced, was trying to think of a good title for this guy’s story. Her eyes drifted off around the room. She had just come up with Significant Earth, which sounded pretty clever to her, when she was distracted by the sudden disappearance of a tree outside the window. She looked confused, blinked, and then looked again. The tree was still there. She wondered momentarily about her sanity, and if mental illness could be contagious. “What? You think your race is alone in obsessing over tourism?” he said, misinterpreting her confusion. “Hell, it’s one of the most prosperous businesses in the cosmos! But I digress. The universe is bursting with life. Most races are harmless. About two thirds of them are as primitive as yours, or more so. The remaining third, which is still, mind you, an enormously large amount, is far more advanced. Mostly, they keep to themselves. There’s some inter solar system trading that goes on, and all the like, but not much beyond that. “However, not all races are benign. Just as you have parasites here, on earth, there are parasites on other planets, too. Not all of these pests are quite as small or as weak as the ones here, though. There are parasites strong enough to destroy whole planets, whole star systems, even. “In fact,” At this, he pulled up his sleeve, exposing a small, black plastic band around his wrist. He tapped it once, and a bright blue picture of earth appeared on its surface, along with several dots under it. He tapped the third dot to the left, which called up a list of words. He tapped parasites. “Here is the accepted list of planetary parasites, which is what they call those powerful enough to destroy a planet.” He walked over to Renee and showed her the odd wristband. She tried to get her mind to focus, and tell her what’s on the damn thing. Words, was the best response she could get. “There are 132 million in all, which is a fairly small number, if you think about the size of the cosmos. However,”

He tapped the bracelet a few more times “There are around 2.3 trigintillion unofficial parasites; ones who are not completely parasitic, or whose status on the list could be debated.” He paused, and glanced at Renee. She was watching a butterfly outside the window. Her mind thought it was odd how the butterfly seemed to grow and shrink as it moved from flower to flower. She was always a fan of optical illusions. With an air of tenderness, he continued. “Human Beings are on that list. Because your race is incapable of inhabiting other planets, you’re not listed as a threat. In some… schools, I suppose you could call them, around this section of the milky way, the story of the human race, how it grew, how it treated other life forms, how it treated members of its own race, and how it took care of its planet are used as a bit of a didactically tragic tale to teach us to respect that which nourishes us, and first supplied us with a home. Although various members of the advanced races will move from planet to planet, on occasion, we all know that there’s no place in the whole universe that better fits us than the planet we came from, the planet we adapted to, and because of that knowledge, we treat our home with the utmost respect.” He was looking at her with an air of saddened concern. There was a long pause, as he examined her, his eyes seeming to peer into her heart. She blinked a few times, and then went back to looking out the window. He shook his head. “Forget it. Who am I trying to kid?” he began digging through his pockets, and eventually came up with a pill of sorts. “Here. Take this. It’ll restore your voice. And reverse the effect of the serotonin injection I gave you to knock you out.” He walked over to her, took her arm, and closed her shaking hand around the drug. Renee sat, dazed. “I’m sorry for the trouble. Feel free to tell any of the employees that I attacked you. It’ll give them something to fuss about, which always makes them happy. We might as well try to make their last few days enjoyable, if they even have that long.” He walked slowly towards the window on the other side of the room, looking at the sky with an air of resignation. When she didn’t leave, he turned around and shouted, “GO! Just leave. I’m sorry to have disturbed your pleasant little day. Go on, go on about your blissfully ignorant business. It was my mistake entirely to try and put my trust in a human. You’re incapable of understanding. You’re all the same. Selfabsorbed, snarky little idiots. Well, whatever. It’s fine. You’re all about to come to an end soon, and at no great loss to the rest of the universe, I might add.” He was pacing, talking to her in a mock polite and apologetic tone. He stormed back to the window, and looked out once more. Renee shoved the pill into her mouth, and swallowed. It seemed reluctant to go down, and so it clung with all it’s might to the throat. Her eyes watered, and she coughed a few times. “GO!” he screamed, not even bothering to turn back. Not anxious to spend any more time with an irate, delusional, and seemingly fragile man, she quickly got to her feet.

“Um” she croaked, her voice scratching its way back in. “Sir?” She got up, and glanced at the man, who was hunched over, his forehead resting on his fist. She realized that he was crying softly. “Sir?” she said again, her voice taking on a comforting tone. “I… I know this is probably not the thing to say, as you seem rather upset, but….” Slowly, he looked up. She took his gaze. “Could you possibly give this to Kelsie, if you see her?.” She held out her business card. The man’s face turned to stone, and his eyes to ice. Aside from the normal feelings of confusion, fear, discomfort, and curiosity one would tend to feel in her situation, she felt a twinge of jealousy. She had been trying to work up a glare that powerful for years, and really, hers looked almost kind in comparison to his. She thought about congratulating him, but realized that this was probably a bad idea. “I’ll just… leave it on the bed.” She said, backing away slowly. He began to breathe very slow, very heavy breaths. She began to back away much, much faster. “Um. Yes. Nice meeting you. Good luck with those locusts.” She said, giving him a thumbs up and a nervous smile. And with that, she turned tail and ran. After about an hour, he walked to the bed, picked up the card, and read:

Greenlink Environmental Awareness Productions Renee Moria Communications 5692 Greenlink Drive Glendale, CA 98111 Phone (203) 555-0100 Fax (203) 485-9121 [email protected]