Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 40274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 201(@200wpm)___ 161(@250wpm)___ 134(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 201(@200wpm)___ 161(@250wpm)___ 134(@300wpm)
“Seriously?”
“Go,” he repeats firmly, without raising his voice.
“I’m not leaving you here alone,” I tell him.
“You’re not my supervisor,” he says. “Go. Now.”
I have the strong feeling that I need to do what I’m being told here. Arlo usually has a calm demeanor, but right now he’s downright stern.
I get back into the ship and sit, arms folded over my chest, sulking. This feels stupid. Why are we down here interacting with people who obviously want to hurt Arlo just for some coffee for Cir? It feels like a waste of time, and maybe even like a ruse. A lot of people don’t like the aliens. They resent them for being alien, which makes sense, given human nature.
The Cupid say they’re here to help, but it’s not easy to help people even when they want it, and there’s a lot of folks who never wanted anything on planet Earth to change. They had everything ordered the way they wanted. I don’t know if he feels it, but there’s danger here. The way people are looking at him as he comes out of the shop makes me afraid for him.
I stand up in the open shuttle. He doesn’t seem to notice the way some of the locals are starting to crowd around. He just smiles pleasantly and even affectionately at them all, as if he is surrounded by a box of kittens. This fucker is going to end up dead if he’s not careful. Things have been bad on Earth for a while, and that’s been hard for us all, especially as we had nobody to blame but ourselves. Now, though, these people have him to blame, and they’re going to blame him hard.
Someone jostles him. It’s pretty crazy to watch a man in flannel go after a scaled alien nearly twice his size, but I know there’s a decent chance at least some of these people are armed, and that means he could be shot at any moment. As amazing as these aliens are, I’m pretty sure they’re not bulletproof.
“Arlo!” I call out to him. He turns to look at me, and the sunlight catches his scales just right. For a moment, he glows. Several people draw back from him with little gasps of admiration. He’s a hell of a beauty. It’s not a good thing. There are those that admire beauty, but more who feel compelled to destroy it. I can see more people coming, like they’ve been called by social media. It’s starting to look more like a mob than it a casual gathering of people who wanted coffee.
“We gotta go,” I say.
“I haven’t gotten the coffee yet.”
“And you’re not gonna get it, buddy.” I reach down to where a horn would be on a car. I want to beep beep this guy into moving. I do not like the way people are starting to look at the ship either, or me.
Instead of finding a horn, not even sure why I thought there would be a horn, I make the entire ship jolt up and forward suddenly. We are now hovering over a pickup truck with a dog in the bed, casting a shadow on a sunny day. Arlo forgets about the coffee and runs back to me. Fast. He vaults up off the hood of the truck and into the interior of the shuttle in an athletic motion that impresses everybody and makes it slightly less likely for him to be shot.
“Don’t mess with the controls,” he lectures me, swatting my hand away from whatever he doesn’t like that it is near.
“Don’t be so oblivious when you’re surrounded by ape-descendants who want to pump you full of lead,” I reply.
“What?” He looks surprised.
“There’s about half a dozen dudes with guns down there and all of them are trying to decide which one of them is going to start a war with your species over some shitty coffee lie. Let’s go.”
“Mr Alien! Mr Alien!” A beaming woman in a gingham apron comes bustling out of the interior. She seems to be among the very few people who are not offended to the point of rage at the very sight of Arlo. “Here’s your coffee! Thanks for coming!”
Arlo leans out of the top of the shuttle and takes it off the woman, tipping her with a gold coin that’s probably worth more than the truck we’re hovering menacingly over.
“It’s alright,” he says, putting the coffee in a little coffee holder. I didn’t notice was there before. Beverage holders make this species seem even more fallible than I thought.
“You mad at me?”
“Mad at you?” Arlo looks over at me, surprised. “Why would I be mad at you?”
“I don’t know.”
Part of me is scared that he’s going to leave me down here, like, kick me out of the shuttle and make me go join the people who are now starting to gather around the base of the shuttle. I’m afraid they’re going to grab on and climb up. Arlo is taking everything way too fucking easy, in my view.