16. Alien Abductions Are Real
16
Alien Abductions Are Real
From Barry Wright’s manifesto:
With the collusion of world governments, extraterrestrials abduct humans and implant mind-control devices in their brains. How do I know this? I’ve got friends who’ve described waking up outside with no memory of how they got there, their heads aching. My buddy Burt even remembers a flash of light and little green men looking down at him. When the aliens are ready, they’re gonna subdue Earth’s population with the press of a button.
TESSA
O liver was ridiculously fast, but adrenaline and shame kept me at his heels. I managed to slip out of the building before the electromagnetic locks bolted with a buzz.
Now I understood why Dad had stayed a week past the solstice. He’d brought a group of a dozen like-minded associates to the Discovery Diagnostics parking lot. Some of them were his age, grizzled and weathered from living rough, off the grid. Others were baby-faced dudes, their eyes wide and shifty. There were a few women in yoga pants who looked like they’d come in their minivans straight from the school drop-off line. When I met my father’s gaze, his eyes narrowed in accusation.
“You didn’t tell me you worked for big pharma,” he said, loud enough for only me to hear. His lip curled as he scanned my lab coat, which I hadn’t taken the time to shed.
“I don’t,” I said equally as quiet. “You’d be better off driving down the road to Gilead. Or better yet, going home. We do good work here.”
He held my gaze for a moment, then lifted his bearded chin and shouted, “Companies like Discovery Diagnostics know the cure for cancer, but there’s more profit in treatments. So they hide the cure and sell us snake oil.”
“No! More! Snake! Oil!” one of the younger guys shouted. The rest of the group repeated the phrase as they waved their signs.
For half a second, Vaseline-lensed nostalgia washed through me. As a gangly thirteen-year-old, I’d been so excited when Dad finally said I was old enough to go with him to a protest. It had been at Diablo Canyon Power Plant, and we’d chanted, No safe dose of radiation and Save our children's children. In my cynical hindsight, he’d probably wanted me there so everyone would keep my generation’s nuclear-free future in mind. But I hadn’t thought of it then. I’d been thrilled that Dad finally wanted to do something with me aside from silently eating flapjacks in our camp chairs outside our trailer.
A broad body in a white coat stepped in front of me. He held up his hands. “Hi, folks. I’m Oliver, and I founded Discovery Diagnostics. What seems to be the trouble?”
“You’re in charge, junior?” my father sneered.
Oliver propped his hands on his hips, further shielding me. “I am. Sir.”
“Then you’re the one I want to sign this statement.” My father held out a paper. I wondered briefly how he’d printed it. Had he trusted the network in my home, or had he gone to one of those sketchy internet cafés and used a VPN to bounce his IP address halfway across the world? Or did he have a typewriter in his truck?
Oliver took the paper and scanned it. “You’re asking me to promise to release the cure for cancer we’ve got in our vault?” He chuckled. “We don’t have a vault, and if I had a cure for cancer, I’d be a very wealthy man.”
“That’s exactly it!” A woman, her hair in a long braid down her back, pushed to the front. “It’s more profitable to sell us your ineffective treatments. You’re lining your pockets with our suffering!”
I tried to push around Oliver, but he flung out a hand. It landed on the front of my lab coat, and the strength in his fingers shocked me into stillness. His fingertips dug into my stomach muscles, grounding me in my body.
“I’m sorry you’re suffering,” he said gently. “And I’m doing everything I can to help. Discovery Diagnostics develops tests for cancer and other conditions that will help the medical community diagnose diseases earlier. Patients will be able to receive treatments sooner and have a better chance at survival.”
He handed the paper back to my father, who snatched it from his grip. “Treatments,” Dad scoffed. “Poisons, more like.”
I met my father’s gaze. I remembered it too. She laughed when clumps of her long blond hair fell out. She told ten-year-old-me it was a sign the treatments were working. But even a self-centered tween noticed when her clothes hung off her too-spare frame, when she came back winded from her slow shuffle to the mailbox at the end of the driveway. The chemo was poison, and in the end, it hadn’t saved her. My nose prickled, and I blinked hard.
“Dad,” I said, “go home.”
Oliver’s head whipped around, eyes wide. “What?”
No one in Dad’s group blinked. He must have told them about his misguided, traitorous daughter who’d fallen prey to big, bad pharma. The one who needed saving from her ignorance.
“Can’t.” Dad’s lips twisted. “I promised a show.” He jerked his thumb at the guy with the camera on his shoulder a few steps away. A reporter with hair that didn’t move in the breeze stood next to him.
“At my expense?” I said softly.
His green eyes went flinty. “You’re on the wrong side, Tessa. I raised you better than this.”
Had he? I was so young when Mom died. A blank paper for him to inscribe all his theories about the government, the healthcare industry, the cabals he saw everywhere. I believed that living off the land, in a community of like-minded people, away from the prying eyes of the government, was how we protected ourselves. Trust no one was our mantra. It served me and my anger toward the doctors who’d broken my trust by letting my mother die. And it served me later, when I’d learned enough through my independent homeschool studies to understand my father had it wrong and I couldn’t trust him either.
I should be grateful he’d taught me that. I only wished I’d remembered it when I’d listened to Harry.
With one last, searching glare, he turned to his comrades. “Discover the truth. Down with Discovery!”
They chanted back, “Discover the truth. Down with Discovery!” They held up their hand-lettered signs and continued the chorus.
I grasped Oliver’s wrist, which was still banded across my stomach. “Let’s go back to work. I don’t think they mean any harm.”
“What about…” He nodded at the padlocked, heavy-duty metal storage box in my dad’s truck.
“He never brings his guns to protests,” I assured him. “He knows he could end up in jail for this. No need to add a weapons charge to it.”
With perfect timing, two police cars pulled into the parking lot, their lights flashing. Some of the protesters groaned, but under his beard, my dad’s jaw turned to steel.
“I’m sorry,” Oliver said. “I didn’t know it was your dad.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s not the first time I’ve bailed him out. It won’t be the last.”
The protesters had spotted the police cars too, and their shouts increased in both volume and desperation.
Oliver leaned closer to whisper, “Go inside. I’ll handle this.” His breath stirred the shorter hairs near my face that had escaped my ponytail, and I shivered.
“We’ll handle it together,” I said, still holding his wrist. I wish I could say I immediately released it, but I needed the reassurance of his strong, steady pulse.
“Together,” he echoed.
I dropped his hand then. It was too much to gaze into those innocent blue eyes of his, clear and open as the summer sky. Maybe he was as trustworthy as he seemed. He’d seen a secret I kept from my closest friends, yet he still offered to stand beside me.
So we talked to the police officers together. We stood side by side as some of the protesters clambered into their trucks and drove off Discovery Diagnostics’ private property. People like my dad, for whom the cause was supremely personal, continued to shout their slogans until the officers took them into custody. Dad shouted through the police cruiser’s window, his eyes wild and his expression savage, as they drove him away.
A chilly breeze tossed the hem of my lab coat as the news van’s taillights receded down the street.
“You okay?” Oliver asked. We were the only ones left in the parking lot.
“This isn’t the first time. Actually, it’s the first time he’s protested at my place of employment. But he’s protested hundreds of times.” I glanced back at the building, where a couple of people watched us through the windows. “He…he started after my mom died of cancer.”
“I’m so sorry.” He stepped forward and reached out a hand like he’d take mine.
I stepped back. “It was over thirty years ago. My memories of her are so faded I’m not sure what I actually remember and what Dad told me about her.”
“You were so young,” he said.
“So was she. Younger than I am now.” I stared off into the trees that lined the back of the building. I’d made some poor choices that I regretted, choices that had narrowed my life for too long. But at least I’d had those years. Those choices.
He looked toward the distant line of live oaks. “My grandmother died of cancer too, though she was a lot older. Still, I miss her, and I wish we’d had more time together. It’s why I do this.” He waved at the building.
My lips twisted into a wry smile. “Same. I like to think I’ve finally made a choice she’d be proud of.”
His hands twitched, but this time he didn’t reach out. “She’d be proud of you regardless.”
“Yeah, right.”
I clocked the exact moment he remembered my worst choice. A steel door slammed shut behind his eyes, cooling the blue to slate.
“Come on,” I said, “let’s get back to work.” And I forced my feet to propel my weary body back to the office.
“ S o,” my dad said as he pulled his pickup into my motor court and shone the headlights on the front door, “same time next year?”
“Dad.” I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes. “You can’t do this again.”
“What?” His eyes crinkled as he chuckled. “I can’t come see my daughter?”
I turned to face him. “No. You can’t. Not if you’re going to bring your conspiracy comrades to my job.”
“You can’t be serious about working there. That Oliver is a liar, and he’s convinced you with a fantasy that you can make a difference. You can’t. Not with the government and the men in black and big pharma?—”
“Stop.” I waited until he closed his mouth, until he met my gaze. “I believe in this work. I believe in the company. I believe in him. And I believe I can help them change the world, one patient at a time.”
He snorted. “I raised you to question everyone and everything.”
“You did. And I do. Right now I’m questioning whether there’s a place in my life for my father. And after today? I’m not so sure.” My voice cracked, and my eyes burned at the backs with tears I refused to shed, even in the dark. “Next time you feel the urge to come visit, find a pay phone and call. I’ll let you know if you’re welcome.”
He squinted. “It’s worse than I thought. They’ve already poisoned your mind. Do you have any missing periods in your memory? Dreams of bright lights?”
“No, Dad. I haven’t been abducted. I’m drawing a boundary. Please respect it.” I tugged the door handle and shoved it open with my elbow. I jumped down and leaned into the cab. “Think about how your choices affect others. Goodbye.”
I slammed the door and walked to my porch, then I watched him drive away. We shared a past. We shared skepticism and mistrust too. But I didn’t have to like it.