tall, slim, blonde, and beautiful, a real stunner. But that’s not the type the aliens prefer. “Maybe. Nobody’s safe, Gabby.”
Except me, probably. Always a little chubby, mousy hair that won’t hold a style, nose a little too big, legs a little too short, forgettable and anonymous. I doubt I’ll ever see the insides of a Bululg spaceship, and that’s absolutely fine.
She shrugs. “I know. But what are we going to do? This is the way things are now. We can’t fix it. The Bululg are holding us in an iron grip, but they’re not actively exterminating us. We have to live with it, somehow. And once we reach thirty, we should be safe.”
She’s right, of course. We do appear to be powerless against the aliens, with their technology and those terrible creatures that helped them invade us. The faint rumors of a Resistance movement are probably just fantasy and wishful thinking. The aliens are keeping total track of each one of us at all times. And yet, I want to feel the resistance inside myself. I don’t want to take this lying down.
I finish the yogurt and suck the last of the flavor off the spoon. It’s not great. Seems like nothing tastes like it used to. “While tens of thousands of other girls have been taken. It’s hard to enjoy life with that going on. Okay, this topic is just too depressing.”
I get to my feet and take my cell phone out of its holder, but I fumble and drop it to the grass. “Ow! Shit.”
I instinctively grab my arm, where the implant has given me a hard electric shock under the skin as punishment for the phone-slash-tracking device being more than a couple of feet away from it.
I hurriedly pick the phone back up. The next shock will be harder, and the phone will report me to Population Control for non-compliance.
I rub my arm. “Fuck this annoys me.”
“Just keep the phone in a transparent holder strapped to your arm,” Gabrielle says and points to her own setup. “You never need to take it off. I haven’t been zapped for a couple of weeks now.”
“It’s hard to use it like that,” I grumble. “Can’t take good pictures.”
Donna, another media major from my dorm, comes marching over with quick steps. “Who got zapped? We could hear the crack from way over there.”
I keep rubbing my arm. The sting takes a good while to go away, and the soreness will stay for a couple of days. “Who do you think?”
Donna looks me up and down, shooting out a shapely hip. She’s beautiful and immaculately stylish as always, well on track to become an anchor at just about any news channel. “I’m sure we would all appreciate it if you would keep your phone a little more safe? They say that one person getting zapped could give a black mark in the permanent records of everyone around her.” She even talks like a newscaster, emphasizing half the words in the sentence.
“That’s nonsense,” Gabrielle defends me. “Just a silly rumor.”
Donna does her carefully studied, hugely exaggerated I’m-shocked routine, just like they do on the news. “Is it? Well, I hope you’re right. Because the way things are, we should all just cooperate and follow all the regulations. If we’re really good, maybe the aliens will loosen some restrictions?”
“’He only beats me because I’m bad,’” Gabrielle says.
Donna flutters her long eyelashes. “Excuse me?”
I put the empty yogurt tub in my backpack. “It’s a classic thing you hear from battered wives. Blaming themselves for their husband’s crime. I think Gabrielle means that we shouldn’t hope for anything good from the fucking Bululg, regardless of how well we follow their stupid rules.”
Donna sniffs. “Well, they are in charge. And I wish you wouldn’t talk about them like that. You know that phone listens to everything— oh, now you’ve done it.”
Gabrielle’s cell phone starts beeping, very loudly. Then other phones further away, then Donna’s. And then mine. It’s an ear-shattering cacophony of atonal beeps that could wake the dead.
“Attention!” all the phones on campus screech in unison. “Stay where you are! Do not move, or you will be punished. Stay where you are! Do not move or you will be punished. Stay where you are! Do not move…”
“What the hell?” Gabrielle exclaims.
Donna points at me. “It’s her and her slanderous tantrum! We’ll all be arrested now. Well, I have nothing to do with it. I like the Bululg,” she says into her phone. “And I would never