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Bo tapped under my chin to close it. “They don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. They say they are ethically farming meat the way humans have for over thirty-thousand years— but without pain, suffering or distress. They claim they do not understand why humanity is upset.”
“How do you know this?”
“The aliens, strangely, deliver us messages. We guess it’s their bots who slip the notes under our doors while we sleep.”
Ethically farming meat without pain, suffering or distress? As a Sloth, I could say, indubitably, that I felt distressed about this whole thing. The aliens were full of shit.
“Heads-up,” I heard Garrett say.
Marching out of the tree line that surrounded the property, an android appeared, his cold, metallic shell sporting a slight red sheen. Having grown up with bots, I had never found them scary. But now, they terrified me. Even looking at it, as it stalked toward us, made me shudder.
Garrett raised his rifle and shot at it, marking it in its smooth, mental cranium. However, the bullet did not penetrate its head.
“Goddammit,” Garrett muttered. “Take her inside. They’ve adapted.”
Huck appeared with a towel as Bo lifted me from the tub and handed me over. “I’ll help Garr. Take her to the basement. Arm yourself, just in case.”
Carrying me like I was a bride in terry cloth, the youngest spirited me away from the backyard and over the backdoor threshold into the cabin. When he put me on my feet, I wrapped the towel around myself.
“It will be chilly down there,” he said as he pulled a large blanket off one of the beds and handed it to me. “I don’t want you to catch a cold.” He then slid the table and chairs from their position and crouched down. He lifted a hidden latch and tugged it up, which opened the wood floor. This revealed a staircase.
Huck waved me over. “Come here,” he said gruffly.
I rushed over and let him guide me down into the dim. After making sure I was safely in the basement, he went back up and closed the hinged door, casting us in darkness. I stood there, feeling as if I had fallen into an alternate universe. I trembled, from fear or cold, I could not say.
Suddenly, there was a small flare of light as Huck lit a lantern, and a warm glow filled the chilled room. I noted that the basement was more like a root cellar. Canned jars lined the shelves and dried meat hung from the rafters. Like the upstairs level, there seemed to be no shortage of weapons here either.
There were sleeping cots in the storage space, so with my blanket in hand, I occupied one. Huck moved about, seemingly taking inventory of ammo.
“Are there other humans around? I mean, Anachronists like you?”
“Yeah, they’re around. Every once in a while, we visit a working village for supplies. But it’s not safe to live together like we all used to back in the day. So we all live on farmsteads or in the wilderness, far away from each other.”
“Why?”
“When there are too many of us in one location, it draws their attention. They don’t like it, and they will make things go wrong to disperse us. If you want to live in a civilization, they want you to be in their cities, not making your own.”
Hearing more gunfire, I shivered. “Bo said they are like us.”
“They are. They are like humans working for a corporation. They don’t want competition for resources. Do you know what a corporation is?”
“I’ve read about them,” I confirmed. “Most corporations were large, wealthy companies. Long ago, people worked for them for money to buy food and housing.”
“Yes.” He began filling ammo clips. “That is the aliens. They are like a wealthy corporation. They want to maintain a monopoly over the care of humanity. As time has gone on, fewer and fewer humans live independently. At least that’s the case in this area.”
“Have you seen them?” I asked quietly, as if I could conjure them.
“From a distance. They are the same aliens that have always been around. The ones from the cave art, who have their ships in classical paintings.”
“What do you mean?”
“They look a lot like their androids, but less shiny. Tall, thin, gray. Long fingers.”
I fell forth from the cot and collapsed onto my hands and knees to violently dry heave. Huck rushed over with a small metal tray and joined me on the floor. Crouching next to my shuddering form, he held my hair and rubbed my back as I retched into the container. I was obviously traumatized. Why else would I be naked on the floor of a basement, vomiting my breakfast into a tin plate?
“Okay, you’re okay,” he soothed.
I was far from okay. I was trapped in a fucking nightmare. But I was too busy retching to express it.
