INVASION

“How long have we been working together as a team, Val?”

“Twelve years, five months, two weeks and three days. Do you want me to break it down into hours and minutes?”

Paul Jones turned to his partner, an incredulous look upon his face.

“Are you actually, frigging serious?’

Val Thorens broke into a broad smile, his eyes never leaving the giant screen in front of him.

“No, you muppet. I’m pulling your leg”.

Paul, standing, strode across the small room to a filing cabinet and yanked open a drawer. Retrieving a brown, cardboard file, he opened it and perused its contents for several seconds.

“July 2nd 2011. Almost twelve and a half years ago. Jeez! You’re right. How did you do that? Wait, if I check the actual time that you became my partner…”

“Paul, a child of four years could work out how long we’ve been together. Why are you making such a fuss about it?”

Replacing the file, Paul turned back to his partner.

“I didn’t know. I mean I knew it was about ten, twelve years but you…you’re always so frigging precise. It’s uncanny”.

‘Hey, I might be a physicist and an astronomer but, above all else, I’m a mathematician. Numbers to me are like candy to someone like yourself”, Val glibly remarked, pointing at the almost empty, giant bag of M and Ms that lay on Paul’s work station without removing his eyes from the monitor in front of him that, to an untrained eye, appeared to display an impenetrable darkness.

“Horses for courses, my friend. How come you don’t like candy, anyhow?”

Paul resumed his seat and stared briefly at his screen, quickly becoming restless and bored.

“My parents didn’t allow it when I was younger and, as I grew older and saw the damage that sugar did to teeth, I just decided it wasn’t for me”.

“Man, I’d go crazy in this place if I didn’t have something to brighten up my shift”.

Paul looked around their work space eyeing the pristine environment that made up this lab-like habitat that was their “office”. The sterile stolidness, dominated by the two giant screens, the computerised telescopes that were their workstations and which covered the skies above the state of Delaware, only a coffee machine and the low humming refrigerator added a sense of domesticity though one of the earlier shifts had, half-heartedly, hung tinsel around the place in an effort to provide some festive cheer.

Grabbing a handful of chocolate treats, Paul leaned back in his ergonomic chair, staring idly at the ceiling, popping candy.

“Val, do you ever get bored with this job?”

“Sure. And, every time it happens, I think of the money we get paid, partner”.

Apart from the idle chitchat, the room's silence was broken only by the incessant humming of the fridge and crackling of radio static; the latter being the communication airwaves that connected all other watch stations; one per state across the nation. Each employing two, highly trained scientists per shift in a constant, perpetual state of watchfulness upon the skies above and beyond.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right, Val. We get paid way more than if I was actually working in a lab. But, I mean, don’t you ever think that we’re kind of wasting our skills? All the years it took to get our degrees. I majored in astrophysics, for God’s sake yet, here I am just…watching a frigging screen”.

“In actual fact, if you calculate the time you spend popping candy, making endless cups of coffee and staring at the ceiling, Paul, you probably spend a minimal amount of your working hours actually watching your screen”.

“And your eyes never leave your screen, amigo. I don’t know how you do it. No wonder you need those tinted glasses of yours”.

“Well, I figure this is what the government pays us to do so, for eight hours each day, it’s my duty to oblige. Plus, after so long, it would be extremely difficult for me to drop a hundred grand per year by taking a normal lab job”.

Suddenly, Val leaned urgently forward, his eyes having discerned something on his monitor.

“One o’ clock, Paul. Check it out”.

Startled, Paul crashed down in his tilted chair, eyes returning to his own screen, a duplicate of Val’s, his hand involuntarily releasing a cascade of candy, M and Ms rolling across the metallic floor. 

Both screens simultaneously arrowed in on the object identified by Val, images expanding as Paul controlled the direction of the viewfinder on the space telescope that provided them with intimate coverage of the night sky. Within seconds, Paul, among his other accomplishments, a nanotechnologist and an expert in the structure of such things, relaxed.

“Just another boring meteorite. Iron-nickel. I can tell by the regmaglypts, the irregular shaped pits. No problem, unfortunately. That’s the way the cookie crumbles”.

Later, as their shift ended, the spotting of the meteorite and its subsequent passage to Earth recorded in the log, the two men exited their work environment, the outraged cries of their shift replacements echoing in their ears as they slipped and crunched on the candy strewn floor. They grinned at each other as they unlocked their cars in the parking lot, the weak, early morning sun dazzling Paul but not bothering Val behind his dark lenses. Paul lamented.

“Another cold, miserable morning. I can’t remember the last time we had a white Christmas”.

Immediately, Val shot back.

“December 25th, 2002. 1.3 inches fell in Wilmington”.

Paul looked askance at his work partner.

“Do you make this shit up? How could you remember that?”

Saying nothing, Val simply shrugged, pulling up his collar against the chilly wind.

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, you numbers freak”.

“Yes. Just two days ’til Santa comes”.

“Hey, Val, we need to organise a night out or something. Your wife and mine. Maybe in the New Year. What d’you say?"

“Yeah, definitely, we need to do that”.

As Paul climbed into his brand new Tesla, he, somehow, knew it would never happen. They had been talking about it… for twelve years, five months, two weeks and three days.

The alert came the following day: drones spotted over New Jersey. Reports varied: five, some said, six, others claimed; large, the size of cars according to a New Jersey police chief. Paul arrived for his shift in a heightened state of excitement though Val was his usual phlegmatic self.

The shift they were replacing seemed loath to leave though Delaware had, so far, not seen anything amiss. The unusual happenings in a neighbouring state were causing great excitement within the watchers’ community and the comms channels crackled with constant chatter. 

“Can you believe it? Just east of us. Just our damn luck but we’ve been on full alert all day. Washington is saying they don’t know what they are. One eyewitness said they came out of the ocean”, a tired, wide-eyed watcher eagerly reported to the duo.

Alone again, the two settled in front of their screens.

“Val, d’you think this could be for real? D’you think…?”

‘Paul, I don’t believe we should take any notice of mere conjecture but, given the vicinity and its closeness to our own area of observation, I do think that we need to be extra vigilant”.

“Hey, don’t worry, pal. My eyes are never leaving my screen”.

As the night progressed, however, nothing was displayed on the monitors from the space telescope that hovered high over Delaware though, on the various frequencies that shattered the silence of their stations, they listened, enthralled, as word filtered through of several other sightings, maddeningly close to their own area of surveillance and, by shift’s end, the number of reported craft had increased steadily; Washington, despite stating that there was nothing to fear, still unable to identify their origin.

True to his word, Paul had remained watchful throughout the night, an unopened bag of Snickers testament to his attentiveness, and both men, too, were reluctant to leave their posts at the end of their shift, feeling that it was only a matter of time before Delaware, too, became embroiled in the mystery.

Fear, that normal human reaction to anything untoward that cannot be explained, spread swiftly over the ensuing hours. People who relied and depended on their government to reassure them were severely disappointed. Some brave citizens were taking ineffective pot shots at the unidentified craft as their numbers multiplied rapidly. These were not, as first reported, drones. That much was abundantly clear.

Panic followed fear and the roads were soon blocked by the vehicles of those fleeing from their homes, though where to, they did not know, but a mass exodus was taking place in New Jersey. Yet Washington did nothing to assuage concerns, either refusing to divulge the true identity of the spacecraft or simply unable to.

As Paul and Val reported for their shifts on Christmas Day, still, they learned, no sightings had been made over Delaware though New York State and Pennsylvania, both close neighbours, had now experienced numerous craft sightings. The incessant radio chatter confirmed the seriousness of the situation and the two observational physicists studied their screens intently; Paul, finally realising the importance of his chosen profession. Could the nation be under threat from space? The tension was palpable.

Then, an hour before their shift’s end, out of nowhere, an image appeared on their dual monitors; small and faint, at first, but, as it loomed closer, growing ever larger. Excitedly, Paul expertly guided the telescope remotely, zooming in, and gasping aloud as the magnification identified hundreds more craft coming into focus, following close behind the vanguard ship but only serving to accentuate the monstrous size of the lead craft.

“Holy Mother of God. Val, you see that? That’s a frigging mother ship!”

The static of the various frequencies suddenly ceased, all communication cut by some unknown, alien source. Paul, terrified, turned to his partner but Val seemed unperturbed, almost gleeful, pushing away from his work station and turning to Paul, slowly removing his glasses.

“It’s been…interesting, Paul. I’m sorry it has to end this way but, hey, that’s the way the cookie crumbles, right? Happy Christmas!”

Unable to move, Paul stared at the man he had worked alongside for so many years; a man who, after more than twelve years, he suddenly realised, he knew absolutely nothing about A man who, he registered far too late, was, in fact, not a man at all, his bulging, bright red eyes, exposed for the first time, now burning into his own, distorting his vision, the vicious heat melting his very flesh.