Present Day? On the list of things I expected to happen on my fifteenth birthday, being the victim of human trafficking hadn't even cracked the top twenty. If anything, the least surprising part was that my abductors were aliens. I'd always figured they had to be out there somewhere, and they had to have some kind of hobby.

  They'd locked us in a sterile box, sorta like an oversized bird cage, and all the basic necessities were attended to. There was a giant gerbil style water dispenser, a pool of water to wash in, some cardboard looking stuff that was probably edible, and a toilet that was really just a floor-hole. The only little complication affecting that last bit was that there happened to be three other people in the cage and exactly zero walls.

  Most of us sat in silence. Most. Unfortunately the child traffickers from outer space had also captured my little sister. Unfortunate for me because I'm not particularly keen on the idea of my little sis getting kidnapped. Unfortunate for them because Melanie is physically incapable of shutting up.

  “You split-lipped alien bastards! I'll rip your extraterrestrial nuts off and shove them down your throats!”

  She’s twelve.

  Jackie, my best friend, the first punk in space, interjected. “Split-lipped alien sounds kinda prejudiced man, that’s like a whole species, some of them are probably cool, how bout we just stick to good old classic insults like-”

  “Hey,” I cut her off and pointed my thumb at Melanie. “Language around the kid. Watch it.”

  Jackie's gangly arms shot out. “Watch my language? We're in fu-”

  “Shh.”

  “Okay now this is just fu-”

  “Shh.”

  She'd been crying. Tried to hide it, but she likes her mascara heavy. I would've broken down too, only I was so excited at the discovery of aliens.

  I managed to coax the smallest quirk of the lip out of her. “You know what Tommy? Fu-”

  “Shh.”

  She stopped and giggled, letting her arms relax.

  Melanie hugged her. We'd find a way.

  “Oh, the family's having a little moment, how cute.”

  That was my last cellmate. I had no idea who he was. He looked older than me, and had mastered the art of sulking.

  “Way to kill the atmosphere, man,” I chided.

  “The atmosphere. The atmosphere? We're on a-” I raised my hand to stop him but he ploughed on. “-fucking spaceship, with fucking aliens who fucking kidnapped us, and I'm ruining the fucking atmosphere? What freaking planet do you come from?”

  “Really? Swearing in front of my sister? Not cool, man.”

  “I don't give a shit!” he screeched.

  “Her vocabulary really doesn't need any new additions,” I muttered.

  He slumped, all that shouting had drained the life right out of him.

  He slid thoughtlessly against the wall till his butt hit the floor. “I wish I could've said bye to my parents.”

  “Yeah, me too, man.”

  The doors outside the cage hissed open, puffed smoke, and the two aliens appeared, dragging a gurney covered in cuffs.

  The stranger sighed. “I told you you shouldn't have brought up probing.”

  ***

  Earlier. I'd never been a fancy birthday person. For fancy birthdays, you need friends. I had two, and for determining the fanciness of parties, sisters who share a bunk bed with you don't count.

  Mel, Jackie and I sat at a park bench, demolishing a plain cheese pizza and looking like the sort of ethnically diverse friend group brochure-makers around the education world drool over.

  “Wait a second, we're forgetting something here,” Jackie had a malicious little smirk on her face.

  “What's that?” I pretended I wasn't excited to hear what she'd have to say.

  “We forgot about your birthday punches.”

  I wish I tried harder in PE. Maybe I'd have been able to dodge her pizza-fuelled Wolverine lunge.

  “Are you one?” thwack! “Are you two?” “-oof,” “are you three?” thump!

  “Help!” I shouted into the void. “Assault! Assault! I’m being beat over here!”

  Twenty seven punches later (after Jackie was done, she had to hold me down so dear sweet little Melanie Wong could get her turn), I was released, and slumped against bench, massaging the quickly growing purple spot on my arm.

  “Hey, consider yourself lucky, you’ve only got two people beating you up,” Jackie said. “If you had more friends than thumbs that mark would be a hell of a lot darker.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “Can we show him now?” Mel interrupted, bouncing up and down“Can we? Can we?”

  Jackie grinned. “Fine, he’s been good, we can show him.”

  “Show me what? Should I get welding goggles?”

  “Your birthday present, doofus.”

  Jackie peeled the zipper on a tatty denim backpack with a shielding surface of dozens of pins, and passed me a little plastic rectangle.

  Tight plastic wrapped around the case. Endless Galaxies 6. My arm was a memory.

  “Told you,” Jackie leaned over Mel. “He’s not from this planet, is he?”

  “Thank you! I mean screw you! But thank you!”

  I’d been eyeballing the game for months, but it never went on sale, yet… here it was. Procedurally generated planets, billions at a touch, with their own species and ecosphere’s and so much to learn. You played as the head of an intersystem corporation that bought planets that didn’t have any intelligent life on them, and studied them. You could run all kinds of experiments and see what happens.

  “Yep,” Mel agreed. “Definitely an alien.”

  “It’s… I don’t think I’m sleeping this week,” I kept turning over the box in my hand, convincing myself it was real. Really there. Really in my hands.

  A supersonic crack ripped through the sky and a white spotlight beamed down on us.

  My first instinct was to scream. “I didn't do it!”

  I settled for just screaming as gravity reversed polarity, throwing me into the sky in a sprawling heap. The game broke free from my hands, and I reached out wildly, grabbing it by the edge and yanking it back. My stomach dropped down as an airborne disc revealed itself as the source of the yellow light and rushed towards me. I couldn't breathe. Pizza came up, flew out. Beside me Melanie had managed to cling onto Jackie who was quiet, even paler than usual, eyes wide.

  A fourth figure joined us as we sailed into the disc, shouting and flapping his hoody-clad arms like he could fly.

  I'm not ashamed to admit it. I freaking wailed. My throat stopped working so I gasped, after what felt like a Russian nesting doll of eternities, our upward fall slowed. My shut eyes were seared as we passed into the source of the yellow light. Beneath, machinery whirred, until the dark ground below disappeared, above, another disc twisted open. We were passing through an airlock. Jackie was weeping. The airlock curled shut.

  Thump.

  Gravity righted itself.

  I rolled over, heart pumping, sweat pouring and heaved. What little pizza was left came spilling out.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  It was like I set off a chain reaction. The stranger had had something else for dinner but the effect was about the same. Just four kids on the floor, vomiting up all that was holy.

  It was only when I settled back that I noticed the three creatures watching me with holographic clipboard projections.

  Three evenly split tripod legs with humanoid torsos resting atop them like periscopes, and split-lips revealing vast arrays of teeth.

  “?? ????????■????? ????□???????◆?????????????? ???□????? ??????????■???????■??????,” one of them said to the other, taking a note.

  Aliens… we'd been abducted by…

  “We just got abducted by freaking aliens!” I broke into a fit of cackling.

  Jackie didn't say anything. She'd hidden her face in her coat to cry. The stranger brooded. He was good at brooding.

  Mel smacked the back of my head. “No need to sound so excited about it.”

  “?????? ■?□??????? □?■??? ??□??????????? ?????????? ?????????????? ?????? ??????□????? ????????????■??? ??□??????” The other one said.

  “Uhh, guys?” I tried calling out. “I just wanted to say it's kinda rude to talk about us behind our backs like that. Could you maybe just… idk have you studied our language?”

  “????????? ?????????????? ?????? ????□?????,” the first one said to his (her? Their? Its?) partner, ignoring me.

  Their language was composed of a weird series of subvocal clicks. Like whales, bulging out their throats with each beat. Would've been funny if they weren't probably talking about probing me.

  “Please don't probe me.”

  Mel shouted. “Eww!” right as the stranger yelled. “Don't give them any ideas!”

  “I just asked them not to probe me, how's that giving them ideas!”

  “Maybe they'd never thought of probing you until you said that, has that occurred to you?”

  “...No.”

  Slightly embarrassed, I realized I was still clutching the game. I stuffed it in my bag, and sat back.

  I tried a few more questions but the clicks were neither directed at me nor did they mean anything to me, and eventually the aliens just left the room entirely.

  Aliens on Earth. Dang.

  ***

  Present day. I didn't want to be humanity's first contact with an alien probe. A fraction of the cage opened, enough for them to grab me in their vise-like grips.

  Mel pounced on the first of the Splits as I'd taken to thinking of them.

  “Mel, no-” I warned.

  One of its three hands shot out and casually swatted her back.

  Jackie prepared her own assault, but I glared her down. “Just make sure the kid's safe.”

  “That's bull-” Mel was already on her feet.

  “Language,” I interrupted.

  The stranger didn't make any attempt to help me. Just nodded.

  “Family's family. I get it, man.”

  I smiled weakly; the reality of the situation was beginning to sink in. “If I'm limping when I come back you'll know you were right.”

  They pressed me into the gurney and the cage shut behind them. Mel still kicked, tried to get free. Jackie lifted her off the ground and air-jailed her, but it didn't stop the stream of curses that followed me.

  The terror rose fast and my brain fell back to how to play the situation. Alien abduction. Creatures beyond my comprehension. Odds horribly out of my favour. What would Jack Burton do? What would Peter Quill do? What would Han Solo do? Mouth off.

  “So… the whole kidnapping random kids thing. You wouldn’t happen to be strangers would you? My mom warned me not to talk to those.”

  They diligently ignored me, and kept pushing on. We passed through further concentric rings. One was full of cages with all sorts of critters, chipmunks, snakes, a disgruntled cow, all from Earth. The next was full of cases of some kind of drug or something. Finally they dragged my gurney into a chamber full of medical devices.

  “If this is for my wisdom teeth, you guys totally gave me the wrong date,” I’d meant it to come out all slick and smooth but instead my voice had a cracked, timid effect to it.

  “??????????????? ??????,” one of the tripods yanked a strange device that looked a bit like a-

  “Nope, not the probe. Nopenopenopenopenope.”

  He pulled back, twisted off a steel cap of some kind, and jabbed it harshly into my ear.

  “Ow! Wait… wait that was it?”

  One of the split-lipped things tilted its head and walked back to the shelf it had retrieved the tagger from, plucking out a different cylinder.

  “Is this one for my other ear cause the last one actually wasn’t so bad.”

  The tip folded back mechanically, revealing a whirling buzzsaw.

  “Shit! Yeah, I’d like to opt out!”

  I strainee against my bonds, twisting, trying to rip off the manacles like I was Doomguy or Master Chief. What would Peter Quill do?

  “I didn’t sign a waiver guys, c’mon!”

  Not helpful.

  He drew closer, and paused the spinning action of the blade. With another poke, the whole machine shifted, revealing a syringe of some kind. Tranquilizer. At least they were going to dissect me humanely.

  He drew it back. I thought about everything I had. My parents. Mel. Jackie. Endless Galaxies 6, even if I’d never had a chance to play it. I’d had a lotta bad days, but the last one had been… actually pretty okay. I had my birthday, spent time with my friends, met new people, discovered aliens. Could’ve been worse. I closed my eyes. A massive crash echoed through the ship. My teeth struck, almost cracking. An alarm blared out throughout the ship.

  I peeled my eyes open. The two were frozen for a moment, bathed in flashing indigo warning lights, then one roared to the other.

  “?????? ●?□???????????”

  The listener bolted to a wall locker and hit a button. The lock clicked open with a satisfying hiss, revealing a wall of enormous guns shaped and sized to their bizarre alien proportions. He tossed one to his buddy, then took another for himself. They covered either door, barking back and forth in that weird bass click of theirs.

  That meant Bad Guy #2 had his back turned when the rocket hit Bad Guy #1. My gurney slammed back from the shockwave, and my head hit the wall, leaving me seeing stars as the smoke cleared. A trio of new aliens poured through the breach, all with weapons trained on Bad Guy #2.

  The one in the middle, some sort of colourful octopus-thing in a humanoid exosuit lowered its rocket launcher and threw it to the floor while its buddies to either side kept their weapons ready.

  The octopus-thing strobed a rainbow pattern, and a device hardbuilt into the exosuit emitted a series of clicks. “?? ????■??? ??□?◆??? ??□?■???????? ■?□??? ??□?◆??? ●?????????? ????●???? ??????□??? ??□???■? ??□?◆??? ??◆?■????”

  Bad Guy #2 growled and threw down his gun. “?? ????●?●? ●????????? ????????????◆?●?●?????? ??◆????? ●????????? ???? ???????? ?????? ??◆?????■?”

  Octopus clicked back, stepping aside to let the alien approach me. “????????? ??□? ??□?◆? ??●???■? ??□? ??□? ???????? ??????”

  “???□???????■??? ???????????????? ???? ??□?■?????? ???? ???????????????”

  I may not have been a native click-speaker but I could tell the temperature in the room was going down. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I vote to not go with that guy, he was going to chop me up and stuff. Just really not my vibe.”

  For the first time, the Octopus-thing actually appraised me. It was a bit unsettling seeing as it had no eyes to speak of.

  It plucked something from its pocket, a unit like the suit translator and planted it on my arm. Needles punched into my skin as it coiled around me and I cried out.

  “????□?●?□?????????,” the Octopus’s skin pulsed a variety of colours. “Try speaking now.”

  “That creepy bastard wants to cut me up!” I pointed and shouted.

  “Ah. I was afraid so,” it curtly waved an arm to one of its subordinates.

  “Wait-” Bad Guy #2 shouted before a hail of plasma flew from the lackey’s rifle and blew it to chunks, leaving blue blood sprayed across the room in the indigo blare.

  The octopus held out an exosuit arm. “I am the Captain…”

  ***

  “I don’t trust it,” was Mel’s first response when we let the others out. “It looks like it should be on a plate.”

  Jackie quickly put herself in front of Mel, and whispered through the side of her mouth. “Now what did we say about xenophobia, honey?”

  “What? I like calamari! Sue me.”

  It was the stranger that got to the point. “Will someone please just tell me what the fu-,” he caught my eye. “What the hell is going on?”

  The captain had collected spare translator units off the dead aliens and tossed them to Jackie and the stranger, Mel would have to deal with my translations.

  “Woah,” the stranger said. “It's like a Babel fish or something.”

  I grinned. “Yeah, exactly like a Babel fish, except the part with the ear. And it being alive.”

  “I apologize, I have never heard of this Babble fish,” the Captain said.

  “Don’t worry, it’s just something from one of our planet’s greatest literatures.”

  “I see. You wish to know where you are?”

  “That’d be a good start.”

  “You are on a spacecraft exiting the orbit of Planet 5674-P, owned by the Glorax Enterprises Corporation, one of hundreds of planets with primitive life being tested in the widest experiment ever committed in the galaxy.”

  “Sorry,” Jackie cut in, “did you just say the Earth is owned by a Corporation.”

  “Yes,” the Captain pulsed. “In fact, so are you. Everything on Earth is company property. You have no rights. You are, regrettably, property.”

  The stranger asked. “But why?”

  “They sought out planets with life not intelligent enough to seek independence, but developed enough to study. There is no singlular core goal to their experiments, no hypothesis they are trying to prove. They merely observe, and occasionally… occasionally they take samples to test.”

  The fear was gone from Jackie’s face, replaced by any punk’s self respecting rage. “ Samples. Hear that, we’re samples. Jesus, you can’t even go to space to escape capitalism! Guess Red Alert was wrong about that! What does that make the Earth? A giant petri dish?”

  I pulled the game out of my bag. Somehow that plastic wrapped case had survived everything. Endless Galaxies. Billions of procedurally generated planets where you could do what. Ever. You. Want.

  “Not a petri dish,” I said. “A playground.”

  “They’re not doing science, not really. That’s what they say they’re doing, that’s how all the other space people are cool with it, but really it’s a giant playground. They’re just… screwing around to see what happens. It’s really all just a game to them.”

  “This one understands. There is no greater goal. There reaches a point of wealth at which reality all loses meaning, and all that remains is a grand game. The pursuit of capital already renders existence a game, a game of accumulation, but what do you do when you’ve won the game? You find a new one. Unfortunately they won all the games they could find. Capital tends to make it easier to win all other games. In this they found a game with no ending. A game that carries on indefinitely. The ‘study’ of hundreds of planets. Earth as you call it has been under their eye for centuries.”

  “All our history,” Jackie said. “All just a game. That’s good to know. God I want to crack a split-lipped alien skull right now. Wait, not that’s not okay to say.”

  “The lips are not how they were born. They are an affectation. Only members of the corporation undergo the surgery necessary to display them.”

  “Okay screw it, killing split-lips it is.”

  “Wait wait wait,” the stranger said. “Hold up. You still haven’t said how you factor into this at all.”

  The Captain pulsed orange. Orange seemed to imply humour. The wry, slightly depressed old-people kind.

  “When we began, we too were playing the game. We came here for capital. We stole data and pharmaceuticals from these ships and sold to whoever paid.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “We saw what was happening. To humans. To atrians. To a dozen other species. You’ll be hunted on Earth if you return. Come with us. Until we can find a safe way to return you.”

  I shook my head. “Not until you tell me what we’re signing up for.”

  “We saw what was being done to the humans and the atrians and the others,” the Captain pulsed red. “And we decided we were done playing games.”