“Mom,” she whispers without looking up. “You’re not supposed to see me working. It disrupts the ops.”
“Sorry,” I murmur, and count to three before adding, “You’re not disrupting anything.”
She eyes me fiercely. “How do you feel about the baseball experiment?”
The thing she calls the experiment is, of course, Richard standing in his yard when neighbor kid Toby flings an overhand pitch right over the fence. With a flick of his arm and zero indication he was watching, Richard catches the ball blind. Not reflex. Precision. And Toby, who’s got that Miami Marlins hat on, just stands there mouth-open. Sammy recorded it, timestamped it, and gave it a five-star rating.
I try not to wince.
“You better have a logical explanation,” I say, folding my arms.
“Oh, I have ten,” she says, voice carefully serious. She taps a pen against her chin. “First hypothesis: he has infrared sensors. Second: he has a radar implant. Third: reflexes learned under alien gravity. Fourth…”
I raise an eyebrow. “How many hypotheses do you have?”
“Seventy-two,” she says, and looks ridiculously pleased with herself.
I stay silent. Let her pile on.
“The basement humming?” she says.
“Nightly,” I admit. “Like a low drone. Makes the blinds flutter.”
“And the blue flashes from his cellar windows? Uh-huh. Definitely labs. Medical or?—”
“Alien experimentation,” she finishes, wide-eyed.
I watch her. She’s scribbling notes again, but tears spring into her eyes—part excitement, part fear. It’s like she’s glimpsed the underside of a dream she didn’t know she wanted, and I don’t know whether to hug her or shut the operation down entirely.
Part of me wants to saystop this,you’re making it worse,go to sleep.But she looks up at me with those green eyes—smart, defiant, fiercely loyal to the unknown—and I hesitate.
Later that night, after I’ve forced her pajamas, sheepish confessions, lectures on privacy, and flat-out bribes with cocoa, I tuck her in. She squeezes my hand and says, “Mom, he’s not just weird. He’s interesting. And maybe he needs help.”
Her face glimmers in the low light. I think I see a flash of her own reflection in the darkness of a world that’s suddenly bigger—and scarier—than she’s ever known.
I kiss her forehead.
“Okay,” I whisper, “but tomorrow we dial it back—no baseball, no experiments.”
She grins through droopy eyelids. “More observations.”
I sigh.
The next day, reality assaults us with its mundane cruelty—morning breakfast, spilled cereal, Alexa alarms belting out weather reports and traffic warnings. But through it all, my eyes drift toward Richard’s house like a reflex. I’m tired—soul-tired—and I don’t understand whythisis what fixes me. Maybe because it's not perfect, and because it'smysterious, and because I haven't had real mystery since college days and that heartbreak that still pings my chest sometimes.
At 5 PM, I peek through the curtains while Sammy is at soccer practice. Neighbors’ windows glow in late light. I see Richard’s silhouette behind the basement windows—tall figure, shoulders hunched, faint turquoise glow outlining his form. The humming vibration fills my house; even in the dim living room, I can feel it like the buzz of a distant transformer.
It's rhythmic. Reassuring. Terrifying.
I twist the glass as though I can peer through infrared.
Are those molecular replicator muttering operations? Plasma calibrations? Terraforming experiments? Or is it just fancy gardening?
At that moment, a sharp rap at my front door. Heart jostles. I stiffen.
I open it to find Lipnicky standing there—black suit, cold smile.
“Vanessa,” he says with that oily politeness. “You have a minute?”
