I was on my second Bloody Mary by the time Andrew sank into the chair across from me at Gigi’s Cafe.
“Oh no,” he said, scrunching his nose. “Bottomless Bloody Mary’s? I thought that was Wednesdays.”
“It is Wednesday.”
“Oh,” he said. “Gross.”
“So I’ve been looking at this severance letter,” I said, waving the paper, “and I’m going to be destitute in less than a month. I’ll get enough for rent and utilities, but after that, I’ll maybe have groceries covered for a week or two at the most.”
“Time to move home,” Andrew said. “Mom’s meatloaf always tastes better when I’m broke. I appreciate it more, you know?”
“Hmm.”
“What about you?” he asked.
“Am I going to move home?” I asked, my brows raising at the thought. “Um. No.”
“Don’t get along with your parents?”
“I don’t get along with their Soul Guide, Ricky,” I said.
“Oh nooooo,” Andrew gasped. “Not Emissaries!”
“Afraid so.”
“Honey.”
The Emissaries of the Enlightened popped up soon after the President announced that Earth leaders had been officially and intentionally contacted by beings from another galaxy. Apparently, there was a star system out there with several habitable planets and moons, and much more advanced tech than we had on Earth. Bion 8KV. The images we’d been given of the worlds there were breathtaking, and sounded almost utopian. But the daernir, the dominant intelligent species of Bion 8KV, had a problem. Only one in twelve infants born in the star system were female, and it meant their populations were dwindling as older generations died out. Through means no earthly government had yet been willing to disclose, the daernir discovered human beings were sexually compatible with daernir, and produced strong, viable offspring, with a rate of approximately sixty percent female.
Obviously, we all had questions, but they were mostly going unanswered. Everything was highly classified. But some nations, ours included, had entered into agreements with Bion 8KV to allow human women to accept alien matches across the universe. There was a dating app, or rather a matchmaking app, because once you accepted a match andwentto Bion 8KV, you probably weren’t coming back. It was a two-month trip and cost more than Earth’s most obscenely rich billionaires made in a year. Who knew, though? Maybe you could get there and get rich enough to come back to earth if you wanted. Although if wealth was that easy to come by, why would you want to leave?
There were a lot of opinions on the morality and safety of hooking up with an alien in another galaxy, presumably to have little alien babies and never see your family again. And one of those opinions was that it was an abomination of nature. A group called the Emissaries of the Enlightened began to gain traction, preaching that anyone who considered such a thing was not only immoral and mentally ill, but also infected with spiritual darkness, likely spread by the aliens through our food, water, air, and wifi. They commanded their followers to surrender their homes, bank accounts, and 401Ks to their local Soul Guide and live a life of organic gardening and no electricity.
So. Yeah.
Mom and Dad joined a cult. They were now penniless, anti-alien, Amish hippies. And they broke off all contact with me when I refused to join them. I wasn’t exactly hopping on the first UFO out of here, but I wasn’t interested in a life without AC and cat videos. It might have hurt me more if I wasn’t used to butting heads with my parents over the state of the world already. I wasn’t sure where they stood on it now, but they’d been climate change deniers for years and jumped at every conspiracy theory they came across with their whole hearts. Don’t get me wrong. I think some shady things go on in our world. I doubt Congressokayed this whole alien baby matchmaker scheme in a sweeping bipartisan bill without some incentives. But aside from faster internet speeds, we hadn’t seen the kickbacks yet. To me, and a lot of people, that’s pretty suspicious. I’ll take the internet upgrade, though. And one probable conspiracy is hardly proof thatallthe conspiracies are true. Like the one about corn being genetically modified to release organic nano-bots into our bloodstream and control our minds? Um? Probably not.
“So what are you going to do?” Andrew asked.
I lifted my glass for another sip of tomato juice and vodka. “Find another job,” I said with resignation.
“You could sell feet pics,” he suggested.
“I tried that,” I said. “It’s a lot of work, and there’s no health insurance.”
“Hmm.” Andrew tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Camming?”
“I don’t think I’d be comfortable showing off anything above the knee.”
“But you’re gorgeous,” Andrew gushed. “You broke Kyle’s heart when you rejected him.”
“Who’s Kyle?”
“Security Guy.”
“Oh. Did he ask you out?” I wondered.
“Yeah,” Andrew said. “We’re on for Saturday. His treat since he basically fired me.”
