Page 82 of Folds
“We’re sorry if we’ve done something strange to alarm you; we are only as knowledgeable about human customs as our hosts are.”
My breath shudders as I blow off the steam from my mug. Hosts? Like a parasite needs a host? Or like hosting a student? I knew a few kids who did cultural exchanges when we were in school. There were plenty of international students as well when I went to uni. Maybe it’s just that.
“Would you like us to explain everything now?” Rose asks.
“Please.”
For a moment, neither of them speak, simply adjusting their clothes and seating position. Like they are the nervous ones here instead of me.
“We are Sorscelgra, the most common human reference to this we can gather is a hivemind.” Rose’s voice is soft, but it doesn’t chase away any of my fears. “When our parent organism shed us, we began our journey to find a new solar system to call home. We are a very territorial being so we require much distance between our life forces.”
“There are others?” I ask.
“Mmm, we’ve never come across another besides our parent, but they must have come from somewhere? We live very long lives, so we can’t imagine there are too many of us.” Not Rose answers instead of Rose, but it’s with the same softness. Like they are both terrified I’m going to freak out.
Which is fair.
I’m barely holding on to my mug right now.
“We travelled a great distance before we found this place.” Rose continues, “The first place was much to put together; we couldn’t see a reason to risk their stability and?—"
Rose stops herself, the petals at the top of her head curling suddenly.
“Sorry, you probably don’t want to know about our failures,” Not Rose says quietly. “What matters is that we found a place that needed us, and we found our mate.”
“The first planet we searched, Pluto, we think you call it now, had a very interesting sort of inhabitant, but they were so frequently in conflict that they were only just discovering space travel. We think they’ll make an excellent defence outpost to ward off others.” Rose’s voice is overly cheery. She’s trying her hardest to sell this invasion of a planet I didn’t even think had life as a good thing.
“So you can—" I swallow because I can’t even believe I want to know the answer to this, "—live on many planets?”
“Well, it depends on the number of inhabitants in any givensystem, we suppose. What we’ve found is that the more inhabited a place, the more put together they are.” Not Rose answers my questions.
“But we could tell even with just the first few leaders we implanted, Earth needed us,” Rose continues. “So much corruption and harm being done.”
She shakes her head like a disappointed schoolteacher, while I feel like mine’s been turned into a ping-pong ball being constantly batted back and forth between the two of them.
“Are you trying to say that your invasion and mass infection of humanity is a good thing?”
Both the flower-headed aliens cock their heads in unison again.
“Yes,” they say quickly. “Because now we can create the perfect world for our Georgia.”
“What?”
“You are the reason we stopped. If you didn’t exist, we would have had to find a new system, but you’re allergic to us, so there’s no reason to keep going.” Not Rose pats their knees in finality. “We’ve found our true purpose.”
“Fuck off.” I gape at them.
“Then let us prove it to you,” Not Rose says. “Give us a chance.”
chapter three
Clearly, I’m fucking stupid.
When a parasitic hivemind tells you that you’re the one thing stopping them from taking over the solar system, you don’t agree to go on a date with them. Why did I do this? I kept asking myself that all day and couldn't come up with a single good answer.
They hadn’t left the video call I abandoned when I thought I was just getting mail. When I sat down at my desk, as if going back to work would solve all my problems, I nearly screamed when my former colleague Daniel, now a sunflower-looking person, started speaking to me.
“You don’t need to work on anything you don’t want to, Georgia. Or really buy anything, I guess. But it’s up to you.” He waved his pale orange hands. “We don’t want to control you or anything weird.”
