1

- Sophia -

“Okay, let's try one more. Emilia?” I try to rub the sleepiness out of my eyes and take a short step back from the test bench to let the Mexican girl come forward.

“Let's see now,” Emilia says and takes a second to come up with something. “Este es un buen día,” she says very clearly into the little microphone.

“These was a belt varnish curtain,” the translator machine says in its bright voice.

Groans of disappointment fill the room.

“I don't believe this.” I clench my eyes shut for a second. I want to bang my head on the lab table. It's been a long day, and progress has been slow. Now it feels like things are going backwards.

“Dammit! I really thought we had it this time,” Caroline says. “They're going to take away our grant, I just know it.” The blonde Norwegian girl started the day looking radiant, as usual, but now she looks just as exhausted as we all do.

“It's not totally wrong,” Heidi says, always the optimist. She pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “It does identify the verb correctly. Almost. Well, kind of. I'll try one.” She takes a step forwards. “Guten tag. Wie geht's?” she says in German.

“Your mothers be an slut,” the little machine responds happily.

Heidi flushes and for a moment I think she's going to punch the translator device. “Mist! That's not what I said! Yes, fine, it is kind of true. Hey, she's been lonely since the divorce. But that's none of this verdammte machine's business!” She kicks a chair and it falls over very noisily.

I totally sympathize.

“It struggles with tenses and plurals,” Delyah says. “The mistranslated words are less important. I'd recommend turning the secondary implicator to a margin of eleven percent.”

For a moment I just stare at her. I'm supposed to be the leader of this project, and even I'm not quite grasping what that means. But that girl from Atlanta is smarter than all of us combined, and speaks seven languages like a native, so she's probably right.

“Okay,” I say, not wanting anyone to know that I'm drawing a blank. “Umm ... could you do that, please, Delyah?”

“Sure thing.” She gets busy with the setup.

I stick my hands into the lab coat's deep pockets so the other girls can't see that I'm balling my hands into tight fists of frustration. We've been working on the experimental translation device for weeks, and at first things looked great. The little machine is tiny, just about the size of a cell phone battery, and it's capable of teaching itself all kinds of languages just by listening to them. But the past few days it seems like we've been going backwards, and the translator just sounds more stupid than ever.

“Let's try the other way around,” Caroline says and comes forward. “Set it for Norwegian, Sophia.”

I change the setting and she bends down over the microphone. “I really like these boots.”

“Du vil gjerne spise dette svømmebassenget,” the machine replies instantly.

We all look at Caroline.

She sighs deeply and looks at me apologetically. “You'd like to eat this swimming pool.”

More groans fill the room. This seems hopeless.

I glance up at the wall clock. One past midnight. I should just let the girls go home. All this was my idea, after all, and now it looks like it has all been a total waste of time. I look around the room and try to look upbeat, but I know my smile is tired.

The girls are, too. They're all bilingual and have been picked partly because of that, so that we can test the machine properly. They're patient, too. None of them have suggested we call it a day, despite the late hour.

“Okay. One more adjustment, and then we go home for the weekend.”

I can feel the atmosphere lighten when I say it. Yeah, we've all had enough of this. If this thing doesn't work on Monday, this project is officially a failure and Professor Wilkins will cancel it. The device contains a hyper-advanced computer chip that comes straight from a university lab, and they can't let me hang on to it forever. It's supposed to be a long step closer to true Artificial Intelligence, it's the only one that exists, and it's worth so much money that Professor Wilkins wouldn't even tell me how much. She was afraid I'd refuse to assist her with this project if I knew.

Well, I can only hope she'll be kind enough not to give me a failing grade. I'll work on the thing all weekend alone, but I just know it won't work. If it doesn't, I'm pretty sure I'll take a hammer and smash the damn device into a thousand pieces. Just to get closure. After I very carefully take the chip out.

I add a line of code on the computer the device is connected to. “How about Italian this time? Aurora, could you-”

The building suddenly starts shaking violently and I have to steady myself on the desk to not fall over. “What the heck is this?”

“Earthquake!” some of the girls yell and dive under the desk.

And that's what it feels like. Everything in the room is trembling hard, and the noise from all the lab equipment is terrible. But there's a rumbling, too, a deep noise that's making my teeth rattle as if someone is playing a very bass-heavy tune on speakers the size of a house. But this sound is sustained and even, not like a rhythmic bass line at all.

I frown. This is nothing like any earthquake I've ever felt. And I'm from California.

A light fixture falls from the ceiling and breaks into a million fragments in a terrible crash.

“Get down, Sophia!” someone is yelling from the floor.

Oops. I'm the only one still standing up. I grab the super-expensive translator and throw myself down.

Just as I dive for the floor, there's a deafening ripping noise and a screech of tortured metal. It rains dust and wood and insulation material and little fragments of concrete, and the room is suddenly much darker as the light goes out. I feel cold air on my hands and face. I just about dare to glance up from under the table I seem to have crawled under.

Ah. The whole roof is gone. But it didn't fall down. It was taken off the building like the lid off a styrofoam cup. This is one weird earthquake ...

The other girls in the room are screaming, and I'm pretty sure I'm doing the same, but I can't be sure because of the noise around me.

I squint. What's that outside in the darkness where the ceiling used to be? It's something big and bright, shining with a light so cold that it freezes my soul. It's round and ghostly and appears to hover in the air like a helicopter.

No, not a helicopter, I realize. More like a ... a flying saucer?

Then I'm definitely screaming my lungs out as I'm suddenly hanging in mid-air, suspended in a beam of green light that somehow stings my exposed skin. Other girls are hanging over and under me in their white lab coats as we're slowly being pulled up towards that one saucer like fish on an invisible line.

And beyond – oh fuck. I can see at least fifty huge flying saucers spread out over the city, all with wide green beams coming out of their undersides and little strings of humans suspended in them.

I notice I'm clutching the translator device in my hand as if my life depends on it. But right now I'd hang on to a live tiger with all my strength if it would mean the slightest chance of all this to not be happening.

But it is absolutely happening. The cold night air in my lungs, the screams, the details I can make out on campus beneath me, including my rusty bike ... I feel the sting of panicked tears behind my eyelids. Whatever this is, it isn't good.

The university buildings are getting smaller under me and when I look up, I see a dark, round hole in the flying saucer. It glows with an unhealthy sheen that makes me think of radiation.

Something in the beam wants me to lose consciousness, but I'm stubborn and I struggle to keep my eyes open. Just before I have to give in and let the darkness fill my mind, I force two thoughts to pass through it.

This is definitely an alien invasion of Earth.

And I'm being kidnapped.