Free M55 by Robert Brockway

“ If you were the only human being
alive on earth, and you’d never seen a sand dollar before, what
would you think when you first found one?” I asked the pair of
them.
    Jen’s eyebrows knit together. A
little lopsided ‘y’ formed in the folds between her eyes. It was
cute. But then, everything she did was cute.
    “ I’m not following the train of
thought here,” Peter said. He seemed to be emptying the entire
sugar container into his coffee mug.
    “ I mean, you’d think it was a stone
or something, right? Some little rock with a neat pattern in it. At
least at first. Then when you walked down the beach and found
another with the same pattern, you’d get to wondering. Then you
find another. And another. Dozens of them, all with nearly
identical, improbably intricate patterns. ‘Okay,’ you’d think,
‘clearly somebody is making these things. This is proof that I’m
not the only human out there.’”
    Nobody snapped at the
bait.
    “ You’d think it was a sign, but it’s
nothing. It’s not even a stone, it’s an animal. It’s just nature.
There are all sorts of patterns in nature,” I said, and I pulled
out my finishing move. I set an immaculate sand dollar in the
center of the table, just beside the ketchup and the plate full of
destroyed, runny eggs that Jen had barely touched.
Peter said nothing. He just kept pouring sugar.
    “ So you think we’re wasting our
time,” Jen said. When she finally spoke, it was slow and measured.
Emotionless. Adorable.
    “ No, of course not,” I smiled, if
only to prove how totally affable and lovable I am. “SETI is a
valuable, hell – a vital program. Now that we’re advanced enough to
look for alien life, it’s a moral imperative that we do so. We’re
obligated as a species to keep looking, if only for the sake of
science. Even if we never find anything.”
    “ Bullshit,” Peter said. He looked at
me as he spoke, never one glancing down at the ceaseless stream of
sugar emptying into his mug. “There’s gotta be alien life out
there. I’ve seen a lot of my little corner of the universe. No way
in hell are we the most intelligent life in the whole damn
thing.”
    “ No way in hell
are  
you
drinking that coffee
,” Jen
said.
    “ Of course not. It’s empty,” Peter
said.
    “ Then why…?”
    “ Because
  it’s empty,” Peter grinned, a
vicious little break in his face, entirely without humor. “That
bitch of a waitress never came back with a refill. Now she’s got a
solid mug full of wet sugar to deal with.”
    Jesus. The people in this town
dislike us enough without little stunts like that. You’d think
they’d be grateful for our presence. Before we’d built the Big Ear
here, the most remarkable thing about Delaware, Ohio was a stained
wall that kind of looked like JFK if you squinted hard and tilted
your head sideways. It’s always been a college town; you’d think
they’d be used to visiting academics. But no, everywhere we went it
was just glares and the cold shoulder. No smile from the
waitresses. No chit chat from the bartender. No friendly advice
from the pharmacist. No suggestive winks from the college
girls…
    These people had no reason to
dislike us – we spent most of our time buried at the observatory.
They barely even saw us.
    Maybe  
that’s
  why they didn’t like us.
    The waitress came by to drop
off the check. I smiled at her extra hard. Look how god damn
friendly we are, you stupid yokel.  
Love
us.
    She just frowned down at the mound
of white spilling out of Peter’s cup, and walked away without a
word.
    These people, I swear to
god.
    …
    Jen walked out in front. She walked
like she thought she was being stalked by somebody, just one loud
noise away from sprinting. To her, a walk was just an inconvenience
between places she had to be.
    “ I’m telling you, that pattern is
repeating,” Peter hollered from somewhere behind us.
I was in a light jog, trying to keep up with Jen. But I was also
trying to