Free The Human Insurgency by J. Kirsch Page B

both knew it. BUT, and I have put this with slam-dunk
firmness, that didn't mean we were going to be having sex any time
soon (or ever) under the microscope of aliens who seemed to view us
as their own private freak show.
    It was despite the situation that Jobe and I had
formed a relationship. It was nice to have some inside jokes just
between the two of us. When it was just him and me I could be less
self-conscious. I could be myself in ways that I couldn't be with
our bigger group. My time with Jobe was probably even more
important because I could be free of my sister for once!
    I know that sounds horrible, but sometimes I didn't
want to put on a brave front and tell my little sister
'Everything's going to be OK!'. Sometimes I wanted to cry, to let
out the pent-up frustration of despair and grief that I felt. Jobe
would let me release all that crap, leaning on him as I just let it
go.
    Sometimes though, it was the other way around. As a
macho-looking African-American, he more than anyone else in our
group played the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' card. But what human
doesn't have doubts? No, let me rephrase: what human captured by
aliens and kept in indefinite captivity doesn't have doubts, deep
and serious? So every time we sat in this tiny room together we
were like each other's personal lifelines, maintaining each other's
sanity in ways we couldn't in the larger group.
    Jobe now decided to do his best version of Sean
Connery and then one politician after the next. I giggled as he hit
his stride, his voice playful as a cat's purr one moment, then
changing key the next, booming indignantly like Winston
Churchill.
    When he'd exhausted his comic relief skills for the
day I leaned forward tentatively. We kissed. He always let me
initiate. I think the creepiness of our situation made him want to
be the perfect gentleman. His hands pressed firmly against my lower
back, but they never strayed from there, and I knew that they
wouldn't either, not without a very explicit green light from
me.
    My hands felt warm resting against his biceps. The
muscles were distracting, and not in a bad way.
    After more than 12 weeks I wanted to force out of my
mind this urge to wonder why the aliens were making us do this
courtship ritual, but part of my brain refused to abandon one
speculation after another. It kept me from thinking how guilty I
felt for liking Jobe. How liking him made me feel like I was
somehow consenting to the demeaning experiment the aliens were
conducting on us. What were we to them but lab rats?
    But did that mean we couldn't at least hold onto our
humanity in subtle ways? I was beyond shame. I think tribulation
and grief had a way of getting me to that point. I was like someone
who'd been given impossible choices. What was I going to do? Make
my body shut down? Turn away from Jobe and refuse to even speak to
him? Sit and wait to die? Was it right for me to ignore the shame
of what Jobe and I were now doing in order to survive? To do things
I would never do in a totally sane or perfect world?
    Right now I didn't care, and whatever Jobe and I
shared, it still had meaning regardless of what had thrown us
together. This courtship was making us care about each other in new
dimensions, and that had meaning which I was betting none of the
Glowing Ones, no matter how brilliant as scientists, could fully
comprehend.
     

Chapter 3
     
The Resistance
     
    Jin stared at the bedside photo of his wife and
family. He didn't see any anger in her captured-in-time face, no
rage at being stolen from the world too early. It was as if she
watched over him. The picture of her gave him that intangible
feeling of relief to keep. It kept him going another day. Another
hour.
    Half-clothed in the light, Jin rubbed his eyes as
Meiyu stirred under the bed sheets. Her arm flailed at the faded
warmth where only a body's imprint remained.
    "Hmm? News? You have to go?" She was used to his
sudden disappearances in the night. Meetings, his presence summoned
to