Chapter Thirty-One: A Visit from Twenty-two

As they walked up the steps to Toby’s house in Germantown, Maryland, Bruce explained the paparazzi to Twenty-two. She’d had some experience with it when she first landed, but the idea that humans would chase famous people around to take pictures and then sell them was a foreign idea. The very act of doing so seemed to her an admission by the photographers that they were inferior to whoever’s picture they were taking. Other than One—who was considered superior to all others—no grod would accept such an idea.

She was grateful when Tyler opened the door to let them in. Olivia invited Twenty-two and Bruce into their living room. “Have a seat,” she said, motioning toward the cushioned sofa and chairs.

Twenty-two wasn’t sure at first if she was actually giving away one of the items of furniture. They would be useless for her; grods didn’t have the physical flexibility in their mid-sections to sit down even if they wanted to. Twenty-two didn’t really understand why humans sat at all. Why not just stand? Only older or injured grods needed to sometimes lower themselves to the ground to rest their legs. While the others sat, Twenty-two shuffled over and stood next to the sofa, and listened as the humans did what Bruce explained as “small talk.” Grods did the same thing, but not nearly to the extent of humans, who could spend hours talking about nothing.

Twenty-two recognized Tyler and Olivia from pictures Toby had shown her. Though she still had problems telling humans apart, their bright orange hair made them stand out, and Tyler was the obviously younger one. Strangely, Toby had said they had red hair, but it was clearly orange. When Twenty-two pointed this out, Bruce had explained that orange hair on a human was called red, just as brown-skinned people were historically called black or ebony, and yellow-haired people were called blond if they were men, blonde with an “e” if they were women. It seemed a complicated and unnecessary code.

But humans were a complicated species. They were intelligent, and yet, when they became emotional, they lost the ability to think rationally. From an evolutionary standpoint, it made no sense; rational thought was most needed in deeply emotional situations, such as when a predator was trying to eat you or a rival was competing for your mate.

They also had weak short-term memories. She’d noted that they often wrote things down, or called up things on their TCs that they’d seen before, as if they truly couldn’t keep these items in their memory. Even Bruce, who was teaching her to play chess and apparently was very good, had difficulty keeping track of the pieces if the board wasn’t in front of him. Grods had games similar to chess, but the entire games were played in their minds; a board with small sculptures wasn’t needed to keep track of the pieces. Humans were as intelligent as grods—more so, in the case of Bruce—but their weak memory skills often made them seem stupid. Or, as Bruce would put it, like chimpanzees.

Knowing that Olivia and Tyler had orange—or red—hair, Twenty-two, using ingredients supplied by Bruce, had died her yellow vest orange, and wore a matching orange velvo. Bruce had helped her with her wardrobe, introducing her to a human tailor, who had made a series of colorful vests and velvos for her. However, while among humans, she doubted she’d wear any of the vests other than the now-orange one with the protective field. It was too dangerous.

She had gotten used to humans leaving their mouths exposed, but could not yet bring herself to do so. She fingered her velvo. There was no logical reason for this modesty, and yet…leaving one’s mouth out in the open seemed so wrong. She knew it was learned behavior; baby grods had no such modesty.

Of more interest to her was the human ability to work with others. By nature and nurture, Grods valued independence. The idea of a group of grods working together to build a house, run a factory, or to win an election, was both distasteful and foreign to her thinking. Grod science advanced only as fast as individual grods made discoveries.

Perhaps this explained why human technology advanced so much more quickly than the grods' ever did, even though they had been around much longer. How long would it take for them to catch up and surpass grods?

The subject of discussion among the humans came to the election, and Dubois’s Stop the Invasion! slogan.

“Is there going to be an invasion?” Tyler asked.

“Tyler!” Olivia said.

“It’s an honest question,” Bruce said. He turned to Twenty-two. “Is there?”

“There is no invasion planned,” Twenty-two said. How could there be? She was the only grod who knew about Earth, other than as a point on a map that represented a race that did not yet qualify for Galactic Union membership, and was thereby off limits for any type of contact.

“If there were an alien invasion, could they conquer Earth?” Tyler edged closer on the sofa next to Twenty-two and stared at one of her arms.

A grod warship could destroy the surface of the unprotected Earth in about five minutes, Twenty-two figured. Of course, destroying wasn’t the same as conquering. To do that, they could annihilate a few islands, and then blackmail Earth into surrender. That might take a day.

“Humans are a spirited race,” Twenty-two said, “and I’m not sure if any alien race could conquer them.” She noted that Bruce was smiling and shaking his head slightly.

“There are more alien races than just grods?” Tyler asked.

“There are many,” Twenty-two said. “I cannot talk about that until Earth joins the Galactic Union. However, you may touch me.”

Tyler’s hand had been inching closer to her. Now he reached out and felt one of her arms. “It’s smooth.”

Soon the discussion moved to Tyler’s running for class president, and then to the table tennis tryouts.

“You have a table in the basement?” Bruce asked.

They adjourned to the basement. Bruce and Tyler faced off, warming up by hitting forehand to forehand shots, then backhand to backhand. Bruce gave some tips on technique, guiding Tyler through the proper form for a stronger topspinning forehand, which he called a loop drive. Twenty-two examined a spare paddle, noting the sponge covering with tiny, angled pinholes that exhaled air when struck, putting extra spin on the ball.

“May I play?” Twenty-two asked.

* * *

Late Tuesday Night, August 31, 2100

“Damn it!” Bruce was spinning a ping-pong ball on his thumb. They were somewhere over the Atlantic on their way to Russia.

“It’s just a ping-pong game,” Toby said. Twenty-two, the object of Bruce’s distress, was at the far end of the Rocinante, no doubt very confused.

“I taught her how to play, and twenty minutes later she beats me! Badly.” Bruce caught the ball and pushed his thumb through it. He tossed the smashed ball aside.

“She’s not human—”

“You can say that again!”

“—and so her reflexes and coordination are a little better than ours.”

“A little?”

“Okay,” Toby said, “a lot better. She did say her ancestors snatched small flying creatures out of the air for food. But I bet you can beat her at basketball. Or in a sprint or high jump.”

“Yeah, she’s about four feet tall. She could barely see over the table.” He began nibbling on a pluot—half plum, half apricot. Stupid crawled over and watched with great interest.

“You’ll get over it.” Toby turned to Gene Conkling. “What’s planned when we get to Russia?” Anything to keep his mind occupied as they awaited the North American results.

“Let me give you a rundown.” Gene stared off into space, and then recited the scheduled speeches and press events. Normally Bruce would be prepping Toby by now, but he was in a mental funk as he tossed a ping-pong ball up and down and nibbled on the pluot. The speechwriters back at headquarters were already working on his upcoming speeches.

Bruce tossed a piece of the pluot to Stupid, who snatched it out of the air. Bruce got up and stood in front of Gene, who didn’t seem to notice him.

“Gene, how many screens do you have open?” Bruce asked. Toby could tell he had several, from the way he was looking side to side, eyes unfocused.

“I’ve got ones from Russia News Central, from Moderate Headquarters in Russia, a personal spreadsheet with our schedule, and a map of Saint Petersburg.”

“Four, huh?” Bruce said. He’d found another of his never-ending supply of ping-pong balls to fiddle with.

“Yep, four,” Gene said. “It’s about all I can see right now, and—”

“Then you didn’t see this coming.” Bruce gave Gene a light shove on his chest. Not expecting it, the weighty press secretary fell backward onto a table. There was a crack as he hit the table, along with a simultaneous exclamation from Gene.

“Screens off!” Gene cried. His eyes focused and settled on Bruce. “What the hell was that for!”

“Okay, I feel better now,” Bruce said. “Let’s get Toby ready for his next appearance.”

Gene glared at Toby as he rose to his feet. Toby sighed.

“Bruce, did you have to do that?”

Bruce’s eyes were unfocused and looking off into space—now he was looking at something on his TC. His eyes focused on Toby. “Yeah, I did.” He turned toward Gene. “Gene, sorry about that, it won’t happen again. The election’s getting to me. Let’s get to work.”

Twenty-two wandered over, an eyestalk on Bruce.

Bruce glanced at her. “Relax, all’s well between us, O, Great Goddess of Ping-Pong.”

Twenty-two’s eyestalks glanced at each other, then focused on Bruce. “Is that a joke?”

“I think it’s Bruce’s way of accepting that his twenty or so years of training at an Olympic sport was not wasted, because he didn’t lose to a mere human or alien, but to an alien with supernatural abilities.”

“And from now on, you’re the Goddess of Ping-Pong,” Bruce said. “We have some more time before we commence filling Toby’s head with arcane facts and figures. Let’s play chess.”

There were a number of briefing papers that Bruce had put together for the next leg of the campaign. Toby hadn’t had a chance to look them over until now. He pulled them up and began to read. Many covered the basic talking points that matched up with what Toby said in his campaign speeches. One interesting item he’d sent to all staff was the “Words” memo, which listed the words to be used for describing themselves and their opponents. They were:

Words to describe ourselves: truth, courage, prosperity, humane, liberty, dream, strength, visionary, reformer.

Words to describe opponents: sick, decay, failure, collapse, destructive, pathetic, betray, hypocrisy, waste, corruption, incompetent, bizarre, self-serving, greed, stagnation, disgrace, lie, cheat, steal.

Toby decided he’d have to have a talk with Bruce about the latter list. Politics was a tough game, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted get into the name-calling game. For one thing, Dubois had more money, and could put far more attack ads out than he could—usually the only way to win a name-calling fight.

He must have dozed off, as he woke to an agonized scream. His heart racing, he jumped to his feet.

Twenty-two had beaten Bruce at chess.

* * *

Just before landing, they received the election results from North America.

North America	Electoral Votes	Dubois	Ajala	Platt
USA	62	51%	32%	17%
Canada	6	34%	31%	35%
Mexico	20	46%	45%	9%
TOTAL	88	82	0	6

They had edged out Dubois to win Canada! It was their first electoral votes. Most of their votes had come at Ajala’s expense, who, after getting slammed by Dubois’s saturation ads, finished third. Dubois, with his last-minute ad barrage, had come back to beat Ajala by a point in Mexico, while easily winning the U.S. With his seven electoral votes from Oceania, Dubois now had 89 electoral votes to Toby’s 6. Ajala was still at zero.

But it was still a long way to the magic 667 needed to clinch the election.