ALIENATED: GROUNDED AT GROOM LAKE

Chapter 9: Homework Bound

The air raid siren started just as Octo, Jessica and I braved the hallway crowd outside the auditorium.

The last time I'd heard that piercing sound, military police rushed me from all sides, pushed me from my launch pad, and threw me to the ground.

"I didn't do anything," I shouted.

Octo put a reassuring tentacle around my shoulder and laughed.

"Don't sweat it!" he shouted over the wail, "it's just an alien invasion!"

"A what?" I yelled back, aiming for the little elliptical holes in the side of Octo's cephalopod head.

"Well, a drill for alien invasion, anyway," he added. "They test it every Monday at ten."

And then the siren stopped.

I watched the mass of extraterrestrials bustling down the hallway, making their way from first period to second as if the siren were as normal as a PA announcement about the cancelation of Chess Club.

"Surely it's too late for sirens," I quipped, looking around at the swarm of alien life moving between classes. "It feels to me like you've already invaded."

"But you can't assume every space-schlepper who shows up in a star-cruiser wants to join our friendly desert melting pot," Octo explained, earnestly. "It's the Bureau's job to be ready in case anyone or anything turns up with more butt-kicking intentions than enrolling their kids in Groom Lake High."

"The Bureau?"

"Yeah, you know, the Bureau for Alien Affairs. All of our parents work for the Bureau, including your dad now, right?"

"He used to be a four-star general," Jessica said. "Now he's working for aliens?"

"With aliens," said Octo. "All of the adults work for the Bureau, and by Nevada State law, all of us offspring have to attend school until we turn eighteen...in Earth years, that is."

I couldn't help laughing. "So extraterrestrials can cross all the time and space of the universe but can't get out of homework?"

"Nope," said Octo. "And we'd better not be late for next class or Mr. Orson will assign us plenty."

"Oh great," Jessica said. "It's my class too. Just promise me you won't ruin my life again."

Given what happened next, I was glad I didn't make that promise.

* * *

My timetable told me that the curriculum at Groom Lake was a blend of basic Earth stand-by subjects (Math, English, Science, Drama, Home Ec., Phys Ed.) plus stuff these guys might need to get into colleges throughout the universe; subjects like Intergalactic Physics and Astro-Mechanics, Galactic Languages, and Planetology—our next class.

The teacher, Mr. Orson, was a rock.

Literally.

He looked like a sandstone take on a snowman, and when he moved he made a sound like bricks being rubbed together. He wore a sharp suit, bow tie, and green handkerchief in his breast pocket—like he'd rather be a university professor than a school teacher.

From the look of the lab, it was pretty clear that Planetology was the kind of subject Groom Lake High did like to spend its money on. A new-carpet smell, the same super-flash computers as Mr. Meltzer's, tables that were little baby versions of the cafeteria's hexagons...this was school in style.