THE ALIEN LANDS
CHICAGO

Ingle was looking at the buildings. Nobody noticed.

They picked their way along the cold, snow packed sidewalk together: Ingle, Lisa and Cordelia. Lisa and Ingle held hands. They always held hands. The sidewalk wasn’t quite wide enough, so Cordelia trailed behind them, like a lost child. She wanted to spend some time with her best friend Lisa as they navigated this strange new land together. But as Cordelia was starting to discover, you can’t have everything you want, not even for a princess.

“Okay!” Ingle said over his shoulder. “C. We got to come up with some kind of plan.”

Ingle was not telepathic, however, he seemed to have a sense for when Cordelia was starting to feel sorry for herself. Cordelia’s audition was in seven minutes. Ingle was right after her.”

“Our other brothers want you to look them directly in the eye. They may not be telepathic, but they can sense when something is not right. Don’t ask me how I know, I just know. Then, when they say yes, we’ll steal all the secrets to this planet and conquer it.”

“Just be yourself, C.” Lisa said.

Her red hair was pulled back in curls. Somehow it made it worse that Lisa has been always so nice to her.

Cordelia had been studying human literature for months. She knew what kind of scene she wanted to do. Hamlet had become her favorite piece of literature and she was going to act that scene out for her audition.

“Hamlet is such a dry piece of storytelling. You sure you want to do that Cordelia?” Ingle asked. “Why not something from say Interview with a Vampire. Now that’s a novel I can sink my teeth into.” He started to laugh, “See what I did there? My first human joke. What do you think?”

“Don’t give up your day job,” Lisa said.

It was kind of incredible how long this had been going on Cordelia thought. They were only seventeen, at the start of their lives, but she felt like she’d known Lisa and Ingle forever. The school systems in the Colonial home world sorted the students out by how many people are with their families. The more people you have in your family the higher your class. For Cordelia, her family had nine hundred and eighty-five people and her mother’s side had three thousand five hundred people, hence why she landed in the first class in the Colonial home world. Cordelia was always a gifted student. She loved the arts, theater, music, but as a princess in Colonial society she never got the chance to chase her dream of being on the tele-monitor acting on various programs she had watched growing up. Lisa and Ingle (that was not their names in the Colonial world) had been running into her in the same programs as they matured and aged. Their world got turned upside down when an unknown force attacked their world and drove eight hundred thousand of them into ships that traveled the galaxy searching for a new home until they found Earth. It was a terrifying journey traveling across millions of miles of dark, cold space without encountering the force that attacked and chased them from the Colonial System. During their five-year journey to Earth, Lisa, Cordelia and Ingle got to know each other and deepened their bond of friendship. Lisa – pale, freckled, dreamy, Lisa wanted to play an instrument, her favorite was the trumpet. Ingle wanted to sing. He had fallen in love with Earth music and wanted to be famous among the humans. Cordelia had a crush on Ingle, but knew that he would never sleep with her.