Obviously, Aliens by Jennie Goloboy

Author:Jennie Goloboy [Goloboy, Jennie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-73436-034-9
Publisher: Queen of Swords Press

Dana stood in the SoftFruit lobby, dressed in costume as a commercial artist. Which was like what she wore as an actual commercial artist, only more so. Her outfit consisted of a hot pink suit jacket, neatly buttoned over her Star Wars T-shirt, her favorite bright orange jeans, an artist's portfolio, and most importantly, an enormous pair of lime green glasses with parrots on each side of the frames. She had purchased the additional accouterments at the Mercury market in exchange for her Taser. The glasses had originally belonged to someone a bit more nearsighted than Dana, but she could still see through them. She was willing to take the discomfort of miscorrected lenses in case Greg had put her face into the SoftFruit computers to be detained on sight. Hopefully if she kept the glasses on, the system wouldn't recognize her.

It worked for Superman, right? And Clark Kent's glasses didn't even have magenta, sequin-covered parrots on them.

She watched the line of business-suit clad people walk through the entry gate and briefly considered joining them, but then she realized that they were all wearing electronic badges and using them so she approached the receptionist instead.

The receptionist, at twenty steps away, looked like a pretty young woman, but as she moved closer, Dana could tell something was off. The receptionist was wearing a lot of makeup. Her foundation looked like it had been sprayed on with an airbrush. “Can I help you?” she asked when Dana got to the desk. When she smiled, Dana could see that the makeup was wearing off around her mouth and the skin underneath looked green.

Alien! thought Dana. It was still cool to realize she was in the same room as someone from a totally different planet. She hoped that the bit of social engineering she was about to engage in would work on someone who wasn't human. “I have a 9:30 with Sara in the Art Department?” she said.

“Which Sara?” asked the receptionist.

“I don't know,” said Dana, widening her eyes and letting them water a little. “My name is Felice Smithson. She just told me to ask for Sara. In the Art Department.”

“We have five Saras in the Art Department.”

“Look,” said Dana, sniffling. “It's a job interview. I really need this job. Can you just call whichever Sara you think it might be?”

The receptionist sighed.

Dana allowed one small tear to fall out of her eye, then wiped it off with her finger without removing her glasses, embarrassment written all over her face.

“Wait there,” said the receptionist, nodding towards a comfortable-looking set of chairs.

“Can I just use the ladies' room?” asked Dana, with a self-deprecating laugh. “I need to clean myself up a little.”

The receptionist got out of her chair. “We need to take your picture first, okay, honey? Could you stand on the X?”

Dana couldn't see any way out of it. She stood on the X.

“One-two-three, say cheese!” said the receptionist.

Dana sneezed. It was a perfectly credible, believable sneeze, and it just happened to shake her head backwards, ruining the picture.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.