Occupied Earth: Stories of Aliens, Resistance and Survival at All Costs by Phillips Gary

Author:Phillips, Gary [Phillips, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Anthologies
ISBN: 9781940610528
Amazon: 1940610524
Goodreads: 24612430
Publisher: Polis Books
Published: 2015-10-13T07:00:00+00:00

I KNOW the mocks’ surveillance of us goes back at least to the 1930’s. Sure, they must have seen plenty of human entertainments before they invaded. I still don’t get their fascination with Hollywood, though. Especially among what I guess is their underclass, the Mahk-Re. But hey, it’s good for business, so I’m not complaining.

I wasn’t complaining either, that day I sat on a bench outside Delphinion Studios’ Stage 1, waiting for Iawan-Re and his daughter Iolawn to be piloted my way by noisy native guide and chief scenarist on their project (and my undeniable acquaintance), Jake Lenfants. Delphinion was built in the 1970’s, almost half a century before the invasion. I guess that makes it Old Hollywood, for the mocks. My realty agency had the place “For Sale or Lease.”

Glancing around from the bench, I took in Delphinion’s four sound stages and associated buildings. The studio complex stood beside a light-industrial cluster of what had once been adult movie outlet stores, now pleasure ‘bot emporia, also on land once owned by the studios. Smog-smudged, dilapidated, and dusty in the summer afternoon heat, everything in the neighborhood seemed a throwback to earlier days, earlier tech – yet also at the same time somehow raw and new, as if the pads for the buildings had only yesterday been bulldozed into the stone-and-gravel dry wash in which those buildings now stood.

Jake Lenfants’ car wheeled in off the frontage road and up to the gate. I heard Jake buzz down his driver’s side window and present bona fides to the security guard. It took a moment for the guard to walk back to the kiosk and start the gates swinging out of their way. In a moment more, they had pulled into a parking space in front of Stage 1, around the corner from where I sat.

“...a real fixer-upper,” I heard Jake say. “At least the location’s good. Close to the old 210 and Foothill Boulevard.”

“And the price is right for the project,” said an older male Mock voice – Iawan-Re’s? -- in the accented Mahklish some call Mahkanese.

“Which project, doc? The whole Family Odyssey thing? Or just Home From The Swarming Stars?” asked Jake, also in Mahklish. He once told me he learned the lingo from his brother-in-law, a guy named Harper whose partner in the FBI was the first Mahk-Ra to be fully integrated into a human law enforcement department.

“The former is a program – technically -- but both, I should think.”

“Shouldn’t we all,” said Jake. In a moment more I heard Jake direct their attention to the studio’s emblem.

“I ‘should think’ that’s a fitting sign for your work, that logo.”

“Why so?” a female voice (presumably Iolawn’s) asked, again in Mahklish .

“It shows the stars of the constellation Delphinus, overlaid on the image of a delphinium flower – see?”

“What’s Delphinus?” Iolawn asked.

“Delphinus, the Dolphin, is the constellation between Aquila the Eagle and Pegasus, the Winged Horse, in the human ‘constellation’ system,” said the voice I presumed was Iawan-Re’s.

“That’s right, doc, but don’t steal my thunder,” Jake said, before launching into his spiel.

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