Anya didn’t get much sleep over the weekend. She spent most of her time on the computer, searching for any and all organizations, institutions, groups, and forces that might be capable of actually responding to news of an alien threat. There were a lot more than she had first thought of.

Several universities had small wings of their science departments who researched potential signs of alien life. Big groups she hadn’t initially thought of, like the Center for Disease Control, also popped up in a few searches. It made sense in hindsight: foreign visitors would bring foreign microbes and bacteria, probably. Still, not what she needed.

Dashing her most fervent hopes, she did not find any sort of official “X-Files” branch in the FBI, but despite her initial misgivings, they sounded like her best option. She considered calling to make an appointment to speak with an agent, but didn’t want them having a record of her phone in case it turned out to be a bad idea.

She spent her Monday morning looking up the central field office for the Bureau in Manhattan and buying herself a basic outfit to replace her old clothes: black t-shirt, jeans, shoes, and a rather nice leather jacket. Felix had told her that items like this, things that did not have an otherworldly tech or arcan modifications and were made from common materials, were all fairly cheap. What would’ve cost her hundreds of dollars at a store (the jacket alone was worth at least $200, she guessed) was only 20 RAC from the menu.

Anya texted Tori as she prepared to leave.

ANYA: Going to the FBI today. Will let you know when I’m done. Thanks for telling work I’m sick.

TORI: They weren’t happy but screw them. GL!

“Hey Felix?” Anya asked as she closed the messaging app.

“Yes?” the AI asked as they appeared.

“I’m heading out for a while. Can you make my menu appear on my phone like an app or something? Just in case I want to use it while I’m in public.”

“I can’t actually integrate it into your phone, but I can layer it on top of the screen to appear like it is. And it’ll follow your hand and eye movements with some calibration. Just stare at your phone and move your hand around for a few seconds.”

“Like this?” Anya asked as she followed her phone with her eyes while she moved it from side-to-side.

“Yup! All done! I’ve set it up to only become large when you’re alone automatically. I can make other adjustments as we go along, and of course, you can just verbally tell me to make it big or match your phone again at any time!”

“Thanks Felix,” Anya said as she opened her door. “All right, make yourself scarce while I’m outside.”

“See you later!” Felix said as they vanished.

By the time Anya got off the subway at Chambers Street Station, it was late afternoon and the sun was already setting. It made the innumerable windows of the city burn with reflected fire and Anya paused on the street to admire the sight. The FBI office was a couple blocks away, right next to Foley Square and Thomas Paine Park. It was a narrow tower of off-color concrete and narrow windows, the very model of drab government aesthetic.

Looking up at the federal monolith before her made Anya’s stomach sink. All of it, the idea of actually reporting aliens to the government and everything that might follow because of her, pressed down on her as she stood in the shadow of 26 Federal Plaza.

Anya grit her teeth and clenched her fists.

“Fucking hell,” she muttered. She had planned all weekend for this, played out a hundred scenarios in her head, and now she had cold feet.

“Just need another minute,” she said and turned away from the building. She cursed at herself as she stood there. She had to do this. It was the smart, responsible thing to do and she would fucking do it.

She just needed a minute, first. A breather so she didn't go into the FBI office looking like a nutcase. There was the temptation to delay this further, to go home and say she'd do it tomorrow, but no. She was alerting somebody now, tonight.

She settled for stopping in a nearby cafe just up the street to give herself a few minutes to collect herself and then she'd go. It was normal inside: smells of ground coffee and fresh bread, the nonsense noise of a dozen conversations happening at once and mixed with the clack and clatter of porcelain. It was a balm against thoughts of interviews with the FBI and how exactly to best phrase the idea of an alien invasion without sounding like a lunatic.

“Just a latte,” Anya said at the counter. She’d have a coffee, calm down, and then go into 26 Federal Plaza and get started on the historic process of alerting her country to alien life. She took her cup of coffee from the counter and sat at a small table by the window so she could look out at the tall federal building.

Her reverie was interrupted when she heard a quiet beep to her right. She looked to her side, thinking it might be a phone somebody had dropped, but then she heard it again and realized it was coming from inside her ear canal.

Anya raised her phone to her left ear and asked, “Felix?”

“Yes?” the AI replied, at level with her phone, but unseen.

“Why is my right ear beeping?”

“That’s the menu system! I also set up any notifications to be more discreet while you’re out in public! Super thoughtful, right?”

“Yes, thank you,” Anya said. “Why am I getting notifications? That’s new.” Anya pulled her phone away from her ear to look at it as she tapped her chest. Her menu appeared, compact and unobtrusive, to the main screen displaying her stats and skills. There was a flashing icon of an envelope in a glowing orange circle in the upper corner of the screen.

“One of the previously locked menus, the messages menu, has become available. Another cache of data has unlocked too, as well as a new side-objective,” Felix said.

Anya clicked on the flashing envelope with her thumb and was taken to a new menu that resembled a messaging app. Green text glowed on the screen and Anya’s eyes widened as she read the words they spelled.

“HEY. U A MENU USER? MEET UP? IM IN THE CITY 2”

“Felix?” Anya asked, a tremble creeping into the two syllables. “What is this?”

“The new data cache has informed me that yours was not the only menu system to have entered the atmosphere Friday night.”

Anya’s mouth dried up and she took a breath before she asked, “How many?”

“As of Friday night, 10,608 menu systems entered Earth’s atmosphere and connected with hosts. Two of them landed near here: one in Brooklyn, and one in Long Island. Your new side-objective states that you should make contact with a fellow host.”

“Ten thousand?” Anya rasped.

“And 608.”

“All over the world?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus Christ,” Anya muttered. “And this guy is in Long Island? The one who messaged me?”

“Ye——” Felix started to say then paused. “No. He’s a few blocks away and closing.” Anya’s menu switched from the message screen to the map, which showed her current position near 26 Federal Plaza as a blinking orange dot. Another dot, this one green, was just up the street and approaching quickly.

“What?” Anya hissed. “How did he——?” But then she realized he found her the same way she could see him: the map. But how had he known to find her? Had he just been staring at his map the entire time?

She didn’t have much time to ponder the questions that sprang to mind. She and a few other cafe patrons all looked up as a gleaming black Rolls Royce straight out of an old movie pulled up in front of the coffee shop. It matched the position of the green dot on the map, mere yards away from Anya’s orange one.

Anya’s grip tightened on her phone as the rear door of the Rolls swung open, and another host for the menu system emerged onto the sidewalk.

The man who stepped out from the luxurious car was at least as tall as Anya, with broad shoulders and a muscular frame clad in a three-piece black suit. He carried a glossy black cane with a silver lion’s head at the top, and several silver rings glittered on his fingers.

He was also the single most handsome man she had ever seen, to the point of it being almost surreal. His hair was long, blond, and swept behind him. He had bright blue eyes and a wide, friendly smile that displayed white, even teeth. His facial features were sharp without looking harsh, rugged without being crude. It was a face that put every man in Hollywood and the modeling industry to absolute shame.

Anya wasn’t the only one who noticed the man. The Rolls pulling up to the curb had drawn several stares, but the man drew all of them. The Rolls pulled away and the man waved to it as it left and then stepped into the cafe. There was a series of click! sounds from phones behind Anya as a few people took pictures. The man ignored them and glanced at Anya. He touched his ear and whispered something while keeping his eyes on her, nodded, then sat down at her table.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Carl.”

“Uh, hey. I’m Anya,” she said as she stared at him. She’d only ever seen people this good looking on a screen or in magazines.

“You’ve got a menu too, right? My little green friend told me,” At this, Carl pointed at his left ear. Anya raised an eyebrow.

“Green friend?” she asked and pointed at her ear.

“Yeah, you know, you touch your ear, menu comes up, little green thing appears and helps you out. Don’t tell me mine was lying.”

“No, I got a menu,” Anya said. She pointed at the center of her chest. “Except mine’s here and my ‘little friend’ is orange.”

“Huh. Makes sense. Your dot on my map was orange too. Weird shit, right?” he laughed but it was forced.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Anya agreed. Silence stretched out between the two of them as they studied each other. Anya couldn’t help but wonder what this guy had spent his RAC and points on. Did he have a nuke? A gun? Psychic powers? Something else more horrible?

“It’s nice to know I’m not the only one,” Carl said. “Kinda thought I might be going crazy for a day or two there.”

“I hear that,” Anya said and studied his face. It was almost too perfectly made, and she asked, “Did you always look like this?”

Carl laughed. “That’s pretty direct. But no. Friday night I was barely five-foot-six, had curly brown hair, braces, and acne. Saturday morning,” he gestured down at himself. “Boom. Leading man quality.”

“I’m guessing the Rolls and the fancy clothes, cane, and rings are new too?”

“Yup,” Carl nodded. “Got everything on Saturday. Cost me most all of my RAC on top of the physical improvements. You? Were you always so tall and muscular and cute?”

Anya made a pfffft! sound and rolled her eyes. “I dunno about ‘cute,’ but the height and muscles were an accidental side-effect of dumping six points into my brawn stat.”

“What? You got tall and buff just by adjusting your stats? You didn’t have to pay for it in the RAC store?” Carl asked, a note of irritation in his voice. He touched his ear and said, “You didn’t tell me I could do that.”

“Yeah, these AI things kinda tend to keep to themselves unless you really grill them,” Anya said. “Does yours take things really literally and act way too cheerful?”

“She takes things literally, yeah, but she’s actually really dull and grunts a lot,” Carl replied.

“So they have different personalities. Huh.”

“I adjusted my appearance first, locked it in place, and then did an even spread on my stats until everything was about the same,” Carl said. “Only had twenty-eight points to work with.”

“You know you can get more by doing the side-objectives, right?”

“Yeah, that’s after I did a lot of them.”

“How old are you?” Anya asked.

“I’m twenty-one, but level twenty-eight,” Carl said. “You?”

“Twenty-eight, but level thirty-one. How’d you go up seven levels?”

“I grinded out a ton of the easy side-objectives. When you’re lower level, you get experience faster. You’re past thirty, huh? You try any of those ‘Other’ skills?”

In response Anya held up her index finger and summoned the tiny flame. Nobody else in the cafe could see anything but some extra light. Carl gaped as his eyes widened and he sputtered as Anya blew the flame out.

“Is that magic or something?” Carl asked.

“The menu says it is,” Anya said. “I only put one point into it, just as an experiment. ‘Flame Dominion,’ if you wanna look it up. You?”

“Mostly mental stuff. Acting, gambling, and persuasion, plus the ‘Man of Leisure,’ class selection. I put a few points into marksmanship, fencing, and some self-defense physical skills but that’s it.”

Anya blinked at him. “Did you get the notification? About the uh, alien invasion coming in one year?”

Carl smirked and nodded. “Yeah. So?”

Anya blinked again, “So, why? Why pick stuff that isn’t going to help when aliens get here?”

“Because,” Carl said and dropped his smirk, “it’s not my problem. Also I maybe spent most of my points before it mentioned the invasion. I got kinda caught up in the excitement of becoming, y’know, amazing at whatever I wanted to be. Besides, I still got all my ‘Other’ points. If there’s an emergency, I’ll grind out more side-objectives and get to level 30, no problem. Besides, it doesn’t sound like you’ve done much in the way of prepping for an invasion.”

Anya jerked her thumb towards the window and Federal Plaza outside. “I’m here to report this to the government! It’s kind of a big deal!”

“Ah,” Carl nodded. “If you wanna risk them experimenting on you or something, be my guest. But from what Ivy, my AI, told me they’ve gotta know already. With as many menu users as there are? Somebody has to know. Going to the feds or somebody just seems like more trouble than it’s worth. I don’t want the military banging on my door or people rioting if they find out or anything.”

Anya sighed. “So I guess asking you to come in and vouch for aliens with me is gonna be a no?”

“Hell no,” Carl said. “Nice idea though. I considered it, but nah. If they heard I, or you, have the potential to order alien bombs, they’d never let us go.”

“Why the fuck did this thing have to hit me?” Anya groaned.

“What? This thing is great. Like winning the lotto."

"If you completely remove all context that led to this happening, yeah, the menu is awesome. Being tall and buff with fire magic is pretty damn cool on its own. But, y'know," Anya pointed up at the ceiling and the sky beyond. "Alien invasion incoming. Not so great."

Carl shrugged. "Gotta make the best of shit. Like now. It's cool being able to learn stuff from another menu user, like the stat change thing. Though I would’ve expected more around Manhattan and other big cities. It just sounds like they went all over the place.”

“He’s not wrong,” Felix said in Anya’s ear. “The menus are designed to seek out population-dense areas prior to integration. Some did, but many did not, judging by the last transmissions.”

“So it really was just random?” Anya asked. She glanced at Carl and saw him looking down in thought, finger to his ear. He must have his AI telling him the same thing, she thought.

“Yeee-eees,” Felix said, drawing the word out with uncertainty. “I don’t think it was supposed to be. I can’t say for certain though.”

“More locked data caches?”

“No, this is different. It’s like there’s a hole in the information. The data caches are there, but they’re behind a door. This information just isn’t there.”

“Shit,” Anya said. “So we got malfunctioning menus?”

“That’s a possibility,” Felix said.

“So, 10,608 menus out there attached to people,” Anya said. “No idea where they are, or how to find them, or if they’re psychos or what.”

“Or even if they know they have a menu,” Carl added. “I found mine by accident hours after I got hit.”

Anya nodded. If all the menus were touch-activated, and somebody got hit somewhere they didn’t touch or couldn’t reach easily, they still might not know. While Anya felt a surge of relief at knowing she wasn’t alone in this, an equal amount of dread was welling up inside her. How many people with a menu system wouldn’t be satisfied with just making themselves handsome and rich like Carl? How many might delight in the more dangerous, destructive things the menu offered. She shuddered.

“Well, as long as nobody tries to muscle in on my budding acting and pro-gambling career,” Carl said and smirked.

“So what?” Anya asked. “That’s you plan? Move to Hollywood or Vegas and get rich?”

“And famous,” Carl said. “The menu can’t buy fame, but it can make getting it a hell of a lot easier.”

Anya shook her head. She had spent all weekend, hell every second, since she got the menu on Friday night struggling with what to do with. She’d finally come up with a short-term plan, but now that was sounding flimsy and too risky. She hadn’t even considered anything in the long-term beyond the year the menu had given her for the invasion.

“And you? You got a grand plan besides alerting the feds?” Carl asked and cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Not really,” Anya shrugged. “Running into you was pretty random. That definitely changes things. Felix, can you detect any other hosts? Or send out a signal or something?”

“The menu system only reached out to Carl when he was within a certain range, according to the recent data cache. Its default is to always search, but it can only connect when another host is nearby. Then it picks up the signal and attaches to it. Kind of like your phone looking for WiFi. If there’s no signal, no connection, but when you’re in range, bingo!”

“Got it, thank you,” Anya said. “Can the menu actually attach to WiFi? Search the internet for signs of other hosts?”

“Unfortunately not. The menu can’t access systems that way. It can’t access Carl’s system, just tell you where it is. Sorry!”

“Damn. So you connecting to the internet and searching for other signs of hosts for me is out. Fine. But, you told me you know where the menus entered the atmosphere, and could track them until they merged?” She thought of her apartment exploding and making the news the next day. The menu couldn’t search, but she could find others by cross-referencing the map with local stories of disturbances. From there she could at least maybe get close enough to pick up hosts like she had with Carl. And maybe those other hosts would be more willing to actually do something than him.

“That’s totally correct!”

“Can you show me on the menu map?” Anya asked as she raised her phone. A map of the world popped up in crisp orange lines, and then countless tiny glowing dots were peppered across its surface. She noted that there were only two in the city, but there were a few others in New York state.

“This is the last scan of the menu systems 0.003 seconds before they merged with hosts or failed to do so and self-destructed,” Felix said. Anya tilted her phone so Carl could see and explained what she was doing, He nodded and told his AI to do the same as he brought out his phone. “There were originally 65 menu systems that approached New York City, but only two of them connected.”

Of the innumerable glowing dots, almost all of them vanished, leaving only tiny pockets of glittering light across the map of the Earth.

“These dots,” Felix continued, “confirmed host integration and then went dark.”

“And that’s the 10,608?” Anya asked.

“Yup!” Felix said, then, “Uh, hold on.”

For the second time since she entered the coffee shop, Anya’s right ear beeped. “Did you just send me another message?” she asked Carl. He looked at her, puzzled, and shook his head.

“No, I just got some kind of notification though,” Carl replied. “Ivy? Is somebody messaging us?”

“Felix?” Anya muttered. “What’s going on? Is it another host?”

“No,” Felix said. “Another data cache just became unlocked.”

Anya looked up as she heard Carl suck in a breath. His eyes were huge with what she first thought was mere surprise, but his healthy tan turning to a shade of old milk told her otherwise. Carl was terrified.

“What is it?” Anya demanded. Carl didn’t respond, only stared at something on his phone Anya couldn’t see. “Felix?”

Instead of an immediate verbal response, the map on Anya’s menu changed. Hundreds of red dots appeared on the map, most of them concentrated around the last known locations of the menu hosts. “This was fifteen seconds ago,” Felix said.

“Are those more menus?” Anya asked.

“Sorry to let you down, but no. It appears those aliens that were supposed to be here in a year are here. Now. And a new data cache has unlocked!”

“They’re what?” Anya asked as her stomach went into free fall.

“The enemy aliens have made planetfall, and the new data cache says they’re going to eliminate hosts and integrate salvageable menu data from their remains,” Felix said, his voice quiet. “That doesn’t sound very nice.”