Meanwhile

Wayne could not believe he was alone in the San Francisco UFO watch cell. He'd lost the rock-paper-scissors competition, and tonight he was stuck manning the proverbial bridge of this weird boat. Eventually, he had to sleep, but caffeine locked in power drinks would help him stay awake until the game. He was in charge of the so-called alien hotline and someone had to stay here in case of an elusive walk-in. In over half a decade in existence, there had never been a visitor to cross the doorstep, but dream die hard in some.

The television on the wall was barely lighting the dirty room. Hours ago they had all watched Round 26 and the strange Louisiana tea party. It had been rather boring except the after match. Lovers of alien and extraterrestrial life expected more from the first game on Mars. Not even a blue sunrise over the red horizon instead human characters supposed to be aliens.

From over a billion, including most everyone he knew, there was only 64 players left, with Emilio and Laurent clearly in the lead. The others knew something massive would climax in three weeks during the finale. Already half the poor souls who travelled for weeks to the fourth planet were out in the blink of an eye. There had to be a hidden meaning to the prohibition storyline, there always was with the intelligence floating in the Electoral Center.images. In a week, Round 27 would drop the number to 32 players. The dropped participants would be senators each given an area of the world while enjoying a well needed vacation.

Back in 2071, Electoral had announced the theme of the 2072 election: Alien Life. That was something the UFO watch cell could relate to. With some luck Marilyn already had uncovered life on Mars and was preparing stories featuring these creatures. But as was always the case with the digital creature, she was mysterious and complex.

Hours ago, Wayne had gutted a bag of salted chips, and he was now destroying a dozen half-frozen brownies. Someone, he joked to himself, had to metabolize these calories and he was the man for the task. The unshaven large man was struggling to keep himself awake, but so was most people insisting to see the game live. For the last five days, all of the members of the UFO hotline had worked overtime and stayed awake until dawn, answering calls. In busy times, the San Francisco hotline received ten calls a year, mostly when the Air Force scheduled exercises in the region. Yesterday alone it received over four hundred calls. People were strained by the digital game and there was no greater day to be part of this group of misfits.

The team's members were all back home. Wayne was excited; the broadcast of the next game powered by Marilyn would be in the world of the boy called Mall-ik. This creature for the moment had taken the form of an angel. This was insanity, the discourse was light-years past the mere existence of simple alien life. Now there were apparently other dimensions, each filled with life. The character literally named for living for billions of years, was amazing. He was an alien and rather amused by humanity’s seclusion in our dimension. No one could have scripted a better competition. In theory, the world was under attack, but he felt, like Sophie, no imminent threat.

Thanks to Marilyn and her game, the Hotline group had gone from a handful of fringe lunatics trying to alert a population of the existence of aliens, to an arm of the government calming paranoiacs. Wayne was happy; he was at least useful. For years they dreamed of when humans would discover aliens. They had. No one, including himself, seemed to genuinely care that Liam and Marilyn were both forecasting the end of days in little more than three weeks. There were seven rounds to be played, and that was a lot of television to watch.

Sophie's unique powers were probably to blame for everyone's good mood here on earth. Her heart-warming attitude and these Rho waves were infectious and poured over the whole planet. Animals in zoos were calm, criminals were being reasonable and disease hesitant to surface. Maybe, he imagined, it was the nonchalant delivery of the doomsday scenario delivered while drinking lemonade on a porch of a digital house. Irrespective, if the world was dying in three weeks, Wayne was simply looking forward to the finale on television.

He just crossed his fingers hoping no one disturbed his peace as he slid on thick glasses and once again watched the Round 26 recap. Nothing about the alien arrival, the competition, and this Sixth Attraction felt ordinary; yet the world kept on going as if nothing of importance was transpiring.

The hotline office was finally silent and had been since the sun went down. Everyone else was enjoying some well-needed sleep. Wayne watched the strange family reunion on television. This reminded him of wise words probably spoken by Carl Sagan. The great man hypothesized that since mankind had been in the past incapable of predicting the present, it was logical to conclude those in the present were unable to see the future. He was right, of course. No one back in the 20th century could have imagined Marilyn, Mars, or the strange story unfolding as part of the Sixth Attraction.

The walls of the hotline were plastered with old movie posters. The two windows were painted over; no one remembered why. Rent in the sleazy strip mall was dirt cheap. The office was flanked on one side by a ballet studio and on the other by a dying 3D game arcade. Wayne still couldn't believe his eyes and ears. He was replaying the images from Mars in a continuous loop. The alien reunion had taken place live, how awesome was that? Sophie, a disabled father, the first artificial intelligence and two aliens from other worlds spoke and drank lemonade. What Electoral advertised months ago was a game based on the discovery of a new hotel on the edge of Olympus Mons and an awesome ride on a transparent glider. Today, no one cared about the hotel or the busted glider.

After reflection, Wayne never still didn't fully understood how Laurent Lapierre could be alive after being clinically dead for days. Science could not explain the resurrection but Sophie now could. In a convoluted way, Sophie's powers made sense. He felt, in his heart, the girl was special and a force for good. She wanted Laurent to be by her side, there he stood. If she had power over life and death, she would find a way to save the world from extinction.

***

Without as much as a knock on the door, Ronaldo’s mind, stuck in the skin of Eugene J. Trent, pushed the door and walked in quickly shutting and locking the door behind him. Wayne removed his virtual reality glasses, paused the television and waited. Wayne was somewhat surprised, but he quickly reminded these were strange times. Visibly nervous, Ronaldo turned to the window and tried to scratch a corner of the paint to see if anyone had followed him. He looked through a small unpainted chip and satisfied himself he was here alone. Under his arm, he held a cheap plastic bag. Inside it was his priceless Martian statue of Marilyn.

"Can I help you?"

Ronaldo saw the television images from the corner of his eye; these included Sophie and Marilyn talking peacefully on a wooden porch.

"Can you turn that off?" He pointed at the mounted television. “And that,” he pointed at the helmet Wayne had just removed. Wayne did. In this safe-haven for the weird, the last thing that crossed Wayne's mind was that he was in danger. There was nothing here to steal, and the magic brownies were gone.

"Is there anyone else here?" the newcomer asked.

"You mean at the hotline? Yes, but they're home sleeping. There is no one back there. They'll watch Round 26 again and again like I was doing. We have had a long couple of days."

"Round 26, not Round 21?” asked the space traveler.

"What? Yes." Ronaldo had walked past the door on Mars on the day after the broadcast of Round 21. The game was now much closer to the finale. That made sense.

"You need to call them back, this is urgent. I have important evidence of alien life, and for your protection, we need numbers. The government will try to shut us up." Anywhere else in the world the person would have laughed, but for some reason, here, Wayne took Ronaldo seriously. The man did not know about the round of the game, that strange fact was sufficient evidence of weirdness for the man.

"Give me a moment." Wayne grabbed his phone, a handset from an older generation and called.

"Only trusted friends."

"Marissa, this is Wayne. This is no joke; we have a situation here at the Hotline; a man just walked in. Not really. This day keeps getting better. He says he has physical evidence." He listened and continued, "I don't give a fuck if you're tired, get your ass down here. Get everyone here, now! Call the others. You fucking signed up for this." The words were harsher than the tone.

"It's three thirty at night," she said on the other side of the line.

"Are you fucking kidding me? Shit is going down everywhere."

Wayne looked at Ronaldo and asked him, "This is real, right?"

"Yes." The large black man meant every word.

"You heard me, get here NOW!" Wayne closed the phone and smiled awkwardly at the visitor. Ronaldo aka Trent was standing in the middle of the small room, his package nested under his arm. He looked around and as he did, the odd feeling of unease kept increasing. The sickness, the dark digital mud was deep in the walls of this place. In his heart, he knew very well what it was. The artificial intelligence called Marilyn Monroe infected the entire planet. Like cancer, it was growing and pulsing in these electronic veins and in his new heart as a Martian creature, he saw her true nature.

Ronaldo saw the phone, table clocks, and even light switches as part of the infection. Marilyn occupied every inch of the digital world. It somehow meshed with every electron flowing. Ronaldo liked Marilyn; she had always been kind to him and humanity in general. She'd even tried, in vain, to save his life on the doorstep of the alien cavern. If others from his new race shared this repulsion, he understood why they wanted her gone. Ronaldo forced himself to block out the feeling and inspected the rest of the room. This place was interesting; a museum to odd entertainment artifacts. Books and trinkets lined every inch of space. To the right were paper books, rows of them. He looked at them.

"What is that?" pointed Trent at the paused broadcast on the television. The image was one of Marilyn talking to Laurent on a porch of the white southern house. Next to her was the girl simply named Sophie and with them two other people he did not know. There was a tall, distinguished Indian man and a blond Caucasian kid. Sophie was her usual self, her mouth was open, and she was barking orders. The girl warmed his heart.

"Aliens,” offered Wayne to his visitor.

"What?"

"You heard me, aliens better than from mars or any other planet,” he pointed at the boy and the Indian man, “from another dimension. You don't know?" Wayne clicked the remote and the video began to play. "So much stuff happened, its really complicated. Just after Round 26, on Mars. The Electoral game resumed and shit went sideways big time."

"Sophie is on mars. Is she okay?" His concern was genuine.

"She's running the show. How can you not know?" From Trent’s expression, there would be no answer. He continued, "We learned that this boy right there,” Wayne pointed at the blond boy in the overalls, “entered our world from a different dimension called the Purple. He slipped into another weaker mind and killed a contestant, apparently by accident. Laurent's mind was strong enough to host the boy as Sophie tried to rescue him. Looking to help her dad, she ended up meeting that tall man there, the Indian gentleman called Liam. He also calls himself the Oldest." Trent was drinking in every word. Wayne kept talking. "That creature says it’s billions of years old. He helps Sophie, he acts as her guide and knows how the fucking universe itself works. He spoke to us about this insane theory. Impossible to understand even for a guy like me."

They both watched some of the broadcast. Ronaldo was unable to ignore the pulsing evil nature of the energy animating the screen.

"In about an hour and forty-five, the game will bring us and every player to the boy's world. It is called the "Purple," as far as we've seen.” Wayne's excitement was palpable. Nothing could exhilarate the man more. "Seems like that Attraction forces many different threats to converge and try to destroy the human race, I guess." Wayne was trying to joke when he concluded, "It seems like we've really pissed off more than one dimension."

Ronaldo was uncertain as to how to react.

Wayne continued, "The President is in charge of saving us down here from any threats. Sophie and Electoral will save us from the Purple. Talk about a bomb dropped on us, little puny humans. You can't make this stuff up. For decades we have been treated like fools, but there it is. I can't wait for the game."

Ronaldo couldn't believe what he was hearing. Whatever was happening in the game made his strange predicament much more believable. The President might actually get his situation. In his heart, he'd always felt Sophie was special. Now, the girl made sense. She had a purpose on that porch, and the unnatural lead in the game by her father and the President also could be explained. His only problem was Electoral. The artificial intelligence had painted its role as part of the solution, not the problem. He felt like she was a monster. He almost touched the headset on the table and shivered.

"Marilyn, in all this?" asked the visitor to Wayne.

"She's great. Her game will save the world. It is uniting people." Ronaldo knew better.

For the moment he needed to hide his true impression. "This is incredible," he let out softly.

"Yes. It's a lot to absorb. We've had all this in about a week, and it's still insanity — flooding in. That's the best word you have? Incredible? I was expecting mind-blowing or even fantastic." The relaxed attitude of Wayne reassured Ronaldo.

“Shocking.”

"Better. I feel," continued Wayne, "like we just went from the kid's table to the adult table. You really didn't know about this?" He pointed at the screen. "Where the hell were you this week?"

Ronaldo ignored the jab. "You said multiple events would converge, each to destroy the human race, I have evidence of one." That got Wayne's full attention. "At least I may not sound as crazy now. I came here thinking no one else would buy my story."

"Still the best place to come. We share the feeling of fearing not being taken seriously." The alien hotline's center was filled with old books and weird technology. On ledges were old robot figurines and posters of aliens. His choice to come here was the fruit of hours of careful deliberation sitting below a sewer grate. He had no passport, no money, and needed allies. Under the street in the downtown area next to the shelter, Ronaldo had waited patiently. He had to hide from an omniscient super-computer. Easier said than done.

He'd waited more than a day. In the dark, he ran scenario after scenario where the software lied to the police and a powerful manhunt came his way. Now he knew why instead of sirens above, there had been silence. Marilyn wanted the object, nothing more. Now, he saw that Marilyn was playing a different game. She had a much broader understanding of the situation.

In his hiding place, true to his new martian instincts, he concluded Marilyn Monroe was to blame and must be destroyed. The video he had just seen gave him pause. She made a convincing case. He needed to get to Berlin and convince the President and stay away from Marilyn. In this era of heightened security, President Emilio was the only one capable of figuring out a solution to this impossible problem.

He was under the misguided impression that he alone knew Martian creatures took issue with Mercury and its cold glaciers capable of housing their kind. He had to tell Emilio about Mercury. The Alien Abduction hotline had glued strange stickers under bridges on the highway. Ronaldo saw them, and desperate for help, walked two hours to this desolate place. He tried to avoid cameras, but he now knew why he, in fact, made it to the center. The situation was much more different than he could have imagined.

"Who are you?" asked Wayne.

"That will have to wait. How long until the others get here?"

"Maybe 15 to 20 minutes," answered the man as he checked the map on his cell phone. Red dots were quickly converging to him. "They're coming fast more like five minutes it seems." Ronaldo didn't want Wayne to use the phone. It was repellant to him and covered by the brown mud. His hands seemed drench in dark electronic oil. He looked away.

The newly minted martian turned his attention to a large poster of the red planet on the back wall. The same way the electronic oil felt repulsive, there was some type of mysterious attraction to the red planet. The colors of the poster came to life. Back on mars, the aliens had told him his emotions vanished along his human body. Ronaldo felt an intense nostalgia. He longed for his return to his new home. For the first time, he felt a bond to Mars. In his heart, he was slowly slipping away from humanity. After some time, he wrestled his attention away from the poster.

"Do you have a way to broadcast outside of the city?"

"Our Facebook page has over nine thousand members."

The moment the man answered, Ronaldo realized the futility of his request. Marilyn was a digital gatekeeper. That was the absolute worst battleground to choose. "Perfect," he said without much conviction. Ronaldo sat down on the old dirty couch but immediately got back up.

"Are you ok?" asked Wayne. Ronaldo tried very hard to avoid looking at the television or the poster. He felt like Marilyn was the darkness; it was looking at him. "Do you want us to post something on our page?"

"You can decide once I tell my story." Ronaldo was trying not to sound too strange. "Do you have any protection?"

"Listen, no one ever takes us very seriously. We're not the evening news. Even with evidence and a body of an alien, we only get a giggle on morning TV shows." Wayne smiled reassuringly. He had a point. "Right now people are focused on what is happening on television. You could probably walk around naked and the cops won't stop you."

There was an awkward silence as they waited for the others.

"Can I get a drink, a soda maybe?" The clarification was helpful. "My name is Ronaldo Corvas." The ceiling lights blinked as he said the name. "What was that?"

"Must be someone next door. The idiots added a Jacuzzi. It keeps shorting out each time a girl drops a drink on it. We told them to isolate the breaker box. I hope no one got hurt, but it'll happen one day. You're edgy my friend, buddy. Let me get you that drink." Ronaldo did not like the coincidence. When he'd spoken his name, the lights flickered. He had a problem with Marilyn, and she ran on current. "The name Ronaldo Corvas rings a bell."

"Do you think there is life on Mars?" asked Ronaldo.

"Of course!" The answer was genuine. That was a good start. Wayne was an intelligent man; he was the caricature of the forty-year-old virgin. Behind his pleasant demeanor was someone serious about his passion. Ronaldo felt nervous about bringing these people in this story, but he could think of no better group of people. He was now an intruder, and this was an alien hotline.

"What do you know about the Valles Marineris?"

"Shouldn't we wait for the others?"

"Maybe. I just need to talk a little more. Humor me? I just want to know what you guys think about the Valles."

"What do you mean? It's a canyon on Mars, the second most known feature of the planet. Each time a probe goes in, it breaks. Alien life would explain that. They have advanced technology and are making fun of our stupid culture and retarded technology."

Ronaldo smiled. "Any rumors about what is in the bottom of the Valles?"

"We have pictures of Martian fossils." Ronaldo now saw there were limits to the folklore. Wayne used the remote control to access his databank of videos. Ronaldo shivered again. It was getting harder to watch him do things like that. “A couple of months ago, this happened." Ronaldo watched the screen, mesmerized by the images. He was watching footage the day he'd died. Or been recreated. The military had done what they do best: lie. There was a plume of smoke with a news banner which read: Mars releases hydrogen. "I'm pretty sure this is a cover-up. Something blew up down there." Wayne's heart was in the right place.

"Do you know who was in charge of that expedition?"

Wayne didn't reply off the top of his head. Instead, he grabbed the small tablet and did a fast search. The real photo of Ronaldo's real face appeared. Wayne recognized the name. He was a little startled to see the name given by the African-American stranger.

Looking at the photo was harder on Ronaldo than he imagined. Luckily, a group of misfits began to arrive one after the other. Most of them had been sleeping when they received Wayne's call. Salutations were exchanged. Wayne was starting to get nervous and the others sensed it. The men and women took the gathering seriously.

"Wayne, can you make sure we have no uninvited guest?" said Ronaldo. "Can we close all electronics?" Wayne got up and took a quick look outside in the parking lot as the group powered down their phones. The sickness washed away from the devices as they were turned off.

The room now numbered eight members. Aside from Wayne, here stood three women and four men, most if not all were social misfits.

"I think everyone is here," began Wayne. The excitement was palpable.

Ronaldo stood up. He was holding the bag with care. It reassured him.

"The best way to start..." began Ronaldo. He stopped and began anew. "I guess last night's broadcast will help considerably." He was looking for the right words. "Marilyn talked about multiple threats converging on earth to destroy the human race. I am part of one of these situations. Before I start, I am a person who has always taken a lot of risks. I've brought teammates into dangerous missions. I make a point to remind them of the real dangers and to respect their decision to follow me into danger. Reckless behavior has no place with me. What I will say next should impact all of your lives." There was silence.

"The man means anyone who wants to leave, do it now," said Wayne. As expected, no one moved.

Ronaldo smiled, "More than ten years ago, a Chinese team on mars reached the bottom of Valles Marineris. It was the first manned mission. Before that time, we'd only tried probes. Basically, just cameras. Anything else simply wouldn't work. We found a man-sized opening. It looked like a perfect door and was baptized simply "the door" to those in the know. Until this summer, the door remained one of the best kept secrets on Earth. The Mars scientific explorations of the last decade are nothing more than a cover to investigate this anomaly and keep the door hidden as the military decides what do to next." Ronaldo had the attention of the group.

This group of misfits was drinking Ronaldo's every word. "Who, or better yet, what, was powerful enough to interfere with anything but hardened cameras. Simple, old technology, but given our best protection. It fooled our systems for so long that discretion was imperative. It destroyed every robot we sent down there. There was no doubt; there was something relevant past the door."

"Fucking government!" said a tall man in the back.

"My real name is Ronaldo Corvas. I am a Colonel in the World Force. I was assigned to mars and given the highest secret clearance. I personally saw the door three times. The door is a strange artifact and is unlike anything else on the entire surface of mars. It suggests alien life or intelligence."

"How do you know there are no other doors? If they can change one camera feed, surely they can hide other doors. No?"

"Agreed. Maybe you're right. We've found no other structure, and none was disclosed to me. Last August, in a last effort to gain information by peaceful ways, I was tasked with leading a physical team down past the door. Moments before I entered, Marilyn..." he was interrupted.

"Wait," a woman in the room walked and peeked out the window. There was a car park in the lot. "Just pizza for the neighbor. Sorry, please, go on."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Ronaldo resumed. "After years of failures going past the door with robotized equipment, it was decided that only a manned mission could bring back further information. That is where I came in. I am an expert at remote missions and was asked to lead this expedition. As you can imagine, the conditions were very severe. We were going in the dark, beyond radio reach in a low gravity environment. We also faced extreme cold and lack of atmosphere.

"The road inside was smooth, long and regular. Marilyn," he pointed at a cell phone on the table, "spoke to me minutes before I entered. She warned me not to go past the door. She knew there was alien inside and she even confirmed she had some type of agreement with them. I ignored her warnings and led my team on. The cavern was a long winding passage leading deep below the surface of mars.

"At some point, we began to notice on the ground extremely regular sand. We bagged samples and put them under mass spectrograph." Everyone in this room seemed to know what was this device was, or at least pretended to. "Turned out each grain was exactly identical in size."

"Round spheres?" asked a voice.

"Yes, almost. In the shape of golf balls with small, flat dimples. Before we could complete the bagging, hydrogen gas filled the room and vaporized my team. So yes, technically, I died." People waited for the rest. "That plume of smoke you all saw on TV, that's what left of my team and me."

"This summer?" asked Julie.

"Yes," Ronaldo continued. "An instant before I was vaporized, I had an out of body experience. That martian sand took shape. Creatures on mars who looked like clouds, lifted a puff of sand from the ground. They reproduced my brain structure. They yanked my consciousness out of the body and then they talked to me. The creatures began to teach me how I had become one of them. They had questions." This is where his choice to talk to this group paid off. No one doubted a word of what he had just said. Ronaldo wondered if his wandering into this particular office wasn't quite as random as he'd first thought.

Ronaldo opened the bag and pulled out the globe. "Don't touch it, just look." He felt like he was giving proof of Santa to a class of kindergarteners. These people lived for proof of alien life. Here it was, inches from them. Any other day, to any other group, there would have been doubt. Here, there was amazement,

"Is this what I think this is?" asked Wayne.

"It is."

“Round 24, we saw them.”

Ronaldo was surprised as Wayne grabbed the remote control. He spoke a couple of words and played the last minutes of Round 24 where Marylin danced in the Valles. She built a white cannon and launched balls filled with sand.

Their eyes glazed over in rapture.

Ronaldo continued, "Listen to the rest of the story. I then talked with the aliens in this new form. They asked basic questions about Marilyn. To them, she is an abomination because of the size, the sheer capacity of her mind. They say all life in the universe must stay below a certain size. They think she is a type of God and will destroy our world. Their plan is to terminate her and her creator species to avoid the resurgence of this monster. Their timing seems to fit with last night's discussion of the Sixth Attraction."

There was another long silence.

"The martians fail to understand the distinction between an artificial intelligence and us? Yet they're powerful enough to change camera recordings and destroy probes?" questioned Julie.

"They asked questions, that means they can't read your mind?" said Yves.

"One question at a time," said Wayne.

"I'm not done with the story," said Ronaldo. They all let him continue. "Things were going very fast. Some parts of the discussion I cannot remember. The aliens told me they once sent a probe to Mercury. I told them planet had an orbit that allowed one side to stay cold and they reacted very badly. They were upset and called me inconsiderate.

"Finally, I formed a plan. I suggested I contact the President, and he might be able, and willing to power Marilyn down. Kill her. To my own surprise, they agreed to let me go. They said a parallel action was desirable. The next thing I knew, I was waking up next to the bridge in the Bay. I woke up in a different body, this one. Next to me was this object. This is the evidence it recently arrived from Mars. I think the original owner stole this object, touched it, and I walked in his mind."

There it was. On the table danced a figurine of Marilyn Monroe. The cloud of sand made her skirt wobble.

"Is that it?"

Everyone in the room was itching to talk. Every eye in the room watched the little figurine dance. Nothing made sense, yet here things were.

"This cloud is probably the consciousness of poor Mister Trent, who’s body I now inhabit." Ronaldo held the globe up. In the sand, some black specs danced. What happened next was contrary to anything he could have imagined. The room exploded in talk. They babbled references to movies, books, and television shows. Ronaldo expected fear, care, but not this lively discussion. Instead, his mind was wandering. He was daydreaming. He saw the black ooze, the ball, and every illustration of Mars shine.