Asylum

If he’d known when he killed her what would come of it, would he still have done it? Would he have condemned an entire race to die?

I’ll never know. I didn’t know the shooter personally, you see. Just like everyone else, I saw him on TV. Everywhere, people were talking about him, speculating. He was the first Allam to be arrested for a crime such as this.

Don’t think that we’re different just because of where we come from. No, we’re the same. I grew up surrounded by others born on American soil. I learned to put up the flag on the Fourth of July. I am a patriot as much as anyone can be.

But it ended there. Now, I am in a cage, along with everyone else who is first or second generation Allam. I’m second, born here on Earth. I’ve never been anywhere else, so when the humans shout out for me to go back home, I want to yell back at them: “I am home, you morons. This is my home, as much as it is yours.”

But I won’t get the chance. They’re gonna gas us. Or chop us. Or follow the advice of the mob and send us “home.”

Mother looked frightened all the time after we heard about the senator’s murder. She guessed what was coming for us. And going home is as much a death sentence for her as it is for any other Allam. They might as well just kill us and save themselves the cost of the trip.

I keep hoping for a reprieve, but my mind goes around in circles. We had rights just like everyone else, once. How did it change so fast?

25 years ago

“Your name is Sally?”

And the class erupted into laughter.

“That’s enough,” said the teacher sharply, “That’s enough, class.” The laughter began to fizzle. Mrs. Marks turned her razor-sharp glare on the boy who had spoken. “Jeffrey, please apologize to Sally.”

“What did I say?” he whined.

“Jeffrey!” she said in that don’t-argue-with-me tone perfected by teachers and parents over the ages.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“Thank you, Jeffrey,” answered a stilted, mechanical voice—my voice through my AI translator.

Even Mrs. Marks couldn’t control the class after that.

I spent the rest of that day with my head down, trying not to talk. Mrs. Marks called on me more than she should have, and hovered near my desk when she walked the aisles, but it just emphasized the difference between the other kids and me. When I got home, Mother asked the eternal question of parents: “How was your first day of school, dear?”

I sighed. “I don’t see why you had to send me to public school. Why couldn’t you let me go to the special school for us?”

Mother sighed. “I know you don’t understand now, but someday…”

Eventually, I did make friends. There are always people who pride themselves on being immune to prejudice, which I've found is almost a type of prejudice all by itself. When I was invited over to play, the parents tried too hard.

“Oh, we love the Allams’ contributions to America,” said Helen’s father. Helen and I were best friends, but her parents seemed awkward whenever I was around. He continued, “A co-worker of mine is good friends with an Allam.”

It’s a misnomer, though it has stuck in pop culture. I’m not an “Allam,” an Alien American. No more than the Haudenosaunee were Indians from India. Our name isn’t pronounceable in human languages, though. On our native world, my kind spend half our time in the ocean and half on land. Our language is only spoken in water, so there is no translation for it in the air.

There were only one thousand refugees on that first ship, the one my parents arrived on. They were among the first to be granted asylum in the U.S. Over the next five years, the Resistance sent two more ships here before something happened back home, and then the ships no longer came. We don’t know what stopped them, but we can guess.

In my teens, I saw the human race riots on TV. That was scary, but it was happening halfway around the world to someone else, so I tried to forget about it. But trying to forget didn’t erase the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. The sense of waiting.

Helen is still my best friend, but she’s now a lawyer. When the Allam killed that senator and the news exploded all over the airwaves, she advised me to lay low.

“How?” I asked helplessly. After she gave me a laundry list of advice—quitting my job, retreating to my parents’ cabin in the woods—I chose to continue on. What she was saying sounded alarmist—crazy, even. Why should anything happen to me? I'd broken no laws.

It took a month before word of the roundups reached us. A week after that, they came into my work. Half a dozen men, as if I would have done something violent if there hadn’t been such overwhelming numbers. My tentacles burned bright green with embarrassment as they led me away and I could hear the snake-hissing sound of whispers following behind me.

What has she done? Is she a part of it? Is she a terrorist?

The guards separated us into cells, but seemed to forget that we spoke by water. At a certain time of every night, we turned on the faucets and sent messages down the drains. I heard the echoes of my misery, my people crying and calling warning to others.

Here came the man who spoke only in grunts and hissed words—my jailor. He let me out into the yard for fifteen minutes, a short time in the sun. I found messages scrawled in the dirt that looked like random hieroglyphics of curves to any human who didn't know our writing.

Water call at 8PM.

Hettie K is looking for John C.

Here 100 days. Anyone longer?

The newspaper of the prison. I toyed with adding something, but had nothing of importance. I was searching for no one—I already knew my parents were here—and knew no one was searching for me.

Until I ran across the message. Helen looking for Sally B.

The guard barked at me, and I realized I’d been standing in one place in shock. Quickly, I scrawled I’m here under the original message before I was hustled back into the flickering artificial glow of the light bulb hanging above my cage.

The next day, a new message appeared, Lawsuit for Allam release pending in state court.

Who would have access to the outside world to learn such a thing? I wrote Thanks, for lack of anything else.

Weeks passed, but I read nothing more in the yard about myself. We got fish slop at every meal, and the running joke down the water pipe was that pets would be going hungry without the tinned cat food they were giving us. I was so sick of the salty metal taste of the food that I usually returned my plate half-full. I worried and I paced the sides of the six by eight cell. No windows. No fresh air except those precious fifteen minutes in the sun.

I lost count of months, but the weather was cooler by the time I heard news again in the yard. It had been raining, so the ground was not great and the messages tended to melt down and become unintelligible.

Hel-n won on app-al. Rele-se in fiv- day-.

I translated: Helen won on appeal. Release in five days.

I waited. A week went by. No news, and the door of my jail cell certainly didn’t open and set me free.

The newspaper returned after a rainy few weeks. The air was turning colder, more crisp; if it snowed, we wouldn’t be let out anymore. Allams could only tolerate so much cold, and even fifteen minutes outside during the winter was hard for us. Maybe that’s what they’d do to get rid of us—simply open the doors, march us all out and leave us in the yard to catch the snowflakes as they drifted down. I could picture it. I’d seen countless movies, fascinated by the idea of snow, but had never seen it in person. Now, the thought was equally appealing and appalling. To see snow…

To die.

Helen case bumped to Supreme Court, I read.

After that, it was too cold to go outside, and we were kept indoors. I sang down the water pipes, but no one had news for me. Perhaps my nearest neighbors in the cells on either side of me had nothing to do with the news about my friend’s case, the lawsuit that was working to free us.

Days were hard to count when constantly locked indoors. I missed things taken as commonplace—walking in the park, talking with my translator, touching living things. Our mechanical translators were the first things taken from us, so we were voiceless except when we spoke through the faucet water. I wondered if I were able to go outside, and if it were raining hard enough, I’d be able to shout through the sky. I spent days imagining this.

When the door opened again, I was so astonished at seeing the surly jailor reappear that I sat down on my bunk and stared at him. “Well, come on,” he said and escorted me outside, as if he had just done it yesterday—not months before.

The first thing I saw on the dirt newspaper that day was: Helen funeral. Shot in back.

There are no mourning rites for Allams, no tears. I lie on my bunk and my heart is breaking. My best friend, my companion from school, the one person who has stuck by me throughout my life. The only one willing to risk her life to save mine—not just mine, but the lives of all of my kind.

Killed by one of hers.

So here is where I was at the beginning. I lie here and wonder about the Allam who put all of us into this jail. I lie here and wonder how the humans are going to kill us, now that our biggest advocate, and my best friend, is dead.

Days pass, and I lie on the bunk. I don’t go out. I barely eat. I say nothing down the waterways.

Until the door opens and I hear a new voice, the first new voice I’ve heard in over a year other than my surly jailor. “Congratulations,” it says.

I look up at the man in the doorway. I can’t see him properly, as if a film has come over my eyes. I don’t know what it is, because I can’t cry, can’t show the proper grief that Helen is due.

Maybe he expects a response from me, but I give him nothing. After clearing his throat, he says, “Sally. It’s good news. You’re free to go. Everyone’s free.”

Helen, I think. I get to my feet and walk through the door.

I wonder if this is how he felt—that Allam who killed. If he held such a rage in his heart that he could think of nothing else, do nothing but follow that rage through to the end.

Freedom from this prison is the first step on the path to finding Helen’s killer. Where I will follow this path, don’t ask me.

I don’t know. Really, I just don’t know.