Best and Worst First Dates

Friday night, I had the best first date of my life. Moz was a good-looking bricklayer and had similar interests to my own. I was recently out of school and was working a clerical job at an insurance company, so I didn’t have much of a budget for going out. We had agreed to have a cheap dinner (splitting the costs) and then listen to a free concert in the park. In accordance with modern custom, I had met him at the restaurant, so I didn’t have to get in his car or let him know where I lived. We ate cheap, tasty Lebanese food that we both loved. He had thoughtfully brought a blanket to put on the ground when we found a place in the park. Our conversation flowed easily, and we shared the same sense of humor. I went to bed that night full of excitement and the hope of seeing him again very soon. I indulged in juvenile fantasies of this becoming a love story.

He phoned me at lunchtime on Saturday. “I had a great time last night. I know this shows I have no game, but I don’t want to wait three days before I see you again. Could we meet for coffee this afternoon? It’s OK if you’d rather give it more time.”

I completely forgot to play hard to get. “I’m warning you. I’ll have to come as I am – I’m not going to be pretty and made up. Do you still want to risk it?”

He laughed easily. “See the real you? That would be perfect!”

The coffee date was just as relaxed as the Friday night had been. We had plenty to say to each other, and when our drinks arrived, we criticized each other’s preferred coffee order. I had a soy chai latte with extra ice, and he had a plain hot Americano. “That’s a very girly drink,” he observed, “too sweet and milky for me.”

“Americano is so dull,” I responded. “Why not an espresso or a cappuccino or a latte?”

Moz bridled. “Are you calling me dull, based on my coffee order?” he demanded, teasing me.

And then the world changed.

At first, I thought there was a fire or a gas leak. White smoke filled the coffee shop. But it didn’t have any odor. We could still breathe normally, and we were all very calm. No one screamed or panicked, there was no rush for the door.

I reached out and grasped Moz’s hand. It felt strange, as we didn’t know each other that well, but it felt as though he was my only friend in a terrifying world. He must have felt the same way, as he put his other hand on top, holding my hand between both of his.

“What’s happening, Moz?”

“I don’t know. Do you feel as if someone is telling you not to panic?” He seemed embarrassed to be asking, as if he was just reacting weirdly.

“Oh my god, yes! You hear that too?” It wasn’t as if someone was speaking to me, but I felt the words inside my head. Like Moz, I had assumed that it was a product of my freaked-out brain. Now it seemed as if someone or something was communicating with us.

I tried to speak to this mysterious entity. Since I had no other way to communicate, I spoke out loud. “What is happening?”

There was no direct response to that. I tried again. “What should we do?”

This time I felt a clear message telling me that I should relax and go with them. I couldn’t see Moz through the mist, but I was still holding his hands. “Did you get a reply to that question?”

He squeezed my hand. “Yes, it’s like a three-way conversation. We need to go with them – whoever they are.”

Moz took one hand away and then put that arm around my shoulders, drawing me closer to him. I moved gratefully into his embrace. Now I was aware of another message. It was asking us if we were together. Now I realized these messages were not coming to me in English. Was it asking if we were traveling together or if we were a couple (or perhaps a bonded pair)?

Moz whispered “I think we should say yes. We don’t want to get separated.”

I had thought about getting married someday, but this was moving much faster than I had anticipated. I barely knew Moz. On the other hand, I didn’t know what was happening. If I didn’t stay with Moz would I be dealing with an unknown civilization completely alone? Would I ever see my family and friends again? Would this strange interlude be over in a couple of hours, so we could go back to normal? Was there some kind of hallucinogen in the white smoke?

I spoke out loud again, gripping Moz’s hand harder. “Yes, we are together.”

Then we started moving. Together, out to the street. Outside there was still white smoke everywhere. I put my arm around Moz’s waist. I can’t explain how we knew where to go. It reminded me of the airplane safety instructions. As if there were a row of lights leading us to the exit. Of course, there were no lights, but it seemed in my mind that the path was clearly laid out in front of us.

I think we were both shaking by the time we stopped moving. I have no sense of how long we walked – it could have been a few seconds or several hours. There were no landmarks, of course, and there was no sun to show us the passage of time.

We stopped, still clinging to each other. And then… Then there was nothing.

I opened my eyes, and the white smoke was gone. Actually, everything I knew was gone. Moz and I were in some sort of booth. We were naked. That was a surprise – our relationship hadn’t progressed to that point yet, but we had agreed that we were together. We started to be embarrassed, but then the fact that we had been kidnapped by some alien species made us realize that nakedness was the least of our problems. We focused on trying to look each other in the eye as we spoke and pretended we couldn’t see each other’s bodies.

Moz spoke first. “I don’t remember anything. We walked outside and then I woke up here. Did you see anything? Do you know where we are?”

I shook my head. “I think we woke up at the same time. They must have transported us here. They took our clothes. There’s a smell of something here. Maybe they bathed us or did some kind of medical procedure. Oh, and your hair!” I felt my own head and looked down at my body. “They’ve removed all my body hair and even my eyebrows and eyelashes.”

Moz did a self-check and nodded in agreement. “Me too. Bald as a coot. I wonder how long we were out. Being bald kind of suits you, though!” He smiled at me. Honestly, that really helped. I reached out my hand again, and he took it.

“Maybe once they’ve done their probing or whatever, they’ll send us back” I said hopefully. “I wonder if they’re still communicating with us.”

I wasn’t aware of any messages in my head. So, I spoke out loud to whoever was listening. “Hello. What are we doing here? Do you plan to put us back where you found us?”

No answer. I started looking around the booth. There was comfortable seating. It didn’t look comfortable, more like some sort of clear plastic, but it was soft and molded itself around my body. There was a table or bed or sofa of some kind that appeared to be made of similar material. There was no other furniture, no door or windows. There may have been a ceiling but I couldn’t see it. The walls stretched up as far as I could see, and they were covered in moving pictures.

The booth was brightly lit, but I couldn’t see any lights. The temperature was pleasant so the lack of clothes (and hair) was not an inconvenience. I started to look at all the moving pictures. If this was a streaming service, it was a good one.

“Look!” Moz pointed to a section of the wall. There were people there, people like us, naked and hairless, and looking scared and confused. And some animals, also hairless. It made it difficult to identify what species they were. These video feeds were cycling through on a continuous loop. “They must have taken hundreds of us!”

I stared at these pictures, keeping a rough count in my head. “They seem to have taken samples from everywhere. I don’t think they’re sending us home for a while. Look, there are some booths with water. There are dolphins and turtles, there’s a whale! Moz, there are whales in here!”

Suddenly I was desperately afraid. I turned to Moz and, forgetting about our nudity, I clung to him. “Are we here forever? Will they kill us? Will I ever see my family again?”

Moz started to reply but then stopped as we both heard the incoming message. We are here as samples. They will study us. We can expect to be asked a lot of questions. Some will require answers, others will require us to demonstrate. This will be a multi-generational project.

Multi-generational. That’s why they asked if we were a bonded pair. They wanted breeding samples. I stared at Moz in horror.

Moz was shouting “No! No! No!”

After a while I said “We want to return to Earth now. We cannot breed.”

The answer came back immediately. There is no Earth anymore.

Moz and I look at each other in shock as we step away from each other. We are almost strangers. And we will have to breed.