Throwback Thursday: A Pleasant Walk, A Pleasant Talk

Each week we are taking a look back at the authors, stories, and poems that captivated us in 2019. Today we offer you an excerpt from ‘A Pleasant Walk, A Pleasant Talk’ by Graham J Darling, from Issue 21, Winter 2019. 

A Pleasant Walk, A Pleasant Talk

The day after contacting us of the press, from between the oddly shining sun (odd for mid-March on the Wet Coast) and the sulky new moon, the aliens landed at Vancouver.

In the early morning light, their craft pulled up at Canada Place like any cruise ship. Except that it came from above (though it wouldn’t have fit anyway under the Lions Gate Bridge). And promptly sank, as if already full of water, which would explain how anything aboard could’ve survived its tremendous deceleration in the hours before.

Then, again like any cruise ship, thousands of passengers poured off its soggy gangplanks. Molluscoids on prosthetic legs each picked up a bundle of cash from the armoured trucks parked at the dock, as part of the deals they’d struck on the way in with governments and corporations for advanced ostreoidean know-how. Then they spread through the downtown core, shopping and chatting.

Their Ambassador installed himself on the top floor of the Fairmont Hotel. We spoke to him there.

“On behalf of all my people, here and elsewhere,” he said, “may I say that we are greatly honoured to be with you today.”

“Why have you come?” we asked from the scrum, a writhing, flashing mass covered in eyes both flesh and glass.

“Neighbours should get to know each other, don’t you think? And pay their respects?” His shell was heavier and knobblier than most. From between its parted halves, round below and flat above, a row of stalked eyes peered out at us, one or two at a time, before retreating into the liquid in the bowl that held his body, carefully balanced to not spill a drop. “We started out as soon as we found out about you and your situation.”

“How? How did you find us?”

“You called out to us, you news-folk, with your radio shows, your television shows. And there was the hum of your people’s power lines, gamma bursts from some of your atomic weapons tests, neutrinos …”

“Neutrinos?”

A particularly bright flash went off particularly close, and the one eye looking out darted back reflexively as his shell snapped shut, like a calcareous wink. But the smooth voice from his shoes did not falter. “I mean antineutrinos, of course, from your fission reactors … the heat signatures of your oceans and vegetation. And the lights of your great cities, of this great city.”

“Why Vancouver, out of all the rest?”

“Considering all the movies and TV shows shot here for its varied terrain, it has stood in for everywhere else on Earth, has it not? And many have settled here from all over your planet and still keep their cultures and customs. That makes it the natural choice to represent this whole world. Besides, you who live here are used to tourists.” His stony lips parted again, and the tentacle of his arm snaked out, the two hands at its forked end shaping a smile.

The next voice shouted from the back. “Doctors who’ve been examining some of you say you’ve all been recently exposed to massive radiation, and will soon be very sick. Do you care to comment?”

The arm withdrew. “We came as fast as we dared,” he said, “and faster than perhaps we should’ve. Life is so short, is it not? And there’s so much to see.”

In the city below and all around, the aliens were certainly trying to see, and buy, all that they could. And what they couldn’t buy, they picked up and handled with thimble-tipped fingers that scanned all they touched through and through. Local museums turned over much of their collections, which could always be replaced. Busloads of aliens were ferried to the nearby aquarium and zoo, swung on the Capilano Suspension Bridge, hiked the Grouse Grind, rode boats and helicopters, and toured residential neighbourhoods where householders laid their heirlooms on blankets spread out on lawns and driveways. Many folk became rich, but many others pressed their treasures on Earth’s guests as gifts, and would take nothing in return.

And the aliens seemed as hungry for human conversation as for human artefacts.

To find out what happens next, pick up your copy of Issue 21, Winter  2019 here!

Graham J Darling (www.grahamjdarling.com) breeds singular hybrids of diamond-hard science fiction, mythopoeiaic fantasy, and unearthly horror, such as for Sword & Mythos, Great Jones Street, and the N3F Short Story Contest, for which he won fourth prize. He also creates molecules such as the universe has never seen, and demonstrates mediaeval science and technology to passers-by.