Asimov’s Science Fiction, March/April 2026
A grief-stricken man named Shore drives aimlessly through New England, barely sleeping, living in his car, haunted by the loss of his daughter and wife. Stopping at Baldy’s Diner fifty miles northwest of Boston, he notices a placemat advertising local tourist attractions, including a UFO-themed inn called the UFOtel at Molasses Bay, site of alleged alien abductions fifteen years prior. Something compels him to investigate.
Shore arrives at the UFOtel, a grand Victorian inn run by Ava Post, whose husband Noah — a mystery novelist — and a neighbor named Ivy Addison vanished on the same night, reportedly taken by a saucer-like craft witnessed by multiple people. The inn is fully booked for the fifteenth anniversary of the abductions, during the month-long “Saucer Days” festival. Shore poses as a journalist to secure a room, presenting an outdated press credential from his defunct newspaper.
He quickly becomes embedded in the Post family’s world. Gabriela, the sharp-tongued eldest daughter, privately confides her theory that her father ran off with the pretty Ivy Addison rather than being abducted, but swears Shore to secrecy. Fourteen-year-old Sonny, conceived after his father’s disappearance and not yet officially named because Ava refuses to finalize it without Noah, performs twice-daily alien patrols for the guests while privately rolling his eyes at the whole operation. Shore discovers that Sonny is being physically roughed up by Gabriela’s bullying boyfriend Clark, who claims he’s toughening the boy up as a surrogate father figure.
Shore also meets the eccentric permanent boarders: Dr. Gertrude Hayden, author of the bestselling Incursion at Molasses Bay, and her partner Chester Lovett, who hold daily court for the inn’s UFO-believing guests. Shore finds himself unexpectedly drawn to Ava Post — the first woman he’s felt anything for since losing his wife.
On the night of the fifteenth anniversary commemoration, with hundreds gathered on the beach watching the sky, Shore sits with Hayden. She explains her theory that when aliens return abductees, they use a simulation to ease their reentry — putting them behind the wheel of a beloved car, stopping at a familiar diner, giving them a roadmap back to the people they love, showing them their family not as they were left, but as they are now.
Shore is paralyzed by the weight of this revelation. The DJ begins playing Disturbed’s “Are You Ready” — the same song Shore had been blasting in his car at the story’s opening. He recognizes it as the playlist his wife had labeled Loud. Then he collapses.
Morning. He wakes on the beach. Chester Lovett recognizes him. Noah Post has returned.
The story reveals its stunning twist: Shore was Noah all along, experiencing the aliens’ carefully crafted simulation of a grieving stranger to prepare him for the shock of rejoining a family fifteen years older. As Noah rises and his family rushes to him — Ava, Gabriela, and the son he’s never met — he whispers one word: “Joy.”
Michael Libling is a World Fantasy Award finalist (2015) whose short fiction has appeared in a bunch of swell places, including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, and the anthology Welcome to Dystopia. His latest novel, THE SERIAL KILLER’S SON TAKES A WIFE, is an off-kilter thriller with elements of mystery, horror, and—dare it be said!—twisted romance. For reviews, click here. The book is from Kevin J. Anderson’s WordFire Press.