Asimov’s, July/August 2026
Jacob’s phone battery dies at 3:12 a.m. while he watches footage of an alien ship hovering above Shanghai, one of thirty-two massive vessels that have settled over cities around the world less than a day earlier. He shivers under a tarp in his sister Kell’s carport, kicked outside because she won’t let her daughters watch their uncle withdraw from opioids. A message from his dealer, Mo, promises a meet the next night, and that sliver of hope is the only thing that gets Jacob through the freezing night on the concrete.
In the morning, sick and aching, Jacob walks to his friend Frog’s trailer, hoping for a ride to his mother’s house. Frog, now on Suboxone and trying to stay clean, feeds him eggs, lets him shower, and warns him away from Mo, whose fentanyl-laced product recently killed a mutual friend named Ken. The two watch news coverage of the alien arrival together, debating what the ships might want. Jacob confesses, almost shyly, that he believes the aliens are here to save humanity from itself — an idea he immediately regrets sharing when he sees pity in Frog’s eyes. Frog needles him about his addiction and eventually gets Frog’s girlfriend Lydia to drive him partway, though Lydia makes her contempt for Jacob clear, and Frog himself tells Jacob flatly that he’s “seeking” and going to die if he doesn’t get help.
At his mother’s house, Jacob is met with the one unguarded joy left in his life. She feeds him a sandwich and watches the news with him, worrying aloud about whether the aliens intend to kill everyone. Jacob repeats his theory that the ships have come to save humanity from the damage it has done to itself and to the planet. The tenderness of the visit is undercut by his real purpose: he slips upstairs, raids the empty medicine cabinet out of habit, and takes his late father’s prized first edition of Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End from its display case, planning to sell it. His mother catches him in the act. She reminds him what the book meant to his father and to their relationship, and warns that if he takes it, he isn’t welcome back. Jacob leaves anyway, chased out by his own need.
He treks for miles across town, dodging a man who once swore to kill him over stolen pills, and waits in the woods behind Mo’s house until Mo finally comes home. Inside Mo’s garage, Jacob pitches the book as valuable, tying its rising worth to the ongoing alien crisis, but Mo is unmoved and offers only a token amount of heroin for it. Mo philosophizes bitterly that the aliens don’t care about humanity one way or another — they’re simply here for some resource, the way an addict is drawn to a need regardless of who gets hurt. Jacob trades the book for the drugs.
Behind Mo’s shed, Jacob shoots up and overdoses. Mo revives him with Narcan, furious and threatening, and kicks him off the property. Alone in the woods, wrecked by withdrawal again, Jacob checks the news one last time before his phone dies, still searching — like the ships above him — for something that might save him.
Gregory Marlow (He/Him) is an associate professor, animator, and writer living in East Tennessee with his wife, Amanda, and dog, Sadie. He has animated on over a dozen video game titles, and some of his short fiction publications include PodCastle, Strange Horizons, Flash Fiction Online, and The LeVar Burton Reads podcast.