From Leo's diary
Lyra didn't waste any time, she began high school just a few months ago and now she has already passed the selections for the cheerleaders' team.
In any other moment, Claire and I would have at least tried to negotiate a little about our daughter's new style choices, the bright pink hair look a bit too extreme. Apparently, she also settled to grow hair only on 2/3 of her head, she said she's struggling to use a disguise on the remaining part. I heard it by many aliens already, partial disguising oneself just for growing hair is much less instinctive than a full disguise, thus more difficult.
However, back to the important topics, elections are getting closer and closer and the candidates' electoral campaigns are harshening day after day. Willing or not, we adults have other problems on our minds.
TV: A new spike in criminality has been recorded in the outskirts of Sim City in the last few months, predominately among the alien communities. Violent outbreaks are getting out of control in the Spice District and Evergreen Harbour areas, requiring massive police intervention. Mr M., outraged by the disorders, immediately replied during his last public speech.
Also in the police station those small revolts just outside of Sim City were the main topic of discussion. We were lucky to live in the calm and boring Windenburg, they said. I, on the other hand, couldn't avoid feeling salty about this situation: as long as that group of aliens was selling illegal drugs in the north part of the Country, that had been the main argument against aliens in any Mr M. speech, but now that we have arrested them he had just shifted his focus on anything else allowing him to keep bashing on us.
Saying that it's frustrating and infuriating would be an understatement...
Mr M.: (on TV) Criminality levels are clearly on the rise in those areas where aliens decided to settle, what other evidence do we need? It is becoming unsafe to us to live next to them, and...
Orion: That's bullshit, did he see any of the neighbourhoods where mostly aliens live? They are abandoned in poverty down there, of course they're be protesting!
Silas: (seriously) Do you really think anyone would be listening to the data in such a situation? That Mr M. is taking advantage of the protests to take votes from Claire, that's all.
Claire was working overtime every day at this point, polls said her party wasn't gaining any point regardless of all her efforts. She was starting to get really exhausted, but she hadn't given up either.
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A few days later I proposed to Claire and the kids to go out to dine together, we have so few chances to spend some time all together recently. Admittedly, we didn't had the time for cooking anything at home either.
Lyra: That's some very heavy rain!
Claire: Let's hurry in, come on.
The hostess didn't welcome us with a friendly expression, we are actually quite sure to have heard her muttering an "aliens!" with an annoyed tone.
They also put us in a corner of the room, as far as they could from the other customers. I don't like to suspect the worst from the others, but at that point it was quite clear we weren't welcomed in there.
Lyra: Well, at least they didn't tell us to sit outside...
Luke: Any suggestion about what to order?
Leo: I heard they are mostly good with fish, my colleague suggested to me to try the trout.
Claire: (tired) Fine for me.
Leo: Well, how are you doing at school then?
Lyra: Luke has won the title of "nerdest student in the school". Again.
Luke: Since when is there such a competition? And what's wrong with wanting to get into a decent university?
Lyra: But...
Luke: Rather, do you and your friends do anything useful aside from waving pom poms at games?
Lyra: Hey, we're not stupid empty heads, you know?
Luke: Ah ah, if you say so...
Claire: Come on, there's no need to argue also in here... Can't we just have a peaceful family dinner?
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Claire: (on TV) We are working hard to ensure integration and equal opportunities for everyone. The engineering and medical technologies recovered on Sixam are close to a real-life implementation, and will soon allow everyone to...
Leo: It sounds like a very good speech!
Claire: Uhm, well, maybe... But since that idiot started to talk so often about the protests in Sim City, our poll results are dropping... I don't have a good feeling at all.
I would love to be able to cheer you up, but we aren't in the position to do anything. Claire is in disadvantage in the polls and, no matter how hard she tries, the situation doesn't seem to be improving.
Claire: I mean, that idiot is playing dirty! He has no real data to accuse us of anything, yet all he needs to make people follow him like sheep is to blame everything on us!
Leo: ...
Claire: (resigned) At worst, in five years we will vote again... Maybe, after realizing that that idiot isn't capable of anything other than void words, the people would be more willing to listen.
Elections will be held in a few days, at this point we are all so exhausted that even Claire just wants this neverending electoral campaign to end, even if this means accepting a defeat. We are starting to surrender, that's it.
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Lyra is quickly befriending her teammates in the cheerleaders' group, They are always around town together giggling about I don't know which uninteresting topic. At the moment she seems to be spending most of her time with the other two sixamians in the team, one is our cousin Ariana and the other, if I'm not mistaken, is called Misty.
They claimed they came to the library for studying but, judging what I could see, they hadn't opened a single book in hours. Actually, quite a few people in the library have turned toward them, visibly annoyed. Is it really that hard to remember that people are supposed to remain silent in a library?
Lyra: Hey Luke, I was looking for you!
Luke: (annoyed) If it wasn't obvious enough, I have to point out I'm studying. What do you want?
Lyra: Could you help my friends? Next week they have to deliver an essay, you already did it last year and you took a super good grade!
Luke: But...
Lyra: Please!
My adorable little sister can be very insistent when it comes to her requests and thus, unfortunately, I found myself teaching to two girls I barely knew. One was Misty, my sister's other sixamians friend, while the other's name was apparently Serena.
Luke: Well, I was told you needed my help with a history project. Have you already thought about the topic, at least?
Misty: We had sort of an idea, but it is not the stuff we can easily find in books.
Serena: But your sister told us you are an expert on this subject instead!
Luke: (puzzled) Wait, what do you have in mind?
Serena: We have already studied the history of the Country dozens of times at school, we got bored of it. So we decided to focus on the story of the aliens instead!
Misty: Spaceships, invasions, laser guns... That sounds like an interesting project, doesn't it?
I didn't answer right away. From them I would have expected the usual project everyone always wrote on the llamas' war or the founders of the country, certainly not this one. Last year I tried to propose a similar project to my group mates, actually, but they laughed in my face.
After all, this task could be interesting...
Luke: It will be a lot of work, I warn you.
We had spent most of that afternoon writing up a lineup. We hardly studied anything about sixamians history at school, so for them it was all new notions. Instead, I was trying to put together all the pieces of information I had collected over the years by talking to Uncle Orion and Uncle Silas, who had given me some data pulled out from the Sixam's old archives for each of my birthdays.
I tried many times to do the same on my computer, but some parts are so intricated that neither I managed to fully unentangle them yet. However, the clearest sections should be more than sufficient for their school project.
Luke: ... and this led to the invention of teleportation. It was at that point that they started focusing on exploring space, searching for resources, and that they discovered the existence of other life forms in the universe.
Serena: Instead, the colonization attempts started due to a lack of resources on the home planet, right?
Luke: Yes. The star Sixam orbits is fading, and this is slowly killing the planet's vegetation, making it difficult to produce food and energy.
Serena: (thoughtful) And so they ended up here on Earth, uhm ...
Misty: Well, this is all very interesting, but it's already 6 PM and and my brain is starting to fry. See you!
Without making any other comments, Misty got up and went out greeting us with one hand.
Luke: Do you plan to leave too?
Serena: No, I can remain a bit longer. But I agree with her, we've studied enough for today. Would you like to play chess for a bit, instead?
I didn't think much about it before accepting. After all, I liked chess, and it was interesting to talk with Serena. How did someone like her end in the cheerleader team, I wondered?
Serena: I was wondering about something that always seemed so strange to me...
Luke: What kind of thing?
Serena: Well, if you think about it, you aliens are very similar to us. You also have two legs, two arms, a head... Which are the chances of two such similar species evolve independently so far one from another?
Luke: My uncles calculated the odds, they were 0.0000... er, I don't remember exactly how many zeros there were. But it was an incredibly low number.
Serena: So how did it happen?
Luke: Well, according to the archives, until about a century and a half ago our ancestors were very different from us. It was when they began targeting Earth and integrating human genetic material that they began to become more and more like humans. The writings report that the original inhabitants of Sixam have decided to create hybrids to best adapt to the climatic conditions of the new planet and maximise their survival chances. The uncles also measured that, on average, our DNA is the same as yours for more than 90%, and...
And then I suddenly stopped talking, realizing that probably I shouldn't have said that. A lot of people don't like to remember the time when sixamians secretly abducted humans to "pollinate them", after all. That was still the main reason why many humans weren't able to overcome their fear for us, actually.
To my surprise she answered with a smile instead, and said:
Serena: I see! So it makes so much more sense, you know?
Luke: May I make a question, too?
Serena: Sure.
Luke: Why are you so interested in aliens? Aren’t you afraid of us?
Serena: I'm Misty's best friend since when we were in kindergarten, how could I be afraid of aliens?
Luke: But...
Serena: I'm sorry, but you got distracted: checkmate!
Luke: What?
Serena: Well, it was amusing, we should play again sometime! See you!
That said, she greeted me with a big smile and left. I admit I was very confused at that moment. And maybe confused is not even the best term to describe the way I felt, but I just couldn't find a better one at the time.
To say that this afternoon has been unexpectedly intriguing would be an understatement, this is probably the first time I hope to see again the cheerleaders at the library as soon as possible.
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