The lights illuminating the tennis courts burned harshly in Linda’s eyes as she stood around, waiting, with everyone else who must’ve been drawn to the place by the strange note. The teenager struggled to rub the sleep out of her eyes, having forbade herself from drinking any additional caffeine to keep herself up. She certainly didn’t want to fall down that slope. [i]Shit, is this what withdrawal feels like…?[/i] she asked herself, not accustomed to staying up so late at night, with-or-without chemicals. [i]I knew I shouldn’t have gotten so used to that shit…!![/i] 

Linda stood in the tennis court with an oversized backpack she’d packed haphazardly earlier that evening, with the nagging thought that she was forgetting something that plagues just about everyone when they’re packing for something big. Or at least, when she [i]might[/i] be packing for something big. Linda was still rather skeptical that the flier she’d found implied any real offer at all. She hadn’t notified her mother that she’d be going on any sort of special trip, hadn’t packed enough clothes to last her more than a day or two, and she [i]certainly[/i] didn’t think she was [i]actually[/i] going on some sort of outer-space adventure… In fact, just to be safe, she did pack pepper spray. 

Glancing around the area, Linda noticed that there weren’t as many kids her age there as she for some reason expected there to be. Instead, she found quite a few older adults, leaving her to pace around the outskirts of the group a bit awkwardly, not super willing to engage in conversation with anyone. She found herself flicking her phone out of her pocket every 30 seconds or so to check for the time, her patience beginning to wear thin given how exhausted she was. It was times like these she kind of wished she had a smartphone — just to pass the time with Angry Bird or Flappy Bird or whatever sort of bird had made itself popular at that time. Instead, her phone was a simpler model — one she didn’t even know the exact name of as it probably didn’t even have a fancy name. It wasn’t a super-basic flip-phone, though. It had a touch screen, and a keyboard, and apparently some degree of internet connectivity, not that she had a data plan for that sort of thing, anyway. It was good for calling and texting but not much more. Her reasoning behind not having a fancy phone wasn’t because she couldn’t afford one, though, but rather because she was a bit hesitant to join this smartphone craze. She’d witnessed too many people glued to their phones 24/7, and heard too many stories of people dying because they had their phones out while trying to drive or something, not to mention the notion that people these days seemed to be way too dependent on Google to solve problems — or so she heard that was a major problem with her generation. Linda really didn’t want to become one of those selfie-addicted sheep. As she waited without any form of handheld entertainment for something to happen, she made a conscious effort to hide her occasional yawning. 

She brought her eyes up from the display that read “2:59” for the tenth time as one more individual approached the group — this one wearing a rather horribly-put-together outfit. Then again, given the fact that this woman wore something covering her head, Linda shrugged the bad color-coordination off, thinking, [i]maybe it’s a religious thing[/i]. 

Only half-listening to this newcomer’s words, though, Linda’s attention came into full-focus and her eyes locked onto the alien as she revealed her scaly features. “Woah woah woah hold on!” Linda spoke up, hastily making her way through the crowd and closer to the extra-terrestrial. “Woah… so you’re our supposed alien, right?” she asked, the slightly crumpled and many-times folded flier now visible in her hand. She spent a few minutes admiring Qyx’s look, thinking it seemed familiar… and then it hit her. “Wait, holy shit, I know who you’re supposed to be! You look just like… like this alien I saw on this show a few weeks back, only pieces of it though — but yeah that sci-fi on that British channel that’s been kind of popular lately. I’m blanking out on the title — something about a doctor — but yeah you look just like that lizard-chick who wears that thing over her face!” she explained, making some sort of hand gesture that was meant to signify the veil worn by the certain alien character she was thinking of. “So like… is this some sort of Comicon thing?” she asked, attempting to understand a facet of nerd culture that she really wasn’t a part of. 

Her heart jumped a bit when the Connector suddenly came into view, though — suddenly not all that sure that this was a “Comicon thing” after all. “How… how did you do that?” Linda asked Qyx, her face having gone from smiling amusement to a more serious, perplexed expression. Almost concerned-looking. This girl here… she couldn’t have been a real alien or something. No, that just… wasn’t possible, right?