Lost in Translation

By Zoe Cannon

The war with the aliens is over. It's time to get back to normal—at least that's what everyone keeps telling us. Time to forget the things we saw up there, and all the people who died down here. Let's all sit down for Thanksgiving dinner, and take pictures with Santa, and act like the past three years never happened.

 

I'm the only one who can see that the threat isn't gone. That we didn't win the war—we surrendered. Which means I'm the only one willing to do anything about it.

 

And I won't let anyone stop me. Not even myself.

 

This short story is 8200 words long. It is also available in Digital Soul, a science fiction short story collection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zoe Cannon
• Release date: Oct 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201759674

Book preview

Lost in Translation

Zoe Cannon

© 2021 Zoe Cannon

http://www.zoecannon.com

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Lost in Translation

My parents had replaced me with a robot while I was off-planet. And not even a robot version of my current self, which would have been a whole lot creepier but at least would have given the impression that they saw me as an adult. No, she was made in the image of my six-year-old self, right down to the pigtails and the t-shirt with the dolphin on the front. But she was a rose-colored mirror, all smiles and soft focus. Her cheeks were chubbier than mine had been, her hair shinier, her jeans not caked with the mud of the backyard. She looked like the obligatory cute kid from a TV sitcom, right down to the dimple, as she turned to me and asked me to pass the mashed potatoes.

The old dining room table, with the ghosts of old crayon marks still visible on top of the varnish, was groaning under the weight of a Thanksgiving spread the four of us could never finish on our own. Especially since one of us didn’t need food, unless robot technology had changed a lot in the three years I had been gone. To my left, cranberry relish spilled out of a too-small bowl. To my right sat a square dish of green bean casserole made from Aunt Edith’s recipe. Mom must have made it herself this year, since Aunt Edith wasn’t around to do it. She had died in the attack on Chicago three years ago. Not that anyone was going to mention that.

In the center of the table, the turkey loomed over all the rest, the skin perfectly crisped, the meat white and juicy. The monstrous bird was big enough to feed my parents for a week with some left over. I imagined Dad carrying the thing home from the store, unbalanced by its weight, clutching it like a promise of the picture-perfect Thanksgiving. I hoped they didn’t expect me to take any home.

I had brought pumpkin pie, courtesy of the only grocery store that had still been open an hour ago, when it had occurred to me that it was only polite for a guest to bring food on Thanksgiving. It had been the last pie, half-price because someone had