Touched by an Alien

I pointed out.
    “She seems cool with it,” Reader offered.
    “You’re not helping.”
    Martini pulled a little harder, and I gave in. Snuggling up against him really wasn’t all that bad. “Okay, I’m cuddled. So talk.”
    “Naps are good for you,” Martini said, sounding a bit more awake.
    “Information’s better. Spill it.”
    He gave a good-natured grumble but opened his eyes a crack. “Oh, okay, fine. The mind-control device is for large crowds, only. It doesn’t work on one person. It’s not even mind control, really. More like creating a group hallucination.”
    “How does it work?”
    Martini yawned and stretched. He looked like a big cat. Then he settled back and moved me a little closer. “Odorless gas that affects the brain’s receptors. Human brains only, because we don’t need to fool any A-Cs and we don’t care about fooling any of the superbeings.”
    “How is this gas dispensed?”
    “It’s in the air all the time,” he said, as if this was just a minor thing.
    “You have gases in the air that give humans mass hallucinations? All the time?” I was outraged, but kept my voice down. People were sleeping, after all.
    “They’re natural to Earth,” Martini said patiently. “We just know how to use them.”
    “Just how do you use them?”
    He sighed. “We can see the gases, and all agents know how to manipulate them. Basically, we create what we want the human crowd to see and project it. Alien technology, remember? We’ve all got devices implanted into our brains, sort of like radio transmitters, only really tiny and set up to handle these kinds of things.” He yawned again. “That’s why no one was asking what happened with the superbeing you took out. I altered what everyone saw. Christopher’s side of the house handles the media. Normally they can get to the cameras and the like and alter them before any human notices.”
    I pondered this for a bit. “I saw the man sprout wings and start killing people.”
    “You were intimately involved in the action, so you weren’t affected by the mass hallucination.”
    “That seems convenient.”
    He groaned. “Nothing’s easy with you, is it? It’s not convenient, it’s adrenaline and the fight-or-flight syndrome all humans have. When the adrenaline starts pumping, it either helps or hinders the hallucination. If a person’s reaction to danger is flight, then they see the hallucination. If it’s fight, then they see reality. And, before you can ask, in the case of law enforcement or military personnel, all those trained to fight no matter what, and all those who are fighters by nature, if they aren’t intimately involved in the action, they’re affected by the hallucination.”
    “The guys who were driving the baggage carts didn’t think they saw a monster,” Reader added. “They saw whatever Christopher wanted them to see. Your mother, on the other hand, was intimately involved and saw what the rest of us saw.”
    “You and I weren’t intimately involved when it started.” Reader and Martini both were quiet. I looked up at Martini. “What does that mean? I assume I won’t like it.” I didn’t expect an answer from Reader—besides, I had a feeling his reply would be that this was complicated.
    Martini looked uncomfortable, but I stared him down. “It means I gave you a shot when you passed out the first time. It protects you against the hallucinations. You can’t see what we project any more.”
    I considered this. “You made it so you can’t fool me like the general populace?” He nodded. “How long will this last?”
    “I gave you enough for a week. If you end up becoming an official agent, you’ll get regular injections monthly.”
    “They don’t hurt,” Reader threw out. “They use some special alien shot-giver thing, much nicer than a hypodermic.”
    “I’m thrilled.” I wasn’t that upset. They’d made me less susceptible to them, not more. If I could believe them. Then again, fast or not, Martini hadn’t been there when the man had sprouted his killer wings. If he’d wanted me to see something else, it hadn’t worked. And if I believed he wanted me to at least go to bed with him, he certainly wasn’t doing himself any favors by making me less adaptable to his will. I decided to let this one slide.
    He picked it up and looked relieved. “Thanks,” he said quietly. “I’d really rather not have a fight with you right now.”
    We were still sitting in traffic—I was fairly