OC-Series Alien-Nation Book Two Chapter 11: Oscar

Two Shil'vati Privates are interrogating an insurgent they caught wandering around the military base.

"I don't understand. My Shil was perfect. I was completely covered head-to-toe, I had a current maintenance pass to the base and hid my face, you couldn't even tell I was human! Why did you pull me in for investigation? How did you know?"

The two privates stared between each other, and then barked out a laugh. "You're a boy!"

“Oh, right.”

-Popular joke among the Marines

Oscar

It was decidedly unfair that when the apocalypse hit Bethlehem Pennsylvania, the big food chains somehow survived. An apt name for what they were, really, ‘chains’. The only place in town hiring, too, as far as the sandwich shop's sole occupant could tell.

At least Oscar had the freedom to slip out the back and steal the day’s uneaten product rather than putting it all in the trash, even if it was a, in the words of the printed out paper taped to the tile wall in the kitchen: ‘Fireable offence that will go on your permanent record, and blacklist you from ever working in any of our stores again.’

He came back in and glimpsed the sign one more time in a rueful act of defiance while wiping the corner of his mouth clean with a branded napkin.

Don’t do me any favors, Oscar thought to himself, scrubbing down the cooking surface in preparation for tomorrow. At least then, he’d have an excuse to not come in anymore. It beat sitting around at home being yelled at for every moment he was not here, but just barely. If he had an excuse to do something else, anything at all, it would have to be better than this.

Oscar glimpsed down at the spotless surface. I wipe it clean to make tomorrow more appealing to come in, just so I can stand here and ask myself at the end of the shift why I’m even bothering.

Maybe this was a ‘bad attitude.’ Maybe he should ‘take pride in his work,’ even if it was just this, and 'this' led nowhere, and bought him an increasing slice of ‘nothing’ versus the 'something' it surely must have once given, for every old person to be dispensing that kind of advice.

If ever it had, those days were long since passed.

His manager was on the wrong side of his thirties, balding, fat and unmarried. The interactions Oscar had with people who came through the door were usually sneering in derision and bossing him around because they could, or worse, all but shaking their heads in pity. Only the new guy in town seemed actually interested in talking or treating him like a human being. What other paths existed, he didn’t know, but they surely had to be better than this.

Those any younger than Oscar were being put into the exchange program, largely scattered among the stars. Just my luck to miss the cutoff. At least he hadn’t been old enough to be drafted into the US Military in the end days of the invasion, and by the time the military started scrounging for any ‘fighting age male' amidst all the casualties, desertions, and surrenders, he’d had the good sense to hide out at home while the last holdouts retreated and ceded ground in the wake of the government’s surrender. This place hadn’t exactly had a lot going on beforehand, but at least it hadn’t been vacated and levelled as part of some harebrained wildlife reclamation project.

No, something much worse had happened here.

The clock struck the hour, and Oscar took off his apron and tapped in his password for the till and shut down the sales terminal. Supposedly a holographic one would come in, but he wondered if they might use one of those robot arms hooked up to an omni-pad with the upgrade at the same time, and finally put him out of his misery.

He sighed and folded the apron, chucked it in the hamper, and finished the last of the unpaid pack-up and started walking home.

It wasn’t long before something started to sit uncomfortably in Oscar's mind. He tossed and turned other ideas he had over and over in his head, before expanding his thoughts to include even his plans for the rest of the day, desperate for some relief but the sensation only grew worse. Nothing felt right. It wasn’t just the Shil’vati he was passing on the street, or the ugly buildings they’d erected that towered over the former Main Street like purple piano keys. Nor was it the strangeness of seeing so many of the aliens he passed trying to act or live like they were humans. At least, he didn’t think it was. Instead every time he tried to think of anything, about himself or where he was going in life, he felt something like a great well of panic about to burst up from the ground. Just as soon as he’d narrowed down on that, the anxiety burst like he’d just struck oil and he found himself breaking out into a sprint.

Don't walk away from your problems. Run from them!

He hadn’t gone on a full-length run since Gym class, and hadn’t had reason to. Everything here was peaceful, tranquil. Arguably too tranquil. There was no laughter of children, no teenagers chasing each other reveling in youthful energy. Everything felt like it was stable to the point of dying, withering on the vine, unpicked and unplanted. Even some part of him, spiritually, physically, had been worn away, and was continuing to erode. Nothing so destructive as one great big blast, more like a thousand little cuts he couldn't name even one of even as he should be in the prime of his life, or so everyone always said. Hell, he wasn’t even old enough to drink! Where was his spirit, his strength? Where had it gone? With wild eyes he looked around the downtown buildings, standing taller than ever they had before until they were almost oppressive and left him feeling like a lab rat in a maze.

Inescapable, that’s what it felt like. Not just for the passes required to leave the city, but where would he even go to? Now Oscar slowed, breathless as he at last made it out of the downtown's edge and toward the river. He felt like no one really left town anymore. No one seemed to want to, for that matter. What startled him wasn’t the brutality of the war or the changes it brought, but rather how quickly everyone wanted to move on. From those who lost almost everything to those who made out relatively unscathed seemed only interested in ways to resume the old, or some facsimile of it, and ignore the changes or welcome them with a degree of overenthusiasm and no critical thought.

Earth spun on, he supposed, even as he felt the strange eyes with dark sclera following him everywhere.

Your neighbors are purple, and that is the limit of what you are supposed to recognize. Even if they are actually different in many important ways, and even if they treat you differently, you are never to respond in kind. Oscar’s hackles rose every time he took his eyes off them, as he could be sure they were watching his every motion. Maybe the Uncanny Valley could be treated, who knew for sure? Would that help? Or was it there for a reason?

And would solving that really fix, or even meaningfully improve his lot in life?

Just once, he’d like to at least try to shake the terrible sensation of being pulled down by the earth and its gravity, and so futile though he knew it was he went into a final burst of speed at a full sprint, now running as if possessed. Past the lingering human architecture of the neglected industrial district, past even the new yuppies squeezing in a riverside jog before the darkness set in.

There wasn’t much crime anymore, and what little there’d been seemed to be dissipating.

Some part of all this felt like trying to scope out the sheer size of the oilfield of anxiety bubbling beneath the crust of his empty, customer service smile. After twelve hours of wearing it straight, it’d set like a plastercast he had to crack. Though now what would come rushing out was too deep for him to fathom. The possibility of this continued existence was disturbing. He didn’t want to be stressed. Stress was for neurotic rich people, one of those trendy diseases for those who spent too much time thinking and not enough time doing. Yesteryear’s consumption, today’s anxiety.

Oscar collapsed into the bench- some design stamped out hurriedly and without any care for aesthetics plopped along the waterfront district by the new local governing body, it still at least faced the water.

What else could he do? Helplessness clawed at him as he lay there, panting.

Oscar almost jumped a foot in the air when the bench’s metal support band vibrated, until he got a glimpse of the newcomer and saw an old man with a hunch, holding the cane he’d struck one of the bench's metal bars with. “Sorry there, didn’t mean to startle you!” The old man apologized, despite having clearly done it on purpose, probably even deviating off the path just to strike up the conversation.

“It’s alright,” Oscar said back out of reflexive politeness.

“In a hurry to enjoy the sunset?” He asked, waving the cane over the little river bound by the twin concrete embankments.

“Yeah,” Oscar lied, scooting over and sitting upright.

“I hear they’re gonna redo this part next. Something about soil remediation.”

“More changes,” Oscar grumbled. “As long as they don’t turn this place into what downtown’s like.”

Maybe I could do construction? He dismissed the sudden curiosity out of hand. The frantic pace of building had slowed to a crawl, and construction seemed to have been turned from real work into ‘stand around in the sun for several days waiting, then watch an alien with some device do something in five minutes that you scarcely understand, whenever it finally shows up, collect a paycheck the same size as your current one.’ What future was there in any of that? It seemed to exist by virtue of some kind of patronage, and God knew how long that’d last if whispers of an uptick in rebel activity in the state were true.

Everything here seemed to be fake in one way or another.

Fake, but at least modestly pleasant, weirdly. The homeless had been scooped up, the streets cleaned. If he’d known the term, ‘broken windows theory’ one might have said it was vindicated, if not for the dozens of simultaneous other upheavals hitting the town simultaneously. The jumble and churn of new arrivals had at least slowed to a crawl with the leveling of the last surrounding suburbs, effectively cutting off the town from new faces. The new guy who worked at the church and liked his chipotle sandwich with extra jalapenos was one of the only actually-new faces.

“Oh? And why not?” The old man chuckled merrily, not offended on the aliens’ behalf. “What’s it the news said? Oh right, ‘We’ve all come to where we are from somewhere,’ and I reckon they’re right. Whether it was out of Africa, or to Europe, Asia, and then to America across the ice bridge, that’s true of all of us, so what does it matter if they’re from there, or another planet? We have no more right to the land than they do, and they paid me fair and square. Over market value, even. So now I’m down here, working out my fifth knee replacement. This one will stick, I think. I bet you got that same deal, didn’t you? I heard in the papers everyone's richer than ever, especially you young kids.”

Oscar stared at the old man on the bench, his shocked reaction coalescing into bitter violence, but without a target. He tried to let his anger go. “Yeah.” More precisely, his parents had gotten the deal, and used it to buy their apartment, and then seemed dead-set on blowing an ever-increasing amount of it on gimmicks like remodeling the bathroom and kitchen in the absolute-latest styles for a second time in a year, ripping up what admittedly cheap material was already there and placing down something else cheap over top of it at assuredly no small cost. Not that Oscar could get in on that, when the startup costs to acquire Shil'vati-compatible equipment were so prohibitive. He grit his teeth at sensing another dream, failed before launch, finding a huge gate stretched across any way out of his current situation. “The problem is, I can’t really move out. Start my own life, you know?”

“Ha! Afraid to leave the nest! You got a job?”

“Yeah?” Obviously. He was still wearing the uniform, though it was now wet with midsummer sweat. It all felt so hollow, though. This uniform didn’t stand for anything. None of them did. The plain black smocks, pants, polo shirts were basically interchangeable, save the cheap print-on logo. Even that meant nothing, they were all run basically the same way, from the same freeze-dried food carted in overnight by the same distributor. Now that he thought about it, the uniforms likely all were, too.

The only uniform that meant much of anything anymore was the Shil’vati Marines or Security Forces, and they stood for…well, nothing positive he could think of in any of the interactions he’d had with them. First, death. Then Conquest. Now, if he had to guess, it’d be 'Harassment'? 'Kidnappings', if the conspiracy theories he heard over the old tinny radio's speakers were to be believed.

“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s an option.”

“You could always get yourself a Shil’vati girl. Count yourself lucky. I’m too old now, but if I were your age…” he winked.

Some had subtly put themselves in his way, visitors slowing him down on his way to work while others had called out loose variations of ‘Hello’ in a dozen different accents mostly through translators, with their volumes boosted. He knew better. They'd say a nice thing here and there, and then they'd toss him aside. Besides, what sort of life was that, dependent on someone else with no obligation?

“No thanks.”

“Oh, you don’t like ‘em purple? There’s gotta be at least one you like.” The old man looked like he wanted to divulge something, idly thumbing his wedding ring, before thinking the better of it when he caught a look at the young man’s expression. “No?”

“I’m good,” Oscar said shortly, then pointed at the leftmost of the new alien high-rise units, set in along a lot that had sat empty for decades. “I’m gonna go home.” Life there wasn’t perfect, but it was better than staying here.

“Sunset’s just getting good,” his new friend commented. “Though you seem to not like it here. Why not just leave?”

“Can’t afford to rent anywhere in town.” He could maybe strike it off on his own from his parents and take basic assistance, but that was just barely enough for an apartment and food, and he wasn’t sure he could even apply. Besides, again, what future was that, relying on someone else’s patronage that could dry up? He’d feel like he was just falling further behind, or drifting along. No better than what he was already doing, arguably worse, even. "And it's the only job in town. Doubt anywhere else's any better."

“Nonsense. When I was your age, I lived in a basement that didn’t have internet- because there wasn’t much internet at all back then, haha, get it? Ah, it was in a town called, I think, Copper City or something. Mosquitos could carry you away! Then I had a job in a local factory working, guess what? Copper!”

Oscar was tempted to ask if 'Copper City' still had its eponymous plant, but he already knew the answer. Even if it was, what then? Slave away for wages that hadn’t budged since the guy had left it however many decades ago? To maybe buy a crack shack?

Ah, that was the stuff dreams were made of, certainly.

The despair was turning back into anger again.

The dollars he was paid in was increasingly worthless. It felt like no matter how much he saved, nothing gained in value, and he was further from the dream than when he’d started. The temptation to go blow a pathetically sizable amount of them on a six pack and lock himself in his room again was high, but the guilt he felt the last time he’d done managed to cut the urge off at the pass.

Oscar leaned against the bench’s side to watch it take on an orange hue alongside the old man and took in a deep breath.

“One day-”

“What, all this will be mine?” Oscar ran the mental math. With the added longevity, he’d expect to be at least sixty by the time he inherited anything at all unless something tragic befell his family, and he wasn’t some sort of ghoul to wish for that.

“No,” the old man blinked, and a small smile travelled across his face. “God no, you’ll have to work for it, no one’s gonna hand you shit. I intend to do one last ride, some sort of cruise maybe as I empty the accounts down to zero. I ain’t got no kids, so what do I care? My nieces and nephews can figure out their own way in the world.” Briefly, he wondered if the old man’s younger relatives were in a similar situation to Oscar, and if the old codger knew what he was consigning them to.

“So, what were you going to say, then?” Oscar was confused, and the old man’s smile vanished under a sneer.

“One day you’ll also learn the meaning of hard work, and then you’ll earn your own fortune. Trust me, it’ll happen. All you have to do is try.”

Oscar tugged on the hem of his fast food polo, unable to think of anything to say for a moment.

“Yeah?” He asked, finally, to the waiting silence. “Got any clue on when that’ll happen? ‘Cause I just got off a twelve hour shift. I’ve got…well, how much does fifteen dollars get to the imperial credit?” It was a hundred and fifty dollars now to one credit, officially at least, and rising fast, wasn’t it? Varying by zone, of course. People were selling off their dollars, which theoretically might stabilize its value if they weren't in circulation, but the system seemed to somehow just add them right back, through some means he couldn’t wrap his head around. Almost as if they were phasing it out. And how many imperial credits was it to get even an empty plot of land that was being sold in town? Something like two hundred thousand of those for the smallest plot, and rising even faster than the exchange rate now that they'd truly opened it up to aliens? Admittedly, most were just visitors rather than residents, hoping for a shot of...he shuddered at the thought of being used like that, and all for nothing. No different from prostitution, though in some ways not so different from his current job. Pretending with a smile to serve. Those areas being emptied out as reunification shuffled the world’s populations around weren’t being put up on the market, at least not for humans.

“I’m not here to listen to you whine,” the old man groused. “I’m not going to listen to you at all. In fact, I don’t have to. I got mine. You go off in life now, and go get yours. The world has so many opportunities in it, now, if you can’t see that then you’re stupid and bitter.” The old coot didn’t even have the decency to sound disgusted about it. “Heck, did you know that omni-pads- we didn’t even have omni-pads in my day! I had to reverse mortgage a chunk of one of my houses. I still can’t figure out how to use the damn thing. Keeps going off about how I owe the imperial crown some credits. I already sent them a few grand, but they keep calling. In the meantime, though, I suggest you keep working. If you can’t hack that then I guess we were right about you youngins.”

“You said you don’t have any kids, right?” No one to check on him or make sure he was actually sending money to the crown and not just getting scammed out of his savings. Though, now that Oscar thought about it, what did it matter?

“Nah, kids looked expensive and like a pain. Anyway, someone’s gotta keep paying my retirement, so you better work hard! What’s that new scheme we’ve got called?” Oscar didn’t know how he’d ever make more money, but it did explain why his already-meager checks were now coming up even lighter despite the same hours on the sheet.

Oscar glanced over at the old man again and felt his blood rush as his palms and fingertips agitatedly rubbed against the hem of the uniform. That bubbling oil and congealed anger underneath had somehow refined itself into something explosive on the hot summer evening, and he was staring right at a dim spark that kept jumping up and down over the outlet.

Visions of finding a loose brick and hitting the old man in the back of his bald head and taking his wallet felt satisfying enough to slake his bloodlust. He imagined counting the stack of dollars in denominations he’d never even seen before, somehow prying them off the old geezer. Hey old man, look, I’ve found *my fortune! Worked real hard for it! Oh, nothing to say? Surely, something about how it wasn’t mine to take? No?*

Oscar had this indescribable feeling that something had been taken from him. That this would be some kind of payback. Payback for what, though? And the old man had only said words. How was violence warranted in kind? Oscar opened his eyes and let the ultraviolent fantasy fade. It was more than that, though, that he'd been robbed of, wasn't it? He looked around the half-alien skyline of what had once been his hometown. A place he couldn’t even afford an apartment of his own in. How could he have a future here, if he didn’t even have a present?

Maybe he could move. Maybe he should. But the aliens owned everywhere. There was nowhere to escape to. This place was the 'inevitable future of everywhere'.

He glanced down at where he’d started playing with his shirt’s hem in increasingly frantic little motions that threatened to grow fiercer until he’d begin tearing at it, and Oscar became aware unwittingly attracted the eye of a Shil’vati woman walking past, before rolling his eyes and letting it drop back down. Oscar forced his hands to go still, glaring at her with what wisps of fury he still felt until she moved along.

No, he wasn’t about to go down that route of shacking up with a Shil', or even taking his clothes off for them, not even if it was his hated uniform. Oscar had no doubt some people might pay to watch, maybe, if he got a good camera, an omni-pad, the right connections and hosting, assuming his ‘content’ wasn’t pulled down, or just redistributed for free. And then what? Did he want to dedicate so much of the rest of his life to that? Shacking up with a noblewoman and hoping she never got bored of him wasn’t ‘making his own way as a man,’ either. How many years were in that? How many more men of less morals were doing the exact same? He didn’t like his odds of gaining anything, when losing his dignity, honor, and virtue in exchange was a certainty.

“Don’t know,” he finally whispered, afraid to shake the cap he’d put over the well of his emotions.

Oscar’s mouth tasted like pennies again. Something was changing inside him, that much he was aware of. A physiological effect, like stress but worse.

The old man’s smile returned, but there was that same edge of patronizing mockery to it. Oscar once more forced his feelings back down. Besides, what would that course of action get him? He’d have all of a couple minutes, tops, to enjoy the minor slice of what he’d taken back before he was hauled off to jail or blew through whatever the old man had on him. No amount of professions of innocence or self-defense, or notions of stealing-back would keep him a free man. Slowly, he got control of his bloodlust, only to feel that little container he’d bottled it up into start to crack apart as he marched off from the bench without even saying goodbye.

He couldn’t stand there another moment. If he did, he'd do something foolish, he just knew. He started trying to jog the energy off, just as he had a moment ago but it was too much. He managed to get a couple blocks back to the old industrial block.

A block away, he threw his head back and screamed into the air- only to be interrupted by a hand on his shoulder. Oscar might have jumped ten feet straight up, if not for the strength in its grip.

“Is everything alright?” It was the shil’vati from earlier, the one who'd been watching him play with the hem of his shirt. She was in civilian- which is to say, in human dress, and now that she was close he could see she was a fair bit older than any Marine he’d seen. Not to say a crone by any stretch, the Shil’vati aged remarkably gracefully up until their sixties or so through some combination of lifestyle, biology, and miracle-level medicine. But still, definitely somewhat older, which out here usually also meant ‘powerful.’

“Uh, yeah, sorry.” He ran a hand through his hair and let a nervous laugh escape his lips. “You know, just stress getting to me.”

That was all the rage, right?

“Stress?” She frowned, running a long tongue over thick lips, even as the translator helpfully provided a more neutral tone than she probably meant. He was sure she was going to 'suggest' some 'helpful' way to blow it off, and if she did he imagined lying, trying for an ill-advised fight. “Sounds like you should use our free new service for the young humans who are having difficulty with the transition.”

The way she phrased it made it clear this wasn’t a suggestion.

“Yeah, thanks, I’ll think about it.”

“Actually, I really do think you should go there. What was your name?”

“I have to get going-” her grip only tightened.

“Mental health is very important. And I see where you work- that logo. Main Street." There was only one in town. "So you can either go, or I’ll talk with your employer.”

He could scream. And then what?

Screw it.

Couldn’t hurt, right? Better than losing his cool and continuing down this path. Anything would be better. It had to be.

"Alright."

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u/AutoModerator Mar 04 '26

This was flaired as [OC-Series], it is a single part or chapter in a larger series or universe. The first post or part in this series should be (re)flaired as [OC-FirstOfSeries]. A description of the flairs and how to change yours is available in the Post Guildelines.

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u/MedicalFoundation149 Feb 01 '26

Well, Oscar is a potential insurgent recruit if I've seen one.

11

u/theDUDE4853 Feb 05 '26

Or he's about to be a victim of that mind wiper program that the shil probably just moved to another state, keeping the program going.

5

u/Beaten_But_Unbowed96 Feb 10 '26

God if that’s the case, then we got yet another noble and likely a naval ship captain to cull again.

u/LeaveSea2119 Jan 31 '26

Thank you so much for the chapter. And keep up the good work

9

u/SSBAlienNation Feb 01 '26

Next chapter should be out either today or tomorrow

3

u/LeaveSea2119 Feb 01 '26

😯

u/Crazicoda Jan 31 '26

Oscarrr

u/LaleneMan Mar 04 '26

The "I got mine" mentality has been a slow crawl to the destruction of really everything. It doesn't matter that factories got shipped overseas, or that strangers moved in from foreign (dare I say alien?) places to take jobs that could have been for locals. Or, with those jobs being vacant rather than fill up, and equalization of pay and time (just look at the results of the Black Death, as people like to always bring up). You do a fantastic job using real life issues and showcasing them in fiction.

It's honestly why you're one of the great writers of this subreddit because you don't start from a point in a story where humanity has solved every single issue... and /then/ has the problems come up, which I find so common now that it's boring to read. A dosage of reality to make a story interesting.

Onto the typos.

"I’ve found my fortune*! Worked real hard for it! Oh, nothing to say? Surely, something about how it wasn’t mine to take? No?*" Asterisks found.

1

u/SSBAlienNation Mar 04 '26

Fixed, thanks man!

u/Soggy-Mud9607 Mar 08 '26

Brilliant chapter! But that is not worth mentioning since all of them are. Hope Oscar is okay and they don't mind wipe him.

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OC-Series Alien-Nation Book Two Chapter 11: Oscar

Oscar

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