I brought the van to a stop in front of them. Daniel sent a quick telepathic hello at me almost at the same instant I noticed him, not saying anything about all the other stuff flying around in my head just then.

I felt grateful for that.

The van didn’t have side doors in the middle of the van, so Daniel and Izzy had to crawl over Haley’s seat. The van’s second row of seats didn’t have windows, but on the other hand Daniel was clairvoyant, and Izzy had some kind of extra-powerful sonar. They could deal.

A little quickly, Izzy said, “Hi,” to us and pulled on her seatbelt—not that she needed one. She did need a winter coat though. She wore a green, fleece jacket that could handle anything Berkeley, California was likely to throw at it, but stood out in the Midwest.

On the other hand, Izzy could probably survive in Antarctica wearing that jacket.

Continue reading Chancy Connections: Part 5 →

On a Saturday morning two weeks later Haley and I drove to Chicago. It was early March, and February’s snow melted on each side of the freeway, brownish near the road.

Two weeks seems like an awfully long wait when you consider that there may be aliens out there who want to cause all of humanity to die horribly. It’s more understandable when you think about the logistics of it all. Initially we didn’t know exactly what we were looking for. All the ship knew was that a suspiciously large number of objects that used materials common to alien technology were going through the postal service, UPS, Fedex and other mailing services in or near Chicago. They were being picked up from P.O. Boxes, and delivered to empty buildings, and from there they disappeared.

Except we’d found a common name between a couple of the post office boxes, and a signature—Chancy as in Chancy Smith, Chancy Jones, and Chancy Sirianni.

I had a hunch, and I’d directed the ship to search whatever it could find that had Chancy in the name, and it had. Continue reading Chancy Connections: Part 4 →