Las Vegas was like no other place in the world. filled with hotels and casinos shaped like massive pyramids and fairy-tale castles, it didn’t even look like a real city. That was especially true at night, when giant neon signs were turned on and filled the sky with an eerie mix of color and light that seemed otherworldly. This made Vegas the perfect location for UFO Space Expo ’09. What better place to talk about life in other worlds than in a city that looked like it came from one?
Jack Bruno was definitely from this world. He made his living driving a taxi. Jack didn’t want to be a cabdriver, but he was good at it. Depending on the situation, he had the ability to be either friendly or menacing—a good trait for a cabbie. If he picked up a pair of newlyweds at the airport, his warm smile and easy sense of humor instantly made them feel welcome. But if some hard partyers climbed into his backseat—and Vegas had plenty of hard partyers— Jack was big enough and strong enough to keep them from getting out of hand.
At this particular moment, Jack was shaking his head as he drove his cab down the main street, known as the Strip. Even for Las Vegas, things were pretty crazy. The sidewalks were overflowing with people who had come for the convention. Many of them were dressed like characters from their favorite science-fiction movies.
At one corner, he saw three “people” cross the road together. One was dressed as a purple alien with six tentacles and another as a silvery robot with blinking lights on his chest. The third had hair and clothes like Elvis Presley—but his skin had been painted glow-in-the-dark green.
Jack was rolling his eyes when two men dressed like storm troopers from Star Wars signaled him to stop. They had a hard time squeezing into the taxi because of their armor and toy laser blasters.
“Imperial ’droid,” one said to Jack, trying his best to sound as menacing as possible. “Drive your Genosian Starfighter to Planet Hollywood,” he commanded.
Jack sighed and started the meter. A fare was a fare. In the backseat, the “troopers” laughed and began to have a pretend battle, shooting their blasters at each other. Jack tried to ignore them, but then one of them almost hit him in the back of the head with his gun. With lightning speed, Jack ripped it out of his hand.
“Hey!” yelped the trooper, his deep and scary voice suddenly replaced by a high-pitched whine. “That’s mine.”
Jack pointed at a sign in the front seat that read: NO WEAPONS ALLOWED.
“It’s just a toy,” the passenger complained.
“Lighten up.”
Jack shot them a withering scowl in the rearview. They quickly decided to end their battle and didn’t say another word the entire way to Planet Hollywood, where the UFO convention was headquartered.
After he dropped them off, Jack left the Strip. He headed to the airport where he hoped he might find slightly more normal passengers. There were only so many aliens he could handle in a night.
Outside the airport’s baggage claim, he was waved down by an attractive woman in her thirties. He relaxed and smiled the second he saw her. Not because she was pretty, but because she was dressed in a business suit and had no tentacles, face paint, or toy weapons.
“Where to?” he asked with a friendly smile.
“Planet Hollywood, please,” she said as she got into the backseat.
Jack’s good mood deflated a little. He’d been hoping to avoid another miserable trip to that hotel. And he was a bit confused. Why was this woman heading straight into the heart of geekdom? Shrugging, he pulled away from the curb and turned on his radio. For a while, the only sound was the classic rock emanating from the speakers.
The woman was wide-eyed as she looked out the window at the Vegas lights. “This place truly is like being on another planet,” she observed. “So much to do and see.”
Just then, Jack was startled by a pair of aliens who staggered directly in front of his cab. They were so distracted by all the lights that they didn’t even notice the traffic. Luckily, Jack was an excellent driver, and he managed to swerve right around them.
“Freaks,” he muttered not so quietly as he maneuvered the cab back into the flow of traffic. “Can’t wait for them to get in their spaceships and fly out of here.”
A few moments later they reached Planet Hollywood, and Jack pulled the taxi up to the main entrance.
“I understand your reaction,” the woman said as she pointed toward a group of ridiculously dressed convention-goers. “They certainly aren’t helping our cause.”
“Our cause?” Jack repeated. She was one of them?
“Educating the public about the possibility of life on other planets,” she explained.
Jack was stunned. She was one of them.
“As a matter of fact,” she continued, “I’m giving a lecture on astrophysical anomaly detection at the convention. Feel free to stop by. Closed-minded skeptics are always welcome.”
She handed him a flyer advertising her lecture. It had all of the basic information about her talk as well as a very scholarly-looking picture of her. Underneath the picture it gave her name: Dr. Alex Friedman.