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Brittany offers me a big smile. “We’re here for you, Hudson. Don’t forget that.”
I smile back even though in my mind I’m saying, why don’t I believe you?
35
A Kick When You’re Already Down…
Allie
Why did I do it? I have so much going for me right now. Like SO much that I should have completely forgotten about Hudson by now. The team was able to verify Frank’s results yesterday, which means he’s ready to present to the world. I ran half a million snippets of data through overnight, and when I woke up, Frank had found three anomalies that can’t be explained by anything we know. Three! That means he might have already found proof of intelligent life. It’s too early to say, but even if they turn out to be something else, at least we’ll have found three more things that we can catalog and teach him to ignore.
Keenan’s so excited, he’s gone back to the conference coordinators with a copy of my report, and a request to find a way to squeeze me in. Because the conference is only a week away, it would definitely be a hard no if it weren’t for how huge this is. I have a very good feeling that they’re going to come back with a yes, which is why I should be working on my speech instead of doing the stupid thing I’m currently doing—Googling Hudson.
Why did I do it? Seriously, why?? I knew it would be a horrible idea. Even if it were just some pics of him surfing (which there were), it would hurt. But what I found is so much worse.
Some dirt-eating, mouth-breathing, son of a spider videoed us in the parking lot, and it’s been making the rounds on the Internet. There are dozens of edits of it, some with people reacting (and hating me with a passion), and even a couple with filters that make me resemble the devil, a cow, and one filter I looked up that’s called ‘disgust,’ that gives me a full-on scowl the whole time. And let’s face it, I look like a crazy person in that conversation while he looks all rational and kind and thoughtful. But no one knows what he did to me. Not even Gwen. Because I’m not telling her the whole truth. Telling her the whole truth would mean sharing his secret, and I won’t do that, no matter how hurt I am. I’ve given her a very vague explanation of what happened, in which I told her that it turns out his feelings for me were ‘less than sincere,’ and that I was going to have to leave it at that, even though I know normally we’d spend weeks dissecting every word spoken between Hudson and me until we beat the topic to death with a couple of spoons. Being the awesome best friend she is, she left it alone, thank God, because if she had pried, even just a tiny bit, I would have spilled the tea so fast, we would’ve both been scalded.
She walks into my office with two cans of Coke for us. “Oh no, you’re not watching more videos, are you?”
“I know I shouldn’t, but can you blame me?” I ask her, taking the Coke. “It’s just so hard knowing thousands of people hate you this much.”
“They don’t hate you. They’re just using the video to get attention for themselves.”
I point to my phone, on which an Instagram reel has the words ‘MOST HATEABLE WOMAN EVER’ across my face.
She tilts her head. “Okay, maybe they hate you, but the truth is, they don’t even know you, so it’s not really you they hate. Now, shut it off!”
I scroll all the way to the top, planning to close the app, when I see a new video has just been posted by that awful Ferris Biltmore. The title is: Hudson the Genius Makes Huge Science Breakthrough.
“What the fuck?” I mutter. “Gwen, come watch this.”
“Allie—” she starts, but stops when she reads the title. “What the actual fuck?”
“Ferris here, bitches! And I’ve got some big news straight from one of my sources at Galaxy Studios. I can’t even tell you how I know this source because she’s so high-level, even one tiny clue would give it away. Anywhoo, back to the huge news: turns out our Hudson is not only the most perfect specimen of man candy to walk the planet, he also is an actual genius who solved a problem those science nerds were struggling with for years before he got there. Now, I don’t understand all the details because quite frankly, they’re too fucking boring for me to listen to, but suffice it to say, those people at that alien hunting place never would have figured it out without him. Never ever. He just waltzed in there, immersed himself in their weird little world, and dominated. Within a few weeks, he managed to develop some sort of AI system for detecting little green men, which brings me to my first segment…”
Gwen shuts the video off while I sit, stunned, confused, and ready to lose it. I look up at her, and whisper, “He’s taking credit for Frank.”
“Well, you don’t know that yet. I mean, it definitely sounds like it, but maybe there’s some sort of mix up?”
My stomach rolls and my body feels numb. “There’s no other explanation, Gwen. He needs the world to think he’s smart. That’s the reason he came here in the first place. And now, he’s found a way to convince people. He’s taking credit for the most important thing I’ll ever do.”
“Come on, Allie, there must be some other explanation for this. Hudson’s not like that. He’s a good guy.”
I shake my head. “No, he’s not. He only plays one on TV.”
“What the hell happened between you too?”
Letting out a sigh, I say, “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that history is repeating itself, and I’m about to get fucked over again.”
Gwen shakes her head. “No, that is not going to happen. Maybe people who don’t know anything about astronomy will believe he had something to do with it, but the people who matter—the people in our field—are never going to buy that. I mean, come on, an actor created an AI system in six weeks? That’s crazy talk.”
“Yes, it is crazy talk,” I say, chewing my bottom lip. “You’re right. No one in SETI will believe that. It totally makes him a bigger shitbag than I thought he was, but at the end of the day, it changes nothing. I was never going to see him again anyway.”
My phone buzzes and I see an email from Keenan asking me to come up to his office for a minute. “Okay, that’s Keenan. He must have heard back about my speech.”
Gwen gives me a confident smile. “Perfect. That is just the thing you need to distract you from all of this nonsense.”
I get up and nod at her. “Yeah, exactly. The speech is what matters. Not this garbage.”
