Wantaviewer

Alissa Trang couldn't keep herself away from the Winnipeg slums. She called in sick for her evening shift behind the counter at CanTechWorld once again and hitched a ride up Highway 3 into the city. For the entire ride from Sanford to Winnipeg, she kept her mouth clamped shut to keep from screaming at the old man driving the antique Saab to go faster. Faster. Everything was too slow for her when Ally wasn't using Blur. She would've borrowed her housemate Anita's car, but she didn't trust herself to drive after a visit to Jenae's in the bad part of the city.

Ally nearly leaped out of the car as soon as it stopped at the intersection of Portage and Maryland. She muttered a quick thanks to the elderly driver. Ally had known he didn't want to be caught in this part of the city, but she'd also known he'd take her wherever she wanted if she let her skirt ride up higher on her legs, which were covered in black tights. As the old car sped off, Ally began to power-walk down the empty street. She adjusted the fingernail-sized rectangle of her lapel camera and made sure the recorder in her pocket, connected to the camera, was still running. She smiled, knowing she'd gotten some great footage of the old fart checking her out while he gripped the wheel.

Ally hurried along the streets, keeping her vinyl coat zipped up tight and wishing she had her butterfly knife with her -- one of her housemates had borrowed it last week and lost it. To reassure herself, she touched the handful of explosive caplets of Mace in one coat pocket and checked that she had all five mini-DVDs in her other pocket next to her recorder.

Her coat rustling with each step, Ally hurried down Sargent Avenue and entered the main section of the run-down neighborhood. Boarded-up restaurants and businesses stared at her from below dark apartment windows, empty places that had simply given up in the past few years. Jenae, her Blur dealer and occasional friend, lived above an abandoned bakery at the heart of the neighborhood, and she had told Ally that the aliens were coming to the city to live. Ally forced down her growing impulse to simply sprint like a madwoman down the street to her supplier's home. She calmed herself by thinking about how good it would feel to get a pink capsule of Blur in her, and to take a couple more back home to help get through the next day or two. With some Blur, Ally felt like she could face down a dirt-eating two-meter-tall alien if she had to.

Now that, Ally thought, checking her lapel camera, would make a great flick.

Ever since the priest in Illinois had somehow managed to get inside one of the ships last week, the Netstreams had been going crazy with a new wave of reports about the aliens. Ally, normally content to surf the Netstreams for the latest films to download to her wallscreen or to use them to chat with friends around the world, suddenly was able to slow down long enough to watch the reports. She hadn't paid much attention back in November, when the first ship had landed less than fifteen kilometers north of Sanford. The town had enjoyed celebrity status for a brief time as flocks of 'stream reporters filled the streets and jammed up the roads before the news of the other ships overshadowed Sanford's fame. The reporters had disappeared as fast as they'd arrived, heading south to the American cities or east to the sites in Ontario.

Judging by the broken trees and torn-up earth that Ally had seen at the landing site, the ship that was now hidden under a massive canvas tent hadn't landed so much as dropped to the frozen earth and skidded to a rest a kilometer later. Zipping her jacket tight to her chin, Ally shuddered as she thought about the Netstream reports she'd heard about the aliens. According to the priest and the U.S. operatives who had gone into the ship, the aliens could communicate with humans on a very basic level, using gestures and bits and pieces of English, but they would only talk to someone who was somehow affiliated with spirituality. The aliens supposedly told the priest that they were called Wannoshay, and most people immediately shortened the name to Wantas, though almost all of Ally's customers called them Wannoshits.

Continued...

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What the critics said about "Wantaviewer":
"The Wannoshay are back in this emotional roller-coaster of a story. The protagonist here is Alissa Trang, who wants to be a famous camera blogger on the Netstream -- but doesn't quite want it badly enough to kick a dangerous drug habit. The drug here is Blur, which speeds one up both physically and mentally, but with a proportionate cost to the system. She goes to a bad part of Winnipeg to make her connection, and accidentally encounters the aliens, who are still new to humanity, still frightening, still largely unwanted. Everyone seems to be expecting some kind of interstellar war, and while waiting for the fewmets to hit the fan, take out their apprehensions on the Wannoshay still trying to comprehend this bewildering world they are refugees on. The choices here are realistic, the consequences logical, and the story heartbreaking."
— Sherwood Smith, SF Site