A Paradigm of Earth by Candas Jane Dorsey

freedom of choice, but that we shouldn’t assume we should use it at a time like this.
    “If you get my meaning,” she said after a pause during which the others looked at her in silence.
    “I don’t care either way,” said Russ. “It should be interesting.”
    “I’ve always wanted to be famous in the real world,” said Jakob, but Morgan noticed his hands were shaking, and she put a hand over one of his briefly (very briefly; she knew he felt ambivalent about touch).
    John was the last to speak, looking from one to the other, the pressure showing on his face, but finally he said, “I can make an event of it. A documentary. I’ll have to get more camera memory.”
    And with this collection of rationales they were joined together on their journey into the strange future.

    She met the security force in the living room. They had indeed come in force. The grey man and his flunky sat; the three silent spear-carriers (the man in uniform, the two women in “inconspicuous” civvies) spaced themselves around the room, one of them behind her, near the door to the kitchen.
    “Stand over there,” she said to the one behind her, amazed at her own peremptory tone. He looked at his senior officer and waited for a nod before he went over to stand beside the women, beside the window.
    “Your people are well-trained,” she said, thinking, this is crazy, ridiculous . “That will make things easier all around.”
    “The ET can’t stay here. The security isn’t good enough.” As usual when something rude was said, the speaker was blue suit. She’d met him in so many meetings. She’d met both of them, but never with a name attached. Need-to-know? Or just bad manners?
    “So don’t tell anybody.”
    “It’s not that simple.”
    “Sure it is. Everybody in Canada thinks ‘our’ alien is in the Atrium, location unknown. Who’s going to suspect?”
    “The story will leak.”
    “And when it does, face the matter then.”
    “You seem so sure that we will allow it to stay here.” Grey suit had no problem with pronouns. He had always called Blue “it,” as if, Morgan thought, the alien were a commodity. Mind you, she’d used the same pronoun with her housemates: it was hard to avoid. She sighed, wrenched her mind back to the cut-and-parry.
    “You assume you have a choice.”
    “We’re in control of the situation,” said blue suit.
    “Isn’t that what you always say, at those meetings we have? But hasn’t the time come when you will have to do as Blue wishes? Unless you have decided to make a hostile response, unless Blue is a prisoner.”
    “There’s no question of that!” Blue suit was affronted. “But security must be maintained. Some crazy could decide to take him out.”
    “Him?”
    “The alien.” Blue suit, too, long ago had made a pronoun choice. Morgan grinned despite herself.
    “What I want to know,” she said, “is whether Blue has freedom of choice. To live wherever Blue chooses?”
    “Oh, yes, I’m afraid so.” Grey suit sounded almost amused for a moment. Morgan looked sharply at him, but he was impassive.
    “And us?”
    “I’m not sure I understand you.” Grey suit.
    “If this one comes here, are you going to harass us and molest our freedoms and destroy our way of life, and in general get in the way? No, don’t answer me now, take some time to think of it. You probably already know by now that there is nothing middle-of-the-road about any of us.”
    “That’s for damn sure!” Blue suit. “A couple of homosexuals … a crippled communist, and a crazy … what is he, anyway? … and that fellow with the van, who works for Amnesty and GovNet …”
    “That will do,” said grey suit, and answered Morgan’s curiosity in three words. He knew everything about them.
    “Communists are a few generations back,” Morgan said, laughing. “One and a half homosexuals, a disabled socialist, a video artist, and a civil servant … We have all agreed to offer Blue a place. But we