"So what do you think about the news?" I asked mom.

"I don't know. I generally prefer to stay out of things that you know the government will eventually hide somewhere in Nevada," she said.

"Well, I went out earlier, and I swear to God I saw the ship." I told everyone else.

"Yeah," Josh, my younger brother said. "And I'm the queen of France."

"And that proves that you're a girl," I said back to him. "So dad, what do you make of this?"

"I'm not entirely sure this is really happening," he said. "Remember the hoax you pulled on us with the balloons?"

A couple of years ago, me and Jared, my best friend, earned some money and bought some large balloons and flares. One night, we tied them together with some fishing line and lit the flares and let them go. Eventually, we admitted to doing it, but that was some of the best fun we had had in a long time.

"Yeah, I remember, but I think this is too large scale to be a prank. It's on national television. Look."

I got up and turned on the television to see the anchorman talking about the ship.

"…We have hundreds of pictures coming in from people all across the nation," he said. "Astronauts and astronomers are attempting to communicate, and from the looks of things they're close. We'll have more of this at ten."

We were quiet for a moment.

"I told you," I said, coming off a bit more in-your-face about it than I wanted to.

"Well, jeez, no need to be a snot about it," my mom said.

We finished dinner and I went outside to see the craft again silhouetted against the moon.

In that thing, that looked so small from here, was something that would probably change the world.

I went back inside, and went to bed. My last thought before I fell asleep was, will I see one?

I spent the next couple of days wondering what was going on. The news, just like all other forms of the press, spent more time on this than any other current event. From what we were hearing, it wasn't just one alien species. It was two. The other one, that you wouldn't be able to see, was a parasite, called a Yeerk. It would crawl through the ear canal, to the brain. It took over all bodily functions as soon as it had sunk into the crevices of the brain.

I didn't like this. How would we know if they were here with a much more sinister plan? I didn't like this at all.

The Hork-Bajir, the aliens the Yeerks had taken control of, had agreed to allow the Yeerks in their heads in exchange for food and water, as their own planet was too small to accommodate them. There weren't any photos of the aliens because they had declined publication in that manner for some strange reason.

They were looking for a place to stay until they can find another, more permanent home, as theirs was being destroyed by geological activity. Apparently, there were fifteen other ships like the one in orbit looking for a place to live, all spread out across the galaxy. In about one week, they would all be here. The leaders of the world were moving as fast as they could in order to find a place that could accommodate all the aliens.

Imagine my shock when they decided Wyoming. The planned camp was spread out to the west of us, the majority of it to the southwest, with some of it in Colorado. There were five roads surrounding the area with one going through the middle. At some point I had decided to do some math and found out that the total area was around five thousand five hundred square miles. How many of these aliens were going to land here?

The government took about three months to prepare the area. My family volunteered with the people setting everything up. I didn't, because I didn't like this idea of these people we hardly knew living right next door. Now, if the governments had decided to place the aliens in, say, Siberia, I think I would be alright.

There were some people I knew that vehemently opposed the aliens living less than two miles away. The couple that had just moved in next door to us a week ago had decided it wasn't worth the trouble and had moved out. One of my best friends, Ryan, thought that they were a waste of time and space.

I simply wanted them to leave us alone.