Joey hovered in the doorway to his parents' room, waiting to be noticed. Eventually his mother Olivia rolled over and caught sight of him.

 

“Oh, sweetie. Did you have another nightmare?”

 

Lip trembling, Joey nodded.

 

“About the raids again?”

 

Another nod. This time the dam broke.

 

Olivia pulled back the covers, inviting her crying son to climb in. She wrapped her arms around him and stroked his hair.

 

“It’s okay, love. It was just a dream.”

 

Joey’s father grunted from the other side of the bed. Unlike Olivia, Reid’s patience for their son’s increasingly frequent nighttime visits was wearing thin.

 

“But Mila’s uncle’s friend was actually in a raid last week,” Joey cried into Olivia’s shoulder. “Mila said there were a thousand Venusians, and they were taller than houses, and they took one person from every family!”

 

Reid huffed. “None of that is true.”

 

“Mila is my friend! She wouldn’t lie to me!”

 

Olivia took a softer approach than her husband.

 

“Sweetie, I don’t think Mila is lying to you on purpose. But it sounds like maybe she’s stretching the truth quite a bit. You’ve watched the training videos; how tall are the Venusians?”

 

Joey sniffled. “Eight feet.”

 

Olivia smiled, wiping Joey’s tears. “Exactly. And when they do their raids, they rarely take anyone. Even if they do, it’s only ever one person. You have nothing to worry about.”

 

Joey turned to their HomeBot charging in the corner of the room. “ROZ-E?” Her eyes lit up in response. “Are the Venusians gonna come here?”

 

The robot replied in her cool, level voice. “Based upon the current frequency at which the Venusian raids occur, and the landmass of Earth, my estimate is there is a 0.0047% chance of them stopping here in Smithville.”

 

“See, sweetie? It’s practically a zero percent chance.”

 

Joey would have preferred it to actually be zero.

 

“In fact,” ROZ-E continued. “It is far, far more likely that you would succumb to something such as a car accident, or a lightning strike, before a Venusian raid ever occurred.”

 

“Ohhh-kay, I think that’s enough information, ROZ-E,” Olivia said.

 

The nightmares continued for several months.

 

* * *

 

When two years had passed without a raid happening anywhere near Smithville, Joey’s paralyzing phobia faded to a healthy, only slightly-above-average fear.

One morning before breakfast, the sound of something shattering downstairs pulled him out of bed. He took the stairs two at a time to the kitchen, finding ROZ-E sweeping up a glass of juice his mom seemed to have dropped.

 

Olivia stood stock-still, staring at a news broadcast through the holoscreen.

 

Aerial footage showed the entire town of Smithville trapped beneath a Venusian dome, as if it were a dish under a cloche. An oddly shaped spacecraft sat at the top, a wide, flat structure made of an iridescent metal whose colors rippled in the sunlight.

 

Joey ran to the front room to see for himself, hoping the news was wrong, hoping the dome had somehow miraculously missed their own house. He couldn’t see the translucent purple forcefield that made up the walls of the dome from where they were, but terror ran through his body as he looked up to see the spacecraft hanging low in the sky, casting its shadow across the town.

 

“NO!” He turned to run back upstairs to his bed, where he’d be safe, but Olivia grabbed his arm and yanked him back towards her before he could take the first step.

 

“Joey, it’s okay.” Her calm voice was at odds with the alarmed look in her eyes, the juxtaposition only causing Joey to panic more. “Remember the drills. We need to go outside.”

 

“They’re going to take us! We need to hide! We need to call Dad!”

 

Olivia knelt so she could be eye level with her son. “We can’t hide from them, Joey. Their scanners will find us no matter where we are. The best thing we can do is follow their instructions; otherwise, we might make them… mad. And if that happens, things could get even worse.”

 

She stood up, ignoring Joey’s sputtering objections as two quick waves of vibration pulsed through them.

 

“That’s the signal. Come on, we need to go.” She took his hand and pulled him towards the front door.

 

“But—”

 

“They won’t take us, Joey.” Her tone was so sharp and definitive that he almost believed her.

 

Out on the front lawn, they found their neighbors in varying states of dress, though they all wore the same look of apprehension. Only a few moments passed before another throb of vibration hit, this time long and drawn out, causing most people to wince at the uncomfortable sensation.

 

The scan began, blue light emanating from the spaceship above and moving slowly down the dome like a wave. Eventually it washed over all the inhabitants of Smithville from head to toe.

 

Joey held his breath and shut his eyes, trembling. His worst fears had finally come to fruition, and he was sure that something bad would happen to him any second now…

 

He peeked open an eye, realizing the scan had completed. Breathing in a sigh of relief, he turned to ask his mom if they could go back inside, if it was all over, when—

 

A beam of light illuminated Olivia, this time so brilliantly white it made Joey’s eyes water. He called out to her, but his mother appeared to be frozen in place.

 

Joey reached out to tug on her arm and keep her from leaving, but a neighbor had run across the yard and pulled him back.

 

“It’s too late,” they told him. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do.”

 

Joey’s words of protest turned incoherent as he sobbed, fighting against their grip but failing to break free. Before he could fully comprehend what was happening, the beam of light flashed the full spectrum of colors, including some he couldn’t name, then went out.

 

His mother was gone. Then the dome disappeared, taking Joey’s entire world along with it.