"Philip? Liam? Leo?"
"No, no, no…" answered Angie, shaking her head. "No way."
This was way before the day she gave birth. They were sitting in their living room. It was shortly before Christmas, and it was cold outside, but quiet and warm inside the apartment.
Back then, Angie was in her fourth month of pregnancy, and they were thinking about a name for their future baby.
"It would have been much easier for a girl." she claimed. "I've got plenty of names for a girl. Alicia, Victoria, Eva... But for a boy, my goodness! It's so hard!"
It was at a time when life was still normal and easy, before the beginning of the events. Life was a straight line back then. One could make projects for the future, and the perspective of having a baby did not feel like an almost impossible ordeal.
In comparison with what it had become, the world at that time appeared comforting and predictable. There were no talking cats from other galaxies — Fluffy was still a perfectly regular (although beautiful) cat, peacefully asleep close to the electric radiator — and no deadly things that could appear out of the clear blue sky and aim murderous laser beams at you.
"What do you think about "Paphnutius" ?
"Are you serious? Is that even a name?"
"It is… What about "Michael"?
"Nope."
"Eugene?"
"Eugene? Hum…"
"Yeah, I know. It's a bit old-fashioned. But I kinda like it."
"Hum. Eugene… Why not, actually? I like it too…"
"Welcome, little Eugene."
They were now stuck in this cold and dark parking lot, underground.
The baby had fallen asleep on his mother's breast. He was an almost purple little ball, still covered in a white and slimy vernix.
Everything seemed quiet out there. It was strange. Whether the destruction had been complete, or the attack had come to an end for some reason. Had they been able to send fighter planes or missiles and successfully scare they aliens away? It was impossible to know. Maybe the world outside was entirely destroyed and nothing existed anymore, nothing but them, in this closed shelter.
If the night still existed out there, then it was already night time. They were all feeling exhausted after all they'd been through. Fluffy, especially, felt really tired after her magical endeavor.
"I think I'm gonna nap a bit..." she said laying down her head on her forepaws.
Marvin tried to push the button of the elevator, but nothing happened. It didn't work anymore. The stairway was blocked because of fallen rubble. So he went back to his family.
They all slept more or less, and spent the night there.
In the early morning, they heard some muffled and distant noise that woke them up. The rocky noise became louder and then appeared some flashlight beams inspecting the dark area. It was the rescue team who cleaned away the rubble that was blocking the parking entrance. They were looking for people to save.
When Marvin and his family came up to the surface, they were first blinded by the intensity of the daylight. Then, they discovered that the hospital building was a wreck. The upper floors had been entirely shattered, and debris was piled up everywhere. Metal, concrete, glass, maybe human victims, all of this smashed matter was now making a disordered and terrifying mess. A desolation was lingering above those smoking ruins. Firefighters were busy trying to find people buried alive under the rubble.
Although these scenes were terribly sad and almost unbearable, Angie was starting to feel relieved. She had been terribly worried for her baby's safety, but now, in some sense, things seemed to get better. Baby Eugene was quietly sleeping on her breast.
Some member of the rescue team was pushing the bed on which Angie was resting together with her newborn. She started to smile when she saw, lying on a stretcher, Penelope, the midwife. Two bearers were carrying her. She was wearing a neck brace and seemed mildly injured. When she recognized Angie she smiled back at her.
"Hello" said Angie with a soft voice. "I'm glad you made it out alive… hum… Penelope…"
"I'm glad for you too." And some tears even wetted her smiling eyes when she saw the baby breathing softly in his sleep.
"You can call me Penny! What's his name?" she added while the stretcher bearers were taking her away to an ambulance.
"Eugene!"
"Oh what a cute name for a baby boy! I wish you all good luck!"
"Thanks. Good luck for you too."
Fluffy, who was walking close to Marvin, had stopped and was now staring with cold hatred at the departing woman.
"Come on, Fluff!" said Marvin, laughing. "Don't tell me you're still stuck on this comment about your tail. Get over it!"
"A goddess never forgets. I swear I will be avenged tenfold for this offense."
Marvin was smiling at this kind of disproportionate grudge.
"Come on, she helped us! Maybe she even saved our lives. Including your future baby general! So what do you say about that? You should be grateful."
As he walked by, Marvin took a look at the wreckage all around. The hospital had been destroyed, and another building had been impacted by the attack. A bridge, at some distance, was now broken in two halves.
The entire city could have been destroyed during this attack. The huge spaceship seemed unstoppable. But this had not been the case. The attack ceased shortly after the targeting of the hospital. Why? Why would they attack random targets like this? It made no sense for Marvin.
Later, the witnesses reported that when the spaceship was throwing laser beams at the buildings, something weird happened, something almost indescribable. The spaceship suddenly disappeared from the sky in the middle of the attack. Hundreds of thousands of people saw it. Some claimed that they saw, just before it disappeared, some kind of glitch, a distortion in the image of the spaceship. They described what happened as if the spaceship was part of a dysfunctional screen, suddenly pixelized and distorted. There was this glitch, and then the spaceship wasn't there anymore.
Marvin was still looking thoughtfully at the rubble. Was it possible that this thing from outer space was really a mere projection, a hologram handled by an AI, just like Fluffy had described it? And then, maybe it was possible that an error occurred. There had been a bug in the program, and the whole thing was shut down. At least for the moment.
Marvin grabbed a small piece of shattered concrete from the remains of the hospital. He slowly rotated it in his hand, feeling its weight and the hardness of its dusty edges. This, for sure, wasn't a hologram. The destruction was real. How it happened exactly, he couldn't figure it out.
The rescue team was already pushing Angie's bed up in a medical vehicle.
She and the baby, together with Marvin and Fluffy, were transferred in a maternity ward in another hospital. They stayed there for three days, well treated by the medical staff, but in a state of dazzled uncertainty.