The Line by Q.P.Liu March-April 2002 Like all the men here, he had been abducted by the aliens. The aliens never showed themselves, and nobody knew what they looked like. The men were kept in a line, busy at incomprehensible tasks, directed by mysterious commands that somehow formed in their minds. There was no point in defying or disobeying these commands, as any impulse to do so would be overwhelmed by an insistent urge to obey. For these men, it was a lifeless existence from which the only escape was through death. The men were not permitted to talk among themselves, or communicate with each other in any way, except when and as directed by their unknowable commanders. However, their prison and workplace was punctuated with their murmurs and cries, and each utterance was a woman's name. For the only thing each of the men lived for, the only hope each of them had, was the few moments they were allowed to spend with their women. As he toiled in his enigmatic labors, he advanced along the line. As he neared the head, the anticipation of his reunion, however brief it would be, with his wife grew in him. And his unconscious voicing of her name in his throat grew louder and more frequent. When finally his turn came, it was the same each time. She would be standing by her mother. He would greet the mother-in-law with a brief embrace, then be left with his wife in privacy. Each time, as he caressed her soft, warm skin, so familiar, yet entirely new to him, she would whisper insistently in his ear, "Give me a child. Give me a child." And, each time, when brief reunion ended, he went back to the end of the line with all the other men, back to the inscrutable work, back to the anticipation of his next reunion, which would be months away. Over the months and years of carrying out the unfathomable alien instructions, he saw that some of the men around him, usually the older ones, would disappear from time to time, only to be replaced by more men, usually younger ones. In time, most of the men around him were younger than him. The years had lined his face and grayed his hair. However, every few months, in the so familiar, yet so new, embrace of his wife, it was always the same. She remained as young as she was on the day they were married. His gray hair became white; his skin wrinkled with age. He was older than all the men around him, even the old ones. But still, he anticipated eagerly his every reunion with his wife. And, each time, she would be impossibly young, whispering in his ear, "Give me a child. Give me a child." He began to wonder how it could be that she could remain so unchanged over the years, and even if the other men had similar experiences. But he couldn't ask them, and they couldn't tell him. He couldn't even speculate, for whenever he returned to the line, his mind would be so numbed by his invisible alien taskmasters that the only thing that remained was his anticipation of his next reunion. Finally, impossibly tired, and unable to continue, he lay down to die. At his side, he saw his mother-in-law and his wife, looking younger than ever to his dimming eyes, kneeling over him. With his final breath, he croaked, "I never gave you a child." As he died, the mother gathered her daughter, still but a girl, in her arms, murmuring, "But you have, my father, my grandfather..." After over a hundred generations of mothers and daughters, which this man had unknowingly perpetuated, appearing once every twenty years, virtually unchanged each time from the last, her daughter was the end of the line. She dreaded what the aliens would do now.