Chapter 4: The Importance Of Having A Hoodie

Disclaimer: BioWare owns Mass Effect. Pan Books owns the rights to Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, written by Douglas Adams.

Milky Way Galaxy, Local Cluster, Sol System, Earth, North American Continent, State of Washington, Tacoma, April 11, 2013

On this particular Tuesday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere many miles above the surface of Earth; several somethings, in fact. Several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike somethings, huge as office blocks, silent as birds. They soared with ease thanks to the properties of Element Zero and an electromagnetic suspension engine that could run either a positive or negative charge through the lengths of the floating structures, either increasing its mass or decreasing it as desired. They positioned themselves, biding their time, grouping. Preparing.

The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their presence, which was just how they wanted it for the moment. The huge yellow somethings went completely unnoticed by NORAD, Cape Canaveral, Goonhilly, Jodrell Bank, and Sydney, which was a pity because for half of those locations the somethings were exactly the sort of thing they'd been looking for all these years.

The only thing on the planet called Earth that sensed the yellow somethings, the only device that registered anything at all was on a small black device attached to a pair of Velcro strips, which was currently fastened upon the left wrist of one female named Jane Shepard. The contents of the black device mounted upon her wrist, in which her Earth friend, Jersey, just assumed was a watch with a holographic interface to tell the time, was quite interesting and would have made any of Earth's technological engineers' eyes pop out of their heads, which was why Jane masqueraded her Omnitool as a sort of time-telling device that Earthlings would assume was just a fascinating new watch admist all their other primitive technogarbage like tablets, smartphones, and FitBits. Besides the Omnitool on her wrist, she also had a short-range Eezo-powered telegraphic translation coupler; a short, squat black rod, smooth and matte with a couple of flat switches and dials at one end. She also had a device that suspiciously looked like a tablet, except with no physical LCD screen present, just a frame that could collapse onto itself in to something smaller than an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy. It certainly didn't run off of an Android operating system. The device itself Jane Shepard called a 'datapad', and it surprisingly had no buttons on it, not even an activation toggle, with a holographic screen that could go from four inches square to ten inches square, and could access a million 'pages' at a moments' notice via the Extranet. It was surprisingly simplistic to use despite its futuristic encoding, programming, and capabilities compared to Earth's technology, and it was camouflaged by an interesting velvet cover that would expand with the frame, covering up the back end to disguise the Haptic Display technology from humans, with the words 'KEEP CALM AND N7 ON!'printed onto it in large, friendly red letters bordered by silver. The other reason Jane had it was because this device was in fact that the most remarkable book amongst remarkable books to have ever been published by ICT, the N7's Guide To The Galaxy. The reason why it was published in the form of a collapsible datapad is that if it were loaded into an Omnitool, it would probably eat up all the processing power on the Omnitool, which was still, sadly, running off a Windows-based OS system.

Besides the Omnitool, the translator and the Guide, all Jane Shepard had on her was a man's wallet containing her biometrically holographic identification card, a stylus, a pack of bubble gum, and six interesting ceramic tubes that she carried in a small messenger bag strapped around her body, she also had a blocky contraption that, when a button was pushed on its side, telescoped into a pistol-like apparatus that she called an N7's Eagle. She had unfortunately lost the Hoodie that had gone with it.

The N7's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of hoodies.

A hoodie, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an N7 could have. Partly because it has great practical value. You can wear it on you for warmth as you pound on one of the access doors to the Corporate Spaceport on Noveria in the Horsehead Nebula. You can lie on it on the brilliant sugar-fine sandy beaches of Virmire, inhaling the loamy smells of the crashing surf. You can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Intan'sai of the Phoenix System in Argos Rho. Use it as a makeshift sail on a miniraft down the slow rivers of Eden Prime. Wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat. Wrap it around your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of Varren (a mind-boggling stupid critter from Tuchanka that assumes that if you can't see it, that it is invisible and in no danger whatsoever... dumb as a Vorcha, but still a dangerous critter). You can wave it in emergencies like a distress signal, wrap it around bars and twist it to widen said bars to escape jails and prisons Jackie Chan-style, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a hoodie has immense psychological value to those who live in the galaxy at large. For some reason, if a bosh'tet (bosh'tet, Quarian word for void head, but also non-N7's) discovers that a N7 has a hoodie with or on him or herself, they will automatically assume that said N7 is also in possession of a weapon, a blade, explosives, hacking apparatus, hard suit, armor, survival gear, up to and including a low-yield tactical nuclear device. Furthermore, the bosh'tet will then happily lend the N7 Credits to purchase any of the aforementioned items that the N7 might have in a fit of desperation and self-preservation so said N7 can scurry along and bother somebody else. What the bosh'tet will think is that any human man or woman wearing a hoodie is an N7, has traveled the length and breadth of the Galaxy, roughing it, slumming it, struggling against terrible odds, has won their way through and still has their hoodie, is clearly a person not to be fucked with.

Hence the phrase that has passed into N7 lingo, quad, in the vernacular of the Krogan. For a species that happens to possess four separate testicles that can birth hundreds of ill-tempered children possessing wide mouths and sharp teeth, anyone else said to possess a 'quad' is a compliment indeed.

Nestling quietly on top of Jane Shepard's left wrist, the Omnitool enters into the last five minutes of its countdown, blinking in warning. Miles above the surface of the planet the huge yellow somethings begin to fan out. At NORAD, a radar specialist contemplates a trip to the local bathroom for some 'personal entertainment and relaxation' time with a recent issue of Playboy.

"You got your hoodie with you." Jane says suddenly to me as I work on my second stout of Guinness, about halfway done. She's already quaffed all three of hers. "Good. Good man. Man should always know where his hoodie is." I'm wearing my brown Carhartt hoodie, one piece with no zipper, a full joey pouch on the front, and deep hood that I can actually drape over my eyes if I want a little shuteye. She frowned, looking down at her own t-shirt-covered torso, the white cloth mapping the curves of her body more than well enough, clicking her tongue in irritation. "Haven't been able to replace mine."

"That reminds me." I set down my now-empty second glass of beer, fighting the urge to burp, and grab my package that I had laid on the bar next to me, the white towel and duct tape rather conspicuous to anyone that would give a damn. I pick it up and hand it to her, the weight of the contents probably less than a pound all together. "Happy birthday, Jane."

"You... you remembered?" The redhead looked surprised as she looks at the towel-wrapped package. She had told me when her birthday was months ago, only mentioning it once in a fit of a drunken haze that her birthday was April Eleventh. Somehow, even in my inebriated state at the time, I had remembered it well enough to have jotted it down on a hanging calender to remind myself of the event. I hadn't kept up with any of my Army buddies since getting out, especially since the decision of getting out turned out to be a disaster, and Jane Shepard was probably now my only friend. Buying her a birthday present hadn't been easy since I was pretty much broke, had little left in my name to sell for money, and was generally being a bum about it. Still, I had found a way to get something I know she would like. She had been complaining about a lost item for months, lamenting about its disappearance, and she had described it to me several times. Getting it made had cost me a pretty penny, but I had gone to a custom shop with a piece of paper and a drawing of the configurations desired. I had also selected the best base model I could find for the design, not resigning myself to getting some cheap bullshit for my best friend. It had cost me one hundred and seventy-four dollars after Washington State rape sales taxes, and result had turned out beautiful; exactly the way I pictured it. I had walked two hours to the custom shop to place the order, waited two weeks for the result, and walked there to pick it up with almost the very last of my money just yesterday. The towel and duct tape had come from a local Goodwill along the way because, for some reason, I had no idea how to wrap paper around fabric without it ripping to pieces.

Seeing Jane smile as she accepted the towel-wrapped gift was worth it. Especially as she yanked off the duct tape and pulled out her gift.

It was a black hoodie, large in size though Jane was easily slighter than medium-sized, double fabric'ed and double-stitched for warmth, volume, and durability. There was no zipper in the front, and the joey pouch was large enough not only to put both her hands in, but extra things as well. The sleeves were too long, just so they could scrunch up at the wrists, and the hood was volumous, able to doff not only over the head, but able to drap over the eyes like the bill of a hat for shade from the sun or even to help disguise your identity for a few moments. The hoodie itself was of very good quality, made of a fabric that was both durable and stain-resistant, and it alone cost me a hundred and twenty dollars for what was generally considered a working man's hoodie; take a lickin' and keep on tickin'. The hoodie wasn't the only gift though, as the custom shop had been a print shop that specialized in graphics and decals for shirts and sweaters. I had taken the hoodie there with a sheet of paper with the designs in mind drawn on it, as well as the locations of the designs. The first had been the badge of 'N7' with a red corner on the lower right hand side, placed above the heart. The second had been a band of red that ran vertically down right arm, an inch and a half wide, with two half-inch silver borders on each side, going from neckline to wrist-cuff down the right arm. The last had been the design of the United States Army Special Forces group, known as the Green Berets; a vertical V-42 dagger with two crossed arrows behind it surrounded by a black banner lined in silver with the words 'De Oppresso Liber' in the banner, Latin for 'To Free The Oppressed'.

Jane held the hoodie in both hands, opened up so she could look at the front without wrinkles or folds, and then the back, and then the sleeve.

"Jersey..." The redhead's voice was weak for a moment, and I could see her green eyes shimmering as she looked at the hoodie with her jaw dropped. "...it's perfect! How... how'd you know?"

"You lamented more than a few times about it, and you described it to me once." I admitted sheepishly, shrugging my shoulders. "It sounded important to you, so I did my best to get you something as close to the original as possible. Which wasn't easy at all." That was a bit of an understatement, as Jane hadn't actually given me any actual critical details about her beloved hoodie that she had earned some five years before upon completing some qualification course that she claimed made the Ninja Warrior Mt. Midoriyama look like a grade-school playground. I wasn't sure if that was boasting or lamenting, but she had been bitter about losing what was obviously a prized point of pride and achievement on her part. I had to guess the font on the 'N7' portion, going for Cochin for its blocky lettering, and guessing the width of the band of red and silver bordering. I watched as Jane put it to her face and, surprisingly enough, smelled it, closing her eyes as she did so. The smile on her face was priceless as she thrusted it on over her torso, slipping her arms through the sleeves and, as I guessed, scrunched the sleeves to the wrists to where they billowed out with folds, just like she once mentioned.

"Jersey... this is amazing!" Jane gushed, pulling the torso of the hoodie down to her jeans, smiling. "It fits me just like my old one from the Villa! How..." Her smile disappeared as she tried figuring it out how I was able to afford it without a car or any real income. She connects the dots well enough by looking me over and spying something different about me. "You... what did you sell to afford this?" Her full lower lip pops out slightly in a pout, and it is completely adorable. She unfortunately has pegged my dilemma exactly, and figured me out completely.

"My 883." I reply sheepishly, and once again, I'm introduced to the sight of Jane's jaw dropping as she looks at me, flabbergasted. Probably should have told her that I sold my 1973 Harley Sportster just so I could get her a birthday present, especially since it was the last real thing of value I had. Jane looks at me dumbly, then at the hoodie she is now wearing, and then at me again. I can see the unasked question in her eyes. "It was just a bike, Jane. That meant something to you. Totally worth it, in my book." I'm not lying, seeing the smile on the redhead's face as she realized what her birthday present was had been incredible to watch. Seeing her now, hugging the very hoodie that she's wearing, it means something.

"Jersey... we should go." Jane looks at her strange holographic watch, frowns at the display, which is now less than one hundred seconds. "Finish your beer." She's standing up as I quaff the rest of my Guinness in record time, really gulping it as I move quickly off the bar stool to follow Jane as she strides to the exit of Rollies.

"Hey!" Lucy calls out from behind the bar as we leave, getting our attention as Jane goes to push open the door and I'm following in her footsteps. "You sure about this whole 'worlds' being evicted' thing?"

"Yep."

"This afternoon?" The older woman's biting her bottom lip.

"Less than two minutes." Jane checks her nifty holographic watch as it now counts down from the mid-80's. Lucy stands there, befuddled. It is obvious she isn't buying into the whole conversation, but she isn't discounting it, either.

"Well, is there anything we can do about it?" She asks. Jane thinks about this scenario for a full second.

"Put yourself down for a thousand Credits at the bookies for the Mariners today." The redhead replies as she pulls out another crumpled mass of dollar bills and slaps them onto the bar, giving Lucy what looks indeed to be a good deal of money. "Not that you'll be able to win it or spend it, but give yourself a last thrill before you go." Jane gives the older woman a charming smile. "I should go." She grabs me by the sleeve of my brown hoodie and pulls me away as we exit Rollies for what I didn't realize would be the last time.

The huge yellow machines began to sink downward and to move faster.

Jane knew they were there. This wasn't the way she had wanted it.

I found myself standing in the parking lot of Rollies, by the busy street intersection that was shared by three gas stations, a car wash, a quarry, some sandwich shop eatery, and a junk yard. It had gotten surprisingly dark for some ten thirty in the morning as I stepped onto old asphalt and the roar of traffic passed by both myself and Jane Shepard as she looks at her holographic watch again, her right hand lifting up the hoodie I'd given her to fiddle with a strange-looking fanny pack I had noticed her wearing earlier. I look up in the sky and see why it seems so dark now; there's something blocking the sun.

Something very large, something very yellow. Impossibly large. And impossibly yellow.

"Jane..." I can't believe what I am seeing as what appears to be a cube the size of Mt. Everest (because I can only compare to something of fathomable dimensions) tearing through skies and clouds in stark relief to everything else in existence, soaring through the atmosphere as gentle as a breeze and without any noise either, hovering in the sky as if it belonged. Like the worlds' largest yellow Lego block had come to squish us all. "What... the hell... is that!"

It's difficult to say exactly what the people on the surface of Earth were doing now, because, for the most part, they didn't really know what they were doing themselves from one minute to the next. None of it made a lot of sense; running into houses, running out of houses, howling noiselessly at the sight. All around the world city streets exploded with people, cars skidded into each other as the sight fell on them and then panic ensued. It was like a tidal wave of emotion that rolled over the entirety of the planet, made vocal by every mouth in every language.

Only one woman stood and watched the sky, stood with terrible sadness in her green eyes. She knew exactly was was happening had known since arriving on Earth just eight months, one week, and three days before; coincidentally, the same day she met Jersey. She had been dreading this moment for the entirety of her time on Earth as her Omnitool counted down Earths' final moments, a moment that had a coldness grip her and squeeze her heart. Of all the races in all of the Milky Way Galaxy who could have come and said a big hello to the planet Earth, she thought, it just had to be the Volus.

Still, she knew what she had to do. As the Volus Relocation Ships floated in the air high above her she opened her fanny pack. She chucked out the useless Earth knickknacks that would be of no use to her anymore; the wads of paper worth of such importance to Earth people, the Samsung Galaxy 5 phone she had hacked months ago for free service, and the cheap disposable cigarette lighter she had confiscated in case she needed to set something on fire. She wouldn't be needing those where she was going. Everything was ready, everything was prepared.

She finally had her hoodie back.

A sudden silence hit the Earth. It was the worse thing in the world. For a while nothing happened.

The great ships hung motionless in the sky, over every nation on Earth. Motionless they hung, huge, heavy, steady in the sky, a blasphemy against nature. Many people with straight into shock as their minds tried to encompass what they were looking at. The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks didn't.

And still nothing happened.

Then there was a slight whisper, a sudden spacious whisper of open ambient sound. Every wifi signal in the world, every radio, every television, every cell phone, every tablet, every site on the internet, every signal receiving device in the world quietly turned itself on.

Every tin can, every dustbin, every window, every car, every wineglass, every sheet of metal became activated as an acoustically perfect sounding board.

Before the Earth became evicted it was going to be treated to the very ultimate in sound production, the greatest public address system ever built. It was to be louder than a plane's take off, louder than a concert, louder than the screaming 12th Man fans of CenturyLink Field cheering on the Seahawks. But there was no concert, no music, no fanfare; just a simple message.

"(hwurk) Peoples of Earth-clan, (hwurk) your attentions, please," a voice said, and it was dignifying. Dignified, perfect quadraphonic sound with distortion levels so low as to make musical masters weep.

"(hwurk) This is Edrin Elkoss of the Elkoss Combine, (hwurk) , who have won a bidding war (hwurk) against other rival companies (hwurk) for favor of the Galactic Citadel Counsel." The synthesized voice continued. "As you are no doubt aware of, (hwurk) the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy, (hwurk) require additional colonization for development and growth (hwurk) of less-fortunate persons in economic need (hwurk) and financial assistance. This planet, I regret to inform (hwurk) has been scheduled for terraformation and redevelopment purposes (hwurk) and the indigenous species occupying it (hwurk) have been slated for removal. The removal process (hwurk) will take slightly less than five of your Earth minutes. Thank you."

The PA died away.

Uncomprehending terror settled on the watching people of Earth. The terror moved slowly through the gathering crowds as if they were iron filings on a sheet of board and a magnet was moving beneath them. Panic sprouted again, desperate fleeing panic, but there was nowhere to flee to.

Observing this, the voice turned on their PA again. It said:

"(hwurk) There is no point (hwurk) in acting all surprised about it. (hwurk) The eviction notice was imprinted (hwurk) on your crops all over your planet (hwurk) for the past seventy-five Galactic Standard Years, (hwurk) so you've had plenty of time (hwurk) to work out travel arrangements and resettlement plans (hwurk) to your own desires. It is far too late (hwurk) to start making a fuss about it now."

The PA fell silent again and its echo drifted off across the land. The huge ships turned slowly in the sky with easy power. On the underside of each a hatchway opened, an empty black square.

By this time somebody somewhere must have manned a radio transmitter, located a wavelength and broadcasted a message back to the ships, to plead on behalf of the planet. Nobody ever heard what they had to say, they only heard the reply. The PA slammed back into life again. The voice was annoyed. It said:

"What do you mean, (hwurk) you didn't understand what 'crop circles' meant? (hwurk) By the Void, it was ease enough to understand (hwurk) if you assembled them all together (hwurk) in the proper fashion. I'm sorry, but if you can't understand and follow (hwurk) simple Voltine Pictoglyphs (hwurk) then that is on you.

"Energize the translation devices."

Lights poured out of the hatchways from the terrible yellow floating machines.

"I don't know," the voice said over the PA, breathing heavily, "ignorant barbaric race. I've no sympathy at all." It cut off.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

There was a terrible ghastly noise.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

The Volus Relocation fleet coasted away into the inky starry void of outer space, with a world barren of multi-cellular creatures behind it.

A/N: hehehe, crop circles. Take that, M. Night Shamalayan!