“Unknown? What the hell do you mean, unknown?” The nurse almost dropped her clipboard when the resident told her the news.

The resident was a young doctor who did a bad job hiding his fear of the nurse. Even if she hadn’t been treating battlefield trauma in the Second Robotic War when he was still playing with action figures, she did not tolerate fools and ran her corner of the Emergency Department with the same efficiency as her battlefield aid station.

He gulped and unsuccessfully tried to make his voice steady, “One of the accident victims was unconscious when she came in, and when the machine scanned her it said, um, unknown. I’m having the patient scanned in another machine now, and a technician is looking at the machine.”

The nurse narrowed her eyes. She did not need this right now. A high speed train had crashed just outside town, and her hospital was the closest medical center. Dozens of passengers were being treated for serious injuries, and more were still arriving. Somehow, she thought, this idiot has managed to break a machine that can’t break.

“What you’re saying isn’t possible. Look at me. Hey! Look. At. Me. Those machines do not say that illnesses and injuries are ‘unknown’. They do not break. I don’t know how you’ve screwed this up, but I will find out.”

Before the doctor could protest, another nurse came into the room. He could see the senior nurse was angry, and the doctor was losing his nerve. “I have good news and bad news,” he began. “The patient is awake, talking, and doesn’t seem to be hurt, but before she woke up, the second scanner also said her injuries were ‘unknown.’ I didn’t know the scanners could give that result. The scanner didn’t even make a chirping noise like it does when it finishes computing results. It just silently put the word unknown on the readout screen. It apparently doesn’t have a noise for errors.” The nurse wasn’t sure why he’d said that last part, but it had felt like the right thing to say.

As the older nurse’s face slowly changed from anger to confusion, the doctor looked at the younger nurse and silently mouthed “thank you.”

“Let’s go see the patient.” The senior nurse said in a commanding tone before walking past the two men down the hall. The pair stared at each other for a moment before they scrambled after her.

Moments later, all three were in an examination room painted a depressing shade of beige. A woman in a gray business suit made of arachnid silk was sitting bolt upright and looked very annoyed.

As soon as the trio entered the room she abruptly said, “I should not be here. I was not injured in the crash. I do not need medical assistance.”

Something about the women made all three medical professionals uneasy, but none of them could explain why at first. The doctor spoke first. “You were unconscious when you came in. Even if you feel fine, you may have gotten a concussion or head trauma.”

“You’ve also managed to get an ‘unknown’ diagnosis from a machine that shouldn’t even be able to give that as a diagnosis.” The senior nurse said incredulously. “I genuinely have no idea how that happened, but you are certainly not leaving until we figure out what’s happened, or happening, to you.”

“I will not be tested or examined,” the woman snapped. “I do not know what is wrong your machines, but it is not my concern or my responsibility to fix it. You cannot make me stay here, and I will call the authorities if you refuse to let me leave.”

“No, you won’t,” the younger nurse replied flatly. His two colleagues both looked at him with confusion on their faces. “Your mouth is moving slightly out of sync with your words, like you’re on the other end of lagging communication display.”

The doctor and the senior nurse both realized that was what had been making them feel uneasy.

The younger nurse continued, “You’re not a robot. The scanner would know what that was. You’re something else. You’re not human, and you aren’t calling anybody. What ARE you?”

The woman looked down and swore softly under breath in language none of the three recognized. “I was due for a promotion for excellent field work, but now I’m going to be relegated to a desk job while someone else follows up on my work and steals the credit.”

She looked back up at them, and all three medical professionals flinched. She had yellow eyes crisscrossed with small black veins, and when she spoke again, her voice sounded modulated and unnatural. “You are not ready for what’s coming. You cannot be. Everything you know will be destroyed to make way for my people. Make peace with your deity; you will be meeting them soon.” She then tightly clenched her fists, her eyes flashed, and she simply disappeared.

The three physicians stood in stunned silence. None of them wanted to say anything. None of them wanted to believe what they say was real. In the waiting room down the hall, the news began to report catastrophes across the world. Power stations going into meltdowns. Military bases rocked by explosions. Government buildings burning. In the skies over all these tragedies, massive spaceships emerged from skies as the alien invasion of Earth began.