Read Learning to Spy for Free Online

like maybe ten. The alarms didn’t sound to wake us, and at what felt like nine, a voice came across the tinny amplifier letting us know we would be eating as a group today, after which we would be allowed free time.
    I sat up and pulled on my coveralls, and as I did, I noticed my brother still on his cot in the back corner staring at the floor in the same vacant way as Flora had done in the cafeteria. I felt a pang of guilt. I’d been avoiding him more and more, but whether I wanted to hear what he said or not, he was still my brother. I couldn’t let him go down without a fight.
    “How you doing?” I asked once we’d taken a seat in the yard after breakfast.
    He shook his head and looked down. I pulled a long stalk of grass and began chewing the end of it. My afternoon time was cut short now because of the extra milking I had to do. Cows didn’t stop making milk just because humans got a break.
    “You seem a little different today,” I said. “Feeling all right?”
    His dark eyes moved to the toes of his boots then out in front of him, to the tree before us, to the branches and limbs, and finally to the sky overhead.
    “It’s all vanity. Just like the preacher said.”
    My brow wrinkled. Braxton was prone to launch into Bible quoting at any given moment, and I recognized this one from Ecclesiastes.
    “You know, I always thought that guy was just depressed,” I said. “And maybe a little crazy. Didn’t he have like a thousand wives?”
    Braxton sighed and returned his gaze to his lap. “You did listen every once in a while.”
    “Oh, I always listened. I just didn’t always agree with what I heard.”
    “None of it matters now. It’s all meaningless just like that king said. Wicked or just, foolish or wise, we all suffer the same fate.”
    I took the grass from my mouth and held it in my lap a moment. “Why are you having these thoughts now?”
    He took a deep breath and pulled his knees up, placing his forehead on the back of his hands.
    “I dedicated my life to God and to preaching. Everybody said I was crazy laying hands on sick people and talking in tongues.”
    I nodded. I was one of those.
    “Now I see they were right. It was crazy. All that stuff I was doing was meaningless, and there is no God.”
    I squinted over at him. “That’s kind of a big leap you’re making there. And isn’t that what the fool’s supposed to have said?”
    His head snapped up. “Don’t you get it? There is no fool! There is no God! It’s all a lie. All those people were right. They just didn’t know why they were right.”
    I was almost afraid to ask. “So why were they right?”
    “Because we’ve been invaded by aliens, Prentiss. Aliens. If there’s aliens coming here, that means science wins. The Bible’s a myth, and all those stories we believed were just that. Stories. There was no flood, there was no parting of the Red Sea, there was no ‘In the beginning.’ Everything we’ve been taught is a lie.”
    I pulled my knees up and clasped my hands on top of them. Then I took a deep breath and rested my chin on them. This wasn’t my area of expertise, and the last thing I knew how to do was counsel my holy-roller brother who was now having a crisis of faith. I didn’t know what to say, but somehow, deep inside, his words rang false to me. I looked up and saw someone signaling to me from the barn door.
    “I got to go milk,” I said, standing and dusting off my bottom. “But I think you’re wrong, brother. I mean, not that I’m believing this alien crap. But say there were aliens. Just for a minute. That doesn’t automatically mean there’s no God.”
    “Then where’s heaven?”
    Standing in front of him looking down, I rubbed my stomach. I’d never really spent a lot of time thinking about stuff like this, and I wasn’t too comfortable starting to think about it now. It was easier for me to believe the Bible stories, look at the picture of that placid, blond Jesus on the Sunday school wall,