10. Hi #5
Charlie closed her eyes for just a moment, feeling a semblance of balance as she realized the most important items in her life had traveled with her to...
wherever she was. She clutched the bag, then slung it over her shoulder, and as she did, the friendship bracelet caught on the zipper.
Blue, green, gold, red. Still on her wrist, still tied with Helen's double-knot.
Even the bracelet had made it. Somehow, that made it just a bit easier to accept that, whatever she was going to do next, she was prepared.
She turned back to Reyna, who was studying her.
"Sorry. I'm just glad to see what's in here is... safe."
Reyna's expression softened as she began to walk to the door, leading Charlie to the medical bay.
"By the way," Reyna said. "What is a 'Fleetwood Mac'?"
Charlie blinked. "Sorry?"
Reyna pointed at Charlie's shirt, the letters just visible beneath the light tinge of the batter and the open flannel. "I was unable to read those words earlier. Now that I can read them, I don't know what they mean."
Charlie looked down at her battered Rumours tour tee and something about it made her relax, just a bit. "They're a band. A music group, from where I'm from. Do you have music here?"
Reyna smiled. "We do."
Charlie mirrored her smile back. "Well, my Dad introduced them to me, to this music group."
"And you wear them on your clothing?"
"Huh, no one has ever asked that. I guess it's just something we do. Humans do, I mean. When we love something, or we attend an event where something amazing happened, like this band traveling around all of Earth to perform their music for people, well, we put it on a shirt."
Reyna considered this, a small smile forming. "Humans are strange."
"You have no idea," Charlie said.
As they walked through the corridors, Charlie reached up and touched the spot behind her ear where the device had been implanted. She could barely feel it.
"What is this thing, anyway?" Charlie asked.
"It's called a Voxlink," Reyna said. "It translates in real time. Every crew member on this ship has one."
"So everything I'm hearing right now..."
"Is being translated, yes. And everything you say is being translated for us."
Charlie touched the spot again. A tiny piece of alien technology embedded in her skin, and it was doing what entire departments at the United Nations couldn't. "That's incredible," she murmured.
Kess was already waiting when they arrived, the Med Bay prepped with a precision that suggested she'd started setting up the moment Torvax's scan cleared.
Everything was laid out with monitors, scanners, and even some instruments Charlie couldn't identify, all arranged with the exactness of someone who believed disorder was a medical risk.
Charlie kept her workbench at JPL the same way with everything in its place because, when something went wrong, you didn't have time to search.
"On the bed," Kess said, by way of greeting.
"She's warm and friendly, isn't she?" Charlie murmured to Reyna.
"She grows on you," Reyna replied. "Like a fungus."
"I heard that," Kess said.
Kess moved around her with brisk efficiency, attaching small monitors to Charlie's wrist, her temple, under her arm.
Each device hummed faintly when activated, and Charlie resisted the urge to examine them more closely.
The engineer in her wanted to figure out how everything worked all with her own hands.
The patient in her wanted to ensure she didn't antagonize the doctor currently responsible for her health.
"Hold still," Kess said.
Charlie held still. In fact, she barely breathed.
Several minutes passed. Kess's pale green eyes tracked data on a display Charlie couldn't read, her expression cycling through what appeared to be confusion, then interest, then something that looked suspiciously like fascination.
"This is... unexpected," Kess said, almost to herself.
"Unexpected good or unexpected bad?" Charlie asked. "Because on my planet, when a doctor says 'unexpected,' it usually means bad."
"Unexpected neither." Kess looked at Reyna, then back at her display. "Captain, I'm going to need you to come look at this."
Reyna pushed off the wall and walked over. Charlie watched as both women studied the display, Kess pointing at something, Reyna's eyebrows rising incrementally.
"That can't be right," Reyna said.
"It might be. She’s the first human we’ve been able to get biological data from, and I've run it three times," Kess replied.
"Run it a fourth."
"Yes, captain."
"Is anyone going to tell me what's going on?" Charlie asked from the bed. Being kept in the dark in this particular situation wasn't welcome to Charlie right about now.
"One moment," Kess replied, pressing buttons and touching the display. Reyna watched over her shoulder while processes happened in front of them.
A few minutes went by before Reyna's eyes went wide again. "Huh," she said, her voice an octave higher than usual.
How did Charlie already know that?
"So, there you have it, Captain. Same result." Kess turned to Charlie. "So... essentially, your biology is almost identically similar to Kaelari."
Charlie blinked. "To what?"
"To us," Reyna said, gesturing between herself and Kess. "Kaelari. Our species."
"The cellular structure, the organ systems, the neurological mapping," Kess listed, her voice taking on the rapid cadence of someone who had found a puzzle and was not going to rest until every piece was placed.
"Your blood carries oxygen using a hemoglobin variant that is functionally identical to ours.
Your bone density, your muscle composition, your immune markers.
The similarities are..." She paused, seeming to search for a word that satisfied her scientific standards. "Remarkable."
"So, we're the same?" Charlie asked.
"Well, not quite," Kess corrected. "There are differences that are notable." She held up a hand and began ticking them off. "Ear shape. Obvious. Our bioluminescent markings, which are tied to emotional and autonomic responses. You don't have those."
"No," Charlie agreed. "I definitely don't glow."
"I'm sorry... glow?" Reyna quirked.
"Yeah, you... glow."
"Like what, a light source?"
"Well, I mean, it's not like you have Christmas lights on your face."
"What the hell are Christmas lights?" Kess asked. Charlie stared at her, then saw Reyna with a similar confused expression.
"That's a long Earth story."
"Sounds intriguing," Reyna quipped.
"So, wait," Charlie said, looking between Reyna and Kess. "If the markings are tied to emotional responses, does that mean they change?"
"They can," Kess said. "Different emotions produce different colors, different intensities. It's an involuntary biological response."
Charlie looked at Reyna's gold constellations. "But yours are just... gold. All the time."
"That's because Kaelari learn to hold them," Reyna said. "It's called suppression. Or, more commonly, it's to 'hold insert whatever your color is.' We're taught from a very young age to maintain a baseline. It becomes second nature, like breathing. We hardly notice we do it after some time."
Kess nodded. "It's something our minds just come to do on their own, 'holding.' I can't remember the last time I had to feel myself actively making it stay."
"It's been thirteen years for me."
Charlie looked at Reyna, and at her gold constellations with new understanding. All that warmth, all that steadiness, held in place on purpose. Every minute of every day.
"What are the other colors?"
"Well, that depends on the Kaelari, and it is usually a personal matter," Kess explained. "But, to explain, most reactionary colors change based on the reason for the change, but on different spectrums."
"Right, so though we all 'hold,'" Reyna explained. "Each of us has a different color that flashes in moments when we are unable to do so."
"So you just 'hold’ all the time?" Charlie asked, her eyes widening. "What happens if you slip up or—"
"Uh uh, we are not going there—" Kess interjected, holding up a hand.
"Oh, no. Just NO. That would be—" Reyna started.
"I mean, could you imagine?" Kess said, turning to Reyna with wide eyes.
"If I had parents, they'd actually disown me," Reyna added.
"Whoa, okay!" Charlie said, her hands up in surrender. "Sorry I asked."
Reyna and Kess looked at each other and laughed.
Charlie watched the exchange, fascinated.
Whatever she'd stumbled into, the cultural weight was clearly enormous.
Kaelari markings weren't just biology. They were something deeply personal, something you controlled and kept as composure.
Letting them slip was apparently the Kaelari equivalent of undressing in public and committing a felony.
"Oh, and there's the aging," Kess interjected
Charlie looked over at her. "The aging?"
Kess removed the monitor from under Charlie's arm and set it on the diagnostic cart beside her. It was Reyna who answered.
"Kaelari live an average of 200 years."
Charlie's eyes went wide.
Charlie studied Reyna. I mean, she couldn't help it.
How old was she? Charlie looked at her face closely and tried to reconcile what she was seeing with a lifespan that stretched across centuries.
Reyna was standing in front of her looking like a woman in her early thirties, and Charlie's brain was trying to calculate what 200 years of life actually meant.
How much you would be able to learn with time like that.
But also, how much you could lose.
She realized she was staring when Reyna tilted her head at Charlie.
"What are you looking at?" Reyna asked.
Charlie shook her head. "I... uh...," she started. "I mean, well, the thing is..." Reyna looked at her quizzically. She knew she was stuttering.
Reyna raised an eyebrow but smiled all the same, which gave Charlie just enough runway to commit.
"Can I ask how old you are?"
Kess snorted.
Reyna shot Kess a look, who covered the sound by clearing her throat.
"Sorry, Captain."