20. Lois
Lois
“Are you sure you are well?” Pax asks me yet again as he looks up from his work.
I nod my head just like before, and clutch one of his decorative cushions to my front until he goes back to working.
It’s not like I’m unwell per se – it’s just that I feel about as anxious as a vampire at a garlic festival.
For one, Az thinks this guy can hook me up with a way to contact my mom. And if I get to hear her actual voice, I am absolutely going to burst into giant, ugly tears.
Ditto for if this whole thing doesn’t work, too.
And for two, Pax currently has DJ in front of him with a little hatch opened up so he can tinker about with her insides, and…
well, as weird as it might sound, I’ve become quite attached to the little weirdo of a flying jukebox, and witnessing all this feels like I’m watching someone perform brain surgery on a loved one.
It’s not really helping my nerves that Pax keeps snorting pinches of this hot pink glittery stuff he keeps in a small box on his coffee table, either.
“Since when did you do that shit, P?” Az asks as we both watch the strange drug make his gray skin light up in tiny little twinkles – like he’s suddenly got multicolored fairy lights under his skin.
“Everyone in the Capital does it during off-season,” Pax shrugs. “Besides, the buzz only lasts a minute and helps with clarity, the lights-” he pauses to wiggle his twinkly fingers, “-last maybe an hour or two.”
Az grunts and folds his arms over his massive chest. “I’ve heard stories about Ceraphrixi getting hooked on that stuff pretty bad.”
Pax pulls down this visor thing that magnifies his left eye to a comical size.
“Good thing I’m not Ceraphrixi, then,” he grins before going back to his work, tinkering around inside DJ.
“Seriously, Az. It’s a problem for some species, but not us.
No different to a few drinks, except it leaves you in a prettier state for the females to look at.
” Pax looks up to me for a very brief moment, but thinks better of it when Az is very obviously not ok about that.
I pay no attention to any of this, though; I’m too worried about Pax being high-off-his-horns on space-glitter while poking all kinds of tools inside my friend.
“Lois,” Az says, his deep voice dragging me out of my anxiety-fog. “Pax here is the smartest Xaviann I know,” he says. “If there’s a way to contact your mother, he will find it.”
He then pointedly looks down at my leg – my leg that’s bouncing.
I take a breath and force my leg to be still.
After what seems like hours later, Pax finally says, “Okay, I think I’ve got everything I need.” I hold my breath. “I tried to patch a line to her personal comms unit, but there are too many carrier restrictions and encryption layers for me to get through.”
My heart sinks. That will be her phone – and I bet her diligence about cybersecurity is what’s causing the blockage.
“But,” Pax continues with a grin, “there is an autonomous sanitizing bot linked up to the same home network, and its encryption standards are quite frankly offensive.”
I blink at him.
“Seriously, even Az could hack this thing,” Pax tries again.
Az shoves his leg with his boot.
“Wait, wait, wait… autonomous sanitizing bot? Like for cleaning? A cleaning robot? On Earth?”
Pax side-eyes Az and then nods back at me. “Yes. It’s running right now. Sweeping something called a living room.”
“Sweeping?… Do you mean a Roomba? My mom doesn’t own a Roomba; that’s just silly, she can’t afford-”
My words cut off when Pax makes DJ project a scene in front of us.
“The particular unit your mother has features audio, visual, and network connectivity.” But I don’t really hear a word he says because I’m currently looking at my mom’s slippers and a stack of crochet magazines that she swears she’s going to read, collect the patterns she wants from, and then throw out.
But she never will. They just keep coming in the mail since she won that subscription competition by crocheting the ugliest Easter bunny you ever did see.
Honestly, I think the judges must have taken pity on her.
A hot tear rolls down my cheek.
“Lois? Are you alright?”
It’s Az’s voice that brings me back to the moment again.
“No,” I croak out, wiping my face but not able to look away from the projection in front of us. “I’m crying about a really ugly Easter bunny.”
Then the scene moves. We’re spinning around, and I can see now that we’re underneath my mom’s coffee table. And…
And there she is.
Sitting on the sofa in her pink bathrobe.
Her face is illuminated by the light coming through the window – the window she seems to be staring out of in a sad, unfocussed way.
The air leaves my lungs, and for some reason, the only thing that comes out of my mouth is, “Since when did she get a Roomba?”
Mom’s head snaps toward me, her brows furrowed, but the scene changes again as we spin and start moving toward an armchair.
“Did that thing just talk?” I hear my mom say. “Kenny? Did you connect the Roomba to the internet again? I told you, I don’t like it doing that.”
“Kenny?” I ask, praying that the damn thing will spin back around so I can see Mom again. “Mom, is Mr Callahan there with you?” Ken Callahan was Mom’s neighbor. A widower, he used to do odd jobs around the house for her in exchange for a home-cooked meal, but- “Mom, are you dating Mr Callahan now?”
There’s silence. All we can see are dust bunnies being shoved around under the armchair until we spin again.
Mom looks like she’s seen a ghost.
“Mom,” I try again, my voice a little wobbly as the Roomba starts advancing on her feet. “It’s me. It’s-
We bump into the coffee table.
Mom’s eyes go wider.
“It’s Lois! I’m ok. I’m alive and well. I’m just… I was… well, I was abducted by bad aliens, but I live with good aliens now.”
I guess neither I, Az, nor Pax really considered what it would be like for a human to engage in an intergalactic communication with someone you thought dead through a rogue Roomba.
“Kenneeey!!!!” Mom screeches, scrambling backward over the sofa.
A few moments later, I’m greeted by Mr Callahan’s feet and my mom pointing an accusatory finger at me – which really goes quite some way in drying up those tears I thought I’d be bawling my eyes out with by now.
“Someone’s talkin’, pretending to be my Lois, Ken; listen!”
“Hi, Mr Callahan,” I say, wondering when it was that he got so cozy with my mom. “It’s me, Lois.”
“It’s some scam-artist,” Mom insists. “Shame on you! Trying to take advantage of me!”
“By what? Sweeping your floor and bumping into your furniture? Mom, it’s me!”
Mr Callahan takes a seat in the armchair and tilts his head at me like a curious dog. “If you’re really Joanie’s Lois, tell her something only the real Lois would know.”
Mom puts her hands on her hips and raises her brows in challenge.
“Uh… Mom’s middle name is Irene… um… she loves popcorn but hates getting it all stuck in her teeth…
uh…” Mom’s arms drop from her hips. “For my junior prom, we couldn’t really afford to get me the dress I wanted – it was powder blue with a full skirt and underskirts.
Mom found a way to barter with the store owner, whom she’d been doing odd seamstress jobs for at the time.
She’d clean the lady’s house twice a week for three months if I could have the dress on loan.
I was so scared about getting it dirty, I refused two dances – one with the boy I’d had a crush on for a year. ”
Mom’s whole expression changes as she bends down and picks Roomba-me up. “Lois?”
My vision blurs around the edges as I nod my head, even though she can’t see me. “You said I should have danced with him, and that you would have happily cleaned that lady’s ugly house for as long as it took to make up for any rip or stain.”
My mom’s face crumples. “It’s really you, Lo-Lo?”
I let out a pathetic sob.
“It’s really me, mama.”