Chapter 2 #6
I don’t want to know what happens if we hit zero.
At least I got to come before the end? There was so much more that I could have experienced.
I never got to work on this side of the galaxy.
I never got to see the wonders of the universe.
I never got to get married and maybe divorced.
And then the worst thing occurs to me—Rustle is going to know I died.
He’s going to be so fucking smug about it.
He hits the controls and the ship hits a rotation that effectively mimics a J-turn in deep space.
We are now facing the oncoming ships, and I don’t know if I’m making it up in my head or not, but I swear to god I can see the other pilot in the vessel before us for just a split second before Arkon blows the ship up.
“Final ship departing,” he notes.
“Good work, Arkon,” the voice on the other end. “See you at home.”
Arkon glances over at me. “Are you okay?” He asks the question with some concern. “Did all of that flying around shake anything loose?”
“No.” I giggle at the audacity of the question.
“Good,” he winks. “I’m going to increase speed for a bit. Warp feels strange. Try not to be sick.”
“I…”
The ship phases out around me and I am in the middle of space without so much as another hint of warning. There’s a bubble around me, a warping, shifting barrier keeping me from getting all tangled up in the bits of existence that are streaming by at incredible speeds.
For a while, that is all that happens. The universe wraps itself around me and I curl up in it.
Then I hear voices.
“Warp sickness.”
“Might have lost her somewhere out there.”
I become aware of the fact that we have stopped. I open my eyes to find myself lying down in what I guess is an alien hospital bed. I am wearing a white gown. I don’t know where my clothes went. I am pretty sure I was wearing them, though.
“There you are.” Arkon smiles down at me, his alien features warm with relief.
“Where am I?”
“You’re at our base,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’ve been informed human consciousness can’t travel at warp speed. We had to go and retrieve yours.”
I try to process what that means and I get absolutely nowhere with it because I don’t understand. We were definitely going faster in the massive vessel that got me to that even more massive port, and I didn’t experience my brain falling out, not even once.
“I got lost in space?”
“Something like that,” another alien says.
A doctor, I presume. She has the air of someone competent and medical.
Her hair is dark and short, cut in a sleek bob that frankly would be fashionable in any place and at any time.
Her eyes gleam green, and her teeth are slightly less obviously sharp.
She is wearing a white robe that sweeps about her tall, regal frame.
“Am I fine now?”
“Your consciousness has experienced more in the last few hours than it was ever designed to hold,” she says.
“When the psyche comes unglued from the mind, the effects can be unpredictable. But, having said that, you are human, and you are fairly simple, and it may be as easy as plugging it back in.”
She looks over my head at Arkon. “We will keep her for observation. You can leave for the moment and check back in a few hours.”
He nods. “I will attend to some business matters,” he says.
I am feeling very small and very lost as he leaves.
I knew that I would be the only human in many lightyears when I came all this way.
I knew, too, that I would be working for aliens.
I didn’t know how I would feel when I got sick for the first time, and how much I’d want to have someone around who knows how to make chicken soup.
Maybe I look forlorn, because the doctor puts her hand on my arm.
“I want you to rest,” she says. “I’m going to lower the lights and give you a chance to sleep. A nap would be ideal to help your consciousness re-sync with your body.”
She dims the lights and leaves the room, and I am alone on an alien outpost. I feel pretty normal by all standards, not like my mind has been glued back to my body at all.
I think I’m fine. I’m also not tired. Everything I’ve been through recently has been intense as hell. The dog fight among the stars, and before that, the way Arkon touched me. My alien boss is a very hands-on manager, I think to myself with a little giggle.
The door opens and the doctor looks in. “You’re supposed to be resting,” she says firmly before shutting the door again. Apparently I am being monitored more closely than I imagined. Good to know.
As I was looking around, I couldn’t stop thinking about the tech here.
I bet I could slip some of it into my pocket.
Or I could, if I had my normal clothes on.
And if I wasn’t almost certainly being watched through a monitor or similar.
I have got to get better at telling when the aliens are looking at me.
The urge to steal is, well, not a new one. It certainly didn’t first emerge at Alpha Core. This is the first time it has felt something like noble, if I am to be honest.
I have been snatching stuff most of my life.
First I did it to get a little extra in the way of food when the credits didn’t quite go far enough.
My mother worked as a secretary in the public service, and we lived in a little apartment in a building full of more than a thousand of those little apartments.
She had to work a lot. I used to sit at home, feed myself on whatever I could scrounge up, and do homework.
But sometimes I’d go out and snatch things from the various vending carts that would park up on some of the main lobbies.
Our building had twelve of them on various levels.
I could get donuts, noodles, and sometimes fruit. Kebabs, even.
My stomach growls. I’m hungry.
I sit up and make noises in the general register of wanting to eat until the doctor comes back in.
“Sorry,” I say. “But I think if I don’t get something to eat very soon, I am going to eat this bed.”
“Ah, yes, of course. You probably want a hot dog,” she says.
“Uhm, sure?”
“That’s what humans eat. Hot dogs.” She says it as if she is very proud she knows this, and is also very much uncertain that it’s true.
“Okay,” I say.
“I have to take it out of the plastic wrapper and put it in the air fryer. We got an air fryer specially for you, because we know that’s what humans like to cook in.”
I am actually quite excited about the prospect of an air fryer cooked meal. It’s old tech, but it’s good. Air fryers pretty much overtook all other forms of cooking for a time in human history, to the extent that it’s recognized as a major epoch.
It doesn’t take very long to prepare me a meal.
The hot dog that’s presented to me is a sausage in a bun with a hint of something that might be mustard.
The bread has the texture of chicken, somehow. I think the bread might be meat. The sausage in the dog tastes like macerated cauliflower and cheese. None of this is bad, it’s just very odd.
Arkon returns when I am almost halfway through the meal. I’ve been eating slowly because the doctor is watching intently and it’s making me feel a little self-conscious.
“Good?” Arkon says.
“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”
Now two aliens are watching me eat a hot dog. It’s not the oddest thing that has happened today, but it feels like the most awkward.
“She seems well enough. If she starts showing any concerning signs, you can bring her back,” the doctor says. “But for now, I think we’ve gotten her more or less together.”
The best anyone can hope for, really.
“Can I get dressed again?” I ask the question with a great deal of hope. There’s something about the way clothes feel that really brings me back to myself.
“On that front, it would be better if you wore an appropriate uniform,” Arkon says. “I’ve brought one with me.”
He puts it on the bed, and both aliens withdraw to let me get changed. I’m impressed they allowed me that much privacy. I feel like the most observed creature in the universe right now, an ant under a microscope.
The uniform is a very short flippy skirt that only goes to my mid-thigh.
There are boots that zip up to just below my knee.
They’re silver and very comfortable. There’s a shirt, too with long sleeves that are a little puffy.
The outfit reminds me of the ancient uniform of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, if I am to be honest.
“Cute,” I say, looking at myself. It’s better than most uniforms I’ve worn in my life. I think I narrowly prefer tactical field attire, but this is not that bad.
Arkon nods approvingly when he sees me. “Now anybody who looks at you will know who you belong to,” he says. “And that is a sword that will cut both ways. I want you to behave yourself for me.”
I look at him with a slight expression of surprise.
Then he puts one of his four hands on the back of my neck and bends down to murmur in my ear. “You came off the ship in a collar and leash. I can put both of them back on you if I need to.”
An excited shiver runs through me, even though I really wish it wouldn’t. I want so badly to appear competent and appropriate, but every interaction I’ve had with this handsome alien has revealed something very primal about me.
I can hear the smile in his voice.
“I thought so.”
I look up at him under my lashes. I don’t know what he intends to do with me. I don’t know if what happened on the shuttle here even really happened. I do know that I am starting to feel a very familiar tingle between my legs and there is some part of me that wants him to assuage it.
“Incredible,” the doctor murmurs.
“What?” I ask.
“The human pheromone response is indeed patently detectable to our kind,” she explains. “My research indicated that humans are not consciously aware of pheromone exchanges.”
“What does that mean?”