CHAPTER 2 #3
Something dawns on me. “Wait… you’ve been working with humans a lot longer than the past twenty years, haven’t you?”
I expect him to correct me—twenty Earth years.
A funny unit of measure since Earth doesn’t exist anymore.
But the tiny atomic clocks all humans have embedded in our arms count time at the quantum level.
Any holo-watch or info-pad can scan that chip and translate the time into units most familiar to us.
The ICSS deemed this necessary, since inter-galactic travel comes with all sorts of…
time-bendy stuff. Theory of relativity or whatever.
You can go on a little vacation and return to your family a month younger than your twin.
It’s weird. Our little underdeveloped human brains struggle with it. So: Earth years.
“Since well before Cataclysm Sol-Three,” he says.
We humans just call it ‘the cataclysm’. When Earth shattered into a million pieces and died a fiery death.
I do the math and snap my fingers. “Back when we were still under observation. So it was true. There were abductions.”
“Not abductions. Opportunities.”
I make a face. “Yeah, right.”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?” he says coolly. “For an… opportunity.”
I open my mouth to say something, then snap it shut. He’s right. I don’t have a leg to stand on here. “Why are you all so obsessed with milk, anyway?”
He laughs suddenly, as if I’ve caught him off-guard. The genuine pleasure in his tone makes me glower.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’re here and you don’t know that?”
“I’ll confess I may have dozed off during the tapes once or twice.”
He smiles and tilts his head. “You call them ‘tapes.’”
“Yeah, so?”
“You would need to be far older to have been alive when Earth still used analog media.”
“My parents were. They were super into it. Had this big collection of VHSes and records, lots of vintage shit. I guess it was always normal to me.” I shrug.
He tilts his head the other way. “You volunteered information about yourself.”
“Was it not a genuine question?” I mock.
He raises a brow, then says slyly, “I didn’t ask a question.”
I snap my mouth shut again and bury my face in my tea.
He lifts two of his legs and clicks them together.
“We—inter-vertebrates, that is—require a lot of calcium to form our exo-skeletons. Milk is a highly efficient source, so we crave it. Like mammals and sugar, I suppose. Lactation didn’t evolve on this planet.
So it quickly became a coveted delicacy.
Where there is demand…” He waves a hand. “Supply will follow.”
“Huh. And here I thought y’all were a bunch of sex freaks.”
The slow grin that spreads across his face exposes his fangs. “Who said we aren’t? Why do you think those black-market prices are so high?”
That image flashes through my mind again—mouths on my tits, sucking, groaning. I push it away.
We finish our tea quietly.
“Now, I will draft the contract.”
I nod, setting my empty cup aside, then hesitate. “Wait—”
“Cold feet?” he asks.
Those intimately human words on his strange tongue derail my train of thought. “Stop that.”
He wobbles his head slightly, which I take to be his equivalent of a shrug.
“I just… we should at least know each other’s names first, right?”
“It’s not relevant to the nature of the contract.”
“It’s relevant to how insane I’ll sound later.”
“Haven’t you already passed a critical threshold on that matter?”
Anger rises in my chest, but I keep hold of it, instead speaking deliberately and enunciating each syllable. “My name is Andromeda. What’s yours?”
He huffs a laugh, then makes more of that melodic clicking noise. His throat and lips move in a mesmerizing way as he makes the sound. Then he says, “Humans usually call me Arthur.”
I snort. “Really?”
“No,” he sighs, “but I thought I might be able to get it to stick. It’s a clever little play on Arthropoda, don’t you think?”
I stare at him.
He continues, “You know what Arthro—”
“I’m familiar with the phylum,” I say flatly.
“Fine,” he sighs. “People call me Sylvus.”
“People already call you Sylvus and you’re trying to get Arthur to stick?!”
He tilts his head. “Is that a veiled compliment?”
“No. Whatever. Forget I asked. Draft the stupid contract.”
His cool, amused, appraising expression makes my cheeks glow brighter. I hope he hasn’t figured out that little quirk of human anatomy, but if he has over twenty years of experience, I doubt I’m that lucky.
He glides back from the table—it’s impossible to think of it as ‘stepping’, with that mesmerizing way his limbs coordinate in perfect smoothness—then lifts his back legs.
They touch the spinnerets at the end of his abdomen, drawing out gossamer strands of fresh silk. He weaves them with mind-boggling speed and precision, soon producing a small, circular piece of incredibly complex fabric.
It catches the light strangely, throwing off glinting rainbows.
It’s stuff like this that makes humans incredibly primitive in comparison.
The other species in the ISCC have senses and abilities way beyond a human’s.
They can interact with dark matter, anti-matter, gravity threads, time strings, consciousness energy, and all sorts of other shit that will make a human go insane if we think about it for too long.
It’s better if we just think of it as ‘magic,’ so we do.
He snips the circular, iridescent silk from his spinnerettes and sets it on the table in front of me.
“How do I know you made it exactly to my specifications?” I ask.
“Touch it.”
I do—and at the bizarre sensation, I snap my hand back. It’s like running your hand over clingy, sticky microfiber—but inside of my brain.
Before Sylvus can mock me, I stubbornly override my reflex and place my palm deliberately against the fabric.
My eyes flutter shut instinctively, turning off visual stimulus to free up processing power. There’s a strange feeling, like being between awake and asleep. My mind flickers with a half-remembered dream, and in that dream the contract is executed exactly as I requested.
I can feel the magic shifting and sliding, almost like a curious snake, prodding around without malice.
Everything settles as it hits a certain part of my brain, and there’s a sudden rush of trust and comfort, as if the person with whom I’m contracting is a dear, close friend who would never wish me harm, and not this smug asshole.
I tentatively lift my hand—the feeling of trust and affection vanishes. Then I place it against the silk again, and I feel compelled to give Sylvus a hug.
I pull my hand away again. “That’s weird.”
He wobbles his head again. “You don’t have to sign it.”
I scoff. “I’m not quitting now.” I decide it’s the bit of silk—the magic of the contract itself—that I trust, not Sylvus.
That was the whole point of this hare-brained plan, anyway.
And I know the contract magic is legit. Arachnoids are common throughout the planets of the ICSS, and the vast majority of contracts are executed this way.
They’re truly binding on a metaphysical level, tied to the very stuff that consciousness, free will, and intention are made of.
It hardly means Sylvus is benevolent. It just means this contract suits our respective desires.
“Alright, how do I sign this thing?”
“Blood.”
I take a steadying breath. “Okay, you got a knife or something?”
He laughs again.
I glare. “Aaaand you were joking. Aliens aren’t supposed to be sarcastic. You’re supposed to be all literal and obtuse and stuff.”
“You’re the alien.”
I click my tongue and sigh.
He gestures at the silk. “Just touch it and focus on your consent. I’ll do the same. You’ll know when it’s done.”
I reach out and press my palm to the iridescent surface, closing my eyes. That slithering sensation returns. There’s something new—something both cool and warm, foreign yet familiar, making my hair stand on-end and my skin tingle.
Sylvus’s consciousness, I’m assuming.
Emotions roll through me, induced by the contract’s magic.
Reservation and release, fear then comfort, excitement and relief.
It’s as if the magic is running scenarios, testing me, assessing the truth of my intent.
It all happens so quickly I can’t tell what I’m even reacting to.
The loss of control of my own mind makes me nauseous, yet at any moment I could lift my hand and end this.
I don’t.
There’s an odd sensation of something tightening around my wrist—real and yet not.
Everything fades.
When I open my eyes, the intricate silk is gone from the table. Instead, there’s a gossamer tattoo around my wrist, shifting iridescent in the light.
Sylvus sports a matching one.
“So… that’s that?” I ask.
“That’s that.”
Triumph briefly flickers through me. I’ve done it—I’ve secured my future. I’ve been so laser-focused on getting here without being caught, on executing the contract, that I haven’t really thought about what comes next.
And as soon as I do, my cheeks blaze their hottest yet.
“So…” I clear my throat. “When do you… uh… want to… start?”
A wicked grin crosses his face, sending my chest tight and my heart pounding.
“There’s no time like the present.”