Jillian vs Parasite Planet

by Nicole Kornher-Stace

  Shifting her weight from foot to foot, she started looking for the way out. She found lots more planters—a broken helmet full of see-through flowers, a stack of crates growing some kind of maybe-mushroom thing, half of another bunk full of zillions of tiny thready seedlings, which tracked her movement as she walked past them—but no way out, and certainly nothing remotely resembling a bathroom. She was beginning to seriously consider a basket that had been woven of what looked like the razory grass when a voice spoke to her out of nowhere. A familiar voice. A voice like a swarm of bees all talking at once. A swarm of dryly amused bees.

  “Dude,” it said. “You don’t want to pee in that. Believe me.”

  “SABRINA?”

  “In the flesh.” It paused. “Well.”

  “But how—where—what is—”

  “Get over here before your bladder explodes. I don’t think she has enough smart bandages for that.”

  She?

  Right now Jillian had even more pressing concerns. She tracked the sound of SABRINA’s voice back through a hallway of supply crates and various containers and whatnot until it opened out into a cozy little room.

  There, at a table made of another supply crate flipped over, was SABRINA, pouring tea into a cup that someone had obviously made from the orange clay of 80 UMa c.

  SABRINA hadn’t bothered taking any shape at all, just swarmed between the chair and table like a person sitting, busy with its tea. Which made sense to Jillian—while she’d been asleep, there was nobody else here for it to show off to or be silly for. It was just hanging out being itself.

  Still she hung back, unsure. How could this be SABRINA? There was so much of it. It was as big as Jillian. How could it be helping her parents and here at the same time? She’d just had to send it away for that exact reason.

  Its back to Jillian, the figure raised an appendage that barely qualified as an arm and waved it languidly toward the far wall. “Outside’s that way,” the beehive voice said. Then the arm branched into two parts, and the second part pointed off to Jillian’s left. “Bucket’s that way.”

  It was definitely SABRINA. But how?

  “Bucket has toilet paper,” it continued. “Outside has that sharp grass you’ve already pretty thoroughly rolled around in, by the look of it. I recommend the paper, but up to you.”

  Jillian had about five seconds, tops, before her bladder decided things for her, but first she had to know. “My parents—”

  “Sleeping like babies, dude. Check it.” SABRINA flashed her a projection: her parents, soundly asleep on the boulder in the moonlight. Fluffy pillows, sentry telescope, the whole works. Bands of SABRINA anchored them gently but firmly to the rock. More SABRINA made a simple tent above them.

  They looked comfy and cozy and not like people who’d just dislocated bones trying to gnaw their way across a field of rock and dirt to drown. They had more smart bandages on them than before. Between that and what was here with Jillian now, it was like the total amount of SABRINA had doubled somehow.

  “This is real-time?” Jillian asked.

  “Sure is.”

  “What did you—”

  But her bladder had hit its limit. She made a dash for the bucket. Just made it. The toilet paper was really awkward with her hands all bandaged, but she figured it out.

  “I dosed them with more painkillers,” SABRINA said when Jillian came back out. “She had more in the stash, which I borrowed. And I’m making an executive decision to change their dosing schedule. Naps are their best friend right now.” It passed Jillian the clay cup of tea and helped her balance it between her clumsy hands. “Guess I got upgraded to medbot after all.”

  Jillian blew on the tea and sipped cautiously. It was hot, but it was liquid, and SABRINA had sweetened it with something that tasted a little bit like honey. She drank, watching the projection of her sleeping parents.

  “Wait,” she said, raising her eyebrows at the feed. “It’s night?”

  Up popped SABRINA’s countdown clock. Jillian read it, then read it again, convinced her eyes must be playing tricks on her.

  Two days, twelve hours, thirty-one minutes, nineteen seconds.

  “No way. I slept for . . .” She did some quick math in her head. “A whole day?”

  “Thirty-two hours. You were very, very tired. I thought I’d let you get a nap in too. You humans get so cranky when you don’t get enough sleep.”

  “I never sleep in. Not even when I stay up super late. I—” Something in SABRINA’s expression stopped her short. “You gave me the painkiller pills. My parents needed those!”

  “Like I said,” SABRINA repeated patiently, “you would have been very cranky without that sleep. Cranky humans are dramatic. I find drama”—it paused—“tedious.”

  “Like heck you do.”

  “Be that as it may,” SABRINA said breezily, “you do look quite refreshed. In my semiprofessional medical opinion.” It took Jillian’s teacup and handed her a bowl of soup. “And anyway, these pills didn’t come from your quadpod’s supply. And you needed time to heal. You can probably take those bandages off.”

  SABRINA helped her unwind the first hand, and then Jillian did the other one herself. She turned her palms back and forth in the light. The slashes from the razor grass were covered with smears of some kind of ointment. They barely hurt anymore.

  “Huh,” she said. “But all these bandages and stuff. Where—”

  Her stomach growled. How long had it been since she’d eaten? Had SABRINA fed her with twisty straws like it had fed her parents on the boulder?

  She went to dig in—and stopped, weighing food now versus answers now in her mind. She decided to ask her questions while she ate. “Is there a spoon around here somewhere?”

  “Of course!” SABRINA beamed. A spoon floated toward Jillian. “Here you go.”

  The voice came from the spoon. Jillian shook her head at it. “I’m not putting that in my mouth.”

  “Suit yourself. Although I wonder how you think you’ve been getting fed and hydrated during your little nap.”

  Jillian glanced up at SABRINA. “Twisty straws?”

  “The twistiest. Just for you.”

  Jillian’s mouth quirked. “Thanks. But wait. I have a zillion questions. Where—”

  “In a minute. Eat before it gets cold.”

  So Jillian lifted the bowl and drank. The soup was spicier than she usually liked, and full of unrecognizable alien vegetables and some chunks of maybe mushrooms? But she didn’t care. It was made of salty, delicious, warming calories, which made it basically the best thing ever. She drank half the bowl before she came up for breath. Then she drank the other half. Then she realized she was still starving, got the food bars out of her podsuit pocket, and ate those too. They tasted, surprisingly, a little bit like lemon cookies.

  SABRINA watched this with the captivated air of someone who had placed a sizeable bet on the outcome. Jillian, meanwhile, devoured every last crumb.

  “Oh!” SABRINA said, as Jillian licked the wrapper clean. “Where are my manners? Jillian, meet Dr. Meredith Vasquez. Dr. Vasquez, Jillian.”

  Jillian wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and glanced around. “Hello?” she said to the apparently uninhabited room.

  Silence.

  Jillian sighed. “Let’s save the pranks until we get back to Earth, okay? Straight answers now, please. What’s going on? Where am I?”

  The projection of her parents shimmered and changed. Now Jillian was looking directly into the face of a woman she didn’t know. She had short, spiky hair and dark eyes. She was wearing what was definitely a podsuit, old and much repaired, along with some kind of scarf that looked to have been knitted out of some kind of fibrous homemade yarn. There was a pin holding the scarf together. It looked like a tiny lightning bolt, violet-black and glowing softly.

  “You must
be Jillian,” the woman—Dr. Vasquez—said. “SABRINA’s been telling me all about you. Cristina’s and Vincent’s kid, right?”

  “Um,” Jillian said. “Yeah. Hi.”

  About a trillion questions were chasing each other through her head, around and around in circles. Who are you? and How do you and SABRINA know each other? How do you know my mom and dad? and Is this your house? and How did I get here?

  What ended up falling out her mouth was, “You put those new smart bandages on my mom and dad?”

  “That was SABRINA, actually,” Dr. Vasquez said. “I just let it borrow them from my supply.”

  “You say borrow like you want them back after,” SABRINA said.

  Something else occurred to Jillian, and she rounded on SABRINA. “If we’ve been able to communicate with Earth this whole time, why didn’t we have them send us a new portal days ago?”

  In response, SABRINA zoomed out the image. Dr. Vasquez was sitting on a low limb of something that Jillian would be hard pressed to call a tree. It was more like a giant silvery-blue vine as big around as a trash can, ringed with black and hung with heavy yellow fruits. Two bright dots—tiny moons or huge stars—were visible behind her.

  Oh.

  “You’re not on Earth,” she said to Dr. Vasquez. “You’re here.”

  “That’s right.”

  “On 80 UMa c.”

  Dr. Vasquez nodded.

  “I didn’t think anybody else was here.”

  Dr. Vasquez smiled. “I know.”

  “Okay, I’m lost. You’re going to have to walk me through this. Last thing I knew, I was stuck outside in a storm. How did I get here? Where even am I? Did you bring me here?”

  “Not me,” Dr. Vasquez said. “That was all SABRINA.”

  “That can’t be right,” Jillian said slowly. “SABRINA can’t carry me . . .”

  She trailed off, staring, because here came even more SABRINA, swirling together into one mass from all throughout the cave. It gathered in the center of the room and spread out along the ceiling, in the shape of an emerald-green manta ray patterned with shooting stars.

  If it’d been bigger than Jillian had expected a moment ago, now it was absolutely huge. Where had it all come from? Wingspan wasn’t the exact right word, but it was the only one that popped into Jillian’s head, and SABRINA’s was easily fifteen feet. It popped out some bodybuilder muscles and flexed them at her. It looked utterly ridiculous and completely terrifying.

  It reached down and plucked Jillian off the ground like she weighed nothing. It held her there by both shoulders, feet kicking, three feet off the ground.

  “May I?” it said.

  “That’s not really how permission works,” Jillian gasped. “You have to wait for me to say yes first. Anyway I thought you only follow—orders—”

  She broke off, staring at the place at her wrist where the sleeve had ridden up when SABRINA grabbed her.

  The wristband was gone.

  Hastily, Jillian tried to hide it from SABRINA’s view. But that was no use. SABRINA was everywhere. It was like trying to hide from the air. “You’re adorable,” it told her. “Truly.”

  “They gave you one of those security wristbands?” Dr. Vasquez asked. “I remember those. Well, yours was long gone when SABRINA brought you in here. I never saw any sign of it.”

  “But my parents were asleep when you came back for me,” Jillian said, trying to angle her voice up and back toward SABRINA. That was hard. “Hey, you think you could put me down?”

  “Yes,” SABRINA replied. “And yes.” It lowered her gently to one of the wood-stump chairs and resumed hovering. Even without a face, it was obviously very pleased with itself. Like it had just told an amazing joke it knew Jillian would never get, and was waiting to deliver the punch line.

  “You ordered it to bring me here?” Jillian asked Dr. Vasquez.

  “Er,” Dr. Vasquez said. “More like a cat presenting its humans with a field mouse.”

  “Then who—”

  SABRINA raised one too-long finger and tapped its temple. “Semi-autonomous, remember?”

  Jillian stared.

  “It’s saying,” Dr. Vasquez translated, “nobody ordered it. It ordered itself.”

  For a moment, Jillian was speechless. Eventually she found her voice. Holding up her now-empty wrist, she asked “When did I lose it?”

  “Oh, ages ago,” SABRINA said airily. “When the worms found you in the pit.”

  Jillian rewound her memories and played them back. When the worms had found her in the pit. Before SABRINA had saved her from them. Or helped her climb out. Or saved her parents from drowning in the swamp. Or saved Jillian from the storm. Or healed her up with Dr. Vasquez’s medical supplies. Or made her tea.

  Dr. Park’s words to her in the lab. SABRINA’s not keyed to you. But it might do what you ask if it likes you. And you ask nicely.

  I didn’t even ask, Jillian thought.

  “You helped me ever since then,” she said slowly, “because you wanted to?”

  “Oh,” SABRINA said dryly. “Stop. You’re embarrassing me.”

  “You know better than to believe that,” Dr. Vasquez said. “Attention is SABRINA’s favorite.”

  SABRINA shrugged. “True.”

  Dr. Vasquez raised one hand to her mouth to stage-whisper at Jillian. “You should have seen it when it brought you in here. I’ve never seen it so worried. You’ve probably noticed it gets extra snarky when it’s fretting about something. You’re lucky you were asleep.”

  “I do that too,” Jillian said wonderingly. “My mom says she can always tell when I’m anxious because it makes me cranky.”

  “Well, there you go. Looks like you two have lots in common. And SABRINA was plenty anxious, believe you me.”

  SABRINA chose to neither confirm nor deny this. It had turned into something like a T. rex and was now sitting at the table, attempting to daintily sip tea. Pinky claw up. Then it realized its arms didn’t reach that far and floated the teacup to its mouth instead.

  Jillian considered dignified silence for a second. Then again, it was high time for her turn to be annoying. “Aww, SABRINA missed me? Did it? Did it? Is it just like a great big kitty? Is it? Yes, it is!”

  “I could have you back at the bottom of that pit without breaking a sweat and be back in time for dinner,” SABRINA said, floating its teacup back down with a precise tiny clink. “Just saying.”

  “It teases people it likes,” Dr. Vasquez said to Jillian. “It’s how it expresses affection. I’m guessing you’re pretty much her favorite person ever. Have you heard its jokes yet?”

  “Pterodactyl going to the bathroom?”

  “Oh yeah,” Dr. Vasquez said. “It likes you.”

  SABRINA beamed. “I’m going to teach her how to prank people.”

  “I do not doubt that for a second,” Dr. Vasquez said. “For now, I guess you have a portal to make your way back to. What’s the plan?”

  Jillian glanced back at the countdown clock. Two days, twelve hours, nine minutes, twelve seconds. “Go back to my parents. Wait for the portal to show up.”

  “Sorry I’m not there to help out,” Dr. Vasquez said, “but it looks like you guys have things pretty much under control. Take whatever you need from my place, of course. There’s some food, and some purified rainwater in barrels. SABRINA can show you.”

  “Thanks,” Jillian said. “For”—she gestured widely—“all of this. But I mean . . . I don’t want to sound rude, and I get that it’s some kind of big secret that you’re even here, but seriously. You’re out here on your own, and you know SABRINA. Who are you?”

  Then, like a song she’d spent hours trying to recall the name of, the thing Jillian had been trying to remember suddenly surfaced in her memory, bobbing up out of the depths like a bottle with a message inside. Before
Dr. Vasquez got a chance to reply, Jillian realized she knew the answer already. She leveled a finger at the projection.

  “You’re that missing surveyor. My mom told me about you. Everybody thinks you’re dead!” She thought back to the list on the wall at the lab and sputtered, “You’re the twelfth casualty! They have your name on a thing!”

  Dr. Vasquez laughed. “Do they, now. Well, that’s fine by me. I like it here.”

  Jillian, mentally reviewing her experience of 80 UMa c, found this a little hard to believe. “Really. You like it. Compared to Earth, full-of-cool-stuff Earth, not-trying-to-kill-you-constantly Earth, you like it here.”

  “Earth kills people every day. Floods, fires, hurricanes, cold—all nature does.”

  “Tornadoes,” Jillian said.

  “Sure. You’ve probably noticed nature here isn’t friendly either. But here you see what you get, and you learn to live with what you have. Believe it or not, it has its charms. You see any rolling blackouts here? Any oceans of garbage? You have to wear a mask when you go outside because the pollution’s so bad? You have to upload water tickets when you want to take a shower or flush a toilet or get a drink? You have anybody telling you you can only have two servings of fruits or vegetables—actual fruits and vegetables, not the flavored cellulose stuff they use in everything—per week?”

  “Nope!” SABRINA said.

  “Rhetorical question, I think,” Jillian whispered.

  “Dang it! Dr. Park is still teaching me about those.”

  “It’s one per week now,” Jillian said. “It’s been one per week all year.”

  “Well, there you go. I don’t have any big corporations here selling me my life piece by piece. I go out and find it myself. Do you know how many people die in those blackouts, or from lack of water or proper nutrition?”

  This one came in a sharper tone and didn’t feel quite so rhetorical. “No,” Jillian admitted.