Alien Omega

by Marc Landau

  I got up and headed for the garden. Poka finished licking her lips then followed behind—not because she wanted to be by my side, but because she thought I might have more peanut butter.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kat looked the same. Still no life signs, but at least she hadn’t gotten any worse. The bot had respectfully placed her on a clean patch of grass surrounded by a colorful bed of blooming flowers. I don’t know if the walrus meant to place her in such a picturesque spot, but I was glad it did.

  Oddly I noticed some of the flowers and grass were leaning towards her. They were drawn to her. Or she was attracting them. Was she sucking the life force from them, too? If I left her there, would she eventually turn into a mound of human-shaped flowers? That would be a pretty memorial.

  More importantly, would the grass and flowers be enough to bring her back, or would she be in this state for another billion millennia or however long it was before I found the object the first time? For all I knew, the alien could stay this way indefinitely.

  It was weird that it hadn’t reverted back to its hard cocoon form. That would’ve protected it better from the harsh conditions of space. Maybe she was too weak. Maybe she could no longer turn back. Maybe she’d been in human form too long and she’d transformed. She’d become something else.

  My idea was crazy. And probably stupid. And it most likely wouldn't work, but why not try? What did I have to lose?

  You just want to kiss it again, the little voice said.

  “I’m not kissing her!”

  Then what are you doing?

  I took the Nutella out.

  Seriously? You’re giving it Nutella? That’s nutsella.

  It was, but it was also her absolute favorite junk food. I used to have to hide the jars, or she’d finish them off while watching vids or reading. Then the next day she’d get mad at me for letting her eat the whole jar.

  “Why’d you let me do that?”

  “You get mad if I try to tell you to stop. You also get mad if I don’t tell you to stop.”

  “So you might as well tell me to stop, since I’m going to get mad at you either way.”

  “Good point.”

  Instead of telling her to stop, I’d often hide the stuff. I’d also sneak up on her while she was devouring a jar and steal it away. She always busted me and got pissed. But she also thought it was cute, and we usually wound up… let’s just say Nutella helped keep our intimacy nutty.

  Since the alien reacted to strong emotions, I figured the chocolate nuttiness might spark something deep in there. Some primal urge. I also figured that since the alien was still human, (or at least looked human), it might be hungry. If it was human it might need some actual nourishment in order to wake up. Maybe sucking the juice from the ship or the plants, or me and Poka, wasn’t enough.

  The idea was so ridiculous. Nutella to revive a comatose human-alien hybrid. I actually thought it might be the alien telling me to do it. Slipping the wacky idea into my unconscious. Inceptioning me.

  Worst thing that could happen was I’d slather a bunch of Nutella on a dead alien, and the bot would think I was performing some bizarre human death ceremony. If it did, I wouldn’t correct it. Let it think humans were weird. It already thought that. It could add it to its dumb human behavior database.

  I dipped my finger in the jar and could hear Poka’s tail wagging in expected excitement. “Sorry, not for you, Pokes.”

  She looked away in disappointment with her best, “How could you be so mean to me?” face.

  Where do I put the food? Where does an alien eat from?

  Just put it on its mouth, idiot, the little voice said.

  I touched Kat’s lips with my choco-laden finger. Would this actually work? Seemed impossible. Worse, this kind of felt like when the clueless teenagers check to see if the monster is dead. They get really, really close and reach out to touch it. Then suddenly, the monster comes back to life and attacks!

  Was Kat going to suddenly jump up and eat my hand? I pulled back instinctively, like an alligator had just jumped up and tried gulping my arm down its throat.

  Stop being a scaredy-Elkan, the voice chided me.

  I exhaled, put my finger on her mouth, and waited to be eaten.

  Nothing happened. Phew, that was a relief. I hadn’t given an alien monster a human cupcake with Nutella frosting.

  Then something wet touched my finger. I flinched and almost jumped back, but held steady. It must have been her tongue. She was eating the damn Nutella! I was right. Or it had telepathed me. Either way, this was working. She’d actually moved her tongue to lick the chocolate. Alien-Kat was alive.

  Chapter Twenty

  Only it wasn’t her tongue. Or if it was, it wasn’t any human tongue I’d ever seen before. It was definitely, one hundred percent an alien tongue. It looked like a worm, but also like a flower. I wondered if it had developed from her laying here in the garden. Worms and flowers morphing into a snaggle of writhing, colorful, wet, wormy mucous tongue. So gross.

  Of course it’s gross. It’s an alien, the voice said, not remembering that there were hundreds of gorgeous alien species out there.

  Whatever. The only thing that mattered was that alien-Kat had shown life signs. She still hadn’t opened her eyes or breathed, or done anything significant. Except of course, licking Nutella with a worm tongue.

  It definitely looked like it was enjoying the chocolate nut treat. In seconds, it had wiped my finger clean and had extended its disgusting tongue in search of more sugary goodness. A bunch of worm tentacles licked my face, leaving a warm, sticky residue on my eye and cheek.

  I gagged, trying not to retch yet again while Poka, of course, jumped up and tried licking off the slime.

  “Off!” I yelled, and she backed away. No way I was letting her eat the worm snot off my face. Who knows what germs were in there? Whatever they were I was sure they’d make Poka scurry around the ship depositing bio-squirts all over the place. The bot would then chide me, and suggest air-locking her into space.

  The flower worms licked my face again, and bile rose to my throat. I decided the best course of action was to give this thing more and keep it distracted from my face. I dug my hand into the jar and scraped up a heap of the remaining spread. It licked it off faster than a Turvelian spitfire goat, leaving my hand cleaner than it had ever been before.

  More worms poured out of the alien’s mouth, and I tossed the jar onto its chest and backed off before I was covered in mucous worms. They devoured every remaining molecule of chocolate, leaving the jar spick-and-span clean, then extended themselves from the alien’s mouth towards me and Poka.

  These things were starving. They definitely wanted to eat us. We probably looked like yummy snacks. Like in the cartoon vids where the guys are shipwrecked, and eventually they get so hungry they start looking at one another as a hamburger or a hot dog.

  Funny how now that ten-foot-long gummy worms are spilling out of its mouth, you’re calling the alien an it, the voice said.

  “Shut it.”

  About ten of the worms nibbled on my foot, and I backed up, tripped over my big, stupid colorful sneakers that had saved me once before. Now they were going to be the end of me. I fell to the floor and crawled backwards as the worms closed in. I had to move fast. They were pretty quick for ten-foot-long slugs.

  “That reminds me of a joke. What did the slug riding the turtle say? Wheeeeeeeee!"

  You’re losing it, man.

  “Wouldn’t you if you were being chased by ten foot alien worms?”

  I am being chased by them. I’m the voice in your head.

  They were some pretty long worms and they were all still attached to the alien’s mouth. So it looked more like hundreds of garden hoses coming after me. The alien had a Medusa mouth. Except it wasn’t a bunch of snakes, it was hungry slug-worm flowers.

  I backed up as far as I could, but hit the wall. There was literally no place left to go. I was about to become dinner yet again. Firs
t a sphere, now a bunch of alien garden hoses with teeth.

  Poka growled and barked at them, but kept her distance, thank the universe. The last thing I wanted to watch was her being engulfed by snot worms.

  “Go to your place!” I screamed at her at the top of my lungs.

  That was our emergency code phrase. Like I said, ninety-nine percent of the time, she didn’t listen to me. But when told to go to her place, she would put her ears and tail down and go to her spot on the ship. Back on Earth, it was her bed in the corner of the sleep quarters. And when I say her bed, I mean my chair.

  On the ship I’d put a bunch of pillows on one of the standard military chairs. They weren’t made for comfort, so she got most of my pillows. I kept one for myself. But I wished I’d kept two so I had something to rest my arm on. It took a month to get used to not sleeping with the extra pillow. But I’d brought her onboard this crazy ship, so she deserved the pillow.

  Not that she appreciated the extra effort I’d put into making her comfortable. In fact, she usually snuck into the sleep quarters before me, laid down on the one pillow I had, and drifted off into snoring slumber. I can’t count the number of times I curled up on the corner of the bed with no pillow and a third of the blanket covering me, just so I didn’t wake her up. And did she appreciate it?

  “Go to your place now!” I yelled again, and she went reluctantly. Her ears flopped down, with her tail under her butt, as she left the dock pod. At least I wasn’t going to have to watch her get eaten by disgusting mucous worms.

  Note to self: Big-time reminder to have the cleaner-drones wipe up all the mucous if I make it out of this one. If I didn’t, the bot would be responsible for taking care of Poka, and I didn’t like her chances with the walrus in charge.

  Especially not with it still acting sort of evil. Before the aliens scrambled its brains, at least I knew it couldn’t hurt her. It would have to do whatever it needed to protect her once it knew she was a life form, and not a bio-AI. Even at the risk of losing its own life. Or whatever bots had. Ha. That almost made me smile. The bot having to end its own life in order to protect Poka. That would be great karma.

  But now, I wasn’t so sure it would care for her. It was still acting weird. Dangerously weird. At least it wasn’t as bad as before, when it was shooting laser blasts at us.

  The worms surrounded me, leaving a clear section of about a foot, like they were waiting for something.

  “Kat, don’t do this!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Maybe my panic would trigger her, like my anger had with the cold.

  The worms slid closer.

  So much for intense emotions.

  I felt worms slide onto my foot and tried pulling back, but they were too heavy. More of them slithered onboard. Onto both feet. Crawling up my legs. Covering my torso, then my chest.

  When they hit my neck, I panicked, struggling to keep my head high. It was like I was drowning and trying to keep my head above water.

  The flower worm slugs were heavy. Hellvian. They were like Corvan constrictors. Each one must have weighed a Poka. If they didn’t eat me, they would crush me. Were they like the Corvan constrictor? Tightening up with every breath I took? They didn’t seem to be but it didn’t matter if I breathed or not. They just kept climbing onboard weighing me down. Crushing me.

  When they covered my neck and head, I could really feel the slime. It was thick and sticky. Again I was reminded of the hallucination in the bathroom. Why the frak was I always drowning in jello snot? It must be an alien thing. It had hundreds of ways to kill you with snot.

  Kat’s not looking so pretty now, is she? the voice said, and it was right. Pretty was the last thing Kat was.

  “Kat, stop it!” I yelled again, and a worm slid into my mouth. I tried pushing it out with my tongue, but no luck. So I had to do the last thing I wanted to do. I bit it.

  Thankfully, it didn’t like that. It recoiled and headed backwards out of my mouth. Note to self: Don’t open your mouth again.

  They tried to get into my nostrils and ears, but as big as those were, they were too small for the worms, thank the universe. I couldn’t even fathom one of those things crawling around inside my brain.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized the space gear I was wearing was holding up well enough that they weren’t able to get into the one other hole in my body that was big enough for one of them to squeeze into. I clenched harder than I ever had in my life. No way one of them was getting in, if I could help it.

  The mucous covering my nose and mouth made breathing tough, and I couldn’t raise my arms to wipe the goop away but I was good at holding my breath. That’s what I was calling lucky at this point in my life. So I lay there covered in mucous worms, unable to move, holding my breath and gagging.

  They wiggled and slithered all over me. I had become a writhing mound of alien mucous worms. So disgusting. The stuff also smelled horrible, just to add insult to injury. I held my breath as long as I could. Fire burned in my chest. My mouth on auto-pilot trying to open itself and suck in air, but there was no way I was gonna let one of those things back in my mouth.

  As good as I was at holding my breath, I couldn’t hold out much longer. Even the universe’s best human breath-holder only managed nineteen minutes. Which is amazing, but still not long enough when you’re covered in alien worms.

  I’d be lucky if I could hold mine for three minutes. I didn’t know how long I’d been holding my breath, but however long it had been, there wasn’t much time left. My lungs were about to explode.

  Just when I was about to resign myself to dying for the fifth or sixth time they started slowly retreating. Wiggling and flopping off my body. Each one that left felt like the weight of a sack of wet mud coming off. What a relief. Hurry up and get the hellvian off me.

  After a few seconds—or minutes, or hours, or years, it felt like years—they were gone and I could breathe again. I sucked in oxygen. It tasted disgusting but did the job. I was feeling better. Except for being covered in disgusting smelly-jellyfish-slug-goop. If I never saw a gelatinous substance again, it would be too soon. I’d never eat jello or eggs ever again. That was for sure.

  They hadn’t eaten me after all. And they’d backed off just at the point where I couldn’t take it anymore. Did they know I was on the brink?

  You mean did the alien know you were about to pass out or die, so it backed off?

  Yes. I heard an unknown, resonant voice respond. It was the same voice as before. The voice of God. The one who’d brought the ship back together again.

  “Who is that? Is that you, alien? Are you talking to me again?”

  Silence was all I heard. I wished the thing would talk more.

  “Come on. Say something else!”

  But it didn’t. It was the strong, silent type, I guess. But it also confirmed that alien-Kat was definitely not at all even close to dead. She was shooting giant worms from her mouth and telepathically communicating again.

  Finally I was talking to the part of the alien that knew what the frak was going on. The one with the power. Not the one acting like my ex who said she had no clue that there was an all-powerful alien inside her.

  But why didn’t it say more? Why didn’t it use Kat as the wrapper but still act like an all-knowing alien? It was weird that it had two parts. It made everything so much more difficult. But it also made me have stronger feelings for the Kat part. Maybe the alien was smarter than I thought.

  Maybe smarter than you thought? the little voice said.

  “Yes. I get it. The alien is much smarter than me. Can you please shut up? You sound like the bot.”

  Kat still wasn’t moving, except for the slug-worm in retreat. Or were they shriveling up? On closer look, they were shrinking. Drying up. I got the sense they were starving. It looked like when you kill a vampire and they turn from young and beautiful to old and shriveled, then to dust. Not the vampires you stab with a stake and they explode into mist. Those are different vampires. I mean the shrive
ling vampires.

  I spotted the walrus lurking in the doorway holding a large plastic package in its hand appendage. I recognized it as one of the many food substances that we had onboard. I checked the label and saw that it read chocolate syrup.

  I’d never had that before. The walrus had been holding back the good stuff. Hiding anything I might actually enjoy. I made a mental note to return the favor. When I came across a juicy piece of data I knew it would love to snack on, I’d keep it to myself.

  I got the sense that the bot had just stood there watching the entire time while the worms covered me in snot, waiting to see if they were going to eat me. I’m sure it was hoping they would.

  Even if it didn’t want me eaten, it did want to see what happened in order to collect unique data. Data was bot-heroin. It was more important to get data than make sure I lived. I had to fix that somehow. Have a drone double-check to make sure the programming virus, or whatever had messed up the bot, was gone. I didn’t like that it was standing around waiting for me to be eaten, or coming to drag me to the trash shoot when it thought I was dead. There was something sociopathic about it. More so than usual.

  “Why didn’t you help me?”

  Tbe bot made processing noises. “You are not injured. Do you require medical attention?”

  “No, just a sani-shower. But why didn’t you do something to get those things off me?”

  “Uh. Beep.”

  “You wanted them to eat me?”

  “Beep. Erm.”

  “Dude, what is wrong with you? We’re going to have to check your code.”

  “My code is fine.”

  “No. It’s not. Ever since that sphere attacked, you’ve been acting weird. First you almost trash-shoot me. Then you try to fry me. And now you stand there watching while worms try to eat me.”

  “They didn’t try to eat you.”