by Elle Simpson
I blinked. Only one eyelid moved. “Uh…”
“Not good,” the voice carried on, “and indicative of a rapidly progressing intercranial haemorrhage caused by the traumatic effects of exposure to a violent and uncontrolled Akanarin compulsive episode.”
The silence after that little speech seemed especially silent. My brain chugged through the possibilities like it was swimming in a vat of treacle. It managed, like, half a lap and then drowned a sugary death.
“Uh…” I said. “I…I…what?”
“Hannah.” The voice was old-school, like something out of a stuffy costume drama with corsets and top hats. “I understand you must be having a great deal of trouble with your cognitive processing, and I know this must all seem very strange, so I will endeavour to explain in the simplest possible terms. Your brain is badly injured and I can repair it. But we must move quickly. So may I ask – would it be possible to relocate yourself nearer to the easternmost wall?”
“Uh, why?”
“Well, in truth, so I can transport you to my orbiting craft via a molecular reconstitution beam.”
“Oh. Okay. Seems…legit?” Which it did not – it did not in any way seem legit – but as the voice in my head had so helpfully pointed out, I was having cognitive processing issues at the time. “And, uh, which way is east?”
“Left, Hannah,” the voice said.
I turned left.
“The other left,” the voice said.
“The other left is right,” I told it.
“No, it’s still left.”
I turned other left and staggered over to the wall. I had to use it to hold myself up. My legs weren’t working right suddenly.
“Why here?” I asked. Tried to ask. Came out more like, “Whu he…yuh?”
But the voice understood. “The walls surrounding your current location are immensely thick and are interfering with my instrumentation. A weakness in the render in the easternmost wall allows for easier transmutation, and also increases the likelihood that you won’t rematerialise with an extremity where an extremity ought not be.”
“Oh…” I wasn’t really paying attention, to be honest. Mostly, I was trying to figure out why the voice in my head didn’t sound like me – and why, you know, there was a voice in my head to begin with. “What…do…I…need…to do?” I asked, the words struggling out like a cat stuck headfirst in a welly.
“You need only stand exceedingly still.”
Easier said than done that was, because my hands had started shaking and I couldn’t make them stop. I opened my mouth to tell the voice that – but too late.
The world split into a rainbow of colour in front of my eyes. It fizzled through me, between my eyeballs, out my nose, my mouth.
And then…
9
Back at the hospital, Creepy Bob compared Cheekbones to a cockroach. You remember, right? It was a really crappy comparison in that Cheekbones didn’t look even slightly like a cockroach in any way whatsoever. Remember?
“Whu…”
Thing is, if Creepy Bob had just held onto the cockroach nugget for a few more chapters, he could’ve played his trump card.
“Whu…”
Because sitting in front of me, in the middle of a white-glass circular console, in the middle of a white-glass circular room, was a giant ten-foot-tall cockroach.
“Whu…”
I couldn’t say anything else. Didn’t even try. But I did, in a really distant, completely shocked way, correct myself. Sitting in front of me wasn’t a giant cockroach; sitting in front of me was the result of a cockroach and a scorpion who’d had themselves a night to forget while on steroids and growth hormones.
“Hello, Hannah,” the giant alien cockroach-scorpion hybrid from outer space said. “It is wonderful to meet you properly at last.”
The voice – his voice – was in my head, all posh and news-readerly, no ears required. But his…mouth-type opening still moved too, and these shiny brown things skittered and shuffled at either side in time with his words.
Shiny, brown, skittery, shuffly things that looked kinda like…
“…p-p-pincers?” I managed.
“Mandibles, actually. But pincer-like in appearance, I’ll grant you that. These, however,” the alien said as six mammoth, gleaming claws went click-clack, “these are most definitely pincers.”
And that was when I fainted.
10
When I woke up, the world on the other side of my eyelids was bright and white, and smelled faintly of custard.
Back in hospital again then.
Which was a relief. I might have to deal with the vampire doctor shining torches in my crevices, but at least she’d fix my head, and whatever was happening with my eyeballs – and, y’know, the whole ‘hallucinating a giant alien cockroach’ issue.
I knew I should probably wake up and tell Dr Vlad about the aforementioned ‘hallucinating a giant alien cockroach’ issue. But even the thought of that? Ugh, too much to be bothered with. I kept my eyes closed instead, caught in the weird, dreamy, half-asleep place I’d found myself.
I was comfortable anyway. So comfortable that I didn’t want to move. So I didn’t. At first because that seemed like the best, most lazy option – and then, suddenly, horribly, I didn’t move because I realised I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t move at all.
What in the actual fu—
“I understand the impulse is to panic,” a posh voice said, “but the paralysis is only temporary. I will very shortly be finished repairing the damage done to your brain. But you will find your respiratory system is unaffected. Might I advise you take slow, calming breaths for the duration?”
I followed the advice. Wasn’t as if I could do anything else. I mean, my choices were either breathe or not breathe. I was sticking with breathing.
“And there we are,” the voice said. “All done.”
My eyes flicked open to a white-glass ceiling. I was floating horizontally in midair. Or I was, until the absolutely nothing that I was floating on tipped me upwards and left me standing on a white-glass floor.
And in front of me? A giant alien cockroach-scorpion hybrid from outer space.
“Am I high?” I said. “I’m just, I’m high right now, aren’t I?”
“High?” the giant alien cockroach-scorpion hybrid from outer space inquired.
“Yeah,” I said, “like, on drugs?”
“Humans have developed pharmaceuticals that induce flight?” The alien turned away, but one eyestalk kept on looking at me. “Or is it levitation?” He poked a pincer to the console as he spoke, as if he was—
“Are you taking notes right now?”
“Professional interest,” the alien explained. “Field notes, you see.”
“Field notes?”
“Yes, notes undertaken by an individual engaged in the practice of field work.”
“I know what field notes are,” I said, sounding far less hysterical than I felt. “What I want to know is why you’re taking them?”
That got a puzzled clack of mandibles. “Well, because I’m an ethnographer, of course.”
“Oh,” I said faintly. “Oh, yeah. Of course.”
And that was when my legs gave out on me again.
“Oh, goodness!” the alien exclaimed. “Oh, Hannah! I do believe you’re in shock.” A curving white-glass bench rose out of the seamless floor. “Perhaps it would be best for you to sit.”
No perhaps about it. I hauled myself up and I sat.
A glass slid out of the bench beside me – out of absolutely nothing – clear liquid sloshing inside.
“Please,” the alien said. “Please, do drink. I believe this to be a fairly accurate approximation of Earth’s water from the area of your current habitation. Though I apologise, I may have the potassium content just a touch too high.”
I picked up the glass and gave it a covert sniff. Didn’t smell of anything much, just like water. I took a sip. Tasted like water too. So I down
ed the whole thing, because I was suddenly so thirsty it felt like my tongue might crawl out of my mouth and go in search of the nearest watering hole.
“Thanks,” I said, gesturing with my empty glass. “And, uh, sorry for freaking out.”
“Oh, don’t apologise, please.” The alien ruffled his wings – his wings – in an anxious gesture, the ridges clacking together like castanets. “What a dunderheaded thing to do, old boy,” he muttered to himself. “Show your bleary face to the poor little hatchling without so much as a by-your-leave.”
I took another of the slow, calming breaths I’d been having success with, then, “Why does it smell like custard in here?” I asked no one in particular.
(I never did find out. I’ll ask, though. Next time I see the giant alien cockroach-scorpion hybrid from space whose name I know now but don’t yet know narratively speaking, I’ll ask him why his spaceship smells like custard.
Fifty-fifty it’s either a really complicated science-type reason, or just that he’s partial to a custard snack pot.)
The alien was still busy muttering away to himself, so I said, louder, “Um, excuse me? When you’re done beating yourself up, I have questions?”
The alien’s attention swung back to me in a flutter of wings and mandibles. “Yes! Oh dearie me! Of course you do, and I will endeavour to answer them all if I can.”
“Cool beans. So, um? Like, hi? Who are you? Where am I?”
“Most sensible questions,” the alien said. “To start with the first – who am I? A field officer attached to the United Intergalactic Council’s Department for the Protection of Uncontacted Peoples.”
I took a second to process that. “So you work for, like, Space U.N.?”
“An apt comparison, yes.”
“But that’s your job,” I told him, “not who you are. You shouldn’t let your job define you. That’s not healthy for your inner wellbeing.”
One of the eyestalks blinked at me. “Well…yes, quite.”
“What’s your name? That’s what I meant.”
“Ah,” the alien said, ruffling his wings discontentedly. “It is here, I’m afraid, that we come unstuck upon even the simplest form of interspecies social nicety.”
It was my turn to blink. “I got, like, one word of that.”
“The unfortunate reality is that my true name is unpronounceable without two separate vocal tracts and, as you have previously noted, Hannah, at least one set of mandibles.”
“At least?”
“Two does allow for a more accurate replication of the initial triphthong, four for the penultimate affricate.”
“Oh…”
“But perhaps,” the alien said, rallying, “should you wish to, you might supply me with a human name to ease the manner of our mutual communication?”
“Colin,” I said instantly. “We should totally call you Colin.”
(And okay, yes, I did name a giant alien cockroach-scorpion hybrid from space after my Uncle Colin. But I was working a theme, okay? It’s not every day I get asked to name an alien, let alone two of them. Plus…)
“…you do kinda look a little like my Uncle Colin.”
“Do I?” Colin asked, fluttering his mandibles in an obviously pleased kinda way. “Well, they do say everyone has a doppelgänger somewhere, don’t they? Though, of course, I have more than most. Indeed, at last count—”
“And, uh, where are we?” I prompted.
“Ah, yes. Forgive me. An easier question to address.” Colin tapped a pincer to the console in front of him. “And I think this view is answer enough.”
Something whirred, then beeped, and one curving wall of the room began to split in half like curtains opening. There was glass behind the wall, and behind the glass was…
“That’s Earth.”
“Yes.”
“That’s Planet Earth.”
“Yes.”
“Why am I not on Planet Earth?” I said, a very much, definitely hysterical ring to my voice.
“Because you are on my ship,” Colin said, “which is currently in cloaked orbit of Planet Earth. Hence, above – or, indeed, below – but not upon.”
“I’m in space?”
“Yes.”
“Outer space?”
“Yes.”
“But how?” I dragged my eyes away from the view. “Colin, how did I get here?”
There was a concerned look on Colin’s shiny, craggy, anglely face. It was weird, but I could tell – he was worried about me.
The giant alien cockroach-scorpion hybrid from space was worried about me. What an absolute, total mindfu—
“Hannah,” Colin cut in. “I must ask, do you not remember?”
“Remember what?”
“Oh, I see,” Colin murmured. “I haven’t quite restored…” He reached out a pincer and tapped at the console again until it bleeped at him crankily. “Perhaps if I was to…ah, there! Now, Hannah, I ask again. Do you remember?”
“Remember?” I said – and then I didn’t say a single thing at all, because everything came crashing back.
Cheekbones, Creepy Bob, Creepy Bob’s creepy mind-whammying. The voices in my head. Everything, all at once. All of it.
I dropped my glass. The floor absorbed it without a single smash.
“Oh my god, Colin! Is Creepy Bob trying to take over the world?”
“In short,” Colin said, “yes.”
11
“Oh my god!”
“Indeed.”
“No, but, like. Oh. My. God.”
“Indeed,” Colin agreed.
“We have to stop him, Col! Creepy Bob – whatever he’s going to do. Oh my god, we have to stop him!”
Colin’s eyestalks bobbed. “That would be the plan.”
“You have a plan? There’s a plan?”
“There is a semblance of a plan,” Colin allowed.
“Which is so much better than no plan at all,” I said, deflating with relief. “All right, lay it on me.”
Colin reached for the console again. “My plan requires first that I retrieve a message that has hidden itself in the computer systems of—”
“Wait.”
I interrupted before things could start beeping again. My brain was still coming online. It hadn’t addressed the huge pink amnesiac elephant standing in the middle of the room, and now it really wanted to.
“How could I forget, though? Oh my god, why would I forget something like that? Evil aliens are trying to take over the world. That’s not a thing I should forget, Col!”
“Compulsion,” Colin said, apropos of absolutely fricking nothing, until, “is the ability to telepathically compel thought and action in others. It is a talent common to all Akanarin and the primary source of your current predicament.”
“Compulsion,” I muttered, my brain chugging away like Mum’s old desktop, whirs and groans and all. “So, like…you’re saying Creepy Bob used this compulsion thingy to make me forget?”
“That was the intent, yes,”
“Intent but not, like, actually though,” I said. “Because he didn’t do a great job, did he? I mean, I didn’t remember, but it’s not as if I forgot everything either. Not properly. It’s not as if I let his creepy mind thing talk me into letting myself die.”
“A product of ‘Creepy Bob’s’ own arrogance,” Colin said, “and my, well…” His eyestalks drooped a little. “My somewhat bumbling intervention. Which I would very much like to explain – and apologise for, if I may.”
“When you were in my head, right? Telling me to lie and stuff? So you can do the compulsion thing too?”
Colin’s eyestalks perked up to shake the negative. “I can communicate with you in the same manner as the Akanarin, that is true. Indeed, it is exceptionally rare in the universe for intelligent life not to possess the ability to communicate via telepathic transference. But no, my kind are not imbued with any inherent form of compulsive ability.”
“But you helped me fight Creepy Bob,” I said, so confused
even my confusion was confused. “At the hospital. In the carpark. You made him get out of my head.”
The eyestalks carried on shaking. “That was your doing, Hannah.”
“It so, so was not.”
“It was,” Colin insisted. “Once you were made aware of the compulsion, up until the point resistance was no longer physically possible, you exhibited a robust display of juvenile compulsive immunity – which is something I would be most eager to study more should we both survive the coming days.”
“Col!” I yelped, aghast.
“I apologise for the morbidity,” Colin said hurriedly. “But in relation to your original query – that is to say, that while I have no inherent compulsive talents myself, I have through extensive experimentation and collaboration with learned colleagues developed a rudimentary device somewhat able to mimic the Akanarin compulsive—”
“Oh my god!” Words, words, so many words. “Okay, like, I don’t mean to be rude,” I said, “but I literally don’t care. Creepy Bob! Creepy Bob and Creepy Bob’s shenanigans! Show me the receipts, Col!”
Colin flailed for a second. “I – I have no printed statement of monetary exchange to—”
“Colin!”
“Oh my!” Colin said on a startled flutter. “I, oh – yes, Hannah?”
“In little, tiny, teeny words, tell me the story that starts, ‘Once upon a time, a creepy evil alien who wants to take over the world made Hannah forget stuff, like the fact that her brain was bleeding and she was going to die!’”
“I…” Colin paused, passed a pincer over the console, swung his eyestalks back to me. “Perhaps it’s best I begin at the beginning?”
“No perhaps about it,” I said, “like, oh my god.”
A bluish-whitish hologram fizzed into life above the console. It was Creepy Bob, spinning gently, somehow managing to smirk despite not having a mouth.
“May I present to you, Hannah, one B’oab Baakatarin BaBarin of the Progenitor BaBa.”
“Three bags full,” I finished automatically. And whoa, Creepy Bob had so been lying about the name thing.
(Along with everything else it was possible to lie about but, you know, the point still stands.)
