by Peter Telep
“No, Doc.”
Her brows come together. “Doke.”
I sigh, “Okay, Doke. What’s your name?”
She snorts and says, “What’s your name?” She thinks a moment, and then quickly answers, “My name’s Cypress.”
“Okay, cool. Cypress. You got a last name?”
Her lip twists in disgust.
Uh, what did I do to offend her?
Shrugging that off, I glance back at the chopper. “So why do you ride that when you have the grren? Couldn’t you just ride them?”
Her gaze alternates between the bike and the grren, and once more, I’m not sure if she understands the question. But then her brown eye widens. “So you know nothing. Very disrespectful to ride the grren or their personas.” One of the hairless, green-skinned beasts tucks its head under her arm, and she strokes its cheek.
I raise my hands. “Okay, whatever. And I didn’t know the grren could change their personas like that.”
“Change their personas,” she repeats.
“Aw, forget it. Just listen. Somehow, you know me. You can see I’m in my persona. That means I’m vulnerable. I need to get back to Flora. My friends are bringing my body, otherwise I’ll die. Do you understand?”
While she’s thinking about that, I spy something over her shoulder—
A stack of familiar objects on the desk, along with a small flat screen TV. A Samsung.
I slip around her and go to the desk, where she has the TV, along with a Blu-Ray player, wired up to another hexagon-shaped box about the size of a dinner plate that seems to throb ever so slightly. Maybe it’s a power source.
Those familiar objects are Blu-ray cases. I sift through the titles: episodes of The Big Bang Theory, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Star Wars Rebels, and others. There are films as well, including my Star Wars discs.
However, these aren’t just any Blu-rays.
They come from my room. I wrote my name in Sharpie marker on the back of each case because people always borrow my stuff and never give it back. Wait. That’s actually my TV and Blu-ray player. I remember the scratch on the TV near the logo.
And lying next to the Blu-rays are some of my Star Wars figures, along with a few souvenir mugs from Tenerife.
There’s also an old photo album I know was Dad’s. Inside are pictures from various trips to the island, real back in the day stuff. I’m just a little boy in most of the shots. There are some loose photos, too, ones taken off the magnets on our refrigerator. So this is where they wound up. Damn.
One photo shows me and Grace at the beach, a copy of an old picture I showed Grandpa. There’s another taken at my fifteenth birthday party, where Julie threw her arm around me, and I felt like we were a couple.
“My homework,” Cypress says.
“These are from Earth,” I tell her. “From my house.”
She nods. “I like Stars Wars and zombies.”
“How’d you get this stuff?”
She huffs and glances away, muttering something under her breath that’s too fast for me to catch. But then she eyes me, revealing yellow teeth that’re scary, borderline vampire. “Bran-doll-lynn,” she says.
“My grandmother.”
“Yes, Doke.”
“I’m not sure if you know this, but she’s gone. The lab blew up, and she died with my father and our friend Joshua.”
Cypress puts a hand over her mouth.
“Sorry,” I tell her. “But please, tell me, what was she doing here? What’s this planet about? Where’s everyone else? Why am I here? Come on, talk to me…”
Cypress’s face tightens before she shakes violently, as though my voice has covered her in something nasty.
She goes to the kitchen counter, opens a box, and removes a reddish-brown vegetable or fruit that’s shaped like a football. She wipes the thing off, picks up a knife with a long, wooden handle, and begins chopping with attitude.
“Please,” I beg her. “I’m running out of time.”
She ignores me. I can sense her wreath, but it feels weird, like it’s weighed down by something.
Despite that, I send her an invitation to connect.
In my mind’s eye, she rejects it with an angry expression and a huge wave of her hand.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Because my body’s on Earth with the others, I can only tell them what’s happening on Halsparr.
I try to use my connection with Keane to speed up the process, but we’re either being blocked or maybe the planet Halsparr is just too far from Flora, even for our link.
I have a feeling, though, that we are being blocked…
Meeka takes me up to Blink’s room where Mrs. Bossley left the pouch of mirage.
And speaking of her, I told Tommy to go over to her place and rip her out of bed if he has to. We need answers, and we need them now. He agreed but said he’d be more diplomatic than that.
“You’re getting pale,” Meeka tells me.
I nod. “I don’t feel so good.”
She holds up the pouch of mirage. “Should we try a little more?”
I take a long, shivery breath. “I don’t know.”
She tosses the pouch back on the dresser, and then sits on the edge of the bed, motioning that I join her.
I shrug and have a seat. “How much does this suck?”
“You’ll be okay.”
“But you won’t. Your whole life was messed up because of my dad’s research, and now I’m making it worse. You guys should just walk away. I mean, come on, Meeka, you’re the last princess from the Royal House of Arabelle. That’s huge. You shouldn’t hang with a loser like me.”
“So this is the part where you feel sorry for yourself—”
“No, I just don’t want to drag you down.”
“Would you shut up? The Armadis isn’t going away. So you need to talk to Cypress and figure out what’s going on.”
“I’ll try, but apparently questions insult her. I don’t know what to do. I’m just tired. I haven’t slept. I’m starving. I just want to go home.”
She nods. “I want pancakes.”
“Yeah. I want ‘em, too.”
* * *
I sit at a low, round table made from the same wood as Cypress’s chopper. She offers me some of her food, but I tell her eating in my persona won’t make my body full.
“I know that. Maybe you’d like the taste.”
“That’s okay. You got any pancakes?”
Damn, Meeka’s got me obsessing on them now.
Cypress winces over the question, slides out a chair, and takes a seat opposite me.
A few feet away, the two grren sit up like statues, just watching. I’m not sure if they’re guarding her or hoping that she’ll toss them some scraps from her bowl.
After straightening her shoulders, she lifts both hands over her bowl and connects the fingertips to form a dome over her meal. Closing her one eye, she hums a few notes that sound like she’s moving up the musical scale. As the highest note fades, a whisper emerges from her throat, like she can speak in two voices: “Habneeshoe vosi-goba.”
“What is that?” I ask. “My wreath won’t translate.”
“So rude,” she snaps.
“Look, I’m sorry. Is this not a good time to ask questions? When is a good time? Because I’m dying and—”
“Doke, I break the old laws a lot. Especially for you. But I won’t do that. I won’t ask questions or listen to them. There are better ways to think and speak.”
“Better ways? What kind of a place is this where you don’t ask questions?”
She ignores me.
I sigh loudly in disgust and fold my arms over my chest. I’m not sure how to talk to this woman anymore. Nearly every sentence that comes out of me is a question, but what does she expect?
I was deliberately sent here. She was waiting for me. She’s been studying me with help from my grandmother. But I’m not allowed to say anything because apparently it’s rude. Well, I don’t care about
hurting her feelings anymore. I won’t sit here and wait to die.
I push back my chair and stand. “So, I’ll see you later. I need to get back to Flora. I’ll find somebody who can help.”
I turn and come face to face with the saber-toothed grren, whose crystal-like eyes rotate and focus on me. One of them growls and shows his inner teeth.
“Doke, you’re not really Floran.”
“Uh, hello, I’m in my persona.”
“Your grandmother told me you were raised Terran.”
“Is that what you call people from Earth?”
“Only the rude ones.” She smiles. “I ignore your stupid question and make a joke.”
“You’re not very funny.”
She shrugs. “I need more homework.”
“Wait a second. Asking questions is rude,” I say, adjusting my tone so that it’s not a question.
“Also against the law,” she adds.
“Why?”
She huffs. “Your grandmother said you’d be slow. But now maybe you understand.” She widens her brown eye.
“Okay, okay, I get it. Somebody brought me here.”
“Yes,” she says.
“Was it Julie? My grandmother? Mrs. Bossley?”
She lowers her gaze and shakes her head.
“Wait,” I say. “Sorry for being rude and breaking the law, whatever. Someone else brought me here for some reason.”
Inhaling deeply, she reaches around and pulls something from the back of her hair. It’s the coil of vines that held her ponytail in place. She shakes out her hair for a moment, stands, and gestures for me to follow her.
She leads me to a heavy metal door at the back of the kitchen, throws a latch, and the door creaks inward.
We cross into a room barely larger than my garage where, surrounded by rings of candles on metal holders, sits an engine similar to ours, but this thing’s much older, like it’s been sitting in someone’s attic for a thousand years.
It has the usual cannons facing each other, along with a portal ring, a staircase, and the scuba-like tanks and cables, but again, the materials are slightly different, reminding me of a steam-punk version of our own vortex.
I sense heat coming off the machine, along the faint and familiar scent of burning toast.
“I know your grandmother for a long time,” Cypress says, pointing to the engine. “She helped me fix this engine.” Her gaze sweeps back toward the other rooms. “This whole place was like a train station on Earth. You buy tickets and go to the moons, or to Galleon, before the war.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, Doke, wow.”
“So you intercepted my jump.”
She nods. “Your grandmother told me to find you and bring you here.”
“For a very important reason.”
“Yes, and I’m sorry it took so long. My engine is very old and doesn’t run well. It broke down, and I had to fix it. And now it doesn’t work right. It could only find you when you jumped.”
“So I’m here for a very important reason,” I repeat, trying to get a damned answer out of her.
“I’m sorry about the jump.”
“I know you are. What the hell am I doing here?”
“Questions, Doke!”
“Look, I’m sorry.”
She shrugs. “Me, too. I didn’t mean for you to land in the jungle. I didn’t know it was just your persona. My timing is very bad.”
“You have to get me back.”
“Not yet.” Her brown eye goes distant.
I’m about to ask what’s wrong—
When she starts for the door and screams, “We go!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Doc, get down here!” Keane shouts from my living room back on Earth. “It’s Tommy!”
And suddenly I’m not so tired anymore and am practically falling down the staircase to get there—
Where Tommy is kneeling on the rug, clutching his chest.
Steffanie, who went shopping with him, crouches down at his side, frantically asking if he’s all right.
“What happened?” I ask.
“We were on our way to Walmart when he started having pains. I told him to come right back here.”
“Y’all, rest easy,” Tommy says through a deep exhale. “I ain’t buying the farm yet.”
Tommy’s already had a heart attack, so I need to ask the hard question. “It’s not your heart, is it?”
“Not sure,” he answers. “I think it’s the wreath.”
“The Wrrambien must be wearing off,” I say. “Do we have any more? I didn’t even think about that.”
“I did,” he says. “I got some in my pack over there.”
He barely finishes and shoots to his feet, pulling away from Steffanie like he’s just touched a live wire.
He staggers backward toward the wall, his eyes widening with fear or shock… because in the next breath he projects his persona right there in the living room:
It’s a glowing version of Major Thomas McMillan, United States Marine Corps—only he’s even more buff than normal and wearing the iconic dress blue uniform with white hat.
“Is this me?” he asks, raising his white gloved hands, while his body begins to shrink down the wall. I rush over to help Steffanie lower him down to the floor. Meanwhile, Meeka fumbles through his pack, searching for the Wrrambien.
“Oorah,” Keane cries going up to Tommy’s persona. “You jumped all by yourself with no help. And you look like a total badass!”
He begins patting his chest and looking around. “Oorah, this is me. And I feel like The Six Million Dollar Man!”
“You’re gonna feel like a Mask of Galleon if we don’t get you a shot of Wrrambien,” I tell him.
“Wait, hold off on that,” he tells Meeka, just as she’s about to inject him with the drug. “I want to connect with you guys, see how that is. I’ll be safe while we do that, right?”
“I guess so,” Keane says.
“Aw, man,” I groan. “I can’t. I’m stuck here in my body.”
“No worries, Doc,” Tommy says. “I’ll just be a second. Then we’ll get right back on the engine.”
I shrug. This is a huge moment, and I wanted to be the first one to connect with him. After all, he practically raised me. I used to think of him as my surrogate uncle, and now he’s basically the only dad I have left.
“Okay,” Keane tells Tommy. “You ready?”
Tommy hesitates. Maybe he sees the deep disappointment in my eyes, because he raises his voice and says, “You know what? We’ll play those games later. Show me how to get back in my fat old body.”
He looks at me and winks.
* * *
Back on Halsparr, I race after Cypress, who’s leading me toward the chopper.
“If we’re in trouble, we should jump,” I scream.
“I can’t!” she hollers back.
“Why?”
She just hisses in frustration.
At the same time, the grren rush up, leap into personas that resemble their bodies, then morph into tires and wrap themselves around the wheels.
Cypress motions for the grren in their bodies to remain here, and then, with a kick of her legs, she launches herself into the air and lands perfectly in the driver’s seat.
I trip over myself and practically collapse onto the seat behind her.
“No jumping for you, Doke. You stay with me.”
I won’t argue. Her planet. She’s the boss. And she sounds pretty scared.
Maybe the masks are after us again. Just one of their bolts can zap me back to their ship, where Solomon will be waiting for me with a cigarette dangling from his lips.
We streak off and hurtle through another pipe for about a minute…
Then we rip into bright sunshine, bouncing across a rocky hill.
Cypress tilts her head and weaves the chopper between smooth boulders and other stones shaped like arrowheads. I’m thrown forward as the hill drops steeply into valley of more tall, black
grass that shines purple along its edges.
I clutch Cypress even tighter, and trust me, there’s no lust in my heart for this woman, just utter fear. At any second we’ll go flying over the bars and tumble to our deaths.
Or maybe not… because she leans hard into the turns, and we roll across a long ledge, picking up more speed until she hollers, “Hold tight!”
And then we soar into the air, plunging toward a vast black sea of grass fluttering in the morning breeze and lying about twenty feet below.
Voices pierce the air behind us.
I steal a look back at three more choppers blasting off the ledge, pursuing us.
The drivers wear brown, leather-like jackets and pants with fringes dangling from the seems, along with floral patterns sewn across the pockets.
Leathery skull caps sit tightly on their heads, with more fringes trailing like stray hairs in the wind. I can’t tell if they have the eye bling like Cypress, but they’re all much tanner than her, as though she doesn’t see the sun very much—
As though she’s constantly hiding from them.
“They’re not friends,” I tell her, hoping for an explanation.
“No, Doke. They come to kill us.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When you inject Wrrambien directly into your body, it goes to work much faster than when it’s mixed in with your food and digested.
Still, as a precaution, Meeka and Steffanie were ready to connect with Tommy so he wouldn’t get abducted by the masks. He’s feeling much better now, so we’re out in the garage, where Alina’s car sags under the weight of cylinders and cables and cannon-like devices piled up in the trunk. He’s also packed two red tool boxes that I can barely lift. We begin carrying parts into the living room.
Meanwhile, Keane projects my grandmother’s immortal, and she begins telling us what each part is and where to set it down so it’s handy as we begin assembly.
“Make sure you connect the hyperdrive motivator to the dilithium crystals, otherwise the flux capacitor could overload,” Keane says.
I should be impressed by someone who can reference Star Wars, Star Trek, and Back to the Future in a single sentence, but instead, I just look at him and shake my head.
