The Alien's Accidental Bride

by C. V. Walter

  "Do I need to change?" she asked him.

  "What? Why would you change? Have I indicated anything-"

  "My clothes," she said, interrupting him, her hands raised. "Just my clothes. My personality, such as it is, has suffered through worse and is not likely to get any better."

  "I like your personality just the way it is," Mintonar said. "If you'd feel more comfortable wearing something else, then you can change if you'd like. I don't really have much here for you. I'll need to fix that."

  "I don't mind wearing your pajamas all the time," she said, blushing slightly. "Though I haven't quite figured out how to do the laundry so I haven't washed them yet. I should probably do that so you'll have some to wear if you ever decide to wear them to bed."

  "There hasn't been much need for that," he said. "And I have no objection to you wearing whatever of my clothes you like. If you want to wear a work shirt and nothing else, for example, I would be very pleased."

  "Well, it would be that and nothing else because you haven't gotten me clean underwear, either. And I don't know what happened to the stuff I was wearing in the medical bay."

  "The cleaners likely dealt with it. I'll ask them for it when I get back to my office tomorrow."

  "Thank you, I would appreciate it." She paused and he could tell she wanted to ask something else.

  "Is there any kind of clothing you'd prefer? I don't know that we'd have an exact equivalent but our people are shaped similarly enough that I might be able to find something for you."

  "Oh, um, it's nothing and I really never thought I'd say it but I'd really like a bra. Whatever you did with that table to put me back together really perked the girls up but, well, I'm getting older and I'd like a little support so they don't get all saggy again."

  "The girls?" he asked, confused.

  "Ah, it's how I refer to my breasts. I've even named them; Olga and Helga, Olga's a little bigger than Helga though Helga was much better at producing milk when Aidan was born. I'm rather proud of them. They're not the biggest ones I've ever seen but they're not small, either, and you seem to enjoy them." She gave him a wink and he wasn't sure if she was joking.

  "Your breasts are... you've named them? Is that a common thing for humans?"

  "Probably not," she admitted. "Though it's more fun than calling them left and right."

  "Ah, and they sag as women get older? But you're not old."

  "I'm thirty-six," she said with a rueful smile. "I'm not old but I'm pretty sure I'm considered middle-aged right now and I've hit the years where my fertility goes from actual to iffy before it hits non-existent. There's hormonal stuff that's supposed to be starting between now and sometime in ten years that's going to make other fun changes. And by ‘fun’ I mean awful and miserable, if my mother was anything to judge by."

  "Oh, that does not sound like a good thing. You're still younger than I am, though, if our years are similar."

  "Married to your job, right? I think I remember that. I was the same for a very long time, even while trying to balance a family and other responsibilities on top of it. As hard as it was, I'm glad I had my son before I threw my fertility on the altar of my career. A lot of women get to my age, realize they're going to have trouble conceiving, and regret the years they spent at the office more than they want to admit. I saw more than one of my colleagues in tears after getting confidential mail from the fertility clinic."

  "I-" Mintonar didn't know what to say. "I was never interested in joining with anybody. What recognition I felt on my home planet was faint, a pale imitation of what I felt with you, and never enough of a temptation to keep me from my job. Do your people struggle with fertility problems?"

  "Some do. There are some things that can stop it for a while that makes it hard to restart, especially when you get past the ideal window. It's still possible for women to get pregnant outside that window, of course, and we're making strides every year to make it safer for older mothers but there's always risks involved and if you put it off too long, you might find that you put it off for too long."

  "I see," Mintonar said. "This will require much research. I would like to know what your scientists have discovered to combat the issue."

  Chapter 25

  Molly was concerned by the look on Mintonar's face. He looked sad, almost frustrated, and she wondered if it had anything to do with what she'd said about sacrificing your fertility on the altar of your career. If he was on a space ship, far away from his home planet, with no prospects for having children, he might have realized just what he'd given up.

  "Sorry," she said, reaching out for his hand. "That was my little soapbox. Um, I'm not sure how much help it would be but if you can get me an interface for some stuff on Earth, I can find you what research we have? I don't know how you'd do that or if you could read it but I could find it."

  He smiled at her. "I would not know how to do that, either, but we can ask Alvola when he gets here. The information can be put through the translator which will get me started on it, at least."

  "Ah, the translator you put that children's program you gave me through?" she asked.

  "Yes," he said. "Why, is there a problem?"

  "Not really, it just has the same issues that most automatic translator programs do of not quite getting the written syntax correct. Audio seems to do better and I can tell you're occasionally reworking something to make it feel better in your brain."

  "That, yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. I find your language to be more intuitive than I would have thought but there are still departures from what I would expect."

  "It's okay. Most people who learn English as a second language, particularly as adults, have issues with some of it. There's things we know that we picked up hearing our parents talk that we don't know we know until we have to explain it to somebody else. I imagine you have the same?"

  "Yes, as you'll find if you keep working through the program. Perhaps you can help make the translations better?"

  "I can make the English read better," she said. "Whether or not it's actually what you meant to say might be left up for debate."

  "We can work on it together," he said. "And you can teach me to read your language while we do."

  "I should search for a children's program for you, too," she said and laughed when he grinned.

  "Perhaps you should," he answered.

  There was a chime from the door and she started. Grabbing the dishes, she started to clear the table and take the things to the kitchen. Mintonar grabbed her hands and held them still, supporting them so nothing fell when she shivered at his touch.

  "It is only Alvola," he told her. "I will help clear the table once I've let him in. Do not panic."

  "Who's panicking?" she asked, her eyes wide. She could feel her heart racing and admitted to herself that she might be panicking just a little.

  He gave her a small smile and a light peck on the forehead then let her hands go and turned to the door. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before taking the dishes to the kitchen. Her hands were steadier than they'd been moments ago and she was grateful that he'd noticed she might be in distress.

  Mintonar sounded surprised and when she turned to see why, she saw not just one guest but two. They were speaking in Mintonar's native language and he seemed agitated. One of the guests, an older man in an impressive looking uniform, was gesturing at the table. She heard the names of the dishes Mintonar had brought her and saw him answer in the affirmative.

  The second man, who looked to be close to Mintonar's age, had more grey in his blue-grey skin and almost cobalt blue hair. The combination was striking, along with horns that had designs etched in them and swirling scars on his cheeks. He was staring at her, she might have thought he was glaring, and she moved to the edge of the kitchen to stand with her hands behind her back.

  Whatever discussion Mintonar was having with the older man stopped and he turned to her.

  "Do you want stay with him?" he asked in halting English.

&
nbsp; "Stay? As in here?" She asked.

  He shook his head and tried again. "Do you want him?" he asked, gesturing to Mintonar. "Stay with him?"

  "Yes," she said slowly. "I like him. I'm okay staying with him. Do you want me to go somewhere else?"

  "You stay," he told her then turned to Mintonar to give him a command in their native language. Whatever he said shocked Mintonar and his guest, who turned to stare at the older man.

  The other guest, who had to be Alvola, protested whatever the older man had said only to be shut down by Mintonar. The older man left without another word and Mintonar turned to her.

  Striding across the room, he took her in his arms and kissed her, with more passion than she'd expected with a visitor in the room. Of course, she answered him the only way she could and was surprised to find herself sitting on the kitchen counter with her legs wrapped around his waist.

  A snort of disgust came from the living room and Molly remembered where she was. With a hot blush, she ducked her head until she could get her breathing under control, smacking Mintonar's chest when he chuckled at her.

  "You're a beast, stop it," she told him. "We're embarrassing our guest."

  "Let him watch," Mintonar said. "I couldn't help myself and there's nothing to be ashamed of with us."

  "There never was," she said, reaching up to stroke his cheek.

  He kissed her again, struggling to keep it light, then stepped back and helped her off the counter. Alvola set the helmet on the table and said something to Mintonar that he answered back in their language. Whatever was said, he stroked his hand down her back and helped her into the chair by the table. He sat next to her and Alvola sat on the other side of the helmet.

  "Okay, um, how's this going to work, exactly?" She asked, turning to see Mintonar then back to Alvola.

  "You will demonstrate the controls," Mintonar instructed. "Alvola can understand you. If he has any questions, I will translate them and you can answer."

  "Alright," Molly said, suddenly nervous. "I think you've already figured out how to turn it on. Actually, the basic system is on all the time unless you deliberately turn it off. Otherwise, it stays in Standby where it can be reactivated without a boot cycle, which tends to take longer so most Techs leave it in Standby."

  Alvola asked a question and Molly turned her head to look at Mintonar so he could translate.

  "He wants to know what a 'boot cycle' is," he told her. "And wants to know if it's pertaining to footwear."

  She grinned and turned to Alvola. "A boot cycle is when the whole thing goes from drawing no power to drawing power and starting the operating system. When it powers off, it dumps anything in the short-term memory that hasn't been saved to a different system. It can be handy when the short-term systems get overloaded to turn the whole thing off. More convenient to do it when you're not wearing it and it's sitting in a power dock, though, so I usually do a full system shut down once a week or so when I have it broken down for maintenance. Make sense?"

  Alvola nodded and gestured for her to continue.

  "Okay, the thing I'm showing you is the manual control. Follow my thumb to see what I do with it and how it interacts with the projector. It allows me to look through all the menus and perform basic command functions but it's not a full interface that I would get from using the heads-up projector or jacking it into one of the maintenance systems. It allows 'front', 'back', 'yes','no' and 'cancel' commands, though some menus will have pre-filled answers that can be used by selecting them. Which I'm sure makes no sense until I show you."

  He shrugged and gestured for her to continue. She had the feeling that all the basic stuff was very boring for him but she had no idea just what level of familiarity he had with any of it. She thought programming languages, in their purest form, might start from universal yes/no or on/off beginnings but she had no idea. So, she decided to explain it to him like he was five and let him be bored until she got to the good stuff.

  Not that she had any idea what would be considered the good stuff as far as he was concerned.

  Taking a deep breath, she activated the projector and aimed it at the wall. For something that was meant to be seen less than five inches from her face, it was astonishingly clear blown up like that. There were a dozen malfunction errors showing that she decided to walk them through.

  "All of these are showing something is wrong with the suit," she said. "Mostly, it's saying that the system in the helmet cannot connect with the other systems in the suit. There's no reading from the Oh-two sensors, or the hydraulics, or the atmosphere or, I think you get the picture, right? The system in the helmet regularly checks the status of the systems in the rest of the suit and alerts the wearer when there's an issue by popping up one of these alerts."

  A message from her son popped up and she felt her heart race as she read the first few words before opening the message. Where are you? You still haven't called. I'm going to come looking for you soon.

  "And this is a message from my calendar, reminding me of a personal appointment. Since I don't have access to the heads-up display in the mask or a keyboard that would come with the maintenance system, I have a couple options for replying to it."

  She glanced up at the men who were watching the display and neither showed any indication that they suspected she was lying.

  Pulling up the options to reply, she picked one she'd pre-programmed herself. Talk soon. Love you.

  "Since it's a message to myself about an appointment, I have a few options to respond. I can say I've rescheduled, am attending, cancelled it, or that I need to upload details later. Once I send the response, the computer will save it to that message so I can come back to it and deal with it once I'm at my personal terminal."

  She hit send and hoped it didn't set off any alarms.

  Alvola asked a question and Molly glanced at Mintonar while she cleared more of the status errors.

  "This is all fascinating," Mintonar said. "But how do you get to the other menus?"

  "Ah, that was next. Alright, once all the error messages are out of the way, it takes you to the basic screen, see? From here, you want to go to this picture here, hover the pointer over it until it expands, and it will show you the basic menus. Was there something specific you want to see?"

  Alvola leaned forward and glared at the screen. He spoke rapidly to Mintonar, not quite angry, but certainly agitated.

  "He was able to pull up the videos without doing any of that. They were open when he gave me the helmet and I was able to watch through several of them that seemed to be basic lifesaving procedures. How was he able to get to the videos without going through that screen and how would he get to them from here?"

  "So, the thing about the suit is, it tries to help. It really does. But it's only as good as its programming and it is very often working on incomplete data. One of the things it does is, when it notices that the person wearing the suit is injured, it brings up ways to help. It starts with basic first aid protocols and then proceeds through some of the more advanced ones, because it assumes the person wearing the suit has gotten help. Usually, this happens because the suit recognizes that it's been opened and depressurized. The first videos that you saw are what the program thought would be helpful based on the damage it recognized by running diagnostics on the rest of the suit."

  "Alright, but I was able to watch many more after that, most of which had nothing to do with your injuries."

  "Right," Molly said. "Most of the videos, once they're finished playing, will have options to watch other videos after it's finished. Usually something related but sometimes not at all. If you had the pointer hovering over where the next video option was, it'd read it and play the next video."

  Mintonar nodded. "That makes sense with what I noticed. Very well, how do we get there from this screen?"

  Molly ran through the options in the various menus and showed them how to get to things like the diagnostic reports and the safety videos. "A lot of this is text," she said, scrolling through
some of the other options. "Since you can't read the language and the auto-translate doesn't work very well for text yet, it probably won't mean much to you right now."

  Alvola growled something and Mintonar chuckled.

  She turned and raised an eyebrow at him.

  "He says he's a little busy but will work on a better translating program when he gets a moment."

  Molly laughed. "It's no hurry. Most translator programs suck until you get more data. In fact, I'm sure most of what you're getting right now won't translate to other Earth languages because I use a lot of slang and cultural call backs that don't really have a direct translation but you're able to pick up general meanings from surrounding cues."

  "How did you know that?" Mintonar asked.

  "I'm more than just a pretty face," she said and winked.

  "Much more," he agreed. Whatever else he was going to say was cut off by Alvola asking something else. He was becoming more and more agitated as they went through the options, like he was expecting something she hadn't gotten to yet.

  They went back and forth for a minute before Mintonar turned to her.

  "He says there were other videos. Not the medical ones but there were some with just a woman's face talking to the screen. She had a pleasant voice and it stopped playing while he was taking apart the suit. He didn't break anything but she stopped talking to him."

  Molly's eyebrows drew together. She had a few PSA videos on there but most of those were just a computer-generated woman's voice without any kind of face to go with it.

  She stared at the beginning menu for a minute trying to decide where to even start looking. The activity log was probably her best bet but she dreaded the sheer number of error messages and distress alerts she knew was going to be in it. It also wasn't the easiest thing to find, hidden in the diagnostic menu and if her son hadn't shown her how to do it, she might not have been able to.