“The cruise ship? You do see the problem with that, right?” asked Patav, who typically was nicer to Gail because she didn’t know what she was thinking. Patav moved her eyes across the cramped and rusty space for unnecessary emphasis.
It took several minutes of starts and stops, hemming and hawing, and flip-flopping—testing the length and strength of Lorav’s maturity past adolescence—for Gail to explain the current framework of her family’s expectations.
Gail as captain. Of the ship. This ship.
“No, not you. NOT YOU!” shouted Tarke. She mimed a massive cardiac event and crumpled to the floor. Quaja gave the body a few small kicks, inciting no movement.
The crew observed a moment of silence for their comrade who had fallen quiet.
It was a nice a moment.
It was momentary.
Tarke sat straight up, like an animatronic corpse on hinges. She stared into Frankie’s very soul. “I am not calling her captain, Captain.”
“You will if the captain tells you to,” said Frankie, who wasn’t going to hurt any chance for an attorney’s—any attorney’s—pro bono work.
“...which captain?” asked Tarke, suspiciously...as if it mattered. “I want to be captain, again.”
“This is not a game! Gail’s not it. We are doing this to keep peace with Gail’s family...and, to receive low-cost legal counsel.”
“The kids aren’t going to want to come here for their furlough,” said Gail doubtfully.
“I don’t even want to come here, and I get paid...well, we used to get paid. What’s going on with that?” asked Tarke, distracted for just a moment.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been paid,” mentioned Quaja. At this point, she might have considered the whole idea of compensation a mythical beast.
“Well, first of all—I was in jail,” finished Frankie without a second or third. It seemed fine to both lead and end with that.
“...OK,” said Tarke, which was anything but ‘OK.’
Even the tentacles near Quaja’s shoulders swayed, as if weighing the statement against the fact that payments had not been rendered prior to Frankie’s arrest either.
With the unconvinced silence, it appeared Frankie would need one more point after ‘first of all’. “…And if I don’t get this legal counsel, I might be going back to jail.”
“Well, I don’t think children would be interested in this even if you did pay them,” said Quaja.
“Tell them they can visit Hephaestus and Khufu. I’m sure they’ve cleaned up Hephaestus by now.” They hadn’t. “And Khufu has that water park.” Lorav had a big grin on her face. Mostly, because she wanted to see Tarke suffer as much as they had suffered. For now, she ignored the fact that she’d also be under Gail’s ‘supervision.’
“Yeah, that’s perfect. Say you’ve got a crew member that’s gotten into some legal trouble and you’d appreciate if they’d come bail her out—well, not actually bail her out, since she’s already out, but...you know. Tell them you can show off your ship and the planet you own. Hey?” suggested Patav.
“It’s ‘Eh’,” corrected Frankie.
Patav wasn’t sure what that meant, but felt that Frankie felt she was right.
“Ehh,” remarked Tarke. “Oh, and be sure to say how horrible your crew member, Frankie, is at PAYING EVERYONE!”
THREE
There was no reason the crew should remain on the ship, and that was before it was grounded. Similarly, there were plenty of reasons Frankie shouldn’t visit THE GALAXY’S MOST WANTED at the Trundle In-and-Out, and that was before she went. So the crew went out looking for fun, shopping, and the truth, respectively.
Within the color-muted cubicle, Frankie sat in a universally uncomfortable chair in front of a universally recognized communication device. Frankie wasn’t sure if it was her colorless reflection in the frosted glass or if it was the filtered image of Sossios on the other side of the pane. Frankie had come alone. One, because she didn’t want the others coloring her judgment, or judging her coloring. Two, because visits were costly.
*You have a collect call from Sossios Zadra from the Nurflan Trundle In-and-Out. Please remember this call may originate from any department of the Trundle In-and-Out, including ones that deal with immigrants and criminals. Do you accept the charges?* The nasally voice cracked through the communication line.
“Wait, I thought I already paid for the visit. Now you’re saying I need to pay more in order to actually converse during the visit?”
*Talking is free. Being heard is not.*
The communication device conveniently had a place to insert payment, inconveniently only for Trundle Dollars. One needed to convert their currency into Nurflan currencies, then to the government branch specific currency. The Chuck E. Cheese tax model was popular on this side of the galaxy, where prisons were financial assets and fun was commercialized.
Frankie agreed to the charges and the frosted glass cleared to reveal a Nurflan not much different than Frankie. Sossios Zadra had modified her appearance since they’d last met in what the crew had been calling The Great Trundle Switch-A-Roo. She had taken off the facial jewelry and had donned dark goggles matching Frankie’s goggles.
The sly smile was nothing like Frankie’s smile, though. Through curled lips, she did look a bit like an evil twin.
“It’s a mad, mad world, huh? Weird to see yourself?”
Frankie realized she was staring. “Actually, I’ve been really surprised to see myself…everywhere. I grew up on Earth. There wasn’t a lot of me…anywhere.”
“Did that suck?”
Frankie shrugged. “I guess I wouldn’t know. Did you grow up here? I mean, not here, but…around here.”
“It’s where I’m wanted…or where I’m unwanted. You too.”
“I didn’t do any of those things,” Frankie was quick to say.
“I don’t think any of us have.” A hue as cool as her statement traveled from her collarbone to her cheeks as she spoke. This same color seemed to travel on the words, landing like a glowing ear worm on Frankie’s patina. The rusty color of distrust fought the color change, and mostly won out, but the seed had been planted. Frankie refused to ask, but Sossios told anyway.
“There’s more than you and me. I don’t know how many, but they say I’ve escaped three times as THE GALAXY’S MOST WANTED. No way. I think they’ve caught…and maybe done away with…three of us so far. It’s how they can keep hunting us.”
This was starting to sound like the plot to one of Tarke’s absurd science fiction shows. Frankie wondered if it was. Maybe she should have paid more attention to Tarke’s weekly recap and commentary of…whatever was the flavor of the week. Given their DNA, Frankie felt she should be able to tell if Sossios was lying. Individual lies were difficult to ascertain given the blanket level of distrust Frankie felt. She wasn’t sure if it was because she was a stranger, because she was wanted for the galaxy’s worst crimes, or because her brain couldn’t process a doppelgänger as something other than deception.
Sossios raised her eyebrows and tilted her head as if prodding Frankie to connect the dots. After a moment, she gave up. “We’re clones. You, me, three others at least—we’re clones.”
“Clones of what? Who? Do you have proof?” Frankie hadn’t even wrapped her head around a second, much less others. She heard a disbelieving, sarcastic voice in the back of her head—which sounded a lot like Tarke’s voice: Of course she wants you to think there’s others, because then she could be innocent. Also, I saw this TV show….
“You need to go to Calligan Reincarnation Services. It’s here, in town. They’ll have proof. Numbers.”
“That’s one of the places you broke into, right?” Frankie had wondered what there was to steal at a place like that—bodies? Second-hand caskets? “I’m sorry if that’s true, but my family adopted me from Trundle In-and-Out. If anyone’s a clone, it’s you.”
“You are from Earth, aren’t you? It doesn’t even cross your mind that you�
��re not the special one.” Sossios laughed, and Frankie wondered if that was what she sounded like when she laughed. She didn’t like it. “Go check out the adoption records yourself. I’m sure you’ll find neither of us is the chosen.”
Frankie felt a twinge of pity. Maybe Sossios was jealous, but this still didn’t make sense. “Then why this evil twin defense? If you’re a clone, I’m a clone—If this cloning-thing is true, why don’t you explain it to the court?”
“You don’t know anything about cloning, do you?”
“Pretend this is a new concept that you’re introducing to someone well into a series of adventures that did not include cloning,” Frankie requested confidently.
If Sossios found that strange, she didn’t color that way. Perhaps it was easiest to just get on with it. “Cloning is the process of producing individuals with identical—”
“No. Pretend they have a grasp of basic science. Jeez.”
“Jeez?”
Frankie shook her head. “It’s a thing.”
Oddly, Sossios seemed to find that strange. Frankie noticed a brief movement of the goggles she recognized as a single eyebrow rising, because she recognized herself in that moment.
“In this galaxy, cloning is legal only if all parties’ intentions are legal. Calligan Reincarnation Services regularly clones customers so that they can live another lifetime from start to finish.”
“Why would they—?”
“You can’t ask questions if we’re ever going to get through this.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“We were cloned illegally, because the intentions were illegal. Calligan, Nurflan government, the Planetary Owners Association—” Frankie winced. “—do not want this getting out.”
“You really haven’t explained why. There’s billions of galaxies and a near google of people. So what if a few of us are the same?” Frankie felt herself getting defensive with just the mention of a POA.
“You keep interrupting. Jeez, is that right? Don’t answer. Look, what you really need to know is The Anti-Cloning Law for Experimentation of Sentient Beings went into effect ten years before our clonings. Calligan Reincarnation Services broke intergalactic law when they placed us on different worlds. You are an experiment, and a pretty boring one too, I might add.”
“Isn’t that also an insult to you?” asked Frankie. Her skin muted almost imperceptibly.
Frankie had quickly grown tired of her own company. Great minds think alike. She’d need Tarke to balance it out.
FOUR
Tarke bounded up to the entrance of the Trundle In-and-Out Processing Center for Immigration, Adoptions, and Extraditions, creating a ripple of color flashes on the interactive stairs.
Once she reached the top, Tarke spun around to admire her effect. “See, that’s how I imagine it is every time I walk.”
Frankie didn’t doubt it for a second. Her giggle was choked out by the heaviness of the opalescent building. While she had been previously held and rescued from the place, she’d never used the main entrance, nor had she known all types of sentient trafficking for the planet was funneled through the same processing center—beings seeking or losing permissions and the grand show of opportunity.
Frankie’s worry did not subside inside the lobby, which was also a giant color wheel-like genealogical display. Inside the color wheel, Frankie shrank. It was like the ancestors of her family tree, the whole planet, was looking down at her in a giant paint swatch prism of funny mirrors. Frankie’s primary patina was somewhere in the magenta range.
“Quick! Put your hand in here!” Tarke motioned at the barcode-like scanner in the middle of the display.
“No, what if it says I’m the Galaxy’s Most Wanted? What if they arrest me?”
“It’s just a kids’ activity—you know, interaction!”
“I don’t want to interact,” said Frankie with her teeth gritted under the watchful eyes of the spackling of mid-morning Nurflans. “Everyone is staring.”
“Oh Manfloon’s Appendix—” grumbled Tarke. Her voice got louder, bouncing off the walls of the circular lobby and the color wheel display. “Yes, I am getting a haircut. Cool it, Parental Figure.”
This seemed to shake the least curious of the lobby’s occupants. They observed more surreptitiously.
“Sorry, I just get so many looks,” said Tarke with a wink, as she had apparently taken the hint about the social issues surrounding her. A first for the woman. Then more loudly she said, “You know, for something across the street from the spaceport named ‘Trundle In-and-Out,’ I was expecting something with a bit more hospitality.”
While Frankie was appreciative of the gesture, there was simply no way she was going to make a public reveal of her ancestry, when she did not know it herself. Frankie deliberately walked to the customer service desk.
“Maybe they have a take-home test,” muttered Tarke. She hurried to keep behind Frankie, in case she decided to turn back around.
At first it appeared that the customer service desk was opalescent like the exterior of the building, but upon closer inspection, the material was clear and refracting the colors of the person behind the counter. Projecting a friendly customer service vibe was taken to the next level as Frankie approached, and the attendant and its desk pulsed a trustworthy-bank blue.
A pinkish mauve color seeped into the desk as reflected from its attendant’s reaction to being approached by someone who looked exactly like—or was exactly THE GALAXY’S MOST WANTED. Still, customer service protocols required attendants to not assume, but to listen to their customers.
With a small cough, the telling color receded. “Hello, I’m Katie. How may I help you today?”
“Um yes, my name is Farkhanix Chakrabarti. I am looking for my adoption papers. I was… adopted… to Franklin and Saanvi Chakrabarti.”
“Sure, I’ll be happy to get the documents you need. First, we’ll need a DNA sample.”
“It’s weird that it’s called DNA here, right? I mean, what’re the odds?” Tarke placed an elbow on the desk and rested her head on her paw, which required her to more than double over. She had trouble remaining erect and unsupported for any period of time. Also, she was flirting.
Katie took her customer service job seriously. “Is it weird? I don’t know, but I can research the entomology of it and get back to you.”
“Etymology, right?”
“No. Would you like me to research for you?”
“Hm, No, that’s OK. It was just an observation,” Tarke said as she fiddled with a green banker’s lamp on the desk. Tarke didn’t mention its probability of coexistence.
“Why do you need DNA? Can’t you just look up my parents? I mean, my adoptive parents.”
“Unfortunately, our policies require us to confirm identities of parties prior to sharing information,” she said with an apologetic hue.
“All right… Where do I go for that?”
“We can use the color kiosk,” said the woman, coming out from behind the desk, which revealed itself to be dull, translucent polystyrene.
The woman escorted Frankie and Tarke back into the central display and the color matcher. Tarke let out a couple of skips in her walk, trying to distribute her excitement in small subtle moves. Frankie was going to use the color matcher.
The color matcher was a sleek and rounded machine, the size of which could fit a couple of Nurflans, but not more than that. The woman pressed a hand on the display, which had turned a highly specific green. The machine read the color and authorized access. As she tapped with two fingers in a pattern, the machine’s scanner changed configuration in preparation to accept the DNA sample.
“OK, place your hand underneath here.”
Frankie placed her hand in the tray under the scanner device. Immediately, a small black band popped out and restrained Frankie’s wrist. By instinct, Frankie tried to pull away, but it was too late. The machine began its process of pricking her hand three times. Before Frankie could realize the three taps were
actual punctures, the device had retracted into the machine and she was released.
“What was that for?!” she asked, flashing bright red.
Katie remained a calm blue. “It’s to keep you from pulling away like you tried to do.”
Frankie considered debating policies Katie couldn’t change. Thankfully, the screen flashed her results, saving everyone the self-righteous rigmarole.
“DNA MATCH”
“You ARE the father!” shouted Tarke, drawing a look from another receptionist and a few aliens in custody on the far side of the lobby. She beamed at them as if she’d like for them to join the celebration.
One alien began clapping.
“Jer-EE! Jer-EE! Jer-EE!” shouted someone.
Tarke stood up to spot the being who knew the classic Earth television show in which its host brought some of the most pressing family drama to light by means of interviews, group discussion, and audience feedback. The long-running franchise outlasted its aging host, whose body parts were gradually replaced by wax body parts. The show continued like this until one alien knocked his head off the wax statue with her handbag after swinging and missing her brother’s half-sister who had kidnapped a baby she had surrogated and raised on a beet farm. At that point, Jerry’s remaining body parts retired from the show. He did voice-over for the next season, but most people thought he was just phoning it in. A worse rumor was that the audio had been clipped from previous shows. The season after that, the show was hosted by a random number generator hidden by a cardboard cutout which presented the paternity and lie detector test results.
No, the alien who had shouted ‘Jerry!’ had not meant that Jerry, nor was he or she even looking at Tarke. She followed the alien’s gaze to the entrance where Jerry, their spheroid lemony frenemy, had just walked in. Tarke gave her signature wave—a tousle of her hair and sly eyes over her shoulder. Jerry waved in a short, quick motion before leaving the lobby through another door.
The crew were still unsure of Jerry’s involvement in the whole thing, but it seemed prudent to acknowledge her prior to any later involvement she might have with them or other story lines. That was all they had time for, though. Still more pressing was the possible reveal of Frankie’s family history, and also the whole not-going-to-prison thing, so rather than pursue the yellow creature, Frankie and Tarke followed Katie back to her desk.
Atalan Adventure Pack: Books 4-6 Page 14
