Alienation

by S E Anderson

  "Manhole?" I asked childishly.

  "Sally. We need to talk."

  "I know."

  "You do?"

  I fell to the ground, trying to catch my breath. The snow seeped through my jeans, making my butt cold and wet, but I was too tired to care. Plus, it was soothing in a way. I breathed in the fresh air.

  "We stopped the ICP." I reached to feel my head. "Woah."

  "Yeah." He crouched in front of me. "We did it, all thanks to you."

  "Don't patronize me, Zander," I snapped. "This was all for nothing. We did nothing. The Theosians and the Downdwellers are still stuck, the mob is still doing its thing, and the mayor is still having galas while everyone below him is struggling to get by. I have no idea if Sekai is okay. I think I killed someone—two people. Maybe even more. Innocent people. My hands."

  I lifted them up in front of my face. They were shaking. The dried tears on my face were freezing fast in the cold.

  "You know"—Zander reached up to take my hands in his, clasping warm skin around them as a shield—"you told me your mission was to take out the robots so the Downdwellers could have a small place in society. Am I right?"

  "Yeah, but that wasn't going to work. And the mob never intended for it to do anything, either. It was all for money. And in the end, it was all part of what the ICP had been planning."

  "Yeah, but we stopped the ICP," he said, squeezing my hands tighter. "And we ended up getting rid of all the robots in the process. Now everyone can go back to normal. You did good today, Sally, but that's not what I want to talk about."

  "Is it the fact we're a bit far from my house?" I said, my teeth chattering now. "We're gonna have to walk for a bit—in the cold."

  I was not looking forward to standing in the freezing weather in my t-shirt. My wet t-shirt. And my wet shoes. And my sore ass and bruised skin.

  "Where exactly are we?" I asked, "Russia? Alaska? The North Pole?"

  "Sally, listen." Something in his tone told me this was no joke. Far from it. He clutched my hands to stop them from shivering. Blayde had backed away, looking off into the white wilderness, silent.

  "What?" I asked, suddenly very worried.

  "I've failed you on so many counts,” he said. “I promised to keep you safe, and I lost you. I promised to protect you, and you ended up fighting a killer AI. And now, Sally, I don't think we'll be able to walk back to your home."

  "Get to the point, Zander."

  "We're not just a continent away from your house. We're a few solar systems off."

  "What?" I asked, fear rising.

  "I didn't have time to jump back to Earth. Finding the coordinates takes time, and with the explosion imminent ... We missed Earth, Sally."

  "But you can take me back, right? One planet out of the way shouldn't be too much of a problem."

  He shook his head. "It's impossible to find a planet after jumping away twice. I explained that at our first encounter, remember? When I jump from point A to point B, I can either go back to A or on to C. But when I reach C, it's D or B. Understand?" He paused. "I jumped from Earth to Da-Duhui. But now we're here, and I don't have the coordinates for your planet."

  "But ... the Killians. You used their thoughts to take them home, right?"

  "They're empaths. It's like I lent them the car, but they did the driving. Humans don't have that sense."

  "So, you're saying ...?"

  "I can't ever bring you back, Sally. I'm sorry. I can’t sense Earth. I can’t find it. I lost the way home. "

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Well, this sucks

  When you find a manhole in the middle of an icy nowhere, chances are you might have stumbled upon an exclusive five-star hotel that's looking for clients.

  Poor advertising made the hotel hit a slump, and the slump had made the advertising even poorer. When we showed up, climbing through their back entrance and shivering with the cold—well, I was the one doing the shivering; Zander and Blayde seemed comfortable—the first thing the staff did was ask if the royal suite would be enough. All free of charge if we could write them a review on the Alliance's version of Yelp.

  I think it was called "Shouting and Screaming," but the translation was a little hard to understand. Plus, I didn't really care.

  Which is how I ended up clean and bandaged on a plush bed larger than my living room. The window looked out upon the underwater glory of this icy world. Fish in thousands of different colors swam outside, some pushing the boundaries of what you might call “fish.” Two large squid-like creatures swam up to my window and stared in at me, their eight large, purple eyes wide.

  "What kind of creature is that?" one of the squids asked the other. I pretended not to notice them.

  "I do not know," the other replied, "but it's so ... colorful. It's not doing anything though. Come on, honey, it's a little boring."

  I was too tired to even wonder what the hell that had been. I arranged my pillows—I had more than I could count—into a comfy nest and let myself fall back against them. I wanted to sleep, but my head was swimming too fast for me to relax.

  There was a knock on my door. I didn't want to see anyone, not unless it was Marcy. I certainly didn't want to see their faces.

  "Sally, come on," Zander pleaded. "You're going to have to let me in eventually."

  "It's not locked," I said, my voice low. Somehow, he heard me, and peeked his head around the door. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to listen to anything you say. It just means I'm too lazy to get up and figure out how to lock it."

  Zander said nothing. He let himself in and closed the door behind him, all quiet and gentle. I turned away, gazing out the window again. The squids were gone now, but a fish that looked like Elvis gave me a glare. I turned away.

  "I owe you an explanation," said Zander. I felt him sit on the end of the bed. "We haven't been totally truthful with you."

  "Sorry about that," said a female voice.

  Blayde was here too? Dammit. But then again, I had a feeling Blayde had been more truthful with me than Zander ever had. She barely spoke to me, but when she did, she was so candid it usually hurt.

  "We haven't told you the whole story," she said, "and Zander and I have talked, and we think you have a right to know."

  "Oh, you do, do you?" I snapped. I sat up in the bed, which was not a smart idea. Every muscle in my body screamed its hatred of me. Recovery would be a bitch.

  "Yeah, we do."

  "Like why the fuck you think you can police the universe?" I spat. "Or maybe why you can't fucking die? It's been two years since I watched the two of you get shot, and still—still—I have no idea what's going on. I never signed up for this. I wouldn't have agreed to come if you had told me the truth."

  "We'll answer everything," Zander said.

  Looking at the two of them sitting on the end of my bed and watching me with pitiful eyes, they looked like parents about to tell their child the dog was dead or that they were getting a divorce.

  Either one of those would feel better right now.

  "Then start with who you are—who you really are."

  Zander sighed, looking at Blayde for support. She shook her head.

  "We don't know," she said.

  "The fuck? I thought you said you were going to be honest with me. How can you not know who you are?"

  "Listen, kid," Blayde said, her face twisting into something demonic before a touch from Zander brought her back. "We really don't know. We probably did, at one point, but not anymore. Perks of being immortal? You live a long time. A really long time. Neither of us have any idea how we started out. We forget memories every day."

  "No family," Zander added. "No home planet. No home. At all. Were we born the way we are? Were we created? If so, by whom? The point is: We don't even know where we got our names from. We simply exist, but we're trying to find out."

  "And how do you do that?"

  "The journal."

  "The journal," Blayde agreed, pulling the small red book from ins
ide her breast pocket. All those months it had been in my house, and I had never once opened it. "I've had it for as long as I can remember. Longer, actually. But it doesn't document our beginnings. We're hoping some of the older entries can bring us closer to the truth, but so far, we haven't had much luck."

  "Not when we have to travel blind in the first place, and every jump can put years between us and our last planet. We don't even know if our homeworld is still there."

  "And the other Zander and Blayde? The criminals the Alliance seems to hate? And the myths? Are they related to you?"

  "Pretty sure they are," Blayde muttered.

  "The Alliance and us have an ... on again off again relationship," Zander explained. "We helped them out when they were just forming. Fought in a few wars with them, or for them. Then they started to forget about us. Recently—and by recently, I mean a few centuries ago—they accused us of trying to take them down or something. You know how it is. We've been their scapegoats for a while. That's why we try not to get on their radar. They'll probably pin the ICP incident on us."

  "Seriously? You two have been around the block a few times."

  "That's an understatement." Zander chuckled.

  I leaned forward. I was mad, fuming even. But they were answering my questions for once. And boy, the questions had been piling up. I crossed my arms over my chest.

  "Are you two, um, space vampires?"

  "Come again?" said Zander. Blayde laughed as Zander continued to look confused and a little dejected.

  "Vampires. From space. Are you two vampires?"

  "What makes you ask that?"

  "You know, immortal. Super-fast. Strong. And no pulse, right? You guys are smart. Scary."

  "We don't drink blood, Sally," said Zander. "And you've seen me eat garlic bread so many times."

  "Are you forgetting the fact that we’ve walked around in sunlight together, too?" Blayde scoffed. "But, hey, maybe the stories come from somewhere, right?"

  "Maybe.” Zander shrugged.

  "And I'm not so sure about the intelligence thing, not for Zander anyway."

  "Oy!"

  "In any case, Sally," said Blayde, "there's a lot we have no answers to. Like how we don't age, but our hair still grows and our nails have shit upkeep. Or the limits to our jumping. We don’t have all the answers, but from now on, we are fully transparent with you. If we don't give you an answer, it's because we don't have one."

  "So you're just ... lost," I said. "You're looking for your home."

  "But we try to help out the universe where we can along the way," said Zander. "We picked up some skills over the years. We try to keep balance when we can, since we can."

  "Is it like that everywhere you go?" I shuddered. "Earth. Da-Duhui. Always going to shit."

  "Not everywhere," Blayde replied. "Sometimes things are calm. Nice. Beautiful. Sometimes we come to planets where no one has been before. We stand and look at views no one will ever see. Being immortal has its perks. That and never having to worry about parking."

  No one said anything for a little while. I stared at my toes, which were different shades of blue. There wasn't much of my skin that was my usual color anymore. Zander stared too, and I curled my toes away, slipping them under a pillow.

  "All this tension is making me thirsty," Blayde said. "I'm going to the bar. You two are free to join me."

  She disappeared, and I shook my head. I was tired of all this weirdness. All I wanted was to go home and have some normalcy. Netflix and pizza would be enough.

  No. Not pizza. Not for a long time. Netflix and some ice cream would be best.

  "Do you want to go for a walk?" Zander offered.

  "Where?"

  "Anywhere." He smiled, extending a hand. "The hotel is huge, and no one is here but us. Let's go to the observation deck."

  Walking sucked, but it was the right decision. I needed to stretch my legs if I wanted to walk normally again. I wrapped a hand around his arm for stability and shuffled out of the suite wearing my fluffy robe from the spa and slippers that felt like a cloud.

  The observation deck was empty, as expected. It was just a large room with a huge window overlooking an underwater rock formation with alien algae and coral growing in all the colors of the rainbow. Fishlike creatures swam around, all with more eyes than the spiders back home. I didn't realize my hands and face were against the glass until I felt my nose squashing and pulled it back.

  "It's beautiful," I said, quietly to myself.

  "Harold." The squid thing from earlier swam to her companion. "That creature is hitting on me."

  "I don't think it is, darling," he said. "They're not intelligent enough to attempt language. Oh, a male!"

  The squid swam closer, eager to take us in. They looked happy that we were here.

  "Hey, you two, do something!" the first one said, tapping on the glass with a tentacle. It had a sharp, silvery tip, like a talon. It made a sharp rasp when he knocked it against the window.

  "Mate! Mate! Mate!" the one called Harold cheered. I stepped back, my hands trembling. I felt my mouth go open in shock and pushed my jaw shut.

  "We're trying to have a serious conversation here." Zander glared at them, a look that made them recoil. "Don't make me come out there."

  "Shit," Harold swam away. "Now that was unsettling."

  "He said it," I agreed, keeping up the whole passive-aggressive attitude to piss Zander off. "What the hell was that?"

  "Oh, the hotel is a zoo. Don't look shocked; it works out great for everyone. People get a beautiful hotel at an inexpensive rate. Locals get a piece of the universe and can see a whole slew of different races. It works out for fetishes on both sides."

  "Gross," I said.

  "It's a big universe, Sally." He gave me a sly smirk. "People are into a whole lot of things. You want to sit down?"

  He said this casually, like we were talking about the weather. Like I wasn't mad at him for getting me lost in that very big universe of his. The room had a few white couches scattered about along with a bar against the back wall that didn't have anyone working it. We were alone.

  Except maybe for the fish.

  "And we can understand them?"

  "The translator chip I got you is top-of-the-line," he said. "It works off brainwaves rather than a saved repertoire of different words. Lets you understand languages even from races the creators of the chip hadn't even heard of. You can pretty much understand anyone in the universe, even some very smart cows."

  "Cows?" I scoffed. "Seriously? I talked to a few cats and dogs during our hiatus. Didn't understand them and they didn't understand me."

  "Cats and cows are not on the same level."

  We sat there together for a little while, watching the fish swim by. They avoided us now, like Zander and I were scaring them away. Or maybe it was just him.

  "You lied to me about Matt," he said calmly, breaking the silence.

  "You lied to me about a lot of things."

  "I had a reason. Why did you?" He was sad, I realized. Actually sad. "Matt was my friend too."

  I watched a courageous little fish swim up to the window, tap it with a fin and turn around, swimming back. His entire rear looked exactly like his front, twelve eyes and all. "I didn't want to burden you. I wanted you to be happy. I didn't want his death hanging over us."

  "He was my friend, though."

  "If it makes you feel better, he thought you were trying to sleep with me and was weirdly jealous about our relationship. I don’t think he was your friend."

  "Why would that make me feel any better?"

  "I don't know." I looked away from the fish and down at my white slippers. "His death really hurt. You leaving hurt. I didn't think you'd come back, and I was about ready to give up."

  "I made a promise, didn't I?"

  "You promised a lot of things. You said you would keep me safe. You said you would bring me home. You said we were only doing recon, and then you blew up my office."

  “I’m sorry,
” he said, his voice low, almost a whisper.

  “Matt was a good man,” I said, “and now he’s dead. I lost a relationship. I lost a future.”

  “No, you didn’t. You two would never have lasted. You said it yourself. He was possessive and controlling. It wasn’t healthy. Death has that strange way of ironing out the wrinkles, doesn’t it? Suddenly only the good remains, all the bumps in the relationship smoothed out.”

  “Matt was a good man,” I snapped.

  “He was, but you can’t stay stuck in this idea that everything would have been perfect if he survived. Matt was a vainglorious control freak, and he only turned out to be a semi-decent human being at the end. That kind of regret will only fester. Trust me.”

  “Trust you? Trust you? After everything you put me through? Nice day out, my ass.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just….”

  He was sputtering, at a loss for words. Glaring at him probably wasn’t helping. He paused for a long time, staring anywhere but at me. This tall, confident man who had just saved the Alliance from a robot uprising was now sitting, mortified, by me.

  “I’m so sorry, Sally.” His voice barely over a whisper. “I was so scared. Seeing you like that, after I promised to keep you safe, to give you a nice night. I panicked, and I never panic. I panicked and I dropped you. I failed you.”

  And it went silent again.

  I fingered the pendant on the cord around my neck, the tiny jar of bright light that lived on my chest. Was Tam all right? Martha? Kun? Was last night a victory or a defeat for them? Would anything get better?

  Or had I made things worse?

  All my life, I had lived with this hole in my chest. An emptiness I called astrolust, a desperate need to go up there, into space, into the universe. Then maybe I would feel complete.

  But now I was here, and the more space I was shoving into my chest, the more was spilling right back out. I felt as empty now as I did before I left Earth.