She slithered into the water and began to make her way to Serenity. Two minutes later her little ship crumbled upon itself – leaving nothing more than a slag of unrecognizable metal.
Jynx passed a handful of alligators that looked at her with interest. She opened her mouth wide letting them know she was in no mood for any hijinks. The swamp things took one look at the giant snake and swam off . . . putting as much distance between them and it as they could. “Grrrrrrr,” growled the Shamie in satisfaction . . . a sound that was shocking coming from a snake.
*****
Zack’s House
Sylvia had called Zack and invited herself over. Don’t forget, he and Zeke lived next door to Grammy. When she got there, it was her boyfriend’s identical twin that opened the door.
“Hey, Syl,” and he looked behind her as if expecting to see his on-again, off-again girlfriend. “Egg still recovering from her near death experience?”
“Sorry Zeke. She and Ezra are trying to figure out what went wrong. He gave her the plane and did all the maintenance on it . . . so he feels really responsible.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. But she’s okay, right?”
He was being too serious so she responded with, “She’s Egg . . . we both know she’s never going to be okay. She’s too much of a whacko for that to ever happen.”
It worked and the boy . . . well, he was nineteen so let’s call him a young man . . . laughed. “You got that right. Maybe in a few days when this all settles down, we could double date?”
“I promise you that we will.” If Egg was going to Aerianna for gosh knew how long, Sylvia would insist she end it with Zeke as gently as she could. He deserved that much.
“That’s great. Tell her I can’t wait, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Hey, dummy, invite her inside,” came a voice from somewhere behind Zeke.
“What? Oh, sorry. Come in, Syl.” He stepped aside and the girl walked in and up to her boyfriend and gave him a quick peck on the lips.
“Everything okay with Flying Girl?” he asked.
For a moment, Sylvia was taken aback . . . then she realized he was referring to the plane. “Flying Girl lies somewhere in the Badlands broken into a billion little pieces. But her pilot is fine.”
“You know what’s weird,” he said. “Way back when we first moved here . . . maybe nine years ago . . . my ugly brother wrote a story called the Adventures of Flying Girl. Supposedly it was about Egg.”
“Hey, you’re right,” answered Zeke. “I totally forgot about that. Um . . . she had a flying suit and somehow took me to another planet where we met a dragon named . . . um, oh yeah . . . named Storm. We had to save a body in a coffin.” He stopped to collect his thoughts. “Never mind. It was stupid when I wrote . . . and now it’s just embarrassing to remember it.”
Sylvia fought hard not to react. Egg had told her about the story Zeke had written in the hour after Egg had returned him from Aerianna. He had helped her rescue Dazzle’s body from the Crystal Mountain. That was all the time he had before the magic of the suit made him forget everything. “Well, I think it’s very imaginative. Maybe you’ll let me read it sometime?”
“Can’t. I threw it out years ago.”
“Shame.”
“Enough, you two. Come on Syl . . . we can go up to my room. What exactly is this project you want help with?”
“I want to see if we can determine the number of times in a single day that someone thinks they saw a UFO or an alien . . . by country.”
“Why?”
“It’s a special project for a statistical psychometrics course I’m going to take at Harvard.”
“And people call me a nerd.”
“Don’t feel bad . . . at least you’re cute.”
*****
The Lake
“Gosh, I haven’t been here in years.”
“It’s perfect . . . thank Grammy again for thinking about my well-being.”
“Ha . . . she’s probably already counting the days until she becomes an honorary great grandmother. Which reminds me . . . how long do serpents take to make baby serpents?”
“The usual . . . about twenty-six months.”
“Yikes. That’s a long time compared to humans.”
“Why should that surprise you? Serpents are so much more complex than you flat-footed, long-leggedy, bipedal beasties.”
Egg laughed at her friend. “I hope your kids have your sense of humor.”
“Don’t forget my good looks.”
“Never.”
*****
Zack’s House, 2 Hours Later
Zack was really good at computers . . . almost too good. He could hack into any network, anywhere in the world.
“You haven’t done anything illegal, have you?”
“Um . . . not really.”
“Zack!”
“I didn’t disrupt anyone’s computer and I didn’t steal any secret information. All I did was find that one report. It wasn’t classified.”
The report was from the U.S. military. It reported a likely UFO had landed in Area 51. There was no additional information.
“Well, thank you. But don’t you ever dare do something stupid . . . promise me.”
“Define stupid.”
“Stupid means getting yourself into trouble. Promise me,” she demanded.
“Does that mean you love me?”
“It means . . . there is a possibility . . . perhaps a strong probability . . . that sometime in the foreseeable future my feeling for you could . . . and I emphasize the word could . . . morph into feelings that others may consider, if they were to compare it to standard definitions or relative to various literature . . . stronger than ‘like’ . . . perhaps even approaching a form of affection that might, or might not, have implications for a long term relationship of a more permanent nature.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Such a nerd,” but she gave him a kiss anyway.
*****
Grammy’s House
Sylvia returned to Grammy’s house with her tidbit of information. “Can you believe it . . . Area 51 claims a UFO landed there. What are the odds?”
“If it happened, then one hundred percent,” teased Ezra. Syl shook her head in exasperation.
“That’s great work,” said Egg more reasonably. “That boyfriend of yours is good.”
“Speaking of which . . . I promised Zeke we would double date when things settle down.”
“Why?”
“Because you need to break it off with him . . . and do it without crushing the life out of his soul. He deserves better than that. Don’t you dare forget that without his help you would never have rescued Dazzle’s body. In fact, he should be in Aerianna’s history books as a hero. I’m going to talk to Meggy about that.”
Egg looked contrite. “Maybe we should take them there . . . to meet Dazzle.”
Syl wasn’t sure if her friend was kidding. “I, for one, think that’s a great idea.”
“What’s a great idea?” asked Grammy as she entered the house with Tee’ka.
“I was just saying . . .” but she stopped when she saw her sister. “Tee . . . what happened to your hair?”
Grammy answered first . . . to make sure that her granddaughter didn’t say something unintentionally hurtful. “Do you love it as much as I do?” she asked while staring at Egg then Sylvia. “Tee’ka had never been to a beauty salon so I took her. She thumbed through one of those celebrity magazines – which by the way was totally fascinating to her – and found this style. Well, I agreed with her that it was absolutely darling and she should get it. And, well . . . she did.”
“I . . . um, I think it’s so cute on you. Nice going, Tee.”
“Thank you. I just love the curls and the color and everything. Sorry I didn’t get one like yours.”
“Don’t be silly. Hairstyles are very personal . . . you should always get what you want and not what someone else thinks you should.”<
br />
“Tee,” added Sylvia. “Stay away from my boyfriend. One look at the new you and he’ll fall hopelessly in love.”
The poor girl had no idea her friend was teasing . . . so she blushed a scarlet red. “I would never do that. If he comes over, I’ll hide . . . I promise.”
The others laughed good-naturedly and Grammy explained that Sylvia was just giving her a compliment.
“Oh,” she replied. A moment later, she said, “How does a girl go about getting a boyfriend? I think I would like to have one.”
“All in good time, dear. Those things just sort of happen. However, the more boys . . . I mean young men . . . you meet, the greater the chance you will fall in love.”
“How will I know?”
“I promise you, you’ll know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When you meet this special someone, you’ll find him endlessly fascinating and it’ll hurt to be away from him. You’ll think and dream about this person constantly and find it difficult to concentrate on anything else. When you hold hands or hug or . . . at some point when it becomes appropriate . . . you kiss, a feeling of warmth and comfort is palpable. Finally, when you are together, you feel that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” Grammy finished and Ezra tried very hard not to smile.
“Sorry, I still don’t understand.”
“Let me try,” offered Sylvia. “Your life, with this person in it, seems complete. You bring out the best in him and he does the same for you. When you’re together, the day seems a little brighter, a little warmer. When you’re separated, in your heart you know that he’s missing and it makes the day less cheerful.”
“Tee,” interrupted Egg. “Think about your life as a hostess compared to it now as a Hameggattic Sister. What’s the difference?”
“Before I was alone and my life didn’t have a purpose that satisfied me. Now, I have all of you – friends and sisters. You care for me and I care for you. I would do anything for each of you and I know you would do the same for me. And with the sisterhood reinstated, I . . . we . . . can do things for others that makes me very proud. My life is so much more complete.’
“That’s what love is. The only difference is when it’s with a boy, you get to kiss him and he gets to kiss you.”
“Egg . . .” began Sylvia who thought that explanation was a little shallow. But Ezra cut her off.
“Excuse me ladies . . . not to be a wet blanket, but there are some missing young women that need our help. To that end, Egg and I are confident that we’ve come up with a landing place for one of the pods.”
“Was it Area 51?”
“No. We think this one landed in southern Florida. That would be consistent with Soo ending up in the Gulf.”
“What about the other two pods?”
“Still working on it. The good news is that if we assume the Area 51 is the location of one of your sisters, we can use that data point to find the next site.”
“Ezra, should I teleport to Florida and rent a plane? I could map out a flight plan that would cover a lot of ground.”
“To what end?”
“I’ll use my communications crystal to try and contact whoever landed there. I’ll be much closer so there won’t be as much interference.”
“That could take weeks. Besides, it’s late afternoon back east. Let’s think about it tonight and we’ll implement whatever plan we come up with the first thing in the morning.
Chapter 6 – They Came From Outer Space
The Everglades that Same Day
Sometimes having street smarts is better than being a genius. No one who ever met Serenity could doubt the towering intellect that she possessed. But, most of it was based on theory. Case in point, she had designed the escape pods without ever having the need or the experience of using one. She gave them the cloaking device, an autopilot so they could land themselves, artificial intelligence so they could do what was necessary to keep the person inside safe . . . and a number of other features including the self-destruct mechanism so the technology wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.
Unfortunately, she left out a few things.
As she sat in her just-retrieved wheelchair, she looked longingly at the last pod that was about to implode. She shook her head sadly, as she watched it crumble into a heap of useless metal. “Idiot,” she said to herself. “What was I thinking?”
Looking around at the totally uninviting surroundings, she felt a stab of panic . . . not an emotion she often had. It was getting late in the day and the shadows were already forcing out the sunlight. In case you didn’t know it, a scary looking swamp looks down right menacing, as it gets darker.
It would have been so much better if she could have used the pods as temporary housing for her and Jynx. Safe, dry, protected from creepy-crawly – not to mention slithering – creatures and buzzing biting insects.
Sadly, her design never considered this particular situation. Once a pod was assigned to a person (or a Shamie or a wheelchair), only that person could turn off the self-destruct system. So, when Jynx and she left their respective pods to go fetch her wheelchair, they both imploded. Now, when she removed the chair, this last pod did the same thing.
And the other thing she didn’t consider in her design was the ability for the pods to maneuver once they landed. If she had, they could have flown them to a less dangerous place.
Oh well . . . it was what it was. At least she had added the thrusters to her chair so she could hover over the swampy muck.
“Jynx, I don’t want you walking or swimming in the water. At this time of day, some of the creatures will be looking for their evening meal. Can you shift into a flying animal?”
“Grrrrrrr.”
“Great. But it needs to be something that can fly relatively slowly. Hang on a second,” and she tapped at her computer screens until she found what she wanted. “Can you do this one?”
“Grrrrrr,” and the Shamie shifted into an incredibly large . . .
She flapped he wings to get the feel of them then touched down gently on the water for a quick drink.
“Jynxie, I wouldn’t do that. Something in the water might find you too irresistible to ignore.”
The butterfly growled and burped . . . then flew a few feet above the swamp.
“Okay, let’s go find someplace relatively safe. Stay close . . . it’s getting dark fast.”
“Grrrrrrr.”
*****
Area 51
The pod came down in the desert about two miles from the center of the top-secret base. Whoever was in command had dispatched about a hundred soldiers, a dozen tanks and a small army of scientists, each carrying an armful of instrumentation.
The first thing they did was to send in little robots to measure any radioactivity.
Satisfied, they instructed the robots to tap on the pod . . . just in case there was some kind of force field or other protective systems. Nothing happened.
Next, four of the scientists, followed by six armed guards, approached. One of the men took out a megaphone and said, “We mean you no harm.” Spirit, of course, could understand them since she had a translation crystal. Her first reaction was to giggle . . . a hundred soldiers each carrying weapons and a dozen armored vehicles each carrying cannons – all aimed at her. She wondered what they would have sent if they did intend to harm her.
“Maybe she doesn’t speak English,” suggested one scientist.
“I know a little Spanish,” offered another.
“Maybe we should just show her some mathematical equations . . . something universal that she’ll probably understand.”
Spirit shook her head . . . it was obvious these people had never encountered aliens before and, so far, their efforts were embarrassing.
“I don’t wish to talk to you. Please go away,” she said telepathically.
“Holy moly . . . did you hear that?”
“The pilot was right. She is telepathic.”
“You think she ca
n read our minds?” asked another with great concern.
A soldier with a lot of medals on his chest came up to the scientists. “Listen, this is no place to have our first encounter with an alien. We need to take that ship into Hangar Deep 6. Tell her we’re doing it for her own safety.”
“Tell me yourself.”
The Colonel jumped at the voice in his head . . . but regained his composure quickly enough. “To whom am I addressing?”
“As I told your friends, I do not wish to talk to you. Please go away.”
“I can’t do that. You are the first . . . person . . . from another planet to land on Earth. In effect, you have invaded our world. We need to know why you are here . . . and perhaps discuss subjects of a mutual interest.”
“I crashed landed.” She was about to say ‘we’ then thought better of it. “I had to destroy my ship in order to save your world. A simple thank you will suffice.”
“This isn’t your ship?”
“Don’t be silly. This is an escape pod.”
“May I ask your name?”
“Sure.”
He waited but she didn’t say anything. “What is your name?”
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
The Colonel had to laugh. “You have quite the personality. Very human like – I’m surprised. However, I have my orders. My men are going to move your vehicle to one of the buildings on this base. If they do anything that in any way jeopardizes your safety . . . please let us know and we’ll stop. We mean you no harm.”
“Keeping me against my will is considered harmful where I come from.”
The Colonel smiled again. “That may be true. But the fact remains that you came here uninvited. We have a right to know why. Your statement about your ship and saving Earth may be true. But, we have to verify it. That isn’t unreasonable, is it?”
“What is your name?”
“Colonel Korn. Colonel is actually my rank.”
“Then I’ll just call you Korn. We should never have met. Your world is not ready for aliens. From what I know of earth, you need a few hundred years to grow up. I can’t, in good conscience, provide information that might be misused. I’m sorry.”
Box Set #4: Sisterhood's End: [The 3 book 4th adventure of Egg and the Hameggattic Sisterhood] Page 27
