by Ian Rodgers
Xenovida Zenic gestured to the alien next to her. “This is Ambassador Qwel Ri’Tiov, the representative for the Iali in the House Goodwill and head of the Interspecies Relationships and Encounters Assembly.”
“Ah, your excellency!” Aunlood exclaimed, instinctively curling into a deep bow.
“Please rise. No need to stand on such formalities, Chova’Klove Aunlood.” The voice was soundless and held a timbre of regal authority. The words formed within the Ranga’s mind and echoed with intent and meaning. The telepathy of the Ial was smooth and felt comforting instead of the untrained psychic powers that tended to cause irritation in the recipients.
The CEO of Crown Corp. rose, still unable to look at the ambassador head on. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw the Chairperson-Elect roll her eyes. Hmm. That was a strange gesture. Her people didn’t use that very often. He filed the info away for later and turned his attention to Ambassador Qwel.
“So, how may I help your excellences?” Aunlood inquired.
“We wish you to be present when we arrive on Earth to retrieve the Droid and human.”
“Earth? Human? I’m sorry, I don’t recognize those names,” the Ranga admitted.
“The name of the world and species your droid encountered. The Privy Council Select and the Ial Legacy have decided to directly intervene in this situation. Our relations with the Hegemony lie on a powder keg, and we are doing everything we can to keep it stable,” Xenovida revealed.
“Why are we going to this world to retrieve the droid and the being?” Aunlood inquired.
“Droid 77 has filed a request with Star-Helix to create a cancer drug. They have paid for the medicine in full. Combined with their request to obtain citizenship, we felt it would be prudent to see to this personally. We must retrieve the droid and silence the human before anything else happens,” Ambassador Qwel explained.
“And the drug? Will it be confiscated?”
“No. It will be delivered via your automated delivery system as per usual.”
The Ranga blinked in surprise. “Why?”
“Star-Helix is legally obligated to ensure the creation and delivery of the medicine. Not to mention that interfering might tip the droid and its owner off that something is up. They could react poorly if that is the case,” Ambassador Qwel explained.
“The Ial have their honor and image to consider, Chairman Aunlood,” Xenovida said, building on the envoy’s words. “Still, we shall be releasing a spy drone to observe both the Earth and the droid. That way we will be able to judge the situation as it develops, and determine if the Earth and its humans are useful resources for the Alliance.”
“Of course, I understand,” Aunlood said with a nod of agreement. It made perfect sense when they explained it that way.
“Excellent. Now, gather what beings and materials you need for a long trip. You will be joining Ambassador Qwel and me on my personal vessel. Consider it a vacation of sorts,” the Chairperson-Elect said with a smirk. Aunlood shivered but nodded. And in the back of his mind he could hear faint chuckles from the Ial.
Chapter 19
“You’re looking pale. Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”
“I’ve just been under a lot of stress recently, Mike. My family is still coming to terms with my sister’s hospitalization, and I’ve been looking into various loans so I can help her,” Zane said, leaning against the wall of the local convenience store.
The mechanic nodded in sympathy. Word traveled fast in the countryside and not long after Zane had returned the whole of Plainsburg knew about the Pendon family’s situation.
“Are you sure you have to do this all by yourself? Couldn’t your parents help?”
“They have their hands full taking care of Jack and Donna. And with Don a mental wreck no help is coming from that side for a while,” Zane revealed. “But it’s fine. I know a guy who’s great with numbers and the stock market. I’ve made a tidy sum that should help tide us over with the bills.”
“Just remember that if you need any help, just ask. You’ve really grown on us, Zane. And we all remember how your grandfather would help anyone who needed it.”
“I’m like a rash; always clingy and irritable,” Zane joked, giving the older man a bout of snorting laughter.
“Anyways, any plans for the weekend?” Mike asked after he settled down.
“No. Why, is there an event going on?”
The mechanic stared at the younger adult for a moment before waving his hand at the window and the various shelves in the store.
Everywhere one looked, pink could be seen. On balloons, on ribbons, on posters and packets. Then there was the heart-shaped everything. Every other item in the store seemed to have a heart on it somewhere.
“Oh. Yeah. I forgot about Valentine’s Day again,” Zane admitted sheepishly.
“Seriously?”
“Give me a break, Mike. I haven’t had a girlfriend since my freshman year in college,” the coder said with a roll of his eyes. “Ever since then February has just been ‘Singles Awareness Month’ for me.”
“You poor soul,” Mike said with a shake of his head. “But you have one now, don’t you? Are you planning anything for her?”
“Wait, how do you know about…?”
“Internet. Your mother has been complaining that you haven’t introduced your mystery lady to the family yet.”
Zane sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose in annoyance. He really regretted showing her about social media all those years ago.
“Soooo?” Mike asked, drawing out the word with a teasing smirk on his face. Zane rolled his eyes in response and took a deep slurp of his slushy.
“Hey, this might seem out of the blue, but doesn’t it seem weird for two adults to stand in the corner of a convenience store and chat like some acne riddled teens?” Zane asked slowly, glancing around.
He and Mike were not the only adults in there at the moment either. Some much older women were in a huddle near the magazine rack while a few other men hovered around the coffee machine.
“It’s a small town, and it’s too early in the day to go to the bar,” Mike replied as if that explained everything. Sadly, it did, and Zane was forced to shrug and accept it.
“Hey Mike, I’ve got a question.”
“Hmm?”
“My, uh, ‘girlfriend,’ is really nice, but I don’t think she deserve to have to go through all this pain with me. I’m considering…”
“Breaking up with her to spare her the drama?”
Zane nodded, a hint of shame in his face.
“I personally think that that is a dumb idea. You need all the emotional support you can get,” Mike said with a sigh. “But at the same time I understand where you’re coming from. My wife and I came very close to divorcing before we had our darling little miracle. Both of us were convinced that the other would be happier with the separation because we were unlikely to have children. But we realized how stupid that was.”
The mechanic reached and patted Zane’s shoulder. “Still, at least this proves you like her enough to want to spare her your own suffering. But if you really want my advice? Keep her close. Everyone deserves some form of happiness.”
Zane let out his own sigh before zipping up his jacket. A determined look entered his eyes and he waved goodbye to the people he recognized on the way out.
“You’re right, of course. I guess it’s true that old people have the best advice,” Zane said with a smirk. Mike huffed but waved him off.
“Do what needs to be done, young pupil,” Mike said in a faux-sensei voice. Zane just laughed before heading to his car.
“Are you certain you want to do this?” Rob inquired as it hovered nervously in front of his friend and ‘owner.’ The human nodded resolutely.
“She deserves to know.”
“It could complicate things. We still have another three months before your sister’s cure is finished, and then another four months for delivery. Not to mention that we have no idea if
Alliance authorities are on their way here, or when they’ll make a move. And that’s not even taking into consideration Earth’s local governments!” Rob protested.
“In the last two weeks alone I’ve had to shut down nearly six dozen tracers and hacks in the websites and companies I’ve been using to make the money for the cure’s purchase. Someone is trying to probe the data around us, and they’re clever. All the dummy servers I’ve tracked this person to are reserved for various government agencies across the globe.”
“Charma has been nothing but good to us, Rob. I don’t want her to get blindsided by any of this.”
The two companions had a long staring contest, neither willing to give in easily. Both their points were valid and had merit, but in the end it was the TI that gave in first.
“Damn you organics and your hormones and ‘love,’” Rob sighed. “Fine. Let’s do this.”
Beeping filled the living room as the droid accessed the video-phone feature and contacted the intergalactic idol.
“But for the record, this is the honorable thing to. Dumb, but honorable. I do approve of your dedication in that regard. Just be ready for any and all consequences.”
The connection to Charma’s vid-phone went through seconds later, and a smiling idol appeared in the screen.
“Zane! I’m glad to hear from you! Last time we spoke you mentioned you were heading off to check on your sister’s condition. I hope she’s feeling better.”
“She’s not. And that’s partly why I’m calling you,” Zane admitted. The azure Dren tilted her head questioningly.
“Charma, this is really hard to say, but I’ve been keeping some things from you.”
The extraterrestrial looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean… well, there’s no easy way to say this, but…” Zane took a shuddering breath before looking the alluring alien straight in the eyes.
“I’m not from an Isolationist Enclave. In fact, I only found out about the whole galactic community less than a Standard Galactic Year ago. It all happened when Rob crash-landed on my planet. Which, by the way, would be classified as a Class B civilization by Alliance reckoning.”
Only the hum of Rob’s hover unit filled the air. All else was silent, as if the world was holding its breath.
“I must have a parasite or something in my ears because I could have sworn you just said you’re from a primitive world, using what would be considered illegal technology,” Charma said, making an exaggerated ear-cleaning gestures. She gave a shaky smile. “You’re joking, right?”
Zane’s lack of comment and his attempts to avoid further eye contact brought out a laugh from the alien idol.
“Very funny, you two! Hilarious!” Her laughter devolved into one filled with a tinge of mania.
“It’s not true!” Charma cried, pounding her fists against the furniture she was seated on. The sound of splintering plastic was audible over the call.
“It’s all true. I’ve been lying to you. Well, maybe not entirely, but lies of omission are still pretty bad,” the human said with a depressed chuckle.
“Why are you telling me this?!” Charma demanded. She balled up her hands to keep them from lashing out at the rest of her furniture.
“Because the odds are in the coming months I’ll be arrested. Either by my local government for whatever trumped up charges they can slap onto me, or by the Solar Alliance of Independent Planets for possessing advanced technology and harboring an illegal TI.” Zane paused, before scratching the back of his head sheepishly.
“Oh yeah, Rob’s a True Intelligence, by the way. I let him use my world’s version of the exo-net and he may have surpassed his limits and broken the shackles of his programming.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Charma asked again. Off-screen her clenched fists drew blood.
“When everything I’ve done comes out –and it will, one way or another – I don’t want you to be surprised.”
“We also don’t want you to be seen as an accessory to our crimes,” Rob butted in. Now that the cyber-cat was out of the packaging it could now address the female like normal instead of playing dumb.
“If we reveal this to you now, you can claim later that you had no prior knowledge of our backgrounds until this moment. I’m 98.75% sure that the Planetary Alliance is already after us in some fashion. They’ll search my directory and data when they capture me so they’ll find out about our conversations.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Charma asked once more. She was slumped in her seat, all of the energy sucked out of her.
“Because my sister is dying. And I will do anything to cure her,” Zane stated. He then leaned in, and the action made the idol look up once more.
“And I’m telling you all of this because while I honestly don’t know if what I feel for you is love or not, you deserve to know exactly who I am.”
Charma stared into the human’s eyes for a long time before reaching out and pressing a button on her end. The line went dead.
“Well, that’s that,” Rob said softly. Zane just let out a sigh and pressed his face into his hands.
“Do you feel any better now?”
Zane looked up at the droid with a blank expression. “No. Not at all.”
Months went by. They felt like years to Zane. He fell into a routine.
Wake up. Eat. Sleep. Do some coding. Contact his family once a day to inquire about his sister. Die a little bit more inside. Go to sleep. Repeat.
He hid it well, though. On the outside his smiling face fooled pretty much everyone. But it was clear to those who knew him that life was getting to him. A tiredness in his movements, a lack of light in his eyes.
With Rob’s help Zane had managed to play the stock market and get enough money for Veronica’s hospital stay and assorted treatments.
Not to mention the pair had bought up literal tons of willow and balsa wood, the latter apparently also fairly popular in the intergalactic market. They sold it piecemeal to Gangmoon, slowly building the funds to pay off the cure from Star-Helix.
But it was all coming to a head. Just a few more weeks until the cancer drug arrived from space. At the moment Zane was overseeing the final shipment of lumber to the Gangmoon delivery drone.
He watched as the large, bulbous egg-shaped device gathered up the wood and stored it within. At one point Zane would have marveled at how much space the machine had while still being able to ascend into space and move at nearly light speed to exit the solar system. Not now, though. He just gave it a dead-eyed stare as Rob finished up interfacing with the more primitive machine.
“And done,” Rob announced. As it spoke, the delivery drone shimmered as gravity shields lit up and it shot upward into the midnight sky like a bullet.
“That was the last shipment. With that, we’ve finally done it. The cure is paid off in full,” Zane said.
“And not a moment too soon. I’ve received a shipping notice from Star-Helix that the cure is on its way. I’d say another week, give or take, before it arrives. And then your sister will be in the clear,” Rob agreed. “Now let’s get you back to the house before anyone sees us.”
“Rob, we’ve done this dozens of times so far. It we weren’t caught then, what are the odds we’ll be caught now?” Zane asked with a roll of his eyes.
“Do you really want the answer to that?” the droid replied. A thin smile crept unconsciously onto the human’s face before it was forced to vanish. The droid just barely managed to catch it.
“You can smile now. We’re at the finish line,” Rob all but pleaded. It hurt seeing its friend hiding such pain.
“Maybe later. Can you play that song again?”
Rob held back a static-laced sigh and instead began to play a bit of music very softly as they trudged back to the ranch house.
The cool summer air was filled with an angelic voice, and Zane bobbed his head in time to ‘Nebula Lover’ one more time.
“Do you think she’s forgiven me?”
> “I don’t know, Zane. I don’t know.”
The sun was shining, birds were chirping, and for some reason Zane felt extremely optimistic when he woke up the next day. He lay in bed for a while just letting everything catch up to him.
Eventually he swung his feet over the side of the bed and got up. Today, he decided, was going to be a pajama day. So what if it was Tuesday? This was one of the great pleasures of working from home!
“Rob, does today feel like a good day to you?” He asked the metal eyeball as he wandered into the kitchen. The droid bobbed a bit as it hovered at his side.
“Can’t say that it does. If only I had better barometric systems I could feel the weather like an organic,” Rob said. Zane bit back a snort.
“You know what I meant.”
“Of course I do. And yes, it does seem like a good day. You’re smiling, after all.” Rob’s voice held a note of joy in it. “It’s been far too long since that’s happened.”
Before Zane could respond a brisk knocking sounded through the house. Quick as a flash Rob darted off into the basement to hide while the homeowner grumbled a bit about answering the door underdressed.
“Can I help you…” Zane began, only for his words to trail away as he saw who was on the other side of the door.
“Mr. Pendon? Apologies for bothering you this early, but we have some important matters to discuss.”
A man in a black suit with his brown hair drawn back in a ponytail flashed Zane a dazzling smile while a much larger suited man tapped his foot impatiently near a large number of black vans and official looking people.
“Mr. Pendon, I’m afraid you’re under arrest for suspicious activities. Please come quietly. Oh, and let us search the house. We have a warrant for both matters so your compliance is hardly a factor, but I find things go faster when I ask politely.”
Agent Frank’s smile turned sharper as Zane’s face went pale. “And if you behave, we’ll let you put some clothes on later.”
