“No venereal diseases.” The doctor sounded disappointed.
“Now let me go!” Sarah demanded, still embarrassed about what they’d just made her do.
“Ral, can I fully sedate her? I’ve stabilized her biological functions, it’s just her emotional state that’s unpredictable. I can’t do anything about that until her brain has fully restarted.”
Sarah threw a pleading glance at the pink-eyed man in the hope that he wouldn’t let this unkind doctor put her to sleep.
“I want her to stay awake.” He turned back to Sarah. “What year d’you remember?”
“Twenty-twenty,” Sarah said.
“The year is 2320. Welcome to the future, little one.”
“Why have I been abducted by aliens and taken to the future?” Sarah demanded.
“You’ll probably be pleased to know that you haven’t been abducted by aliens, or taken to the future; you were cryogenically frozen.” He smiled at her, and for some reason Sarah felt like she was safe around him. After all, in her dream, he had been her daddy. Her cheeks flushed again as she realized what he’d said to her when the probe was inside her. Come for Daddy. It didn’t seem like he was just saying that; it was more like he’d innately reacted to that part of her that had been acting like a child.
“You told me before that your name was Sarah. That right?” Sarah nodded. Had the last time she’d seen him been real, then? She colored red as she remembered calling him Daddy when she thought she was dreaming.
“I’m called Ral, as you might have guessed, since Doctor Tavia keeps calling me that, and I’m an astro-archaeologist, so I investigate sites like Luna, where I found you. I brought you straight here, to Minos Kerala, which is a city on a planet called Minos Kerala, in Andromeda. As you can tell, the Minos Keralans were very imaginative when they named everything.” He winked at her and she had to suppress a smile. “You’re here because I work in this city.”
“I’ve never even heard of this place. Why couldn’t you drop me off on Earth as you passed it? That’s where I was from. I don’t even know how I ended up on the moon!” Sarah frowned, trying to work it all out.
“You’re very lucky, little lady. At some point, someone must have decided it was cheaper or easier to store cryogenic units on Luna, and they moved a whole set of people there. None of those other storage units still had functional power; I think an asteroid had hit near the place where you were being kept. When the Earth was destroyed, you survived.”
“What do you mean, the Earth was destroyed? I was there this morning! Or something…” Her brain caught up with the idea that her perception of time might be wrong.
“Someone invented a technology which made the surface of a planet so uninhabitable that no one ever lived there again. Someone else used it,” Ral said.
“Why would anyone do that?” Sarah didn’t understand what would drive anyone to destroy an entire planet, with people living on it.
“As a show of power. About fifty years ago, a mad emperor went on a rampage around the Milky Way, destroying all the known inhabited planets. Earth now looks like Venus, the planet next to it. Poisonous gas and molten lava everywhere. The only people left from Earth are those who weren’t on the planet at the time. There are lots of Earth descendants on Minos Kerala since it was colonized by Earth’s Homo sapiens—that’s your species. Around the rest of the galaxy, Earth humans are pretty rare.”
“But… they’re fixing it, right?” Sarah felt like she’d been standing on a chair to reach a high shelf, and now the chair had been kicked away. How was the Earth—the whole, entire Earth—gone? All of it? It wasn’t fair. Her eyes became wet as she tried to make sense of it.
Part of her didn’t want to believe it; her background thoughts tried to reason that perhaps this was all a test, like a psychological evaluation, and that everything he was saying was a lie. A couple of the VR companies were rumored to use immersive scenarios to test the caliber of potential employees. The rest of her knew it was true. Nobody went around telling people things like that unless they meant them, and somehow this man, Ral or whatever his name was, seemed trustworthy. He radiated control and honesty, and it seemed like he had rescued her. He hadn’t used that medical exam to take advantage of her, either, despite the fact he was clearly aroused by it. He hadn’t even taken her panties down, although it would have been entirely justifiable.
“I’m sorry, Sarah. They can’t fix it.” Ral shook his head sadly.
Sarah felt lost as she tried to accept this situation. She couldn’t even wipe the tears away because she couldn’t move properly. A machine made a beeping sound again.
“That was the evaluation of your mental state. It advises that you shouldn’t be left alone. Unfortunately, I am not running a babysitting service so you will have to pull yourself together. If you’ve finished expending energy on this, I really need to ask you to leave. I have three more revivals to get through in the next hour, and they’re all paying customers.” The mean doctor pressed some buttons and Sarah felt something sharp behind her ear, then the glass slid away and she sat up properly.
“We can dispense with the pocket translator now.” Ral picked up a device that looked like a radio, pressed a button on it then put it in one of his pockets, making his jacket look slightly lopsided where the device bulged through the fabric. Sarah put her hand to the side of her head; Ral’s voice seemed to be inside her ear now. It was very disorienting.
“What just happened? Your voice…” Sarah frowned, unsure of how to describe it.
“Doctor Tavia implanted a Speakeasy chip behind your ear. It’s a special device that will translate everything you hear, so you can understand us all. Every citizen of the Interplanetary Alliance has one,” Ral explained. “Now, the kind doctor is going to waive her usual exorbitant fee if we quit her office immediately, so I want you to try and stand up, then let’s go for a walk around Minos Kerala city.”
Sarah put one foot on the black glassy surface, then tentatively put her weight on it. The other foot touched the floor too, and she saw that she was still wearing her ruby-red glittery party shoes. There had been an event, and she’d been dolled up. Where were her dress and clutch bag? She was dressed in a hospital gown. Something didn’t quite add up. Where had the event been? The memory of getting into a stretch limo was followed by nothing. A big empty blank patch where the rest of the night had gone. Who had she been with?
“Was I frozen in this hospital gown?” She looked at Ral, hoping for an explanation.
“Looks that way. There are plenty of places near here where you can get some clothing.”
“I’m pretty keen to know where my dress and purse went. They might explain why I got frozen.”
“Get out of my laboratory!” the doctor grumbled. “Outside is for conversations. Inside is for sick people. Paying sick people!”
“Wait! Do you have a towel, please?” Sarah wondered why this was sticking in her mind, but she knew it was important.
“On the shelf. Take one and get out.” The doctor waved a hand dismissively at a huge stack of white fluffy towels. Sarah picked one up and held it tightly.
Ral took Sarah’s free hand and gently led her out of the doctor’s office into the corridor.
“Why a towel?” he asked. She looked up at him, as the tears pooled on her lower lash line again.
“It’s the only single thing I can think of right now that will make me feel even remotely prepared for this situation,” she tried to explain, but she knew it must seem silly to other people. She was just glad that such a normal thing as towels still existed in this future. Was it a sign that everything hadn’t changed much? But then, she was on a foreign planet, surrounded by aliens whose languages were being translated by an implant behind her ear. How were there still towels? Her fingers gripped the towel to make sure it was still there. It was reassuringly fluffy.
Ral showed her out through the glassy automatic doors, and Sarah found out just how different this new world really
was.
The street was bizarre. Sarah stared around at the black, glassy buildings under the tropical purple sky. There were rows of flying cars, about five feet off the ground, all traveling at a uniform pace. Occasionally, a vehicle would break away from the herd and land beside the dark, translucent pavement, and someone would either get into or out of the car, before it would take off again and rejoin the others. On the other side of the road, a woman in a shiny catsuit walked behind someone crawling on all fours; the woman held a leash that attached to a muzzle obscuring the crawling person’s face.
“Those people… are they performing street theater?” Sarah asked, barely able to stop staring.
“No, little one. They are probably just going for a walk on a summery afternoon.” Ral squeezed her hand, and Sarah was momentarily reassured that he would keep her safe in this scary world.
It didn’t last for long, however, and when they got to the bottom of the street, Sarah nearly walked straight into an enormous monster with masses of writhing green tentacles. Ral turned to wave at the monster at the same time that Sarah screamed in terror. Wrenching her hand free from his, she fled, clinging to her towel as she ran away. Ral called after her but she ignored him. She didn’t know how to feel about Ral in the torrent of emotions that seemed to be taking over her. He had seemed so safe and trustworthy, but she had no interest in finding out why he was being friendly with horrific monsters like that. Had he brought her all this way to deliver her to some sort of alien overlords? All the sci-fi shows she’d ever seen ran through her mind at once and she was too scared to stop and find out what was going on.
With no idea where she was going, she dodged down an alleyway between two tall buildings, and ran at top speed away from the terrifying tentacle monster. After taking several turns to throw off anyone chasing her, Sarah ran straight into someone, and they both fell to the ground. When Sarah looked up, she was surprised to see a young woman in a sailor dress.
“I’m so sorry, are you okay? We have to get out of here, there’s a tentacle monster nearby!” Sarah cried. Her towel had landed on the ground and she snatched it up like a hungry wolf snapping at a piece of meat. The other girl frowned then giggled.
“They look really scary but they’re just different. You look like you’re having a bad day; want to come to my place and play?”
In the midst of all the confusion, Sarah realized this must just be another dream. There was no planet anywhere, even in the distant future, where adults asked other adults if they wanted to play. It must be her subconscious yearning for a friend again. Sarah had always wanted someone who she could act little around, without having to worry about what she was wearing or what she said or did. In an ideal world, there would also be a daddy around to take care of her, but Sarah knew there wasn’t much chance of her finding anyone who would put up with her work schedule. More certain that she was dreaming, Sarah nodded at her new friend.
“I’m Sarah, what’s your name?”
“Laila. Are you new to Minos Kerala?” the other girl asked. Sarah nodded. “Don’t worry, this whole place is really weird ‘til you get used to it. Do you like painting?”
“Sometimes. I’m not very good at it though.” Sarah was definitely not an artist.
“Me neither! We can paint terrible pictures together in my playroom! C’mon, I’ll show you!” Laila took her hand and led Sarah around a corner to her building, a big warehouse made of the glassy black stuff that all the other buildings seemed to be built from. Behind the huge door, there was a spaceship parked in an enormous hangar-type room. The words ‘The Great Gig’ were just visible on one side of the ship, beside an unfinished painting of a pinup girl clad in a corset and frilly panties, who was still awaiting some feet and shoes, but otherwise looked a lot like Laila. The ship’s underside had a very dented door that looked large enough to load cargo.
“That’s my daddy’s ship. Our apartment is upstairs.” Laila led the way up the stairs to a mezzanine floor that half-covered the warehouse, and she opened a door at the top. Inside, there was a living room. One wall was just made of glass windows, facing outside, and the only pieces of furniture were a low coffee table and several very large beanbags. There were a few devices that looked like iPads on the coffee table, and a half-full glass of something orange. At one end of the living room, there was an open-plan kitchen.
“My little room’s this way!” Laila opened a door to one side and showed Sarah into what turned out to be a playroom. The walls were painted in a pale yellow. Three big toy chests brimmed with dolls and puppets. Two red plastic-looking easels stood side by side, one with the word ‘Basil’ at the top, the other, ‘Laila.’ Instead of a bed, a pink playpen stood in a corner. It was all perfectly adult-sized. Sarah had never seen anything so amazing.
When Laila got the paints set up, they both painted happily together until someone loudly opened and closed the front door.
“Laila? You home?” a voice called. Sarah paused with her paintbrush poised over the paper, then reached to the floor and picked her towel back up. Laila dropped her brush into her pot and ran out of the room.
“Daddy!” Laila shrieked with joy. Sarah cautiously put her brush down and tiptoed to the door, holding the towel ready to throw over the head of any monsters. She knew these sorts of dreams could change at any moment. The man tickling Laila didn’t look scary; nobody wearing such a normal knitted sweater had ever turned into a tentacle monster.
“We have a visitor, I see.” The man looked at Sarah, who shrank back and tried to hide most of herself behind the playroom door. If only there wasn’t so much of her, she thought, she could probably have gone unnoticed.
“Sarah, this is Basil, my daddy. Daddy, this is Sarah. I bumped into her on the street and she was lost and scared. Can she stay with us?” Laila looked so hopeful and Sarah was torn between wanting to roll her eyes and wanting to give her new friend a hug.
“Wait a moment, young lady. I think you need to explain this in more detail,” Basil said, and Laila told him what had happened. Sarah was too scared to interrupt; she just hoped the tentacle monster wasn’t going to reappear.
“So, you found her on the street and brought her here? Sarah, do you have a home nearby?” Sarah looked at him and shook her head. To her immense surprise, the chip was only translating one or two of his words in each sentence, and everything else he said was in English.
“You… you speak… normally…” Sarah struggled to put her thoughts into words. “Can you take me back?”
“To Earth?” Basil looked pained. “I’m sorry, Sarah, it’s been destroyed. Maybe you should tell me how you got all the way to Minos Kerala without knowing Earth was un-terraformed.”
Sarah hesitantly started explaining everything that had happened today.
“…And when we got to the end of the street, this scary monster appeared, and it was covered in slimy tentacles and I was so afraid that I ran away,” she finished. “Then I met Laila.”
“So there’s an elf out there somewhere who’s searching for you. Did you get his name at all?”
“Ralnar Rowardennan,” Sarah remembered. “He was really tall.”
“Yes, you told me; that’s how I knew he was an elf. Elves are always a lot taller than humans. There’s not many of them on Minos Kerala so they tend to all stay in touch with one another. I wonder if my good friend Flin knows him from one of the elvish bars…”
Sarah shook her head tearfully. She buried her face in her towel, feeling completely ridiculous as she did so, but still unable to help herself.
“Please don’t call him. He seemed to know that monster, I think they were friends.” She spoke through the towel but Basil seemed to understand her.
“Sarah, there’s a few tentacle monsters on Minos Kerala; they’re just regular people like you and me. They look different because they grew that way on their planets, but they’re not inherently bad or good. They’re just people,” Basil explained.
“I told you that!�
� Laila announced.
“You… you mean it wasn’t going to eat me?” Sarah asked, lifting her head from the towel.
“Absolutely not. They only eat seafood and plants,” Basil said. Sarah shook her head in disbelief. Pescetarian tentacle monsters… now she knew she must be dreaming.
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Additional Books in the Twenty-Fourth Century Daddies Series
His Little Earthling
Thirty-one-year-old Sarah Bryan is surprised and confused when she wakes up in a medical exam room with no recollection of how she got there, but the real shock comes when she learns that she has been cryogenically frozen for hundreds of years and she is no longer on Earth.
Ralnar Rowardennan, the huge, handsome alien astro-archaeologist who found and rescued Sarah, takes it upon himself to care for her. He does his best to help her adjust to an unfamiliar world, but when Sarah’s impetuous behavior puts her in danger Ralnar does not hesitate to put the beautiful little human over his knee and spank her soundly.
Her Daddy and Her Master Page 32
