by Ellen Mint
After taking a giant ramp up, which required the horde to slow to a snail’s pace, we stepped through the massive doors which I swore looked like they were gold. Not solid, that would be impossible. Even a gold sheet at ten stories high…
Best to not think about it.
A bright blue light zapped from a hovering projector. I raised a hand to shield my eyes, but it was over before I could bother. “One register, gamma class. Mid-grade level. Second…” The machine erupted in a chewing noise and I glanced nervously at Nolan. Was it going to send me back to Earth? Or worse?
“…classified as pet. Proceed.”
Nolan nodded to the man-sized cricket in a nice suit guarding the scanner. My guide began to pull us on, but I wasn’t going to let that go. “Pet? It thinks I’m a pet!”
“We’re in, okay. That’s all that matters,” he whispered, our faces hunched together close.
My sneer and urge to flip a finger no one would understand faded when I caught the concern in Nolan’s eyes. He wore the same speed hole jumpsuit as on the ship but added a sleek blue and white robe to the top. It emphasized his shoulders to knuckle-biting degrees, reminding me that he wasn’t without strength. A powerful man clearly worried. What mess did I wind up in?
“Am I in any danger?” I asked.
“Aren’t we always at the whims of entropy?”
“You know what I mean. Rogue alien factions. Or murder cults. Or…”
Nolan stared askance at me, his lips twisted in an inhuman smile. “The only murder cults I was aware of were on Earth. I dare say you were in a far greater threat there based upon the news.”
My mouth dropped open, prepared to argue, but I couldn’t. I knew nothing about this huge galaxy and enough about Earth that he seemed to be right. Granted, he could be hiding an entire evil empire for all I knew. But I trusted him.
“Besides,” Nolan said, “you weren’t the one I was concerned they wouldn’t let in.”
I swiveled to him in confusion, when the lights dimmed. The godlike ballroom from marble hell faded. Lights of pinks and yellows rose upon the pillars, highlighting more of the alien writing. I couldn’t see any math, but I swore amongst the squiggles was the word ‘Genius.’ It was probably just like cloud spotting, my mind finding patterns where none were.
Two spotlights clicked on, highlighting a full room waterfall wall. A dais floated on an infinity pool below while faces and names projected behind the tumbling water. Music played throughout the hall, shushing the last of the conversations. I knew it to be music, recognized the existence of chord progression and rhythm. But my ears shivered from the strange instruments vibrating to create the high and low pitched melody.
“Are there going to be fireworks?” I asked, trying to settle in for the show.
“On a space station?” Nolan asked, shutting me up. “Don’t give them any ideas.” Then he brought his fingers together in a pinching sound. As I watched, everyone else who had access to something approaching a hand did the same.
The clicking noise grew until a series of bodies fully hidden below robes walked onto the floating dais. I couldn’t even take a guess at who was under there or the species, but the robes bulged in various spots. For some it was the chest, others the gut. One was just a massive floating ball, the robe’s hem fluttering an inch or two off the ground. And the last…
Funny, that one looked almost human. Even at a distance, I knew it couldn’t be. The face had hard bones protruding down the middle of it. Maybe bipedal hominids weren’t so strange to the universe after all.
“The Think Tank Forum will now hear requests,” a voice boomed through the air.
My head shot up in surprise. “I understood that?”
“It’s a universal language that they…” Nolan began to explain when the entire crowd rushed forward in one move.
“Holy--!” I shouted, terrified of being trampled by feet and tentacles.
A hand latched onto mine and I found myself parting through the horde. “Here we go!” Nolan shouted as if we were about to leap off a cliff instead of force our way out of a mob.
“Sorry, sorry, excuse me,” I kept saying while Nolan continuously shoved.
The closer we got, the louder the voices screamed. It was a crush of noise, as incoherent as listening to five different bands at once. But then a sentence caught me.
“The true origin of life!” a voice shouted and whipped a limb that looked more like a tree through the air.
A red light burst above the heads of the dais people and the tree man sulked off.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Which religion is the correct one?” another person called. I turned and nearly leaped backward over the barrier and into the pool. Eyes red as blood and sunk into an inky blackness stared skyward at the Think Tank. Its tentacles wiggled in the air and the hands that could crush the life from a human strained upward as if wanting a hug.
“Nolan! Nolan!” I shouted, clawing at his arm. When he turned, I numbly pointed at the Kirkan asking about religion. “Isn’t that…?”
“No,” he laughed. “The skin is much darker than our fellow bounty hunter. They don’t all look alike.”
The same red light burst above the water and the Kirkan I thought was trying to kill me turned away. As it did, I spotted a soft grey patch on the side of its cheek area. I damn near accused an innocent stranger of attempted murder.
While shame rounded through my veins, Nolan grabbed my shoulders and pushed me to the front of the massive, screaming queue. My back bounced into a padded banister and I stared at him.
“You have to tell them what you need.”
Sense. For someone to tell me how and why an entire galaxy built a flying temple in space where people screamed intellectual questions at a waterfall.
“Your research. Only you can phrase it for them.”
I dumbly nodded and spun to stare up at the no doubt sharpest minds across thousands of planets. “I need…” I squeaked, only to have another fifty people cry over me. This was what I’d been working on for years. What people sighed upon hearing me bring up, or ignored me entirely for. The only thing that made intergalactic bounty hunters give a shit about me.
Filling my chest, I raised my head and shouted, “I want to know if P can equal NP!”
The constantly red waterfall suddenly shifted yellow. “Query: Explain,” an emotionless voice said.
I glanced to Nolan. “What does that mean?”
“They need more clarification, to understand what you want.”
Okay. The hardest part about being a scientist was finding a way to sum up and dumb down your life’s research enough that kindergartners could get it. And in this case, kindergartners who spoke Martian.
“I want to know if it’s possible for…” My voice faded as I realized the cacophony of requests snapped away. Every head, every screaming mouth, every visual orb receptor was turned to me. It was Grease in high school all over again. Don’t throw up on Zuko. Was there an alien named Zuko here? Shit.
“Trini…”
Nope. Tuck tighter into a ball. Wait for them all to forget you even exist.
“Trini,” Nolan whispered, warm fingers curling from the start of my genetically cursed sideburns and back around my ear. My heart pounded away, but I broke from shrinking to turn to him. “You can do this.”
I had to do this.
Squeezing my fists so hard my nails dug in, I raised my head. Even with my tongue tapping on the roof of my mouth, I shouted, “Can a polynomial problem be solved in non-polynomial time?”
The robes shifted, head areas swiveling to stare at each other. Only the sound of water sprinkling into the pond and setting off a gentle lapping wave filled the massive forum. Every echo faded from the compacted world until my ears pounded with the beat of my heart.
One by one, the robes turned to gaze out at the proceedings. Was that good? Bad?
A green light appeared above their heads.
“Yes!” Nolan
shouted and he locked his arms around me. Before I knew it, I flew into the air, the man spinning us in a circle so my green and yellow silk skirts fluttered around.
“What does that mean?”
“They’ll take our query! It’s…” His cry of excitement faded as he let me slip to the floor. Before my toes reached, he guided my body closer and his lips pressed to mine. In that moment, I felt like the fairy princess of science. Nolan roughed through my hair, his tongue lapping over my lip and encouraging me to taste him. I reached around his waist, my hand hiding under his robe and pulling him until our bodies fell flush.
“Excuse me,” a robotic voice broke through the mad passion trying to sweep me away.
My heart wouldn’t stop beating madly from what I assumed was euphoria until I spotted the long black tentacles striding through the crowd. The Kirkan, the one that once had its fingers around my neck, stepped up to the banister and said, “I have the same inquiry, but I can pay better.”
Blood red eyes turned to me and I felt myself shrinking. “Hello, Doctor Martinez.”
“Why are you here? Why is she here?!” I shrieked as if there was some forum manager I could talk to.
Nolan slammed a hand on the banister, drawing the robed people to him. “I can top whatever the Kirkan is offering!”
“Don’t make a fool of yourself, Yaxha. We all know your kind.”
Poison burned in Nolan’s eyes as he glared at the Kirkan. From the side of his mouth, he hissed, “I demand arbitration!”
“You’ll lose,” the Kirkan gloated, but those same crickets in suits appeared from nowhere and hustled around the arguing pair. Before I could blink they began to whisk Nolan and the murderous bounty hunter away.
I moved to take a step forward to follow when something grabbed my arm. Thinking it could only be a small snag, I pulled—and felt fingers dig into my bicep. Human fingers.
What the—?
My spin turned into a blur as the entire forum drained away, and my body slipped to the floor. Before it could hit, I felt something or someone grab me. Someone human.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CANDLELIGHT FLICKERED JUST beyond my vision, smoothing the sharp edges stabbing into my brain. It’s all a dream the dance of tiny fire seemed to tell me. Aliens aren’t real. You weren’t nearly murdered in your lab and certainly not kidnapped on some knowledge-based space station.
Okay light, if you’re so smart then how come I’m laying in a massive pile of pillows?
I woke in a groggy roll, tumbling across the padded red and gold pillows. Piping and tassels covered the not-designed-for-sleeping-on cushions. The pile looked like a furniture store dumped their entire throw pillow stock into the corner and added me on top for good measure. The same crimson color filled the walls with decorative trellises in gold climbing them. A few extended off the wall a foot below the ceiling, allowing vines to droop out of stone-like planters.
It felt foreign and familiar at the same time. When I caught a fountain shaped like a nameless naked woman my brain screamed at me. Trini, you’re in a harem. Some corpulent, slug-alien crime boss kidnapped you and threw you into his harem! Get out, now!
My limbs flailed, sending me crab walking over the scattered mount pillow. On such unstable ground, I kept falling but my eyes locked on what could be a door. Chances of it being unlocked—0.0001%. But I had to try.
“Ahem,” a soft voice coughed and I whipped my head around. A woman dressed in a blank unitard stood behind the pile. A human woman.
I nearly jumped out of my skin. She’d been deathly quiet the whole time I tried to escape. But the unisex outfit put me at a strange ease. If this was a slug mob boss’ harem she’d be in a string bikini. Probably. Unless slugs preferred their kidnapped victims to wear clothes with waists dropped below their knees.
The door blew open and a body dressed in the black robes of the Think Tank strode in quickly. Up close, I could see they weren’t a flimsy fabric but bore an incredible amount of detail. The robe was textured with a barely visible dark grey pattern embroidered over every inch. I couldn’t make out what the image was, making my eyes slip lower at such a display of useless wealth. An even blacker ribbon shined down the trim like a river of oil.
Three other creatures in the same unitard outfits flanked whoever this was. They couldn’t be human going off the number of eyes and limbs fluttering about. My kidnapper paused and turned the horned face to me.
My eyes fell to the floor to avoid the cold glare of the black sockets. I watched my pink and red toes bounce. Where’d my sandals go? Absently, I patted my waist to make certain I was still dressed, when a booming voice commanded, “Leave me.”
Was that directed at me? I took a step forward, only to have a cold hand flash before my face. “Not you,” the kidnapper said.
Before I could breathe, the underlings vanished and the door to my freedom slammed shut. Clacking my teeth, I swept my periphery to the horned face. Wait. There was an edge on the side.
The kidnapper placed a hand to her cheeks and the alien protrusions vanished to reveal…a woman. Human. Mid-thirties at a guess. Her black hair was tied up in a bun, which she began to let down until it fell to her waist. Wrinkles hugged the sides of her mouth as if she’d kept it shut for decades to survive.
“So, it’s true,” the confounding woman said. “When you made your declaration I thought you looked familiar.”
“Do we know each other?” I stumbled, then shook my head at the insane idea of meeting someone from my past lightyears across the galaxy. “I don’t even… What’s your name?”
Her thin lips twisted to the side, and eyes gray as the sea before a storm burned into my soul. “It’s not who you are that concerns me, but what.”
“A…” I tapped my hand against my chest, trying to run through the options. Scientist? Latina? “Human?” I guessed.
The stranger snorted and picked up a Turkish teapot with blue rosettes painted across the copper body. Golden liquid poured into a small cup as she said, “A genius. Though I’m beginning to question the accuracy of that.”
“I’m not a…I’ve never taken an IQ test.” Or finished one, at least. My parents tried, but I panicked in my seat, threw up on the paper, and hid in the bathroom until it was over. You can’t have anxiety and be a registered genius.
The stranger’s sharp eyes sliced deeper into me, sending me staring skyward. There I recognized a mandala carved into the wood—or faux wood on a space station.
“This is how they inform me, a bumbling fool sent to the Forum with a pertinent inquiry. After all these years…”
“I’m sorry. What?” I tried to shake off the bumbling fool part even though she called me a genius two-seconds earlier. It was quite the conundrum to be both fool and brilliant at the same time.
She paused in sipping from her porcelain cup and walked closer. The malice wafting from her crooked mouth and tight shoulders sent me scrabbling backward. Only for her helpful peon lingering quietly in the corner to hold me in place. “You must have accepted their request before they finished making it.”
Please don’t stab me, or burn me, or poison me with tea made from gold! I cringed so hard my face puckered inward, wishing I could somehow fold myself into fractals until I was an atom.
Wait. “What request? From whom?”
“The Tank, of course. That Thraxian bastard’s always trying to…” her muttering faded, and she stared at me, then took in the entirety of my body. The harem theory might still be on the table. “Were you not approached by a member of the Council to sit upon the Think Tank board?”
“No?” I squeaked.
In an instant, the ominous threats circling the room snapped away. Even the dark lights of the suffocating room brightened and the woman leaned away from me. “Huh. So you truly are…?”
“Here with an inquiry.”
“Humans do not arrive at the Think Tank,” said the human who kept another in her bedroom.
I scratched at the back of
my neck, causing the gold knot of my halter top to bounce. “I had help from a friend.”
The stranger that kidnapped me said, “Be careful who call friend.” She placed her teacup down and clasped her hands. “As you are not of the galactic core, I will tell you my name on earth was Emilia Utkin.”
Her hand extended, revealing a pile of gold bangles running straight up her forearm. But, as they clanked together at her wrist, a sound of bells shaking in the snow burst free. I stared at the offer of physical contact, my skin pickling at the thought. The edge of her lips curled and I slapped forward to take her hand. “Trini. Martinez. Doctor.”
“Not in that order, I imagine,” Emilia said with a wry grin. The pursed glare was completely erased. Now she took me in like she discovered a fuzzy caterpillar crawling up her window.
“Well, it… I guess I was named in that order, linearly speaking. What do you mean, earth name?”
Emilia nodded to the silent woman. “Dove, you can leave us.”
The silent woman didn’t move save her eyes opening wide.
“I don’t think Dr. Martinez is a danger, which should be clear to any, nor a spy.”
It was obvious the silent Dove disagreed, her glare intensifying, but she stomped off in the same direction as the other acolytes. Which left me all alone with the Think Tank lady who tried to have me kidnapped.
“Help,” she shrugged, “you know how it is.”
I shook my head. The state of my apartment was enough to tell anyone how often I used a cleaning service. “Why did you…?”
“Forgive me for…inconveniencing you on the forum floor.”
“You mean kidnapping me. There was drugging involved, and dragging,” I muttered, digging the flat of my hand into my back. A pop broke free, then another. They must have treated me like a sack of flour when tossing me in here.
Emilia glanced at me, once again darting her gaze down my body. “I should have known better considering your attire.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
