by Lucy Snow
Ark cocked an eye at me, leaning his head over. “Sit.”
I set my plate down on the table before sitting, next to Ark instead of the standard across from him. Ark seemed to take no notice; he was more interested in his food. I had selected meat ravioli, one of my favorite comfort meals from back home.
Sure it was no good for any sort of diet beyond ‘the cheese and pasta diet,’ but it was also delicious, and after being away from Earth for a week already, I had earned some deliciousness.
I looked at Ark’s plate, the one he was so interested in. On it was a vaguely green…mush, if you could call it that. “What’s that you got there?” I asked, brightly, trying to start the conversation.
Ark continued looking at his food as he picked at it with something like a spoon. “It is a nutritional supplement. Number 23, I think.”
“Your people number their foods?” I tried not to sound too snarky at that, but it was almost hilarious.
Ark eyed her. “Some of them, yes.”
“How many do you have?”
Back to focusing on his food. “Nutritional supplements? Hundreds.”
“Do they all taste the same?”
“Of course not, that would be stupid.”
“Do you ever forget which ones you like and which ones you can’t stand?”
Ark glanced at me sharply. “No. I never forget.”
I decided that was a good time to focus on my own meal for a bit, since Ark obviously did not want to talk to me.
We ate in silence for a minute. “And what is that disgusting looking thing you have there? A dead carcass of some kind?”
I nearly choked on my food as I laughed, watching Ark’s stony face look back at me. “This is ravioli. It’s pasta with meat and cheese inside.”
“I only understand a few of those words. It sounds revolting.”
“It’s delicious, amazing comfort food. Wanna try some?”
“No.”
“Suit yourself.”
We continued eating.
“Tell me about yourself, Ark.”
Ark stopped eating long enough to stare me down. “I am a warrior.”
“Is that all?” I knew putting it that way was a mistake the moment the words came out of my mouth, but despite all the technological advances humanity had discovered through the Kreossians’ help over the last 50 years, we had not solved the mystery of time travel quite yet.
Ark bristled. “A warrior is the highest honor a Kreossian can achieve. It is what our society most prizes. Do you not have warriors on your planet?”
“We do, sure, but we haven’t really needed them nearly as much as we used to, not since, well, not since Ambassador Fuller met Admiral Kaalax.” I looked toward the door behind which the two old friends ate.
Ark’s eyes gleamed. “So your people have taken our existence and our presence as reasons to become weak, then.”
“Hold on, just a minute, that is not at all what I said!”
“It sounds like what you said.” Ark’s tone was factual, even, and without malice.
I wasn’t about to let that go so easily. “We are not weak, Ark, in fact we’ve come a long way since first contact.”
Ark leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms under his massive chest, and my eyes almost bugged out at his huge muscles, covered in those gleaming tattoo-like colors. “Judging by your taste in food I find that hard to believe.”
“Just because we don’t eat things named with numbers?!”
Ark smiled. “Bear in mind, Melissa,” I stiffened with a mixture of lust and incredulity at the way Ark made my name sound, “we are eating nearly the same thing, you and I.”
I looked down at Nutritional Supplement 23, a pile of goo on Ark’s plate, then back at my ravioli. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Ark laughed. “Do you think the station has whatever this ‘cheese’ or ‘pasta’ you mentioned aboard? The food preparation machines are adept at making food taste like whatever you want, but in reality you are also eating a numbered nutritional supplement.”
He reached over and grabbed a ravioli from my plate. I tapped him on the wrist, but he got away with one. I noticed the way his skin felt on mine and wanted more of it, but Ark pulled back, giving the ravioli between his fingers a suspicious look before tossing it into his mouth.
He grimaced while chewing, before speaking again. “Nutritional Supplement 46, I believe. Not a favorite of mine.” He stared back at me. “I prefer the 47.”
I looked down at my plate, suddenly no longer hungry. Of course Ark was correct. The plans for the station didn’t include boxes of cheese and pasta. The food preparation machines took component nutrients and synthesized them together.
Ark’s way of eating just cut out the middleman and got right to the point. “In a way,” she said, “that’s refreshing. You don’t waste time with dressing up food.”
“There are more important things for a warrior to deal with.”
“But…what about the pageantry of it all? The enjoyment of food, sitting down to a nice meal with your friends, or…a loved one?” I didn’t mean to make that last part so much like a question with a purpose, but I immediately felt that was how it came out.
Ark stared at me, his eyes narrowing, a grimace on his face. “Pardon me, I didn’t mean it to sound like that.” I looked away, suddenly unable to meet Ark’s withering stare. “I don’t even know if your species experiences love,” I muttered almost to myself, under my breath.
Ark leaned forward. “Love is universal, human. No species in the known galaxy experiences it as passionately and as powerfully as the Kreossians. Do not make the mistake of forgetting that.” There was no humor in his tone, nothing to suggest Ark was being lighthearted. He clearly meant business.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to presume…”
“That is understandable, you do not know our ways.”
I then realized I had asked the question that way because O wanted to know what Ark’s relationship status was, and that almost made me laugh out loud, but I managed to hold myself in check just at the last moment. I blushed, and quickly looked down to try and hide my face just as I noticed Ark’s eyebrows raise in question. “Tell me about how your species loves, Ark. You make it sound so all-encompassing.”
Ark nodded. “That it is, human. Tell me about your species’ ideas of love first.”
I opened my mouth a couple times and closed it before I found the right words to say. “We’ve changed a lot in the last few decades.”
Ark nodded again, unsurprised. “The meeting with us changed your planet. First contact always does.” He stared me down. “It changed how you love?”
“Yes, yes it did. The upheaval that the knowledge of life on other worlds brought, well, they accelerated how our society was already changing. People now don’t really form long term bonds very often.”
“What do they do instead?”
“Short term relationships, mostly. Meet someone interesting, sleep with them, be with them for a short time, and then move onto the next person.”
Ark’s face had taken on a mask of something approaching anger. “It is like this all over your world?”
I looked back, sadly. “Unfortunately, yes. It’s become so easy to jump between relationships that people don’t really try anymore to keep them going through hardships.”
“I did not know our arrival would cause such turmoil.”
“Don’t get me wrong, your arrival didn’t help, but you’re also not to blame. Our society had been moving in that direction for over a hundred years even before you came. Technology is what started it.”
Ark scoffed. “You let your machines change you?”
I nodded. “When you put it that way it makes us sound weak, and maybe we are. But I think instead we were just unprepared for how easy technology would make things.”
“Now I begin to understand how our appearance could change your world so much in such a short amount of time.”
We ate in silence for another minute. I was momentarily despondent at the state of love and romance’s apparent demise back on Earth. “Now,” I said, trying to brighten up. “How about on your world?”
“On our world, we have embraced technology without letting it change us.”
“That sounds hard to believe.”
“Only if you do not understand the heart of a Kreossian warrior.”
“I admit, Ark, that I don’t. You’re the first one I’ve met. And I’m only the second human to have met one of you.”
Ark didn’t say anything, just took another bite of his nutritional supplement. I started to eat again, but Ark interrupted her. “We do not flit from dalliance to dalliance like your species, Melissa. Kreossians go through a short time in their lives, around 3 of our years, in which we play at love.”
“That’s it?” I was intrigued. That wasn’t long at all.
“After that, we choose our mates and remain connected to them for the rest of our lives. No exceptions.”
“For the rest of your lives? You don’t have…divorce?”
Ark furrowed his brow. “I do not understand that word, but I gather its meaning. No, the bonds we forge cannot be broken. It is the second most important choice a Kreossian makes in their lifetime.”
I was still trying to wrap my head around this entire thing. “And the most important choice…is?”
Ark almost snapped to attention. “The most important choice in a Kreossian’s life is how they will serve the empire.” There was no wavering in his voice - this was what he believed, through and through.
“And how have you chosen to serve your empire?”
Ark bristled at the question, like he almost considered it an insult. “Is it not clear, Melissa Crane of Earth? I am a warrior - I go where the empire sends me, and I make sure its will is carried out.”
I took a sip of my drink. “That sounds very exciting.”
“Exciting is unimportant. I do not do it for myself, for my personal glory. What matters is the empire and its interests.”
“Is that all that matters?”
Ark studied me gravely before answering. “No, of course not. That is not the only thing.”
“It sounds like you don’t have time in your life for anything else.”
Ark rested his giant hands on the table. I looked down and couldn’t help but lick my lips as she stared at them. I had always had a weakness for men with strong looking hands and forearms, and despite being an alien, Ark put all the men I had ever fantasized to utter shame in that department.
By now I had forgotten my food, and curiously, I wasn’t hungry anymore when I noticed the plate sitting on the table. Ark also hadn’t taken a bite in more than a minute. Ark’s eyes were dark and as I grew aware that Ark was staring at me, I couldn’t help but become entangled in his gaze. “When I find something that interests me, Melissa Crane of Earth, I do not waste time. A warrior does not deal in deception.”
“What do you mean?”
“I do not engage in games. When I want something, I make it clear.”
I couldn’t hold Ark’s strong gaze and let my eyes fall back to his hands on the table. “Oh.”
We sat in silence for another minute before Ark sat back in the tiny chair and looked around the room. “Admiral Kaalax and Ambassador Fuller will return soon.”
I smiled, not wanting to break the connection we shared while the room was ours. “They’re not here yet, though,” I said softly, letting my words hang in the air, a mischievous smile growing across my face. “We still have some time together alone.”
Ark didn’t return the smile, but he nodded. “You are factually correct, Melissa Crane of Earth. Admiral Kaalax and Ambassador Fuller are not here yet.”
I winked at him, before wondering if an alien such as Ark would interpret that gesture the right way. For all I knew, it was a grave insult on his world, and could spark a war; a war that Earth would no doubt lose, and lose badly. “Factually correct is the best kind of correct, Ark.”
Ark nodded. “I have often said the same thing to my men.” He seemed pleased that we had at least something in common, and I guessed from his nod that he was serious and had missed the point of my joke. I briefly wondered whether Kreoss even had a concept of humor. There wasn’t even the hint of a smile on his face, so I could only conclude that they didn’t. “What shall we do with the brief time alone we have left?”
I studied his face again for some hint that he was thinking something amorous, but Ark was as unreadable as a sphinx. If he were a human man, I would take that as a clear sign, but I definitely didn’t know how to proceed with an alien man, even one as hunky as Ark. I went along with it, though - my senses hadn’t been on fire like this in a long time. Whatever this alien was, he was intriguing. “Tell me more about how your people experience love.”
“That would take longer than the time we have, Melissa Crane of Earth, and would require a Kreossian far more eloquent than I am.”
That seemed like as close to a shut down as could be. I stiffened, chastened by the rebuke. “Tell me something about your species, then, or somewhere you’ve been that was exciting.” This was like pulling teeth from a rhinoceros.
“I have seen many worlds, fought in many battles all across the empire. Eventually they all begin to look the same.”
“Has anyone ever told you how much of an amazing dinner companion you are, Ark?” I tried not to sound too sarcastic, but as soon as the words came out she knew I had crossed a line. She could only hope that Ark wouldn’t notice.
Ark nodded again, without a hint of acknowledging my sarcasm. “I have often heard that. When I am not on a campaign I am invited to many dinner engagements, presumably for my company.”
I sighed, and was about to open my mouth again when the door to the anteroom opened and Ambassador Fuller and Admiral Kaalax came out, Kaalax with his arm around Fuller’s shoulders. Ambassador Fuller himself looked tiny and tired compared to the gigantic, hale, and hearty Admiral Kaalax, but even I could see the happiness etched across Fuller’s face.
It must be amazing, to meet the man who changed your life and the entire trajectory of your species after 50 years. The stories they must have to tell each other! It was too bad the conference was only scheduled to last a couple days - they could probably catch up on each other’s lives for months given half a chance.
“Melissa,” Ambassador Fuller called out as I stood up, “it’s been a wonderful dinner, but I think it’s time for me to rest now.” I went to his side immediately and helped him, stepping gingerly toward the dining room’s exit toward the sleeping quarters.
“We will talk again in the morning, Fuller,” Admiral Kaalax called out from behind them. Fuller turned around, resting against me, and I turned with him. Ark had stood up and moved both their dishes to the recycler before taking up his position next to Kaalax, a good head taller than his commander.
Fuller waved back. “Indeed we will, old friend. But for now I must rest. You’ve taken the wind out of me.”
Kaalax laughed, the booming sound echoing over the small dining room. Fuller flinched, and I helped him back to his room. Just before Ark left my sight, I thought he saw him smile for a moment.
