Happy Snak

by Nicole Kimberling

  Seigata calmly sidestepped. The vial shattered against the wall.

  “Kenjan—” Oziru began.

  “I deny this companion.” Kenjan jabbed a finger at Wave. “I will not take its flesh.” Kenjan’s muzzle contorted in a paroxysm of fury, but the alien said nothing more, just dived beneath the water and vanished.

  Oziru sat like a statue. Two attendants dragged Wave back from the water’s edge. One of them bent and wrapped the Kishocha’s injured arm with a fleshy-looking bandage.

  “Is it over?” Gaia asked.

  “Be quiet!” Seigata said.

  “No, she may speak.” Oziru stood. “It is over. The ghost does not want this servant, and I cannot bear to look at it for it belonged to Kenjan. You may have it. It is called Wave.”

  Oziru left without another word. Seigata and the attendants trailed after it. The Kishocha door twisted shut. Gaia eyed the pool of water where the not-at-all-dead Kenjan lurked. Then she turned her attention to Wave.

  She prodded the alien’s uninjured arm with her toe. Wave didn’t respond. In fact, the Kishocha seemed incapable of responding. Its pupils pulsed. Its jaw hung slack.

  “Wave?” she said. Wave’s muzzle twitched and it groaned out a word, “Pofuham.”

  Gaia tried to look pofuham up in her electronic dictionary, but found no entry for that or for any other word Wave said. The alien was too strung out to communicate, even in its own language. The best Gaia could do was to wrap some bandages around its cuts and hope it sobered up.

  Gaia shoved her hands under Wave’s armpits and dragged the alien toward the human side door. The shell floor was still wet from the ceremony and she slid a couple of times. She set Wave down, and discovered that she couldn’t open the door. Though clearly biomechanical and voice activated, Gaia couldn’t figure out how to make it obey her.

  She spent the next ten minutes prying, pulling and pounding at the door and surrounding wall. She looked up the Kishocha word for open in her dictionary. The door didn’t respond to “open”.

  Gaia tried the entry that lead to the Kishocha side. Same story. Wave groaned. Gaia went back to the alien. Blood oozed out from its cuts. Gaia pulled off her Happy Snak smock and wrapped it around the alien’s arm.

  Her bra was held together by a safety pin but who, apart from Kenjan, was there to see it? She decided to call Fitzpatrick. But she found her phone had gone dead. Water had seeped into the cracked housing.

  “Shit!” Gaia threw the phone down. It skittered into the water. “Goddamn it!”

  Suddenly, the remains of the phone came flying out of the water, whizzed past her head and slammed into the wall behind her back.

  Kenjan’s head emerged from the pink water. Its tendrils twined over each other. Gaia trembled. She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “I thought you were supposed to be dead.” Gaia’s voice shook.

  “Migiu,” Kenjan said. The door to her bedroom twisted open immediately.

  “Thanks.” She turned back to Kenjan, but the alien had gone.

  Wave’s skin felt clammier. Gaia hurried to drag Wave into her own bedroom.

  “Migiu,” she said to the door. Nothing happened. She looked up migiu. The dictionary read, to dilate. Inspired, Gaia looked up the word for contract, and said, “Hidero.” The door twisted closed. Gaia sank down to her bed.

  She had managed to get through a door with only minimal help. It was a small triumph, but she clung to it.

  Gaia got her first-aid kit and mechanically plastered bandages around Wave’s arm.

  The Kishocha groaned, but didn’t seem to see her. Gaia wrapped Wave in a couple of thermal blankets. As she stood, looking at the damaged, delirious alien, her legs suddenly buckled. She landed on her knees a few inches from Wave. Her hands shook. She was cold and wet.

  What was she supposed to do now? The only thing she could think to do was wait. Maybe when Wave woke up, the alien could tell her what it needed.

  A slight scratching sound made her jump nearly to the ceiling. She whirled and saw Microbe industriously digging at a piece of cardboard she’d put in his labyrinth specifically for him to industriously dig at. At least that plan had worked out.

  Gaia watched Microbe working. She knew she wouldn’t sleep. She reached under her bed and withdrew a stack of five hundred unfolded takeout boxes. One by one, she folded them all.

  Chapter Seven: Wave

  Gaia’s eyes itched. Somewhere between takeout box number two hundred fifty and three hundred, they’d dried out. Crooked stacks of folded boxes leaned over her bed like disintegrating columns of the Parthenon. Some toppled over. Gaia lost the ability to stack neatly at box number four hundred sixty-three. It was only five a.m. She’d have thought that folding them all would take longer. Wave had yet to regain consciousness.

  Gaia rubbed her bare wrists. The medics had instructed her to wear her braces for another two weeks, but she’d tried to wean herself early. The fresh tendons and muscles were still weak and shaky. Sometimes she was struck by the irrational fear that her new hands would simply fall off.

  Gaia was less upset than she had been a few hours before, but not because the situation had improved. Sleep deprivation had diminished her capacity to feel any strong emotion. A soothing bleak inevitability had settled over Gaia, narrowing her range of feeling, like the cool clouds compressed the sky over Seattle. She had a furious Kishocha living just outside her bedroom and another bleeding on her floor. But getting excited about either problem seemed pointless now. Gaia employed this method of mental limpness more often that she would have admitted to anyone.

  She decided to order supplies. She wandered out of her bedroom to the food lockers in her store’s back kitchen.

  She slid open a refrigerated food locker and fell into the easy habit of dictating.

  “Recording supply list—as of October ten, we have only one case of Clammi!, definitely need to stock up…also need a gallon of Orange number 17.” Gaia closed food locker twelve and slid open the door to number thirteen.

  “Order two more cases of churro mix… Need ketchup packets… Wet-naps are okay… There are fucking mushrooms growing in the bottom of this locker, goddammit!” Gaia crouched down to get a closer look at the fungi. The mushrooms were slender and long, with tiny blue caps. Gaia raised the hand-held to her lips again. “Get some industrial-strength fungicide.”

  The dull clatter of falling takeout boxes caught Gaia’s attention. She rushed back to her bedroom. Wave was sitting up. The black spot over its eye gleamed like fresh paint.

  Wave stared at her as though she was a completely unexpected thing. Wave asked, in English, if it was dead. Gaia replied that it was not.

  Though still groggy, Wave brightened. “Do you speak English well?”

  “Sure,” Gaia replied.

  “How lucky English is the only human language I know. My name is Wave Walker—like Jesus Christ, you know?”

  “No.”

  “Jesus Christ walked on waves. I can do that too. My flippers are as big as your prophet’s flippers were!” Wave held up its feet, spreading out the toes until the membranes between them pulled taut. As it shifted around to display its feet, the Kishocha winced, suddenly perceiving its injuries. It stared quizzically at the bandages. “Here is the source of my pain.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Dry and not very well. And much surprise at living. How do you feel?”

  “I’m okay. I’m Gaia Jones.”

  “You certainly are. I am happy to meet your radiant person. All of us Kishocha have heard of your bravery. We know that Gaia Jones rules Happy Snak and has been chosen to be the guardian of the kaijamfutan.”

  “I’m happy to meet you too.” Gaia wondered if Wave was still too groggy to explain what was going on. All indicators showed Kenjan to be vibrantly alive, and yet no one at the ceremony seemed to find its resurrection surprising. “Do you remember anything from yesterday?”

  “I remember little, except strange dre
ams of crashing water.”

  “Kenjan isn’t dead,” Gaia stated flatly.

  Wave’s face grew serious. “The esteemed Kenjan is a ghost now. It pains us all. I am only a servant, and I am so sad, but that does not change the ghost into alive again.” Wave stared sadly at its bandaged arm. “Gaia Jones?”

  “Just Gaia is fine.”

  “I am so sorry. Forgive me. I am ignorant and to blame. Please correct me whenever I am wrong.” Wave flattened itself across the floor. Gaia recoiled from Wave’s subservient display.

  “It’s okay. What were you going to say?”

  “Why am I alive?” Wave cocked its head sideways.

  For a moment, Gaia thought Wave was asking a philosophical question, which she had no idea how to even begin to answer. Then she realized that Wave was asking about yesterday’s aborted sacrifice.

  “So I guess you were going to be…” Gaia hesitated, searching for a nonconfrontational synonym for “killed”.

  “…a companion in death for the beautiful Kenjan’s ghost,” Wave supplied.

  “Yes, and so Oziru was, well, cutting your arm.”

  “In order to lure the hungry ghost with flesh.” Wave didn’t seem displeased, which disturbed her.

  “And Kenjan came bursting up out of the water and knocked the knife out of Oziru’s hand. And then Kenjan screamed something I didn’t understand and then Oziru said, ‘Accept your place.’ And Kenjan got really pissed off and dived under the water. Then Oziru told me to take you, and I brought you in here.” Gaia took a breath. “So you see, Kenjan is definitely not a ghost. That one is right behind that door somewhere.”

  “The ghost rejected my company?”

  “I don’t think Kenjan is a ghost,” Gaia said. Wave frowned.

  “With all due respect, I must say the noble Gaia should stop insisting that the delightful Oziru am Kenjan is not a ghost. Your words make it harder for we who are bereaved. I personally attended Kenjan while it died. The breath stopped, the blood stopped. Then—”

  “Yes?”

  “The glorious Oziru lay over the capsule and wept tears of acid. When the breath of Kenjan stopped, Oziru howled with desolation, and before Seigata could intervene, the powerful but grief-stricken Oziru commanded Kenjan’s spirit to return.”

  “So?” Gaia leaned closer to Wave.

  “So, the gorgeous Kenjan arose as a kaijamfutan and is haunting Ki Island.” Wave ended its story with one long sad look at the door.

  “But Kenjan’s breathing again, right?”

  “Yes.” Wave’s shoulders drooped even lower. “Such was the power of lightning.”

  Gaia puzzled over this statement but didn’t pursue it, tenaciously hanging on to the subject of Kenjan’s bodily functions. “And Kenjan still eats right?”

  “Even ghosts eat.”

  “That isn’t what humans call a ghost,” Gaia said, triumphantly.

  “Really? What is it called?”

  “It isn’t called anything. You’re still considered to be alive.”

  “Even after a human has been dead? It’s still thought to be alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many once-dead humans are there?”

  “Not many, but there are a few. My brother’s heart stopped once for about thirty seconds.”

  “Have you ever been dead?”

  “Not to my knowledge.” Gaia gazed at Wave. What was she supposed to do with this alien—correction: these aliens? Because now she had two, and that got her thinking. “Can I ask you a question now?”

  “Certainly.”

  “What am I supposed to protect the so-called ghost from?”

  “Criticism and exorcism.” Wave adopted the same informative television presenter pose that it had in the video Fitzpatrick had shown her. “While alive, the ghost had many detractors and they may come to criticize it after death. Some of those same people, especially Scholar True Current, may call for exorcism, which is usually done with a holy spear or blackening poison and so you can see how it could be quite dangerous for the ghost.”

  Gaia wondered how it could have slipped everyone’s mind to mention to her that fending off spear-wielding scholars might be part of her duties as a guardian. “Do you think that’s likely to happen? The exorcism, I mean?”

  Wave let go with a snuffly laugh. “No one would dare exorcise this ghost unless it started to act as though it was alive. Oziru would not allow them to live. But there will certainly be criticism.”

  “Is that also done with a holy spear?”

  “No. Rocks, mostly. But a critic must have a fine throwing arm to get its opinion all the way across the moat, and scholars are not known for that, so the ghost should be all right.”

  And that was…good news?

  “Powerful Gaia Jones?” Wave said. “May I please entreat you for some water?”

  When Gaia brought water, Wave didn’t drink. Instead it poured the liquid over its bandages and asked for more. Gaia accommodated Wave’s repeated requests until, after a few minutes the thermal blankets were sopping wet. Then Wave asked if it could lie back down and sleep more.

  Gaia resumed inventory of both her meat products and her general situation. Was there any way to get out of this? She’d been handed responsibility for two specific lives in the most complete possible way, and indirectly gained control of all human beings on A-Ki Station.

  She couldn’t believe that she’d let this stupid situation get so out of control. Why hadn’t she asked more questions at the outset?

  She didn’t really care about Kenjan. How could she? She just cared about the new restaurant location she’d gotten saving the alien. Wave, on the other hand, elicited a sting of guilt. Gaia could already feel herself beginning to like the Kishocha.

  If she understood this situation correctly, Wave had become her slave. She couldn’t even think of such a relationship for more than a few seconds before a shudder of distaste rushed over her. Slavery was wrong. Treating living people like they were dead was wrong. Deliberately pouring water on your own bed was wrong. There was not much right about the Kishocha today.

  But she knew that if she went through the motions of her duties as Kenjan’s guardian and as Wave’s owner, she’d grow used to them.

  It would be prudent to evade attachment now.

  If she left, where would Wave be? Would Fitzpatrick take responsibility for the alien’s life? Would Wave then just become a pawn of the embassy? Or, worse, a trophy?

  Gaia rested her forehead in her palms. She felt as though her brain had suddenly grown too heavy for her neck to support. The past few weeks had slid by without impediment, because Gaia had never stopped to think about anything. That kind of mental limpness worked for her when she was in the throes of crisis and confusion, but it was a hell of a way to live every day. She had to stop and decide, without rationalization or ambassadorial threats, whether she was going to keep going down this road or flee.

  But she was so tired. It was six-thirty. In an hour Cheryl would be coming to help her with the set-up. In an executive decision, Gaia decided that she wasn’t up to work today. She needed rest and quiet more than she needed help inventorying her wet-naps. She and Wave both needed a little time. After entering an apologetic message into the storefront display, Gaia turned all her communication devices to sleep mode then returned to her room, tiptoed around Wave and climbed onto her box-strewn bed.

  Still, she did not sleep. Why had she let the Kishocha tattoo, cut, scrape and bruise her? Why did these things seem not only inevitable, but also correct? Why wasn’t she angry?

  Gaia didn’t know if loneliness or curiosity drove her. Maybe it was just convenience. For the price of only a few hours of discomfort, she had gained connection and importance. The power came cheap, and yet Gaia felt so weak. She did not want to meet her new obligations, but knew she could never respect herself if she ran away. She just had to keep going.

  So thinking, she passed out.

  While she slept, Gaia’s voic
e messages multiplied. By the time she woke, in the early afternoon, she had nearly half an hour of them. Both Blum and Fitzpatrick wanted to know how the Summoning had gone. Then a message from Roy who wanted every last detail of the ceremony, and a lone message from Cheryl asking if she was supposed to come to work today. Cheryl also remarked on Gaia’s locked door and inquired if she was okay. Last, Gaia’s mother excitedly reported seeing her on the WOW! Media Blast channel and commented that she looked pale and seemed mean.

  Gaia drummed her fingers against her hand-held, sourly trying to deduce which messages she could ignore.

  “Are you troubled, my master?” Wave asked.

  Gaia jumped and knocked over another stack of boxes. Wave was awake and looking more refreshed than before.

  “Please, just call me Gaia.”

  “Of course, I am deeply regretful to have caused need to correct me again.” Once more Wave lay flat out on the floor.

  “Please stop doing that too. Humans just don’t prostrate themselves before others. Well, Americans don’t, at least.”

  Wave shot bolt upright. “Is this pose correct?”

  “Good enough.” Gaia slouched forward, compensating for Wave’s now excellent posture. “Look, Wave, I want to talk to you.”

  “And what a coincidence. I love to talk!” Wave folded its white hands and leaned far forward so that its muzzle was lower than Gaia’s nose. Gaia decided to ignore this submissive posture. She could explain about groveling and related annoying topics later. “Can I ask what’s troubling you now?”

  “I’ve got a lot of messages to answer and—” Gaia broke off, looking at Wave. “I just can’t figure out what I’m supposed to do with you.”

  “Anything you want. I am your servant.”

  “That’s just so wrong.”

  “No, I am a good servant.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Gaia said. “Anyway, what can you do? I mean, what do you usually do?”

  “I am the Grand Experiment.” Wave dropped its voice theatrically.

  “And that is…?”