Happy Snak

by Nicole Kimberling

  “Did it work?” She doubted that it did, but then again, these were aliens.

  “No.” Kenjan sighed dramatically. “But I heard that some humans fly by psychic power. I heard it on the television machine.”

  “You heard wrong. Humans don’t fly. And they especially don’t fly by psychic power. The only way humans fly is by using flying machines like airplanes and hang gliders and stratolifts and things like that.”

  “I investigated these objects,” Kenjan said. “At first I thought that humans could control gravity, but they only manipulate the currents in the great ocean of air. Human machines are glorious, and yet they hum unspeakably.”

  “So, you’re into flying machines, huh?” Gaia asked. Kenjan was, and began recounting in detail the history of its love affair with the mechanisms of human flight. Of these, the helicopter was Kenjan’s favorite because it resembled an insect.

  Occasionally, Gaia glanced at the door. No Kishocha darkened the threshold. She started to feel bad. It was like throwing a party and having no one arrive.

  After an hour, Gaia’s attention began to flag. Sensing her weariness, Kenjan wound its commentary on military-attack helicopters to a close.

  “You seem very tired now,” Kenjan asked. “Have I filled you with boredom?”

  “No, it’s just past the time I usually go to bed.” Her gaze drifted toward the empty door. She wondered if the shrine’s hours of operation were rigidly set in Kishocha scripture or if she was allowed to close early, for lack of business.

  “Then perhaps, my beloved guardian, it is time to close the door and sleep. I expected to see no one tonight. It is too soon. Just a double order of chicken satay with extra toast and cucumbers will satisfy me.”

  “The cucumbers haven’t been delivered yet,” Gaia said. “But I have some dill pickles. Do you want one of those?”

  Kenjan slid back into the water, leaning its head back to submerge its cranial tendrils, which had gone dormant as they dried. “Whatever would please you most, my dear protector. I will simply await your return and listen in anticipation to the hum of snack-making machinery.”

  Chapter Nine: Feeding People

  Every employee’s first day on the job is rough, but Wave’s was rockier than most. The day started off with a volley of sirens and flashing lights set off by a short gravity failure. Gaia was startled awake by the noise only to find herself floating six inches above her bed. A couple of seconds later the gravity returned and she plopped back down onto her sheets, stunned.

  A rude awakening indeed.

  Ruder still to find compostable cutlery, straws and other light objects that hadn’t been tied down strewn around the Happy Snak dining room. Gaia and Wave started early, first straightening up, then addressing the mundane details of food service.

  Wave’s first real problem was the Second Skin Plasticized Hygiene Dip, which conformed beautifully to Gaia’s hands and peeled off easily, but adhered to Wave’s more porous skin like glue and had to be removed by a reproachful Kishocha doctor. After rubber gloves were located for Wave, the alien’s orientation resumed. An inherently fast learner, Wave mastered the cold-drinks machine in no time.

  Gaia let the alien investigate the food-storage lockers, reading the boxes and getting acquainted with the words, while she continued counting inventory. After only five minutes, Wave had a question.

  “What is this liquid?” Wave held up a jug. “The label says Orange number 17.”

  “It’s orange dye.”

  “Is it to drink?”

  “No, it colors the food. I use it in the sweet and sour sauce to make it more interesting.”

  “Is it orange fruit flavor?” Wave asked.

  “It doesn’t have any flavor,” Gaia replied.

  “But it smells delightful!” Wave unscrewed the top and took a huge whiff of the dye. Gaia walked over and sniffed the jug.

  “I don’t smell anything.” Gaia frowned at the bottle.

  “Please, wise and noble Gaia, may I please drink some orange?” Wave clutched the plastic jug.

  “I guess…” Gaia poured a tiny bit into a plastic cup. She handed it to Wave who greedily gulped down the contents. Wave’s eyes slowly closed, its muzzle wrinkled, its cranial tendrils quivered. Then the Kishocha opened its left eye, followed by its right. Wave’s lips were stained vibrant red-orange.

  “Beautiful taste, color of golden sun! Flavor of all heavenly delight!” Wave blurted excitedly. “More orange please, I beg you. Oh, orange… Orange! Even the name is delightful.”

  Gaia cautiously poured Wave a little more orange dye. Again Wave threw it back like a shot of whiskey. The Kishocha’s cranial tendrils stiffened until they resembled rubber snakes, then dangled, gently vibrating. Gaia worried that she might have poisoned Wave, but the alien didn’t keel over.

  “Oh mighty orange, hear my love!” Wave cried, then began to sing in Kishocha. Quietly, Gaia put the orange dye away in her room. When Wave finished singing twenty minutes later, Gaia was stocking ketchup packets and individually wrapped midget dills. “Gaia, where is the orange?”

  “I’m cutting you off.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t think you should drink too much orange in one day.” Gaia crammed the last midget dill into its dispenser.

  “No?” Wave asked.

  “No.” Gaia pressed a note of grim firmness into her voice.

  “Will I get some tomorrow?” Wave clutched its empty orange cup.

  “Maybe after the store’s closed.”

  “Then I will cheerfully begin my duties, knowing that orange awaits me.”

  Gaia waited until she heard Wave flop across the dining room before she removed the hand-held.

  “Order a couple more gallons of Orange number 17,” she whispered, then pushed the send icon. It was almost time for Roy and Cheryl to arrive. She wondered how they would react to Happy Snak’s newest employee.

  Roy couldn’t stop grinning. He sat to Gaia’s left. Wave slouched shyly to her right, and Cheryl faced Gaia across the slick yellow expanse of tabletop. Bright, cheerful “sun-lite brand” lighting fixtures suffused the dining room of Happy Snak with a warm morning glow. Beneath their feet, white and yellow floor tiles gleamed in unscuffed glory. Everything was new. The butter-yellow paint still emanated a slight wet smell. Above the counter, three new menu-board screens displayed her carefully planned list of available snacks. In the old Happy Snak, she’d settled for a handwritten sign. Now full-color moving pictures and dazzling graphics blazed over her front-counter area like a perpetual fireworks display. Near the front doors, Gaia’s narrow bank of video games flashed exciting silent images. Gaia had turned the sound off for the employee meeting.

  She’d realized the necessity of an orientation, now that she had employees, but hadn’t fully planned for the disruptive quality of an alien. Neither Roy nor Cheryl listened as she described the override mechanism for the register. They sat, enraptured with the novelty of Wave.

  Roy took a breath, beaming, and blurted out, “You are just so cool!” Cheryl rolled her eyes.

  Wave slouched harder. “I am sure I am not. I am the average temperature.”

  “You’re so great! I love you,” Roy burbled.

  “Calm down, Roy. I think you’re scaring it,” Cheryl said. Then, suddenly realizing that Wave spoke English, she added hastily, “Not that you can’t speak for yourself, right?”

  Wave scrunched down harder, its chin only inches from the yellow tabletop. The Kishocha’s long cranial tendrils curled in front of its eyes and muzzle. “I am shy.”

  “Oh God,” Roy gasped. “It’s adorable.”

  Gaia looked down at her tattoos, embarrassed by Roy’s unabashed awe and adulation. Whenever she felt any truly strong attraction she couldn’t look at the object of her admiration. She’d once had the opportunity to meet one of her favorite game designers, the woman responsible for Wreck Diver and Subconscious. When it had come time to say hello, Gaia had suddenly turned aw
ay, pretending that she hadn’t been waiting at all. Naked veneration undid her.

  She’d just have to bag the employee meeting. No one was going to learn any error codes today.

  “Listen,” Gaia said. “Maybe we should go over register codes another time.”

  “Huh?” Roy didn’t look at her. His enraptured gaze locked on Wave. The alien. The Kishocha. Gaia’s failed strategy for the meeting had been to treat Wave as just another member of the crew.

  “Yeah.” Cheryl’s expression was especially perky. “Let’s just get to know each other today. I’m sure there are a lot of challenges ahead and we have to get a ground-floor understanding of each other first.”

  “What?” Gaia looked at Cheryl’s tightly laced fingers. Wave peeled a cranial tendril away from its eyes.

  “I’m sure we’ve all got different cultural values, and a little conflict is inevitable. But the more we know about one another, the more we can respect each other’s individual and cultural diversity,” Cheryl said. Gaia hadn’t realized Cheryl was capable of speaking embassy-dialect English.

  “I can’t believe you’re an alien,” Roy mumbled in hushed awe. “From another, entirely different planet.”

  “I am from another galaxy,” Wave said.

  “It just gets better.” Roy grabbed his head as though trying to prevent his skull from popping open from mind-blowing delight. Cheryl smiled so hard Gaia thought her face would crack.

  “So,” Gaia said, “what’s your home world like?”

  “Wet.” Wave’s voice was barely audible.

  “What else?” Roy clutched the edge of the table.

  “Purple.” Wave’s voice hadn’t gained any strength.

  “Is the sky purple?” Roy asked.

  “The sky is blue,” Wave said. “It contains oxygen.”

  “So, what part of it is purple?”

  “Excuse me, but are you going to eat me, Roy?” Wave asked.

  Roy dissolved into little giggles. Cheryl looked horrified.

  “Roy isn’t going to eat you, Wave, don’t worry!” Cheryl’s knuckles whitened. “What made you think that?”

  Wave said, “Roy stares and snuffles like a predatory thing.”

  Gaia and Cheryl turned their attention to Roy. If there were a less predatory man on or off Earth, Gaia would have liked to meet him. Cheryl snorted in quiet laughter, also contemplating Roy’s predatory qualities.

  “Roy isn’t going to eat you,” Gaia said.

  “How can you be sure?” Wave peeled a couple more cranial tendrils off its muzzle.

  “For one thing, Roy’s a vegan.” Cheryl’s hands had relaxed. She rifled through her pockets, eventually producing a pack of cigarette gum.

  “That means he doesn’t eat meat, or anything that came from an animal,” Gaia clarified.

  Wave suddenly bolted upright, apparently alarmed by this. “You eat clams, right, Roy?”

  Roy tried to compose himself, failed and managed a weak and giggly, “No.”

  “Are you being punished?”

  Roy shook his head and then it was Wave’s turn to lean forward. Gaia took this to be a good sign. She noted Wave’s cranial tendrils, easily the most expressive part of the Kishocha. The very tips of Wave’s tendrils curled and uncurled very slowly in a way that Gaia interpreted as a combination of wariness and curiosity.

  “You must be very powerful spiritually,” Wave said. “To resist the lure of clam every day.”

  A smile twitched at the edge of Roy’s mouth, but he suppressed it. “It’s hard sometimes, but I make it, with Cheryl by my side.”

  A thought seemed to strike Cheryl. “Are you single, Wave?”

  “No, there were many in my birthing pool.”

  Cheryl tried again. “What I meant was, is there someone you’re in love with?”

  “I’m not sure the Kishocha pair off like we do,” Roy said.

  “Never without permission!” Wave said. “I am not a sneaky.”

  Gaia stepped in. “I think Cheryl was just asking because she and Roy are married, and she wondered if you were married.”

  “Married?” Wave tilted its head quizzically.

  “Like Kenjan and Oziru,” Gaia said.

  Wave’s cranial tendrils stood straight out from its head.

  “Cheryl is like Oziru?” Wave slid away from Cheryl, lowering its head again. “Forgive me, I did not understand your superiority.”

  “No, Cheryl isn’t like Oziru,” Gaia said. “However, like Oziru and Kenjan, Roy and Cheryl are in love and live together. They live next door in the back of the Peace Corps office.”

  “And to show frenzied devotion, you and Roy do the sex often?” Wave asked.

  “Not as often as you would think.” Cheryl snorted.

  “Hey!” Roy sat up straight. “I had to brush up on my Kishocha.”

  “Whatever, baby,” Cheryl said. Gaia decided that she absolutely didn’t want to know how often Roy and Cheryl had sex, and took evasive conversational action.

  “Wave, is there anyone who needs to know where you are?” Gaia felt a little embarrassed at not wondering, until now, if Wave had friends who were worrying after it.

  “No. The ghost knows that I am here to help take care of it. And I am not permanently paired with any person, except with the ghost. I wish I could tell the ghost about my new and exciting position at Happy Snak. Kenjan always said that I was most adaptable to learning things, and look! Now I am learning how to override the cash register.” Wave turned to Gaia. “Code key F2, void key, 32543, code key F3.”

  Gaia burst out laughing. “That’s great, I can’t believe you remembered that.”

  “Not only that,” Wave announced smugly. “Frymaster override: clear, clear, reset. Sanitization unit override: manager 123 clear. Kwickthaw override: Pull out the plug and plug it back in again. I am the master of the machines. I know their secret-code ways. All machines must do as I say and bow before me. Worthless, asymmetrical things, they will have none of my clams!” Wave drew itself up to its full height and crossed its arms.

  Roy emitted a soft snicker. “I just love this guy.”

  During the week before grand opening, Roy managed to get over being starstruck by Wave. As the two learned the intricacies of Happy Snak, they formed an amicable relationship. Cheryl started off a little stiff and formal toward Wave, but eventually she also relaxed. Gaia was glad. She just wanted the grand-opening party to go smoothly.

  The day of the opening, the four of them finished preparations early enough to get a head start on drinks. Gaia guiltlessly broke into one of the cases of beer Blum’s office had sent over. Cheryl twisted the top off her beer with one hand, deftly unwrapping a stick of Nico-Nico cigarette gum with her other. Gaia slid a cup of Orange on Ice to Wave, who declined the beer on the grounds that it smelled like pee.

  Cheryl took a long appraising look at her husband, much like the one Gaia herself had given Roy when he arrived earlier that day. He was shirtless, which Gaia was pretty sure was a violation of health department regulations. Roy also sported an enormous shell choker and a boa-like swag of fresh, moist kelp. Where had he gotten it?

  “Roy,” Cheryl said, “do you feel like a tool? Because, baby, you look like a tool.”

  Gaia internally flinched at her scathing tone, but Roy only laughed. “I may look like a tool to you, but you’ll be the one feeling underdressed once the welcome party gets under way. Isn’t that right, Wave?”

  Wave looked startled at being abruptly yanked into the conversation. Then the alien smiled hugely, showing all of its teeth, now stained bright orange.

  “I’m sorry. I do not know what tool Cheryl thinks you look like, Roy, so I cannot say.”

  Cheryl snorted. Roy smiled indulgently at Wave.

  “Okay, so here’s the plan,” Gaia said. “Everything’s on the house tonight. The opening ceremony starts at six, but we have to make absolutely sure that these freeloaders are out of here by ten o’clock so I can go feed Kenjan, okay?”
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  Roy and Cheryl nodded their agreement.

  Wave asked, “What’s on the house?”

  “Complimentary,” Gaia clarified. “Do you know what that means?”

  Wave nodded seriously. “We tell all the people that they are so beautiful—even if they are ugly.”

  Cheryl choked back a laugh. Roy clapped her on the back.

  “Not quite,” Gaia said. “It means that everything is free today.”

  “We don’t ask for money pieces?” Wave looked appalled. “But the handbook says that we must always take the money pieces before presenting the product to our honored guests.”

  “Yes, normally that’s true,” Gaia said. “But tonight we are giving everyone samples.”

  “Samples?”

  “Like presents,” Roy said.

  “But the handbook says that we can’t give anything away, not even an empty cup which costs us ten money pieces to buy. It constitutes loss.”

  “You truly are an excellent example of a budding capitalist,” Cheryl remarked, with some disdain.

  “Thank you, but the capitalism game is easy, so I can’t be too inflated.” Wave dismissed Cheryl’s backhanded compliment with a shrug.

  Gaia chose to ignore the other woman’s lack of love for free enterprise. She had her hands full with the aliens. “See, Wave, most people who are coming tonight, especially the Kishocha, haven’t ever tried our product, so we give them a taste for free. They like it and want more, but we won’t give them more unless they have money, and then we have business, and then I can take the money and give some of it to you for your pay, and you can buy orange. Do you understand?”

  “We are luring them with our treasures?”

  “Something like that,” Gaia said.

  Wave looked down into its orange glass. “But the Kishocha guests won’t ever be able to come back because they don’t have any money pieces.”

  “Maybe not money like ours, but they’ve got to have something,” Gaia asserted.

  Cheryl said, “I hate to break it to you, but they don’t have anything. They’re a cashless society.”

  “Are you sure?” Gaia looked for confirmation to the alien, who nodded and slurped more orange. Irritation ground through her stomach. This was a major glitch in her plan to dominate the Kishocha market. “Well, that’s a problem.”