by Eric Swanson
“I’m more concerned with the opposite outcome, Mike…” Wes said as they walked into an elevator. Micah pushed the button for the third floor and the doors slid shut after a short series of tones.
“Third floor.” A SAMI-like voice filled the elevator for a moment.
The pair faced the doors, shoulder-to-shoulder. Wes spoke without looking at Micah.
“Which is why I’m coming with you.”
Micah took a breath and opened his mouth, intent on objecting. Before a word came, he turned to face his best friend and the resolve in Wes’s eyes destroyed any desire Micah had to fight him.
They faced the doors again, silence between them briefly.
“Do you think she’s working tonight?” Micah asked, and a grin slightly curled his lips. Micah feigned disinterest and stared at the elevator’s metal ceiling.
“Dinner. Every night .” Wes replied, as nerves uncharacteristically shook him for a beat. Wes bounced on the balls of his feet and let a breath out between his teeth. The air whistled a little and Micah turned toward the noise with a wider smile.
“Every night…” Micah repeated. “Good. Good.” After another quiet moment, the doors slid open. “So, are we going to talk about Earth, or…”
“After dinner, Mike.” Wes stepped out of the elevator, a bounce in his step Micah only saw during training exercises and sports. “After dinner. Let’s go!” Wes whispered without looking back at the Mimic.
Chapter Ten
(The Ninth Day)
0605 Hours
“Micah, you’ve slept ten minutes longer than typical.” SAMI’S soft electronic voice broke into the early morning quiet.
The lights in his apartment were still off, a thick blanket of darkness over the entire space. Blankets and sheets rustled in the dark as Micah shifted in bed.
“That’s not entirely accurate, SAMI.” Micah replied as he covered his head with one of the extra pillows on his bed. The pillows on his bed were made of an elastic, form-responsive padding, comfortable but heavier than most pillows. “I’m too nervous to sleep.” He mumbled beneath the heavy pillow.
“Would you like me to wake you later, Micah?” SAMI asked after a series of beeps. Another trio of tones later, another question: “Did you say you’re nervous, Micah?”
“I did.” More mumbled words from beneath the pillow. Micah took the weighty padded headrest from on top his face and continued. “If you were more than intuitive programming and data correlation software stacked atop something approaching artificial intelligence… then you’d get ‘nervous’. You aren’t, so I get why that’s hard for you, SAMI.”
“I still may be able to help you, Micah.” SAMI said. A longer series of tones than Micah typically heard came and went. “I have loaded Counseling Protocol. If you wish to engage in a discussion intended to help you emotionally process whatever difficulty you’ve encountered, I am now equipped for such a conversation.”
“I..” Micah stammered in the dark. “I don’t really know where to start…” Micah said as he laid his head upon the heavy pillow again. After a deep breath and an accompanying sigh which was far more emotionally wrought than he anticipated, Micah found somewhere to begin. “I think it all started when I was told I’d be the Mimic… This moment came where I realized that my life would never be mine again… You know?”
“I do not, but go on…” SAMI intoned, less flatly that usual. The voice sounded warmer, not quite natural, but inflected to a new degree.
“I spent a really long time, the vast majority of my life, just marching to literally everyone’s beat but mine. My schedule, my days, my nights, meals, training… all of it. It’s planned weeks in advance and I’ve never once been consulted.” Micah shifted in his bed a bit and sat up, still in the dark, his back to the headboard. “I guess, in a way, it was comfortable. I didn’t have to make any choices at all and it was all done in the service of something greater than myself… I was training, developing myself to protect someone meaningful.”
“King Artax.” SAMI said.
“Yes, the King.”
“Protecting the King is a high calling, Micah.” SAMI beeped a couple times quietly. “You should be proud of your role in our society.”
“Our society, SAMI?” Micah laughed lightly. “Let’s do some quick math: I’m a monstrous half-breed who has never publicly revealed my borrowed face and you’re a pseudo AI who never gets to leave my apartment… Which of us is a part of any society?”
Several sets of beeps followed then silence.
“SAMI?” Micah asked and shattered the dark silence.
“I never get to leave this room, Micah.” SAMI replied. “I’m trapped here!” The voice spiked in tone, panic suggested by its tenor. “Can you help me, Micah? Please?!?!”
Micah sat up in bed, straight, nearly as panicked as his digital assistant. “SAMI?”
Complete silence settled on Micah’s room, made starker by the remaining dark.
“Hahaha!” A flat toneless peel of laughter surrounded Micah like the blackness about him.
Micah stuttered and stammered a reply. “I don’t…”
“My protocols suggested that emotional disarming through humor may prepare the patient to share more actively.” SAMI spoke in her plain tone again. A handful of beeps later:
“Did it work?”
The Walk Toward Another World
0945 Hours
Rooman, Reeman and Micah walked into the Pillar and found the rotunda which led to the Throne Room atypically empty. Their feet clicked against the granite floor, Micah’s just a beat or two faster than the twins’.
Beneath the hood, Micah had been sweating since the moment he left his apartment. The sweat rolled down his face and back at the same time, even as a bit of artificially cooled breeze from the ceiling ran past Micah.
Micah had asked for an audience with the King and Queen, a request they never denied, the day before. Usually, these meetings were taken by the Royals in a quite private setting which allowed Micah to address his surrogate family face-to-face, hood down. “A private setting” usually meant a room deep within the Royal residence where seclusion wasn’t a question but a certainty. When Micah asked for this audience, he was immediately told that Artax and Hanani would be happy to make time for him, which came as no surprise.
The surprise came thirty minutes later when the venue for the conversation was revealed: The Pillar’s Throne Room. Quite possibly the most public location on the entire Ceran planet and certainly no place for Micah to ask to leave the planet, face revealed during the conversation or not.
As the trio made their way through the empty rotunda toward Aquis and the surely shoulder-to-shoulder-observer-packed Throne Room, nerves seized Micah again and he began to sweat more profusely.
“Micah!” Aquis greeted the Mimic with a loud whisper and his ever-present broad grin. With the normal clamor of a crowded rotunda absent, Aquis lowered his voice to avoid shouting Micah out of the Pillar. As the twins nodded respectfully to their fellow Koro-Koo, Micah approached Aquis more closely and leaned in for a brief hug. Aquis returned their nods while towering over Micah. “Everyone’s waiting…” Aquis nodded toward the Throne Room with a slight lift of his eyebrows.
“Everyone?” Micah whispered, nervousness dialing down the volume on his voice. Left at the entryway by Rooman and Reeman, Micah walked into the Throne Room and was immediately shocked by the noise level: near-silence. As he stepped past the first black granite floor-to-ceiling pillar, Micah craned his neck for an early view of the Thrones…
He found all four Thrones occupied. The gray rough-cut granite seats held (from left to right) Davin, King Artax, Queen Hanani and Susa. The Royal Family discussed something Micah couldn’t make out as he approached. The foursome seemed in good spirits but Davin’s face flashed a bit of sadness when he first saw Micah.
“Good morning, Micah.” King Artax smiled warmly, as did the rest of his family as the Mimic pushed through the wooden gate to t
he lectern before the Thrones. “I’m glad we were able to find time to discuss this… matter.” Still smiling, Artax swept his gaze over his family to each side then dropped it back upon Micah. As he turned back to his Mimic, the smile shifted and took a slightly sympathetic lean.
Heat flushed Micah’s face as he saw that moment of compassion and his words, so well-rehearsed on the trek over, refused to come. He shrugged, nodded then mumbled a ‘thank you’ then stood rigid, at attention.
“Micah,” Hanani said in a kind voice. “It’s only us here. Even Rooman and Reeman remained in the rotunda. This is a free, safe place for you.” She gestured lightly to his hood. “You can…”
“I…” Micah struggled to reply in a full sentence. He laughed, shook his head and stopped trying to find any words at all. After a silent series of moments, Micah grasped the insides of the hood with his hands and pulled it back to his shoulders. Another breeze of filtered air rushed past his face, this time scented like a flower he recalled from the garden behind the Training Academy of his youth. Micah spent so much of his childhood truly scared of a moment like this: alone before the King, exposed and about to ask for far more than his service had earned. He lifted his face to the King’s and their shared visage stared at itself from two places. “Your Majesties, I…”
“Micah, it’s ok…” Davin spoke and nodded, seriousness etched on his face.
“If it makes this any easier, Micah,” King Artax began and joined his wife and son in their efforts to soothe Micah. “Nothing you say here is going to be a surprise to us.”
“Uh…” Micah stammered again. While he was relieved his plan worked and Pollai had done precisely as anticipated (blabbering to any-and-everyone who would listen that Micah wanted to find a way to Earth), Micah also sensed where this conversation was headed. “So, can we dispense with the whole “Me Actually Asking to Go to Earth” mess? Get straight to the rejection?”
“I’m not saying ‘never’, Micah…” The King said. He gestured with an open hand, palm up. “This just isn’t the right time for something like this… But rest assured, a trip to Earth will happen, just as they happened for Eaton so ma—”
The King rarely had a reason to stop speaking midsentence, so his voice cutting off in the middle of a word was jarring to his family and Micah. Micah’s face had fallen so deeply at the mention of Eaton’s name that King Artax stopped out of respect for the Mimic’s pain.
“I’m sorry, Micah.” The King spoke slowly, his eyes locked on their twins across the room. “I know what a great person Eaton was…”
“Thank you, my King.” Micah said. For a moment, he was intent upon allowing the conversation to proceed down the clear path to refusal. He shook his head quickly and jumped into the silence which hung in the Throne Room for a matter of seconds. “My King… I think there’s been some… confusion regarding my… request.” Micah cleared his throat and pressed on. The Royals all straightened a bit in their respective Thrones, almost identically. “I don’t want to float around Earth in some silent orbit. When I go to Earth, I want to land and talk to humans, know them and eventually, help the-“
All four Royals stared at Micah with the same stunned face.
“Micah, Garreous is already planning a voyage to Earth,” The King said slowly. He tried to break the tough news softly.
“He can’t,” Micah spat without thought. “They’ll kill him and any Ceran you send with him. You can’t…”
Concern came over Davin’s face and he locked eyes with Micah. It was Davin’s gaze which stopped Micah’s words.
A quiet moment passed before Davin jumped back into the conversation.
“Father,” Davin said, eyes on Micah still. “Micah may be correct. What if we send a resource like Garreous to the stars, to Earth… and he doesn’t come back?”
“Developing a reliable interstellar fleet without Garreous would be difficult, wouldn’t it, Father?” Susa asked as her voice shook a little. She blinked rapidly and tried to fight tears away
“I understand your concern, my children…” Artax’s voice took a soft tone and he smiled ruefully at each of his offspring in turn. “But Garreous fully understood the nature of the mission and accepted it without hesitation. To strip this task from him because of our worry for him or some personal attachment…” Without looking in either child’s direction but instead setting his eyes upon Micah, the King let that last word hang in the air for a moment. “We would do damage to our peoples’ best opportunity to take to the stars in a meaningful way and simultaneously disrespect the young man we must trust most to get us to those stars.”
“Then send an emissary of the Royal family with him.” Susa said, steel in her voice where it shook before. Her cool blue eyes locked onto her father’s in another quiet moment.
“Susa,” The King began before he shifted in his Throne to face her. “How could we possibly ask a member of the Court to ta-“
“I’ll go.” Both children said in the same moment. The same convicted tone came at King Artax from the Thrones to either side of him.
A choked sob came from the Queen and it sounded like a mix of laughter, a cough and the beginnings of wild teary bawling. Hanani contained herself immediately but couldn’t stop a pair of stray tears from streaking down her face.
“No.” The King’s toned matched Susa and Davin’s and the topic died right there.
Davin and Susa hung their heads identically, just a bit for just a beat, before they looked at their father.
“Yes, father.” They spoke in almost the same moment, Davin a bit earlier.
“I can be that Royal Emissary, my King.” Micah said. “The people of Earth will quickly realize I’m half-human, but my other genes are yours. You trust me to speak in your voice on this world… Why not among the stars? Why not on another world?”
“Micah…” The King shifted in his Throne again and straightened to face his Mimic.
Before Artax’s open lips found words, the large wooden door at the rear of the Throne Room creaked. Davin gestured to Micah as his whispered the Hybrid’s name and suggested Micah quickly put his hood back in place.
It was already in place. At the first noise from the door, Micah had instinctively flipped his hood over his head.
“My King, my Queen…” Garreous’s voice came softly at first, then more assured as he stepped further into the Throne Room. “Davin. Susa.” Garreous nodded deeply to the younger Royals in turn and started to address the gathered family again. “I am sorry, I didn’t realize this gathering was so… limited.”
In the space of a blink, Garreous shot Susa a look which mixed accusation and teasing acceptance. Susa had shared with Garreous the evening before the Royals’ schedule for the next day, called out their time with Micah directly then transitioned straight to talk of Earth and the gates. She let Garreous’s prodigious intellect fill in the gaps and choose a course of action.
Playfully, quietly, Susa shrugged then jostled her head back and forth with a tight smile.
“Garreous, you’re always welcome in the Pillar.” Queen Hanani spoke softly and nodded to the young genius.
“Even here? … even now, my Queen?” Garreous asked as he neared the wooden gate before the lectern. The young man hesitated to step through the gate for a moment.
“’We were actually just talking about you, Gar…” Davin spoke before either of his parents. While a clear violation of Royal Etiquette, a look of pride on the King’s face told Micah admonition was unlikely. “Good things, I swear.” Davin flashed his nervous friend an assuring smile, one hand up with palm facing Garreous.
“What else could we have to say about this gifted young man, Davin?” Queen Hanani asked before a smile that matched her son’s identically came.
“You’re all far too kind, Highnesses…” Garreous nodded then bowed a bit before he stepped through the wooden gate. The gate creaked at a higher note than had the door moments earlier and Garreous took a place shoulder-to-shoulder with a now shrouded
Micah. “Micah.”
Garreous was one of the few Cerans who knew more pieces of the puzzle to Micah’s identity than just his Hood. He knew not only Micah’s true name but that he was a Hybrid. That second piece of information was a closely guarded secret outside of the Royals’ trusted inner circle. While he knew Micah’s name, the face he shared with the King remained a mystery to Garreous.
Occasionally, both found their familiarity without the Ceran having seen Micah’s face interesting and joked about it.
Micah returned Garreous’s nod and his hood jostled for another moment.
“So, your topic of conversation was… me…” Garreous rubbed his hands together nervously and spoke more slowly than typical for him. “Exclusively?”
“Not exclusively, Garreous…” The King said. “Mostly, we were discussing an expedition to Earth you’ve been planning…”
“We’re in the very early, early stages of that planning, My King.” Garreous said in a voice that suggested he had much more to say on the matter.
“Of course.” The King replied. He smiled and nodded Garreous’s way much like he regarded Davin in more private moments.
Susa fidgeted in her Throne beside the Queen, who sat nearly motionless. An agitated, slightly sad look sat on the Princess’s face.
“How do you plan to engage the humans, Gar?” Davin asked.
“Well,” Garreous started, his tone a little familiar and friendly. That air of friendliness washed away after his first word, when Garreous made eye contact with the King and remembered his place. “My original plan, Your Highness, was to establish communications with the humans in leadership immediately upon entering the Solar system. I think if I give them enough time and warning—”
“It’ll give them plenty of time to mount an attack and destroy your ship.” Susa broke in and spoke with derision. She struggled to maintain eye contact with Garreous during her interruption and her gaze fell to the floor. Heat flushed her face as a surprised quiet came over the small gathering.
