by Edo-chan
“Do you want to turn off your minivan first?” Ken asked.
Amelta’s face faulted, and she ran back to her vehicle.
* * *
“So, if all of you have your paperwork, I’ll sign off on them.”
Each of them handed over a sheet of some kind of plastic, and Amelta started looking over them.
Sounds of gasping made their way up the stairs, and the source of it – Ken – collapsed at the top of the landing.
Katrina fluttered down next to his side. “Are you all right?”
Ken’s hand shot out and pointed directly at Natalia. “You! You’re taking a room on the bottom floor!”
Natalia nodded. “That was the intention.”
“What do you have in those bags!? Concrete blocks!?”
“It’s none of your business.”
Amelta looked unsympathetically toward him. “Sorry, Ken. Can you make some coffee?”
“At least let me put my lungs back in my body, would you?”
Katrina sympathetically patted him on the head.
* * *
“I’ve got cell phones for all of you,” Amelta said, pointing to the five cellular phones strewn out on the coffee table. “This will allow you to get in contact with me in case anything happens. Oh, and I’ve programmed all the phone numbers of the other phones into each of them, including my cell phone and Ken’s home phone. You’ll just have to change the names in the address books.”
The tenants looked at the colors.
“Katrina, I’m sorry. They don’t make them in your size.”
Katrina frowned.
“I’ll take the green one.” Angelica picked up her phone.
“I want the brown one,” Natalia said, taking hers.
Cassandra put her hand on the blue one. “I’ll have the blue one.”
“I’ll take the black one,” Alisa said.
Ken came in from the kitchen with a tray of coffee cups. As he came around, Amelta picked up a cup.
“Ken, there’s a phone for you, too,” she said.
“What color?”
Katrina patted the only one left. “Pink!”
* * *
“Now that we’re all here, why don’t we go over the introductions?”
Cassandra stood up from the sofa. “Cassandra Pyredom, from the planet Talsenia. I’m twenty-two, and I’m here attending a local college for a linguistics degree.”
Ken raised his hand. “Question.”
“Yes?”
“What’s with the sword? I mean, there’s no one I know of that walks around with one.”
“It’s customary on Talsenia.”
“Everyone carries a weapon?” Angelica asked.
“The overwhelming majority of females do, as part of the warrior caste.”
“You have a caste system?”
“I think ‘caste’ may be the closest word. Perhaps ‘role,’ or ‘designation of duties’ would better explain it. In Talsenia, women occupy the majority of combat and physical roles. Men take support roles.”
“Well, women are superior in leadership roles,” Natalia chimed in.
Cassandra shook her head. “It’s not a matter of superiority. We have clearly defined positions. Even verbally degrading the positions can lead to punishments. Your comment there would have lead to an inquiry. But we’re not on Talsenia.”
She sat down.
“O-Okay,” Amelta tried to recover, “next?”
Angelica stood up.
Boing.
“Angelica Elegance. I’m from Falldine, and twenty-three years old. I’m working as a nurse at a local hospital.”
Ken thought it would be really nice to be taken care of by a nurse like her.
Katrina spoke up. “Does everyone on Falldine have wings?”
“Yes.”
“Wow!”
Ken looked at Katrina. “Um, you do know you have your own wings, right?”
“But not like those!”
Ken could only chuckle. Then he took a look at Angelica’s wings. They weren’t large ones like in pictures of angels, but a little smaller and thinner. They were obviously strong enough to carry her. He did have another concern.
“Don’t your wings get in the way? I can’t imagine what it’s like to sleep with those.”
“Oh, they’re compact. If I keep them out, they do get in the way. I remember knocking over things a lot when I was younger. They’re actually very flexible.”
And then the wings pulled closer to her back, and the lower ends wrapped around her waist.
“See? This is how I usually sleep.”
“Doesn’t that hurt?”
Angelica cocked her head to the side, thinking. “Not particularly. It’s no different than wrapping your arms around your body and sleeping.”
“Next?” Amelta called out.
“Me, me, me!” Katrina shouted, holding her hand up and jumping up and down on the sofa cushion.
“All right, Katrina, your turn,” Amelta conceded, amused.
Katrina floated to the coffee table, and cleared her throat. “I’m Katrina Faerblood, from the distant planet of Betlin, orbiting the star known as Aiseria. I’m nineteen years old.”
“So,” Ken asked the obvious question concerning her slight stature, “what is it that you do?”
After striking an inspirational pose, she stated “I’m a Time Cataloguer!”
“Time Cataloguer?” everyone remarked, aloud.
“Oh, I get it!” Angelica said. “Sort of like a living stopwatch.”
“Incorrect.”
Everyone turned to the girl who had said nothing until that point: Alisa.
“A Time Cataloguer is a high-level position among Betlinians, which measures and documents the flow of time and effects of it in relation to the age, expansion and reduction of the universe.”
“Yep!” Katrina gave a smug look.
“You mean like that space-time continuum thing?” Ken asked.
“Precisely!”
“You can control time!?”
“Me, personally? No, but some people I know can nidj . . . nadj . . .” she tilted her head in confusion.
“’Nudge’?” Ken offered.
“Yeah! That’s the word I was looking for.”
“What do you mean by ‘nudge’?”
“Time is fluid and can easily be changed, given the proper equipment and frequency. You see, each of the infinite strands of time has a binding frequency. So, if you were to grab a hold of that frequency and either reduce or increase the wavelength, you could cause minute variations—”
The only other person in the room who knew what she was talking about was Alisa. And she was nodding.
Katrina panicked. “I’m sorry! I’ll be quiet now,” she sat down, embarrassed.
“Who’s next?” Amelta said.
“That will be me!” Natalia triumphantly shouted. “I am Natalia Greentyme, from planet Forshe, and twenty-three. I’m here to foster distribution contacts for my father’s company.”
“What does your father do?” Cassandra asked.
“He’s the head of a cosmetics corporation.”
“Wait,” Cassandra remarked in a shocked voice. “You mean THE Greentyme Cosmetics conglomerate?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
Ken was confused, and leaned toward Cassandra. “Is the company big?”
“Big? It has locations and buildings on every major business world in the Entine Republic. ‘Big’ wouldn’t begin to describe it.”
“So, she’s rich?”
“‘Rich’ wouldn’t be enough to describe her.”
Natalia bent down over Ken. “Impressed?”
“Not really. I was just wondering why someone rich would be staying at my house, of all places, poor as I am.
“Huh?”
“I mean, couldn’t you have just bought your ow
n home here?”
“That’s true,” Cassandra said.
“I can’t argue with that point,” Natalia agreed, though bitterly. “My father wanted me to get some culture and experience in another setting, preferably on some other planet that doesn’t know me or my family.”
“So that you don’t have anyone hounding you for money or prestige. Is that it?” Angelica asked.
“Yes. Probably.”
“Probably?”
“My father’s rather distant when it comes to things like that.” Natalia shook her head, like she was trying to clear it. “But that’s no matter. I’m here, and that’s what counts.” Then she sat back down.
Amelta leaned toward Ken and whispered, “Ken, her father is a very big donor to this program, and has been so for many years. It would only be natural for us to have her in the exchange program.”
Ken nodded in agreement, but had to wonder why she hadn’t been in the program earlier if that was the case.
Amelta cleared her throat. “Then that leaves only one guest.”
The silent-until-just-a-little-while-ago-woman stood up and vacantly swung her gaze around. “Alisa Maestral. I’m from Kodominé. I’m working at a local college with computers and electronics. I’m twenty-two years old.” Then she sat down.
That’s it? Short introduction, to say the least. Ken thought she would have gone into some dissertation about her planet, her job, or just a general overview of the final frontier called ‘space.’
“Good!” Amelta said to break the silence. “I’ll do my introduction. I’ll be your handler, so to speak, in several legal and paperwork affairs. My name, as you may have read from your welcome packets, is Amelta Tayon. If you have any problems, you’re free to contact me. You can also stop by my office if you happen to be in the area. And I think that takes care of all the introductions.”
Katrina raised her hand. “There’s one person who hasn’t done an introduction,” she happily chirped.
“Come to think of it,” Angelica said, turning to Ken.
Ken noticed everyone was staring at him. “Me?”
“Well, everyone else has,” she said with a smile.
“Okay, okay.” Ken put his coffee cup down and stood up. “You’ve all probably read my name from the welcome packet, but my full name is Kenaeth Adam Goldwrite, and I’m twenty-five years old. I was born two states away. I will be your landlord while you’re living here.”
Ken cleared his throat and continued. “I consider myself to be easy-going, and while I expect you to follow the rules of common courtesy, there are two major rules that I need to lay down.
“First, take responsibility for your actions. If you don’t do so, I will force you to take responsibility. Second, you will treat everyone that lives here with respect, no matter what background you may have come from. I can take a joke or two like everyone else, but if you go overboard, I’ll make sure you regret it.
“Am I being clear on these two rules?”
Everyone slowly nodded, surprised at the seriousness that he put behind his words.
“Splendid. Everyone, I hope you have a good time here.”
Amelta nodded. “Good! Now that’s all settled, I think I’ll get going now.”
There was a growl in the room, and it was from somebody’s stomach. Amelta gave an embarrassed laugh after patting the source of the sound.
Ken motioned toward the kitchen. “I was going to turn on the grill and have a cookout to celebrate the arrival of my new guests, but it looks like your handler is also going to join us for a barbeque.”
“Barbe—what?” his guests said in unison.
* * *
“Well, what do you think of them?” Amelta asked cautiously.
The tenants had moved onto the deck in the back yard, near where the grill was. Ken and Amelta were in the kitchen. He was hand mixing ground beef, onions and some spices together in a large bowl. He hadn’t cooked handmade hamburgers in a long time.
“They’re a bunch of kids,” Ken laughed.
“What do you mean?”
“They may not seem to be so at first glance, but they’re just a group of scared little girls.”
“Are you surprised? They’re in a completely different environment than their own. It’s no wonder they’re scared.”
“I don’t know if I can relate. I’ve moved only once in my life.” Ken put a patty together, and then placed it on a plate next to the mixing bowl.
“That’s a lot different than a couple of galaxies, which makes it all the more interesting.”
“For who? Me?”
“Yes. Playing teacher, father and mother, along with older brother . . . You’ve got your work cut out for you.”
“I didn’t volunteer to be a mother.”
“I have your signed contract at the office. So, too bad. You’re stuck with it.”
Ken rolled his eyes. He finished putting the ground beef into patties. He washed his hands, and picked up the plate to take outside.
“I hope everyone likes beef.”
“Beef?” Angelica asked.
“Bovine. An animal that lives on this planet. Everyone here eat meat?”
“Yes,” Angelica said.
“Yes,” Amelta replied.
“Yeah!” Katrina shouted.
“Yes,” Cassandra said.
“Somewhat,” Natalia said.
“Quite often,” Alisa responded flatly.
Alisa’s answer scared Ken.
“It’ll take some time to cook, so why don’t all of you take a walk around the yard? There’s a garden right down the stairs. Oh, and does anyone want cheese on their hamburger?”
“Chee—what?” Katrina asked.
“It’s made from milk, a calcium source.”
“Oh,” she replied.
“No problems?”
Nobody voiced any.
“Okay. Do a little exploring and I’ll call you all when it’s done.”
Everyone but Ken and Cassandra walked down the stairs of the deck, and down the small sidewalk.
“You’re not going?” Ken asked, putting the hamburgers on the grill.
“No. Not yet.”
“I have a personal question.”
“Go ahead,” she gestured.
“Does everyone from Talsenia have different-colored eyes?”
Cassandra shook her head. “It’s not rare, but rather, really uncommon. It’s considered a blessing and a hint at destiny.”
“Hint at destiny? Are superstitions big on your planet?”
“Not really. Since my eyes are blue and green, my mother thought it was pointing at something. Coincidentally, the opportunity to come here was announced when I was finishing my tertiary schooling. Looking at some of the pictures of this planet, you can see a lot of green and blue.”
“A planet of green and blue, huh?”
She nodded.
“Deep . . .”
“I don’t put too much stock in superstitions. It’s probably just a coincidence,” she confided in him.
“Could be. But you can probably talk about that later with the group.”
Ken flipped a few of the burgers.
“You don’t seem that . . . unnerved that there are people from other planets that will be living in your home.”
“Frankly, I’m concerned, but that’s more because of the potential cultural misunderstandings and conflicts. For example, I can deal with, say, any issues between myself and one or two other people. But I have to do that and mediate between others who have problems.”
“Looks like you’ve thought this through.”
Ken shook his head. “Not particularly.”
“Not . . . particularly!?” she echoed, not believing what he just said.
“Well, regardless of what planet people are from, people are people. It’ll work out.”
“A positive outlook. I like that.”
�
�But what about you? No concerns?”
“Embarrassingly, I’m scared, but . . .” she breathed deeply, and then continued. “Relieved.”
“How’s that?”
“It seems nice here.”
“It is. It’s not overly populated, and if you can get over the cow manure smell that comes out during the summer, it’s a great place. It also has a low cost of living.”
“Cow manure?”
“For fertilizer. Didn’t you notice all the farms on the way here?”
“No. I was too nervous to really pay attention. It’s my first day. I can’t help it.”
“Do you normally walk around everywhere with that sword?” Ken asked, pointing to her sword with a spatula.
“I try to. It belonged to my mother.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up any bad memories.”
Cassandra gave him a confused look, and then realized what he was getting at. “She’s still alive. What I should have said was, ‘It belonged to my mother, but she gave it to me’.”
Ken replaced a few burgers with new ones. “That’s a relief. See what I mean? Misunderstandings.”
Cassandra nodded and they spent the rest of the time in silence.
Ken finished the hamburgers and brought them into the kitchen.
“Do you want me to call everyone?”
“No, I still need to set up in here.”
* * *
“So, here’s what you do. Everyone watching?”
Everyone nodded.
“First, open up the bun to create the foundation. Then, take a hamburger patty, and place it on the bottom bun. Put ketchup, mayonnaise and maybe even some mustard on top of the patty, then add some lettuce, tomato, and perhaps an onion. Put the top on, and your hamburger is complete. Add a few chips, and you’re done.”
Everyone clapped, like they were praising someone who had won a major award at some science conference.
“It’s just a hamburger . . .” he assured them.
“What’s this?” Katrina fluttered around a green and white two-liter bottle.
“Soda. It’s a drink.”
Ken pulled out a small cup, reconsidered, found a thimble, washed it out, and poured a little into it. “Here.”
Katrina smelled it. “That tickles my nose.”
“It’s the carbonation in it.”
Katrina took a drink. “That’s good!”
Cassandra looked at the red-labeled bottle. “I’ll take this one.”
Angelica pointed to the blue bottle. “I’ll try this.”
“No one’s picked this yet. I want this,” Natalia said, staring at the green-labeled bottle.
“This one,” Alisa said, tapping a bottle with a bulldog on it.
