Mimic and the Space Engineer Boxed Set, Books 1 - 3

by James David Victor

  “Yes, it could have gone horribly wrong. Yes, we all could have died. But we didn’t survive because of luck, or chance. We survived because Mimic is far more gracious and forgiving than any person I’ve ever met.”

  “That is an…interesting spot. So, you’re saying space explorers deserve what they get?”

  Wow, this interviewer was really going for it. Perhaps I would have been impressed if I hadn’t heard the same thing in Nouveau France, or again in the South-West of the Asian Alliance.

  “Of course not. However, what I’m saying is that when humans don’t mitigate risk, don’t make sure that there’s no chance that we’re destroying sentient life, there can be great and terrible consequences. The ship we were on should have tested every chain we crossed, but we didn’t, and I’m sure we’re not the only ones. Who knows how many first contacts we’ve passed up because we’re so certain of our claim on everything in this universe.”

  “And what a note to end on. Thank you, Mister Higgens. Although I hear we may be calling you Doctor Higgens in the future?”

  That I did blush at. “Oh, not for quite a while. I’m only halfway through my bachelor’s, but a master’s looks promising, and I have been blessed by many engineering colleges with open invitations to check out their programs.”

  “How thrilling. You truly are a model for every colonist, orphan, or layman out there. Even the lowest among us can achieve great things.”

  I kept my face straight, but I could feel the expression in my eyes sour slightly. “Funny, I never thought of myself as a low person just because I wasn’t born a rich Earther like you.”

  The interviewer’s hologram reflected their shock, their perfectly lipsticked mouth dropping open almost unflatteringly.

  Almost.

  I stood, and the holo-recorder rose with me. “Thank you so much for the chance to speak on your show. The experience has been lovely, but I have so much homework to do.”

  “Of course,” they said, giving me a professional nod. It was clear that they wanted to keep going, and that they even probably had another three to four minutes slated for me to talk, but I was done. It had taken me the entire year of constant interviewing to stop being the awkward mess I usually was in such situations, and if I stayed any longer, I might revert. “Thank you for your time. We’d love to have you again.”

  “You have a great night,” I answered before reaching over and shutting off the projector.

  I sighed yet again and rubbed my temples. At first, interviews had been a terrifying part of my package. They made my stomach heave, my forehead sweat, and my heart thunder in my chest. I always mixed up my words, stuttered, and generally made a fool of myself.

  But the public had loved it. They ate me up with a spoon more than they did the Coin Twins or Gonzales. In the beginning, I had thought it was maybe because I was a symbol of hope. A sign that no matter who you were or where you were from, that doing the right thing was incredibly important. But after a few months, I realized that wasn’t it at all.

  I was inspiration porn for some, for those who were rich and benefiting from the terrible imbalance in our society who wanted to assuage themselves of their guilt by using me as some pinnacle of what was possible. Any poor, impoverished or otherwise struggling person who ever complained would have me shoved in their face like I disproved their suffering. As if every poor, under-educated, awkward person on the spectrum could accidentally run into the first proof of other life that just so happened to change the world.

  And then for others, I was a laughingstock. They made jokes about my intellect, my choices, my tendency to stutter. They called me moronic, and made memes about it on the net. Nothing was safe from them, from my dislike of looking interviewers straight on, to how I talked about Mimic with the utmost respect, to how I often let Gonzales and Ciangi talk for me because honestly formulating words in such a serious setting was so exhausting. They even made fun of my body, possibly the least interesting thing about me. My hair was too long, or I wasn’t fit enough, or I was far too wimpy. I tried to ignore this side as best I could, but their voices were so similar to the bullies that had kept me down during much of my young life, it was hard to lock them out.

  The rubbing at my temples was getting me nowhere, so I settled for a stretch and a quick trip to my personal fabricator. As much as I complained, I supposed I should be grateful for the suddenly amazing life I had now.

  Well…seemingly amazing.

  First of all, I had a mansion. Yeah, an actual mansion. It was bigger than perhaps the entire apartment cluster my parents had had on the Mars colony, and so beautiful I wanted to share it with everyone. Unfortunately for me, everyone was pretty much just Gonzales, Ciangi, and Bahn. Despite traveling all over the world for a year, and becoming Mimic’s voice at the diplomatic delegations our world’s governments held every month, I still hadn’t made any friends. I was hoping when the furor died down, and the medical and scientific advancements became a once in a while thing instead of every day, I might be able to go out into the world and find some more amazing people out there. But until then, I guessed I would have to focus on my studies.

  Or maybe I would just run away to Mimic’s planet and live happily ever after.

  I practically snorted to myself as I thought that. For someone who had never been very attached to someone for their entire life, I certainly was needy for my alien friend’s attention. It had been a year since I had seen her, and she was so busy with rebuilding her civilization, that she only had time to send me a holo about once a month—if that. I was incredibly grateful for every one of them, but I found myself wanting more.

  I missed the curve of her smile when I said something she thought was funny. I wished the way her long, grey-white hair would sometimes get in her face so instead of putting it in a ponytail, she would shift it smaller. I missed how she would sometimes revert to her black and spikey form when she was tired and settle onto my bed like the good old days.

  I missed her.

  A third sigh escaped my lips as I punched in a code and waited for my steak to construct itself. I had everything I had ever wanted. Fame, riches, some respect, all the money I could want, an education, a nice house, and tons of gadgets. And yet, it wasn’t enough. Would I ever be happy?

  I didn’t know. The only thing I was sure of was that some piece of me was definitely missing.

  2

  SLICE OF LIFE

  I WALKED TO MY WORKSTATION, steak in one hand and a beer in the other. I had never been one for alcohol on the ship, but now I found one in a great while when I was feeling down wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Plus, the flavors on Earth were much better than any of the colony swill that my teenage compatriots had gone wild for.

  I flopped down in my chair, looking at all my homework splayed out across the ergonomic desk. Thanks to the help of my engineering friends and everything they had taught me on our adventures, I had breezed through the prelim courses for my degree. Apparently, I was actually pretty intelligent; I just learned differently than most people. If I had known that when I was younger, maybe I wouldn’t have believed I could never survive college. But then I wouldn’t have met Mimic, and I wouldn’t give that up for anything in the world.

  I still had a long way to go, of course. According to my professors and tutors, I had about a year for my bachelor’s and two for my master’s. Still, it would be worth it. Too often on our trip, I had been at a disadvantage because of lack of knowledge. If it wasn’t for Gonzalez and the coin twins, I never would have survived, and Mimic’s people would most likely still be under the influence of that disgusting alien that had nearly wiped them out.

  That was depressing to think about, so I switched my attention to my food and my homework. Normally, I liked the digital packets I was given, but I just wasn’t in the mood to stare at my academic datalogs. Funny enough, I’d never been able to fill up the massive internal memory of the little devices in my entire previous life. But since becoming both a student
and diplomat, I’d completely filled four of the devices with important information on different subjects. There was just so much info to be had. Was this what Mimic had felt like when she had first gone onto the net? If so, I admired her even more for how effortlessly she had absorbed it all.

  Would she be proud of me when I saw her again? I had been keeping my schooling a secret and also as a failsafe in case I turned out to be completely inept. I didn’t want to tell her I was getting a degree and then fail miserably, so I figured I would wait until I had everything all tied up before informing her of my accomplishments. I hoped I was able to see her again soon, though. Waiting until I was completely graduated seemed an impossible time to be without my best friend.

  I felt myself getting antsy and I knew that learning was not going to get done in the moment. Booting up my personal holo-interface, I checked to see if either of the Coin Twins or Gonzales was on our personal chat.

  Gonzales’s icon was dark, as it had been for several days, but I saw both Bahn and Ciangi online. I pinged them for a voice chat, and thankfully, they both answered after only a couple of rings.

  “Hey, how are you?” Ciangi said, her voice slightly raspy as if she had been sleeping. “I saw that interview. I had hoped there might be a new question in the bunch, but apparently, I have too much faith in humanity.”

  I chuckled at that. Since arriving on Earth, Ciangi’s already dry humor had become that much more arid. “I know what you mean. But I’m surprised you guys are both on. Is Harunya not there?”

  “She is, she’s just sleeping. She had a rough day at the labs.”

  “Aw, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Harunya was a brilliant biochemist and possibly one of the top five most beautiful people I had ever met. She had been at one of the grand galas held by some education institution or another that had invited us, and she had hit it off right away with the Coin Twins. A few weeks and many theorems later, she was dating…actually, I still wasn’t sure who was dating who. Perhaps Bahn, perhaps Ciangi, or perhaps both. Since I couldn’t tell from just observing them, I figured I didn’t need to ask and was just grateful that they both seemed very happy to have her in their lives.

  I also couldn’t deny that I was a wee bit jealous of them. Try as I might, I couldn’t connect with anyone like they seemed to connect with Harunya. Sometimes, I felt like I couldn’t even connect with them. I felt like an outsider, and I couldn’t be sure if I was just isolating myself or if there was something intrinsically wrong with me that made me unable to maintain any sort of meaningful relationships with people. Would the Coin Twins and Gonzales even be my friends if we hadn’t been forced into so many life and death situations together? Probably not. Which only made me feel that much more alone.

  “It’s nothing that will bother her long-term. She just had cross-contamination on some of her samples and is bummed she has to re-set up her entire experiment and control group again.”

  “Ugh, yeah. That is a bummer.”

  “Yup. But anyway, why did you call? Is something up? Another patent hopeful call for your approval on another terrible advancement?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh again at the terrible truth. Since scientists had gotten their hands on the samples Mimic had sent, our technology and medical field both suddenly surged forward like a ship at warp speed. In just a year, we nearly had completely functional cloaking technology, and curing cancer and a litany of other diseases, as well as many other things that I still didn’t quite understand. Every day, there was usually a new advancement that owed its possibility to Mimic’s shifting molecular makeup or the alien technology she had sent home with us—as well as the readings she had stolen from the ship.

  Yes, we had entered a whole new age of science and technology. I just hoped that it would trickle down to the little guy.

  “No, I just wanted to talk,” I answered, just remembering that she had asked a question before my musings. “I feel like we haven’t just chatted in a while.”

  “I know what you mean,” Bahn, who had previously been so silent, said. “We’ve been working with a team to try to create self-healing engine parts, but we keep running into dead ends.”

  “Really? That sounds interesting.” Although I was still quite in the beginning of my schooling, even I could prattle off a dozen or so reasons why that would be absolutely amazing.

  “Yeah. I got the idea after watching the mini-mimics regrow lost or damaged limbs. However, we don’t want to make the engines out of organic tissue, but that’s where our data keeps leading us.”

  “Organic tissue sounds…very easy to mess up. Or damage. Or for it to grow wrong.”

  “Yeah,” Ciangi agreed, chiming back in. “Or even get a virus. Except in a much more literal sense than a digital one.”

  “Well, I—” I was cut off as a loud groaning/sighing sound came from Bahn’s line.

  “Sorry, I yawned,” he explained sheepishly.

  Instantly, guilt cut through me. “Am I keeping you up?”

  “No, I couldn’t fall asleep anyway. I’ve been making myself tea while we’ve been chatting and I think it finally kicked in.”

  “I was actually dozing at my desk,” Ciangi answered with a chuckle. “So, if anything, I’m grateful that you woke me up so I would go to my actual bed.”

  I wanted to chat longer. To talk about our hopes and dreams and how crazy the world had become. But most of all, I didn’t want to be alone.

  “Alright, well, I better let you eggheads get some sleep. I know you wake up at six a.m. to get your day rolling.”

  “Watch who you’re calling egghead, you egghead-in-training,” the blonde woman shot back before yawning herself. “Oh man. I’m hitting the hay. Talk to you guys later.”

  “I will turn in as well. Feel free to call us tomorrow after eight,” Bahn said sleepily. “You be safe now, Higgens.”

  “I always am,” I answered before closing out of the voice chat.

  Once, that might have been a lie. For a short while, I had lived the life worthy of an action star on those net flicks I used to love to watch so much. But now, now my life was calm, peaceful, and full of everything I could ever want.

  I just wished I still wanted everything I had.

  3

  TOTAL SHUT OUT

  I FIDGETED with the collar of my outfit, the crisp fabric irritating the bottom of my chin. I didn’t want to wear the stupid things, but Ciangi had chosen our uniform-esque outfits as our way of appearing as a united front dedicated to Mimic’s interests.

  It helped, or at least I thought it did. Wearing them did make me feel less isolated in my idiocy, like the random charity case that has been allowed into the playpen with the big kids.

  Ciangi caught my hand and smoothed my hair back, looking up at me with a sweet grin. “Stop worrying. You look fine.”

  “I don’t think his unease is due to any dissatisfaction with his physical appearance,” Bahn said, tugging at the end of his long, dark braid, “but rather nerves about the meeting to come.”

  “Aw, come on, Higgy,” she said, gently cuffing my elbow. “This is like the seventh one. Aren’t you used to them by now?”

  “I don’t know if I can ever get used to them,” I admitted, pulling at the end of my sleeves. “They make me on edge.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it,” Ciangi assured. “It’s just going to be a discussion on what wave of support we’re going to send Mimic.”

  “Wait, we’re still on that?” Bahn asked. “I thought that was what the first meeting was about.”

  “And the second,” Ciangi answered. “And the fifth. Do you two even pay attention to these?”

  Bahn and I shrugged. “I was distracted by the third and fourth meeting where we discussed a new wave of weaponry they were considering. We barely convinced them that the new type of nuclear fission they were proposing was too dangerous to risk,” the taller of the twins said.

  Ciangi sighed. “Yeah. Gonzales was killer on those. I wish
she was still around now.”

  “Hey, does anyone know where she even is right now? I haven’t heard from her in a…week, I think?”

  “I’m pretty sure that she is on some sort of secret weapon project related to those meetings we had.”

  “Does anyone know when she’ll be back?”

  Ciangi shrugged. “She talks to you way more than the two of us. Besides, you know how she gets when she’s on the verge of a breakthrough.”

  I nodded and felt my stomach twist a little. I had caught my friend at the tail-end of a couple of her research benders and it was…intense, to say the least. It seemed the weapons engineer researched just as hard as she played. It made me wonder how she got stuck on a mining ship in the middle of nowhere rather than some lofty military position. Not that I wasn’t grateful…but still. It was a curious set of circumstances.

  I heard footsteps down the hall and turned to see the military and political folk marching forward. Well, some of them marched. Some oozed along like they were exactly as shady as colony folk insisted they were. I was trying hard not to see them all as a line of Giomattis, but it was definitely a challenge.

  The three of us bowed or shook hands with each of them as they passed, depending on the preference of the person, until we were the only ones standing in the hall. Ciangi shot me a knowing look before we all filed in.

  It wasn’t a large group, or even a large meeting room, by any means. There were maybe eleven of them total, and that was including the two aides that were always either perpetually taking notes or fetching drinks.

  The holo-projector was booting up as we took our seats, several images forming then melting above the table. I recognized the logo of the company that was contracted with the military, then a map of our solar system, before finally the default symbol that was supposed to represent any projects related to Mimic.