by M. D. Cooper
“Super-freaky funland dark-side death-zone powered by MnM.”
“That can’t be Earth!”
“Well, I’m sorry, but things change, child,” said the blob. “Your home planet had to make ends meet somehow. Becoming an escape room theme park was the logical choice.”
“An escape room… theme park?”
Katra felt as if the ice around her heart had gone right back to being frozen, as cold as the popsicle she had been inside the pod. She wished her eyes could shoot literal daggers across the room, but even if they did, she doubted they would hit the gelatin or harm it in any way.
“Yes, and quite a nice one,” said the blob. “I brought my hovel-mates there a few cycles ago. Such fun! Much better now than it ever was before.”
The pageant queen was fuming now, but she forced herself through the breathing techniques her coach had instilled in her and stayed focused. There was no point lingering on the fact that her home was gone, or the fact that everyone she ever knew or loved was now dead. Except maybe Marcus, her one love, her rock, who was living quite silently in her head.
“I want to go home,” she murmured, under her breath.
“Do not worry, we’re sending you back, all expenses paid.”
“It’s not my home anymore.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but according to your passport, it is.” The cloud made the little green booklet drift up before Katra’s eyes. “And your visa expired quite some time ago. So we have to send you back. You understand, of course.”
“Of course,” said Katra, keeping that pageant calmness. “Do I get some kind of compensation, at least?”
CHAPTER 2:
We’re not here to make friends, but we’re going to make something
She did, of course, get compensation. But she wasn’t quite sure what to do with the roll of aluminum foil wrapped in plastic, the little blue backpack with shapes on it that she couldn’t decipher, or the bottle of drink that looked a lot like chocolate milk.
One perk had been the little translator they had given her. The one thing that confused her (just one? her mind interjected) was why it had to be a suppository.
She stuffed her golden bikini and the ball gown into the new backpack along with the foil and the bottle before following a lizard-man to the docks. The voyager disk she sold back to the officer, in exchange for some petty cash, not that she knew what any of it was worth. She had only been unfrozen for about five hours, and already she was being sent home. No time to visit the planet – the one she had taken so much time to reach.
She was supposed to be an ambassador. The first human to set foot on Slexia, a show of goodwill from her people to theirs. To cement Earth’s place in the universe and turn the council of twelve into the council of thirteen.
They had not been the only postulants: over fifty different worlds had sent their most gorgeous specimens to compete in the Miss Universe pageant (though a more apt name might be Miss-This-Arm-Of-The-Milky-Way, despite the fact that the locals called this galaxy Todd). It didn’t matter who won, the true victory was through unity.
She had taken too long though. They had sent someone else.
She had failed.
And now Marcus was dead, and she had absorbed his mind. She wanted to mourn the death of her lover, her fiancé, but she wasn’t sure what to think of him anymore. There was no body to cry over. No last note. No nothing.
The dislocation officer had told her that his mind was in hers, but Katra had yet to hear a peep from him. Was he really in there? She concentrated on her thought patterns, trying to see if anything was amiss – if anything pointed to Marcus being in there.
No luck.
“Watch the frozzle where you’re going, lady!”
Katra had been concentrating so hard on her own thoughts that she had practically tripped over what appeared to be a small child. Only about half her height (which wasn’t too difficult, seeing as how Katra was a powerful 6”1’ even without her heels) but with a scowl that could eclipse the sun, the sun girl looked like she had murder in her eyes.
“Sorry,” Katra said quickly, before processing what the child had said, “Does your mom hear you speaking like this?”
“Mom’s been dead for centuries, but that’s none of your frozzing business,” said the kid, glaring.
“How…”
“Have a pleasant trip back, ma’am,” the lizard person who had been hired to guide her said politely, rapping a sharp claw along the tip of its nose. Was that some kind of polite gesture? Katra didn’t know, she hadn’t had the time to catch up on thirteen thousand years of galactic culture. She had barely learned their common language before they had jammed her inside her pod to be shipped off into the stars, and was pleasantly surprised she was managing to communicate so well.
Or maybe it was the translator slowly dissolving in her colon.
“You gotta tip the guide,” hissed the kid.
“I don’t have anything to tip it with,” Katra said back.
At that, the girl yanked Katra’s pack from her hand and ripped it open. She pulled out the gold bikini and handed it to the reptile. Well, less of handed, and more like slammed the little garment into its scaly open hand.
“This should do the trick.” The glare turned into a grin, and the lizard person smiled too.
“Gods shine brightly upon you,” it said, and dashed off, clutching the flimsy golden material tightly in its claws. Katra didn’t know what use it would even be to an alien, but at least it was something.
“Jesipax,” said the kid, extending a hand to shake Katra’s. “Call me Jesi, call me Pax, whatever you frozzing want.”
Katra shook back, wondering how a simple handshake could still exist in the universe.
“Katra.”
“Wow, old much?” the kid snorted. “My great-great-great grandmother was called Katra, and I haven’t met anyone with the name since she died.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“What use is sorry when you have a universe to explore? Come along. Welcome to the Beyoncé.”
“What the froz?” Katra’s hands rushed to her mouth. “Froz. Come on, Froz. Froz! Why aren’t I saying Froz?”
“You took their translator, didn’t you?” The little girl – who wasn’t all that little – gave her a soft smile. “These guys believe they can clean up the universe by cleaning up our language. But whatever, it’s still froz anyway you say it. Just be happy they didn’t give you the one that makes you say Fudge or Sugar. Come along!”
Katra chewed her mouth around the word. She could say it fine, but the sound came out all wrong. She hated the idea of someone in her head controlling what she said.
“Hold on! You said this ship is called the Beyoncé?”
“Um, yeah. You coming?”
Katra didn’t have the energy to do anymore asking – more questions would have to come later. She glanced up at the non-kid: Jesi hadn’t yet given back the backpack. She stomped up the stairs to the ship’s door with the kind of aggravated stomp of a toddler about to throw a tantrum. She couldn’t have been older than nine, but she sure wasn’t acting like any preteen Katra had ever met.
“This your first time being dislocated?” asked Jesi.
“Hopefully my last,” Katra replied, nodding.
“Ah. It’s my third. I’d say you get used to it, but you really don’t. New body? Why did you go with such an outdated model? Is that all they had in stock?”
“Erm, no?” Katra was trying to take in the polished interior of the ship as they walked, but Jesi was moving too fast. The ship was large and long, shaped a little like a shoehorn, and the interior was crisp and white with a lot of mustard yellow accents.
If they even were accents. Katra realized she didn’t want to know.
“The good thing about being dislocated is that if they frozzle up badly enough, they’ll give you a really young model,” she explained, “Which is how I got this beauty here. Extended my life by eighty years or so. It’s w
onderful. But I’m horny as froz, which is going to suck for the next few years.”
Katra gagged at hearing the words come from a child’s mouth. But it was making sense now: how Jesi’s personality was such a mismatch for her small, innocent body; how such vulgarities could come from such a tiny mouth.
“Nobody told me what’s happening,” said Katra, following the non-child through the ship. “Are they going to help us find a place to live or anything? What happens when we get there?”
“Oh, we belong to the FunCorp,” the girl replied. “We’ll be working the attractions.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, everyone local works for FunCorp.”
“But I don’t want to work for… FunCorp, was it?”
“Well, too bad, we belong to them, now,” she said, with a shrug, “the entire planet was sold to them over a century ago, along with everyone on it, and their descendants.”
“But I’m not a descendant!”
“Hey, your visa was revoked, same as me. We’re theirs. Tough luck.”
Jesi led her to a cabin, a small white room with two sleeping bunks and a porthole window. From it, Katra could see the city she had been sent to explore. Massive spacescrapers rose into a smoggy blue sky. It reminded her of Singapore, where they had fitted her for the pod she would eventually use to cross interstellar space. She and Marcus had gone clubbing. It had been that night he had proposed, stone drunk.
The next morning he had proposed again, sober, and with a ring. A ring that Katra wore now, rubbing her thumb along the band to fight off nerves.
Jesi tossed the pack on one of the bunks.
“You’re my buddy now,” she said. “We’ve got a long flight back to Super-freaky funland dark-side death-zone powered by MnM.”
“I hate that name.”
“I’m old enough to remember when it was planet MegaDeath.”
“Isn’t that a metal band?”
“I’m not a massive fan of classical music.” Jesi shrugged. “But hail the almighties.”
“I left the planet when it was called Earth,” Katra said, letting out a heavy sigh. “I’m not quite sure it’s the same planet I left.”
“Earth?” The child let out a low whistle. “Dinga, girl, you make my granny look old.”
“They apparently forgot to unfreeze my cryo-pod.”
“Dislocation is a bitch,” said Jesi. “I lost my last body in a hyperdrive accident. Apparently, you’re not supposed to know how fast you’re going on these things. The second you do, poof, no one actually knows where you are. They had to scrape my brain off the hull of a mining ship two light years away.”
“Sounds horrid!”
“Come on, let me introduce you to the other dregs of society.” She led Katra out the door. “Those of us going to Super-freaky funland dark-side death-zone powered by MnM because we have no other choice.”
“Can we call it something else?” Katra had to trot to keep up, which was impressive considering her legs were twice as long as the child’s. “That name is really a mouthful.”
“We’ll call it what it is, then,” said Jesi. “Hell in a hyperdrive.”
Katra wasn’t quite sure she wanted to go back to Earth in the first place, much less a planet called… everything it was called. But she did her best to keep a smile on her face: when all else failed, you smiled and waved. It was the pageant girl’s way.
Jesi led her into what looked like a break room in a boring office. White walls and floors surrounded the space, and a small table waited for them, already occupied by two men. The non-child waved in their general direction.
“Guys, meet Katra,” said Jesi. “Katra’s just been thawed. How long were you out, again?”
“I hadn’t said,” Katra replied. “About thirteen thousand years.”
“Thirteen thousand?” the taller of the two men at the table sputtered. His eyes went wide, a smile growing on his face like a blossom in sunlight. “Froz. That’s impressive.”
“Yorick here had his visa rejected upon arrival,” said Jesi. “He's not a dislocation victim like us.”
“Apparently, they have standards to uphold,” said the man, waving his hands in the air, “and I don’t conform to their beauty objectives. Yorick Adamou, by the way.”
Katra was quite confused by this. By all accounts, he was an insanely handsome man: more handsome than Marcus, bless him, wherever he was. He was tall and muscular, his shirt just tight enough to reveal the trace of his strong body under the thin gray material. His skin was a dark tan, his hair thick and dark, and the stunning beard framing his face reminded Katra of a pirate. He extended a hand to shake, turned a violent shade of red, and retracted it just as fast.
“I’ve always been self-conscious about my hands, but this is by far the worst discrimination I have ever received for them.”
“Your… hands?”
His hands looked normal to Katra. Normal and… strong? She started to imagine what it would feel like to have them on her skin, trailing down the length of her arms, her body –
She snapped herself out of the fantasy. No. She was loyal to Marcus, in body and mind, wherever he might be.
But damn, Yorick was a fine piece of human ass.
The other stranger hadn’t looked up for even a second. Katra took the empty seat between the two men, both as an excuse to get closer to Yorick and as a way to get a better look at the stranger. The man was… off, in a way. His skin too greasy, too shiny, too pale. He sat at the table holding a mug of something, his eyes wide open and staring off into the distance, unblinking.
“Don’t mind Owaitt,” said Yorick, “he’s run out of words on his spool. I’d rewind him, but I like the silence.”
He must have seen the look of confusion on her face, because he nodded, slowly, before launching into an explanation.
“Owaitt used to be a service droid before his type became obsolete. It costs too much to decommission the old ones; too much trouble, too much paperwork, and those damn bot-bangers clog up the process. So they just let them pick a planet to retire to. Owaitt picked Super-freaky funland dark-side death-zone powered by MnM.”
“We’re calling it Hell, for Katra’s sake,” said Jesi. “She doesn’t like the new name.”
“Who does?” The man rolled his eyes. “I liked it when they called the planet Hogwarts, after some old religious text. Though you might know a little more about that.”
Katra couldn’t speak: she wanted to, but the words simply did not come. She couldn’t pinpoint what was the weirdest from the conversation, but one thing was for sure: her mind had completely derailed.
“Can we just call it Earth?” she asked, her voice coming out a whisper.
“Sure, whatever,” said Jesi, “describes the shmuz pile it’s become quite well.”
Still, Owaitt didn’t budge an inch.
“Is he… did he die?” Katra dared to ask, pointing at the man. No, the droid: that’s what Yorick had called him. A droid. A robot.
“Nah, he just ran out of words,” Yorick explained. “His type did menial, repetitive tasks. When he talks or thinks too much, his memory chip gets clogged up. You need to clear it before he can move again.”
“Clear his memory?”
“Yeah. That’s why it’s so tedious: you have to explain who you are all over again – every time he boots up.”
The room turned red for a split second. The lights dimmed as a pleasant chime rang out, and Jesi smiled.
“Ah, we’re taking off. Don’t worry, Katra. Just a day, and you’ll be back home.”
But she would never be back home: home no longer existed. She might not feel the ship take off, but she knew it was moving further and further away from the life she could have had.
CHAPTER 3:
You wouldn’t pirate a spaceship
Katra awoke to find a child sitting on her chest.
“Jesi?”
A small hand stuffed itself over Katra’s mouth. “Shh. We’re under attack.�
�
“We’re what?” Katra said, but it came out closer to “woowoo?”
“Pirates,” Jesi snarled. “Get up. We’re dislocated. We’re worth nothing as hostages. We’re gonna have to fight to stay alive.”
Katra swallowed, hard. She had never fought a day in her life, except maybe for the hours of kickboxing she did every day to tone her body. Though it wasn’t actual kickboxing, it was a kickboxing inspired workout, so she doubted it was quite what she needed now.
Especially when Jesi shoved a silver pistol in her hand.
“Do you know how to use this?” The non-child asked, her tone hard and military.
“I guess I’ll have to learn.”
Jesi ripped the gun from her fingers and flipped it around. The gun felt cold and alien in Katra’s hands, even more so than an actual alien’s hands in her hands.
“Don’t let them kill you, and don’t let them take you alive,” she ordered Katra. “Press the red button to shoot. Come on!”
And with that, Jesi jumped into the hallway, brandishing two guns and a terrifying smile.
“Shouldn’t we hide? And wait this out?” Katra coughed as she ran after Jesi. “We have nothing to do with them! They’d let us go, right?”
“Froz if I know, they’re Pirates! It’s not like they have a code or anything!”
With that, a massive explosion rumbled through the ship, tossing the two women sideways. The walls shuddered and moaned as the ship lurched sideways. Katra fell on the wall, slamming her head against a porthole.
Her mind was swimming when she pulled herself back up, reaching for her gun with trembling fingers. Whatever gravity had been holding them down to the floor had now switched sides, and the floor was now a wall, random items from the rooms raining down into the hallway.
Katra spotted her blue backpack down the way a bit, the only thing she owned in the world. She pushed herself to her feet and tore after it, hissing as she put weight on her ankle. It wasn’t busted, but it hurt like hell and made running a pain in the ass.