by Jade Allen
It took a few minutes for her hearing to return, but when it did, Viseer and Araimeer were considerably calmer.
“Okay, her eyes are opening.”
She looked up to see Viseer and Araimeer peering straight down at her, the sky above them littered with starfish organs. Araimeer smiled beatifically, but Viseer looked upset.
“Why did you do that? We told you to stay back!”
Araimeer shot a withering look at Viseer. “Viseer, she obviously didn’t do it on purpose. She had no idea what was going on, couldn’t you tell?”
Allie tried to sit up, and the two men each helped her with a hand on her lower back. “What happened?”
Viseer laughed abruptly. “You happened. I knew you weren’t just human.”
And icy wave of fear washed over Allie. “What?”
Araimeer pointed to the glow in her hands. “Allie, you’re not supposed to do that. You’re not supposed to be able to take all of our energy and hold it in you. It’s supposed to pass through you, almost like gas.”
“Pass through me?” She repeated, looking down at her naked body. “So…what’s going on? Why am I like this?”
Viseer shrugged. “You’re a conduit. I thought you might be when we picked you up. I didn’t want to believe it, but you’re clearly not dying from the electricity we poured into you, and you didn’t even pass out.”
“You suspected she was a conduit?” Araimeer asked, his cheeks reddening as he spoke. “And you didn’t mention it to me?”
“The way you were mooning over her, I assumed you’d figured it out,” Viseer said, frowning. “Why else would we both be so drawn to her? Why else would the transpo-spheres pick her up? We were scavenging for parts that we could use for the transporter as well as conduits. She got picked up, so she must be a conduit. Just a bigger, more fleshy conduit than we’re used to.”
Araimeer and Viseer glared at each other, and Allie wondered if they were about to fight. Then she cleared her throat, bringing their attention back to her. “Sorry, but what’s a conduit?”
Araimeer looked at her sheepishly. “It means you can handle large amounts of energy in much the same way we can. It’s rare for someone outside our species to be able to do it.”
“Other members of your species are like this?” Viseer and Araimeer exchanged another look, and something stirred in her mind. “Wait…all of you aren’t electric gods? Can some of you do other stuff?”
Araimeer looked surprised. “Well, yeah, somebody’s gotta be average, so not everyone has abilities. And some of us have other elements we can control—fire, minerals, water. Water would have been real handy.”
“But maybe not as handy as you. You summoned the stone,” Viseer said. “You’re stronger than we thought. I never thought we’d find a human this strong.”
“I never thought we’d find a human so calm,” Araimeer said, looking at Allie closely. “How do you feel? Your color is returning, and your eyes are back to normal.”
Allie took a deep breath, wondering how to answer the question. She felt better than she’d felt in years, but she didn’t want to admit what this meant for her. The entire ship probably knew about the attack by now, and would be sending submarines down to look for the wreckage. When her body wasn’t found, she would be presumed dead. Poor Collin, she thought. Then: Poor Carter.
Then something stirred in her mind. “You said you guys are travelers?”
Viseer look startled. “Yes, but you didn’t answer our—“
“And I’m a conduit. So I’m stronger than other humans?”
Araimeer smiled. “Yes, but—“
“Okay.” Allie said. “What if I tag along with you guys?”
Viseer shook his head at once. “Absolutely not. It’s too dangerous. Do you even know the first thing about space? What about your health? What about your ship?”
“Her ship thinks she’s dead,” Araimeer reminded Viseer gently. The other alien fell silent, looking embarrassed. “And it’s our fault in the first place. You wanted to play with that jellyfish, and I let you. You’re fascination with Earth creatures finally got us in trouble, and it nearly cost us a human life. What would the council say?”
Viseer’s cheeks blushed a brilliant red. “Fine,” he spat. “She can stay with us. For a while!” he added, as Araimeer and Allie cheered. “A trial run. In the meantime, we can think about contacting someone on your ship at some point, doing damage control if it’s an option. Now we have to get back to base, though. Is that okay with you, Allie?”
“That’s fine,” Allie responded gleefully. She and Araimeer grinned at each other while Viseer grumbled to himself and began to slip the lightening stone into it a soft pouch before stowing deep in the transporter’s engine. Her heart was pounding, and not from fear, but from the dizzying excitement of finding a new adventure at last. Araimeer slipped his cloak back on pulled out a fresh one for Allie; it fit her snugly, almost like it had been made for her in advance.
Araimeer turned to her and put one arm around her shoulder while Viseer finished packing up their surroundings. “So, you never did tell us how you feel now. How do you feel?”
Allie looked at the old wooden ship above them, with its dome of light protecting it from the crushing waters around them. Viseer flipped a switch on the transporter; after a moment, a beam of light flickered on and a shimmering doorway appeared out of thin air just behind it—she could see shifting dunes made of vibrantly colored sand, rounded matte-finished buildings in pastel shades, and disc-like vehicles zipping around in midair. Viseer had called it their base—was it their home planet? Whatever it was, it meant they were ready to report back, and Allie would need to be on her toes while she learned all she could on their next adventure. I’ll call Carter, tell him I’m alive and I’m doing my own thing for a while. It’s going to be hard, but he’ll understand, she decided as she gazed at the teleporter; then she laughed, imagining herself bursting out of his dorm room closet to deliver the news instead.
She raised her eyes to Araimeer’, taking his hand in hers as they followed Viseer toward the teleporter’s doorway. “I’ve never felt so alive.”
THE END
Chosen Alien Gene: Joran’s Quest
Joran felt the buzz of the comm unit on his wrist as he strode through the human train station; for the moment he ignored it. His superiors on the ship could wait for his progress report—he had more interesting things directly in front of him.
He had spent the months of transit to this planet in preparation for the assignment he and twenty other scientists had been given; Joran smiled slightly to himself in memory of the research. The planet they had come to was densely populated—much more so than his home planet, Khatanar (called Tau Ceti e by Earthlings)—with lower gravity and a refreshingly lower normal temperature everywhere. The dominant life forms on the planet, the humans, were more diverse genetically than the Khateen, Joran’s own species. That genetic diversity was both the reason for the mission and the biggest hurdle to the goal of the mission.
Joran watched as a human woman paused at a ticket kiosk, glancing around furtively. She had been the focus of his attention from the moment she stepped onto the train; while Joran had not quite become accustomed to the various shapes, sizes, and traits of human females—and he had not yet come around to find them precisely attractive in a sexual sense—it was difficult for him not to stare from behind the dark-tinted glasses that he had adopted as part of his costume.
She was of medium height for human norms, and would have only reached Joran’s chest, standing in front of him. Somehow, however, when she stepped onto the train, looking around quickly to find a free seat, she seemed taller—an anomaly that Joran couldn’t quite understand. Her clothing subtly emphasized her full, heavy-looking breasts, the narrowing at her waist, and the flare of hips that suggested that she was sexually mature—and that she would be a very viable option for reproduction.
Joran had felt a hot jolt of something he couldn’t initially
identify; keener than objective interest, more potent than scientific curiosity. He had carefully avoided her notice even as he stared at her, and even as he followed her off of the train and into the station. It had been impossible not to see the sway of her hips as she walked in front of him; he wondered why every male in the crowded train station wasn’t responding to it. Joran had watched a great deal of educational material, excerpts taken by his superiors and compiled in order to understand the vagaries of human sexuality.
His comm unit buzzed at his wrist again. Joran tapped the screen, sending an acknowledgement. He may have found the subject he was sent to locate; the thought filled him with a mixture of heady scientific interest and something much more intensely personal.
The mission Joran had signed on for was to locate specimens of the human race—female, for the purposes of the current mission, though there were some among the scientific community who thought that a future mission should include males of the species—in order to determine whether a hybrid race could be created. From what little understanding the Khateen had of the human genetic code, it was more complex than their own, far less stable, and prone to mutations. The humans themselves did not seem to recognize the wealth that this trait had—their efforts at genetic engineering were still in infancy, and information gleaned about common opinions on the subject suggested that most were against the idea of tampering.
The question at hand was whether scientists could somehow cross the inter-species barrier between the two races, to either incorporate human genetics into their own code, or to create a new race that combined the benefits of both. Joran and his colleagues were each assigned the task of recruiting human females for experimentation; and Joran thought to himself, watching the woman walking away from the kiosk, looking around the station for the signs, that he may have found an excellent subject indeed. Everything about her boasted reproductive viability; her general shape, the look of good health, and something like vigor in the way she moved told him that she was likely fertile. Joran felt another hot jolt work through him as he surreptitiously moved closer to her, the better to take in details.
The more he watched her, the more Joran began to think of how he could persuade this woman to come with him. He knew from his research that human females were highly alert to improper advances; there was something he had read, a human essay, about a phenomenon called “cat-calling,” which suggested that if he tried to make an overt move—especially a loud or vocal one—she would reject him outright, feeling threatened by his aggressiveness.
Joran tried to decide how best to approach this female. On Khatanar, it would be so much simpler; mating was decided by genetic index, with mates chosen from a pool of candidates based on the need to unite and mingle families rather than individuals. From what Joran had seen in his attentive watching of human film art, this was not generally the case among their people. There was a complex, often paradoxical dance that seemed to result in failure much more frequently than success. And yet there were so many humans on the planet that Joran’s superiors had thought for certain that none of the women they took for the purposes of their testing would be missed. They would be less than a drop in a barrel, as far as the population of the planet’s humans were concerned.
He contemplated how he would perform the maneuver that he had seen called “breaking the ice” with this female as he followed her towards the newly-arrived train, and Joran thought that he would soon see just how well the various safeguards he had been told to implement worked to disguise him as a human male. If nothing else, he thought wryly, it would be a good test; but he knew that if he were not able to recruit this woman, he would be very disappointed in himself.
****
Adriana felt as though someone was watching her; she couldn’t put her finger on where the gaze was coming from, but nonetheless the sensation of being watched—and even more, of being followed—stayed with her from the moment she had gotten onto the first train of her trek until the moment she sat down on the second one. It was not precisely a creepy feeling; she couldn’t sense any kind of malice from the source, or anything that raised more of a red flag in her mind than the pure sensation of being watched. I have a can of mace, and I have those silly self-defense classes. If that’s not enough to protect me, then I’m doomed. She was traveling to visit a cousin; Susannah, who lived in a town so small that the nearest airport was more than a hundred miles away, was having a difficult pregnancy with her third child, and Adriana had volunteered to take some of the pressure off of her by cooking and babysitting the older two children while Susannah worked.
A man sat down a few seats away from her on the train, and Adriana glanced at him curiously. He was tall, with a lean muscular build that seemed a little too perfect, clothed in the most nondescript outfit she could imagine: jeans that bore no particular brand, a tee shirt that just fit him without being either baggy or tight, and a pair of sunglasses. His skin seemed somehow strange in her cursory glance; it was somewhere between brown and gray, not sickly looking but not quite what she was used to seeing. His hair was thick, cut close to his skull, and an inky black that didn’t look exactly like it was natural to his skin tone. Adriana thought idly that he might have been the source of the sensation she was feeling; but he sat easily, not fidgeting or anything. He certainly didn’t look like the kind of man who would just grab her, try to attack her. In fact, somehow in spite of her sudden conviction that he had followed her—she thought she might have seen him in the corner of her eye on the last train—she didn’t have any sense of danger from the man.
She turned away, looking out through the window as the train pulled away from the station. This leg of her journey would be longer than the first; she had packed a lunch for herself along with the changes of clothes in her backpack. Adriana watched the scenery flow past her and considered taking her food out. She was more bored than hungry, she knew; but something about realizing that she was, in fact, being watched made her want to do something, just for the sake of activity.
It’s not being watched, she thought after a moment’s reflection. It’s like I’m being observed. She felt less as though some creepy guy was staring at her from behind dark sunglasses and more like the subject of some kind of anthropologist; or some kind of science experiment. Adriana couldn’t quite think of how she had arrived at that conclusion—how it was that she could decipher intent from a guy who hadn’t spoken to her, who she didn’t even actually know was watching her—but there it was.
Before Adriana could decide how she had arrived at the conclusion, her thoughts were interrupted by someone close by clearing their throat. She turned her head, and the man from before was standing in the aisle, his attention obviously on her. “I’m sorry if I have upset you,” the man said, “but I saw that you were traveling alone, and thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind company for a little while.” Adriana frowned slightly; the man had a strange, almost guttural accent—combined with an even stranger precision in his enunciation. Where in the world is he from? Up close, he was even taller than he had seemed; Adriana thought that if she stood, she would at best reach his chest.
“I guess that would be okay,” she said cautiously. Adriana worried at her lower lip, and somehow felt rather than saw the man’s gaze shift from her eyes to her mouth. There was something compelling about the man; in spite of her surprise, she still didn’t feel even a trace of danger from him. “Have a seat,” she suggested, pointing to the empty one next to her.
“Thank you very much,” the man said, sitting down. Adriana felt dwarfed by his size, and shifted instinctively closer to the window—but the man didn’t sprawl or try to invade her space. “Where are you headed?”
Adriana smiled in spite of herself, shrugging. “I’m going to visit a cousin who lives in the middle of nowhere,” she explained. “She’s having trouble with her third pregnancy and needs someone to lend a helping hand.”
“That is very kind of you,” the man replied. He paused, and Adriana intuited that he
was mentally translating something—his accent and his speech told her that he was definitely foreign, though it was not an accent that she could place. “Oh! I almost forgot, I should ask your name.”
Adriana stifled a laugh at the odd syntax; he was definitely strange, but it was obvious that he was making an effort to speak well, to be polite. “I’m Adriana,” she said. “And you?”
The man’s lips curved in a slow smile. “I am Joran,” he told her with an odd kind of firmness. Adriana watched him, waiting for his explanation of where he was going, and why he was traveling there. He simply watched her from behind the dark glasses, and Adriana started to feel—for the first time—slightly uncomfortable as the silence stretched out.
“So, Joran—pleased to meet you. By the way, where are you headed?”
Joran shrugged. “The middle of nowhere, like you,” he said. “I am to perform research.”
“Oh? What kind of research?” Adriana glanced around the train compartment; there were only a few other people in the car with her, and she hoped that at one of the next stops, there would be more. If it turned out that this Joran was creepier than he seemed, she wanted to be able to make a getaway, or at least get someone else’s attention.
“Genetics research,” Joran said, that faint almost-smile curving his lips again. “Actually, I am recruiting volunteers—and I had thought that you would be a good candidate.”
Adriana felt her cheeks warming; that was one of the stranger come-ons she had ever received from a man in her life, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. “Oh really?” she asked. She struggled to keep her voice level.