Errant Contact

by T. Michael Ford

  “Well, something smells good.”

  “Feeling better, I take it?” I asked.

  “Much. A shower like that is a rare treat for us ever since we joined the ranks of spacefarers.”

  I reached over to the control panel and pressed a few more buttons. Seconds later, a pair of chilled drinks were ready. I slid one across the table and motioned for him to take a seat.

  He accepted and lifted the drink in respect. “Safe for our species, I hope?”

  “Safe as an alcoholic drink can be,” I responded and then watched in amazement as he downed the first half of the tumbler of sea-green liquid in a few quick gulps.

  “Hmm, not bad. A little sweet for my taste, but not bad at all.”

  I mentally noted that he was going to regret that later, these were very potent drinks to be downing like that.

  “Had a talk with that Kalaya girl you mentioned. Very respectful, but every answer to my questions only raised more questions. I felt like I was playing a game of wits with a grand champion chess master and losing badly. Rather unhelpful, actually.”

  I smiled and popped a chunk of synthetic vegetable into my mouth. “I see she already has you all figured out, and here I thought she would be out of practice.”

  “Figured out? You mean she is messing with me?” He groaned, shook his head ruefully, and gulped down more alcohol.

  “She’s messing with all of you; it’s what she does best. You might as well get used to it; that’s what I did. Now, I can’t ask for a better friend.” I slid one of the plates of food over to him, thinking that getting some food into him to counteract the drink might be considered a merciful act.

  “Steak?”

  I shrugged. “We call it Cinobok, a delicacy that my people enjoyed when we still hunted on our home world. Of course, this isn’t real Cinobok, but it’s synthesized to be pretty close to the original.”

  “Do I want to know what a real Cinobok was?”

  “Probably not. I’ve only seen representations of them in museums. Oddly, creatures like them resulted in a divergent path between our two species.”

  “I don’t follow,” Drik said, starting to slur his words slightly.

  “Well, from what Kalaya tells me, in your evolutionary history, humans responded to threats from large predators by producing better and more deadly weapons. Eventually, you killed almost all of them off, which screwed up your natural ecosystem. And with no large predators left to exterminate, you started turning the same weapons on yourselves; thousands of years of war ensued.”

  Drik nodded gravely. “Guilty as charged, I suppose; but I guess I’ve never considered it from that viewpoint. So tell me, Kodo, how did your civilization differ?”

  I set down my fork. “We took another route. Instead of producing weapons, we collectively learned to build better fortifications and structures to keep creatures like the Cinobok away from us. The village was only as secure as its weakest defense point so it was in everyone’s best interests to see that there were no weaknesses. A spirit of collectivism became ingrained in our DNA, and it has served us well in our transition to the stars.”

  “But you said you had only seen representations of a Cinobok in museums. That implies they are extinct; what happened to them?”

  “The short answer is our sun became unstable and huge solar storms erupted. While the structures we became so adept at building protected our people, we could do nothing for the planet itself. Ice caps melted, grasses dried up to dust and the native species, except us, began to perish.”

  “I see,” he said gravely, staring thoughtfully down at his plate.

  We talked about normal things for a few more minutes and had another round of drinks. Then the door opened as a fresh-faced Laree walked in smiling brightly with a towel wrapped around her hair.

  “Something smells good in here, and it’s not ration packets,” she said strolling over to our table.

  “Pull up a chair and have a drink,” Drik called out happily, as he pushed a chair out for her with his foot.

  “What’s with him?” she asked me.

  “He’s had a few drinks already,” I commented as he just smiled at her and raised his glass.

  “Yeah, I can see that.” She sat down primly and looked over all the foods I had arrayed on the table. It wasn’t so much that I was starving anymore, but it had been so long since I’ve even tasted anything that I just wanted a few bites of everything. “So…what’s good tonight?” she asked.

  Drik slid a plate of the steak in front of her as well as another drink. “To start with, I recommend this.”

  “Steak sounds good, but do we have anything a bit lighter to start out with?”

  Drik sighed as he passed her a plate of rose- and ochre-colored vegetables and a small side dish of dressing. “Stuff tastes like spinach, and the purple dressing tastes a lot like creamy Italian.”

  She nodded in appreciation. “That works for me. Honestly, I don’t really care what it tastes like as long as it’s not hard as a brick and flavored like one.” She took a tentative bite and pantomimed fainting away in a swoon. “Oh, my goodness, this is fantastic! How do you manage to keep food fresh in space? Much less for a thousand years!”

  “It’s all synthesized from stores of base foods preserved in specialized compounds. Remember, the Aurora was designed not only to build and support a new colony, but also to host it until local foodstuffs could be located or grown ourselves.”

  Drik hit the bottom of his fourth tumbler of alcohol and triggered the button to dispense another round. He motioned for us to join him. Laree took a sip and smiled in response. “Oh, that’s good. I don’t know, Kodo, keep treating us like this and we might never leave.”

  Keep making threats like that and I might just have to stop. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had the opportunity to entertain guests, even before this mission.”

  “In that case, thank you for your hospitality.”

  “I flipping hate this place!” We all stared at the door and our final guest. There was Maxwell in a…tiny pink jumpsuit?

  I couldn’t help but laugh to myself as Laree jumped up from the table and rushed to her brother. “Max, what happened to your suit?”

  “I’m telling you, this ship hates me! I took a shower, one that kept changing from burning hot to freezing cold, might I add. And when I finally got free of that blasted room, my jumpsuit was…well, look at me!” he said, thrusting his arms downward at himself. The cuffs of his pants, normally down below the ankle line, now rode up to mid-calf, and the arms were now short-sleeved at best. Instead of the bland green color that everyone else sported, his jumpsuit was an almost fluorescent pink and quite tight around his midsection.

  Laree looked him over and confirmed that he was undamaged, then proceeded to give me a frosty look. “What do you know about all this?”

  I held up my hands in mock surrender. “I can honestly say that I had nothing to do with it.” I really didn’t, but I could hear Kalaya laughing loud and clear in my mind.

  Laree didn’t seem convinced. “Hmmm, so I assume I will need to take this up with your mystery partner then?”

  I just shrugged; take it up with her all you like. Better men than you three have tried to tame the girl and failed miserably, and Kalaya was well out of your league by anyone’s measure.

  “That’s it? You’re just going to sit there and shrug helplessly?” Yep, that’s kind of the plan. “Ugh, fine, we will talk about this later. Max, why don’t you come and sit with us and have a bit of this wonderful food. It might help to take your mind off things.”

  “I doubt it. When I finally meet this person, they are toast,” Max growled angrily. I doubted that very much, but I’m not telling them that. Best to let Kalaya have her fun.

  Max was still rather disgruntled when he sat down at the table. Drik passed him his own plate of food and he silently began to eat, all the while sulking petulantly.

  The meal went on a bit longer with only light conv
ersation between them. Max’s interruption seemed to have put them both off slightly; at least until Drik spoke again.

  “I have a question for you. How is it that you know so much about humans if you have been frozen for a thousand years? You can’t possibly be working off thousand-year-old information, can you?”

  I shrugged again. “Basically, yeah. A thousand years might sound like a long time, but in space, it’s really not that long. Think about it, just getting from one end of the galaxy to another takes your ships what? Ten, fifteen years?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “So it takes you a quarter of a century just to complete a delivery of goods and return home. You’re not exactly going to do a massive migration very quickly like that, are you? And since few habitable worlds are anywhere close to Earth, you probably were forced to set up supply routes with space stations. Those take even more time to get functional. Once you get better ships, say in another two thousand years or so, you might be able to make more of an impact in a short span of years, but not right now. Besides, you’re not going to appreciate this but we and the other advanced races know quite a bit about you humans.” I took another sip of the brew and I could feel it loosening my tongue.

  “What? How so?” Max looked up, scowling, from his food.

  “To begin with, you don’t exactly try to hide yourselves. You’ve been beaming your vids out into space since you invented the technology. Not to mention all the trite messages you’ve been transmitting to nearby star systems. And don’t even get me started on the naked pictures on space probes; did it never occur to you people that that might not be such a good idea?”

  “Why? What harm did it cause?”

  “For one, it made you look like complete, ignorant rubes…would it surprise you to know that most of the universe calls your planet Dirt instead of Earth…it’s not a compliment. Your planet and civilization are held up as an example to schoolchildren across the galaxy. An example of a worst-case scenario of how not to run a planetary system. Is it any wonder that you haven’t run across other aliens that want to play nice with you? You’re an embarrassment. Oddly, that very fact might have saved your lives many times over…go figure.”

  The three of them had gone very silent. Finally, Max choked out a feeble question, “How would being looked down upon by everyone in the galaxy be a good thing?”

  I got the feeling I was probably talking too much, but I sighed and replied, “Look, Junior, like everything else, the universe is divided into good, evil, and something in between. Powerful forces represent all three. A small, non-aligned system like yours is a ripe piece of fruit primed for the picking by any of the dangerous factions out there. All that keeps one of them from swatting you is the fact that you are isolated by distance, and the loss of face they would endure for doing so.”

  “Are you suggesting we are so pathetic that it’s beneath the dignity of these entities to destroy us?” Laree questioned incredulously.

  “Exactly.”

  The three of them were silent for a long time until Laree slowly pulled herself together and changed the subject. “So, Kodo, does that magic machine of yours make anything good for a sweet tooth?”

  “Magic? Hardly, even this ship doesn’t rank high enough for that,” I said as I touched a few more buttons.

  I turned back to them with two plates of dessert, only to find Drik and Laree staring at me coldly in suspicion once again.

  “Are you saying your people have magic”?

  “Of course not.” They both sighed in relief. “We lost that ability thirty millennia ago.” Again, raised eyebrows. “You’re going to make me explain, aren’t you?” They both nodded. Ugh, why didn’t we load the ship’s computers with training videos? There has to be a very well-crafted and boring-as-hell vid to explain this crap somewhere out there. “As you know, the galaxy is very, very big; the universe is even more so. And parts of it are filled with powers that could never be imagined or explained by science. The worlds in these areas seemed to evolve in a different direction than most, choosing to refine and use this force instead of technology.

  “So, you’re trying to say that races chose to go down a path of either technology or of magic? Why would they do that? Technology has to be vastly superior to anything magic can come up with.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. We have seen races that develop magic to the point that it is almost impossible to tell the difference between the two. Just because they still use magic, doesn’t mean they never grow and evolve. It’s actually very impressive.”

  “So there are worlds out there that are magical? Truly?”

  I nodded. “Yes, there are a lot of them, in fact.”

  Drik asked another question, “Where does the magic come from?”

  That was a very smart question…I was almost impressed. However, the answer was not something that I really want to get into. I focused on the three of them the best I could; they must not question that I was telling the truth. “There are higher powers than gods. Just leave it at that.”

  I slipped three more plates across the table and turned my attention to my own. I hoped they would get the idea that the conversation was over. Thankfully, they were silent for a good long time.

  “I guess chocolate cake is chocolate cake everywhere,” Laree muttered.

  Chapter 9

  Laree

  I don’t know how late it was when I finally got back to my room. Kodo had somehow kept us up incredibly late without even saying a whole lot. He is a very quiet man despite his revelations about the universe. I entered the bedroom and slipped out of my jumpsuit, collapsing on the bed moments later. The cool sheets felt good on my skin and soothed my aching head. Whatever was in those drinks was powerful stuff.

  “Quite the evening, huh?” Kalaya asked softly from above.

  I groaned as I forced myself to turn over to face the ceiling and the direction of the voice. “I would have thought you would have had the good sense be asleep by now.”

  “Not tonight, I’m afraid. I have much yet that must be completed before morning.”

  “Pulling an all-nighter, huh? I’ve been there, studying for exams.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me that you have. But worry not; I have done this many times.” I felt my eyes growing even heavier, simply closing under their own weight. As I sank deeper into the soft bed, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I fell asleep.

  “I’m sorry, but I am going to go to sleep now.”

  “I can see that. Have a good long sleep, Laree. I won’t wake you till late.”

  “…Thank you…”

  “My pleasure.”

  I slipped away into the soft bliss of the night.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Kodo

  I don’t see how humans could do it. What possible reason could they have to have evolved with such a high ability to drink alcohol? Is their planet made of the stuff? Bastards and their giant-ass livers.

  I lay there in that unfamiliar room, awake but unwilling to move. The enormity of the previous day’s revelations hit me like a hatch door to the head. Why did things have to turn out like this? And why does my head have to hurt so much?

  “Having a rough morning already, are we?” Kalaya's voice purred through the room’s com. Please don’t tell me it’s time to get up already. I still feel the effects of the alcohol, and I know this hangover is just going to get worse as the day goes on.

  “Morning already, is it?” I groaned not even bothering to open my eyes.

  “Morning will soon not be the correct word if you don’t get out of bed,” she said, but now it sounded like she was in the room…like in the bed next to me. I opened my bleary eyes to see an absolutely stunning young woman sitting cross-legged next to my pillow. She watched me with her glowing blue eyes set into an angel’s face framed by collar-length, dusky blonde hair. Smiling down at me in affection, she even reached over to gently brush some hair away from my eyes. Her touch was not something I
would ever be able to describe adequately. It was something akin to the feeling of a static charge raising the small hairs on my arm. “You have been sleeping for years now; don’t you think you’ve goofed off enough?”

  She got up from the bed without a sound, motioning for me to get up as well. I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she was. I’ve worked with her for years, but the shipyard where the Aurora was commissioned was old and lacked the equipment or necessity for extensive hologram use.

  She wore what looked like an old-style white tailcoat jacket, laced up in the front instead of buttons or other seals. Noticing my unabashed stare, she smiled and happily showed off the rest of her outfit. The jacket was form fitting but was still modest and extremely elegant. The tail wasn’t as long as I thought, only about six inches longer in the back than in the front. She wore smooth, tight green pants that, again, looked more appropriate to an age long past but still reminded me of formal wear. Lastly, her boots were knee-high leather riding boots that had been well-loved. Overall, she made it a stunning outfit from centuries before my time.

  “You like my outfit, I see. I have to admit I am quite enamored with this old stuff; it reminds me of a simpler time. Still, most people don’t expect one as young as I to wander about dressed like this. But you have to admit, no one can rock this jacket like I can!”

  I have to confess that I have indeed never seen an outfit like that, let alone one that looked so good on a woman. If this is what everyone was wearing in the old days, why the hell did we start wearing jumpsuits? She sashayed quietly around the room, brushing her hands over some of the objects, but never moving even one of them. Based on her familiarity with the room, I guess she has been here before, either that or…