Gamma Rift

by Kalli Lanford

  A nudist I wasn’t, so baring all my parts, even in an empty room, was extremely uncomfortable, more so than walking on feet that felt like they were being pricked by a thousand pins. I kept one arm over my chest and covered my lower half with my other wrist and forearm.

  “Stop screwing with me, and let me out of here.”

  Again no response, which creeped me out. The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself.

  The metallic walls were as naked as me and seemed solid and nonporous, void of any visible camera lenses or microphones. But even if the front wall hadn’t been constructed from some sort of flowing, dense liquid, I felt like I was being watched.

  Etched on the floor, three feet from the far wall, was a small circle. I touched its center with my big toe. Two rectangular sections of the seemingly seamless wall slowly and noiselessly extended in my direction, producing two thick slabs of metal beveled with empty, sink-like basins, the upper slab being waist height, the lower, knee height. Yes—a toilet and a sink.

  The streamline sink and toilet disappeared into the wall when I was finished but not before I contemplated whether or not to drink the water from the self-filling and hopefully self-sanitizing sink with its burst of steam, and with what I hoped was hand soap.

  The water was clear and odorless, something my dry mouth and cracked lips craved, but I didn’t risk it. Instead, I paced the remainder of the room, looking for another symbol on the floor that, when triggered, would reveal something, like maybe a water fountain. I found one and touched it.

  A dime-sized etching in the shape of a water drop resulted in the extension of another panel, one with a rainbow stream of water that jetted in an arc from a clear tube, landed in a small pool, and drained.

  It was clear, odorless, and cool. After letting it puddle in the cup of my hand and giving it a full inspection, I set my lips against the sweep of water and took a long drink. Okay, so at least my captors didn’t want me to die of thirst, whoever they were.

  Within minutes, the sweet water renewed my spirit and my limbs, each leg slowly recovering from its unexplained weakness and eerie tingle. I stretched, slapped one palm against the wall, and stamped my right foot on the floor as its recoil vibrated through my body.

  Had I fallen into some super-secret government site where they did experiments and tests, like before they sent astronauts to the moon? But I didn’t think even NASA had the technology to pull something like this off.

  And what would they want with me? I was a business major from San Diego State on scholarship and loans. I had a life, a future I wanted to get back to as soon as possible.

  Sniffling and watching the lucid wall trickle, I shouted, “Where am I? Why am I here? How did I get here? Please, someone tell me. Help me, please!”

  My mind was sludge. I couldn’t remember losing my clothes, when I’d gotten locked in the room, where I’d come from, or how long I’d been here. And then the memory as cold and surreal as this room twisted in my mind, and I remembered.

  Maybe I was dreaming? Maybe when we were camping, I’d fallen and hit my head. No, this couldn’t be a dream. The stiffness and tingly sensation in my legs were as real as this weird metal floor.

  And I knew, with certainty, I’d left Earth far behind.

  Today had to be Sunday, I think. Attie, Logan, and Kevin must have returned to our camp at one thirty or two in the morning without me and with a story that would be hard for anyone to believe.

  Did people believe them, or did everyone think they went psycho? I was sure they were questioned, dragged one at a time to the police station and into an interrogation room. And what if they blamed the guys for my disappearance, accusing them of raping and killing me and dumping my body in the lake? What if they thought Attie had something to do with my disappearance, too?

  My mom? What would she believe when she found out?

  My heartbeat rose into my throat, my breathing quickened, and the remaining prickles in my lower legs became a throb of uncomfortable heat.

  What if Attie, Logan, and Kevin never returned at all? Maybe they were here, wherever here was, and somewhere in a room down the hall.

  I rose from the corner and took small steps toward the front wall, planting each foot carefully to compensate for its hot numbness. Getting as close as I could without touching the liquid, I screamed, “Attie, are you there? Logan! Kevin! Can you hear me?” My words bounced from the wall, reverberating across my tiny room, as if the wall was made from a misty mat of thick rubber.

  Fuck! If I could only touch it, break its seal, and make a run for it. But to where? I didn’t know. I just wanted out of there, and as my blood pressure rose and tears threatened to re-spill, I was ready to try and give the wall a test.

  My nails reached just past the tips of my fingers. With my teeth, I tore at my thumb, accidentally cutting too close and making my thumb sting, but I had a sliver of nail big enough to throw.

  Flying through the air with an over-hand toss, the nail clipping hit the liquid as the wave of its thick paste undulated toward the floor.

  It sizzled as a flame plumed from its contact point, obliterating it into a peppering of ash and a spiral of smelly smoke, the first real odor to hit my nostrils since my arrival. Good thing I didn’t try touching it with my finger.

  A pencil-sized vent opened in the ceiling above the fourth wall, and with a hum, the curl of smoke, along with its smell, disappeared. As the vent closed, leaving the gray ceiling as smooth as before, I hoped that maybe my action would trigger the appearance of my captors.

  Watching the dense wall trickle toward the floor, I screamed, “I want out of here! Now! Please! Someone help me!” I stamped my numb feet and sniffled back my tears. “Let me go. You can’t keep me here. You can’t do this to me. I want to talk to whoever’s in charge. Show yourself.”

  As I balled my hands into fists and tightened my jaw, the hall on the other side of the liquid curtain exploded with light.

  Chapter Four

  Garran

  “You need to delete that image. It’s hideous,” declared Murelle with a clack of her bare feet against the stone floor of my sleeping quarters, and a sneer toward Lestra.

  Despite being one and a half years my junior, and of lesser royal stature, my sister continued to override my security settings and enter my room whenever she wanted. She waved one of her powdered arms, stopping to admire the soft, pink film of talcum, sparking red from the glow of the sun coming through the window.

  Instead of using our planet’s customary muted colors of gold, beige, or peach, she chose to bedeck herself with a trendy collection of pink and purple shell powders and insisted on increasing their color’s intensity by adding multiple layers. I’ve told her over one thousand times that she overdoes it with the shell makeup. “Guys think a little natural shell is sexy,” I had tried to explain to her, but she never listened. If my sister wanted to look cheap, that was her problem. Lestra wasn’t allowed to wear shell dust or embellished apparel while on duty. But even with her dull exterior, white tunic, and beige leggings, I thought she was pretty.

  “And you need my permission to enter my room. We’re not children anymore,” I rebuked, watching the life-size image of a male human flicker. Instead of telling her about the human our father held in the lab, I relaxed so she wouldn’t suspect anything and said, “I got tired of speaking to that generic language simulator, so I transferred its language program to this image I found in our data banks.” I tapped the generator, and the backdrop of what our archives referred to as a “typical human sitting room” materialized behind it. “Watch. ‘Hello, how are you?’”

  “I’m fine. How are you,” the image said in a monotone and non-distinct voice.

  “And what’s that thing?” She pointed to the wooden object next to it.

  “It’s a chair,” I told her.

  “A chair? I’d crack my ass on that thing.”

  “Yeah, you would.” I laughed, knowing that e
very time my sister was pissed, which was quite often, she’d sigh and drop down hard into the closest sitting cube.

  In contrast to the soft, thickly padded, and practical furniture of our planet, humans actually sat on highly ornate furniture made from wood, stone, and even metal; materials used for minimal shell contact here, such as walls and floors.

  “And it’s so cluttered and messy,” she added, pointing to a set of floor-length curtains and scowling at the repeated design on the wall.

  Like the exterior, the interior of our homes was as smooth and refined as our shells. Panels lowered to cover windows, and the last thing anyone would do is distract from the gentle arches and curves of our high ceilings by covering our walls with decorated paper.

  Murelle’s face plates dropped. “You could at least put him in a tunic and leggings.”

  The human image wore the only thing in our data banks that resembled male, human attire—a black, two-piece suit worn by the Scolls, a race of thin-shelled beings two galaxies away. It was a stretch, but it worked for me. I honestly didn’t care what the thing wore. Why would I?

  “How’s this?” I smirked, manipulating the virtual generator’s controls. Before Murelle could blink her eyes, the black suit was gone, leaving the male completely naked and oblivious to its indisposed condition. I flipped through the virtual closet flickering before me, searching for a black tunic, thick leggings, and dark shoes.

  “Their dicks don’t tuck away? They just hang there like that?” The shell around Murelle’s mouth turned down at the corners like she had just bitten into an unripe quip.

  I hadn’t expected her to stand there asking questions, especially questions like those. My goal was to get her to run from my room. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about male genitals with my sister. “Yup, just like that,” I said like it was no big deal, which it wasn’t—at least not to me.

  “It sure is a puny little thing. It looks pretty useless.”

  “Murelle, I can’t believe you just said that. I don’t want to hear that shit!” A tap on the controls restored the human’s dignity.

  “That’s much better. Keep it clothed at all times, so it doesn’t offend anybody.”

  “Why don’t you stop barging into my room unannounced and without my permission? Then you won’t have to worry about being offended.” If only her shell scan couldn’t unlock my room.

  “Fine,” she huffed.

  As Murelle left my quarters, she gave the virtual human a kick, slicing through his calf with her foot before going out the door. The man’s leg flickered wildly for several seconds before the generator’s wavelengths settled back into place, restoring his virtual appendage.

  Finally! “Do you have more information on the human?” I asked Lestra, leaning forward.

  “Kind of. You’ll see,” she said, pulling a small tin of shell powder from her pocket.

  She pushed her left tunic sleeve up her arm, slid the lid away from the powder box, and gave the puff a generous dip, causing a small glistening cloud to emerge from the container’s lip.

  “I don’t understand how this—”

  “Watch and you’ll see.” Lestra turned her dull inner forearm toward me and gave it a liberal brushing back and forth with the puff, the sweet smell of powder filling my room. Her ashen shell instantly glowed a soft beige. After an additional rub, something else appeared as the powder settled: first a five, a two and then a U, nine, three, Y, eight, K, seven, six, six, four, nine, five, five in that order.

  “What in the galaxy is that?” I gasped.

  “The code to give you access to the lab and the lab’s medical files.”

  “You damaged your shell? How could you…?” I asked, still stunned.

  “Because my brother, Slaine, is one of the interior guards. He’s been assigned to the lab, cellblock three.”

  “What? That’s impossible.” The Timuarys were servants and facility and maintenance personnel; they’d never held positions of palace security or planet and inter-planet defense.

  Lestra’s shoulders dropped.

  “I mean, not that your family isn’t qualified for those stations,” I lied, “it’s just that it’s not part of our palace tradition.”

  “He’s newly appointed last week—by your father,” she said firmly. “You’re right. The Timuarys are hard working, but passive. We, too, were surprised but honored by the king’s request.”

  Maybe Slaine was selected because he is taller and broader than the average Timuary male—taller and even more broad shouldered than me—which resulted in two rumors among the royals: he was either the result of a Timuary affair, or he practiced a banned ritual called “forced augmentation,” the act of ingesting an illegal substance that keeps the shell from hardening at the end of puberty, thus extending the Enestian growth period.

  “Slaine gave me a tour of the cellblocks. But he didn’t break any rules,” she was quick to add. “He had permission to show them to me.”

  “Did you see the human?”

  “No, but I saw every cell except for the last cell in block three, cell fifteen. Slaine said it was empty and being upgraded. But I know when my brother’s lying.” Her eye plates widened. “The human has to be in cell fifteen.”

  “How did you get the code? Did your brother give it to you?”

  “Of course not! He’d never go against orders. I used my heritage badge. Secretly etched it while Slaine entered it into the console.”

  She ran her fingers over her inner arm, and I grabbed her wrist. “You didn’t have to do this to yourself.”

  “Yes, I did. Visitors aren’t allowed to bring communication devices into the lab, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to memorize it,” she huffed, poising her hands on her hips. “You couldn’t ask your father for access to cell fifteen. Think about it. For some reason, this abduction is different from all the others. Your father assigned a Timuary to guard it, someone he can trust, someone who will keep a secret. Getting the code was the only way.”

  The bronze finish on the left edge of Lestra’s heritage badge was rubbed away, revealing the shinier metal underneath, and some of the metal itself was worn so it was no longer horizontally symmetrical.

  “I’m not worried about my badge. It can easily be repaired.”

  That was true. Heritage badges displayed reputations and wealth with their symbols and intricate designs and were traditionally re-gifted, handed down from one generation to the next. Lestra’s badge probably came from a great, great, great, great-grandmother as did mine from a great, great, great, great-grandfather.

  But we cannot live without our shells. If Lestra were caught with this intentional self-violation, she would be reprimanded and removed from duty, becoming the first blemish on the Timuary family’s reputation.

  “I didn’t expect you to harm yourself. The integrity of your shell’s been compromised. What if someone sees what you’ve done?”

  “I did what I had to do in order to help you. I’m not worried about my shell. If it cracks, it cracks. I’ll get it repaired,” she said without regret. “As for the code, I’ll keep it hidden.”

  “I appreciate what you did, but still…”

  She looked up at me, blinking ashamedly.

  “I have a bit of shell paper,” I said, hoping my offer would ease my guilt.

  “You do?” Lestra’s eyes gleamed. “How? It was banned before we were even born.”

  “I’m a royal.”

  Each of my family members had a piece, all preserved by a vain and greedy great aunt. I had no need for shell paper. Most males, even those in the royal class, revered our shell’s unrefined surface, but I’m sure my mother and Murelle, on the other hand, used theirs profusely, so far without any consequences.

  At one time, we used it to buff away the top layer of shell and make our porous shell plates as smooth as glass. It was a short-lived trend. Cases of shell crack quadrupled before its inevitable prohibition.

  “Before you leave, I’ll memorize the co
de, then make it disappear.”

  “Thank you.” She gave me a nod and scraped her hand along the inside of her forearm just above the communication cuff at her wrist. Our eyes met, and she smiled. Not her usual friendly smile, but a sexy kind of seductive smile that made me feel uncomfortable. What was up with that?

  “Um, let’s check the lab’s files,” I said, taking a step away from her when I stood.

  We positioned ourselves at my desk below my virtual monitor, sitting side by side, though I was careful not to let any part of my body touch hers. Lestra displayed her graffitied arm, and I relayed and memorized the precious sequence of numbers and letters that would hopefully give us access to something involving cell fifteen.

  “There it is. The file for cell fifteen,” said Lestra, pointing to the screen and leaning closer to me.

  “Okay, let’s open it.”

  Lestra recoiled. “Is that thing the alien?”

  There it was, the human female, its image from the top of its head to the tops of its shoulders engulfing half the screen. The image was probably captured at its arrival when it was lying down, still unconscious, and its vitals and statistics were taken. The lips were turned downward, and its outer covering called “skin,” though darker in color than my own off-white shell, appeared paler than that of any human I’d seen in pictures.

  “It’s so soft and weak,” said Lestra.

  “To us, but not to them. Human males admire the soft female form. I’ve read about it in their literature and poetry. According to this, it’s fifty-six dimits tall, making her shorter than me. About your height.”

  “What’s that stuff on the head called again?”

  “Hair.”

  Its face was free of it with the exception of two thin, arched strips of the stuff, one above each closed eye, and a row of short, curved hairs along the edge of the skin that is used to cover each eye when the human blinked or slept. Its head was covered with a thick mass of brown hair that hung below its shoulders, reminding me of the mane on a Verilian horse.