The inside of the top portion of Indigo Space Center was like being in an airport terminal. That was the closest analogy that Enedelia could come up with. There were gates, and bridges connecting ships, and big windows that allowed you to view outside at the ships coming and going. The inner circle had restaurants, lavatories, communication terminals, and even duty free shops while the outer circle offered resting areas for those waiting to transfer to various ships. She was unable to read the writing on the walls, naturally, but she felt confident enough that she had assessed her new environment accurately. She knew she wasn’t on Earth, but the forms of social life seemed consistent with her expectations.
And she was frightened.
“You can’t leave me here!” Enedelia pleaded with Kirk 23.
“Oh, yes I can. A deal is a deal,” Kirk 23 said.
“But the smell is horrible and I don’t speak the language…”
“After a while, you’ll not notice the smell, and the language will come to you in time,” Kirk 23 said. “Relax. Enjoy your time here.”
“But, I have no money,” Enedelia said.
“You’re a resourceful human,” Kirk 23 said. “You’ll be fine.”
“At least give me some of those diamonds you were going to pawn off on me
back on Earth,” Enedelia insisted.
He fumbled at a pocket and pulled out a small, black, felt bag apparently weighted down with large jewels inside. He handed this to her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No problem,” he said, turning to walk away. He arrived at the bridge door that
lead back to his ship, and then looked one last time to Enedelia. “Though, I’m not sure why you would want them. Apparently, they’re about as useless here as they are on Earth. Saturated market, I suppose. Damn De Beers.”
The door slid open, he stepped through, and the doors shut. Enedelia watched as
he walked down the bridge back to his ship. Her heart sank. Here she was, probably billions of miles from home and not a bit of money to her name. Perhaps she should have thought this through more fully before making arrangements with a clone. A creature ran up to her and made a noise, shaking a slimy tentacle, its whole body pulsing with the movement of liquid. It pulsated like a jelly fish that had been poked and changed colors.
She stared at it, mouth slightly ajar, until, that was, a creature four times as large slid up to her like a giant slug, picked the little thing up, growled-slash-gurgled something at her, and slid off, cooing at the smaller version of itself. Their mass of gelatin changed colors as they communicated to each other.
Enedelia felt a bit weak at the knees and so found a place to sit down. The bank of chairs was facing one of the eateries, back to open panes of space, and traffic coming and going. The only way she could look at the eateries, without growing sick at her stomach, was to imagine it was a Lucas or Spielberg film. This was fantasy. The only thing was, fantasy never smelt so bad. She tried to put the smells in perspective, too. She loved ferrets. She thought they were the greatest little creatures ever, but her brother and her mother thought they smelled awful. To her, they didn’t smell bad, they just smelled
different. Most people walk into your house and smell a dog or a cat, and they’re okay with it because they are familiar with those smells. But when they walk into your house and they smell something they can’t identify, like a ferret, they automatically put the smell in a ‘bad’ category. She imagined this was some sort of biological self defense against wondering into something new, dangerous and potentially deadly. She made a decision to retrain her brain to accept this new smell as pleasant. Or hope that she soon became immune to the smell.
Enedelia tried to focus on something other than the scents. Instead, she began to size the aliens up in terms of threat level. Of all the creatures present in her line of sight, with the exception of maybe two or three, she figured there would be no way she could beat them in a fair fight. Between claws, teeth, and sheer mass, there was just no touching them. Not that she had any desire to get any closer, much less have any conflicts, but she knew all too well that it was indeed possible to say something wrong or even make a gesture that could be interpreted negatively and then you were unwittingly drawn into a fight; hopefully authorities would be called due to an offense. So far, as she continued to sit, no one bothered her. That was a good thing. Except for the fact that she would eventually have to get up and approach someone for assistance.
Of course, the more she thought about the potential of unwittingly offending
someone with a simple gesture, the more rigid she sat. She felt sicker and wanted desperately to be home, in her own bed. Perhaps she should offend someone. Perhaps she should march right up to the creature serving food at the closest eatery and slap it in the face. Yeah, that was a good plan. That way the authorities would come, throw her in jail, and she would get a free meal, and maybe even medical care. And a bed. It’s not like she was on Earth where there was potential for being tortured and mistreated in jail. After all, this was the heart of a true civilization. They had to treat prisoners well. She smiled at how clever her plan was and forced herself to stand up.
To her relief two humans rounded the bin. Instead of going to strike the food
server thing, she approached them. Perhaps too quickly. The closer one drew a weapon.
“No, don’t shoot,” she said, holding her hands up.
It said something to her and she just stared in awe. It wasn’t speaking English, Spanish, or any other language she knew. He appeared human, in every aspect she could see, but it felt strange watching his mouth move while listening to the strange sounds that tumbled out.
Enedelia backed away, keeping her hands in the classic “I surrender” stance. The two questionable humans went about their business. She returned to her seat and sat down. She was still feeling sick to her stomach, her forehead beading with perspiration, which she wiped with her sleeve. She remembered that she had been extremely hungry not too long ago, but now all she could think of was vomiting. Fortunately she hadn’t partaken in the junk food she had fed to Kirk. It was amazing to her how being so excited, and then suddenly ill, could remove all the thoughts of food from ones mind.
She wondered if eating would help, but the thought of eating made her sicker. Still, she forced herself to eat one of the sandwiches she had stolen from the convenient store, and a portion of the crushed chips. She also sipped from her bottled water. Nothing seemed to be helping and she fought the urge to puke it all up. There was nothing worse than being sick, except, being sick so far away from home and far, far from anything familiar. Even a home where a brother beat you…
Screw that, she thought. No one should be beat up in their own home! Though she couldn’t let herself give into it, she felt so dizzy, she wanted to lie down. Afraid to lie down, she slid to the floor, and rested her head in the seat.
She blinked at the sign over the eatery. Before, it had been just a random set of marking, but some of the letters had begun to fill in with familiar shapes. She blinked.
She was beginning to hallucinate, she thought. This was certainly an awful sign. Her mind raced with the worse possibilities. Perhaps she was allergic to aliens. That made the most sense. Of course, she was probably not inoculated for any of the diseases that may be running rampant through the galaxy. Perhaps she had contracted the galactic version of the flu and her body had no immunity against it. She was as good as dead if this were so. And then there was the possibility of her infecting everyone here with Earth stuff.
But surely Kirk 23 would not have brought her here to contaminate all of these good citizens… Unless, that was his plot! Perhaps Kirk 23 was evil. No. He was just a clone.
That in itself could explain it, though. A stupid clone brought in a specimen from an alien planet and killed everyone on the station.
Enedelia became aware of two creatures near enough to her that she could hear
them speaking. And they were speaking in Spanish. She stood, paused as she made
certain of her balance, and approached them.
“You’re speaking Spanish?” she asked.
“No,” the green creature to her left replied. “And neither are you.”
“But I hear you speaking Spanish,” Enedelia insisted.
“Look at my lips very closely,” the green guy said. “Does it look like I’m
speaking Spanish to you?”
Enedelia took a step back, frightened, stumbled and fell flat on her butt. The green guy laughed, as well as his companion to his right, who was in a space suit. The suited fellow was anything but human, but fortunately the mist in his suit kept its true ugliness from assaulting her sensibilities all at once. Of course, perhaps if she could see the full face all at once, her curiosity would be cured, and she could look away from it. She slowly became aware of her face muscles tightening as they screwed up in quiet revulsion and morbid curiosity.
“First time to Indigo Station?” the green guy asked, drawing her attention back to him.
Enedelia nodded. She wiped the sweat from her face and wondered if this was all
a bad dream. It would be nice to wake up now. Maybe that jog to her noggin by her brother had done more serious damage than she had guessed.
“And I guess this Spanish of yours is your primary language?” Green continued
to quiz.
Enedelia nodded, glancing back at the suited fellow.
“Well, then, that’s your explanation,” Green said. “You were probably feeling ill a few moments ago, judging by the sweat on your face. You humans are so pathetic when you’re sick. Anyway, that was a language virus. It sometimes takes a moment to get in your system, but the end result is you will be able to understand and speak Galactic basic.
At first it will no doubt sound like Spanish, or if you know a second language, maybe a combination of the two, but eventually you will learn to distinguish between when you’re using basic, or Spanish, or any other language you have learned to speak. Of course, if it clashes with your system, you could end up like my other human friend. He spoke four
languages before the virus reprogrammed his language center part of the brain. Now every other word comes out a different language and no one understands him. Or, it might just drive you completely mad, before you drop into convulsions and die of a massive brain hemorrhage. Good luck.”
He turned back to his suited friend, put an arm around it, and walked it back
towards the bridge it had emerged from.
Enedelia was no longer feeling as bad as she had a few moments ago. In fact, she felt quite good. A language virus! She turned to the eatery and discovered that she could fully read the name and as she approached closer, she could read some of the menu. Most of the menu was unrecognizable words, but she could pronounce them. Or at least, she believed she could. She could read everything she saw in print now, including markings on the walls and floors, most of which were numbers. There was one word that caught her attention and that helped her get beyond the fact that she was in a totally alien place.
And it was the best word any girl could ever hope to hear: “Mall.”
“A mall!” she shrieked with joy, startling two creatures standing in line at the eatery. She forced herself to seem more humble, but the excitement kept bubbling out of her. She followed the line pointing towards the mall to an access door. The sign at the entrance said, “All creatures leaving this floor will have to go through customs. No exceptions. You will not be allowed back on this floor without proper identification and a proper travel authorization pass.”
Enedelia shrugged. She wanted to go to the mall. Before making that final step
across the threshold into the next part of the station, she did pause to pull out one of the cameras she had pinched. She framed what looked like a nice shot, capturing in the big and little slug slime things she had encountered earlier, part of the eatery, and the large plate window where a ship was pulling away from a retracting bridge. She pressed the button and the flash flared. A dozen or so creatures dropped to the floor, others took refuge behind anything they could find to hide behind, and four drew out what might have been weapons, looking for the threat. Two of the latter pointed towards her and started walking her way.
Enedelia’s felt the muscles holding her smile twitch as she realized she had
frightened some people. She said “Kodac moment,” as she pointed to the camera, waved, and slipped into the next section of the station. She would have to remember to be more careful with the flash in the future.
The corridor widened to allow people to be funneled through several work
stations. Since she was obviously not a resident, or even a legal alien, a pun that didn’t slip by her, there was no use in even trying those lines. Instead, she chose the line for tourists, which moved about as slow as any line she had ever been in back on Earth.
Perhaps, she thought, some things were universal. Whatever line you happened to be in would be the line that moved the slowest. She took the time to observe her surroundings, and examined the process the tourists and custom officials were engaged in. When her turn came, she emulated it nicely. Enedelia pulled out her fake ID which she had used to get into bars in Dallas before her mother had so rudely moved her out to the country. She handed the ID to the Custom Official.
Lights and bells began going off before the agent even began scrutinizing the
card. Guards came out of nowhere and surrounded the station blocking any escape for her. They brandished weapons at ready and it was obvious to her they would be happy to use them if she made even the slightest wrong move.
The Custom Official handed the fake ID to the chief guard. The chief guard took
it without examining it, and turned to Endelia. “Do you understand G-basic?”
“Um, yes,” Enedelia squeaked.
“Follow me,” the guard said. It was an order, an order he expected to be followed.
He pivoted on his feet and marched off, never looking back to see if she would comply.
It wasn’t as if he had given her a choice. All the guards moved in unison with their leader, without taking eyes off her, and had she not followed the chief guard, they would have walked over her, or picked her up and carried her. Since she was not inclined to be touched, much less be carried kicking and screaming, she fell into stride quickly.
Enedelia was brought to an isolation room. Four of her escorts took up positions inside the room, standing at attention. Two others took up positions just outside the door, while the remaining continued down the corridor. The chief guard stood facing her, staring at her as if she were a common criminal.
“Is it about the ID, because I can explain,” Enedelia began.
The chief guard didn’t respond. Enedelia stopped her rambling when another
entity entered. The creature appeared human only in the fact that he had two arms and two legs. He was much shorter than her and had a bluish skin tone, one eyebrow, and a flattened nose. Except for the blue skin, he might have resembled an Oompa Loompa from the original Chocolate Factory movie. He took the ID from the chief guard,
examined it, and then examined her.
“You are Maria Gonzales?” he asked, presently.
“Um, well, no, not exactly,” Enedelia answered.
He looked up at her, pushing his glasses back into place, making his eyes look
even bigger. “Explain not exactly. This is your picture, no?” he said, showing her the ID
card. “Are you a clone?”
“No! I’m not a clone, and yes that is my picture,” she said. She couldn’t deny that much. “You see, Maria is my alias.”
“You are a spy?” he asked, the middle of his eyebrow dipping.
“No!” Enedelia said, her voice squeaking. “I mean, no. I used this to get into
dance clubs that have age requirements. See, I’m from Earth, and we have this little custom...”
“I know where you’re from,” the blue man said.
“You do?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said. “We’ve scanned your body and found traces of radioactive
strontium-90, a waste by-product of nuclear power plants. Since there are only six known planets still using such an archaic energy generating device, and three of those planets didn’t evolve humanoids, that means you could have only come from Earth. This ID, of course, helped narrow it down to Earth, specifically the Dallas Fort Worth area. Besides these radioactive particles in your body, there are also elements that reflect other aspects of your specific region where you have been living. For example, judging by some of these trace chemicals, I suspect your planet is still burning fossil fuels. There are traces of led in your body, as well as mercury, and higher concentrations of particular trace elements than should be normal. Though none of these contaminants are pushing the threshold of toxicity, they provide a clear signature, a finger print of you will, of where and when you come from. Still, you’d be a lot healthier without the led, mercury, plastic, and Teflon in your system. I bet they even put fluoride in your drinking water and MSG
in your foods. I also suspect, though you aren’t personally a smoker, or drug user, you do associate with people that do drugs. Yeah, it all gets into your system and leaves the tell tale signs. We can read you like a book. And we haven’t even begun discussing your personal genetics, yet, which is a whole other story.”
Enedelia blinked.
“But, that’s not why we pulled you aside,” the blue man said.
“I got radioactive particles in me?” Enedelia asked, still taking it all in. “And mercury?” She had heard that pregnant women shouldn’t eat tuna because of the chances of mercury affecting the fetus, and she had even heard of a debate of mercury being used in child immunizations but she didn’t think she was contaminated. “I feel fine,” she tried to assure herself. And lead? “Lead?”
“Do you really think your society could use leaded fuels without there being any contamination issues? No doubt the strips of land near your highways are saturated with lead! I even bet your society still hasn’t replaced all the lead pipes in your water delivery systems,” the blue man rambled on. “And to imagine your species thinks itself civilized.
How long have you known that lead was dangerous? Since the Roman era? You damn,
cave dwelling, mountain Hill Billie’s are still probably throwing rocks at the moon thinking the world is about to end.”
Enedelia was about to argue the point, but then remembered a water fountain at
her new school. Near the drain, right where you would look should you bend over to fetch a drink, was a little silver sticker that said, “this fountain is guaranteed to be lead free.” Why would they put that sticker on the fountain if there wasn’t still a lead pipe issue? Her tendency towards paranoia and conspiracy gained a little weight.
“You’re whole planet is a toxic dump,” the blue man rambled. “You wild humans
are simply disgusting. Releasing ungodly amounts of known bio-posions, and tons of other chemicals I couldn’t even begin to pronounce, into your biosphere without a thought of the repercussions. It’s amazing anything is still alive on your planet. It just
goes to show you how tenacious life can be once it has a foot hold. But don’t distract me from my purpose. Hand me your bag.”
Enedelia handed him the bag without thought of resisting. As the blue man took
her backpack, a table slid from the wall as if the room had anticipated he would need it.
He opened the bag and dumped the contents onto the table. He shook his head in dismay.
“It’s even worse than I imagined. It’s bad enough you dump raw waste into the
open environment, but you have to consume this garbage? Processed foods! Not a bite of nutrition anywhere to be found in this entire pack. And just who were you bringing this stuff to?” the blue man asked.
“It’s mine,” she said.
“You expect me to believe that you were going to consume all of this?” the blue
man demanded, waving his hand over the chocolate. He picked up the bottle of coke and approached her, pointing it at her. “Just the caffeine in this bottle alone is sufficient grounds for me to have you locked away for the rest of your life.”
“Caffeine is an illegal substance?” Enedelia asked.
“Caffeine is the most nefarious, insidious substance in the known galaxy!” the
blue man said. “Do you realize what would happen if a clone were to consume even a fraction of this? Do you? No! And you don’t want to know.”
“I’m sorry,” Enedelia pleaded. “I didn’t know the stuff was bad.”
“How could you? No doubt your entire, so called, free education was sponsored
by this crap,” the blue man said, beginning to pace. “I know your backwards planet all too well. I’ve seen it all a million times, right before you’re annexed into the Republic, we have to go in and repair all the damages for you wild, uncivilized creatures
committed, wasting precious resources that would be better spent on our own kind. I bet you even consume processed foods made from mostly corn syrup. You probably even
drink cow’s milk and your society wonders why it has an epidemic of obesity?!”
“Well…” Enedelia began.
“Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it,” he said, walking right back up to her. “By law, I’m forced to overlook this first infraction, partly based on your ignorance, but mostly because this stuff is currently legal on Earth. Again, based on the trace elements, we have confirmed that you indeed hail from this primitive, backwards world. According to the language virus that you’ve assimilated, this is your first visit to any place civilized, so I am going to let you go with just a warning. But mind you, I got your DNA mapped, your fingers printed, retinas scanned, your body ran through every biometric calculator you can think of plus one, and used every other sort of identifying, non evasive technology we have. If I catch you carrying this garbage in my city again, I will have your hide. You understand me? And don’t try that caffeine free crap on me either.
There’s enough caffeine in one cup of caffeine free tea to put you away for sixty years.
You got me?”
“Yes, Sir,” Enedelia said. There was caffeine in caffeine free products? Did that mean that there was no way to get a hundred percent of the caffeine out of a product? If so, why do the corporations market it as caffeine free? Why don’t they call it reduced caffeine instead? No doubt, it was all about money, and trying to fool the consumer.
“Your profile has been updated into our system, which can and will be accessed
by others in the Republic agencies, so ignorance of this specific law will not get you off
so easy next time. In fact, you should know, carrying caffeinated products into some planetary systems could catch you a death sentence. Do you understand this?”
“Isn’t that a bit extreme?” Enedelia asked.
The blue man stepped in so close to her she could smell his breath. His breath
alone was enough to have her regretting the question, much less his looks and the loudness of his voice. “We take addictive substances very seriously in our Republic. Any substance with an addictive potential that is not utilized by your body or created by your body for its continued biological function will most likely be considered contraband. So why risk it? It is for the good of all society that its members remain drug free.”
Enedelia simply nodded and waited a moment after he resumed pacing to take in
a breath of untainted air. He really did smell awful, and it wasn’t just his breath! His shirt had dark patches indicating sweat.
The blue man turned to the table and began throwing the non-addictive stuff back into the pack. Which meant the only thing she had left was her cameras and the bottled water. He handed this back to her. The remaining stuff disappeared into the wall as the table retracted, leaving a perfectly seamless wall once again.
“I recommend trading in your plastic bottles for unbreakable glass bottles. You’re free to go,” the blue man said. “I’ll be watching you closely. Behave yourself.”
“I will. Thank you,” Enedelia said.
Enedelia hadn’t noticed the door had slid open once more. She was still staring at the wall where most of her stuff had disappeared. “So, what are you waiting for? Get out of here,” the blue man waved.
Most doors in Indigo Station seem to open magically for people. Except for
Enedelia. Of course, she knew it wasn’t magic. There was some sort of technology being employed that gave people access to the rooms behind the doors, while leaving others, like her-self locked out. She had been watching closely for about an hour, trying to figure out if people had ID cards that triggered the door, or if there was some other sort of trigger. Occasionally she was able to piggy back through a door, by waiting for someone to open it and then following behind them. Only once did someone confront her about
“piggy backing.” He explained that the room was restricted to Indigo Staff only. Later on she did learn that there was a manual release on all doors, and by touching one of the opaque panels, doors would open for her, unless they were locked out. If they were locked out, the opaque panel would light up red, and announce “Access denied.” In this manner, she proceeded down corridor after corridor trying to get back to something familiar. She never did find the mall and she felt as lost as a rat in a maze without cheese.
Enedelia came upon a place that was bustling with activity. There was the familiar noise that comes from the buzz of many conversations, as in a cafeteria. There was also an odor, something very akin to the cheap food of her school. There were also
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