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With all that was going on in The Sanctum of Everlasting Diplomacy (classes, acculturation, breeding season, and diplomatic training) Elijah was glad to get some sleep. He did so while snuggling next to Kra, relishing the sensation.
Hearing his alarm, he gave a groan. ”Time to wake up already? Christ, I have a headache...” Why was his alarm different? Did he accidentally switch the settings?
But wait. Something else was wrong. Was there a malfunction in the artificial gravity? He felt so much lighter. And what was wrong with the environmental controls? It was way too humid, the moisture level in the air being higher than on what he and Kra had compromised it would be set at whenever she visited him.
Opening his eyes, he realized he was in a completely different bed, in a completely different room. Looking to his right, he saw an unfamiliar ZidChaMa woman laying next to him. “GAH!”
This caused her to wake up, with an equally startled reaction, her thanatosis reflex almost activating. “Who’re you!?”
He recognized that voice anywhere. “Kra?”
Yes, it was her, but... different. Older? It wasn’t as obvious as first, but after a few seconds he saw that it was clearly her, but with her scales slightly less radiant and with some lines around her eyes and mouth. He had also been caught off guard by the fact that the changes that accompanied breeding season had gone away, meaning she was regular old innocent Kra.
“ElLeeJah? Is that you? You look um... different.”
At her words, he reached up and touched his face. His skin felt somehow thicker, and wrinkled. His hair was cut shorter as well, and... receding slightly?
He got out of bed, forgetting about the much lighter gravity and almost leaping into the air due to the excess force he used. The bedroom was well furnished, with the decorations being a mix between MidKwo and Anglo-American in origin. He noticed a standing mirror against a wall. “Oh fuck.” He looked fifteen to twenty years older. “Jesus Christ, I’m middle aged!”
He almost began to hyperventilate, but his panic lessened somewhat when he noticed how well he’d aged. ”I’ve got a silver fox thing going on, don’t I? Not bad, I must say.” Wait, no! Now was not the time for self appreciation!
“What happened?”
“I don’t know!” The girl had gotten up too, looking at her visage in the mirror with equal horror. “The last thing I remember, I fell asleep next to you, in The Sanctum!”
“Wait.” Elijah raised a finger in the air, squinting in a way that could now be described as sage-like (”because I’m old”). “I remember seeing an episode of a TV show where something like this happened.” He racked his brain trying to remember. “A character went to sleep, and then woke up decades older. It turned out he had amnesia because of an illness he contracted, and his mind had been erased of any memories he created in a particular span of time. It was a pretty good episode actually, an—“
“I’ve missed out on the best years of my life!?” Kra looked woozy, and her knees were shaking. Her death mimicry reflex was about to activate.
“Kra, sweetie—“ the words caught him off guard. Had he just really called her that? It just slipped out. “It’s going to be fine. This is probably a trick by The Magistrates.” Or Scott. Fuck that guy.
“But what if it’s not!? What if we have amnesia because of some bizarre thing we were exposed to while in space or something, and we’ll never get our memories back? I—“
Elijah put a finger up to silence her, and then said “shh” when that didn’t work, remembering she didn’t know that hand gesture. “There are footsteps,” he whispered. “Someone’s coming!”
“Oh no no no no!” Kra took his hand, leading him to the centre of the bedroom and looking around erratically. “We’ve gotta hide!”
“What? Why?”
She didn’t answer, probably overwhelmed by instinct, as her species often was. “Here!” She pushed him onto the bed, throwing a blanket on him before doing the same to herself.
“This is asinine.”
“Shh!”
Someone was at the bedroom door. “Mom? Dad? You guys up?” It sounded like a pre-teen boy.
Elijah didn’t say anything. He was unsure of what to even say to that. ”Mom and dad? What in the ever loving fuck!?” How would that even be possible!? Some unholy hybrid of human and ZidChaMa DNA? No no, that was impossible.... ZidChaMa were from a completely different tree of life.
Kra squirmed next to him, whispering something under the sheets. “Maternal... instinct... activating... ahhhhhh!” She seemed as if trying her hardest not to spring up and immediately open the door.
It was because of her hindbrain, Elijah was sure. ZidChaMa neurology was fascinating. Apparently, people who joined the military had to receive behavioural modification just to ignore certain things which might trigger involuntary instinctual behaviour.
“Kra! I don’t think any of this is real. Maybe if we ignore it—“
“Mooooom?”
At the child’s voice, Kra sprung out of bed. “Coming, sweetie!”
“Dammit, Kra.”
Elijah sat up and tried to look presentable, and Kra opened the door a crack. A human child, perhaps eleven or twelve years old, stood there. He was tall for his age and quite lanky, perhaps due to the effects of having been raised in lower gravity than Earth. He had messy, wavy dark brown hair, a pale complexion, and piercing blue eyes, looking strangely familiar. Seeing them, he gave a pleased smile. “Morning! I was just wondering when breakfast is.”
Elijah gave him a look. “You seem old enough to make breakfast yourself, kid...”
Kra shot him an angry glance, scolding him somewhat by saying his name in a hiss. “ElLeeJah! Not nice.” Then, she turned back towards the boy. “Breakfast will be soon, honey. Your father and I are just having an important conversation at the moment.”
”Why is she so into this!? There’s no way this isn’t some weird simulation. We haven’t travelled into the future, and that isn’t our kid.” Elijah found himself slightly disturbed by the whole idea.
“Can we have waffles? OOH, and bacon?” The boy seemed way too happy at the prospect of food, and Elijah felt a pang of something odd when he realized he reminded him of himself at that age, or his younger brother.
“Uh,” said Kra, clearly not knowing what either of those were, “sure! Just give your father and me a few minutes to get dressed, okay?”
Seeming satisfied with that answer, the boy nodded. “Awesome. Also, RoVin managed to get out of his [larval incubation pond], but I threw him a few [leech analogues], and he was fine after he ate. Can you believe his baby legs are already here!?” He had switched from English to MidKwo for those two ZidChaMa words.
Kra gave a little, very pleased sounding chortle. “He’s growing so fast! Alright, see you in uh... a few minutes.” She closed the door.
“What in the hell,” said Elijah, in a horrified whisper, “are baby legs!?”
“What they sound like? Anyways, we have to figure this out. Do you know how to make human breakfasts? I think we should just play house until everything becomes more clear.” She sounded much, much too excited about the whole thing, and her scales were lit up in what was analogous to a huge smile.
Elijah, however, was much less enthusiastic. “Uh-huh...” Getting up, he found some clothes in the closet, noting how fashion seemed to have changed since the (supposed) time skip occurred. A conclusion came to him as he was buttoning up his shirt. “This is a dream!” Yes, it was all so simple. “I’m dreaming! It’s just an oddly vivid dream, isn’t it?” Looking at Kra, he grinned. “It could be because I somehow ingested some of your neck poison again, right? Or some enzymes from it that came through your skin or saliva or something? I had trippy dreams last time, too!” The thought that he, in fact, had not lost fifteen to twenty years of his life filled him with glee.
“Nope!” She said, chipperly.” Not unless we’re psychically linked somehow, which I’m pretty sure is impossible. Besides, if I were a character in your dream, I’d stop existing when you wake up. You don’t want me to die, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then let’s just enjoy this.”
”Why does she seem so happy? The happiest I’ve seen her since... ever, actually.”
As strange as it sounded, even if this version of Kra was a figment of his imagination, he wanted her to be happy. Besides, if it was a dream, he might as well enjoy the whole thing until he awoke.
Elijah glanced down at the wedding ring on his hand, a family heirloom that he, as the oldest son, had inherited from his father. “We’re married, apparently. How did that work, do you think? Aren’t you not allowed to marry out of your religion?”
“You probably converted to mine,” she said, still chipper.
“... Greeaaaat.”
“Don’t look so down at the idea of us being an adorable married couple!” She reached up, affectionately squeezing his cheeks together. “C’mon, where’s that smile?”
He gave a very forced, fake looking smile. Of course, she wasn’t familiar enough with the subtleties of human facial expression to know it was not genuine, and Kra gave a little coo of affection at the action. “That’s the spirit!”
They went to the kitchen, and while walking down the hall Elijah noted that the entire house seemed custom built, blending ZidChaMa and human architecture with what could be described as a compromise. It was a lot less wet than what he’d seen in their movies and television shows, and a lot of the fixtures had been built to accommodate a human’s larger height and frame, to prevent banging one’s head against doorframes. Kra was already tall for a ZidChaMa at around five feet tall, and he was sure traditional households on her planet were much more cramped.
”We have a custom built house? Huh, we must be doing pretty well for ourselves. I wonder what sort of money comes from being an interstellar ambassador. Book deals and speaking fees, probably... like with retired American presidents.”
The kitchen had appliances which seemed a bit alien to Elijah in terms of interfaces (he doubted he’d be able to use the microwave for example), but designs like a combination stove-oven or a refrigerator seemed sort of universal. Or maybe they were the result of human influence?
“Alright, I guess we’re cooking two breakfasts? A ZidChaMa one and a human one?” He whispered this to her, not wanting their ‘children’ to overhear. It was kind of fun, playing a role like this... like he was really getting into character while playing an RPG.
It turned out that they had, in fact, four children (Kra produced a sound which might be the ZidChaMa equivalent to a girly noise of jubilation at this realization, but it sounded like a noise of pain at first and startled Elijah). Two were human (and looked a lot like Elijah, which indicated that perhaps they were actually his, and a surrogate helped out with things), and two were Kra’s species.
With one of the ZidChaMa children being the equivalent of a toddler (and having to spend most of the time in a spawning pool of some sort), there was only one ZidChaMa child at the table, who seemed to be younger than the human child that asked them for breakfast earlier on. The other human child was a girl, perhaps six years old, with blonde hair and a very tired expression which told him that she wasn’t a morning person.
They, of course, had no idea what any of their children’s names were, so it was just a matter of improvising and using pet names like “sweetie”, “sugar pie”, or “my precious tadpole” when talking to them. Easy peasy.
“Dad, you make the [best] waffles,” said the oldest child, through a mouthful of food. He had used a MidKwo term for ‘best’, perhaps because the English equivalent was lacking in something.
”Makes sense that they’re all bilingual... I wonder how the ZidChaMa one is at speaking English?”
“Thanks, son,” he replied to the boy. “The secret is covering everything in maple syrup.” As is Canadian tradition.
“Daaad,” said the ZidChaMa girl, “Noah got syrup on the table, and it made my sleeve sticky!” Her scales turned orangish red in annoyance.
Noah? They had named him after Elijah’s dead brother.
He hoped the look of surprise wasn’t obvious on his face, and then felt his phone begin to vibrate in his pocket, indicating that a call was coming through. “Oh, hold on.” Elijah gave Kra a look of curiosity, wondering if she thought he should answer it or not, but she was too busy doting on the ZidChaMa girl to notice.
Having excused himself from the breakfast table, he went into the hallway to take the call. “Hello?”
The audio quality was horrendous, as if someone were driving through a tunnel while calling from a cellular phone. “Hey, man! How’s it going?”
It took him a few seconds for his brain to process who the voice belonged to. “Thomas!?”
“Yeah! Christ, man, I’m glad to hear your voice. I mean, assuming it’s really you. Somneus said you were alive, but I’ve been skeptic.”
“Who’s Stromulos?”
“Not Stromulos, Somneus. Sawm-nee-us. It’s the nickname I gave that glowing ghost dude who visits me in my dreams sometimes to give life advice. He says you two have met.”
Glowing ghost dude?
“The... The Entity!?” He said it a bit too loudly, and got some looks from his wife and kids (that felt weird to think about). “The... is he a fourth dimensional guy made out of light and abstract shapes that have no name? Can’t look at him directly without your brain getting hurt?”
“That’s the one!” Thomas’ voice cut out halfway through the sentence. “Can you hear me okay? He just told me he can’t keep the line open for much longer, because of the distance. Listen, I just want to tell you that everything’s fine. We all miss you, alright? I’m glad you’re still alive, man.”
Elijah felt himself choking up somewhat. He often thought about how he was missed by his friends and family, and being reminded of that opened up some emotional wounds. “I’ll be back in less than a year and a half. I’ll buy you a beer when I do, alright? Hell, I’ll buy everyone who missed me a beer.”
“Sounds good, bud. He’s saying I’ve gotta go now, so... catch you later.”
“Bye.”
The call ended. Elijah looked down at the phone, solemnly. Something touched his leg, and he almost jumped. Looking down, he saw the little human girl hugging him. “Don’t be sad, daddy! What’s wrong?”
“It’s fine,” he said, a bit surprised at how much the hug made him feel better. “Everything’s fine. How about we go back to the kitchen an—“
There was a knock at the door.
Elijah heard his heart beating in his ears. Who could it be? Would he open that door, only to see The Entity – Somneus – standing at the door and wanting to talk?
”No,” he thought, ”if this is a dream, I have to keep a positive mindset, or else things will get dark.”
He put on a smile, walking towards the door and opening it. To his surprise, the person on the other side of the threshold was a pretty looking woman in her late thirties (or perhaps early forties? He was terrible with guessing ages. Either way, she was around as old as he was in this dream or simulation or whatever it was.). She had piercing blue eyes and long, blonde hair that was in a ponytail, and she was dressed in a dressy casual way.
Elijah was a bit speechless, partially because she was so beautiful, and, luckily, she spoke first. “Hey, uh...” she glanced down at a note in her hand. “Elijah?” She had a thick accent, sounding as if she was from the Southern U.S.
The little girl who had been hugging him just seconds earlier ran towards the woman. “Yaaaay, biological mommy Sarah!”
At the girl’s words, the woman looked momentarily terrified. “Oh,” she gave a forced looking smile, “I didn’t see you there, cutie pie!” The tone of her voice indicated that she had no idea who this girl was. While the girl buried her face in the woman while hugging her, Sarah looked up at Elijah. She gestured for him to come closer, and then handed him something flat and metallic, about twice the size of a two dollar coin, but rectangular. “Does this look familiar to you?” she said, in a whisper so the girl hugging her couldn’t hear.
It looked exactly like the medallion he received from The Scions near the beginning of his adventure, the one that said his name and group. Hers said:
‘Sarah Wilson: Group Alpha. Strategic intelligence, logistics, and associated military disciplines.’
Submitted November 27, 2017 at 07:13PM by CalmBeforeTheEclipse http://ift.tt/2AaCVop HFY
