Chapter 5

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.