“My name is Tania. What’s yours?”
He ignores the direct question, which in any galaxy qualifies as a douche move. I don’t like this guy. The king was nicer to me, and he must outrank this one.
He leads me to a sort of floating pad thing which is hovering in the middle of what I guess I’d call a corridor, if corridors were sort of there one moment and not so much the next.
“Get on.”
I step on, somewhat gingerly, which turns out to be a mistake. The second my foot is on it, it flings itself away at high speed, tossing me backward and into the arms of Mr. Grumpy Alien himself.
“Is that how it’s supposed to work?”
“It is not,” he says, looking down at me with a scowl. “It is possible that your biology confused it. We will have to walk.”
It’s a long walk. Every now and then somebody with a fin head comes skating by on their magical hoverboard and I’m reminded how alien I am here. The ship’s halls are wide, the floor is perpetually lit with a sort of undulating glow, and the walls seem to shift and merge when I look at them. Sometimes I could swear there was a door somewhere, and suddenly, there is not. At one point someone walks through a wall, but it’s not a wall, it’s now another hallway.
“What is this ship?”
That is a question he cannot resist answering. He draws himself up, and speaks in tones of pride indistinguishable from arrogance. “You are aboard the Metahyperion, the strongest, most advanced warship in the known universe. The technologies aboard this ship are beyond your ability to comprehend. It would be better if you did not waste both our time in the feeble attempt to do so.”
“Wow.”
“Wow, indeed,” he says dryly, mistaking my annoyance at his rudeness for an expression of admiration. “This way.”
He makes a sharp left turn and walks through the fucking wall. I try to follow him, figuring the wall is a lie, an illusion or mirage of some kind. But I find it to be more persistent than I imagined, and it almost breaks my nose.
“Ow! Fucking hell!”
“Catch up, human,” the alien reappears, grabs me by the arm and pulls me bodily through the wall.
“I think I broke by nobe,” I complain, clutching at my face.
“You are leaking, human,” he sighs, as blood starts to trickle down over my lip. “Why must we continue to invite non-compatible beings onto the ship?”
“By nobe!” I protest louder.
He reaches out, tweaks my nose and I let out a scream loud enough to wake all the dead in every galaxy for all time. Then I realize that it didn’t hurt, and that my nose no longer feels like it has been crushed with a hammer.
“You fixed it!”
“Yes. Your flesh is simple. Now, stop holding us up.”
“Listen, I’ve known about your existence for approximately ten minutes,” I remind him. “I need a little time to get used to how things work here. On my world, you can’t walk through walls, and you have to get your nose set at a hospital if you try.”
My words are met with a dismissive flail of his shiny clawed hand. “Your planet is a ridiculous little backwater. I will hear no more of it.”
He’s really rude, and incredibly unpleasant. I’m glad I’m not working for him. King Tyrant seems much more reasonable than this guy. This guy has more than a chip on his shoulder. He’s covered in chips. Technically they’re scales, but still.
He drags me through another wall. This time I duck my head like I’m diving into a pool from a great height. It helps in some small way. Maybe. I don’t know. What I emerge into doesn’t look any noticeably different than the rest of the ship. Pale walls pulsing with changing light, a floor which is probably more of a suggestion than reality, and absolutely nothing else.
“This will be your room. You will stay inside it. Documents will be brought to you, and you will do the tedious, small-minded work associated with processing them into some kind of semblance of passibility.”
“That’s not a sentence that makes sense.”
The assistant rolls his eyes at me. “As if you would know, human.”
“I can’t stay inside this room. I will go literally insane within three hours if you leave me in this room. I am already tired of this room. All rooms, actually. If I have to be inside one more room…”
He ignores me. Unsurprisingly. Then he makes a declaration which is just as rude and callous as everything he has said since meeting me.
“Human, you are filthy. And you are wearing the sort of clothing which is not suitable for literally any occasion.”
“It’s suitable for sleeping in, which is what I was doing.”
“Ah, of course. Your species puts on its worst possible clothing in order to lose consciousness and escape your tedious little lives. Perhaps it is suitable attire for that.”