“Your species doesn’t sleep?”
“The Essence does not need to escape itself.”
He’s referring to his species in the third person. He’s speaking as though he is synonymous with the whole collective. God, he’s really kind of a huge dick. I wish King Tyrant had escorted me here. Compared to this asshole, he was the most charming guy I’ve ever met.
“You are a disgrace to your profession, your planet, and your species.”
I look him up and down as he throws in an insult apparently for the fun of it. I don’t have a lot of feral in me, but this creature threatens to bring it all out of me. But I have to be sensible. I can’t go all Jersey on him.
He is seven feet tall. He is wearing a uniform expressly tailored to be intimidating as possible. There are spikes on the shoulders, and there are actual claws on his hands. When he looks at me, I feel his innate disgust quite keenly. His eyes turn a rather unpleasant muddy green when he stares at me.
I have an immense desire to tell him to go fuck himself. It would be unprofessional, but it would be very satisfying, and maybe even therapeutic. It might also be dangerous. I don’t know what value these aliens put on my life, and I probably shouldn’t test that right out of the gate. If he can fix a broken nose with a touch of his fingers, he could probably rearrange my internal organs with not much more effort.
“You will wear the uniform we assign to all humans here on assignment.”
He pulls clothes out of thin air — quite literally just reaches into space as if it were a clothing rack and takes what he wants. It is as though the atoms surrounding us simply oblige his suggestion for fear of disobeying him, and become a very ugly robe. In my opinion they were better off being nothing much at all, but still, it’s very impressive.
“Whoa! How did you do that?”
“It is absolutely none of your business,” he says with all the curt derision one entity can possibly muster. “Put this on,” he says, casting it toward me with a dismissive gesture.
I really don’t want to. It’s ugly. A big, shapeless sort of bag with gold lining around the edges, and a word on the chest, which I can’t make out.
“What does this say?”
“Idiot.”
Am I actually going to put a dress robe that says idiot on it on my body? Yes, I am. Because the idiot dress is better than the toothpaste stained t-shirt. Also, he might interpret my obedience as a pacifying gesture, which is very much needed. I’m not sure if I’m more scared or pissed off at this point.
“How is it you speak English?” I change the subject.
“We don’t.”
“Oh. It seems like you are.”
“It does seem that way, doesn’t it?” He smiles in the sort of way a kindergarten teacher who hates his job might smile at a child commenting how the play dough tastes salty. I am being patronized and I do not enjoy it.
OBSIDIAN ALERT!
A siren blares through the ship. It, too, appears to speak English.
OBSIDIAN ALERT!
It repeats once…
OBSIDIAN ALERT!
Three times. It repeats three times and then all falls silent.
“What’s obsidian alert?” I ask the question even though he hasn’t answered a single question I’ve asked so far, and I have no reason to imagine that he will break that trend.
“We’re engaging the Martians, I assume,” he says offhandedly. “Do you insist upon footwear with crudely drawn beasts upon them, or will you settle for a less exotic pair of foot coverings?”
“The Martians!? There’s no life on Mars. Not of the kind that can attack a ship. There’s bacteria, maybe.”
He gives me another one of those pitying looks, and I realize I should probably be quiet. I just got here. I don’t know anything about anything. In fact, everything I thought I knew an hour ago has turned out to be completely wrong.
Soon I am clothed. I am wearing a brown robe with gold thread woven through it so it shimmers glamorously when I move. I just have to forget about the insult plastered across my chest. The shoes are more like long boots, soft and tailored perfectly to my legs.
“Would you care to brush your hair, or is it customary to have half of it ratty and messy in your culture?”
“I’m going to brush my hair, thank you. If you have somewhere I can prepare…”
“This is your room. This is where you prepare.”
I look around at the general pinkishness of it. It’s not really so much a room as it is an organ of some kind. A womb! That’s what it reminds me of. Light diffuses through thick walls in the way I imagine it might if you shone a very bright light at a pregnant woman’s stomach. Yes. That is a weird thought, but I am prepared to own it.