Chapter 27: Very Compatible

Paulie and Jakiikii left the roof right as the sky turned from a deep cerulean green to a star studded black. Their journey back down was as silent as the trip up had been, but gone was that silent tension that had proceeded their talk. He felt strangely buoyant, even more so than normal in the light gravity of the planet. No, he felt as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

He saw Jakiikii’s eyes looking at him and gave her another wide smile, causing the termaxxi to flash a pale white again. He was starting to recognise her emotional and nonverbal cues now. Even after only a few days of knowing her he felt as though he had known the alien woman for all his life. Something about her just felt.. right. He couldn't describe it in so many words, but whenever he was around the strange six-armed alien he felt as though he was on the right path. He shook his head slightly at the thought, maybe he was losing his mind.

They entered the main hall on floor eight and he was unsurprised to see the same maggastium woman sitting guard on the landing leading into the building proper.

Officer Sasfren held up one of her trifurcated tentacle-arms for them to stop. If she noticed his slightly reddish eyes she made no comment but instead admonished, “You two cut that very close to the line. My superior wanted me to storm up there and get you. But I managed to convince him to give you another five minutes, which is almost up.” She tapped her communicator, “They are back. I told you I wouldn’t need to go and get them.” She motioned to them both and raised her manipulator digits.

“Good. Tell that color-shifter to keep a tighter leash on Mack’s pet. I don’t want it getting loose and causing a panic.” The voice barked back.

He glanced at Jakiikii who had bristled slightly. Clearly not pleased by the words and tone of the unseen adjudicator.

The link cut with a snap and Sasfren gave them what he thought might be an apologetic look, her petals turning a muted blue once more. “Sorry about that. He usually isn’t so brash.. Okay, maybe that’s a lie. But still, I am sorry.”

Paulie shrugged, a little peeved but not at her. “What can you do, right?”

She nodded, seemingly relieved that he wasn’t angry with her. She waved them on and he obliged, moving down the hallway at a brisk walk that soon saw them around the nearest corner and likely out of earshot of the zealous peace officer.

Jakiikii grunted. “Stinking prejudiced ollg’k.” She spat with considerably more venom than he would have expected from her.

“Whoa, what does that mean?” He asked, a little curious.

She seemed to flash a pale shade of brown and shook her head. “N-nothing. Forget I said it.” She seemed genuinely embarrassed by her outburst and he put two and two together.

He reached out and grabbed her attention with a little wave of his hand. “Jakiikii. I saw how you were acting around the adjudicators, and not just today. You seemed like a puppy that was just whipped. Are you alright? What happened?”

Jakiikii glanced around with her eyes only, the motion looking a lot like a cow or some other bovine flapping their ears. He had to suppress a small smile at the comparison as she turned towards him and seemed to whisper as best she could, “I told you I am a prisoner. I wasn’t lying. Before Mack started to mentor me in the ways of the law, I was pretty feral I guess you could say.”

Paulie suddenly had images of her in simple caveman attire. Furskin sling and loincloth, running around invisibly with a spear and torch in her six hands.

This illusion was shattered as she continued speaking. “We were naked and living like animals for a long time, Paulie. I don’t know exactly how old I am even, Flurn did some pretty extensive testing and made a rough approximation. But even that was only an educated guess.”

He was curious now. As they rounded another corner in the drab featureless hallway, he looked down and asked her the one question you never ask a lady.

“How old are you?”

She hesitated, her next step faltering slightly as she cleared her lungs and seemed to take a deep steadying breath. “Well, our best guess is somewhere in the vicinity of three-hundred-and-four galactic standard years.” She must have seen his shocked expression as she quickly countered it by quickly saying, “Give or take a few months.”

Paulie was a little taken aback. She was three times his own age, at least. “You are.. how long do you live for? Termaxxi I mean.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, about a thousand years I think.” She had to pull up short as Paulie froze in surprise.

He mouthed silently, finally looking at her with an expression bordering on horror. “A thousand years?!” How could a person even stand to live that long, the amount of time and patience that must require.

“Well, that's in galactic standard years. What’s that come out to in your people’s time? And is that really so surprising? How long do humans usually live? How old are you, Paulie?” Her barrage of questions rattled around in his already beleaguered mind, nearly causing him to lose his train of thought entirely.

Paulie nodded to himself and then started walking again. “Well. That depends on a lot of factors, but I think the global average is seventy-five.. Earth years that is. That would be about..” he paused, doing some brief mental calculations. “..almost two-hundred. Geez, you are almost one-hundred-and-twenty years old, Jakiikii?” She looked at him and shrugged as if it were the most normal observation in the world to her. And it likely was.

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She nodded to him, but before she asked again he answered her earlier question. “I’m thirty-two, er.. eighty-three in your years.” He chuckled. “Makes me sound like an old man. No offense.”

She smiled slightly, eyes looking around and then to him. “None taken, youngster.” She giggled breathilly and he smiled in response.

“So how long have you known Mack?” He was curious and wanted to get back to their earlier conversation before they had drifted too far on a tangent.

She slowed, her long loping strides becoming a little more halted as she spoke softly enough he had to strain to hear. “A couple of years now. Mack found me during an investigation. I waited till the bad one’s had left and then in the following commotion I fell asleep in the hovel we had called home. I was awoken to pain as I was roughly detained by Censec peace officers. I don’t know how many days I was kept in that isolation cell, but it was Mack that was the first to try and talk to me like a person.” She took a heavy breath and he was afraid she was about to cry again. But she stopped herself short as they reached the door to his room.

He stood there and then gestured to the door. “Do you uh, want to go inside?”

She shook her head and placed a hand on his shoulder gently. “No, I need to get going if I am going to make it back to the complex.” She spoke sadly.

Paulie had a desire to offer for her to stay with him, in the room that she clearly had already used before. But he hesitated, it might seem a little odd though as they were still only newly met. Then a new idea hit him, “Hey, why don’t you stay here?” He said, gesturing to the hall around them.

She seemed a little taken aback, another long pulse of white flaring across her skin that didn’t seem to abate nearly as slowly as normal. “What? Like, with you?”

He shook his head and chuckled, “No, in one of the other rooms. We could be neighbors, I would come over and bang on your door and ask you for a cup of sugar and all that jazz. Could be fun right? What..” He stopped as he noticed she had put all six hands up.

“I had better not.” She saw his crestfallen features and must have guessed as to their meaning as she spoke once more, this time in a more placating manner. “I mean, not yet at least. I can’t just jump to whatever flower I want, even though you are very compatible. I would need to run it by Mack and such before I was able to stay in another of the rooms.” From the way she said it he got the distinct impression she was talking about something other than what she was expressly saying.

He nodded, a little put out but understanding that she had to follow procedure. It didn’t really make any sense to him personally. But he would abide by the wishes she expressed regardless. “Well.. you should just ask him anyways. What could it hurt?” He wasn’t sure that was the best way to word it, but she seemed to perk up a little regardless.

He stood in front of the door as she turned to leave. “Oh.. here.” She reached out and handed him his cups, one of them now half filled with melted slushice.

“Thanks. Have a good night.” He took them and watched as she walked away, staring after her silently. Not really sure what else to say, he wondered briefly what she had meant but decided that if she had wanted to elaborate then she certainly would have.

He saw her glance back towards him once or twice but stayed out in the hall till the termaxxi had rounded the corner out of sight in the distance. Paulie turned slowly and used the laserkey to open his room as he awkwardly balanced the cups in the crook of his arm.

The door clicked open and he walked to the kitchen, pouring out the liquid before setting the cups down in the autocleaner. He had a minor facepalm moment as he realised he could have just stacked them inside each other instead of trying to balance them both independently.

“Stupid.” He muttered under his breath.

It was late now, the entire day having gone by. He was quite tired, all truth be told. He was still getting used to his new surroundings, the strangeness of it all. He chuckled, the alieness of it all.

He was the alien here after all. The one entirely out of his element. Paulie kicked off his shoes by the front door and pulled one of the stools to the large device he had not yet figured out. He was tired, but he was also determined to get it working before he forgot what Jakiikii had shown him with his commie earlier.

Paulie sat in front of the device and tapped at the buttons. Nothing, he grunted in mild annoyance. Pulling the lasercard from his pocket, he inserted it back into the slot he had before and was rewarded with a flash as the screen turned from black to a green that quickly filled with vertical lines of falling alien text.

He couldn't understand it but proceeded to push the various buttons on the console in a manner similar to what she had shown him on his commie. And after several failed attempts he was rewarded with the screen flashing pink and a pinkish glow emanating from the side of the device nearest to the wall.

He proceeded to do as he had been shown, thinking at the device until he felt his consciousness rub up against the parasite’s again. He was immediately beset upon by it as if it were a ravenous beast, but caged and constricted as it was he easily dodged its weak mental flounderings. Less like attacks and more like the weak spasms of a suffocating fish out of water.

It was entirely uncoordinated and seemed to be weakening even as he watched.

He frowned and thought at it, ‘Hey. What’s the matter with you?’

It stopped. Maybe surprised to be addressed directly in such a manner. Maybe just freezing in response to his emotional shift.

His questions were answered as a moment later a thin squirming line of thought seemed to quest out towards him. It rebounded off the metal armour he wore and he slapped it back down, it whined in apparent pain at the heavy contact and Paulie almost felt sorry.

Almost, but not quite. He could still well remember the terrible beast he had fought, the pain it had inflicted upon him for daring to stand in its path before he had caged it in a prison of grit and bloody minded determination. He wasn’t going to fall for that trap of false sentimentality.

He shook his head as he stared blindly at the flickering pink screen. ‘You really think that was going to work? After what you tried to do?’

The small dark shape in the back of his mind ceased its struggles again and another thought reached out from it. But this one wasn’t the same as the others, it seemed more organised. Not quite words, but meanings and promptings that seemed to mimic a sort of speech in their own way.

‘You are less.’ Was the meaning he got from it.

He chuckled out loud. ‘Clearly not.’ He thought in return. ‘See who is caged and who is free.’

It seemed to lash out angrily, but much weaker this time and he easily batted the clumsy attack aside. ‘You are not master. I am master.’ It almost seemed to whine at him petulantly, like a small child throwing a tantrum over being denied their favorite candy.

He shook his head and exerted some force on it. Pointing to the pink screen as he put the lean on the parasite’s mental form. “Turn it on, I want to see what it does.” ‘Don’t even try it.’ He added as a thought as he felt it tense to lash out again. He rattled the cage and felt it recoil with another smaller wail of rage or perhaps frustration.

He laughed aloud. ‘What are you going to do, tiny thing?’ “Just connect to the damn TV and I will stop bothering you.” He demanded, a little pissed off despite the pitiful mental cries of the thing.

He felt a little pressure in the back of his mind, like trying to fit too small of a ring onto his finger before there was a snapping sensation and the light on the device switched from a flashing pink to a solid blue. A soft feminine voice spoke from the device, now understandable as the parasite had relented. “Translation bioware accepted.”

A menu seemed to pop up and he asked, “Okay, so what do I do now?”

“Select a channel..” It said emotionlessly and then began to list off a series of increasingly perplexingly named channels. After a minute of this he shut it off.

He nodded to himself, he wanted to mess with the device farther, but he was also so incredibly tired. Wrestling with his jargon worm passenger had worn him out the rest of the way and he took off his shirt before lying down amidst the bedding.

The large simulation screen flicked a little as distant thunder rolled across the simulated squall in the distance. The faint sound of thunder rolling in the background soon accompanied by the sound of heavier waves and finally rain. He closed his eyes as the rain started and was asleep in moments, his chest rising and falling slowly with the crashing of the simulated waves upon the red pebble beaches of the virtual world.