Aly in Space Ch. 02

Yevn could not be redirected. And eventually, she concluded we did not believe her. "Drats. I understand now. It's not that you haven't been understanding my words or the concepts, because I could always try to explain again, but... you don't believe me, do you?"

Kat knelt next to Yevn and took her hands firmly but kindly. "We believe you, Yevn. We believe that you believe what you are saying. We believe you are legitimately trying to help and do the right thing. We believe your... mission... is very important to you. There's just some pieces that we don't know what to do with."

"Is it the Succession? I would happily impart more knowledge of our society if that would help--"

Kat interrupted carefully. "Actually, darlin', it's the space stuff in general," she smiled sadly.

That stopped Yevn's thoughts in their tracks. Her face turned down and to the side slightly, lost in thought. "Forgive me... I did not anticipate my briefing on your earth knowledge would be so... off." She paused again to collect her thoughts. "You... you are aware that the lights above you are far away, yes? And much larger than they appear."

At this Kat couldn't help but laugh a little. "Yes, I know what stars are. I know that our planet goes around the closest one, and I know about asteroids and spaceships..."

"Then what is the problem?" Yevn asked, genuinely confused. "You don't believe me, yet you do believe the stars and travel and planetary systems I'm talking about. Do you... simply not believe in... my planetary system? My journey here?"

Kat looked back to Mark, as they both kind of vaguely nodded. Then I said, "Basically, yes, Yevn. You're talking as if you're a different species, when you look just like us."

"Oh! As I have tried to tell you, our species can adapt our biology--"

"Yevn! Hold up, please. Take a deep breath with me. In... Out..." I breathed slowly.

Yevn looked at me even more confused, but did breathe in and out.

"We want to help you, we really do. But we need doctors' help to get you stabilized first."

Yevn sighed and looked at us disappointedly. "It's very sweet of you to be so concerned for my well-being--" then a thought struck her. "Would you feel better about all this, if I checked in with my medical provider?"

All three of us nodded, relieved that she was finally considering it.

"And then we can talk about my mission?"

Kat squeezed her hand and looked intently at her with her beautiful brown, doe eyes. "Yes, if you let us go with you to the doctor, we will happily talk more about this after. Promise." She could sway me to do anything with that look, but apparently it worked on Yevn, too.

"Very well, then," Yevn declared.

Mark went to pull out his phone to try to call her psychiatric office (or the one on 7th, perhaps), as Yevn stood up and pressed a button on her watch. Instantly, the entire room turned a vivid shade of green, the air warped around us, like we were suddenly in an algae-covered aquarium. All three of us startled, looking around, to each other, and back to Yevn, whose watch now glowed neon green. Then, the room and furniture around us stretched and zoomed above us, like we were falling through the floor, minus the gut-dropping part. More like the room was being pulled up and away from us.

As the entire apartment stretched out of sight above us, another room rose from below to replace it, this one earthy, dark blue, very moist, and full of the weirdest neon plants growing from the walls. In a few seconds, our apartment was gone, and everything around us had changed. Kat looked about as wide-eyed as I had ever seen her, Mark turned where he stood to take in the room, and for a second I couldn't breathe.

Probably without realizing it, Mark stepped a couple half steps away to look at the earthy walls and plants behind him. Kat grabbed his hand to pull his attention. "Hold up, baby," she said, still in shock.

For my own part, I had been around enough people with psychosis that I had learned to keep my face neutral, no matter how bizarre their story seemed, that after a moment to just observe, I realized that something very different was going on here than we thought.

I took the room in briefly. The floor was almost spongey, like an athletic mat, and I sat on a stool of sorts that almost seemed to grow out from the floor like a little stump. I bounced a little in place. It, too, was delightfully springy. I almost giggled.

Okay, I did giggle, and I bounced again as I looked around, noticing Kat smiling and rolling her eyes at me, because of course the bouncy seats would be my reaction to all this. I shrugged my shoulders and tried to muffle another giggle, noticing that this room was fairly spacious, with what looked like tables and machines, except all made from this... mushroom kind of material. Bioluminescence instead of electric lights. Moist and springy instead of flat and metallic.

Kat and Mark followed my lead and slowly scanned the room as well, with half smiles of part disbelief and part fascination. Kat kind of flopped on her hip and leaned against my leg, giving me a heavenly view of her ample cleavage. She anchored Mark by his finger so he didn't wander off as we all gaped with wide eyes.

Yevn was making her way across the room to someone standing there with very interesting clothes. They matched the color scheme of the room around us but looked more sturdy and sleek, wrapping around his figure like a decorative trellis. He looked up, startled, still holding a bottle of something in his hand.

"Yevn? I thought you said there was a delay, that things were talking longer to explain than you anticipated." He set down the bottle, along with whatever train of thought it had involved, and stepped over to greet us. Or at least Yevn.

"Apologies, Zentylk, we failed to anticipate that these individuals, with such high Empathic Capacity, might have concerns different from ours. I was trying to explain our species' dilemma, but these sweet humans were too concerned about me and my health to focus on something so... distant as our larger concerns. They promised to hear us out once I was cleared by my medical provider. So if you would, could you assure them that I am in proper working order?"

During Yevn's explanation, Zentylk, too, looked slightly to the side, brows furrowed in confusion, as he caught up to speed with Yevn's train of thought from earlier. He shrugged, said, "Why not?" and quickly grabbed what I guessed was their version of a medical kit.

Yevn continued to prattle in her unceasing way, while he lifted her limbs, tilted her chin, and put what I could only describe as a 6-pronged starfish on her chest. It attached via suction, and faint bioluminescent light pulsed in patterns and streams across her entire body.

Kat tugged at my sleeve as the three of us watched, still somewhat in shock. "Do you know where we are?" she asked, not looking away from the two people--creatures?--a little ways in front of us.

"Not in our apartment," I answered quietly. The man shone a large, dim light in Yevn's eyes, again bioluminescent-powered, as she looked in various directions.

"I think we're in Yevn's doctor's office," Mark said humorously.

"You two are so helpful!" Kat admonished, turning back to mock glare at us. She saw me wiggling my butt on the little stump thing as I tried to gauge how pliable this material was, separate from its spring, and almost snorted.

Yevn looked over at the three of us with a smile, and Zentylk gestured freely for her to go. "You are in perfect working order, your sequences are aligned, and you seem unharmed from your trip to Earth." We still looked at him in wonder and vague confusion, and he turned the starfish-looking thing toward us and said, "this would have glowed red if she were unwell," as if that was all the explanation we needed.

Yevn walked toward us and offered me and Kat a hand up. "You three are absolutely the sweetest. Thank you. Can I show you around?" she offered with a smile.

"Um, YES," I said, immediately tripping over the slightly squishy surface as my curiosity spurred me forward. Fortunately, Mark caught me, but in doing so we both stumbled a few steps, very much getting our feel of this floor. "The floor's bouncy," I gushed, my face a mix of shock and joy. "Is this your doctor's office?" I asked, checking out the blue plant nearest me.

"Yes, you could say so. This is Zentylk, our associate scientist, and he knows the most about how I work, aside from Valitor or the Science Division back home.

"Where are we?" Mark asked, distracted by whatever thing he was trying to poke on the wall, while also a little more concerned about reality than I was. I mean, bouncy floors? Almost as good as bouncy--

"Aboard one of The Rukien Empire's three top research vessels, this one assigned to your Solar System--we really try to use the local's names for their places as much as possible--also under your living room. Sort of. Would you like an explanation of dual-particle space vectors? I'm sure Zentylk could facilitate that. Zentylk..."

I wandered along the wall, losing track of Yevn's monologue. It was cool here, and moist, but not fully wet. The neon plants were indeed growing straight from the wall, as were the tables, chairs, and larger equipment around the room. Huh. They must have some way of manipulating this material pretty easily. Or they were really good topiarists.

From a ways behind me I heard Kat say to Mark, "She's even worse than you! I swear, I have to keep my eyes on you two at all times. Aly! Aly? Come back here while we figure this out for a sec?" She waved me back to the group. I hurried over as fast as this weird floor would let me, ending up a little breathless.

"Yeah? What's up!" I panted, looking at Kat, Mark, and our new friends. Boy this was exciting.

"Yevn and... Zentylk...? Were just explaining how we've had a spaceship under our apartment this whole time...?"

"That explains the noises we've been hearing through the walls," Mark chuckled.

"And to think I thought it was Ethan and Rachel," Kat said in fake seriousness.

"Yeah?" I asked, turning to the... not-humans?

"Oh no, they're there too," Yevn began. "We're both there, but they don't know it. Our camouflage technology advanced within the last few hundred years to not only warp light and hide us from visual observation, but also to warp our own particles themselves to kind of... share the space? We're both here, but can kind of just... flip the switch back and forth. It's fascinating stuff, really, dual particle physics--"

"Yevn, why don't you cycle your sequences for a moment. I think we're overwhelming our guests," Zentylk teased.

"Oh right, sorry," Yevn said, closing her eyes. Those bioluminescent patterns from before quickly flashed across her body again, emanating faintly and rapidly from the center of her chest out to her extremities. She opened one eye sneakily, but a glance from Zentylk and she closed it again.

Zentylk leaned in toward us and said, "She means well, but I imagine this is a little overwhelming for you all already. Care for a tour?" he said, gesturing down a hall. "You're doing great, Yevn," he called back to her as we left.

The path we walked sort of tangled and climbed as we went, like one of those playhouse things at McDonald's that I always wanted to go into when I was a kid. Except it was my size here, spacious and sturdy enough for my almost 6'.

Zentylk moved easily up and through the passageway, giving us a brief narrative of this ship, its biology, and basically affirming everything Yevn had tried to tell us earlier.

Mark climbed pretty easily after him and offered a hand down to Kat. She took it, pulling herself up after him, and I got a glorious view of her ass in the process. What I wouldn't give to press my fingers up between her legs... But neither Kat nor Mark had expressed any interest in personally satisfying my ridiculous horniness. Don't touch it, Aly, just admire... Mark tried to offer me a hand as well, but I waved him back, instead stepping back a little, bouncing on my toes several times for a test, then using the spongy ground to spring up easily as I had observed Zentylk do. That was fun.

We came out of the tunnel onto a sort of deck surrounding a fairly large open area, with many rooms and tunnels heading off in different directions around a central open space a few stories high. Other people did move around, but it was even less busy than the quiet street outside our apartment.

Zentylk led us around the perimeter for a decent view as he described a few significant locations. There were areas of much larger spongy machines, some little alcoves tucked away behind thin membranes where individuals seemed to be reading (or at least studying something), plenty of tunnels we couldn't see down, and a general, quiet busyness about the place.

We walked through a wide entryway to open into another, larger dome, similar to the one we had just walked through. A large cylinder of water bubbled up from the floor here all the way to the ceiling, and off into smaller tubes throughout the structure, almost like the veins on a giant leaf.

In my efforts to both marvel and keep up, I missed a good deal of what Zentylk said, but they seemed to have no problem repeating stuff, if I needed to ask later. Kat was a bit awed, holding securely to Mark's arm as they walked. Mark was intrigued, and he did a much better job of listening to our tour guide, even asking questions along the way. (But like, intelligent questions, not my occasional outburst of "what's that!" as I pointed at something colorful or moving.)

Eventually, Zentylk led us off from the central domes to a brightly lit room down the way. Two other people were currently talking there, but upon our arrival, the one in charge dismissed the other.

"Zentylk! Have they already agreed? Splendid! I had no idea things were moving that fast."

Zentylk held up a hand to pause. "Actually, Valitor, we fell into things in an unexpected order. I think they are only now coming to understand where they are, but they are certainly taking to it all quite well. Yevn brought them here with partial consent, since they were not grasping the whole, but I figured who better to enlighten than our lead scientist."

Valitor smiled. "Of course! Welcome. Have a seat won't you? Do you require any fluids? Sustenance?" He gestured to the seats in the room around a low table. "Onsa!" The tangle of green hair we saw leave here when we arrived popped back into view. They smiled and said, "Yes, Valitor?"

"Onsa, would you please run over to the generator and grab some... water?" He looked at us, as Kat and I nodded. "... And some... snacks?" I nodded enthusiastically again.

"Certainly!" they said, walking spritely down down the deck out of sight.

Zentylk and Valitor also took seats, and Valitor opened his hands in welcome. "We are so glad that you even came to visit us, although we have some very high hopes for you still to come, should you be willing to help us."

"Does helping you involve staying here on this super cool mushroom ship?" I asked, looking, as always, as the different colors and distractions around me rather than the person speaking.

Valitor laughed. "Yes! Yes it does."

"Then yes!"

Kat immediately halted me with a "woah there, girlfriend, let's talk about this. Let's hear him out. You have no idea what you're signing on for yet."

I wrenched my eyes away from whatever slight pulsing was going on in the mushrooms at 2 o'clock to settle my attention on Valitor.

"I really do appreciate your open-mindedness about this," Valitor said before resuming. "As you can see, we are a science and research vessel not native to your Solar System. We are here to do research regarding the similarities of our two species, in the hopes that what we learn could help us with a problem we have back home."

"What sort of problem?" Mark asked, leaning back comfortably.

"Our species exists in a form of collective monarchy, run by The Eminence. Each Eminence throughout our history has a single Successor, when our life cycles come to term, who will be responsible for leading our people into our next generation. Our species has enjoyed many years of peace with our nearest neighbors after an unfortunately violent period, and their Successor is also nearing her term. We have both rejoiced to finally be at peace--collaboration, even--but we are worried about the Empathic Bond that has formed between our Successor and theirs, and some of the ramifications of achieving such a high EM Bond with a different species. We wish to maintain it as best we can, not only for the sake of the Treaty, but also for the sake of our beloved Successor, but they have run into some... complications. Do you understand so far?"

Valitor paused to give us a moment to process.

"I'm getting an alien conflict and something about Empathic Bonds, but some of this is going a bit above me," Kat said, continuing to take in the information.

"Your Queen Bee is having relationship problems," I said matter-of-factly.

Valitor looked at me puzzled.

"Sorry, that's what Yevn said earlier. That you were like bees around a queen. And I'm guessing this Empathic Bond involves how they feel about each other?"

Valitor thought for a moment then vaguely nodded. "That's an interesting but fitting metaphor. Yes, you could say so."

"You have an entire research vessel out looking for relationship advice?" Mark said, clearly amused. "Maybe I should've done that before I met Andrea, back in the day."

"Well, maybe if you were the queen Mark of an entire species of Marks, you could have," Kat quipped. "Sorry," she then said to Valitor, shaking her head at Mark.

Valitor laughed lightly. "I assure you it is more scientific than that, but yes, that is the premise. Ah, Onsa is back."

The green haired fellow (lady?) returned with a few Dasani water bottles and some bags of chips. I gladly took a bottle and the only bag of Cheetos, turning them over in my hands. "Are these real?" I asked, pinching the bag's corners.

"Absolutely!" Valitor affirmed. "We have been working on making our own duplicates of Earth products, to make you feel more at home here, should you stay aboard for any length of time. If those are particular favorites, I can have Onsa fetch some more originals to make sure our versions are adequate for your standards."

I would've said "yes absolutely", but Kat gently touched my leg to remind me not to get ahead of myself. Did she mean to put her hand so far up my thigh? Probably not. I opened the Cheetos to give them a taste. Genuine in my book.

"Thank you, Onsa," Valitor said, nodding for them to leave again. "We've been stationed here for a little while, studying your species," he went on. "Non-invasively, I assure you. Your species is remarkably similar to ours, physiologically, except for your widespread capacity for high EM Bonds."

I whispered to Kat, "We're good at loving each other," to try to keep her up to speed.

"Precisely. (In short.) Unfortunately, only a few members of our species have reached as high an EM Bond as our Successor has somehow managed--which is the way it often goes for our kind, I suppose--and so we simply do not have much data or methodology for resolving issues involving such high EM Bonds.

"If you are willing, we would find it very beneficial to study you three and your relationships, putting you through some simulations here in our lab where we might monitor your reactions."

"You just want to watch us interact?" Mark asked. "In simulations?"

"Yes. Technically we would be monitoring more than the visual, watching your cortisol and hormonal levels, heartbeats, recording some speech samples for our linguists to study, and other non-invasive readings."

"If you've been studying our species for some time now, couldn't you already be taking these readings of us in our natural environment? Without all... this?" Mark asked, gesturing appreciatively to the ship as a whole.

"To an extent," said Valitor. "We try to be as non-invasive as possible to other developing species, though, and some of the readings we could only properly take in closer proximity with our instruments in our lab. Having a controlled environment would also enable us to run a few hypotheses, change specific factors at will. And, as your species has already discovered regarding your own studies of psychology, the inherent risk of distress common to studies of this nature can only ethically be done with the parties' consent."

I nodded along. With their advanced technology, they certainly didn't need to ask, but I trusted them more because they thought it was still important to ask.

"What are the risks?" Mark asked, practical as always. A trained lawyer knows to read the contract.

"We will happily send you back to your home with a copy of the details for you all to discuss, but I will happily summarize for you now," said Valitor. "First, we would be asking for your time. Our initial experiments should only take a few days, after which we would send you back while analyzing the initial data on our end. If you find the initial process amenable, we would summon you again with different parameters based on our findings.

"Second, because we are studying relationships, we would facilitate primarily dynamic interactions among you three. We need to see how you respond to low levels of stress, or to unexpected circumstances, in addition to positive experiences and growth. While everything we control will be a simulation, you will be reacting in real time with each other, and you may learn more about each other just as we are.

"Third, because we need your reactions to be authentic, we cannot tell you the particulars of most simulations ahead of time. In the contract we will give you, there are options for you to opt out of specific items of your choosing, as well as general items we would describe. But some people can find the simulations unsettlingly real and find the adjustment stressful."

"But they would all just be simulations, right? No risk of actual harm or allergies or anything?" I asked, licking my Cheeto fingers clean.

"Correct. Any other questions I can answer now for you?" Valitor said. He reached under the table of sorts and pulled out a very earth-looking briefcase with papers in it. He opened it and passed it to us. "These are the more detailed accounts we have prepared. We will be happy to sign yours if you wish, and for our end we would take a simple genetic marker unique to each of you, similar to your thumbprints. But again, you may certainly take these back with you to think over. Our research is on a shorter timeline than we would like, but not so short as to skip the foundational pieces. If you have no other questions at the moment, we are ready to send you back to your home. It has been very rewarding to meet with you all. Zentylk?"