Chapter 4: Tell Me More
Paulie was laying flat on his back in the middle of his small apartment staring at the ceiling when the door knocked. He jolted upright and then scrambled to his feet before rushing to the door and throwing it open without even looking to see who it was. He didn’t really care, he would have been happy to see anyone there if only to break the dark monotonous mood that had overtaken him.
Jakiikii stepped back a pace before grunting as he surged forward and embraced her.
“Ouff! Hey, calm down, you are going to break my ribs if you keep that up.” She complained only half-jokingly.
Paulie stepped back and nodded his head, fidgeting as he gestured behind him. “You, uh.. want to come in? I cooked breakfast a little while ago but didn’t want to eat without you.”
He saw her bubblegum pink tongue poke between her lips as she waved her chin in the air. The twin sensory bulbs that sprouted from under her chin waggling a little as she tasted the air.
She cocked her head and gave him a look. “What did you make this time? More of your human horrors you call food?”
He chuckled and stepped to the side as she loped in.
“Not exactly. Just chopped up some stuff and mashed it together, if you wrap it in those bread tortilla things you gave me last week it makes a pretty good breakfast burrito. Not quite the same as a wrap back home, but it will do in a pinch.” He smiled as he walked through the main room and into his small adjoining kitchen area.
He thought he heard the creak of one of the table stools being moved but could not see the main room from the kitchen. He grabbed a covered dish from the countertop oven appliance and then a large beaker of slush he had made for her from the fridge. Walking back into the other room with his haul he paused as he noticed her staring at him intently.
Jakiikii’s eyes softened slightly as she noticed he was looking, but not enough to fully mask her concern. He ignored it, she was just a little overprotective at times, and he was fine.
Setting the dishes down, he took his own seat and uncovered his plate. The scent of alien ingredients wafted through the air as steam rose from the two breakfast wraps he had crafted with the ingredients he had available to him. Now that he had been living on Gike for a while he had a better understanding of what was good and digestible for him. Some foods were hard on his guts, others seemed not to digest properly at all and one time he had even had to visit the hospital for severe internal cramping.
He chuckled internally. He would never eat those little hairy roots again, what had they been called?
His thoughts were interrupted by a slurping from across the table as Jakiikii’s long, hollow tongue slipped from between her lips and into the large beaker of mashed fruit he had made for her. Her eyes lit up a little as she siphoned off some of the fluid.
“Oh, that’s very nice. That almost tastes like..” She sucked her tongue back into her mouth even as she looked at him in surprise. “Is there agul in here?”
Paulie smiled and nodded even as he took a big bite of his own breakfast. The consistency was about right now for a burrito, though the taste was still somewhat on the tangy side of savoury. He had found a few meats that didn’t upset his stomach overly, with one of them being similar in texture to beef but tasting more like duck. Ground and cooked with spices it was quite good, but made for an odd sort of sandwich.
Gesturing towards her he asked, “Is it too much? I put in less than I would have liked myself. But I like spicy food, I know you don’t really.”
She moved her head from side to side a little as she seemed to make her decision. “Mmmm.. I don’t dislike it. But I do think that there is a little more in here than is really needed. It is strong enough to mask the flavour of the other nectars. I assume there is frubble juice in here?” He nodded. “Yeah, see.. I can’t really tell.” She smacked her lips and took another long drink of it however, so clearly she didn’t overly object to his culinary experimentation.
Paulie had tried some of it himself and found it almost disgustingly sweet, which was why he had added the agul in the first place. Its slightly bitter and aromatic nature was not too dissimilar to cinnamon, though with decidedly less spice.
He took another bit and chewed as Jakiikii rested four of her arms on the surface of the table. “How are you feeling Paulie?”
He paused mid chew. Swallowing heavily he set the burrito down and shrugged. “I feel well enough, considering the circumstances.”
She shook her head. “Not what I meant and you know it.”
He frowned slightly.
She prodded him again, a little more forcibly this time. “Did you have the nightmare again?”
He jerked a little at the memory and turned to look into the middle distance. He was silent for a long moment, hands tapping idly on the surface of the tale as he tried and failed to come up with a satisfying answer for her question.
She sighed heavily, “I am sorry. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, Paulie. I love you, and I am worried. But you are stretching yourself thin.. I can see it.” She trailed off as he turned to look at her again. He wasn’t angry though, there were tears in his eyes.
Jakiikii reached across the table for him and he took one of her hands in his and gripped it tight, likely tight enough to hurt a little but she offered no complaint. After a moment of that he sniffed hard and then dabbed his eyes with his sleeve.
“I am fine now that you are here.”
He met her gaze one on one, all six of her eyes to his two. In them he saw understanding and careful acceptance. He tried to smile but was only half successful, so he released her and sat back into his stool.
Grabbing another bite of his food he decided to change the subject. “So, you were telling me the other day a little about your time before I came along. With Mack in the force.”
The termaxxi woman gave him a slightly suspicious look, he didn’t blame her. His obtuse direction change was as obvious as it had been blunt. But he really didn’t want to think about his own unraveling mental state at that moment. They were together, alone in a quiet room where they had nothing but each other’s company to occupy them. He wanted to take the opportunity to learn a little bit more about the alien woman he loved while they still had the time to talk quietly.
She pursed her lips, long tongue still dangling from her mouth in a comedic manner than brought a small and genuine smile to his lips.
She started off telling him a bit about her acclimation to civilised life, rehashing some of the details she had told him before. As she continued he nodded and asked pertinent questions when he was curious to know more about a specific event.
“So after you had gone through the secondary training and gotten more proficient with your stealth suit, what did you think about being able to turn invisible completely?” He scratched his chin, the light dusting of stubble there making a faint scrunching sound as he did so. “And how does that even work?”
She shrugged. “I have to be real, I didn’t really think much of it at the time. I was used to being unseen by that point in my life. Now I had an excuse to do it whenever I wanted.” She smiled with her eyes, the brows of each crinkling slightly in a way he had come to recognise.
He raised an eyebrow. “Yea, too bad it doesn't work on me.”
She grinned. “One of my favorite things about you, Paulie. You always make me feel seen, even when I am not.”
Now it was his turn to grin widely, teeth flashing in the overhead light as he nodded his head and ran a hand through his dark hair. “Yeah. I like the way you always seem to know what I need to hear. Thanks Jakiikii, I feel a little better now.” He glanced at the wall and then at her, “So, how does it work though?”
She took a deeper breath, her air vents flaring slightly as she spoke, “Well the suit is made from a sort of light refracting quantum material encased within long carbon nanotubes..” she trailed off.
“So you don’t know either?” He asked bluntly.
Jakiikii folded two pairs of arms and huffed loudly. “I had it explained to me before, I just don’t remember off the top of my head.” She finished with a grumble.
Paulie shrugged, he didn’t remember half the stuff they tried to teach him in school either, and Jakiikii was much older than he himself. He recalled her telling him that termaxxi had a lifespan much much longer than a human’s.
He shifted topics, “Well, when you went from living on the street to having to navigate your way around city life, was it difficult for you?”
Jakiikii sipped at her drink even as Paulie chewed his own breakfast and then leaned her angular head onto one of her longer primary arms. “Yes, at first all I wanted to do was climb back into the dark under the cover of anonymity. But it became pretty zalcing clear to me that it would not be an option.”
Paulie cocked his head, swallowing the bite he had taken. “Why? What happened?”
Now it was her turn to shiver and look a little uncomfortable. “I got caught. Termaxxi are not a common species and it seemed as though there are forces besides Ooounoo that were interested in my kind.” She paused but continued a moment later before Paulie had the time to open his mouth. “No, it wasn’t her. I know it, but it was still one of the most terrifying times I can recall clearly. I was in an iron cage, they poked and prodded at me. Ignored my cries.” She growled a little.
Paulie reached across the table this time and she took his hand immediately. “Clearly you were rescued, I assume it was Mack again?”
She nodded.
He grimaced. “What kind of world is this? Thousands of years of civilization and it is just as corrupt as my own people back on Earth.”
She cocked her head at the comment, her eyes flashing as her bright irises caught the light. “You don’t talk about home very much. What do you mean?”
Paulie hung his head a little. “I am not proud to say it, but humanity’s past is steeped in oceans of blood and corruption. There is a lot of good there too, don’t get me wrong. But, the bad is..” Shaking his head he gave her a sideways look. “..is very bad.”
She waved a hand. “Like what, wars and calamity are a part of existence. Surely it could not be that bad? If many humans are like you I just have a hard time imagining it.” She smiled at him as she said it.
Paulie felt a small tug at his heart. “I don’t like talking about stuff like that, but there were times in our history where it was feared we might bring about the end of the world. Not just humanity, but all life on Earth. And pretty recently too.” He thought it over, the conflicts he had left behind. The wars and the political turmoil. He didn’t miss it, not for a single second.
“This is more home to me than Earth ever was.” He said with a tone of finality after a moment of self reflection.
“Oh come on, you can’t mean that. Surely there is a part of you that yearns to go back?”
Paulie sniffed and rotated one shoulder as he thought about it. Was there any part of him that remained tied to his evolutionary homeland? He searched, he really dug in deep but as hard as he looked there were no links he could think of. His parents were not the kind of people he missed, and dear old Aunt Margret was gone many years past. He had no friends, no social life to speak of and things had been looking grim. Here, here he was respected and loved. He had a home, he had stability, he had purpose.
He sat up straighter and let go of her hand as he shook his head in a determined fashion. “No. Not that I can think of. All there was back there was sadness and bad memories, I would much rather be here with you.”
Jakiikii shrugged all six arms and then finished off her drink before sucking her long tongue back into her dainty slash of a mouth. Wiping her face with the back of a hand, she asked him cautiously, “Do you think there is hope for the future of your people?”
He opened his mouth to tell her no, and then stopped as he realised the question she was really asking. She wanted to know if he thought that there was hope for her own people as well as his. He swallowed and then nodded slowly while chewing his top lip. “I think.. that there is more hope than doubt. But, people are hard to change. And there is so much hate on all sides, there are those that hate what they do not understand. Hate what is not like them and will do anything to destroy that which they see as the other. I think that the price of civilization is war, there will always be another side that wants what you have.” He paused, not sure if he was really helping or hurting the situation.
Jakiikii was quiet for a moment and then fidgeted with her glass, her eyes looking down at her hands. “That seems like a pretty pessimistic view of the universe.”
He shrugged, “I don’t think I am wrong though, right?”
The termaxxi woman didn’t answer, she looked to the corner of the room with several eyes as she mulled it over internally. Before she had the chance to respond there was a knock at the door and she stood quickly.
“Were you expecting anyone today?” She seemed a little more on edge than usual, he shook his head.
She crept to it and then peeked at the doorside security screen before her body relaxed. Turning to it she jerked a hand towards the door. “It’s Sergeant Aril.
He smiled, “Oh, good. Let her in.”