The Prom Goer's Interstellar Excursion (15 page)

The bile lapped against the toes of my shoes, melting the soles. The smell reminded me of Gordo High seniors peeling through the parking lot in their cars trying to run over frosh—and occasionally me, if they were in the mood.

Then the bile dissolved the rest of me. There's no other way to put it. Perhaps I was in too much shock to feel any pain, but it was actually a warm feeling, like going to sleep from my toes on up.

I died. It's not a pleasant memory.

If the first kiss of my life had been something like a dream comprised of pure, pharmaceutical-grade joy, my second kiss made me never want to do it again. My eyes were closed when I was overcome with the smell of stale makeup and the sensation of having two alcohol-lubricated slugs pressing against my face.

I heard Skark's voice, which sounded very far away, like he was speaking to me through a long tin tunnel.

“Just to make it clear,” he said. “I didn't
want
to do that, but I've often been told my kiss is magic, so get up. You've cost this band almost all the money it has left, so the least you can do is awaken. And my God, put on some ChapStick once in a while. Not for my benefit, but for yours.”

I opened my eyes, whereupon I saw Skark's painted eyes a few centimeters from my own, his long, pointed face filling my field of vision like an out-of-focus head shot.

“And…he's back,” said Skark, waving a bottle of Spine Wine above his head. “I
told you
my lips have life-restoring powers. My father was a mortician. When I was bored when I was young, I used to kill time by bringing corpses back to life.”

“That explains a little bit,” said Cad.

“All art has to come from somewhere,” said Skark.

“…How long have you been doing that?” I said groggily. I still wasn't sure where I was or what was going on.

“A minute or so,” said Skark.

“A full minute?”

“Barely a heartbeat compared to my normal Tantric indulgences,” said Skark. “Don't act like this is something I found
pleasurable.
I have
always
preferred ladies, but when a little pro bono medical attention is required, I don't mind stepping up to do my part. Plus, you were
dead
, so a little
thanks
would be appreciated,
particularly
because you're uninsured, as we've discovered.”

“I'm on my parents' insurance,” I said.

“
Do you really think they take Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Mexico up here?” said Cad.

I looked around and saw I was in some sort of hospital room—there were squiggly charts hanging on the wall, and a variety of ominous, pointy metal instruments on a side table next to my “bed,” which was less a bed than it was a receptacle coated in the dregs of a gooey pineapple-colored liquid. A pair of thin broadcloth scrubs covered my otherwise naked body. Skark, Cad, and Driver were standing under a lamp that was emitting a bright lime-green light, making everyone in the room look vaguely puppetlike.

“What…happened?” I said.

“It was
Ferguson
who sabotaged us,” said Skark, sounding even more unstable and emphatic than usual. His eyes were dilated, and it seemed like he was on something stronger than just Spine Wine.

“Ferguson had nothing to do with it,” said Driver. “We know you went searching the hospital for pills during Bennett's operation. Whatever you took is increasing your paranoia.”

“I heard
explosions
before that dam came down,” said Skark. “Ferguson's letters used to describe
fantasies
about him watching me perish in the stomach of a giant beast while he played his triangle,
ding
ing it slowly as he enjoyed the sight of my body being eaten away. I swear I heard those
ding
s today.”

A doctor poked what I assumed was his head into the room. He was round-bodied and unclothed except for bands of fabric around his chest and waist. It looked a bit like he was wearing a
woman's bathing suit, but perhaps that was just what surgeons wore up here. His head was a set of jaws opening and snapping shut, like the snout of an alligator, but missing the rest of the skull. I couldn't figure out where his eyes were located, and the only reason I knew that he was male was that Cad said
hey, man
when he entered the room.

“How are you doing in here?” said the doctor.

“A little rattled, but fine, I think,” I said.

“Good boy,” said the doctor. “I kept thinking that I was getting your proportions wrong during the rebuilding process, but your genes were saying that's actually the way you're
supposed
to look. Amazing.”

The doctor's jaws opened and closed rapidly as he cackled to himself, and he ducked out of the room.

“What happened to me?” I said.

“You were dissolved inside the Dark Matter Foloptopus, and we brought you back,” said Cad.

“What do you mean, brought me back?”

“We were coming to
get
you in the bus when all of a sudden we saw you get swallowed up by the bile,” said Cad.

“If you had stayed alive another few seconds, it would have saved us a lot of money,” said Driver.

“We used this really high-end Tupperware we keep around for some of Driver's more disgusting meals to scoop up a little of the stomach acid from where you disappeared, and we brought it here,” said Cad. “It was pretty foul. The doctors had to reconstruct you from your DNA.”

“
Personally, I think they did a great job,” said Driver. “The new cells really cleared up your complexion.”

“Wait…this isn't even my
real body
?”

“Oh, like you would have been able to tell the difference if we hadn't told you,” said Skark, rolling his eyes. “The doctors said it was actually a fairly simple reconstruction—none of your thoughts or memories were particularly profound, so they were easy to recover from what was left of your cells.”

I spotted another chart tacked up on the wall. It appeared to be a page that had been ripped from an extraterrestrial anatomy textbook, with an illustrated figure of a human male in the middle of the sheet, surrounded by arrows pointing to sensitive parts of the body and cryptic symbols that I couldn't understand. The aliens had clearly learned something from all the people they had abducted, though I saw that the figure had no nipples, which concerned me. I put my hand on my chest to confirm mine were there.

“Yeah, I made sure the doctors gave you your nipples back,” said Cad. “They weren't going to do it because it wasn't in their chart, but I showed them mine, and they figured it out.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Speaking of which—the doctors said there's a
chance
that some other DNA got mixed up with yours,” said Driver. “There were a lot of fans getting dissolved, a lot of acid sloshing around—you were there, you understand.”

“If you start feeling strange or develop any abnormal powers, that's probably why,” said Skark. “Just ride it out and try
not to get too
angry
about things—that's normally when odd conditions flare up.”

I pulled my body to a sitting position. It seemed great—all my parts
felt
new, like I'd received a head-to-toe tune-up. Dying wasn't so bad if this was what you got to come back to.

Skark produced another bottle of Spine Wine from somewhere, and with a series of
glug
s emptied its entire contents down his throat. It was the most that I'd seen him consume at one time. His movements were frantic one moment, lethargic the next.

“Another,”
said Skark. “There must be alcohol somewhere in this hospital. Somebody find me another bottle. I hate hospitals. And I hate it even more when I have to be in one because of
Ferguson.
Thank God I found those pills in a
drawwwerrrrr
….”

He started slurring. I watched him use the edge of my tub to keep himself upright.

“You shouldn't have taken those pills,” said Driver. “You don't even know what they were.”

“I'm
fiiiiine…
,” said Skark. “By the
waaaaay
, did the
rooaadieeees
make it
oouut
?”

Driver frowned. “They made it out, but they quit their jobs, citing dangerous working conditions. And they took our gear as payment for lost wages.”

“So we don't have our instruments?” said Cad.

“That's correct,” said Driver. “We have nothing, except Skark's wardrobe, which none of the roadies wanted.”

“At least there's
thaaaaat.
This is all Ferguson's
faaauuult
,” said Skark, and with that, he passed out and fell to the ground, mouth stained red.

“Good
Lord
, he's got a drinking problem,” I said.

“Not even Skark's body can handle Spine Wine combined with whatever pills he took,” said Cad. “This isn't the first time we've seen this. He'll be out for hours.”

“Hours?”

“Most likely,” said Cad.

“As in,
many
hours? Enough time to make a side trip?”

I looked at Cad and Driver. They could see what I was thinking.

“Any pit stops, and we'll be cutting it close getting to Dondoozle, if we make it in time at all,” said Driver.

“This is his
prom date
we're talking about,” said Cad.

“It'll really piss off Skark,” said Driver.

“Reason enough for me,” said Cad.

“All right, everybody grab a limb—we're going to have to get Skark out of here,” said Driver. “Bennett, you need to wear those scrubs until we find you another outfit. We couldn't track down any underwear for you, but you'll have to deal with it for now.”

It was then that it occurred to me that I'd just been totally
remade
, and therefore all my
appendages
were new.

I peeked under the scrubs to make sure everything was fully intact down there.

“How does it look?” said Cad.

“Honestly, maybe better than before,” I said.

“Good,” said Cad. “When the doctor was doing the reconstruction, I told him to give you a little extra
pop.
Glad he listened.”

Before we got to Jyfon, home of the Ecological Center for the Preservation of Lesser Species, Driver gave me the background on Certified Receipts, which were important in space due to widespread smuggling between planets. Because a lesser creature on one planet might be considered a pet or food on a world with larger, more aggressive organisms, the Certified Receipt was the only way to prove you
weren't
somebody else's property.

Apparently in the rest of the universe all creatures were issued a Certified Receipt when they were born, and every creature was supposed to carry it around for his or her or its entire life, or until he or she or it gave it to somebody else. Because of the disparity of economic conditions in different galaxies, it was common for aliens to rent themselves out as indentured
servants on other worlds, which meant handing over their Certified Receipts. If somebody had your Certified Receipt, they had you.

When I pointed out that nobody issues Certified Receipts on Earth, Driver explained that backwater planets like Earth weren't part of the standardized Certified Receipt program because they had no affiliation with any larger governing body, so everybody tended to look the other way. However, not adhering to the Certified Receipt system didn't exempt humans from having to show proof of self-ownership. In most situations, showing a legal birth certificate would suffice—I guess a birth certificate
is
just a receipt, in a way—though it might take some time to check with the proper authorities back on Earth and verify that such a document was authentic.

“Are you telling me I'm supposed to be carrying around my birth certificate to prove that I own
myself
?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying,” said Driver. “All of us have to.”

“Do you have yours, Cad?”

“Wouldn't be caught dead without it,” said Cad. “Shore Memorial Hospital in Somers Point, New Jersey. We picked it up before I came on tour. Have to be careful—you know how much some aliens would pay for a handsome human blessed with the gift of music?”

“What about you, Driver?”

Driver showed me his Certified Receipt—it was a laminated rectangle of green paper, resembling a bookmark, with a bunch of words and numbers I couldn't read.

“It's a pain to carry around, but not as much of a pain as trucking across the galaxy to the Office of Documentation and Proof of Ownership if you lose it.”

“The system seems broken,” I said.

“What system doesn't?”

The Interstellar Libertine vibrated and popped out of its latest space rift, and Driver took his foot off the accelerator to make sure we didn't overshoot our destination. As we drifted toward Jyfon, we began seeing what appeared to be three-dimensional billboards promoting the Ecological Center for the Preservation of Lesser Species.

The boards—if I can call them that, because they weren't made of any solid material—were free-floating, high-resolution, mile-long pixelated images that changed form every few seconds, their atoms artfully arranging themselves into mirages of odd creatures sitting in open fields or underground caves. All of the animals had looks on their faces like they were being forced to sit still and smile for the camera. I even thought I saw the tip of a weapon at the edge of one photo, but it might have just been somebody's finger on the camera lens.

An image of a greasy ball of nervous lemon-lime fur melted into a shot of a silver-skinned brick of an alien wearing a head-dress made of strawberry-colored animal skins. The picture liquefied again, and I knew the subject of the next shot even before all the particles snapped into place.

It was an image of Sophie, wide-eyed and looking over her shoulder as she ran past the front door of an Olive Garden.

Apparently the Jyfos hadn't been able to coerce her into the same kind of fake-casual photo as easily as they had the other residents of the Ecological Center.

“Looks like Sophie's become a tourist attraction in her short time here,” said Cad. “Which won't make it any easier to get her out.”

“Thanks for making that point,” I said.

“I'm just saying, it would be hard to roll into the San Diego Zoo and ask them to hand over a penguin,” said Cad.

“Maybe the rules are different for research centers,” I said.

“It would be just as difficult to show up at Princeton and ask for one of their study monkeys,” said Cad.

“Is that some kind of passive-aggressive Princeton comment?” I said.

Cad and Driver stared at me.

“What are you talking about?” said Driver.

“I got wait-listed at Princeton,” I said. “I thought I already told you guys about that.”

Cad and Driver shook their heads.

“As long as you get into other places, being on the wait list isn't such a big deal,” said Cad.

I didn't say anything. Cad and Driver looked at me.

“You didn't get in anywhere else?” said Driver.

“I didn't apply.”

“You didn't
apply
anywhere else?” said Driver, incredulous.

Cad and Driver were stunned. As far as I knew, neither of them had even been to college, and
they
couldn't believe I had
only applied to one place. I didn't even know how Driver
knew
about Princeton. Maybe Cad had mentioned it to him before because of the New Jersey connection. I felt humiliated.

Our final descent toward Jyfon was what I imagine approaching Vegas would be like—rows of lights hanging in the sky guiding the way, more boards featuring strange creatures interspersed with the occasional unflattering candid shot of Sophie, and finally the distant panorama of a city rising up out of the blackness of absolutely nothing. It was easy to discern the location of the Ecological Center—80 percent of the planet was gray skyscrapers and grids of electricity, in the middle of which was an egg-shaped wilderness of magenta and malachite fields. At the bottom of the reservation was a building shaped like an X.

“Guess that's the welcome center,” said Driver.

We plunged through the atmosphere, down into a lot that was—to our surprise, given the amount of promotion hanging in the ether around Jyfon—completely empty, like a theme park in a ghost town. I would have thought the place was closed, except for the fact that through the windshield, I could see the front doors of the Ecological Center for the Preservation of Lesser Species rising up over us, thirty feet tall, utterly open.

“And here we are,” said Driver. “Good luck in there.”

“You're not
coming
?”

“We need to find some instruments,” said Driver. “We brought you where you had to go, but this is still a tour.”

“
Just go in there, tell them what you want, and if they ask about the Certified Receipt, give them this,” said Cad, putting a brick of cash in my hands.

The bills looked like euros—brightly colored, different-sized paper rectangles featuring ink-drawn portraits of illustrious aliens. I've never been to Europe, but whenever the news does a report on a crumbling economy over there, I've found myself admiring the aesthetic of the currency.

“I thought you spent the money from the Foloptopus gig on my medical care,” I said.

“This isn't from the Foloptopus gig,” said Driver. “This is Skark's personal nest egg.”

“He hides his money in one of his platform heels,” said Cad. “He thinks we don't know about it, but we do, and we need gear and you need your girl.”

“What if paying them off doesn't work?” I said.

“We'll swoop in and help you out,” said Cad. “Just hold on, we won't take long.”

Driver slid open the door to the bus. I tucked the brick of cash into the pocket of my scrubs. Driver had given me the choice of some of Skark's other jumpsuits, but the scrubs were more comfortable and looked less ridiculous, so I had kept them on. I stepped outside onto the paved earth of Jyfon, and immediately I was hit by the scent of animals—hair, saliva, waste. This was the place.

I walked through the entrance to the Ecological Center for the Preservation of Lesser Species, which led to a long hallway
where a female Jyfo was sitting behind a counter, flipping through a magazine and occasionally adjusting her glasses. She looked a bit like Driver wearing a wig, which I took to mean that the Viking dogcatchers who had snatched Sophie had to be nearby.

She looked up at me as I walked toward her, fake smile on my face, attempting to seem casual.

“Welcome to the Ecological Center for the Preservation of Lesser Species,” she said. “Can I help you?”

I didn't respond, just kept smiling while I thought about what to do. Because I didn't actually have a Certified Receipt for Sophie, I figured I only had a few options:

I could lie and say that I had lost the Certified Receipt but I still wanted her back, which—in a best-case scenario—would lead to them taking me out to see her, at which point she would run to me and leap into my arms and the Jyfos would recognize that we were supposed to be together and let us go. This seemed unlikely.

If the Jyfo behind the desk insisted on seeing the Certified Receipt, I could subdue her by force, hijack whatever kind of vehicle they used in the facility, and hope I managed to find Sophie and get her back to the bus before the Ranger and the scientists tracked me down and made me part of the center's ecosystem. This was my least favorite option, both because I wouldn't know where I was going and because I didn't like the idea of manhandling a lady, even one who weighed several hundred pounds more than me and who was holding my date hostage.

Finally, I could bypass the Certified Receipt situation entirely and simply offer my bribe in exchange for Sophie's release. The problem with
this
option was that I knew Sophie had become a popular attraction, and a low-level employee might not want to subject herself to the kind of scrutiny that came with letting a star exhibit go. Nor might she even have the power to do so.

None of the options were good. I was going to have to wing this.

“Can I help you?” said the woman behind the counter once again, impatiently this time. I recognized her voice—she was the Jyfo I had talked to on the phone.

“Yeah, we spoke before. I've come to pick up Sophie, the new human.”

“Right right. I've already let the Ranger know that you're coming. I can't guarantee he'll be in a good mood when you see him. You've thrown quite the kink into his research.”

“I'm sure he'll be able to continue his research without her. It seems like you've got a well-stocked facility.”

“Sure, but we've never seen anybody run like her. We never could have
imagined
a human could be so wily—she's rewriting our opinion of your species.”

“She does mud runs.”

“I don't know what those are.”

“It's not important.”

“Show me your Certified Receipt and I can start processing the paperwork for her release.”

“About that Certified Receipt…I
have
a Certified Receipt
for her. The
problem
is that I had to leave Earth in a hurry, and I left the Certified Receipt at my
house
, so I don't have it
on me.
But I do have it, and I can
send
it to you later, for your records. If you have a fax machine, something like that…”

“The center is very particular about paperwork.”

“I'm sure, and I was
hoping
I could make a
donation
to the park in order to make up for the fact that I perhaps wasn't as prepared as I could have been, and to facilitate the documentation process.”

“It's rare that we take donations at the gate.”

“If a donation to the park isn't satisfactory, maybe I could make a donation to a charity of your own
personal
choosing. Or I could just
give
you the money and allow you to donate it as you see fit. I'm not from here, so I'm not familiar with your causes.”