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I still get a headache whenever I try to think about those aliens. My visit with them made about as much more sense as that lunatic tea party in Alice in Wonderland; where after about 5 minutes of watching them all talking backwards & pouring tea down each others' pants Alice's mind imploded and she went running out the door screaming! Something I might of done too if I'd had feet to run on, or if the only exit wasn’t an airlock with a whole lot of unimaginably cold nothing on the other side.

But all in all I was glad I didn't leave, because after all their spazzed-out surrealistic stupidity it did turn out that they had something worth sticking around for. Very worth it...

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)))==============> REELED IN
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I’ll tell you, tractor beam hurt!

Not that I'm any kind of expert on them, I’ve only ever been in this one and there might be some less painful kind that I don't know about.

Or maybe it's a more comfortable ride if you’re in your car when they grab you, so that the beam mostly latches onto it; which could explain why the people who get abducted in movies sometimes don't even know they're inside a tractor beam until they suddenly notice that the highway they were driving on is way down below them.

But I didn’t have the protection of a car. In fact being a typical mermaid from this part of the Atlantic I didn’t even have any clothes covering me, so that my hair, the fin on my tail and everything in between were straining hard toward the source of the beam. So I was glad this was going to be a short ride. Just a dozen or so stories straight up to that big saucer hanging up there.

The calling conch my sister Anemone had given me was pulling at the shoelace around my neck with so much force I was afraid it would snap. I reached up and grabbed the big shell in both hands, not wanting to lose what might be the only memento I would ever have of my mermaid family and my life under the sea. Or of my life on Earth period.

A hatch was sliding open for me now; a triangle of darkness that stood out razor sharp against the ship's blazing white underbelly, the one unblurry thing I could see up there. When I was sitting down there on my rock and this glowing saucer showed up it had looked like the whole spacecraft was spinning. But now that I was closer I could see that only the outer third of it was moving, while the whole middle stayed put, even though these two parts looked to be solidly attached to each other. Which made absolutely no sense to my eyes or my brain.

I'm sure you've seen those pictures that are designed to do strange things as you stare at them. Like the one where it looks like that endless grid of boxes is angling down away from you, until something shifts and you see them rushing toward you from above, and then they start flipping back and forth until you don’t know what they’re doing! But those are just pictures, and even the name "optical illusion" warns you this is just some visual lie that you don't need to take seriously. But seeing one in person is a whole different matter, turning everything you thought you knew about the world and dimensions and what stuff should be able to do in space into reality soup, to where all by itself your mouth starts making weird cartoon sound effects! Maybe some physics superbrain like Stephen Hawking could've stared straight into this madness and go “Oh okay, I get it...”; but I sure couldn't.

I rolled over, turning myself away from it. The view from this high in the air was scary, especially with the sensation of having nothing physical supporting me. But the idea of falling didn't freak me out half as bad as that impossibleness I'd seen above me.

In the floodlit patch of ocean below me I saw sixty or seventy merpeople from our village. My “rescue posse”, which had showed up just seconds too late to do anything for me. They'd stopped gawking at the sight of me levitating up here and had all gone into a sort of circular huddle- a big bummed-out group hug in honor of their dearly departing Princess Enomena; each with an arm around the one on either side, and with Jasper and two other dolphins in the middle, facing out at them like the points of a triangle. And filling the center was a huge wright whale with his head sticking up, who I'd never gotten a chance to meet and whose name I didn't know.

I couldn’t say if this perfect formation they all were in was just coincidence, or if this was some ritual thing they did at times like this. And I supposed I never would find out. After being with them for only a week there was still so much I didn't know about my mermaid history and culture. But what I knew for sure was that whichever of those drooping heads with the shiny metal hair down there was Anemone, she was crying her poor heart out. Mom too, although being the Queen she would do her best not to show it.

As I got close to the saucer's underside its blinding white bulge made me feel like I was falling into the sun, and the sound of it was like some psychotic composer's piece for church bells, jet engines and jackhammers; So I was glad a moment later when I was pulled up into a big dark room, which shielded me from nearly all of the light and about half the noise. The tractor beam moved me sideways a couple of meters to a spot over this big fish tank, which I fell into with a plunk! when the beam shut off.

This purplish dimness felt wonderful, soothing to my eyes. Everything I could see in here had a clear solid edge and none of it was doing anything impossible. The crazy-making racket from outside was fading as the air pressure out there steadily dropped. A strong wind rushed past me and out the triangular hole in the floor next to me, which seemed to be taking its sweet time about closing, considering where we were and how fast we were going!

Peering down through it I had a breathtaking view of the moonlit ocean far below. Not being able to feel our acceleration (which I'm sure would've been very uncomfortable if I could...) made it seem like I was seeing it all on a video screen instead of through the open window I knew this was.

Some cities came into view; hugging the coast of what had to be Florida; the buildings, streets and freeways were all lit up, and some floodlit sports stadium like a bright green drink coaster; all of it getting smaller and smaller as it fell away from us. By now I probably could of seen a whole curving chunk of the planet below, with maybe some of it under the glare of sunlight, if my peephole wasn't quickly disappearing. As it clicked shut the wind in here rushed around for a bit, confused about where it had been going, and then died down.

“Flukin' Aye!” I laughed, wishing I could jump right back in line and take that ride again. Whatever else happened to me up here I had done something totally amazing. A thing few humans ever got the chance to experience, and even fewer mermaids. I was in space!
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)))==============> HELLO? HELLO?
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I was floating in a glass tank the size of a motel hot tub which was parked in an extra-wide spot in this high-ceilinged metal hallway that I could see curving off away from me to my left and right, like it was following the shape of the saucer's hull. I listened for the approach of the aliens, or any sounds they might be making anywhere in this ship. It was dead quiet.

I saw what looked like a fancy chrome Christmas tree ornament the size of a garbage truck hanging from a rack overhead. The glass thing like a 500 pound piece of spiral macaroni sticking out from its bottom looked like something a beam would shoot out of, so I figured this was the tractor-beam generator. And what was probably a control panel for it sat seven feet up on the metal wall next to me, its triangular buttons arranged in a Chinese-checkerboard pattern. These and the trippy lit up ceiling were the only things in this big cavernlike corridor that looked at all alien or interesting; otherwise it was pretty stark and bare.

It would of been nice to swim around a little and unwind but there wasn't really enough room in this tub for that. I submerged myself completely, hanging there like a drowned person and just breathing in and out, relieving the aching dryness in my sinuses. After breathing salty sea water full of sand, plankton and the whole chemistry set of human industrial waste this crystal clear water tasted oddly flavorless and flat; but I knew it wouldn't hurt me.

I was already pretty tired from that dolphin ride Ani and I had taken this afternoon when I went through my long fight with the tractor beam, so by now I felt totally wiped out. Achy and sleepy. I let myself rise to the surface and lie floating with my arms outstretched, gazing at the ceiling---which glowed like the purple twilight sky of some far off planet---and just relaxed; grateful to be out of that evil beam.

Not that I wasn’t worried about my predicament. I'd been kidnapped and hauled aboard someone's ship for the second time in a week, and this thing I was sitting in looked too much like a big Pyrex cooking pot for my liking. But after so many weird surprises this vacation I was learning to pace myself on the whole "panic" thing, especially when there wasn't a lot I could do about the situation.

If I'd thought there was a way off this boat I might've tried to climb over the edge of this tub, ease myself to the floor and start crawling. But while I knew I could breathe both air and water, I seriously doubted if I could breathe space. And I might be able to steal some little landing shuttle---if they even had such a thing---but I didn't see myself being able to pilot it back through the Earth's atmosphere and land it, or at least not in once piece...
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Something moving caught my attention from the corner of my eye. I turned and saw a long, low-slung creature sneaking along the base of the corridor's wall. It was like a stretch limo version of an armadillo, with eight or ten short chubby legs spaced evenly along each side. It had a stubby forked tail and little pom-pommed antenna dealies sticking up instead of ears.

Sensing that I was watching it the creature stopped, blinking that one giant red eye at me and sniffing the air, unsure of what to do, its fleshy purple catfish whiskers quivering. I slowly raised my hand at it, in that relaxed I-come-in-Peace way that they say you should do if you ever meet an alien from outer space, and said as gently as I could, “Hello. I'm-”

From the way it reacted I realized this wasn't a member of the crew. It took off like a rat does who expects you to try and smash him with a broom, streaking straight up the wall about twenty feet, to where it just winked out like the Cheshire Cat. It either had its own personal cloaking device or had found some hole to slip into.

“Fine! Be that way,” I mock-pouted, then went back to doing nothing.
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So where were these alien kidnappers of mine? Did they even intend to show themselves to me? Or was I just cargo to them; some animal they'd collected for a zoo back on their homeworld, that they figured wasn't worth talking to? It would sure suck to be stuck sitting here in this hallway for the months or years it took to get to another star system, my only company the tube that came dropping down once a day to feed me flavorless gray goop; that I would name Tooby and have long heartfelt conversations with as I slowly cracked up from loneliness and boredom...

“Hel-l-l-l-o-o-o-o-o?” I called out, “Anybody?”

I wasn't really expecting a response. And not such a loud one, or where it came from; so I kind of eeeek-ed when the voice rang out from inside my head: “COMING! COMING!”

A weird spiky shadow appeared from around the bend in the hallway, growing bigger and weirder looking until what was casting it came slithering into view.

My jaw dropped open and my eyes bugged out; and suddenly this water in my tank might not have been so sparkling pure anymore...

I'd been prepared for the possibility that these space creatures would be very bizarre looking. And my week as a mermaid had gotten me a lot more used to talking with creatures with nasty, lobstery-looking faces or sometimes no face at all. But I never expected my alien abductor to be one of these; a vision from the pits of Hell that I was all too familiar with. And suddenly I was wishing my friend Chiro had never shown me his collection of disgusting Japanese comic books.
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)))==============> AAAAIIIEEEEE!!!
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I'd known Chiro McMillan since third grade, back when he was still going by his real name of Charles. And if he'd been an odd kid back then, in the years since---as he realized he was never going to fit in with his classmates---he'd turned his strangeness into this whole superior social-rebel thing; going around in his big polka-dot bow ties and with that Samurai ponytail poking up from the top of his head.

Although they usually tried to hide it---since they'd always sort of liked him (except for during that short spell when they were convinced that it was him who had talked me into being transgender...) and they wished I could be as good a student as him---there was something about Chiro that made my parents uneasy. And I'll admit there were times when he creeped me out too.

He had this whole filing cabinet full of manga books, all tucked away in plastic sleeves inside manila hanging folders. And though he had some excellent ones, like STEAMGIRL DIRIGIBLE CORPS, the bulk of his collection and those he loved most were all about these monsters that hung out in dank caverns and spooky old abandoned pagodas. Creatures that they rarely showed completely in a single picture---you mostly just saw their tentacles slithering into the panels from every angle---whose main mission in life seemed to be to grab wholesome young Toyko secretaries by the wrists and ankles and do horrible and pornographic things to them as they screamed and sobbed and squirmed.

These comics were labelled ADULTS ONLY on the cover, but whoever shipped them to him obviously didn't check the buyer's age. And to me the plots of all these stories seemed endlessly the same; but Chiro was like a connoisseur of them, with complicated reasons why this one was excellent but this one was just a rip off of YUKI'S NIGHTMARE #4, and how exquisite this artist's use of stipple shading was, and: “Oooooh! Look what it’s doing to her now!”

Chiro confessed to me that he was gay in the eighth grade, and if I didn't tell him about me being Susan right then it was because I hadn't totally sorted my own stuff out yet. But by a half year later I'd finally admitted to myself that these girl feelings of mine were real; and that not only were they not going anywhere, they would need to be acted on if I wanted to have a life that didn't feel disasterously fake and wrong. That I needed to say and to be who I really was, and to face whatever doing that would bring. And so with everything he'd already admitted to me, and how he claimed to be so into “honesty” and “not judging” between friends, he had seemed a logical choice to be the first person I came out to.

And one of the best things about finally being out with him was how it gave me a good defendable reason to just say "NO!", that I DIDN'T want to look at this latest perverted comic book; Because whatever he might get out of them, all they did for me was make me feel disgusted, like they would any normal girl. Which he immediately proceeded to judge me about.

Not about the being-a-girl part. Chiro loved a good transformation story, and found the idea of a person changing something as basic about themself as their sex to be something he could admire (although in that Chiro-ish way of his, which missed the point of what it is to be transgender and turned it into some adventure in mutant living that I'd set off on for some mad-scientist type reason...). What Chiro was disappointed in me for was that the girl I'd come out as was such a “typical, boring and hung-up” one that I didn't see anything brilliant about these comics of his, but DID see something revoltingly anti-woman in them.

Which as obvious as this seems (You just had to look at a few of them; how typically the victim's "nobody-home" expression shows she's reached a point where she would welcome death, but no such luck...) Chiro denied that they were any such thing, using a lot of intellectual blippity-blop about the “Chthulu Mythos” and “atavistic race memory” that I don't think meant anything; and which led us into a big fight that made us each say some very harsh stuff about the other, and ended with me storming out of there yelling “Have fun with your sicko comics!” and us not calling or texting each other in the three weeks since then...

But if I ever do get back home I know I'll get in touch him first thing. Because it was a stupid fight, and weirdo or not he's my oldest friend, and my best guy friend. I'm grateful for his encouragement, and for saying I'd make at least as cute of a girl as Marianne Phillips, things that gave me confidence at a time when I really needed some. Plus I'd love to see how he flips out when he finds out I'm a genuine mutant mermaid now!
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None of which has much to do with this story you've been reading, except it explains my whole issue with tentacle monsters, and how remembering that sick artwork in all those comics had cranked my fear way up, even past where it might normally be if you had a slobbering wheezing thing the size of a UPS truck lunging at you in a blur of eyeballs and tentacles- 'This can't be happening! Oh dear God Jesus Mama Mama ..... they're REAL!!'

“AAAAIIIEEEEE!!!” I screamed as I motorboated back away from it, in such a total ridiculous panic that it came as a surprise when a second later I felt my shoulders slam up against the far side of my tank. I was trapped- like the last naked prawn left floating in a bowl of ṕḫo tȭṃ soup!

The monster reared up over me, showing me how much bigger than me it could make itself, those forty or fifty limbs thrashing ferociously! Each of them ended in a heavy bone spike, like the nozzle from a fire hose sharpened to a point. The creature let out a bloodthirsty telepathic roar that went off like a bomb in the center of my brain: “YAAAAAUUUUGGGHH!!!”

I was whimpering, the word spilling out from some unthinking place in me, “Please ...... please ..... please...”

“-TO MEET YOU!” giggled the creature as it relaxed its thrashing arms. It crossed a few of them in front of itself and said,. “OKAY. NOW THAT WE'RE ALL INTRODUCED AND EVERYTHING, WE'D BETTER SLIDE ON OVER TO THE MEDLAB AND GET YOU FIXED UP!”

“What?” I asked, dumbfounded over the fact that I wasn't being molested or digested or both right now.

“I SAID: NOW THAT WE'RE ALL INTRODUCED AND EVERYTHING WE SHOULD GET OVER TO THE MEDLAB AND-”

“No, I- I heard that,” I stammered, still not understanding how me and this nightmare could just be talking. “But I mean like- Introduced? We were? When was this?!”

“ZOWIES! YOUR MEMORY MUST REALLY SUCK! ABOUT TWO SECONDS AGO, IS WHEN. WOULD IT HELP IF I LEFT AND CAME BACK IN? DO ANOTHER TAKE?”

“No that's okay. And ...... Well hi then, pleased to meet you,” I laughed nervously, not convinced this 'introduction' had ever took place, but wanting to be polite. Which is something else they say you need to do if you ever find yourself making 'First Contact' with an alien civilization. You don't want to start things off by calling your visitor from out there a damn liar.

“AND HI THERE YOURSELF, AAAAIIIEEEEE!!!” she said cheerfully. Or it was cheerful until the 'AAAAIIIEEEEE!' part, which was another brain-piercing scream. Except this scream sounded terrified instead of terrifying, and I supposed was a pretty close copy of the scream I'd let out when I thought I was being attacked. She said, “THAT'S A VERY PRETTY NAME BY THE WAY. IT SUITS YOU. YOU LOOK LIKE AN AAAAIIIEEEEE!!!”

I say 'she' and 'her' because when she was speaking and not screaming her telepathic voice sounded like a normal teenage girl’s. A perky, wholesome sounding one, who's on the School Pride Committee or whatever. I laughed, not quite so nervously as before, and let this misunderstanding about my name slide for the time being. What was one more in my growing collection of names? Smiling up at the part I took to be her head I said, “Well thank you. And what was your name again? I swear, I'm just terrible with names...”

“YAAAAAUUUUGGGHH!!!” she roared, but I was prepared for it this time. And again when she explained, “IT'S SHORT FOR YYYYAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAA-AAAAAAA-AAAAAA-AAAAA-RRRRRRRR-AAAAAAA-UUUUUUUUUUU-GGGGGGGG-HHHHHHHHHH-AAAAAAOOO-UUUUUURRRRAUGH-AAAAGHHHZOZZ!!!!!!”

By the time I met the rest of the crew and learned all their names, and with all those sudden RRAAAAHHR's and UUUUURGGH's punctuating the conversation, I would wind up having a pretty good headache going. And so if you don't mind, I'm just going to call her Yaugh from here on...

Yaugh's head-part looked like a purple artichoke the size of a beach ball, with no nose or mouth on it but an eye on each of the fleshy petal things that covered it, peeking out in every direction except straight down, where her neck was. The fact that these eyes were so totally normal and human looking (actually closer to what a regular person has than my big Bambi-lashed mermaid ones...) somehow made this head look even more disturbing- like someone had mixed human and artichoke DNA together just to see what they would get. The head bounced and bobbed on top of a flexible neck like a stack of pink sweaty tricycle tires that led down to her body, which seemed to be about the size of a refrigerator, although it was hard to see inside the squirming mass of purple tentacles.

“I take it you're not from around here,” I said.

“NO, WE'RE FROM A LITTLE PLANET A COUPLE DOZEN LIGHTYEARS...” she pointed with a tentacle, “THAT WAY.”

“That's quite a ways. What's it called?” I asked, expecting to get screamed at again.

“I'M NOT EVEN TRYING TO KEEP TRACK AT THIS POINT. THEY CHANGE IT ABOUT EVERY OTHER WEEK. I KNOW IT'S BEEN CALLED 'EARTH' A FEW TIMES...”

“Wow, what a coincidence! You're kidding.”

“NO, I'M YAAAAAUUUUGGGHH!!! THEY WERE ALL EXCITED ABOUT CALLING IT MATLOCK LAST TIME I WAS THERE, BUT THAT WAS SIX MONTH AGO. WHO KNOWS WHAT IT'LL BE NAMED BY THE TIME WE GET BACK?”

“All that changing it must get confusing for your people,” I said.

“YES, AND IT'S WOOOONDERFUL!” she sighed, a sound like happy little air bubbles in my brain.

Just talking to Yaugh was putting me at ease. Her attitude and tone of voice were about as far from sinister and evil as you could get. There was something kind of flighty and unfocused about her, but anyone this chipper, who liked to giggle and laugh so much and was on the School Pride Committee couldn't be a bad person. Could they?
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)))==============> ZOOM-ZOOM
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Yaugh wrapped the ends of several of her limbs around the massive shopping cart handle on one end of the tank I sat in. I noticed that none of her tentacles had those lines of ugly rubbery sucker things running down them, like squids and octopuses have (or that Chiro's tentacle monsters put to such godawful uses, like clamping a great big one right down over your struggling face). It made her seem a bit less intimidating, despite how any one of these arms could crush you like an anaconda or run you through with its boney spike.

And now I saw that these spikes were actually a sort of claw, as one of them popped open into three long pointy fingers---like some alien kind of needle nose pliers---that she used to press one of the triangular button set in the long handlebar. Through the tank's clear bottom I could see the oversized black hockey pucks it rested on begin to glow, turning a bright candy red, and the whole thing rose into the air about twelve inches.

“OKAY LET'S GO,” she said.

“Sure. And where exactly are we going-WHOAH!”

I didn't expect her to take us from 0 to 60 in about four seconds. And the water in my tank hadn't been expecting it either. There was an impressive tsunami around me that left about a third of it back on the floor under the tractor beam thing...

As I got myself pointed rightside-up in the water I asked her “Are you nuts?!”

“I'M STONE FLIPPITY BONKERS. HOW ABOUT YOU?”

“I'm getting there,” I gulped as we zigzagged through the forest of crates piled into haphazard towers that filled the next stretch of the hallway; Yaugh barreling along, oblivious to the wild way this bowl-thing I was riding in was whipping around behind her, having one near miss after another (like that Star Wars Pod Racer ride they used to have at Disney World, until that third lawsuit over a kid getting decapitated...).

Looking up at the stacks of crates looming all around us, it was clear that these aliens could have used some tips on basic box stacking. Starting with the notion that the biggest crates should go on the bottom and the little tiny ones go on the top, not the other way around...

“Do you always run around here this fast?” I asked.

“ACTUALLY, FOR THE TIME AND TEMERATURE WE'RE AT, WITH MARS IN RETROGRADE, SAGITTARIUS RISING AND CANCER IN REMISSION, THIS IS KIND OF SLOW,” said Yaugh. “DO YOU WANT TO GO FAST? I CAN GO REAL FAST!”

“No, this is a good speed. In fact a little slower might even be better...”

“OKAY,” she said, and took one of her running legs out of commission, which slowed down by about a mile per hour, if that, and left me still cringing in one direction and then the other at a series of close calls.

We were nearly out of the crate forest when our luck finally ran out and my tank rebounded off one of the stacks. It went leaning out, surprisingly slow at first, as Yaugh shouted: “TIM-BURRRRR!”

From the riot of crashing sounds behind us the stack we'd toppled knocked over at least one other, which started a whole falling-dominoes thing. One big tumbling and jumping crate the size of a cargo container was chasing us for a while (“Faster, Yaaaaauuuuggghh! Faster!” ~ “BUT YOU JUST SAID TO GO SLOWER...”) until it finally started to fall behind. I was about to take a deep breath of relief over this when we rounded the next stretch of the curving hallway and I saw what was coming at us!

There was this four foot diameter glass pipe stretching across the corridor with an ugly bubbling yellow-green glowing liquid sloshing and foaming through it. The stuff looked horribly toxic and corrosive, and probably radioactive too. It was idiotic to have this tube hanging so low across this hallway, like putting a brick wall across an expressway. I didn't see how we could possibly pass under it.

“Slow down!” I hollered.

“YOU REALLY NEED TO MAKE UP YOUR MIND ABOUT THIS FASTER/SLOWER STUFF! NOBODY LOVES A BACKSEAT DRIVER,” Yaugh called back, and I think even sped up a little. She was going to run us right into it!

But then without breaking stride, and with a noise like several out-of-tune accordions she contracted her neck and the whole tentacled mass of her spread out and squashed itself flat---like there wasn't a bone in her anywhere---so that she slipped under the pipe easily. Which left the top foot or so of my container on its collision course with this tube full of burbling ook! I dove as deep as I could in the shallow water and waited for the explosion of shattering glass that would send that stuff pouring down on me, to probably melt the flesh right off my bones!

But at the last possible instant she clicked the handlebar controls with her claw fingers twice, shutting off the antigravity disks for a heartbeat and then back on; so that the cart landed heavy and slid with a harsh scraping noise, clearing the tube by about the thickness of a sheet of paper, and then bounced back into the air on the other side.

Ordinarily I would be giving any person who has attempted a damnfool stunt like that a good sized piece of my mind. But since Yaugh wasn't a person, I couldn't say if what she'd done was as reckless as it seemed, or if her alien reflexes and vision really were that good, and I had no grounds for worrying or whining. It was frustrating, and in a way I couldn't recall being frustrated before...

This whole extraterrestrial encounter had me facing more unknowns than I'd ever been forced to deal with at one time before; things I couldn't even begin to guess about. It gave me a weird feeling of powerlessness, like I was still drifting around in that tractor beam with nothing to hold onto.

The one thing I could say for sure was how exhausted I felt, as the jolt of alertness those near-collisions had given my mind faded. Watching the complicated dance of Yaugh's tentacles all weaving around each other was strangely hypnotic. And the rhythms of the wet splopping sound they made as they slapped and slid on the floor. I yawned, thinking about my seashell bed back at the castle, stuffed with the finest angel hair kelp. And about my other bed, at our house down in Dover, with the new quilt bedspread my Mom and I had picked out a few weeks ago...

Remembering that trip to JC Penny with her made me smile. I'd wanted a pretty one, a feminine one; and for the first time I didn't have to pretend otherwise; to figure out which would be the best compromise between that “Tea Rose” set I fell in love with and something that looked all gender neutral and empty of personality. And Mom said the quilt was a good choice, frilly without being overdone or too little-girlish about it, one that I probably wouldn't come to decide is stupid in a few years.

But right now I would settle for just about any kind of bed. I felt like I could sleep for a month.
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)))==============> FUNOLOGY 101
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We were certainly headed somewhere in a hurry. In this lull between disasters I asked her again, “So where did you say we're going to?”

“TO THE LAB. THE MEDLAB.”

“Oh that's right. Why?”

“TO GRANT YOU YOUR REQUEST, SILLY!”

“Request?”

“WOW, YOUR MEMORY REALLY IS SHOT TO PIECES! WHAT DID YOU DO TO IT?”

“Well I am pretty tired.”

“WHAT YOU SAID TO US WHEN YOU WERE SITTING DOWN ON THAT ROCK. I HOPE YOU AT LEAST REMEMBER BEING THERE,” she snickered.

“Oh that request.”

“YES! YOU SANG THAT NESTING RHYME ABOUT STELLAR MAGNITUDES AND OBSERVATION SEQUENCE, AND TOLD US HOW YOU WERE MISERABLE AND WANTED TO BE A LANDGIRL INSTEAD OF A FISHGIRL...” she said. She'd raised a few of the tentacles along either side of her and was clicking their claws open and shut in no particular of rhythm, for no apparent reason.

“You heard all that?”

“HOW COULD WE NOT HEAR IT?! YOU BEAMED IT STRAIGHT AT US, HACKING INTO OUR PSIONIC LINK. AT FIRST I THOUGHT IT WAS ONE OF THE FELLAS MESSING AROUND. GAAAAAAAHHH!!!” she screamed, “OR MAYBE UUUUUURRRGG!!! A COUPLE OF REAL URKELZOIDS, THOSE TWO! BUT WHEN WE REALIZED IT WAS COMING FROM OFFSHIP WE DID A PSI-SCAN AND FOUND YOU. BUT HOW DID YOU KNOW WE HAD A TRANSMORPHOTRON ON BOARD THAT WE COULD CHANGE YOU WITH?”

“I didn't. I thought I was wishing on a star,” I said.

“WISHING ON A STAR,” she repeated, clickity-clacking her built-in castanets as she mulled it over. “IS THAT A FUN THING TO DO? OH HERE, LET'S TAKE THE SHORTCUT!”

We veered in through a small doorway ======>

////// and were zipping through a room where a bunch of big machines were lurching back and forth, smashing themselves to bits with these sledgehammer-things on springs that seemed to be a part of them, and then veered out through another door ======>

\\\\\\ back into what I'm pretty sure was the same hallway. I shook my head---What the hell was THAT?!!---and told her, “Sort of fun, I guess. I was sitting there on that rock with no real place to go, and ....... well mostly I was just killing time.”

“YOU CAN KILL TIME?!” she gasped, her chattering claws going into overdrive, “WOW! I'M IMPRESSED!”

“That's just a figure of-”

“AND CAN YOU KILL SPACE TOO? I MEAN WOULDN'T THAT BE FUN?! BIG FUN, ON A COSMOLOGIC SCALE! WE USED TO BE ABLE TO DO STUFF LIKE THAT, UNTIL WE LOST THE REMOTE. IT'S FUN TO HAVE FUN, DON'T YOU THINK?”

“Yes. I like to have fun,” I said, trying keep my annoyance with this nonsense she was babbling out of my voice. I was definitely starting to get a headache here.

In that place inside my brain she was practically shouting now, “I KNEW IT! I KNEW THERE WAS A FUN PERSON UNDER THAT MOPEY OLD WISH! ME, I LOVE TO HAVE FUN! LIKE ANY OF US FROM THE-PLANET-POSSIBLY-BUT-NOT-LIKELY-TO-BE-STILL-KNOWN-AS-MATLOCK, FOR THE PAST FIFTY-THREE YEARS OUR WHOLE PHILOSOPHY HAS COME DOWN TO THE IDEA THAT LIFE SHOULD BE AS MUCH FUN AS POSSIBLE! FUN IS OUR CREED, OUR CODE, OUR IRREDUCTIBLE RUBBER DUCKY, WHICH WE ARE TOTALLY MENTAL OVER! YOU COULD SAY WE'RE FUN-DA-MENTALISTS, HAR HAR. NO BUT SERIOUSLY, FOLKS-”

I didn't tell her so, but to me this 'creed' of theirs sounded pretty bogus. Like what people believe in when they don't believe in anything except doing whatever they want.

Then again, I supposed that to care only about your own amusement was better than some of the ugly beliefs people seemed to fall into. Like terrorists, so worked up about whatever that they blow up themselves and whoever they can take with them. Or certain distant relatives of mine, who my folks and I were more than happy to keep distant, that were just nasty hateful self-righteous jerks who had failed every chance we'd gave them to prove otherwise...

And besides, what I was assuming she meant when she said the word 'fun' might not be what Yaugh herself actually meant it to mean. This happens between different languages and cultures on Earth, and she was from a whole 'nother planet, where this short little word might have several different shades of meaning on top of the ones us Earthlings usually give it, that get lost in translation. So finally I said, “I guess there's worse things you could have as your philosophy.”

“BY KOJAC!” she barked, “I KNEW YOU'D UNDERSTAND! AFTER ALL, YOU'RE FROM THE PLANET THAT'S THE FUN CAPITAL OF THE UNIVERSE!”

“It is?”

“WELL OF COURSE IT IS! EARTH IS THE SOURCE OF ALL OUR ADVANCEMENT AND ENHANCEMENT OVER THIS PAST HALF A CENTURY, AND THE VIOLENT OVERTHROW OF OUR ENTIRE WAY OF THINKING, PRAISE GODFREY!”

“Your people visited Earth before?”

“NO NOT UNTIL NOW. BUT WE DIDN'T HAVE TO, YOU CAME TO US. FIRST THE RADIO WAVES, AND THEN ABOUT THE TIME WE BEGAN DECODING YOUR LANGUAGES-MADE-OF-SOUND, THOSE FIRST TELEVISION SHOWS FROM HERE. BEFORE WE WERE BEWITCHED BY THAT GUIDING LIGHT FROM YOUR WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR, THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES WERE JUST LOST IN SPACE! BUT EARTH, THAT BONANZA OF GOOD TIMES, IT REALLY HELPED US GET SMART!”

It surprised me that instead of looking down on our polluted war-torn planet like we were the hillbilly lowlifes of the universe, these aliens---so super-advanced they had faster-than-light travel and “gravity management”---seemed to think we had something to teach them. They actually admired us! But I had this hunch nagging at me, that there was something weird and wrong about this. I asked her, “You realize most of those shows are just stories, right? They're not like 'historical documents' or anything...”

This amused her. “WELL, DUH!”

“Just making sure.” I said.

“BUT REALLY, ALL THAT QUIBBLING OVER WHAT'S REAL AND WHAT'S FICTION, THAT'S MORE LIKE OLD US. AND WHAT'S SO SAD, IN A FUN KIND OF WAY, IS HOW 'EVOLVED' WE THOUGHT WE WERE. I MEAN SURE WE HAD PEACE AND PROSPERITY, GREAT WISDOM AND MULTIVERSAL HEALTH CARE ....... BUT WE COULDN'T ENJOY ANY OF IT, ENSLAVED AS WE WERE BY CONCEPTS LIKE 'LOGIC' AND 'TRUTH', AND ALL THOSE OTHER BUZZKILLS THAT IT WAS SO BUBBLICIOUS TO FINALLY BE RID OF!”

“I admit I'm no expert on all this heavy what's-real-and-how-should-you-think-about-it stuff; but, um..... don't you kind of need those?”

'THAT'S A GOOD ONE!” she said when she finally stopped laughing, “BUT LIKE I SAY---AND SAD AS IT IS TO ADMIT---WE WERE STRICTLY FROM DEAD AIR! SO DULL AND SERIOUS ABOUT EVERYTHING WE MADE THE ALGOREANS---WHO EVERYONE SAYS ARE THE MOST BORING RACE IN THE GALAXY---SEEM LIKE A BUNCH OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED PARTY ANIMALS ON SPRING BREAK IN THE TAKE-YOUR-PANTS-OFF NEBULA GOING 'WAHOOOO!' WITH THEIR HAIR ON FIRE...”

“Wow,” I giggled, wondering how much of that image was things that actually happened.

“YOU BET YOUR LIFE! AND WE WOULD STILL BE THAT WAY TODAY IF WE HADN'T BEEN EXPOSED TO THOSE DEMIGODS OF THE AETHER ...... BERLE ...... KOVACS ...... AND THE MIGHTY CAESAR HIMSELF.”

“Who's that?” I asked.

She laughed. “YOU ARE GOOD, YOU KNOW THAT?”

“No I mean it. I don't know who those people are.”

“GREAT WHEEL OF FORTUNE!! WHAT ARE THEY TEACHING YOU IN THOSE SCHOOLS DOWN THERE?" she yelled, and launched into a speech that was even more baffling than one of Chiro's lectures, but I listened politely because it seemed important to her, “WHY, THEY'RE ONLY THE GREATEST REALITICIANS OF YOUR GOLDEN AGE, THAT'S WHO! THE THREE WHO LED US TO THE REVOLUTION IN POSTNORMALIST CONCEPTING WHICH HAS MADE US WHO WE ARE TODAY. E.G.: HOW A DOOR MIGHT NOT BE A DOOR, BUT AJAR! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE IMPLICATIONS? A THING THAT IS NOT ITSELF?”

“Oh sure,” I lied. It just seemed easier to pretend. Less chance of sending this conversation off into some tangent that was even more confusing...

“BUT OF COURSE YOU DO! AND NOWADAYS WE TEND TO TAKE AXIOMS LIKE THIS FOR GRANTED. TO FORGET JUST HOW LIBERATING THOSE FIRST SIMPLE SUBVERSIONS OF LINEAR IDEATION WERE. LIKE CRACKS IN THE PRISON WALL, GROWING BIGGER AS WE PICKED AT THEM, HUNGERING FOR THAT STRANGE LIGHT WE SAW SHINING THROUGH ...... UNTIL THE CRACKS BECAME A GATEWAY, BRINGING US ALL INTO THE GLORIOUS NEW LAND OF HEURISTIC RELATIVITY, AND A MUCH, MUCH FUNNER WAY TO BE! AND FOR THAT, MY FINNY FRIEND, TO YOU AND YOUR WORLD WE ARE VERY, INCREDIBLY, STUPENDOUSLY AND ETERNALLY GRATEFUL!”

“Glad we were able to help,” I said, having understood the grateful part at least.

“IT'S NOT FOR NOTHING THAT WE NAMED OUR PLANET AFTER YOURS THOSE TIMES, AND FOR ALL I KNOW MIGHT HAVE AGAIN. AND SO OUR MISSION HERE TODAY WAS OUR WAY OF SHOWING OUR GRATITUDE. OF PAYING BACK SOME OF THE FUN YOU SHOWED US HOW TO MANIFEST!”

I didn't liked the way this hallway had been narrowing---didn't trust this place to make sense enough that my tank wouldn't get hopelessly stuck---but thankfully it was starting to open up again.

It was these odd changes in this hall's architecture that which kept me from suspecting we were just travelling in circles. And also the way the lighted ceiling kept changing color. Changes which, weirdly enough, you never noticed as they happened or saw them coming down the hall toward you but would glance up and realize it was orange now and had been for a while. But where the heck was this “medlab”? This was taking forever!

“So what's this mission you came to Earth?” I asked.

“OH, WE SCRUBBED THAT...”

“Scrubbed what?” I asked, for some reason picturing all these gigantic soapy brushes scrubbing our planet and cleaning up our pollution.

“THAT MISSION. WE'RE NOT DOING THAT ONE NOW,” she said, shrugging like a bunch of people doing the wave, “BECAUSE WHEN WE HEARD YOU SITTING ALL ALONE DOWN THERE AND CALLING OUT TO US, YOU WERE OBVIOUSLY IN SUCH AN UNFUNULOUS STATE OF MIND THAT WE DECIDED TO MAKE YOU OUR PROJECT INSTEAD. IF THERE'S ONE THING YOUR TRANSMISSIONS HAVE TAUGHT US, IT'S THAT A FRESH, BOLD, ZESTY, NEW-AND-IMPROVED IDEA IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN ONE THAT'S BEEN LAYING AROUND GETTING STALE A WHILE. AND AFTER OUR SIX MONTH TRIP OPERATION BOX OFFICE SMASH WAS DEFINITELY LOSING ITS CRUNCH.”

“Box Office Smash? So you were making a movie?”

“NOT QUITE! WE WERE DOING THE LIVE VERSION WITH---GIGGLE! GIGGLE!---AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION.”

“Well that sounds like fun,” I said; Although it seemed to me if they were really grateful to us they really would scrub our environment clean, or bring us the cure for cancer or something. But maybe to them these sorts of gifts would seem too practical to be any fun, like when your aunt sends you socks and underwear for Christmas.

“I'M SURE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN, IN A SIX-MONTHS-AGO SORT OF WAY. CENTRAL COMMAND WILL BE SURPRISED WE'VE MADE SUCH A HUGE CHANGE IN PLANS, BUT THEY DID SEND US OUT HERE TO BE ARTISTS, AND I KNOW THEY'LL BE ABLE TO LISTEN TO UNREASON! ESPECIALLY ONCE WE BRING THEM UP TO SPEED ON THE LAST TWENTY-THREE YEARS OF EARTH CULTURE. THEY'RE SO OUT OF IT, THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT THIS GLORIOUS THING THAT'S IN STORE FOR THEM CALLED REALITY TV.”

“Why not? Oh, right .... Television only goes at the speed of light.”

“AND THEN I'M SURE THEY'LL SEE THAT WHAT HELPING YOU WITH YOUR STAR WISH MIGHT LACK IN FLASHBANG AND DAZZLE IT MAKES UP FOR IN PURE EFFORTLESS FEELGOOD MAWKISHNESS...”

My star wish. All of her screaming and talking in idiot riddles, and even this lunatic ride I was on suddenly seemed like a very small price to pay, if they were willing to do that for me. “And this machine of yours, it can really make me human?”

“PROBABLY. OR SOMETHING INTERESTING ANYWAY. WE'LL HAVE TO BIO-SCAN YOU FIRST TO MAKE SURE.”

“Please do that. And if it works, you'll be taking me home after?”

“THAT WAS PART OF THE WISH, RIGHT? TO BE HOME WITH KITH AND KIN- WHOEVER KITH IS. TWO THIRTY SEVEN SPINNAKER COVE LANE, DOVER, DELAWARE, ONE NINE NINE OH ONE, IF WE READ YOUR MEMORY CORRECTLY.”

Incredible! This was everything I'd been praying for back on that rock, when the future had seemed so hopeless for me that it felt like the sun was setting not just out there on the ocean but inside me too. And then when I got abducted and whisked off into space, it made the chances of me ever getting home seem even less likely. So maybe that hadn't been real real star, granting my wish with real magic, but it seemed awfully close to that.

And now that this hope was being dangled in front of me I just wanted all this to be over with; becoming Susan physically as well as in my heart and mind, and to be back with my folks again. I wasn't just impatient, I was paranoid. Of yet another bizarre complication coming along to add whole new chapters to this odyssey I was on. Like this falling into a black hole, going back in time and crash landing us in the days of the dinosaur. Or a humongous cube-shaped oil refinery of a spaceship pulls up alongside of us and starts telling us that we'd been drafted into their gang's-all-here collective, that our I-don't-wanna is irrelevant and resistance is futile-

Suddenly, in the wall alongside us I saw something that made me yell, “Holy Frickin' Crap! WHAT'S THAT?!”

“WHAT'S WHAT?”

“THAT!!” I shouted, pointing at this big huge entryway like you might tow a passenger jet out of, and what l saw on the other side of it. Something so mysterious and amazing that it made me hollar, “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! STOPPPPP!!”
.

.
)))==============> INSTALLATION PIECE
.

Instantly all her tentacles froze into place wherever they were at, and we slid to a stop so sudden that the water in my tank lurched forward and over the rim, giving Yaugh a big splooshy bath and lowering the water's level by another third.

Beyond the big rectangular doorway was a dark space like a warehouse, full of what seemed to be lavender hula hoops that hung in the air glowing. These spinning, levitating hoops were in columns, each hoop about two feet above the one below it, that went all the way up to the shiny black ceiling. There were about 50 hoops to each column, and hundreds of columns standing in a perfect grid---like ranks of soldiers on Marvin the Martian's parade ground---that seemed to go back forever. They hummed faintly as they spun; a sleepy, peace sound. If I stumbled across this in an art museum---one of those whole room sculptures they have---I'd feel like my $3.50 student admission fee had been money well spent from just this alone, and anything else I saw in there that day that I liked would be gravy...

“PRETTY, HUH?” asked Yaugh.

“They're beautiful! Is this your star-drive?” I asked. I could imagine a technology that let you break the speed limit of the universe being something as exotic looking as this.

“NOBODY CAN LOOK AT THE STAR DRIVE. I MEAN YOU COULD, BUT THEN YOU'D FALL INTO A PSYCHIC SINGULARITY AND NEVER THINK ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE AGAIN. NO, THIS IS JUST OUR ARMORY.”

“Armory,” I said. If these were weapons I couldn't imagine what sort of weapons. Bombs? Brain melting sound weapons? Or maybe they just sliced right through anything in their path, no matter how big or what it was made out of. I told her, “That sure is a lot of ....... hoops. What do you need them all for?”

“I GUESS WE DON'T...”

“That's good to hear,” I nodded. Very good, in light of the crazy paranoid idea that had been forming the back of my mind, about why a spaceship would have come to Earth with so many weapons.

Yaugh had been absent-mindedly clicking a half dozen claws the way she did, like some nervous habit she wasn't even aware she was doing, when all at once they fell silent. “UH-OH! SOMEBODY IS IN THE WORST PLACE HE COULD POSSIBLY BE.”

I looked around that big hangar space but didn't see anyone. “Who is?”

She didn't point but just whispered, “SIXTH COLUMN FROM THE LEFT WALL, SEVEN ROWS IN FROM THE DOOR.”

I counted over and back to find where she meant. A ten-legged animal like the one I'd seen earlier was creeping across the floor between the stacks of floating hoops. Very sneakily, like the little guy knew he was in real danger. It took him a whole minute to move another twelve feet toward us. If he saw or was afraid of us he was even more scared to be where he was.

When he was four rows from the door he decided the best thing to do would be to make a mad break for it.

Mistake. Even with as fast as these critters could run, he hadn't even got to the next row of columns when one of the glowing hoops broke formation and swooped down on him, like a fighter plane on a strafing run. The lavender hoop flashed bright red in time to the pulsing red beam that shot out of the front edge of it for less than a second, which hit the creature right in the eyeball and made him instantly collapse into a pile of ash. The hoop climbed and banked and circled back to its column, slipping into its gap like it had never been gone from there.

“POOOOR LITTLE ARMADECAPEDE,” moaned Yaugh miserably. Then she announced in a voice that through some weird trick of telepathy wasn't like any voice I'd ever heard before, and which I guess was suppose to be comical from how she started laughing right after: “HE SAW THE LlIIIIIGGHHT!”

Which might have been a good pun if that had happened to a really despicable villian in some movie. But her telling it about this cute little animal having his life snuffed out right in front of us didn't strike me as one bit funny.

It's not like I go around looking for animal-cruelty issues to get all upset and righteous over, but I am pretty much of a spoilsport when it comes to laughing at death and suffering; and people who do this are usually the kind of people I don't want to know.

Also, maybe it's sexist of me to stereotype like this, but that sort of humor always struck me as being mainly a “guy thing”, part of whatever it was that made them compete to see who could act the most heartless about things that if they were alone would (or I would hope they would) provoke some sympathy. So it was especially disappointing to find out that Yaugh, being a girl, was into messed-up emotional garbage like that. She carried on laughing for some time, with her tentacles flying all over in a way that made me wonder how she didn't poke an eye out with one of her claw spikes.

“Ha ....... Ha.” I said flatly. But my sarcasm either went over her head or didn't seem worth responding to.

She grabbed hold of my tank's handle and whisked me past the big doorway and off down the hall, leaving more water behind so that now it it was like I was sitting in some little kid's wading pool with my tail out in front of me.

She chuckled, “WELL THAT WAS BUNCHES OF FUN, BUT WE'VE GOT THINGS TO DO BEFORE WE MAKE TYCHO.”

“It wasn't much fun for him though. Now was it?” I asked, not willing to let what happened back there drop. I really wanted for her to at least admit ......... Well I wasn't sure what. But I'd know it when I heard it.

“HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?”

“What are you asking me?” I shot back, treating it like the totally stupid question it was. “How do I know it wasn't fun for him?! Well gee, I don't know ....... Maybe because he died?! Huh?! Do ya THINK?!”

“HAVE YOU EVER DIED BEFORE?”

“Well I-” I thought about the night I drowned, and had to admit, “No, not completely.”

“THEN HOW CAN YOU SAY YOU WOULDN'T LIKE IT?” she asked, sounding totally serious about this.

I would of been willing to accept her being somewhat coldblooded about killing the armadillo-thing if it turned out they were some kind of disease carrying space vermin, just like humans don't go out of their way to spare the lives of cockroaches and don't hold memorial services for them. And as mermaids, well, the whole ocean was one big predatory food cycle and you did what you had to. But saying that something had FUN when you killed it?! Please.

“Whatever,” I sighed. Either she was trying to yank my chain or Yaugh really was as 'stone bonkers' as she'd bragged about, and not just in some cutely eccentric way. Neither one of which I wanted to talk to right now...
.

.
)))==============> ARE WE THERE YET?
.

This second leg of our trip didn't take as long as the first half but it still took a while. There was one scary part worth mentioning,when I looked up and noticed we were about to fall into a huge square hole like an elevator shaft in the hallway's floor ahead of us.

At its edge, those alternating stripes of light and darkness down there showed that it went down at least ten stories. I screamed!

Yaugh sprang and leapt, sailing across it with my fishbowl chariot flying behind her like Santa's sleigh. Halfway across she asked, “WHO'S THIS 'D'YA-HAAAAAUGH!!'? SOME FRIEND OF YOURS?”

“Yeah, friend of mine,” I grunted as she hit the floor on other side running. “I uh ...... I thought I saw him back there but it was just an instrument console. Looked just like him, with that big old boxy head of his.”

At the rate we were moving, and from the size the saucer had seemed to be from down below, it seemed like we could have gotten from anyplace on this ship to anywhere else on it a long time ago. It wouldn't surprise me if she really was just going in circles for the “fun” of it, or because it proved that up was down.

Or worse, that this medical lab with its transfabulous transformation machine was just something she hallucinated, or was a big fat lie she was teasing me with. Or maybe some kind of experiment about human behavior, weren't these UFO aliens supposed to be big on stuff like that? Because nothing she'd said to me tonight seemed to have any credibility right now. Or hell, maybe Yaugh was the ship's idiot mascot, and I was just a toy that the ship's real crew had hauled up here to keep her quiet and out of the way...

My headache was in full bloom now. All I wanted was to get off of this crappy ride. And no this wasn't very mature, but I asked her, “Are we there yet?”

And then I asked her, “Are we there yet?”

I asked, “Are we there yet?”

“Are we there yet?”

“Are we there yet?”

“Are we-

“OH YOU'RE IN A HURRY?” she asked with that aggravating unchanging cheerfulness of hers, “HERE, LET'S TAKE THE SHORTCUT!”

And we swerved and zipped toward a round door that shuttered open for us just in time, as we slipped through it and into ======>

////// We were streaking through a shining bubble of space with a door at the other end, heading toward what I figured was our own reflection coming toward us out there in the shininess. But as they passed by us, when that other Enomena sitting in her mostly empty fish tank turned and waved, and I I didn't do this, I realized they weren't us. Or not this same us that we were.

And what the hell was she so happy about; smiling and waving like some ditzy gold-haired bimbo riding a parade float?

This isn't something I'm in the habit of doing, but as ticked off about things in general as I was, it felt good when I raised both fists and gave dumb little MISS SEAWEED FESTIVAL 2010 and her tentacle monster friend the finger with them both.

The door on the room's far side spiralled open for us ======>

////// and we popped back into regular time and space. This time I was sure we were back in the same hallway.

Stone flippity bonkers. I was starting to wonder if the word “shortcut” meant the same thing on their world as it does on Earth. And if not, then what? "Room where crazy stuff happens for no reason whatsoever" would be my guess...
.

.
)))==============> ASSIMILATE THIS!
.

Suddenly a voice that wasn't Yaugh's was talking in the middle of my head. A male voice that was asking, “HEY FEARLESS LEADER, WHERE YOU AT?”

Obviously he was talking to Yaugh. I heard her answer, quite loud, as if her telepathy-voice had to carry some distance, “DON'T WORRY. WE'RE ON OUR WAY. YOU GUYS JUST MEET US AT THE MEDLAB.”

“OKEE DOKEY, YAAAAAUUUUGGH-IE! WE'LL BE THERE, WITH PROPELLERS ON! HEY, IS THE FISH GIRL GIVING YOU ANY TROUBLE?”

“NO, SHE'S FUN. YOU'LL LIKE HER.”

“WELL CUZ YOU BEEN GONE A WHILE,” said the crewman mopily.

“DON'T WORRY, WE'RE ALMOST THERE,” she told them. “TELL YOU WHAT- WE'LL TAKE THE SHORTCUT!”

“No...” I groaned, thumping my forehead against the glass wall of my tank. We swerved, and bumped through these inward swinging double doors with the half-moon windows in them, and =====>

////// It was a big fancy ballroom out of some other era, with chandeliers overhead and tobacco smog in the air, where a lot of human couples in 1930's or was it 40's style fancy dress were dancing to the buttery smooth dance music being churned out by the big band up on the bandstand there. And when everybody stopped dancing and I sensed a kind of commotion in the air I thought it was because of the artichoke headed alien and the bare-breasted mermaid in the fishbowl they'd noticed cutting a path through the middle of them, because I knew they weren't very into diversity back in those days and probably didn't like us non-humans even being there...

But then I saw over by those tables that had everyone who wasn't dancing sitting around them, these two Borg like from Star Trek, looking really out of place with all the tubes and gizmos all over them, marching clumsily along oblivious to everything but Captain Picard, who was sitting at one of the tables looking all debonaire in a white tuxedo, talking out of the side of his mouth to some dudes who were obviously old time gangsters, when he suddenly jerked to his feet holding an old Thompson machine gun and started blasting away at the Borg, screaming like a total murdering crazy man!

It was like something from one of those movie studio theme parks they have in Orlando, except that Yaugh and I seemed to be the only tourists here. I wondered if this whole room was a holographic simulation---just like it had been in the movie I recalled this scene being from---or if maybe my aliens had kidnapped the actor Patrick Stewart and were making him act this scene out for some reason; or whether all this wasn't something even stranger than that; built completely out of my dreams and memories, so that what Yaugh was seeing might have been completely different than what I saw (This would explain why she was singing what she was under her telepathic breathe; a whimsical, bouncy little tune about PINK ELEPHANTS ON PARADE that hardly seemed to go with the deadly gun battle I was watching; all “Hibbity-bob! Hibbity-bob!" and "Rumpity dumpity doo!”). And then we were zipping through the door on the far side of the ballroom and into ======>

////// Not into the same old hallway like I expected, but a big room of highly scientific equipment, where we skidded to a tank draining stop as Yaugh's tentacles once again locked into place!

And where my legs and other parts I wanted were waiting to be created for me; and I was about to meet a bunch of aliens that were even sillier than Yaugh was.

.

NEXT: STRAIGHT TO THE MOON, ALICE

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