Alien Bangs in: Self Service

The little ship dipped through the vacuum of space, avoiding all the potholes. Those didn't usually occur out here in the untraveled places. With the current galactic traffic, Alien Bangs decided against visiting the Morgue System, opting instead to do a little scouting work. This was an arm of the galaxy with the old trade routes, long dormant. Alien need only drift and perform scans for old satellites or ancient ships for a Melnan week, and the historians would pay her a modest fee in Resbelian gold.

“Simple dimple,” Alien cheerfully remarked. Alone and adrift in space though she was, Alien was of a chatty race known for speaking many of their thoughts out loud. This was one of the reasons most other races actively avoided Durmots. Legends say that the first Durmotic diplomats had caused the Argrista Empire to collapse under the weight of a single, thoughtlessly spoken truth.

“Luminiferous aether!” Alien squeaked, as the ship suddenly jolted. “But what was that? Potholes, indeed-a-leed!”

Durmots resembled most bipedal species found scattered throughout the galaxy. One of the big differences, however, were the little pincers that hung from their hairline like two pointy bangs of hair. Rather than the insect-like pincers they resembled, they possessed electrical properties, directly linked to the brain of the Durmot. With a little mental effort, they could manipulate and control all sorts of electronics. They were a darker blue than her skin, and a major contrast to her orange hair, and they twitched as she examined her ship's instruments.

“Bloom and blast! This is luminiferous condensation, not aether! Leave it to me to slip into a reality fracture! Oh deary dread, but I must realign the chronosticator and refuel.”

Space travel, long ago, became as mundane as planetary navigation. With all the emptiness, the scenery often left so much to be desired that many Durmots would rather drift through the countryside of one of the homeworlds of the Resbelian High Council, riding pitboggers and scalers through the mountains. Alien Bangs was a rare breed, however, and liked space. She often worked as a troubleshooter for all the troubled peoples of the galaxy. There were many troubles, and work was never lacking. Thus, she was familiar with many of the troubles of modern space travel. Yes, it was very mundane, usually. But there were these rifts that had become more common in the past century. They shifted time and space, causing instrumentation to give the strangest readings. Only the incredible technology of the Durmot kept them from being a severe problem.

And this was nothing more than a pothole, even if a rather large one.

No danger, this! “Now, there's a planet! And a nice, little place, too! Strange, though. Was it there before? Well, better to have a visit somewhere new than scoop up fuel from a dead planet. I'll fuel up here.”

Her ship descended. Durmot shielding caused little friction during atmospheric entry, and she pierced the clouds like a lance, leaving large, white circles of cloud in her wake. The sudden stop above a paved lot was welcomed with a few shouts of wonder from people below.

Looking this way and that, Alien muttered, “Fuel...fuel...”

She noticed a sign in the distance. Squinting at it, she recognized one of the human languages. It was a little ancient, but there were always pockets of traditionalists.

“A very blue planet. A very self-sustaining place! Why, not a single ship is in the sky today! And the vehicles all have wheels! Slippin' bippies, it's all so quaint! Gas...station. My, but that's very quaint indeed-a-leed. Refined fuel? Must be retro engines.”

The following moments might give one the impression that Alien Bangs is, no nice way to put it, a bit of a dunce. In fact, the Durmot are so intelligent, so advanced, and so educated, many of the less advanced races are confounding to them. For instance, Alien Bangs did not consider it rude or intrusive to squeeze her ship under the strange, flat-roofed tent above the fueling zone. One chose one's spot, and gave it little thought, back in her sector of the universe. She had no way to account for the three or four people that were patiently in line for that spot, because she assumed all these vehicles were just as quick and precise as her own ship. To her, it was almost as though they had let her in first, and she wasn't going to turn down the offer.

Her door slid open, and a small staircase extended, quickly solidifying as it formed from the luminiferous aether itself. She stepped down daintily, regarding the humans all around with a curious glance, then taking in the wonder of this fueling station.

“Gas. Gas. Gas! What an old word. Predating the seventeen schisms of Martianized English. I wonder why they use it here? Oh. And what's this? A fuel nozzle? Doesn't seem to work, though. Let's see. Pay here? Hmm...”

Her pincers twitched. She touched the gas stand, and there was an electric hum. Inside the gas station, a surprised employee suddenly heard the speaker click on.

“I don't have this currency. I'll pay inside with Resbelian gold.”

Then, having no understanding of payment etiquette, Alien Bangs gave another twitch of her pincers bending the machine to her will. The meter ticked on. She turned to her ship, waved a hand, and a funnel formed, giving her access to the fuelacious distribulator within. She squeezed the handle on the nozzle, and gave a shriek, stopping suddenly.

“Gribbles of grief! How much do you think I need? Or do these piston-based machines require much more fuel than a Questrian Darter?”

She replaced the nozzle. The meter read: 0.70.

“And now, payment.”

At this point, Alien had become aware that many eyes were upon her. They said that some humans found the Durmot quite attractive, and it pleased Alien very much that she was pleasant to their eyes. For just a moment, her skin turned bright orange in embarrassment, but she opened the door to the gas station, and forgot all about people staring.

“Wow! Truly quaintness has been hardened into luminiferous diamond!”

She spun around, taking in the candy rack, the cash machine, the newspaper stand, and a rack of gift cards.

“Ancient sheen!” She ran around, picking at the things on the racks. “Little packet snacks! High calorie! This one has Earth peanuts! And look at this! But that's plastic, isn't it? Does this planet still manufacture plastics? Fascinations! They say that plastics saved the oceans of ancient Earth from boiling, ages before humans colonized the glorious Red Planet!”

Alien Bangs suddenly gasped, moving to a newsstand like a child in awe. Her shoulders wriggled, and she clenched her fists in excitement. Little gyrations of her ankles made her boots twist in ways that would be quite uncomfortable for less limber human beings.

“News in print, too. The Durmot developed electronic media so quickly in our history that we never had typeset.”

And now, once more, a difference in the Durmot reared its cheerful head. They were quite brilliant, of course, but due to the way their brains used energy, they thought better and more clearly if they were talking and moving their hands about. Sometimes bobbing back and forth helped. In this manner, they always seemed excited about things. They also burned calories like an incinerator.

So it was that Alien Bangs snatched up the newspaper and read, bobbing side to side and checking out the little comic strips, reading the front-page story about a boat accident in...

“The Pacific Ocean? Humans reuse many names, don't they? Now, wait...It's entirely possible...yes, I could definitely be on Earth, now I think of it! Fortuna Lumineris! I'm in that sector! Do they still have such places as this on Earth? Why, what are the odds I landed in such a historic place? Oh, great Fronsic Nebulae, I hope I wasn't supposed to pay for a ticket!”

There were sirens in the distance now. Alien did not think much about them.

“Ah, the old dating system, too! Let me see...2027...I forgot the Ancient Earth to Durmot conversion. Oh! I can use the Resbelian Recursion! Of course! Now, let's see...”

Alien Bangs, math genius, began counting things on her fingers. They weren't real numbers that were popping into her head. The finger counting was nothing more than excitation of her remarkable brain. To the onlookers, she seemed a little idiotic, although that was not at the forefront of anyone's mind, currently.

The sirens were getting louder.

“Hah! A gag newspaper! Why, if this date was correct, it would predate the first human contact with the Melnan, and the first Resbelian contact with the outer Earth colonies. The Melnan and Human ambassadors wouldn't even be aware of Durmotic civilization for centuries before...”

Something inside the head of this rather distracted genius seemed to click, and her skin turned purple-orange briefly.

Carefully, Alien placed the newspaper back on the rack. She turned, slowly, trying to observe the humans now watching her, stock still with expressions of...of...

“Luminiferous aether.” muttered Alien.

Cheeks flushing orange, she marched to the counter and slammed down a cube of Resbelian gold.

“For the gas.” she said, flatly, before walking out the door.

Now the sirens were getting very close, and there was a sound like something chopping away at the air, and closing fast. Alien Bangs walked briskly to her ship, waved a hand, and tapped her foot impatiently as the staircase to her compartment slowly formed. She trotted up, slipped inside, stared out at the people filming her with their little, rectangular communicators, and for a moment she froze up, wondering just how big a mistake she'd made.

Collision sensors on to avoid squashing any humans, Alien slipped out from beneath the big, square canopy, and then her ship shot into the atmosphere and away from the pull of earth so fast that she probably caused a minor gravitational quake.

A quick scan of her surroundings indicated that she was in very, very empty space.

“The Time Command will have my boots over this! Pools of Lumine!”

She tapped her chronosticator feverishly. “Stupid slooner of a gadget! You giggly little parchent masher! Oh, no! I didn't add the coterminal drift! But still, in all the aether, what kind of galactic scarring was that? How did I drop all the way back to primitive Earth? Come on, ship! Scan the closest six systems for chronolateral transference! Oh, poddledops...How much fuel will I need for...and I can't trust my chronosticator! This is why I never time travel! Argh! Luminiferous blazes!”

There was nothing for it, and Alien knew it. She moved a swivel and brought a large, curved bit of glass in front of one eye.

“Time dilations are sensible. Scar healed a little already, but I can't follow the wake. Phasing into the time echo would eat up too much fuel...Oh, my. Curse my doodles! I'm going to have to contact Time Command! Or...”

It wasn't the right thing to think, but Alien Bangs had a bit of a reputation with Time Command already, and had been admonished several times for not keeping her chronosticator in dual references. It's not like she was responsible for all the galactic scarring, but as a member of one of the most advanced races in the universe, there were certain responsibilities that had to be undertaken.

“...I suppose I could build a proper time machine on Earth. If I limit my time movement to....six hundred Earthian years...I won't necessarily be detected by Time Command at all! And if I screw up...I'll get yelled at and sent to live with the elves for a year to do time cleanup. Big whipple! I like the elves, anyway. Yes, let's build a time machine! What could possibly go wrong?”

“Um...Excuse me?”

Alien froze into a perfect statue. In fact, her skin turned a ghastly, stone-white. She did not move a muscle for some time. Then, ever so slowly, and with absolute dread filling her, she twitched her pincers and made the chair swivel round. There, tucked in a pocket of her pilot's cabin, crammed between instrumentation like a frightened animal, sat a young woman clutching her knees and trying to look as small as possible. Human, pale as a ghost, looking a little out of place with some kind of ancient sound device covering her ears, the girl squirmed under the scrutinizing gaze that Alien cast in her direction. Indeed, the girl was out of place, for this was not someone that Alien had invited onto the ship. The girl shivered, and although it was evident that she was frightened, Alien was under the impression that the girl was cold as well. Even though she was wearing little more than an orange bathing suit and red boots, the ship's temperature was at a steady, comfortable level that should have been fine.

For a Durmot. This was a human, however.

“I'll turn up the heat a little,” Alien said, pincers already adjusting the controls.

“Thank you. You're...from outer space.”

“Most Durmots are, in relative terms, yes. What in all the aether are you doing on my ship?”

Alien was far too cheerful and oblivious to be angry. However, she was a little concerned that her troubles had just turned around to ask her one more question.

“I was at the beach, and I took a trip up the road to grab some drinks for me and my friends. I was caught up in a song, humming to myself, and there was this whoosh overhead, and there was your ship. I saw you step out, and you were fidgeting with the pump, so I thought, 'I could totally sneak on an alien ship and get some proof!' And then the door closed, and I couldn't figure out how to...well, and then you came back, and I got scared and hid.”

Alien raised an eyebrow. “Honesty beyond caution. Nothing piddling, but nothing to smash a vlicken over. You've put me in such a spot, you silly human! The Time Command will have my head over this, and no mistake, no mistake. Drappling and farcical nebulae! Well, and where are my manners. I'm Alien.”

Alien held out a hand and smiled. The girl shook it. “I know. We've been over that bit.”

“My name is Alien. Alien Bangs. And what lovely Earthlike name do I have the pleasure of acquainting?”

“You're not going to believe me.”

“Your race is not going to meet my kind for centuries. Millennia. You have no idea of strange, I assure you.”

“It's Jupiter. Jupiter Maxine Phillips.”

Alien surveyed her critically. “Jupiter is the planet's name.”

“It's mythological! And anyway, what kind of name is 'Alien' for an actual alien!?”

Jupiter began breathing heavily, and it was clear that the stress of the situation was affecting her mood. Alien touched Jupiter's forehead and administered the proper bio-inhibitors for calming a human. Human beings were not prone to psychic prodding remotely, but by touch, Alien could shift the mental scales a little.

“Oh, thank you. That feels much better. How did you do that?”

Alien smiled. “You are on an alien ship belonging to one of the most advances civilizations from a time so far in the future that you wouldn't recognize your own people's technology. And, luminiferous aether, if you knew the advances in medicine our people have made. Did make. So long ago that we haven't really needed advancement lately.”

Jupiter, much less shaken now, started to stretch out in the cramped cabin. She asked, “Did we ever cure the common cold?”

Alien smirked. “Not even close. Of all the races in the known luminiferous span, each has their own version of the common cold, as you call it, and it is insurmountable, and necessary for the continued survival of a species! It is an evolutionary process without which biological forms would not adjust to viral evolution over long periods. This is such a well known thing in the future that our histories have accounts of great religious movements based around the plarnax, or 'common cold' you mentioned. This is also...”

Alien trailed off, and realized that she was talking so fast that the girl was positively bewildered. Yet she seemed to have understood.

“The important thing is,” Alien said, raising a finger, “that I am in a great many troubles at present, and your thieving ways have really taken the screws to the canine, as the saying of your time translates.”

Jupiter hung her head. “Sorry. But you see all these shows, and nobody ever gets good pictures of flying saucers, and the ship was right there, and I just had to try to get proof that...”

Alien groaned and slumped in her chair, slapping a hand over her forehead. “Oh, the evidence! Of course! Can't let Time Command see that!”

Alien swiveled round again. She worked feverishly at some controls while spouting things that made a little sense to Jupiter, but seemed to get away from the fact that she was trapped on a spaceship with an alien.

Named “Alien.”

“Muttering stars, there's video circulating the planet! Well, a little twist here, a tuck there. Ah, you're not getting past me with your random node connections. Far less random than you think, Earthling! Zappo! And another! I quite enjoy this...kind of like a game...”

Jupiter almost fell back, or would have if there was any more back in which to fall. Alien swung round with a look of triumph. “Primitive toys playing at recording Durmot technology! Haha! But then...”

Alien's expression became rather sad as she sighed, “It will break their hearts that they will have no proof of what they witnessed. Luminiferous aether, but I'm vexed! Well, and what about you? How do I handle such a conundrum?

Jupiter locked frightened eyes with Alien, who watched her patiently, orange elbows on her knees and hands clenched. Those little, downward-hanging pincers that looked like bangs twitched rapidly as the visitor from space rested her chin against her knuckles.

“Er...” said Jupiter, looking away, “You could maybe take me back to Earth?”

Alien waggled a finger. “A proposal. I'm much in the thrusters on this one. I need to build a time machine that can slip back to my own time without alerting Time Command. No big deal. But I need to get parts from Earth if I want to hasten the process. You already have manufacturing capabilities for many of the components at this time in your history, though the big bits will have to come from my ship and...elsewhere. So I will need a little help to avoid the silly exposure of my presence in your time, and such help, aether know it, would definitely make up for attempted robbery. Now, a fairer truce not be wrought! What say?”

Jupiter, certain that she should feel much more frightened, but nevertheless soothed by whatever magic this alien had worked on her, summed it up as best she could. “You scratch my back, I scratch yours, you mean? And I get away without a probing, or whatever you do to thieves?”

Alien blinked a few times, not recognizing the saying. “Probing? Let me look that one up.”

Scratching a portion of her arm, Alien peered at her skin with intense concentration. Her eyes scanned as though she were reading, and then her face turned a light purple. She looked up at Jupiter and said, rather flustered, “I made no such proposal as this! I don't know what strange relationships you forge with thieves on Earth, but I was merely asking for a little help, by the pillars of Lumine!”

Jupiter smiled, despite herself, and nodded. “Okay, okay. Help it is. Not every day I get to help a visitor from space. But what's with all this 'luminiferous aether?' I remember my science. That was just a hokey theory, wasn't it?”

Alien Bangs tilted her head at the girl, and stated bluntly, “Well, I suppose it is some time before your people come back around to Lumine Theory. Don't you worry your pretty little head, nor my condescending. Humanity does just fine. Adorably so. And now,” Alien went on, thoroughly patronizing her guest, “I think our first stop will be fifteen years in the future. Try not to get too excited, Jupiter Maxine Phillips. This won't take long.”

Jupiter squirmed a little behind the cushy-looking chair of her alien captor. “I don't know what you did to my brain, but I feel like time travel should seem more exciting.”

“Indeed-a-leed. But if I removed the psychic inhibitor right now, your hindbrain would go all pulsar, and then I would have to account for an ancient human passed out in my ship if Time Command catches me. You can be excited later, once it wears off. Any other complaints?”

It's a little...cramped in here.”

Alien raised a finger without looking up. “Precisely why we need to jump ahead in time. I need a proper chair for you. We'll hammer out some extra space in fifteen years. I don't want you thinking yourself a prisoner, so a copilot should definitely have her own seat, right?”

Jupiter smiled a broad, beaming smile. Was she really about to embark on a great adventure through time? Hours ago, she'd been at the beach, and her friends had asked her to grab a few drinks up at the gas station. This was going to be a whole thing, now, and there would be police reports, and she'd go missing, and then she'd turn up when this whole adventure was over, everyone would think she's crazy...

“Definitely! This is going to be some fun, isn't it, Ms. Alien?”

“Misselians have longer necks. But yes, very much fun, minus the part where we have to lie about the first human meeting a Dormut in the year 2027. And the part that this is all pretty normal for me. But, oh luminiferous aether, I get to hang out with a primitive human! 'Hang out' is the right slang, isn't it? I can't wait to see how funny you are! In a friendly way, naturally.”

And so an Earth girl in an orange bathing suit and an alien with pincer bangs began their grand adventure. To the Earth girl, it was a chance of a lifetime, a wondrous expansion of her horizons, and a defining moment of her existence. To Alien Bangs, it was – as the humans might say – a little sweeping under the rug to avoid getting lectured by the wardens of Time.