“Yes, but maybe… you could mention in passing… to that lot… that maybe, you know, I might have had something to do with them taking us home. Or just promising to take us home. You know, like that.”
“But they already promised that,” Libby said. “And people know…”
“Yes, well, maybe they don’t quite know yet. Or don’t believe it. Or something. Either way. You know. Dammit, I’m an actor, not a spaceship captain — but here we are in something that could have been torn from an episode of Invictus, and I did used to be the captain, and really, it would be nice if at least there was a story…”
“A story…?” Xander echoed, torn between being amused and merely mystified that a grown man who couldn’t shake the one moment in which he meant something to a significantly large number of people would be so willing — even eager — to leap with both feet into the pages of a self — created comic book narrative.
“You know. Just tell them I gave them the ultimatum. Or at least a talking to. Just mention it, even. In passing.” Rory was honest enough to follow that with a grimace, and then a wry little grin. “We all know it isn’t true. But still…”
“What, you mean now, wandering past them?”
“Well, yeah.”
“But they can see you pow — wowing with us right now,” Libby said. “Won’t they tumble onto the simple fact that you just, um, asked us…?”
Rory lowered his voice a conspiratorial notch, the ghost of that weird little smile from a moment ago still on his lips. “Or they might think we’re talking strategy, or something.”
Xander’s eyebrows crept towards the top of his forehead, and then back down again, and then he simply smiled and shook his head.
“Sure,” he said. “If it’ll make a difference. I mean, come on, it’s just one more unlikely thing that they would have to believe, now, isn’t it?”
Libby gave him a quick glance filled with consternation — he was basically taking what authority Andie Mae had, as con Chair, and handing it over to a has — been ex — movie — star with a big ego, just for the asking, and it was a honking big lie on top of it — but Xander seemed to have ‘reckless’ turned up to eleven. He had already started walking, tossing his head at Rory and Libby to follow. Just as they approached the girls, Xander simply started talking, beginning a sentence randomly in the middle.
“… and I’m sure you’ll realize it is best kept under wraps for now but they did agree to a slingshot and then back….”
They were past, and behind them there was a susurrus of whispers and indrawn breaths and soft admiring laughter.
Xander cocked an eyebrow at Rory. “Enough?”
“I can work with it,” Rory said, grinning a little more broadly. “Thanks. Appreciate it.”
Xander turned to glare after their movie star as he peeled off and looped back to the girls, and then he and Libby walked on, Xander shaking his head in amused disbelief.
“Seriously,” he said. “You’d think that someone like that didn’t have to concoct a cockamamie shaggy dog story to get some admiring girl being more than willing to make his con memorable, you know. Even the basic parameters of the flirtation factors have gone out the window with this con. Seems the stakes get higher when the stakes, you know, get higher. Now you have to be a hero. And if you can’t go in shooting like you do at the movies, you’re supposed to be able to make demands of the enemy — however diplomatically, but still — on behalf of the homeworld…”
“So long as you don’t give away the homeworld,” Libby said, with a quick grin of her own.
Xander lifted his arms, and laced his hands around the back of his shaved head, stretching into the cradle until his knuckles cracked.
“Speaking of homeworld,” he said conversationally, “has anyone checked recently on how fast the Moon’s gaining on this particular little piece of it that we’re no longer stuck on?”
Back on the homeworld in question, Al Coe woke up woozy and disoriented in a familiar bed — but with every bone in his body aching in a way that was definitely not the usual status quo. Some ached more and some less — and arguably he had woken himself up by trying to roll over onto an arm that was still in a sling, possibly bone — cracked if not fully broken, certainly suffering from the post — traumatic agony of a dislocated shoulder now returned to its original position but still angry at the insult it had suffered the previous night.
His memory was patchy.
Posters.
Andie Mae. The convention. Errands.
Printer. Reprints.
Posters.
Accident. Emergency Room. Taxi ride to a hotel… that wasn’t there. And then somehow — with no further memory of how he had accomplished this — ending up back here in his own flat, in his own bed. Stark naked in the bed if you didn’t count the sling.
Accident. Accident. Doctor. Did the doctor say he had concussion? That he did not have concussion? Was this just post — traumatic shock?
Pain.
There had been pain pills. Had he taken any the night before? He had no memory of it.
Posters. The Terminator and Data. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bent Spinner. No, Brent Spiner. That was the problem with the posters. Had been the problem. He had fixed that. Historic meeting at the con. Two great Manufactured Men. Together. Perhaps for the first time ever. On Saturday. On Saturday afternoon.
Al glanced at the clock beside his bed; it informed him that the time was 10:37 and also offered up a day and a date.
Saturday. It was Saturday. The Saturday?
Why wasn’t he at the con…?
Where was everybody else? His flatmate? Andie Mae?
They were at the con. They were at the hotel.
Accident. Pain.
The hotel that wasn’t there.
…wasn’t there.
The memory of last night’s cab ride kicked in and Al sat up sharply — and immediately regretted that decision, sitting very still with his eyes closed until the world stopped spinning around him. Then he very slowly and very carefully swung his legs out of the bed, one at a time, and let himself sit there on the edge for another little while, staring at his bare feet on the floor.
What time was that meeting again? What did the poster say? Was it 3 PM or something like that?
“I’d better get down there,” Al muttered, and his voice sounded hoarse in his throat. There was nothing he would have liked more, right now, than to simply let himself topple back into the bed again and pull the covers over his head and groan himself back to sleep. But there was something stronger than that at work now.
A vision of Andie Mae’s eyes. And the message in them. Get up, get up, you’re all there is.
“I have to… go. Have to explain. Have to apologize,” Al said to himself, even though he was far from clear as to how he would explain the mystery of the hotel that had disappeared into the night to anyone else, something that he could not adequately explain to himself. It did cross his mind to wonder about whether it all might have just been a product of his own somewhat less than optimal state of mind… although just why he would ever imagine such a thing, he was very unclear on. He had tried to sound as stern and convincing as he could bring himself to be. The words came out as more of a gurgle, but it was nonetheless an imperative.
The imperative necessitated the wearing of clothes, and this proved to be a problem that almost defeated him. Everything still hurt so badly, he could not begin to contemplate (for various painful reasons) wearing anything at all that necessitated being pulled on over his head — and fiddly things like shirt buttons presented their own set of difficulties when they had to be tackled with essentially just one hand, and not his dominant one, at that. He would not make a pretty picture when he met the two stars, but eventually — and it took him more than an hour to accomplish this — he was reasonably certain that he would make a presentable one.