The ship soothed my legs with the slop wands. Aleria had ordered it to do so. She thought I was upset about the blisters on my thighs and shins, but the truth was that I was used to those now. I let her keep thinking that was what it was, though. This was something I’d learned to do back home, even though maybe I didn’t know I’d learned it at the time: you know, act like something bad that happened is much worse than it actually is until you can figure out your next move.
The wands were wet and gooey. I was holding onto a wall strap and stuck my legs out floating in front of me so the ship could get to them easily. Living in the ship was like living inside a kind of cave, only the stalactites and stalagmites could grow out of the ship wall instantly, and they could be long and thin, or thick and bumpy. They would also be hollow, like a hose. They delivered all kinds of stuff, from fluid to the goo on the slop wands, to the gray stuff I sucked out of one of them that Aleria called food. It must be something close, because it had kept me alive and kicking for over a year.
Anyway, the slop wands were a little different. They were more like sea anemones with swirling little tentaclely brushes. They were coated with this combination of nutrient and lubricating solution for the mechs in my skin.
The goo was kind of rancid to tell the truth. It smelled like that time Dustin found the frog eggs when he was playing at the creek by my old house, and he brought this big mass of eggs home and put them in a bottle of water—one of those plastic bottles that used to be at the grocery stores and they came in a case of twelve or twenty or however many and they were wrapped in that clear wrap like a little squeaky pod. We always got Something Springs Water, something like that. I’d forgotten the brand name. It wasn’t something I ever thought I’d want to remember, you know?
I used to really like to poke my fingers in the plastic wrap of those cases, because it would give a lot without breaking and make these kind of dorky dimples that looked funny, before finally it would break. Da yelled at me for wasting my time doing it once.
“But it feels good, Da,” I would say, and he would smile and say, “Yeah, sweetiepie, I guess it does, at that.” And we poked a couple in together.
So Dustin leaves the frog eggs on that little side cart thing by the kitchen table and one day about a week later Mom comes in from gardening and she’s all thirsty and what does she do? She looks around, and sees a half-full water bottle and reaches for it and takes a swig.
And there I am sitting at the table, eating some microwave shrimp dinner or something, and I’m in a hurry because I have to go to a soccer game.
Mom turns to tell me probably to hurry up or we’ll be late.
She realizes her mouth is full of water.
Then she realizes what’s in that water.
Spew!
Week-old frog egg water all over the side of my face, in my hair, on my jersey sleeve, in the macaroni and shrimp. And there’s even some of it on the fork that’s just going into my mouth. Frog water—and into my mouth before I can stop it.
Disgusting!
I spit out the frog water shrimp and macaroni on the plate. Meanwhile, Mom runs over to the sink and gags, trying to throw up, but she can’t get herself to.
And I, I remember, I went over there too, and I couldn’t help it, and I shouldn’t have done what I did next, because I was just as grossed out as she was, but I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
And she turned and looked at me so hurt, that I would laugh at her at a time like that. She didn’t say anything, but I’ll never forget that look she gave me.
And I felt really bad and started to cry, “Sorry, Mommy. Sorry, sorry, sorry.” Because I still called her that sometimes back then, “Mommy.”
And then Mom smiled. Everything was all right.
Except that she went ahead and threw up right then and there into the sink, of course. After all, she’d drunk a huge swallow of frog egg water.
I was ten at the time. It was not long before that night with the glowing light, and the bad dream, and the next thing I know I woke up in the crèche, and then there was Aleria hunched over me, staring at me with those eye stalks of hers.
But back to the frog water: the smell of it hit us both. It was on me, and it was rancid. And we both started to gag and laugh, and Mom helped me clean up real quick, and she brushed her teeth and gargled with some old mouthwash she found under the bathroom cabinet, Tangerine or Listerane or something, I can’t remember, and we made it to the soccer game just in time. But I had to keep the same jersey on since I only had the one, and I smelled that gag-me frog water smell the whole time and it made me so mad I scored a goal and took another girl out with a slide tackle when I was on defense and got yellow-carded and almost thrown out. Anyway, we won that time, and all the other girls jumped on me, and high-fived me for playing so good. And I forgot all about the frog water after that. Until now.
The slop wand goo had been in storage probably for years, and, like everything else on Aleria’s ship, was kind of stale smelling or tasting.
I dried myself off with a towel that came out of another maker-bump from the ship wall. You have to dry yourself off in zero g. Any liquid that’s water-based will stick to you like a layer of paste or cooking oil or something, and it won’t just run off, because there’s no “down” for it to run toward. I gave the wet towel to a disposal tube, which sucked it down.
“Space or recycle?” asked the ship.
“Recycle,” I answered.
There wasn’t any reason to throw the thing away, even though interstellar space was pretty empty and could use maybe a towel floating out there between stars to give it some character.
After Aleria had detached herself from my legs, she slid over to her resting globe. It was kind of like a chair for Aleria, and it floated in the exact middle of the bridge pod. It was held in place by magnets or some kind of forcefield thing like that, because if you tried to move the globe from the center, it would pop back into position. It had an opening on one side, so Aleria, who didn’t have any skeleton or exoskeleton at all, could slide into there like a, say, one of those sea slugs from the Science Channel, and bunch up in a ball. This was relaxing to Aleria’s type, the Meebs. I’d never met any others, but she’d had me watch plenty of videos.
“You’ll be meeting them soon, after all,” she said. “Your new brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles. By the time we arrive, you’ll really be looking forward to it.”
So there she sat in the middle of the bridge pod. This was what I called the room, anyway. It was oval shaped, like an egg. There wasn’t really any floor or ceiling, just a wall, because this was zero g. The resting globe was clear and it looked like one of those terrariums I used to see in Pet Mart or whatever that place was called. I guess the globe ones were supposed to look cool. They sat on a stand and you put turtles or frogs or whatever air breathing stuff in them. Dustin and I only ever had gold fish.
Thinking about Dustin made me whimper a little. I guess it was pretty loud. I didn’t cry anymore, but I couldn’t help sometimes letting out something like that. I hated it when I did. I hated to let Aleria know anything about how I was really feeling. She was going to own my thoughts and feelings pretty soon, and I wanted to keep them for myself as long as I could before that happened.
“Honey, won’t you tell me what’s the matter?” said the voice from the ship’s speakers. This was Aleria talking. The regular ship voice was just a voice, maybe a woman, maybe a man. Gray, like everything else here. But Aleria’s voice was all honey-sweet. She kind of sounded like when Da would do the helium breath voice at my and Dustin’s birthday parties, but full of “oohs,” and “aahs,” and “dears” and “darlings.”