Smile now fully shifted to a frown, I reached my destination and got busy running all the tests I needed to. Structural analysis, double checking the previous patch I had made the first time the tube blew, space radiation and electromagnetic readings, the works really.
It took me a solid hour to finish, and when I finally did I was excited to go back to my room and see what exactly Mimic had learned. Hitting my comm, I steadied my voice. “Finished here. Everything is good to go.”
“Great. We’re due to start mining tomorrow.”
“Cool.” I went to click off before thinking better of it. “Uh, hey. Have we scanned these asteroids for any signs of life?”
“Signs of life? Are you kidding me?”
“Y-yeah. What if there’s some sort of harmful bacteria or mutated fungus we’re bringing in? Doesn’t it seem like we should be carefully testing each of these celestial bodies before crushing them up and reducing them to their raw materials?”
“That just might be the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard, Higgens, and I’ve been a government contracted employee for ten years. From the moment we mine a single thing, it never integrates with the interior of our ship. We suck it up into those hermetically sealed tubes, then send it to the sorter, and so on and so on. All of it is entirely contained.”
“Except for when there’s accidents.” I countered. “Like the last time I was here.”
“Yeah, occasionally things go south. But you’re fine, right? If there ever is an emergency like that—which there never will be because we’re in space—we’ll deal with it.” A frustrated sound boomed through the technology. “Gods, Higgens, I don’t have time for this. Waste any more time and I’ll dock it out of your pay.”
The comm clicked off and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. What a twat.
Abruptly I was very done with humans in general. Packing up my cart, I headed back to my room. I was so fired up over how my boss had spoken to me that I almost forgot that I had left a sentient alien that could take on any form in my bedroom.
That certainly put some pep in my step, and I rushed the remaining way to my room.
I slid my card in the door and punched in my code. It seemed to take ages for the pneumatic doors to slide open and I quickly shimmied inside.
I was greeted by an empty room and terror seized me. Then, as the doors slid closed, something emerged from my scrap-box. I almost screamed again, but managed to catch myself just as the formless blob solidified into the Mimic’s human form.
“Oh my God,” I gasped, clutching at my chest. “You gotta be more careful or I’m going to die of an apoplexy.”
“Die, verb form of the noun Death, meaning the action or act of dying or being killed; the end of the life of a person or organism.” She said, voice strangely musical with intonations in all the wrong areas. “Apoplexy: unconsciousness or incapacity resulting from a cerebral hemorrhage or stroke.”
My jaw would have dropped if I wasn’t so thoroughly amused by the incredibly serious expression on her face as she rattled off definitions. “Yes, those are all correct. Did you learn those on the net today?”
“Learn, to gain or acquire knowledge of or skill in by study, experience or being taught.”
“Yup, that’s right too. But you know there’s more to a conversation than definitions.”
“Definition: a statement of the exact meaning of a word, es-”
“Right. I got it. We’ll work on that.”
I walked over to my bed and managed to plop down, gesturing for her to sit in the chair. She looked from me, to the chair, then back before tilting her head. Right, she probably wouldn’t understand almost any physical prompts or slang.
All my doubts about her potentially not being sentient were pretty much out of the window. In just a few hours she had taught herself how to read and obviously had been very busy digesting the entire contents of some dictionary or another. Actually, in our current situation, I was definitely the dumbass. I couldn’t help but wonder if the little being had been trying to talk to me since I had found it, or if shapeshifting a human’s brain was what gave it its intellect. Perhaps that was a little self-centered to think, but this was the first alien known to man. I had no idea what made her tick, tock or shift.
“So, let’s start with the basics. What is your name?”
“Name?” She repeated. “A word or set of words by which-”
“No,” I said quickly, cutting her off. “No more of those straight definitions. If I wanted to read a dictionary, I would. I mean,” I tried to think of the best way to phrase it. “Who are you?”
For the first time her face took on an expression that wasn’t a mirror of my own. “Who… am I?”
“Yes! Do you have a name? What do your friends or family call you?”
“Friends…” She repeated slowly. I waited patiently. The poor alien had obviously spent so much of the afternoon submerging herself in learning that I didn’t mind being put on pause while she searched for an answer. “Family…” More pause, and her eyes slid over the room as if they were searching for something to help her communicate what she wanted to say. “…are dead.”
That wasn’t where I was hoping the conversation was going.
“This…beast killed them.”
Now it was my turn to parrot things back. “Beast? Y-you mean the ship?”
“Ship: a vessel larger than a boat for transporting people or goods by sea. This is… a vessel? Not a beast that has eaten both you and I?”
Oh no. I could understand exactly how she had come to that conclusion, but I was about to give her a rude awakening. “No. It’s a mechanical ship, and we travel through space and mine valuable minerals from asteroids, comets and small moons.”
“Mine: used to refer to a thing or things belonging to or associated with the speaker.”
“No, not that one.”
“Mine: an excavation in the earth for extracting coal and other minerals.” Her eyes went wide as she finished her statement. “But I saw its teeth!”
“No, you saw the drill bit as it churned up the asteroid that you were living on.”
Silence again, and she almost seemed frozen in her spot while her brain churned. “You killed my family?”
Crap. Here was the moment I was dreading. “I didn’t personally, no. And the crew didn’t mean to! There’s not supposed to be life in space, so they didn’t think they were hurting anyone. Or anything.”
“S-space?”
Yeah, you know that thing outside of your asteroid?”
“As…teroid?”
I was surprised that she didn’t go into another long string of definitions. “Yeah, your home. That’s what we call it.”
“I… I see.” She went quiet again, but I didn’t rush the conversation. I was guessing her day had just gone from full of excitement and potential to decidedly awful. “So I am… alone?”
“Well, I’m here for you.”
“But my home… it is no more?”
“…no.” I finished lamely.
“So, all this work I have done to find a form and speak to you, learning your language and speech, just to find out I will never be able to return home again?”
Geeze, this was not something they taught me how to deal with in custodial and maintenance training. “I’m so, so sorry. But there has to be other asteroids with aliens like you, right? I can help you find them!”
A soft, barely there smile turned up the corner of her mouth. Had she learned that online or was that an instinctive reaction? Either way, it made me feel better to see a glimmer of hope in her countenance. “You would… help me?”
“Of course! It’s the least I could do.”
“But why? Your ship killed us all.”
“Oh, whoa, nonono. This isn’t my ship.” I objected hastily. “I’m just a glorified janitor with a handful of repair responsibilities. Mostly I handle a lot of disposal and clean up.”