Mimic and the Space Engineer Boxed Set, Books 1 - 3 Page 12

  “No, he was not.”

  “Higgens?”

  “Mimi?” I replied, raising my eyebrow at her.

  “We have been friends a good while now, yes? And have survived many things together.”

  “Yes, I would say that’s accurate.”

  “Then you would answer a question honestly, even if it was uncomfortable?”

  “Mimi, what are you getting at?”

  “I just…” For the first time in a long while, she seemed at a loss for words. “I’ve read many amazing things on the net interface your kind created. But I have also read many terrible things. Things I still do not want to believe. Wars, and explosions, and murder of millions. I thought perhaps those were just rare tragedies that were not to be expected.

  “But then, that man, Giomatti. He was cruel. He wanted to ruin me for profit. He felt absolutely no remorse for the death of my family. He didn’t even seem to realize we were a people, even if we were so different from his own kind. “

  I looked to her earnestly, giving her my full attention. I still didn’t know where she was going with this, but I wanted to listen. It sounded like it was important to her, whatever she was formulating. “I think you’re right.”

  “Thank you. But that affirmation is not what I need. I know Giomatti is a selfish man. A myopic one, even. And I know you are a good man. Incredible, even. You were willing to give up everything to help me, a stranger, what might have even looked like a monster to you when we first found each other.” I blushed a bit at the praise, but she continued. “But what I need to know is if most humans are like you, or are most humans like him?”

  Oh.

  Oh.

  That was a question indeed, and one that I hadn’t been anticipating. “I… That’s really hard to say. I’ve been told my whole life about how I’m weird, but I don’t know if that’s what makes me kind, or if it’s something else.”

  “I understand if you cannot answer with resolute conviction, but I want to know your opinion. I have always valued it and always will, even when I didn’t know enough of your language to communicate that to you.”

  “Right. Well, uh, I guess I would say that the majority of people are average. Not necessarily good, not necessarily bad. Just people, doing their best to get by and that’s it. They have the capacity to do great things, but most likely they will not. And then, a much smaller fraction is like Giomatti. They tend to cling to power and do terrible, horrible things in the name of progressing their own means. Then, there’s people like me. We’re not particularly special either, but when we see someone hurt, or when we know that someone needs help, we do everything in our power to aid them. It’s like a scale, where the three of us all balance each other out.”

  “So, you’re saying for every Higgens, there’s a Giomatti.”

  “I guess so.”

  “That’s…terrifying.”

  I paused, surprised by her reaction, but then I thought it through. It was pretty daunting to think that for every single selfless, helpful person in the world that there was a person waiting in the wings to take advantage. But then again, for every person who would hurt another for gain, there was someone who wouldn’t stand for injustice right behind them. It was like a cosmic scale of checks and balances.

  “I guess it all depends on how you look at it.”

  “Or who you choose to surround yourself with,” she countered. “I think I just happen to have lucked out to have run into four very good people.”

  I blushed again. “Well, good is subjective, but thank you.”

  “Of course, Higgens. You are my friend. I have read that lavishing compliments about positive traits is productive to keeping friends both happy and healthy.”

  “Well, it’s safe to say that being your friend makes me very happy.”

  “Excellent. Now for the next wire, are you removing it, splicing it, or repurposing?”

  “Splicing.”

  She nodded and reached to the tray next to her, handing me an ionic welder and then a simple pair of wire-snippers. “Splice away, then.”

  “DO YOU THINK WE DID IT?” Ciangi asked nervously.

  “How would I know?” I asked. “You guys are the experts. Do you think we did it?”

  “I don’t want to jinx us.”

  “Human friends, it has been just over a month since our escape from Giomatti. I think perhaps the best way to find out if we have indeed done it is to power up the scanner and see if it works.”

  The four of us looked at Mimic, who was standing to the side and watching us intently. I had to hand it to her, she certainly was keeping her calm for someone who might or might not be on the edge of being reunited with her people.

  “Right. Starting it up. That would be a good way to get this going.” Ciangi took a deep breath. “Bahn, do you have the algorithms loaded?”

  “I do.”

  “Gonzales, you said the initial power tests went well?”

  “Check, my friend.”

  “Higgens, you loaded all of the samples into the analyzer?”

  “Just like you showed me.”

  Ciangi nodded, her small mouth pursing as she went through another mental checklist. It was funny how she had seemed to have taken over as the de facto leader of their little scanner project, as Gonzales had taken over during the planet-hopping section of our journey.

  “Okay. Got it. I…I think we’re ready. Bahn, add the power.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The taller of the coin twins reached over to the console and punched in four simple digits that would reveal if all the work we had put in was fruitful or a complete waste of time.

  The room filled with whirring and popping as our machine came to life. We all held our collective breaths as we waited to see if it would all end in a fiery explosion.

  But it didn’t.

  Things lit up and the scanner menu booted just fine on the console, with the loading bar proceeding right on task. It was a tense five minutes, but then, finally, the computer let out a ding.

  Calculations Completed.

  Then, in a glorious moment of relief, a map of the system we were in projected itself into the center of the room.

  Possible matches found within one thousand clicks. Estimated arrival time: nine hours.

  “Oh my gosh!” Ciangi cried. “We did it! We actually did it!”

  “We…” Mimic’s voice cracked a bit. “We found my people?”

  All of our smiles were ridiculously large as I pulled my friend into a hug. “Yeah, Mimi. We did. You ready to go home?”

  She let out a long, shuddering sigh and I was pretty sure it was the first time I had seen her show such emotional vulnerability. Or perhaps she was just learning to show her emotions as we did. “Yes, more than anything else.”

  “Then let’s take you home, friend.”

  10

  OVER-HYPING THE FINALE

  I HAD a strange combination of emotions as we flew in a beeline right toward the scanner’s destination. A bit of it was a surreal level of accomplishment. After everything that we had been through, some dumb janitor who was born on a backwater colony had managed to not only discover our first definitive proof of alien life, but to reunite her with her people after wrongfully destroying her home.

  But at the same time… I was realizing that we were about to drop my best friend on a planet that might not support human life. After all, we weren’t nearly close enough to get an actual reading on its atmosphere. I couldn’t go home either, so was I just going to be stuck in an orbit life, only to occasionally drop down to visit Mimic planet-side with all of her shifter friends? Would she even want to be friends when she was with her people again?

  The knot in my stomach only grew as we navigated closer, with more and more worrisome thoughts cropping up. Such as, what was I going to do with my life, would there be room for us on Mimic’s new planet, and what would we do if the scanner turned out to be incorrect and we had to recalibrate?

  When it wa
s time to sleep that night, Mimic and I both curled up in my bed, me cocooned in blankets and her just lying there, completely motionless as she always was when she rested. She was looking a little softer these days, less whittled down by the unforgiving clutches of starvation. I found myself staring at her, taking in each and every feature. It was probably a silly thing to do considering her face could change into whatever she wanted at any time, but it didn’t matter. Mimic had changed my life. In no small way either. And now that we could possibly be parting ways, I found myself worrying that I would never see that face again.

  But still… I was supposed to be happy for her, right? And I guessed I was, but that happiness was having a hard time keeping up with all the worry and fears. I had spent so much of my life being friendless, and now that I had stalwart companions, I didn’t want to let a single one of them go.

  Oh well. It wasn’t like I was going to come to any sort of definitive conclusion before our sleep cycle. We would be arriving at the planet in another four hours, and then the short-range, planetary scanner would find us a landing spot and any preliminary information about the environment that we might need to know.

  Once we woke up, it would be the grand finale of our little journey.

  …but what if I didn’t want it to end?

  “EVERYONE READY?” Gonzales asked, her fingers hovering over the controls of the landing ship. It was just different enough from the other vessel we had been stranded on for a week for everything to be uncomfortable, like someone had come into my room and moved everything an inch to the left.

  “Ready,” Mimic said, practically bouncing in her seat. At least she was happy, and her obvious excitement made me smile as well.

  “Alright, shape-shifty-Mcgee, let’s go say hi to your people.”

  The engines hummed and then we were gently flying out of the hangar bay. It was certainly much different than our last frantic escape from the ship, but my heart wasn’t beating any less hard. What was waiting for us on this strange new planet?

  I supposed I was going to find out very soon.

  For the first time since we had met, our flight was neither hurried, tense or fraught with danger. We descended through the atmosphere without trouble and landed right where the nav had set out for us.

  Once the ship was settled, Gonzales hit the proper sequence for a landing rest and then we were all suiting up for our exit.

  “I am confused,” Mimic said as the rest of us donned our enviro-suits. “I thought the scanner said the atmosphere was quite livable for humans. Why are you putting on such protections?”

  “The atmosphere is livable, but the foliage or fauna could be less than pleasant. You remember that nasty creature you fought off during our first visit? Who says there aren’t bigger ones here?”

  “I doubt there are. My people deal with predators…remarkably well.”

  “Really?” I asked. “I was under the impression that your people were entirely peaceful.”

  “We prefer it that way, but when life does not give us a choice, we will defend ourselves. It’s always a last measure, of course. Mostly, we’re happy if we can just eat. Before I met you, eating was ninety percent of my daily function. The other ten percent was thinking about eating.”

  “I can identify with that,” Gonzales said. “Last night, I had this amazing dream about tostones made from Earth-grown plantains. That’s pretty much all I’ve been able to think about today. Oh, and uh, getting you back to your people, of course.”

  We all laughed at that before Mimic gave a dutiful nod.

  “Yes. It is time. Come, my friends, let’s take this final step of our journey together.”

  In a bittersweet gesture, we all joined hands. Standing in a line, the five of us waited for the hangar door to slide open then the ramp to descend before walking forward into the light.

  The planet was beautiful, that was for sure. Much different from the comet home we had originally pulverized. It reminded me of pictures I had seen of Earth, lush and green and full of all sorts of animal sounds. Far different from the colony I had been raised on.

  “Wow,” Mimic murmured. “This is nothing like my last home.”

  “I guess your people have gotten a bit of an upgrade,” Ciangi offered cheerfully.

  “Maybe one day, thousands of years ago, one of our space colonies was knocked out of orbit and landed here. My people do not have any form of inter-celestial object communications, so we would have never known. Never…cared, really.”

  That last part seemed to bother her, but I wasn’t about to let her put a damper on what should be one of the happiest moments of her life in recent memory. “Hey, none of that now. You’ve found your people. This is a happy day.”

  “Right. Supposing I actually find them.”

  We looked around, unsure of which direction to go. “Well, east or west then?”

  Mimic craned her neck, her eyes flashing several different colors. I guessed that maybe she was changing their structure to view the world in different ways, but she didn’t explain one way or the other before taking off to the east.

  We followed her without question, all eyes busy surveying the area while our hand-held scanners were set to find deposits of minerals that Mimic could eat. We figured that if her people were anywhere, it would be near food.

  We trudged on for hours, saying nothing, seeing everything. The plants were truly beautiful, and my scanner beeped occasionally about edible ones. At least if we were stranded here in permanent exile, we would have plenty of different options for building our own sustainable farm.

  I could see it now. The four of us settling into everyday life as we invented different things to make our own mini-colony, visiting Mimic and her shapeshifting relatives at least once a week while we ate totally non-compatible dinners. It was a nice vision, and I couldn’t help but find myself wishing that was exactly how all of this would pan out.

  “There!” Mimic cried suddenly, tearing me from my reverie.

  I blinked and turned my head to see that she was suddenly dashing off, disappearing between thick, flowered vines. The four of us exchanged looks before tearing after her.

  I had no idea where we were going, or what she had seen, but I trusted her, so I sprinted along blindly, enviro-suit squeaking as I did.

  But then, as suddenly as our chase had started, it ground to a halt and I barely had time to kill my speed to avoid crashing into a suddenly very still Mimic.

  “What’s going on?” I asked her.

  But her eyes were affixed on something ahead of her. Squinting, I looked into the distance to see some sort of black cliff, shimmering in the light. It was only after several steps that I realized it wasn’t the rock itself that was ebony, but rather the light glinting off of hundreds of thousands of little mimic bodies.

  “My gods,” Bahn breathed. “It’s them.”

  Mimic let out a screech that sounded like it might have been something in her own language, and ran forward again, arms outstretched. She shifted as she went, until she was once more the large dog-sized version of her dark, miasmic, spikey self.

  She reached the base of the mountain in just a few short seconds, us following behind her with massive grins. I could hear her excited chirping even from where I was, while she danced in a small circle. Her joy was obvious, even in such an alien form, and it was entirely infectious.

  Except…none of the mini-mimics reacted.

  As the four of us humans drew closer, I realized just how small they were. Even smaller than Mimic when I had first met her. They just continued on, marching in a very dedicated line toward something that we couldn’t see.

  Joy quickly turned to worry, then to heartbreak as Mimic’s cheerful cries slowly lowered in tone until they were nothing but a shaking warble. I wanted to intervene, but I also knew it wasn’t my place until I was invited.

  After several tortuous moments, Mimic slowly shifted back into her human form. “They…they won’t answer me,” she murmured, eyes red with
withheld tears. Since when had she learned to cry? What a horrible lesson to have to learn.

  “It’s okay,” Ciangi soothed, coming up alongside the alien woman and gently rubbing her arm. “Maybe you guys speak a different language? You said they could have crashed thousands of years ago, right?”

  “Yes, but it is like they don’t even see me. They should have some sort of reaction. Even when I couldn’t understand a word of what Higgens was saying, I still knew that he was some sort of strange and terrifying living creature!”

  “You thought I was terrifying?”

  “Of course. You were a massive giant inside of an even bigger giant that destroyed my home.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Maybe it’s not intentional?” Ciangi offered, still trying to be supportive.

  “Why don’t we do a cognitive test then?” Gonzales said, picking up a stone before aiming carefully. With a flick of her wrist, she sent it sailing toward a chunk of the mini-mimics a few feet up the mountain.

  The rock crashed into them, sending a few scattering, but mostly they just went around it or over it, never questioning what had sent the missile in the first place.

  “Yeah, either they’re not capable of recognizing stimulus or they are actively deciding to ignore everything. I’m not sure which is worse.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mimic whispered, her voice cracking. “Why are they doing this?”

  We didn’t have an answer, but seeing her like this was awful. I walked forward and pulled her into a sturdy hug, wishing her all the happiness that she’d had just moments earlier. “I don’t know, sweetie. But I’m sure this is just a temporary thing. We’ll get you both on the same page, I promise.”

  “Perhaps the best solution is to see what they’re all so mindlessly progressing toward,” Bahn said, looking in the direction the little shapeshifters were dutifully marching. “Perhaps they have evolved some sort of hive mentality and our answers will lie at the epicenter of all of this.”

  “That’s definitely a theory,” Gonzales said, nodding hopefully. “I like it.”