Mimic and the Space Engineer (Space Shifter Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  I rushed out, cheeks flushing a bit pink. Gosh, I was awkward with conversation. It figured that Mimi was going to learn her first impressions of human interaction from someone who barely understood it. I hope I didn’t socially cripple her for life.

  Then again, if I was returning her to her own people, that wouldn’t matter much. It would have been nice to daydream about how whatever I taught her would affect her species’ view of us, but I didn’t have the time. I was on a mission, after all.

  I could hear the tell-tale hum of the drills through the wall. It was the sound of active mining, which meant that the coin twins weren’t going to be in the engine bay, instead they would most likely be at the bridge or the engineering center where they would monitor the ship’s readings.

  I headed to the lift, rehearsing lines in my head. I had to play this smooth. Anything too weird and I might arouse suspicion.

  Too bad acting subtly was not one of my strong suits.

  I chewed on my lip as I left the elevator and walked out onto the engineering center. I had to hope they would be there because there was no chance I was going up onto the bridge. The only times I went there was once a month or so when some sort of mess needed to be cleaned.

  “Oh, Higgens, what brings you here?” Gonzales said, standing up from the console they had been leaning on.

  “Uh, nothing.” I blurted nervously. “I just wanted to talk. I get lonely from time to time, ya know.”

  “Really, you’re capable of human emotion?” she joked… I think. “What a surprise.”

  “Be nice to him.” I looked over to see Ciangi come around from a machine, her data-log in hand as she recorded the dozens of readings around her. “He’s the one that makes sure we’re not submerged in three tons of organic waste.”

  “Come on, I know the cook has been charged with a hundred counts of attempted poisoning, but I didn’t think it was that bad.”

  “You’re hilarious.” The blond retorted. “I am always amazed at how often you manage to squeeze jokes about fecal matter into grown up conversation.”

  The darker skinned woman shrugged. “It’s a talent, I guess.”

  “That is not the word I would use to describe it, but alright.” Her gaze moved to me with an expression that was part amused and part condescending. “Can I help you, Higgens?”

  “Uh yeah. I just, uh, had a bit of a question that I wanted to pick your brains with.”

  “Sounds better than staring at these readings. You know, sometimes I swear I can hear my brain rotting from disuse.”

  “Perhaps all the toilet humor is its way of cleansing itself.”

  Gonzales laughed and it was a long, happy sound. “Maybe! All that shit’s gotta get out somehow. So anyways, what’s your question?”

  “Well, I couldn’t help but have a thought after one of the tubes blew last time. I was running standard cleaning procedure with my organic scrubber and micro-organism cleanser and I began to wonder why. There’s not supposed to be anything alive in space, right? The radiation itself would kill pretty much anything that could have possibly existed on it.”

  “Yes, that’s the prevailing theory.”

  “Yeah, but what if there was something alive on there, something strong enough to survive space radiation, and it managed to get onto our ship in another accident?” I licked my lips nervously. “Shouldn’t we be testing everything we drill for any signs of life before we go tearing it up again.”

  “Didn’t I hear you arguing with Giomatti over this?”

  “Uh… maybe?”

  “Really? What’s with the sudden obsession with the possibilities of life in the cold, dark, unforgiving void of space?”

  I laughed nervously, rubbing the back of my head. “I guess one too many horror-flix on the net. But still, it’s not a bad idea, right? We’re exploring sectors where no one has ever been! We crush rocks and moons that have never come in contact with the human race before! What if we’re destroying a microscopic species that could end up being a cure for some insane disease, or the answer to genetically modifying our crops in our colonies to survive in harsher climates? The payout would have to be ridiculous. I’m just trying to think of our future!”

  “What, do you mean you don’t want to be a janitorial engineer forever?”

  I gave Gonzales a look. “Look, all I want is you science-y folks to tell me if it’s a worthwhile idea or not.”

  Ciangi was the one who answered first. “Technically it is a valid point. Although we are completely separated from the materials we bring on, we do run the risk that someway, somehow, something living could get into our stores and possibly have devastating effects were there to be some sort of leak to occur—such as the one you cleaned up. But the chances of that are astronomical and testing each and every ounce of material that we bring on would be incredibly expensive.”

  “Really? We couldn’t make some sort of scanner or something and periodically send it through the tubes?”

  Both of the engineer’s eyes widened. “Actually,” The blond murmured. “That’s not an entirely terrible idea. Impossible to implement at this point, but a patent of that…”

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  This time I managed not to jump or squeak as Bahn slid out from one of the consoles, ionic welder in hand. You think I would have realized where one coin twin was, the other was sure to follow.

  …or be hiding there the entire time for a lovely little jumpscare. Perfect.

  “What, I wasn’t thinking anything!” Ciangi exclaimed innocently.

  “You’re telling me you weren’t just contemplating buying off Higgens for a small sum then developing his idea yourself to massive amounts of profit?”

  The smaller woman blushed, her round cheeks puffing out. “Okay, maybe. But can you blame me?” Her bright eyes looked back at me a bit guiltily. “I would have given you like, a hundred thousand credits. I’m not a complete jerk.”

  “I-it’s fine.” I stammered. “So there’s basically nothing to be done about it?”

  “Not as of right now.”

  “Alright, well here’s to hoping that we don’t get overrun by space zombies.”

  “You read way too many retro-horror comics, you know that?”

  “In your opinion.” I countered somewhat sourly. Now that there was no way to scan the rocks coming in through the tubes, I wasn’t quite sure what step to take next.

  “Hey, coin-twins!” A voice boomed over their comms loud enough for me to hear it. “I just got a reading for a massive deposit of Eurodyne on a nearby asteroid cluster! Pull back the drills and get ready to relocate a half-click over.”

  The comm clicked off and the room shared a collective eyeroll. “Does he have a volume that isn’t full blast and grating?” Gonzales grumbled.

  But I was caught up in what he had said rather than how he had said it. “How did he know that?”

  Ciangi raised her eyebrow. “Do you not know how our actual scanning system works?”

  “We have a scanning system?” I asked sheepishly.

  “Yeah, how else do you think we decide which systems to mine?”

  “Um… whatever’s in our path?”

  Gonzales laughed outright and Bahn cleared his throat, finally standing from where he had been lying under the console. “No. We do have a scanner in the bridge. Headquarters sends us a message of whatever ore or material they want us to focus on next, then Giomatti places a sample of whatever they want in our scanner. From there it detects any large deposits of said whatever and we go there.”

  “Oh…” I murmured, the wheels in my head slowly turning. “So, whatever you put in there, it’ll tell you if there’s anything like it nearby?”

  “Yes, that about sums it up.”

  “So, if you put like… human flesh into it, it would tell you if there were any other humans around?”

  “Haha, no. I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. But it would tell you where deposits were of all the different material
s that are in human tissue. So iron, calcium, carbon, depending on what kind of sample you’re using. If you wanted to specifically find only humans, I suppose you could narrow the scanner to search for exact percentages of certain elements in relation to each other, but that would be incredibly tedious to plot out all those algorithms. That would take weeks to figure out.”

  “Really? Why’s that? It seems like the kind of thing that you could plug and chug with some buttons.”

  Now it was Ciangi who gave a short laugh. “Not even close. You would have to not only create an algorithm for every single element in the sample, but an algorithm for every element in relation to every other element.”

  “That’s… confusing.”

  “You’re not kidding.”

  I set my mouth in a firm line. It might be impossible, but I was pretty sure I knew what we had to do to get Mimi back to her people. “Since we’re getting ready to go to a new area, I’m going to go do a checklist run to make sure everything’s still alright. I’ll catch y’all later.”

  “Later, Higgens.” Gonzales said with a little salute. “This was fun. You should come hang with us normal folk every now and then.”

  “Haha, yeah, totally.” I agreed nervously before backing out of the door and walking quickly to the elevator. As the doors slid closed, I tried to order my thoughts so I could communicate to Mimi effectively.

  The lift doors opened and I quickly shuffled out. As fast as I could, I opened my door, slid in, then watched it shut behind me.

  “I need files of your staff.”

  I yelped, breaking my streak of not sounding like a complete and total coward. I just hated loud noises, was that so wrong?! “What?”

  “Your staff records,” Mimi continued. She wasn’t wearing the jumpsuit I had given her anymore, instead being dressed head to toe in an outfit entirely compiled of black fabric. It was definitely some sort of covert ops get up, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she was able to shift clothing, or that was just an extension of her skin. Either way, it was mildly unsettling. “I need them.”

  “Why?”

  “If I want to take anyone’s form, I need to know everything I can about them. Medical records, physiological records, personality profiles.” She gestured to the data-log in her lap. “I have been reading since you left and have learned much.”

  “Um… what exactly were you reading?”

  “Everything.” She replied flatly. “I’ve never had such a wealth of knowledge at my fingertips. Anything you could possibly want to know is contained within the thing you call the net.”

  “Yeah, I guess it’s easy to take it for granted. I’ll, uh, see if I can get you those files, but I’ll be honest that I have absolutely no idea how.”

  “They are not publicly available?”

  “Far from it.” I gave a little bit of a shrug, feeling just a wee bit useless. “That’s actually some pretty confidential stuff. You usually have to have a much higher rank than I do for that kind of clearance.”

  She nodded. “Understood. I remember seeing something about being able to infiltrate networks that do not belong to you. Perhaps I shall research that.”

  “Yeah, perhaps.”

  “But you have returned from your mission, I assume that you have an update?”

  “Oh! Right. Apparently, we can’t scan what’s coming in to see if it’s got lifeforms like you. But what we can do is load a sample of you into the scanners we do have and it’ll show us any similar groupings within a few clicks.”

  “That is wonderful!” She exclaimed, clapping gleefully. Or at least I assumed she was clapping. In reality, she was just slapping her thighs in rapid succession. It was somewhat tantalizing watching the pale flesh jiggle, but also felt slightly pervy. I quickly looked to the ceiling as another question came to mind.

  “So, uh, do you have a reason why you picked that form?”

  “Yes. After I fed from what I learned was your radiation dampener, I took the liberty of traveling through much of the venting of your ship. I ended up in what I believe is your ‘med bay’ where your medic was working on something. I watched her for several hours to try to understand her mannerisms and physique. I was hopelessly confused until she cut herself on something she was working on. As she left her station to take care of it, I used the opportunity to absorb her biological matter.”

  “Absorb…her…matter?”

  She nodded dutifully. “This ability you call ‘shifting’ is a natural defense mechanism for my people against the often-changing radiation levels and environmental conditions of space. Taking on your form was proving to be endlessly complicated, so I needed a bit of a… how do you say it? Boost, I suppose.”

  “I see. I guess that makes sense. I remember reading once that humans were very squishy machines being propelled through the world by thousands of small explosions.”

  “That seems like a fairly apt assessment.” She ran a hand through her hair, and although the action seemed more performative than natural, it was still quite endearing.

  It was strange, the dichotomy of Mimi’s existence before me. Clearly, she was massively intelligent, almost impossibly so, but there were so many things she didn’t understand at all. Like war, or human greed, or what a high five was. She had lost all of her family in the gnashing teeth of our drills, but she hadn’t spared them much more than a frown. Did her people even cry? Did they ‘die’ as we did? It was all so complicated. I didn’t know what was a matter of course for her and what was completely alien.

  “So, about that whole scanner thing,” I said, getting back on track. “It turns out we’re going to need a sample of your true form, and a whole lot of math.”

  “Math, how so?”

  “Well, in order to find more of you and not just random deposits of whatever it is you’re made of, we need to figure out the percentages of all the elements in you and write a whole bunch of algorithms for it.”

  “I see.” She murmured. “Actually, I do not see at all. I will have to do quite a bit of research to comprehend what you mean.”

  “Right, well we can’t research on an empty stomach. Why don’t I go grab us some food?”

  “I do not have a stomach,” She replied. “But if you need to sustain yourself, please do so. You are my only friend now, Higgens, and I wish you to be healthy.”

  “Thanks, that uh, that means a lot.”

  “It is but the truth. I know you could have destroyed me when we first met. I was wounded and starving. And yet you didn’t. I will forever be grateful for that.”

  “It’s nothing, really. I hope the same would be done for me.”

  The conversation fell into a natural lull and I stood to go grab some more rations. We certainly had a lot to do, but for some reason I felt confident. For the first time in my life, I was doing something truly important.

  I just didn’t want to mess it up.

  6

  PILLOW TALK

  Several days passed and they were surreal ones at that. I spent almost all of my time in my room with Mimi, who spent almost every moment studiously researching things across the net.

  She read at a speed that I wouldn’t have believed was possible if I hadn’t seen it myself. She would pull up an article then scroll down to the bottom before I could even blink, then move right onto the next subject. And I might have thought she wasn’t actually retaining any of the information, but she would shoot new theorems and equations at me periodically as she learned.

  However, the one thing I’d noticed by the second day was that she had issues understanding almost anything about culture, money or material possessions. She was constantly asking me to clarify little things here and there, and honestly it made me feel a bit better.

  Was that shallow of me? To need to be wanted by the poor, helpless alien that I was supposed to be saving? Did I have a hero complex and I just never realized it? It was hard to say. I just knew that when I looked at her furrowed brow as she absorbed whatever it was she needed to know,
I wanted her to be happy. She had earned at least that much.

  “What is love making?”

  I nearly choked on my water, startled by the sudden transition. The last thing I knew she was studying physics. How had this even come up?

  Well, I respected her enough to give her an answer, even if it made me a bit uncomfortable. “Uh, geeze. You see, when two people of consenting ages like each other very, very much, they sometimes engage in various activities meant to give each other pleasure.”

  “Pleasure? Wait, yes. I read about this. Certain actions release dopamine or other mood-boosting drugs into your brain which results in a slight euphoria. That sounds nice.”

  “It, uh, can be. Yeah.”

  “Then we should do that sometime.”

  More water came spewing out of my nose. I really should just set my cup down. “Uh, I, uh… I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  She turned to me, finally setting the data-log down for the first time in over a day. “Why is that?”

  “Well, for a lot of people, love making is supposed to be for someone special.”

  “But you are special to me. You are my only friend.”

  “Hah, uh, you have a point there.” I scrambled to think of something. It would be so easy to take advantage of her naiveite, but I couldn’t think of anything more unappetizing. “But you also have to be careful because sometimes it can make a baby.” I didn’t know if our systems were compatible enough to do that, but it certainly wasn’t worth the risk.

  “Wait. I thought the word for your reproductive process was ‘sex’.”

  “Uh, yeah. Well it is. Sex and love making are the same thing.”

  Her eyebrows did that furrowing thing it did when she was confused. “Your means of creating progeny is the same as your way of bonding with friends?”

  “Yes.”

  “That does not seem correct.”

  I shrugged. “It is what it is.”

  “No wonder you humans are so volatile. I can’t imagine the kind of chemical soup caused by affection being mixed with the primitive need to survive that is in all of us.”