Page 10 of Love Galaxy

I’ve got to suck my bottom lip to stop myself from crying out. With Mr. Smith and Chloe upstairs in the back room, I don’t want to risk them hearing me.

Trying to distract myself, I hold on to the thick biceps of two of Sorin’s arms.

His jumpsuit doesn’t feel fabric-y. Rather, it feels like—I stroke his arms—scales. I blink, trying to focus my eyes on the finer details. Each one is a soft green and circular, and when I tap my nail lightly against one, there’s a satisfyingclick, click, clicksound.

But that would be impossible, right?

Nobody actually has scales.

Nobody actually has four arms.

If I weren’t concussed, I’d probably be freaking the fuck out. Because if the scales are real— If his four arms are real?—

I really,really, REALLYwant to believe this is some sick hoax, that I’ve somehow ended up on the film set of a reality joke show, but there are too many coincidences I can’t explain away as being mere set props or special effects.

A sharp pain pinpricks my arm, and I flinch away from him.

“Hey!” But before I can interject more, a numbness races through my body. My shaking stops. My vision clears. “Wow. That’s the good stuff.” I run my hands through my hair, gingerly probing the cut I know is back there, but there isn’t any more pain, and when I examine my fingers, there’s no fresh blood.

My headache’s gone too, and I tip my head from side to side, testing if the side effects are temporary or if the painkiller is going to continue doing its job.

“I theel—” I clasp my hands over my mouth. That wasn’t what I’d been going to say. “I theel— F- F- Feel!” I open and close my mouth, but everything seems to still be working. “I feel like there’s suddenly so much more room in my brain for my thoughts.”

Thoughts like:fucking hell, I’m on an actual alien planet with actual aliens.

And:who the hell do I call for help now?

Last time I checked, the Australian police didn’t have an intergalactic taskforce. While NASA can barely get its astronauts to the international space station and back, let alone have legitimate proof that intelligent life exists on other planets.

And what planet is this even? Hardly Mars or Venus. Does that mean we’ve travelled to another solar system?

LOVE GALAXY is what Mr. Smith had accidentally called the show before he’d corrected himself. What if that’s the real title? What if I’m really in a whole other galaxy?

Chapter Six

Sorin

“Umm… ” Briar is staring at me, wide eyed. She runs a hand through her hairs, and her fingers catch in the tangles. “You’re… Thuck! I mean,fuck. I wasn’t expecting—” She presses her lips together, cutting off the end of her sentence.

Despite her obvious confusion, there is a little more color in her face than when we first met. Hopefully that is a sign she is beginning to feel better. I administered one-quarter the usual dose of antiseptic painkiller, concerned more would be too much for her small physique and equally concerned it would not be enough to alleviate her pain.

“You were not expecting what?” I ask, but of course she still cannot understand me.

She slides off the table and walks a circle around the kitchen, pausing to stare at the control panel set into the wall and to tug at some of the cupboard doors, trying to open them.

“Like this.” I step forward to show her how to press at the top corner to release the seal, and the cupboard door springs open to reveal a turntable holding clean cups. I then pressthe corresponding buttons on the control panel, causing the turntable to rotate as a cup is selected and then filled. The hatch in the bench top opens then, and the filled cup is raised. I pick it up and take a sip.

Do cupboards not exist on her home planet? Does she not have a kitchen of her own? Isolated as we are, we have only the barest of technology, yet she does not seem to know how to operate even the easiest of controls.

Dread swirls around my stomach as I consider the limited information I have discovered about Briar. No translator. No understanding of the Common Tongue. No knowledge of cupboards. A deep-seated fear of medical units.

“You are a barbarian.”

“What?” She wrinkles her nose, confused by words she cannot understand.

I do not need her confirmation to know I have stumbled onto the truth. She is of a species which has yet to develop intergalactic travel. Planet-bound. Barbarian.

All contact with such species is strictly illegal, as decreed by the Interplanetary Guild. Their planets do not appear on any official space chart, their location strictly guarded by those tasked with policing the known universe.

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