Page 53 of Time Traveling Space Bastards
“How are we going to explain it when we get home with her?” I asked.
“I’m still working that out,” Kuka said. “She’s going to be the only human on our planet. Even if we don’t say she’s the Devouring Mother, she’s going to be a curiosity.”
“I know that. But she’s your Velne, which means she will be your consort, She’s also my Zovea and we don’t have a name for what she is to Enix. That’s going to cause some drama.”
Kuka shrugged.
“The people it’s going to cause drama with get upset about every little thing. These are the same people that nearly rioted because Mum cut her long hair off.”
“This isn’t going to be like that,” Omi said. “They think the Saki are criminals and the ones that aren’t are only good at protecting their posh asses. My brother wouldn’t just be your bodyguard anymore. You’re sharing a bond with him. You’ve also got the people who look down on the pleasure Enix. We even thought it wasn’t possible for them to have bonds like us, but they do. Plus, you stole this one. It’s going to cause problems.”
“Yeah, but that part, Iknowhow to fix. Baxter didn’t know about the bonds when she wrote her books, but her character was in a relationship with all of us. We don’t have to say Baxter is the Devouring Mother, but wecansay the Devouring Mother was a prophet from Earth and that is howtheybond.”
“Good point.”
I guess that part was easier than fixing some of the people who wanted to hunt down the galaxy they came from to attack the planets before they could attack us. Valtens was the worst of them. Some people were just scared, but others wanted to obliterate those people and steal their resources. While Omi was patching up Enix, Baxter told us what Valtens had said when he had her hostage. Valtens was gone, but there were still people like him threatening civil war on our planet. Kuka wouldn’t attack a planet unprovoked as king and he’d made that clear. If Kuka didn’t come up with something to putallof that to bed, he was in danger of being assassinated.
And I couldn’t have that.
There was no rest for the wicked. As soon as I woke up, they had coffee waiting for me. But more than that, they had coffee the way I liked it made for me. I gulped it down as we planned our next move. It was time for me to die. Or fake die as it were.
Enix looked up how much blood humans had in their body and Omi used her machine to just make that much blood with my DNA. It was pretty weird, but it could save a lot of lives here on Earth. A lot of their tech could, but if my fellow humans found out about them, it wouldn’t go well for my time traveling space bastards.
Most of the people in this neighborhood kept to themselves, which was why I’d chosen to live here. That and the cheap rent. So, when there were no life signs outside of Big Daddy, we started carting all the blood up to my apartment. The cops didn’t care about this neighborhood, either, so there wasn’t much in the way of street cameras.
None of the people who lived around me probably even noticed the strange men who’d been in my apartment for the past few days and they wouldn’t notice us carrying jars that looked suspiciously like blood, either. The only person who would have noticed was my neighbor I helped out, but sometimes, if she wasn’t feeling well, she didn’t make it out much. I usually checked on her to see if she needed anything when I hadn’t seen her out much.
Shit, I was a terrible neighbor. I would have checked on her by now, but I got a little wrapped up in my own drama. So, while we were staging my murder scene, I asked Enix to knock on her door and pretend to be new in the building to see if she needed anything.
But when we got to the apartment, GholandOmi stopped us. I thought we’d just be dumping it on my bed and splashing some on my walls, but what the fuck did I know about faking my death?
“We need it believable. You can’t just splash blood on the walls. There’s going to be someone who is analyzing the spatter to get a picture of how you died. It has to make sense to someone who knows how humans bleed when they are wounded,” Omi said.
“I can do that,” Ghol said. “Valtens added a lot of different programming, but I can also access and process all the information on blood spatter analysis and medical information on how the human body bleeds.”
“Gross, but I could kiss you, Ghol,” I said.
“Please don’t. I’m still very grossed out by the idea of sex after having to watch Valtens do it.”
“And that’s still totally fine. I wasn’t actually going to kiss you. Torrek would throw down and we don’t need that right now.”
“First things first. Valtens had me programmed for crime scene cleanup, but not the kind that solves crimes. It’s the black-market kind of programming if you want your Enix to cover up a crime. Kuka and Torrek probably left DNA all over this apartment, especially in your bedroom.
“No one on my planet has had a chance to analyze the difference between our DNA and humans, but it’s probably different enough that if Kuka and Torrek’s DNA are read by a lab at the police station, it’s going to throw an entire wrench into framing your boss. It’s going to be different enough that it becomes the focus and not the murder.
“I need you all to step outside while I work. I need to get rid of any DNA that isn’t Baxter’s and make the blood spatter look believable. If there’s anything you wish to take with you back to our planet, you should pack it now. This will be the last time you see this apartment.”
I looked around. This shitty place I’d mostly furnished with things people threw out had been home for the last ten years. It wasn’t great, but it was mine. It was my sanctuary while I hid from my parents.
Was there anything I wanted to bring with me? I couldn’t bring my clothes. I didn’t have that many and it would look suspicious if my clothes were missing. My coffee machine was precious, but it would be useless where I was going.
My shitty laptop had my entire life on it. I wouldn’t need my phone. It wasn’t going to work where I was going. I could leave my phone and take my laptop. I loved reading, but I didn’t buy paperbacks because I couldn’t afford them, and I didn’t have the space. I did, however have an e-reader full of beloved books that I didn’t want to leave behind.
I grabbed my laptop and e-reader with the chargers, but I didn’t know if I could plug them in where we were going. I leftmy phone on my nightstand and exited my apartment for the last time.
I wasn’t sure exactly when, but I’d be saying goodbye to this entire galaxy soon, too.
We had nearly everything we needed to go home. I hadn’t figured outeverythingyet, so there were some pit stops I wanted to make. I talked to Enix and some of Baxter’s favorite things she’d be leaving behind could come with us and she could have it again, eventually. We all enjoyed them, too, so I was pretty sure the rest of my planet would, too. I was going to bring back the ability to make coffee and chocolate.
