Share a Smile

Elspeth was not having a good day. In fact, she was on the verge of throwing her hands up in submission. The thought that echoed through her mind drowning out everything else was, “Fuck it. Fuck this, fuck that, fuck everything and fuck you, too.”

She tried to convince herself that the “you” in her thoughts was not a particular individual, just people in general. That wasn’t true, though, and she knew it. If she had seen her weasel of a manager at that moment, her day would have ended in a cell instead of her bed.

As she walked through the city, the exertion helped pull her awareness outside of her own head. She realized that people, especially the non-humans, were moving out of her path the same way they would a rabid dog. Her reflection in a store front made her start.

“Deep breaths, Els, deep breaths,” she said aloud. Facing her reflection, she took some calming breaths. A memory from her early childhood floated to the surface, a song from pre-school.

“Help someone else to feel less sad, to be less mad, to not feel bad.”

The rest of the song had been lost to her, but that line was nearly as insistent as her earlier thoughts had been. She walked into the shop.

It was a side entrance into a shopping complex with a collection of small vendors set up in stalls. An odd combination of farmer’s market, bazaar, expo, and flea market, the main floor was a tourist attraction for the city. Most of the vendors were human, with a scant few alien-run stalls. Most of the shoppers, however, were alien.

Elspeth recognized most of the alien types from her work as a data scientist with the Interstellar Trade Board. She wandered the stalls looking for the vendor with the least traffic. There was an alien at a booth in a tucked away corner of a hall junction, selling what she assumed was hand-made lollypops. The sign was in an alien script, but in careful letters below were the words, “Hend Kendi Stik.”

Her first thought was that it was a terrible place for a stall, until she realized that the small area she’d entered was down one path of the junction, the main, tourist attraction part of the market was the opposite direction, and the crossing hall led to the facilities.

She bought two of the sweets and walked away from the booth feeling at least a little more in control of her emotions. It was while she was attempting to retrace her steps in the maze of the indoor bazaar to reach the door she’d come in that she found a small alien of a type she’d never seen before. Despite the unfamiliar shape of head and face, the six gangly limbs that seemed to be both arms and legs, and large, unblinking, solid black eyes, anyone could tell it was lost.

She knelt down to be eye-level with the alien. “Hi, my name’s Els. Can I help you?” The silly line from the song played in her head again.

The alien stared for a moment, then warbled, pointing at a small, button-like device stuck on the side of its head. A mechanical voice came from a device strapped to one of the forward arm-legs. “Greetings, Els. I am Froo. I am unable to contact the parent, and I cannot find my way to the exit.”

“Ah, little fella lost your mama? Take my hand and I’ll get you to the front where your comm will work better.” Elspeth offered a hand to the small creature before she realized it was eyeing the lollypops.

She unwrapped one and offered it to the creature before unwrapping the other and popping it in her mouth. The alien held the sweet in a front hand, a long tongue flicking out to take small tastes of it.

Elspeth offered her hand again and the alien grasped it with the middle hand on the same side as the hand that held the candy. She rose and led the little alien through the crowd. It walked on three limbs, hand-feet sometimes sliding on the slick floors.

They continued through the hall junction where she gave the sweets vendor a nod and a thumbs-up gesture. By that point, Froo had been licking at the lollypop so much that it was dripping sticky messes from its hand and face. Once past the junction and into the main, touristy area, Froo began to speed up. She figured the tyke recognized where it was and was in a hurry to return to its parent.

Froo tapped the device stuck to its head and burbled. The device on its arm said, in its mechanical voice, “I have contact with the parent. I will go.” With that, the creature just disappeared, leaving Elspeth holding on to nothing.

“Damn kid. Got my hand all sticky, didn’t even say thank you, and then cloaks and bolts.” She sighed. “Whatever. I’ll call it my good deed for the day and go home.”

#

Froo was teleported directly to the combat bridge of the mothership as soon as his contact had been restored. Fraa was waiting for him, anger and annoyance pouring off her in waves. She slapped the lollypop out of his hand, knocking it to the deck where it shattered, small, sticky pieces flying everywhere. “What’s gotten into you?!”

Froo was amazed. He’d never felt better, although everything around him seemed to move in fits and starts, sometimes too slow, other times too fast to register. “I was enjoying that,” he said, once he realized what she’d done.

“Enjoying it too much, Froo. You’re a mess.”

“The ambassador’s offspring is in the market,” he said, “and I placed a tracker on him. We can teleport him here once he’s clear of the inner section. You’ll see when the tracker pops up on the scanner.”

Fraa waved at the display on the wall. “Did you activate it before you planted it? It sure as the void doesn’t look like you did.”

Froo pushed past her to the console and began to enter commands to locate the scanner. “You’ll see. There’s a section of the market that blocks our comms. He’ll have to come out of there at some point.”

“Get away from there and clean yourself up. You’re making a mess of the console.” Fraa pushed him toward the door.

A slight sizzle and pop caught their attention. One of the fragments of candy had stuck to the side of a connector, melted, and now the connector was smoking. “See what you did?” Froo asked. “If you’d just let me be, then that — whatever-it-is — wouldn’t be smoking now.”

“That’s the gravity plate power, idiot!” She rushed over toward the connector but only made it halfway before the gravity plating shut down. Her rush turned into a floating, headlong tumble into the far bulkhead.

Froo wasn’t certain how he’d ended up there, but he found himself hanging on to the ceiling to keep from floating aimlessly. “That’s probably not good,” he said.

The lights flickered then shut down to pitch darkness until the emergency lights, each with its own battery came to life. An alarm warbled through the ship, as systems began shutting down with loud bangs and groans. “Ooh, that’s definitely not good.” Froo busied himself licking what he could off his hands.

Fraa made her way back to the console where she shut off the alarms and called up the damage display. Gravity was down throughout the ship. Weapons and shields were down. Controls for maneuvering thrusters, main engines, and the fold drive were all offline. Life support was on emergency battery power, and the main generator was fried. One item, as it scrolled by, made her scream.

“The cloak is down! The cloak is down!”

They hadn’t noticed it during the commotion, but Froo saw the line on the damage report. “Huh, all internal and external sensors offline, rescue status initiated. That’s good, right? We’re going to be rescued.”

“No, you idiot, that’s bad. Everyone is sealed into whatever area they were in when the sensors went toes-up.” Fraa growled. “We’re locked in, and the weapons room has been exposed to vacuum, if that system lasted long enough.”

A voice came over emergency comms. Froo’s device was able to translate, although it didn’t seem like the ship’s translator was working. He repeated the message for Fraa as it came in.

”Attention, Erdilian military vessel. You are in violation of multiple statutes under the Perseus Arm Accord.

“You have entered the space of an accord member in a military vessel without declaring your intentions or securing authorization. You have entered that space in a cloaked vessel, circumventing traffic control and putting lives at risk. You have entered a low planetary orbit, endangering satellites and other traffic.

“Stand to and prepare to be boarded. Any action taken beyond station holding will be seen as hostile and will result in lethal force.”

Fraa went limp, which in free fall was even more effective at expressing her resignation than it would have been given gravity. “The Accord will probably use our presence on the battle deck as an act of hostility. We’ll be lucky to not live out the rest of our days in prison.”

Froo looked at her floating form and then at the sealed door. “We should get out of here, then. Manual override.” He pulled himself to the door and placed his sticky hand on the palm sensor. Nothing happened. He tried again and again, finally slapping the sensor for all he was worth.

“The override is tied into the main power circuit,” Fraa said. “No power, no scan. No scan, no override. All you did was make another sticky mess.”

#

Elspeth left the market and saw most everyone looking up. Fighters were scrambling for orbit. She continued her journey home, wondering only for a brief moment what all the ruckus was. It was as she approached her door that she remembered the rest of the song and chuckled. “Share a smile, it’s free,” she sang.