Wander

Not all who wander are lost, but I am. The thought echoed through my mind like a mantra, telling myself over and over again how completely fucked I was. Lost in every sense of the word. I didn’t know where I was on the planet geographically, which planet I was on or even if I was still in the Milky Way galaxy. My emotions were a jumbled, indecipherable mess made all the worse by the realization that I was likely stuck here for a long time. I’d lost my cell phone and purse, meaning I was flat broke, as if this planet would even accept Visa or MasterCard.

The city around me was large and bustling, filled with alien creatures of all descriptions. I couldn’t understand a word anyone said in any of the dozens of languages I heard, and the five or possibly six different writing systems I saw displayed were just as foreign to me.

At first, I’d thought maybe I was in the middle of some sort of massive cosplay gathering, until I realized that the strange creatures were not humans in costumes. This was a poor situation for first contact, and there had to be someone more qualified for it than I.

I still kept wandering, hoping to overhear some English — or anything that sounded human. There was a small part of my mind that kept telling me I would survive this, that I’m the final girl. Not that it felt like a horror movie, more like a fever dream.

What little I could remember of getting here was broken, distorted, vague. I had followed the girl in the android cosplay out the back door of the club. It was almost disturbing how much her skin looked artificial. She hadn’t stayed longer than it took for me to ask where she was going to or coming from in her cosplay.

With the way she bolted out, I thought I’d insulted her somehow. I followed her out the door to the alley to apologize. She turned and saw me and just said, “No.” Then it felt like I was run over by a train, and I woke up in a park or public garden of some sort, dressed in this tunic gown I wouldn’t be caught dead in back home.

I have no way of determining how long I was out. Along with my purse and everything in it, all my clothes, and my shoes, I was missing all my jewelry, including my watch.

Regardless, I was parched. I heard the sound of running water and followed it around the corner of a building to a fountain. I wouldn’t normally deign to drink from a public decorative fountain in the middle of a city, but thirst won out.

I tried to be casual about it, sitting on the edge of the fountain, dipping a hand in when I wasn’t being watched. After the first couple single handfuls of water, I decided to go for it. I cupped both hands together and drank three of the double-handfuls without care about who might see me.

As I sat for a while longer, I realized my bare feet ached. With the advent of hydration, I began to feel the pangs of hunger. I wondered if there was anything here I could even eat.

A scent not dissimilar to fry-bread caught my attention. I followed it to a lane with food vendors on both sides of the uncannily smooth road. A few customers lined up in queues, but it seemed like I had either missed or beat the rush. When some of the customers began to be served and sat at the empty benches in the road, I realized I had beat the rush.

It wasn’t difficult to locate the trash receptacles, but I wasn’t ready to go picking trash to eat. While I tried not to stare, I watched the creatures that ate. One of them left their mess on the bench.

I sat where they had been and looked at the trash. There was a half-eaten something, with a texture between gelatin and mashed potatoes. It smelled like boiled cabbage and some sort of spice. I took a tentative taste.

The flavor was how I imagined rotten cabbage, not fermented like kraut or kimchi, but rotten, together with enough black pepper and fake cinnamon to choke a goat. It made me gag but I managed to swallow it, but one tiny bite was all I could handle.

I picked up the slob’s trash to take it to the waste bin and there was a small device left under it on the bench. Old habits die hard, and I picked up the device and began scanning the crowd for the short, orange, beetle-like creature that had left it.

Not seeing them anywhere, I dropped the trash into the receptacle and examined the device. It was a disk, about the size of a quarter, maybe three times as thick, and one side felt sticky. The odd thing about it was that it would stick to my skin, but not to the gown I wore.

I stuck it to my arm, under the sleeve, to keep it safe. Whether the creature that left it would come back to look for it or not, it seemed important.

The smell of something vaguely bread-like frying caught my attention again. I followed it through the various stalls to where a deep pan of boiling oil was being put through its paces.

The creature that was cooking had at least eight tentacles going every which way, handling multiple tasks at once like a cartoon octopus. One tentacle plucked small, green, puckered fruits from a bush and dropped them in the oil. Another wielded a strainer ladle, fishing out the crispy, plump, brown results of frying the fruits.

They looked a bit like large donut holes, even though the raw fruits were unappetizing. The wind shifted and the smell hit me hard. The smell of fried bread and sugar was overwhelming.

I watched as the creature served dozens of customers. The variety of creatures that lined up for what I guessed was a sweet treat was mind-boggling.

There was one that looked like a cross between a turtle and bird that wore a tunic gown that looked very similar to the one I wore. They also had one of those devices, stuck to their beak. They got two of the treats and swallowed them down whole as they walked away.

I must’ve been too obvious in my watching of the vendor. It put three of the treats in a small bag and moved faster than I could track to be standing next to me. It held out the offering and made chirping noises at me.

I took the bag and said, “Thank you. I—I’ll help you out to pay it back.”

It chirped something else and was back behind the fryer before I knew it. The closest I could describe the fried treats would be a sweet mushroom, with a crunchy skin like a super thin chicharron.

When I finished the surprisingly filling meal, I joined the creature behind the fryer. I’d been watching long enough to know that despite all the tentacles, some tasks required time away from the main task of cooking and serving.

I separated the bags and opened them up, making lines of opened bags on the counter behind as the creature had. When the side of the bush closest to the creature was bare, I rotated it to keep the fruit in reach.

Whenever I saw one of the creature’s bags left empty on a bench or the ground, I ran out, picked it up, and dropped it into a bin. At one point, the creature pointed at a canister, then at the bush.

I picked up the canister and felt the liquid inside slosh around. As I brought the canister closer, the creature pointed at the bush.

I figured it wanted me to water the bush, but just to be certain, I began slowly. It came as a surprise when one of its tentacles took a soft grasp of my wrist and turned the canister over to dump the entire contents on the bush.

The bush began to rustle, and new fruits sprouted on the bush in seconds, growing at a rate that would make them mature in a few hours at most. The crowds died down, and the lane became still and silent as the food stalls shut down.

My feet ached and I felt tired after rushing about. I sat on the nearest bench, then lay down. Sleep was not far behind.

The cold of night woke me. I was stiff from sleeping on the bench, but felt otherwise energized, though thirsty. I walked through the silent, dark city back to the fountain and drank my fill.

That’s when I saw her again, the girl in the android cosplay. Or was she a real android? She stood stock still, watching me.

I walked toward her and stopped a few feet away. She looked at my face as though she was looking for something.

“I didn’t mean to insult you last night,” I said, “if it was you at the Hap ’n’ Stan’s bar.”

She raised her arm, and the forearm opened up. Either a hyper-advanced prosthetic or she was a real android.

She lifted one of the round devices out of the space in her arm and showed it to me. I took the one off my arm and showed it to her. She mimed putting it on her temple, so I did the same.

“Very good. You’re doing well,” she said, then walked away.

At least, I was sure that was what she said, even though the sounds she made all sounded like variations on the word no. I sat back down on the edge of the fountain and wondered what I could do to stay warm until morning.

Three of the beetle-like creatures came around the corner, wearing official-looking clothing. They stopped in front of me. “What is your business here at this hour?” one of them asked. I was surprised that I could understand the word behind the mandible clicks and purrs that made up their speech.

“No business, just trying to stay warm until morning, then trying to figure out how to get out of here.”

One of the beetles extended a limb with a pincer-like grasper. “If you would follow us, we can show you where to find accommodations.”

“I don’t have any money,” I said. “Is it a shelter or something?”

All three looked at me as though I’d grown another head. “Yes,” the one with the still-extended limb said, “we’ll show you where to find shelter.”

I figured something had been lost in translation, so I gave up and followed them. I wouldn’t have guessed that the building they led me to was a shelter, or hotel even.

They led me to a wall that looked like maps of the building’s many floors, with some rooms in orange, and most in blue. The beetle explained that each map corresponded to a floor, and the rooms marked in orange were available.

When I reiterated that I had no money, the beetle just ignored me and continued on. By selecting a room, it would be locked to my DNA for the night and only I could open the door.

I picked what I guessed was the lowest available floor and touched the map at a room that looked close to the elevator, if that’s what it was. I studied the symbol for the floor, and the beetle led me to what looked like an elevator without the niceties like walls or doors. It was a platform directly under a hole in each of the floors above.

There was a control panel that rose up, with all the symbols from the map on it. I selected the one that matched the floor I’d chosen, and we were whisked up at breakneck speed, while I didn’t feel so much as a whisper of movement.

I lost count of floors somewhere around thirty-four, but we finally came to a stop. The beetle walked me down the hall to a wall with the room symbol on it. He motioned me to the wall.

I stepped closer, and the wall opened to reveal a room on the other side with a soft, mattress-like floor. I was too tired to care and lay down on the floor to sleep.

That was the first day of my first month on what I learned was called Tukraz … at least as close as I can pronounce it. I also learned to whistle the name of the fried fruit vendor, but I also call her Octavia as it seems fitting.

I’ve gotten over worrying about money, as the concept doesn’t exist here, or in the coalition formed by all these different species. Octavia and the other vendors cook because they like to.

I’ve been working with one of the beetles, Kikrizik, at his shop where he makes clothes. I’ve shared designs for Earth clothes, and he’s converted them for other species. Thanks to him, I’m learning how to sew and how to read Tukra common.

I say my first month because the android visited me again last night. She said I was here to test how well humans could adapt to the coalition. Given that my translator was taken before I woke, and I didn’t know what to do with the one the agent left behind, she said I passed with flying colors. We’re adaptable, after all, and that’s a big part of what makes a species “fit” for inclusion.

Last night, she offered to take me back home, which I have learned is “only” eighteen-thousand light-years away. Just a short warp translation to get there.

My initial reaction was, “Yes! Let’s go!” The second reaction, less than a second later, though, was, “Can we wait a bit?”

She looked at me as if calculating something. “How long would you like to wait?”

I thought about it. So far, I’d seen this city, but not much else. “Is there a way I can contact you?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, removing another little disk device from her forearm. “You have represented humans well, and there will be more brought for evaluation before the coalition decides to uplift or not. Is there something you wish to accomplish?”

“I haven’t seen much of Tukraz. I think I’d like to wander a bit and see more.” I smiled at her and tied my new shoes Kikrizik made for me. “I’ll contact you when I’m ready to go home.”