Technicolor creations danced, gamboled, and flailed wherever Gavin stared, overlooking the various terraces that turned the city of Millatees into a vast hanging garden. The autochthons, too, stared, not with mockery, but a playful curiosity, an innocent assay on this living photograph stiffer than an anvil before the hammer struck. They were friendly enough, though, sometimes overzealous when they leaped into his arms, lolling like a lapdog and expecting a cordial pat.
So, this is what cartoon characters feel like! He said to himself, as if they should have felt anything but. It was presumptuous, even shortsighted, reducing their nature to a slew of baseless similes, especially for a guest on the animated world of Annastotts buried somewhere in the Scutum sector. But he couldn’t ignore the differences between a whimsical sketch on a piece of paper and his own physical body.
He was in good hands, technically. However, a few overstepped their boundaries.
“Can it bend?” One youthful creature asked as he pawed at Gavin’s leg.
“No, dimwit!” Another retorted. “Humans break outside the joints.”
“What about stretching out his arms like this!” The first one yanked the ligament, oblivious to his strength.
“Okay, stop it, you two,” Gavin demurred, praying they wouldn’t dismember him by accident.
“Nah. He’s brittle like cured sweet nut. They’re all like that,” the second child answered the first, waving his hand dismissively.
“Well, try pressing his cheeks and see if his eyes pop out.” The second eyed the other’s progress.
“Ya gotta ‘ply more pressure if you wanna get results. Here. Like this—”
“Ah—” Gavin lifted his palms and nodded, feigning genteelness amid a racing pulse. The two cringed, grinning apologetically, and scampered off like a pair of startled squirrels. It was cute, though, how they whirled their feet with their backs erect before disappearing into the leering crowds.
There was no harm nor foul, but in truth, Gavin wasn’t supposed to be here, at least according to the World Federal Authority that corralled the human race into a paddock of obedience. Perhaps, the attaché, whom Gavin still had yet to meet, could expedite his application for asylum, in a cartoon world, no less.
“Hey, Roosty! Lookie here!”
Gavin shot an upwards glance. A great bear loomed over him, or a critter of similar physique, bobbing a finger down towards his head. In an instant, Gavin was suddenly crushed, trapped in a furry embrace.
“He even feels like a rock!” The creature practically drooled on Gavin, all the while vicariously knocking on his scalp.
Gavin tried to rebut the allusion, but he struggled to breath. Plus, he nearly sneezed from the alien dandruff titillating his nose, and hoped for a prophylaxis to pathogens that squashed and stretched like everything else.
“Quit it, Verm! He’ll snap like a twig.” A slimmer fellow came up and slapped the side of his partner’s head that vibrated like a degaussing prong.
“Uh, gee, Mr. Human,” the greater creature pleaded as he rubbed the wound on his temple. “I’m sorry! I’m really sorry! Here, lemme help ya!” He lifted Gavin effortlessly by the shoulders and dusted him off.
“Okay, okay! Nuff’s enough! Leave the poor guy alone,” the slenderer of the two shouted, grabbing his partner’s ear and yanking him off the human. The greater creature staggered his way back into balance as he lumbered out of sight.
“Hey, mack, don’t let ‘em give ya a hard time. They got eyes hungrier than stomachs.”
“Who said that?” Gavin snapped from his jade and turned towards his shoulder where another creature rested his pilous elbow. Saucer eyes beamed, penetrating his soul. He nearly jumped out of his skin. The flipside would haunt his memories for years to come, doubled by his own traumas abroad, if he didn’t steel himself faster.
“Keep yer shorts on, pal. I ain’t gonna eatch’ya!” The creature straightened up and slapped Gavin’s shoulder with a chuckle.
Gavin heard ‘stomach’ and shuttered, losing track of some of their cultural dictions and aphorisms. “Wait. Are you—?”
“Yup-yupper! The name’s Kazzimmerin, Kazi fer short, at your service.” He placed his hand over his chest and bowed into a graceful S-curve.
From Gavin’s perspective, the creature, approaching his own size, resembled an overgrown marten patched with a merle of blacks, sables, and whites, and large ears tapering into a pair of V’s. In a way, he looked vaguely canicular, and Gavin thought of the corgi across the street from his old residence. His personality came across as terse, closer to a smart aleck than a dignitary, but that was to be expected. Though, he looked adorable, tempting Gavin to throw on a collar and carry him home as a pet, but he seized the impulse to belittle his attaché, and the last thing he wanted to do was drive a wedge into his hope of asylum, as well as a solid rapprochement with a formative alien race.
“I see you got a bit of our tongue!”
“Hardly,” Gavin replied as casually within the bounds of his composure. “It’s hard to memorize when tethering semantics to emotional inflection.”
“A kick in th’ lobes! Undulations. We be speakin’ undulations!” He arched his paws in a bell curve. Gavin barely understood what he meant, but it somehow involved the caprice inherent in their language.
“Well…Kazi, it’s an honor—”
“Hold that thought…”
Kazi reached into his pocket and pulled out a pen. Reaching down to the ground beyond the breadth of his height, he dragged the pen into an arc wide enough to cover their presence, leaving a stroke of neon floating overhead that split the sky. In an instant, Gavin found himself in another part of town. He froze in disbelief as he watched his host casually pocket the device and refocus his attention.
“This way,” Kazi resumed, “we get a wee bit o’ privacy.”
“What did you do?” Gavin darted his head around what turned out to be an elaborate mew draped in foliage and studded with flowers. Part of the side dropped into a low-hanging partition, revealing a vast arcological resplendence of piazzas, spires, and basilicas. A couple of vessels rose above the city into the deep blue dome.
“This?” Kazi gestured to his pocket. “Oh, it’s how we get around. You’ll get used to it.”
Did he suggest a spare? Gavin tentatively nodded, wondering on the possibilities of such a device he could slip into his jacket without anyone batting an eyelash.
“It’s…it’s an honor,” he stuttered, refusing to question the matter, and reluctantly proffered his hand. Kavi reeled back at the shoulder and swung, wrapping his bulbous fingers around the other’s hand with an open smile. Gavin recalled their high-trust society, a mark of a stable civilization. He blushed at the glum reservations of his own world, but he squandered time harping on it.
“Well, Gav, it’s a pleasure t’ meetch’ya! Lemme ask. Weren’t you involved with some…err… recon organization?”
“Intelligence and Surveillance Operations. Anything related to intel merged under the global treatise…if you want to call it that.”
“Bad blood, I take it.” It was a statement, not a question, as if he had already known the facts.
“To put it mildly.”
“Got a body count peggin’ yer wits?”
“Excuse me—? Oh. I was a functionary. My role was assistant director. I organized dispatchments, sent them in for approval, and off they went. Mostly deep reconnaissance. At the time, I thought I was doing our leaders a service…early on, at least. So, yes. I’m equally culpable. It’s when I had a second opinion they lined their sights on me.”
“I’ll say. Ya dance with the piper, ya die by the sniper!”
Gavin marveled at the similarities to a few Terran idioms. It seemed like they shared a common enemy.
“Any family? Cubs?” Kazi continued.
“Divorced…the kids taken. Injunction on top when I stepped out of line. Bad influence, I suppose.” The memories clipped his speech. He tittered defensively. “I tried to remarry, even at forty-eight, but that’s when things really began to shake up.”
“I’m sorry fer your loss, dirt-man.” Kazi leaned forward, tenderly grabbing Gavin’s shoulders. “You were in a precarious situation, but keep yer eyes straight ahead. Ya don’t wanna drag yer past around like bales of laundry.” He cackled. “Sorry. Humor’s kind of a habit here.”
“No umbrage taken.” Dirt-man? Gavin recalled the allusion to Earth’s etymological meaning. “But I don’t intend to drag my past through the mud. It’s in my training. And I still have a pressing question, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“Don’t mind at all. Fire away.”
Gavin thought of the bullets he dodged during his escape.
“I’m still not sure how you do it.”
“Do what?”
“Um…” Gavin searched for ways to avoid insulting his generous host, inadvertently or not. However, in astute observance of the locals, the only way he would get the desired answers was to be as blunt as a bare hillock. “The way you…contort yourselves…in ways that would kill someone…such as myself.”
Kazi twitched his shoulders, breaking the fur around his shirt, and figuratively jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “I suspect you’d’ve asked somebody by now.”
“I…I didn’t want to be rude. I don’t exactly live down the street.” They didn’t have streets, he recalled. Just pedwalks weaving through the city. They flew otherwise.
“Naah.” Kazi shook his head, spreading his paws apart. “Not here. You saw how everyone climbed over you like a museum curio. Stiff as a board, I might add.” He broke into a cackle. His deluge of repartees started to grate on Gavin’s nerves. “I’m sure you saw plenty of examples just by hangin’ around this place.”
“I certainly did. The proof is stuck to me.” Gavin casually plucked a few strands of shedding from his jacket and flicked them away. Though, he planned to save a few specimens for later examination.
“We’re a feisty bunch. Anyway, here. Lemme demonstrate…up close and personal. Grab my hand.” He straightened his arm out.
Gavin stared at the paw with some reservations, his mind hearkening back to the two children testing his ductility. He was afraid to touch it by choice, even though an entire planet of creatures great and small surrounded him, willing to rub their paws liberally over his body. But to their credit, they were willing to extend those same paws and provide him aid.
Reaching out, he latched onto Kazi’s wrist, and without giving it another thought, yanked as hard as his current posture allowed. He expected to hear the crack of a joint dislodging. Instead, he stretched the limb beyond its means, pulling everything—flesh, bones, and tendons—with the flexibility of an elastic band. He let go. The arm recoiled with a loud smack, faintly jostling Kavi as he continued to smirk.
Gavin’s childhood rekindled like a bonfire when recalling his first batch of Play-Doh one Christmas. His interest suddenly piqued.
“May I?” Gavin asked, gesturing toward Kazi’s face.
“Nothing’s stoppin’ ya, pal!”
With impunity, Gavin snatched at his cheeks and tugged in both directions as far as he could reach. Kazi’s eyes bulged and drooped from their sockets. His lips parted, revealing a long set of fangs that could have severed the limb of any human in a single bite. Yet, the creature stood aloof, his arms akimbo, and his demeanor unbothered. A drool of spittle even hung from the side of his mouth.
Frightened, Gavin let go. Kazi reeled. His head shape vibrated until settling back into its original form, followed by his whiskers. Yet he still retained that smile.
It was a ghastly sight; body horror pushed well beyond its limits. At first, Gavin wanted to run. But to where eluded him. He was too endangered to return home, yet sadly out of place with whom he sought patronage, escaping the lion’s den to wind up in the maw of the beast. But nothing concrete—no serious transgressions or acts of malice—had yet to justify his preemptive fears of creatures he didn’t understand. Their protean morphologies didn’t exactly match their intrinsic ethics, at least he had hoped. In fact, they were his salvation.
“One more,” Gavin requested, peeling a strand of sputum from his lapel.
He grabbed a hold of Kazi’s vulpine ears and pulled, dragging the shaggy head in the process, then released. The ears slapped back into place, popping erect after a beat.
“Wait…” Gavin said, unable to curb his excitement. He reached behind his host, snatched his bushy tail, and tugged with both hands, ready to fling him around as he would a shotput. Kazi, in the heat of a challenge he couldn’t resist, stepped forward, slackened his tail and wrapped it around his guest, spinning him until firmly secure, then hoisted him up, feet first, to meet him eye to eye. The creature glared with a menacing, though flawless, confidence. The message had been sent.
“J-Jesus!” Gavin gasped between breaths, trying not to black out. “I-I…I apologize for any offense that I might have—” He trailed off.
“What apologies?” Kazi shifted back into his lively persona and patted the side of Gavin’s face warped with horror. “Yer doin’ fine!”
He lowered his guest, pivoted him back onto his feet, and whipped his tail away in a flurry of hairs. Gavin, however, couldn’t snap out of his fetal slump, locking his arms to his sides, still waiting to be crushed into oblivion. Each of these creatures, despite their innocuous and festive decora, harbored the power to subdue a hundred men, coupled with their resilience to physical trauma. He was dealing with an entire pantheon of cosmic shapeshifters able to withstand any weapon trained to their heads.
“You…you…you’re unreal…you’re demons…or gods…” Gavin stalled with every attempt to describe his host. “I don’t know who…or what you are. All I know is that you’re…if there’s a more apropos term…indestructible!”
“Well,” Kazi leaned back, scratching the tufts on his chest and inspecting his nails, “that might be a little bit o’ hyper-boli,” he pronounced without inflections, “but I tell ya what…it’s a great survival tool fer th’ far reaches of space.”
“Are you kidding?” Gavin pleaded with his hands clawed. “You probably don’t even need a damn space suit! For Christ’s sake, you don’t even need weapons. You are the weapons! You can be your own damn arsenal!” He grabbed at the air in front of him. “Hell! You don’t even need technology! Yet here you are with vehicles that float everywhere like magic carpets, even crossing the stars! And what about that magic pen you just used?”
“Whoa, whoa, buddy! Settle down.” He padded the air with a placatory smirk. “I know trouble’s a-brewin’ on your world, but here, you’re safe an’ sound. You saw the stuff we can do. Just can the second thoughts before ya go boundin’ back into th’ fire.”
“Wars are cropping up like weeds, Kazi, only now they’re aiming at civilians. And to think I was part of the problem!”
“Yeah, you’re gonna feel the residuals. You were smack-dab in th’ eye o’ the storm. Give it some time. You know we’re not in a hurry. And you ain’t the first one to stumble onto this side o’ the galaxy.”
“I know I’m not. I’m just wondering how we’re all going to adjust once we’re settled.”
“Listen. You know some of us are over there in th’ trenches too, shepherding a few of your insurgents. So, we kinda know what yer up against.”
“So I’ve heard from the grapevine.” Gavin didn’t bother to elaborate on the idiom. “Just be careful. I know you can pound us into dust if you wanted to, but we’re dealing with a species willing to wipe everything out, including every innocent man, woman, and child—scorch-earth—if they don’t get their way. We’ve got a pack of spoiled children in charge!”
He radiated panic. Kazi read it loud and clear, unable to ignore the empathy flooding through him like a tidal wave.
“I can see that. It’s why we operate from th’ sidelines, coaching a few confidants, sharing a few technologies—”
“Like that pen?”
Kazi nodded.
“Then you better watch it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. The World Authority is foaming at the mouth! Can you imagine what they’ll do with something like that?”
“They probably wouldn’t know how to use it in th’ first place. They’re biometrically sensitive fer one. Still, we better get crackin’. Speakin’ of which…” Again, he pulled out the pen, drew four concentric rings that stilled in the air, tapped out an invisible code, and voile: a vectorial kiosk appeared. Gavin leaned forward, intently fixed on the apparition.
“Stand up straight, please,” Kazi ordered.
“Huh? Oh.” He followed suit.
Kazi grabbed the interface and looped it over Gavin’s body, then pulled it away.
“There ya go. Registration complete.”
“What did you just do?”
“Circum-scan. They wanna know who’s planning t’ stay. Good, clean record, besides the hit list,” he said inspecting a holoscreen that popped up next to him, “but that’s no fault of yer own.”
To the beguiled Terran, it was magic…all of it. Anyone who could draw an object in empty space, flip it on, board it like an aircraft, and wield it around like a household appliance, even a weapon, automatically confers undue respect, a master of the universe destined to conquer it. Indeed, Gavin was in good hands.
“One more thing…” Gavin threw his hand up. “May I request one more demonstration? Maybe do one of those crazy wild-takes. I don’t know. Anything that punctuates your emotion.”
“Sure thing, pal.” He turned, putting away the pen. “You mean somethin’ like this…?”
Kazi yanked out his ears, exploding in a frenzied rictus that consumed his body. His fur bristled, zapped with a surge of electricity. Eyes burst, his pupils dilated, and the sclera crooked with varicosity. The tongue shot from under a trilling uvula, wildly flicking like a fandoozle.
Gavin was stiff, leaning back with a grimace at the moment of death. The more disturbing element that strained his sensitivities was the void in sound. He expected an orchestral sting to fill in the gap.
“That do th’ trick?” Kazi asked, snapping back into his normal self.
Gavin hesitantly nodded after a beat, hoping never to see anything like that for a long time, if ever.
“Alrighty, then,” Kazi resumed. “Time t’ get acquainted around here.” He scooped at the air. “Come on. I’ll show you around Millatees. It’s quite the site! I’ll even sketch out a li’l gondola we can take.”
“Mm…” Gavin contemplated riding a form of transport distinguished only by an impromptu wireframe made of light. “If it’s no fur off your back, maybe it would be nice to go on foot.”
“With all the oglers out there?” He stuck his thumb sideways, then shrugged. “Fine by me. I admit, you’ll like th’ greenways. They’ll give ya a nice view of th’ city.”
Gavin consented. The knot in his chest loosened, to his solace, and they set off. With newfound confidence, he began to walk with his usual swagger, but a thought piqued him that he still needed to get off his chest.
“Pardon the apprehension,” Gavin mused, “but I’m not used to animals walking around on two legs…or talking for that matter. The standards on Earth are…different.”
“Eh, you’ll get used it. Just don’t go walkin’ off a building and expect to bounce back.” He chuckled dryly.
“Yes. I’m aware of that. But…what I’m trying to get at…” He fumbled for examples.
“Taak got your tongue?”
Gavin recalled the native species in passing, but returned to his train of thought, heedless of the idiom. “Our four-legged friends back ho—”
“Don’t push it, pal.” Kazi whipped around, feigning a sharp poke to the nose of his guest. “I ain’t a pet. But I get it.” He snapped back and happily swung out his arms in a heap of fur. “You need th’ comfort of home, normality—from yer perspective—and a sense o’ belonging. Tell ya what.” He hopped on all fours, equally natural for the Annastotians, and leered up at his would-be master. “I’ll escort you like this ‘til we get things settled. Whatever pumps yer endos, pal!” He mirthfully swung his fist.
Unable to contain his reflex, as well as feeling somewhat liberated from overweening formalities, Gavin bent down and patted the head of his boisterous host.
“Alright. Alright. Let’s not get too carried away,” Kazi lowered his head, trying to shield himself from the show of affection. “Not all of us go fer th’ ‘umiliation rituals. I mean, anything t’ help ya dirt-man, but let’s keep things professional for now.”
And off they sauntered, into a land of shimmering illustrations where the gods were drawn and dreams went by, frame by frame.
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This is wonderful- thank you.
This is so @David Perlmutter.....