Darkworld: Earth

2.31.

“Can I look?” Lisa asked, pulling at the corners of her blindfold. It was black, to contrast the white wedding dress that she was wearing.

“Not yet,” Kirk answered. “We’re almost there. I promise you, sweetheart, this is going to be the best honeymoon you could imagine.”

“Are we going to the Bahamas?”

“Somewhere way more exotic than that. Someplace that only eight people have been before. I checked the numbers to make certain,” Kirk told her.

They were in the cab of his eighteen wheeler, out in the desert beyond Las Vegas. They passed by cacti and sage brush on their way to the GPS coordinates programmed into Kirk’s navigation computer. He swore to Christ that if he didn’t find what he was expecting to be there … well, he’d do something, but he wasn’t sure what. Probably laugh and cry at the same time.

He hadn’t told Lisa yet, but he’d quit his job. He’d told her that he’d cleared this sudden elopement with his boss. Lisa was self-employed as a hair stylist, so she’d simply informed the salon that she wasn’t going to be renting one of their stalls for a month. She’d be able to return to work without issue once the honeymoon was over.

If she still wanted to after he told her the news.

She might. She was like that. She needed to keep busy, and she loved the socializing.

A meteor fell from the sky as they approached. Except it wasn’t a meteor.

“Okay, Honey, open your eyes,” he said.

Lisa giggled and pulled the blindfold down, just in time to scream as the spaceship landed nearby.

“Oh my god it’s the freaking aliens! Get us out of here before they suck out our brains!” she screamed.

That was … not the response she was expecting.

“No, sweetie, it’s not the aliens. Well, it is, but it’s our ship. It was a gift,” Kirk explained.

“Oh my god it’s the ESF! Get us out of here before they shoot us for trespassing on government property!”

“The ESF isn’t going to shoot us! I have permission to park it here. I had to fill out sixty pages of paperwork to get permission, but I managed. Once we clear the moon’s orbit we’re free to go anywhere we want. I’m not taking you to the bahamas, Lisa. We’re going to fly us to the moon! We’re going to play among the stars! We’re going to see what spring is like, on a-Jupiter and Mars.”

He switched into a poor imitation of Frank Sinatra as he butchered the lyrics to an iconic song.

Lisa calmed down and looked at him. “That joke you had about winning a spaceship from the aliens,” she said. “That wasn’t a joke?”

“No, it really wasn’t!” Kirk exclaimed. He laughed. “I can’t believe it either, but that crazy bastard Werlian came through for us! We’re going to be space explorers for our honeymoon! Can you believe it?”

Lisa cocked her head to the side with the expression she got when she was thinking something through. “How much is it worth?”

“I talked them up to a cool one hundred and twenty million dollars, baby. We’re going to be millionaires when we sell it, but I told them I needed to use it for my honeymoon before I gave it to them. They weren’t happy with the delay, but they signed the contract locking in the price,” he explained.

“That’s what this is all about,” she said. “You asked me to marry you before telling me to make sure that I loved you and not your money.”

“Well, when you put it like that--”

She kissed him. Deeply.

They ended up tearing the wedding dress in the twenty minutes of intense exercise that followed. That was fine, she wasn’t planning on wearing it again anyway. Once they had finished, they dashed out of the cab of the eighteen wheeler and ran over to the spaceship, carrying a bottle of champaign and a can of spray paint.

Lisa eyed the spray paint for a moment, then just sighed as Kirk defaced their sudden windfall. A ship’s name, in addition to “Just Married.”

“Gotta give her a name,” He explained.

“Boys,” she chided.

They spent an hour exploring the ship. Thirty minutes was spent christening the cabin. He didn’t bother to put his clothes back on as he went into the cockpit.

“Computer, take us out. Also, if you don’t know, your name is Enterprise.”

“Yes, Captain Kirk. Taking us into orbit now. Following filed flightplan. Takeoff in T-minus 10, 9…”

~~~~~~

“I’m just saying, what if the alien infiltrator that they caught isn’t the only one?” The voice on the radio asked. “What if they’re like ants? You see one and you smash it, but there’s an entire colony of them hiding under the sink. How are we supposed to feel safe when an alien can invade your children’s school pretending to be one of them, or rip apart a car with their bare hands? These are facts, people, these are things that happened--”

Ji-eun Moon, former captain of the Seeker of New Discoveries , turned the radio off. Her boyfriend, Trevor, kept his eyes on the road and said nothing, knowing that if she had something to say she’d say it. She kept her eyes on the passing scenery as they passed through the open country. They were on their way to a school. It was, ironically, the school which had just been discussed. The one where the infiltrator had been going before the final showdown with the authorities.

She had called the school in the aftermath to volunteer to speak to the students, to reassure them that most of the Yonohoans weren’t like that. That the child that they met was a relic from a terrible time, and that terrible things had been done to him to make him the way that he’d been.

And she’d point out that nobody had died. Despite the damage that had been caused, there were no collateral deaths in either of the two incidents in which the infiltrator had engaged the authorities.

Then she would point out the fact that the Yonohoans had been involved in the subduing of the rogue agent. She would attempt to convince them, and possibly their parents, that the Yonohoans were just like humans. There were some bad ones, but most of them were good. Or at least pretty alright.

She took her PHDA out of her pocket and held it in her palms. “Call Eolai,” she said.

An icon appeared in the air to show that the connection request had been issued and was waiting to be received. She waited. And waited.

She was about to cancel the request when it went through five minutes later.

“Captain Moon. It is a pleasure to hear from you again since you have changed the purpose of your life. It gives me pleasure and solace in this time of sadness that your life is moving in a positive direction, and I hope that you find happiness in your new career,” Eolai said, a small hologram of his head floating in front of hers.

“Thank you Eolai. Your words are very kind,” she said. Then she realized something. “I’ve switched careers. I forgot. I need to tell my Yonohoan friends that they can still talk to me, don’t I?”

“It is customary for a professional contact to wait a suitable period of time before reaching out to a person who has made a significant life change to see if the relationship was more than simply a professional one,” Eolai said. “But rest assured that Renosa and two other members of the fleet intend to do so in a few weeks if you do not contact them first. I was very pleased to receive your call, I hope you are not offended that I was unable to answer promptly.”

“I wasn’t offended,” She assured the hologram. “I just wanted to ask if there was anything you could tell me about the infiltrator. I know I’m not cleared for classified information anymore so it’s fine if you can’t say anything. But I’m about to talk to the kids who knew him, and all I have to go on are the public reports. I was hoping you could tell me something that would reassure them.”

“You may tell them that he was a soldier from a bygone era. You may tell them that he never once viewed the humans of Earth as his enemy. You may tell them that he died with honor in the eyes of his people. You may tell them that John lives on in the heart of those who loved him,” Eolai said. “You may not tell them this. Your government would not be pleased that I am about to disclose this information. He is my father. And he still draws breath.”

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