Riasi and the Mad Scientist

I

Chief: Just you remember sawbones, this ship may belong to the Captain but the hangar is mine!

Doc: Please what could go wrong?

Chief: You tell me … Knockers.

Doc: Hey I got everything put back to normal. Man you swap a few people's genders and they never let you forget, We have a newly designed interface to the Anomalous Xenotech Artifact. Preliminary tests are promising and we restored all the human subjects without a hitch.

Chief: … did you try it for size on the aliens yet?

Doc: … Not as such. The only one who’d go near the damned thing is Mukh and the AXA didn’t read him right. It thought he was a rottweiler or something and spat him right out.

Chief: Sounds about right.

Tivk: Doctor, the Cadet has informed me we have reached perihelion. I have run the power leads out the hatch and we are ready to absorb solar plasma … why I couldn’t tell you.

Doc: Mukh said that was what the manual for the damned AXA said. Something about it facilitating a biometric field entanglement. This was what we missed when we had that ahh disturbing experience.

Chief: Hehehehehehe.

Doc: Quiet … Laverne.

Chief: … Aye sir.

Tivk: … ?

Chief: He has … holos.

Doc: To your positions everyone.

Chief: I can’t believe you got Ms. Riasi to go through with this.

Tivk: It required several pairs of open toed designer shoes as well as copious jewelry to be fabricated. 

Doc: It’s your own fault. Letting her watch Frankenstein right before the procedure!

Tivk: She got the movie card with her meal. I insisted she discard it and …

Chief: She did the opposite of what you wanted. Imagine that. This is why you’re single.

Tivk: That would be my choice. I’ve been married when I was at that phase of life. Now this is the right time of life for being single.

Chief: I doubt there’s a wrong time for some.

Doc: You don’t have to sell me on her stubborn streak. She’d make the Big Glowing Head eat its own ears.

Risai: I can hear you in here you know!!

Doc: Do you deny it?

Riasi: I’ll be denying you a whole bunch of things if you don’t change your tone, Dolphin. Remember that thing I’d do that you like and I do not like? Hurr …

Chief: …

Tivk: Oh my.

Doc: What? … She was going golfing with me! Knock it off you two.

Riasi: That too!!!

Doc: Okay in five … four … three … two … one … mark!

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

Riasi: Rrrrrowwwwwwwwwrrrrrr ooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!

Doc: Readings normal!

Chief: That … didn’t sound normal, Doc! Poor kitty.

Tivk: ‘Life, give my creation life’ is what you are supposed to say. 

Doc: Shut her down!

Tivk: Shutting down. That smoke can’t be good.

Doc: Riasi!

Chief: Paramedics and Damage control to the hangar! 

II

We need to set up two kitchens. Hers doesn’t need a stove. Just a fridge. I’ll need her to begin transfusions to set up a blood bank for herself here though she can take the universal plasma. We can make do with one bathroom though … she’s pretty much taken over mine.

We can’t agree on the settings for the view screens or the sound mastery protocols. If the screen is set for me she finds it dull and colorless. Increasing the color temperature to what she likes almost washes it out for me. I think I know a little of how Nok feels. Ditto the sound mastery. She lowers the volume almost to nothing and I understand why she jumps like I’m shouting at her sometimes. She just giggles in her voice soft as distant thunder.

Don’t get me started on hair-care products or clothing. I’m amazed that she accumulated so much clothing so quickly after being kidnapped. She had a ball with Jenn getting her nails done. She’s practicing keeping them half extended and I’m sporting three new bandaids. 

The tail … her tail is prehensile, much more than I was led to believe. I’ve seen her pick up a padlet and a stylus and yank my leg out from under me to throw me in a pool. Which didn’t work as well as she thought it would when I took her with me. Fact, get her wet and she looks like a scrawny tween girl … only with wet fur.

She will never smile at me. Her facial muscles don’t work the same as mine and baring teeth has a different context to her. I’ve learned the signs to mark her amusement, the head tilt, the half closed eyes the body language, the tail motions. She learned that when I bare my teeth it’s a good thing and not to dive out of arm’s reach.

Kissing is nearly impossible. We gave up. I kiss. She nuzzles. It works. She’s learned to be gentle. We don’t all have a fur coat to protect our hides. At least I don’t.

But I’m the only one she’d ever let her defenses down for, even for a minute. In this whole galaxy I’m the one she trusts completely to handle her like a fragile glass rose; though I know she is far from fragile, or defenseless. That means everything to me. I wouldn’t lose her for a minute.


But I must it seems.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Proxy? You Misspelled Patsy! Part 1

Trade Relations

Traveller: Society in Decline or Post Apocalyptic?