This is a very important installment.  Las Vegas meets Centennial Hills.  Who will win?

Content Warnings:  Threats, Descriptions of Violence, Homicidal Ideation, Suicidal Ideation, Self-Harm, Chemical Abuse, Use of Guns, Rape Mention, Mortal Despair, Unpleasant Depiction of an Unhoused Person and Drug Addicts, Ableist Language, Irresponsible Driving.

–

CENTENNIAL HILLS CONTINUES

by Bébé Mélange

Tmai saw some people walking on the side of the highway south, and slouched in their seat.  “Steeraight blease, Geershteem.”

“OK, Tmai.  Not a lot of other options out here anyway.”

Olivia got Tmai’s attention and signed, “I love you.  I know, you just can’t understand that, can you?  Are you going to be OK?”

They signed, “I love you, OK OK OK.”

“I know you don’t know what that means.  I was acting like a baby before, but I’m almost a teenager.  I understand things.”  She took Goose’s hand with both of her own and mouthed the words, “Thank you.”

Tmai nodded, squeezed their eyes shut, then opened them and looked at the metal shard.  They let Olivia keep holding their left hand.  “Shlow, blease.”

“We’re getting closer?  Should I look left or right?”

“Right, dang you.”

It was convenient – wherever ‘Smar’ was, they wouldn’t have to cross a median.  Kirsten kept nominal attention to the empty highway and scanned the dark desert.  It was flat enough out there she could theoretically drive it, and might have to, given their mission.  But it was a bad idea.  A random animal burrow or rock could total the SUV, and just getting over the rough patch at the road’s edge might do the same.

“Yere, yere!  Right, Geershteem!”

There was only one business, one anything in sight – the entrance to a junkyard.  She pulled into the short length of drive before the gate, then killed the engine.  Under the dome lights, she turned to look between the seats, and talk to her passengers with hands and mouth.

“Tmai, Olivia, this is the hard part.  We could all get shot or attacked by dogs or who knows what.  Baby, this is why I would rather have left you home.  But this is a special thing, a once in a lifetime experience.  It would be terrible for you to know you missed it, if I’d left you behind – even though it would for sure be a lot safer.  Do you get me?”

“I understand, mom.  I’ll be really good and do everything you say.  Goose?”

“Tmai go Smar.  Dang you, Olibia, Geershteem.”

Kirsten killed the power, got out of the car, helped Olivia down.  Tmai figured out how to work the door and got theirself out.  They all met in front of the gate.  Kirsten went to the radio box.

“Hello?  Is there anybody working now?  Anybody home?”

There was no response.  They all peered into the darkness, looking for a sign.  There were low lights in the one building, far back on the property.  All sorts of strange inanimate shapes loomed in the big lot between them and the structure, not all of them vehicles.

The radio squalled to life.  “Hey, we’re closed.  What do you need?”

“This is going to sound crazy, but do you have an alien in there?  We need to see it.”

“Who are you?”

“Friends of ET.  There’s only a few of us, and we are totally harmless.  I’m a receptionist.”

“Mmm, alright, but I’m leaving the gate locked.  You walk in.”

“Thank you, sir.”

She crossed the short gate by straddling it, then lifted Olivia over it.  Tmai came over in some kind of fluid movement, hard to see what exactly she did in the darkness.  Kirsten took one of Olivia’s hands and Olivia took one of Tmai’s, and they approached the building.

“Here goes nothin’,” Kirsten said.  Nobody could understand her.

A fat guy with black dreadlocks and flip flops came out of the front door, holding a shotgun.  Her heart jumped out of her chest and they all froze, but one look at the visitors and he lowered it.  He waved them closer.

“Come into the light, OK?  If you’re harmless as you say, I won’t shoot you.”

Kirsten went forward, taking her little chain with her.

The guy made a big show of putting the safety on the shotgun and tucking it under an arm pointing away from everybody.  “I’m sorry.  Wow!  You got one too!  I’m Melvin.”

“Kirsten.  These are Olivia and Tmai.”

“Chnai?”

“Close enough, I’m sure.  Is Smar OK?  Is Smar in there?”

“Yeah.  I mean, it’s all banged up.  They’re like frogs, I don’t know what to call ’em, like boys or girls.”

“Oh.  Thanks for the information, Melvin.”

“I’ll get rid of this.  Come in, come in!”

They all followed him into the building.  It was dark inside, with a few random halos of light.  The largest was making a small open kitchen near the back into the brightest place to be.  A lone figure lurked.  Melvin made the gun disappear and smiled at Olivia, then toward the kitchen.

Tmai took the lead now, with all the humans trailing behind, interested to see this meeting.

Snar saw Tmai for the first time since the crash, well attired in a pink hoodie and white dress, a blurry smear of red pigments across their mouth.  Tmai saw Snar, naked except for crude bandaging over several no doubt egregious wounds, their exposed skin livid with contusions and wrinkled from a cycle of rapidly alternating dehydration and saturation.  Snar’s mouth shrank in anger.

“Captain,” they signed, “What took you so long?”

Not that the humans would be able to tell, but Tmai’s face was wracked with feelings.  “Doctor, I don’t know…  There is nothing I can say to make up for this.  I’ll only say sorry and…”

“And?”

“Speak of practical things.  These locals I’m with, we may well be able to stay with them until we can get rescued, but we need a beacon.  That’s a big problem because we don’t know where the ship crashed, or what state it’s in.  All I had to find you with was this.”  They held up the metal flake and let it go.  It zipped past Melvin and stuck to the collection belt, off in the darkness somewhere.

“Alright.  I have the collection belt, so maybe…”

“I can rig it to track the ship.  But for now, just staying out of sight – staying safe – is the priority.  Can you walk?”

“These bandages are holding in my motor fluids adequately.  My advice – if you see the ones with guns, and the blue and red lights?  Shoot them before they can shoot you.”

“I’m so sorry, doctor.  There are no words.”  They stepped closer, reached out vaguely with their hands, imploring.

Snar held their hands over their eyes, vexed.  At last they reached out their own hands.  Tmai came together with them, and they clasped hands, rested their heads together.

Snar winced away quickly.  “Neck.  Hurts.”

“Sorry, sorry.  Thank you for that gesture, doctor.  I won’t impose on you again.”

They turned to face the humans and gestured for writing on paper.

Kirsten said, “Melvin, do you have something they can draw on?  It’s the fastest way to talk with them, since they don’t speak English.”

“Oh yeah, we can use my whiteboard.  Do you and Olivia want anything?  Tasty cakes?  Water?  Orange soda?”

“That’s so kind.  Can I get that, while you help them?”  To Olivia she signed, “Stay with Tmai.”

“Thanks, mom!”

Snar sat down at the table and held theirself very still, watching the commotion, the people going by.  Who here was harboring a violent pene?  Bloodthirsty beasts?  Nasty chemicals for throat, nose, and lung?  The juvenile one held the captain’s hand, but watched Snar with one of their wiggly little alien expressions.  Snar shook their head and the creature looked away.

 

Shammy and Eliza looked at each other grimly, not sure what to do.

“You realize,” she said, “we could die in any of a thousand ways at any moment right now.  Right?”

“Wasn’t my idea.”

“I didn’t know I was an imagineer, making his baby dreams come true.”

“It’s a helluva thing.”

“I really feel like finding something sharp, and going into that little cockpit we attached, and *eh* in between Han Solo’s ribs.”

“There’s a lot of heavy objects.”

“Bludgeoning seems more disgusting to me – the crushed bone, flesh bulging from internal hemorrhage.  Better to just have a red puddle.”

“Hey guys,” Scuzz said, coming back from the cockpit.  “You fighting over who gets to be Chewbacca?”

“Young lady, that is–”

“Sooo disrespectful?  You’re right, I’m sorry.  Nobody is Chewie here.  We’re all real people here, going on a real ride.  And we couldn’t have done it withou–”

“Don’t remind me,” said Eliza.  “I am become Death, destroyer of my own stupid ass.  So how would you rate your boyfriend’s flying, Scuzz?  We can’t really tell back here, with the artificial gravity.  Has he buzzed the White House?  Started World War Three?”

“Aww, don’t be a Debbie Downer.  He’s just flying us to the moon.  You like that song?  It’s so amazing.”

Eliza stood up from the game table, cleaned her glasses on her sweater carefully, then put them back on.  Everybody was paralyzed by the vehement intensity she quietly invested into the motions.  “Very well.  I will see the moon.”  She walked to the cockpit.

Pep had his back to her, focused on the controls.  They weren’t an exact replica of the Millennium Falcon’s interior, but some effort was put into making them a more functional spiritual cousin.  Outside the ship, bright stars wiggled erratically.  There was no moon in sight.

“I heard we were going to the moon, Mr. Ambergris.”

“Call me Pep, Eliza.”

“I’m not going to do that, sir.  Where is the moon?  Where are we?”

“Well, we’re making Branson and Bezos look like clowns.  First thing I did was break Earth’s gravity, just because I could.  You never think about a limitation like that until it’s no longer a limitation – then it seems like an unimaginable imposition.”

“Speaking of imposition…”  She was getting nauseous and tried to focus on his face, leaning over the passenger seat.

“I didn’t make you dress like C-3P0.”  He winked.

“And yet we both know your little thing has slave Leia cosplay in one of those storage compartments.”

“Scuzz is a free spirit, full of her own power.  She has the white number from New Hope.”

“Sir, you are a tower of progressive virtue.”

“Dirty words.  I’m an egalitarian.  You know that.”

“I don’t read your books or your tweets.  I also do not want to die, so…”

The moon and Earth wheeled into sight and she went silent.

“Breathtaking, isn’t it?”

“Just… thinking… about how hard it looks.”

“Eliza, this thing handles like a dream.  But if it makes you feel better, we are returning to Earth shortly.”

“Yes.  That does make me feel better.  And should we survive the landing, I will be walking away from this.  I will.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.  Go have a seat, my friend.  You’re looking rather peaked.  See if Shammy wants a look, OK?”

“God.”

“I’m great, but not that great.”

She returned to Shammy and Scuzz, who had activated the game table.  A kind of holographic battle chess was being projected over it, in emulation of a certain movie prop.  Scuzz made a rancor monster take a swipe at one of Shammy’s pieces.

“Game time?,” Eliza asked.

“You wanna?  I’ve been practicing my chess skills,” Scuzz said.

“I’d prefer not to.  And you, Shamar?”

“I hartly ever played.”

Eliza crumpled her face in anger and stormed off.

“I should go talk to her,” Scuzz said.

“Eeeh, ya might not come back in one piece, ma’am.  I’ll do it.”  He scooted out around the table, a bit too large for the space.

“What?  She wants to be a girl, she should prefer to talk to a girl.”

“Ma’am, trust me.  I’ll be back.”

He left her at the table.  She experimented with sticking her fingers in front of one projector, then another, then more than one.  The holographic space monsters registered no complaint.

Shammy found Eliza in the back of the ship, where they’d installed the loading ramp.  They had arbitrarily assigned that area “back” status, since the saucer did not fly by a conventional thrust system.  She laid on her side, half on and half off the ramp, arms around her body.

“Ma’am I’m sorry I’m not puttin’ it to those kids like I ought to.  It’s just, I don’t know how long we’re gointa–”

“Supposedly he’s taking us right back.  You and I, we can step off this death trap and have a nice little sit down on solid ground.”

“Really?  He said that?”

“He won’t be able to land it.  He won’t.  We’ll burn up on reentry.  He’ll kill us all!”

Shammy knelt beside her, then finding that too uncomfortable, laid on the floor beside her.  He would have put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her, but these were different times.  One had to be more mindful of boundaries.

“I did this.  I put in all these parts, made it possible, with my boys.  If we die, blame me.”

She peeled her hands from her face and bugged eyes out at him.  “How can you defend him?!  How?”

“That ain’t it.  Aw, ma’am, I’m just sorry is all.  But my work here, I bet my own life on it.  I didn’t know that’s what I was doing, but I did it.  And I believe I did good.”

“Even if it holds together–”

“It will, and I can explain to you why, if it’ll help.”

“–he can still crash us.  Is it crash proof?”

“Why do you think we could put it back tagether so easy?  The artificial gravity is a cushion.  He could bounce us off the ground.  We’ll be fine.  Course it works better if you aren’t in tha cockpit.”  He smiled.

“Really?”  She smiled weakly.

“Oh yeah, the field was design’t for a flyin’ saucer.  Those toy parts stickin’ out the sides?  I wouldn’t wanna put those to tha test.”

“Oh my,” she said.

“You know what my boys call him?”

“Pepsi Hamburgers?”

“Pimp Hamburgers.”  He could barely get it out before he broke into a Muttley-styled snicker.  Clearly to him, that was the very height of ribaldry.

Eliza’s mood lightened, partly from his reassurances, but mostly from the charm of somebody being so straight-laced they cracked up at a very mildly dirty word.

“Very well.  You’ve convinced me.  How safe are the bunk beds?”

“Very.”

“Get my attention when we land, OK Shamar?”

“I will, ma’am.”

 

There was no way that alien – on foot – could have reached anywhere on the highway that Nate had driven.  She must have gone offroad, which a t-bird was decidedly not designed for.  He did an angry donut on a desolate stretch of road, rolling to a stop backward on the shoulder.

What do you even wanna do to her?, he thought.  Apologize?  Shoot her dead to erase your shame?  Or to save random humans from her fuckin’ laser beams.  What are you fucking doing here?

He had at least half a plastic dinosaur of coke, a hot rod, and a shotgun.  It was more than he’d ever held in his life.  Time to start thinking clearly.  Sell the coke, get an apartment and a job, go to night school…  Or prop up the shotgun, snort enough coke to have a heart attack, and pull the trigger before you have to die from that.

Decisions, decisions.  He beat on his head with a hard fist several times, then slumped in place.  The only kind of redemption he’d get was helping his friends.  Live to hustle another day.

Nate drove back toward Rennie and Lita.

He found them quickly enough, and pulled over less dramatically.  “Hey, guys.  C’mon, get in.”

Lita moved slow.  “Why?  Are you done with this..?”

“Yeah.  Yeah, I fucked up.  I lost her, but we can make good.  You get in, we go hock the hot shit, and go home.”

Rennie said, “I’m a’ight with that.”

“But where could Smar beee?,” Lita whined.

“Girl, it don’t matter,” Nate said.  “We fucked up.  We’re bad dads and moms.  She’s in a better place, with anybody else.  Prob’ly makin’ a crib out a cactus.”  He opened the passenger side door and tossed the shotgun in the back to make room in the cramped hot rod.

Rennie pulled the passenger seat forward and crawled into the back, then pulled the seat back into place for Lita.  “We’ve been walkin’ all day, Lita.  Come in.  Sit down.”

“SMAR!,” she yelled out to the desert.  “SMAAAAAR!”

The only sounds were the idling rumble of the t-bird and some fighter jets doing unknowable maneuvers in the night.  Not a coyote was howling, not a night bird crying.

“LITA,” Nate said, “She won’t come for you.  Why would she?  Get in.”

“we shared love,” she said quietly to herself.  The words were swallowed under the engine noise.  She clutched her head in grief and frustration, but finally gave up and got in the car.

–

Share love, for as the poet Anthony Kiedis once wrote, “Young blood is the loving upriser, how come everybody wants to keep it like the Kaiser? Give it away give it away give it away give it away now.”