Читать книгу Identity - Jeff MDiv Sieniewicz - Страница 11

“So they took your,” Laura said, stomaching a particularly hearty laugh before continuing, “rock, did they? And claimed they worked for the,” swallowing another laugh, “government, did they?” pestered Laura in one of her three most teasing voices. “Exactly how many did you have in you by this point?“ she quipped, no longer able to bury the laughter within her.

“Yes, that’s right they did. And none!” Frank stormed back.

Laura noticed his shirt would need to be ironed at least in the area where his arms were so forcefully folded.

“Sorry, Frank, it just doesn’t make any sense.”

“Well, it’s what happened, so it doesn’t need to make sense.”

Laura thought about that for a moment, as Frank reached down clutching and hugging his knees to his chest.

“Don’t worry. I’ll make some tea,” she said.

Laura hummed as she brought the water to a boil, warmed the teapot, and then let the water mix with the fresh tea leaves she had carefully selected. It was Saturday and she was glad to have the day off from teaching. She poured the water diligently as it was boiling and not afterwards, because as she often reminded everyone, this was a key ingredient to making the very best cup of tea possible.

Laura generally enjoyed being the fourth grade teacher at the local elementary school, but this had been an especially long week, with more than just a couple of meetings with pestering parents. A day off is just what she needed, two actually, and she would then easily be able to greet the kids with a smile on Monday. She let the tea steep an exact amount of time as the tea infused through the water. She smiled as she walked to the cupboard and took down her strainer, and began running the tea through the mesh into each of their cups before rejoining Frank in the living room, whistling as she did.

“Here we go.” She beamed, handing him his cup.

Frank took it, but didn’t speak or change his expression, while only giving Laura an appreciative nod.

They both went quiet for a while as they sipped their tea.

“Good tea.” Laura was practically gleaming as she spoke.

“Yeah, not bad,” Frank remarked.

Laura couldn’t help but shoot a shocked glance in Frank’s direction after that comment, but restrained from saying anything. After all, Frank appeared to be already a bit out of sorts today.

Soon the conversation turned to weather, local events, and old friends. The incident regarding the two policemen temporarily left Frank’s mind.

Laura turned on the local morning news, hesitating to change channels when she spotted Frank’s jaw suddenly doing push-ups as he stared at the screen.

As he regained control of his jaw, Frank yelled, “That’s them!” and began pointing repeatedly at the screen as up flashed pictures of the two men from the previous night.

“Who?” Laura asked.

“The men in my apartment last night.”

The newsman went on to explain that both are policemen and that both had gone missing only the night before.

“That must have something to do with the rock they took from me. I know it, I just know it,” Frank exclaimed.

Frank had just stormed from the apartment as Laura began questioning the plausibility of his story. In large part due to finding it a much warmer alternative than questioning the sanity of someone she had been a close friend with for years. Plus, she was a person who thought positively, at least she was now. She had been forced to become a positive thinker a couple years ago, and she couldn’t let the negative thoughts return now, especially not like they had once been. Never again would she allow that.

_________

A substantial distance away from Earth, the two Etan agents were reporting back to the head council of the Milan Galaxy Board of Directors in Borus.

Borus being where most of the central bureaucratic, administrative, and legal headquarters for the entire Milan Galaxy are located.

The two Etan agents sat in front of a massive creature with folds of skin flapping at the sides of his neck, a hard cranial shelled forehead, and one steel plated chest cavity. All of which paled in visual attention when his temper would roar, causing his forehead to bulge like a volcano seriously contemplating erupting. The extent of the bulge would vary, usually between four inches and a full foot, depending on how truly upset he was.

President of the Galaxy, Ghandy the Gargantuan was now addressing the two agents, and his forehead was still well within the regularly occurring bulge of eight inches. The President of the Galaxy can always easily be identified at any galactic gathering as the one wearing the fiery red sash, and Ghandy wore it proudly.

Expletives in Aribian, which only Ghandy and a few rebels from the Akilian sector spoke, flew from his mouth.

The expletives were accompanied by the occasional chunk of Terinian bird sandwich from lunch, which he would later wipe from his chin with his prestigious red sash, but for now he was too busy laying a tirade on the two agents unmatched since, well, since his outburst before lunch.

The first agent stood forward and slowly, shyly, spoke. “But sir, we did recover The Beacon.”

“Oh you did? Why that’s tremendous!” Ghandy replied, elated while temporarily forgetting he was in the middle of a tirade, but he quickly regained his composure and barked back.

“Why didn’t you say this in your Akorflagin report to the board?”

“We did,” the agent answered.

“Frugin Stallin! It’s not important,” the president muttered, "you should have told us. We don’t have time for this.” Pausing to look slowly first to his left, then punctuating it by looking even slower to his right in the direction of the rest of the board, adding one more deliberate nod of the head just so he could feel assured he had made it especially clear that the very, very important people were them and absolutely no one else. Adding, just in case any of this had escaped the attention of the agents, “We’re the Galaxy Board for Taro Ackben’s sake! Unacceptable incompetence on your Wracto-rickit parts,” he hollered, his forehead passing nine inches and as of yet showing no intention of stopping.

Picking a piece of half chewed Terinian sandwich from his cool smooth metallic cheek apologetically, the second agent began to give his response.

“Actually sir, its in the first section under-- " the agent began before the massive president interrupted.

“Enough! Job well done. Next!” he shouted to the constantly nervous intern on his right, and the next unfortunate soul was brought before the board. The agents meanwhile were quickly ushered out.

The two agents, graduates of the Hiruahian Space Academy, rapidly boarded their craft and pulled onto the Milanian SuperSpaceWay to begin their flight back to Hiruaha. They had already returned The Beacon of Light to atop the Pole of Promise when immediately returning from Earth.

According to Agent 4352, despite having discarded each body of the two human policemen on that trip from Earth, the smell of the human form still lingered.

“Humans! Always with the smell of feet!” he complained.

Based on their limited experience with humans, those of the Milan Galaxy hold only one conviction about them, that they smell awful and much like feet.

This criticism could appear a little harsh considering the lack of experience the entire Etan society had in dealing with humans, yet Agent 1 concurred all the same and the two agents fell back into a numbing silence for the rest of the trip.

_________

The reason Etans detest human scent to such a large degree is mostly due to their species’ specific set of preferences, and from their smelling circuitry being so remarkably well developed as a result.

Etans are known for having one of the strongest senses of smell in the universe. Their powerful sense of smell, as is commonly the case in biological evolution, was born from continued circumstance over an extended period of time.

Not long after the Etans creation, they were forced to share Hiruaha with the fire breathing Tyron Fluid Dragons. A creature that took flight primarily when their main food supply, the Etans, slept. With a Tyron Dragon being nearly a football field long, with a wingspan twice as large, and a tongue capable of engulfing an Etan like a frog does a fly, this certainly wreaked havoc on the Etans for a considerable amount of time.

The one survival advantage the Etans had in avoiding the Dragons was that the oil the Dragon produced within its mouth emitted a seriously pungent odor. The Dragon used this oil in combination with its ability to create fire up its throat to fry the Etan’s parts.

The Dragons had been lovers of the taste of fried Etan ever since they first experienced it. Incidentally, this had happened after the great volcano blast of many moons previous. It figures not to be much of a taste, that of a fried metallic substance, but does go to show there is not much accounting for the taste of dragons.

So why did the Etans need a great smelling ability if the odor of the Dragons was so pungent?

It was long held to be true among Etans that if the scent of the Dragon’s oil was so powerful as to wake them, a Dragon was so close it could eat them. So it was best to be going and fast. So for a dragon’s scent to be strong enough to wake an Etan while still being far enough away that the Etan could escape, then that Etan’s smelling circuitry must be one of the very best.

Over time this had the effect of weeding out the Etans with lesser smelling abilities from the population, and left only the Etans with the most developed smelling to reproduce. Thus producing more Etans with highly advanced smelling capabilities.

The Etans later becoming self-aware and intelligent enough to create new circuitry for themselves also became a factor in their smell evolution. This gave them the ability to increase their sense of smell individually over time, speeding up the powers of evolution that needless to say, don’t appreciate being rushed.

This is believed to be how the Etans great sense of smell came to be, and why they are so revolted by human scent, especially that of feet: evolution and ingenuity.

The history behind the Etans sense of smell was quite a remarkable one, yet this was of very small consolation to the agents as they now flushed the socks of the policemen out the space portal. The same portal that they had used to flush the policemen’s bodies on the journey up.