“Your staff records,” Mimi continued. She wasn’t wearing the jumpsuit I had given her anymore, instead being dressed head to toe in an outfit entirely compiled of black fabric. It was definitely some sort of covert ops get up, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she was able to shift clothing, or that was just an extension of her skin. Either way, it was mildly unsettling. “I need them.”
“Why?”
“If I want to take anyone’s form, I need to know everything I can about them. Medical records, physiological records, personality profiles.” She gestured to the data-log in her lap. “I have been reading since you left and have learned much.”
“Um… what exactly were you reading?”
“Everything.” She replied flatly. “I’ve never had such a wealth of knowledge at my fingertips. Anything you could possibly want to know is contained within the thing you call the net.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s easy to take it for granted. I’ll, uh, see if I can get you those files, but I’ll be honest that I have absolutely no idea how.”
“They are not publicly available?”
“Far from it.” I gave a little bit of a shrug, feeling just a wee bit useless. “That’s actually some pretty confidential stuff. You usually have to have a much higher rank than I do for that kind of clearance.”
She nodded. “Understood. I remember seeing something about being able to infiltrate networks that do not belong to you. Perhaps I shall research that.”
“Yeah, perhaps.”
“But you have returned from your mission, I assume that you have an update?”
“Oh! Right. Apparently, we can’t scan what’s coming in to see if it’s got lifeforms like you. But what we can do is load a sample of you into the scanners we do have and it’ll show us any similar groupings within a few clicks.”
“That is wonderful!” She exclaimed, clapping gleefully. Or at least I assumed she was clapping. In reality, she was just slapping her thighs in rapid succession. It was somewhat tantalizing watching the pale flesh jiggle, but also felt slightly pervy. I quickly looked to the ceiling as another question came to mind.
“So, uh, do you have a reason why you picked that form?”
“Yes. After I fed from what I learned was your radiation dampener, I took the liberty of traveling through much of the venting of your ship. I ended up in what I believe is your ‘med bay’ where your medic was working on something. I watched her for several hours to try to understand her mannerisms and physique. I was hopelessly confused until she cut herself on something she was working on. As she left her station to take care of it, I used the opportunity to absorb her biological matter.”
“Absorb…her…matter?”
She nodded dutifully. “This ability you call ‘shifting’ is a natural defense mechanism for my people against the often-changing radiation levels and environmental conditions of space. Taking on your form was proving to be endlessly complicated, so I needed a bit of a… how do you say it? Boost, I suppose.”
“I see. I guess that makes sense. I remember reading once that humans were very squishy machines being propelled through the world by thousands of small explosions.”
“That seems like a fairly apt assessment.” She ran a hand through her hair, and although the action seemed more performative than natural, it was still quite endearing.
It was strange, the dichotomy of Mimi’s existence before me. Clearly, she was massively intelligent, almost impossibly so, but there were so many things she didn’t understand at all. Like war, or human greed, or what a high five was. She had lost all of her family in the gnashing teeth of our drills, but she hadn’t spared them much more than a frown. Did her people even cry? Did they ‘die’ as we did? It was all so complicated. I didn’t know what was a matter of course for her and what was completely alien.
“So, about that whole scanner thing,” I said, getting back on track. “It turns out we’re going to need a sample of your true form, and a whole lot of math.”
“Math, how so?”
“Well, in order to find more of you and not just random deposits of whatever it is you’re made of, we need to figure out the percentages of all the elements in you and write a whole bunch of algorithms for it.”
“I see.” She murmured. “Actually, I do not see at all. I will have to do quite a bit of research to comprehend what you mean.”
“Right, well we can’t research on an empty stomach. Why don’t I go grab us some food?”
“I do not have a stomach,” She replied. “But if you need to sustain yourself, please do so. You are my only friend now, Higgens, and I wish you to be healthy.”
“Thanks, that uh, that means a lot.”
“It is but the truth. I know you could have destroyed me when we first met. I was wounded and starving. And yet you didn’t. I will forever be grateful for that.”
“It’s nothing, really. I hope the same would be done for me.”
The conversation fell into a natural lull and I stood to go grab some more rations. We certainly had a lot to do, but for some reason I felt confident. For the first time in my life, I was doing something truly important.
I just didn’t want to mess it up.
6
Pillow Talk
Several days passed and they were surreal ones at that. I spent almost all of my time in my room with Mimi, who spent almost every moment studiously researching things across the net.
She read at a speed that I wouldn’t have believed was possible if I hadn’t seen it myself. She would pull up an article then scroll down to the bottom before I could even blink, then move right onto the next subject. And I might have thought she wasn’t actually retaining any of the information, but she would shoot new theorems and equations at me periodically as she learned.
However, the one thing I’d noticed by the second day was that she had issues understanding almost anything about culture, money or material possessions. She was constantly asking me to clarify little things here and there, and honestly it made me feel a bit better.
Was that shallow of me? To need to be wanted by the poor, helpless alien that I was supposed to be saving? Did I have a hero complex and I just never realized it? It was hard to say. I just knew that when I looked at her furrowed brow as she absorbed whatever it was she needed to know, I wanted her to be happy. She had earned at least that much.
“What is love making?”
I nearly choked on my water, startled by the sudden transition. The last thing I knew she was studying physics. How had this even come up?
Well, I respected her enough to give her an answer, even if it made me a bit uncomfortable. “Uh, geeze. You see, when two people of consenting ages like each other very, very much, they sometimes engage in various activities meant to give each other pleasure.”
“Pleasure? Wait, yes. I read about this. Certain actions release dopamine or other mood-boosting drugs into your brain which results in a slight euphoria. That sounds nice.”
“It, uh, can be. Yeah.”
“Then we should do that sometime.”
More water came spewing out of my nose. I really should just set my cup down. “Uh, I, uh… I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
She turned to me, finally setting the data-log down for the first time in over a day. “Why is that?”
“Well, for a lot of people, love making is supposed to be for someone special.”
“But you are special to me. You are my only friend.”
“Hah, uh, you have a point there.” I scrambled to think of something. It would be so easy to take advantage of her naiveite, but I couldn’t think of anything more unappetizing. “But you also have to be careful because sometimes it can make a baby.” I didn’t know if our systems were compatible enough to do that, but it certainly wasn’t worth the risk.