“Isthiswhat the world looks like to you,” I laughed.
“Yes, little earthling. I’m not even considered tall in my family.”
“Whoa!”
He must have been right. I couldn’t touch the ceiling even perched on his shoulders and as we exited through the sickbaydoors, I was equally safe from hitting my head on the arch, or any of the ceilings in the halls of his ship.
The halls of Vidar’s ship were wide, spacious and lined with that blue metal.
“This is huge! Is this all yours?”
“It’s a government issued ship for proconsuls of the imperium. I’m the second proconsul in my planetary district.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I govern one of the large continents in our star system. The other proconsuls on my planet govern the Southern and Eastern continent respectively.”
“Wait. When you say govern a continent… that means you’re like a president or something?”
“Something like that, little earthling.”
“I can’t believe it,” I gushed, not wanting to sound totally naive all the time, but still reeling from Vidar’s news. He’d never mentioned that before. And he’d still never mentioned what precisely he was doing on earth.
“Don’t worry about that. Come. It’s time for you to enjoy your planet the way it was meant to be enjoyed.”
He took my hand and led me through the halls. I couldn’t have found my way back to sickbay if I tried. The route was complicated, and I kept getting distracted by different doors and labels in his alien language which looked like a mixture of Farsi and Klingon.
We finally came to a large door with a gilded arch entryway. Vidar pressed his palm to a screen at the side of the door and a computerized voice announced loudly, “Welcome to the cockpit, proconsul Vidar.”
“Hello. I’m bringing a guest into the viewing room.”
“Of course, proconsul Vidar,” the computer replied with the same soothing female voice.
While there was still an uncanny valley, Minerva couldn’t believe just how realistic the voice sounded compared to any of the human programmed computerized voices.
Vidar ushered her in and then pressed a button on the panel in front of him. The protective screen in front of them dematerialized and a curved view of planet Earth came into view. From their position, she could recognize Europe and Northern Africa.
There was no view quite like it. Minerva felt small right then, extremely small. She braced herself against the panels in front of her and whispered, “It’s beautiful…”
“This planet of yours is incredible.”
“Is it very different from Pollux?” I asked as Vidar positioned himself behind me, warm and strong.
Vidar let out a deep belly laugh.
“Of course it’s very different. Your sun is yellow and bright, and hot.”
“I can’t believe I’m up here and John is down there. Vidar, we have to help him.”
“I know. I know you want to. To be honest, I did not even check to see if he was alive. I have no clue what DNA signature he might leave behind.”
“How did you get my DNA?” I asked him.
“I was covered in your hair. You shed.”
“I don’t!”
“Yes, you do.”
