But then the voice repeated itself, and this time, Al recognized the voice of his mother. “Who is calling on this frequency?”
Well, it seemed his communication device worked. There still was the issue of the static, which was loud enough that it grated on Al’s ears, but it had succeeded in reaching his intended recipients at the very least. A good sign.
So why did Al not feel good?
It took an increment of time to get his human tongue to twist around the right syllables, but finally—and with much dread—Al responded, “Hi, Mom. It’s me.”
“Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’p?!” he heard his mother say over the crackle of static. Her sentences were scattered, lost in the fragile transmission, but Al pieced parts of it together and got the gist of the message. “Scared us… thought… were dead… where are… you safe…? told you not to… if you put one dent in that ship…”
“I jumped solar systems, got stuck in a planet’s gravitational pull, and crashed. I’m okay, but the ship is totaled and I’m stranded. Can someone please give me a ride?” He then recited the coordinates of Earth in relation to his home planet.
“Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’p?!” His father was now on the line, too.
“Hi, Dad,” Al said flatly, rubbing his temple and rolling his eyes. He glanced at Jude, who was watching with a completely baffled expression, which was perplexing until Al realized he couldn’t understand a single word being said.
Covering the speaker with his hand, Al whispered in English, “It seems I have successfully reached my parents,” and this seemed to be all the information Jude needed to understand Al’s less than cheerful disposition.
“Thought… were dead… mother… worried sick… Titan never would… without permission… you are not allowed… fly off-planet… matter what, young man,” Al’s father said.
“Yeah, I figured as much,” Al muttered, attempting to astral project himself into another dimension. “So can I get a ride home or not?”
“How… learn your lesson… clean up your mistakes?” his father asked.
“Okay, I get that, but I also don’t have access to a spaceship here, so I don’t know what you want me to do. Can you yell at me about this later,afteryou’ve picked me up?”
“What are you saying to them?” Jude whispered, but not quietly enough—Al’s parents heard him in the background.
“Is someone with you?” his mother asked.
“Hope… filed… proper paperwork… first contact,” his father added sternly. Al pinched the bridge of his nose and contemplated throwing his communication device at the wall. It was remarkable how quickly his parents could make him feel their contempt. They never failed to treat him like a child, and he did not think that would change even after they found out he had children of his own on the way.
“Listen,” Al said, doing his best to rein in his exasperation, “a lot has happened since I’ve been gone, but I don’t want to tell you about it over the transmitter. Can youpleasejust pick me up?” He repeated Earth’s coordinates for good measure.
In response, he received several disjointed popping noises that vaguely sounded like his parents’ voices.
“The transmitter is cutting out. Can you still hear me?”
More popping noises.
“Mom? Dad?”
More popping noises followed, then there came a sharpclang!of snapping metal. Al set the device down in a hurry, and no sooner had he than all its lights went out at once. Smoke poured out from the inside, and the scent of burning plastic filled the room. The device gave one last sad little wheeze, then collapsed into many separate pieces—some of them quite charred.
Al stared at the wreckage of all his hard work, but he couldn’t say he felt much sadness about it. He’d spent less than five minutes talking to his parents, but he already had a headache.
“Well shit,” he said in his mother tongue, simply because it seemed like the right thing to say. He looked at Jude to explain what had transpired during the conversation before the transmission went out, but felt startled to see him bent forward on his stool, both hands clutching his stomach and his face contorted in pain.
“Jude?” Al asked frantically in English, his parents and his broken communication device instantly forgotten. “Jude, what is wrong?”
“Al, I don’t think…” Jude trailed off for an increment of time, grimacing, then said in a strained voice, “I don’t think it’s the chalupa.”
18
Jude
It was definitely not the chalupa.
The pain was coming every eight to ten minutes now, and Jude’s whole middle section was cramping up when it struck, sometimes so badly it knocked the wind out of him. He had barely managed to make it to his car without crumpling up into a ball right there on campus grounds, and now that he was in his car, he found he couldn’t get comfortable. The only thing that helped was pressing himself with as much force as he could into his seat, but even that didn’t do much to detract from the agony of labor.
