“Fuck.”
“What the fuck?” Jude said, frowning not at the pregnancy test, but at Ezra. “You just swore in Darvrokian. In like, a perfect accent, even. When did you learn how to do that?”
“What?”
“Dude, you’re speaking in Darvrokian. Are you not doing it on purpose?”
“I’m speaking English,” Ezra said, baffled, as his heart tried to beat straight out of his chest.
“No, man,” Jude insisted. “That was Darvrokian. I can understand it through my bond.”
Ezra had no idea what Jude was talking about, and had exactly no patience with which to figure it out. He turned the results side of the stick toward Jude, whose eyebrows rose to his hairline when he saw the two pink lines.
“Well,” he said after an awkward beat of silence. “Maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe it’s cancer.”
Ezra dropped the test back onto the counter with a clatter, then slid down onto the floor, curling up in a ball and resting his forehead on his knees.
“Fuck,” he said again, or at least, he thought he did.
Jude lowered himself down to the floor beside him and put a hand on his shoulder.
Reassuringly, he said, “That was in English this time.”
16
Titan
Of all of Earth’s inefficiencies, the cellular device Titan had been given for “communication” had to be amongst the worst. It died often. It beeped obnoxiously. It used far too many rare materials, and in such wasteful quantities! And worst of all, it did not even function as intended half the time. For example, and most egregiously: in his government office here on Earth.
Ezra had claimed this “dead zone” was a “security measure” to prevent sensitive data from being broadcast by spies to nongovernment agencies, but that did not make any sense, as Titan had seen the way the Earth governments stored their data, and found it to be very bad. Any being with even a rudimentary grasp of information technology could easily infiltrate their primitive databases and retrieve whatever information they liked, even without a functional cellular device handy. Titan certainly had. It was fortunate there was nothing overly sensitive to be found—mostly boring dealings between the Earth governments and codes for things like “footballs” and “biscuits,” which Titan assumed were preferred settings for the microwave oven, sinceboth files were tagged with the word “nuke.”
In any case, Titan had no great love of his often useless cellular device, and he had especially little love of it this Sunday morning, as he had spent the last ten minutes attempting to order a bad and dangerous Earth vehicle via the application “Uber” without success. However, it was imperative he accomplish his goal, as he had spent much of the night unable to fall into unconsciousness following the conversation with his cousin and brother. While their advice had been just, it had not been comforting, and despite the fact that they were wise and educated beings, Titan found himself unable to give up hope that they were wrong. There had to be some sort of bond between himself and Ezra. What he felt for the Earthling was too powerful for there not to be. Other factors had to be at play, perhaps having something to do with Ezra’s extreme dislike of him. What he needed now was a way to solve this core issue so that the truth would show itself, and without a clear understanding of what it was about himself that was so abhorrent, he was in need of outside assistance.
Specifically, human assistance.
There were no other beings as qualified to tell him which of his qualities were turning Ezra away than those of his own species.
The problem was that he knew very few humans, and the one he lived with did not speak to him with any regularity. Unfortunately, that meant there was only one other human acquaintance of his to call on, and that human acquaintance lived an unwalkable distance away.
“Take me to Human Corbin’s location, application,” he said as clearly as he could to his cellular device. The device heard him and issued an address for Corbin, Kentucky. Titan did not know which kind of a creature a Kentucky was, but in his frustration, he wished very much that it would swiftly go extinct.
“Uber,” he said in his most commanding voice, “you will take me to Human Corbin’s location, or I shall deny you your precious sustenance stars upon which you dine.”
The threat did the trick—the application produced an address Titan recognized as Human Corbin’s location. It was simple to confirm, as due to the sensitivity of Corbin’s government position, it was the sole dwelling in its location for many miles. Titan confirmed his desire to travel there and allowed the application to take his credits, then navigated to the rating system in order to mete out the application’s five allotted stars. It did not deserve all five of them due to its ineptitude, but he chose to award the maximum anyway, as perhaps the positive reinforcement would help it learn.
“111 Stardust Lane,” he muttered, eyeing the address on the screen. “Albuka—Albucaque—Albu—” He scrunched his nose. “New Mexico, Earth.”
Should the application challenge him again, he now had the exact coordinates necessary to correct it.
Excellent.
Now all he had to do was wait for Carlos G. and his dreadfully slow ground vehicle to arrive, and he would be on his way.
The ground vehicle showed up approximately eight minutes later, pulling up outside the mansion’s security gate. Titan entered through the back passenger-side door and said, “Greetings, Carlos G. I would like to go to Human Corbin’s house. You know where he resides, correct?”
Carlos G.—a young adult human male with dark hair and a pleasantly dark complexion—turned in his seat and gave Titan a hard look. Not to be outdone by this primal display of dominance, Titan gave him a hard look back. Recognizing him as the superior specimen, Carlos G. shook his head and turned back around to face his cellular device, which was clipped onto the console of his ground vehicle. “Uh, I mean, I got an address here on Stardust Lane, if that’s where your friend ‘Human Corbin’ lives.”
Titan hummed in the affirmative, and Carlos G. backed out of the long driveway and onto the street.
