"Gianna, we don't even know what this is or what it's all about. You can't just agree to do it."
"Yes, I can. I write about alien romance all the time. And if they can fix my diabetes too? This is a dream for me. And I'm all about it."
"It could be slavery or something, you don't know."
That must have resonated with Gianna because she wasn't quite as enthusiastic.
"Ladies, this is not slavery! As a representative of the Intergalactic Dating Agency, I am a touch surprised and offended that you would think such a thing."
"Can you blame us? In our world, this would be considered an alien abduction."
Re-lee seemed to consider that. "Where, exactly is your world? You're Terran, correct?" She looked back at her tablet.
"Earth," Tina said. "Earth. Terra is another name."
She scanned the tablet again, and her fingers slipped up and down over the panel, her brow narrowed.
"What? What do you see?"
Tina scooted closer to Gianna, and the two joined hands. The doctor even paused his scanning. Was there something wrong? Maybe they were a mistake and needed to go back home? If they did, this would be a heck of a story to tell people later.
Heck, the idea made Tina wonder if she needed to change professions. In a moment, she started wondering if she could synthesis a vaccine--her brain started double-timing into the scientific procedure and how she would be able to do it without revealing the source of her initial vaccine because it had to be--
"Is there a problem, Re-lee?" Gianna asked, bringing Tina back into the conversation.
"Not exactly," she said. "More of an unexpected twist."
Tina raised her eyebrow. "Unexpected, how?"
"There must be a mistake in the data. I will have to search for the faulty codes." She glanced back at them. "Do not worry, your mates are here, and they are 100% your matches, and they are looking forward to meeting you."
"What did you tell them?" Gianna asked.
Tina shook her head. "Wait. What if I don't want to do this? What is the out?" Tina asked. There are far too many weird things going on right now. She wasn't sure she believed any of it. If it was a dream, it was the most intense dream she'd ever had. If it was real, then she had been kidnapped to become someone's wife, and that didn't make any of it any better.
Her grandmother might like the idea, but not her.
"The out?" Re-lee asked.
"What is my way back home if I don't want to do this?" Because she would rather be back home and trying to find a way to synthesize what was in Gianna's blood. Make a vaccine for Earth. Or at least create a treatment beyond the typical, expensive treatments Gianna and many others had to have.
"You have 30 days. Suppose you choose to reject your selected mate. In that case, you will be returned to your place of existence with the option of remembering, or not remembering, your experience here with the IDA."
"Okay, so what if I want to take this out now?"
"You cannot. You have to meet your mate and give it thirty days before you can reject the match."
"Why not? What if I reject it now?"
The doctor stepped over to her. "I can answer part of this. It is the transporting through the dimensional gateway. It takes the body thirty days to heal from it. If you were to go through again so soon, you might not survive."
"So, I have to stay here for thirty days?" Tina sighed. "Of course, there's a stipulation like that. There should have been a sign."
"There was. In standard, written on the ring," Re-lee said.
"Evidently, we can't read standard," she said. "I am not even sure why I understand you."
Re-lee held up her dark hair and showed a small metal disk behind her ear. "Your translator chip. You both have one behind your ear, to covert Standard, and whatever other kind of languages you hear, to your native tongue."
