Page 84 of Keeping Sarah

“I would imagine not,” the other woman said as she looked around the infirmary, taking in all of our advanced equipment, while Jenny did the same. “I’d be willing to bet you have all kinds of tools we could never dream of on Earth, considering all your technology. I’m ready.”

“I already did it,” Ode said.

She looked down at her arm. “Where?”

“Right there.” Ode pointed to the injection site.

“I didn’t feel a thing.” Then, Elizabeth frowned at Ode in disapproval. “You didn’t even sterilize it.”

“There’s no need with our tech.” Ode set aside the jet injector. “In fact, unlike Sarah’s entrance into our biome, you won’t need to take a fungal dip and I don’t need to run too many tests on either of you, because my genius boyfriend—” Treg blushed and waved at them when she pointed at him in the corner, “—reprogrammed the entrance frame of the ship to do all of that for us.”

“Fungal dip?” Elizabeth asked, sounding and looking mildly appalled.

“A standard practice for humans we take on board, until now,” Ode said. “Our biomes are not as robust as yours in certain ways, including our gut microbiome, so we are susceptible to some fungi and other things that are normal for your bodies to handle. Feeling better?”

“Almost normal, thank you,” Elizabeth said, taking another sip of the water with herbs. “Or as normal as I can feel going…how fast are we going right now?”

I said, “There is a complex mathematical formula involved in that answer, but essentially, we are going far faster than light right now.”

She slowly nodded and muttered, “Huh.”

Jenny jumped into the conversation. “Ode, you keep saying human andour, like you are different from me and Elizabeth. And Deacon said he was wearing the wrong body. Does anyone want to clear that up for me?”

She was such a curious and vivacious thing, compared to her staid sister, Elizabeth. “As I was saying earlier, there is more to all of this than you know, and I want to be completely honest with you both, but I do not wish to cause you further distress, either, so I find myself in a quandary over how to move forward.”

Elizabeth sighed hard and set down her cup before crossing her arms over her chest. “Deacon, you already got me on your spaceship, so I’m smart enough to realize that there’s more to all of this than meets the eye. Right now, I feel like I took a strong dose of mushrooms or something, but since Jenny is here and seeing the same stuff I’m seeing, I kind of feel like this is all too fucking real, so how about you just come out with it, because I already feel like my grasp on reality is snapping.”

I grimaced. “That is what I would like to avoid, in fact. No mental snaps of any kind. But I need to show you things you may wish you had not seen. If you decide you cannot handle what we have shown you, Ode can drug you into believing this was allsome strange dream, and we will return you to Earth, but then you will not be able to help Sarah. Would that solution work for you?”

She and Jenny looked at each other, seemingly having an invisible conversation with each other. Then, Jenny looked up at me and said, “Show us whatever you want, and we will make our own choices.”

Her sister nodded in agreement.

“Very well, then. I am going to look quite a bit different momentarily, and you will not be able to understand my language, though I will be able to understand you.” I took a breath and pressed the de-mog button on my belt. The transformation back to myself was painless, and I was just over eight feet tall, so I suddenly loomed over them.

Both of the women jumped back, their eyes huge.

Elizabeth muttered, “The fuck?”

But Jenny grinned up at me, so like her other sister. She studied me with open curiosity, from my head all the way down to my huge feet, then back up again. “You’re so tall! And big. Huh.” Then, she walked around me and gasped in delight. “Oh my god, he’s got a tail!” She peeked around me and asked Ode, “Do you have a tail?”

Ode laughed. “All Ladrians have tails, unless they have a birth defect or were in a terrible accident.”

Elizabeth stared at my face in fascination, before she looked at Jenny. “Really? A tail?"

Jenny nodded in excitement. "Yeah, come look, it’s furry like a dog!”

“I’m not furry like a dog,” I grumbled.

Jenny startled at hearing my new language, then glanced at Ode for clarification. “What did he say?”

“He whined that he is not furry like a dog.”

I huffed indignantly. “I didn’t whine.”

“It reallyisfurry like a dog,” Elizabeth said, now equally as enthralled with my tail, as her sister was. “It even dips when he’s embarrassed.”

“I am not embarrassed!”

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