Page 62 of Malliko
Lios pulled out a small device and placed it on the table between us. He activated it with his mind, and a recording of Tania popped up above the device as a hologram.
“This is agent Tania Dermouth, Federation employment number 941489. I have been the contact person on Earth for researcher Malliko Boton. On several occasions, I addressed the importance of never being intimate with humans. Despite my warnings, he has violated that rule. I know this because he confessed to me that he had initiated a sexual mentorship with a woman he met through his research program. As she left his apartment a short while ago, I talked to her. She was under the impression that Malliko and I are mated but that we are in an open relationship and that I lived far away. To protect the woman, I informed her that I live next door to him and that there was no such thing as an open relationship between us. She was hurt and shocked by his lies and agreed to never see him again. That was after she admitted that they had been intimate only minutes before I spoke to her. I’ve done what I can to protect this woman. But I’m afraid that Malliko will do the same thing to the next woman unless you make him understand how wrong it is. Humans are easily manipulated by Eidrons.”
When the recording ended, I sat back examining my memory of what happened. I hadn’t seen Clara as a victim. If anything, she had left empowered and stronger than when she arrived at my apartment.
“Now, do you want to tell us your side of the story?” Lios asked.
Deciding that my best defense was to invite them into my memory, I connected to them and thought back to what had happened last night. Through my memories of Clara, I showed them how excited and nervous she had been before Lucas arrived and how she had thanked me for giving her the courage to try new things. My memory replayed her expressing herinsecurities about oral sex and what I had done to help her overcome them. I showed them everything until the moment she hugged me tight and kissed my cheek before leaving my apartment.
Nerix sat quietly for a while after I had played them my memory and then he turned to Lios. “I don’t see the problem. There was no coercion.”
Lios moved in his seat. “A memory can be distorted and differ from the victim’s experience.”
“Clara isn’t a victim.” I pulled out my phone. “We can connect to her and ask her directly if she feels like a victim. We’ll just need to access their phone system, which shouldn’t be hard as long as we’re orbiting the Earth.” I looked up Clara’s messages and stiffened when I saw that the message I’d sent before coming here had been rejected.
“What’s wrong?” Nerix asked.
Lying to them wasn’t an option with their being connected to my thoughts. I could sever the connection but then it would seem like I was hiding something, so I chose honesty. “It’s just that my last message hasn’t gone through to her. It says that the user is unavailable.”
They exchanged a glance and even though I didn’t have access to their thoughts like the time we worked as a team, I picked up on the tension.
Lios reached for the phone to see for himself. “The agent did say that she had made Clara promise to stay away from you.”
I looked at the screen again when Lios put down the phone on the table in front of me and said, “That would explain it, but if that’s the case then Tania didn’t do any of us a favor. Clara thinks men can’t be trusted and Tania just reinforced that narrative by sticking to her own home-brewed story of she and I being a couple. My fear is that it will knock Clara back to isolating herself.”
“You think one short conversation with Tania could have that big of an effect on Clara?” Nerix questioned.
Feeling restless, I moved my chair back and explained, “Yes. Humans live their lives based on emotions. Words spoken in anger or grief can linger with them for decades and cause broken relationships. You have to remember that words hold a higher importance since they can’t connect telepathically. Unlike us, they can’t access each other’s memories or feel what’s in another person’s heart. It makes it much harder for them to decode what is true or false. It makes me sad to think that I contributed to Clara’s thinking that men can’t be trusted. The worst part is that Tania is of the same impression, except her anger isn’t directed at human men. She’s wary of Eidron men because of her father and a researcher named Soros.”
“Is her father Eidron?” Lios asked.
“Yes, Tania is a hybrid. She has a lot of anger toward her father who came to Earth as a researcher and ended up impregnating her mother, which of course resulted in her. She’s determined to avoid other children like her being born because it hasn’t been easy for her growing up. One of the other researchers who came before me had a relationship with her. She still has unresolved feelings for him and misses him.”
“Who, Soros?” Nerix asked.
“Yes. I think that’s why Tania is so determined not to let any Eidron men touch human women. Either it’s a form of jealousy or it could be altruistic behavior with her trying to save them the heartache she’s experiencing.”
“That sounds a bit extreme though,” Nerix muttered. “Did this Soros guy hurt her? I mean if she misses him, it can’t have been a bad experience, can it?”
“No, but that’s the thing about humans. As I said, they cling to emotions stirred up by things of the past. They let the pain of loss overshadow the joy of togetherness. They feel so intenselythat grief will make them isolate themselves from the fear of experiencing more grief.”
Sitting back in his seat, Nerix crossed his arms. “That doesn’t make any sense. Don’t they realize that grief is a privilege only afforded to those fortunate enough to have loved?”
“Maybe from a cognitive perspective, but their emotions are on warp speed compared to ours.”
Lios and Nerix exchanged a glance and then Nerix nodded. “My thoughts exactly. It sounds exhausting to be human.”
“What’s the purpose though?” Lios asked me. “You’re the speciologist so do you know? Evolution tends to enhance what works to improve a species, but the overload of emotions that humans experience can’t be beneficial. Can it?”
“I’m not sure. My time and studies there have been highly fascinating, but it’s too soon for me to draw any conclusions. They seem to be highly sexual beings with a collective problem.”
“What problem is that?” Nerix seemed genuinely interested, from the way he leaned closer.
“It’s hard to pinpoint exactly, but I get the sense that there is a misalignment between their reptile brains and their value systems. It’s like their value system has developed much faster than their reptile brains and maybe that’s the reason they haven’t developed telepathy. They guard their thoughts because they associate shame with sexual fantasies.”
“Shame?”
“Yes. What I learned was that humans call sexual fantasies dirty. In fact, the most normal fantasies are taboo and not discussed openly.”
