Young Writers Society

Ellipse left a resignation sticky-note on her boss’s apartment door. It was not the most professional of exits, but she was short on time, and at least the sticky had an elegant, swirly watermark at the bottom. Besides, her boss lived two doors away, and Ellipse passed by his place every time she used the actually-normal elevator in the staff housing block.

She met the siren in the regular elevator, but only after waiting around for four minutes while he played with the gravity change between the higher floors. When the doors finally slid open, Ellipse found the siren with his green, tube-like tongue lolling out of his mouth and the wheelchair pushed over onto its side.

“Really?” she sang.

The siren shrugged. He scooted about in the elevator, giving Ellipse space for her feet and her belongings, and slapped the button for the housing block’s ground floor.

“So you speak five vocal languages, can communicate in three visual languages, and understand eight more languages, which are beyond the ability of earthlings to replicate.” the siren prompted.

“Yes.”

“You are not lying to get onto the Conics?”

See, Ellipse tried very very hard not to lie. “Of course not,” she said. “I do not lie.” She did not mention that she also tried very hard to not tell the truth.

“Everyone tells little lies,” the siren pointed out. “The question is whether or not you think this is little.”

Ellipse curled her lips back, and the siren shrugged. Evidently, she would have to prove herself. Rolling her eyes, she took a deep breath and let out a slew of sentences, all memorized from the third edition of Universal Biology, making sure that the part she spoke in English was the “mitochondria are the powerhouse of the earthling cell” bit.

The elevator slid to a stop, landing with a soft thud and a near-indiscernible shake, and the siren stared, gills flaring out and down. “I did not know that,” he sang, and then he flopped his way into the lobby. Whether or not that was approval, Ellipse did not know.

She followed him, leaving the wheelchair in the elevator, and bid a silent and unremorseful goodbye to the concrete walls and steel walkways that built the staff housing. To the hanging plants and abundant fairy lights, Ellipse bid an actually remorseful goodbye.

The pair made their way across the bare-bones concrete lobby, with the siren flopping as fast as his tail would let him and Ellipse strolling, taking great pleasure in whistling and readjusting her two bags, and acting as carefree as possible.

“So uhh, which dock is your ship in?” Ellipse asked. Hopefully the Conics was in the S or T block, because then she would not have to struggle with the elevator again.

“S-seventy-nine.”

Ellipse heard the S and thought, thank the almighty big bang. Then she heard the seventy-nine part and wanted to roll over and die. Walking there would take forever, and the S block’s conveyor belt floors were not for passenger use. Not officially, anyway. She grimaced and pointed at a door hidden behind a mass of dense, dark moss.

“Hey,” she called. The siren paused and twisted to look in her direction, and then to glance at the door. “S block is right over there.”

Like Ellipse, he grimaced, nose wrinkling and eyes narrowing. “This is the low number end, is it not?”

“Yeup,” Ellipse sang, long and slow.

The siren let out a honk, like a distressed goose, and flopped. He made a show of sad bird noises and too-weak arms and sent Ellipse a long, quivery look, plastering his gills down the sides of his head.

“Why are you such a baby,” Ellipse deadpanned. Or she tried to deadpan it, at least, but deadpanning in siren meant sounding like a gross saxophone, and Ellipse did not have the vocal chords for that.

Flipping onto his back, the siren let out a wail. “I have done so much walking today!” He sent Ellipse another pitiful look, like a kitten tossed out into the rain, and shifted so he was not crushing his dorsal fin.

Ellipse neglected to point out the obvious fact that sirens were inherently incapable of walking. She flung one bag over her shoulder and swung out a hip and plastered on as menacing a glare as she could summon. “I am sorry,” she growled, “but you suggested leaving the wheelchair in the elevator, so grow up and get going.”

The siren stuck his tongue out and made a gross flubbing noise, but he pushed himself up and scooted along nonetheless. He droned a few phrases about being a grown-up already, and Ellipse gritted her teeth and tried to emanate nasty vibes. She was practically grown-up too, and no one would ever hear her complain about walking through the terminal. Then again, she was a creature made for walking.

She managed to wrench the door open despite the bags in her hands, and made a grand sweeping gesture as the siren chugged through. Alas, he did not pick up on the sarcasm and whistled a cheery little thank you as Ellipse shut the door behind them. One short, bland hallway and metal door later, the duo marched out into the S block.

Ellipse felt irritated just looking at the S block. Were it not for the fact that she was already scowling, she would have clucked her tongue and frowned, lips curled back. Instead, she shuddered and re-positioned her bags. “Alright,” she sang, “now we keep going.”

Where the passenger sections of the Fold Terminal was industrial in a hip, we-still-covered-the-pipes way, the shipping section was a disaster of metal and spray paint and soot-blackened concrete. A conveyor belt, like the ones Ellipse had seen in airport scenes in Earth movies, ran along the outer edge of the main walkway, and then circled back around on the other side. From her brief stint as a customer service girl, Ellipse remembered that the conveyor belt ran nearly a mile and a half in total length. Stretched out, it could service over half of the Fold Terminal.

Overhead and on the left flashed a small electronic board, proclaiming the occupant of dock one. The red symbols rolled across like a wave, fluid and curly, which probably meant the ship there belonged to a hydrogen floater. Their writing looked like Russian cursive, only stouter.

Ellipse sniffled with a huge gulp of air and tried to set her fists on her hips. It looked awkward, and she regretted the pose immediately, but it was too late for take-backs. “Seventy-nine, right?” she asked.

The siren nodded, his gaze fixed on the conveyor belt with the all the longing a fish would have for the water.

“We had better get moving then,” Ellipse said, and then she was off.

The pace was school-bus slow, not old-lady slow or crawling-through-traffic slow, but like someone just way too worried about a ticket. And also the lives of forty small children. The siren flopped as quickly as he could, slapping the ground with smacks so loud Ellipse worried for his palms and that place where his torso turned into tail—she was not certain if that was called the waist or the hips or something completely without translation.

Really, something should have gone wrong before Ellipse and the siren reached dock thirty-two. That walk had taken a grand total of seventeen minutes, and the siren’s face developed an odd green tinge that seemed comparable to how earthlings flushed when they got tired or talked for too long without breathing. But then the pair made it to dock forty, and then fifty, and then sixty, all without even an inkling of a hitch.

There was no way Ellipse had lost the bounty hunters just like that. As she strolled under the sign for dock seventy-one, she chanced a glance backward, but the only thing behind her was a shipment of dried blue kelp from Sirena, packaged in matching blue biodegradable crates. The crates drifted away, slow and lazy, and Ellipse wondered for a moment if the kelp had come from the Conics.

The siren noticed her staring and scoffed. “Ugh,” he groaned, sounding like a trombone with its bell chopped off. “That stuff is nasty. I do not understand how earthlings can eat it.”

Ohh. Ellipse had heard of the kelp from Sirena. Supposedly it was like a low-sodium seaweed replacement. Ellipse personally thought anyone who did not like Earth seaweed was just a coward, but dietary restrictions were a thing, and Sirena kelp was the only decent substitute for seaweed.

“We eat some Earth versions of kelp all the time,” Ellipse explained. She brought her arm up so she could nudge the sleeve back with her nose and check her watch. “It goes well with one of our primary carbohydrate sources.”

The siren gagged. “I do not understand why anyone would want to eat something that is not meat.” Carnivores had no idea what they were missing out on.

Shrugging, Ellipse made a mental note that it was ten minutes before the seventeen-hundred hour mark. The Fold would connect to the Triune System soon.

“Hey,” she called, “what system are you going to next?”

“Home, of course.” The siren trudged onward, straining his neck to look out for his dock.

Home would be the Triune System, probably. Far be it from Ellipse’s intention to assume the siren’s birthplace, though. It was not like she came from Earth.

She settled on a neutral “um” in response and followed after him, flicking her gaze up as she passed under the sign for dock seventy-three, which held an Earthling ship from Brazil. This would be the moment when things went wrong.

She happened to notice the bright white gato sitting atop the sign, because really, white did not blend in with the shadows of the ceiling or the dark cement, or anything out in space. The alien’s twin tails twitched, and then suddenly a mass of snowy fur hurtled down and collided with Ellipse’s chest.

The next moment found Ellipse on her butt, fingers sore but undamaged, and tailbone aching. She peeled her eyes open, only to find herself face-to-face with the black gato and wheelchair boy, who sat atop his adoptive parent, arms wrapped around the gato’s neck the way a child might hang onto a motor-biking daredevil mother.

“Oh, it is you again,” Ellipse grumbled. “Please leave. I have things to do.”

“Like what, leave? You realize that your timing is pretty suspicious, right? You’re practically turning yourself in.”

Ellipse flung up her hands, luggage and all. “What do you want me to do? I can show you my passport if you like.”

“Oh right, like that’s even your real-

That boy was a total asteroid, Ellipse thought. Then she whacked the black gato over the head with her luggage and scrambled for dock seventy-nine. She passed the siren along the way; he had decided to leave her behind instead of pulling his vocal trick again, the jerk, and for that Ellipse almost considered whacking him too. She managed to resist the temptation.

The door to dock seventy-nine opened at the quick press of Ellipse’s ID to the nearest scanner, and she slipped inside, dumped her luggage, and then reached out and dragged the siren in after her. He yelped in protest, but Ellipse did not care. She needed to be done with the bounty hunters. She fumbled to scan her ID again, and might have crushed the white gato’s paw when the doors finally slid shut.

“You are awful,” the siren announced.

“Oh, shut up. It is hardly my fault they think I am someone famous.”

The siren shook his head, gills flapping, and Ellipse interpreted that as his equivalent of an eye-roll. “Now then,” he said, eyes darting about the dock. The metal room was near-empty, with only a few empty biodegradable blue crates stacked in one corner. “Where is Captain Maj?”

Ellipse followed his gaze, turning to take a look at the dock, and her eyes found the ship and latched on like a barnacle. The Conics was beautiful, exactly what a nerdy mathematician would think of upon hearing the name. She was a sturdy, egg-shaped ship, with a shiny metal shell and plenty of round windows to peek through. Her engines were outlandishly large and for some reason shaped like airplane jets, and her landing gear shimmered, clean and strong and reliable.

Someone dropped out of the bridge hatch, and Ellipse held back a gasp of delight. This crew had a real live tyran! If only this had been an appropriate time for drooling.

The tyran opened its beak and let out a stream of vowels and consonants, and Ellipse let the syllables wash over her like a wave. She had always wanted to meet a tyran; they were one of the few other known species capable of learning earthling languages, and she had learned the tyran language forever ago.

“What does he want?” the siren asked.

Ellipse swooned. She was already useful. “He wants you to hurry the heck up,” she said, voice airy and dreamy, “and also he is very confused about why the custodian is here.”

“Oh, whatever.”

The tyran said a few more words, and Ellipse translated again, overflowing with glee. “He says we should have left seven minutes ago. The Fold is about to connect to-

The siren squawked, and Ellipse snatched up her belongings and rolled him to the bridge hatch. She watched the tyran lift up its crew mate, giant arms not betraying the slightest hint of strain, and let herself break into an awestruck grin. Then, once the siren was safely situated on board, the tyran stuck its head back out and poked its skinny tongue out the side of its beak.

“You want to come on, don’t you? I don’t know what Focci promised, but it’s too late to argue. Get up here. We’ll drop you on planet five.”

Biting her lips in jubilee, Ellipse held up her bags, and tittered in amazement as the tyran gripped around her waist and pulled her up. She had no idea what planet five was, but she could not find it in herself to care right now. All Ellipse cared was that she had just boarded a gorgeous ship and met one of the rarest intelligent species in the known universe.

Those bounty hunters could go to heck.