Young Writers Society

The siren burst out of hiding only five measures into the New World Symphony. His face blossomed with forest green, and his feathery gills stood up in all directions. “Stop that!” he shrieked. “You do not know what you are even singing!”

If only Sirens had a language equivalent to French. Ellipse needed something snotty to say that would translate as “au contraire.” Instead, she just shrugged and kept playing, a smug glimmer in her eyes.

“I will lick you!” He leveled a pair of pliers in her direction and waved them about. “I really will! Do not try me!”

Like Ellipse was scared of being licked. She was infinitely more nimble than the siren; he could never catch her.

Actually, scratch that.

Ellipse felt a flutter run through her stomach, fracked a note as she lost her footing and her heels floated off the floor. Sirens had tails and webbing and sail-like fins. Even if air resistance was puny compared to water resistance, the siren had a distinct advantage in mobility once Ellipse took gravity out of the equation.

She fumbled another note and tore the trumpet from her mouth, allowing herself a look of despair that landed halfway between smile and grimace. The siren grinned, delighted, and swam towards her, wide tail flicking up and down in strong, even strokes.

This would be an oh-heck moment, Ellipse thought, before realizing that it was, in fact, an oh-heck moment and that she really ought to do something. Leaving her trumpet to float, she stretched her feet to the ground and pushed off towards the computer room door, arms flailing in a poor rendition of Michael Phelp’s front crawl.

As hard as Ellipse tried to propel herself forward, she moved no faster than a snail The siren was somewhere around caterpillar speed and still kicked comically fast for someone travelling less than thirty centimeters per second, but at least he moved. And he could probably turn without assistance.

Letting out a muffled groan, Ellipse stretched her arms out, trying to get the slightest grip on the machinery that surrounded her. If she could just catch the tiniest bit of plastic, she could propel herself a little faster, or pull in towards the walls.

The fingertips of her left hand whispered over a break between computing towers, and she managed to catch a portable drive sticking out beyond the sheets of metal. Using what little friction existed between her skin and the metal, Ellipse dragged herself closer to the wall of computers. Then, she flipped so her front faced the wall, and pulled herself out the door.

“Get back here!” the siren shouted. “You cannot just recite love poetry like that! It is rude! An affront to social mores!”

Ellipse stuck her fingers in her ears and floated by the hatch in the floor. She even puckered her lips and inhaled to give the appearance that she might start whistling. Sirens hated the way earthlings whistled.

“Fine! Sing all the love poetry you want!” The siren flailed in the doorway, forgetting that he too could use his arms to put Newton’s third law to good use. “Just come back here so I can get Mouthbot to learn all of your voices!”

“Maybe,” Ellipse drawled, moving her arms to pillow her head. She shot the siren a smug smile. “I mean that is the reason I have passage on this ship. I’ll have to get to that at some point.”

“Yes, exactly,” the siren huffed. He stopped flailing and banged on the door frame, which sent him smacking into the other side of the opening. “Now get back-

“Hey earthling!” That was the tyran. The hard syllables of his language stuttered and repeated, signs that he was drawing out his words. “We’re about to pass through the Fold! Send Focci down to the cargo bay for me, would you?”

Ellipse peered at the siren, eyes narrow. “You are Focci, right?” she sang, probably butchering the pronunciation of his name. She knew was that it was similar to the Tyran and English words for foci, but Sirens had a terrible love for creating variations on themes. No one could translate a siren’s name correctly on the first try.

“Yes,” the siren replied, rubbing his shoulder and wincing. “But you should sing the high tonic twice instead of adding in the leading tone. What did Wrecktrix want?”

“He wants you in the cargo bay.”

Focci wheezed, the green flush of anger receding from his face. “Ugh. I hate working in the cargo bay.”

“I could probably do it,” Ellipse offered, shrugging. Her head bumped against a wall, and she reached backward to reposition herself.

“No no. You will just make a mess of things.” At this, Ellipse scowled. “Just tell him I will be down once I have finished training Mouthbot to learn from you.”

Ellipse shrugged. Keeping one hand on the wall behind her, she cupped her other palm over her mouth and shouted. “Focci says he will be down in a few minutes! He has to do something with Mouthbot so I can teach it to translate better.”

The tyran let out a squawk of a groan, and Ellipse tried to pinpoint exactly what emotion she was supposed to interpret from that. But then Focci was gesturing for her to come back to the computer room, so she kicked off of the wall and dove for the doorway.

As much as Ellipse would have liked to watch the ship slide through the Fold, she wound up stuck in the computer room for several hours. The captain had decided to bypass stopping at the Triune Fold Terminal in favor of a mobile scan, report, and check-in, and the Conics was now headed for the system’s life-belt.

“Say, Mouthbot,” Ellipse droned, picking at her fingernails and interrupting whatever question the computer had just asked.

“Yes. Ellipse?”

“What can you tell me about the Triune system?”

The computer hummed for a moment before the standard lady-voice crackled back into the air. “Information on all systems available on this ship is uploaded in the Specifus language.”

So this was a Specifus ship, or at least a ship made by them. Ellipse gritted her teeth and wished that internet existed in empty space. “Then I’ll translate it. Flash me the info.”

“Flash?” Mouthbot repeated, voice echoing in the quiet. “To flash is to show something quickly. It has many conno-

“Hecking shut up,” Ellipse groaned. She turned a somersault and reached out for her trumpet, which floated an arm’s length away. “Earthlings use the word flash to refer to any kind of light-based communication. It is not that hard to figure out.” Where had the crew found this computer’s English data? Google Translate?

“Updated,” Mouthbot said. “I will now proceed to. Flash. The Triune system information.”

Computers were so hecking awkward. Fiddling with the keys on her trumpet, Ellipse flexed her leg muscles and tried to flip backwards.

As it turned out, the Triune system had a smaller, older version of the Earthling system’s sun at its center. Its first planet resembled Mercury, and the next three had birthed intelligent, space-faring life, which was why Earthlings called the place the Triune system in the first place. A single gas giant orbited out in the void by its lonesome, and the oft-mentioned planet five was currently being transformed into a ski resort.

Ellipse did not know how to ski or snowboard and really did not want to learn. As she translated sentence-by-sentence for Mouthbot, she imagined her lifeless body oozing blood after falling off a trail, starting an avalanche, and being crushed by rocks.

Her stomach chose that moment to be needy. Which was good, because she stopped thinking about dying, but also embarrassing, because Mouthbot wanted an English translation for the rumbling sound.

“That would be my stomach,” Ellipse said, and then she repeated herself in Global Gliss. “Earthling stomachs make noise when they do not have enough to digest.” Did other species not do that? Ellipse swore she had once heard a hydrogen floater pass gas while its digestive tract decided to reduce the amount of acid in its intestines.

“But earthlings produce noise only from their mouths, do they not?”

Burying her face in her empty hand, Ellipse let out a long, heavy groan. “I will explain this to you later. For now, just accept that my body is telling me to eat.”

“Can you translate that into-

“No.” Ellipse reached out for the wall and pushed herself through the hall of computers. “I am leaving. To eat.”

“That is-

“Good bye!” Ellipse shouted over her shoulder. She somersaulted out of the computer room and aimed herself at the ladder leading up to the second floor. Time to locate a kitchen.