TOC MetaStories: Ineen Aldrop's 'He Stood taller Than Most'

Part 16 -New Resident-

Paulie looked at the alien detective and then back at the tall building they were behind in the alley. He nodded slowly, “Home huh? Alright, I can live with that. It looks a lot like my apartment building back on Earth actually. Maybe a little smaller.“

Paulie followed Mack as he led the way inside. He didn’t really know what he had been expecting. Walls made of chrome, floating chandeliers maybe? Instead the inside of the structure was simple and so plain that it almost hurt his eyes. The floor was lightly textured grey tile, maybe stone of some sort. The walls looked like plain plaster, a soft off-white in color almost like eggshells and they were unadorned by pictures or artwork.

Mack led him past a small desk behind which sat another oniuh, this one a slightly different shade of green than Flurn had been. The small toad-like alien seemed to blanch as they walked up to the desk, its bright eyes fixated on Paulie as they gripped the lapels of their loose fitting overalls worriedly.

Mack rapped the counter to get its attention. “Hey, I need a room. Large, preferably no street view and with the most durable furnishings you can get your webbed fingers on.” Its three umber colored eyes flicked from Mack to Paulie and back again, an unspoken question dying on its thick rubbery lips as it complied.

The small alien hopped off its stool and waddled back around a small doorway. The sounds of rummaging could be heard, a soft curse as something thumped into something else with a meaty whack followed by what sounded like air being let out of a balloon.

After another silent moment of waiting, the small lumpy-skinned alien came back out. One hand holding the back of their head as they grumbled and handed Mack a large square piece of greenish glass.

Mack nodded to the man and bade, “Good night. And watch yourself.”

And with that, he led Paulie down the short corridor and to a hall. Taking a quick turn the man checked the apparent key he had gotten from the desk attendant and then handed it to Paulie.

“It says room fifty-seven on floor eight. But I don’t think you read yuuvian yet. Do you?”

Paulie cocked his head, looking at the small glass square curiously. No, not glass exactly. It was too heavy and tinged with that slight greenish coloration. “No I can’t. Hey, what is this made of?” He asked Mack curiously.

Mack stopped and turned his head to look first at Paulie and then to the small greenish square. “That’s a lasercard. The data is laser-encoded into a beryllium-aluminum-silicate medium usually with some chromium inclusions for color. It is generally grown in a specifically irradiated atmosphere for counterfeit protection. Only the owner of the lasercard would have the specific emissions key.”

He shook his head, the man was speaking in tongues for all he understood. “So it isn't glass, because that would be just too easy to copy or something?” Mack made a gesture with two fingers. Paulie took it to be the man’s version of a thumbs up.

Mack pointed to the left. “There’s the stairs. We’ll take those”

Paulie groaned internally. “What, I thought a futuristic alien society would at least have access to elevators.”

Mack cocked his head as he held the door. “That word didn’t come through.”

Paulie rolled his eyes. This was all becoming rather tedious. He began to explain, maybe a little more condescendingly than the alien really deserved. “Well, elevators are little boxes that go up and down buildings to carry you from one floor to another all while listening to terrible music. Generally while being trapped with strangers that you neither know or care to know.”

Mack stopped on the second landing. His neck spines chattered as he chuckled. “Oh, yeah we have those. We call them elevators.”

Paulie Opened his mouth and closed it. “But you just said you didn’t know what I was talking about?!”

Mack nodded. “I didn’t. But now I do, and so your jargon-worm is translating the unknown meanings over. So when I say ‘elevator’ you are hearing whatever your interpretation of what you had originally said was.”

Now Paulie had more questions. Questions that he peppered at the man like birdshot as he followed him round the wide stairs. “Wait, so it is an active translation? How does it work, can it determine intent? If I use the same word for two different meanings then how does it know which one I mean? What is a jargon-worm anyways? Wait, is there a worm in my fucking brain?!” He got progressively more and more energetic till he practically shouted the last question, hands on the sides of his head as he stopped in place.

The miriam stopped too after another few steps, their large grey eyes rolling in their head at the barrage. With a slow blink the man gestured up the stairs. “Yes and no and yes again. I can explain in more detail once we get you safely inside.” Mack seemed to shake his head, long neck twisting to gaze back ahead with those huge grey eyes of his.

Mack had answered Paulie’s question, but it had only led to him being even more confused. Not for the first time he felt that uncomfortable squirming sensation in his mind and wanted to scream. Was there something inside of his brain? It certainly felt like there was something crawling around in his grey matter, something that seemed to let him understand the alien’s speech despite him not even passing Spanish class in high school.

The rest of the trek was done in retrospective silence, Paulie thinking over the strange course of events that had led him to where he was now. One tiny deviation in the way things had played out and he was either rotting in a metal box, pancaked on the bottom of an alley or shot to pieces in the middle of an alien electronics store. No, he was lucky. Too lucky, it was as if the universe itself had been looking out for him.

He cursed karma, and not for the first time. He would not have needed all this luck had those stupid little reptiles not kidnapped him in the first place. He could be hanging out with Dana right now, watching movies with her or taking long walks in the park to watch the sunset.

He shook his head. No, there was no point in letting himself get stuck in what could have been. He needed to look forwards towards the future, towards his potential. Mack stopped and Paulie was so lost in his own thoughts that the detective had to put out both hands to stop himself from being bulldozed by Paulie’s greater bulk.

Mack was forced back a step as Paulie grunted. “Huh? What?”

The miriam shook his head tiredly and muttered, “Damn walking mountain..” In a louder tone he continued, “Okay, this is the landing, look at the numeric symbol. You may need to be able to recognise it when I am not here to assist you.” The alien pointed to a small plaque by the simple door.

Upon it was a small string of alien text with a large symbol below it that looked like a picture of a table sitting on a fence with a circle on the left hand side. The character was unlike anything he had seen on the zen’kkalkian ship. But that meant little, it could very well be that it was from a different dialect or language entirely. He had no way of knowing and he wasn’t in the asking mood at the moment.

Instead Paulie just nodded. “Yuuvian for eight, got it.” He tried to push past Mack, but was stopped by an outstretched arm.

“What are you doing?” The detective asked, his hands straightening his dapper suit as he looked up into Paulie’s face.

Paulie threw up his arms in frustration. “What do you want me to do? Remain out of sight entirely?”

Mack nodded. Speaking in a tone as if he were explaining something to a very small child. “Yes, that is exactly what I am going to be doing with you. You may call yourself a human, but to most you are still a dangerous near-sentient animal from Urren.”

“I’m a person. I think, therefore I am or some shit like that!” He said heatedly while gesturing towards the barred doorway.

The alien man nodded. “Yes, and I know that. But they don’t know that.” He swept an arm towards the rest of the building. “And I must ask you to respect their opinions on this matter at the moment. As soon as it is safe to do so we will clarify this whole situation with your system being considered as an uninhabited backwater.”

He muttered low in response, “Quarantined uninhabited backwater world.”

Mack shook his head again, neck quills chattering in sympathetic response. “And I can’t do anything about that if you get yourself killed or injured by Ooounoo and her criminal ilk in the meantime.”

He made a certain kind of sense with his statement. Not the kind that Paulie wanted to hear, but more so the kind he needed too. “Keep it up then, I don’t really want to end up as a specimen in her grim menagerie either.” And with that he motioned for the shorter alien to lead the way. Lest he continue the macabre talk, Paulie decided to change the subject back to the issue of his apparent infestation.

“So, you are not the first person to mention ‘jargon-worms’ to me. I am curious, what is a jargon worm?” He added with additional emphasis.

Mack nodded absentmindedly as he opened the doorway. “They are small, semi-sentient parasites implanted into the speech centers of the brain. Generally applied at birth or at least the younger stages of life so they may grow with their host. This causes the least amount of residual discomfort.”

Paulie stopped halfway through the door. “What!?”

Mack shushed him and pushed him into the hall with an anxious look in both directions. “No time for your strange human antics here. We need to move before somebody sees us. The camera footage will be scrubbed already so that Ooounoo has no clues as to your whereabouts. Though with her vast resources she may yet be able to puzzle it out regardless of my preparations. Hence the reason Jakiikii has been assigned to keep an eye on you in the interim.”

The words spilled out nearly as fast as he could process them. Several phrases seemed too long for the meaning his mind gleaned from them and he shook his head as he was guided along soft carpet lined floors patterned like those from a 1930’s hotel. The soft beige and grey patterning blending into the hallway’s drab surroundings as they slowly maneuvered down the silent corridor.

After another moment of walking in tense silence they arrived at a locked door. Mack gestured to him, “Use the lasercard.”

Paulie reached into his pocket and withdrew the crystal slab, as he looked for a place to insert it he noticed a small slot to the left of the doorway in the wall. Almost like unto a thicker card reader.

Inserting the lasercard into the frame, Paulie was rewarded with a click and the whine of the door opening slowly inwards. He stepped through the threshold and into the darkened interior.

The room was small. Well furnished in a strange and unfamiliar way. There was a large bed-like thing near the corner if that was the best description for it. On the far wall was a large set of screens on which scrolled lines of green alien script. He wasn’t sure what their use was and so he turned his attention to the rest of the small alien flat.

There was the main room, a small offshoot that could have been a storage room or closet and what looked like a kitchen area. On the other side of the near wall was a door that led to what he had to assume was a bathroom. More of those strange silhouettes he had seen before but this time on a rotating dial could be glimpsed through the darkened frame.

He turned to see Mack still standing in the doorway outside the room. Waving to the detective he asked, “Won’t you come on in detective? I don’t know what half of this stuff is and might need a second opinion on it.”

The miriam nodded his head, neck quills chattering and closed the door behind him as he entered the apartment with Paulie.