Page 68 of I Fell for an Alien Popstar

“Well, hi to you too,” I laughed.

She grabbed my hand and started dragging me toward the sliding glass door.

“You are going to lag when you see this place,” she giggled.

The door chimed and slipped open, and suddenly I was standing inside something I had only ever seen in half-remembered dreams.

The Jelly Lounge was totally out of orbit.

For a second, my brain refused to understand it. My body did, though. I felt that slow, drifting calm, as if gravity had softened its grip and the world had decided to float instead of stand still.

The floor beneath my boots was clear, seamless glass. Far below, an endless tank stretched into glowing blue-green depths, light rippling upward in liquid patterns that slid across my skin.

It looked like walking on the surface of an ocean that refused to break.

Every step sent faint pulses of light scattering beneath me, as if the water were aware of us.

Tables made of thick glass rested on chrome legs, hovering slightly above the transparent floor. Chairs were round, white molded seats without armrests. Light shifted constantly, bending and waving with the water, so the entire room felt submerged.

The walls weren’t walls. They were vast, curved tanks stretching upward until they blurred into the ceiling, which was also alive and moving.

Creatures drifted above us, below us, and beside us.

Everywhere.

Alien fish glided through the water in impossible shapes and colors. Some were translucent, their bones glowing like soft circuitry. Others pulsed with gradients of electric pink, citrus green, and deep ocean violet.

One spiraled past like a ribbon of liquid glass, its body refracting light into shifting rainbows that painted the room in slow motion.

Nothing swam fast. Everything drifted lazily.

I mean, I would too if I were a fish in a giant ocean.

The whole place moved to a rhythm I couldn’t hear but could feel in my chest, steady and weightless, as if the building itself were breathing.

I just couldn’t get over it. It didn’t feel like we were in a café.

It was as if the planet had decided to let us sit inside its oceans for a while.

Creatures with long ribbon fins drifted past in lazy arcs, moving like slow silk. Jellyfish pulsed in pale gold and soft mint, their bells expanding and contracting with patient precision.

A school of iridescent things moved as one organism, turning on some invisible cue so they flashed through every color in the spectrum at the same time.

“Oh my God,” I breathed. “This is insane.”

“Right?” Pia’re bounced on her toes, her glow brightening. “It’s like eating underwater, but we’re dry.”

“I studied extraterrestrials in college, aren’t you an aquatic species?”

“Yes I am. We like to live near water now, but not in water. We’ve evolved, Vada.”

She rolled her eyes jokingly.

We wove between tables to a small spot near one of the side walls, where the tank curved close. A ribbon-finned creature floated by, its translucent body streaked with electric blue.

Pia’re dropped into one of the round chairs, which wobbled once before settling. I slid into the seat across from her.

As I looked around at the other extraterrestrials eating, I noticed that the glass tables contained tiny currents carrying strands of neon algae and drifting specks that shimmered like digital plankton.