Page 51 of Her Alien Boss

“Drak, she’s…”

I ignore the doctor as I walk into the bay and see Evie there. Her body, at least. The part of her that makes her, well, her. Is not. That is out inside the cold of a machine. What is left is her physical form, feigning life.

I can see her breathing. Some relief creeps back in, but it is limited. I know that the human form was not meant to be kept this way.

The look the doctor gives me is apologetic.

“Tell me you did not do this,” I say, compiling my mental list of people who need to die.

“I couldn’t stop him,” she says. “He had already initiated the removal of the cerebellum, and I thought she might perish if I were to try to stop him.”

“So he’d been planning this alone, then? Someone built in a direct capacity in the machine to allow a human brain to be connected to it?”

“Drak’s brilliant. Nobody really understands that thing other than him,” she says. “He could have done all sorts of twisted things without anybody knowing. What I can tell you is that her body is safe right now, and I think we can reattach her brain if you can retrieve it.”

“Retrieve her brain,” I repeat. “How hard can that be?”

CHAPTER 8

Evie

I wake up after what feels like the world’s longest and best sleep, stretch, and the universe shivers around me. I am bigger than I have ever conceived of being before. I used to think a blue whale was fairly large. But I am bigger than a whole shoal of those creatures. I am larger than the asteroid upon which my new body was pieced together.

I have no memory of being removed from my physical shell, nor of being settled into this body. But I know what must have happened. I know Drak must have physically ferried my brain out here and installed it somewhere inside the oddly beating interior of the creature he calls goddess.

I am, effectively, Frankenstein’s monster. I have no softness to me. I have no sense of erotic need. All the sensuality I was able to experience in the training process must have gone to some other purpose for I am as sexless as a whiteboard. That could bother me, if I let it, but I am too busy coming to a series of realizations all more or less at once.

First of all, I am inside the greatest piece of technology ever created. Second, I have control of her, as if she were my own body. I have been trained to pilot and control this mega-mech from the day I arrived on the asteroid. Third, I finally have something to take home. Something I don’t have to steal because it was bequeathed to me upon my untimely demise.

Arkon is going to be furious with Drak. And maybe with me. But I will burn that bridge when I come to it, because right now, I am going home.

They’re going to be so proud of me when I get back to Earth. I’ve taken tech that will slingshot humanity into a period of such discovery and pure technological triumph that we will never go back. I will take us from the last on the ladder to the first among all.

I just have to get there, which might take some time, on account of how space works and how far everything is, and quantum whatnots. But this mech has enough power for flight across lightyears. I’m going to turn the universe into a fuzzy blur once I calibrate my understanding of the location of the world I came from.

I know where Earth is. I know it the same way I know everything, because there are data files stored in my physical machine system that access all the knowledge in the universe, or at least a lot more than I used to be able to call up in my brain at any given time. I thought I was smart before. I’m so much smarter now. I know seventeen different recipes for macaroni and cheese. I can’t make any of them, because there are no stoves the size of asteroids, and not enough boxes of macaroni in existence, but I know them.

I notice that my feelings are oddly flat. I think that’s because I don’t have a human body giving feedback anymore. There’s just the solid and dependable processes of all things technological. That’s why I’m not freaking out, I have to assume. You have to have a lot of squishy bits producing adrenaline and other things to freak out.

I fly home. It takes some amount of time. I’m not sure how long. Time is another one of those things that is primarily moderated through squishy things. In this machine I don’t get hungry or tired. Whatever Drak did to hook my brain up to it, he clearly included enough nourishment for a long time. I suspect I’m filled with sacks of sugar that are getting broken down to feed my disembodied brain.

There’s enough of them to get me from one distant point of the galaxy to the other in a matter of what I am sure is probably days and is definitely no longer than weeks. The transporter I took from the moon didn’t take all that long, and that wasn’t a goddess robot put together by a madman with no regard for consequences.

Nothing feels entirely real. I have all my memories, and all my personality, but the lack of a feedback loop to my body creates a sense of unreality. I feel as though at any moment I might take off the VR set and be back in the room with Arkon. The fact that there is nothing to take off and that room is lightyears away does not matter. Perception is nine-tenths of the law, or however that saying goes.

I come into the orbit of Earth like an angel. I decide not to go screaming into the atmosphere because I am not sure how much of me would burn off in the process and it would be a pity to land as nothing but a brain in a jar.

“Earth, this is Evie Westport of the Alpha Core,” I transmit down on all available frequencies. “I’m here with some alien tech.”

I float around in a languid circle waiting for them to get back to me. The continents roll by beneath me, looking pleasant and calm. I think of an eighteenth potential recipe for mac and cheese. Then I wonder if I will ever get to eat such a delicacy again.

I have to assume the brain in machine-ing is reversible. I’d have to get back to my body, though, of course, but how hard can that be? I feel very much as though my energy reserves are good. They’re very possibly being charged by the sun, even.

I get no response, so I lower myself down, closer to Earth. Time passes. I feel little puffs and gusts of force against my feet from time to time, but they are tickles that mean very little.

It takes some time to realize that these are weapons being fired at me. Big ones.

“It’s me!” I shout out. “Evie!”