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Leaving her sitting on my bed, I go to run errands for my pet. It’s strange. For the last however long, I have visited her unconscious body several times a day, never really thinking of her as anything more than a task that needed to be completed. Now that task is sending me on more tasks. It may very well never end. Oddly, I find myself not minding that thought as much as I imagined.
I raid my brother Zain’s room. He has blankets, throws, pillows, all manner of decadent comforts collected over the years. If he likes something, he takes it. I have always been more circumspect about what I gather. If I do not absolutely need something, it is discarded. There are also some small tables that she can probably sit at with the aid of cushions and such.
Stella
Kahn returns absolutely festooned with blankets, cushions, and small pieces of furniture, carrying what seems to be the contents of an entire room in one go. His arms are full, and more is balanced on his shoulders. He looks like a walking alien interior design store.
He also has a grilled cheese sandwich sitting precariously next to a bowl of hot tomato soup, balanced against all known laws of nature on the back of his left hand. He steps into the room with this inherently unstable configuration very obvious, to the extent that I rush forward to grab the hot liquid before the entire unbalanced load comes down in a hefty crash.
Sure enough, my removing the plate and bowl are enough to destabilize Kahn’s load, and the rest of the items tumble from his grip one after the other as he reaches out to stop the heaviest and most breakable things from hitting the ground directly.
I am left standing holding my lunch, or is it dinner, in the midst of a bunch of stuff I know he must have spent the last hour or so picking out for me because there’s no way a grilled cheese and tomato soup took that long to make.
“I found a small table that should fit you,” he says. “And cushions. You can pile these up. And a rug, to make the floor more comfortable, so you do not lose too much body heat through it.”
He sets everything up as he talks, giving up his pristine, clear floor in favor of brightly colored rugs and throws and pillows that must come from someone with a very different temperament.
“There,” he says. “A place for you to sit, and to eat, and to write, and to draw. A proper place.”
“Thank you,” I say. He is an alien oppressor and obviously my enemy, but I can appreciate kindness, especially as it doesn’t feel like I’ve experienced much of that in a while.
“You can sleep on the cushions too,” he says. “I brought plenty of blankets so you will be comfortable.”
“Oh, I’m not allowed to sleep in the bed with you?”
I intend the question to come out sassy and sarcastic, but for some reason it sounds genuinely disappointed.
“I have no intention of taking a pet for myself. I will train you,” he says. “That is all.”
“Oh, you’ll train me, huh?”
I sit down at the table and stuff a corner of the grilled cheese into the tomato soup while looking him in the eye.
“You’ll have to be trained,” he says. “You will need to know how to fit into our world. Where you came from, you were an apex species. On Euphoria, you are more of a pet than anything. You will have no political power, no legally protected rights. You will live according to the whims of those who own you.”
“Sounds like being a woman on Earth,” I quip, though I’m not really joking. Women’s rights used to be something a long time ago, but in my experience we get traded and used just as much as animals and probably more. And we’re expected to make the soup. Nobody brings it to us.
“There are plenty of humans who are quite comfortable in their role as pets,” he says. “There is a certain safety to the arrangement. You are provided for and looked after. You do not need to seek shelter or maintain financial independence.”
“All of that in exchange for all our freedom forever, huh? Sweet deal.”
I’m not serious, of course, and he is talented enough a communicator to realize that.
“You appear to have left the city in search of freedom,” he says. “I know you do not value security. If you did, you would make better decisions and seek less pain.”
“Maybe I’m just a freak,” I say. Maybe I am. Right now, I’m a freak eating a very good sammich and having some pretty good soup too. I can see how people are lured into this arrangement with these aliens. On some level, fighting it seems like the stupid option. I take a lot of stupid options, though.
“You are a particular kind of human. There are many different kinds of humans. Some are suitable as pets. Others are not.”
“How many kinds of humans are there, you think?”
He smiles, pleased to be asked his opinion. I know how to read men like this. They think they’re smart. They usually are too, intellectually. Most of the human men I know like this wouldn’t know a feeling if it slapped them in the face though.
“I would not like to quantify the types of humans. There are many different ways to sort your species. Also, life changes can change temperament. Breeding humans generally calms them down. It is possible you would be a more tamable creature if you were to be bred. There are hormonal changes and the requirements of raising young also drain energy…”
“I’m not interested in being bred. What would you do, anyway, get some guy to fuck me?”
“There are breeding studs available on Euphoria. Their owners make good money when others want to create new life, though it does not often work. I have hypothesized that something in the Euphorian atmosphere acts as birth control for humans…”
