Testing, testing, one two three - is this thing on?

Yeah, looks like. Okay. Ship's personal log for Alex Charles Whitman, entry number one.

Let's see... my friends and I have just left the Earth behind, with no idea of if we'll ever be able to come back or when. Our five-month mission, to travel to the secret Rebel base codenamed 'Sanctuary' without being intercepted and captured by minions of the foul upstart Kivar. Yeah, five months in a pretty crowded little spaceship. It's gonna be weird. No matter what Sanctuary is like, we're probably going to be very glad to arrive, just to get out of such tight quarters.

In other news, Max and Liz are now engaged! Apparently he popped the question to her in the airlock as we were lifting off, and gave her a necklace to seal the deal, which fits in with Antarian tradition better than a ring thing. Christin, our shapeshifting hostess, is trying to see if she can scrounge up a promise necklace for Liz to 'give' back to Max, because that's the right way to do things. Christin fusses over Max and Liz particularly, as if she's the alien fairy godmother in their Cinderella story or something like that. Apparently there's some story about Liz being the true alien bride in spirit, but I haven't gotten all of the details straight with that.

Let's see. As soon as Max, Liz, and Christin were inside, and the word came that we'd gotten high enough in Earth's atmosphere that even other alien ships wouldn't be able to penetrate the ship's cloak easily... well, all of the girls made a big fuss over the engagement thing, obviously, but someone pointed out that we needed to get something sorted out for accomodations and not just keep standing out in the ship's corridor. Beyond the crew quarters, there were five small passenger cabins, and ten of us, including the New York contigent. Three of the cabins just had a single bed in them, just about big enough to get called a double, while the others had two seperate, narrower bunks. Kyle, conscious of the fact that nearly everybody but he and Lonnie were couples, and I think he's still a little scared of her, was very insistent that he should get one of the double-bunk rooms with a guy roommate, and same with Lonnie and another girl. But then the question came up, who was the odd couple out?

Max and Liz, pretty obviously, got a cabin together, what with the engagement news and everything. Isabel hesitated only a second and then called the next one - which probably doesn't have as much to do with wanting to sleep with me as being very unwilling to share that much space with her New York lookalike. Basically that was how it came down between the other two pairings, too - who was most willing to stand Lonnie's company. Ava ended up falling on the grenade - she doesn't like Lonnie much, and they've had some reasons for enmity lately - Ava agreeing to work with Michael, Isabel, and Liz to foil Lonnie's plans at the Summit, Lonnie refusing to help Ava and Rath out when they set out to stop Tess, and so on. But they grew up together, and I guess Ava figured that she could put up with the other girl better than Maria, who still pretty much looks at her as the same girl who manipulated Max into going to New York because she needed a king figure.

Christin introduced the crew of the ship too, though I don't remember any of their names or anything like that. Think I've got the job descriptions down pretty well - there's a pilot, a captain, (who also covers as navigator,) an enginner, and a steward/purser. Christin's taken a spot on the crew too, which seems to be more or less 'tactics and communication officer', so there's five of them, (true aliens, crew,) and ten of us, (earthborn, passengers, human or hybrid.)

Speaking of communication, Christin said that they were going to break radio silence in about two hours, (well, less than that now,) to send a signal off to Sanctuary just before turning on the warp drive for the first time. Max, Liz, and Isabel all wanted to sort out some kind of attachment to the message, with an announcement of the engagement, and reassuring Queen Alinda, Tess, and anybody else who cares that we all got en route safely. Isabel has started to really think of Alinda like family, even though they've never met, sort of a grandmother figure - since Alinda was the princess' mother, and Isabel came from the princess' DNA and spirit. Apparently, since they found out about the Liz stuff, that also changes Isabel's status, in that she has Vilandra's DNA and the spirit of Vilandra's little sister, but that doesn't really affect her connection to Alinda I suppose.

So, while Isabel is off in the comm room or the lounge or somewhere trying to figure out what to say to aliens, I'm back in our room, experimenting with the ship's computer and trying to get used to the notion of living here for a hundred and fifty days. That's more than a school term... that'll take past the end of January, or it would if there wasn't a time compression effect one way or the other. Christmas - my folks will be celebrating christmas alone this year, not sure where I am, even if they believe Valenti's story, and as for us - even if we do mark the days and try to have Christmas on board ship, there probably won't be much we can arrange for decorations and gifts. Well, we'll deal that out when it comes up.

Might as well close out this 'log' session now, before I depress myself anymore. Pop in next door to visit Michael and Maria - assuming that they aren't occupied with stuff I'd rather not see. Oh, boy, that's another thing. I don't suppose these cabins are perfectly soundproof. Yet another slightly awkward bit. And we're right between Max/Liz and Michael/Maria, both of whom might get - a bit loud, in various ways. (At least Max and Liz probably won't have big screaming arguments.)

Log more later.

#

"Okay, I guess that covers things for Alinda," Max agreed, tapping a spot on the computer screen that generated a horizontal rule over the message screen. "What about Tess?"

"I'll handle that one," Isabel said, and took a breath before dictating to the computer. "Hi, Tess. Hope you and the baby are both doing well. If what we heard about your due date is right, he'll probably be a few months old by the time we get there. Kyle got your message, and though there was a lot of personal stuff that he'll have to decide if he wants to reply to, he mentioned that you said we should all try to hop on a ship and leave Earth, so thanks - that hint probably helped us all prepare ourselves for Larek and Christin's plan."

"How was your trip from Stellynfruss to Sanctuary? Probably it was a few months, or at least weeks, since you weren't going Granilith express. I never thought about that before now. It took us a long time to get the communicator working, and by the time we did, they said that you had arrived, but I never thought to ask about how long it had taken - or to speak to you directly, sorry about that. I think that would have occured to me, eventually, if the Kivar stuff hadn't popped up.

"I guess I'm learning a lot lately about how to forgive, first with Rath, who I hated for tricking us all and attacking Max, but then he turns around and helps protect Alex, bringing him back to me after I thought I'd lost him. And now even Lonnie is trying to make good and toe the line in exchange for her ride home, and I'm finding it hard to hang onto my grudge against her. Maybe anyone really can redeem themselves. I'm looking forward to seeing you again more than I expected to - and meeting my nephew, of course. Take care of you both. Isabel."

She tapped a button to turn off the voice recording function and turned to Max and Liz. "Whatcha think."

"Seems an okay note to sound," Max agreed, and then noticed that his fiancee was giggling very softly. "What is it, Liz?"

"Oh, just - I think that may be the first time we've told Tess - or anyone on Sanctuary - that Alex wasn't actually dead. Wonder how she'll react, having you mention it in passing just like that?"

"Hmm... probably she'll be very frustrated, and impatient to know more, the hows and whys of it," Isabel realized. "Okay, let's send it off as is."

"Good enough for me," Max said with a grin. "Hmm... you know, I'm actually feeling pretty hungry. Didn't eat much during the final run up to Childwold. I wonder what kind of food this ship'll be able to provide for us."

"Should we try to signal the steward?" Isabel said, indicating the contact button, which Christin had pointed out to them, saying that they just needed to tap it to page anybody on the ship through a kind of public address system.

"No, come on." Liz grabbed their hands, her eyes glinting with amusement. "There's a computerized food dispenser right over there - I saw the pilot use it right when we were getting started." She had to let go of Isabel again to gesture to the corner of the lounge. "Why don't we just take a look to see if it understands English, and anything about our food choices?"

"Liz, I'm not sure..." Max started.

"No, come on - if things go badly wrong, we can ask for help, but don't you want to try on our own, just once, for the first time?" And she got up, not letting go, and nearly pulling Max over towards the food dispenser slot. "Testing - do you understand English?"

"We're going to need to learn Antarian before the trip is done," Isabel muttered. "The translators here aboard ship are all very good, but a bit distracting, and they're not going to be everywhere..."

"Ssh," Liz insisted. Of the crew, only Christin knew English, but she'd programmed it into the ship's computer apparently.

The food slot replied with a long burble in an alien language. "Saying that it can't understand us?" Max asked. Liz gave him a silent look, that somehow clearly meant 'just wait a bit longer.'

"Interface established with linguistic databank," the slot suddenly announced. "English voice command interface is online. What can I serve you this - evening?"

"Hmm," Liz considered. "Let's see... I'd love two big slices of pizza."

There was a pause. "No recipe for 'pizza' found."

"Oh, well..."

"Analysis of dictionary definition in process. Analogs for dough crust and tomato sauce found. Insufficient information to replicate 'mozarella cheese' or 'pepperoni salami.' Is more data available?"

"Hmm..." Liz looked up at Max. "Think we can teach it to make a decent pizza?"

"Maybe - but something simpler might be a good first step," he pointed out. "Think how noxious a meal we might end up with if the cheese goes wrong."

"Oh, yeah."

"Try a hamburger," Max suggested.

"Hamburger recipe found," the slot replied. "With pickles or without?"

"Um - sure, pickles," he agreed, sharing an odd look with Liz. Had Christin managed to put this much into the food slot's programming.

"Extra mustard?"

"Nope."

"Working..." was the only reply for about thirty seconds, and then a fairly decent looking burger was lowered down into the delivery spot.

"Hmm." Max took it and had a bite - a bit plain compared to the Crashdown's eclipse burger, (which was nicely spicy,) but he wasn't complaining at this point. As well as the pickles and the mustard, the recipe apparently included a bit of a ketcup-like sauce and some shredded lettuce, as well as the bun and the meat. "Can I get fries with that?"

"What ingredient would you like - fried?"

"Guess not," Isabel put in. "I'll have a burger too, and some cold water to drink."

"'Burger' not found - can you specify water temperature?"

"Establish 'burger' as a synonym for hamburger," Liz said, wondering if this programming style would work. "Use three degrees celsius as a default tempeature value for all cold beverages."

"Understood." After asking Isabel about the pickle and the extra mustard - both of which she wanted held - the machine delivered her order. Max got some water to drink too.

Liz had a different idea though. "Computer, is there a menu listing of Earth food choices available?"

"Affirmative." The menu appeared on a screen above the food slot. "You can make your selections by tapping on the screen, in addition to voice control."

"Now that's using your head," Max admitted. "What have we got?"

"Hmm... okay, I'll try the grilled chicken and fettucine alfredo," Liz said, tapping options, "along with garlic bread, garden salad, and cherry coke. Not bad!" This took longer to deliver - the salad and coke came first, and they were all eating by the time Liz's main course arrived.

"Oh, hey guys - done with the message?" Christin said from the doorway just as Max was finishing his burger. "Or did you decide to take a food break? Figured out some of the recipes I was able to program in I guess."

"Yeah, umm, we're all ready," Max said. "Guess that we - umm, we thought that you'd be able to tell that with some sort of alien telepathy or something I guess, that there wasn't anything else we wanted to add."

"Nah, I don't use the mind reading mojo much - it's a violation of privacy," Christin shot back. Max blinked in surprise. "Oh - that was a joke?"

"Yeah, but it's alright," Liz assured her. "You can read the file we were working on and attach it to the outgoing message at the right time?"

"Sure," she insisted. "Anything else you guys need?"

"Very soon we'll need to teach that food system about pizza - not to mention mozarella cheese in general," Liz said with a smile. "This parmesan stuff on my noodles isn't good enough. But that can wait for a bit."

"Sure," Christin said with a laugh. "Never really got the point of pizza myself, though I have more of a sense of taste than most shifters."

"Not 'getting' pizza?" Isabel repeated in disbelief. "Geez, you really are alien." All of them laughed a bit too hard over that one.

"Yeah, well, soon enough we're going to be the ones who are 'different'," Liz pointed out. "We're sort of out of place even here aboard ship, even though we outnumber the crew. Christin - language lessons?"

"Tomorrow morning, if you're up for them," Christin answered with a smile. "I can teach directly if you like, but the computer can probably do it a lot more patiently."

The three kids exchanged looks. "Well, we'll see," Max said. "Thanks for everything, Christin."

"All part of the service, sir," she said with a big smile, and left the room.

"Well, I should go back and keep Alex company," Isabel said, taking the second to last bite of her own burger. "Are there food slots like this one in the staterooms too?"

"I don't think they quite count as staterooms, but yeah," Liz laughed. "Also on-suite bathrooms, which don't look quite as weird as the ones you described from Stellynfrus, Isabel."

"Probably they don't have room for the fountains on board ship, so copied Earth designs," Isabel laughed. "I think they still have the sponge towels though." And she put her dishes into the recycler and left.

"What makes you say that it's not a stateroom?" Max asked Liz with a smile. "I mean, I'm not sure what a stateroom is, other than a passenger cabin on a ship, but if there's a qualification that we lack, I'd like to know about it."

"Huh." Liz considered that. "I don't know, actually. I guess I thought of staterooms as being very roomy, and fancy, like good hotel rooms - not quite a suite, but almost. May be way off base with that, though."

"Okay. Well, we can always try looking it up in the linguistic database later," Max pointed out. "Obviously it has a pretty good dictionary included, as well as translations into Antarian for everything."

"Yeah, but much later," Liz laughed. "I've got other plans for you once we finish eating, my Betrothed."

"Hmm... maybe I should grab something else," Max pointed out, since he was finished and Liz was still working on her chicken and pasta. "If you're going to wear me out."

Liz laughed merrily as Max went over to look at the available menu for himself.

#

Alex's personal log, day two.

Learning Antarian is hard - at least, for those of us without some alien blood or spirit or anything like that. Even Michael and Lonnie were struggling some with the basic 'vacation-level' phrases that we stated on today.

Oh, talking about alien spirits, Liz finally explained that part to Maria and I over breakfast this morning. (She insisted on having us try hot pizza for breakfast, because Christin had apparently been working on recipes through the night. Didn't seem half bad actually, though I think the pepperoni isn't quite authentic yet.) It was an incredible story, with the alien soul of Queen Ava being implanted in Liz's two grandmothers, passed down to their children, and then to her - kind of cool and yet mind-boggling at the same time. And it's hard to not laugh a little about Tess, being so determined to seduce Max and have his baby, not realizing that in soul, though not in body, she was more his sister than his wife. Yikes.

Things are settling into a kind of routine pretty quickly around the ship, which was named to us as the 'Van Allen.' Probably all of us want a little structure to our lives now that we've left Earth, so accidents easily turn into tradition, and soon hidebound rules. At least things aren't so cramped that there's a real shortage of different places to be if we're tired of sitting in our cabins, but there's nowhere that's really roomy enough for everyone to gather at one time either, which will probably make clique politics show up sooner rather than later. And yes, Isabel and I could tell that our friends were getting very, umm, affectionate through the walls last night, but it wasn't really too hard to tune it out and drift off to sleep. Isabel was experimenting with getting the computer to play Antarian music, including some stuff that she heard back when dropping Tess off and had been missing the sounds of. There isn't much earth music in the library, though, and I can tell that long before we make dock, I'll be homesick for Dido and Sense Field.

After what Isabel told me about the Granilith I was expecting something dramatic for the first jump into Warp space but it was pretty disappointing - stars disappeared from the viewing ports, replaced by the same pastel color patterns that she mentioned, but nothing inside the ship seems to be different, even the lack of engine vibrations and noise. Apparently we'll be taking something like eleven days for the first warp hop, which isn't really heading anywhere in particular, just heading away from Earth in a random direction so that we'll not be traced or followed.

There's a game room down the hall, which is pretty cool. I was wondering if it'd be a fancy holodeck-like thing, but no. Christin says that the Antarians do more or less have that kind of technology, but it's only available on larger and fancier ships than this. The games room is entirely computerized though, with walls, floor, retractable table and so on all being touch-screen computer interfaces, so that you could play cards with having your 'hand' displayed on a tiny popup of the table that other people can't see, and the cards that are 'played' showing up on the table. Isabel and I went up against Max and Liz on a game of floor chess, with the board taking up the entire room instead of being on the table, and we also tried an Antarian game that is kinduv chess-like, but got a bit frustrated with some of the more complicated rules. Oh well.

Michael, Rath, and Kyle are talking about trying to set up a full-immersion adventure game, where you can look out and 'see' different scenery, enemies, and so on over all four walls, but there wasn't something like that already in the computer, and I know that it's going to take a lot of effort to make some deal like that work. Would be pretty cool if we can get it working though, (and by 'we' I mean that I'm not going to slog through all of the programming myself just so that we can play.)

Oooh, looks like it's time for more basic vocabulary drill. More later.

#

"Oooh, c'mere sweet baby," Rath said, stretching out his arms and smiling as Ava jogged up and kissed him. "Yeah, I've missed you," he added once the kiss hello was finished. "Valenti isn't as bad as I thought he'd be, roommate-wise, but I still wish I was with you at nights."

"Yeah, I know sweetie," Ava replied, and sighed, leaning against him and looking out. They were using the observation pod as a lover's retreat, a small dome at the top of the 'ship' where the shifting colors of warp space were visible in a half sphere all around and above them. "But it kinduv made sense for me to go with Lonnie - at least for now. Maybe we can switch with Michael and Maria later, or some deal like that. Plus, isn't this more romantic than a room with shiny steel walls, alien fluorescent lights, and a tiny little porthole that we could peer out through." Rath's look was more than a little dubious on the value of this romance. "Oh, come on, just kiss me back."

He did.

#

"I want to decorate our cabin a bit," Maria mentioned to Michael as they had breakfast in bed together. "Put up some things to remind us of home, if possible."

"Hmm." Michael reached out, grabbed his black jeans, (which were due in for the laundry soon if not immediately,) and went digging in the back pocket. After a few seconds he brought out something made of blue plastic, about the size of a postage stamp but much thicker, with a notch cut out of one corner and little golden contacts."

"A flash memory card?" Maria repeated. "What's it from?"

"That little digital camera that you brought along," he said. Nobody had really thought of taking pictures on their road trip from Roswell to New York State, but... "It was nearly full of pictures that you or your mom, or I had taken back in Roswell and Corpus Christi, right? When we had to bail out of the motor home, I figured that the camera itself was too big to bother with, but for some reason I thought of taking the card."

"Hmm, cool," Maria said, seeing the possibilities. "Now, all we need is to tell the computers here on board ship how to understand JPEG image format on a FAT file system, or whatever, and rig up something capable of printing out the pictures, maybe even full poster size."

"Oh, come on, we've gone paperless here, haven't we?" Michael added with a grin. "I think that the computer can display the picture directly on the walls, if we can instruct it to."

"Really? I thought that was just in the games room."

"The game room is fancier, with better resolution and sensitivity, but there have been displays showing up on just about all the walls," he said. "Whenever Christin wants an interface, it just sort of shows up wherever it's handy."

"I thought that there were just specific spots in each room that could do that," Maria replied, and smiled. "But we can ask about it, sure. So, what else is up for today, beyond more language classes?"

"Hmm, not sure," Michael admitted. "Anything you want to do?"

"Hiking," Maria put in instantly, and giggled. "Might be hard to arrange, though. Let's see... watching a movie, same sort of issue I guess. Is there any possible way we'll escape going insane from the boredom in nearly five months more of this?"

"Well, let's see," Michael put in, wrapping an arm tenderly around her. "Once we've got some more of the language under our belts, I think that the computer library is going to start becoming more and more interesting in proportion. There's tons of Antarian music, books, video features and such in there, just waiting for us to get good enough to understand them."

"Somehow I think it may take more than a few more language lessons until we can understand the culture of an alien planet," Maria put in, and sighed. "For me, anyway. I'm not sure if you'll have an easier time of it or not."

"Hmm." Michael considered. "Oh, Alex had a notion for this big game that could keep things lively for a while."

"Hmm... what is it, has he taught the games room computer to play Balderdash or trivial pursuit or something?" She considered. "No, both of those are dependent on the material in the card boxes, which would be really hard to reconstruct from memory or anything."

"No, from what he's said it's just a sort of party game that doesn't involve much more than little slips of - paper or some close equivalent," Maria snickered, remember what Michael had said earlier about going paperless, "and enough people to play. It's called werewolf, and apparently it gets really deep and psychological. I didn't really follow what was in all of the rules, but maybe we can ask him to explain this afternoon."

"Alright." There was a little chime. "Oooh, okay, we'd better go clean up and get dressed for class. Who're we with today?"

"Max, Liz, and Lonnie I think," Michael said, getting out of the bed and heading around to the bathing annex. Maria met him with nothing on but a smile and hugged him hard. The habit of meeting in groups of five for the Antarian lessons was one of those firm traditions after only around two days on board ship - it allowed interaction and practice between the students without greating groups that were too large to meet anywhere. Maria was even starting to feel more comfortable around Lonnie from the times that they'd been in 'class' together - she was so dedicated and earnest when it came to her studies, which very much contrasted with her old New York 'badass as all that' persona. Everybody wanted to do well, realizing that language could be a prison for them at Sanctuary unless they learned how to get free of it.

In shower mode, the 'bathroom' was basically just one double-size stall, with all the other appliances retracting into the wall. Hot water tended to drizzle down from the entire ceiling, which had taken Maria some getting used to, especially because she didn't have a spot where she could retreat to and apply the lotions or hair cleansers provided, but it was pretty easy to adjust to getting that sort of thing done while still getting wetter. And there were lots of other fun things to do while getting wet. Not that they really had time for that kind of shower fun this morning.

#

Morning, day three.

Okay, spaceship werewolf is definitely a 'go.'

I hope that I'll be able to run this sort of a game without it totally self-destructing. I've only played werewolf/scum a few times, always with other people on the internet who I've never met. Heard about it being played in parties, and gotten a bit of the descriptions of how, but I'm not sure that too much of it can be carried over to this. For one thing, a lot of the rules in that situation seem to be oriented around making the game actually finish in an hour or so, in order that people can go home, and what appeals to most of the people here is the idea of something that would last a long time, so as to relieve boredom at least until we get out of warp space and receive a message from the Rebels, if not much longer.

So, we've got eleven players total it seems, because Shana and Jevrok the steward both agreed to be in it. (Guess the other members of the crew are still too busy to play games, which I can respect considering how hard they have to work to get us all where we're going.) With a cohort like that, I think that the pack size of the werewolves will probably be three, though maybe that'll switch by one in either direction. One secret role on the townspeople's side, probably a psychic, and that should just about do it. I don't want to get overly clever the first time. For all of the secrect stuff, I've started to arrange some individually keyed computer access systems, sort of like online forums on the net back home, or more like email boxes I guess, so that the werewolves can vote together by night and the psychic can find out what his or her dreams tell, and so on. Well, I'll sort it all out and then give everybody the spiel. And no, I'm not going to put any of the secret identities in this log until they've been discovered, because I'm not sure it's as secure as the other computer files can be.

Let's see, what else can I talk about? Everybody's excited about the prospect of getting a message back from Sanctuary in five days or so, when we pop out of warp space for the first time. Not sure what Alinda or Rayde or anybody else there might have to say to us, but at least it's a source of new stimulation. Language courses are continuing - Isabel and Liz and a few of the others are really starting to progress past basic vocabulary - and run into the tricky stuff, the noun declension and verb conjugation for basic root words, which is the dreary part of every language I've ever studied myself. I'm still stumbling over 'pardom me madam, which way to the town square', but it's starting to click just faintly at least.

And then... well, umm, after quite a long stretch of acting uptight, Isabel has suddenly gotten lots more, well, affectionate, which I'm not sure if I should read as that she's even more worried than she was when she got on, or that she's finally relaxed. In any event - well, I'm certainly not complaining about the attention. Oh, sounds like she's...

#

"Okay, here's how the basic game works," Alex announced later that 'afternoon.' He was standing in the doorway just outside the games room, and all the werewolf participants were gathered inside the games room, inside the rec lounge nearby with the door open there too, and in the hallway near him. "First, everybody goes to consult the computer in secret to find out their assigned role in the game - just ask for your werewolf role and touch a contact point where it asks you to - we'll be able to manage everybody doing this in complete privacy I think, inside the bedrooms or the game room, with everybody congregating in rec who's waiting for a room to come free. Sound good?"

"Your role will be either townsperson, werewolf, or psychic. Nobody knows anybody else's role for sure but their own, so everybody will be acting as if they're townspeople, who are the most common. The townspeople, and the psychic, are terrified of the werewolves, who have already killed many of their loved ones, and everybody has agreed that they need to resort to drastic measures to root them out. Thus, for every 'day' of game time, which may be more or less than a day of ship's time, the town will vote on one suspected werewolf, who will be lynched. After the lynching victim dies, their role will be revealed for all to know."

"So, everybody gets to vote on lynchings, even the werewolves?" Liz asked from her seat in the games room. (Where she was sitting with one leg hooked over Max's, in point of fact.) "Because nobody knows who's a wolf but the wolves themselves."

"Right, Liz," Alex agreed. "The wolves will probably try to steer voting so that a townsperson is lynched, to spare themselves. At night, the wolves will meet secretly - this will be handled via the ship's computer - and vote on an outsider to settle on and attack before the sun rises. The wolves' victim, too, will be identified once he or she is dead, but this will not say as much, because the role will almost always be 'townsperson', unless they happen to catch the psychic. Once you're dead, you have to avoid interfering in strategy or saying anything more about your impressions of the game to the remaining players - even the psychic's gifts don't extend to communicating with the dead."

"What's the psychic good for, then?" Rath asked.

"Thanks for asking. Every night, as long as he survives, the psychic has a dream of another player and his or her true role - whether they're wolf or townsperson. He or she can try to control who they'll dream of, but this isn't perfect - if they try for a particular person, they'll get a dream about the right individual a little less than half the time."

"But how do they put that info to best use?" Maria asked. "They can't really just announce themselves and say 'yeah, I'm the psychic, here's what my dreams have told me." The town wouldn't really believe a claim like that."

"And if the wolves believe, they'll make the psychic the next victim," Max said thoughtfully. "The werewolves might fake a psychic claim to feed the town wrong info, and a plain townsperson might clain in order to take a sacrifice and distract the wolves away from killing someone more important, like the real psychic."

"Yep," Alex agreed. "You're starting to get the hang of it. One other rule that I'd like to mention, though it may have to be on the honor system - no trying to use sex or other physica favors to seduce secret identities out of your partner - or anybody else, as far as that goes."

"Oh, darn," Isabel joked back, and everybody laughed. "So, any other rules, or should we go get our assignments?"

"Just a few more details, won't take long I promise," Alex said. "After lynch voting has settled on a clear majority, there'll be a time limit for anybody to change their minds, probably four hours to start with, not counting the usual sleeping shift. I'll adjust that as time goes on. If it looks like nobody will reach a najority but there's a clear vote leader, I'll designate the same time limit. In the event of a tied vote, I'll randomly announce a tiebreaker for each round. Night play will also last about as long as it takes for the psychic and the wolves to get their business accomplished. Play will start in the daytime, which means that the town is voting without any real evidence of the wolves' strategy, and somebody will die based on baseless suspicions, but this is better than allowing the wolves to pick a victim first I think. Alright - go."

As people shuffled around to go into private rooms, Ava went up to Alex. "Are you ever going to pick a wolf as a tiebreaker?"

Alex just smiled slightly.

#

"Yeah, I'm curious when we're going to get into some words that don't have such easy English translatio..." Liz broke off her conversation about their Antarian studies when Michael came into the rec room and considered the big voting board up on the wall. After pondering the options for about twenty seconds, he tapped a spot on the row marked with his name, thus placing a vote for the first lynching, which he hadn't previously weighed in on. After considering his choice for another brief moment, he headed off to the food slot and ordered a king-sized banquetburger with all the trimmings, (including french fries, onion rings, and an extra-extra large pepsi. Sitting down at one of the tables, he finally seemed to twig that Liz, Max, Ava, and Kyle were all staring at him.

"What?"

"Aren't you going to say anything?" Max asked.

"About what?"

Max waved at the board, which just made Michael shrug a little. "You've placed a vote to lynch someone, and you have absolutely no comment to make to anybody about that?"

"If the person I voted for wants to ask for an explanation, then maybe I'll consider giving her one," Michael muttered. "What business is it of yours?"

"Well, we're all in this town together, and the only thing that's going to keep all the people from being wolf meat would be information," Max said. "Specifically, information about why people are voting the way that they are, not just the choices that they've made. It might not mean much now, I know, but we've got to start getting the baselines in, so that everything might come together later when we need it to." He paused. "Or if you refuse to speak up much, then we've got to wonder if you're one of the people who has the most to lose by showing up on the radar."

"Everybody stands to lose by showing up on the radar, Max!" Michael exclaimed in exasperation, knocking his rings over with an extravagant gesture. "Wolf or human - anybody who gets noticed too much will end up dead. Either by getting voted up to the lynching block, or else by being targeted by the real wolves."

"But is that really losing?" Liz put in. "If you're a team player, then I think you can claim a victory if your team wins, even when you die first. Townspeople have to put the welfare of the town first and their own lives second - same for wolves and the pack, I suppose."

"Yeah, but getting myself killed too quickly isn't going to help anybody..." Michael muttered. Ava made a face at him. "Okay, you wanna know why I voted for Christin? It... it was just a hunch, but I - I started thinking about the way she's been acting since the game started. A little - removed, a bit like she knows so much more than we do."

"She does know a lot more than any of us do - well, except for Alex and Liz, maybe," Kyle put in.

"Maybe, but she's never shoved that in our faces before," Michael argued back. "It got me thinking about what Ed woulda done in the same situation, and I think that was the way he acted when he was trying to keep something hidden from us. Thus, maybe Christin is trying to keep from us that she's a wolf. It's not much, I know, but it may be the only way to guess - it's not like any of us really know her that well."

"Hmm... okay, okay, I guess we can leave it at that for now," Liz decided. "I don't think I agree with you, but I certainly won't put my own finger of suspicion on you for that."

"No, you like it where it is," Ava teased. Liz's own vote for lynching was currently set to Lonnie.

"I just want to see how she'll react if she thinks that she's actually in danger of being the first one out. Lonnie's the kind of girl where it's hard to tell anything behind her poker face unless she thinks she's about to lose her shirt." Kyle made an odd kind of half-laugh, half cough. "Maybe you should ask her to lose her shirt, Kyle."

"Very funny," he mumbled. "Between Lonnie and Tess I seem to just get the lovely, slightly pathological rejects interested in - well, in flirting with me, at least."

"Sorry," Liz said in a low voice.

"Okay, new subject," Max put in. "Umm... shapechangers, that reminds me. Christin can't have been the last alien remaining at large on Earth just before we left - excluding Kivar's new team, I mean. What about - about the protector who put you guys in New York? Any idea what might have happened to him?"

"The special unit could have caught up with him," Michael put in. "Pierce always thought that there was only one original crash victim unaccounted for - whether he guessed that we were unborn at the time or not I don't know..."

"I don't think that Pierce knew as much as he wanted you to think," Ava replied. "I actually managed to track the protector down before I met up with Rath again - after the Summit, you know?"

"Really?" Liz replied. "You never told me about that part."

Ava shrugged. "Slipped my mind, sister. Anyway, he was living in La-la land, all Hollywood, a big time producer. Didn't seem to want anybody alien to bother him, so I didn't. He should be able to deal with Kivar's people, if they give him any grief. Not's like he really knows anything about us anymore."

"I hope so," Liz said. "Wouldn't want to think of him getting into trouble on our account - and thanks for telling us - sister."

Max blinked slightly and looked over at his fiancee. This was the first time that he knew of the two girls had used that term, but it made sense in an odd way. Liz was reincarnated from the same alien spirit that had been copied, slightly altered, to make Ava, and that was probably part of the way the two of them had become good friends through such unlikely circumstances. He could do a lot worse than Ava for a potential sister-in-law.

"Alright," he said, squeezing Liz's shoulder and getting up from the seat. "I don't vote in line with my sweetie lightly, or want to give anybody the impression that she makes the big decisions..." Michael and Kyle both chuckle-snorted, more or less. "But that sounds like a plan that I can get behind - the Lonnie thing. I'll vote for her too. See what happens."

"Interesting," Maria said from the doorway as Max made his selection. "That makes her the clear leader, and only, what, two spots away from having a clear majority? Things are getting interesting."

There was general agreement as Maria went over to sit next to Michael.