Chapter 2

My name is Marco.

I'm magnificent. Zaphod's got nothing on me, and at one point I was 'The most famous person on Earth Ever.' Brave – no, scratch that, courageous. Heroic. Funny. Cute. Smart. I'm like all the best science fiction characters in the universe rolled into one. I had been probably the most sucessful Animorphs after the end of the Yeerk invasion on Earth. Of course, I had given up my pass to fame on Earth what felt like a long time ago – the martyr for my friends. One friend, off to rescue another, and bringing everyone that made sense to bring along.

Had I mentioned how loyal I am?

We had done two rescue missions so far on our mission mostly set around saving Ax. Unfortunately, we'd done a lot of other destruction, as well. People have died, since we started. We've lost track of time. Been at a loss about the enemy – who we're worried about or how to deal with it. Even worse, we'd yet to come out of a single mission with the same spaceship, having already burned through The Rachel and The Researcher. It was like James Bond going through cars. But I hoped we could hang on to this one.

The Estrella was really nice.

This ship had been the prototype for a human spacecraft, compared to our last two ships which had been aimed for the Yeerk or Andalite scientist audiences. This ship had bling, by human standards. It had videogames. It had movies. It had books downloaded onto things you could read from little pads that looked exactly like paper – 'eBooks' was what the name seemed to be. Not to mention real food. The Estrella was a compilation of entertainment and practicality for your average human on board. Plus, it had some necessary things for Andalites, too, having been a co-production with the intention of having a few Andalites on board.

It was still a bit understaffed, but not unreasonably so anymore. We couldn't go losing people without significant problems for ourselves personally, but we could take some downtime as we were. Jake, Ax, Tobias, Leah and I had saved a few kids from this planet, the Cryhalis, which made the downtime possible. We couldn't count on that permanently – we were actually heading back to an outpost to possibly meet with Ondrean to get more willing hands on deck. I wasn't quite sure what the story was with these kids having the Estrella, or at least the details, but Jake had decided it wouldn't be right to keep them out here, and I more or less agreed.

To be honest, we were still dealing with the problem of the last stranger we'd picked up: Leah had been subjected to some drug on the Cryhali planet while we had been working to rescue this new group. And she was not exactly recuperating that well. And honestly, it was unlikely that Ondrean – our 'agent' of the human and Andalite worlds – would be unable to find adult replacements willing to take on that type of responsibility with us.

Just one of the more uncomfortable benefits of fame.

Anyway, at the moment, Tobias and I were the ones taking a break. It hadn't really been normal for us to be placed together before the last mission, but Jake had been avoiding me since the Cryhali planet. He was probably feeling guilty, even though he hadn't really done anything wrong.

He'd been avoiding Tobias far longer than me. But in avoiding the two of us, it had been inevitable we would have been around each other a bit more than Tobias and I were comfortable with. On the other hand, it was a great chance for me to keep an eye on Tobias, at least for a little while. I'd been needing some time to figure out what was going on with everyone else. Tobias, especially.

Tobias was a nothlit again. And those of us that knew him? We worried. Not that anyone would ever say anything.

But I couldn't get a sense of Tobias as being anything other than regular Tobias. If he had more negative thoughts than normal on the matter? He was keeping them to himself. And I figured he probably would let everyone know how he felt at some point. Whenever he felt comfortable enough to do so. Or maybe he was happy. He had been doing things he couldn't do as a hawk without morphing frequently. His Andalite body was younger, stronger, more able than the hawk body he'd acquired in its mid-life and then lived several years in. He was doing things like sketching during some of his free time, and joining me in the video games right now: Yeerk Slayers. He wasn't happy, but that had never really been normal for Tobias anyway, and he didn't seem too frustrated. I was less concerned with seeing him in ways that matched with the stuff he'd always done, compared to any drastically negative or positive personality change.

Maybe these things were more appealing away from people for Tobias. On Earth, Tobias had been bullied. Here, things were pretty simplified. We worked unless it was our sleep period, or our break periods. We saw the same people day-in and day-out. Everyone was a teammate, even those we didn't actually like. There wasn't exactly a huge, complicated world inside the Estrella. And maybe that was good enough. Or, on the other hand, maybe it was just a denial thing so far.

Maybe it was just easy to forget about being a hawk in a place where you couldn't really be a hawk. Maybe that wouldn't come up again as an issue until the day we were back on Earth, assuming that day ever came. He wasn't going to go flying around the Estrella. So it was possible that the lack of emotion tied to that thought simply resulted from a lack of things to do in space in a hawk body.

If he was waiting until he got back to Earth to worry about it, there was a good possibility it would never even matter.

But Tobias didn't say anything. So I didn't say anything.

All of this made this particular downtime a bit awkward for me. Except that I was pretty sure, wherever Tobias was, that he wasn't that high-risk.

Tobias had gone off to read while I was off thinking to myself. I probably looked like ridiculously conspicuous, but I had a lot to think about. Lately I would sometimes just sit back on the couch and worry. Not just worry, but planning types of worry. Analytical types of worry. I had three or four types of worry going through me at any given time, and it didn't show, but I had a lot of thinking to do in general about how thing swere running.

We had to take on a few issues. The issues of the rescued kids. The issue of if – or how – we would keep the Estrella if we were going to focus on the apparent issue of The One and the Kelbrid. Leah – none of us were looking forward to that one.

Think, think, think.

I looked around what we had taken to calling the 'Rec Room' even though it had some fancy name that basically designated it for the same tasks. I needed something to do. There were options, and I just needed to pick something and take my mind off of things I wasn't supposed to think about at the moment. I looked. Besides game concoles, movies, books... I searched, perusing the room.

It really did have a lot of options. I could play any game I wanted. Read any book. Watch any movie, or TV show. And those things all seemed like great ideas – I could stick on The Simpsons and watch hours of episodes before it was time for the lights to go out. I could try my hand at sketching, like Tobias, if I really cared to. I could do so many things. It's just they were all things 'in the Estrella, and that was getting a bit old. No one had ever really trained me – or anyone here that was human – for being out in space for months at a time. Jaela and Lahsailat hadn't been trained for indefinite time literally in the middle of nowhere, and most of what Ax had suggested to me was exactly what I would have done anyway.

"Stay busy." Like I hadn't already figured I should do that. But at first I had mostly stuck to games and videos, things I had enjoyed on Earth. They were still fun. But they weren't the way to occupy all of my free time – I was getting bored. But what was a thing, or my thing? One of them, anyway.

But what I settled on, in the end, was a helmet device. It was the Virtual Teaching Unit, or the VTU. The item worked to teach a great variety of subjects through the use of virtual reality – and we're talking pretty good, sophisticated virtual reality. A great example of Andalite and human minds working together – our entertainment systems had made quite a few leaps since 2001. Most of the convenience of a holodeck, without most of the cost, the space... And hopefully less technical difficulties. The guide, full of suggestions, was pretty helpful – seeing as I really had no idea what I wanted to do.

I could learn languages. Martial arts and various forms of self defense. Dancing – even partnered dancing, if I knew someone else willing that had a helmet within five feet. I grinned, and saved that bit of information to tease Jake sometime when he was stressing out beyond the necessary, but kept looking. History – different types, as if I really cared about history in any form. Various social sciences and subfields. Sciences I hadn't heard of. Games.

I was debating between karate and trying to learn more Spanish – both things I probably could have had a lot more fun doing on Earth with the money to learn wherever I wanted. But then Jessie poked in, Leah in tow. It probably had been only her first or second time out since we had gotten out here – and Jessie had mostly had to stay with her, to make sure she wasn't, well, dangerous. Between the withdrawal phase with physical symptoms that were practically deadly on their own – and that had been an ugly phase – and now? It was a pretty unfortunate state of affairs.

"Let's find something to do," Jessie was saying. I hesitated over selecting an option for the VTU, listening in on the conversation. Decided instead to go to 'view' mode – the mode made for the VTUs so a person could pause and deal with people around them between whatever they were doing. "I'm sure there's something."

"There's nothing."

"Drawing is something."

"I don't wanna draw."

"Television is something."

"No."

I noticed Tobias had paused in his sketching, giving his own sideways glances. It was a bit like watching an overgrown toddler, even knowing the background story was more complicated than someone refusing for the sake of refusing. Jessie was trying to work with her, and she wouldn't – or couldn't – comply.

"Look around," Jessie was down to pleading with Leah. I felt pretty bad for her. Leah looked a bit ashamed, and began to shuffle around, perusing the items in the room. Passing the digital equivalents of books, board games, sketch pads and various other crafts.

It wasn't just like she was bored, it was as though she could never be anything except bored again. That nothing in life, except the drugs she had been introduced to, would ever matter. Everyone was familiar with vices on the Estrella. But what Leah had was more of a noose.

Slowly, Leah had walked up to me. "Marco? What's that on your head?"

"It's a virtual reality helmet."

"Can I use it?"

I gestured toward a back wall, where there were four others. Leah shuffled back, placing one over her head. Jessie took the chance to fall back onto the couch, and flip on some channels. Leah was now busy. Jessie could give her a few feet. And if Leah was going to avoid being back on Earth, she needed to find a way to cope with the things that had happened to her.

For a while, much like myself, there was no discernible display of Leah using the VTU – it begins with thoughts, and used audio or not pending on the things a person was doing. But at random, I heard Leah say something along the lines of, "Ani bi ha mehoneet."

So she'd given something or other a shot. I wasn't sure what, but it was something.

A bit pleased with what I had managed to learn in such a short period of time, I grinned, and selected the karate option on my own VTU.

Just because it was my day off hadn't meant I hadn't done anything useful, anyway.