Iroshar
2397
"It says here you're... 408 years old?"
Ashley looked up at the waiter who she'd given her ID card to. He was a zhr, one of the buglike humanoid species native to the planet Iroshar, just like the other patrons in the mostly empty restaurant (although this guy was better dressed than most). She and Misam might have been the only two people in the whole place without antennae.
"I'm a time traveler," Ashley explained calmly. "Should be an age listed in the next box down."
"Oh, right." The waiter looked at her card one more time before handing it back. "Is that common on your planet?"
"I wouldn't know." Ashley shrugged. "Haven't been back for years."
Misam folded his orange tail over his lap and smiled to himself as the waiter walked away. "Is it always this hard for you to order drinks?" he asked Ashley.
"Not if it's coffee." Ashley brushed her long blonde hair out of her eyes and grabbed a tortilla chip from the bowl in front of her. "It's not just the time thing either. Sometimes I have to convince people that I'm a human."
"To be fair," Misam said, "no human with your skin tone would have that as their natural hair color."
"Eh, it's worth it. Makes me feel cool. Besides, I'm used to being different. I go through the world with the expectation that other people are going to be different from me. I don't need to be good-looking or anything. I just want to stick out."
Misam took a chip of his own and eyed it for a few seconds before putting it in his mouth. "You sure these things are free?" he asked.
"I mean, assuming you're gonna order something else after. You've been to Earth restaurants, right? That's pretty much what this is."
"It's the 24th century, Ashley. Earth doesn't use money anymore. I don't even know how much I'm supposed to pay for that thing where you pay extra to the waiter. What's that called?"
"A fooi? I don't know, I always just do twenty percent. Of what the bill would be, if you didn't use a gift card."
"This is so confusing." Misam's ears fluttered. "I can't believe I decided to move to a capitalist planet."
"This is how you know you've made it, Misam! The only thing every Iroshan has in common: they all hate Iroshar. And each other."
"I don't know if I can really hate anything. Even when I should. Why'd you move here, anyway?"
"Earth is..." Ashley paused. "Well, it's different than it was when I grew up. Before I ended up here, in the future. It just didn't feel right, I guess."
Misam looked out the window. "You know this will be the first time I've lived on a planet?"
"You've never even lived on your homeworld, have you?" asked Ashley.
"Not really. I was raised on starships. Earth's fleet always protected us, so my parents wanted to help protect them. Then I went to Princeton, and then I signed up for the fleet myself right after. Not much reason for a xenobiologist to stay in one place."
"Not even Earth? I mean, you studied there, you worked aboard its starships, you even adopted one of its religions, for Christ's sake."
"Well, really, Christ did it for my sake."
Ashley laughed. "You're an alien, Misam."
"I'm a gentile, right? Same as anyone else. Anyway... how do you find a job around here that actually takes you places? I've been doing some ship flips here and there but I'm really looking for something where I can travel."
"And help out?"
"Yeah, for sure. I wanna feel like I'm making a difference, even if it's just helping, like, two people."
"I've got something you might be interested in," Ashley said. "I applied for it, actually, but I think you should too. You'd be more qualified anyway. General Interplanetary in North Wind City is looking specifically for non-Iroshans for transport and freighter duty."
"Why? We're on Iroshar. Can they discriminate against zhrs like that?"
Ashley just shrugged. "Every other planet does. Maybe they're just meeting the demands of the market."
About a week had passed when Misam called Ashley and asked her to check out his newest ship flip.
"So this is the spacecraft you wanna fix up and resell?" Ashley put her hands on her hips. "Wow. An actual Alteran gateship. This thing's gotta be ten thousand years old, at least."
"Maybe not," Misam said. He walked through the open hatch and pointed out a device in the ship's cargo hold. "No one's built a ship like this in ten thousand years, sure. But this one's got a time machine."
"Seriously? And the government just let you have it?"
"The time machine's broken. And I'm not gonna try to fix it - I was actually thinking of sending it to Earth or Lantea for study. But when these things do work, they don't just go into the past, right? I think someone, at some point, used this ship to jump to our time, then sold it off for some seed money."
"Gotta have that money." Ashley followed Misam into the ship. She pointed to some mismatched equipment mounted on the dash. "I'm guessing this is what had you interested?"
Misam nodded. "It's been hotwired to run on aftermarket controls, so you don't need the Ancient gene. It's still got the Stargate dialing pad, though." He gestured towards the area between the seats.
"I didn't think there were any Stargates in the Milky Way anymore," said Ashley.
"There aren't. But that means stuff like this is pretty hard to come across, and that's what makes it valuable." Misam paused to admire the ship's design. "You know, the only reason this ship has to actually run is because Iroshans like a working specimen. Whoever buys it isn't actually gonna use it."
"How long do you think it'll take to get it running?"
"I've already got everything in place, actually," said Misam. "I was just gonna give it a try. Wanted to show you first, though."
"You're going out on your own? Sure you don't want me to come along?"
"I'll be fine. I've been around starships my whole life." Misam walked over to the pilot's chair, then stopped and looked back at Ashley. "If you really want to, though..."
"These ships might have been built by the Alterans, but they're not that much more advanced than what we have today," Misam said as be piloted the ship out of Iroshar's atmosphere. "The neural interface is the only part we haven't been able to reproduce. And the one on this ship's already been torn out."
"What about the time machine?"
"Well, that's not part of the ship," said Misam. "It's on the ship." He glanced behind him. "Did you hear something beeping?"
"A microwave?" Ashley asked. "Sounds like my food's ready."
"I think that was the time machine." Misam pulled a handheld radio from his pocket. "We might have activated it."
"Seriously?" Ashley said. "No microwave? I was hungry." She followed Misam into the cargo bay. "And I thought you said it was broken."
"I mean, it seemed broken," said Misam. "If it did go off, we have to figure out where we ended up. I'm not getting anything on this. Something's definitely happened. Wait... here's something on the AM band."
"You have an AM radio?"
"I've seen a lot of weird stuff in my career in the fleet. You always have to be ready." He fine-tuned the radio. "Sometimes there would even be a data subcarrier. Hopefully we can get the date and time."
Ashley walked back to the front of the ship and looked out the window. "You'd think a time machine would be, I don't know, noisier. We are still orbiting Iroshar, right? Don't you think one of those old-timey people is gonna see us?"
"Don't worry about that," said Misam. "Ship's cloaked. And the technology Iroshans use to see cloaked ships hasn't been invented yet."
"What year is it?"
Misam glanced at the radio's display. "Earth year? 2005. I think August." He looked over at Ashley. "Shouldn't you be panicking?"
"Hey," said Ashley. "I've time traveled before. I mean, that was on purpose, but still. It wouldn't be the first time I've been stranded. What about you? Shouldn't you be freaking out right now?"
"I always come prepared, Ashley." Misam rolled up his sleeve and used a claw to rip a hole on the inside fabric. He pulled out a notecard. "Iroshar may not have been aware of alien life. My homeworld wasn't either. But there were people, from Earth, in 2005, who were fully aware of both extraterrestrials and time travel."
Ashley gave Misam a skeptical look as he slid back into the pilot's seat. "You're really going to drive this ship to Earth?" she asked.
"It's the 21st century, remember? The Milky Way galaxy had a Stargate network back then. And this ship's made to fit through the gate."
"So you're going to find a Stargate, dial Earth, and emerge under a mountain in America with soldiers pointing guns at you."
"Not that mountain, Ashley," said Misam. "A different mountain."
