Eeqiu had never traded bodies with anyone; it was on their bucket list. And seeing as their body was rapidly rotting away, now seemed like an optimal time. They weren't selfish, no, not really... they had just never really done anything with their life. They had spent years sifting through the archives, but they were never smart enough to go out and do anything worth doing.
So when someone commented that Eeqiu was dying, it came as a bit of a shock. They hadn't had proper time to prove themselves! They hadn't made a single contribution for the greater intelligence of the Great Race! They were sure they could achieve greatness if they were only given the time. It was merely an attempt to acquire more time that lead them to steal a body-switching machine and input human coordinates, human because Eeqiu had learned enough of latin to understand most (some) human languages. Maybe Eeqiu was a coward, but so what? Who would miss a single human mind? It probably wasn't a very good mind, anyway.
After a few minutes of button pressing and dial turning, Eeqiu felt themself rocketed through time (and space). The journey through time (and space) had left them rather disoriented, and for the first few hours in their new human body they were unable to move. It was a shock to wake up in a human hospital bed, being able to feel the bed, the covers, the air around them, the pulsing bump on their head - and the smells, oh the smells, had there always been so many little chemicals in the air? How many particles, and they were now aware of all of them at once!
There was a nurse standing over them, talking in that odd language that sounded so much better on Artificial Speech Machines. "Are you feeling alright? You conked your head pretty badly after you blacked out."
"Who am I?" asked Eeqiu, who had never been one to beat around the bush.
The nurse looked concerned. He checked the clipboard on the side of the bed. "Valerie Elizabeth Birch."
Oh, they'd never be able to remember all that. "What is my gender?" Eeqiu asked.
"Female, I think," said the nurse. "Are you sure you're alright?"
"I do not know. I understand more about my surroundings than I would like to. What does 'pain' feel like, and how do I tell it apart from normal sensations?"
"Pain is sharp and unpleasant."
"Everything's sharp and unpleasant," Eeqiu muttered. If they had known that this was what it was like to be human, they would have stayed home and died in comfort.
"I'm sorry to hear that," said the nurse, who was not at all sorry. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Maybe if I had a nice book to read it would take my mind off of all of this. Does this establishment have any archives? I would prefer something nice and in Latin."
"I don't think we have any books. There's a TV, though. You could call your wife and ask her to bring you books. Which reminds me, she brought this for you." The nurse held up a cozy-looking homemade throw pillow.
"What is it?"
"A pillow."
"What is a pillow?"
The nurse stared. This was not his jurisdiction."Well, a pillow is... something fluffy that you put under your head when you sleep. You're lying on one now."
"What does 'fluffy' mean?"
"Soft. Comfortable." This patient was probably foreign. Or maybe they were a robot imposter. Maybe they were French.
"Well, I'm not very comforted."
The nurse handed them the pillow. Eeqiu fumbled around with their arms, trying to get used to their newfound sense of touch before finally stuffing the pillow underneath their back.
"Are you comfortable now, ma'am?"
How can a person ever be comfortable? "Yes." They paused. "Did you say that I have a wife?"
"You do, don't you?"
"I do not know. That is why I asked. I do not remember anything, you understand." Wives are reproductive partners, right? Eeqiu wasn't found of the thought.
"Well, I'm sure your wife will be along soon. In the meantime, I think we should call a doctor in to figure out why you're experiencing memory loss."
"I don't think that's necessary. It's probably just amnesia."
"There's a difference between amnesia and" - and not knowing what a pillow is - "total memory loss."
"I do not see why it is a problem. I just want to go home and see what sort of life I live."
"Maybe. I better get someone." The nurse quickly left the room.
Eeqiu looked around. They could see now why human captives were always so impressed by the city: human architecture was boring as hell. The walls were whitewashed and the ceiling wasn't even arched. There was a window against one of the walls, but it was rectangular. Everything was rectangular, except for the furniture, which was plush for some ungodly reason. Eeqiu wondered which thing was a 'teevee.'
An official-looking human came in and started asking them all sorts of odd questions. Eeqiu kept insisting that they didn't know anything and that they just wanted to go home to their (ew) wife. After several more questions and a number of fancy tests the doctor declared that Eeqiu was perfectly healthy, though they still had to stay for 'observation.' At last the doctor left, sharing confused looks with the nurse.
At noon the nurse brought in lunch. Eeqiu was a bit shocked to find that the acuteness of the human senses extended also to the food they ate, but as it turned out jello tasted tolerable enough. The nurse was nice enough to show them how to work the teevee, and Eeqiu spent several hours watching it.
Around two o'clock, the door opened to admit a human who was dressed more colorfully than the nurses and doctors who were dressed in greyish shades of blue. The human sat down in a chair next to Eeqiu's bed. "Do you remember who I am?"
"No," said Eeqiu. "I am not even entirely sure who I am."
"Oh, Valerie, you're my wife." The human was shaking convulsively. Snot was dripping down her face.
The thought of living and reproducing with this mess of a human was less than pleasant. Eeqiu vaguely remembered that this is how humans act when they're upset. They hoped humans didn't get upset often.
"My name's Ellen, remember?" the human whimpered, using a tissue to mop away her tears. "We've known each other since high school. We got married last year. It was springtime, remember, and those little white flowers you like were all over the place and you said that the sky was like mashed potatoes? Remember?"
"I do not," said Eeqiu. What the hell were 'mashtpodatos'?
"I'm not sure if you still love me, but please, Val, give me a chance. I know it's weird and I probably seem creepy or desperate or both but maybe we can at least be friends until your memory comes back. I mean, if that's okay."
"Okay." Gosh, humans are so emotional.
Ellen (my wife, Eeqiu thought) seemed to calm down. "Sorry to be all upset," she sniffed. "I can't help it if my brain wants me to cry."
"It is alright. It's nice to have someone to talk to." And it was, even if Eeqiu wasn't used to human conversation yet. What would a human talk about? Uh... "Lovely weather we're having."
"Yeah." She visibly relaxed and looked out the window. It opened out onto the other wings of the hospital, and all one could really see from this height were roofs and skies. "It is a peaceful view, isn't it?"
"Yes," Eeqiu lied. They couldn't believe how well this was going.
"This morning," said Ellen, "the sun came down in such a way that most of the streets were in shadow, but the tops of the buildings were golden. It's gorgeous."
"I hope I get to go outside soon and see the city."
"The doctors say that you should be able to come home tomorrow. They don't know why you can't remember anything."
Eeqiu really wanted to tell someone, especially because they didn't want to spend the night in observation and the doctors simply refused to take a hint. But all they did say was, "I have decided I do not like doctors much."
"Yeah, well. They only want what's best for you." Ellen leaned back in her chair. "I hope you'll get your memory back. You seem to remember your pillow."
Eeqiu looked. The throw pillow had wriggled out from underneath them and, without even realizing it, they were clinging to it like a child. "Oh, huh. What's so special about a pillow?"
"It's your safety blanket. Or it was, at least. Your mother made it for you, d'you remember?"
Eeqiu shook their head. They didn't know much about sewing, but they could tell that someone had put lots of love into this pillow. Funny thing to put love into, really...
"You don't like sleeping anywhere without it, so I brought it for you." Ellen's eyes seemed to mist over. "You know, I was really worried that you wouldn't wake up."
"I might not have." Eeqiu thought of the real Valerie Elizabeth Birch who was trapped in prehistoric Australia, slowly dying in an alien body.
"I'm glad you did wake up, even if you don't remember me. I keep forgetting that you don't."
"You seem like you would be worth remembering." Especially if one was dying in prehistoric Australia. It would be hard to forget a person like Ellen while dying in prehistoric Australia.
"Thanks. Oh, by the way." Ellen reached into her bag and, to Eeqiu's delight, pulled out several books. Eeqiu studied them intently. They couldn't quite make out the words, as they were more used to reading cursive than printed human letters, but they delighted in the way the words looked so straight and organized and yet so squiggly.
"You were in the middle of this one," Ellen said, pointing to a book that still had a bookmark peering over the top. "You haven't read this one at all, and this one" - she pointed - "is one of your favorites and it's relatively short."
Eeqiu opened the latter and tried to read the first page. It took a minute, and once they had read a few lines they realized that this book was unlike anything they had read before. It was fiction. The archives had contained no such thing. What was the point in reading about something that had never happened? But Eeqiu kept reading, if only because Ellen was watching.
Soon they forgot that Ellen was even there. The book was written, in some ways, like the manuscripts they were used to reading, but there was more emotion in this. For a moment it felt like they were feeling the emotions firsthand, even though they hardly knew what emotions were. "Is this what life is like?" Eeqiu muttered as they turned the page.
"You like it, then? Do you remember it?"
"It's lovely," said Eeqiu, ignoring the second question.
"So you've always said." Ellen paused for a minute to let them read in silence before she spoke again. "You told me once that you would never stop reading it if there weren't other books to be read."
"There are other books like this?" Eeqiu picked up another book and started reading that, too. They had to make haste; a human life is only so long. "Do you have any books like this, but about things that actually happened? Like History?"
"I don't have any on me, but we have some at home."
"Thank you, Ellen!"
Ellen smiled.
Visiting hours were over. Ellen waved goodbye, and as she left a nurse came in with Eeqiu's dinner (chicken soup, canned peaches, and, of course, jello). After they ate, Eeqiu spent several hours reading before the nurse came back and politely stated that it was time for bed.
In their dreams Eeqiu felt like they were back in their old body again, soaring over a grotesque parody of Pnakotus. Ellen was there, too, and together they laughed and talked until they fell and crashed into a ditch. Eeqiu awoke suddenly, and they were so overwhelmed by the return of human sensations, especially the sweat that now stuck to their skin, that a nurse had to come in to calm them down. Eventually Eeqiu remembered where they were, but their hands still faintly tried to speak in click-language.
"Are you alright now?" asked the nurse.
Eeqiu was shaking. "Relatively."
"Relatively?"
"Does one normally hallucinate in one's sleep?"
"What? I... Is it normal for you? Are you not used to bad dreams?"
"I don't know what that is."
"Are your dreams normally calm?"
"Whaat... are dreams?"
"Halluci-"
The nurse didn't get to finish his sentence because Eeqiu had begun to vomit. He managed to get them into the bathroom, and for half an hour Eeqiu sat over the toilet heaving. When their stomach had been thoroughly emptied, Eeqiu was still convulsing, and they lay down at the base of the toilet with stomach acid dribbling down their cheek.
The doctors the next morning chalked it up to nerves, but, just to be sure, they sent in a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist concluded that Eeqiu was homesick, having concluded this because Eeqiu kept muttering "home" under their breath. So Eeqiu was released on schedule, and Ellen came in the afternoon to wheel them away. Eeqiu, who had never properly walked and who had never learned, was enjoying their new wheelchair, and they liked Ellen's car even better. They slept dreamlessly through the drive, waking up only as Ellen pulled into the driveway of a pale orange townhouse.
"Is this it?" Eeqiu yawned.
"Yep. Hold on, let me help you out."
Inside, the house was warm but soft, and light streamed in through rectangular windows and splashed across the paneled floor. On the walls were hung a few samplers but nothing framed by anything more than masking tape, and littered across the floor and in the corners were papers and books and pamphlets coated with dust. "So this is the family room," said Ellen. She lead them through a doorway and into a room where the walls were lined with... aluminum foil? "This is the kitchen," and Ellen moved on quickly to the red-painted study, noded at the door to the garage, went through another door and back into the family room, and stopped at the foot of a flight of stairs.
Stairs are so stupid.
"Well, the bedroom's up there," Ellen said, "but I don't know if we'll be able to get you up there."
"That's alright. I'll be fine in this chair," said Eeqiu, wheeling themself back and forth.
"Are you sure? It can't be comfortable, and you can't really sleep in a wheelchair."
"Oh, I'm not going to sleep again," said Eeqiu matter-of-factly.
"You have to sleep sometime."
"Why?"
"Your body needs sleep to work."
"It doesn't seem that way. It certainly didn't last night."
But Eeqiu relented, and Ellen set up a bed for them on the couch. "Do you need anything?" she asked, fluffing a pillow. "Some juice, perhaps?"
Eeqiu thought for a minute. "What do I normally do to calm down?"
"Well, normally," said Ellen, sitting down in a nearby chair, "you take a shower, and then we sit on the couch and watch a show until we fall asleep. But I don't think you're well enough for a shower, and seeing as you've lost your memory I'd feel weird pretending that everything's normal, anyway."
"What would we watch?"
"Any number of TV shows. But I would have to explain all the characters to you if we watched anything now that you've lost your memory."
Ah, yes, the teevee. It was like fiction books, but with less thinking. "Can we watch it anyway?"
"If you want to, yeah."
The show was colorful and loud, like all human teevee shows, and Eeqiu was glad that teevee only appealed to the senses of sight and sound because those were the only ones they could stand. They didn't understand everything the characters said, and they couldn't tell why Ellen always fast-forwarded through the commercials, but this was human culture, and they would have to learn to like because they were pretty much stuck with it. Eeqiu was getting tired, and they clung to Ellen as if she were a charm to ward off night terrors.
"It's getting late," said Ellen. "We should probably stop and go to sleep."
"Yeah." Eeqiu was splayed sleepily across Ellen's lap.
"Hold on." Ellen stood and went upstairs (stairs are much noisier than ramps - too noisy) and came back down dressed for bed and carrying a toothbrush and a modest nightgown. She helped them into the bathroom to change and brush teeth. Just human culture stuff, probably, though Eeqiu could do without the ghastly mint mouthwash.
Eequi settled down on the couch amidst a number of throw blankets and pillows. "Can you stay with me in case I start dreaming again?"
"Sure." Ellen was already setting up a bed for herself on the floor.
"You're not going to sleep, are you?"
"Why not?"
"I just don't think it'd be good for both of us to sleep at the same time in case both of us start dreaming at once."
"I don't have bad dreams often," said Ellen. "And I'm a fairly light sleeper so you should be able to wake me if anything happens."
"Just stay close, please." Eeqiu closed their eyes and suddenly it seemed like Ellen was much, much closer. But when they opened their eyes again she was still several feet away.
"Don't worry, you can wake me if you need me." She turned over and fell asleep.
Eeqiu tried to sleep despite the rhythmic ticking of the clock that seemed to envelope them and devour their beating heart. Beneath them on the carpet Ellen was breathing heavily and worrilessly. The clock struck the hour in minor key, and Eeqiu, confused, wondered who had died.
But then they were dreaming that they were walking through a city - not the city, no. There were stairs here, and plush furniture, and humans and Elder Ones and Nameless Ones and what ever the hell that thing in the corner was. Even the characters from the fiction book were there, and so were the people on teevee, and the faceless authors of the manuscripts. Ellen was sitting on top of a trapdoor, and she waved.
"How do you like heaven so far?" she asked them.
"This is heaven?" Eeqiu gawked. "But we're not dead."
"Sure we are, Val," said Ellen. "You died thousands of years ago, and I died inside when you left me."
"You misunderstand. I'm not Valerie. I'm not dead yet."
"Your body is," said Ellen. "Doesn't that bother you?"
"A little," they admitted.
"And with your body died your brain," Ellen continued. "Not your consciousness, maybe, but your brain, and one's brain is what makes consciousness. Who you are now is influenced more by Valerie's brain than by you yourself. The old you is dead. They won't come back."
Eeqiu thought about this. "What about you? You're human. With each new memory your identity is changed irreversibly. The old you is dead, too."
"Ah, but I'm used to being human, aren't I?" said Ellen with an unnerving grin. "But now you've got things in your head that weren't there before. How many feelings did you have in your old body? Two, maybe three. Now that you've got reward hormones you've got a whole spectrum of emotions. An irreversible change if I've ever seen one. Get off your ass and embrace your newfound animosity."
"I don't know how."
Eeqiu realized that they had said that last sentence aloud. Blinding light was coming in through the windows. The dream seemed insignificant now that they were awake, but they still would have liked to see it through to the end, even though the end would probably have had some sappy "live life to the fullest" message. They looked down at Ellen, and Ellen looked back.
"You wanna have breakfast, or do you want to keep sleeping?"
"Breakfast," said Eeqiu. They weren't entirely sure what 'breakfast' was, but it sure sounded better than any more dreams.
She threw on a robe. "Is cereal okay?"
"Sure." Eeqiu slid off of the couch and crawled towards the kitchen.
Ellen stared. "Are you alright?"
"Yep," said Eeqiu as they clambered onto a dining chair.
Ellen gathered the spoons, bowls, cups, and cereal box in a way that looked well rehearsed, and she poured the milk and cereal and sat down to eat.
Eeqiu had never eaten anything remotely crunchy before, and it took them a while to get the hang of chewing their food. By the time they had bitten through one piece of cereal, the rest of their breakfast was soggy enough for them to swallow whole. When the cereal was gone they drank the leftover milk, and a bit of it got in their nose.
"Did you sleep well?" Ellen conversed.
"I fink tho," Eeqiu replied, milk and cornflakes dribbling down from their lower lip.
"No bad dreams?"
Eeqiu horked the dribble back up before speaking again. "Well, I had one dream... it didn't hurt as much, though."
"Good, good." Ellen set the dirty dishes in the sink.
"What do we do now that breakfast is over?"
"We should probably brush our teeth, first, and then we can read or watch TV or play a game or whatever."
"Do we have jobs?"
"Yes, but I'm using my vacation days to take care of you, and, no offense, but I don't think you're fit to work right now."
"I'll have to go to work eventually, whether or not my memory returns." Which it wouldn't. Besides, Eeqiu had always wanted to see a human place of business.
"Might as well make use of your day off nevertheless." Ellen helped Eeqiu into the bathroom.
After they had relieved themself and brushed their teeth, Eeqiu spent a few moments staring at their reflection in the mirror. They flexed their hand and watched its twin respond, a slab of meat with nubbish fingers attached. How did this species evolve this far while still retaining hands that were better fit to bang sticks together in a forest somewhere?
"I don't like mirrors," they said, hobbling out of the room and collapsing on the living room couch.
"Oh, well... It's normal to be insecure about your looks, and I guess mirrors don't help much. But you're still beautiful to me."
How consoling. One monkey calling the other monkey beautiful. "It's impossible to be both human and beautiful."
"Probably," Ellen agreed. She sat down next to them and lovingly stroked their hair. "But I still think you're beautiful."
Eeqiu grunted.
The clock struck the hour - nine - and they sat there a moment longer in silence before Ellen stood up. "Let me get you some toast and honey, and then we can watch a movie or something." She disappeared into the kitchen, and Eeqiu could hear her pull the toaster lever down and rummage through the cupboard for wildflower honey. While the bread toasted, she asked Eeqiu what movie they wanted to watch.
"Something educational or otherwise culturally significant," said Eeqiu without missing a beat.
"Oof," said Ellen as she tried to think. "Let me check my movie list." There was a rustle of papers as she consulted her 'movie list.' "Do you want a documentary, or historical fiction, or something by a famous director maybe? You probably don't want a romance, do you? Oh, let's watch a historical musical! Do you prefer Les Mis or 1776? Oh, but Les Mis is so much better onstage. I think we have a bootleg somewhere..."
Clearly Ellen felt quite at home on the topic of movies. Before they knew what had happened, Ellen had goaded them into watching a near-on opera, and the illegally burned disc was already in the player and somewhere along the line a plate of toast had found its way onto Eeqiu's lap. "This is my favorite bootleg," Ellen said happily as she settled down next to them. "You can really see the emotions in the actors' faces."
"Is this a talkie?" Eeqiu asked.
"Well, um, it is a musical. But that does remind me we could watch Singing in the Rain next."
Five minutes in and Eeqiu had had quite enough of singing, regardless of weather. It was, however, interesting to watch something on the June Rebellion that captured more than just facts and dates. They could feel those human emotions acting up again. Just instinct and hormones, they told themself as they cried their eyes out during Fantine's death scene. And Eponine's death scene. And everyone's death scene. People just kept dropping like flies, and somehow the singing made it worse. Eeqiu would never see their old friends again, they realized, and they sobbed more. And Ellen would never see Valerie again, whether she realized it or not. And somewhere, millennia in the past, Valerie was trying her hardest to cry, surrounded by alien creatures that watched with muted pity as she slowly, slowly died. At that moment the world seemed full of Marius-es.
Hours later the disc had stopped playing, but Eeqiu and Ellen still sat staring at the blank blue screen, both silently agreeing that a musical French tragedy wasn't the best thing to raise their spirits. Eeqiu was covered in snot and toast crumbs.
"You said I like to take showers to calm down?" they whispered.
"Yes," Ellen whispered. Neither was willing to completely break the silence.
After a few minutes Eeqiu slowly slipped off the couch. "I'm gonna take a shower."
"Do you need help?"
"Yes..." Eeqiu admitted. They had begun to make their way limply up the stairs, like a very sleepy toddler. Ellen came over and gave them some support, and they stumbled into the bathroom. Eeqiu knew nothing about bathing, except for some vague shadows of plumbing schematics that they had glossed over once, and it was mostly a lucky guess that they knew to remove their clothes before stepping under the water. Ellen blushed slightly, unsure whether to stay for safety purposes or to leave for privacy, so she waited outside the door to the bathroom, ready to intervene at a moment's notice.
Eeqiu was shocked at the number of soaps and shampoos. The labels were mostly brand names in big letters followed by fancy jargon about how the product will make you look younger and bring shine to your hair and make you smell like Citrus-Urbana-Sunrise. Eeqiu gave up reading the labels and had to sit down on the shower bench because their human legs had started to give way beneath them. The water scorched red lines up and down their rib cage, but Eeqiu didn't notice because at this point all human sensations felt equally unpleasant.
After a time they were reminded of the sweat and dust that was stuck to their skin, and they scraped it off with their fingernails. Soon their skin was cleaner and covered with more red marks, and they shampooed their hair (not without carefully consulting the directions on the bottle) and used their fingers to untangle the knots. Then they laid back against the wall again, stroking their hair and skin and enjoying the way the water made everything feel smoother.
After a while, Ellen called through the door. "Are you okay?"
"Yes, why do you ask?"
"You've been in there for an hour."
Why in the world did 'hour' rhyme with 'shower?' Eeqiu shook their head at human language as they reached over and turned the water off. Outside, Ellen was reminding them to "Be careful!" just as Eeqiu slipped out of the shower stall and stumbled over wet tile into a rack of towels.
"I'm okay!" Eeqiu clung to the towels for support as they stood back up. They carefully moved to the pile of clothes in the corner and began to dress themself, moving slowly and with difficulty because they hadn't bothered drying off and the water stuck their skin to their clothes. They put their legs through the wrong holes when they put on their underwear, and they managed to put their shirt on backwards because they didn't know better. The pants had somehow gotten turned inside out and it took a few minutes to pull the legs back through, but Eeqiu succeeded and was soon dressed (more or less) and feeling very stupid. Such high maintenance for a mediocre monkey-body.
Eeqiu went out into the hall and found Ellen still waiting dutifully by the door. "Do you wanna go back downstairs," she asked, "Or should we stay upstairs since we're already here?"
"Upstairs." Eeqiu wanted to explore.
As it turned out the only other room on this floor was the bedroom, but to their delight Eeqiu found that it was lined with bookshelves. They wasted no time in grabbing for every nonfiction book in sight, and every philosophy book, too, and, hell, just about every book because why not? "Let's have an intellectual session," they said, setting up a reading nook using pillows from the bed.
"About what?" Ellen asked.
"About divide the reading material equally and when we're finished we share what we've learned." Surely, humans enjoy the pursuit of intelligence as much as the Great Race does.
"Can't we just read for fun?"
"I thought this was reading for fun," Eeqiu said.
Ellen thought for a moment. "I guess so. It's just that the way you phrased it made it sound like an assignment in English class."
"Is English class not fun?"
"Well, no, not all the time, not really."
Eeqiu was sorting through the pile of books they had collected. "Why would you take a class if it weren't fun?"
"I know, right? But the system said I had to."
For a few minutes there was silence as they read. Then Eeqiu said, "Did you know that there are at least eighteen French kings called Louis?"
"I knew that there was a lot," said Ellen.
"Apparently Louis XVI was Louis XVIII's brother, but Louis XVII, their brother, was given the title XVII only after he died in prison at age ten."
"Huh," said Ellen.
More silence, then, "And did you know that it takes more fuel for a space probe to get to the planet Mercury than to leave this Solar System?"
"What book has both French History and Astronomy?"
"I'm reading several at once," said Eeqiu, who indeed had a miniature library set up on their lap. "I'm cross-referencing."
"Cross-referencing French History and Astronomy?"
"Yes," said Eeqiu. "When I see words used in different contexts, I can better understand their meaning."
"Why don't you use a dictionary?"
"Why, would a dictionary help?"
"Yeah, there's one over there, hold on." Ellen went and fetched a book that was thicker than a tree limb and just as heavy.
Eeqiu was saved the embarrassment of asking what a dictionary was upon seeing that the Table of Contents showed a section of handy instructions, as well as a history of the English language, a guide to phonetics, a list of geographical locations, and a main section marked in bold that seemed to take up most of the book. Soon the other books lay forgotten as Eeqiu read about aardwolves and abaci and abalones. They had hit the education jackpot.
"Are you reading the dictionary?" Ellen asked with a smile.
"Affirmative," said Eeqiu, who had learned that word five entries ago.
"Well, most people don't read the whole thing."
"Absurd," said Eeqiu. "Almost as absurd as antidisestablishmentarianism."
"Oh, shush," Ellen laughed, bopping them on the head with a paperback novella.
Eeqiu went back to reading and made awesome progress. At page 489 they paused to show Ellen the full-color, full-page explanation under the entry 'color analysis,' and several minutes later they showed her, too, the illustration of railroad gauges on page 774. They would have shown her the scientific drawings of the human muscular and skeletal systems on page 1032, labelled simply 'man' in lovely italicized cursive, but by that time Ellen had lost interest and had gone downstairs to make dinner. She came upstairs a few minutes later shielding two cups of instant ramen, and Eeqiu slurped their meal as they continued to turn pages.
"So how much of that d'you think you'll actually remember?" Ellen asked, referring to the colossal book that Eeqiu was quickly devouring.
Eeqiu thought for a moment, reflecting on the capacity of human memory. "Next to nothing, I suspect."
"Why read it, then?"
"Well, why do you watch sad opera bootlegs?"
"Touché," Ellen said and took another slurp of noodles.
"Why why does it feel sharp?" Eeqiu asked, looking down at the cup in their hands.
"Sharp?"
"Touch it for yourself."
Ellen touched the cup. "It's hot."
"In what sense?" The word 'hot' had been listing as having 37 definitions.
"Well, it's giving off heat."
"Heat..." Eeqiu flipped to the entry for heat, but as it included the word 'hot', it didn't help. "Is heat like pain?"
"If something's hot enough, yeah."
Another human sensation swept into the 'pain' category. Problem solved. Eeqiu set the bowl aside.
"Are we gonna sleep up here tonight?" Ellen asked.
"Sure." Not like Eeqiu would be doing much sleeping considering the number of pages left to read, but the closer to books, the better.
"Well, it's almost 5:00 now," said Ellen, though the digital clock on the endtable was insisting it was half past ten. "I should probably go run downstairs and get your stuff."
By the sounds she made as she 'ran downstairs,' it was clear that she did, in fact, run, returning only moments later and visibly out of breath. In one arm she was carrying a mess of blankets, PJs, and toiletries; in the other arm she carried the books and pillow that she had brought Eeqiu in the hospital. She dumped the former load on the bed and sat beside Eeqiu, setting the books down in Eeqiu's field of vision. "You don't want to read anything more interesting?"
"Too specified," said Eeqiu. "I need books that cover everything and then some. I only have so long to live and I want to know everything."
Ellen sighed. "Aren't you a bit old to think that way?"
"Why, am I close to dying?"
"No. It's just that by this point in life, most people have seen what life has to offer and have realized that life is supposed to be lived leisurely."
And to suppose that they were being lectured about leisure by a member of a species that would never accomplish mass socialism. "But I do live leisurely."
"Are you reading the dictionary because it makes you happy?"
"I will feel happy once I have finished."
"Then you're reading for the sake of reading. There's no fun in that."
Eeqiu looked down at their book, unknowingly flushed. Page 966 had said that 'fun' was 'amusement,' and page 133 had said that 'amusement' was 'a pleasant diversion.' Eeqiu guessed that it was a diversion from the imminence of death. Trying to absorb the whole of human knowledge before they died probably wasn't a good diversion, then.
"I'm sorry," said Ellen. "I shouldn't criticize you like that."
Eeqiu didn't say anything, but their fingers were tapping away in their native language.
"Sorry," Ellen said again. She stood for a moment, apparently on the verge of leaving, before picking up a book and sitting down with it on the side of the bed.
Eeqiu tried to resume reading, but Ellen was right: the pursuit of knowledge was not only not very fun, but it also didn't have much of a point. They look through the pile of books for something to read that would take their mind off of how pointless reading is. Of course there was the fiction book they had been reading earlier, but their attention was drawn to a large, unlabeled volume sitting on one of the upper bookshelves. "What's this?" they asked, reaching for the book.
"That's our journal," Ellen said. "We write about events that happen to us, but events don't often happen to us so all of the entries are mostly the same. You can read through it if you want. We should probably write about your memory loss when you're ready."
Eeqiu opened the journal and saw a sketch on the inside cover, depicting two smiling, embracing women with the caption 'Ex Libris Val + Ell.' On the adjacent page, the year was written in cursive, and someone had stuck a smiley face sticker underneath. The actual journal entries were dated anywhere from two days to two months apart, and the readability often changed mid-entry as the pencil was sharpened or the author was changed. Ellen had only been partially right in saying that all the entries were the same: half of the entries were things like 'we ordered pizza tonight' and 'the funniest thing happened the other day,' while the other half were 'I just read a book that made me question the human condition' and 'apparently the federal government is thinking of invading the middle-east again so Val and I had to rethink our emergency nuclear fallout plan.' But in every entry, the one thing that always remained constant was the bond the two women had. It appeared in the way Ellen wrote about their first kiss, and in the way Valerie described how Ellen looked in her wedding dress, and in the constant entries that read simply 'we cuddled on the couch and watched TV.'
"I have to do something." Eeqiu left the room, taking the journal with them.
Ellen ran after them. "Are you okay?"
"Where do you keep your machinery?" Eeqiu asked, ignoring the question.
"The garage? But really, Val," Ellen stammered as she followed Eeqiu downstairs and out the door, "I think maybe we should just take some time to wind down and watch a show or eat ice cream."
"I don't want to!" Eeqiu stopped a few feet inside the garage and turned around to face Ellen. "All the things you do for fun aren't really fun! And since you've ruined my version of fun, I'll ruin yours! Ice cream is only fun because your brain is reacting to its sugars, and once you've finished eating you'll only want more sugars anyway! And teevee is an half-hour distraction filled with plot holes and scientific inaccuracies, and watching it will not benefit you long-term! Now help me find an electric generator and some phototubes!"
"We don't have those things."
"Then we shall invent some. Get me fifty light bulbs, two magnets, a laser pointer, and as many negatively charged electrodes as you can find."
"Stat, nurse," Ellen muttered to herself as she went off.
Eeqiu set the journal aside and, using a crowbar hanging from the wall, "acquired" some scrap metal to build the machine out of. Ellen returned with the materials and watched in concern as Eeqiu assembled them in a hodgepodge mess of smoking metal and blinking lights.
"Uh, whatcha doing there, Val?"
"I'm not supposed to tell you," said Eeqiu as they hammered a nail in using the crowbar. Ellen wouldn't believe the truth, anyway. Time travel? Impossible.
"Is it safe, though?"
"Sure. But you still shouldn't touch it." They thought for a moment. "In your life… what is the value of a day?"
"You know…" Ellen paused. "I don't know. I never thought about it."
"If someone were to steal two and a half days of your life, would you be any more upset if they stole the other half day as well?"
"I don't wanna answer that."
"Yeah, okay." Eeqiu stepped back to admire their handiwork. The machine they had built looked like, at best, a toaster oven assembled by blind toddlers. That was pretty good considering that Eeqiu had only ever read about mechanics and had never actually constructed anything mechanical. Let alone quantum mechanical. Using household items. This was a pretty good attempt, considering.
"So, are we done?" Ellen asked.
"Pretty much. What time is it?"
"6:30."
"Okay. I'm gonna go to bed." Eeqiu grabbed the journal and headed back into the house. Ellen was too polite to protest.
That night Eeqiu dreamed that they were flying over the Antarctic, and spread out beneath them were 99 billion humans, each holding plates full of jello. It was a fairly irrelevant dream, but they were glad to have had it, especially considering it would be the last dream they'd ever have. They slumped out of bed and searched around in the dark to find the journal and a pencil. They scribbled something down and, still carrying the journal, they tiptoed downstairs, avoiding the family room where Ellen had slept on the couch. Quietly they slipped through the door in the kitchen that lead into the garage.
The garage wasn't well lit at the best of times, but, early morning as it was, the room was almost completely black. Eeqiu pressed the button that opened the garage door (they assumed that's what the button did) in the hope to open it and let in more light. The door opened, but the sun had not yet risen and the light that entered was cold and weak.
They went to the machine they had built the previous evening and wheeled it out into the sun. It would take a while to power up, since it was solar powered, and as they waited they flipped through the journal again.
The sun was spilling over into the sky and it changed from darkness to fog. When the machine was mostly powered up, Eeqiu set the coordinates from memory by opening and closing certain circuits - they didn't have a keypad, so of course they used binary. The exposed phototubes lit up and filled with smoke, and the laser pointer that they had awkwardly incorporated into the structure was reluctantly shining. Eeqiu looked at the journal one last time before grabbing hold of the machine and getting knocked out cold.
Ellen found Valerie dazed and confused on the front lawn. The machine had fallen apart and its pieces lay spread along the driveway, and the journal had fallen aside in the grass. Valerie quickly came to and described what had happened, or what she thought had happened, based off of the millisecond that she had spent in an alien body.
"I don't even think it happened," she said as Ellen helped her inside. "I saw it happen, but I didn't actually feel it happen. But I had tentacles for arms, I think, and they were covered in black mold, and I was clutching what I thought was a machine, but then I saw that the machine had exploded and now it's all over the lawn! It felt so surreal. It was like I wasn't actually experiencing it."
"You were out for three days, Val."
Valerie fell silent.
Later, when they had both had something to eat and had spent an hour watching TV and pretending that nothing had happened, Ellen suggested that they write an entry in the journal. But someone had already beaten them to it, and in a scratchy, unfamiliar cursive was written:
I am sorry to take leave of you with so few words, but it has come to my attention that, though I have been avoiding death for fear that I haven't accomplished anything with my life, yet I now realize that death is, in itself, an accomplishment. In the realm of dreams (if such a realm exists, and if it is as pleasant as your churches make it out to be), I shall have infinitely more to learn. But for you, with roughly fifty years left of your lifespan, I advise you not waste it in a hurry.
Sorry for wasting three days of your time (Ellen) and three of your life (Valerie),
Eeqiu