Billy Bob McCracken had been three years into a thirty-year sentence when he'd seen a tiny spacecraft fall into the exercise yard at Metro City Prison for the Criminally Gifted. He'd been wire-thin then, and athletic enough to keep up with the new guys on the basketball court. Now he was puffy and got around in, well, not a wheelchair anymore. The blue infant who'd been in that craft had grown into an inventor a century ahead of the rest of the world. When Billy Bob had been released, in failing health, the inventor had built him a chair that floated in the air, like his brainbots did. In it, the old man could go out into the swamp, the same as he used to when he was a boy, rifle at the ready and senses alert for game, legal or otherwise. It was, in Billy Bob's opinion, a damned sight better than sitting around the house watching TV while his divorced granddaughter, who got a regular check from the government for taking care of him, did the housework. He was always glad when the blue inventor and his talking fish pal, who still called him Uncle, came out for a visit.
For that very same reason, he was not happy with the news they had this time. It meant they'd be going for good. So, without being obvious about it, he was trying to discouraged them. They were sitting on the porch, the two men with bottles of Billy Bob's homebrew on their chair arms. They'd been out shooting at things earlier, but had come home empty-handed, so Darlene (the granddaughter) was making sandwiches.
"Well, what if they've got some religion they want you to sign up for? You boys ain't never been much for religion."
"This will be a civilization of superintelligent people," replied Megamind. "Any religion they have, I would probably have no quarrel with."
"Well, what if none o' them blue women like you? What if they think you're too Earthified?"
"In the woman department, I'll be bringing my own."
"What you mean, boy?"
"It's Ms. Ritchi," said Minion. "She wants to marry the boss and come with us."
"That little gal you kidnap all the time?"
"That's the one."
"And she wants to?" Billy Bob sounded doubtful.
"It was her idea," replied Megamind. "I thought she'd either bid me goodbye or beg me not to go. She more or less ordered me to take her along. Amazing woman. I'll never be bored with her."
"And what if them blue women didn't like her none?" Darlene chose this moment to come out with the food. "Darlene, honey, you call up your gal friends every day, doncha? Tell these boys how important it is for a woman to have other women to understand 'em." As he spoke, he slid out the little table that stood between his chair and Minion's, so she could put the platter on it.
The young woman stood up and faced them. She was used to the aliens and spoke to them without fear. "It's not that a good man isn't important," she said. "But there are some things a woman needs to talk over with other women. Maybe not face to face, but at least on the phone or in email. Is there some way she's gonna be able to phone home after she gets there?"
"Er, no," Megamind admitted. "The physics of faster-than-light travel dictate that, even though we will age less than a day in the course of the journey, from the point of view of someone on a planet, it will take ten years, and that applies to messages as well as to people. But I am not worried. Roxanne is a very brave and resourceful woman, and expert at winning hearts. I refuse to believe that she will not have friends of both sexes within a year or two of our arrival."
He would have gone on, but Darlene gave a little gasp. "Did you say Roxanne, like Roxanne Ritchi who's on Channel Eight News?"
"The very same," replied the blue man.
"Yeep! I gotta tell Sally Ray. She won't believe it!" As she squealed out her words, Darlene went running back inside.
"It might not happen," her grandfather shouted after her. "That's what we're discussin'."
"But you're talkin' about it," her voice came from inside the house, "and that is happenin'." They could hear the beeps of a phone being dialed.
"Darlene," shouted Billy Bob in a warning tone. She ignored him. With a look of resignation, he said "Well, boys, your secret's out, at least among the redneck gal segment o' the population. Nuthin' we can do about it now, so we might as well dig in." He picked up half a sandwich. His guests did the same.
###
Metro Man rose from Roxanne's balcony in as much of a rage as the superpowered hero ever allowed himself. He zoomed over the industrial district, searching. There was a trick to seeing through one of Megamind's holographic illusions, but he had to know it was an illusion first. Doing it for every building on the peninsula, pausing long enough at each to really understand what he was seeing, would take all day and part of the night and would give him a blinding headache that would take days to go away. So he skimmed, glancing into known former lairs and other likely spots, less to actually find the blue villain than to give his outward self something to do, to burn off energy while he sorted out his feelings. After twenty minutes in the air, he arrived at an inner clarity and was surprised to realize that it had nothing to do with Roxanne. Why him and not me? Why his people and not mine? He knew there was much more footage of him out there than of Megamind because he had battled other threats, performed rescues, given interviews and received public honors. It had all been videotaped and had gone streaming out into the galaxy along with the rest of the world's broadcast television signals. So either none of his people had survived (which seemed to him very unlikely) or some had survived but hadn't looked at video transmissions from Earth, or they had looked, had seen him, and had decided, for whatever reason, not to contact him.
That was the thing that got him in the gut, the possibility that his people, of whom he knew absolutely nothing, had looked down from up there and had not found him worthy. It was as if, after all these years of rivalry, the little blue kid had won after all. Without realizing it, he'd left the industrial district. He was out over the lake, nothing but water between him and the horizon. He turned around. He was far enough out that he could see the city as a whole, glittering in the sunlight, its skyline coming to an elegant point at the top of Metro Tower. When he got up this morning, he'd been proud of this city, proud of his role in it. Now it looked like the booby prize.
This was crazy. He pulled back from himself, enough to take a more objective look at the situation. Megamind was going to an unknown culture, to a place he really didn't know anything about, where he'd be starting all over. He might succeed there where he'd failed here, or he might fuck up again, or he might not be anything special one way or another. There was no way to know whether he'd really have a better life there. The thrill of being chosen would fade, probably within a week or two of his arrival, and after that it would just be life, with an extra dose of painful adjustments and misunderstandings. He'd get used to the good parts, struggle with the bad parts, same as in any life. He'd just be doing it without Wayne Scott. That was the bottom of it, he realized. On an uninhabited world, in a pioneering society, his powers would be even more valuable than they were here, but apparently it hadn't occurred to Megamind to lay aside the old rivalry and ask him to come along. He'd rather take Roxie - take the damsel, for crying out loud. Not that Wayne would go. He knew where his loyalties lay. The city depended on him. But not even being asked, that really stung.
###
One of the things that had made Roxanne pretty sure that Megamind had not been lying to her was that he'd driven her home without even a blindfold. On the way out, he'd stopped just outside the building so she could look back and see where the secret entrance was, and then told her the address, so she could come and go as she pleased. She decided to go in person to tell them about the conversation with Metro Man.
No one was there. Well, some brainbots were floating around, but neither of the aliens, nor the Invisible Car. On the other hand, in the garage area there was a roughly round metal object, about three feet across, that hadn't been there when she'd last seen the place. On closer examination, she realized that it was a geodesic, made of flat five-sided panels, and was pitted and scratched on all sides like...like the retired asteroid belt probe she'd seen in the Air and Space Museum when she'd visited Washington, DC. Megamind had said they'd received a message. He hadn't said how they'd received it. Maybe it had come in this.
She couldn't see any buttons, but there was a slightly darker shape, like a hand print, in the middle of one of the panels. Below it were some little arrangements of short spiky lines that looked like they might be writing. She put her hand on it. Immediately she heard something move on the far side of the little round... thing? What would you call it? Light emerged and suddenly there was a hologram about ten feet beyond it, of a fish, rather like Minion but not exactly, apparently floating in midair. It spoke, not in any language Roxanne was familiar with, for a couple of minutes. Then it vanished, replaced by a virtual screen showing the Milky Way galaxy. The view zoomed in on one particular arm of the spiral, stopping when it showed a cluster of stars in the center, with several isolated stars around it. Then the cluster went dark as pale lines streaked away from it in all directions. The view panned down, following two of those lines, nearly parallel, gradually separating until they each stopped at another star. There was a pause with those two stars in the upper left and lower right corners of the screen. For a moment, Megamind's face and Minion in the dome of his gorilla body were visible above the lower right star. Then the view zoomed in on the other star. It became a star system with multiple orbiting planets. Closer focus on the second planet, which had a large moon. Closer and closer, swinging around to the night side where a single light showed on the surface, suddenly a complex multi-lobed orbiting habitat came into view, three-dimensional and seeming to intrude into the space of the lair. All this time, the fish's voice continued to speak in the strange language.
A hatch became visible on one side of the habitat. The view approached it and it opened, letting her see the inside of an airlock. Then, inside the airlock, the view reoriented itself, rotating as well as turning right. If Roxanne had really been there, she'd have ended up standing on the door she'd just come through, facing a second door. It opened and a corridor was revealed, being used by blue bald people, fish in mechanical bodies (bare metal, completely robotic-looking) and bots that floated or rolled. There was gravity, apparently. Then there was a series of scenes of work being done: in a greenhouse, in a machine room, underwater in a shellfish bed, in a repair bay off a hangar.
During this sequence, the Invisible Car rolled up. Roxanne turned and waved at it but stayed where she was. She had no idea how to pause the projection and she was fascinated by what she was seeing. Minion went off in the direction of the kitchen with something in a plastic bag. Megamind came up beside her, took her hand, and began to translate. "There's a regularly scheduled shuttle between the orbiter and the colony every six days, but additional trips are common. Functions are gradually being moved down onto the surface as the colony is developed." The scene shifted to an open swimming pool, where a couple of dozen naked blue people of all ages were hanging out, eating, drinking and talking as if around a pool on Earth. "As this is being recorded, children are still born, reared and trained in orbit, going to the surface only when they are able to fully contribute." The view returned to the hangar, where a craft like a small jet airplane was being guided out the door, toward the planet (Earthlike except that the shapes of the continents were different).
The next shot was of a gleaming geodesic dome on the shore of a wide body of water. Around it were cleared fields, with forest at the edges. There was a dock extending out into the water. The little jet flew in, circled the dome once, then appeared to stop in midair and levitate down. "The name of the settlement is First Seed. It's occupied mainly by researchers developing crop plant species. It also serves as a base of operations for explorers and prospectors." The scene shifted again, to the dock, where two blue people looked down into the water. A fish rose to the surface and spoke to them. "Large bodies of fresh water have proven particularly fecund in the area of edible native species." Scene shift again, to an underwater hillside where large snails are being harvested by a bot that looks like a submarine with arms while a fish of Minion's species supervises. "Our great limit," Megamind continued, "particularly in this area, is technological. All the devices controllable by Minion's species were brought with us. We are unable to build more due to loss of the technological infrastructure needed for making certain parts. It's a serious problem for the new generation. We can give them the modification that will allow them to control these machines, but we cannot build more as our population increases. However, you seem to have built at least one of those devices, even though our analysis of Earth's stage of advancement shows that it doesn't have that infrastructure, either. So if nothing else, we ask that you send us an explanation of how you did it. We would honor your name as long as our civilization lasts." The scene shifted again, back to the fish she'd seen at the beginning, still speaking. "Additionally, if you, yourselves, are willing to join us, we would be glad to have you. Our numbers are barely enough to avoid inbreeding. We are perpetually short-handed. Plans for a basic hyperdrive ship are included in this transmission. To access them, press index, pinkie, thumb and then upper palm. We wish you courage in these difficult times." The display shut down as he finished speaking.
They turned to each other. Megamind was about to ask Roxanne what she thought, but then he saw a very strong emotion on her face, or maybe a mixture of emotions. Suddenly she flung her arms around him and kissed him so hard, he had to take a step back to avoid falling over. After the initial surprise, he happily responded in kind.
"I take it you liked what you saw," he said when they came up for air.
"When you kidnapped me that last time, to tell me you loved me, you had already seen that whole thing, including those naked blue women."
"Er, oh. Yes. In fact, it was only after I'd seen them, and found my feelings for you as strong as ever, that I decided to kidnap you. I seem to have imprinted on your kind." He smiled at her fondly. "I'm so glad you're coming."