A floating copper eye followed me around, possibly the aliens' camera system.
My cell, roughly the size of your average two bed motel room, had the basics: A bed (Venus flytrap thing), pitcher plant toilet, shower (unfortunately, not much privacy), a compartment that held giant hamster water bottles and a shelf with a tiny dog door, presumably for food.
They'd provided me with an exercise machine, I had a `play area' cluttered with something I presumed to be toys, and one of their handheld computers. A holographic thing at the foot of the bed showed 2D earth broadcasts the aliens had recorded.
For `companions,' I had a pot of impressive African violets, and some animal in a bubble, suspended in one of those giant `egg cups.'
A circular panel on the wall indicated how they'd gotten the creature in, and how it probably hadn't been there long enough to need food, water or anything.
Its four legged Labrador retriever sized `catfish' body rolled frantically around in the ball, boar tusks attempting to poke holes. As I approached, the hairy creature growled and wiggled, glaring with its cyclops eye.
Without warning, the bubble popped, and the catfish thing pounced me to the concrete.
A mouthful of lion's teeth opened, dripping saliva on my face. I thought for sure it intended to kill and eat me.
It sniffed, poked me with an anglerfish-like appendage growing from its forehead, then licked me like crazy.
I laughed, pushed the thing away. "Hey! Stop!"
I got to my feet.
The creature oinked and barked at me, rolled over on its belly, flapping its scaly fish tail.
When I knelt down to pet it, a weirder creature strutted past my only window.
An obsidian humanoid body grew from the lower body of a goose, like `Mr. Featherpants' but big as a Shetland pony. Its cyclops pig's head stared at a little computer, pushing buttons as it observed me, muttering to the Qulpari in its booth.
I tried to listen in, but at that moment the Jandaga got too hungry for earwax, and when I took it out, my new furry friend shot out his tongue, frog-like, swallowing the creature in one gulp.
"Oh gee thanks! Now how am I supposed to know what anyone is saying?"
The catfish thing only made a quizzical dog noise and panted.
Now even more depressed, I sat on the bed, watching the non-animated version of Punky Brewster.
Still shivering from my swim, I searched for towels, but found none. I discovered a blow drying machine completely by accident while looking around the shower.
Although dry and not shivering now, I didn't have much control over the recordings, which depressed me again. When the cartoon ended, the aliens had decided to show me that boring exercise show they put on in the early mornings, bikini ladies making afterimages as they do jumping jacks in a pink room. I tinkered with the little computer, ignoring the program.
A low growl and a lapping tongue awakened me from slumber. I guess the events of the last few hours had taken their toll, and my new pet had joined me in bed.
When I sat up, I noticed someone had slid a tray of those empanada things into the cell, and...kibble for the catfish creature.
I spent the whole day in captivity, watching The Dick Tracy Show, Ferris Bueller, The Great Space Coaster...My attention waned when they showed Adam West in his gray tights, and some black and white cowboy shows. The monotonous imprisonment in front of the TV reminded me a lot of daycare places I went to when I was little.
I played with the `toys' the aliens had set out, complicated Rubik's cube type puzzle things where you had to push buttons in and turn knobs in addition to aligning the faces. I tinkered with a molecular model, and a Qulpari doll with a tool that X-rayed of its anatomy like a Visible Man kit.
A Qulpari came into my cell clad in a rubbery blue suit and helmet. It checked my pet, the plant, then me.
He asked me a bunch of stuff, but I could only understand parts and only answer "I don't understand you," not "Your monster just ate my translator." My visitor growled something else, waddling out.
More hours passed. I searched the place for possible ways out, crevices or cracks I could exploit somehow, maybe dig a tunnel through. No such luck. I even tried to exploit weaknesses in the computer device, but only found some games and a program that allowed me to make video `phone calls' to aliens. That latter would have been great, except I didn't know Rilquza or Vorxora's `number.'
I gave up hope, staring sadly at a wall. My pet kept licking me to cheer me up, but it didn't help.
When I heard tapping on my window, I didn't even care to look, not until the knocking got more urgent.
Once I noticed who it was, I sat up with a start. "Colzest!"
Okay, not my favorite alien to see, but familiar, and I could only hope that he could help me. I rushed to the glass, waving to him.
He wore a rubbery outfit like the guy who had examined me. I scarcely recognized him through his space helmet, but during our trip I'd stared at his weathered face long enough to tell him from the others of his kind.
Colzest smiled, raised a glowing finger.
I pressed my hand to the pane. "What's going on! Why am I here? Please help me!"
The alien rolled his eyes, pointed to the side of his head, nonverbally asking where my ear slug was.
I shook my head, pantomimed eating it, gestured to the catfish thing.
With a low shuddering sound, Colzest rubbed his eyes and forehead as if having a headache.
He pantomimed 'I talk talk point point,' which only confused me.
"You've... been talking with them about freeing me."
Colzest scratched his head, pantomimed 'You, short you, wavy you, point point talk talk.'
Out of frustration, I picked up the computer, poking the squishy sucker-like buttons until I pulled up a language module that I'd become a little familiar with. It wasn't perfect, but I could manage a few alien sounds. The device did ask me to talk to it.
In Qulpari, I asked, "Me, outside, yes?"
Colzest groaned, rattling off a bunch of stuff.
"No? No outside?"
Colzest mimed a sandwich, then a house.
"A restaurant."
The goose thing appeared at the window, opening my cell door.
`Sandwich house,' Colzest pantomimed again.
My prison had somehow moved without any noise or shaking. I sort of noticed the difference a couple times when I had my check up, but now, on the other side of the door, I could see the difference. I stood in a rotunda, staring at rows of closed cell doors.
A chime rang and one slid open, revealing a long gray tunnel.
Anything was better than my current cell. I marched to the end.
The tunnel opened in a big domed greenhouse, like something out of the movie Silent Running.
"Elliot!" Gertie rushed up to give me a hug. Jamie came up and hugged me too, pressing her forehead to mine. "So. You've got the translator. What did you find out?"
I sighed. "I had the translator. An animal just ate it."
Jamie gawked at me. "An animal? Ate your slug?"
Something oinked. The creature had followed me.
I frowned. "Yeah. Him."
The catfish creature mooed happily.
"How are we supposed to talk to them now!" Jamie cried.
"Like anyone learns any language, I guess. Immersion."
My sister looked excited about my animal friend. "Does he bite?"
"I...don't think so."
She smiled, petting the creature on the head. "Did you name him yet?"
"No. I was kind of mad about him eating my ear slug."
Gertie didn't hold any grudges. "Let's call him Chewy."
Jamie rolled her eyes. "He doesn't look like a Wookiee."
"Yeah," I groaned. "But he did eat our translator."
"Where's your glasses?"
"Dunno. Judging from what I've seen so far, I don't think we're going to be doing much reading."
Our `bio-sphere' resembled the `natural' exhibits they have at zoos, giving you the impression of freedom, but you couldn't go where you wanted.
All around us grew a simulated jungle of earth plants. A shed contained gardening equipment and toys, a `bird bath' constantly circulated cool water (a drinking fountain, I supposed), we had a sink, toilet, and a small waterfall hissing at one side of the place. Like an ape house, we had exercise equipment, probably a good thing considering our space atrophy.
A little `house' stood at center, prefab concrete, shaped like a dome tent, big enough to fit four adults. No beds, but such a fat cushion swelled from the floor that you really didn't need much more than a blanket.
Each of us had been given a pet. A bird with a pink rat's tail kept nuzzling Jamie with its feathery body, frilled lizard wattle vibrating as it squawked. She'd named it Fluffy, but Gertie favored `Wingy MacSaurus.' Gertie's was the weirdest: A cockroach the size of a small dog, padding around on raccoon limbs, a budgie's head chirping as it wagged a stripey tail. She named that one `Harry Bugbird'.
"They gave us plants," Jamie complained. "Now they're giving us more to take care of."
I shook my head. "I don't know if that's what they're doing. Maybe it's like putting a canary in a coal mine. They're trying to figure out if we're toxic to their species."
"Kind of a double standard, isn't it? You can't eat a hamburger, but they do animal testing?"
"Maybe ET or Rilquza convinced them we're not dangerous."
"...Maybe..." Jamie stared through the biosphere's transparent dome. At one end, in a gray corridor, Qulpari pointed at us and muttered to each other. "I was right. This is ending like that Twilight Zone episode."
"You don't know that."
"Are you saying this place doesn't look like a zoo to you?"
I had nothing to say to that.
"Either that, or this is their jail. Like...punishment for killing...whoever Charlie was."
"Gee, I hope not."
A week passed. Just us and our alien pets. Three times a day, a round table would rise out of the ground in front of our little house, laden with food. The cooking never improved, but we didn't starve either. What could you do?
Other stuff got sent along with the food, and our pet food. Since I couldn't go back to my cell (and didn't want to) they shipped over the computer, the African violet, the toys, and then, later, Gertie's tape deck, my glasses, and our 'pet plants.'
A hologram projector inside the house played recordings from earth 24-7, but we didn't have a remote or anything to control what they showed. One day they played an endless string of commercials and, about ten times in a twelve hour period, the video to Obsession by Animotion. It was okay during our waking hours, when we could walk off and do other stuff, but when we wanted to sleep...
We got so fed up that we used a spade to pry it off the wall, sticking it in the back of the tool shed.
Only then, by accident, did we discover the shut-off button.
Between the three of us humans, we figured out how to fully operate the Qulpari language module and master the basics, 'hungry,' 'thirsty' 'where's the haxgep (toilet)' and to call every Qulpari 'bilo' to be respectful. The module helped us understand the 'video phone' feature a little, but, as Jamie remarked, it ran like a "Roulette of chat". I tried to find Vorxora, but the interface wasn't very intuitive, at least to a human user.
"Can't you snap up a chat with anyone you know?" Jamie complained as I fumbled through a conversation with a stranger. "I'd kill for even a couple minutes face time with the guys we came in with...Even that grumpy Colgate!"
"Colzest," I corrected.
She rolled her eyes. "They named him after soap and toothpaste. It's no wonder he's so mean."
"You don't want to know what Sikes means in our language," I joked.
That got earned a blank look.
"You've never seen Alien Nation?"
"I'm in an alien nation."
"It's a movie. Anyway, my point is that the syllables of their names might mean something different in Qulpari. A name like Polly Wannacracker might be a perfectly respectable family name, and Jamie could be a cuss word."
She frowned. "Oh."
One of our 'snap a chat' friends really tried to communicate with us. A Qulpari, named Meazquad, freckly, Jack Russell-like birthmarks. I asked about ET but I didn't think he understood, or even knew who he was.
What he did understand was how we could use some language lessons, so he would take his device around every day...wherever he was (a house in a jungle, it seemed like), and show us things, asking us to respond, or repeat what he was saying. It helped.
Time passed.
At the end of the week, as we were tended our pet plants, considering taking them out of their pots and planting them in the little jungle, a Qulpari slowly padded its way into our enclosure. At first, I thought I had hallucinated, but when I rubbed my eyes, blurry with tears, it didn't go away.
He was actually there. And not even wearing a protective suit.
"ET?"
The alien's expression reflected pity, the face a grandmother makes when your parents are fighting and you run to her house. With a sigh, and a heart glowing through his skin, ET spread his slimy brown arms, inviting a hug.