“Why are you in my room on the floor?”
Instantly, I wake up. Was that her voice? It is! I look up from the floor, and there she is, sitting on her bed, looking down at me.
Anxiously, I respond, “Uhm, you froze, and I took care of you to make sure you’d be okay.”
Confused, she tries to clarify, “So, you’re saying I was in stasis?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“And you didn’t fetch help?”
“Oh, I did, of course! I got Steve, and he told me what to do!”
“He didn’t send me to a hospital?”
“Uhm... no. He gave me a chance—three days.”
“Three days! How long was I out?”
“About two days?”
Disconcerted, she stands up, stomping past me as I scramble to get off the floor. I can only watch as she heads out of the house in the direction of Steve’s place.
Oh no! I hope he finds the right words to explain all this. This is exactly the moment when “she-will-be-pissed” becomes reality.
Nervously, I pace up and down the tiny house, unable to focus on anything meaningful. Her conversation with Steve takes time—apparently a lot of it. An hour crawls by, amplifying my anxiety with every minute. Then, suddenly, I hear a noise at the door. I rush to the entrance room and freeze.
There she is, standing in the doorway, her silhouette framed against the bright light outside. She stares at me, wordless, as if deciding something. A moment passes. Then, pulling herself together, she walks past me with solemn words: “I need to sit.”
She heads toward the terrace behind the kitchen.
Perplexed, I watch her go. *This is not the moment to hide,* I tell myself. Very cautiously, I follow her and step out onto the terrace. There, I see her sitting on the bench against the wall, facing the wilderness that surrounds the house.
Somehow, I feel increasingly insecure. Yet I dare to sit down next to her, leaving a short but respectable distance between us.
I’m too nervous to start the conversation, so I just copy her, staring into the abundant jungle view in front of us. And what a view it is! I’ve seen it before from inside, through the kitchen window, but I never truly appreciated it. My heart was never light enough to cherish the green scenery that surrounds us. And still, it doesn’t belong to me. Now, regret alone makes me mourn the beauty unfolding before me.
The urge gnaws wildly at me to say something—anything—but I don’t know what. The silence stretches time into infinity. It’s only after a few moments that I somehow manage,
“Uh, I’m sorry for what happened.”
Steadily, she replies, “Don’t be. My condition isn’t your responsibility.”
Her firmness unsettles me slightly. This doesn’t feel right. Hurriedly, I try to steer the conversation in the right direction.
“Uh, I mean my behavior.”
She raises her brows and subtly turns her head toward me. “Uh, why?” And with the same firmness as before, she adds, “If you feel that way, you feel that way.”
As soothing as that might sound, something about it doesn’t sit right with me. I want to take responsibility, but she keeps pushing me away from it. I need to steer the conversation somewhere she can’t dismiss my guilt. Nervously, I stutter my last resort,
“No… uh… no, it’s not that! I mean… I was wrong even in this aspect!”
“You were?”
“Yes, yes, I was!”
“Okay, so what’s your true feeling about all this?”
Suddenly, a wave of sadness floods my soul. There’s no escape now but to reveal the fears I’ve been holding in. This way, it’s no longer about her taking responsibility for my behavior—it’s about me.
“I was just upset because I was thinking about my mom.”
“Your mom?”
“Yes. I left her alone on Earth. She’s still getting my payments. We’re very poor, you know. And she still doesn’t know I’m officially dead. But soon she’ll think I am.”
Kehan sighs deeply. “Oh, I get it. You signed one of those recruitment lump sums.”
She knows about those contracts on Earth? These Manides are so well-informed about humans that it unsettles me how uninformed I was about them. Excited, I jump on this,
“Yes, damn, yes!”
With a sharp stare, she side-eyes me critically and says in a low, slow voice, “You are such an idiot.”
Strangely, I don’t take it as an insult. On the contrary, I get a strange sense of friendliness. Instantly, I can’t help seconding her statement in her own language.
“Yes, io ese mereti!”
She laughs. It’s a real, enjoyable laugh. Relieved, I note to myself that she’s not as pissed as I feared. But then, her face turns serious again.
“Unfortunately, it’s now very difficult to contact anyone on Earth. Our global government made a truce with yours. We agreed to announce ourselves as completely extinguished, and in return, Earth agreed to stop attacking us. Any ties, communication, and knowledge of our existence have been severed between Gaia and Earth.”
This news sends an ice-cold thorn down my spine. “You mean there was once a chance to contact my mom, but not anymore?”
“Well, it wasn’t much better a few months ago.”
“Uh, okay.”
Then, with a friendly and soothing tone, she leans slightly toward me. “But things may improve again, even while the truce is still in place. I can try to ask a few contacts about what options are left in times like these.”
“You can do that?”
She leans back again, her voice cautious. “Yes, but I can’t promise anything. I’ll try though, okay?”
“Thank you,” I whisper gratefully.
Silence settles between us, and we both return to gazing at the jungle stretching endlessly in front of us. Maybe I’m foolish, but this moment feels good enough to last forever. All my life, I’ve struggled and fought to claw my way out of every mess—out of poverty, out of being second-rate, out of low education. And here I sit, next to someone willing to do something difficult for me. Just like that. With nothing in return. Just because I feel miserable.
Thinking of this, I utter ironically, “I’ll start translating that common clause now. Time to read that vile paper about my slavery.”
With a huge sigh, she comments, “Thank goodness!”
Now that things seem to be looking up, my brain does what it always does—it tries to give in to fear. That gnawing angst that something bad will happen immediately. As if I’m not allowed to feel at ease. As if my life isn’t meant to take a brighter turn. And sure enough, a new thought crawls into my mind, bringing a wave of guilt. I know I can’t avoid the bad forever; it’s better to confess it now, before she gets pissed after all.
“Uh, I need to admit something,” I say nervously. “I wasn’t able to keep up feeding you six different dishes over the last two days. I’m really sorry.”
She laughs, grins, and briefly grasps my hand with a firm, reassuring squeeze. “Well, if that’s your only concern about how you handled the last two days, I’d say everything else must have been just fine.”
Relieved, I let myself fall back against the bench’s backrest. Closing my eyes, I conclude that, altogether, I’ve made it through this situation better than I ever expected.