Alien Research

CHAPTER 50

PERFECT. Because the day just hadn’t been “fun” enough already.

“Why are we here?” I asked.

The congressmen looked at each other and shrugged. The Senator in Charge turned back to me. “We’re here to pass judgment on your latest failures.”

“Oh. Good. Look, per everyone, I need the sleep.”

“Per us, you need to explain why things went haywire today,” one of the Committee said.

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“Let’s put her in prison and get on with it,” one of the other Committee members said. “I want to convict someone, and she’s conveniently here.”

“I want a lawyer.”

“I’ll represent the accused.” Turned to see Michael standing there. He didn’t look like he’d been shot. Heard a mewling sound and Fuzzball jumped up onto Michael’s shoulder. “My associate will give the opening arguments.”

The Poof started mewing. Hopped up and down. Lots of tiny growls. Went large and toothy for a bit, still jumping up and down, though the growling was a lot louder. It finished up, went small, and jumped back on Michael’s shoulder.

“I see,” the Senator in Charge said. He turned to me. “What do you have to add to the learned council’s comments?”

“Ahhhh . . .” I had no idea what the Poof had been saying. At all. It was just so much cuteness from what, if I looked at it out of the corner of my eyes, was a somewhat insubstantial version of Fuzzball. Michael looked somewhat insubstantial, too.

“I say we sentence her now,” one of the other Committee members said. “I have a golf game to get back to.”

“No, my client is more important than your golf game,” Michael said. The Committee and all the rest of Congress, all of whom were, once again, in attendance, grumbled but finally they waved at Michael to continue. “My client will make her statement now.”

Turned to him. “Are you a ghost? Or just a figment of my imagination?”

He flashed me his typical “you so hot, babe” smile, the one he gave to any woman between the ages of 18 and 98. “I’m whatever you want me to be.”

Chose to not take this as a come-on line, seeing as Michael was both engaged to Caroline and also dead. Though he looked alive right now. Very, vibrantly alive. Turned my head and looked at him again out of the corner of my eye. He looked insubstantial again.

Turned back. He looked alive again. Worked for me. “I want you to be alive and unharmed and all of yesterday to have been a really bad dream.”

Michael shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way. You need to explain what happened yesterday. In a bottom line way.”

“We want to know who’s responsible for what happened,” the lead senator said.

“I am. I was the acting Head of Field.”

“Can we just send her to the chair?” one of the others on the Committee asked. “She wants to take the blame for what the terrorists did, after all. Having a scapegoat is wonderful. Gives us something to focus the people on, instead of the bigger picture, or what’s really going on.”

“No,” Michael said. “We find the other side’s scapegoat, that’s great. But that only avenges us for who pulled the trigger, not who gave the order.”

“I gave the order.”

Michael gave me the “really?” look. “So, you told the assassin to kidnap, torture, and kill us?”

“Well, no, of course not.”

“You gave the order to overtake Home Base and the Science Center?”

“No.”

“You called in me and Brian, along with other non-Security personnel, so we’d be easier to capture?”

“No, Gladys did that.”

“Did you tell her to?”

“No, Ronaldo Al Dejahl did.”

Michael nodded. “The Defense rests.”

“We do?”

Fuzzball jumped up and down on Michael’s shoulder. “Ah,” he said, “good point. My colleague would like to ask if anyone believes that Ronaldo Al Dejahl is in charge.”

“He took his own sweet time showing up on the scene,” the Senator in Charge said. “Seems to me he’s a convenient face for the new Al Dejahl terrorist group.”

“Not as if his father ever acknowledged him, after all,” the Committee member who wanted to send me to the chair said. “It seems to me that he was found after his father was killed.”

“By someone who was told where to look,” the Committee member who wanted to play golf added. “Despite his claims to the contrary.”

The others all nodded.

“Wow, you’re all buying in to the idea that the Mastermind is behind all of this?”

Everyone in the room looked at me. “There is another,” the Senator in Charge said.

“Right, right, another Jedi out there. Or another Sith. You mean the Apprentice.”

“Someone won the job,” Michael said. “Or else this wouldn’t have happened.” Fuzzball mewed again. “Oh, right. Kitty, try to remember that you’re not responsible for what anyone else does.”

“Right, everyone chooses their own path. I don’t remember being this hung up on Star Wars as a kid, but I guess I was.”

“What makes you say that?” Michael asked.

“Well, this is my dream, right? So all of this is coming from my subconscious.”

Congress faded away, until there was just me, Michael, and Fuzzball standing in a gray, formless mass. Michael smiled again. “Is it?”

“Isn’t it? If it’s not my subconscious, if I’m not asleep, or whatever, then what is it, whatever ‘it’ is?”

Michael shrugged. “It’s whatever it needs to be.”

“Okay, then, is death really only the beginning?”

He laughed. “I don’t really know yet.” He looked around. “I think it might be. We’ll find out.” He patted Fuzzball. “And we’re not going alone.”

“That’s good. I guess.”

“It is.”

Fuzzball mewed, purred, and rubbed against Michael.

“See? Fuzzball agrees.”

“Okay. Um, are you . . . with ACE by any chance?”

“Not yet.”

“Will you be?”

“That will depend on a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

He gave me a funny look. “If everyone lets us go.”

With that Fuzzball jumped onto my shoulder, gave me a nuzzle, and jumped back to Michael’s shoulder. Michael kissed my forehead. Then they both faded away into the gray nothingness.

Looked around. I was very alone. Wasn’t a fan. “If this is my dream, I want to wake up now.”

Nothing happened.

“If this isn’t my dream, I still want to wake up now.”

Nada.

“I got the message. I swear! Stop wallowing in guilt, find and stop the Apprentice, get that much closer to the Mastermind. Right?”

Still alone in the gray mass.

“Um, if ACE is out there, we’d like him to be able to come home, please. I’ve met the guy who’s his sorta replacement, and ACE is now even more sorely missed.”

Could have sworn I heard someone chuckling. It so freaking figured.

“Algar, I know that’s you.”

“Who are you talking to?” Jeff asked sleepily.

I blinked and I wasn’t in the gray nothingness anymore. I was in bed next to Jeff. “Ah . . . what did I say?”

“You said ‘I know it’s you.’ Were you talking to me or someone else?”

“I have no idea any more. It was just a weird dream. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“Mmm,” Jeff said, as he pulled me closer to him. “That’s okay, baby. I have the perfect way for you to make it up to me.”