Finals Week
an excerpt

Chapter 1
The rhythm of the pink rubber ball ricocheting off his floor and wall had lulled Chris into a false sense of comfort. He was admiring the pattern of pink stains against the formerly white plasterboard wall. How long could he keep going, he wondered, before one of his roommates complained about the constant noise? And how many bumps per minute could he attain? Could he increase the rate and still maintain his fluid pace? And what percentage of bumps fell outside the emerging rubber-ball-splatter-pattern?

All it takes is hand-eye coordination, he thought. It should be eye-hand coordination; you see first, then react. Right? And with that one moment of uncertainty, Heisenberg was proven right. The ball jammed the upper knuckle of his index finger, bounding out of reach. Of course, his hand might have been able to reach if he hadn’t contracted his arm as a sudden shot of pain sped nerve-fast through his arm and into his awaiting brain. “Shit!” he blurted before sucking his finger into his mouth.

“It’s about fucking time!” Denbo’s unmistakable high-pitched voice cried out from the first floor.

Chris considered going downstairs to yell at his roommate, but he realized Denbo was right. The physics exam was in seventeen hours and Chris hadn’t even started to review his notes on collisions or probability. “I can’t keep wasting time,” he said to himself, sweeping his hair back from his forehead. “I’ve got to concentrate.”

He popped the buds of his iPod into his ears, set the shuffle feature, and tackled a few review questions Mohir had written up for him. As he tapped his feet to a particularly catchy, irreverent blues tune, he realized the floor was shaking without his help. An empty beer bottle on his desk performed a jig before falling and spitting a few drops on his physics text. “Dude!” Chris yelled. “What the f-” But before he could finish his predictable question, the door to his bedroom broke off its hinges and would have smashed against the far wall if it hadn’t suddenly stopped mid-flight. “Fuck” he concluded.

The word sounded empty in his ears, not because his thoughts had changed as he was speaking, but because there was no echo in the room. It was as though the word had been frozen outside his mouth and froze upon his chin. Then, a whoosh of noise seemed to pull all the air out of the room. Chris gasped as a flash of light from downstairs illuminated the stairwell and all he could see of the second floor. Instinctively, he blocked his eyes from the white light, but he realized quickly that his eyesight was not affected. Trying to avoid hitting any of the creaky panels of wood in his floor, he tiptoed out his door and stood at the top of the stairs. Looking down into the living room, he saw Denbo seeming to stare back at him. But the look on his roomie’s face was blank, empty; Chris wasn’t sure Denbo was alive.

Slowly Denbo slid through the air, and Chris realized he’d been floating and now was moving through the plate glass window. He wasn’t sure if the glass had been removed or if Denbo was somehow floating right through it, as though it were a Denbo-permeable membrane.

Once Denbo was out of the apartment, the light went back to normal. “Denbo?” Chris called out, but the word sounded as flat as when he’d last spoken. He tried to move down the stairs, but his body was paralyzed. Suddenly, a whoosh of noise rushed throughout the apartment once again, and Chris’s intended momentum pushed him onto the first step and he struggled to maintain his balance as he ran down the stairs.

Denbo’s bag of Doritos and bottle of beer – cold to the touch – were on the table. If it weren’t for the orange, triangular crumbs on the couch and floor and the sound of the Yankees game on the television, which had suddenly sparked back to life, he’d have sworn Denbo hadn’t been there. Outside, a dog was barking. Chris looked at the window, and saw his reflection in the glass. “What the hell just happened?” he said into the room.

Chapter 2
“How many different classes have used these old ships?” Grilspuk asked his co-pilot, Farlek. “They smell like five hundred years of earther dung.”

“I swear, my father probably flew this old garbage scow when he was our age,” Farlek replied. He was wearing his standard issue gray suit and cranial helmet, which seemed to breath by itself; it was the gravitational automator, set for Earth atmosphere. “I bet that if I looked hard enough, I’d discover he scratched his name into the titanium.”

“How many more earthers do we need to catch?” Grilspuk continued. “These things are so disgusting, I don’t know if I can handle one more of them. I’ll tell you, I can’t plug up their excretory holes fast enough to keep them from letting loose in their quarters. What is it about these beings? As soon as you catch them, they crap themselves!”

Even though the holding cells were three floors below the bridge, the wailing screams of Denbo and several other humans rang out, crying for help and mercy and understanding.

Grilspuk flicked one of his naked tentacles against the command console and spun himself on his chair. He’d removed his suit after inserting the anal plug into Denbo, the latest arrival, and stowing him into a mucus-lined cell, from which earth air emanated. “Won’t those things ever be quiet? I swear, I’d rather scoop solar spiders out of prominences than transport another one of these creatures to our classroom.”

“Fry-kle! Grilspuk” Farlek exclaimed. “I thought you’d quit your whining by now. You haven’t shut your muncher since we got through the Kuiper Belt.”

Grilspuk paid no attention to the glassy gleam of frustration that was visible in Farlek’s eyes, even through the ocular shielding. “That’s because I could already smell earth from there. Why couldn’t we troll for isopods in the pools of Io? They don’t talk, and they’re far more interesting biologically than these humans. For crying out loud, humans should be an experiment for first years, not fourth years like us.”

Farlek pressed a button, shifting the gravitational polarity in the ship. Grilspuk immediately flew out of his chair, banging his cranium against the titanium surface above them. Terrified squeals from the humans below deck filled the bridge once again. “I told you to keep your gravitational suit on,” Farlek said. “And I said you should buckle up. We’ve still got to gather at least two of the earther females.”

On the ceiling above, Grilspuk wiped the seepage away from his nostrils. “Son of a Vegan!” he spat. “You did that on purpose. You’re going to have to get the females, then, because I can’t get nitrogen on this wound.”

“You have a suit!” Farlek yelled. He knew what was going to happen. Grilspuk would take the ship and fly out to Hawaii to taunt the telescope viewers; he’d done it before. And Farlek would be stuck in an earth forest with a pair of wailing humans. And the anal plugs are always kept on board. Those were the rules ever since one of Grilspuk’s cousins had ventured to Earth and plugged up a half dozen humans before the headmaster was even aware he was gone. “I’m the commander of the voyage, and I will not let you cause me to lose a grade all because you want to go joy-flying.” To emphasize his point, Farlek switched the gravity back and Grilspuk crashed back to the floor. The humans below deck cried out once more.

“I should have known better than to be lab partners with you, Farlek.” A tentacle slightly off kilter, Grilspuk shook his appendage until it slipped back into position with a loud, wet slapping sound. Farlek snickered beneath his suit; he’d forgotten how much he enjoyed playing with gravity.

“Get your suit on. I’m going to fly to San Francisco so you have a wide array of females to choose from.”

Chapter 3
Farlek placed the ship in stealth mode and positioned it over the Golden Gate Bridge. Dressed in his gray suit and cranial helmet, Grilspuk finished his preparatory steps, calibrating the suit’s Pulmo-pulse meter for 21st century Earth pollution levels, double-checking that his tentacle-to-foot Transitional Transport system was in working order – nothing worse than getting used to walking on two feet only to have the system crap out and leave you slithering on seven tentacles. Talk about chafing!

The final step was the communication boggler, which was an aural implant through the small ear holes on the side of the helmet. Grilspuk absolutely loved how amazed the humans were that sounds seemed to transfer from brain to brain. The looks on their faces were priceless – even better than the goofy looks their males have when they copulate. Earthers smell awful, but they are amusing. If only they didn’t die so quickly on Trianulum V, they’d make fun pets.

Grilspuk climbed into the transport tube. A crackle of sound shook through his head as Farlek tried to update him on their position. “Aghh!” Grilspuk gurgled. He shook his head and smacked the helmet against the transport tube.

“What’s wrong?” Farlek asked, sounding concerned.

“Oh, I left the volume too high from the last earther,” he grumbled. “He was watching that transmission device, and I needed…”

Farlek didn’t care. “You’ve turned it down? You’re ready to go?”

Grilspuk flipped the universal message of annoyance in Farlek’s direction, knowing he couldn’t see him but wishing he could. “Yeah!” he replied. “Ready and steady.”

Under his breath he muttered, “Your mother munches Vegan cats.”

“What was that?” Farlek replied. He was sick of this assignment already and considered leaving Grilspuk on the planet. But he’d have received a demerit on his flight command grade. Moreover, a search team would have to be sent to retrieve Grilspuk. Those freaks enjoyed terrorizing planet natives in search of lost Trianuli. Farlek didn’t hate earthers like most of his classmates did; he didn’t want to give the search team the satisfaction. Worse, he didn’t want to have to deal with Grilspuk in class after they found him.

“I said transport me, you ass!” Grilspuk said.

With a push of a button, Farlek sent his shipmate into the Castro district of San Francisco.

The gray suit was sufficient to keep Grilspuk out of view in the shadows, but the streets were too crowded and well lit for him to venture far. Several groups of men walked past, some hand-in-hand. One couple seemed engrossed in a deep conversation, then left the sidewalk and moved just a few feet away from where Grilspuk was standing. They placed their munchers together and stroked their human tentacles across each other’s bodies. Grilspuk was fascinated. He’d never seen such behavior among earthers, and he readied his tracking-sensor for a wide berth to take them both.

“Not yet,” one of the men said to the other. “We’ve got to meet Tony and Robert.” They munched each other once more and returned to the lit sidewalk.

He considered casting a broad beam to track them, but he’d only have to find more females if he took these two males – though they didn’t seem like the type that needed mates.

Grilspuk activated the communication boggler: “Farlek, are you sure this is the right spot? I don’t see any females.”

“This is what we had in the computer.”

Grilspuk shook his head and stared at the ground. Either someone input this area as a joke, or the research was poor. “This is not going to work,” he replied. “There’s got to be females in this town, or at least nearby. Do they have one of their learning plots nearby?”

“I’ll check,” Farlek said, sounding frustrated.

He turned his head back up to look for the light of their home galaxy, but the street lights were too bright and he couldn’t even find any of the nearby stars. “How do these beings live like this?” he wondered. Tapping his return coordinates into his suit, he prepared to return to the ship. Once he’d set his escape to twelve earth seconds, he saw what looked to be a female – burly, but in female earth plumage, complete with painted muncher and bedazzled aural lobes. She was alone, and Grilspuk quickly shot her with the tracking-sensor and secured her for transport. A green flash enveloped the earther, lifting her off the ground and into horizontal position. Grilspuk’s pre-set transport took him, and moments later the earth female followed directly to the mucus-prep facility.

In the prep room, Grilspuk immediately searched for an anal plug. He sprayed the human with a light acid that eliminated its clothing; the skin would be slightly irritated, but they grew skin quickly. Once the clothing was gone, however, he discovered that it wasn’t a female after all.

“Fry-kle!” Grilspuk shouted. The human stared wide-eyed at his captor, his screams high-pitched and so piercing that Grilspuk’s aural implant moved deeper into his skull, causing him to grip at his cranial helmet.

“Fry-kle!” he cried again, scanning the control panel searching in vain for the auto-return button. He’d never sent one back from the prep room before, but he knew it was possible. “Fry-kle! Fry-kle! Fry-kle!” He pushed a random green light, which sent vaporous particles onto the screaming human. Grilspuk cursed once more, realizing he’d hit the wrong button. The particles immediately formed a skintight sheath around the naked human, and an automated blade lowered to open holes for its mouth and nostrils; Grilspuk was expected to enable it to see. “Fry-kle!” he called out searching for a blade dull enough to open up visu-holes without scarring its face. They hate that. He looked around and pushed spots on the room’s walls to release drawers of various metallic implements.

“Grilspuk?” Farlek’s voice called out of the comm unit. “Grilspuk?”

Finally, Grilspuk pulled at the sheath with his gloved hands and tried to calm the being with a smile.

A crackle emerged again from the ceiling and then Farlek’s voice: “Grilspuk, I thought you said there weren’t any females.”

At the sound of discernable language, the human screamed louder than before. Grilspuk grabbed at his helmet again, and kicked at the base of the bed on which the human lay. The pain in his head was getting worse, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to kill the human; it was an automatic loss of half a grade – as he learned the year before on an interspacial biology trip. Since he already had one death on his hands, he might even get a detention, which he simply didn’t want to deal with.

Yet, the screaming human was making it difficult for Grilspuk. The small nostrils on his face twitched. The human had let loose; the smell seeping out of the small holes that allowed it to breath, see, and scream was almost unbearable. Grilspuk shook his head hoping to avoid the stench and took a step back.

“Grilspuk?” Farlek asked.

He looked up to the nearly invisible speaker in the ceiling intending to yell at his shipmate – and that’s when he saw the button he’d been looking for. The problem was he couldn’t reach it without his tentacles and he was still in his suit. He reached up, but he was a couple feet short. Then he tried jumping, but the suits weren’t designed with jumping in mind. When he landed, his lower tentacles felt as though someone had ripped them off and deactivated his ability to regenerate limbs.

The only thing his jumping and gyrations had accomplished was to frighten the strangely plumed human even more than before. It tried to break free of the synthetic skin restraint, leaching more of the foul reek into the cabin.

Grilspuk, his legs and skull in excruciating pain stared up at the ceiling wondering how he could reach it. Then it occurred to him

“Farlek, Degrav!”

Grilspuk steadied himself, anticipating the sudden shock of crashing against the ceiling. Instead he felt momentarily sick, floating slowly in place. He realized his mistake: he had meant to tell Farlek to switch the gravitational polarity, as he had before. This was better. He pushed against the floor, allowing himself to float to the button, which he pushed. The screaming human vanished in a flash of brownish light.

“All right, Farlek,” he called. “I’ve sent him back.”

His upset stomach settled. And then so did Grilspuk – with a crash to the floor.

“Fry-kle” he muttered.

Chapter 4
Carolyn couldn’t sleep, she was so mad at herself. It felt bad enough that she was failing her abnormal psychology course and would probably have to change her major (could she really expect to get into a good master’s program when highways had better grades?), but she had also broken up with her tutor the day before the final exam. She tried to rationalize the situation: she found him dressed in buttless leather chaps and chains getting whipped by a blonde, but at least Carolyn finally understood the meaning of cognitive dissonance.

Still, she couldn’t concentrate on the material. Every theory, every example, every page of her texts reminded her of Carl. Carolyn attributed the successes she’d enjoyed during the semester to his tutelage, though she couldn’t understand why grades didn’t quite reflect the confidence she felt when she discussed chapter after chapter with him. Though the fact that they were both naked during such sessions might have clued her in, had she really given it a little more thought.

Usually, Carolyn hated studying at the apartment. Though her roommates, Danielle and Cindy, were both psychology majors also and had invited her to join their study group, Carolyn couldn’t quite handle the group dynamic; she felt intimidated. A one-on-one approach was more Carolyn’s style. But tonight the apartment was quiet.

As a soft breeze blew in off the Bay, Carolyn tightened her robe close to her body and wondered if a warm shower might help her to relax, clear her head. Outside, a cat howled, and she walked to her window to see whether it was Cindy’s tabby, Festinger. He was the most social cat she’d ever seen, eager to cuddle up with anyone but also insistent to be allowed to wander the back yard and alley ways beside their off-campus apartment.