Earth to Emma

The Arrival

"Um, excuse me?" I asked, my mind still trying to catch up with the fact that I was in a flying piece of metal. Like an airplane. Except I definitely did not sign up for this.

"Sorry, got a bit ahead of myself. I'm Zi-Eed, but everyone calls me Zig." He held out a blue tentacle. "Is this how humans greet each other? I'm beginning to wish I paid attention to the last lecture."

I sat there, stunned, before tentatively reaching a hand out towards his outstretched appendage. It was warm and soft, nothing like the cold slimy thing I'd been expecting.

"I'm sorry, what do you need again? And why am I here? What's going on?"

"I'm here because I'm about to fail my Humans Studies final. I'd get Kio-Leng to help, but he did my homework last week." He ran a tentacle down his rather human-looking face, stressed. "This student debt is killing me, and if I don't pass, I won't graduate. That, and the fact I would be killed if they caught me in here."

I sat there, still very confused. At least now, I had confusion with a purpose.

"If I help you out, will you tell me what's going on and get me out of here? I have finals soon too, and I spent way too much time studying to not take them."

"Deal."

.......

"Where exactly are we going?" I asked, struggling to keep up with Zig's fast pace.

"Back to my dorm, to get my text books. Do you have dorms on earth?" He let out an exasperated sigh, flapping one of his arms. "I really should have paid attention."

"Yeah we do, the community showers suck though. I do not recommend them."

He gasped, grabbing my arm. "They suck here too!"

I let myself be pulled along, through winding hallways made of a shiny grey metal and past oval doors, all of them identical. It was hard to tell the difference between each passage Zig pulled me down, but he seemed to know them by heart.

"In here," he said, pressing a few buttons on the keypad next to the door. The markings were strange, almost like hieroglyphics, except much more bizarre.

Zig tiptoed into the room, and I padded after him, the door sliding shut behind us. The room was small, with two hovering disks, one of which had a mound of blankets on it.

"You have to be really quiet," he whispered, creeping over to a shelf built into a wall. It had several worn books on it, looking out of place in the futuristic room. "The textbooks are right here, I got them half off on baigslist—"

"Zig, shut up." A muffled voice groaned, followed by a pillow hitting Zig square in the face.

"And that would be my roomate, Kio-Leng, but you can just call him Kio—"

"How many times do I have to tell you, stop bringing others in when it's lights out!"

"Yeah, sorry about him, he can be a grump."

"Hey!"

"Anyways, let's get started. How many cultures are on earth?"

I blinked at him, confused. I don't know what I'd been expecting, but it wasn't this.

"I don't know actually, there's almost too many to count. I'd say over three thousand?"

"Wait a second," I heard Kio grumble, before he sat up in bed, staring at me. "Did you actually go steal a human?"

"Yeah, duh." Zig rolled his eyes, writing what I said down on a piece of paper.

"I thought you were joking! Zi-Eed, you can't just steal a human, that's illegal."

"And what they do is unethical. Your point?"

"You're going to get into so much trouble!"

I watched them bicker back and forth, wringing my hands. What on earth—or should I say space—had I gotten myself into?

"I refuse to let some poor human be taken off to the mound, when I have the full capacity to save them!" Zig yelled, banging his tentacle on the table.

"Oh quit it, you know you only saved this thing, so it would help you with finals."

"Hey!" I frowned, glaring at this so-called Kio. "I am not a thing. I have rights."

"Exactly! And we need to protect those rights. From people like you, Kio!" Zig shouted, standing up suddenly and wrapping one of his blue tentacles around me, drawing me flush to his side. "Now, about those rights. What year was the women's suffrage movement?"

Kio snorted, flopping back down on his rounded bed. "See? He's hopeless."

I extracted myself from Zig's grasp, taking a better look at the room as I did so. It was fairly small, keeping to the standard theme of grey metal and rounded furniture. There were a few posters plastered on the wall with words in a language I couldn't understand, and a dim lamp hovered in the corner, illuminating the room in a warm glow. Overall it was cozy, even if all the metal and white starchy bed sheets seemed uncomfortable.

"Um, 1848 I think? The woman's suffrage movement, I mean. Although I'm pretty sure there were two." I grimaced, plopping down on what looked at least somewhat like a chair.

"Oh goody. Wait two? I thought there were like, four." Zig groaned, rubbing his face with his tentacle.

"You're totally going to fail this," Kio snorted, laying back down and pulling the covers over his head.

"Well that's just like warning me the sun will rise."

"Um, what?" I squinted at Zig, confused by the words I'd never heard before but which still made total sense.

"I'm going to fail?"

"No, the thing about the sun. Aren't we on a spaceship? Floating through space? Where would the sun rise?"

Zig laughed, the sound reverberating through the room.

"Space? That's funny. Human, we're on Mars."

...........