Laura watched her roommate dumbly click through television channels. Ro had not talked to her in three hours, and Laura hoped she was okay. While the girl wouldn't admit it, she was quite shaken from Losker's visit. Ro had taken to watching children's shows on the television and repeating the character's lines as they spoke. She had taken out a piece of paper as was writing down what Laura assumed was relative definitions of some words.
She ran a hand lovingly across her stomach and tried to distract herself with baby names. Her and Mitch were constantly trying to find the perfect name, and Laura found that she could focus much better on that problem when she was trying to keep more undesirable things from her mind.
They didn't want to know the gender of the child, so they had a few picked out so far. For a boy, Laura had pleaded for the baby to be named after Mitch, but her husband hated his name. They settled on Michael. The girl's name was more difficult. They didn't want to call the baby Laura, and all other names seemed inadequate.
"Roseanne." Laura rolled the word softly across her mouth. It was a beautiful name.
"Ro?" she called.
Ro looked up.
"If the baby's a girl, can I call her Roseanne?"
Ro cleared her throat. "I mean, sure. I just never liked that name. The nicknames are just other names, which is silly."
"Hence 'Ro'?" Laura laughed.
"Hence 'Ro.'"
"Well what name would you prefer?" she asked. "If you were to change you name, I mean?"
Ro pursed her lips. "I think I'd like to be a...Sonya. It means 'wisdom.'"
"Sonya.... I like that. If this baby's a girl, she'll be Sonya."
Ro colored a bit and tried to hide a smile.
"I'd be Abigail," Laura continued. "Don't know why, just like how it sounds."
"But you'd get people calling you Abs!" Ro laughed.
"Abs isn't any worse that Laur," Laura countered, giggling as well. "My sister would always make fun of me and call me Rawr. That name is seared into the brains of my family, and I get at least three dinosaur-themed things for Christmas every year —"
She stopped, and her mind drifted to home. Her sister, her family, Mitch...they were probably all so worried. She'd been here seventeen days (she thought), and she was certain that everyone would be worried about where all those people went —
But no, they wouldn't be. Because Ro said that thirty people per language per continent were taken, which meant that it would look like simple, random kidnappings.
But then again, Laura was ninety-nine percent sure that the rooms they woke up in were their real rooms, in which case everyone on Earth was very, very confused.
Her head hurt. It was definitely time for bed.
"Ro? I need some sleep. Could you...?" She gestured to the television.
"Sure thing," Ro replied. She turned the volume down.
"Not what I was looking for," Laura laughed softly, "but that's alright. Goodnight."
"Uh-huh," Ro replied.
Within minutes, Laura had drifted off.
...And then was woken up.
"Please! Wake up! Laaaura!" Ro shook her shoulder.
"Ro, don't do that," she muttered. "I'm pregnant."
"I need you!"
"What..." she yawned, "time is it?"
"Late. I've been up all night. Anyway, so I have an emergency."
Laura pushed herself into a sitting position. "What's the emergency?"
"I might have —" Ro broke off and whispered into her ear: "The television doesn't restrict channels...and so I happened across something children shouldn't see."
Laura rubbed sleep out of her eyes. "Okay? And?"
"It was waaay PG-thirteen. Like PG-thirteen times ten."
"So...R?"
"Yes, that."
Laura felt a tiny twinge of annoyance. "You didn't seriously wake me up for that, did you?"
Ro held up her hands in surrender. "No, it's just...Losker didn't tell me about that. He said that Lii babies just kinda appeared when a person or a family or a couple was ready. He explained it like: we hardly know how our own brains work, and the same thing is with babies here."
Laura shook her head, still trying to clear to fogginess away. "You can't seriously be freaking out about this, can you? Get some sleep, hon."
"That's the thing!" Ro exclaimed loudly. "I can't! I've been trying ever since we got here, a I just kinda lay there...and stare off into space.... And with, you know, the visit today, I definitely won't be able to sleep."
"Well I want to sleep. I was sleeping. I love you like a sister, Ro, but it's just too late for me to hear about your accidental, R-rated television show. You need sleep."
"I thought you'd be more interested, since you're pregnant," Ro pouted.
"Seriously," Laura said in a motherly tone, "you need sleep. I'm not sharing my prison cell with a sleep-deprived wacko."
"I was sleep deprived last night too, and was fine. I think it was the fish-thing I ate."
"Fish...thing?"
"Yeah. Someone brought it in a half hour ago, and it was on a plate, and the Lii fork-thing was by it, so I ate it. All of it. Sorry. But then the world got shiny. Seriously. Like, shiny."
Laura giggled. "Okay, no more fish. Us humans clearly can't have it."
Ro shrugged. "It tasted funny anyway." She stretched her arms over her head. "I'm going to watch TV. Goodnight."
Laura took a notepad and pencil off the nightstand and wrote a note:
Dear Lii cooks, thank you for the late-night snack, but I'm afraid it doesn't react well with humans. We'll stick with what you brought us previously. Thanks. Laura :)
