My Crazy Hot Interstellar Affair

18. Supermodels Discovered at Fast Food Banquet

Holy Toledo.

What was going on? Was the electric blue light contagious? Maybe she was still asleep. She needed the light of day to chase the dream back to its subconscious lair. Where was the light switch? Oh, right. Aliens don't have normal switches—too prosaic. They had thought control stuff. Damn. But she needed light. The room brightened. The pain in her temple eased.

She sat, her brain protesting this move by thrashing around inside her skull. She noticed a tiny metal object, like a single square of glitter, stuck to her fingertip atop a droplet of blood. The microchip. It had to be. She could barely contain her joy.

She was free. But didn't Oliver say if it came out she would turn into a mental vegetable? Her brain felt the same as before. She quickly solved her favorite polynomial using the quadratic equation. Fully functional brain. She flicked the microchip off her finger, and it landed in a forest of shag carpeting. She sucked the blood off her finger. It tasted normal—like iron, copper, and salt, but it smelled like cinnamon.

This meant the end to her Wormholing career. No spur-of-the-moment sojourns to Egyptian pyramids or the African savannah or the Antarctic. Okay, so Andie hated the cold, but still—Kayaking with seals. Gawking at penguins. Seeing the glaciers before they melted. Maybe she could put the thing back in when she wanted to travel. Andie poked around the shag and found it. She wrapped it in a piece of toilet paper from Oliver's cavernous bathroom, which, by the way, was still humid from a recent shower.

Donning the Planet B t-shirt along with Oliver's sweatpants, she placed the microchip in the pocket. Time to explore Oliver's house.

She blundered her way out of the bedroom. The air smelled like a cabin in the woods where kids might come in from the snow to bury their tiny button noses in hot mugs of apple cider. It was a combination of pine and cinnamon, wood smoke, and wet boots. She swept her hands along the wall, searching for a light switch. Nothing. Damn it.

Her fingertips buzzed and sparked, and the mysterious orbs on a Christmas tree about thirty feet ahead illuminated. Andie gasped as she almost tripped over a tiny babbling stream that separated the hallway from the next "room."

The mere scale of the place was enough to send a mentally healthy human being for a good long stay in padded accommodations with daily psychotropic cocktails. Okay, maybe this was why he wanted to give her the tour himself. It was a veritable forest, replete with the same orange shag carpet that was in the bedroom, and blurred boundaries between flora and furniture.

In the pale light, it resembled a magical land like Oz or Narnia or somewhere Oompah Loompahs might go on a summer holiday. Miniature hammerhead sharks darted around the stream in about-face maneuvers like well-drilled soldiers. Boulders were scattered here and there in little conversational groupings. Christmas trees, like the one in the bedroom, dotted the interior landscape—a hammock strung between the two in the far corner next to the French doors. Each tree held at least thirty of those strange balls of light. Fireflies darted in the forest, flashing and flirting with their bioluminescence. 

She heard a noise. Oh, no. Was Oliver back? Why should she feel guilty? He left her here alone. Andie followed the sound to its source—a waterfall in what must have been the kitchen. Of course, there was a waterfall in the kitchen. All the posh aliens had waterfalls, right?

The refrigerator looked like an igloo. But there was a pretty normal counter with a flat-screen television and, best of all, a Nespresso coffee maker, which, in a matter of moments she had rumbling into action.

She sipped her espresso and switched on the TV.

Oliver must have some sort of weird cable or satellite connection because it was tuned to a show she'd never heard of called As the Earth Turns.