Scorched Earth, Alien Wonders
Chapter 15: Mushrooms

It was going to be a long, hard, night waiting for Steven Wilder to get the message and show up at the lab, so Cassie put a Beatles album on the computerized turn-table then we sat on the floor and talked with it playing in the background.

Cassie could have sat on a comfortable bench or stool, but she preferred to be near her “animals”, which is what she jokingly started calling us after the three stooges incident. She had retrieved some snacks from the refrigerator, and was munching on an assortment of good smelling, colorful things we had not seen the likes of since landing on the scalding surface of Earth.

“Want to try one?” Cassie asked, as she offered me a piece of something fleshy that smelled like a gourmet slice of heaven.

I took the cream-colored chunk and cautiously put it in my mouth lest the taste be polar-crap opposite from the delicious aroma. As I chewed on the morsel, bursts of flavor unlike anything I had ever experienced erupted on the center of my tongue.

“Okay, maybe it’s because I haven’t had anything decent to eat since we landed here or maybe it’s my fouled up prairie dog subroutine, but this tastes de-licious,” I said to Cassie, with my mouth half full.

“They are called mushrooms, and we grow them in the hydroponics bay,” Cassie said as she offered samples to Brown and Moore, who eagerly accepted them.

“Yowsa, that’s good,” said Moore, munching away.

“Aren’t mushrooms a fungus?” asked Brown, as she popped the piece into her mouth. “Anything grown from fungus is a rare delicacy on our planet.”

Suddenly, I heard rustling noise from outside the open door

Could it be Cassie’s dad already?

I sure didn’t want the stooges back this soon without Torie here when we weren’t fully recharged for another tornado-beast battle. But it turned out to be Doc and Davis, who came huffing and puffing through the door.

“We didn’t stay for the full entertainment session, because we decided to get back over here and see what’s going on,” said Davis, as he tried to catch his breath.

“Yeah, what did we miss?” asked Doc.

Moore and Brown looked at me then we all looked at Cassie...then we burst out laughing.

A while later, Doc and Davis were still getting a full lowdown on the failed attack from Cassie, Moore and Brown. Their account was only slightly embellished. They were still giving a blow-by-blow description when I moved away from the conversation.

I carried my last piece of mushroom over to Jones, who had been sitting quietly away from the group. I put my hand on her shoulder, and I offered it to her. She was trembling, and I realized she was a civi, who wasn’t used to physical combat like the rest of us.

She took the slice of mushroom, sniffed it then popped into her mouth.

“You did good today, Ms. Jones,” I said in an attempt to console her.

“Yeah?”

“Qualdron will be duly impressed,” I responded.

“I will finally have something interesting to tell him besides the 12 different ways Torie has declined to reveal the messages he sent to his girlfriend, which was probably X-rated or something.”

“How about you...were you impressed?” she asked.

“Indeed, I was impressed...and, by the way, that brings up a question I have been dying to ask you. What do you look like as a Rosenian female?” I couldn’t help myself, because Jones was a bit unnerving as a hairy monkey with dark, bulging eyes staring back at me, and I needed something more pleasant to visualize.

“Spoken like someone who has been on Earth too long,” she responded, with the touch of a smile on her wiry face.

“Okay, tell ya what. Give me the name of one of Cassie’s rock songs that would best describe you.”

Jones thought about the question for a bit then she smiled again and told me her answer.

“All About That Bass.”

Hmmmm.

“Okay, I remember now. Isn’t that the song that talks about having all the right junk in all the right places?”

“Yep,” she giggled.

“Aww, Jones...you’re killin’ me!”

It was the first time I heard her giggle, and it was adorable, even if it came out of a homely primate, who suddenly didn’t seem so homely.

“Okay, captain. What song would you say best describes you?”

I smiled nonchalantly, shrugged one shoulder and said, “The Rolling Stones’ ‘Monkey Man’.”

Suddenly, Torie’s burrowing owl swooped through the door, promptly swirled back into the mini-binocs, and landed on the dirt floor next to me.

I heard voices outside.

“Shhh,” I hushed everyone to get their attention. I was relieved not to hear any trace of Russian accent in the voices.

A tall, blonde man with sweat on his forehead came running into the room, while two men dressed in uniforms looking like they were close to heat-stroke collapsed near the door.

“Father!” shouted Cassie and she ran over to give him a big hug. The two were clearly glad to see each other. They talked for a few minutes as Cassie explained what happened earlier when the three stooges stormed into the lab.

A short time later, Steven Wilder turned and walked over to the guards.

“There doesn’t appear to be any more danger now,” he said. “You guys go to the clinic, and put security on full alert. Check on my wife’s condition then ask the doctor to call me. My daughter has more she wants to talk to me about here.”

The two perspiring guards wiped their brows and left grudgingly at a much slower pace than they had arrived. Wilder closed the door after they were out of sight to help the air cooling unit be more efficient.

“Dad, these are my ‘animal’ friends,” said Cassie, gesturing in our direction.

Brown was sitting on one stool, while Moore, Doc, Davis and I, stood in a line on our hind legs at full attention like we were preparing for a drill sergeant inspection.

Funny, Jones had disappeared...

“Prairie dogs, right?” he said, smiling at Cassie then looking over at us. “But, geez, they’re the size of small children. You haven’t been doing experiments on these poor, defenseless critters, have you Cass?”

She laughed out loud at the word “defenseless”.

“Not really,” said Cassie. “But this one has a very special gift for you.” Then she led him over to Brown like we had previously planned. Curiosity got the best of him, and he leaned down to look closer at Brown.

And that is when she locked eye contact with Steven Wilder, and began communicating our story telepathically from the day we landed, telling him only that we were here on friendly terms for exploration. She described each member of our team in detail. She told him about our connection to Suburbia and the town-folk. Then she told him what happened during the attack that afternoon, including Torie’s buffalo tirade and our kick-ass, tornado-beast defense, which allowed us to defeat the attackers.

Wilder didn’t break his gaze or even blink, but the range of expressions on his face went from disbelief, to astonishment, to incredulous, to disbelief again.

Brown’s communication only took about 30 seconds...then she disengaged.

Wilder stood there with a look of total captivation, and he shrugged his shoulders, “by all the stars that exist in every universe I never would have imagined this.”

Then Brown said to him in perfect English: “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Wilder. I’m Communications Officer Shasta Brown.”

He looked at Cassie, who smiled knowingly back at him.

Meanwhile, I had asked Brown to get a sense of his character while she was inside his mind and to give me the “all green” signal when she was done if she sensed he was an honest man. But if she sensed any hint of duplicity in him, she should wait to explain later without giving any signal at all.

Brown quickly glanced at me, when Wilder was looking back at Cassie then she tugged her left ear, which was the “all green” signal.

Wilder scratched his head, and smiled as he looked us all over then he asked the strangest question.

“Where are Yoda and the monkey?”

It compelled me to like him instantly.

“I’m Captain Stanley Memphis,” I said, stepping forward to start off introductions.

“Gerry Moore, Second officer.”

“Fats Davis, company clown. I mean...Tech Officer.”

“Dr. Jason Jenkins, but everybody calls me ‘Doc’”

Wilder smiled and nodded to each of us in turn as we stepped up to shake his hand.

“I know we have picked up evidence of other intelligent life before by Earth, and Mars deep-space probes sent into distant galaxies, so we suspected it, but this is the first absolute confirmation of anything sentient out there beyond bugs and microbes. It is an honor to meet all of you,” said Wilder, letting out a deep sigh and shaking his head as if he still couldn’t believe his eyes.

I took the mini-binocs from around my neck, and put them on the ground to the side of me.

“Torie!”

The bot-shifter swirled up into his organic form, and stood looking around perplexed. Apparently he had been resting after completing his flying owl delivery mission, instead of ease-dropping for a change.

“Torie, meet Steven Wilder, Cassie’s father,” I said to the crusty old centurion.

Torie casually nodded affirmative in Wilder’s direction.

“Interesting looking creature, but Yoda? I don’t see it.”

“Are you in the mood to do a little showing off?” I asked Torie.

In the blink of an eye, his form swirled into the spitting image of Star Wars’ Yoda and he sat looking at all of us from his small, googlie-eyed, funky-eared, avocado-colored face.

“Who’s your Jedi Master?” Torie said, in perfect Yoda-ese. “WHO’S your Jedi Master? May the Force be with you.”

“Yeah, that’s Yoda, alright” laughed Wilder, shaking his head again in disbelief.

Without waiting for an encore request, Yoda’s form swirled back into the mini-binocs, which I picked up and hung around my neck.

Then as if on cue, Jones came hopping out from behind the computer screen to present Wilder with “the monkey”.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Wilder,” she said in her quaint voice. “I’m Dr. Lithia Jones.”

“Excellent to meet you, Dr. Lithia Jones,” Wilder leaned down, and held out his hand to shake hers, which she accepted politely.

Hmmmm...Lithia...nice name.

I don’t know why, but it bothered me that she hadn’t shared that name with me before, even though it was just an Earth designation.

“Mr. Wilder, do you have any idea who attacked your daughter?” I asked, wanting to get down to business since time was wasting away with every second that passed.

But Wilder was suddenly distracted by a communications device he pulled out of his pocket and plugged into his left ear. He listened quietly for a full minute to what we could only assume was a call from the doctor about Sara’s condition.

“Yes, I understand. I’ll be right there.”

Wilder’s face was pale as he pulled the device from his ear, and looked at Cassie. We all prepared for the worst, but what he said next came as stunning news.

“Your mother is pregnant.”