Light-Years From Home by Michaelbrent Collings

Author:Michaelbrent Collings [Collings, Michaelbrent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure action humor funny fun family galactic movie four quadrant science fiction fantasy mystery thriller adventure alien invasion funny fun foolish comedy humorous alien contact first contact space travel interstellar scifi teenage love angst relationship young adult middle grade adventure YA pop culture
Publisher: Written Insomnia Press
Published: 2022-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

23

The next few days were a blur. Click convinced his parent-halves that they had nothing to lose, then his parent-halves convinced the Elders. I saw that argument, and it wasn’t flattering to humans in general or me specifically. Imagine trying to convince the President of the United States to appoint a dung beetle as Secretary of Defense, and you’ll have a rough idea of the conversation. Elder Thor in particular seemed to have a low opinion of anyone who couldn’t glow.

It was a mark of how desperate they were that the Elders eventually gave in.

After that, the only person left to convince was me, but it seemed that was an optional feature to our little science project. Whether I wanted it or not, I was going to help them.

After the excitement of me saying, “Show me your weapons,” wore off, I decided to bow out. Maybe telling them to shove it, then crying for my mommy and daddy. I cooked up a lot of options—all of them negative.

Again, Leya changed my mind. Not with reasoned arguments, but just by laying her hand on my arm and saying, “I’m glad you’re helping them.”

Which is how I ended up half-buried in the guts of one of their cannons, Morb explaining how everything worked, while Leya ran errands, taking an eggpod back and forth from building to building to pick up various things the Celestians designed and barfed-to-order for me, and Noah sang a consistent refrain of, “I don’t know what that word meant!”

The Celestians’ tech was way more advanced than ours, so though they listened intently to everything I told them, I often felt like the world’s dumbest baby in a room full of Nobel Prize winners. There were some fun bits, though. Seeing how they made small tools and machinery was a fascinating process. Even more interesting—and gross, if I’m being honest—was watching giant blob-creatures they called “factories” barf up bigger items, like giant pieces of machines or entire lifepods, furniture included.

Watching Celestians catch onto the idea of lasers and finally understand why I needed two reflectors (one total, one partial), was almost as fun. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t being avoided for my brain—I was being sought after.

Oddly enough, one of the hardest parts was explaining conduction to them. I was telling them what level of power I thought I’d need, then realized none of them understood anything I was saying. I backed up and tried again. Still no dice.

After maybe a half an hour, I realized what the problem was: they didn’t use electricity the way we did. It should have been obvious: they were alien. They would have developed different kinds of technology, because they lived on a different planet, and had different physiological necessities and limitations. They had taken a different evolutionary path, and that path hadn’t included Ben Franklin flying his kite in a lightning storm.

After that, I discovered that not only were they unclear on the concept, but electricity was incredibly dangerous to them.

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