Earthian

Kilovolt

Despite my slow start, things began to gel in the second week. The six of us–Michael, Cam, Adia, Alejandra, Victor, and myself–we were slowly but surely becoming some kind of team. At the same time, Owijer was turning each of us individually into Star League Peacekeepers… whatever the heck that ever meant.

All our group activities seemed to involve running and chasing in those early days, while the instances we did alone were designed around our personal skills. For me, that meant dribbling soccer balls past groups of simuloids, doing trick courses on a bicycle, free running across more weirdly shaped playgrounds, biology research in simulated forests, and… and skipping stupid stones.

I was fully onboard with the program at this point, but my little inner Wiley was full of suspicion. And much like the real Wiley back on Earth, I couldn’t shut him up. What the heck could any of this possibly train me for?

I’m not sure what the others did during their instances; we were hungry and exhausted all the time, which pretty much killed conversation. Honestly, I just slept and ate and hoped their training was as ludicrous as my own.

Something troubled me more, though: my biology training was mostly survey work, finding and describing specimens, dissecting plants and small animals… but they were all simuloid replicas of Earth animals. I still knew as much about the Star League as when I started.

The worst part? I still hadn’t seen a single giant robot. There was only the little blue guy following me around, looking on with his big glassy eye and occasionally flashing a thumbs up. He acted almost like a bodyguard, but I doubted a floating plastic baby could put up much of a fight if things went wrong.

Then one day, Owijer made me forget all about giant robots…

It’s our twelfth day and the six of us are standing in the gym again. We’re calm and relaxed, too muscle tired to be restless. Too stubborn to take a proper rest.

The lights (wherever the heck they are) seem a little brighter right now. A little more harsh. Maybe it’s just me being strung out and tired.

Owijer walks up, and for the umpteenth time, I never saw him coming… he’s just there all of a sudden like a TV character walking into frame. I don’t know if he’s the sneakiest person I’ve ever met, or if I’m truly losing my marbles. Probably a bit of both.

“Greetings, Peacekeepers!” he says with a giggle. “I have fantastic news for you!”

No one makes a peep.

“For your next challenge, you’ll be running a relay race across an entire city!Sounds exciting, right?”

Victor sighs. Someone had to.

“What’s wrong, guys? Don’t you enjoy training?”

“It’s just,” Michael says. “Well… we’re pooped, Owijer.” From the tone of his voice, I somehow think Michael’s never said those words before. They sound awkward, like his tongue doesn’t quite know the shape of them. Or maybe he’s just that wiped-out.

Did I mention that we’re tired?

“My goodness,” Owijer says in mock surprise, “you’ve all lost your sense of humor.”

“Which part of hell am I in?” Cam asks.

“There’s no relay race,” the alien says. “And you’re all so beat that it’s not even fun to poke fun. I’m poking no fun.”

He gracefully dances in a half-circle around us, moving much more smoothly than when we first met him. He barely touches the floor now, instead just gripping at it with the tips of his tentacles, and I frankly have no idea what’s keeping him upright. It wouldn’t even surprise me if he swam up into the air; gravity here doesn’t always do what I expect, and I’m too embarrassed to ask anyone about it.