Human by Choice Read online

  “That will work great,” I said, then asked, “Is that thing very complicated?”

  “It's far beyond your present technology.”

  And that made me wonder just how long her species had been civilized, but before I could ask I remembered she had told me already. She didn't know. And that created a nagging thought in the back of my mind that just wouldn't go away. I couldn't keep from thinking what an old history teacher of mine had drilled into me when I was in the eleventh grade in high school. He told us every single day that people who didn't know their history were doomed to repeat it. How could such an advanced civilization not know their history? And how did they manage not to recreate problems that they had solved in their past? It all sounded too, well, alien.

  “Well, I hope none of your other people got captured and some of our enemies get hold of that thing. Or other gadgets you may have, too.”

  “It wouldn't work for anyone but a Cresperian, Kyle.”

  “Good. That reminds me, though. Have you any idea about what your companions might be doing? No contact yet?”

  “None, other than I know some survived. Most likely, even if they were seen, they would have used their cloaking device and escaped capture once their lifeboat dissolved. On the other hand, they're likely to be doing the same as I, assuming human shape as rapidly as possible.”

  “Would they purposely try to find humans to help them?”

  “I imagine so, after they learned enough of the local language to ask.”

  I could just picture what a spectacle that would be, a four-armed monster tapping someone on the shoulder and asking if they could assist it in turning into a human. They'd either faint, run screaming or try to shoot it. Or maybe they'd help. My expectations of humanity might be lower than reality.

  Something was troubling me but I couldn't get it to come to the surface of my mind. Actually, there was a whole hell of a lot troubling me, but there was more still trying to form into real troubles in the recesses of my cerebrum. I made a mental bookmark to try thinking about it later, and began writing up a grocery list. While I was doing that, one of the things I'd been wondering about came to mind.

  “Jeri, just curious, but why did you have to have a first-aid kit to repair your body if you can manipulate it to such an extent as to turn into a human? Couldn't you have fixed your injuries the same way?”

  She tried laughing but it didn't come out well. Not human enough yet. “I could have, if I hadn't been injured and taken a blow to the head that affected my perceptive sense for a while. In fact, I could have freed myself, too. The kits are designed to assist in cases like that—although this is the first I've known of them being used. In fact, ours is the first spacecraft that's ever been lost, to my knowledge. If by chance I ever return home, I must tell the designers about the dissolving process of the lifeboat trying to do the same to me!”

  That was my first indication that they weren't omniscient. Somehow, it made me feel better.

  * * * *

  My home was located up in northeastern Arkansas in the thinly populated Ozark Mountains, near some little towns with the picturesque names of Ash Flat, Evening Shade and such. The county seat was Hatfield. The Strawberry River wasn't too far away. Since moving there, I've driven through the mountains occasionally to try relaxing but I found you have to pay too much attention to the traffic on the winding, up and down roads to think about much else.

  Jeri was astounded at how I could maneuver the old Hummer all by myself, as she put it. All their conveyances at home were automatic, she told me. Talking to what looked to be empty air beside me as I drove was so strange at first that I kept wanting to reach over and assure myself there was really someone beside me, but after a while I got used to it. I took us to Hatfield, the nearest town with a super Wal-Mart, a pretty fair drive from home. I wanted to give Jeri a chance to see a lot of human activity from up close. She asked if she could go into the store with me but I suggested it wait until she was human. I did roll the windows halfway down so she could hear the conversation as people passed back and forth and get an idea of what other people talked about in the normal course of their affairs.

  Jeri had told me that she'd soon begin taking earth food, although only small amounts at first. I had neglected shopping since she arrived, so I had a larger than usual list, including a greater variety of food than I normally bought. And looking to the future, I thought I'd get both the junior and regular size of tampons for her to take care of that problem, just in case she hadn't thought of it yet. I had to just take wild guesses when it came to buying clothes for her. I felt downright ashamed that I couldn't even use Gwen's sizes as a guide, because I didn't know any of them, which goes to show how much attention men pay to things like that. Anyway, all the clothing was just to give her a start. She'd select her own after becoming completely human, but the whole episode certainly made me think of what a state of affairs it is when men don't know things that basic about women, even ones they've been close to.

  I got back to the Hummer just in time. My mind must have been in park or even sound asleep for me to leave the window open with no passenger to be seen inside. It was an open invitation to theft and two sleazy-looking characters were already attempting to equalize the wealth, one acting as a lookout while the other obviously had some means he thought would get the hummer started. He already had an arm inside and as I watched he flipped the locks open and slid into the driver's seat.

  “Hey, you son of a bitch!” I yelled as loud as I could, cursing myself for not bringing the pistol I was licensed to carry with me. Once I'd gotten the permit I packed it for a while, feeling like a wild west cowboy, then started getting careless. I might as well have saved the money I'd spent for the permit for all the good it was doing me the first time I needed it. I abandoned the cart and began running as best I could toward the car and stopped a few feet away from the young, rotten-toothed, anorexic idiot trying to steal the Hummer. The rotten teeth and frail figure along with the wild stare in his bloodshot eyes told me that he was a meth-head. The homemade drug had become so damned prevalent across the country that us law abiding citizens could no longer buy nasal decongestants at the local pharmacy. The idiots were using it in their home factories so much so that they had been buying them in large quantities. So instead of cracking down on the druggies, us law-abiding citizens could no longer buy decongestants with pseudoephedrine in them anywhere. If you got a sinus cold, then you were damned to some newer version of a medicine that you couldn't make meth out of. And that newer stuff didn't work for me at all. Goddamned junkie bastards.

  “Back-off, gramps,” he said, turning a rotten-toothed snarl towards me. He flashed a multi-tool pocket knife in his right hand.

  “Hold on there, sonny. I don't want any problems,” I told him as I shifted my weight onto my good left leg in back with my good right arm forward.

  “Give me the keys, old man, and nobody gets hurt.” He continued to wave the little pocket knife side-to-side.

  “You know what? You are so spaced out of your dumbass head that I don't think you could hurt me even if you tried. So, no. Get the fuck away from my car, you piece of methed-out shit.” I taunted him just enough so that he made an angry and horribly off-balance lunge toward me.

  I hopped sideways on my good leg just out of the way and grabbed a handful of his long, matted hair with my right hand. I used his forward motion and yanked him by the hair forward and down with all my strength. He did a wild off-balance face plant into the parking lot asphalt that probably broke his nose and some of those nasty teeth. The knife flew from his hand and skittered underneath an adjacent car. I kicked him in the side with my nearly worthless right leg to add to the insult.

  Fortunately, the druggy was an idiot and his buddy was a coward. They were more interested in making a getaway than staying to fight. The man crawled up to his feet holding his bloody nose and they both ran away. Normally, I would probably have muttered something about how my tax dollars would end up p
aying for his hospital bill because I was certain he didn't have medical insurance. I'd probably have bitched about the fact that even though the sonofabitch couldn't pass a drug test or might be an illegal alien—that's right, alien, not immigrant—he would still get free health care at the emergency room paid for by Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class America. Normally, I'd have cussed about that and spat at them. But I quickly realized what I had just done and how plainly fucking stupid it was.

  I didn't give chase. Hell, I couldn't give chase. Had they been more than dying, cowardly, meth-heads, I'd have been in trouble. I didn't think just how stupid I had been. My ego just wouldn't let me accept my permanent disability.

  “Not sure what the hell I was thinking,” is what I finally muttered to myself. “Good thing they ran.” Then it hit me. “Jeri!” That's why I had faced them down. I was way more concerned for Jeri than for my own safety, and I sure didn't care to give chase just for the sake of corralling a couple of car thieves who were gonna die pretty soon from self-inflicted poisoning, anyway.

  “Are you okay?” I asked and poked my head in the window.

  She didn't reply and I thought for a moment she must have abandoned the vehicle when the man started to get inside. Instead, she had the good sense not to answer me because she noticed what I hadn't. A few male shoppers who had seen what was going on after I yelled came running to help. Another young man had pulled my cart out of the middle of the driving lane and now brought it to me. I could tell that one of the men was carrying a gun from the slight bulge under his left arm.

  “Who are you talking to, Mister?” asked the young man pushing my shopping cart over to me.

  I turned around with what must have been a very stupid look on my face, an expression that appears there all too often. It wasn't intentional, but for once it did some good instead of causing whispers about how retarded I am. That brainless stare managed to put over the first remark that came into my head.

  “Oh. Those bastards flustered me so much I forgot that my wife didn't come with me this time. Thanks. I'm calming down and will be okay now. Seriously, thanks.” I took my buggy back from him and started putting the groceries in the back seat. The men looked at me the way younger men look at older men who are getting senile, but I guess they decided I had just forgotten to take my meds that day, for they helped me unload my groceries and then they left.

  “You take care of yourself, you hear?” one of the men said.

  “You handled those two pretty good if you ask me,” the one carrying the gun added.

  “Thanks, gentlemen. I appreciate the help,” I told them and smiled as they turned away. Then I rushed into the car, nervous that Jeri might have been scared out of her mind. Once into the driver's seat, I rolled up the window and said quietly, trying not to move my lips, “I'll explain in a minute.”

  “It's probably not necessary, Kyle. I believe I've had my first encounter with thieves. A strange process, one I'll have trouble adjusting to, I fear.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said shakily. By then I was pulling out of the parking lot and felt I could talk without attracting attention so long as we were moving and not stopped at a light next to anyone. “That was more unusual than you might think, Jeri. It's the first time in my life I've encountered thieves, other than during the war.”

  “Oh. I'm glad to hear it. I was afraid it might be more common than I had thought from my studies. You saw such things in a war? Were you an observer or a participant?”

  “I was in the army.”

  She was quiet for a moment, then asked “By chance is that where your scars came from?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “The one you've seen on my shoulder is from a bullet wound and the one above my eye from a little piece of shrapnel. I've got one on my hip, as well.”

  “Did you have to kill any of your fellow humans while you were in the army?”

  “Here's a lesson for you, Jeri. Men and women who have been in combat generally don't talk much about it, and that question is something you just don't ask a veteran. However, in this case, you deserve an answer. Yes, I did have to kill other humans. I didn't enjoy it. Hardly any of us do, although there're always a few who seek it out. They're sometimes called psychopaths or sociopaths, though the definitions do differ. I prefer just to think of them as crazy bastards. Some psychologists say about five percent of the human race are utterly amoral. I suspect they're pretty close to right, and probably up to as much as twenty percent of humans have less than the normal ethical sense. Or maybe they were never properly taught ethics. I dunno.”

  We discussed that unfortunate aspect of behavior all the way home, but Jeri had a hard time understanding it. I told her my own thoughts about it, which were that most antisocial behavior is tied in with the survival instinct somehow and that environmental influences have altered the way the genes are expressed. I also admitted I might be wrong, even in my contention that the true psychopaths are simply born that way or their brain is wired in such a way that the psychopathic behavior is inevitable. But then again, a perfectly healthy baby could be tormented on a regular basis until it formed into an adult that was nothing short of shithouse rat crazy.

  She was quiet for a while, then finally said “Kyle, it's become obvious to me that my species altered our genetic makeup so far back in our history that there's no way of knowing whether we were ever subject to such behavior. For certain, I have a difficult time grasping all the aspects of human culture I'll have to adjust to while living among you. However, I still believe becoming human is my best option. I'll simply have to learn as rapidly as possible.”

  Again I assured her I'd help, and I meant it. It was just that my idiot self still hadn't figured out how she was intending to learn. I didn't doubt for a minute how quickly she could absorb information, though. She could read almost as fast as she could change pages on the net and remembered virtually everything. The big problem for her was resolving all the contradictory views that differed according to which authority or pundit espoused them and that appeared to change as often as my unneutered cat used to have kittens before I had sense enough to let a vet take care of it. Bobo had been in the car with Gwen, on her way to be neutered, when she died, along with the cat. But I'd managed to bring two of the kittens with me. The ungrateful things went native as soon as they got here and haven't let me pet them since. I see them from time to time and hear them out behind the shed. I fully expect to see more of them in the future because one of them was female.

  Once I turned onto our lane, Jeri dispensed with the invisibility cloak and put it away. It was a mistake, but I wasn't expecting company, either. Who would believe their eyes if they saw us, anyway?

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  * * *

  Chapter Four

  There's a sharp curve in the gravel lane just before my home comes into sight. It is well hidden from the blacktop county road by the pines, and the area of the curve is grown up with brush and young saplings. A person in a car is practically on my doorstep before he sees the house, which is why the driveway curves around it, making a complete circle. I had no desire for a vehicle to join me at the dinner table some evening. The UPS truck was stopped in back of the house and the driver had gotten out to come to the door but been distracted by the gouge in the earth and the broken pine limbs caused by Jeri's lifeboat when it crashed. She turned around as I slammed on the brakes and stopped the Hummer just before hitting her truck.

  I saw her raise her arms and open her mouth to scream. At first I thought it was because of how close I came to having a mashed UPS truck cluttering up the backyard. Then I remembered Jeri. I turned, intending to tell her to get invisible quick. She vanished before I had a chance to say anything. The woman closed her mouth with the scream unuttered.

  When I got out of the Hummer and began walking toward her, she shrank away from me, a fearful expression distorting her pretty young face.

  I stopped walking and did my best to play the innocent, putting concern in my voice
. “What's wrong? Are you in pain?”

  “Uh, uh...” She was still staring at the passenger seat of my Hummer. “What on earth is that thing in the car with you?”

  “Thing? What thing? What are you talking about?”

  “I saw a ... a monster in there. Don't tell me I didn't. It's still in there!”

  “Ma'am, I don't know what you're talking about. Monster?”

  “I saw it!”

  Acting like a patient parent trying to soothe a confused child, I walked back to the Hummer and opened all four doors and the end gate.

  She brushed her hair back and very cautiously approached, peering inside from every angle, then circling the vehicle to be sure she had seen every nook and cranny. I waited on her to satisfy herself there was no monster hiding inside, but damned if I know what I would have done if she'd started feeling around on the passenger seat. Fortunately, she let what looked like empty space do her thinking for her. “I ... I'm sorry. I must have been hallucinating or dozed off while standing up for a second and had a nightmare.”

  “No problem,” I assured her. “Are you tired?”

  “Well, yes. I didn't get much sleep last night.” A faint blush suffused her face as she spoke, giving me a pretty good idea of the reason for her lack of sleep.

  “You need to be careful driving, then. You sure don't want to fall asleep at the wheel.”

  “No. I'll be careful, thanks.”

  “Did you have something for me?”

  “Huh?” The blush that had been fading reappeared. “Oh. Sorry. I really am out of it today. I'd better drink some more coffee. I keep a thermos in the van.”