Page 53 of Her Alien Boss

I thought the missiles and such might slow down, but if anything, they’re getting worse as humanity continues not celebrating me. Weird. I think one of the countries might have nuked another country by accident while trying to nuke me.

I wonder if maybe my message just isn’t getting through?

“It’s Evie Westport,” I repeat, broadcasting very slowly and patiently.

Another missile escapes the atmosphere and crashes harmlessly into my ankle. I reach down to brush the debris off. To my surprise, I realize that there are actually a large number of bits and pieces over my exterior skin, most of which have shiny little wings. It’s like I’ve been attacked by a swarm of bugs…

“Oh, dear,” I say to myself. “I know what those are. They’re not shiny wings. They’re satellites.”

I realize far too late that I have been disrupting satellite communications and probably much more. I can only imagine the field my being is giving off. I am like Alice in the rabbit’s house, my leg sticking through the front door, my head through the chimney.

I move back a bit, hopefully out of range.

I start to pick up some transmissions there. A lot of them are panicked and encoded, and though I could descramble them I don’t bother after the first few, because it’s all coordinates and such.

I’m stuck with what’s being broadcast on television, a technology that never went entirely obsolete even after we all started downloading everything from massive data centers that ruined our lives.

“The giant entity is still in orbit, still threatening communications, and still blocking large parts of the sun,” the news reporter says. “Attempts to make contact with the mechanical menace have been unsuccessful as it continues to broadcast unintelligible static that is interfering with everything from shipping to the Superbowl.”

“It’s Evie,” I shout through the channels.

I hear myself echo back, a booming voice that sounds like the voice of a goddess. Even to my own ears I sound garbled. The language translators aren’t working correctly. Again, that makes sense. I’ve made so many rookie errors in contacting my own species. Silly me.

The channel flips to another human planning to do other human things.

“We’re preparing for the rapture. We’ve sold everything, including some things we didn’t own, and we’re waiting for…”

I am not improving anything by appearing to humanity as a huge angelic space robot. That’s a pity.

Just as I try to get a sense of what a good next move would be, I have a very strange pinching sensation right around where my right ear would be. It is followed by the feeling of being drawn backward through space, pulled by the back of my neck. At first the motion is slow, but before I know it my home planet is dwindling and then it is gone. The stars turn to smears and the rear motion makes me giddy. Something has me by the scruff and is dragging me home at more than the speed of light.

* * *

Arkon

The Fematrix glides through space, returning home like a robot vacuum suitably full of pet hair and dust. There is no drama in the way she returns to me, no great fanfare. It is hard to believe that my Evie is in there. If she were truly herself inside that great body, she would be throwing sass and shade in all directions. Instead, the docking with the external port is almost seamless, and eerily silent.

The chaos on Earth has become something of an interstellar incident. There will be diplomatic fallout from what they consider to be a near invasion by some hyper-intelligent being for quite some time to come. The mystery of the Fematrix, the secrecy of her, has also been blown to smithereens. There is no part of this unplanned deployment that has not been a disaster.

I do not care about any of that. I only care about her.

“Go and get her brain and put it back in her body,” I growl at Drak.

Many days have passed since the meaning of my existence fled from me wearing a giant mechanical robot weapon. For all that time, I have suffered the fear that I may have lost her forever.

Evie is docked at a floating port just off the asteroid, accessible by shuttle. We fly there, Drak and I. I find myself standing under what would be her chin if she were in a human form, looking up at her face, expecting an expression that cannot come.

And then she speaks.

And it is in her voice.

And I could cry.

“Hello!” the gargantuan machine says. “Is that you, Arkon? You look so small.”

“Evie!” I shout back. “It’s me!”

“Of course it’s you,” she says. “You were always so into me.”