Page 13 of Time Traveling Space Bastards

F ood was universal and was my only friend during high school. It just gave the assholes something else to bully me about and my mom acted like the weight I gained landed on her ass and not mine. Didn’t stop me from eating. That shit tasted good, and I needed it to stay alive.

They were already inside with trays of food when I came in with the donuts. I wanted them to try the donuts, but donuts were dessert so those came last. They didn’t seem weirded out by that when I explained it. They seemed just as excited for me to try their food.

“This is proper street food. You can get it in the neighborhood I grew up in. Torrek had diarrhea for a week after eating palace food,” Omi said.

“If I could put you on a rocket and shoot you back home, I would.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You love me and you can’t beat up any men I sleep with when you’re a million light years away.”

“If you sleep with a human, I’m telling Mom.”

“Ew. They don’t even have stripes. No offense, Baxter.”

“None taken. Some of these guys dry rub your left labia tip for six minutes and ask if you came, anyway. And you have to get naked before you find that out.”

“I’m programmed in all manner of pleasing women and men,” Enix said.

“Are you offering, big guy?”

Was that flirting? I guess he was learning. I was going to have so much fun corrupting him. He just stammered.

“So, if you’re based on my books and I based my books off of you, then I have you being able to eat and drink with the capability to learn. That was all shit I made up after our brief encounter at my pool, but if they based their design off of it and thought I was a prophet, then you are capable of more than what they told you.”

“They never let us read the holy text. I only ever got a chance after Torrek and Kuka rescued me. But yes, I do think I want to try food.”

“Together? I don’t even know what animal this kebab came from and I’m about to put it in my mouth.”

Torrek let out a little growl.

“I love watching an adventurous woman eat.”

Well, shit. He was already pretty high on the bangability scale, but when he looked at me like that when I was shoving questionable meat in my face, he just went higher.

“You don’t think my ass is too big?” I asked.

Now, Kuka was growling at me and looking at me a certain way.

“You have the ideal body on our planet.”

“Seriously. It’s considered a sign of status,” Omi said. “No one makes fun of people if they don’t have your body type, but it’s considered a sign of wealth. It means you can afford food. It didn’t use to be like that, but in certain areas, people are starving.”

“Okay, so this food is amazing and the more I eat, the more I’m going to sober up. You’re going to have to tell me about your planet and what you actually need from me. But first, Enix has to tell me how much he likes food.”

Enix’s cheeks were stuffed like a chipmunk and he had meat grease dribbling down his chin. I’d give it to their 3D printer. I couldn’t tell this wasn’t cut off of an animal and immediately cooked. Enix was adorable. I mean, they designed him to be physically perfect and I guess, close to humans. Which was weird because I designed my Enix after the man by my pool and then they designed their cyborgs after my smutty books.

Time was weird.

“Don’t try to speak,” Kuka said. “Focus on chewing.”

I could tell from that blissful look on his face that he loved it. I probably had that same look on my face the first time I tried a donut burger for the first time. It was excellent. I still didn’t know what animal the kebabs came from and I wasn’t sure I wanted to, but it tasted similar to lamb.

“Are you sober enough to hear why we came? Is your stomach finally settled?” Torrek asked.

“I think so. Also, this food banging. If it comes from something cute like a tribble, don’t tell me.”

“I have no idea what a tribble is, but the kebab is made from Dotu. They are very ugly and dumb as rocks.”

“Okay, then I don’t feel bad about seconds. I don’t particularly understand the mechanics of time travel, but your planet based their society after my book, which I couldn’t have written if you didn’t crash in my pool and fuck up my life. I can completely get why a society built on self-insert alien smut might be fucked up, but I need you to explain what you need me to do.”

“We don’t know. This became a lot more complicated when we realized you only wrote the holy texts because we showed up when you were a child and when we came back two hours later, you were now an adult,” Torrek said.

“Maybe start with the history of your planet? My books are written in English, but you had to have Enix program your chip to speak and understand it. How does that work exactly?”

“Your galaxy and ours aren’t the only galaxies out there. You don’t have the capability to discover ours yet, but another did, seven thousand years ago. It was an entire fleet who was unhappy with their current government and they were packed with many different races.

“When they found our galaxy and realized some of the planets were hospitable, each fleet took a planet as they’d been traveling for a long time and had bonded. From what our history has told us, they didn’t want anything about their new home to be like the old one. They were refugees from many different planets with different cultures. They weren’t run the same, either.

“These were desperate people looking for a home and the only things living on these planets were flora and fauna. It hadn’t evolved into anything like us yet.

“Most of the planets were empty, but some had natural formations they attributed to a divine being, so they made a religion and let that dictate how they ran their planet. Others went by logic because they came from a planet with a religious heavy hand.

“Ours was different. Someone had been there before, but no one could figure out who. There was a device there with no power, but once they figured out how to turn it on, there were four texts.

“Everyone started focusing on building shelter and finding food, but there was one linguistics expert on that fleet. They decided to come together and build his shelter while he tried to figure out what the words on the device meant.

“That’s where things got confusing. They went by different names, but the texts described two of the main races on the fleet two a T. It was mine and the Saki. There was no way anyone could have known about us in this galaxy. If the people they were running from had found it, then they would have plundered it for resources if they kept it a secret and the planets were untouched.

“The only other galaxy anyone was aware of at the time was this one, but it was so far behind theirs. They were living in rudimentary houses and using fire for light because they hadn’t figured out how to harness their sun for power. They didn’t have the means to travel the stars, so they went with the prophet,” Kuka said.

“They did everything after the texts. The linguist developed a new language and everyone was keen on learning it. It combined the languages of the different races on the planet with the language in the texts so they could completely leave their old lives behind. The linguist then translated the holy texts into the new language and that’s all anyone reads it in. The original texts are preserved and only certain scholars have access.”

“Weird,” I said. “I always wanted to have my books translated to other languages, but they don’t even sell in English, so I can’t afford it. And I can’t even put on the landing page for more sales because no one would believe me. Those books were pretty smutty. What did they think all the foursomes were about?”

Because I had questions. I was a pretty healthy, very horny twenty-two-year-old when I started writing those books. I didn’t get to have the usual high school experience where I got to experiment with bases and lose my virginity in the back of someone’s mom’s car. I had to get all that out of my system after I left. Plus, I was naturally curious and I also read a lot of smut.

I think people were of three minds when it came to aliens. You had the folks who wanted to experiment on them, the ones who wanted to blow them up as soon as they saw them, and then you had the romance community. We wanted to know if you could fuck them. I wrote all about what I thought that would be like in multiple positions with several of them at once. I still didn’t get where they got holy prophet from my self-insert character getting double penetrated while giving head.

“Our ancestors took that to mean we shouldn’t repress ourselves and shouldn’t judge what goes on between consenting adults behind closed doors,” Kuka said.

“Really? Because mine would have burned my book and then burned me as a witch or heretic,” I snorted. “There are still people this year who’d want to do that if they found my books.”

“The sex parts were my favorite and my mom was always really mad about that,” Omi said.

“So was I because you kept trying to recreate them and I had to keep beating the shit out of people,” Torrek growled.

“I thought you said it didn’t matter what consenting adults did behind closed doors?” I asked. “Because that part is pretty cool.”

“Well, the men were consenting adults, but Omi was a fifteen-year-old kid and wasn’t old enough to consent.”

“How old were you the first time you had sex?” I demanded.

“That’s different!”

“Oh, I like her. We’re going to be good friends.”

“ Anyway,” Torrek growled. “The last text has always been an issue.”

“Just the last one?” I snorted. “There was some pretty fucked-up shit in the first three.”

“Well, the last book ends with a massive fleet of heavily armed ships flying into our galaxy and it’s hinted they want to invade and then the book ends,” Kuka said.

“Oh, yeah, if they thought I was a prophet, I could see where that might be a problem. Shit.”

“There were no texts after that. There were scholars who thought The Devouring Mother wasn’t a prophet, but wrote about what came before. The invaders destroyed everyone in the galaxy and she wrote about it. She was just killed before she could finish. There are other scholars who think she was trying to warn us as much as she could, but we were supposed to figure the ending out ourselves.”

“The truth of it was, books are expensive to publish and I don’t make a ton of money. I was trying to save up and then my car shit the bed and I had to use that money to fix it. Then I got writers’ block, which honestly might be more of a motivation thing because I was broke and the series was barely selling. And apparently, I get murdered in two days, so what’s up with that?”

“There is another set of scholars that work in secret at the pleasure of the palace. My family. They look at all theories. Our planet is on the brink of doing something very stupid. A lot of people think the mysterious fleet is our ancestors. The planets our people fled from who finally found us and want to oppress us again. Things are at a tipping point because one faction wants to do what we’re doing and prepare for it and the other wants to go in search of the galaxy our ancestors came from and wipe them out before they find us.

“My family’s scholars looked at all known galaxies for the Devouring Mother. This galaxy is putting enough satellites into space and the signals are getting strong enough for us to be able to connect to them. This is kept close to my family to not incite anyone, but they located the name on our holy texts here in this realm.

“My parents told them to not dig any further because the Devouring Mother being a human would upend our entire society, but my brother and I have been looking closer. We both have an Enix. He bought his, and I stole mine. My brother wants to prevent the texts from ever making it to our planet and I wanted to save you to finish them. That was before I met you and found out the texts got written because we were trying to find Baxter Holmes before she got murdered and got you when you were just a kid going by the name your parents gave you.”

“So, your goal is to protect me while I write the next book? I don’t know how it ends. I didn’t outline anything. I just made it up as I went.”

“It’s not just that. If we were involved in the creation of your books, then someone from my planet might be involved in your murder. My brother and I used two different teams to work out time travel, but that’s not to say they haven’t sold it, even though they were paid not to. My family’s scholars are sworn to secrecy, but the Devouring Mother possibly being human is pretty major. They might have told someone. We also need to figure out how your books ended up on my planet seven thousand years ago.”

“That’s a lot of pressure.”

“I know, but we’ll be here the entire time. And we have a time machine capable of traveling to different galaxies. We can take you somewhere safe,” Torrek said.

“Can we kill Hitler when he’s taking a shit before he does all that awful stuff?” I asked.

Kuka just shrugged.

“Time travel isn’t linear, and it doesn’t always take you where you want to go. We needed to meet you when you were seven, otherwise, we never would have had any reason to come looking for you. So, that was where we ended up, even though that wasn’t where we were trying to go.”

“Yeah, that’s fucked-up. I think it’s time for you to try donuts while I disassociate.”

How was this my life?