Page 57 of Time Traveling Space Bastards

S pace was beautiful. So was their planet. I was standing on it before anyone got here and that was a big thing. I’d always lived in cities surrounded by buildings and pollution, but I always did love nature. I just didn’t get many opportunities to commune with it because my parents didn’t trust me outside with no supervision and I didn’t get much time to do it after I ran away.

The ground of this planet was covered in purple flowers that smelled amazing. I pretty much always said if I got rich and could buy a house instead of my apartment, I wasn’t going to have a lawn. I was going to have it dug up and have purple clover planted instead for the bees.

This is exactly what I would have wanted. The air here was pristine. The trees were like our trees but not. The bark was slightly different, and I’d never seen leaves that color before. Some had fruit growing, but I didn’t know if they were edible or not.

I could see animals peeking their heads out to see what we were doing. None of them approached, but they were checking out the new arrivals. One of the reasons my parents called the psychologist again was when I was nine was when I tried to domesticate a racoon who was going through our trash and ended up needing a ton of shots after it bit me.

If not friend, why friend shaped? My dumbass wanted to go running and pet all the animals on this planet who’d never seen people before because some of those animals were stinking cute.

“What’s that? Is it a wee little baby?” I said, pointing at one that looked a little like a kitten, but definitely wasn’t.

“That’s a Chogur. That one is fully grown. They don’t get big, but they are huge apex predators. A few people have tried to domesticate them and keep them as pets, but they have big feelings about it.

“See the one peeking behind the tree? That’s a Risni, and they approached us first and domesticated like they wanted it. Plenty of people have them as pets or for protection.”

“Oh, my god, I want to bury my face in its belly and blow raspberries. I always wanted a cat or dog, but my parents thought I would hurt it and then I ran away. My apartment doesn’t allow pets, so that was out.”

“We can get you one when we are back to my present. You might not want to pet that one unless she comes up and asks for it because she’s never seen anything like us before.”

“Noted. So, what do we do now?”

“The only signs of life when our ancestors got here were the fauna. They eventually found a cairn made of rocks like someone was marking a grave. Some people wanted to leave it alone and not disturb the dead, but others decided to dig. They wanted to figure out who died here and why there was no one else here.

“They said they needed to disturb the cairn to know if the planet was safe. They started digging, but all they found was the device we had delivered. They did other digs, but they didn’t find anything else buried. We need to protect the device and build a cairn around it so they know to look there.”

“Good thing I’m excellent at picking nice rocks,” I said.

“Have someone with you at all times. It’s not just the animals. Some of the plants are dangerous.”

“Got it. Killer plants. This is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Baxter!” Torrek yelled, chasing after me.

Yeah, I was about to swan dive in those purple flowers, starfish, and do the equivalent of snow angels, but Torrek grabbed me, threw me over his shoulder, and started marching off.

“What the fuck?”

“The pollen of those flowers is a powerful narcotic. They used to use it for pain, but people started abusing it.”

“So, all it’s going to do is get me high, and you stopped me?”

“It’s extremely addicting. If you got a little in you, you might get hooked and trust me, you don’t want to come down from that high,” Omi said.

“There’s an extensive garden at my home if you want to play in the flowers,” Kuka said.

“I’m holding you to that.”

“And we’ll take you to get a Risni,” Torrek said.

“Like I said, best day ever.”

“Wait until we get back to the present,” Omi said.

“Space puppies,” I whispered.

Because a Risni reminded me of some kind of dog, and I was about to be the proud companion of a space puppy. Completely losing my mind over here.

“Let’s build a cairn and we can show you what happened to this planet seven thousand years later.”

I was pretty sure my best day ever was about to get better.