Page 61 of Time Traveling Space Bastards

T his was stressful, but what was the point of being a pantser instead of a plotter if I couldn’t come up with an ending that stopped some alien from trying to do Space Columbus on a bunch of planets? No pressure.

I really needed a forty-eight-ounce tumbler of coffee, another four million dollars, and everyone to tell me I was pretty. You know, just a minor pep-talk and bribery. It was extremely motivating.

I knew my books, but I was missing a lot of history of this planet and I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and make it worse because I knew the history of my planet when people were doing that shit to other cultures.

But maybe that was the answer—using my planet’s past to fix this one’s future.

“I think I have it, but you’re going to have to fact check me if it’s going to work here.”

“You’re pretty brilliant, Baxter Holmes. You can do this,” Torrek said.

“Okay, so my planet also has people called prophets and a lot of them wrote things down that eventually became some religion’s holy text that societies were built on. Some of them just made vague predictions someone could interpret as being true if you really wanted it to be.

“We can use that. The books were always meant to try to connect me with other people who might have met you. We can say in her last message to me, the books aren’t about a future to come, but a test and a cautionary tale.

“The Devouring Mother wrote the texts to inspire the people to push ahead with technological developments, but it was never a prophecy in the way that meant they should use it to go on the attack, only to protect. Her last prophecy before she told me I’d never hear from her again was that if this planet attacked another unprovoked, its society would crumble. Traveling the galaxy to learn about other cultures and peacefully merge them is the way forward or only peril would follow.”

“Yes!” Kuka yelled, standing up. “I’m actually all for exploring other galaxies than ours and I’d love to be able to do that as king. I definitely don’t want to attack or dominate those other galaxies. I think we would do very well as a planet to learn about other cultures and bring some of that back with us.

“And I don’t mean taking it. If they don’t want us there, we defend ourselves long enough to leave. We don’t get angry and go back to start a war. They didn’t want us there, and they are allowed to do that.

“We were all able to prove that the Enix can access anything online on other galaxies. We don’t even have to risk violence. We went to Earth undercover, but we don’t have to do that again. The Enix can send any planet a message when we discover their galaxy to let them know we mean them no harm and would love to share knowledge.

“I know some of these planets will lie and some might be very primitive so there’s no data of an Enix to access. There might be people there we don’t have the ability to contact. We can help those people and learn from them. It’s perfect!”

“No, she’s perfect,” Nizis said. “And when you have time, I would absolutely love to have lunch with you so that you can tell me about your planet and I can help you with mine.”

“I would love that,” I said.

I actually would. I had a terrible relationship with my mother and it wasn’t just because she took away my agency and tried to get me under a conservatorship when I was finally old enough to get away from my parents.

My mother took it personally that I wasn’t thin. I liked eating, and I did that sometimes when I was lonely. A lot of the medications they forced on me listed weight gain as a side effect. She kept me on those meds and just restricted my food and bullied me about it.

My mother wasn’t the only one to bring up my weight over the years. Kuka’s mother didn’t. She suggested getting to know each other over lunch. Food was a great way to get to know people, but I’d had people avoid suggesting lunch and dinner dates because they thought they were enabling me or something. I just got these vibes Nizis wasn’t going to be monitoring a single thing I put in my mouth.

“Before we make any announcements, I’d like to show my Velne her quarters and maybe make one of her dreams come true,” Kuka said.

He read my books, and we’d spent all that time in my cramped apartment. Kuka had both his dicks in me, too.

I was pretty sure that was code for alien foursome. At least, I hoped.