Page 7 of Time Traveling Space Bastards

H ow was this my life right now? Maybe someone with a much bigger ego than mine would have loved to have just found out they were basically Alien Jesus, but that wasn’t my thing. If you looked up religious trauma in the dictionary, my photo would be next to it.

When I was eight and everyone thought I was just a liar who was acting out, there was a boy in my class who was particularly awful about it. He shoved me in the mud and ripped a shirt I bought at a Star Trek con my dad took me to the year before. I loved that shirt and I’d basically never be able to replace it. They were only made for that con, and my dad swore he’d never take me to another one if I didn’t stop lying.

So, I did what any self-respecting eight-year-old girl should. I jumped out of the mud and beat the shit out of him. He got a black eye, a bloody nose, and ingested a lot of mud and everyone was mad at me. He started it, I just finished it.

His mom had some choice words about rods and putting the fear of God into me, which my parents took literally and I didn't have a very good time with any of that.

Plus, those books were written by twenty-two-year-old me. Twenty-two-year-old me had just spent four years enjoying their freedom in every way possible. I didn’t get to be a normal, dumb teenager, so as soon as I got out, I got all of that out of my system. I tried what I wanted to try and had several one-night stands with questionable, but very attractive men.

There were a lot of alien-on-human fucking in my books. Which should have given them some kind of hint they were written by some horny girl figuring her shit out and not a prophet, but here we were.

“I’m an atheist,” I said weakly.

“What’s that?” Kuka asked.

“According to the data, an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in God or the gods. Not to be confused with an agnostic, who thinks it’s impossible to know if God does or doesn’t exist.”

“Cool. I’m an atheist, too, then,” Torrek said.

“Seriously? You never told me that,” Kuka said.

“I travel more than you do. We based our society around the writings of the Devouring Mother, but other planets have their own gods and beliefs. This planet probably does, too.”

“They do,” I said. “There are several religions and they all think they have it right. There are multiple flavors of the same religion. I’m not a god and I’m not a prophet. I’m just a really fucked-up girl trying to process everything. I don’t know what you want from me.”

I really didn’t. I based most of it on a brief encounter by my pool and then I just made up the rest. I didn’t have any answers for them. I was barely functioning myself most days.

“Hey, listen. I know you aren’t a god. I’m pretty sure Kuka and Enix have figured that out, too. But somehow your books ended up in a galaxy a million light years away that’s only accessible through a black hole. People used them and created a pretty amazing society that’s only just recently gone to shit,” Torrek said.

I didn’t know what it was about Torrek. He should have scared me. He could have ripped my throat out with his teeth or squashed my head like a grape, but he just always made me feel better.

“Listen, no one buys my books. I don’t even make enough money off of them to buy a cup of coffee. I work at a bookstore and they won’t even stock them. I couldn’t tell you how they ended up on your planet.”

Kuka just smirked at me.

“Aren’t you dying to know how that happened? It could be an interesting story.”

Actually, yeah. Finding out how my books ended up several million light years away was probably fascinating. It was definitely a lot more interesting than working for an asshole and ghosting guys every few months.

“We have to tell her,” Enix said.

“Tell me what?” I demanded.

“We don’t have all the holy texts from the Devouring Mother. We’re missing the last one. We know there’s a last one the fourth one ends in a certain way. It’s the final text that’s causing all the issues. Since we don’t have it, some people are trying to say they know what the Devouring Mother wants and they are willing to turn the planet into a war zone to get it.”

“So, you just need me to write it? I mean, I’ve got wicked writers’ block and some motivation issues since it’s not selling, but if you could really wire me all that money, I could do nothing but work on it.”

They were all looking at each other like they didn’t want to tell me something. I mean, they just told me my alien smut was their bible, so I couldn’t imagine what they thought was going to be too much for me at this point.

“I was able to connect to the satellites and access all the data on this planet when we crossed through the black hole and into this galaxy. I was able to link the names on the books to the girl by the pool and then eventually Baxter Holmes. Since we’re in a time machine, we can access future data, too. In two days, someone murders Baxter Holmes,” Enix said.

Well, fuck me.