Octavia Girl

Chapter Five

Hold the Gifts - Send Cash

Jenna slid the earpiece back into her ear. “How can I hear everything else that is happening around me through this thing?”

“It’s making adjustments for the sounds it blocks and broadcasting them through its speaker at exactly the right pitch, frequency, and time,” Armen explained. “You’ll hear better through it than you will through your other ear.”

Jenna nodded.

“Look, we didn’t bring you here with no comforts available. We brought you eight gifts from Earth to comfort you.”

“Obsessed with eight?” she asked.

“Very obsessed,” Armen agreed. “The first one is your cat, Charm.” Armen tugged on the collar of his shirt, exposing his collarbone and shoulder where there ran two sets of very unhappy claw marks.

“You should really get some antiseptic on those,” Jenna commented dully. Charm always made a mess of everyone.

“Yes, but later. The second thing we brought was all your clothes, including a fedora hat with a pin. Your furniture can be replaced, but people like their own clothes to make themselves more comfortable.”

“Unbelievable nuisances, clothes,” Favel said under his breath.

“The third thing is your grandfather’s house,” Armen continued.

“My grandfather’s house?” Jenna burst.

“Yes. The whole thing has been placed on an island on Octavia five as a summer retreat for you when the Adamis Council is in recess. Apparently, it withstood the stress of the transport very well.”

“What about the people who were living in it? That house didn’t belong to my family anymore.”

Armen looked around shiftily. He clearly had no idea. “Maybe we’ll need to make some modifications in order to make it more suitable. Jisbet, make a note of that. The fourth thing is your phone. It won’t work the same way here, but it has photos on it and other personal mementos, so we’ve prepared a way to charge it and for Sardius to access it, though you will not be able to contact anyone through it. From now on, your phone has been replaced by Sardius.”

“That’s not as good,” Jenna grieved. “There’s no screen to watch things on or play games on. Not to mention how uncomfortable it is going to be to listen to music through only one ear.”

“You liked your earphones, did you?” Armen asked like he knew why she liked them, for the headband that helped cover her crown.

As far as Jenna was concerned, he could go to hell. Yes, she liked her earphones. She liked headbands, hats, and anything else she could put on her head to hide what her grandparents had put there when she was a baby. His intonation made his thoughts clear. He thought her concerns had been stupid, like hiding how she was different had been futile and wasteful. It made her want to slap him when she couldn’t go to a hairdresser, couldn’t let a man run his fingers through her hair, and flat out could not let anyone see the top of her head.

As a matter of fact, she was so angry, she couldn’t think of a single thing to say to him and just gawked at him as he continued telling her about the gifts the Octavians had given her.

”The fifth gift is a lifetime supply of potato chips. We don’t have them here, and it’s the thing the internet claims everyone misses the most about Canada.”

“Of all the stupid things…” Jenna scowled. She wasn’t allowed to eat them on her diet. “You really didn’t think to consult me? You could have asked me what I wanted if an alien race was offering me gifts. I certainly would not have chosen potato chips.”

“I had to choose them before I brought you here,” he explained weakly. “The sixth thing is a reproduction of every piece of clothing you ever pinned on Pinterest.”

Jenna’s skepticism melted and her expression softened. That was actually a really good present.

“You’ll get new pieces at your residence on Octavia Prime as they’re completed. The seventh gift is your second cousin, Lucy .”

“My second cousin, Lucy!” Jenna almost screamed in sudden outrage. “Why would you bring her here?”

“Everyone was concerned you wouldn’t be happy here without any friends or family. We didn’t abduct her. We invited her! She was more than willing.”

Jenna gasped. It was a moment before she flared, “I wouldn’t have invited her inside my apartment and you invited her to come with me to outer space?”

Armen rolled his eyes. “We didn’t invite her thoughtlessly.”

“It sounds like you did.”

“She didn’t have a boyfriend or children. Like you, she’s an only child. She was the only person we found who you were close to who could make this sort of a trip without disintegrating a social construct.”

Jenna bit both of her lips together to help her clamp them shut. She had to keep her deeper thoughts to herself. The reason Lucy didn’t have any friends or family was that she was a garbage human being. It didn’t occur to Jenna that she also did not have any friends or family either, but she did not think of herself as garbage. She thought of it as a consequence of having two opposing claws on her head in the shape of a crown.

“She’s about your age. You need family,” Armen said softly.

Jenna was about to comment about how most of their presents sucked when she noticed a note of discomfort in his voice. He had been reading from a screen in his palm, like a smartphone, until then. When he finished telling her about Lucy, he turned off the screen and pocketed it.

“What’s the eighth thing?” she asked skeptically.

“An eighth thing?” he asked, swallowing a lump in his throat.

“Yes. Obsessed with eight. You said eight. These haven’t been spectacular presents so far and the fact that you’ve brought Lucy along with us basically spoils everything else you’ve given me. Go on, impress me. What’s the eighth thing?”

He opened his mouth to speak, twitched, and closed it again.

“What’s the matter?” Jenna asked.

“It’s him,” Sardius said in her ear. “They’re giving you him.”

Her eyes searched the room in disbelief. “Why?”

It seemed both Armen and Favel knew very well the body language of a person who was speaking to their assistant and neither of them answered her but waited for her to get her answer from Sardius.

“It’s because you didn’t like any of the men on Earth. They’re giving you one of the eleven men you had a possibility of having a romantic connection with out of all the men in the entire universe. It’s the one thing you couldn’t get on Earth that you can get in space and just now, on Octavia.” He cleared his throat. “They’re quite desperate.”

“How are you clearing your throat?” she suddenly asked her PA. “Do you have a throat?”

He chuckled and made a sound like he was clicking his tongue against his molars, but he couldn’t possibly be doing that. He was an octopus the size of an amoeba. “I’m not making any sounds at all. I’m sending commands through a computer program, It is turning my written language into sounds you can interpret. That aside, he’s the final gift. Are you impressed?”

Jenna glared at Armen across the room. “Not at all. The Pinterest thing was pretty cool, but the rest were sort of blah.”

“Come on,” Sardius interjected. “You’re happy to have your cat, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, except I feel like I’m being manipulated by my cat and my grandfather’s house. I don’t like that.”

Sardius continued, “It wasn’t included as one of your gifts, but your residence on Octavia Prime is exquisite. You might find that your job is palatable as well. For now, you just have to show the Octavian population proof that you exist and that will be enough to establish you as a credible diplomat. All the other diplomats are dead. That’s why they need you so desperately. Today, your existence is a public relations stunt. Think about it, Jenna. Imagine shaking your hair out and having your little secret avert an interplanetary incident. Doesn’t that have some appeal to you?”

“Can I return some of those gifts and get new ones?”

“We will be in a much better position for negotiating for changes if you do well today,” he said in her ear.

“‘We’?” she asked him.

“I’m yours and I’m not a diplomat. My job is to keep you informed, healthy, and unharmed. ‘We’ are a thing now.”

She chuckled. He sounded cute.

Jenna looked across the room at Armen and Favel. She had never hated anyone more than she hated Armen. She felt like everything she valued was being used against her and what on earth was she going to do with a man she hated? He was hers? She couldn’t think of anything to make him do except get out of her face.

“This feels weird, to have a man given to me in this way. What am I supposed to do with him?” she asked Sardius.

“Nothing. He’ll tell you what to do half the time. He feels strange explaining his role since it is something you have to establish between the two of you. It will take time and patience. I’m detecting a conflicting set of emotions from him regarding you. Just ask him for help when I can’t help you. He’s got hands,” Sardius reminded her, sounding like he did not think that fact made Armen the least bit superior. “They chose him because of your grandmother, Letty. She was even pickier than you. Did you know that out of the whole universe, she could only find one man who could romance her?”

Jenna thought about her grandfather: his sparkling gray eyes like sunlight off the water, his gentle way of touching people, his confidence in others, and the generous way he had of exposing his heart. Yeah, Jenna thought. He was a man who could be the only man in the universe.

She dropped her hand from the earpiece and prepared herself for the least exciting bit of the day. “Where’s Lucy?”