Princess of the Void

B-31 swings up to a sitting position, still silent.

“I guess you probably don’t understand me,” Grant says. “And you may not want anything to do with me. But I wanted to say sorry. Uh. That you’re stuck here. And that when we met, I didn’t help you. I’m not sure I can help you now, even. But I am sorry.”

“Sorry,” she says. Sah-rih.

He perks up. “That’s right.”

“Thaz ryde.”

“Well, now you’re just copying me.”

Her tail swishes. “Wellnau yurjaz goppingmi.”

He chuckles.

Her tail wraps around the monkey bars and she slips off of them. She hangs upside down from the jungle gym. Gravity does interesting things to her chest. He blinks back his untoward stare. “Do you have a name?”

“Name,” she repeats.

“I’m Grant,” he says. “Grant Hyde.” He points at his laminated ID. “My name. Name. Is Grant Hyde.”

She points at him, too. “Grantyde. Name.”

He nods. “How about you?” He points at her. “What’s your name?”

She watches his finger. Her head tilts.

He chuckles. “I can’t just keep calling you Batty.”

“Ba-tee.” She repeats it. “Grantyde name. Batty name.”

He sucks air through his teeth. “I feel like I’m not explaining this quite right.”

She delivers another babbling brook of syllables. “Batty,” she concludes.

“Okay. We’ll go with Batty for now.” He looks around the chamber. He settles on his palm, which he presses against the glass. “Hand,” he says.

She reaches down and loosens her tail until her hands press against the floor. She back-bends onto her feet. She approaches her side of the enclosure. “Hand,” she says.

“That’s right.” He points at himself. “Grant.” He points at his hand. “Hand.”

Batty shakes her head and points at him. “Grantyde.” There’s a sassiness to it. Or maybe he’s reading into it, like Drake said. Interpreting the cock of her hip and the pulling back of her lip wrong.

“Grant Hyde.” He emphasizes the space.

“Grantyde.”

“Grant.”

“Grantyde.” Her head bobs left and right. “Grantyde Grantyde Grantyde.” A burst of syllables. “Grantyde.”

“All right, all right. I concede.” He puts his hands up. “Grantyde.”

She folds her arms and smirks. Fuck you, Drake. Black box,social cues. This is communication. He won’t bullshit himself into believing otherwise.

This is a person.

The next night, he brings his guitar into the chamber with him.

He taps his knuckle against it. “This is a guitar. An instrument.”

“Gee-dar,” Batty replies. “Instroomand.”

“Yes ma’am.” He slips a guitar pick into his hand and strums a c-chord. “Music. You know music?”

She gasps. Her ears fan outward. He cracks a grin.

“Geedar,” she says. “Meu-sik.”

“Uh huh. You want to hear a song?”

Her tail’s wagging. He imitates another strum and she nods rapidly.

What’s the first song you play for a woman from another planet? He clears his throat.

Grant isn’t proud of very much that’s happened in his life. As far as he can tell, he made some mistake a few years ago, some miscue on the release, and now he’s a slow gutterball. Too late to change the way things roll. Just watch it coast toward the dark and hope you’ll get another shot once it’s done. Back before he gave up on sleeping through the night, he’d keep himself up trying to pinpoint exactly what it was he messed up. There’s plenty of options.

The one unimpeachable thing, the one piece of pride in his life, is his singing voice. It’s not a modern sort of sound. Not something he could ride to any genuine success today. But for the plainspoken bleeding-out sound of the old songs, the songs about watching the train leave the station without you, it’s perfect.

He rolls out the first dusty E major riff of “I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry.”

Batty coos with quiet awe as the song unspools. Her head nods back and forth to the rhythm. Her big red eyes close.

He ambles into the last verse, and the words prick at his heart.

The silence of a falling star

Lights up a purple sky

And as I wonder where you are

I'm so lonesome I could cry

She claps and whistles. He grins sheepishly. Didn’t know aliens clapped.

She crawls forward and he tries not to stare at the swaying of her body. She taps on the glass. “Grantyde hand?”

“What do you mean?”

She points to her right palm and makes a grabby gesture. “Grantyde hand. Uh, uh." She chews her lip. "Music instrument.”

“Oh.” Grant holds it up. “That’s a pick.”

“Pick,” she says. She moves along the perimeter of the cell. She taps on a piece of the wall on the far side.

He scoots the chair over to where she’s moved to.

There’s a little handle here. Batty pushes another one on her side and a sliver of glass protrudes out. It’s a drawer. One of those two-way chute things like in movies about prisons. Batty points at it. “Pick.”

He stares at the drawer. “Uh. I don’t know about that.”

“Grantyde.” Her voice gets an edge to it. She looks intense. Her pupils shrink, and for a moment her eyes become strange and reflective, glinting in what light there is. “Hand Batty pick.”

He looks at her. He glances around her cell. Nothing there. Not a single possession. And she clearly wants this thing badly.

Hell, it’s just a pick. He has like a dozen of these per square foot. Loses them all the time.

He places the pick in the drawer and slips it through. “There you go,” he says. “Can’t exactly fit the guitar, but…”

She grabs the pick and scurries onto the jungle gym, staring at it, her tail wagging rapidly. “Pick,” she says. She turns it over and threads it between her fingers. “Pick pick pick.” She looks up at him like the tortoiseshell chip he gave her is made of solid gold. Her eyes are alight.

He grins. “You hide that thing, right? Maybe, uh… He points at the poster. “Behind that, maybe.”

He stands up. “Okay, Batty. I gotta go now.” He gestures to the door. “Gotta go home soon.”

“Go home soon,” she repeats. “Home.”

“But I’ll be back tomorrow. Do some more songs for you.”

Batty climbs down her jungle gym bars and leans against the glass wall. Grant’s attention strays to her breasts, where they deform on the surface. His eyes snap back up to hers. They’ve never left his face.

Her hips sway a slow circle, back and forth. Her tail wraps around one leg. It squeezes her thigh. The soft flesh swells beneath it.

“Grantyde,” she whispers. “Home. Grantyde.” She sings his name, draws its syllables out. She taps the glass. That glow in her eyes again; another flow of syllables. “Grantyde. Batty. Home.”

He isn’t sure what that means. But it’s enough to provoke another stupid decision.

“Can you, uh.” He holds his phone up. “I need to take a picture of you. Picture.” He mimics a camera and makes a clicking noise in his throat. “I’m trying to be a whistleblower here,” he says. “Not start up an alien OnlyFans. And if you’re standing like that, it’s, uh…”

Her body smushes further against the pane. She imitates his clicking noise and giggles. It’s a light, chiming sound. Her nipples are blue, too, where they flatten against the glass. Dark blue.

He tries a shooing gesture and she finally gets it. She steps away from the glass. Fascination is plain in her as he raises the camera and takes a series of photos.

She has horns, he suddenly realizes. Horns sticking out of her silky hair. Has she always had those?

“Okay.” He lowers the phone. Her gaze follows it. “No idea who gets these or how I prove they’re not fake,” he says, “but it’s a start.” Maybe he just uploads them somewhere? Spreads them across some anonymous imageboard? Do people still pay attention to that sort of thing?

“Issa start,” she says. “Home.”

She looks up, to the cold metal ceiling. “Home,” she murmurs.