Scene suggestion—anup and sourang 5 (Patreon)

Lunsdie drove Ckkkrt home in his truck, then she drew out a new design for his cart. It would be bigger, wider, and taller than his old—folding out from ground level to up above the shopper’s ears. “No, this is totally impractical,” he told her. “It’s too tall. No one will be able to see over it.”

“You do not want the shopper to be able to see over your display, apprentice,” she explained. “The whole point is to draw their attention so they can not overlook you.”

Lunsdie shook his head and sighed, leaning his elbows against his workbench. He stared at the sourang—as she called her people. “No. This design is so tall that I wouldn’t even be able to see the shoppers. I’d get robbed. Thieves would walk right up to my cart and take stuff.”

Ckkkrt snorted a sourang sigh. “You do not hide behind your merchandise,” she said. Then she reared up and reached over the worktable to grab him by his shoulders. Lunsdie still felt a surge of panic, but he was starting to grow a little more accustomed to the alien’s refusal to keep her distance. She pulled, walking him around the workbench until he stood in front of it, not behind. “You stand in front of your merchandise. You present it to them. You help your customers make their purchase and you encourage them to buy the items with the highest margin.”

“No. No. No. No!” shouted the anup. With his span, he pushed firmly against her chest until she backed off the correct distance. “How many times do I need to explain this? Anup need to remain two meters apart at all times. Standing in front of the cart will block their access. They won’t even approach it if I do that.”

Ckkkrt pushed the rod away and moved closer until her face was only a half-meter from his. Her woolen scent strong, she held her ears infuriatingly still, her whiskers twitching. He had never seen her expression change and he wondered if sourang could even move their ears at all. Perhaps I’m supposed to read her expression from the way she moves her whiskers or…—he shuddered in disgust—the way she waves her paws?

“Why?” she asked.

“Because they don’t want to contract Collapse, that’s why!” he nearly shouted. He drew a few deep gasping breaths, trying to regain his composure. She was from another world. It was only natural for her to be confused by anup customs. “It’s deadly.”

“You are not sick.”

Lunsdie growled in frustration. He laid his span across his shoulders and rested his wrists over top of it, like one of the mannequins that Sbarrie posed in her fields to frighten away the birds. “They don’t know that! I don’t even know that. I could have third wave right now, be completely contagious, and not realize it. Or they could be! I don’t want to catch it, either.”

“Third … wave?”

“Yes! The third wave of the Collapse pandemic.”

She showed him no signs of comprehension. Instead, she sat down on her haunches, clearly waiting for an explanation.

“Fine,” he grumbled, taking a seat on the table. The sourang was tall enough that with her sitting on the ground, she was nearly at his eye level. “The first wave of Collapse was two generations ago, back when my grandfather was my age. It devastated all the major cities, and most of them are still abandoned.”

He focused on his span to avoid her all-black eyes. “No one knows where it started, but it found its way to the whore houses. Everyone that visited them brought it home to their mates. Five days of incubation, then fifteen, nearly asymptomatic days where the victim is contagious, then death.”

“A hundred percent mortality?” she asked.

“Not quite but nearly,” said Lunsdie. “The few people that survive suffer so much organ damage that they never really ‘recover’.” He sighed, recalling all the stories he’d heard about the era. “Since it was sexually transmitted, the small-town folk saw it as divine punishment for sinful city lives and they outcast anyone who traveled to them.

“Scientists tried to trace the disease, to isolate anyone who might have been exposed, but the victims collapsed so fast, and with all the religious fervor over how it was spread, many anup were dishonest when asked who they had slept with.”

He shrugged, finally meeting Ckkkrt’s eyes. “Abstinence was the obvious solution, and it worked. Everyone abstained from sex and those that had already caught it died without spreading the virus any further. First wave—it wasn’t called that at the time, obviously—burned itself out, and everyone thought the nightmare was over.”

“Until the second wave,” she added for him.

“Until the second wave,” Lunsdie agreed. “The scientists had thought that Collapse was gone, but now they believe that maybe it’s buried itself in our genes, hidden like a bomb, waiting for something to trigger it, to set it off. That trigger happened during my mom’s generation, one winter when a cold virus swept across the world.”

The anup shook his head and stared out the open shop door. Twilight tinted the sky blue and green. “Second wave wasn’t really communicable like first wave had been. Although it had the lowest death count, some say it was the most devastating of the three. Second wave affected only nursing mothers; you see. The virus got into their breast milk, and in a month’s time, a million pups died.” He wiped his eyes on the back of his wrist. “The deaths were evenly spread this time and the rural areas were not spared. The gods were certainly punishing us, but no one agreed why.”

The sourang’s whiskers drooped low. Her voice soft, she said, “I am very sorry, Lunsdie. I am sad to hear this happened to your people.”

He nodded, not meeting her eyes. Then leaning way back and staring at the shop’s light overhead, he explained, “Third wave began about ten years ago. No one really knows what changed. One day that bomb hidden in someone’s DNA went off and they were contagious—really contagious. Third wave spread like crazy. And even when we quarantined those who had been exposed, it continued to pop up. Even to this day, someone will spontaneously become contagious.”

Lunsdie went silent for a long time. “Third wave nearly wiped out the anup. Social distancing was the only thing that saved us. ‘Two meters back or two meters under’ is our way of life. Us survivors have learned to work within Collapse’s framework. We’ve learned to cope. We’ve adapted our lifestyles so that even when third wave pops up, the damage it can do is limited.” He raised his span and pointed it at Ckkkrt’s fuzzy chest. “But for us to survive, everyone needs to abide by the practices—not just to protect ourselves, but to protect everyone we love.”

Ckkkrt scratched idly at the concrete floor, deep in thought. “And then the krakun visited your world,” she said, prompting him to continue.

“The ambassador took blood samples from many anup and he studied our DNA. He said that Collapse cannot be removed from our genes, but he believes that it can be controlled. He thinks that it should be possible to keep us from passing the dormant virus along to our pups. They’re working on a way to do that and some day—maybe four or five generations from now—life on Anuptec can return to normal.”

“If they succeed, your people will be deeply in their debt,” volunteered the sourang.

Lunsdie shook his head. “The gods have cursed us and are trying to wipe us out. If the krakun can truly save us, it would do more than put us in their debt. It would elevate them to a god-like status among my people.”

Ckkkrt flicked her fingers a few times in what Lunsdie was starting to recognize as a sourang nod. “I understand, apprentice,” she said. “Thank you for explaining all that. I have never been on a world such as yours and I have never had to function within such a … framework.”

“It’s all right,” whispered Lunsdie. He gave her a smile. “There’s no way you could have known.”

Ckkkrt grabbed the plans for his cart and spread them out on the floor in front of her. “Clearly you will need to stand to one side to stay out of the way.” She paused a moment and then pointed to the ceiling with an index finger. Her voice filled with renewed enthusiasm, and she said, “We will need to mirror your merchandise so that items available at one end of the cart are also displayed at the other! That way two shoppers will be able to simultaneously select their wares without getting too close—without having to reach over one another.”

She looked up at the anup and tapped excitedly on the drawing. “You will move behind the cart to service one customer and then the other.”

“So that I don’t block their access,” he agreed. Lunsdie looked up into her dark eyes and smiled, noticing for the first time how they sparkled when she was excited. “Sounds like it will be quite a workout.”

Ckkkrt waved her paws dismissively. “We will begin your endurance training tomorrow.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Lz5Ho1l4YRaxZvkWWHwvixmcpIRiVirb6G2x6Q6gLZ0/edit?usp=sharing