Planet-Eater 84 (Patreon)

“Mort, are you alright? You look a bit…” Fern makes a face and waggles his hand, which is the universal sign for like shit. An astute observation! That is, in fact, exactly how I feel! Gosh, I love having friends who recognize my moods. Even better is having one capable of reacting sensibly to them, ergo, since I can barely stand, Fern is helping me into the elevator. “Maybe you should sit this one out? The Commander did give you the go-ahead to not attend it.”

“Yeah, sure, but then…” Then I’d be disappointing him, and what if the party was specifically designed for X people, and then one is absent, so there’s one plate too many, and the whole seating chart will be totally off-course, and the poor plater who would have to throw away a portion all because of me… No. I can’t. I just… “I’ll hold out,” I say shakily. “I’ll be fine.”

Going by the look on Fern’s face, I can assume he doesn’t quite agree. “Well, alright, then.” As we enter the elevator, Fern tells the operator—a lanky-looking droid—to bring us to the entrance floor. 

As we drop, I feel my stomach doing a similar routine. Though I’m trying not to actively spend too much attention on my other body, on that specific body, I can’t help but feel my mind wander back to it. I’ve got my whole body wrapped around the tiny, grain-sized spaceship, so the innermost tentacles can see inside the cockpit. It’s so small. All it has are two chairs, a control panel of some sort, a few walls filled with blinking buttons, and a window. And there they all are. 

A scraggly teenager with frizzy hair and oversized clothes, lounging in one of the chairs. 

A well-built middle-aged man in overalls, each pocket filled to bursting with knick-knacks and tools, standing by one of the consoles.

A robot lady in a weirdly motherly outfit, complete with fake wig and a massive… Front portion… 

And, finally, leaning against the short railing separating the cockpit and the window, is a green woman with white hair, who has been very angry at me and has shouted at me so much that I kind of want to cry. 

Right now, they’re all discussing something that I can’t hear because I don’t have ears. Not that I want to hear it. That would be a huge invasion of privacy. Though, then again, they might be discussing me. Saying mean stuff about how I look or how I talk or how I act. People do that sometimes. Wouldn’t be the first time. Calling me a sissy or a… 

I shudder.

“Is it about the people you found…?” Fern asks gently. Kindly. 

His words make me relax a little. I guess, some things are worth asking. “Fern, what do you do when you’re trying to talk to someone but all they do is yell at you, all mean-like?”

He makes a face, but before he can answer, the elevator dings and the main floor is here. A sea of heads presents itself, alongside the many-mouthed murmur exclusive to large crowds of people. The kind that makes my skin crawl. 

Fern gives the room a once-over before nodding at me to follow, and we exit into the crowded room, the main floor filled to the brim with extravagantly well-dressed fishmen and octopusmen and humans and all manner of creatures, all making sure to step out of the way as Fern pushes his way through them, holding my hand the whole way to ensure I don’t get lost again. 

“It depends,” he mutters at me once we’re a bit more secluded. “Normally, getting yelled at is…” A sneer crawls across his face, disappearing as quickly as it arrived. “Some people like to do it because they enjoy feeling powerful. Especially if it’s a superior. For them, yelling is a way to keep you in line.”

Oh. Yeah, that’s… Well, I suppose so, but I don’t think she was trying to do that. Sure, she did say OBEY a whole bunch of times, but that could’ve meant anything.

“Then again,” he adds, absently craning his head to look for familiar faces in familiar outfits, “it could always be stress. The troopers yell at each other under blasterfire. Duress tends to do that.”

Stress… I scratch my chin. “You mean like if your spaceship was out of fuel and you almost got eaten by a big space octopus?”

“Yep. That oughta do it.”

“Oh,” I say, allowing myself to survey the floor while he looks for our gang. It’s kind of hard to hear my thoughts over the din of general talking, but I’m sure of one thing. I mustn't hold this against her. She’s stressed, she’s scared, and even if I told her I’m really a nice octopus, it makes sense she’d be hesitant to let me wrap my tentacles all around them. She was probably just trying to ensure that her and her friends didn’t die. “That makes sense.”

“Yeah,” Fern says, squinting at the multitude of people and persons. After a few moments of fruitless search, he sighs and turns back to me, sticking his hands in his pockets. Something seems to be on his mind, so I avoid saying anything. “I’ve been wondering, though…”

“About what?”

“They were on a ship, right?”

“Yep! Busted-up little thing!”

“Right. So… How did they talk to you?”

I’m just about to give an excellent response explaining the details when I find myself drawing a blank. Wait. How did she yell at me? In space, no one can hear you yell! “I’m, uh… I’m not sure,” I admit. My big forms don’t have ears. The only thing I can imagine is that they maybe sent out some sort of vibration, but that doesn’t make sense. “It was just a voice in my head, right in there.”

Fern shrugs. “As long as it isn’t a jedi, you should be good.”

I feel myself freeze in place. J—j—jedi?

The evil space wizards who can command beasts? Who can make people do their bidding with the wave of their crooked, evil space hands? Those jedi??

My body is beginning to shake. I am, with no conscious input, beginning to do the jellyfish jam. This is disastrous because I do not in fact possess bones and thus I am at great risk of collapsing in on myself. Evil space wizard. There might be an evil space wizard in my hands. I might be holding an evil space wizard this very moment and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. 

What do I do? Oh, gosh, what do I do? If I’d had the balls, I would’ve done away with it. One less evil space wizard in the world. B—but there are others on there, too! Unless they are also evil space wizards? Oh, gosh. Oh, gosh. 

A horde of worst-case-scenarios come bursting in through my mental fortifications. What if they command me to defect from the empire? What if they command me to hurt people? I don’t care if they use their evil space powers to hurt me, but if they make me hurt others, then—

“Mort? Mort are you—hey, snap out of it!” Fern grabs me by the shoulders. “I was just kidding! The jedi are ancient history, okay? They got wiped out! You’re safe. Besides, even if there was a jedi prowling about, why would it be in the unknown regions? A jedi would much prefer causing disaster in the core, or at least the central sectors. Messing with a creature like you wouldn’t make any sense.”

The only reason I’m not a puddle on the floor is because he’s holding me up. Half-blubbering, I ask, slurring my consonants, “Awe you shuwe…?”

“Yes, I’m sure, now—” Something in the corner of his eye catches his attention, and he turns to it, face lighting up in surprise and alarm. “Oh, they’re here. We’d best join up with the crowd.” He almost releases my shoulders, only to realize in the last second that I’m still not-quite-solid. “Um… Will you be able to walk on your own?”

“G—give me a minute,” I say, desperately trying to pull myself together.

There’s no such thing as evil space wizards, there’s no such thing as evil space wizards, there’s no such thing as evil space wizards…

I draw a deep breath, gathering up all my limbs. “Okay. I’m r—ready.”

He lets go of me and I only stumble once before finding my grip on the world, though I did admittedly have to splay out both my arms and my tail to do so. Fern gives me a wordless look. You okay? I nod back to him resolutely. All good! 

Then, we join the rest, and head inside the dining hall adjacent to the hotel.