Chapter 31

With his saddlebags stuffed with gear, Grady led the two horses up to the gateway. He had tried to think of everything a person new to the world would need, but his imagination failed him again. He packed a stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the clothes he bought and a pair of Jedidiah’s adjustable sneakers that fastened with Velcro. He added a hat and a light jacket.

As he approached the grove, he called out to Z%$*&#, who hooted in response. Grady dismounted and walked both horses into the grove. When he spotted his new hire, his eyes bulged, “Holy Shit!”

“Hello, good sir,” Z%$*&# said. “Your chromosomes are quite robust. The possibilities for variation are broad, but your species appears to favor certain skeletal choices, that also inform limbs, skin tones, and hair follicles. Your species relies heavily on symmetry, which has certain ramification for mental and meta-mental development, of course.”

“Of course,” Grady repeated because he was at a loss for words. He stared, saying nothing more.

“I chose the other gender of your species, and my thinking was there would be less complications with aggressive and competitive beings.”

“Ye-ah,” Grady said. “You got the symmetry down, that’s for sure. By my species’ standard, you are incredibly beautiful, gorgeous, which is a problem.”

“Why a problem, sir?” Z%$*&# asked with a sultry voice that would have given a guileless male a thoroughgoing erection. However, for Grady as he gazed upon this new visual, his testicles were attempting to retreat back up into his body cavity.

“I wanted you to blend in, not stand out,” Grady finally stuttered. “This, this will not do. Oh shit.”

“Perhaps you have an example you can show me?”

Grady swatted his forehead for his lack of thinking in the moment of crisis. He pulled out his mobile and opened the photos app. “These are my friends. I need you to look older than them or me.” He came across a picture of Jessica and Bettina sitting together in Jessica’s apartment. “This woman on this side is old enough to be my mother, and the other one is ten solar rotations older than me. They’re considered nice looking, even pretty. Can you, I don’t know, bring down the symmetry and match the age range?”

“Oh, of course I can,” Z%$*&# said. “No one expects to get body morphology correct the first time. External morphology is the easiest to correct. The organs associated with the waste system are another matter entirely.”

Grady was reeling. “Is this going to work? Will your body modification fool the people I have living at my ranch? None of them, and no one on this entire planet knows about the gateway except for me. The secret must be kept; I don’t know if I can chance bringing you down the mountain.”

“Now, now, sir, there is no need to panic,” Z%$*&# said in a soothing voice that sounded more like a proposition of sweet death by unrelenting orgasms. “If you could lend me that primitive digital device, I can have the external presentation updated in a matter of ... hours. Twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes in one planetary rotation – a day, correct?”

“Yep, we round up the rotation to twenty-four hours and reconcile the calendar every four years,” Grady said, trying to get on track. “Why don’t we go back to the ranch in a different fashion. I’m going to lead you down the mountain to the road. You’re going to wait there until I can drive my truck over and drive you back to the ranch. This way, we’ll have plenty of time to make adjustments.”

“Good, what’s a truck?”

Grady groaned inwardly. “There’s a picture of it on my phone.” He watched the being flip through the pictures, making noises that were not usual for a human being. Taking back the device, Grady brought up the browser on his phone and directed his query to one of the big shopping sites. As they rode down the mountain side by side, he pointed out people, clothes and objects that would be pertinent. “We need to give you a human name, a first name and a surname.”