Chapter 14

April donned her favorite persona ... Ship ... a clone of Simone. But that made her very sad. Very sad indeed. Scanning Gary's mind, she found that Vee was ideal ... Gary's ideal ... and April wasn't going to make that mistake again. Nope ... cloning a real person was not a good thing. She was excellent at being Stevie Nix ... but that was another sadness ... besides ... two in the same time?

No ... wait ... that was almost 100 years in the past.

Is there such a thing as the past to a time traveling one hundred and forty thousand year old universal explorer?

Beauty is in the eye ... no ... that's not right. Beauty is in the mind of the beholder. Squids are pretty to other squids.

In this case, the beholders are Vee and Gary ... Gary loves red hair ... Vee hates it.

"That's easy," Vee said. "Gary is a blond."

Gary piped up, "I hate blond hair."

Vee mumbled, "I wish I had his and he had mine."

"What?" asked her loving mate.

"Never mind," she replied.

April asked, "So ... if you could have any color hair ... but not each others ... what would you chose?"

"Black."

"Brown."

"Vee, you can't have black hair ... you'd have to change your skin color, too."

"Good! No more freckles!"

"I love your freckles!" Gary exclaimed.

"I ... I ... you do?"

"Connect the dots!"

"So that's what you do with your tongue?" Vee shivered.

"Yup ... It's a new trail every night"

"I like that," Vee sighed. "Noon dot chasing is good, too."

"Early morning is great."

"How old are you two?" April asked. Hormonally driven teenagers were the last thing she needed. Humans were never logical and teens the worst.

"For real? Or apparent?" Vee and Gary asked together.

"For real."

"Seventy and fifty."

"Aren't you a little old for this?"

"Maybe," they replied ... cautiously.

April was looking at them from the vast age of 140,000 years but in all truth ... she was just out of her teens ... raging hormones ... it was her biological clock that had just jumped and the throbbing begun. "Hmmm."

"I mean," Gary said. "Look at her ... we had to reset me because the watch keeps her from aging..."

"Reseting him ... well," Vee explained, "I'm gasping for it ... all the time. He's pretty."