Xant stared at the grey canopy above them, but it was not his focus.

One of the many new abilities his expanded nervous system granted him was the option to process multiple things at once. He could feel the sleek, tight fabric of the ‘sun lounge’, the heat and scent of the human next to him, and the curious sensation of his own breathing motions.

The air intake through his nostrils and the filling of his lungs, these functions had not been available to him prior to joining with the human, but she was apparently conscious of them at all times.

Jasmine had asked him to take a moment to ‘recoup’ after their dizzying tour of the super yacht, the height of human luxury, and he was all too co-operative. Any researcher could spend their entire lifespan studying the vessel, be it citizen, corporate or military, and would have found something of worth. Jasmine could become rich off the fabric and wood the ship held alone.

More and more variables kept getting thrown their way. It would be almost impossible to calculate everything until the human’s citizenry status was decided upon, but there was a small part of him that was happy.

As long as there were questions to be asked or answered, he would be able to stay by her side, especially now that both a Lieutenant Commander and an Engine Lord recognised him as part of her entourage, human and Arvas cultures notwithstanding.

The doctor’s ears flicked up as he heard the oncoming footsteps of a much larger being.

“What is it?” Jasmine asked, still staring up at the hangar’s immense ceiling.

“I believe the captain may be approaching,” Xant replied. Jasmine audibly grinned and sat up immediately.

“Rynny!!” she shouted, running over to the safety railing to see him, waving with all the grace of a drunk worm. “Up here!!”

The captain was sniffing around the Pajero. He stood a clear head and shoulders above the thing, but was very surprised when he saw the small creature aboard the much taller yacht.

“Now how’d ya manage to get up there without zero G?!” he laughed, impressed.

“Like this!” Jasmine swung herself over the edge and slid down the short ladder, landing on top of the car with very little effort.

“Huh.” Rynard folded his arms. “Nimble little thing aren’t ya?”

“Only when i have to be. Come on up! There is soo much I gotta show ya!” she insisted, climbing back down into the Pajero to retrieve her things.

Rynard eyeballed the side of the yacht, specifically the tiny ladder the human had used in her descent.

“That doesn’t look like it would hold me--”

“Jeez, you too, Rynard?” Jasmine laughed, throwing bags out the car window. “Give me a sec and I’ll show you how to get up.” Four different bags of different sizes were lying at Rynard’s feet. “Could you throw them up on deck first though?”

Rynard scooped up all four in one hand and tossed them up onto the yacht.

“Thanks! And here.” Jasmine scrambled up atop the Pajero, then easily jumped across to the yacht’s ladder and tapped the edge of the deck.

“Just pull yourself up from there. If you try to jump up in your suit you’ll break the whole thing. Be careful!” she laughed.

Rynard scratched his chin. Delicate work was not his M.O., but he could reach the edge well enough. He hopped out of his mobile armour and made the climb up.

The ‘ship’ wasn’t quite what he was expecting. The deck was a deep rich brown and made a nice timbre sound as he walked over, careful so his claws didn’t ‘scratch’ the surface.

Jasmine was happily dragging the four bags over to the seats where Xant was waiting for them. She plonked them down and then eagerly scrounged through a pretty yellow one, grabbing out some clothes and tucking them under her arm.

“I’m going to go and get changed. Xant, why don’t you bring the captain up to speed!” She beamed, just about skipping down the lower decks for some privacy.

Rynard looked down at the doctor, who was still lying flat on his back on the sun bed.

“So, the entire engineering crew can feel the ‘jovial’ nature of Her Grace,” Rynard remarked. “I was coming over to check you weren’t dead,”

“Dead? No, Exhausted? Absolutely,” the doctor replied.

“So, uhh, what is this?”

“A monument to excess,” Xant answered, sitting up. “I’d be surprised if anyone other than a minior queen held onto such luxury. There’s just so many things…”

Xant saw the captain was uncomfortably out of his depth.

“Anything on board I need to be worried about?” Rynard deflected.

“Jasmine mentioned there might be glucose and caffeine. I’ll do my best to contain it,” Xant assured him.

Rynard shifted uneasily.

“Take care of the caffeine first, make sure it’s contained before the lieutenant arrives.” he ordered.

Xant nodded. Rynard peeked curiously into the smaller cabins.

“Any weapons the engineers might have missed?”

“There was some industrial-grade cleaning fluid and perfume...” Xant joked. “But no, this is a citizen’s vessel, no weapons aboard.”

“That’s good.” Rynard relaxed a little and started looking for a place to sit down, but it didn’t seem anything human was made to accommodate someone of his size. “So this is for citizens huh? All a bit flash, really.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Xant shook his head. “We barely scratched the surface. You should see what they sleep on, the craftsmanship and the detail is astounding.”

“So, a lotta sparkles and no substance? Nothing I can sink my teeth into?”

“No, Jasmine didn’t indicate anything of military use at all--” Xant’s ears flicked up as he felt Jasmine returning.

“Drinks are on me, boys!!!” she laughed, coming up on deck, carrying with her more of the dreadful ‘whisky’ and another mysterious bottle under her arm. The human was no longer wearing the dull grey armour but instead strange tailored clothes in bright colours with flamboyant patterns, shorts that barely covered her legs and a long lacy robe that was clearly more for show than actual function.

“So, what do you think of my new threads?” she asked, twirling around and lifting up the sunglasses to sit on her head.

Both aliens stood there stunned for a moment, but Jasmine just pressed on, offering them both more glasses.

“I think I would be fine without a drink, thank you, Jasmine.”

“Ah, don’t worry, Xant.” The human smiled, plonking herself back onto the sun bed. “I’m not going to make you drink any more whisky, I found some tonic water that had rolled under a chair, it should be safe for you both!”

“Should be?”

“It’s water, H2O, with some minor natural minerals, and there isn’t even a hint of sugar anywhere, in case you were wondering.” She held the bottle away from her body and winced as she cracked open the white lid. The clear water inside came alive with tiny bubbles.

“Ooh! It’s still carbonated. Nice!”

She poured the two glasses and then filled her own with some more whisky.

“Cheers!~”

She took another swig and the aliens copied her motions. The ‘water’ wasn’t unpleasant, the carbonated bubbles tickling Xant’s tongue. Rynard had thrown the entirety of his drink down his throat, barely wetting his lips, once again disappointed in the quantity provided.

“Now then.” Jasmine produced from her back pocket a small black dataslate that fit perfectly in the palm of her hand. “Do you guys want to see what I looked like before the brainballs picked me up?”

It was a rhetorical question of course. Xant undoubtedly wanted to see more human stuff, and Jasmine was going to show him regardless of his answer. The phone booted up with a bright animation of her service provider, then settled on a background picture of a sandy beach. White sand, blue skies and ocean as far as the eye could see. It made a nice contrast with the colourful app buttons.

Jasmine tapped into her library and brought up a selfie.

“There we go, look how long my hair was!”

There wasn’t a staggering difference between the photos, Xant noted, but Jasmine’s mane was indeed much longer, the brown hair sat neatly above her shoulders, held back by the sunglasses in the photo. But there was something in the photo that was different.

“Why is that tooth not in line with the rest?”

“Because it’s a stupid tooth,” Jasmine replied, “and not worth the two grand it would cost to fix it.” She shrugged and pressed her finger to the offending tooth. “It’s always been this--” she ran her finger over her teeth, but she couldnt find the bump where her incisor stuck out. “Huh. That’s a little weird, did you fix it for me when I was under?”

“I didn’t know it was possible to do such a thing.”

There was an uncomfortable pause.

“Stasis pods often have restorative chems, perhaps that could affect it?”

“Maybe…” Jasmine shifted the photo to another, a group shot of her and her friends at a campsite on the beach.

“This is where we were abducted. We were just packing up to go back home.”

Xant looked over the picture. It was small, but the fidelity matched many of their own equipment. Painted in colour rather than UV, the scene was limited in depth, but otherwise very detailed. The campsite was littered with more unidentifiable objects, colourful chairs, a crude firepit, makeshift hab-tents and high tech objects scattered on tables for contrast.

Jasmine flicked through more pictures, stopping on close-ups of her friends.

“This is Chamkov, we worked together at (the restaurant). He’s a line cook like me, but was going to be head chef when we opened our B&B. He liked to grow veggies and stuff. He would have absolutely wet himself if he had seen your hydroponics lab.” A tall, thin human with black hair and blue eyes, he had metal studs in his ears and a curiously uniform pattern across his left pectoral. Xant wondered if such a design could even be natural and once again pondered the effects of ‘natural’ gene-splicing.

“Katie was my best friend growing up. She was the one who helped me on my way to becoming a chef.” Jasmine smiled fondly at the picture. “She had a degree in tourism and it was her idea to start the business.” Katie had pastel pink hair, with eyeshadow and nails to match. Dark olive skin and obsidian eyes gave her quite the striking appearance.

“And that’s Warren.” Jasmine sighed, looking at the photo. “In all honesty, I had a crush on him. He was an engineer in the army, got out after his last tour and helped us to invest. He just wanted to sit on the beach and fish.” She laughed. “It was going to be an adventure for all of us...”

Xant studied the picture of ‘Warren’, getting a glimpse of what a ‘military grade’ human looked like. He was larger, muscular, but not obviously so, if Jasmine had not said anything he would not have been able to make the distinction. Perhaps he was more like the engineer’s assistants than the engine lord himself? Or perhaps humans were not as physically diverse as he expected.

Jasmine continued her virtual tour, swiping through photos in her gallery, showing off the Australian countryside. Long swaths of empty, red dirt land, with sparse scatterings of plant and animal life. The settlements were small, filled with rugged vehicles and people.

Jasmine pointed out the locations that her friends were looking at for their establishment, many of them isolated along a tarmac road.

Then the small rim settlements made way for cities of steel and glass, sparkling in the sunlight.

“There she is, ye old isolated capital,” Jasmine stated sarcastically, but Xant marvelled at the silhouette.

The rising towers lit up the night sky with colourful lights and a single white moon cast its visage over the river. It was beautiful and simplistic, easily rivalling GC architecture from the newly settled planets. The scenery soon gave way to human revelry, more bright colours, more coloured drinks.

“Do humans drink coloured liquids all the time?” he asked.

“It’s an Australian tradition to drink whenever possible. Holiday? Drink. Party? Drink. Tuesday? Drink!” She laughed playfully, taking another sip to make her point. “Commiserating and remembering? Drink.”

City life soon gave way to more intimate photos, more selfies and other people.

“That’s my mum and dad…” Jasmine’s voice grew softer as pictures of the pair embracing her came onto the screen. “Mum was in real estate, and she loved to garden.” The human swiped through until she found a picture of a house with a giant, creeping plant out front. “See that? That’s jasmine, my mum’s favourite flower, and my name, of course.

“Dad wanted her to cut it down. He tried a couple of times, but the thing grew back like a weed. ‘Jasmine, if you’re half as determined and tough (persistent) as that damn creeper I’d be proud.’ He worked in accounting but he always wanted to be a musician.”

There were other photos in the mix: more human food (a lot of food, actually), her and Chamkov in chef whites, a party at Katie’s house where she pointed out several other friends. Then it stopped on another couple of humans that had not appeared so far. Jasmine lingered on the photo longer than the others.

“That’s my brother Daniel and his fiancée, Vanessa.” Her heart sank a little, and she took another drink.

“You never mentioned him before.”

“No, he died before the abduction. Car crash, slippery roads, wrapped himself around a tree. It took me a long time to get over it. I dropped out of uni and everything, mum didn’t get out of bed for days, dad sat and watched TV for longer and I…” Jasmine looked guiltily at the whisky and put it down out of her reach. “But Katie, Chamkov and Warren helped bring me out of it. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have such great friends.”

Xant thought over his connections with his own siblings. He had not spoken to any of them in nearly a decade since his departure from the inner planets. It wasn’t even as though they had been close to begin with, despite being literally mind-linked. Rynard had even less of a clue. He’d come out of a vat, his type mass-produced and referred to by numbers unless they lived long enough to get a name.

To have such an emotional connection to anyone was quite outside their knowledge or experience.

“I hope we were there to help you as much as they were,” Xant comforted her, a hand on her shoulder.

“Oh god, Xant, if it weren’t for you two and the dogs…let’s just say I wouldn’t have been nearly as sane or co-operative,” she replied, half-serious.

“Jasmine, you know you don’t have to be the ‘only’ human,” Xant touched on the uncomfortable subject, “we could always make more when you’re ready, pass on all the knowledge of your home to them.”

Jasmine shifted uneasily and pulled herself from Xant’s hand, lying back on the sunbed.

“I’m not ready for that conversation,” she replied. “I don’t know how I’d feel raising a bunch of my own clones.”

“They wouldn’t be exact copies of you, we can alter their appearances if that is the--”

“That’s not it. It’s complicated.” Jasmine sighed, and returned to the window of her phone, before snickering under her breath. “Do you guys want to see what happens when you mix humans and gravity?”

Jasmine turned the phone around and showed the aliens a video of gymnasts jumping on a trampoline, one by one performing twisting somersaults in the air, when one fell out of sync and smashed face-first into the mat with wildly flapping arms.

Xant and Rynard both bellowed in gut bursting laughter. She felt the familiar splashing water at her heels from Xant, but Rynard’s laugh was like a boom, in both freq and volume.

“Look at its wiggling arms!” the captain guffawed.

Slapstick humour was apparently universal. Jasmine smirked.

"Do you want to see some more?"

The aliens nodded their heads as they crowded around to watch humans fall over and crash cars on the tiny screen.