I tried to only do English songs, but my Q selection is rather tiny. But most of this song is in English and has a good beat.
There he was again. Sirusho Amhara.
Resident of Modlin, an inhabited moon orbiting Jupiter. She watched
him depart from Gate A3 and made his way to the shuttle bay.
When Laura had entered the Earth Police
Department as a cadet she had wanted to be in the division that flew
high atmosphere planes for planet patrols. It was the closest she
could get to space travel after applying to join the Star Corps. But
leaving the planet would devastate her parents, so EPD it was.
But she didn't get assigned to the High
Altitude Air Division. Nor did she get assigned to her second choice,
immigration, or her third, identity theft. If she wasn't going to
get to go off planet, at least she could work with people who did and
hear their stories. But no, she got assigned terra airport
surveillance, airports whose flights only went between Earth cities.
And while yes off world tourists did visit some of the airports, she
couldn't talk to them. Surveillance was all electronic, and she sat
in a small room at the top of the airport looking at all the bustle
below her through a computer screen.
Sure, it was normal hours for the most
part. No danger. Her post was the Lake Michigan airport, situated in
the middle of the water and offering quick hover shuttles to Detroit,
Chicago, Madison, Columbus, Windsor, Toronto and other Midwest
American/South East Canadan cities. Shuttles which meant quick
travel times for her parents to visit, shoot her now.
Sirusho got on a shuttle, heading for
Windsor. He had to duck to fit. Even though the shuttles had been
built with some needs of off worlders in mind, Modlings were taller
than the seven foot door frame.
Laura watched the shuttle doors close,
and when it left the docking station followed it's blinking symbol
until it left airport grounds and disappeared from her screen.
She replayed the footage of his time in
the airport again. He was hard to miss, being so tall, and maybe
that's what drew Laura to him. His inability to hide. Or maybe it
was his calico colored skin. All Modlings were calico patterned, but
Sirusho was black and gold, a rare combination for his species. They
usually had three tones to their skin. Absently, Laura wondered if he
was considered on Modlin sorta like albinos were on Earth.
Being so close, yet not able to
interact with him was driving her crazy. Something about the alien
drew Laura to him, and she spent more time then she should looking at
surveillance footage of him. She had dreams about being with him too,
trying to picture her short human build next to his tall frame. It
didn't quite fit.
“Drooling again?”
Mary Ellen, her fellow EPD surveillance
cop rolled her chair over to look at Laura's screen. Hastily, she
swiped the window off screen. Mary Ellen laughed.
“You've been pining after that guy
from the screens for six months now. It's obvious he's a resident, he
comes through here so often, you should just jump on a shuttle with
him one day.”
“That would be unprofessional.”
Laura peeked over at Mary Ellen's screen. Majong. Of course. LMA got
very little trouble, having cameras and scans all around tended to
keep crime down. It was impossible to not get caught sooner or later.
And if something did happen at LMA, the computers would alert them.
Majong was actually a good activity, it
helped stretch your brain. Much better than Laura's habit of gawking
at off worlders and keeping her fingers crossed that Sirusho would
show up. Still, she couldn't help it. Maybe this time when she
asked for a transfer to a different unit she'll get it.
~*~
Despite being 27, her mom still had a
lot of power over her. Maureen would call, insist that she visit, and
on Laura's next day off she'd be sitting in one of the smaller hover
shuttles to Pittsburgh.
Laura pulled out her key card and
scanned it at the shuttle's entrance, only looking inside the craft
once she boarded.
There he was, Sirusho Amhara. Hunched
over in a seat in the center, away from the slanting ceiling in the
front and back. He was so tall, his knees were almost even to his
rib cage sitting down. On his thighs, he had a tablet propped.
The seat next to him was empty.
Her phone rang.
Laura picked it up, still staring at
the empty seat when she answered.
“Hello?”
“Hey Ms. Stalker.” Mary Ellen. She
was on duty today. “You're obsession is on the shuttle you just
boarded.”
“Yeah, I figured that out already.”
“Talk to him!”
“I'll...I'll try.”
She hung up and took a deep breath.
Her mom was always telling her she was a push over, and maybe she
was, but if Mary Ellen was going to push her closer to Sirusho, well,
she wasn't going to complain.
Laura sat down in the empty seat. It
was electric, being so close to the Modling. A huge feat, to just be
this close to an off-worlder.
Sirusho didn't notice. He kept playing
on his tablet. Laura leaned over to peak, it looked like some type of
logic puzzle. At least, it wasn't a graphic game and it didn't look
formatted into text paragraphs. Well, not that the Modlin writing
system had paragraph, it was just one block of text.
“Yes?”
Laura looked up at the voice, it was
Sirusho. Talking. To her.
“Um...is that a Modlin game?”
He blinked, and Laura noticed that his
eyelids weren't calico patterned like the rest of his skin. One was
black and the other gold.
“Yes. Do you want to learn it?”
“That would be wonderful.”
It wasn't that different from Sudoku
actually, the objective was the same but it was based on the
mathematical properties of different shapes. Sirusho was a good
teacher, and while Laura caught on quickly she kept repeating
questions and double checking her thought process just to hear his
voice.
All too soon, the shuttle was docking
in Pittsburgh. Laura was half way tempted to sabotage the doors so
they couldn't get out. Instead, she settled for being one of the last
passengers off. Sirusho had waited as well, thought she supposed that
was to make it as easy as possible to not hit his head. If the crowd
had jostled him into one of the storage shelves lining the ceiling,
it would hurt.
Once out of the shuttle, Sirusho
stretched to his full size. He had to be eight feet tall, and Laura
felt dwarfed by the difference in height. Surely they'd only be able
to converse with raise voices to breach the two and a half foot
difference between their mouths. And now, she realized she hadn't
actually asked Sirusho about his life or world. For the entire 40
minute ride they had played the game.
Drat.
He offered his hand. “I'm Sirusho
Amhara.”
“I know.”
He blinked at her.
“I mean, I work surveillance at the
Lake Michigan Airport. I know your name from the scans, that's all.
I'm good with faces. I'm Laura Silvestri.”
He nodded, the awkwardness of her
response to his name fading. “I have never seen you at the air
port.”
“I work in a small room, no windows
and no interactions with anyone other than the cop in there with me
at the time. It's not a very exciting job.” To her delight, she
didn't have to shout for him to hear her words. They started walking
towards the doors. Laura didn't have luggage for this was a day trip,
and Sirusho just had a backpack he had kept under the seat. “What
do you do?”
“I am developing a tour guide of
Earth for my race.”
“Well, if you need someone to show
you around, I'd be happy to.”
Sirusho smiled down at her. “I would
love more of your company.”
They exchanged numbers before getting
in different cabs. Once in hers, Laura called Mary Ellen.
“You talk to him?” she asked as she
picked up.
“Even better, I got his number.”
------------------
Some of the credit for this story goes to Star Trek, for making me think if there are ships to protect the Federation, why aren't there ships to protect individual planets? Why did the Enterprise alone have to destroy Nero's drill? Where was the Earth Defense Force?
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