My Crazy Hot Interstellar Affair

24. Area Woman Naked in Crowd Discovers She's Not Asleep

If Andie's previous Wormholing experience could be described as terrifying, Wormholing into the War Room resembled something more akin to "death by burning for all eternity." Like before, she endured the usual sensation of falling, losing all contact with her body, then being rudely reminded she possessed a body at all when it became squashed into two-dimensions by an insidious gravitational force and roasted over a hotbed of neutron stars on the verge of supernova. But this time when she reformed, thousands of volts of electricity coursed through her already battered existence.

If she could've located her mouth, and vocal cords, she would've screamed.

When she finally materialized, it was inside a glass sphere filled with the stench of burnt sulfur. Andie's body floated in the center, while lightning bolts of blue Neuronic energy flowed from her core and back again.

She screamed, her vocal cords now fully functional.

The electricity portion of the festivities must have been part of the security system Ernest had mentioned—there to validate her blue energy 'signature." Because only Amu royals had Neuronic energy, the system would not see Andie as an invader. If she failed the validation "test," she would be vaporized or fed to ravenous space korks, although she doubted such things existed. Ernest might've been kidding. Although, the question was, do Zuts joke?

Speaking of space korks, lined up in the cavernous circular War Room, were arched rows of desks covered with levers and dials and screens and lights—like what a control board in a recording studio might look in a couple of hundred years. Dozens of Amu technicians manning the controls spun on the ergonomically correct chairs (she had ordered for the company!) to see what was going on. On the bright side, no one pointed anything lethal at her.

Finally, the sphere vanished. Blue electricity shot throughout the massive room, and she dropped so hard, she dented the cold metallic floor ... with her bare ass.

Ouch. Andie rubbed her tailbone and sucked great gulps of air into her burned-out lungs.

Goosebumps covered every inch of Andie's naked flesh. Goddammit. She had hoped that with the blue energy version of Wormholing (as opposed to the microchip/shower cap/red wine version), she would arrive clothed. She had even tried to visualize herself arriving at her destination fully dressed.

But she was alive. She'd passed the security clearance test. Breathing hard, Andie dragged herself to a squat. Her head was cold. She patted her scalp, and to her horror, discovered that her long brown wavy locks had turned into crunchy burnt hair, which explained the burnt sulfur odor. Charred clumps fell onto the gleaming metallic floor. Andie forced back tears. She did not have the luxury of crying over lost hair, even though it had been her only decent feature. What she needed to focus on was getting to the Priority One, but she did not know what it looked like. Ernest only shook his bald head when she asked and explained to her that the Zuts could not see it because they were merely mutants. This mutant talk had to stop.

So far, the Amu hadn't moved. Perhaps they thought she belonged there. If she located the Priority One before they realized who she was, she could be on her way to the mother-ship and to Sterling. But she had to move fast. Surveying the room, she hoped to find something that looked like alien transport. But in the alien world, it could probably be anything—a toaster, a houseplant, an invisible door—which would actually be pretty cool.

On the walls, 360 degrees around the room, were gigantic screens alternating images of world maps, maps of Los Angeles, and red lines with arrows exploding out from one location to another.

On other monitors were Hollywood celebrities—Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Chris Pine, Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Hemsworth, and dozens more. Some screens displayed muted episodes of the show Andie had seen at Oliver's house—As the Earth Turns.