Worlds Apart

"Sorry," he sighed, setting down his cutlery. "It's just a little...overwhelming. You're overwhelming," he added, gesturing to her massive frame. She took it as a compliment, grinning back at him.

"Yeah, I got pretty big, huh? It's weird for me, too. I remember always having to look up at you, you were so much taller than me when we were kids. I used to like how that made me feel," she added with a smile, gazing into the distance as her nostalgia overwhelmed her for a moment. "Looks like the tables have turned."

"So, tell me what Borealis was like," Jamie said, changing the subject before he got too flustered. "The place, I mean. I think I've heard more than enough about the people."

"Hot," she replied without a moment of hesitation. "Really, really hot. Couple that with the gravity, which is thirty-percent higher than on Earth, and stepping off the shuttle is like walking into a sauna with a fifty-pound rucksack on your back. I took one step off the ramp and almost buckled."

"It has its benefits, though," he said as he gestured to her muscular frame.

"You can't help but toughen up under that kind of gravity," she explained. "You might not believe it, but I've never lifted a dumbbell in my life."

"You said that Elysia was a city?" he continued.

"By Borealan standards," she chuckled. "When you say 'city', you think of glass skyscrapers, streets packed with cars and people. Nobody in Elysia has a car, there's no traffic, no mag-levs. Few of the buildings are more than a couple of storeys tall due to the high gravity, and they use stone rather than steel. Hell, it's not even customary to have windows on their houses. Helps keep the heat out. It was a real culture shock," she continued as she licked some more grease from her fingers. "In many ways, Borealis is a medieval society. They had only just discovered gunpowder by the time humans showed up, most of the planet is pre-industrial. They're modernizing, but slowly. Most dwellings have no electricity, no intranet, but the capital does have running water on account of it being on the shore of a giant lake."

"Is that why you were never able to contact me?" Jamie asked, seeing his opportunity to press her on the subject. "I tried to get in touch with you, but I didn't have a clue where in Elysia you might be."

"Believe me, I wanted nothing more than to get a message back to Earth," Liz sighed. "There was no phone service in Elysia, and besides, my parents had confiscated mine. The only line of communication off-planet is an FTL satellite operated by the UNN, and it's not exactly easy to get a message into the queue."

"Tell me about it," Jamie muttered.

"There's some traffic from spacecraft, mostly Navy vessels bringing in troops and supplies, but civilian trade is pretty light. You'd be lucky to see more than a couple of freighters a year, and there are no spaceports, no tethers, no orbital stations. The only way to get word to you would be to come here myself, and...that's what I did!" she said with a shrug. "It took chartering a private shuttle to get me off the surface, then I booked passage on a jump freighter to reach a colony where I could catch a more traditional flight. Had to raise the cash first, mind you. As it turns out, being an Alpha has lots of privileges. Borealans are oddly unconcerned with private property and personal wealth, the pack shares everything. If I wanted something, I generally got it."

She patted her bomber jacket, directing his attention to her ample chest.

"Cool, right?" she asked as Jamie appraised her outfit.

"Yeah," he conceded, "it's pretty damned cool..."

"Thought I'd need some human clothes if I was coming back to Earth, so I had it custom made," she added as she tugged at the furry collar. "Say what you want about the Borealans being backward, but their artisans are without compare. Let's call it size XXXL," she laughed, downing her last burger. "Anyway, enough about me. What have you been up to all this time? When I turned up at your apartment yesterday, you said something about hiring a detective and bribing a UNN official? That's a story I want to hear."

"Oh, right," Jamie replied. "Yeah, that was a few months after you left. I ran into a similar predicament as you did. I couldn't get a message through the satellite buffer, and I had no clue where you had gone. The first thing I did was find a private eye in Old Town, hoping that I could hire him to find your new address."

"Old Town?" Liz asked, leaning her head in her hand as she listened intently. "That place was super creepy, I never liked going down that way."

"That plan fell apart pretty quickly when he explained the logistics of locating someone off-planet. Fortunately, he knew a contact in the UNN who had access to one of the quantum satellites, and who had a way to bump civilian messages up the queue. It was like communicating with a spy, it was crazy. The guy would take calls in audio-only mode, and he used a synthesizer to change his voice so that nobody could recognize him. Well, I say 'he', but it could just as easily have been a woman. I'd have no way of knowing."

"Exciting!"

"I would have called it scary," Jamie chuckled. "I felt like this guy was going to black bag me if he thought I might blow his cover. Anyway, his method was to encrypt the data using Navy protocols, then he'd slip the encrypted package into the buffer, passing it off as some important UNN communique. As long as the file size was pretty small, it wouldn't attract any scrutiny. Problem was, he was asking a pretty steep price for his services."

"Here it comes," Liz said with a shake of her head. "I didn't think he'd put himself at risk of a court-martial out of the goodness of his heart. How much did he want?"

"Five thousand credits," Jamie replied, Liz's feline eyes widening in surprise.

"Five?" she repeated, her furry ears twitching as though she might have misheard him. "I hope you told him to cram it."

"It was cheaper than using a private company, by a considerable margin," Jamie explained as he shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't have much of a choice. So, I sold my console and my VR kit."

"Oh no!" Liz exclaimed, her brow furrowing. "You used to love playing that thing! What was the one you always tried to get me to play with you, the one with the guy on the station fighting Bugs? The virtual reality always used to scare the hell out of me."

"I remember that," he said, chuckling at the memory of her flinching away from digital Drones as she waved the controllers around. "Don't worry, I replaced it eventually, got the latest model. But yeah, I was still pretty far off the mark, so I ended up getting a part-time job to raise the money."

"All this just to get a message to me?" she asked, her expression warming.

"I wanted to reconnect with you more than anything," he blurted, composing himself as a wave of embarrassment made his cheeks warm. This was Liz, and yet, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was talking to a stranger. They had kissed in his apartment, surely it was okay to get personal? "After that note you left on my door...well, that gave me even more motivation. I felt like I had to set the record straight. For one brief moment, I had everything I ever wanted, and just when I felt as if I couldn't be any happier...you were gone. I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye."

"I couldn't face you," Liz said, her excitable demeanor darkening as she sifted through the old memories. "That's why I left the note. It would have killed me to say goodbye, so I ran from you, I always regretted that. But if I had stayed, your last memory of me would have been miserable, and I wanted that night to live on forever. It was the closest thing to a perfect moment I've ever had," she added, laughing more bitterly now.

"I don't know if things can go back to the way they were before," Jamie said, Liz's furry ears twitching as she glanced across the table at him. "Maybe we've grown too far apart, maybe we shouldn't go into this with the assumption that we're going to end up at a predetermined point, you know? But if nothing else, we can bury those regrets, make some new memories. If we part ways at the end of this, then it'll be as friends, with nothing left unsaid."

"I like that," Liz replied, nodding her head. "You think I've changed a lot, but you've changed more than you realize, Jamie. You're more...pragmatic than you used to be," she added, appraising him with a new appreciation.

"You done eating?" he asked. "Come on, I want to show you something."

***

They paid their bill and left the diner, setting off to walk the route they used to take after school. Liz was tall enough to run her claws through the leaves of the trees that lined the street now, loping along beside Jamie with long, slow strides so as not to outpace the smaller human. She drew a lot of attention, but the odd looks didn't seem to bother her anymore. She had been so timid in her youth, but now, she put her Borealan-ness on display proudly. She swaggered through the throngs of pedestrians, the crowds parting like the Red Sea to let her pass, craning their necks to get a look at the massive alien. The average human knew 'of' Borealans, but unless they were serving in the UNN, they were unlikely to ever meet one in person. As Liz had described, the planet was primitive, and there was little civilian traffic to and from the distant world. To see a Borealan wandering around the shopping district was a once in a lifetime event.

They eventually found themselves outside the old elementary school where they had first met. It was empty, as it was a Saturday, and all of the children would be at home. Liz peered over the fence that surrounded the playground, noticing that the same swing set was still there.

"I can't believe I used to be small enough to sit on that," she mused. "I remember how scared I was on my first day. Nobody looked like me, none of the other kids wanted to play with me, until you came along." She ruffled his blonde hair with her giant hand, smiling down at him. "You were like a guard dog. Whenever someone upset me or made me cry, you'd come running to chase them away."

"I don't think you need my protection anymore," Jamie chuckled, "you look like you could flip a car."

"I dunno," she replied sarcastically. "You might want to keep another rock on hand in case Tyler gets wind that I'm back in town and comes back for round two."

"I'm curious," Jamie continued, leaning on the fence as he gazed out at the grassy playground. "After living on Borealis for a few years, seeing what their society is like, do you think your parents made the right decision in bringing you here?"
"I think they were uncommonly wise for Borealans," she replied. "I suppose it takes an exceptional person to drop everything that they've ever known to become an ambassador on an alien planet. Only now do I realize that coming here was as jarring for them as going back to Borealis was for me. They had to adapt to a completely alien culture, one where the standards of conduct are drastically different. You can't assault a human for cutting you off in the checkout queue at the grocery store, and it takes incredible willpower for a Borealan to suppress that impulse."

"You think you had a better childhood here than you would have on Borealis, then?"

"Oh, for sure," she continued. "My siblings were all seven feet tall by the time they were adolescents, I really was the runt of the litter. If my parents hadn't decided to take me with them, I would have had a much harder childhood. If you thought being bullied for looking different was bad, try being a disadvantaged Borealan at the bottom of the sleeping pile."

"Those impulses you mentioned, do you have those too?"

"Yeah, in some ways," she said with a nod. "It's kind of a...nature versus nurture question. It can be hard to tell which parts of it are instilled by the culture, and which are instinct. I do know that when you and I spent that night together, something new awakened inside me, like a switch had been flipped in my brain. At the time, I thought it was just...desire, but it was more than that. Going back to the old country was beneficial in that it helped me understand those feelings, I learned to control my instincts. I can see that being confusing, even scary for a Borealan with no peers of their own species. It could also end up being very destructive for someone growing up with no guidance. There would be these urges to lash out, to dominate, but without the context of the pack."

"I guess your folks had some good reasons after all," Jamie conceded. "They kept telling me how you had to 'learn to be a Borealan', but I didn't understand what that meant. I still wish that you had stayed, but...it makes me think a little better of them."

"I'm not saying they couldn't have done it differently," she added. "They could have eased me into it, helped me spend some time here, too. Doesn't help that it takes months to travel between the planets, and superlight isn't exactly a fun experience. It makes you feel like your brain is being taken apart neuron by neuron."

"I'm as muddy as they come, I don't imagine I'll ever go to space," Jamie laughed.

As they gazed out at the empty playground, Jamie remembered that this was supposed to be a date. Nostalgia was all well and good, but he should be showing Liz a good time, introducing her to the person that he had become.

"You want to go somewhere fun?" he asked, turning to look up at her.

"Sure," she replied. "What did you have in mind?"

***

They stepped off the mag-lev platform and took an elevator down to street level, emerging into the brickwork of the Old Town. This area was not as deserted as some of the other parts of the city, it was a tourist hot spot, with pedestrians and vehicles occupying the newly-paved streets. The abandoned buildings had been refurbished, turned into upscale coffee houses and restaurants, colorful awnings picking out the many gift shops. The shoreline lay ahead of them, the glittering ocean visible beyond, the ruins of some surviving buildings rising above its blue surface. The tide was low, revealing the carpets of seaweeds and barnacles that clung to their discolored facades, like the hull of a shipwreck. Crumbling masonry exposed rusted structural beams to the salty air, and the glass that had once made up the windows was long gone, leaving gaping openings upon which seagulls perched. Some of the buildings listed, their foundations long since eroded, but enough remained to get a good idea of what had once been.

It was a sight that had always been familiar to Jamie, the remnants of a calamity that had concluded over a hundred years before his birth, but it was hard not to feel a sense of wistfulness while looking out over the ocean.

Their destination was a far more modern structure of glass and steel that straddled the shore, nestled between the surrounding ruins. It looked like a giant kidney dish that had been turned upside down to Jamie, it had probably been designed by some overpaid and undercooked architect who had been trying to make a statement, but it was the inside of the building that interested him.

"Are you taking me to the aquarium?" Liz asked, giving him a playful nudge with her elbow that was almost enough to make him stumble. "I'm not ten anymore, you know."

"The aquarium is fun and educational for all ages," he replied in mock outrage. "Besides, I remember how much you liked to watch the fish, and Borealis has no oceans. I'd take you to the fair on the boardwalk, but you're too tall for any of the rides."

"Oh, ha ha," she replied sarcastically. "Alright, fish boy, show me what you've got."

***

The aquarium was fairly busy, but it was no concern of Liz's, as she could see over everyone's heads. In many respects, she had the best view in the house. The colorful shoals of fish swimming around against the backdrop of coral reefs, and the moody, blue lighting were a pleasant reprieve from the bustle of the city. It was relaxing, and Jamie had always enjoyed the scents of the ocean. They paused by one of the large tanks to watch a group of tropical fish swim past, their patterned scales reflecting the light that filtered in from above.

"Okay, maybe this was a better idea than I gave you credit for," Liz admitted as she stood beside him. "Oh! Look at that one!" She pointed to a conger eel that was peeking its head out of a little cave in the corals, opening its jaws rhythmically as it sucked in gulps of water. "Borealis has fish, but you'd have to go catch them if you wanted to take a look at them. Browsing the meat markets was fascinating, seeing all the exotic creatures they'd dredged out of the lake or hunted in the jungle band."

"You always did like xenobiology," Jamie added, watching the eel slide back into its shadowy crevice.

"Kind of ironic, isn't it?" she chuckled. "I was obsessed with aliens growing up, but I was technically living on an alien planet the entire time."

They continued on, walking through a glass tunnel, sharks casting them in their shadows as they swam by lazily above their heads. The other guests seemed as interested in Liz as they were in the exhibits, but she didn't pay them any mind, her green eyes reflecting the blue light that filtered through the water. She was forgetting about her surroundings, too absorbed in the natural beauty to care.

They visited some of the smaller tanks, admiring the seahorses, and the mesmerizing jellyfish. There was a large, open tank where guests could reach into the water and touch some of the more inoffensive creatures like starfish and small rays. Liz abstained, claiming that she didn't want her fur to smell of seawater for the rest of the day. Instead, she watched a gaggle of squealing children lean over the side to pet the horn sharks, which seemed to provide her with just as much enjoyment.

The fish were all well and good, but the exhibit that had always intrigued Jamie was the glass walkway that had been built along the seabed, giving the visitors a view of the sunken streets just off the shore. The water was fairly shallow, the sea level had only risen by a few meters compared to when the city had been built, but it was enough to submerge vast swathes of it. It hadn't happened suddenly, so there were no abandoned cars on the roads, no evidence of sudden chaos. There were only empty streets and crumbling buildings that were now home to fish rather than tenants. The cracked asphalt had mostly been reclaimed by seagrass and forests of kelp, waving eerily in the ocean currents, what remained of the brickwork now colonized by clusters of mussels and barnacles. A coat of green algae seemed to cover everything, even clinging to old traffic signs that had somehow remained upright.

They stopped as a shoal of silvery fish glided above the tunnel, watching them swim by.

"You know, I could come here any time I want," Jamie said as he gazed up at the water's shimmering surface high above. "But I don't, and I'm not sure why. What makes us think that we can only do fun things on special occasions?"

They exited through the gift shop, a rather large room that was packed with memorabilia, as well as more decorative fish tanks. Everything was painted ocean-blue, with various representations of cartoon sea life adorning the walls. There were shelves and stands packed with plastic toys and plush sea creatures, more shrill children racing between the aisles as their handlers struggled to keep up with them.

Something bright and orange caught his eye, Jamie leading his confused date over to a pile of stuffed fish. He raised a large, plush clownfish the size of a pillow, presenting it to her. She scrutinized its plastic eyes and its cartoon smile, cocking her head at him.