Greg

Nobody Left Behind 12

Added 2025-04-07 02:24:40 +0000 UTC

So, Sarsuk's dating Nyakkat now...

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———

Siki leaned against one paw against the bench, the other scratched absently at her chocolate brown ruff. She shook her head. “So, why all this drama then, Sarsuk?” asked the geroo. “You were too shy to ask Ashiok out, and you didn’t realize that Dennydr would have dated you, but Nyakkat wanted to go out with you, so—”

With unblinking eyes, the giant head explained, “Dating Nyakkat is what got me killed.”

Her ears stood tall. “What?”

“Well, beheaded,” he clarified. “It would have gotten me killed.”

Siki frowned, trying to understand. “Did she have a jealous mate or something? Someone powerful and important that you didn’t know about?”

This made Sarsuk laugh. “No, nothing like that! Nyakkat was a criminal who was trying to scam me,” he said. He bit at his lower lip for a moment. Then, in a quieter voice, the krakun asked, “ But you know the really sad thing, Siki?”

“No, what?”

“I knew it,” he said. “I knew all along that she had to be a scammer, but I went along with it anyhow.”

She squinted at him, as if trying to perceive the invisible. At last, she gave up. “Okay, now you’ve lost me. How could you possibly know that?”

“Attractive gals don’t go for guys like me,” he explained. “Not the fancy ones who could have any guy they choose. That’s how I knew it was a ploy.”

Siki blinked. Without intending to, she replied, “That’s a pretty negative sentiment.”

“It is, but it’s also accurate,” he explained. “I’m not the kind of guy that gals find attractive. If you act like you’re into me, then you must want something.”

Siki crossed her arms and studied him a moment with lowered ears. “So, if you knew, then why didn’t you avoid her?”

Sarsuk chuckled and nodded. “That’s a fair question,” he admitted. “Part of the answer is that I didn’t think she could do me any harm.”

The geroo’s dark brown muzzle fell open. “You didn’t think a scammer could harm you?”

“Scammers are after money. I don’t have any,” he explained with a roll of his eyes. “I figured that she’d targeted me by mistake, was going to pretend she was in love with me, and then present me with some sure-fire get-rich-quick scheme. All I’d have to do is front her some seed money…”

Siki grinned. “Which you didn’t have.”

“Exactly. You can’t steal what I don’t have!” he laughed. With a sly grin, he added, “But I was curious how far she’d go to convince me she was in love with me. Would we kiss? Would she sleep with me?”

Siki leaned her back against the bench and put her paws behind her head. With eyes closed, she said, “Scamming the scammer,” as if she’d know better.

“I tried,” he admitted. “Didn’t work. She was not only out of my league, she was far more devious than I.”

The two sat in silence a moment while Doctor Palani fiddled about at the far end of the laboratory. Circling back around, Siki reminded him, “So, part of the answer was that you felt immune. What was the rest of the answer?”

After a couple false starts, Sarsuk asked, “Are you dating anyone, Siki?”

The geroo’s ears lowered with a mischievous grin. “I don’t date giant heads hanging on walls.”

He laughed once more. “No, I’m serious. Are you dating anyone?”

Without sharing details, she nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got a boyfriend. Why?”

“Is he attracted to you?”

She jerked away in surprise with one ear lifted. “I certainly hope so!” she yarped. With a sigh, she asked, “What’s this about, Sarsuk?”

“It feels good, doesn’t it? You see him, and you can tell that he wants you, craves you,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with that. It feels good to be wanted.”

Siki shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Everyone wants to be wanted.”

“Right,” he agreed. “Now, imagine that it doesn’t work out. You break up. Whatever. He’s no longer attracted to you.”

A pause. “Okay…”

“Except it’s not just him. Your friends stop hanging out with you, your family isn’t close anymore, you’re alone.” His solid green eyes studied her in silence. “A year goes by and you’re still alone. Five years. Fifty years. Five thousand years—”

She rolled her eyes. “Geroo can’t live five thousand years.”

He nodded, but prompted her, “Pretend that you could. Imagine that you’re alone for five thousand years. You don’t have any friends, your family doesn’t want you, nobody does.”

Siki looked down at her paws. She tried to do as he instructed, tried to imagine it, but like the krakun himself, what he was suggesting was just too big. She couldn’t get her brain around being that alone.

There was a time once, when she was maybe half her age, she’d had a falling out with her best friend. She couldn’t recall the details precisely, but it involved a doll and cruel things she’d regretted saying. When word got out, the entire class rallied around Siki’s best friend, casting Siki out of her friend groups like a heretic. The shunning hadn’t lasted long—a week or possibly two—but it had felt like a lifetime. And even then, she still had her parents to hold her and dry her tears.

If such a thing happened to her now, she knew she’d quickly descend into a funk and then a full depression. And though she could picture that level of aloneness in her mind, her imagination topped out at around a month. She just couldn’t conceive of it lasting a year or more.

“And then suddenly,” he whispered, “someone you find really attractive is into you. Can you imagine that?”

She shook her head and answered honestly, “I’m not sure I can.”

“Well, trust me,” Sarsuk said with a sigh, “you wouldn’t want to give it up. It felt good, better than I could remember feeling.”

He closed his eyes and let his head hang loose until his chin rested on the floor. “And even if it was fake, even if it was an act, call me foolish, but I wanted every moment she was going to waste on me.”

Siki felt bad for the oversized lizard. Not that her arms were long enough, but she wanted to give him a hug. She wanted to run her palm across his snout and assure him that everything would be all right.

His eyes lit, and he tilted his head just the slightest bit, quietly confiding, “Plus, there was always the sliver of a chance that I was wrong, that she really did like me. I thought it was a safe risk to find out.”

The geroo frowned. “But it wasn’t … safe, I mean.”

“It should have been, really,” said Sarsuk. “I did a little research into all the common scams. So long as she couldn’t talk me into doing anything illegal, I thought I was good. I tied down all my loose ends to armor myself, locked up every way she could extract value from me. But I never would have guessed that she was trying to steal some unclassified data.”

Siki’s ears lowered in confusion. “Un-classified data?” she asked with an accent on the “un”.

Sarsuk squinted. “Yeah, let me explain,” he said. “The other commissioners and I operate the geroo fleet—that’s over twelve hundred gateships, all flying around the galaxy, looking for planets with life on them, where krakun could colonize, mine, or even terraform them into a planet that could support life.”

She nodded. “Yeah, we used to live on a gateship. Got it.”

“There are millions of millions of planets out there, and most of them, frankly, are uninteresting. The vast majority of planets are useless, lifeless, and boring. There’s no reason to keep anything about them a secret.” He tilted his head and lowered his voice, as if confiding in her, “But once in a very, very, very rare while, you’ll actually find a useful planet, and that’s a very big deal indeed.”

She tried to imagine finding a new world, but once again, it was just too big of a thought to fully appreciate.

“Viable planets are so exciting that our empire classifies any information about them as ‘Top Secret’.”

Her long ears lit as she thought about her boyfriend’s favorite films. “Like in the spy movies.”

“Exactly,” he said. “And that means that each of us commissioners have to maintain a government rating that will allow us to handle top secret information—even though it’s unlikely that we’ll ever need it.”

She squinted at him, studying his enormous face for a moment. “So, you’re a spy?”

“Ha! I wish. If I were, I wouldn’t go five thousand years without a gal making a move on me,” he laughed. “Anyhow, even though I can legally handle top secret information, I’ve never actually seen a … single … secret.”

Her ears fell a notch. “Never?”

“Never.” With a sigh, “So, we call all the information about where the ships are, and where they’re going, and when they’ll get there, ‘unclassified’ information.”

Siki felt confused once more. “So, it’s not a secret?”

“No, it is a secret, but it’s the least important kind of secret,” explained the krakun. “If cheating on an exam was a top secret, then an unclassified secret would be like cheating on your diet. Big deal.”

She smiled at the analogy. “So, sharing an unclassified secret might get you scolded, not decapitated?”

“Exactly,” he said with a nod. “Anyhow, Nyakkat stole an unclassified secret from me, but my boss—who hated my guts—told everyone that I’d stolen top secret data instead.”

The geroo’s mouth fell open. Sarsuk had been pleasant enough to her since he’d realized he’d be totally alone without her, but she’d seen enough to know how difficult he could be. It didn’t shock her that his boss hated him, but she couldn’t understand hating him enough to try and get him killed.

She fumbled for words, eventually asking, “But there was a trial, right? Why didn’t you explain this during the trial?”

“I tried! I tried over and over, but no one would listen to me,” he said with obvious frustration. “And because the stuff I allegedly stole was now top secret—even though it wasn’t really—I couldn’t show any of this in court. The judge wasn’t certified to see anything top secret.”

She sat back, resting against her tail, her mouth slightly open. Without meaning to, she said, “You got screwed.”

He agreed, “I got screwed.”