The Record She Left Behind. Patrice Sharpe-Sutton

it.”

      “What?”

      “Your vision.”

      “Thanks.” Sometimes nothing beat an intuitive friend, Zer thought. She settled back in the chair, waiting for her first breach experience. Zer lived among Zenobians who revered the dark stretch between the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies. They said the breach between the Ways promoted lucid thinking.

      Zer thought it a shame, considering the underground woman and her dying plant, that Earth was the last stop on the journey. The woman needed plants now, and Zer had just the gift to establish a perfect relationship: three bags of seed. Not just any seed. Exotica trees cleaned air and clarified minds and refreshed people’s spirits. Thank the stars she’d tripled her allotment for gift giving. She’d locked the two extra bags in a biolab drawer, so the pilot wouldn’t throw them out. How could he after she told him the vision? The seed promised fertile relations with aliens.

      “Don’t count on it,” Vatta said, forgetting her mind-reading manners.

      “What better way to prep for bi-galactic adventure?” Zer shrugged at her friend’s amused look. Vatta believed in the ancient prophecy of cultural sharing or even co-evolving with Milky Wayans, which Zer’s age group called a myth.

      “What if space data prove otherwise? Will you stay?” Vatta asked, “help prepare more than a few willing Earthlings for the future?”

      Zer looked out the viewscreen at darkness. She heeded the danger part of the myth. She just resisted a galactic dream kindled and tumbled down for ages after an ancient visit to Earth; Earthlings weren’t ready then to welcome Zenobians because most couldn’t imagine changing dimensions or turning invisible at whim. Those who could were outcast, burned at stakes, or hid the knowledge. Some went insane.

      Still insane or barbaric. Earth was a far-flung outpost of wild people. There nineteen Earth years ago, her parents died—for sharing unknown bioconcepts.

      Zer was an infant at the time, so in lieu of parents she’d never known, Exotica trees nurtured her. By five, she was changing dimensions habitually. She had to mentally detach from emotion and bodily sensations so that her body could dematerialize, changing frequencies and molecular bonds. As an invisible vibration, she’d vapor-travel and slip under a tree’s green skin. The symbiosis had brought her back to her senses more than once. “They offer sanity.”

      “Please. They’re taboo. Earth people aren’t like us,” Vatta said.

      “They think, don’t they? Exotica reflect people’s thoughts. What’s so terrible?”

      “Those trees stir up some people’s darkest hidden thoughts. They’ll cause hallucinations,” Vatta said.

      “The way we look won’t?” Zer gazed at her friend’s long, pearly fingers. When on Earth, Andromedans mostly contained their life force in third- or fourth-dimension bodies. In third-di bodies, they resembled Earthlings, except they were less muscular and short haired or hairless with slightly bigger heads and large, expressive luminous eyes. Mixed bloods often had multicolored eyes, though Zer’s were white, flecked with white.

      “They’ll think you’re blind. Have you talked to your brother?”

      “He’s too busy navigating.” Thankfully, Zer thought, because her foster brother mind read even better than Vatta. A pilot, he worked at the hub of their pyrid craft, one of three hundred currently interlocked with the mothership; Zer worked on the pyrid’s outer ring with the C-ring section between them, though with his gift, it didn't matter. Leon surely knew about the extra seed. So the elders had obviously lifted any taboo on establishing Exotica on Earth.

      “Those trees will cause trouble. They're a threat to Earthling sensibilities,” Vatta said. Zer didn’t believe it. In the last nine years, Zer had trained some hundred saplings and never saw anyone hallucinate in their presence.

      The tricky juvie stage annoyed Zenobians like Leon. A pureblood, her foster brother preferred calm and detachment, so he could study arcane cosmology. He called her a wild cultivar. Exotica trees half raised her. She came from Lilio, the island continent, whose people had bred and exported Exotica to neighboring continents for millennia. Lilios were a merry people.

      Zer missed her kind. She was ten when the Lilio volcano exploded. Leon rescued her from the island and took her to his mother in Zenobia. Later, he brought her saplings to train and breed though he didn’t love and understand them as she did. For many Zenobians, the trees mainly cleansed and stabilized high radiation environments; since abundant stock and trees existed on Zenobia, few people experienced a sense of loss. With Lilios, Exotica shared humor, insight, and adventure. They did not harm others.

      Vatta broke into her thoughts. “How do you expect Earthlings to cope with sentient, walking trees?”

      “They don’t walk or talk. They glide, gracefully.”

      “They make their thoughts known,” Vatta said.

      “Happily, and clarify their companions’ thoughts.” A lunar-bright smile lit Zer’s face. The cave woman. That's why her foster brother had wanted her to come on this journey—special agent to properly introduce Exotica. “Don’t worry, Leon approves. He’s playing a trick on me.” He'd practically insisted she take this trip, calling her a clinging symbiot, dependent on Exotica. Broaden your horizons, become a bi-galactic citizen, he’d said.

      Zer sighed at the dreary prospect of having to be careful. Among those high-strung Earthling people, she’d probably change dimensions constantly and end up teaching biologics from an invisible realm. Unless. If she introduced Exotica—trained so they didn’t suggest even a speck of hallucination—the trees would expand Earthlings’ perceptions by natural means. Let the people enjoy an infusion of tree thoughts. Courier of the fifth dimension, on my way. She laughed.

      Leon knew she couldn’t imagine a world without Exotica. “Leon didn’t drop a single hint he wanted me to act as Exotica’s agent.” She wouldn’t let on, ruin his fun.

      “You can’t possibly believe—” Vatta shot her a startled look.

      Just then the ship reversed drive, swayed, and slowed, approaching the pure, wild center between the Ways. Leon and the elder were about to bless the crossing and the tree seed-cave omen.

      Here at the midpoint between galaxies, voyagers stopped to perform the ancient ritual and honor a future with Milky Wayans. Supposedly, when intergalactic matter reached a density that significantly touched in the breach, Zenobians and Earthlings would explore the future together. “What do you think bi-galactic citizens will be like?”

      “Curious, and messengers telling the latest on every dock,” Vatta said.

      “And messenger birds in every Exotica tree.”

      “You’re hopeless.”

      “Let’s go see wonder woman,” Zer said.

      Near the large screen on the north wall of their pyrid, they joined crewmates to watch Kalila, the only elder on the journey, perform the ritual. It was a rare privilege to have the elder of elders aboard. Elders usually stayed home and dealt with the forces and rhythms of space and celestial radiations impacting their star system. Shipshape, they called it. It helped keep everyone bathed in healthy radiations.

      “She’s beautiful, for a couple hundred years old,” Zer said.

      Vatta poked her. “One seventy-six. Shush.”

      “Welcome.” The elder’s lilting, gentle voice resonated through the sound system.

      Zer suddenly felt homesick again though she had plenty of company from home. She lived with nine crewmates in Pyrid Six, one of three hundred pyrids interlocked around the core mothership, which altogether held three thousand-and-three people. The starship resembled a giant, silvery flower. Her people loved flowers.

      Zer pressed closer to the screen where she could see the ship hovering over the pure spot. There was no going back.