It didn't take me long to figure out how to convince @auroraloon to meet me for a semi-private conversation. Getting the courage to walk up to her, however, was a completely different matter.

  Sango had to give me a good pep talk and reassure me that I was special by licking my nose, up until I was worried that I would smell like cat drool when I finally had a moment to be close to @auroraloon. I think Sango was sabotaging me to have me all to himself. I punished him by bringing him with me when I finally got the nerve to approach @auroraloon.

  The rows of seats were not magically organized. We were in a box, so the seats were in a perfect square. The ship fit 160 people and was divided into four quadrants, 40 seats per quadrant. Aisles were spaced between each set of five seats, and walkways to pass between the columns of chairs were inserted after every four rows. The sections were also color coded. I was in the blue section. My seat was Blue 131. So, for example, seats 121 through 160 were in my Blue section, and the color helped me start looking in the right area of the floor. @auroraloon was in Red 34, kind of diagonally in front of me.

  If I had known about her thing for Winnie-the-Pooh at this point, it would have been a perfect time to use a reference that she would have to know only someone who had met her would understand. But that happened after we ejected, after I had sent the signal with my memories from the starlab over to the Extrovert Starmada. I didn't get the other memories back until later. If I had, then I would have gone up to her and done a Pooh impression, saying, "Excuse me. I mean. He-hem. Would you happen to have any honey?" And then smacked my lips.

  Instead, I went for the blunt and not so funny approach. I held up my cat to get her attention, leaned over the person in seat RED 35, and said, "Hey there. We need to talk."

  She eyed me annoyingly. "No, we don't. I don't know you."

  Oh, but I was prepared for that response. Thank you, futurecasting.

  "Tell that to our child!" I screamed, dramatically, lifting the cat toward her. Sango floated in the carrier, flipping upside down, trying to hold on to the mesh top with his claws. "Tell that to our child!"

  She unfastened her seatbelt, wide-eyed and irritated, and stood up angrily. Her boots were magnetized, keeping her grounded to the floor. She stalked over as I backed away, like she was going to beat me up.

  Ahh, remember that time she beat me up and left me there without a gun in the zombie infested lab? Good times.

  "He needs his Mama!" I yelped, as she grabbed me by the throat.

  "You're making a scene," she growled. I stared at those violet eyes kind of not caring how much my throat hurt. The meds from the vampire were still helping my overall pain tolerance, I suspected.

  Most of the Flipper crew were elsewhere. We were just along for the ride, so we didn't have in-flight service or anything like that. They just wanted us out of the way and quiet. But they did have two crew members down on Level 12 with us. One of them was stomping toward us with a panicked look on their face. I wished I had been wearing magnetic boots like they were. My feet were off the ground, and if she wanted to, @auroraloon could have just flung me toward the ceiling. The other crew member was on their comm unit, looking equally panicked.

  I waived them off. "It's fine," I squeaked.

  Everyone was staring at us. @auroraloon quickly released my throat, and I grabbed the chair of the person in front of the aisle seat to pull myself back down to the floor.

  "Everything is fine," I said loudly, cradling the cat carrier under my left arm with Sango, still upside down, now working on the zipper with his teeth. "I don't do well in space. Something about being sucked into the vacuum of space with no breathable air while my blood boils just doesn't appeal to me."

  By stupid luck, the medicine from the vampire was making me nauseous, and I vomited, sending little floating balls of puke up toward the ceiling. I was surprised I had anything in my stomach to even puke, but retching made me feel better, so I did it again.

  @auroraloon stood a few paces away, staring at me, trying to figure out what the hell was going on with irritated curiosity. The Flipper crew member was no longer panicked. People went from startled to disgusted and most returned to whatever they were doing to pass the boredom of being shipped in a cargo freighter.

  "May I escort you to a bathroom, Sir?" the man said, searching his brown jumpsuit and finally pulling out what looked like a wad of napkins. "Crinkled but unused," he added, presenting them to me.

  I looked at the vomit floating away.

  "Don't worry about that," he said. "Happens all the time. There's an airflow system that will suck it up and into a particle reclamation unit."

  "Impressive," I uttered, trying to see where the particle reclamation unit was.

  "Flipper's special. One of the only cargo ships that will take on passengers."

  "Well, I'm fine," I said. I dabbed my mouth with one of the napkins, thinking all the while that now I smelled like barf and kitty drool. I was off to a fine start at flirting with the girl who caught my fancy. "I just need something to eat, maybe a sip of water."

  "Ah, then our cursed Level 13 is the right spot, and it's probably empty because the food is horrible, so you'll have some privacy to recover."

  Stolen novel; please report.

  @auroraloon was about to sit down now that things had settled down.

  "Honey, can you come with me?" I asked her. "Maybe hold our cat for me in case I need to be sick again?"

  She was about to snap at me, but for whatever reason, she acquiesced. Maybe she was worried about me making another scene, or maybe she was just embarrassed and wanted to go someplace away from all the people, or maybe she wanted to know what the hell I was all about.

  I'm clever like that. I gave her many reasons to want to join me.

  She walked over to me with a fake smile. "Of course, honey."

  I gave her the cat carrier. Little Sango did one of his little cute I love you things by reaching toward her, his paw pressing up against the mesh lining, while he made lovey eyes at her and chirped. That made her smile for real, a smile that I had been hoping to see and welcomed. I was beaming foolishly, with just a bit of vomit stuck to the corner of my mouth.

  "Can you hold my hand so I don't float away?" I asked in my most cute and adorable way.

  She rolled her eyes at me, but she took my left hand in hers with a firm grip, digging in one of her fingernails to inflict a little I hate you and you better explain yourself pain in my direction, and she started dragging me toward Level 13.

  "Can I have my cat back please?" I said, leaning against the sink on Level 13.

  She was playing with Sango between the liner of his carrier, wiggling her fingers, then hiding them, then popping them out and wiggling them again. Every time she did, Sango would reach out like he was trying to grab a toy. She stopped playing with him and glared at me.

  "No." She hugged the carrier against her checkered flannel with both arms around it in a protective, motherly way. "Who are you? What do you want?" The way she looked at me told me she was thinking about ways of disposing of a dead body. "And what's the cat's name?" she added.

  That's the @auroraloon I knew. Violent but sweet.

  I started with the easy one. "His name is Sango." She looked at the carrier, fingers on the zipper. "Go for it. He can't really run away in zero gravity, but watch your nose."

  She opened the carrier, and little baby Sango leapt out, propelling his tiny furry body up into the air. She wasn't ready for it, but grabbed him before he floated out of her reach. He gripped her hand, and as soon as he was close enough, he clung to her shirt and reached for her face. She looked down at him to rub her nose against his (big mistake), and he grabbed her jaw with one paw and proceeded to lick her nose over and over and over and over and over, while she giggled. Yes, she actually giggled.

  I waited, satisfied with myself. It was a good idea to get a cat. This would have gone much worse without a cute baby kitty to soothe the situation.

  "I know you," I finally said. She glared at me again with scrumpled eyes. "Just hear me out, and then you can kill me."

  "You have until Sango here stops licking my nose."

  Ha ha, I thought. She had no idea how long Sango could lick a person's nose. I had at least five minutes, but he's gone as long as thirty minutes nonstop, like he was in a trance.

  "Deal. You don't know me because we died after escaping Starlab 41665.1. I'm @kittyboy. You're @auroraloon. You had a snakeskin outfit that you said you picked up at Starlab 41665.1, although I'm not sure I believed you. I'm pretty sure the scientists at the lab used you for zombie virus experiments. The place was abandoned and overrun with overtaken. We fought them off together. Your hair was shaved and the wires into your brain were exposed."

  Her look of anger subsided. She listened intently.

  "We rode spacecycles out of the facility. I transmitted the memories of my team to the Extrovert Starmada. I was there with an Extrovert reconnaissance team. Our plan, meaning your plan and my plan, because we had formed an alliance ..." I paused. Alliance wasn't the right word for it, but I wanted to be careful how I phrased it, and I was nervous.

  "Look. We had formed a bond, okay?" That was the best I could do. "Our plan was to stash your memories along with my new memories, and then blow ourselves up. That's all I know. We died, obviously, or at least we probably died. I don't know how we would have survived. We were being pursued by a valkyrie ship called the Eternis.

  "I was reanimated with the recovered memories from the transmission. After I sent the signal, we were going to eject from the spacecycles, head to 1941 Wild, and hide our memories."

  She nodded along, but remained silent, absently stroking Sango, who had stopped licking her nose already and was curled up in her arms.

  "You have a memory gap," I stated. "Maybe you don't know you have a memory gap, but that's what happened."

  "We had formed a bond?" she asked, amused.

  I admit. I was not expecting that response. I wondered if my futurecasting was broken, or maybe she was just a new variable or an outlier.

  "I just told you all of that," I gesticulated with my arms, "and you're wondering about our bond?"

  "Yes." Short and to the point. "I don't believe you."

  My eyes must have popped out of my head. "So you believe all the stuff about the starlab and the zombies, but you don't believe we had a bond?"

  She shrugged. "What kind of bond?"

  I blushed, struggling to come up with the words. I kind of like you. You kind of seemed to like me. I think we were crushing on each other. What do you say to someone with no memory of your first meeting?

  "The atomic kind," I sputtered. "Two molecules attract each other." I put my hands into fists and rotated them around each other.

  "Yeah, I don't believe you," she blurted.

  "Are you gaslighting me?"

  She raised her eyebrows. "I think you have an optimistic opinion of yourself, a crush on me, and some vomit on your face."

  I let my jaw hang open.

  "I still have vomit on my face?"

  "Yes," she laughed. "You do." Her laughter woke little Sango up, and he stretched in his adorable way.

  I observed her carefully. Subtle smile, dilated pupils overtaking some of the violet color to her eyes, rate of breathing increased slightly despite a soothing kitten in her arms.

  I pointed at her a little too strongly. "You like me!"

  She slapped my finger away, shaking her head slightly. She pressed her lips together and looked away.

  "You do!" I repeated.

  @auroraloon focused her attention on Sango. "I don't know you. How can I like you?"

  "I can show you," I said, holding out a qwire port. "I can share my memories." It was a bold move, I admit.

  "Fuck that. I'm not plugging that into me."

  I retreated back to the oddity of what had happened to us, again asking the question. "All of this was plausible? The lab, the snakeskin suit, the spacecycles, battling the overtaken? Everything I said? But you don't believe that you liked me?"

  "That's right. How do I know?"

  I was pretty flustered. Sore. Tired. Worried about my crew. Thankfully still feeling some lovely effects from the medicine to ease the pain of my new ARM and the lashing I had taken. I was too tired to come up with a rational argument. The evidence was there in her body language, unless she was intentionally messing with me.

  "Atomic bonds," I said confidently, "are hard to break."

  @auroraloon looked at me, then back at Sango, then back at me. I enjoyed the silence. I didn't even mind the she was holding Sango. That, in and of itself, seemed to make perfect sense.

  "Did I beat you up?" she asked.

  I wasn't expecting that question either, but I was relieved, my nerves finally letting me relax and drop my guard. "Yes, you most certainly did."

  She nodded, satisfied. "Okay then. I believe you."

  Yes! I had done it! I wanted to give her a big hug to celebrate, but she clearly had other things in mind.

  "What do you know about the snakeskin armor?" she asked, just as the first blast from an attacking ship struck our freighter and the alarms rang out, terrifying the shit out of our kitten.