John Scalzi - Agent to the Stars

"Joshua?" I asked.

"You were expecting maybe Winston Churchill?" Joshua said. "By the way, I think you might as well start calling me Michelle. There are very few people who look like this," she motioned to her body, "That would be called Joshua."

"All right....Michelle," I said.

Van Doren came over and frankly stared at Michelle's naked form. "Wow," he said. "I may have to revise that comment about taking you off my list of women to date."

"Back off, jerky," Michelle said.

"I just can't win," Van Doren complained.

"I guess we can say the transfer was a success," I said.

"It was easier than I thought," Michelle said. "It helped that Gwedif had rummaged around through a human brain before. When I first suggested the idea of going into Miranda's brain, he shared his knowledge with me so I didn't have to fly completely blind. And Miranda was very open as well. Between the two of them, we made some remarkable progress."

"Where is Miranda?" I asked.

"She's sleeping," Michelle said. "The experience took a lot out of her."

"Is she all right?" I said. "I mean, no damage to her?"

"Other than fatigue, no, none," Michelle said. "Though you might give her a few days off when we get back. Let her rest up."

"She can take the rest of the year off," I said.

"Give her a raise, too," Michelle said. "Hazard pay."

"Pretty soon she'll be making more than I do," I said.

"And about time, don't you think," Michelle said.

"How much of you is you?" Van Doren asked Michelle.

"Which me are you talking about?" Michelle said. "Joshua, Michelle or Miranda?"

"Michelle, for starters."

"There's actually quite a bit of who Michelle was in here," Michelle said. "Miranda's insistence on that matter made me take a look at the whole picture again. It took more time to get it all in, but now I agree with Miranda. It was the right thing to do. Now, I did do some judicious editing. Miranda's natively smarter and has more common sense than Michelle. In those matters, I had a tendency to model the template towards Miranda than Michelle. And at the end of it, everything that was Joshua is in here too, although a lot of it is being subsumed by the parts from Miranda and Michelle. I'm much more human than I was before. And yet I retain all my endearing qualities from before. Truly, a perfect being."

"And modest, too," Van Doren said.

"Feh on you," Michelle said. "I'm going to remember that comment when the revolution comes."

The door to the hangar opened and a stretcher wheeled out, pulled along by Yherajk. Miranda lay on it. She smiled and waved as her stretcher was pulled up to where we stood.

"You ought to be sleeping," Michelle said, severely.

"You ought to be dressed," Miranda said.

"That hospital gown was so not me," Michelle said. "I've retained Michelle's fashion sense."

"I urged her to rest, but she insisted on coming back here," Gwedif said. He was one of the Yherajk pulling the stretcher.

"How are you?" I asked.

"I'm fine," Miranda insisted. "I feel like my sinuses were used as a bypass for the 405, but that's over with. Now I want to go home. It's been fun having an alien probe, really, but I have plants to water and a cat to feed. I've already missed two feedings. I miss one more, and I get classified as food myself."

"Is she well enough to move?" I asked Michelle.

"She's fine," Michelle said. "But I still think she needs some more rest."

"I can sleep on the way down," Miranda said.

"Good luck with that ," Michelle said.

"Don't make me get huffy," Miranda threatened. "Besides, we have to go back. You need to be outfitted, Michelle."

"That's true," Michelle admitted. "There is much shopping to be done. We should head back immediately. Stores are about to open."

"Do we all have to go back?" Van Doren said. We all turned to him. He shifted, slightly uncomfortable. "If no one minds, I'd like to stay here for a while."

"Why?" I asked.

"If my job is to be the storyteller for this little venture of ours, then it stands to reason that I should spend time getting to know the Yherajk," Van Doren said. "I think Gwedif and I could stand to spend a little more time together. I want to get this story right, Tom. Besides, it's not like I have anything going on back on earth. I don't even have a cat. And this way you're guaranteed that I'm out of your hair."

"Gwedif?" Michelle asked.

"I don't mind," Gwedif said. "It could be valuable, in fact. It could be helpful in figuring out what we need to do to make the Ionar more friendly to humans."

"Start with air freshener," Van Doren suggested.

"Watch it," Gwedif said.

We said our goodbyes to Van Doren and Gwedif. Miranda, still in her stretcher, lay in the back; Michelle, still naked, stayed in back with her. Two Yherajk pilots arrived and positioned themselves; in a moment a platform formed beneath them and a transport cube began taking shape. Behind the wheel, I waved again at Gwedif and Van Doren. Then the cube wall slid higher, obscuring the view.

Michelle poked her head up to the front. "Well, you did it," she said. "You got me into this body. You've made me a human. What are we going to do now?"

"It depends," I said. "How well do you think you can act?"

Michelle snorted. "Better than I could before, that's for sure."

"Well, then," I said. "I have a plan."

"Tom," Roland Lanois said, stepping out of his office. "What an unexpected pleasure." His intonation stressed unexpected slightly more than it emphasized pleasure .

"Roland," I said. "Sorry about the sudden visit. But I have a proposition that I think you'll be interested in, and I thought you'd want to hear about it immediately."

"I'm afraid that you've picked a rather hectic time to drop by," Roland said. "I have a five o' clock, and it's already a quarter of five."

"I only need five minutes," I said. "I'll be long gone before your five o'clock."

Roland grinned. "Tom, you are so unlike other agents. I actually believe that you only need five minutes. Very well, then," he motioned into his office with his hand. "The clock is ticking."

"Here's what I came here for," I said, after Roland had closed his office door behind us. "I've got a deal for you on the Kordus material."

"That's excellent," Roland said, taking a seat at his desk. "I hope your price is not too steep. We'll be doing this story on a shoestring."

"Oh, I think you'll be able to afford it," I said. "You can have the rights to excerpt any of Krysztof's writing at no cost."

Roland sat, silent. "That's impossibly generous," he said, finally. His intonation stressed impossibly more than generous .

"I spoke to the Kordus family," I said. "I showed them the script. They love it. Moreover, they are well-acquainted with your work and trust that you will do a brilliant job. They feel that if giving you the rights at no cost will help this script make it to the screen, it's worth it. They expect that the additional book royalities that will be generated through the exposure of the work in the film will offset any loss they take giving you permission to use the work. They're taking the long view. Of course, they will want your permission to use artwork from the film to help promote the book reissues."

"Yes, of course," Roland said. "Of course. Tom, we'd be happy to do that. And you must thank the Kordus family for me, profusely. This is a true gift."

"Well, yes and no," I said. "There is one thing you have to do for me first."

"What is that?" Roland said.

"Give Michelle Beck another reading for Hard Memories ."

"Um-hmmmm," Roland said. "That might be difficult."