THE PERFECT FAMILY

Katherine Sonso's foster family was not normal. The young teenager told them so
often. "Mo-ther! You are so bo-ring! This whole fa-mi-ly is bo-ring," she would
whine incessantly. "I hate being adopted. I'd never have chosen this family if
I had had a choice!"

        "What family do you want, then?" asked Mrs. Sonso calmly. She was used
to this argument, and its conclusion.

        "I want a family that is exciting! Exotic! A family that can provide a
wonderfully full and exciting teenagehood for me! I am so bored and it's all
your fault!" She took a deep breath and prepared for the finale. "I want a
life! I want adventure! I want my REAL family!" With that, Katherine tossed her
thin brown hair over her shoulder (which was her favorite
teenage-girl-and-proud-of-it gesture) and stormed outside, slamming the door
behind her.

        "Where is that daughter of ours going?" asked Mr. Sonso. He, like his
wife, had blonde hair and blue eyes, and dressed quite conservatively.

        "I'm sure she'll be back soon," said Mrs. Sonso, going upstairs to fix
cute little sandwichs with toothpicks in them for her husband.

        Katherine walked around the elementary school, which was deserted
because of the simple fact that it was summer vacation. She sat on a bench for
a while and brooded about how boring her life was. "I have a boring family,"
she told a chickadee that was hopping along looking for small pieces of bread.
It didn't seem to care about what she was saying, but she went on anyways.

        "My life is boring too. I have boring straight hair. I have boring
brown eyes. Not sprakling brown eyes or bouyant well-conditioned auburn hair.
Just boring, plain, simple.....I want DYNAMICS! I want people to notice me!"

        The chickadee looked at her some more and hopped a bit farther away.
She ignored this silent insult and went on. "My clothes are boring. My parents
refuse to buy any exciting clothes for me. My real parents would care! They'd
buy me cool clothes and take me to Europe and let me surf in Hawaii on the
weekends!"

        The chickadee was now completely uninterested (as opposed to mildly
interested that she might have a bit of bread stashed somewhere) and hopped
away rather fast. It must have feared that she was going to follow it, for soon 
after building up quite a good hopping speed, it thrust itself into the wind
and, with a flap of tiny wings, was gone.

        Katherine frowned. Stupid twit of a bird. Since there was no longer an
audience for her to burden with her greivances, she decided to go home. Maybe
her brother (fake-foster-brother, she reminded herself sternly) would be there,
and she could nag him until he called her a few names. Then she could accuse
him of being cruel to her because she was adopted, and start up a nasty fuss
about the whole thing, with the end result of a new dress for her (to assure
her that even though she was adopted, she was still loved) and a grounding for
him.

        She walked along the well-trodden path home, through the small forest
land bordering the school. But as she was about to turn the last corner and
find herself half a block from home, she saw something strange.

        It was a tree, but it had a sign on it. It was actually an ugly yellow
sign, but then, there had never been any signs on the trees in the mini-forest
to begin with anyways, yellow or otherwise. But enough about its color, or the
odd chance that she should happen to notice it. It had writing on it, and this
is what it said. NEED A LIFE? SEE US! SMITH'S CIRCUS OF TERRIBLY EXCITING
THINGS! 1 MILE EAST OF THIS SIGN. PART TIME HELP WANTED.

        Katherine didn't hesitate. She immediately started off in one
direction, then stopped, remembering that she didn't know which way north was.
She looked closer at the sign, and noticed a small compass in the upper corner.
She smiled, turned around, and began walking towards what had to be so much
more exciting than home. The sign dissolved into blue sparkle behind her, but
she didn't notice.

        She followed similar signs for a mile, and then she reached a small
clearing. Had she been a cautious child, she would have noted that the small
forest land had dimensions of only 15 feet by 15 feet, and she could no longer
see any landmark that should have been recognizable.

        But Katherine didn't notice the oddities of the clearing. A yellow sign
told her to sit, and she sat. "Where's the circus?" she asked no one in
particular.

        "Circus?" repeated the sign.

        She sort of stared at the sign for a few moments, letting her brain
tie itself into a few good knots before giving in to curiosity and answering.
"Blu--g?" Sure. Intelligent response, mocked her brain. The rest of her told it
to shut up. It did, with the result that her next few reponses were rather
boring.

        "I do believe you want to find the terribly exciting circus?" prodded
the sign.

        "Yeah..."

        "There isn't one."

        "What??"

        "There isn't one!"

        "WHAT?"

        "Listen," said the sign, exasperated, "do you know where you are?"

        Katherine looked around and found that she didn't. "No."

        "That's because you've never been here before. And you never will be
again, either."

        "What?"

        The sign came about as close as a sign can come to a sigh, which came
out as a sort of "hmm-phat!" Then it collected its rather impressive sign-wits
and continued, "My job was only to bring you here. I refuse to put up with any
more of your questions. You sound positively human!"

        "I am human!"

        "Whatever you say." The sign hummed exasparatedly. "It's all yours,
Grak." Then it dissolved into a mini-firework display of blue. Katherine
watched it in confusion, and then felt a tingling all over her body. She looked
at her hands. They seem to shimmer with little blue particles. Then they were
gone, and so was the rest of her, as if she nothing more than a talking sign.

        Katherine reappeared in a white place with smooth walls. It was quiet.
She saw a table, or a strange version of one. A small red placard said "Eat."
It was positioned beside a plate of what looked like a normal cheeseburger. She
hesitantly took a bite, and found it to be a rather bad imitation, tasting a
bit like sawdust would taste if you poured hamburger juice over it.

        She spit it out, and the placard changed. "Sorry." it read. She
regarded it suspiciously, just happy that it didn't talk to her. It changed
again. "Leave." As she puzzled over that, it changed again. "The." And again.
"Room."

        "Leave the room," she said out loud. "Yes" read the card. She walked
towards the wall, and a small panel about a foot higher and wider than she
disappeared to let her through. There was a big window opposite her, and when
she looked out it, there was Earth, looking very peaceful against the black
starfield. Rotating on its axis, as if nothing was wrong, not missing her at
all. She was, as she had suspected, in space.

        
        A small thing that looked like a hovering wastepaper basket whirred up
to her. In a voice like that of the sign, it said, "Follow me, Ka-ther-ine."
Deciding that any culture with enough spare time to build talking wastepaper
baskets had to have some awesome weapons, she co-operated, letting it lead her
through the well-lit white corridors and into a vast room. In it were three
chairs, two of which were not facing her. The third, which looked comfortable,
was unoccupied. "Sit in the chair, Ka-ther-ine," droned the mechanical
wastepaper basket, and it left.

        She slowly walked towars the chair, wondering if the other two were
occupied, or if they would be soon. When she got close enough, she took a good
look at all three chairs. Empty. She sat in the single one and waited. Its
contours fit her curves rather nicely, and she felt relaxed for a grand total
of tweleve seconds.

        Tweleve seconds after she sat down, blue sparkles began in the two free
chairs. Each set of sparkles danced around in the chairs until they formed the
outline of a form, then the rest of the features filled in quite fast, as if
poured into the frame, and suddenly, the two chairs were occupied.

        There was a male and a female. The woman had silver hair and the man's
hair was blue. They looked human- sort of. Katherine searched for something
defiant and bold to say. As her brain worked on this, her mouth blubbered,
"W-who are you?"

        "I am Zeeka," said the woman, "and this is Grak." The man nodded
respectfully.

        "Why did you take me from my home?" she asked. "What will you do with
me?"

        "Krethay," began Zeeka.

        "Katherine!" corrected the girl harshly.

        "Krethay," continued Zeeka, unphased, "we are your parents."

        "What???"

        "We left you on Earth- as is common in our society- to grow. We simply
beamed you outside an orphanage as an infant. On Earth, others would aid your
growth, and we would not have to be bothered with infantile needs. As it is
now, you no longer need constant attention, and you also have a full memory of
humanity that will prove useful to us."

        "Then I'm a-a-an alien spy?"

        "You are not an alien; you're one of us. A Takalan. It's those humans
who are aliens."

        Katherine suddenly found the contours of the chair uncomfortable and
alien. "You look so much like us...."

        "They look so much like us. We are humanoid, not Homo Sapiens. In a
decade, your hair and skin tone would have changed radically, and you would be
a freak. That is one reason we brought you back before you reached adulthood."

        "But I didn't want to go..."

        Grak laughed. "Of course you did! Your family down there was imperfect.
Boring, I believe you labeled them."

        "Yes," broke in Zeeka. "We Takalans also find humans most boring. With
us, your life shall be more....exciting."

        "I don't want excitement! I want my boring family! I want my home!"

        Zeeka broke in. "It is always this way. You shall grow accustomed to
your life with us. Soon, you will forget your human childhood; it is such a
short phase of your life. And besides, what is the life span down there? Sixty
years? Eighty? Maybe a hundred, for some. But with us, you shall live for four
hundred human years. I myself am 209, and your lovely mother is 207."

        "I don't want to live for four hundred years!" she said. " And Zeeka is
not my mother! I already have one!"

        "You have an alien mother down there, whom you will outlive four times
over," said Zeeka, not sounding hurt. "We take our children back before they
marry, or form close human bonds. Most develop an acceptable degree of maturity
sooner than you did, and we can take them that much quicker."

        "I am too mature!"

        Grak sighed. Sighes seemed to be universal, Katherine noted. "We will
speak no more of this, it is not necessary. Read up on who you are, and begin
learning." He handed her a small book-shaped thing. The buttons were labelled
in English, but beneath each letter there was another letter, a strange alien
one. There were also a few buttons with no English counterparts. Grak noticed
her confusion. " Our alphabet has more symbols- letters, you call them- than
yours."

        "That is another reason for us to let our children grow up on Earth, in
English-speaking countries. You shouldn't have much difficulty learning a
different alphabet, or at least not as much as you would have trying to
comprehend a completely alien system."

        That in itself seemed a contradiction to Sarah, but she meekly
examined the book-shaped thing. "It's a grizebo," he explained. "To you, the
equivilent of a computer (although much more advanced) programmed with
educational materials. Go now, and learn."

        "Go where?"

        "You have an assigned room as you did on Earth, Krethay, do not act
dense. Here is your transportation device; it will take you there." She flipped
a small blue circle at Katherine, who reflexively caught it. "Just press it.
Your personal robot will care for you further."

        "Personal robot?? But- that's not how parents are! They don't abandon
their children to learn on their own!"

        "You have much to learn, Krethay. Press the device and stop your
disobedience," said Grak, coldly. Katherine had no choice, and did.

        As the blue sparkles engulfed her, forcing her into a new, exciting
future, Katherine heard Zeeka grumble, "I'll be happy when she learns Takalish
so we can stop speaking this twisted English."

                                THE END
SAUCE00The Perfect FamilyEoanyaMiSTiGRiS20941015