Interstellar Affection

WHEN YOUR

SPIRITS CLIMB

- Four decades of short stories

For my family:
My wife Tanja, my inspiration,
My daughter Mara Sophie, my pride and joy,
My mother, who always knew how to tell a good story, and
My father, who was the best pal a boy could have.

FOREWORD

This anthology of short stories was born when I worked on a book called "A Canvas of Prosperity", which essentially comprised a few assorted works by my family: me, my mother, my father, my wife and my daughter. My thoughts all through the writing of the very modest paperback soon lingered on en route onto actually creating and assembling a few short stories in a controlled format. I had completed The Haunted Kingdom trilogy and started on a few novels, none of which were ready. The short story, appealing to me truly because it forces the writer to be clear and precise, was to be my next project.

I have always written stories. I have always told them. Maybe that is because I was always loved stories. All artists tell stories. The painter tries to capture a scene, be it in an abstract or traditional tale, in a painted format. The composer tries to paint pictures with tones and melodies, trying to convey a feeling of security that is mirrored proverbially within the feeling listener's ear. The most perfect of this encounter is in Mendelssohn's suite A Midsummer Night's Dream, where you hear the elves dancing in the merry pizzicatos and the donkey hee-hah in the forte of the strings and the horn.

Sculptors, dancers, painters, actors, singers, authors, conductors, directors, stage and costume designers: we all have something to say, because every human being at some point makes a creative choice. The eminent ethnologist and zoologist Desmond Morris once said that the most gray human being sooner or later has to face the situation of choosing a new tie and that choice is creative.

We are at heart spiritual beings. As such, we speak the language the spirit knows: art. In his famous book "Conversations with God" Neal Donald Walsh has written that the only assignment the soul has is to make people remember heaven and what we really are: eternal souls. Art is the language the soul loves. We are in fact all artists.

Now, Victor Hugo's 1500 page Les Miserables, a dragon of a book, will grip you. Reading it, however, takes endurance. Robert Sheckley's four page diamond Cosmic Itch is a boggling statement of warped dimensions that leaves you baffled precisely because it is so strong and so short. That is the beauty of the short story: the moment. Just as Ture Rangström wrote in his song The Only Moment: "Alone was I. She came alone. She passed me. She didn't wait, but wanted to. She didn't speak to me, but her eye spoke. A year passed. One memory chases the other, but one remains: the only moment."
The contained character of the short story can be looked at and accepted without the lengthy epic figure of the novel. It is a sketch as opposed to a large painting, a Monet's Water Lily and not a Rubens' Maria de Medici, maybe a Chopin scherzo as opposed to a Wagner opera. It is maybe even a Poe as opposed to a Hugo or a Tolstoy.

There is no long examination necessary. And so I had seen this compilation as a vehicle for variety in which I could display my knowledge of styles and characters: loners who fought themselves through outer space, haunted castles, crime scenes, rose gardens and stock markets. Then I looked at what my stories were. No matter how many genres I had endeavored to write in, I had missed one thing. My heroes were not loners. They were lovers. Lovers of art, lovers of individuals, but most of all they were lovers of life and of the heart. It became clear to me that this anthology of short stories were about relationships, amorous as well as amicable. It is also a dedication as to how important any kind of inner relationship between two people or a person and a situation as such is to the development of the human soul. This in spite of how different we are, how different we think, how fascinating woman is, not only in body, but in soul.

My dad was an author and my mom told me bed time stories. For a reference to these tales leaf through my three children's tales. I owe my parents gratitude. This compilation entails four decades of stories. They are original ideas recalibrated. The earliest dates back to 1973 and comprises the ideas of my mother Gun Kronzell. The latest is my science-fiction romance "Interstellar Connection" from 2010.

There are horror stories and sci-fi - psychology mixture, but the element of relationships or lack thereof is a common theme in all. When I draw, I always tell my daughter: Papa is not a painter, but Papa tries to paint other kinds of portraits and so this is a portrait of a different kind: an attempt to portray the spiritual woman in any being, Jung's anima, from various angles and how she, as Gershwin said in the song "Shall we dance?", makes your spirits climb.

Charles E.J. Moulton, June 9th 2010
Gelsenkirchen, Germany in Europe, the World, the Universe
THE PRAYING LARK

This short story was written in 2010. Basically, it is a tale about the spiritual paths that two people travel in the course of a relationship. How unwelcome a guest the unexpected event ever is.
This is something we are reminded of in this tale.
The title of the story refers to the opening lines of the film "The Sound of Music" and is a dedication to the inner sparkle that signifies true love and the fact that real love never ever really dies.
It is the tender gift of a true soul. It is the one attribute we already have within us, but also what the soul needs to feel within the tender kiss of another human spirit.
The memory of true love is never ever really forgotten, no matter how long the lovers are apart.

FROM CHARMIAN'S POINT OF VIEW:

When my father first saw the premiere of the film The Sound of Music in New York City at its' release date May 2, 1965 he was, in his own description, flabbergasted.
He was so impressed that he named his daughter after the oldest, and prettiest, daughter in the movie: a girl named Liesl played by a former model and dancer named Charmian Carr. I thought her performances were quite fine in the movie, but my resemblance to the actress was not as extraordinary as my father always said. I turned out to look like nothing like her. People say I am pretty and I suppose so, but as she is brown haired and brown eyed I am blond and blue eyed.
No matter. My dad did the tour of the filming locations in Salzburg shortly before I was born on September 8, 1969 and then kept singing the songs from the show to me all through my childhood.

One thing he told me stuck in my mind forever, especially the years after he died. The thing that made him love the movie most was a necklace. Well, not really, but it was a lyric that Julie Andrew sang in the first song in the film: To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray. This lyric made him buy a beautiful necklace for me as a baby girl: a silver medallion with the picture of a lark flying away, spreading its' wings, its' beak open and it eyes beaming. It was a small thing and exquisitely fabricated. For my father this was The Praying Lark necklace.
It was invaluable to me.
The fate of this necklace is what this story is about.
I wore it as a baby girl all the time. Through Kindergarten onto school I wore it. We got a bigger chain for it when I was seven and twelve and eighteen, to fit my height. I graduated from Montpelier High School in Vermont with it around my neck.

I had always been interested in buildings. Drawing elaborate schematics of large complexes as a child, I soon knew what it was that I wanted to become: an architect. The necklace helped me here, too.
My parents had enough money, so they sent me to what they felt was a good college: Northwestern University. I decided to work toward a bachelor's, or maybe even a master's degree, in architecture and to minor in drama. My necklace was around my neck at all times.
It was in the drama courses that I met my future boyfriend: Robert Young. He noticed my beautiful necklace and we spoke at length about my father's love for the musical The Sound of Music and he told me about his great admiration for the rock 'n roll legend Buddy Holly and Robert's favorite song 'Everyday'.
The song was very simple, but what occurred to me was that it was especially well written with simple, and almost bar non, percussion with a very sweet celesta accompaniment.
It became our song.

FROM ROBERT'S POINT OF VIEW:

I had always wanted to become an actor.
Ever since I saw Star Wars in the cinema I wanted to become an actor and be just as famous as Luke Skywalker.
I met Charmian when we studied drama together at the Northwestern University in 1988 and she supported me in my dream.
We were both fresh out of high school and acted that way.
Be that as it may, I was flabbergasted by her. That word was also used by her father to describe his feelings for the film The Sound of Music. I saw the film and think I liked it as well, but only because I saw the world through the pink sunglasses of being desperate in love with a gorgeous lady. Charmian gob smacked me.

We couldn't keep our hands off each other. I think we spent equivalent periods studying and making love.
What I found so marvelous was the conversation.
Most of the time, we talked about music and movies. She was extremely well educated and I think it was due to her parents being lawyers and art fans and simply marvelously cultural people.
The years of studying drama and linguistics during the daytime and studying Charmian at night was unbelievable. I was rehearsing half the time and trying to cope with a swollen crotch the other half.

Charmian was marvelous. She was a ball of flames.
My parents had never been great fans of me becoming an actor. They were very conservative bookkeepers from Glen Ellyn, Illinois and wanted me to become a banker.
When a future architect named Charmian met them and told them that I was a fantastic they changed their minds. Not only did she look like a mixture between Michelle Pfeiffer and Sharon Stone, she also had the brains of a rocket scientist.
Too good to be true?
For the time being, maybe.

FROM CHARMIAN'S POINT OF VIEW:

We graduated from college simultaneously in 1994.
The day of our graduation I gave him my necklace with the lark, something I had worn since I was two. He wears it to this day.
As he received a degree in drama with a minor in linguistics, I had the official right to call myself an architect by profession. To celebrate our happiness we bought the 1952 Revival Cast recording of Gershwin's Of Thee I Sing. We danced in the bedroom until we dropped onto the bed, drunk with 1994 Long Island Sweet Scarlet Red. Then we made love to the soothing sounds of Michael Feinstein. We stayed in Chicago for a while and kept on teaching and doing odd jobs, waiting tables, going to the art institute, feeling sorry for the cubs and living on Chicago-stuffed pizza and fudge.

I started out looking like Cindy Crawford in 1988. In 1995 I had become Anna Nicole Smith. Robert, whom everyone called Buddy by now due to his idol, loved it. It always made him want to 'do it doggy-style' to put it bluntly. It gave the whole thing a wobbly fascination. I was very happy to be so lusted after by my man, but the way he sometimes looked at me before sex was like becoming a steak.

In the beginning of the harsh winter storm of February 1996, I received word from New York City's top architectural firm William Rawn that they wanted me as an associate.
It was hard to arrange a move to the Big Apple while 2500 workers worked 12 hours to clean up thirty inches of snow, but in the beginning of March that year we had moved into a modern and elegant Manhattan flat. Robert, I still called him that, managed to get some Off-Broadway gigs like Floyd Collins and I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, so we felt like royalty. Soon, Robert said, Hollywood would call and I would design a new home for us in Beverly Hills and we would become, as he put it, "filthy, stinking rich". I responded that we already were filthy, so half of the fun was won. He agreed with me there and so we kept working even harder to achieve our most precious goals.

Everything changed in 1997.
I had work up to my ears and I could've supported both of us with my huge salary. Robert had auditions all the time, on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, for repertory companies. Even high school plays were not off limits to my hunky hubbie. When he didn't audition, he worked on a monologue or taught English or waited tables part-time.
No acting or singing job emerged. Nothing. Even his old pals from the Off-Broadway circuit were telling him he wasn't "the type".
Robert started drinking as a result of this misfortune and because if this we saw almost nothing of each other. My company gave me so much work that Robert claimed there was another chick with big boobs living in his apartment and he didn't know who she was.
He meant me.

FROM ROBERT'S POINT OF VIEW:

I felt like I was in an express train that was speeding up and there was no way in stopping it. To celebrate our graduation in 1994, Charmian and I had seen the film Speed before going to the most famous pizzeria in town: Giordano's.
Three years later I felt like Keanu Reeves, only now there was no way out of the bus. There was no Sandra Bullock there to help me, she was working 24 hours a day and she hated my guts.

Still, Charmian trusted me a little bit. All of her trust in me hadn't gone to smithereens. I had always been an honest guy. We had been a couple now for almost a decade and not once had I abused her or lied to her. I had access to her accounts, in fact we had a mutual account at the Bank of America.
When she was away, I went to the 40th and 59th Streets, with Midtown East edging out the West Side at 25-26 and spent her money on hookers and booze.
She had no reason to doubt me, I had always been a very hardworking guy, so I had all the free rides I needed. She rarely checked her accounts and after about three months I had embezzled about three thousand dollars and was constantly drunk. That is not a joke. I was even drunk when I was asleep. I even dreamt about being drunk.

The problem was that I scared away absolutely everyone.
No one wanted to work with me.
Not even the hookers liked me.
The big crash came when Charmian found out what I was doing.

FROM CHARMIAN'S POINT OF VIEW:

I hate to say it, but Robert, the sweetest and most tender fellow I knew, had become an asshole. I know I was working a great deal, but I figured that it would eventually cool down and I could take some time off. After all, Robert could live well on my expense.
What I didn't know was that not working was big problem for him. He had always worked. Always. His parents had made him sell tickets, deliver mail, take out the trash, do the kitchen and work on the farm. His labor ethics were harsh. He had worked hard all of his life.

Being dependent on me and not having work was a serious blow to his manhood. He became an alcoholic and a womanizer and started abusing me verbally. He had no control over his senses.
My reaction when I found out about his womanizing is something I think I have blocked out. I only know that I screamed at him to cut off his cock before I did.
I told him Lorena Bobbitt had been right.
He told me that I was a control freak and that my tits were now the size of mountains. We threw things at each other. He said that I was a stupid bitch for not using my influence to give him a job. I told him that I had introduced him eleven times to my boss and he had fucked it up every time.

I had wanted to marry him.
After that day, the possibility of marriage was an illusion.
I tried to get him back on his feet. I sent him to rehab, I sent him to sexual abstinence courses, I even told him I would take a prolonged vacation from the company. Nothing helped.
He practically drove me away.
In the Indian summer of 1997, after repeated tries to help him, I gave up. William Rawn had offered me a position as a top architect in L.A. and I took it. I made sure that Robert had enough money and I even gave him a job as a clerk in our firm.
I made sure he could live in a decent, high quality flat from the money he earned. I told him that he could go fuck himself, but that I would always be there for him financially.
We broke up on my birthday.
When I saw him again nine years later he had been living on the streets for three years.

FROM ROBERT'S POINT OF VIEW:

Once Charmian left me, I couldn't cope at all.
I was confused, although I really tried to maintain my discipline.
I worked on monologues and took singing lessons, but often when I auditioned I got polite laughter. Old friends of mine would stare at me as if had cancer.
The job that Charmian had given me was boring but good and I managed to hold on to it for a bit.
I called Charmian every day. The last time I spoke to her before the millennium she said she was seeing someone else and that I should stop calling her forever.
She changed her phone number and after that there was no way I could reach her. I tried her office, but they always told me that she was now working in San Francisco. Both of my parents died that year in a car accident and that meant that I had virtually no one at all that cared about me.
I kept on drinking and calling escort girls until I lost my job in 2001. After that I was on welfare for two years until I lost everything.

FROM CHARMIAN'S POINT OF VIEW:

Robert didn't know, but I had cried myself to sleep for years after we broke up. I had lost my soulmate.
The lark never disappeared from my mind. Robert still wore it when we parted and I have no idea how I could have forgotten to take it with me. It was my good luck charm and now it was gone.
I was desperate to get over Robert, so I quickly dated all the guys I knew. I lost weight and after sleeping around more than I should've, I met my future husband Sam, a selfish snob.

We married in 1999 and had our honeymoon in Paris exactly when Y2K hit the fan, our baby daughter was born in 2000 and we divorced in 2005. It was an ugly divorce and I had probably been a bitch, but I got the custody of Tiffany Amber Jensen, my baby girl.
I hated myself and I hoped Robert was doing well.
He had betrayed me unlike anyone had betrayed me before.
I wanted to have nothing to do with him, but I still loved him.
I was very confused.
Sam remarried three months after our divorce.
I couldn't stand it anymore.
I had to find Robert at all costs.

I asked to be relocated back to New York and the company managed to fulfill my wish. I must've been a boring colleague back in 2005. I spent all my time brooding and searching New York for Robert. I did lots of fun things with Tiffany, but kept on searching for Robert. The more I searched, the more desperate I became.
He had disappeared completely.
No one knew where he was.
He had been gone since 2003.

FROM ROBERT'S POINT OF VIEW:

Losing Charmian was one thing.
I had no pride, no woman, no self control, no success.
Being bad at my job was another entirely. Everyone knew I was an alcoholic and they let me keep my job as a salesclerk in some remote part of the firm as a service to someone far away by now.
When I lost my job in 2001, it was because I had apparently touched a young woman's behind.
I was leading her into an elevator and wanted to help her find the way, but this is America, remember? We invented pornography, but we are not clean enough to admit it.

Soon I was on welfare. My flat was way too expensive for me.
I moved to Brooklyn.
Then, as my money run out, I moved to Queens.
My last flat was in the Bronx.
After that I got thrown out of my flat onto a pile of shit, literally.
The only thing I had left were the clothes on my back, a cassette tape of Buddy Holly's song Everyday, an ancient tape recorder and a picture of Charmian. I became one of the 25 000 people in New York City that were homeless. I begged, rummaged garbage and often slept in Sylvia's Place, a shelter that provided dry room for poor people.

I stank, seldom washed, drank whiskey and had my home under a bridge in Manhattan.
Oh, yes. I bought batteries for my recorder. Every night I listened to the song Everyday and kissed Charmian and my lark medallion good night.
She never answered me. Neither did the necklace.
I knew she probably missed the necklace, where ever she was.
I don't think she missed me.
By the time nobody knew that my name was Robert Young anymore because everyone called me Buddy, the picture of my ex-girlfriend was yellow with age and bleak from the sun.
I had lost a tooth and had forgotten that I had been an actor in an earlier life. People avoided me. I knew what that was like.
I would've avoided me, too.

FROM CHARMIAN'S POINT OF VIEW:

I was getting desperate.
What could've happened to Robert?
Had he moved abroad?
Was he in another city?
I contacted the authorities in my search for Robert Young and realized that he had lost his job in 2001 and apparently moved two times before running out of money in 2003.
I began to understand that he probably was right here in New York City, that he had never left and that I was probably responsible for this bullshit.
In 2006, I was heading the same way as Robert.

I was doing my job, but just about.
Most of the time I took poor Tiffany early out of Kindergarten or school in order to look for someone I had heard looked like Robert.
I had marched into the Bronx in my fur coat so many times and asked for someone wearing a medallion with a lark that I thought of changing my name into Evita Peron or marrying an Argentinean dictator. I had become obsessed.
I had gotten mugged five times in 2006 and even gave money once to someone just to save time.
My colleagues thought I was nuts.
I did, too.
Finally, on a cold winter's day in November 2006, I gave up.

I was a single, rich mother living on Fifth Avenue and I did something my colleagues seldom do: Tiffany and I rented Bambi and ordered two pan pizzas and two cold large Ben and Jerry's.
Get drunk and fat, eat the rich, stuff the poor and bugger the world. I want to forget the pain.
Robert, I miss you.
The lark? Did I miss the lark? I had forgotten about the lark.
I got drunk that night and decided to go shopping on Broadway and maybe catch a Disney flick with Tiffany
I tried to forget Robert.
That is when fate kicked in.

FROM ROBERT'S POINT OF VIEW:

I don't know what made me go to Broadway that day.
Usually, an organization originally created for the gay homeless people called Sylvia's Place was okay for a rest. Hell's Kitchen, the subways or the parks were good places to find some cash. I would search the fast food joint garbage cans for a half eaten burger and chase away some mouse and fight a bug for some lunch.
I had gotten some money that day.
Normally, I would be able to beg myself to a half decent meal.
There were days when no one would give me anything.
That day I had twenty dollars in my pocket.
So, I had no reason to walk all the way down to Broadway.
I didn't care about anything. I just wanted to eat.

I was in a daze. Some burger chef had thrown me out and refused to give me anything.
I had finally managed to buy myself a meal in a fast food joint and I was pretty full and happy for once. I had bought a beer and was walking down the avenues until I found myself in front of theaters where I had auditioned. Winter Garden presents Mamma Mia!, Minskoff presents The Lion King.
I laughed at the horse crap they called the industry.
There was a small shop on Broadway that sold jewelry and I don't know why I stopped there. I took a look at the gold and silver in the window and sneered. What good was that shit?

A woman stopped next to me. I just realized that she smelled fantastic. I felt like grabbing her stupid fur coat and pouring my beer all over it. It was cold, so instead I just huddled up inside my coat and pulled my gloves tight around my knuckles.
Normally, a woman standing in front of a window next to me would've walked away and not come back. This chick even had a little girl with her. I didn't know who these people were. I just know that the girl must've been six or seven.
I didn't look at them at all. I just saw them from the corner of my eye. Her fur coat, her pink nail polish and her long, black boots resembled someone I had once known.
The little girl, who must've been her daughter, whined and asked her mommy if they could leave.

Then, as if on a given signal, we both turned toward each other. I thought I would head back the other way away from this bullshit and she wanted to go the opposite way away from Times Square.
Suddenly, we were facing each other and the little girl was looking up at me as if I was a bug. What was more astounding was that the woman was looking at me as if I was Jesus.
She took a long look at my necklace. I had almost forgotten that it was there. She made a whimpering sound and a tear rolled down her cheek. She bit her lip and the upper lip, that made her look like Michelle Pfeiffer, trembled.
"Robert," she said. "Robert!"
I realized that the woman I was looking at was the woman I loved and kissed good night every evening on a yellowed picture from 1993. I gasped.
"Charmian," I answered. "Charmian."

FROM CHARMIAN'S POINT OF VIEW:

The situation was so unbelievable that I was expecting Spielberg to shout "Cut!" and then add, cynically: "This is too corny even for me!" But there was no director, no Best Boy or Worst Boy, there was no Gaffer and no technician laying out cables.
Here he was, the man that I had spent over a year searching for.
I couldn't recognize him at first, but I did recognize him once I saw the necklace. It hung there just like it had ever since I gave it to him back in 1994, twelve years ago. Memories came flooding back. I first thought it was a copy of the same necklace, but then remembered that my dad had custom made it by engraving my initials on the front under the lark: C.M. for Charmian Malone.

I saw that and then realized that it was the very same necklace I had lost.
I then thought about how the fuck this bum could've gotten a hold of the lark. He had probably killed poor Robert and then taken it along with his money. It was as if I had looked for Robert and never believed that I would ever find him.
The guardian angels always listen to prayers, even if you don't believe in them.
Tiffany was pulling my hand all along and telling me to come with her, but eventually she stopped pulling my fingers when she saw me look deep into this man's eyes. His eyes looked like Robert's. His mouth looked like Robert's.
Robert had always worn a clean shave, unless it was needed for him to grow a beard for some role.

This man had an untidy beard and a tooth was missing. He stank of alcohol, garbage and sweat.
We must've been a very strange sight standing there meters away from the Minskoff Theater in the heart of Times Square. Me, the elegant architect in pink nails and a fake fur and stiletto boots and him, the toothless bum.
It was so strange, because just as I recognized who he was someone played the 1952 revival recording of Gershwin's Of Thee I Sing, a recording we had liked and other people hated.

We started exchanging looks and remarks, as if we slowly felt our way back to where we had once been, and once we realized what had happened to us it was like traveling back in time and meeting ourselves. I told him about my daughter and about Sam and how miserable I had been. Tears were in my eyes for a full half hour and finally Robert said that Tiffany should sit down somewhere and have a bite to eat. Still, Tiffany had refused to shake Robert's hand.
I thought it was sweet of him to think of Tiffany when he had hit bottom like he had. We went to Sbarro's on 49th and Broadway.
We got many dirty looks when we ordered four slices of Pizza Sausage and even someone who shouted at me if I thought I was Mother Teresa.

I gave Tiffany a small copy of Alice in Wonderland and let her draw some pictures in her Winnie the Pooh coloring book. She had a pizza as she intently listened to Robert tell us about his horrible fate. He told us how he had lost his job and lost then everything. He told us about losing his tooth in a fight with a gangster down in China Town, he told us about garbage cans and police officers and sleeping under bridges. He told me that he had kissed my picture good night every evening before going to sleep under the bridge.
After eating six slices of pizza and drinking four cokes, he told me that he had been miserable ever since I left him.
I wanted to admit that I had married Samuel Jensen only to forget about Robert. I couldn't do that in front of Tiffany. I did however say that when I understood that I the best thing to come out of the marriage was Tiffany, that had made me go back to New York City to look for someone I knew could be a better father than Sam.
It was obvious that we couldn't leave each other again.
We had to get back together at all costs, but he had to promise me to shape up.

FROM ROBERT'S POINT OF VIEW:

Meeting Charmian again was like seeing God and having him tell me that I could get a second chance if I played my cards right.
Tiffany didn't particularly like me, but I would not have expected that. I was just happy to see Charmian again.
I must've looked like a pig.
Charmian cried and cried and I cried and Tiffany thought we were nuts. Maybe she was just sad that her mom was in tears.
She understood what was happening pretty soon and then she cried and laughed, too.
I ate more that evening than I had in three years.
We told each other everything and she excused herself for being such a bitch, but I said that I had been a bad boy, too.

It was close to evening when we walked out of Sbarro's.
She ran into The Gap and got me some fresh clothes.
As I waited outside the store, I almost thought that she would disappear and I would never see her again. But she did appear a half an hour later, after I had almost been thrown away from the sidewalk by some guard.
I thought of a lyric from Porgy and Bess:
"Lonely boy, you have come out of the storm!"
Charmian had so many clothes with her that I thought she was going to open a flea market.
She told me that she would take me to her flat, but I said that her company car would forever smell of shit. She laughed and said she didn't care about the stupid car. She had found the love of her life again. So, I stepped into the car and a new part of my life began.
I was not homeless anymore.

FROM CHARMIAN'S POINT OF VIEW:

I thought I was crazy.
Maybe Robert had turned into a raving maniac in his years on the streets, but somehow I knew that I was doing the right thing.
The doorman in my Fifth Avenue building thought I had gone bananas, but I didn't give a shit.
I told him that this man was my long time lover and we laughed at that all the way up to the top floor.
Tiffany was now laughing as well.
She had a new dad, after Samuel had turned into an egomaniac.
Somehow, she knew that this was a great thing. After all, she had heard so much about this man that I called the love of my life.

We spent the evening washing Robert, shaving him with my razors and foam from the shampoo I washed his hair with.
I did have to clean the car, though.
The old clothes went into the trash in a second and I think I spent ten minutes washing my hands after throwing away the bag. I told Robert that he need not go back to his shelter to fetch the picture of me, he had the real thing now. I sent him to the dentist to fix his teeth and it was a big job, believe you me. Five appointments later his teeth were fixed and I was thousands of dollars poorer.
I always told him that if he started drinking again, I would kick him out again. He promised he wouldn't drink or cheat on me again.
I believed him.

FROM ROBERT'S POINT OF VIEW:

The hard part was getting me back into the infrastructure of society. No one wanted to hire me or have anything to do with me, but I was determined to make it.
I started singing again and practiced my acting skills.
Finally, I did get a job waiting tables at Charlie's Steak House.
I auditioned again and nothing came in, but it didn't matter. I sang at parties and had a part-time job as a singing telegram.
It was way better than where I had been.
God had given me a second chance.

FROM CHARMIAN'S POINT OF VIEW:

When I told my parents about finding the lark again, he immediately flew to New York with mommy and invited us to the Ritz. I knew he didn't have that kind of money, but he was so happy that he cried and laughed at the same time.
I had not seen him do that since I was twelve.
Robert and I married on my birthday.
It seemed like a nice gesture that would celebrate our love, because we had broken up on my birthday ten years before.
We were creating new memories.
We had my parents stay in our penthouse and take care of Tiffany, drive her to school and what not while Robert and I flew to Hawaii for our three week honeymoon.
My father left New York City happy and died in his sleep in Vermont a week later. On the funeral, Robert sang two songs: Buddy Holly's 'Everyday' and Richard Rodgers' 'The Sound of Music'.

FROM ROBERT'S POINT OF VIEW:

I finally have a great gig.
After working out like crazy and doing small shows for three years I finally have a Broadway gig. I am hired for the Ensemble of the musical Chicago. The fact that I am covering the role of Billy Flynn is a good thing and I think the press is rather interested in the fact that I was a bum for three years. It is a kind of Cinderella thing, I believe. It has taken a long time for me to shape up, but I believe that I have shaped up now.
Charmian and I put together this little booklet of our story and we will lay it in a drawer and have our grandkids read it.
Tiffany is coming home. Gotta go.

FROM CHARMIAN'S POINT OF VIEW:

A footnote from me. Three good things.
Now, 2010, after three years of trying to have Robert's child, I am finally pregnant. I will be 41 when our baby is born, but I will take care of myself and all will be well.
Robert is still wearing my Praying Lark necklace and he probably always will. That little bird has been through a lot.
Second thing, somebody called Sy Roth called from San Marino. Robert wrote him because he thought that it might be a nice chance to have some contacts over there. Now the agent wants to see a performance of Robert's first cast Billy Flynn when he comes over to meet another client.
Third thing, some people from the press have expressed an interest in our story and want to turn it into a book. Maybe there is charity work in there, maybe something can be done.

The praying lark has been through a lot. I emphasize that again.
Our luck has changed ever since we are back together.
Sam doesn't call, but Tiffany has a new dad and soon a sibling.
May the lark and I and Robert and Tiffany never part again.
We should count ourselves lucky. There are still 25 000 homeless people in our city. May God help them.
Not everyone is as lucky as we were.
This story should prove to everyone that people are first and foremost human beings and souls, whether they are famous celebrities or homeless folks. It doesn't matter if you are famous, as long as you have someone who loves you.

INTERSTELLAR AFFECTION

There are three cinematic influences here: George Lucas, Gene Roddenberry and David Lynch. Take a cup of all three, add a helping of fantasy, a pinch of sex, a milligram of new age, a strong dose of philosophy and tablespoon of flower power and you have a tale of interstellar love.
This is a road of self discovery for our hero. The main character took over the story himself and decided his own fate, regardless of what synopsis I had worked out in advance.
Fasten your seat belts. You are going to travel far into the future.

The view over Lake Aldrin had always amazed me. The way planet Earth set over the lake was an amazing sight. Of course, I was a lucky man. I had been hired as the star chef of Hyperspace Home Resort Newton for three years now and they had done everything to provide the best of an easy life for me.
I lived in a big house with seven rooms, a library, a pool, a music room and a Holo Vision Chamber™. When I sat in that custom-made chair I had to think of how far we humans had come in the matters of technology. We were now traveling past light speed, communing with aliens, living on the moon and now this, too, was a reality: a chair whose armrests catapulted and transmitted a light that transformed your room into the film you were seeing. You not only saw the film, you were in it.
There were the normal machines available for the normal customer. Occasionally, the holographic film emanating from the chair's armrests would get interference from the room's furniture.

The room in my house had been specifically designed by Margin Electronics Corporations. This meant that I was actually moving around in the arena when Charlton Heston raced his rival. I could actually see the film from different angles and join in when the ancient pop icon Madonna dropped wax on Willem Dafoe. Watching movies like Star Wars was real fun, except for the guns. They stung a bit.
My friends always asked me why I looked at these ancient movies and not the newer ones that had more effects. I always answered that I found the older movies better. My favorite series was Star Trek and I always compared the series to my reality.
I could, of course, only watch movies in my free time.

I spent six days a week in the Home Resort, a 28th century hotel that accommodated its' various lodgings to the living environment of the guests origins. My job was to design the replicated meals that rotated on a weekly basis. In addition to that, I was assigned to cook the fresh food for a number of species who, for religious or traditional reasons, refused to take part in a replicated banquet.
I had a team of a thousand individuals from forty different worlds working for me. We had guests from the entire galaxy here. The thousand light years distant warrior tribe, a clan named the Fhrmixyi, often chose the rustic environment with rocks and weapons hanging along the walls. The intellectual tribe Jwijkegy Nenheueh spent most of their time in meditation. The merchants Zuehszheoeb from close to Proxima Centauri were odd creatures that spent most of their time trying to fool somebody out of something worth something.

All in all, we had about three hundred species coming to our custom-made world. They were designed to fit the diverse needs of the places they entailed.
There were spider worlds and worlds that had bubble tissue as beds, there were eight legged shoe polishers and four-holed toiletries and miniature vans filled with crayfish that could be used as cosmetics.
With the money I earned I had bought my house in cash in five installments for 200 000 federal units. My Space Wagon took me early every morning past the terra forming cubes onto Plaza Einstein where I worked. The building was huge and its' two hundred stories housed twenty thousand rooms, each one equipped with a virtual butler and a hostess that could perform three thousand functions.

I lived alone in my house by Lake Aldrin and my love for erotic stimulation was renowned. I had my diverse array of holographic girls come each night after work. There were black haired goddesses with four breasts from Numia beyond Andromeda and there were human blondes with seductive genius, there were purple headed twins from the colonies of Titan and hybrids from the ocean with four clitoris.
It was a dangerous pastime, because it was all virtual and I looked for no mate.
I had all the mates I wanted in my machine. I thought.
It all changed the day we had guest from a planet around the Alpha Centauri system. A very elegant and tall species from a planet called Centaurinea came to hold a conference in our hotel. I knew that rich tourists took the ACTOR ship to the system to experience this very pretty world with its blue colored people and oceans of deep thought. The men were well built and had bright, long faces and the women had shiny black hair mostly down to their knees arranged in spectacular ways to attract their men. Equality was the name of the game and this fascinated me.

ACTOR stood for Alpha Centauri Traveling and Organizational Rocket and this ship traveled a weeklong toward the system by way of the famous ocular fusion technique that made it possible to travel to before unknown speeds. On the tip of the rocket's cockpit, where the pilots sat, there was a beam that functioned like an eye that foresaw a traveling distance of several light years and made the ship travel on this beam.
The individuals that came to our Home Resort were elegant people and wanted personal service from me. I quickly realized that they were keen on learning from us what kind of beings we were. Diplomats and politicians, they would talk until the interstellar morn about new breakthroughs in their squeak and click tongue.
One lady really fascinated me. She was a stunning girl named Wih-Meh-Wih, a chick with very lively eyes and we soon began flirting heavily with each other. It was usually my policy never to mix with the guests, but this time I was invited to be there. Because of tourism, this girl had learned to speak six or seven human languages and so I could speak to her in mine.

Soon enough, we were asking the council if she could join me in the house for a late drink and the sovereign said yes.
What began as a very sweet seductive chat by the lake, ended as a frenetic, sexual dance with this lady that had two vaginas and six C-Cup breasts. I was in awe and we had sex every night of that month. I soon discovered that she had seventy erogenous zones which made her sensitivity enormous. She sang very high tones during sex and her having two openings made the possibilities almost endless.
When she left, she pleaded for me to come to her world and I quickly agreed. I was the boss of my department and I was going to take leave as soon as the big boss of the resort said yes.
Her father, the sovereign, gave me a plaque at the end of their trip. It said: To Quigley Oacum, the best chef in the galaxy, with the best of thanks for brilliant service. Then they had written in their letters the same sentence again. It was a silver plaque gold studded with rubies in a white frame so it looked quite fantastic.

I cried when I received it, because they had grown quite attached to me and I really loved them. The sovereign was the king and the Wih-Meh-Wih was the princess and his daughter.
Both my alien girl and I were madly in love with each other and really wanted to see one another again. They flew home and soon enough I was planning a trip to Alpha Centauri.
I stopped using my holographic girls entirely and studied the language that I was about to speak on the planet. The country that I was about to travel to was the country of Huewhaohr on Centurinea and I really looked forward to practicing my Centurinean.
When my vacation finally came a good six months later I wondered if my girl would remember me. I'd told the manager that I would be gone six weeks, leaving me four weeks in Huewhaohr and two weeks on the luxury ship with four decks of pleasure.

I spent a week eating and drinking and watching holographic movies. There was a theater with real actors on board and that was fascinating. I saw them perform a play from the 20th century. Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was being performed by a troop of actors that found themselves being hailed as the new Hollywood legends. The two main actors looked like the original film actors Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman.
Were they holographic?
No, they actually seemed real.
Anyway, I arrived in the capital of Lhdzgelij in the country of Huewhaohr and soon began to ask for the Princess Wih-Meh-Wih. I was soon told where the castle was and realized that I could take the virtual train to the palace. It was an under and over ground system of something called a Ray Transfer, where you sat in small light bubbles and it took me past buildings that hovered in the air above large harbors and buildings that looked like multiple pyramids

The royal palace was huge and looked very different from anything I had seen before. Black and yellow towers revealed white and gold balls on their pinnacles with many red windows. Then there were fifty or more pyramids that all connected with each other. At the other end there was a huge crane-looking thing that housed some sort holographic belt of bubbles from which diverse lights were emanating. It was a spectacular sight against the canvas of this strange dusk of purple and orange lights from their suns. It was very strange to see, but apparently the sky produced some sort of Aurora Borealis with weird wavy belts of dancing luminosity.

A blue and green holographic guard with four tusks, a brown uniform and a gigantic sword hanging from his belt appeared and soon asked me what I wanted. I told him in his language that I was a personal friend of the Princess Wih-Meh-Wih and wanted to see her. The guard told me that he did not know who I was and that he could not let me in unless he knew what my name was and from where I had come. I had come a long way to see the princess, I told him. He looked at me as if I had just stolen his sword.
The gate onto the garden before the palace was huge and the flowers seemed to be communicating with each other. They were waving their leaves and swaying to-and-fro. The flowers looked like a mixture between meat eating plants and roses. He watched me gaze at these flowers and slanted his four eyes and gave me a big smile looking through the pink rubber gate with an evil grin.

"Ijwoujw gesjsjhw, jejkeoisy ehehshsuzzh mmrer" he mused in his very husky bass baritone.
He had told me not to go to close to those flowers.
They ate strangers.
He nodded a few times and then said that he would ask the princess if she knew me. What was my name? I told him it was Quigley Oacum and that we had met on planet Earth's moon six months ago and she had requested me to come. I had asked for a vacation in order to come and we had fallen madly in love.
He interrupted me rudely.
"Mwsojeoueksk, jej!"
His voice now sounded hoarser than ever and his two and half meters seemed a little too evil. He had told me to shut up and called me a dummy. He picked up a small machine that was the size of a toenail. Out of it he pulled a long antenna. He spoke into the top of the antenna and waited for an answer.

Soon enough, I heard something that very much resembled Wih-Meh-Wih's voice and she laughed happily when hearing that I had come. After a few seconds she appeared in a holographic projection. She took one look at me and told the guard to ray me up.
He swung his head three times back and forth, which obviously was his version of bowing. The gates opened and Wih-Meh-Wih disappeared. Soon enough, a very strong and green light appeared out of the antenna surrounded me until I was in the light. I heard a very loud click and the light disappeared. Now I was in a throne room with a round black and yellow roof. There were squares in the roof here that had little pink balls as decorations. Each one was rotating. It was a dizzying sight. Additionally, the room was huge and had a checkered floor with red draperies around what probably were arches. This led to a very psychedelic effect on the viewer. Wih-Meh-Wih, who was at least a head taller than I, sat on an orange-purple throne with a black frame that rested on a shiny, black platform with steps leading up to it from the checkered floor.

After taking a short look at me, she ran up and embraced me with such vigor that I had to laugh at her enthusiasm.
She spoke English in her wonderfully odd Centurinean accent.
"I have missed youu soh, my secret lllover," she sang in high tones. "Whyy hhhave you waited so longgg?"
I told her that my boss would not give me such a long vacation first until now. She then said her father the king was very mad at her for considering leaving the planet. I was surprised. She paced the room while telling me that her father had fifty children with five concubines. Only one of them was allowed to leave the planet a year. Two of them had already left that year and both because of love. Wih-Meh-Wih wasn't up for the throne or anything, she was just a princess, but the king was angry that she was considering going away so far. He had said that he liked me, because I was a nice human and cooked good food and that he even liked my name. Should I ever appear on their planet, which meant I loved her, I should have to withstand the thirty tests.

If I survived them, I could have Wih-Meh-Wih and take her where ever I wanted.
If not, it was off to the Khunga. That is, if I wasn't dead already.
I started breaking out into fits of sweat. I began envisioning my vacation turning into a holiday from hell.
Thirty tests? Khunga? What was this? The Russian Revolution?
She smiled.
"Nnnnooohhh matter, dearrr," she squeaked. "I think my father will be nice enough to you to only put you through 25 tests. Think of how much great sex we could have on the moon if you manage to succeed going through the tests."
I stopped her midway through the doorway of one of the arches and asked her what kind of examinations these were.
What the heck was Khunga?

She giggled and told me that any stranger who wanted to marry and engage in a prolonged sexual activity with anyone in the planet's royal family had to go through the 30 tests, which in essence comprised life on the planet.
There were easy tests like presenting the basic skills of the language, cooking a special meal of the region and learning how to operate a shtuunk.
"A what?"
She giggled again and told me in a giggly school girl fashion that it was the machine that I had seen the guard operate in order to contact the princess. I remembered the machine with the antenna and realized that this was a shtuunk.

There were tutors for everything and people to guide me through the process. The first ten tests were basic stuff like cooking, language and operations. The next five were religious and intellectual and the last ten were the hardest. These tests were the ones that most men failed. Battling the ten monsters of the planet was extremely difficult, in part because some of them couldn't be seen. There were teachers here, too, but ultimately no one could prepare you for the extraordinary carnage.
Had anyone made it, I asked?
Yes, two out of fifty had made it.
My saunter through this very elegant palace was surreal. The rooms were very glitzy and it was obvious these people loved turning and rotating things in very brash fabrics. Long corridors with lit floors gave way to halls and rooms in very weird formations.

I was starting to doubt my choice of coming here. I had thought that my vacation would become an adventure of sexual bliss, now it was turning into a test of mad bravery and probably one that could lead into fatal attraction.
I stopped again and faced her.
We were standing facing holographic projections of what were obviously ancestors. They were all blue and huge with four eyes, but extraordinarily handsome. As we spoke they leaned over and shook their heads, nodded to one another and chatted.
"Look, dear," I said. "I am afraid. I love you, but I am petrified of this. Is there no other way to get you to be mine?"
She shook her head and smiled, giving me an intense kiss that nearly blew my shoes off. Her two tongues grabbed my organ of the idioms and played with it. This gave my crotch a tingle that had me whimper.

That decided everything. No woman from home could make me feel that way. I did not know what waited for me in those tests, but I knew that I wanted to be with this woman forever. Her lifespan being longer than mine, she would also remain fit until my old age and bear me children who possibly also were fitter than me.
We passed long corridors with very high ceilings with these strange projections of rulers. She explained to me that these were the kings and queens a thousand years back. They had been visiting Earth for a long time now and looked at the primitive way we looked upon rulers. It was not until the end of the 21st century that they made a move to make real contact with us. That is when they saw a surge in morals, where more people had a belief in something divine. This was very important to a Centurinean.
I asked her if she thought sexual practice was a naughty thing.

She told me that it required a sense of responsibility and that many humans had a very eager sense of nervousness about life. Fertile love was as much a part of life as anything, but choosing a partner was something everyone should do with great respect.
If that was the case, I told her I was happy she had chosen me.
We entered the royal hall and this extent, it was more than a room, was the biggest I had ever seen. St. Paul's Cathedral in London, that had been standing for a thousand years now or more, was about half the size of this thing. The walls were in constant motion depending on if we were moving or not.

The walls were blue, the floor was red and yellow and the ceiling was green. It was a dizzying sight. I felt like I was in an amusement park in one of those crazy houses.
Suddenly, we stopped moving and so did the walls and that was when I saw the king sitting on a completely white throne at the end of the hall. The portion of the floor we were standing on lifted and started to move and at once it really did look like we were in a tunnel. Then we stopped and halted a few feet before the large throne.
Three big steps led up to the throne that looked not unlike the throne of Abraham Lincoln near Arlington cemetery on the west end of the National Mall of Washington. The king sat there in his brown uniform blinking with his four eyes, his height of eight feet looming over me like a tree would. He stood up and laughed, spoke with rolling r's and exploding b's.

"Quigley, my boy," he chanted. "How arrrre you?"
So, this was my father-in-law?
He lifted me up and hugged me, told me how he'd been disturbed by the fact that his daughter had wanted to leave him to marry a human, but he realized that his daughter was now a young woman and if Quigley was strong enough to go through the tests there was no stopping us.
Furthermore, he could have the best meals in the galaxy whenever he came to visit us.
I had already booked a room at the Lkueuzgsos Oiisiisw, which was the Bubble Palace Hotel, the first-class resort in town. It was a sort of resort for rich tourists. The king shook his head and said that of course I should stay here in the palace. I could stay with the princess, of course, but I did have to think of saving my strength for the tests.

He asked me how long I was willing to stay and I told him that I had planned to stay for four weeks and now that I was saving the money I wasn't spending on the hotel resort I had some units to spare. He told me that I had to plan two weeks minimum for the tests.
The next week was a mixture of relief and agony. During the daytime I was being trained by twenty teachers ten hours a day in every way: physically, intellectually, spiritually, militarily, gastronomically, tactically, acrobatically, confrontationally and romantically. The tutors were so strict that I spent every lesson sweating and crying.
In the evening, my mistress cooked me the most delicious food. Zemiars Vegetable Spice Soup with Hsjwi cream, Steak of Piwueis with Hwztfajdfoid Sauce on Taqtuqtiqit foundation and as a dessert something as common as ice cream from the moon.

What the digestive was I need not tell you. I worked all day only to be with Wih-Meh-Wih in the evening.
She and I went into the holographic chamber to take trips all over the galaxy and went on real trips around the solar system in the mornings before sunrise. It was a crazy time.
Then on the eighth day it was announced that the tests could begin. The first tests took place in the royal hall that was bigger than St. Paul's. I had to figure out riddles like these: if your rocket storage has 4 pink barrels, 8 white barrels, 6 green barrels, and 2 silver barrels, all standing in pairs, how many barrels would you have to beam out in the dark to be sure you had a matching pair? They were impossible to solve, some of them, because most of them did not have a logical answer. That hour gave me a headache, but I passed it.

The food test was a piece of cake, pardon the pun.
That was what I did best.
The physical fitness worked well, although I did find myself rather tired after all of that running.
My lady came served me my lunch with her clothes off, which was quite a sight. Her six buxom blue bosoms were rather daintily decorated with ribbons. That was no way to calm down and I think that was the point.
The entire afternoon had me working in the holographic chamber trying to get out of a gigantic labyrinth. I spent six hours alone in there until I found myself out.

That night I did not want to speak to my girl.
I fell asleep after hopping into bed without even sparkling my incisors. I woke up next morning, because there was something bouncing and thumping next to me. Wih-Meh-Wih was jumping ferociously at the side of my bed. I suddenly felt a sensation of wanting to leave this planet and never come back. I had only four tests behind me and they had been easy.
She stopped jumping and smiled.
"I'll mmmakke yyyouu brrrrreakffffast," she chirped.

Completely baffled by this strange way of saying good morning, I sat up and got up into their version of a kitchen. I watched her standing on a platform with all these strange machines virtually coming to her instead of her coming to them.
I spoke to her softly about her maybe not being the right girl for me. We were so different. She said that she understood that I felt this way. She asked me to go through with the tests and then decide.

If the first day had been hard, the second day was even harder.
I felt like I was in an odd version of a Jim Carrey movie, with a bit of Sponge Bob thrown in. The next day I was to grasp Centurinean history, which was like trying to repeat how the hundred year's war developed backwards while walking up and down a wall and eating cake while juggling potatoes and singing Someone's in the Kitchen with Dinah sideways.
That was actually exactly what my next test was. I was to perform several tricks at once.
Then I was to learn one of their instruments.
By the end of the day I had a total of ten successful tests behind me and I actually didn't want to see Wih-Meh-Wih ever again. She had expected that, but she kept on serving me now with greater care. She was never in the nude and she certainly didn't come to close to me. It seemed to me that this entire hype of intense sex was exaggerated. What I needed now was calm and control.

I went to Wih-Meh-Wih and asked her if we could have some nice cuddling instead. To my great pleasure, she was happy and so we spent a very nice a quiet evening drinking a bottle of Centurinean wine made of a special grape like fruit called Thruibk. It was a taste that reminded me of blackberries with the syrupiness and bloom of a grape. We watched the stars shine over the Centurinean night and spoke of life and love and her conception of God, which was full of meaning. I also told her that the tests were not at all what I had expected. Weren't the first ten tests supposed to be basic? She answered that I would find that, a lot of times, categorization was unnecessary. Everything was a part of everything. I felt I had redefined my relationship with Wih-Meh-Wih that evening.
The tenth day of my stay I felt ready to take on new tasks.
I said that I was ready to take on test eleven.

Wih-Meh-Wih told me that I passed the eleventh test yesterday evening by looking beyond the merely physical. Yes, sex was a fine thing, but there was much more than sex to a relationship. There was talking and cuddling and mutual understanding. The labyrinth had paved the way. I was honored to be a part of getting to know myself. Obviously, she was smarter than I ever could imagine. Maybe smart was wrong: she was evolved.
I wandered the fields of the holographic landscapes and she showed me various worlds. She presented me the sunsets of Galinea beyond the suns of Proxima. The green fields of Ireland were followed by the rings of Saturn, the nebulas of Andromeda and Neptune's thirteen moons then rose above the horizons. We took a walk on Jupiter, which was possible in a hologram. The storms were huge. We felt them whisk and bend around us, but didn't get affected by them. Then we walked on Pluto and I have never seen such a lonely place.

At the end of the day, over a bottle of Thruibk and Hsjwi cream on the Taqtuqtiqit root, she asked me what I had learned. I said that creation was beautiful. I came to the conclusion that all things should be handled with care.
Nothing should be taken for granted.
I had passed the twelfth test.
The thirteenth test was a bit of challenge: acting. I had to read a play by a Centurinean author named Mij-Kleh Grrumsp IV. The story was about a young female from Centurinea that arrived on Earth and fell in love with a human man. He told her that she had to pass several hard trials before she could be his wife. She refused and left. After leaving, he reconsidered and went to Centurinea in order to agree to sacrifice something for her. Seeing how selfless he was, she then agreed to sacrifice something for him.
In the end, she told him she was a changeling and could teach him about the magic of the universe.

After reading the English translation of the play, their version of Shakespeare, I had to explain the moral of the story. The ordeal continued and Wih-Meh-Wih and I were to rehearse the parts with holographic actors as collaborators. The rehearsals went reasonably well, only the director was an unmerciful tyrant that kept on calling me the worst actor in the galaxy.
Three days of rehearsals followed and, luckily, I had few lines.
On the sixth day we had a dress rehearsal before a crowd of belching, eating, holographic inhabitants. The performance was quite depressing and I asked myself how long this examination would last.
The premiere on the seventh day of the test was good and I must say that I passed the test. I had become a better actor than I thought. The audience was much nicer, so maybe that was the reason why I was a better actor on that day. Anyway, I was proud of myself after the show that night.

Test number fourteen was learning to fly a Centurinean rocket.
At this I was miserable. However, I kept on wondering how long I had been on this planet. Time seemed to pass differently here. Had I been here a month or year? I did not know.
We tried a new approach and the tutor explained in English what each lever did and how I should be really careful with each one and push them too hard. It was very dissimilar from human ships, which were quite sturdy. These ships were highly advanced, but very sensitive. After three days, I was ready and could pilot the thing in a race on one of the moons. It was the most famous races in the system and there were three hundred contestants.
Holographic competitors, of course.
I flew over canyons and mountains, lakes and cities. I was thrown off course by evil individuals and helped by good ones. In the end I came in last, but I made alive and that was main thing.

Wih-Meh-Wih hailed me as if I had been the winner.
The next six tests were a collection of trials that tested me physically, intellectually, spiritually, militarily, gastronomically, tactically, acrobatically, confrontationally and romantically. I had to perform several examinations at the same time that comprised a life on the planet. I had to know how to operate a Shtuunk and I was tested in an incredibly tough manner in order to be able to fight. I was taught to jump, sway, sword fight, kill, hurt, disable and save.
I was becoming a warrior.
Once test number twenty was finished, I was told that the final tests were coming up. I was about to enter hell and battle the most ferocious beasts of the galaxy.
I had to be extremely cunning and very brave.

The first beast was easy, considering the rest. It was a shark from Earth. I really didn't know if this was real, because I was thrown into a room with a huge pool and given a diving suit that I had learned to use. It took ten weapons and three hours to kill the beast, but in the end I did manage it.
The second was harder. A tiger from a planet beyond Andromeda. He pushed me into a hole and chased me down a tunnel and up a hill before he jumped on me and tried to rip my legs off. I wrestled him to the ground, but he jumped on top of me and made me throw him against the wall of cave.
I was bloody and beaten by the time I was ready and my mistress had to bandage me up and leave me out of the testing for a longer time before my continuation of the process.
Test number twenty three continued on the first day of the third week of my visit on Centurinea. I realized that I probably had been here longer than two weeks, but that the entire concept of time was changed. I had been away for a week or two or a year or two. I did not know and it was all up for grabs.

I was now healthy enough to fight the most ferocious beast yet: a Hetsuwhra. The holographic program had been created by the only one to survive a battle with the beast. This twelve feet tall and twenty feet wide monster had three heads and sixty eyes that were blinking constantly. Its' ten arms were waving about all the time. He screamed in different pitches. It was like a weird concert with this strange monster screaming in three tones at once.
I had a very advanced assortment of weapons and armor. The walls of the cave had me bouncing. I finally killed the beast by luring it to eat itself. The right head mistook my presence on top of the middle head and tried to eat me. It then actually bit into its' own head as I jumped off and watched it bleed to death.
I was completely drenched with the monster's green blood as I dashed out of the holographic chamber. I jumped into a holographic sea naked after that at stayed there for the rest of the day.

The night in a haunted mansion was just a matter of endurance. I encountered every possible ghoul: werewolves, vampires, poltergeist, ghosts, mummies, ectoplasm, fairies, furies, witches, warlocks, elves, time travelers, apparitions. I was a nervous wreck when it was over.
Then I had to fight a very real monster, the largest monster in the galaxy: a Khunga. One that swallowed space ships was my foe. I had to find a way out of that thing and did it by exuding an antimatter substance and letting the monster vomit me out.
I was then chased by thousands of termites down a labyrinth and at one time I was so bitten by these things that my whole face was blue. I managed to escape in the last minute.
I was then sent to fight a sea beast.

At this point I was excluded from the testing process, because I had cheated and finished early. The king called me to his throne and beat me until I stood up and screamed at him that I loved his daughter and I had gone through twenty seven tests and was worth some bloody respect. He apparently was very proud of me and told me I had passed the next test by defending myself.
The three last tests were hard, but considering what I had gone through comparatively easy. I killed a dinosaur, a dragon and a giant.
After the last test was over I found myself being pulled away from the entire process. It was like traveling back into time and seeing myself perform all the tests at once. I had accomplished something. I should've been furious at these people for putting me through this whole thing. I should've left Centurinea at that moment and forgot the whole thing.
Instead, I was blissful. This was no ordinary woman. This was a female being from another world, one a head taller than me that loved me and who had such marvelous gifts as love. I was in awe.

The last remaining days of my vacation was the most amazing of my life. I was driven around in ships in order to see the entire quadrant of the galaxy, I was entertained by the most amazing entertainers I have ever seen, heard music I never dreamt possible, saw performances that brought me joy and ate delicious food.
The amazing thing was that my now official girlfriend and I did not once engage in a mingling of lust. Instead, we exchanged telepathic morphing. We danced in a spiritual light that had us waltzing toward paradise. It was remarkable.
We spent every evening dwelling in each other's minds.
At the very last day of my stay at the palace, Wih-Meh-Wih told me that she was a changeling and could change form whenever she consciously wanted. She could even take the form of a human, but only the form that had been chosen for her. In her human form she was brown eyed and brown haired with a sweet complexion and normal human physicality.

I would see what that entailed upon my arrival on the moon.
Their ships were far more advanced than ours and my return trip with the ACTOR ship was canceled. I took the trip with the king and my future wife to Earth and in a matter of days we were there.
We had chosen the lake by my house as a place for the wedding.
The ceremony was conducted by her father. Funnily enough, in a matter of a day's notice my parents arrived to witness it and were happy and surprised to see their son get married.
My boss also arrived and put on his Sunday best to see his best cook take the oath.
The oath itself was astonishing.
I suddenly saw Wih-Meh-Wih turn into a beautiful, buxom, human beauty. We lifted off the ground and mingled in a spiral. I literally became one with her. Our bodies turned into blue light and we swayed and hovered above the lake in a spectacular dance of spirit.
I felt her and she felt me. There was no fear and no anguish.

The night was young as we consisted of blue smoke. Here, she told me I was her wife forever. I was one with the entire creation and she told me that I could become a changeling, too, with her help.
We gradually took our human form and landed on the ground.
The party continued and now I could hear what everyone felt and said and thought.
The language was emotion and the smiles were the reward.
I now had actually felt what my wife's soul looked like and it was beautiful. Hearing and seeing her and guessing what she meant was different than actually feeling her.
My parents and her parents became really good friends and once they left in the same space ship to visit Earth and then go to Centurinea we realized we had created bliss.
We never have sex anymore.
We just turn into blue smoke.
Our five children are changelings, too.
And, boy, can they cook.