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I love Dolfrick Dour. It’s so much fun having a Goth run the teleporter.
It wasn’t often that Teleporter Chief Dolfrick Dour teleported people for the first time, let alone three in under a day. It gave him mixed feelings. While he mourned the loss of the original, with its virginal molecules unsullied by the machinations of his mistress, he nonetheless had a strong curiosity about people’s reactions after their first time.
Ellie Sue had been fascinated and elated, which, given the fact that she’d arrived in the captain’s embrace, seemed perfectly suited to her personality. Typical. The human who arrived looked surprised and a little shaken. Again, not an unusual reaction. Disappointing.
The alien, however… He gasped, drawing a huge draught of air, as though he’d felt smothered by the process. He staggered, wrapped his arms himself protectively as if anticipating his body flying apart into a trillion subatomic particles. He scanned the room wildly, and when his eyes alighted on the teleporter console, they widened with existential dread. Dour could see the humanoid’s intellect fighting against the instinctive urge to throw himself before the console in supplication and fear.
Dour found this sensible and respectable.
“What have you done to us?” the alien whispered in his own language. The ship’s translator repeated it, even to the same awed, horrified tone.
LaFuentes broke the moment. “Aw, take it easy. I promise, whatever you had on the planet you still got now, and it’s all in the same place. Come on. I’ll take you to the Captain.”
LaFuentes waved a hand toward the door. The human slapped his alien companion on the shoulder in a comradely way, and he regained his composure. LaFuentes escorted them out. As he passed by the console, he gave Dour’s robes a once over and rolled his eyes.
When the doors closed behind them, Dour intoned, “And thus does another moment of death and resurrection befall a new species, only to be brushed aside with the banality of human concerns.”
He needed to have another ritual. But first, he wanted to record this moment in poetry. It was deliciously depressing.
