The Benefactor loomed over everyone in the room as a more familiar Grey finished the boot up process on the android in front of them. It was severely unsettling how perfectly human it looked. An exact copy of General Adams, but for the slight issue of the real general not supporting their cause any more.

Dr. Montgomery wasn’t sure how she felt about this, but desperate times and all of that.

Although she was starting to wonder about how nervous the various aliens serving the Benefactor seemed to be of late. Ever since the Asset had first gone missing they’d all seemed uncharacteristically jumpy. She had heard from the Benefactor that the Asset could cause substantial destruction, but surely a weapon like it wasn’t worthy of such fear from interstellar races?

It was bothering her, and she didn’t like being so out of the loop. 

She had pieced together that the Benefactor likely had hoped the Asset would blow up in Humanity’s face. Even now, with things having gone mildly sideways, he seemed smug about the amount of stress she was experiencing.

He had some sort of interest in the Earth, and no doubt hoped to swoop in as a saviour. She could understand that. 

The other aliens being scared of something five hundred miles away, however… surely on the scale of the galaxy a being that was essentially a walking nuke was far from the scariest thing around?

She was going to have to lean on other channels to find more information. The United States had prisoners she could ask, but getting to them wouldn’t be easy. Not if the Benefactor was watching her moves, which Dr. Montgomery was rather certain of. She either needed someone smart that she could trust to do the visit to her (which was a combination that sadly didn’t exist in her line of work) or find a way to have a prisoner brought to her. 

Or a guaranteed way to escape anyone following her.

“Now we just need some way to upset the M’tethon, so that you can put it down and find a better host, no?” the Benefactor said, as the testing of the android General Adams wrapped up. “Though, a primitive planet such as your own should probably do that in no time. Likely someone will respond poorly to the first proven alien life form.”

“No doubt,” Selma replied.

“And then the fun starts,” he said, flashing his sharp-toothed and too large smile. “If you’ll excuse me, though. I have a sparring partner from your world to break in.”

The towering alien left. His aloof nature deeply grated on Dr. Montgomery, even if she’d dealt with similar types from Earth. Those born into wealth and convinced they were lucky for a reason. 

What she did have to wonder about was who, or what, his sparring partner could be. She was left suspecting a grizzly bear or a rhinoceros.

---

The Entity nodded as it followed Tessa to the grocery store. 

“No lighting things on fire. Understood,” it said.

“What were the other rules?” Tessa asked.

“No vaporizing things. No time locking people. No firing energy beams,” the Entity replied.

“Yeah, that seems to cover most of it. Now, do you have the grocery list?”

The Entity nodded, holding up the piece of paper. Tessa didn’t have high hopes for an efficient trip to the store, but she did hope the Entity would learn something from the attempt. 

Probably not everything she’d like it to learn, but maybe the mundane human activity would help bring the Garcelle out in it. To help it be able to at least sort of function at the university next week.

Entering the store, all eyes were quickly on them. Tessa had read the news reports, so she knew what the general public had been told. What she’d largely assumed until recently: the Entity was some sort of space fungus being studied by the US and Canadian governments due to odd energy storage abilities, and it had somehow largely rewritten Garcelle’s brain on exposure. That she was a victim recovering from a brain injury. Who sometimes let off bursts of energy.

Officially their time in custody after the events downtown had involved the government finding a way to drain her power to keep her from being a threat. So no one should worry.

Unfortunately there were enough rumours swirling about time being frozen and people being reverse-disintegrated on the initial burst of chaos that Tessa didn’t have much hope for people believing everything. There were limits to what the government could cover up.

Maybe they should have taken Agent Lee’s offer to relocate to Alert or a similarly remote outpost. 

She should have known the odds of the Entity getting a normal life were gone. Yet she still wanted to cling onto the hope that routine would bring back more Garcelle in it.

Or maybe it was the fear that the loss of anchors would lead to her losing what she still saw of Garcelle in the Entity.

Would those memories survive in some sterile government facility in the high arctic? Thousands of kilometres from any of their friends? Any of their favourite restaurants? The apartment they’d lived in together the past few years?

The life she and Garcelle had built?

Yet the way every other customer in the store kept at least five metres away was making Tessa wonder how well she could cling on to any of that even without moving.

“Social distancing was only two metres,” she muttered to herself as she spotted a woman hovering at the edge of the produce section. 

“Which brand of apples should we buy?” the Entity asked, staring at the bags on sale. “I remember one is bad for cooking and one is good, but I do not remember which was which.”

“Uh… I think it was… hmm… I think you knew better than me, sorry,” Tessa replied. “I guess we’ll just buy one and see how it goes.”

The Entity nodded with total conviction, before grabbing one of the bags and putting it in their basket. 

Heading into the rest of the store proved similarly surreal. The Entity was insistent on running the math to determine which brands were the best price, leaving Tessa rather impressed it could work out the better deal between beans at $4.73 for 520mL and the same type of beans at $3.99 for 430mL in its head so quickly. 

She also couldn’t really say which was the better quality brand, so they went with the cheaper one.

“Of course, I wouldn’t have to do the math if the sale price tag shared the price per unit the same as the regular price tag,” the Entity muttered.

“Mhm, but then more people would realise the sale isn’t as good as it seems,” Tessa replied as they walked past the junk food aisle.

Or, started to walk past. The Entity was very quickly distracted by the allure of chocolate. Specifically a chocolate bar with candy chunks in it.

“Sure,” Tessa said, with a shrug. 

“Really? I remember the shows saying that eating such things too often was unhealthy,” the Entity replied.

“I… I don’t know if you have ‘health’ now in general, and… whatever you’re running on, I think you can handle a bit of sugar,” Tessa said.

“Magnifique,” the Entity replied, putting the large chocolate slab into the cart.

And then floating up into the air.

“Where are you going?” Tessa asked.

“There were maple cookies in the last aisle. If I can have sweets, I want some,” the Entity explained.

Tessa watched her girlfriend float over the aisle, followed by a shriek from someone who apparently thought they were safe from the Entity over in that aisle.

“There’s more than one brand!” the Entity called out, apparently unperturbed by the other customer’s response. “Which type is better?”

“I don’t know!” Tessa called back.

“Is it safe for… it to be out?” a feminine voice asked in a hushed tone.

Turning, she saw that there was a woman poking her head out from behind the shelves of food. There was fear in her eyes.

“Yes. She’s readjusting to society, but she’s harmless,” Tessa said, knowing it was a slight lie, but the Entity had been learning to behave itself.

“Isn’t it radioactive, though?” the woman asked.

“I don’t thi—”

“What are you doing?” the Entity asked, shooting out from the aisle it had been in.

A move that caused the woman to let out a shriek of surprise and scurry off. The Entity, however, did not seem assured by that, floating over to get into Tessa’s personal space.

“What were you doing?” it asked again.

“Uh… I was just talking to that woman?’ Tessa replied, a bit confused.

“Are you… are you planning to leave me!?” the Entity asked, seeming honestly terrified of the possibility.

“P-pardon?” Tessa asked. “I was just talking?”

“In Buddies everyone said Jenny was paranoid for thinking Rob was going to cheat on her when he talked to that waitress, but then he did cheat on her,” the Entity said.

“… Rob is a slime,” Tessa replied.

The Entity made a face at that, taking a moment to think things over. “True. True. He is.”

“So… my talking to a stranger isn’t going to end the same way as a sleazeball in a tv show, don’t worry,” Tessa said.

The Entity nodded slowly, not looking completely sold, but… reassured, at least.

“And I will figure the same for you,” Tessa added.

That confused the Entity, causing it to stare at her, mouth mildly agape. “Me?”

“Mhm. When you talk to other people.”

“But… why would I talk to anyone else? You are ma chérie. I don’t need anyone else,” the Entity replied.

“I… I’m flattered, but… if you’re going to go back to studying mycology you’re definitely going to have to talk to other people. I’m a history major… I barely understand half of what you… ‘Garcelle’ you talk about,” Tessa explained.

The Entity’s eyes filled with concern as it began to float into the air. Rubbing its chin, it slowly turned in the air to float upside down, too deep in thought to notice.

Tessa had to, once more, let out a sigh of relief that static cling easily overcame the force of gravity and so there was no risk of her girlfriend’s shirt falling away in a revealing way.

“I don’t think I like that very much,” the Entity said, bobbing along upside down.

“You need to have friends. We both need to have friends. Everyone needs a little time apart. Like the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt, while absence makes the heart fonder,” Tessa replied.

“Hmm… what if I teach you mycology?” the Entity asked.

“Firstly, we should talk about this at home, after we finish grocery shopping, but, secondly… I’m not really very good at biology. All those chemical names and whatnot. It’s a lot. My brain can’t handle it,” Tessa replied.

“You can handle many names in history, though?”

“Those are people’s names. I can understand how people relate and interact…” Tessa said. “I… let’s just finish the groceries first, ok?”

The Entity nodded and started floating off once more.

The rest of the grocery gathering was fairly straightforward. The Entity tried to stick to the list, and did a decent job of it… until they got to the frozen section. Where it became almost hypnotized by the ice cream selection.

Tessa let out a tired sigh and let it get one tub of its choosing. Which turned out to be the caramel-brownie mix that Garcelle had always gotten herself when she’d felt she really needed a treat.

A nice reminder that Garcelle was still in there. Even when the Entity seemed to drift.

Things then went sideways again when it came time to pay. A concept that seemed to perplex it deeply. 

Tessa had to bite her tongue as she struggled not to ask what that meant about space. If the galaxy was some sort of post scarcity utopia. Or if currency exchanges were simply so automated that people forgot they were a thing, like seemed plausible with some of those staff-free stores companies like Smile Corp were working on down in the States.

---

Getting home, she got her answer… it was just because the Entity had never really interacted with stores before.

It was a doomsday device, after all.