Private Double Vision

The hum and groan of the observation center made her even more uneasy than the planet itself. She didn't like places like this, all metal and rubber, the sort of barren technoscape completely foreign to her home planet. Even most of the major government buildings back home incorporated some natural element in their construction. She felt like she couldn't breathe in places like this, like the walls were closing in. Atleast earth had plenty of green. If she'd had any choice in the matter she would never step foot here, but the necessity of the space station was unfortunately insistent. Her ship could hardly come to the island with her, and she needed to make her reports! The people back on Gaonope were relying desperately on her Earth mission! Or...that's what she'd been led to believe anyway, before she was shipped off.

The pinkette scurried her way through the drydock, a pair of headphones firmly pinching either side of her head, their cord a rubbery serpent that ran through the creases in her bright blue and acidic pink wind breaker, jacked in to the chunky brick cassette player she still often used, a treasured relic sent with her on her initial journey to earth, for research into their culture. Madonna was blasting in either ear, the girl's head bobbing along as under hushed breaths she sang some bastardized version of Material Girl, every other note off key, lyrics strained and stretched as the alien fought her own tongue to reproduce English without the help of her communicator, desperate to become a fluent speaker without the need for the translator.

Her written reports read more like a diary, but she'd spent the better part of her weekend writing them rather than working on her current paper for her Social Deviance class. The girl had been torn between them, the compelling materials of her classes and the desperate need to explore and report on everything the city had to offer. She was probably meant to write reports about atmospheric conditions and current geopolitics and societal structure, but that seemed boring and stuffy. She liked studying the people instead. Humans were strange but adorable creatures, if a bit frightening sometimes.

She was pulled from her train of thought and the rhythm of the infectious tune by a sight that caught her attention, waves of remembrance washing over her, like deja vu. Her eyes scanned the metallic exterior of one of the other ships stored in the drydock. This looked awfully familiar...like the ships she always saw on her mother's work resources and the brochures she was always putting together. A cruise ship? The aloof alien stood and gawked for a moment, before slowly moving to continue on her way....unaware of the startling interruption about to come.

The sudden sound of a tinny voice shouting something between shock and a greeting at her caused Padori to leap a solid foot backwards, her antenna shooting straight up, like rigid limbs thrown up to avoid an incoming threat not actually posed. Her flight response had been tripped and the automatic instinct to jet herself upwards took over, causing the girl to float a solid five feet upwards before she realized this wasn't in fact the ocean, quickly plopping back down, landing flat on her butt. A heavy whine creaked from her lips like a rusted hinge, the girl rubbing at her rear end with a hand, that was like...totally gonna bruise.

It seemed the horror was far from over though as an amorphous metallic haze erupted from the battered ship and assumed a form of her own, like looking into some twisted mirror came to life. Padori muttered and sputtered, slowly scooting her way back from the thing, whatever it was, with eyes so wide they seemed to threaten to pop from her skull. She pointed at her other self (?) with an accusatory finger. "Y-Y-You're Me!" she bumbled out. Thousands of thoughts churned in her head like raging waves in Gaonopan seas. Who was that girl? How was this possible? Was she a clone? Some mimicking sort of entity? Perhaps just an uncannily similar member of her own race? She couldn't be certain, but every answer seemed equally or more frightening than the last.

"You...are you like...real?" she asked, a more than genuine question in and around the island, as she had quickly come to learn. Nothing was a given on this planet, in this place. It was as though earth drew the intergalatic, interdimensional eye of every single entity who had made a discovery of it's existence, a magnet drawing all sorts of bizarre people to it's orbit.

Her shocked antenna finally fell slack, floppy against her head like droopy rabbit ears as she sighed, finally regaining some composure. They perked up then, probing at the air in the direction of the stranger, a pursed lipped look forming on the pinkette's face. "You look just like me but...you're not from Gaonope. You don't smell like home, like me. You smell like...metal. What are you? Who are you?" she continued to probe, a silence following as she finally left a gap for the familiar faced stranger to answer some of her questions.